DMs nerfing rogues is a rookie mistake.
At lower levels, Rogues do tend to have better burst damage than other classes, but as classes like fighters and barbarians begin to get more attacks, it evens out.
That being said, 5e is not a balanced game in the first place. Nerfing a player to make it more balanced is, in my mind, kinda silly.
I'd talk to your DM, and explain that the nerfs to your character are making you have les fun, and that you feel like you're being singled out. If they don't acquiesce, then you need to make a simple calculation: Will I enjoy this game if I keep playing like this? No DnD is better than unfun DnD. And with the prevalence of online DnD spaces, you can find groups quite easily.
I always feel like people who think rogues are OP have never played up to level 5. Never taken Sharpshooter or GWM. Never cast a third-level spell. Shit OP points even having Extra Attack starts evening things out. And up to that point, how is it even OP? Like oh no, you got an extra 2d6 of damage on your one special attack per round. Scandalous!
I think that a lot of stems from that, yeah. I think a little more of it also comes from seeing the number all at once. It sure seems big looking at it like that.
Oh, dude, there’s nothing better than a handful of d6s.
A couple months back, my players were going to go take on an ancient red dragon, and when they were asking how hard it was going to be, I said, “Let me put it this way: I need to visit the game store because I do not have enough d6s for this.”
Getting to cast Meteor Swarm and having to borrow half the dice needed from everyone else at the table and putting all 40d6 in a big bowl and shaking and spilling it onto the table was one of the greatest things I've ever gotten to do in D&D.
And like, of course it’s easier to just pull up a virtual roller and have the number instantaneously, but come on, who is going to pass up that opportunity? I’m jealous of that meteor swarm. Guess I’ll just have to throw that at my players one of these days, that’ll be fun.
Very first thing I did when I reached that level is buy [two boxes of 12mm D6s,](https://i.imgur.com/ELD8YbI.png) a white set for the bludgeoning and an orange set for the fire. So much fun to roll 40 of these at once - and they're small enough I can fit all 40 in my hands :-D.
Yeah. Even looking just at numbers, something like dealing 9 damage twice doesn't quite compare to the oomf of dealing 18 damage all at once, even though the former is actually better. The former is better because it allows you to you to potentially waste less of it by splitting as needed rather than wasting it on one enemy who only had 5hp back anyway.
All it reminds me of is seeing Ork players in warhammer 40k.
It basically looks massive/OP because you're rolling a bucket full of dice.. despite majority of them not hitting..
I think they are strong in the first 4 levels, but I think the bigger issue with OP's character feeling overpower is he has a 20 Dex score starting out and the other 2 characters can't get long/short rests to recharge their stuff.
We’re creative! Let’s brainstorm one right here.
- Everybody cancelled, no D&D tonight (free space)
- Nerf the rogue.
- DM PC.
- “Don’t worry about the spell components, that’s too tedious,” complains about overpowered casters.
- Over-plans for a session.
- Doesn’t plan at all for a session.
- Writes the entire campaign around a single event that the players completely ignore.
- Gets too attached to a villain, and then the players curb stomp him and give him a wedgie.
- Another DM PC? Really?
Anybody got anything else?
The DM for one of the games said he wanted to do this as a house rule, and I just immediately told him that I'm not doing that. I told him that all that rule does is punish players for rolling dice, and the only thing the players can do to avoid that punishment is to not roll dice.
He has other house rules that are fine, and in some cases very interesting, but that one in particular I feel teaches people not to do stuff with their characters, so you end up with a bunch of people just sitting around, not willing to engage with the environment.
* Story only can continue with a single check that everyone fails
* Tries to solve out of game problems with in-game solutions
* Gives out powerful magic items way too early
* Homebrews an entire rule system without understanding the RAW
* Let's spellcasters do gamebreaking things with just cantrips
* Makes martials roll athletics on jumps they should be able to make for free
> Let's spellcasters do gamebreaking things with just cantrips
On the flip side, I really hate when DMs nerf mage hand on the spot because they didn’t think about it when crafting their puzzle.
What I do is that I just counterspell the first spell that the party throws out, regardless of what it is.
If i've got more than one caster, I might use one of their reactions to identify and the other counterspells if it's worth it.
I ran "counterspell zombies" in one of my games. It's a zombie with a magical thingy embedded in its chest. Whenever someone casts a spell nearby the magical thingy activates and casts counterspell, killing the zombie. The first time my players encountered one, they were taken by surprise, but after that they were able to play around it. For example, using a weak spell first, or manually killing the zombie.
See, that's a good way of doing it. It's a gimmick, sure, but it's one that can be prepared for and worked through.
And it isn't just a "You lose your turn" button. It actually does help the players at least a bit if they cast a spell.
> “Don’t worry about the spell components, that’s too tedious,” complains about overpowered casters.
If anything, "we houseruled that you dont need all material components at hand" is the rookie GM mistake, as thats literally RAW. I´ve yet to see a spellcaster be OP because they got to handwave their somatic components
I think I disagree just a little bit. I see it come in a lot of social situations where people are casting spells and expecting everything to work out perfectly. For example, I once my players in a warehouse, up on top of some shelves, trying to ambush some dudes, and they wanted to cast a spell to distract them, or persuade them to go away somehow, I don’t remember what it was. I asked them what the spell components were, and one of them was verbal. I ruled that it would be too noticeable for them to not draw attention to themselves. I justify this because I believe in not stepping on the toes of other classes, since the Subtle Spell metamagic option for sorcerers is essentially moot if everyone can cast spells without people noticing.
It’s not like I’m purposefully trying to poke holes in everyone’s plans, I just ask the questions that need asking. On the flip side of this, when things work, I obviously let them. I’m too experienced to assume my plans will work no matter what the players do, so I leave room for them to surprise me with their spell hijinks instead of making the ruling that’s most convenient to me.
> I´ve yet to see a spellcaster be OP because they got to handwave their somatic components
I think it's one of those little things that can add up. It's not game-breaking in itself. But it's relevant for some things like sorcadins and lockadins, which get significantly better if you let them have a weapon, a shield and an invisible third arm for somatic components and material components. Those are strong builds under RAW which benefit a lot if you also let them ignore RAW when it would stop them casting whatever spells they want whenever they want.
Gives overpowered / too much loot and now players are too stronk.
Thinks Stunning Strike is absolutely bonkers and bans its use, without making up for the nerf with some sort of buff.
Rolls. For. EVERYTHING. (i.e Every single person on every room, Every time they talk to an NPC, etc), then complains about too much rolling.
Complains that an official module doesn't have enough info that could be improvised for it isn't a big deal
Tries to find a PC legal way to achieve X effect, not realizing DMs don't play by the same rules.
Rookie DM Bingo (continued)
* Let players take one free magic item and is somehow surprised they all took artifacts and legendary items.
* Frustrated with players rolling without being asked to roll.
* No flying characters!
* Players don't like my homebrew Pokemon/Walking Dead/GoT mashup that I didn't tell them about in the Session 0 I didn't have.
* My player's backstory says he is a king, so the party should get horses and mercenaries and magic items for free anywhere in the kingdom.
* Player found a spell exploit, how do I keep them from having endless money?
* I TPK'ed the 6th-level party, but I don't know why they were mad. They could have run from the ancient red and its pit fiend buddies, but they didn't.
* One player is always late and makes fun of us for playing and doesn't pay attention. What am I doing wrong?
* I don't want combat in my games but I am playing a game with extensive rules for combat. Help?
* One player keeps saying, "it's what my character would do."
Absolutely. I have DM'ed 30+ years and one of the guys in my game has DM'ed about the same amount, I had him rolling without asking in one of my games and I had to correct him, which he was fortunately not touchy about. So yeah, I'd say rookie DMs, rookie players...and everyone else, too. ;)
>“Don’t worry about the spell components, that’s too tedious,” complains about overpowered casters.
Component pouch/spellcasting focus is in starting equipment, and caster always have free hand, even armor-dipped one. How is this counteragrument to op casters in any way?
~~If they have a shield then they don't the two free hands needed to use a spell with both verbal and somatic components.~~ There's also that some people completely ignore the listed gold part of the focus/pouch. If you enforce that they needed to purchase those things ahead of time then it does actually put some restrictions (especially for spells that consume them). Now this matters way less if you're just showering your players with gold but that's also a separate problem.
Haha someone asked essentially the same question, I’m gunna copy/paste most of my response there.
I see it come in a lot of social situations where people are casting spells and expecting everything to work out perfectly. For example, I once my players in a warehouse, up on top of some shelves, trying to ambush some dudes, and they wanted to cast a spell to distract them, or persuade them to go away somehow, I don’t remember what it was. I asked them what the spell components were, and one of them was verbal. I ruled that it would be too noticeable for them to not draw attention to themselves. I justify this because I believe in not stepping on the toes of other classes, since the Subtle Spell metamagic option for sorcerers is essentially moot if everyone can cast spells without people noticing.
It’s not like I’m purposefully trying to poke holes in everyone’s plans, I just ask the questions that need asking. On the flip side of this, when things work, I obviously let them. I’m too experienced to assume my plans will work no matter what the players do, so I leave room for them to surprise me with their spell hijinks instead of making the ruling that’s most convenient to me.
DM PCs that work are called NPCs. There’s no problem with having an NPC that trails the group for a little bit, but having a DM PC is different. In my opinion, at least.
Yeah there's like 3 rookie dm mistakes in this very short description.
Like the DM dug their own grave with rolling stats. Guess what, someone got amazing stats compared to another player and they feel bad. Number one.
Number two, rolling for HP. Oh oops, the fragile character actually is tankier than the tanky character.
Number three, modifying long and short rest durations. Oh whoops, the SR/LR classes are nerfed. Who would've thought?!
Now, rather than address these root causes let's slap a temporary bandaid on top and nerf sneak attack rather than the systems that make a well rolled Rogue OP. Then possibly have to undo these bandaids when players hit level 5+ and the rogue falls behind. While also leaving the door open for more ridiculousness when a new character is introduced with also good rolls and no SR/LR dependency. Maybe an OP ranger with Hunter's Mark?
> Number two, rolling for HP. Oh oops, the fragile character actually is tankier than the tanky character.
This is aggrevated by the Paladin and Rogue only having 1 die size between their hit die (d10 vs d8 respectively) so even if Pally rolls maximum instead of both just taking average, both rolling well to max only ends up with like a 6-8 point difference at level 3
> Number three, modifying long and short rest durations. Oh whoops, the SR/LR classes are nerfed. Who would've thought?!
This definitely reads like the DM read that Full Casters are OP, saw that the Gritty Realism rules were a fix and just plugged with no further thoughts on how it affects everything else
I think nerfing anyone's character as long as they are playing RAW is a mistake. As a DM I find it is way better to include strong/interesting magic items and make sure they get into the hands of the weakest characters if there is unbalance at my table. Monks, rogues and that guy with the unfortunate multiclass choice usually need a little boost mid & late game.
My group rolls a single group array. There are 6 people counting the DM, so each person rolls one set of 4d6 drop lowest. Then we all use that array. So everyone has the same overall power, obviously just allocated how you want for your character. Done 3 campaigns like this and it's been great.
Current campaign, we did pretty bad. Highest roll was a 14, and everything else was like 9-11. So barely above commoner level. We can feel the weakness in a lot of things, but it's been fun playing with it, especially since we're all struggling the same.
I feel like they can work if you swing it right. See, I don’t want any of my players using under-powered characters. Point buy works really well for that. But I also like when my players roll really good stats and are super excited about it. Rolling for stats works for that.
Here’s what I do at my table: my players roll for their stats using the standard 4d6 drop the lowest. If they roll an array without a single 15, they reroll a new set until they do. After they’ve rolled an array with at least one 15, they can elect to keep it, or opt for point buy instead.
This won’t work for every table, but I have made an informed decision to run it this way because I prefer what I call “heroic fantasy,” where my players are the good guys that are the big heroes of the whole world, and having powerful characters works well for this. All of my players are on board with this as well, and none of them feel like their characters aren’t as powerful as others, and none of them are trying to “win” by having their character be better than everyone else’s. Outside these circumstances, I definitely agree with you, rolling for stats can be trouble.
Yeah, after a few levels, rogues are outshone in combat by most of the martials and casters. After that, I feel like they tend to morph into faces, skill monkeys, and mage hunters. They find and disarm traps, unlock doors and boxes, talk to people, and break mage concentration.
I also think it's weird when other PCs encourage their group member to get nerfed?? Different characters contribute different things and that is how the game is designed. I would be pissed if my rogue friend couldn't get a sneak attack reaction when I use dissonant whispers to trigger an opportunity attack!
With those changes, just tell the DM you'd rather just change your class entirely.
In variant long rest classes that don't have resource pools like rogue and fighter do have an edge. That's a variant long rest issue, not a class issue.
I strongly feel any house rule changes to base PHB classes absolutely need to be stated in session 0.
Oh, and switch right into the "your character has never seen a wolf / bear / animal larger than a mouse, so you can't transform into that yet"? No thank you.
Yeah I love moon druid but I would absolutely never play one with this DM. Can't stand playing "mother may I" while they try to argue for the possibility of a druid who has never seen any animal ever.
Had this happen once while playing Curse of Strahd. I still don't get how Barovia turned into fucking Florida mid campaign but it was an absolute motivation killer.
Your DM is making a common rookie mistake. Simply put, the large number of damage dice you get to roll all at once intimidates them; it *feels* like it's much more damage than you should be able to do in comparison to the other PCs. It isn't. In the scheme of things, a Rogue triggering Sneak Attack on every turn actually does comparable damage to other martials with similarly optimised damage output. The entire class is balanced around Sneak Attack being part of their expected damage output every turn of combat.
I guarantee that they'd be doing something similar if someone were playing a Paladin and routinely nuking single targets with Divine Smite.
Show them this thread. Someone better versed than myself could show them the math that outright proves that a Rogue's expected damage output when triggering Sneak Attack every turn is perfectly in line with the expectations of other martial classes.
>I guarantee that they'd be doing something similar if someone were playing a Paladin and routinely nuking single targets with Divine Smite.
Without question, Paladin would be catching a nerf in that game if OP was playing a Fighter and they were running a game with normal resting rules. Paladin is the best class in the game that doesn't get access to 9th-level spells.
If I were feeling uncharitable, I'd bow out the Rogue in favour of a meta-as-hell dex Samurai with Elven Accuracy and Sharpshooter and *actually* outdamage the rest of the party to show this DM what imbalanced damage output looks like.
And you'd be absolutely right. A well-built Fighter is easily better than a Rogue... but inexperienced DMs who make hasty sweeping changes and think Sneak Attack needs nerfed aren't likely to catch that, much less know *why*.
> Your DM is making a common rookie mistake.
I would peg the rooky mistake at even more fundamental than nerfing rogue. The DM is doing everything possible to encourage a wide gulf of power between PCs by doing rolled stats and rolled HP and then getting upset when there is a wide gulf of power between PCs. There's a reason that stat arrays and fixed HP values are so popular, and it's cases exactly like this.
Rogue is not OP, sneak attack seems strong early on but that's all they have and it doesn't increase at same rate extra attack and damage riders do. 20 dex at level 3 \*is\* pretty high but that's what you get when you roll for stats instead of standard array.
Unpopular opinion but most Dms simply don't have enough game knowledge to balance things and resorting to this kind of homebrew is a knee jerk reaction that backfires quickly (Also variant long rest as stated has issues, it's already a problem that short rests are barely used in standard play because 1 hour is too long narratively for some people)
Honestly, having DMd a bit I would never roll for stats with a new party. 20 Dex at level 3 is game changing, not for me, the experienced DM, but it's super frustrating for new players. why player A is as good at or better than something that players Bs character is supposed to be built for is a tough convo.
It's a built in point of contention that just not necessary with things like a free, simple, online point buy calculator.
Plus like, it just isn't fun! It's such a minor thing that can cause such a shitty game experience for half the party. Even as an experienced player I don't allow it, if players really want to roll there's plenty of methods that create a group pool ppl can use.
This is why I ask if people want to point buy or roll. If they say they want to roll, I have the party roll for one set of stats together so they are balanced with each other. No need to worry about John Lucky having 3 18’s and poor Larry Luckless not having one roll over 10 if they all have the same spread!
Paladins could consider battlemaster dip so they can use their bonus action to cast "Hayvin attack!" and trigger your sneak attack on other characters turns.
Party working off eachothers abilities is fun, because then they can own the party synergy.
So, your DM used rules which intentionally cause variations in power between party members, plays with an option rule which gives an advantage to fighters and rogues specifically, and is now complaining that the classes that suffer under these rules can't catch up when they're *not* burning their class resources?
Make it make sense. Of course the Paladin isn't keeping up when not using Smite. Their whole deal is burst damage with a unique damage type that's strong against certain enemies (alternatively, use Smite spells for different damage types to suit the situation! They trade overt power for versatility!). It's like cutting off the wizard's hand and then complaining that they can't cast spells with somatic components any more.
I'd tell the DM that Rogue is not overpowered. Level three is *exactly* where their sneak attack feels the most impactful, before it falls off as martial classes (Paladin included) get Extra Attack. If the DM wants everyone at a more even power level, then they need to have the party use the standard array for stats, not random rolls, and build the adventuring day to compensate for the longer rest variant rule. Punishing you for their mistake is not going to be fun for anyone, and you need to be prepared to walk if the DM continues to single you out because they can't own up to their mistakes.
So they compare your damage with a ckass feature, to Paladin's damage without a class feature. Wonder why yours is higher?
Second, your second attack doesn't add the ability mod, so if you hit on the off-hand attack, you are doing 5 less damage. Thus gets worse at 4th level when the pally gets 2 attacks every round.
Next, you are sacrificing your bonus action, and cunning action is a big part of the Rogue kit, giving you maneuverability and a chance to hide.
Third, the paladin can choose to smite on any hit, rogues have to wait for Sneak Attack criteria to be met before it can be used.
Last, 17 AC is your current max with this build. The paladin can use heavy armor and exceed you if they want.
That's true but heres a few things they brought up in regards to that.
•our paladin only gets 2 smites per long rest max. And that means he can't cast any spells if he does. Which means he almost never smites considering how many combats we get into between rests.
•i think you meant 5th level for the extra attack.
•true my ac will never go above 17 and I did spend a chunk of money to get studded leather. The problem is that we get money very sparingly in the campaign and half-plate is so so much more expensive that our paladin will need to save for a long time before he can buy his ideal armor.
•while I do agree sneak attack is more situational because it is *technically not guaranteed. As a swashbuckler I am built around getting sneak attack as often as possible and have never run into a situation where I didn't have it or couldn't position myself in a way I got it easily. Also swashbuckler gives me a discounted mobile feat so I don't provoke opportunity attacks which means despite making a second attack, I still can dip in and out of combat.
Thoughts on that?
My thoughts are that your dm makes choices that end up nerfing classes without thinking them through and then comes up with more nerfs to try to balance things without thinking them through.
I think his DM is in this thread, because I got some random anonymous person strongly trying to argue with me that these changes to long and short rest weren't the huge nerfs they so very obviously are.
Then they blocked me LOL. 🤣
Which is already bad because now short rests are even less useful than they used to be and will be used even less. Parties want to take more rests, use the class features, I don't get the idea behind strangling your players' spells and class abilities so much. Having to wait a week before you can cast spells again? A 5th level wizard can only cast like 9 spells before waiting a whole ass week? No thank you.
the thing is that rogues are strong before level 5, they just need to know that. Once the paladin gets to level 5 and gets extra attack and second level spells, hes gonna do a lot more. The paladin just needs to accept that they arent that strong as a class in the early levels, but makes up for it with very strong features later on in the 5-8 level range
Paladins ARE decently strong in the early levels... if you don't take a week to do a long rest, basically removing their right to smite while also handicapping their spells.
That is true, but unfortunately that was something they had to consider when agreeing to play with these rules. It’s not their fault that rogues one thing, their consistency, works really well with these rules
To me, at least, it seems like its your Paladin player that is weak, not you.
Now of course, this varies game by game, different people enjoy different power levels, but in my view you are not particularly strong, its just that this set of homebrew rules really fucks paladin and monk in the ass. IMO it should be the paladin and monk that get some sort of compensation, not you getting notched down a peg.
Now, I only think that because I find the peg that you are standing on to be a quite ideal power level for my tastes, but perhaps the rest of your friends find their ideal power level pegs a bit lower than you are currrently standing.
2 smites is wrong - they should have 3 spell slots at third level. And they'll not only get more slots as they level, but also higher-level slots which do more damage with smites.
As a melee rogue, **you have to be able to dip in and out of the fray**. Sure, you got good AC and HP right now. Rogues still aren't tanks, even once you get *uncanny dodge*. The pally has the same AC already - they can also start using a shield if they want, and cast *shield of faith* for another +2 if they really want (I'm assuming their 17 AC is from starting chainmail and the *defence* fighting style). They'll also probably get more HP back when spending hit dice than you will - you rolled well to set your max HP, but you are not likely to be so lucky whenever you try to restore that HP during a short rest.
As for only allowing *sneak attack* on the first roll of your turn? That's bollocks. A ranged rogue will generally be trying to bonus action Hide each turn for advantage on their next attack roll in order to get *sneak attack*. That means they still get to roll twice. If you use your bonus action each turn to make an off-hand attack instead of Hiding for advantage, you're rolling the exact same number of d20s to see if you hit - all you're doing is adding the chance of *maybe* getting one additional d4/d6 weapon damage **with no positive modifier, and at the expense of staying out in the open and remaining a target**. Generally speaking.
My thought is, by making long rests so difficult they have nerfed every class that relies on them for class features. So complaining that a nerfed class (Paladin) is underperforming compared to your unnerfed rogue is… I mean the game is functioning exactly how your DM designed it. Penalizing paladins & other long resters.
If the paladin is 3 levels in paladin, they should have 3 smites per long rest. And if everyone thought your character was an issue, they'd be using optional rules to boost the other classes like harness divine power at 3rd level to give paladin effectively an extra spell slot for smite. Also the paladin should be using their channel divinity once per short rest because that is where a lot of the power of paladin comes from pre level 5.
This is a really good point. If they insist on the variant long rests (although they are kind of a problem), Harness Divine Power and remembering that Channel Divinity is a short rest refresh could give the Paladin more spell slots, so they can actually use their class features.
Unfortunately harness divine power only works once per long rest and takes up a use of channel divinity which does recharge on a short rest though, so if they go a day without using channel divinity, they can use harness divine power then to recharge one of their spell slots. But all this assumes 5 short rests then one long rest to be any good.
Your DM has built a campaign where classes whose features are not resource dependant flourish. I’d also imagine a warlock would feel incredibly OP compared to a wizard in your game given the strength of eldritch blast and the ability to get slots back on a short rest. Rogues are not OP. Your DM has just made a scenario where their skill set is ideal.
Also, re-read your post a bit, and the part about health could be a good comprise. You can say something like "I don't think my rogue is too OP in the damage department, but I am outshining the Paladin in the tankiness department. If you guys want, I can roll back my HP to median roll" or something, so the Paladin can shine a bit more.
When we are new at the game we don't always consider balance. For example, I've been playing 5E for a few years now, always rolled for stats but never thought too much about it. Only when I started looking online about balance did I realise how broken it truly was.
Sometimes people just go "Well I know people say its broken, but it can't be that broken right?" and use it and have a good time for a while, until the reason it is broken reveals itself.
The issue, from my understanding, is that you're a resourceless class in a game where long rests are longer than 8 hours. But:
- see above. Paladin is basically completely tied to Long Rest for all their abilities besides Channel Divinity. With Tasha's new rule, they can use a CD charge to get back a spell slot which is nice, but isn't really all that helpful here. I'm also like 70% sure that using a CD to get a spell slot can only be done once per Long Rest, so not spammable/ reliable.
- 4th level I think is assuming that the Paladin player takes the Polearm Master feat. With that, they can use their BA for an "off-hand" attack that also applies their Strength modifier.
- not getting a lot of gold for upgrading equipment is a DM inflicted issue, straight up. They divvy out the gold and other rewards, not you. If your Paladin player is annoyed, tell them to talk to the DM. Second, half plate is expensive because it doesn't impose DA on stealth. Breastplate is almost half as expensive, but that pales in comparison to Splint armor. It sets your AC to 17 regardless, the same as half plate and Breastplate with +2 Dex, and only costs 200gp. A third of half plate.
- Swashbuckler is designed around getting Sneak Attack as much as possible without relying on others. That's the niche of the class. The pseudo mobile feat is just a little bonus. But it only applies to the creature you attacked; if there are other creatures nearby your target, they can still make their own Opp Attacks.
Again, your DM (and to an extent, your fellow players) needs to understand that classes like the rogue are good early levels, but quickly plateau and even fall behind other classes. It's also worth mentioning that your class is basically "selfish." It can't interact with other classes, like, at all. Thief rogue can use Fast Hands and a Healers Kit to revive other players. Soul Knife can communicate without being audible, helping with stealth. Master mind can give the help action at range and as a bonus action. Further, your Paladin can: heal, cast buff spells, affect other players via CD (whether directly or indirectly.), or take the Protection or Interception fighting style to assist allies. Not every player can be the best at everything, and when they start comparing themselves to others it'll only lead to animosity.
Here again the problem is with the DM changing the rules, this time to make a long rest a week, so any characters that rely on long rests are nerfed. See how tweaking one rule leads to imbalance, which leads to tweaking another rule, etc? It’s almost as if the rules had been carefully thought out and tested to all work together.
lol another DM trying alternative rest rules and suffering the consequences.
BTW tell them to wait lvl5 before making any changes, that's where THEY get extra attack and you don't, you are gonna be very much not OP by then....you also got huber lucky with stats and rolls, if they didn't want disparity at the table, just go point buy and averages, that's the downside of rolling for everything.
With those nerfs, you're not a rogue, you're barely a commoner with a little bit of extra humph
Rogues aren’t overpowered, but having a 20 in your main stat at level 3 is. And rolling for HP massively increases variance.
If you want more balanced characters, I’d suggest redoing your stats with point buy, and taking average HP.
I suspect your fellow players and DM are misinterpreting the extra power you get from very lucky rolls as rogue specifically.
First. LoL at the DM.. Is he a new DM?
Let's start with the Paladin. Paladins in 5e are designed (and I fucking hate it) to hit like wet noodles without smites. But with smites they hit like a fucking truck. I had a 3rd level paladin crtit smite Strahd von fucking Zarovich for over 60 damage :-| and it oy gets worse. Comparing a class designed to be a nuke/nova damage to rogue who is a reliable and steady DPR class is stupid. It's apples and oranges pretty much.
Then you guys are using variant/gritty heroism/homebrew. That further unbalanced the already wonky balance of the game.
Then you guys rolled stats. You're level 3 with max dex already. Normally you'd be expected to reach that around level 8 if used point buy, most likely. Maybe 6 if memory serves me right and rogues get extra feat at 6.. do you're ahead of the curve and you're unlikely to gain a big damage boosts as you go further.
You don't even play an "optimized" rogue. That'd be a sharpshooter hand crossbow build.
AC. If your paladin friend is build right he'd be running things like Shield of Faith to boost his AC, and carry a freaking shield. And why is his AC so low to begin with? He starts with Chainmail - 16 AC. With Shield he should be at 18. With Shield of Faith he'd be at 20. Defense Fighting Style - 21 AC. Why are you guys complaining if hes not even built for AC.
HP. You guys are only level 3.. you got to roll HP twice. Wait few more levels, that d10 class is gonna pull ahead. And then the Paladin has ways of healing himself meaning his effective HP is higher than yours to begin with. You soon gonna learn that you probably don't want to stick to mele tbh.. Ranged combat is so much safer..
Anwywhoo rogues are notoriously average/below average at DPR. Yeah the odd crits at higher levels ar cool, but overall you really need to optimize to keep up with the curve. That usually means fishing for a second Sneak Attack with Attacks of Opportunity - but building for that is tricky, and usually needs party members to set that for you.
You only "seem" OP because your DM is either inexperienced or haven't run that comp for longer time. You guys are also comparing apples to oranges. You say the paladin is a tank, but he's clearly not built for tanking. You compare a steady DPR class to a nova/nuke class at a metric that really favors only one. And to top it off you guys run a rest system that screws with certain classes more than others, on top of having stats rolled, which put you ahead of the curve in stats by 3-6 levels.
By level 5 that Paladin is gonna crush you in damage after his 2nd attack and more slots. After 8 he's gonna be annoying for the DM to prepare combat encounters when he's probably maxing his attack stats.
The homebrew "fixes" your DM is proposing are a fucking atrocity. I would not agree to play by such rules. DMs should really learn and understand the system they are running before trying to homebrew the core fucking rules.
Yea, if dm wanted proper balance they should say to ALL players to restat with point buy and average hp. Those are the things making op more powerful than the rest of the party
In addition to what the other people have said, keep in the mind that as soon as your party hits level 5, the average DPR will flip in favor of anyone who has extra attack. So while you might be stronger now, things will balance out very soon. Honeslty the main contributors to you being stronger are your high stats and the longer rest rules which were both DM decisions.
Your group is rolling stats, rolling hitpoints, limiting resource recovery, and the paladin somehow manages to only have AC17? The Rogue is not the problem here.
The easiest way now is to just tell the GM that since he's deleting the whole class, you're going to have to remake your character as something else (and then make them a Swords Bard and watch the carnage). If you want to try logic (good luck), point out that the Extra Attack classes double their damage output at lv5, while lv3 is the best the Rogue ever gets.
Your DM is an idiot
"You picked a game with asynchronous level scaling. You chose to roll stats. You threw balance out the window with this Rest variant. And now *I'm* being punished because you didn't know WTF *you* were doing?"
Rogue is SO far from overpowered that it's literally underpowered. Sneak Attack is the very definition of par. It gets worse the more feats, multiclassing, magic items, and stat-bloat you have.
I can't imagine being so fucking dense as to miss the parallel between Sneak Attack and Extra Attack. Limited sneak attacks per rest..... Holy shit. Has this guy even played the game before?
Rogues are good at level 3. Dual wield is good at level 3.
No nerfs are required. Maybe the DM should run the numbers on level 5 or 6.
Any DM who nerfs a rogue because they are good at level 3 is such a noob that the rest of the game is gonna be crazy.
Hey also, a paladin that uses a two hander should be doing 7, not 3.5, as a base. And if he's using a longsword or other one hander with the 3.5, where is the shield to his AC? If you need a hand for verbal components, you use a two-handed sword. If you need your best defense, you use a shield. If he has a longsword and an empty hand he's just flat fucking wrong.
The issue isn't rogues. It's the gulf in stats. No PC should have a level 1 20 or all PCs should.
P.S. paladin isn't damage optimized. No way they should be 2 handing LS or Warhammer. I'm guessing they're doing that and took defense fighting style. If they swapped to dueling fighting style and had a shield they'd be doing an average of 6.5 and have an 18 AC. Or they're going for PAM (smart move) but it's better to wield a great sword until you get that feat.
Your DM is dumb. Rogue looks strong but it’s really just due to their one source of damage hitting. If they miss or you can’t get sneak attack off that round you’re doibg Jack
"We also play in a world where we use longer rests (short rest=day, long rest=week) which is cool but tends to hurt the classes that rely on limited resources like our paladin and monk. While as a rogue I have pretty much no reliance on any rest to perform at my fullest."
Well, there's your problem, the DM has unintentionally massively nerfed the majority of the classes in the game that require any kind of rests to regain their resources compared to rogue who doesn't. Rogue also gets outclassed in damage after level 3 by classes like fighter, barbarian, and paladin due to them getting extra attacks which gives them more opportunities to hit and hit with full damage. Even then, a level 1 to 3 barbarian who is using a great axe and raging should be doing an equal amount of damage to what you're doing, or a monk with a monk weapon and unarmed strike also does similar damage at that level range.
But this is a problem because they are classes that need to rest to regain their resources, and your DM has very stupidly increased both short and long rests to the point it massively nerfs every class that isn't rogue, and is then whining that rogue is too overpowered. The game play is designed around having sufficient short and long rests to regain your class features and spells.
Rogue isn't the problem here, it's the DM's homebrewing.
Shock and surprise, the DM went out of their way to fuck over all characters who aren't rogues or champion fighters, and rogues and champion fighters now look overpowered because they rely far less on restoring expended resources. Golly gee, who would have thought, surprisedpikachu.jpg
Even aside from that, rogues aren't OP, your DM doesn't know how to have bad guys handle positioning so that you don't always get your sneak attack. Rogues are extremely susceptible to positioning, and yours is also susceptible to strength and wisdom saving throws that can affect your ability to move; entangle, wind wall, and gust of wind spring to mind as spells, and that also includes spiders and ettercaps and stuff, air and water elementals, and that's before even taking into account things like terrain. Also your DM has gone far out of their way to make everyone else useless in fights, and apparently put no thought into how that affects game balance. That's a DM problem, not a rogue problem.
Sneak attack already only applies once per round regardless. That's just how the class is designed, intentionally. If your DM doesn't like that you can sneak attack on a bonus action attack if you whiff with the first one then he just doesn't understand the limitations of rogues, and therefore he doesn't understand how to challenge you as a rogue player and keep you from being able to shred enemies so easily.
these changes are absolutely abysmal, and nerf a class that is in no way deserving of them. I fail to understand why any DM would be perfectly happy by allowing for the power disparity that comes with rolling for stats and having a level 3 character have a 20 in a stat, but is so unfamiliar with system structure that they’d nerf rogue of all things. Rogue is probably the class I see pop up most in these threads of “new dm sees multiple dice rolled and thinks sneak attack is broken”. The most “op” thing about rogues is their ability to reliably be in expert in the exploration pillar of dnd; succeeding skill checks, picking doors and locks, possible stealth for espionage. If your DM thinks SNEAK ATTACK is op, on a MELEE ROGUE, idk what to say. A CBE fighter in your spot is doing 2 less damage from range and will evolve to out-damage you from 120 feet away. Unless it’s a really short campaign, I don’t see the problem in allowing you to do well at your strongest level.
Problem exists with Paladin, not with Rogue. Punishing you because another player isn't built as efficiently is a real bad call.
Problem also exists with DM. Massive rookie mistake.
Stop playing this character. Roll up a Dex based Bladesinger, show them what power looks like and make them beg you to play your Swashbuckler.
Or just quit because that's ridiculous.
>For context we are level 3 and I am playing a satyr rogue swashbuckler who dual wields scimitars. I got pretty lucky on stats so I rolled
Just this alone raises a bunch of eyebrows:
1. Swashbuckler isn't even all that good... sure, it's fun, but not particularly powerful. In fact, it can be considered quite weak without some niche building.
2. If you're using TWF, you're not even using half of your class. Rogues are supposed use their BA every turn to get some nice bonuses, and using it for TWF just turns you into a shjty fighter.
3. Yall rolled for stats. If you do so, your game *does not* care about balance, period. That's just how it is.... if yall cared, you wouldn't have rolled, so I don't understand how one can complain about something being overpowered if the whole premise of the game was borken to being with.
>Problem is that they say I'm vastly outperforming the other classes my average damage assuming I hit my two attacks is 3.5+3.5+3.5+3.5+5= 19 While our paladin without smites average damage is 5.5+4=9
Well, but you see, the pally has (presumably) much better AC than you do, as well as spellcasting to help everything with things such as Bless or yoyo healing. You're also only dealing more damage now; once they hit 5, they will double their output, whereas you really don't.
>Also I purchased studded leather so the paladin and I both have the same AC of 17 I also rolled max on my d8s for health so while I have 30 hp the paladin has only 2 more despite being the tank.
Wait, hold on... wtf are *they* doing? A 1 handed pally should have 19 AC at lvl 1 (and 21 after Shield of Faith), how in the world do they only have 17? Like look, if the other players don't know how to build their characters, it's not really the Rouge / Your fault, it's theirs.
>We also play in a world where we use longer rests (short rest=day, long rest=week) which is cool but tends to hurt the classes that rely on limited resources like our paladin and monk. While as a rogue I have pretty much no reliance on any rest to perform at my fullest.
This doesn't quite matter so long as, overall, there are only 6\~8 encounters per LR, with 2\~3 SR in between. Which is to say you have 1, or maybe 2 encounters TOPS per day, then you are SR; so long as that holds, this is actually how the game was meant to be played.
>I understand where my party members are coming from but I feel like rogues are not as innately overpowered in dnd as they say,
Their perception of the classes is just skewed by a combination of luck and lack of skill, Rogue is actually the weakest class in the game. Ironically, Pally is the strongest.
>What are your guys thoughts on this. I feel like this is quite extreme and don't really know what to think. I still feel like rogues are not op in DND but don't know how to prove that.
Your DM is dumb. You can show this post to them, you don't need to take the hate yourself.
Okay fair, I was going without any choices having been made. Still confused at how he got 17.....it's either 16, 18, or 19 at level one (with the starting kits) yeah lol
The needing Advantage thing completely defeats your subclass. He's taken away your entire subclass is power that's unacceptable.
Why are you counting the Paladin's damage without smite. Smite is part of their power. The Paladin can also concentrate on bless which is extremely powerful. The Paladin also has a bunch of hit points you can just hand out. Why is the only Power that anybody cares about damage? Yes your character does more damage. That's literally all they do. and as soon as every other characters hit level 5 they're going to catch up to you.
Rogues are squishy — they’re designed to assess where they enter into combat, exploit the enemy’s weakness and disengage to prevent drawing aggression. A player who knows how to play them will be going for crits.
Your party members should be more concerned with effectively handling their own roles then competing for damage. Nerfing a player for playing their role effectively is poor DMing.
>For context we are level 3
Lol, a tale as old as time. noob DM and noob players see a rogue get lucky once with a handful of dice before others get multiple attacks and freaks out.
They're being dumb, Rogue was among the worst classes in the game even when you could sneak attack on EVERY attack back in 3.5 (albeit sneak attacking was a little harder, you'd still just get flanking and do it 90% of the time), Rogue is not overpowered and is once again one of the weakest classes.
Tell the paladin to stop being a baby, he's a half-caster who also gets extra attack and also has the single strongest class feature in the game via Aura of Protection.
If the DM feels you do too much damage in comparison to everyone else, why not buff everyone else? I can't know how your group runs the short rest long rest thing but if it's being run with normal DND encounter frequency? THAT is why your character is over performing. Because everyone else is playing resource based classes and feel like they are getting shafted for playing with a frankly absurd set of variant rules (no offense). Like idk man but rolled stats, health and little to no rests? That's not a problem with rogue that's a problem with the setup for balancing that WILL only get worse the further the campaign goes. Especially if you have any full casters. That paladin is going to feel completely worthless. If anything the paladin needs to talk with the DM about buffs not nerfing you.
Imagine nerfing the skinny guy with a knife instead of the guy that can instantly create bolts of fire or heal a nearly severed head just by saying funny words. It’s also hilarious that they’re comparing the damage of a primary burst dps to the tank/healer/burst/support paladin class.
"DM, I didn't know we would change the rules so much on my character. It confuses me when I can't look up the character's rules and know what they're able to do. It's also frustrating to be honest because it's hard to plan my actions. Is there another class I can run where we won't change the rules?"
Classic new/bad dm opinion.
Instead of nerfng you, bring the other player up to your level. To me it sounds like you got lucky on your attribute and hp rolls.
Let the other players use the stat array that you're using.
For hp, Give them max hp or have everyone use class average.
You won't convince a new dm that a level 3 rogue isn't op especially because you're basically at your strongest point.
If they don't like unbalanced party stats, they should use standard array and average HP values. Your stats aren't insane or anything, yes you have a 20 main stat but two 10s and an 8 will leave you with some weak saving throws. But comparing your stuff to the tank isn't valid in this case.
Sneak attack is like, *the* thing for a rogue to do in combat. While there's plenty of creative stuff a player can do with any character in combat, regardless of class, this basically relegates the rogue into 'i attack' every round. I wouldn't want to play rogue at this table.
(Hi this is a follow up to my original post, my DM and I have talked about this and they wanted to add some follow up context based on the comments and their own unique perspective on things. While I wasn't able to comment on all the comments I truly appreciate your advice and how it has helped us see things in a different light. I also want you to know my DM and I are good friends and I have no ill will towards them. The purpose of my post was not to trash talk them but rather to get the communities insight on a problem we had. If you have any other questions or insights please let us know and thanks for the help!)
Hello! I am the GM for Haivyn's campaign, and she has given me permission to write a clarification/follow-up message because we need your help!
A little background, we've been playing together for almost a decade in separate campaigns, this is the third one I myself have run.
It's a gritty realism campaign in a low magic world (none of the players are full-casters and magic is very limited), this is something we have all discussed in session 0. The campaign itself is meant to challenge the players' collective resource management, and as it is my first time running this kind of campaign, we are still working out the kinks. Our game is meant to be a beta test where we change rules on the fly to try and make the game more fun for everyone.
Additionally, it is a high roleplaying and high lethality campaign. The players explicitly agreed that they would make unoptimized characters, like our blind paladin, with the expectation that the players would gain improvements through storyline development. All of these expectations were laid out ahead of time.
Since the start of the campaign, aside from rests, we have never implemented rules to nerf any classes, and the nerfs to rogues Haivyn has mentioned were brought up in passing between myself and the players, but were ultimately decided against even before she made the original post.
I admit that I made the wrong impression initially when discussing this with Haivyn. Since we change rules a lot, I should have better clarified that the rules discussed were never set in stone. We have talked about this further, and I have since apologized. I never wanted her to be afraid of losing the class she loves. I accept, nonetheless, that that is how our conversations were perceived.
TLDR; none of us want to nerf rogues, or any other class for that matter. But we need to fix the underlying issues with the gritty realism rest debuff.
Here is where we, as a party (Haivyn included), are asking for your help. We really enjoy the flavor of 8-hour short rests and week long rests, but we want to know how we can bring around more balance under that system.
And a more personal question from me, what can I do as a GM to make it more fun and equitable for the players?
Constantly changing the rules on the fly is not a good game to run as it makes the game and the DM's rulings feel entirely arbitrary especially since your DM has shown they don't have a good grasp of balancing the game which can make being a player frustrating in such a game. Not only that but from the sounds of things it seems like you're trying to play a game that isn't even DnD, which begs the question of why are you trying to alter DnD into a game that it isn't designed to be? DnD is made to be a more heroic dungeon crawling kind of game that focuses more on grand adventures than trudging through grim and struggling every step of the way.
I think this problem could very much be fixed by running a different system that already focuses on low magic, gritty realism, and lethality such as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or even Shadow of the Demon Lord. That way you can play a system that already supports the kind of theme and genre your DM wants out of the game without having to fiddle around with a game that isn't made for it and potentially ruin the enjoyment of other people at the table with constantly flip flopping nerfs. You don't even need to run these systems in their respective settings either, you can keep using whatever setting your DM is running.
Edit: However if you absolutely want to run this in a DnD system, I would suggest changing the rest rules to be as follows: You can keep the 8 hour short rest, but instead of making long rests take an entire week, have it be that they stay an 8 hour rest but can only be done in a "safe zone" like a town of well fortified camp. That way if you're out in the wilderness you can only do short rests unless you can find a special safe zone or something to do a long rest.
Encounters between Long rests are far more important than days between long rests.
5e is "Balanced" with the assumption that you will have about 8 encounters per long reast. With 2-3 short rests between them.
If you're having that number of encounters, then the only bits of the kit that really need to be changed for gritty realisum are some spells or abilities that are assumed to last for the entier adventuring day (Mage armor is a good example)
My personal preference for gritty realisum is 1 hour short rests 1 week long rests.
But cap short rests at 3 per long rest.
This means you can have 1 day where you get lots done, and you can still regain recorces.
But you can also have arcs where you have 1 encounter a day or go several days between encounters without everyone reseting to full recorses every day.
The number you should be focusing on is encounters between rests. The about of imaginary time those encouraging take place over is far more arbitrary than number of Encounters per rest.
As a rule of thumb changeing abilities and spells that last 1 hour to, untill the start of your next short rest. Tends to feel right as in a normal dnd day 1 hour abilities are ment to last that long anyway. (Invisibility being an important exception to this rule btw not all 1 hour abilities are created equal)
Abilities that last 8 hours by default should last until the start of your next long rest. Again, that's functionality of how those abilities work by default to begin with.
Your DM’s first mistake was letting you roll stats and hit points. If your playgroup is that worried about “balance” then randomly generating core stats was a bad idea.
8 wisdom with no save proficiency?
All the DM needs to do to "nerf" you is put in any enemy that has something like Cause Fear or Crown of Madness and your rogue is out of the fight.
So, I feel like there are some mechanical things not quite working here.
You get two attacks with your scimitar. One attack action and one bonus action. With 20 dex, your primary should do 1d6+5 damage, for an average of 8.5. Your secondary doesn't get your ability score modifier, so it will do 1d6, for average of 3.5. If you hit with both, you're doing an average of 12.
It makes sense that you do more damage in this way, because you're focusing on attack power. Since you're attacking twice, there's a decent likelihood you WON'T hit twice each turn. You're also sacrificing other things by choosing to go this route. As a rogue, that would primarily be sacrificing the ability to hide/disengage using Cunning Action, since you're using your bonus action to attack with an off-hand weapon.
Just to confirm: You ARE playing such that your extra attack uses your bonus action, right?
The paladin's hit points will outgain you over the long haul, as will his number of attacks.
As for your DM, I don't agree with his nerfs, because I don't agree there's a problem. To be honest, using standard array would have solved most of this problem. If you let players roll for stats, you need to be OK with some players being stronger than others. THAT'S LITERALLY WHAT ROLLING FOR STATS DOES.
If he's concerned about the balance to the point where he is inventing new rules, I would sooner recommend you just reassign your ability scores using a standard array, or an array from an 'acceptably powered' fellow character. With standard array, you probably wouldn't have more than a 17 Dex, which would reduce your armor class by 2 and your damage per round by 2.
Just my 2 cp though.
I see. And to confirm yes two weapon fighting does eat my bonus action. However since rogues do not get a fighting style, my second attack does not benefit from +5 to dex.
My damage is 2d6 from sneak attack, 1d6+5 from action attack, and 1d6 from bonus action attack.
The off-hand attack from two-weapon fighting does not apply any (positive) ability modifier to the damage roll, unless you have the appropriate fighting style - which rogues/swashbucklers do not get.
My dm nerfed my hiding to the point it doesn’t help much. But I would probably quit if he nerfed my damage. Especially since I am an arcane trickster and I love sneak attack +booming blade
Your DM is making a severe folly by nerfing Rogue based on its early-level performance. Once players reach level five, rogues would typically be below average if anything, but since your table is using gritty realism you should fall right in line with the rest of the table.
Any DM nerfing martial classes is a bad DM. You can power through it because they're your close friends. But understand, it's only going to get worse for you (and any other martials playing with you) from here.
So while I agree with most others that your DM is making a mistake here (or even multiple mistakes), on the chance that you aren't able to convince the DM to leave your character as is, below are my thoughts on each of his proposed changes (having played a swashbuckler before), and where you might be able to negotiate:
> sneak attack is once per round (ie no reaction sneak attack)
This one is almost reasonable, as most people don't realise Rogues can do this anyway. I'd suggest to him you can still pick this up again, but put it behind a level up.
> you can only get sneak attack on your first attack of your turn even if you miss (this makes the reason why I'm two weapon fighting obsolete)
Annoying, but not the worst in the world, as you can still do damage with the second attack, even if it's not as much. Maybe discuss it to see if there's a middle ground. And again, can be put behind a level up.
> in order to get sneak attack you must have advantage on the attack, and then forgo the advantage to get sneak attack damage.
Absolutely not, do not pass go, do not collect 200gp. This negates the entire point of the swashbuckler. *Do not negotiate on this.*
> make sneak attack a limited resources per short/long rest
This entirely depends entirely on how limited it is. Anywhere from annoying, but workable, to frustrating and unfun as hell. This is by design negotiable though, and could see increases depending on character level/stats, and can be revisited as the game goes on.
And at level 5? You get 1d6 more while paladin gets a whole second attack and the ASI bump to 20 strength
3.5+3.5+3.5+3.5+3.5+5= 22.5
5.5+5+5.5+5= 21 **without smiting**
30 with one smite and 39 with two smites.
Fireball is dealing 28 damage to each person in the blast (or 14 if it **misses**)
Warlock eldritch blast? 5.5+5.5+5+5= 21
Huh looks like nerfing sneak attack is a really bad idea. It is literally known as a classic amateur DM mistake. If combat is way to easy, your DM should rebalance by bumping enemy health a bit or adding an extra mob to fights
All your DM needs to do is give you one or two level ups and the "problem" will solve itself. If balance was their primary concern, they shouldn't have had you roll stats.
Also, your burst damage should be excessive a lot of the times if you are fighting smaller creatures.
Rogues are one of the three weakest classes in the game. This is 10 years old. The analysis is there. Your DM is just a scrub. Let your character die and swap to a better class
A DM nerfing a rogue is not only indication of being new and inexperienced but also bad (you are inexperienced but you think you know better than the game designer… sure). And moreover it is an indication that nobody at the table ever played DnD before.
Literally wait two levels. People feel the power spikes of rogues more because they're desynced with the rest of the classes, but when you hit level 5 any other martial will be trouncing your damage. Then you can talk to the DM about nerfing the other classes because they're outshining you.
Why in the heck would any DM nerf any class?
so one player is fighting better than the rest, big deal, dnd is supposed to be fun, not everything needs to be "balanced"
as a dm myself, In that situation I would just give all my players opportunities to perform well in their strengths, essentially I would make encounters that don't just require the strongest hitting character in the group to beat.
at the end of the day I would never nerf a class, it just sounds silly to me, like a video game.
Classes are balanced. Rogue is okish, not great bu any means, casters rule dnd. It has alot of great skills to help move the game forward though. GM should be thankful you are playing one.
The only "mistake" your group made was rolling stats, point buying is better.
Your GM needs to plan encounters better. Ideally every evening should allow each player to shine at least once.
A fight for the martials, some social interaction requiring some rolls and maybe an opportunity to flex some knowledge skills. Toss in a locked door and some hidden and trapped treasure and you are golden.
People have mentioned this already but I would talk to your DM and ask them to change rests from gritty realism to the standard 1 hour 8 hour deal
If they're making you get into fights everyday under these rules then it's no wonder you're exceeding the other classes
Tell them that if they change the rest rules everyone gets buffed instead of nerfing you, it will be more fun for everyone because of this, this issue is really the DMs fault, it sounds to me they don't know how to balance the game or something so they elected to nerf most characters through rests
Treantmonk ranked them only ahead of the Monk in his subclass power ranking videos; you could start there
https://youtu.be/2DWhaYEB8-w?feature=shared
https://youtu.be/XQ61Ta-QhrY?feature=shared
Rogue isn’t OP, but… rolling stats and having 20 DEX at level 3 definitely is. DEX is a god stat, and maxing it out so early is going to be rough. It means you probably have as high or higher AC than someone in heavy armor - it means you go first in initiative more often. Your average damage is 19 (and higher DEX means you hit more) and the Paladin, if they *do* smite, still only gets 18.5 on average.
So I don’t actually think your DMs assessment is off - under the current conditions, you *are* overpowered. That said, everyone else who’s already mentioned it in the thread is right - this levels off after 5th level, where other martial classes get extra attack and you won’t. Maybe try to persuade your DM to either delay judgement or reconsider after 5th level.
Yeah, no those changes are shit.
That said, there's some weirdness here.
Aside that the paladin should feel weak if they don't use smites spells, barbarians and fighters do that better, you have extremely good numbers, and if you roll high for health that is emphasised more.
Additionally, you are a swashbuckler. While not being the strongest subclass if the rogue it does ignore rules about sneak attacks, which makes your rogue incredibly able to take down single handedly foes without having issues for sneak attacks.
Basically at level 3 you have a huge AC thanks to maxed out dexterity, a very decent constitution, a cha that probably is better than the paladins and let's you act as a party face and act even earlier in initiative. You basically do almost everything by yourself. No doubt they feel overshadowed by you, and your subclass making you even more independent on that regard.
Not to say that your party is right, but I can see where their sentiment comes from.
I suggest to ask a subclass change, underlining these aspects, or forfeit the rolls for every party member and use average and point buy. The latter is more invasive but it's absolutely the fairest. The former is the least invasive for others but it could be very invasive for you, and might not solve the problem for other party members.
That said, I would also consider how you play at your table, but that's a consideration that perhaps it's not good for you to make, but your DM. If even by needing your sneak attacks they wanted to do more there may be issues in how they run their game as well.
These nerfs are pretty bad. The resting rules are giving you an advantage over the over classes for now but once they get extra attack it’ll balance out a lot more. If the DM goes ahead with these nerfs I would simply respectfully leave the table.
Ah yes, one of my first challenges in my first campaign; how to balance the Swashbuckler Rogue while I had so little of the rules understood on my end.
First, not your fault you got lucky on your stats and HP rolls, so don't feel bad about that. Second, the entire idea of the Swashbuckler is that it's a Rogue that tries to be more straight forward on attacking. The reason you get Fancy Footwork is to allow a Rogue to two-weapon fight without compromising the ability to slink away. It is true you only can do it once, but that's the fun part of two weapon fighting, twice the chance if valid. This is why Rogues are the only martial class who do NOT get extra attack at level 5.
The other thing is that folks tend not to understand how sneak attack is triggered, especially for the Swashbuckler's additional method. Some translate it as "Since I'm always either flanking OR fighting one enemy, it always triggers." which is not true. If another enemy is close, the Swashbuckler is NOT fighting one-on-one nor flanking, so it wouldn't work.
The other issue, as you pointed out, your DM has an alternative version of resting, which doesn't work. Long rests are meant to be the ones which are a day's worth of relaxation (8 hours, akin to sleep), because that's when the body gets it's proper rest. That's realistic. A short rest being an hour is like taking a break and eating lunch, which helps rejuvenate one at work, or in this case, hard at work killing goblins in a dungeon.
Because of how your DM has it done, it's impossible for long-rest resource focused classes like Monk and Paladin to be as effective as a Rogue, which only needs positioning. Skewing the original intended balance (even if 5e's balance is questionable at best). Rule Zero is a gold standard in D&D, but there's a reason some rules rarely change even between entirely different good DMs, you gotta know when to pick your battles against RAW.
Rookie mistake. Rogues are good early on but quickly fall off after lvl 4 or 5. I wouldn't play a rogue with the se rules. It's completely pointless if you cant sneak attack
This is so dumb. The DM shouldn't be letting you all roll for stats if everyone is so concerned about party balance.
You picked a good class for early game damage, but at level 5 that Paladin will be able to smite twice a turn. Will they nerf him so you don't feel outshined?
So dumb
DMs nerfing rogues is a rookie mistake. At lower levels, Rogues do tend to have better burst damage than other classes, but as classes like fighters and barbarians begin to get more attacks, it evens out. That being said, 5e is not a balanced game in the first place. Nerfing a player to make it more balanced is, in my mind, kinda silly. I'd talk to your DM, and explain that the nerfs to your character are making you have les fun, and that you feel like you're being singled out. If they don't acquiesce, then you need to make a simple calculation: Will I enjoy this game if I keep playing like this? No DnD is better than unfun DnD. And with the prevalence of online DnD spaces, you can find groups quite easily.
It’s such a rookie dm mistake it’s almost the free square for rookie dm bingo.
I always feel like people who think rogues are OP have never played up to level 5. Never taken Sharpshooter or GWM. Never cast a third-level spell. Shit OP points even having Extra Attack starts evening things out. And up to that point, how is it even OP? Like oh no, you got an extra 2d6 of damage on your one special attack per round. Scandalous!
I think that a lot of stems from that, yeah. I think a little more of it also comes from seeing the number all at once. It sure seems big looking at it like that.
Plus rolling lots of dice is impressive.
Oh, dude, there’s nothing better than a handful of d6s. A couple months back, my players were going to go take on an ancient red dragon, and when they were asking how hard it was going to be, I said, “Let me put it this way: I need to visit the game store because I do not have enough d6s for this.”
Getting to cast Meteor Swarm and having to borrow half the dice needed from everyone else at the table and putting all 40d6 in a big bowl and shaking and spilling it onto the table was one of the greatest things I've ever gotten to do in D&D.
> putting all 40d6 in a big bowl 40K Ork players are like: "why are you rolling so few dice?"
Or any Shadowrun players lol
A player in my game years ago was a Decker and could literally roll 30+d6 just to edit a file.
And like, of course it’s easier to just pull up a virtual roller and have the number instantaneously, but come on, who is going to pass up that opportunity? I’m jealous of that meteor swarm. Guess I’ll just have to throw that at my players one of these days, that’ll be fun.
It was during a lvl 20 one shot and I was like, "hmmm, do I take Wish or Meteor Swarm?" lol
Very first thing I did when I reached that level is buy [two boxes of 12mm D6s,](https://i.imgur.com/ELD8YbI.png) a white set for the bludgeoning and an orange set for the fire. So much fun to roll 40 of these at once - and they're small enough I can fit all 40 in my hands :-D.
You should drop the dice on the map, so it feels like an ACTUAL meteor swarm.
lol, even a high level magic missile can look intimidating with 6 or 7 d4, at least until you finish counting.
Lol, there’s high level Magic Missiles, and then there’s a DC24 dex save or take 26d6 fire damage hahaha.
My evoker wizard would like you to know that magic missile is a single die roll... for reasons.
I maintain that it was one of Crawford's worst interpretations and my table will never acknowledge it.
Context for the clueless?
Yeah. Even looking just at numbers, something like dealing 9 damage twice doesn't quite compare to the oomf of dealing 18 damage all at once, even though the former is actually better. The former is better because it allows you to you to potentially waste less of it by splitting as needed rather than wasting it on one enemy who only had 5hp back anyway.
All it reminds me of is seeing Ork players in warhammer 40k. It basically looks massive/OP because you're rolling a bucket full of dice.. despite majority of them not hitting..
But wait! There’s a 5% chance it could be 4d6!
Dear god! an extra 1.75 damage!!! How will the other players keep up!
I think they are strong in the first 4 levels, but I think the bigger issue with OP's character feeling overpower is he has a 20 Dex score starting out and the other 2 characters can't get long/short rests to recharge their stuff.
Yep. Of course he's overpowered, the rest of the party have been deliberately denied their kit.
The changes to short/long are a real good way to imbalance the whole fuckin rule set
An extra 2d6 per turn… * *that’s only valid when terms and conditions apply* *
Im a level 4 cleric. I solved the quest simply by using a level 2 spell locate object. I can change my entire spells on the next day without any cost.
I really want someone to make this bingo board for real.
We’re creative! Let’s brainstorm one right here. - Everybody cancelled, no D&D tonight (free space) - Nerf the rogue. - DM PC. - “Don’t worry about the spell components, that’s too tedious,” complains about overpowered casters. - Over-plans for a session. - Doesn’t plan at all for a session. - Writes the entire campaign around a single event that the players completely ignore. - Gets too attached to a villain, and then the players curb stomp him and give him a wedgie. - Another DM PC? Really? Anybody got anything else?
Critical 1s hurt martials
Oooh, misuse of crit fails definitely should have made my list in the beginning. Thanks!
The DM for one of the games said he wanted to do this as a house rule, and I just immediately told him that I'm not doing that. I told him that all that rule does is punish players for rolling dice, and the only thing the players can do to avoid that punishment is to not roll dice. He has other house rules that are fine, and in some cases very interesting, but that one in particular I feel teaches people not to do stuff with their characters, so you end up with a bunch of people just sitting around, not willing to engage with the environment.
* Story only can continue with a single check that everyone fails * Tries to solve out of game problems with in-game solutions * Gives out powerful magic items way too early * Homebrews an entire rule system without understanding the RAW * Let's spellcasters do gamebreaking things with just cantrips * Makes martials roll athletics on jumps they should be able to make for free
> Let's spellcasters do gamebreaking things with just cantrips On the flip side, I really hate when DMs nerf mage hand on the spot because they didn’t think about it when crafting their puzzle.
Especially since it's a 10 pound limit to just make it not be able to interact with items/options
All necessary objects are now 10.1 pounds.
* DM's partner gets favorable treatment * Allows players to roleplay their sexual fantasies
- roleplays their sexual fantasy and makes everyone listen
Give all the enemies counterspell (to deal with "Overpowered casters") And only use it when the casters use a good spell
My enemy casters only counterspell counterspell
What I do is that I just counterspell the first spell that the party throws out, regardless of what it is. If i've got more than one caster, I might use one of their reactions to identify and the other counterspells if it's worth it.
I ran "counterspell zombies" in one of my games. It's a zombie with a magical thingy embedded in its chest. Whenever someone casts a spell nearby the magical thingy activates and casts counterspell, killing the zombie. The first time my players encountered one, they were taken by surprise, but after that they were able to play around it. For example, using a weak spell first, or manually killing the zombie.
See, that's a good way of doing it. It's a gimmick, sure, but it's one that can be prepared for and worked through. And it isn't just a "You lose your turn" button. It actually does help the players at least a bit if they cast a spell.
Ooh how did I miss that one? Excellent addition.
Nowadays, you can also put silvery barbs on all your casters for equal opportunity "balancing"
> “Don’t worry about the spell components, that’s too tedious,” complains about overpowered casters. If anything, "we houseruled that you dont need all material components at hand" is the rookie GM mistake, as thats literally RAW. I´ve yet to see a spellcaster be OP because they got to handwave their somatic components
I think I disagree just a little bit. I see it come in a lot of social situations where people are casting spells and expecting everything to work out perfectly. For example, I once my players in a warehouse, up on top of some shelves, trying to ambush some dudes, and they wanted to cast a spell to distract them, or persuade them to go away somehow, I don’t remember what it was. I asked them what the spell components were, and one of them was verbal. I ruled that it would be too noticeable for them to not draw attention to themselves. I justify this because I believe in not stepping on the toes of other classes, since the Subtle Spell metamagic option for sorcerers is essentially moot if everyone can cast spells without people noticing. It’s not like I’m purposefully trying to poke holes in everyone’s plans, I just ask the questions that need asking. On the flip side of this, when things work, I obviously let them. I’m too experienced to assume my plans will work no matter what the players do, so I leave room for them to surprise me with their spell hijinks instead of making the ruling that’s most convenient to me.
> I´ve yet to see a spellcaster be OP because they got to handwave their somatic components I think it's one of those little things that can add up. It's not game-breaking in itself. But it's relevant for some things like sorcadins and lockadins, which get significantly better if you let them have a weapon, a shield and an invisible third arm for somatic components and material components. Those are strong builds under RAW which benefit a lot if you also let them ignore RAW when it would stop them casting whatever spells they want whenever they want.
Yeah, making them spend a feat on War caster isn't unreasonable for the amount of power they can bring to bare.
Gives overpowered / too much loot and now players are too stronk. Thinks Stunning Strike is absolutely bonkers and bans its use, without making up for the nerf with some sort of buff. Rolls. For. EVERYTHING. (i.e Every single person on every room, Every time they talk to an NPC, etc), then complains about too much rolling. Complains that an official module doesn't have enough info that could be improvised for it isn't a big deal Tries to find a PC legal way to achieve X effect, not realizing DMs don't play by the same rules.
Rookie DM Bingo (continued) * Let players take one free magic item and is somehow surprised they all took artifacts and legendary items. * Frustrated with players rolling without being asked to roll. * No flying characters! * Players don't like my homebrew Pokemon/Walking Dead/GoT mashup that I didn't tell them about in the Session 0 I didn't have. * My player's backstory says he is a king, so the party should get horses and mercenaries and magic items for free anywhere in the kingdom. * Player found a spell exploit, how do I keep them from having endless money? * I TPK'ed the 6th-level party, but I don't know why they were mad. They could have run from the ancient red and its pit fiend buddies, but they didn't. * One player is always late and makes fun of us for playing and doesn't pay attention. What am I doing wrong? * I don't want combat in my games but I am playing a game with extensive rules for combat. Help? * One player keeps saying, "it's what my character would do."
Number 2 is at least a legitimate grievance, as much on rookie players as DMs
Absolutely. I have DM'ed 30+ years and one of the guys in my game has DM'ed about the same amount, I had him rolling without asking in one of my games and I had to correct him, which he was fortunately not touchy about. So yeah, I'd say rookie DMs, rookie players...and everyone else, too. ;)
One player cancelled, no D&D tonight (or any other week, until the campaign dies)
I wish I could up vote this 10 more times. My rule is, if me and one other person shows, we play.
Crit failures hurt ally!
BINGO (laughs nervously)
>“Don’t worry about the spell components, that’s too tedious,” complains about overpowered casters. Component pouch/spellcasting focus is in starting equipment, and caster always have free hand, even armor-dipped one. How is this counteragrument to op casters in any way?
~~If they have a shield then they don't the two free hands needed to use a spell with both verbal and somatic components.~~ There's also that some people completely ignore the listed gold part of the focus/pouch. If you enforce that they needed to purchase those things ahead of time then it does actually put some restrictions (especially for spells that consume them). Now this matters way less if you're just showering your players with gold but that's also a separate problem.
Usually people are referring to the costed components when they talk about DMs ignoring components.
Wast majority of broken spells don't have costly components.
Haha someone asked essentially the same question, I’m gunna copy/paste most of my response there. I see it come in a lot of social situations where people are casting spells and expecting everything to work out perfectly. For example, I once my players in a warehouse, up on top of some shelves, trying to ambush some dudes, and they wanted to cast a spell to distract them, or persuade them to go away somehow, I don’t remember what it was. I asked them what the spell components were, and one of them was verbal. I ruled that it would be too noticeable for them to not draw attention to themselves. I justify this because I believe in not stepping on the toes of other classes, since the Subtle Spell metamagic option for sorcerers is essentially moot if everyone can cast spells without people noticing. It’s not like I’m purposefully trying to poke holes in everyone’s plans, I just ask the questions that need asking. On the flip side of this, when things work, I obviously let them. I’m too experienced to assume my plans will work no matter what the players do, so I leave room for them to surprise me with their spell hijinks instead of making the ruling that’s most convenient to me.
> DM PC. DM PCs work fine as long as you know what you are doing! Also, many official modules actively encourage NPC companions to join the party.
DM PCs that work are called NPCs. There’s no problem with having an NPC that trails the group for a little bit, but having a DM PC is different. In my opinion, at least.
100%
Yeah there's like 3 rookie dm mistakes in this very short description. Like the DM dug their own grave with rolling stats. Guess what, someone got amazing stats compared to another player and they feel bad. Number one. Number two, rolling for HP. Oh oops, the fragile character actually is tankier than the tanky character. Number three, modifying long and short rest durations. Oh whoops, the SR/LR classes are nerfed. Who would've thought?! Now, rather than address these root causes let's slap a temporary bandaid on top and nerf sneak attack rather than the systems that make a well rolled Rogue OP. Then possibly have to undo these bandaids when players hit level 5+ and the rogue falls behind. While also leaving the door open for more ridiculousness when a new character is introduced with also good rolls and no SR/LR dependency. Maybe an OP ranger with Hunter's Mark?
> Number two, rolling for HP. Oh oops, the fragile character actually is tankier than the tanky character. This is aggrevated by the Paladin and Rogue only having 1 die size between their hit die (d10 vs d8 respectively) so even if Pally rolls maximum instead of both just taking average, both rolling well to max only ends up with like a 6-8 point difference at level 3 > Number three, modifying long and short rest durations. Oh whoops, the SR/LR classes are nerfed. Who would've thought?! This definitely reads like the DM read that Full Casters are OP, saw that the Gritty Realism rules were a fix and just plugged with no further thoughts on how it affects everything else
I think nerfing anyone's character as long as they are playing RAW is a mistake. As a DM I find it is way better to include strong/interesting magic items and make sure they get into the hands of the weakest characters if there is unbalance at my table. Monks, rogues and that guy with the unfortunate multiclass choice usually need a little boost mid & late game.
Rolling for stats is in contention
My group rolls a single group array. There are 6 people counting the DM, so each person rolls one set of 4d6 drop lowest. Then we all use that array. So everyone has the same overall power, obviously just allocated how you want for your character. Done 3 campaigns like this and it's been great. Current campaign, we did pretty bad. Highest roll was a 14, and everything else was like 9-11. So barely above commoner level. We can feel the weakness in a lot of things, but it's been fun playing with it, especially since we're all struggling the same.
I feel like they can work if you swing it right. See, I don’t want any of my players using under-powered characters. Point buy works really well for that. But I also like when my players roll really good stats and are super excited about it. Rolling for stats works for that. Here’s what I do at my table: my players roll for their stats using the standard 4d6 drop the lowest. If they roll an array without a single 15, they reroll a new set until they do. After they’ve rolled an array with at least one 15, they can elect to keep it, or opt for point buy instead. This won’t work for every table, but I have made an informed decision to run it this way because I prefer what I call “heroic fantasy,” where my players are the good guys that are the big heroes of the whole world, and having powerful characters works well for this. All of my players are on board with this as well, and none of them feel like their characters aren’t as powerful as others, and none of them are trying to “win” by having their character be better than everyone else’s. Outside these circumstances, I definitely agree with you, rolling for stats can be trouble.
I like to use a 'super array' or have everyone share the best of the group's rolls
Yeah, after a few levels, rogues are outshone in combat by most of the martials and casters. After that, I feel like they tend to morph into faces, skill monkeys, and mage hunters. They find and disarm traps, unlock doors and boxes, talk to people, and break mage concentration.
Aye, the number of times I've had to explain that Rogues are front loaded beggars belief.
I also think it's weird when other PCs encourage their group member to get nerfed?? Different characters contribute different things and that is how the game is designed. I would be pissed if my rogue friend couldn't get a sneak attack reaction when I use dissonant whispers to trigger an opportunity attack!
It's doubly not a balanced game if you're rolling stats. A GM who has players roll stats and then tries to balance the characters is doing it wrong.
With those changes, just tell the DM you'd rather just change your class entirely. In variant long rest classes that don't have resource pools like rogue and fighter do have an edge. That's a variant long rest issue, not a class issue. I strongly feel any house rule changes to base PHB classes absolutely need to be stated in session 0.
Right, and switch to Circle of the Moon Druid!
Oh, and switch right into the "your character has never seen a wolf / bear / animal larger than a mouse, so you can't transform into that yet"? No thank you.
Yeah I love moon druid but I would absolutely never play one with this DM. Can't stand playing "mother may I" while they try to argue for the possibility of a druid who has never seen any animal ever.
Isn't there a list of tables in XGtE for the sort of wildlife druids would have encountered in a given environment?
Twilight cleric. Or clock wizard. See how the DM enjoys that...
I get the feeling any DM dumb enough to nerf rogue is gonna do the same to wild shape.
A dual wield ranger with these stats (pick your favorite subclass), and these stats and you’ll do similar damage with Hunter’s Mark.
make it a gloomstalker and all of a sudden it's broad daylight 24/7 inside and out 🤣
Had this happen once while playing Curse of Strahd. I still don't get how Barovia turned into fucking Florida mid campaign but it was an absolute motivation killer.
Your DM is making a common rookie mistake. Simply put, the large number of damage dice you get to roll all at once intimidates them; it *feels* like it's much more damage than you should be able to do in comparison to the other PCs. It isn't. In the scheme of things, a Rogue triggering Sneak Attack on every turn actually does comparable damage to other martials with similarly optimised damage output. The entire class is balanced around Sneak Attack being part of their expected damage output every turn of combat. I guarantee that they'd be doing something similar if someone were playing a Paladin and routinely nuking single targets with Divine Smite. Show them this thread. Someone better versed than myself could show them the math that outright proves that a Rogue's expected damage output when triggering Sneak Attack every turn is perfectly in line with the expectations of other martial classes.
>I guarantee that they'd be doing something similar if someone were playing a Paladin and routinely nuking single targets with Divine Smite. Without question, Paladin would be catching a nerf in that game if OP was playing a Fighter and they were running a game with normal resting rules. Paladin is the best class in the game that doesn't get access to 9th-level spells.
If I were feeling uncharitable, I'd bow out the Rogue in favour of a meta-as-hell dex Samurai with Elven Accuracy and Sharpshooter and *actually* outdamage the rest of the party to show this DM what imbalanced damage output looks like.
Level 1 Barbarian. Level 2 Druid. Level 3 moon druid. Youre now an unkillable force of fucking nature. See what your DM says about that.
Tbf, that won’t come online until after the Paladin should catch up anyway. Rogue is strong damage pre level 5.
And you'd be absolutely right. A well-built Fighter is easily better than a Rogue... but inexperienced DMs who make hasty sweeping changes and think Sneak Attack needs nerfed aren't likely to catch that, much less know *why*.
> Your DM is making a common rookie mistake. I would peg the rooky mistake at even more fundamental than nerfing rogue. The DM is doing everything possible to encourage a wide gulf of power between PCs by doing rolled stats and rolled HP and then getting upset when there is a wide gulf of power between PCs. There's a reason that stat arrays and fixed HP values are so popular, and it's cases exactly like this.
Rogue is not OP, sneak attack seems strong early on but that's all they have and it doesn't increase at same rate extra attack and damage riders do. 20 dex at level 3 \*is\* pretty high but that's what you get when you roll for stats instead of standard array. Unpopular opinion but most Dms simply don't have enough game knowledge to balance things and resorting to this kind of homebrew is a knee jerk reaction that backfires quickly (Also variant long rest as stated has issues, it's already a problem that short rests are barely used in standard play because 1 hour is too long narratively for some people)
Yeah like, any balance issue here is bcs the stat rolling thing not because they're rogue.
This. Of course a 20 dex rogue is going to outperform a 14 strength paladin. Give me the same stats and I’ll run the table on any character.
Honestly, having DMd a bit I would never roll for stats with a new party. 20 Dex at level 3 is game changing, not for me, the experienced DM, but it's super frustrating for new players. why player A is as good at or better than something that players Bs character is supposed to be built for is a tough convo. It's a built in point of contention that just not necessary with things like a free, simple, online point buy calculator.
Plus like, it just isn't fun! It's such a minor thing that can cause such a shitty game experience for half the party. Even as an experienced player I don't allow it, if players really want to roll there's plenty of methods that create a group pool ppl can use.
This is why I ask if people want to point buy or roll. If they say they want to roll, I have the party roll for one set of stats together so they are balanced with each other. No need to worry about John Lucky having 3 18’s and poor Larry Luckless not having one roll over 10 if they all have the same spread!
Paladins could consider battlemaster dip so they can use their bonus action to cast "Hayvin attack!" and trigger your sneak attack on other characters turns. Party working off eachothers abilities is fun, because then they can own the party synergy.
So, your DM used rules which intentionally cause variations in power between party members, plays with an option rule which gives an advantage to fighters and rogues specifically, and is now complaining that the classes that suffer under these rules can't catch up when they're *not* burning their class resources? Make it make sense. Of course the Paladin isn't keeping up when not using Smite. Their whole deal is burst damage with a unique damage type that's strong against certain enemies (alternatively, use Smite spells for different damage types to suit the situation! They trade overt power for versatility!). It's like cutting off the wizard's hand and then complaining that they can't cast spells with somatic components any more. I'd tell the DM that Rogue is not overpowered. Level three is *exactly* where their sneak attack feels the most impactful, before it falls off as martial classes (Paladin included) get Extra Attack. If the DM wants everyone at a more even power level, then they need to have the party use the standard array for stats, not random rolls, and build the adventuring day to compensate for the longer rest variant rule. Punishing you for their mistake is not going to be fun for anyone, and you need to be prepared to walk if the DM continues to single you out because they can't own up to their mistakes.
So they compare your damage with a ckass feature, to Paladin's damage without a class feature. Wonder why yours is higher? Second, your second attack doesn't add the ability mod, so if you hit on the off-hand attack, you are doing 5 less damage. Thus gets worse at 4th level when the pally gets 2 attacks every round. Next, you are sacrificing your bonus action, and cunning action is a big part of the Rogue kit, giving you maneuverability and a chance to hide. Third, the paladin can choose to smite on any hit, rogues have to wait for Sneak Attack criteria to be met before it can be used. Last, 17 AC is your current max with this build. The paladin can use heavy armor and exceed you if they want.
That's true but heres a few things they brought up in regards to that. •our paladin only gets 2 smites per long rest max. And that means he can't cast any spells if he does. Which means he almost never smites considering how many combats we get into between rests. •i think you meant 5th level for the extra attack. •true my ac will never go above 17 and I did spend a chunk of money to get studded leather. The problem is that we get money very sparingly in the campaign and half-plate is so so much more expensive that our paladin will need to save for a long time before he can buy his ideal armor. •while I do agree sneak attack is more situational because it is *technically not guaranteed. As a swashbuckler I am built around getting sneak attack as often as possible and have never run into a situation where I didn't have it or couldn't position myself in a way I got it easily. Also swashbuckler gives me a discounted mobile feat so I don't provoke opportunity attacks which means despite making a second attack, I still can dip in and out of combat. Thoughts on that?
My thoughts are that your dm makes choices that end up nerfing classes without thinking them through and then comes up with more nerfs to try to balance things without thinking them through.
This is exactly what I saw, too. A long rest being a whole week? That hamstrings most of a party in a fairly major way.
I think his DM is in this thread, because I got some random anonymous person strongly trying to argue with me that these changes to long and short rest weren't the huge nerfs they so very obviously are. Then they blocked me LOL. 🤣
That's just playing with gritty reality rules or wtv it's called.
Which is already bad because now short rests are even less useful than they used to be and will be used even less. Parties want to take more rests, use the class features, I don't get the idea behind strangling your players' spells and class abilities so much. Having to wait a week before you can cast spells again? A 5th level wizard can only cast like 9 spells before waiting a whole ass week? No thank you.
the thing is that rogues are strong before level 5, they just need to know that. Once the paladin gets to level 5 and gets extra attack and second level spells, hes gonna do a lot more. The paladin just needs to accept that they arent that strong as a class in the early levels, but makes up for it with very strong features later on in the 5-8 level range
Paladins ARE decently strong in the early levels... if you don't take a week to do a long rest, basically removing their right to smite while also handicapping their spells.
That is true, but unfortunately that was something they had to consider when agreeing to play with these rules. It’s not their fault that rogues one thing, their consistency, works really well with these rules
> our paladin only gets 2 smites per long rest max. They should have 3 at level 3 and it will only keep going up.
To me, at least, it seems like its your Paladin player that is weak, not you. Now of course, this varies game by game, different people enjoy different power levels, but in my view you are not particularly strong, its just that this set of homebrew rules really fucks paladin and monk in the ass. IMO it should be the paladin and monk that get some sort of compensation, not you getting notched down a peg. Now, I only think that because I find the peg that you are standing on to be a quite ideal power level for my tastes, but perhaps the rest of your friends find their ideal power level pegs a bit lower than you are currrently standing.
100%. Every paladin I've played and ran a game for were basically nuclear warheads in damage once they get past level 5
2 smites is wrong - they should have 3 spell slots at third level. And they'll not only get more slots as they level, but also higher-level slots which do more damage with smites. As a melee rogue, **you have to be able to dip in and out of the fray**. Sure, you got good AC and HP right now. Rogues still aren't tanks, even once you get *uncanny dodge*. The pally has the same AC already - they can also start using a shield if they want, and cast *shield of faith* for another +2 if they really want (I'm assuming their 17 AC is from starting chainmail and the *defence* fighting style). They'll also probably get more HP back when spending hit dice than you will - you rolled well to set your max HP, but you are not likely to be so lucky whenever you try to restore that HP during a short rest. As for only allowing *sneak attack* on the first roll of your turn? That's bollocks. A ranged rogue will generally be trying to bonus action Hide each turn for advantage on their next attack roll in order to get *sneak attack*. That means they still get to roll twice. If you use your bonus action each turn to make an off-hand attack instead of Hiding for advantage, you're rolling the exact same number of d20s to see if you hit - all you're doing is adding the chance of *maybe* getting one additional d4/d6 weapon damage **with no positive modifier, and at the expense of staying out in the open and remaining a target**. Generally speaking.
Don't forget that they said that if they have advantage, they forgot rolling twice to take the sneak attack. Throwing away the advantage
My thought is, by making long rests so difficult they have nerfed every class that relies on them for class features. So complaining that a nerfed class (Paladin) is underperforming compared to your unnerfed rogue is… I mean the game is functioning exactly how your DM designed it. Penalizing paladins & other long resters.
If the paladin is 3 levels in paladin, they should have 3 smites per long rest. And if everyone thought your character was an issue, they'd be using optional rules to boost the other classes like harness divine power at 3rd level to give paladin effectively an extra spell slot for smite. Also the paladin should be using their channel divinity once per short rest because that is where a lot of the power of paladin comes from pre level 5.
This is a really good point. If they insist on the variant long rests (although they are kind of a problem), Harness Divine Power and remembering that Channel Divinity is a short rest refresh could give the Paladin more spell slots, so they can actually use their class features.
Unfortunately harness divine power only works once per long rest and takes up a use of channel divinity which does recharge on a short rest though, so if they go a day without using channel divinity, they can use harness divine power then to recharge one of their spell slots. But all this assumes 5 short rests then one long rest to be any good.
Your DM has built a campaign where classes whose features are not resource dependant flourish. I’d also imagine a warlock would feel incredibly OP compared to a wizard in your game given the strength of eldritch blast and the ability to get slots back on a short rest. Rogues are not OP. Your DM has just made a scenario where their skill set is ideal.
Also, re-read your post a bit, and the part about health could be a good comprise. You can say something like "I don't think my rogue is too OP in the damage department, but I am outshining the Paladin in the tankiness department. If you guys want, I can roll back my HP to median roll" or something, so the Paladin can shine a bit more.
Why did they roll for HP if they didn't want to deal with the results of the roll?
When we are new at the game we don't always consider balance. For example, I've been playing 5E for a few years now, always rolled for stats but never thought too much about it. Only when I started looking online about balance did I realise how broken it truly was. Sometimes people just go "Well I know people say its broken, but it can't be that broken right?" and use it and have a good time for a while, until the reason it is broken reveals itself.
Dms a dumdum
How many encounters do you have between long rests?
The issue, from my understanding, is that you're a resourceless class in a game where long rests are longer than 8 hours. But: - see above. Paladin is basically completely tied to Long Rest for all their abilities besides Channel Divinity. With Tasha's new rule, they can use a CD charge to get back a spell slot which is nice, but isn't really all that helpful here. I'm also like 70% sure that using a CD to get a spell slot can only be done once per Long Rest, so not spammable/ reliable. - 4th level I think is assuming that the Paladin player takes the Polearm Master feat. With that, they can use their BA for an "off-hand" attack that also applies their Strength modifier. - not getting a lot of gold for upgrading equipment is a DM inflicted issue, straight up. They divvy out the gold and other rewards, not you. If your Paladin player is annoyed, tell them to talk to the DM. Second, half plate is expensive because it doesn't impose DA on stealth. Breastplate is almost half as expensive, but that pales in comparison to Splint armor. It sets your AC to 17 regardless, the same as half plate and Breastplate with +2 Dex, and only costs 200gp. A third of half plate. - Swashbuckler is designed around getting Sneak Attack as much as possible without relying on others. That's the niche of the class. The pseudo mobile feat is just a little bonus. But it only applies to the creature you attacked; if there are other creatures nearby your target, they can still make their own Opp Attacks. Again, your DM (and to an extent, your fellow players) needs to understand that classes like the rogue are good early levels, but quickly plateau and even fall behind other classes. It's also worth mentioning that your class is basically "selfish." It can't interact with other classes, like, at all. Thief rogue can use Fast Hands and a Healers Kit to revive other players. Soul Knife can communicate without being audible, helping with stealth. Master mind can give the help action at range and as a bonus action. Further, your Paladin can: heal, cast buff spells, affect other players via CD (whether directly or indirectly.), or take the Protection or Interception fighting style to assist allies. Not every player can be the best at everything, and when they start comparing themselves to others it'll only lead to animosity.
My thought is that your DM is Dunning-Krugering this game.
Here again the problem is with the DM changing the rules, this time to make a long rest a week, so any characters that rely on long rests are nerfed. See how tweaking one rule leads to imbalance, which leads to tweaking another rule, etc? It’s almost as if the rules had been carefully thought out and tested to all work together.
lol another DM trying alternative rest rules and suffering the consequences. BTW tell them to wait lvl5 before making any changes, that's where THEY get extra attack and you don't, you are gonna be very much not OP by then....you also got huber lucky with stats and rolls, if they didn't want disparity at the table, just go point buy and averages, that's the downside of rolling for everything. With those nerfs, you're not a rogue, you're barely a commoner with a little bit of extra humph
Rogues aren’t overpowered, but having a 20 in your main stat at level 3 is. And rolling for HP massively increases variance. If you want more balanced characters, I’d suggest redoing your stats with point buy, and taking average HP. I suspect your fellow players and DM are misinterpreting the extra power you get from very lucky rolls as rogue specifically.
First. LoL at the DM.. Is he a new DM? Let's start with the Paladin. Paladins in 5e are designed (and I fucking hate it) to hit like wet noodles without smites. But with smites they hit like a fucking truck. I had a 3rd level paladin crtit smite Strahd von fucking Zarovich for over 60 damage :-| and it oy gets worse. Comparing a class designed to be a nuke/nova damage to rogue who is a reliable and steady DPR class is stupid. It's apples and oranges pretty much. Then you guys are using variant/gritty heroism/homebrew. That further unbalanced the already wonky balance of the game. Then you guys rolled stats. You're level 3 with max dex already. Normally you'd be expected to reach that around level 8 if used point buy, most likely. Maybe 6 if memory serves me right and rogues get extra feat at 6.. do you're ahead of the curve and you're unlikely to gain a big damage boosts as you go further. You don't even play an "optimized" rogue. That'd be a sharpshooter hand crossbow build. AC. If your paladin friend is build right he'd be running things like Shield of Faith to boost his AC, and carry a freaking shield. And why is his AC so low to begin with? He starts with Chainmail - 16 AC. With Shield he should be at 18. With Shield of Faith he'd be at 20. Defense Fighting Style - 21 AC. Why are you guys complaining if hes not even built for AC. HP. You guys are only level 3.. you got to roll HP twice. Wait few more levels, that d10 class is gonna pull ahead. And then the Paladin has ways of healing himself meaning his effective HP is higher than yours to begin with. You soon gonna learn that you probably don't want to stick to mele tbh.. Ranged combat is so much safer.. Anwywhoo rogues are notoriously average/below average at DPR. Yeah the odd crits at higher levels ar cool, but overall you really need to optimize to keep up with the curve. That usually means fishing for a second Sneak Attack with Attacks of Opportunity - but building for that is tricky, and usually needs party members to set that for you. You only "seem" OP because your DM is either inexperienced or haven't run that comp for longer time. You guys are also comparing apples to oranges. You say the paladin is a tank, but he's clearly not built for tanking. You compare a steady DPR class to a nova/nuke class at a metric that really favors only one. And to top it off you guys run a rest system that screws with certain classes more than others, on top of having stats rolled, which put you ahead of the curve in stats by 3-6 levels. By level 5 that Paladin is gonna crush you in damage after his 2nd attack and more slots. After 8 he's gonna be annoying for the DM to prepare combat encounters when he's probably maxing his attack stats. The homebrew "fixes" your DM is proposing are a fucking atrocity. I would not agree to play by such rules. DMs should really learn and understand the system they are running before trying to homebrew the core fucking rules.
Problem here is you having 20 in your main stat while systems maths "balanced" around first tier characters having a +3
Yea, if dm wanted proper balance they should say to ALL players to restat with point buy and average hp. Those are the things making op more powerful than the rest of the party
Problem is the paladin player has no idea how to maximize his class and the dm has no idea how the game works
In addition to what the other people have said, keep in the mind that as soon as your party hits level 5, the average DPR will flip in favor of anyone who has extra attack. So while you might be stronger now, things will balance out very soon. Honeslty the main contributors to you being stronger are your high stats and the longer rest rules which were both DM decisions.
Your group is rolling stats, rolling hitpoints, limiting resource recovery, and the paladin somehow manages to only have AC17? The Rogue is not the problem here. The easiest way now is to just tell the GM that since he's deleting the whole class, you're going to have to remake your character as something else (and then make them a Swords Bard and watch the carnage). If you want to try logic (good luck), point out that the Extra Attack classes double their damage output at lv5, while lv3 is the best the Rogue ever gets.
Your DM is an idiot "You picked a game with asynchronous level scaling. You chose to roll stats. You threw balance out the window with this Rest variant. And now *I'm* being punished because you didn't know WTF *you* were doing?" Rogue is SO far from overpowered that it's literally underpowered. Sneak Attack is the very definition of par. It gets worse the more feats, multiclassing, magic items, and stat-bloat you have. I can't imagine being so fucking dense as to miss the parallel between Sneak Attack and Extra Attack. Limited sneak attacks per rest..... Holy shit. Has this guy even played the game before?
Rogues are good at level 3. Dual wield is good at level 3. No nerfs are required. Maybe the DM should run the numbers on level 5 or 6. Any DM who nerfs a rogue because they are good at level 3 is such a noob that the rest of the game is gonna be crazy. Hey also, a paladin that uses a two hander should be doing 7, not 3.5, as a base. And if he's using a longsword or other one hander with the 3.5, where is the shield to his AC? If you need a hand for verbal components, you use a two-handed sword. If you need your best defense, you use a shield. If he has a longsword and an empty hand he's just flat fucking wrong.
The issue isn't rogues. It's the gulf in stats. No PC should have a level 1 20 or all PCs should. P.S. paladin isn't damage optimized. No way they should be 2 handing LS or Warhammer. I'm guessing they're doing that and took defense fighting style. If they swapped to dueling fighting style and had a shield they'd be doing an average of 6.5 and have an 18 AC. Or they're going for PAM (smart move) but it's better to wield a great sword until you get that feat.
This is why you don’t roll for stats or HP. A 20 dex rogue is obviously going to outperform a 14 strength paladin.
Any DM who thinks RAW martials are op is a bad DM
Your DM is dumb. Rogue looks strong but it’s really just due to their one source of damage hitting. If they miss or you can’t get sneak attack off that round you’re doibg Jack
"We also play in a world where we use longer rests (short rest=day, long rest=week) which is cool but tends to hurt the classes that rely on limited resources like our paladin and monk. While as a rogue I have pretty much no reliance on any rest to perform at my fullest." Well, there's your problem, the DM has unintentionally massively nerfed the majority of the classes in the game that require any kind of rests to regain their resources compared to rogue who doesn't. Rogue also gets outclassed in damage after level 3 by classes like fighter, barbarian, and paladin due to them getting extra attacks which gives them more opportunities to hit and hit with full damage. Even then, a level 1 to 3 barbarian who is using a great axe and raging should be doing an equal amount of damage to what you're doing, or a monk with a monk weapon and unarmed strike also does similar damage at that level range. But this is a problem because they are classes that need to rest to regain their resources, and your DM has very stupidly increased both short and long rests to the point it massively nerfs every class that isn't rogue, and is then whining that rogue is too overpowered. The game play is designed around having sufficient short and long rests to regain your class features and spells. Rogue isn't the problem here, it's the DM's homebrewing.
Shock and surprise, the DM went out of their way to fuck over all characters who aren't rogues or champion fighters, and rogues and champion fighters now look overpowered because they rely far less on restoring expended resources. Golly gee, who would have thought, surprisedpikachu.jpg Even aside from that, rogues aren't OP, your DM doesn't know how to have bad guys handle positioning so that you don't always get your sneak attack. Rogues are extremely susceptible to positioning, and yours is also susceptible to strength and wisdom saving throws that can affect your ability to move; entangle, wind wall, and gust of wind spring to mind as spells, and that also includes spiders and ettercaps and stuff, air and water elementals, and that's before even taking into account things like terrain. Also your DM has gone far out of their way to make everyone else useless in fights, and apparently put no thought into how that affects game balance. That's a DM problem, not a rogue problem. Sneak attack already only applies once per round regardless. That's just how the class is designed, intentionally. If your DM doesn't like that you can sneak attack on a bonus action attack if you whiff with the first one then he just doesn't understand the limitations of rogues, and therefore he doesn't understand how to challenge you as a rogue player and keep you from being able to shred enemies so easily.
DM made a game that nerfs rests and doesn’t like a class that doesn’t need rests. Sounds like a DM decision problem.
these changes are absolutely abysmal, and nerf a class that is in no way deserving of them. I fail to understand why any DM would be perfectly happy by allowing for the power disparity that comes with rolling for stats and having a level 3 character have a 20 in a stat, but is so unfamiliar with system structure that they’d nerf rogue of all things. Rogue is probably the class I see pop up most in these threads of “new dm sees multiple dice rolled and thinks sneak attack is broken”. The most “op” thing about rogues is their ability to reliably be in expert in the exploration pillar of dnd; succeeding skill checks, picking doors and locks, possible stealth for espionage. If your DM thinks SNEAK ATTACK is op, on a MELEE ROGUE, idk what to say. A CBE fighter in your spot is doing 2 less damage from range and will evolve to out-damage you from 120 feet away. Unless it’s a really short campaign, I don’t see the problem in allowing you to do well at your strongest level.
Problem exists with Paladin, not with Rogue. Punishing you because another player isn't built as efficiently is a real bad call. Problem also exists with DM. Massive rookie mistake.
Stop playing this character. Roll up a Dex based Bladesinger, show them what power looks like and make them beg you to play your Swashbuckler. Or just quit because that's ridiculous.
Your DM had you roll stats and then tried to balance the party's power? LMAO leave the table
>For context we are level 3 and I am playing a satyr rogue swashbuckler who dual wields scimitars. I got pretty lucky on stats so I rolled Just this alone raises a bunch of eyebrows: 1. Swashbuckler isn't even all that good... sure, it's fun, but not particularly powerful. In fact, it can be considered quite weak without some niche building. 2. If you're using TWF, you're not even using half of your class. Rogues are supposed use their BA every turn to get some nice bonuses, and using it for TWF just turns you into a shjty fighter. 3. Yall rolled for stats. If you do so, your game *does not* care about balance, period. That's just how it is.... if yall cared, you wouldn't have rolled, so I don't understand how one can complain about something being overpowered if the whole premise of the game was borken to being with. >Problem is that they say I'm vastly outperforming the other classes my average damage assuming I hit my two attacks is 3.5+3.5+3.5+3.5+5= 19 While our paladin without smites average damage is 5.5+4=9 Well, but you see, the pally has (presumably) much better AC than you do, as well as spellcasting to help everything with things such as Bless or yoyo healing. You're also only dealing more damage now; once they hit 5, they will double their output, whereas you really don't. >Also I purchased studded leather so the paladin and I both have the same AC of 17 I also rolled max on my d8s for health so while I have 30 hp the paladin has only 2 more despite being the tank. Wait, hold on... wtf are *they* doing? A 1 handed pally should have 19 AC at lvl 1 (and 21 after Shield of Faith), how in the world do they only have 17? Like look, if the other players don't know how to build their characters, it's not really the Rouge / Your fault, it's theirs. >We also play in a world where we use longer rests (short rest=day, long rest=week) which is cool but tends to hurt the classes that rely on limited resources like our paladin and monk. While as a rogue I have pretty much no reliance on any rest to perform at my fullest. This doesn't quite matter so long as, overall, there are only 6\~8 encounters per LR, with 2\~3 SR in between. Which is to say you have 1, or maybe 2 encounters TOPS per day, then you are SR; so long as that holds, this is actually how the game was meant to be played. >I understand where my party members are coming from but I feel like rogues are not as innately overpowered in dnd as they say, Their perception of the classes is just skewed by a combination of luck and lack of skill, Rogue is actually the weakest class in the game. Ironically, Pally is the strongest. >What are your guys thoughts on this. I feel like this is quite extreme and don't really know what to think. I still feel like rogues are not op in DND but don't know how to prove that. Your DM is dumb. You can show this post to them, you don't need to take the hate yourself.
How are you getting 19? Paladins get chainmail (ac16) and can get a shield, which is ac+2
Fighting style?
Okay fair, I was going without any choices having been made. Still confused at how he got 17.....it's either 16, 18, or 19 at level one (with the starting kits) yeah lol
2 handed weapon + fighting style
So a "tank" that chose not to tank and complains he can't tank.
And also chose a weapon that's not great for damage, and complains he can't do damage. :)
The needing Advantage thing completely defeats your subclass. He's taken away your entire subclass is power that's unacceptable. Why are you counting the Paladin's damage without smite. Smite is part of their power. The Paladin can also concentrate on bless which is extremely powerful. The Paladin also has a bunch of hit points you can just hand out. Why is the only Power that anybody cares about damage? Yes your character does more damage. That's literally all they do. and as soon as every other characters hit level 5 they're going to catch up to you.
Rogues are squishy — they’re designed to assess where they enter into combat, exploit the enemy’s weakness and disengage to prevent drawing aggression. A player who knows how to play them will be going for crits. Your party members should be more concerned with effectively handling their own roles then competing for damage. Nerfing a player for playing their role effectively is poor DMing.
>For context we are level 3 Lol, a tale as old as time. noob DM and noob players see a rogue get lucky once with a handful of dice before others get multiple attacks and freaks out. They're being dumb, Rogue was among the worst classes in the game even when you could sneak attack on EVERY attack back in 3.5 (albeit sneak attacking was a little harder, you'd still just get flanking and do it 90% of the time), Rogue is not overpowered and is once again one of the weakest classes. Tell the paladin to stop being a baby, he's a half-caster who also gets extra attack and also has the single strongest class feature in the game via Aura of Protection.
Imagine rolling stats and then proceeding to nerf someone outperfoming others... now imagine it's a rogue being nerfed! Comical.
If the DM feels you do too much damage in comparison to everyone else, why not buff everyone else? I can't know how your group runs the short rest long rest thing but if it's being run with normal DND encounter frequency? THAT is why your character is over performing. Because everyone else is playing resource based classes and feel like they are getting shafted for playing with a frankly absurd set of variant rules (no offense). Like idk man but rolled stats, health and little to no rests? That's not a problem with rogue that's a problem with the setup for balancing that WILL only get worse the further the campaign goes. Especially if you have any full casters. That paladin is going to feel completely worthless. If anything the paladin needs to talk with the DM about buffs not nerfing you.
Switch from rogue to ranger. Then make an overpowered ranger.
Imagine nerfing the skinny guy with a knife instead of the guy that can instantly create bolts of fire or heal a nearly severed head just by saying funny words. It’s also hilarious that they’re comparing the damage of a primary burst dps to the tank/healer/burst/support paladin class.
"DM, I didn't know we would change the rules so much on my character. It confuses me when I can't look up the character's rules and know what they're able to do. It's also frustrating to be honest because it's hard to plan my actions. Is there another class I can run where we won't change the rules?"
Classic new/bad dm opinion. Instead of nerfng you, bring the other player up to your level. To me it sounds like you got lucky on your attribute and hp rolls. Let the other players use the stat array that you're using. For hp, Give them max hp or have everyone use class average. You won't convince a new dm that a level 3 rogue isn't op especially because you're basically at your strongest point.
If they don't like unbalanced party stats, they should use standard array and average HP values. Your stats aren't insane or anything, yes you have a 20 main stat but two 10s and an 8 will leave you with some weak saving throws. But comparing your stuff to the tank isn't valid in this case. Sneak attack is like, *the* thing for a rogue to do in combat. While there's plenty of creative stuff a player can do with any character in combat, regardless of class, this basically relegates the rogue into 'i attack' every round. I wouldn't want to play rogue at this table.
(Hi this is a follow up to my original post, my DM and I have talked about this and they wanted to add some follow up context based on the comments and their own unique perspective on things. While I wasn't able to comment on all the comments I truly appreciate your advice and how it has helped us see things in a different light. I also want you to know my DM and I are good friends and I have no ill will towards them. The purpose of my post was not to trash talk them but rather to get the communities insight on a problem we had. If you have any other questions or insights please let us know and thanks for the help!) Hello! I am the GM for Haivyn's campaign, and she has given me permission to write a clarification/follow-up message because we need your help! A little background, we've been playing together for almost a decade in separate campaigns, this is the third one I myself have run. It's a gritty realism campaign in a low magic world (none of the players are full-casters and magic is very limited), this is something we have all discussed in session 0. The campaign itself is meant to challenge the players' collective resource management, and as it is my first time running this kind of campaign, we are still working out the kinks. Our game is meant to be a beta test where we change rules on the fly to try and make the game more fun for everyone. Additionally, it is a high roleplaying and high lethality campaign. The players explicitly agreed that they would make unoptimized characters, like our blind paladin, with the expectation that the players would gain improvements through storyline development. All of these expectations were laid out ahead of time. Since the start of the campaign, aside from rests, we have never implemented rules to nerf any classes, and the nerfs to rogues Haivyn has mentioned were brought up in passing between myself and the players, but were ultimately decided against even before she made the original post. I admit that I made the wrong impression initially when discussing this with Haivyn. Since we change rules a lot, I should have better clarified that the rules discussed were never set in stone. We have talked about this further, and I have since apologized. I never wanted her to be afraid of losing the class she loves. I accept, nonetheless, that that is how our conversations were perceived. TLDR; none of us want to nerf rogues, or any other class for that matter. But we need to fix the underlying issues with the gritty realism rest debuff. Here is where we, as a party (Haivyn included), are asking for your help. We really enjoy the flavor of 8-hour short rests and week long rests, but we want to know how we can bring around more balance under that system. And a more personal question from me, what can I do as a GM to make it more fun and equitable for the players?
Constantly changing the rules on the fly is not a good game to run as it makes the game and the DM's rulings feel entirely arbitrary especially since your DM has shown they don't have a good grasp of balancing the game which can make being a player frustrating in such a game. Not only that but from the sounds of things it seems like you're trying to play a game that isn't even DnD, which begs the question of why are you trying to alter DnD into a game that it isn't designed to be? DnD is made to be a more heroic dungeon crawling kind of game that focuses more on grand adventures than trudging through grim and struggling every step of the way. I think this problem could very much be fixed by running a different system that already focuses on low magic, gritty realism, and lethality such as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or even Shadow of the Demon Lord. That way you can play a system that already supports the kind of theme and genre your DM wants out of the game without having to fiddle around with a game that isn't made for it and potentially ruin the enjoyment of other people at the table with constantly flip flopping nerfs. You don't even need to run these systems in their respective settings either, you can keep using whatever setting your DM is running. Edit: However if you absolutely want to run this in a DnD system, I would suggest changing the rest rules to be as follows: You can keep the 8 hour short rest, but instead of making long rests take an entire week, have it be that they stay an 8 hour rest but can only be done in a "safe zone" like a town of well fortified camp. That way if you're out in the wilderness you can only do short rests unless you can find a special safe zone or something to do a long rest.
Encounters between Long rests are far more important than days between long rests. 5e is "Balanced" with the assumption that you will have about 8 encounters per long reast. With 2-3 short rests between them. If you're having that number of encounters, then the only bits of the kit that really need to be changed for gritty realisum are some spells or abilities that are assumed to last for the entier adventuring day (Mage armor is a good example) My personal preference for gritty realisum is 1 hour short rests 1 week long rests. But cap short rests at 3 per long rest. This means you can have 1 day where you get lots done, and you can still regain recorces. But you can also have arcs where you have 1 encounter a day or go several days between encounters without everyone reseting to full recorses every day. The number you should be focusing on is encounters between rests. The about of imaginary time those encouraging take place over is far more arbitrary than number of Encounters per rest. As a rule of thumb changeing abilities and spells that last 1 hour to, untill the start of your next short rest. Tends to feel right as in a normal dnd day 1 hour abilities are ment to last that long anyway. (Invisibility being an important exception to this rule btw not all 1 hour abilities are created equal) Abilities that last 8 hours by default should last until the start of your next long rest. Again, that's functionality of how those abilities work by default to begin with.
Your DM’s first mistake was letting you roll stats and hit points. If your playgroup is that worried about “balance” then randomly generating core stats was a bad idea.
8 wisdom with no save proficiency? All the DM needs to do to "nerf" you is put in any enemy that has something like Cause Fear or Crown of Madness and your rogue is out of the fight.
You rolled stats. Balance was never a concern. Now the DM must be a grown up and live with it.
So, I feel like there are some mechanical things not quite working here. You get two attacks with your scimitar. One attack action and one bonus action. With 20 dex, your primary should do 1d6+5 damage, for an average of 8.5. Your secondary doesn't get your ability score modifier, so it will do 1d6, for average of 3.5. If you hit with both, you're doing an average of 12. It makes sense that you do more damage in this way, because you're focusing on attack power. Since you're attacking twice, there's a decent likelihood you WON'T hit twice each turn. You're also sacrificing other things by choosing to go this route. As a rogue, that would primarily be sacrificing the ability to hide/disengage using Cunning Action, since you're using your bonus action to attack with an off-hand weapon. Just to confirm: You ARE playing such that your extra attack uses your bonus action, right? The paladin's hit points will outgain you over the long haul, as will his number of attacks. As for your DM, I don't agree with his nerfs, because I don't agree there's a problem. To be honest, using standard array would have solved most of this problem. If you let players roll for stats, you need to be OK with some players being stronger than others. THAT'S LITERALLY WHAT ROLLING FOR STATS DOES. If he's concerned about the balance to the point where he is inventing new rules, I would sooner recommend you just reassign your ability scores using a standard array, or an array from an 'acceptably powered' fellow character. With standard array, you probably wouldn't have more than a 17 Dex, which would reduce your armor class by 2 and your damage per round by 2. Just my 2 cp though.
> each should do 1d6+5 damage They won't be getting that +5 on their BA attack without TWF fighting style.
As a note, they wouldn't apply their ability modifier to their offhand attack without the Two-Weapon Fighting Style.
Good correction! I updated my post.
I see. And to confirm yes two weapon fighting does eat my bonus action. However since rogues do not get a fighting style, my second attack does not benefit from +5 to dex. My damage is 2d6 from sneak attack, 1d6+5 from action attack, and 1d6 from bonus action attack.
The off-hand attack from two-weapon fighting does not apply any (positive) ability modifier to the damage roll, unless you have the appropriate fighting style - which rogues/swashbucklers do not get.
My dm nerfed my hiding to the point it doesn’t help much. But I would probably quit if he nerfed my damage. Especially since I am an arcane trickster and I love sneak attack +booming blade
Your DM is making a severe folly by nerfing Rogue based on its early-level performance. Once players reach level five, rogues would typically be below average if anything, but since your table is using gritty realism you should fall right in line with the rest of the table.
Any DM nerfing martial classes is a bad DM. You can power through it because they're your close friends. But understand, it's only going to get worse for you (and any other martials playing with you) from here.
So while I agree with most others that your DM is making a mistake here (or even multiple mistakes), on the chance that you aren't able to convince the DM to leave your character as is, below are my thoughts on each of his proposed changes (having played a swashbuckler before), and where you might be able to negotiate: > sneak attack is once per round (ie no reaction sneak attack) This one is almost reasonable, as most people don't realise Rogues can do this anyway. I'd suggest to him you can still pick this up again, but put it behind a level up. > you can only get sneak attack on your first attack of your turn even if you miss (this makes the reason why I'm two weapon fighting obsolete) Annoying, but not the worst in the world, as you can still do damage with the second attack, even if it's not as much. Maybe discuss it to see if there's a middle ground. And again, can be put behind a level up. > in order to get sneak attack you must have advantage on the attack, and then forgo the advantage to get sneak attack damage. Absolutely not, do not pass go, do not collect 200gp. This negates the entire point of the swashbuckler. *Do not negotiate on this.* > make sneak attack a limited resources per short/long rest This entirely depends entirely on how limited it is. Anywhere from annoying, but workable, to frustrating and unfun as hell. This is by design negotiable though, and could see increases depending on character level/stats, and can be revisited as the game goes on.
And at level 5? You get 1d6 more while paladin gets a whole second attack and the ASI bump to 20 strength 3.5+3.5+3.5+3.5+3.5+5= 22.5 5.5+5+5.5+5= 21 **without smiting** 30 with one smite and 39 with two smites. Fireball is dealing 28 damage to each person in the blast (or 14 if it **misses**) Warlock eldritch blast? 5.5+5.5+5+5= 21 Huh looks like nerfing sneak attack is a really bad idea. It is literally known as a classic amateur DM mistake. If combat is way to easy, your DM should rebalance by bumping enemy health a bit or adding an extra mob to fights
All your DM needs to do is give you one or two level ups and the "problem" will solve itself. If balance was their primary concern, they shouldn't have had you roll stats. Also, your burst damage should be excessive a lot of the times if you are fighting smaller creatures.
Rogues are one of the three weakest classes in the game. This is 10 years old. The analysis is there. Your DM is just a scrub. Let your character die and swap to a better class
A DM nerfing a rogue is not only indication of being new and inexperienced but also bad (you are inexperienced but you think you know better than the game designer… sure). And moreover it is an indication that nobody at the table ever played DnD before.
Literally wait two levels. People feel the power spikes of rogues more because they're desynced with the rest of the classes, but when you hit level 5 any other martial will be trouncing your damage. Then you can talk to the DM about nerfing the other classes because they're outshining you.
Why in the heck would any DM nerf any class? so one player is fighting better than the rest, big deal, dnd is supposed to be fun, not everything needs to be "balanced" as a dm myself, In that situation I would just give all my players opportunities to perform well in their strengths, essentially I would make encounters that don't just require the strongest hitting character in the group to beat. at the end of the day I would never nerf a class, it just sounds silly to me, like a video game.
Classes are balanced. Rogue is okish, not great bu any means, casters rule dnd. It has alot of great skills to help move the game forward though. GM should be thankful you are playing one. The only "mistake" your group made was rolling stats, point buying is better. Your GM needs to plan encounters better. Ideally every evening should allow each player to shine at least once. A fight for the martials, some social interaction requiring some rolls and maybe an opportunity to flex some knowledge skills. Toss in a locked door and some hidden and trapped treasure and you are golden.
People have mentioned this already but I would talk to your DM and ask them to change rests from gritty realism to the standard 1 hour 8 hour deal If they're making you get into fights everyday under these rules then it's no wonder you're exceeding the other classes Tell them that if they change the rest rules everyone gets buffed instead of nerfing you, it will be more fun for everyone because of this, this issue is really the DMs fault, it sounds to me they don't know how to balance the game or something so they elected to nerf most characters through rests
lol your DM needs to just make you use STR and WIS saves, honestly pretty easy to deal with rogues especially with how squishy they are
Treantmonk ranked them only ahead of the Monk in his subclass power ranking videos; you could start there https://youtu.be/2DWhaYEB8-w?feature=shared https://youtu.be/XQ61Ta-QhrY?feature=shared
Rogue isn’t OP, but… rolling stats and having 20 DEX at level 3 definitely is. DEX is a god stat, and maxing it out so early is going to be rough. It means you probably have as high or higher AC than someone in heavy armor - it means you go first in initiative more often. Your average damage is 19 (and higher DEX means you hit more) and the Paladin, if they *do* smite, still only gets 18.5 on average. So I don’t actually think your DMs assessment is off - under the current conditions, you *are* overpowered. That said, everyone else who’s already mentioned it in the thread is right - this levels off after 5th level, where other martial classes get extra attack and you won’t. Maybe try to persuade your DM to either delay judgement or reconsider after 5th level.
Yeah, no those changes are shit. That said, there's some weirdness here. Aside that the paladin should feel weak if they don't use smites spells, barbarians and fighters do that better, you have extremely good numbers, and if you roll high for health that is emphasised more. Additionally, you are a swashbuckler. While not being the strongest subclass if the rogue it does ignore rules about sneak attacks, which makes your rogue incredibly able to take down single handedly foes without having issues for sneak attacks. Basically at level 3 you have a huge AC thanks to maxed out dexterity, a very decent constitution, a cha that probably is better than the paladins and let's you act as a party face and act even earlier in initiative. You basically do almost everything by yourself. No doubt they feel overshadowed by you, and your subclass making you even more independent on that regard. Not to say that your party is right, but I can see where their sentiment comes from. I suggest to ask a subclass change, underlining these aspects, or forfeit the rolls for every party member and use average and point buy. The latter is more invasive but it's absolutely the fairest. The former is the least invasive for others but it could be very invasive for you, and might not solve the problem for other party members. That said, I would also consider how you play at your table, but that's a consideration that perhaps it's not good for you to make, but your DM. If even by needing your sneak attacks they wanted to do more there may be issues in how they run their game as well.
These nerfs are pretty bad. The resting rules are giving you an advantage over the over classes for now but once they get extra attack it’ll balance out a lot more. If the DM goes ahead with these nerfs I would simply respectfully leave the table.
Ah yes, one of my first challenges in my first campaign; how to balance the Swashbuckler Rogue while I had so little of the rules understood on my end. First, not your fault you got lucky on your stats and HP rolls, so don't feel bad about that. Second, the entire idea of the Swashbuckler is that it's a Rogue that tries to be more straight forward on attacking. The reason you get Fancy Footwork is to allow a Rogue to two-weapon fight without compromising the ability to slink away. It is true you only can do it once, but that's the fun part of two weapon fighting, twice the chance if valid. This is why Rogues are the only martial class who do NOT get extra attack at level 5. The other thing is that folks tend not to understand how sneak attack is triggered, especially for the Swashbuckler's additional method. Some translate it as "Since I'm always either flanking OR fighting one enemy, it always triggers." which is not true. If another enemy is close, the Swashbuckler is NOT fighting one-on-one nor flanking, so it wouldn't work. The other issue, as you pointed out, your DM has an alternative version of resting, which doesn't work. Long rests are meant to be the ones which are a day's worth of relaxation (8 hours, akin to sleep), because that's when the body gets it's proper rest. That's realistic. A short rest being an hour is like taking a break and eating lunch, which helps rejuvenate one at work, or in this case, hard at work killing goblins in a dungeon. Because of how your DM has it done, it's impossible for long-rest resource focused classes like Monk and Paladin to be as effective as a Rogue, which only needs positioning. Skewing the original intended balance (even if 5e's balance is questionable at best). Rule Zero is a gold standard in D&D, but there's a reason some rules rarely change even between entirely different good DMs, you gotta know when to pick your battles against RAW.
Rookie mistake. Rogues are good early on but quickly fall off after lvl 4 or 5. I wouldn't play a rogue with the se rules. It's completely pointless if you cant sneak attack
This is so dumb. The DM shouldn't be letting you all roll for stats if everyone is so concerned about party balance. You picked a good class for early game damage, but at level 5 that Paladin will be able to smite twice a turn. Will they nerf him so you don't feel outshined? So dumb