If you haven't seen this yet, this went up last night:
Fifth Edition Feedback Survey
Wizards of the Coast has a survey up about D&D 5.
You can get as deeply into it as you want, or as shallowly as you want. I rated the things I read, understood, played, and observed in play - and didn't comment on stuff I didn't.
And yes, I said a Rogue is more powerful than a Fighter. My fighter in Montporte felt like a chump compared to the damage the Rogue dealt out! My job was basically to stand and give the Rogue the chance to deal the real damage. When did they morph from "thiefly type" to "heavy hitter" anyway? 3e?
4e placed rogues in the Striker role, which required them to do large amounts of damage. Over the course of the edition, they proceeded to make rogues the single most effective striker class, essentially doubling the damage you could expect out of most non-strikers.
ReplyDeleteThe real challenge in the Rogue ability in 5e is that unlike a lot of other uber-powers, the Rogue's ability to use their sneak-attack, precision-strike, backstab, whatever you want to call it, is not limited by (say) a per-combat, per-foe, or per-short-rest timing, You can use it every single time that someone is distracted by an attack.
ReplyDeletePathfinder limits the ability for a sneak attack to true distraction, and since Pathfinder has no real "facing," assuming that everyone's looking everywhere at all times, this meant that you really had to work at it (shoot from a long way off, so they can't see you) in order to get that extra bonus damage.
Limiting sneak attack by at least a heavily penalized Perception check would be a good way to go; conversely, it would be more roll-efficient to say unless the Rogue can make a stealth contest vs the combat Perception of the foe (maybe even at a bonus for being in combat). In short, it takes some work - or at least a pause in the action - before you can claim 4d6 or 5d6 of extra damage.
there should be no question that the Fighter, followed by the Barbarian, should have the most average damage, sustained, on the average. That's what they do. Magic Users generally should have the capability to do awesome effects, but be quite limited by resource management concerns. Etc.
Having it be a little harder to access the bonus damage would help, I think.
DeleteYup. But I'm okay with that. Turns out in this edition the fighter's role is more of a tar pit/damage soak type than a damage dealer. They do enough damage that the enemy can't ignore them, but their job under these rules isn't to deal damage - it's to protect the heavy artillery in the rear. I'll also add that it depends a lot on the battlefield, too. Close fights in close quarters the tanks shine while our party's archer doesn't have a whole lot to do but hunker down and hide. Get us out in the open, though, and he tears things up while we clankers blunder about tying to keep the bad guys off his back.
ReplyDeleteI was kind of disappointed that, as a fighter, I'm a second-rate fighter, and my role was more "absorb damage if it comes" instead of "kill stuff."
DeleteThat's definitely the video game tank vs DPS split. It's probably OK if you like that sort of thing; I don't feel a need for it in my dungeon bashes.
DeleteHuh. I don't think my character is a second rate fighter, it just takes him a little longer to kill stuff than my archer team-mate. In some ways I'm better at fighting, because he's got one trick and it better work fast, or he's screwed. My dude's got a lot more staying power and a lot more options at my disposal.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I haven't looked closely at the rogue character. If he can stand toe-to-toe with a standard fighter in a fight *and* he's got a bunch of other tricks up his sleeve with respect to "thiefy stuff"...then yeah, I want my niche back!
It's partly that "fighter as meat shield" and "fighter as the guy who takes attacks while others kill the bad guys" feel very non-heroic to me, and very video gamey. The ease at which a rogue seems to be able to generate +4d6 damage seems a bit more "rogue as cannon" than "rogue as thief with nasty abilities if you let him get the jump on you." Perhaps Doug's suggestions would work for me - making it a lot harder to take advantage of that massive strike would make the rogue more of a sneaky type.
DeleteYour disatisfaction is similar to my feeling on the wizard in GHRPS DF. I liked the AD&D version where the wizard was the bad ass in fighting the boss monster while the rest of the party was support to help get the wizard there. The fighter would fight the lesser monsters and allow the wizard to save energy for the big ones. I always imagined the wizard to be like the one in Dragonslayer where he was too weak to travel so they needed to take his ashes to the battle site but once he reformed then he was the only one able to defeat the dragon. Anyway, I can understand your point that you feel the class that you like gets demoted to helper status instead of a hero.
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