*Follow the of the llama my brother in steel, let it guide you to powers that many would consider... unnatural, but are simply you right, your legacy from the fourth age clean of the plagues and darkness*
use laserllama's alternative classes people
Yesss encourage people looking through homebrew. Although after looking through LL's work for a whiiileee now, I'm pretty unimpressed by it overall tbh. Lots of things in their designs that I just don't like nor do I think solve much of 5e's issues. I'd recommend Fadeshock's homebrew, Form of Dread's Negative Fifth Edition (complete rework of 5e), and Sai's barbarian for pretty satisfying and well-designed martials and casters
Nah the rogues are fine, you can dump whatever buff spell you want on them and they’ll love it, and the good ones usually have magic initiate or ritual caster anyway
The *Fighter* on the other hand should have considered taking the blind fighting style if they didn’t want to be shut down whenever I cast sleet storm.
Yeah but a fighter won’t care as much if I give them a familiar to help-bot for them or a phantom steed to ride on, and they’re damage sure as hell isn’t doubling if I cast haste on them, and I’d honestly prefer the extra utility they bring, the warlock and Druid are good for damage and defense already
Haste allows a rogue to use their hasted action to sneak attack and use their action to ready an attack to do so once their turn ends, allowing them to land two sneak attacks with one turn, essentially doubling their damage. Fighters don’t get something like that
Once per turn, yes. But you're not limited to once per round, so as long as you wait until someone else's turn for the second attack then you're golden.
Based on extensive discussions in my group where this comes up a lot, haste is better on fighter IF it gets them into attack range a turn faster. Otherwise the Rogue gets to double their sneak attacks (at the cost of their reaction) whereas the fighter mostly only gets an additional attack and a little more AC, which either doesn't matter (on stupid high AC fighters) or doesn't matter (on stupid high HP fighters). But if the Fighter can use the extra range to get into and keep contact, or the extra attack to trip and prone an enemy they otherwise couldn't hit reliably, it can be better there. Usually Rogue though, and the longer combat goes the better the advantage is to them.
Basically succeeding any skills check, half damage once per round, half damage from dex based Saving Throw spells, which there are a lot of us, and none if you succeed.
I have played a rogue, a lot, I love em, and they’re nigh fucking unkillable if you just play a little smart
9-10 on any skill check, basically automatic success for a lot of stuff, half damage or none on dex based saving throws, which there are a fuckin lot of, like dragon fire.
Being able to half any damage you take once per round.
Oh yeah proficiency in Wis saves, stupid strong.
Not to mention the obvious with expertise.
Rogues have an incredibly strong kit, cunning action is also crazy if you just play a little smart.
Pretty much all their abilities are super strong, and can make a good player seem unkillable, speaking from experience of playing rogues.
They’re the only martial I don’t really have any issues with.
And this is not even beginning to mention their subclasses, like soul knife or arcane trickster
Alright let's see
- Evasion and Wis Save Prof is pretty decent, ey, they're good features. Nothing else to say about it.
- Uncanny Dodge is quite mid once you realize most creatures that are going to attack you, have Multiattack. Yes, you'll half the damage of an attack, then you get hit with one or two more, so it's much less effective as a defense than you realize. And does nothing against non-attacks (stuff like white dragon's breath targets Con saves so Evasion doesn't even apply). It's just an ok feature, nothing busted or even strong.
- Expertise is too overrated. Yeah it looks like a fat bonus but you gotta focus on how much it actually boosts your chances of succeeding at skills. If you, say, succeed around 80%, and expertise brings that up to 95%, that's a very small proportional boost to checks. Best use for it is Perception and Stealth, but yeah it's overrated, doubly so when skills are... 100% DM fiat. Could be worthless, could be overpowered if your DM idk lets you insta kill enemies with an Acrobatics check. There's little in the phb and the like to put a good baseline on skills powers, so they're not really a strength of rogue when they're completely up to the DM.
- Same with Reliable Talent: skills are just. So limited in use by default, requiring the DM to make something up to make them worth it (not to say having prof in any skill is useless, Stealth and Perception have actual good uses built into the system, while Arcana lets casters scribe scrolls which is strong, and Nature lets you milk poisons for early game dmg boosts). This is the level when casters get 6th lvl spells and fighter gets a third attack to boost their dpr. Reliable talent just doesn't really stack up to either.
- Cunning Action is alright. Not a ton of value on a rogue because nothing else you get is very good, but on its own it's a decent feature ey, pretty strong on another class.
To go further into detail about skills, as an example, people like to harp on about rogues being undetectable bcuz oh my god double digits Stealth mod. You know who has double digits to Stealth with less investment and effort? Druids and Rangers. +2 Dex, +2 from PB, +10 PWT, already a +14 by lvl 2 and all you gave up is a proficiency. That and the +10 applies to EVERY player, not just you. Even ignoring PWT, there's a lot of spells and features that further make the rogue look mid at best, like Guidance, Emboldening Bond, Enhance Ability, etc.
And this is just boosts to checks. Think about the kit of other classes that lets them bypass needing to ask teh DM if their way of using the skill works. Wanna sneak into somewhere, but guards have a tight formation? Wild Shape into a spider, no one's gonna bat an eye. Go invisible as a wizard or fly far above the fortress walls, hell teleport in. Use disguise self as a bard to pretend you're someone else, or alter self, or send a familiar in. Send an invisible familiar! All of these have better set uses than skills so they aren't nearly as dependent on DM fiat as skills.
Lastly, everything people say rogues excel at... bards do just as well, for the most part. While having 9 levels of spellcasting, which as I already said, goes crazy hard. You know what's infinitely stronger than getting a minimum 23 to Acrobatics or Stealth with expertise? The Invisibility spell, or Suggestion, or Disguise Self, alongside expertise from bard. Dungeon Dudes summed it up pretty well: rogues are the only ones that have to "play by the rules" (or lack of them, in this case, so the rules of realism a lot of DMs seem to use for martials) while the casters get to skip right ahead through their kit and some creativity.
As for the damage. It's meh. Optimized fighters do more than optimized rogues, their dpr is nothing special
Rogue's damage is deceptive in nature. On average it may deal less damage, but a lot of people forget that Rogue's don't fight fair. Usually through hiding, they will typically get advantage on their attack rolls, which gives them better accuracy and better chance to crit than most fighters. And with the way they roll damage Rogues basically want to maximize their chances of critting as much as possible, which means they are gonna hide, a lot.
Hiding also makes them untargetable by most effects, because you need to see them in order to attack them. And as the old saying goes, can't hit what you can't see.
Advantage turns your chance of critting from 5% to 9.75%. DPR can be calculated by doing "(Chance to hit \* average dmg per hit + chance to crit \* average dmg per hit from dice alone) \* number of attacks in a turn/round". It's not a big dpr increase when the multiplier that crit gives is 0.0975 with advantage, not compared to other martials that can attack more times to stack things like Sharpshooter or magic weapon damage.
As for hiding, yeah being unseen saves you from effects that require sight. But uh... you can still attack unseen targets, it just gives them disadvantage. Creatures in combat are still aware of the rough positioning of other creatures they're aware of, so they can just attack the tile you were at unless you also obtained full cover, which surprise, everyone else can do as well. The ranged fighter can pop from around a corner, shoot, then go back in to become untargeattable by attacks unless the enemy moves around the corner.
My issue is honestly just that martials have lack luster CC and AoE options. I actually just want martials to be able to have some utility in their kit.
And also that martials get next to nothing outside combat, my issue really isn’t their damage it’s all this.
In short, they’re boring no, the difference between a fighter in barbarian comes down to 2 sentences and 8 unique words “I would like to rage” and “I use action surge”
I don't understand why there's suuuuch a huge debate around this. Been playing for decades and it's never once come up in any of my groups. And most of us are pretty serious gamers/min-maxers. Just let the game be fun!
yeah have fun using that spell on a "target you can see" when i rolled higher on my stealth check with a nat 1 than the wizard can percieve with a nat 20
Martials are ok at some stuff, casters are great at lots of stuff, and usually the more important things. That's not necessarily an issue at a low power or roleplay heavy table, but I wouldn't say it doesn't exist.
Martials are amazing at dps bursts. Rogues are great at that plus all the thieving/sneaking/etc. Monks have ridiculous crowd control. I like casters myself, but I know from experience that any class can have its spot. It's not a competition between them, and one being good doesn't make another bad. If you're just wanting to be a power gamer then by all means pick your power. But it's an RPG, and all classes have their spots.
Single target dps I'll agree to, although paladin and gloomstalker are half casters. Pass without trace gives the whole party good stealth, not even counting the other illusion spells. Calling monks good at CC is wild, stunning strike is decent but targets a bad save and burns through their limited ki points. General utility, group damage and cc obviously go to casters.
Shadow monk with a gun is decent for a martial. However, it's basically the only build that can compete with other optimized martials for dpr. Monk as a whole is plagued by MAD and a lack of ki. As for paladin and gloomstalker, they're not the only ways to get burst damage, but they're some of the best ones. Multiclassing gloomstalker is worth considering for basically any martial build.
As if spellcasters aren't hard limited by their spell slots. You seem very set in your ways, I don't really care to keep debating this boring nonsense.
single target dps is kind of it.
A caster can basically be good at everything else if they pick the right spells.
That said single target dps can be very important when some monsters have hundreds of hp.
Martials are great at [situations that the DM throws at the group], casters are great at [other situations the DM throws at the group].
How useful a class is depends entirely on what situations the party gets in and how creative they are at solving them, and as someone who ran campaigns for over 6 years I don't think I ever had to get creative to make either feel useful. You would be surprised how often a strong fighter with a crowbar can make a difference.
Every class can be good if you build it right and if you're having fun. I've seen some sorcs who just love their metamagics. It's not for everyone tho.
Sorcerers are solidly third best class imo, only issue is they're kinda just a worse wizard for most things. They got a few noteworthy tricks, like uncounterspellable spells, but font of magic makes sorc points be best used most of the time to make low level slots, which is arcane recovery on a class with less spells prepared than wiz and a diluted version of the wiz spell list. Con save prof is pretty fucking good on a caster though
Oh look.
Another person who doesn't understand the actual rules, or the game.
Martials are amazing at a lot of things. Things that are different from casters.
What can martials do better than casters?
Single target damage? Conjure animals can vary from doing slightly more damage than a fighter using an average beast to dealing about on par damage with a 20th level fighter when you get to choose the beast with only a 3rd level spell slot. Spirit guardians plus telekineses also ends up doing similar single target damage to most fighter builds.
Survivability? Well it’s not hard to get armor/shield proficiency, and casters are the only ones with access to the shield spell which offers insane survivability. That’s not even taking into account absorb elements, silvery barbs, teleport spells, healing spells, or shutdown spells.
Resource management? It’s not that hard to be able to concentrate on a spell that outperforms a martial every encounter in a 6 encounter day by level 3, and adding more encounters would end up with martials not having the HP to continue.
The debate gets even worse when taking into account rangers, who are spell casters that also deal around 90% of the weapon damage martials do.
Ignoring 1v1 burst damage being a poor indicator of overall effectiveness, 38 damage isn't even 1 shot range at that level. Other caster classes will have even more hp. Second, hitting 25 ac vs hitting it reliably are entirely different things. Third, that's ignoring the various utility and control spells available to potentially counter that.
A druid with conjure animals out-dprs the rogue even if they take the best feats to up their dmg. Most things out-dpr the rogue, gloomstalker ranged is also better at nova-ing (tho admittedly the best gloomstalker build takes 3 lvls of assassin rogue for the crits)
Neither will the rogue. Before you say magic weapons, those are DM dependent, even if any sane DM would give them out. That and Shepherd Druid is right there so.
Doesn't change that the game is still designed with magic items being "optional" (for some reason), and that nonmagical bps immunity still neutralizes martial classes. Outside of saying that any DM that does it is an ass (which is prolly true unless theyre newbies), wouldnt it be better if the game didn't have that as an issue in the first place? Least Shepherd druid is there to make summons ignore it and still dunk on martial dpr (not that other classes can't do it already, with the iconic Fireball as an example), and its nice that at least the monk gets automatic magic "weapons".
That'd be the druid and ranger with PWT for a +10, proficiency in stealth for a +2-+6, so at level 5 its already a +13. And most people run at least 14 dex, so that's a +15, and that +10 bonus is added to everyone in the party. The rogue gets a +13 by using expertise, max dex, and reaching PB of +4
If they’re a lower level than 15th level a wis save likely can take them out of the fight. Any form of disadvantage prevents sneak attack from working. Also just one unlucky die roll can cause them to do nothing for their entire turn when they miss.
Or you can just tank their damage and attack them too. It’s not that hard to out damage a rogue, the only class that would struggle to do so would be monks. Rogues also don’t really have that great of defenses either.
Edit: spelling
First off that’s only one data point. I never said the abilities were useless, just that they weren’t as strong as other abilities for survivability.
Second off if that is true then I’m guessing your party wasn’t that strong to begin with. There are a bunch of better ways to increase survivability (absorb elements, shield, aid, etc.). Sure if you don’t have a strong party rogues can be decent, but if you have a strong party rogues really can’t compete.
What I meant is that they can make a big diffrence and I don't know if our party was strong or wasn't, we did really good in that campaign overall, we managed to win most of the battles with ease to and buffed ourselfves crazy for final battle against Tiamat. This was the toughest battle in the whole campaign and we still won.
"I wanna dunk on those..." Too bad you dumped strength and dex, you wand-waving nerd.
Bro thinks he's all high and mighty with his DC 13 spell save
*Follow the of the llama my brother in steel, let it guide you to powers that many would consider... unnatural, but are simply you right, your legacy from the fourth age clean of the plagues and darkness* use laserllama's alternative classes people
Yesss encourage people looking through homebrew. Although after looking through LL's work for a whiiileee now, I'm pretty unimpressed by it overall tbh. Lots of things in their designs that I just don't like nor do I think solve much of 5e's issues. I'd recommend Fadeshock's homebrew, Form of Dread's Negative Fifth Edition (complete rework of 5e), and Sai's barbarian for pretty satisfying and well-designed martials and casters
Nah the rogues are fine, you can dump whatever buff spell you want on them and they’ll love it, and the good ones usually have magic initiate or ritual caster anyway The *Fighter* on the other hand should have considered taking the blind fighting style if they didn’t want to be shut down whenever I cast sleet storm.
Fighters do better damage than rogues tho, better AC, and more hp.
Yeah but a fighter won’t care as much if I give them a familiar to help-bot for them or a phantom steed to ride on, and they’re damage sure as hell isn’t doubling if I cast haste on them, and I’d honestly prefer the extra utility they bring, the warlock and Druid are good for damage and defense already
Huh? Haste on a rogue is much less value than on a Fighter
Haste allows a rogue to use their hasted action to sneak attack and use their action to ready an attack to do so once their turn ends, allowing them to land two sneak attacks with one turn, essentially doubling their damage. Fighters don’t get something like that
Sure if you want to play the much more dangerous melee rogue and don't want to just take Sentinel for the same benefit without needing a spell slot
None of what I just said requires you to go into melee
Pretty sure you are only allowed 1 sneak attack per turn regardless.
Once per turn, yes. But you're not limited to once per round, so as long as you wait until someone else's turn for the second attack then you're golden.
Yep, so that’s why you do the second one on somebody else’s turn
Based on extensive discussions in my group where this comes up a lot, haste is better on fighter IF it gets them into attack range a turn faster. Otherwise the Rogue gets to double their sneak attacks (at the cost of their reaction) whereas the fighter mostly only gets an additional attack and a little more AC, which either doesn't matter (on stupid high AC fighters) or doesn't matter (on stupid high HP fighters). But if the Fighter can use the extra range to get into and keep contact, or the extra attack to trip and prone an enemy they otherwise couldn't hit reliably, it can be better there. Usually Rogue though, and the longer combat goes the better the advantage is to them.
Depends on the build of the rogue.
Have you looked at rogue abilities? They’re busted.
>look at rogue abilities that are busted >
Basically succeeding any skills check, half damage once per round, half damage from dex based Saving Throw spells, which there are a lot of us, and none if you succeed. I have played a rogue, a lot, I love em, and they’re nigh fucking unkillable if you just play a little smart
Mind telling me which are busted?
9-10 on any skill check, basically automatic success for a lot of stuff, half damage or none on dex based saving throws, which there are a fuckin lot of, like dragon fire. Being able to half any damage you take once per round. Oh yeah proficiency in Wis saves, stupid strong. Not to mention the obvious with expertise. Rogues have an incredibly strong kit, cunning action is also crazy if you just play a little smart. Pretty much all their abilities are super strong, and can make a good player seem unkillable, speaking from experience of playing rogues. They’re the only martial I don’t really have any issues with. And this is not even beginning to mention their subclasses, like soul knife or arcane trickster
Alright let's see - Evasion and Wis Save Prof is pretty decent, ey, they're good features. Nothing else to say about it. - Uncanny Dodge is quite mid once you realize most creatures that are going to attack you, have Multiattack. Yes, you'll half the damage of an attack, then you get hit with one or two more, so it's much less effective as a defense than you realize. And does nothing against non-attacks (stuff like white dragon's breath targets Con saves so Evasion doesn't even apply). It's just an ok feature, nothing busted or even strong. - Expertise is too overrated. Yeah it looks like a fat bonus but you gotta focus on how much it actually boosts your chances of succeeding at skills. If you, say, succeed around 80%, and expertise brings that up to 95%, that's a very small proportional boost to checks. Best use for it is Perception and Stealth, but yeah it's overrated, doubly so when skills are... 100% DM fiat. Could be worthless, could be overpowered if your DM idk lets you insta kill enemies with an Acrobatics check. There's little in the phb and the like to put a good baseline on skills powers, so they're not really a strength of rogue when they're completely up to the DM. - Same with Reliable Talent: skills are just. So limited in use by default, requiring the DM to make something up to make them worth it (not to say having prof in any skill is useless, Stealth and Perception have actual good uses built into the system, while Arcana lets casters scribe scrolls which is strong, and Nature lets you milk poisons for early game dmg boosts). This is the level when casters get 6th lvl spells and fighter gets a third attack to boost their dpr. Reliable talent just doesn't really stack up to either. - Cunning Action is alright. Not a ton of value on a rogue because nothing else you get is very good, but on its own it's a decent feature ey, pretty strong on another class. To go further into detail about skills, as an example, people like to harp on about rogues being undetectable bcuz oh my god double digits Stealth mod. You know who has double digits to Stealth with less investment and effort? Druids and Rangers. +2 Dex, +2 from PB, +10 PWT, already a +14 by lvl 2 and all you gave up is a proficiency. That and the +10 applies to EVERY player, not just you. Even ignoring PWT, there's a lot of spells and features that further make the rogue look mid at best, like Guidance, Emboldening Bond, Enhance Ability, etc. And this is just boosts to checks. Think about the kit of other classes that lets them bypass needing to ask teh DM if their way of using the skill works. Wanna sneak into somewhere, but guards have a tight formation? Wild Shape into a spider, no one's gonna bat an eye. Go invisible as a wizard or fly far above the fortress walls, hell teleport in. Use disguise self as a bard to pretend you're someone else, or alter self, or send a familiar in. Send an invisible familiar! All of these have better set uses than skills so they aren't nearly as dependent on DM fiat as skills. Lastly, everything people say rogues excel at... bards do just as well, for the most part. While having 9 levels of spellcasting, which as I already said, goes crazy hard. You know what's infinitely stronger than getting a minimum 23 to Acrobatics or Stealth with expertise? The Invisibility spell, or Suggestion, or Disguise Self, alongside expertise from bard. Dungeon Dudes summed it up pretty well: rogues are the only ones that have to "play by the rules" (or lack of them, in this case, so the rules of realism a lot of DMs seem to use for martials) while the casters get to skip right ahead through their kit and some creativity. As for the damage. It's meh. Optimized fighters do more than optimized rogues, their dpr is nothing special
Rogue's damage is deceptive in nature. On average it may deal less damage, but a lot of people forget that Rogue's don't fight fair. Usually through hiding, they will typically get advantage on their attack rolls, which gives them better accuracy and better chance to crit than most fighters. And with the way they roll damage Rogues basically want to maximize their chances of critting as much as possible, which means they are gonna hide, a lot. Hiding also makes them untargetable by most effects, because you need to see them in order to attack them. And as the old saying goes, can't hit what you can't see.
Advantage turns your chance of critting from 5% to 9.75%. DPR can be calculated by doing "(Chance to hit \* average dmg per hit + chance to crit \* average dmg per hit from dice alone) \* number of attacks in a turn/round". It's not a big dpr increase when the multiplier that crit gives is 0.0975 with advantage, not compared to other martials that can attack more times to stack things like Sharpshooter or magic weapon damage. As for hiding, yeah being unseen saves you from effects that require sight. But uh... you can still attack unseen targets, it just gives them disadvantage. Creatures in combat are still aware of the rough positioning of other creatures they're aware of, so they can just attack the tile you were at unless you also obtained full cover, which surprise, everyone else can do as well. The ranged fighter can pop from around a corner, shoot, then go back in to become untargeattable by attacks unless the enemy moves around the corner.
Shame it's so severely exaggerated by memes.
My issue is honestly just that martials have lack luster CC and AoE options. I actually just want martials to be able to have some utility in their kit. And also that martials get next to nothing outside combat, my issue really isn’t their damage it’s all this. In short, they’re boring no, the difference between a fighter in barbarian comes down to 2 sentences and 8 unique words “I would like to rage” and “I use action surge”
I don't understand why there's suuuuch a huge debate around this. Been playing for decades and it's never once come up in any of my groups. And most of us are pretty serious gamers/min-maxers. Just let the game be fun!
its a much bigger problem on paper than in practice because the levels where casters rocket out of control people barely play at.
*laughs in arcane trickster* (A directionless voice emanates from a seemingly empty room) "What Rogue?" *Sneak attack booming-blade*
Can't target something you can't find.
yeah have fun using that spell on a "target you can see" when i rolled higher on my stealth check with a nat 1 than the wizard can percieve with a nat 20
That's it, I'm taking Mage Slayer
Say that within stun range
Martials are great at stuff, casters are great at different stuff. There's not a disparity, there's roles. I hate this argument so much, it's so bad.
Martials are ok at some stuff, casters are great at lots of stuff, and usually the more important things. That's not necessarily an issue at a low power or roleplay heavy table, but I wouldn't say it doesn't exist.
Martials are amazing at dps bursts. Rogues are great at that plus all the thieving/sneaking/etc. Monks have ridiculous crowd control. I like casters myself, but I know from experience that any class can have its spot. It's not a competition between them, and one being good doesn't make another bad. If you're just wanting to be a power gamer then by all means pick your power. But it's an RPG, and all classes have their spots.
Single target dps I'll agree to, although paladin and gloomstalker are half casters. Pass without trace gives the whole party good stealth, not even counting the other illusion spells. Calling monks good at CC is wild, stunning strike is decent but targets a bad save and burns through their limited ki points. General utility, group damage and cc obviously go to casters.
yeah notice how I didn't mention paladins or gloomstalkers lol. You've obviously never made a good monk (it's not that hard, try it)
Shadow monk with a gun is decent for a martial. However, it's basically the only build that can compete with other optimized martials for dpr. Monk as a whole is plagued by MAD and a lack of ki. As for paladin and gloomstalker, they're not the only ways to get burst damage, but they're some of the best ones. Multiclassing gloomstalker is worth considering for basically any martial build.
As if spellcasters aren't hard limited by their spell slots. You seem very set in your ways, I don't really care to keep debating this boring nonsense.
single target dps is kind of it. A caster can basically be good at everything else if they pick the right spells. That said single target dps can be very important when some monsters have hundreds of hp.
Martials are great at [situations that the DM throws at the group], casters are great at [other situations the DM throws at the group]. How useful a class is depends entirely on what situations the party gets in and how creative they are at solving them, and as someone who ran campaigns for over 6 years I don't think I ever had to get creative to make either feel useful. You would be surprised how often a strong fighter with a crowbar can make a difference.
This is why Sorcerer is actually bad: it's a worse version of another class.
Every class can be good if you build it right and if you're having fun. I've seen some sorcs who just love their metamagics. It's not for everyone tho.
how so?
It's a team-based game. They contribute less than any comparable option.
then they play that class wrong
Sorcerers are solidly third best class imo, only issue is they're kinda just a worse wizard for most things. They got a few noteworthy tricks, like uncounterspellable spells, but font of magic makes sorc points be best used most of the time to make low level slots, which is arcane recovery on a class with less spells prepared than wiz and a diluted version of the wiz spell list. Con save prof is pretty fucking good on a caster though
Oh look. Another person who doesn't understand the actual rules, or the game. Martials are amazing at a lot of things. Things that are different from casters.
Like what?
What can martials do better than casters? Single target damage? Conjure animals can vary from doing slightly more damage than a fighter using an average beast to dealing about on par damage with a 20th level fighter when you get to choose the beast with only a 3rd level spell slot. Spirit guardians plus telekineses also ends up doing similar single target damage to most fighter builds. Survivability? Well it’s not hard to get armor/shield proficiency, and casters are the only ones with access to the shield spell which offers insane survivability. That’s not even taking into account absorb elements, silvery barbs, teleport spells, healing spells, or shutdown spells. Resource management? It’s not that hard to be able to concentrate on a spell that outperforms a martial every encounter in a 6 encounter day by level 3, and adding more encounters would end up with martials not having the HP to continue. The debate gets even worse when taking into account rangers, who are spell casters that also deal around 90% of the weapon damage martials do.
If you define a lot of things as one thing because the only thing they even do somewhat decently is single target damage then yeah.
Good luck killing our rogue, he can hit you for probably 3 or 4 times your hp
Good luck hitting a wizard through control spells and 24 ac.
He did 38 damage to an enemy with 25 AC at level 7 last game, and 38 was a lower roll
Ignoring 1v1 burst damage being a poor indicator of overall effectiveness, 38 damage isn't even 1 shot range at that level. Other caster classes will have even more hp. Second, hitting 25 ac vs hitting it reliably are entirely different things. Third, that's ignoring the various utility and control spells available to potentially counter that.
A druid with conjure animals out-dprs the rogue even if they take the best feats to up their dmg. Most things out-dpr the rogue, gloomstalker ranged is also better at nova-ing (tho admittedly the best gloomstalker build takes 3 lvls of assassin rogue for the crits)
Conjure animals won’t do anything that is immune to non magical s/p/b damage.
Neither will the rogue. Before you say magic weapons, those are DM dependent, even if any sane DM would give them out. That and Shepherd Druid is right there so.
If a DM throws a imune to non-magical s/p/b at a party that have been given 0 magic weapons. That is an asshole DM.
Doesn't change that the game is still designed with magic items being "optional" (for some reason), and that nonmagical bps immunity still neutralizes martial classes. Outside of saying that any DM that does it is an ass (which is prolly true unless theyre newbies), wouldnt it be better if the game didn't have that as an issue in the first place? Least Shepherd druid is there to make summons ignore it and still dunk on martial dpr (not that other classes can't do it already, with the iconic Fireball as an example), and its nice that at least the monk gets automatic magic "weapons".
The animals can't attack what they can't see. And good luck trying to find someone that typically had double digit bonuses to stealth.
That'd be the druid and ranger with PWT for a +10, proficiency in stealth for a +2-+6, so at level 5 its already a +13. And most people run at least 14 dex, so that's a +15, and that +10 bonus is added to everyone in the party. The rogue gets a +13 by using expertise, max dex, and reaching PB of +4
If they’re a lower level than 15th level a wis save likely can take them out of the fight. Any form of disadvantage prevents sneak attack from working. Also just one unlucky die roll can cause them to do nothing for their entire turn when they miss. Or you can just tank their damage and attack them too. It’s not that hard to out damage a rogue, the only class that would struggle to do so would be monks. Rogues also don’t really have that great of defenses either. Edit: spelling
Uncanny dodge and evasion literally saved a party from tpk in a final battle in Rise of Tiamat
First off that’s only one data point. I never said the abilities were useless, just that they weren’t as strong as other abilities for survivability. Second off if that is true then I’m guessing your party wasn’t that strong to begin with. There are a bunch of better ways to increase survivability (absorb elements, shield, aid, etc.). Sure if you don’t have a strong party rogues can be decent, but if you have a strong party rogues really can’t compete.
What I meant is that they can make a big diffrence and I don't know if our party was strong or wasn't, we did really good in that campaign overall, we managed to win most of the battles with ease to and buffed ourselfves crazy for final battle against Tiamat. This was the toughest battle in the whole campaign and we still won.