“I rage and beat the shit out of him.”
“Dude, again?”
“I’m a barbarian! What else am I supposed to do? Get happy and talk them out of being evil?”
I had a dm once say he was thinking about saying no about my rogue’s “I shoot, move, bonus action hide around the corner” loop. But then he said he realized if he said no, my character would suck and it’d be no fun.
I think that was the right call.
Very much this. It even feels very “rogueish” to employ that strategy and it’s far from broken, so I don’t see why you would ban it.
I once played with a DM that strictly ruled that rogues didn’t get a sneak attack bonus unless I was in stealth and undetected by the enemy. (As he said its in the name: SNEAK attack)
I brought up I could probably make that still work with a bow and I was immediately preemptively banned from using ranged weapons lol.
That was a frustrating game.
I’ve been hearing about DM’s complaining about Rogues SA since 3.x days. These are the same guys who (allegedly) thought the monk was more powerful that the sorcerer because the monk’s chart had so many more columns and class features.
Why did you even play with this guy?
Did the DM just not like Rogues or were they new to DnD?
To me it sounds just like AD&D 2e rules, in which the ability was called “Backstabbing.”
In one campaign my DM said that the risk versus reward balance was off when using attack from hidden, move, hide each round on my Halfling Arcane Trickster. I countered that scenario was the reason I picked Halfling, and otherwise I would have been an Elf. He let me give up a cool elven made ranged weapon in an arcane ritual to permanently race change to Elf. I then proceeded to use Flanking to attack with super-advantage from Elven Accuracy, using Booming Blade. I followed up with Cunning Action Disengage if the target wasn’t dead. It had the appearance of risk because it was a melee attack, but it was almost as safe as when I was hiding.
I think people overestimate what hiding can do for you. Hiding does not immediately shield you from harm. You can’t hide if there’s nothing to hide behind. If an enemy walks around your cover, even the best stealth roll in the whole world won’t keep you hidden.
How did the DM react to your new strategy?
Halfling racial ability specifically calls out their ability to Hide behind allies. Once Hidden you can’t be targeted with ranged attacks. At lower levels that seems very powerful. Over time it would probably have been fine, but once my character was an Elf there was no going back. I already had INT as my second highest score since I was an Arcane Trickster, and I did a 2 level dip into Bladesinger to get some additional spell slots and Blade dance for INT to AC, Shield spell, Find Familiar, and a few more fun spells.
Elven Accuracy meant Flanking (or any Advantage) was a 14.26% chance to crit, up from 9.75% My DM realized that I was going to blow up his enemies and started adding at least one additional beefy enemy to each fight. This was fine with everyone involved as we wanted a challenge to overcome, without nerfs to base class features.
While that is correct, it’s not like your allies are indestructible cover, so I’d say it’s fair. But I don’t really have to tell you I guess.
So when he realised that your last build would have been more balanced then the current one, he just decided to do what he could have done from the start by adding more enemies?
Thats not a real opinion that people have is it?
Not in my presence at least. I’m moreso mocking the meme format, as people keep using it whenever someone brings up that their build only works with thing x. I’ve seen it with free feats, smites, 1 level dips, specific feats, magic items, …
Some of those takes were reasonable. Some were not. And while the format was made to criticise overreliance on one thing, I feel like it’s sometimes used too easily. Relying on an abilities is not bad in itself. Some builds only work because of abilities. And while it’s fair to bring up that it’s a bit one dimensional, that doesn’t invalidate the build.
Specialization is good, because when everybody in the party is good at one narrow field we all get to take turns doing cool things. If you make a character that’s good at everything, nobody else gets to do anything.
This as well. Because while a more diverse set of abilities would be cool, if you make it too diverse, everyone suddenly becomes a jack of all trades, master of many and that feels boring.
I’ve seen some crazy takes on Sneak Attack, it wouldn’t surprise me if this happened at least once in the entirety of our existence.
Something about rolling a bunch of damage dice without expending resources really makes some people uncomfortable. They see the Paladin and the Sorcerer expending spell slots, the Fighter only having one Action Surge, etc… and come to the conclusion that the Rogue is inherently broken.
This is basically 5e sneak attack anyway (the ‘not having it’ aspect that is)
You can only get a sneak attack if you have advantage on an enemy, and you know what? You don’t have advantage on an enemy just cause you’re flanking them, that’s mentioned in the book as an optional rule the DM can allow (where flanking gives advantage) but isn’t the usual rule. In 3e/3.5e/PF, an enemy being flanked confers benefits including allowing sneak attacks. In 5e the only way to sneak attack without needing advantage is by taking the swashbuckler (specialization? Archetype?).
In 5e the only way to sneak attack without needing advantage is by taking the swashbuckler (specialization? Archetype?).
Actually, since 5e this has been rolled this into the standard sneak attack that every Rogue gets
You don’t need Advantage on the attack roll if at least one of your allies is within 5 feet of the target, the ally doesn’t have the Incapacitated condition, and you don’t have Disadvantage on the attack roll.
So you don’t need flanking, you just need a buddy who is not unconscious.
Ah, good; honestly I remember taking rogue before this change was made (or perhaps it had been changed at that point but none of us at the table knew) and the problem was immediately evident; there’s a lot of stuff in 5e that makes me wonder what the heck the creators were thinking and if perhaps they just rushed the whole thing along and decided to just fix up any oversight later.
This rule has been in the book ever since the PHB first released. If this was something you didn’t use, you either missed it or played a different edition.
