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 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.

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.

Based on the other comments, some DMs seem to have an issue with that. Did they give a reason? I am extremely confused because I’m pretty sure that’s not just the archetype, but also just RAW for rogue. Is there some ambiguity in the wording of the class that I’m just missing?

“it seems silly that you can just go around the corner and suddenly you’re hidden. They know you’re there”

This was rebutted with “they know I’m somewhere over there, but not exactly where or when I’m going to pop out. I’m a 7th level rogue, I’m sure I have tricks you and I can’t even think of”.

Sometimes people get like selectively simulationist. They’ll ignore most of the game’s gamey bits (inventory management, hit points and recovery, magic) but some things throw them off. Usually things that are closer to lived reality. For example, someone having no problem with a wizard hypnotizing an entire room, but balking at a fighter climbing a tall fence.

There was also: “It seems like a lot of damage…”

“I’m pretty sure rogue is balanced around doing sneak attack almost every round. The fighter gets multiple attacks, but I don’t. Almost every other class gets a resource to burn like spell points or ki points or superiority dice. I have nothing. All I do is sneak attack. Without it, I’m a particularly accurate peasant that can run away real good. And I still miss about a quarter of the time, which means my whole turn accomplishes nothing”

I wonder if the DMG or something published expected damage per round or per encounter somewhere.

Based on the other comments, some DMs seem to have an issue with that. Did they give a reason? I am extremely confused because I’m pretty sure that’s not just the archetype, but also just RAW for rogue. Is there some ambiguity in the wording of the class that I’m just missing?

“it seems silly that you can just go around the corner and suddenly you’re hidden. They know you’re there”

This was rebutted with “they know I’m somewhere over there, but not exactly where or when I’m going to pop out. I’m a 7th level rogue, I’m sure I have tricks you and I can’t even think of”.

Sometimes people get like selectively simulationist. They’ll ignore most of the game’s gamey bits (inventory management, hit points and recovery, magic) but some things throw them off. Usually things that are closer to lived reality. For example, someone having no problem with a wizard hypnotizing an entire room, but balking at a fighter climbing a tall fence.

There was also: “It seems like a lot of damage…”

“I’m pretty sure rogue is balanced around doing sneak attack almost every round. The fighter gets multiple attacks, but I don’t. Almost every other class gets a resource to burn like spell points or ki points or superiority dice. I have nothing. All I do is sneak attack. Without it, I’m a particularly accurate peasant that can run away real good. And I still miss about a quarter of the time, which means my whole turn accomplishes nothing”

I wonder if the DMG or something published expected damage per round or per encounter somewhere.

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 actually don’t like the “magic exist so fuck simulatiounism” reasoning, since it implies that as soon as magic exists, any rational explanations are off the table. I generally prefer to establish what can and can’t be done, so we have as baseline for what’s possible. Otherwise you quickly loose consistency. Martials should be able to do more than regular people in our world, but there should be guidelines on what they can do.

Yes the game is not a simulation. But I prefer using examples aside from magic. Magic is not simplification for game purposes, magic is part of the setting. Things like HP, the turn order and armor class vs. saving throws generally work better as comparisons.

Based on the other comments, some DMs seem to have an issue with that. Did they give a reason? I am extremely confused because I’m pretty sure that’s not just the archetype, but also just RAW for rogue. Is there some ambiguity in the wording of the class that I’m just missing?

I actually don’t like the “magic exist so fuck simulatiounism” reasoning, since it implies that as soon as magic exists, any rational explanations are off the table. I generally prefer to establish what can and can’t be done, so we have as baseline for what’s possible. Otherwise you quickly loose consistency. Martials should be able to do more than regular people in our world, but there should be guidelines on what they can do.

Yes the game is not a simulation. But I prefer using examples aside from magic. Magic is not simplification for game purposes, magic is part of the setting. Things like HP, the turn order and armor class vs. saving throws generally work better as comparisons.

Well, thankfully I included examples other than magic.

However, I do think trying too hard on “martials should be like real life” easily leads to harsher limitations for them. It’s not always intentional. But when someone says “I want to leap 15 feet over the chasm” some people get all “you can’t do that! I can barely jump five feet and I’m athletic (they’re not)” and you have a whole digression where someone looks up human records and then argues about if 16 strength is really Olympic class and what about all your equipment and blah blah blah.

It’s much rarer for that kind of argument to come up with wizard types, in my experience.

Clearer rules up front help, though I feel like half of DND players have never read the rules.

Personally I prefer the “classes should feel comparably powerful/capable” model to simulationism. Since we aren’t going full locked tomb and saying that mages are all basically chronically ill, I extend it to martials are folk hero strength. A mid level rogue should be capable of Robin Hood level bullshit.

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?

Our group found the rogue took as long to take their turn as everyone else put together, but we never disallowed anything, we just stopped picking rogues as much. More experienced groups could probably handle the rolls quickly.

I wasn’t always hiding behind allies, but I was always hiding unless there was zero cover or concealment. If that was the case I just ran to max range which was also fairly effective at keeping my character from taking damage while still giving the enemy trouble. At lower levels most enemies are using weapon attacks or spell attacks that require a target you can see, and are in range, and I did my part to not be a valid target. My DM tried adding more enemies, switching their weapons, and a few other tactics which made fights harder on pretty much everyone except me. It became clear that all this wouldn’t impact how I decided to play a ranged rogue. There was an additional issue too …

The previously mentioned sacrificed elven ranged weapon was one my DM had homebrewed to be able to scale with our power level. He had designed the weapon in such a way that it could gain new abilities if we had a component from a slain monster and were able to figure out the trick. He had me roll Arcana to determine if a given monster had a component, and I passed on a vampire we defeated. On a hunch I was able to touch the fangs of the slain vamp to the weapon and spoke the elven word for “vampire” which I was told by another party member. This unlocked an ability that allowed the ranged attacks to do +10 damage on a crit and heal my character for the damage dealt on the strike. With Uncanny Dodge I was able to minimize incoming damage and then heal myself on a big crit for pretty much whatever slipped through.

Other party members had mentioned how powerful they saw my common turn of ranged attack with advantage, move, hide as bonus, and the weapon was just making it that much more apparent. I agreed that this was a balance issue, and we started talking about ways to mitigate it. We decided this would probably involve getting rid of this awesome ranged weapon. I said if he wanted me to appear to have more at risk he needed to give some incentives for me to get into melee combat.

I already had Booming Blade as a cantrip from Arcane Trickster so I was looking at picking up Green Flame Blade as well as a way to generate consistent advantage outside of Flanking such as Find Familiar. I pitched the idea of the DM allowing non elven Bladesingers (now allowed by default) and he countered by saying I could just play an elf. I said if we could find a way to keep my current character (for the narrative) and have him become an elf then I would be on board. The rest was just DM hand waving to make it happen at the expense of my ranged weapon, but it played out very well at the table. He allowed me to make my new race the Shadow marked elf subrace as acknowledgement that the vampiric weapon was the catalyst.