2024 Player's Handbook: The Rogue might now be the weakest class in D&D5e

hey everyone it's Chris here and we are looking at the Rogue today um and we got a busy week I'll put the schedule up on the screen so we got the Rogue today we got the Warlock tomorrow that'll be great to do the Druid so many questions about the Druid going to be answered on Wednesday then Thursday the Wizard My favorite class and then Friday if there's another class that's been getting a lot of questions it's the ranger so what a packed we we're going to have I will be doing reaction videos for all five of those that wasn't my plan I was planning to work on other stuff this week but they came out with this schedule and these videos um seem to be doing well and people seem to be enjoying them so uh my plan is to continue doing them uh until they stop doing these videos so I'm guessing we're going to see the other four classes next week uh they haven't an announced for sure haven't announced for sure yet but I suspect they will uh but today we're talking about the RO and um the thing with the Rogue is that uh so we first saw the Rogue in unearth Aron in uh play test packet two and it was not good um they had taken sneak attack and they had nerfed it so you couldn't do it off your own turn um and there were other quality of life reductions on the Rogue and people were not impressed at all uh so then we saw it again in play test six I believe and everything had been restored so we had the old Rogue back plus they added weapon Mastery which is nice on a rogue um and they also added uh let's see Steady Aim was made uh a non-optional feature which was nice um there were some enhancements on some of the sub classes which was nice and they added cutting strikes which isn't really as much a power boost as it is just uh increased in versatility of use of sneak attack because you give up damage in order to do these other effects so it's kind of a tradeoff but it gives you some options and in some cases it's the right thing to do quite often I think it just want to do Straight damage um so we're a lot happier with that and it did well in the surveys and then came play test seven and eight and we saw huge Buffs for the Barbarian and the fighter and the monk which are the other non-c casting classes and then seeing those improvements and we now know that the fighter and Barbarian pretty much everything went through into the players handbook the question is what about the Rogue I'm not feeling as good about it as I did back in play test 6 um so we're going to see today what ended up happening with the Rogue and I'll have some comments on it but uh I can't I have the players handbook uh so I've read it I have my notes here for everything they've changed and everything they've kept the same versus the old rules and the play tests um so I'll be referring to this as they go along but I can't reveal anything unless they talk about it so if they talk about something I'll have comments on it if they don't talk about something then I I really can't tell you uh what they didn't tell you um and d and d Beyond has been publishing little uh articles that might offer some other details um and so if they get that article out in time I'll I'll refer to it as well uh but it looks like we're about a minute to go here uh so I'm going to do a quick edit and then we're going to get going with the Rogue our main job with the Rogue was to not mess it up yeah because it is it was very sound it is such a beloved solid class that our main goal with the Rogue was to take those really wonderful pieces of design and add some new twists and so in addition to giving the Rogue weapon Mastery as we have several of our other classes and weapon Mastery as you and I have discussed in in another video gives the Rogue and others some really exciting combo options and and tactical abilities as we discussed like short sword with the knife you're like hitting G advantage on the next next attack lining up your sneak attack stuff like that glorious yeah uh but in and I I will add um in in my playing around with weapon Mastery uh I I would say that weapon Mastery does work pretty nicely with sneak attack um they they are a nice little marriage there um so I do think the Rogue getting weapon because the of course the early version of the Rogue didn't have weapon Mastery and we kind of got the impression that weapon Mastery is going to be for the Warriors which didn't initially include the Rogue um I'm very glad the Rogues ended up getting weapon Mastery in addition to that the other biggie in the Rogue is a brand new feature called cunning strike this ended up being a hit in the onar Arcana series and what cunning strike really boils down to is it gives the Rog the ability starting at fifth level to trade sneak attack damage dice for other effects yeah because we realized the sneak attack bucket of dice it gets awfully big yes and sometimes the Rogue doesn't need all of those dice just to deal damage so the light bulb that went off for us in our in our design process with the Rogue was well what if we let the Rogue do other things with those dice cuz my goodness are there a lot of them uh and so cunning strike was then born cunning strike really is an answer to what if the Rogue could do other things with those Dice and so at the start what the Rogue can do is can trade sneak attack dice to do things like poison their target trip their target withdraw from melee uh without provoking opportunity attacks that sort of thing then at higher level you get all right so he has already revealed something that is different from the play test uh so he said that um you know at the lower levels when you first get it you can poison a Target you can trip a Target you can withdraw those were all available in the play test but there was a fourth option in the play test uh for disarming your enemy disarm has been removed not sure why but it's gone even more options and then you also gain the ability to pile on multiple options to the same sneak attack and so it is all about giving the Rogue ways to do more than just bucket loads of damage without taking away the ability to do bucket loads of damage because sometimes the Rogue will still want to just take all their sneak attack Dice and apply all of it to damage but in those cases where it would be more helpful for you to poison the target knock them down withdraw or knock them down knock them out harmlessly because at higher level the Rogue also has even the option to just knock them out and not deal uh enough damage to actually slay them yeah you don't need to assassinate every NPC you meet exactly uh in addition to adding hunting strike to the Rogues kit uh We've also enhanced other features that were there uh we took reliable talent and moved it to a lower level uh we made it so that thieves now he hasn't said what level but significantly lower level than uh it was level 11 in the old players handbook you're going to get it much sooner now can't now gives you an additional language in addition to uh allowing you to use thieves can't and we've also at level three added a brand new feature called Steady Aim this debuted in Tasha yeah if you have Tasha's CAU of everything you already know about Steady Aim it was the only optional class feature that the Rogues got in that book it's cauldron of everything it's now graduated to the core books and this allows uh the Rogue To Be steady and give themselves advantage on their next attack role a fact let's put a pin in that a fact we will return to when we get to the Assassin yes and uh the Assassin is especially glad that Steady Aim is now in the book uh we also even enhance slippery mind at higher level which used to just give you proficiency and wisdom saves it now gives you Proficiency in both wisdom and Charisma saves uh and the reason why that's relevant is it means now Rogues will be harder to banish since since most spells and other effects that uh forcefully teleport people away or banish them uh involve Charisma saving throws oh interesting and we wanted Rogues to have all around slippery minds and to to Really lean into a the theme that not only are Rogues really good at stealth devastating single strikes with sneak attack but they're also good at wiggling out of danger and a number of the Rogues abilities are all about wiggling out of either physical danger or uh mental magical danger and all of that together really I think achieves that goal that we had of take this Rogue that's beloved that's working really well and just crank up the volume a little bit I love having extra things to do with sneak attack I love turning that into a resource um we've seen that kind of design element with a couple of things in this new players handbook but that is something I adore because you always wanted to have the ability to potentially poison a Target right or to knock out Target even in the video games I I grew up playing like thief and Dishonored like that's all very iconic for rogue to be able to do so that that's super exciting yeah and again just as with weapon Mastery it is something that we have loved playing with in our play Test games and again you have weap and and I have played uh the unearth Arana version of the Rogue um multiple times in play tests and it was okay um it's not your top damage dealer uh at least in melee in at range I think it's it's competitive with anybody um but um at least weapon users but uh in melee a little bit behind uh but basically uh I think they're done with the base class so I just want to recap um you basically everything your Rogue had before they still have uh almost there's stuff that you don't care about that might not be there anymore um and then they have added weapon Mastery that's probably the biggest one you're going to get an extra language with your thieves can't um Steady Aim is now a core feature uh you will get cunning strike you're going to get reliable Talent earlier than you used to get it um you're going to get improved cutting strike and uh then you're going to get um an extra save proficiency with slippery mind uh everyone can select an epic Boon at level 19 this includes the Rogue um and there is one other little increase that they didn't mention but it's something that's late on so that's pretty much it and I I think a lot of players were hoping there would be additional like improve scaling for for sneak attack that did not happen um and uh there are enhancements to some of the sub classes which um I think we're going to get into right now Mastery to play with to now a rogue a rogue does not have as many masteries to play with as say the fighter but still enough for it to make a difference yeah and uh it gives the Rogue some really interesting tactical mini games when especially once cunning strike is in the mix yeah to figure out each turn like okay what am I going to do with my weapon what am I going to do with my sneak attack uh a lot of fun then contributing to the rogue's enhanced profile yeah are the four subclasses now the Rogue has its two classic subclasses the Assassin and the thief and those are two arch types in the Rogue that go all the way back to first edition D and D and it's all about really do you want to emphasize the killing part of the rogue's Identity or do you want to emphasize the uh infiltrator and treasure hunter side of the Rogues identity right uh with the thief representing infiltration and uh treasure hunting and then the other two subclasses that are available just as in the fight we have the eldrich Knight and the S Warrior taking the Baseline class and mixing it with stuff outside the class we have the same thing with the Arcane trickster and the Soul knife in the Rogue where you can take the Baseline Rogue and mix it either with spellcasting in the Arcane trickster or mix it with psionic power in the soul knife nice uh shall we start with the Assassin yes let's start with the Assassin my first character was all right so they're going to start with the assassin I thought they were going to start with the Arcane trickster um okay uh the first thing I want to mention about the Assassin is if you want the Mechanics for the Assassin you can get them right now because uh Colby at D4 Deep dive did a video he was given permission to share the Assassin and he did so um but uh we'll see what they have to say as well but uh I would recommend if you want to know the details on the Assassin check out K's video an assassin so I have I've spent time with this subass so the Assassin assassin is long been a very popular Arch type but the 2014 version of the subclass struggled in actual play uh too much of its core identity relied on surprising uh the other yeah the other combatants uh in a in a battle and that could be quite challenging to pull off and since we've changed the surprise rules in the new players handbook we didn't want to have anything in the Assassin that of course relied on that anymore we wanted to at the Baseline for the Assassin's abilities to be more reliable so that you could feel like your subass was actually doing something and so with that in mind uh we redesigned the assassinate feature first off it gives the Assassin advantage on initiative roles this for us was something we planned on doing for a long time once we revised the Assassin because we felt that the Assassin should have a better chance of going first uh than than most other combatants uh because of course to do their job of assassination getting the jump on others is a critical part of that now what we also did is we made it so that the extra damage that they can deal in the first round of combat is no longer reliant on someone being surprised but instead simply reliant on the other person not having acted yet so and so the the two parts of assassinate work together we gave advantage on initiative roles so that the Assassin is more likely to go sooner and going sooner means they have more potential targets to use their assassinate on because the the requirement to use it is simply that the the target has not acted yet uh in in the combat and we have found that in play testing this has achieved the goal of making the Assassin actually able to use their core stick uh reliably in most battles unless the D20 is just totally cruel to them right uh we also uh made a number of other enhancements uh simple ones like in Assassin's tools we now not only give you the proficiencies that we gave you before but now we also give you the tools themselves uh we were chuckling when we realized that a decade ago we gave you these proficiencies uh and then we're like well and good luck yeah so now you actually get a disguise kit and a poisoners kit when when you reach uh the level where you get uh these proficiencies uh We've also then and this goes back to Steady Aim that we were talking about before we've all right so I think we've covered all the level three stuff so so you get advantage on initiative that's new and really nice um and then uh you are going to in the first round of combat you have advantage on attack rolls against anyone who hasn't gone yet uh which you had before so that's that's carried over um and now um if if your sneak attack uh does damage to somebody that round you're going to increase the damage equal to your Rogue level um and so you should should be able to get that in every combat I would think uh so you know if you're a 10th level assassin you should be doing an extra 10 points of damage in every combat you're in completely redesigned infiltration expertise so that it it still includes some of the mimicry that the Assassin was capable of before uh to make it easier for them to socially infiltrate uh certain uh places where they might be hunting uh someone or something down but we've also now made it so that they can use Steady Aim on the Move most Rogues when they use Steady Aim can't move for the rest of the turn because they are standing still as they line up and attack the Assassin who you know in the narrative you can often imagine would be in a sticky situation where they might need to be moving John Wick style uh as they as uh they are battling people we wanted them to be able to line up their shots even while they're running across the room right uh and to me this is actually one of the most cool things in in the Assassin just from a sort of cinematic standpoint right is is imagining them doing this uh we have also replaced the impostor feature that they used to have and give them a brand new feature called inv Venom weapons all right so we're on to level 13 so level 9 yeah um we have the mimicry feature which is uh actually significantly better than the old version um which uh was originally a level 13 feature uh took 3 hours to complete um and uh this one it's just easier uh he didn't go into the details of the specific mechanics but it's easier to use um and then yeah so your speed is not reduced to zero for using Steady Aim notice he didn't say because if you read Steady Aim I'm going to put Steady Aim up on your screen right now this is the version from tashas um and you can see it says in order to qualify for Steady Aim uh you can't have move Jet and your speed is reduced to zero uh so all roing aim does is it says your speed isn't reduced to zero so the first qualifier is still going to be there so that means if you are an assassin and you want to use Steady Aim and move you're good if you want to move and then use Steady Aim you're not good okay so uh basically uh the Assassin's going to want to use Steady Aim at the start of their turn and then they will be able to move which ties into the new cunning strike feature in the Baseline Rogue uh which allows them to deal more damage and ignore poison resistance when they use the poison option of cunning strike we wanted assassins to be the best at using the new poison option that all Rogues have access to perfect uh and then finally uh yeah so in venom weapons is pretty good I would think um when I when I look at uh the the feature as well as the cost I would think that as long as you're not fighting an opponent immune to poison you're always going to want to use inv Venom weapons it it should should be at worst flat flat for your damage and just a free chance to poison somebody every round um and that's assuming they're saving half the time which probably isn't the case Death Strike no longer relies on surprise uh instead you just have to sneak attack somebody in the first round of combat and you can potentially have your death strike uh so yeah so death strike is is essentially the same as it was except instead of having to have a surprised enemy You' only have to inflict sneak attack damage on them which is you're going to do for sure um so yeah death strike is significantly enhanced we did assassin so Arcane trickster yeah Arcane trickster is it's it's perfect it's always been perfect this is a hard one to improve upon well and the Arcane trickster because it was so solid and so fun it other than just getting some tweaks to integrate seamlessly into uh the rest of the players handbook really only got uh a few modifications uh and one bit of actual redesign so first on the front of just some nice enhan there's more than one bit of redesign on the Arcane trickster that's significant um so I'm curious what which one he's going to talk about Ms the Arcane trickster spellcasting ability no longer has any school of magic restrictions perfect uh and yeah so that's a change from the play test too because in the play test um you had these restrictions when you first took uh Arcane trickster and then you had the option to switch out those spells as you leveled up and I I remember at the time thinking what's the point of the restrictions in that case it's just kind of an inconvenience at level three and extra rules that don't need to be there um so they've gotten rid of that if it's on the wizard spell list you can take it uh which I think is a big Improvement um I'm curious are they not going to mention the other big Improvement like the eldrich Knight who can now use an Arcane Focus the Arcane trickster can now use uh an Arcane focus and the Arcane trickster continues to be the awesome spell wielding Rogue who can use Mage hand for Endless Shenanigans uh and we then allow even more Shenanigans with a new new version of versatile trickster which we've redesigned to all right so um he talks about Mage hand uh and I I cannot give you specifics but the uh Arcane tricksters the big change I was thinking of is the Arcane trickster's ability to use Mage hand has been enhanced um and I guess that's all I can say uh hopefully they they put it in the uh article on D and D Beyond now interact with cunning strike in the Baseline Rogue and just as the Assassin is now really good at using the poison option in cunning strike the Arcane trickster is really good at using the trip cunning strike because now when you as the Rogue trip someone you can also have your Mage hand trip somebody else and so you can imagine everyone's distracted by the Rogue doing something and then over there the Mage hand is going whoop and then someone else tumbles down uh so you will be able to get up to even more silliness as an Arcane Trickster uh I have always loved this subass for truly delivering what's in its name being a trickster uh because there is so much prankish in this subass I theve a lot as hurricane trickster it is a very very fun subass also really great at infiltration at triggering traps without dying like there's is one of those perfect meshes of a of a rogue adding magic to a rogue to just get by a little bit better and it sounds like a small thing but in both of the eldrich Knight and the Arcane trickster us removing the school of magic restrictions in each of them is itself a big change because it means you will be able to uh build a mix of abilities that you could never build in the past uh because the school of magic restrictions in the past really really kind of hedged you in yeah in the type of Arcane trickster you can build and and now you have way more options perfect the other Rogue subass that uh the final thing I will mention about the Arcane trickster is they have a level 17 feature called spell thief uh that still exists um there was a change made to spell thief uh that is a straight out boost um it's it's 17th level so maybe you don't care as much uh and it's not a huge huge boost but it was improved that is mixing in Supernatural power with the Rogues Baseline abilities is the soul knife for me one of the things so just as as we get into the soul knife a couple things I want to say about it is um first off of course we never saw the soul knife in on earthto and we didn't even know that it was going to be a subclass it was kind of a last minute replacement for the swashbuckler but if you know about the soul knife there's some common complaints about the the soul knife like its ability to uh only use its blades on their own turn um there's there's questions about how it interacts if you are multiclass and you have extra attack um there are uh potential other issues with it as well uh just weird wording and such uh so I want to see what he has to say here that I enjoy about the Arcane trickster and the Soul knife is they are not only siblings to each other as the two Rogue subclasses that mix roguishness with Supernatural ability but they are also siblings to the other two subclasses in that the Arcane trickster is basically the magical equivalent of the thief MH and the Soul knife is the supernatural equivalent of the assassin yeah and the Soul knife manifests this psychic blade and uses it to terrifyingly attack people and leave no Trace that's the creepiest bit yeah and the Soul knife appeared originally in Tasha's cauldron of everything uh it will feel much the same here but it has enhanced presentation it's now been fully integrated into uh the rule set of the new players handbook but we also made a couple of critical functional changes to uh the use of the Soul knife itself because I'm guessing what these are now so and they're they're they're just like in the Arcane trickster it goes a long way us lifting the school of magic restriction in terms of how the subclass will feel the soul knife has two important changes to the psychic blades one of them is you can now use them on your opportunity attacks yeah uh this was probably the most requested feature for the soul knife is being able to use the the psychic blades for opportunity attacks yeah and now you can thank you the other you're welcome the the other cool thing that we've done for the psychic blades is we've given them a Mastery property we wanted the soul knif to feel like they were still getting to use the fun of the Mastery system even when using their psychic blades and so the psychic blades have the Vex Mastery property which is the property that sets up your next attack to have Advantage meaning if the soul knife is using their ability to make a a an attack with their action and then a second one with their bonus action that bonus action attack can now have Advantage thanks to the Vex of their first attack yeah so you you are setting up your sneak attack very well and you've got this extra weapon Mastery yes so next up the thief okay so future Chris here uh there were a couple things uh that I forgot to mention when I did the initial reaction so I'm going to add it now so Jeremy Crawford mentions that you can make opportunity attacks with the psychic blades now and that they're going to have the Vex Mastery property what he didn't mention and I can't provide specifics but I'm going to give some general information uh there are slight changes to how psychic energy dice are determined as well as to how they are recovered uh and there is a pretty substantial Improvement to the range on Psychic blades as well and I should also clarify something he mentioned so he said that opportunity attacks are now allowed so that's not all reaction attacks that's just opportunity attacks now you can ready your attack action you could always do that with a soul knife and you can make opportunity attacks but something like the Battle Masters Commander strike that provides a reaction weapon attack it's still not going to work with the soul knife so I think that's about it for the changes for this whole knife so let's move on uh let's talk about the thief so the thief has a number of fun enhancements as well as redesigns within it our goal here was to just make the thief even more thiefy um so one of the things that we did is in the fast hands feature we've given the thief the ability to activate magic items as a bonus action previously fast hands did not apply to magic items and now it does and so the thief will be able to take a magic item yeah that requires a magic action for Activation and be thanks to fast hands now activated as a bonus action oh perfect we've also made it so that uh in SEC so yeah a lot of people thought the old version did apply to uh magic items um i' I've had conversations with players who assumed that it did and then you know we had to have a conversation I would usually let them for the session but um it's nice now it's clear they absolutely can story work the thief can now use their dexterity instead of their strength when determining their jump distance and it now gives them a climb speed it technically gave them a climb speed before yeah so not a lot of changes actually to uh Second Story work um mostly uh just sematics um because we got uh you get your deck modifier uh to be used when when you roll for jumping uh before it you got your Dex modifier in extra feet when you're jumping it's probably going to come out to a similar amount um and then the the old version allowed you to climb at equal to your walking speed but it didn't technically say it was a climb speed but mechanically it essentially was before but did not call it a climb speed oh okay and so now now now it Loops through the regular climb speed rules right uh We've also given you a new cutting strike option in Supreme sneak at level 9ine uh which now allows you to make an attack while you're hidden and stay hidden this nasty stuff and then finally in use magic device we've given the thief the ability to attune to up to four magic items instead of just the three that most characters are limited to uh it also gives the thief a chance of using a magic item that has charges in it of not actually expending any charges when using the item and we've also provided guidance on how the thief can use spell Scrolls that they wouldn't normally be able to use and so they are they're really great at kind of cheating number a number of the rules in the game and that's the Rogue okay so um if if we're talking about uh Supreme sneak at level 9 uh he talked about uh remaining hidden this is a cutting strike option so there is a cost for it um but in theory you should be able to save your bonus action on your turn for something else like activating a magic item because if you're always doing this then you're always remaining hidden then you always have Advantage so you don't need to use Steady Aim at all um so the Assassin can move after using Steady Aim but potentially the thief doesn't need to use Steady Aim once they get to level 9ine ever they can just hide and just stay hidden um so that's actually a pretty nice feature now use magic device the old version allowed you to use any magic item regardless of class requirements level requirements um but it didn't give you a casting stat so sometimes you'd have spell DCS that were comically low um but now uh it's more structured so you will attune more magic items which is nice and uh potentially use less charges uh though your odds of that aren't great and you can use spell Scrolls you will want your Arcane trickster to be proficient and then expert in Arcana and then you should have no problem with any checks on that um and then the 17th level feature uh there's a just a tiny enhancement on that that's understandable it is a gloriously stealthy class uh that is now even trickier than it was before the new players handbook is available for pre-order okay so I want to kind of do a final wrap up of the reveal here so there were a lot of questions from players uh to me going into this and especially since I've gotten the new players handbook and I've had to be very Cy with responses but uh is the Rogue now going to be the weakest class in D and D because the general consensus General is that uh spellcasters are more powerful than non-s spellcasters and the non-spell casters are the monk the Barbarian the fighter and the Rogue we have seen the fighter and the Barbarian already and they got a ton of stuff and the Rogue got stuff too like the Rogue is objectively more powerful than it was in 2014 but it didn't get as much stuff and of course with a monk they haven't done a reveal yet but we certainly saw on Earth their cona they looked really good so does that leave the Rogue behind and uh maybe yeah uh you know I don't think the Gap is the same like in 2014 the monk was a lot less powerful than the next lowest class um I don't think we're going to see that kind of Gap but somebody has to be last and yeah I think it might be the Rogue now it depends what you want to do like I said earlier in this video um by my calculations if you want to use a ranged weapon Rogue is actually a pretty good choice um especially if you're not wanting to mix with spells I haven't done the full analysis of how spells are going to interact with weapons um and done all the math yet so I can't really comment on that but if we're talking about non-c casters uh and you want to use a bow or a crossbow the Rogue is going to be a good choice damage wise um but if you want to use melee weapons and you want to do as much damage as possible uh like if you saw my play test videos you'll know that I did some math and the Rogue was behind um not a huge huge amount behind but they were um and nothing here has addressed that so yeah the Rogue might end up being overall all still the weakest class in D and D now um but I don't think we're going to see a gap like we did in 2014 where the monk was just totally Left Behind um but anyway that's the Rogue and wow tomorrow is going to be exciting cuz we are talking about the Warlock so I hope you'll join me talk to you later

Channel: Treantmonk's Temple

Views: 50,514

Keywords: dnd, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Optimization, Guide, Wizard, Wizards, charop, ultimate, best, most powerful

Id: eubtmDVy7OY

Length: 39min 47sec (2387 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 24 2024