The Rogue Problem

Homogenizing classes in pursuit of balance

Sandy Petersen is not the only old-timer dishing out bad takes on the timeline. If only he were the only one. This hobby might be in better shape if the problem were isolated. Unfortunately, it looks like Mike Mearls is suffering from a similar affliction. In a recent post on X, Mearls opined the fact that the Rogue’s Sneak Attack damage does not scale well compared to the damage output of the Fighter. On its face, the idea that a sneaky thief-like character would be as good at dishing out physical punishment as a trained warrior is stupid. However, when you consider this in the context of the game he famously worked on, 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, you may find that this is just a symptom of a larger problem with not just 5e but with post-2000 D&D in general. Since 3rd edition, a lot of time has been put into making every class a viable combatant. Spellcasters now have cantrips that serve as standard attacks meant to replicate a Fighter’s ability to attack with a weapon. Characters are given feats that allow them to take on skills from other classes. Subclasses are designed to turn classes into facsimiles of each other. A Warlock can select Hexblade and basically become a dark Paladin. A Rogue can select the Scout subclass and become a better Ranger than the actual Ranger. So much of this character choice bloat boils down to enabling classes to be better stand-up fighters. D&D seems to have forgotten a few fundamentals not just of fantasy gaming but of fantasy in general. Not everyone needs to stand and fight. Not everyone needs to deal massive amounts of damage every single round. Hell, not everyone needs to make an attack every single round. The Rogue, a muddy conglomeration of two previously distinct classes, is a perfect illustration of these problems. Today we’ll discuss the Rogue and what it actually should be.

As I previously mentioned, a Rogue is a mashup of two older classes, the Thief and the Assassin. The Thief dates back to the first Greyhawk supplement from 1975 and represents the Grey Mouser/Ali Baba type of sneaky, dexterous filcher. The Thief had a suite of skills like pickpocketing, climbing shear surfaces, and sneaking. Interestingly enough, Gygax cites Roger Zelazny’s Shadowjack as a major inspiration. For those of you who don’t know, Shadowjack is the main character of the novel Jack of Shadows who draws magical power from shadows. Thieves have a borderline supernatural skill at thievery, climbing, sneaking, etc. Part of their skill set is backstabbing. Naturally, if you’re hidden, you’ll be adept at appearing behind enemies and leaving a dagger in their back. Flanking attacks already get a bonus and the Thief gets the benefit of doubling their weapon damage if the attack is successful. The Assassin uses Thief skills at three levels lower than their own (minimum of level 1) but gets to backstab and, if he has the drop on his target, gets to roll on the Assassination table. The key difference between backstabbing and assassination is that a successful assassination roll kills the target instantly. Assassins are also skilled in using poisons and in disguising themselves. Still, both classes have lower hitpoints meaning that they’re better off striking from the shadows than squaring up with an Orc. Their other skills reinforced this and gave them other options besides attacking. Thieves could partially read and decipher other languages and magical texts, meaning that they could potentially utilize spell scrolls with a chance of catastrophic failure. Assassins had skills with poison meaning that they could debilitate a target in one shot depending on saves. These characters aren’t gonna be swangin’ and bangin’ every round like a Fighter. They’ll be sneaking, hiding, sabotaging, and lining up for the big one.

In 2nd Edition AD&D, classes were put into categories. Fighting characters like the Fighter, Ranger and Paladin were in the Warrior group. There was a Priest group, a Wizard group, and a Rogue group. The Rouge classes were Bard and Thief. Assassin was absent but later added back in through supplemental material. In the early days though, Thief and Assassin were basically combined into Thief. The full synthesis wouldn’t come until 3rd edition where the class was renamed to Rogue, Bard was separated out into its own class, and Assassin became a prestige class that you trained into at higher levels. From here on, the Thief was gone and replaced by “The Rogue.” I think the idea was not to pigeon-hole players into thinking they needed to steal things to play properly and both Thief and Assassin would continue to be repurposed as prestige classes and then subclasses in 5e. I suppose the idea is that a Rogue is the gen ed requirement and then you major in Thievery or Assassination moving forward. I can follow the logic of the decision in my head, but I disagree with it. Thieves and Assassins are very different. They have a small amount of skill overlap and may need similar aptitudes, but their professional directives are entirely different. Thieves retrieve things while Assassins kill people. Most Thieves pulling a heist would try to avoid bloodshed as it increases the likelihood of discovery. Most Assassins wouldn’t distract themselves from their target by stealing things unless doing so would advance their goal. A Thief has broad skill application whereas an Assassin has very specific skills. I don’t think it makes sense to have them begin in the same place and then branch off. I think they need to be separated entirely.

3e is not just where Thieves and Assassins were fused, but also where D&D begins to shift into what some call a “Grid Game.” My friend RuleofThule on X described this in a response to one of my posts, but the basic idea is that combat was increasingly resolved on a grid and the ubiquity of the grid got players out of the habit of picturing combat in a real location and into the habit of viewing it as taking place on a grid. I call this the “JRPG Pocket Dimension,” after the phenomenon in Japanese-made RPG video games where running into enemies shifts the perspective of the game into a battle world where the environment looks like where you were but you cannot interact with it and your actions have no impact on it. This isn’t the fault of Square or Nintendo or anyone else who made video game RPGs. They were limited by the hardware of the time and even now games with fully dynamic environments are rare. Table-top RPGs have no such restrictions though and there are mechanical advantages to be found by utilizing the environment. Imagine a fight in a castle corridor lined with suits of armor. In a video game, they might not factor in at all or they might fall over if something hits them or they might be an object that can be thrown in rare circumstances. In a table-top game though, the possibilities are endless. A player could hide inside one, push one over onto an unsuspecting enemy, trip an enemy into one, etc. They can be a means of escape, a force multiplier, or something a particularly clever Wizard could use to wreak havoc. Most players don’t think like that anymore though because video games and grid combat have inadvertently convinced them that combat happens is a pocket dimension that has no impact on the rest of the world. To most players, that means everyone has to line up and fight toe-to-toe. Even backstabs are treated that way. It’s the conga line of death with players just trying to get behind their enemies every turn.

With this mindset, players expressed two needs. Firstly, they need to be more durable. This means more hitpoints and more defensive abilities. Secondly, they need to feel like they’re contributing to combat every round. If they feel like they can’t contribute in any other way, then that means they have to fight. Suddenly you start to get padded hitpoints and every class has some kind of attack they can do every round. The video game influence is obvious and this term DPS suddenly enters the conversation. For those not in the know, DPS stands for “Damage Per Second.” It’s mostly associated with World of Warcraft and it refers to characters that deal high damage rapidly but don’t have much in the way of defense. When I posted my initial criticism of Mearls, this was the most common response I got. “The Rogue is a DPS!” In a table-top game, this category is entirely meaningless and this type of language should be expunged from pen and paper gaming as a whole. DPS matters in video games because of a lack of options outside of directly targeting an enemy with a weapon attack. These things will not be on your character sheet but a clever player can figure them out. Some games even have systems for this. In Shadowdark they’re called improvised actions. The DPS Rogue who dances around the battlefield playing the shoulder tap game is stupid. The Thief who slips out of combat, shoves the archer off of the balcony and then cuts the rope holding the chandelier up so that it drops on the enemies below is awesome.

So how should this archetype be handled? Firstly, Assassins and Thieves are different classes. Do you want your DPS glass canon? That’s an Assassin. It’s fine if the Assassin is an Ezio Auditore type and I even like the idea of both the Thief and the Assassin at higher levels being able to point in the direction of an enemy and whistle and then that enemy is swarmed by hirelings. That’s your force multiplier at higher levels. You run a guild, don’t you? Bring 5 initiates with you on an adventure and have them scout and sabotage. Focusing specifically on the Thief, don’t feel like you have to stay in combat or you aren’t contributing. You can climb, right? Get vertical and drop something on someone’s head. The hitpoint bloat of modern games is the reason why you feel like you have to have your damage scale equally with the Fighter, so that’s going away. The Thief is not here to fight. He is here to sneak, take occasional opportunistic shots, and create general havoc within the environment. The Rogue needs to go away and the Thief and Assassin need to be restored to their proper place. DPS is meaningless in a game without technological limitations and the Fighter needs to be the only one worrying about toe-to-toe slugging.