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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
Sounds like the real problem was not your strategy but the fact that this weapon was very much not scaling with you powerlevel and really unbalanced.