Dungeons and Dragons: The Rogue
Old Rogue Versus New Rogue: Which is Sneakier
As we move away from the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons into the 6th edition, also known as the "2024 edition" of Dungeons and Dragons. The new rulebook covers a variety of subjects, from how to make specific calls, how to make certain rules of the game clearer, and most importantly, all the new class variations.
The Rogue is the class beloved by many in the Dungeons and Dragons community and it was always cool to play the silent assassin who knows the right moment to strike a target down. The rogue from the previous edition of Dungeons and Dragons was exceptional at doing high amounts of single target damage and had decent survivability in most situations.
The Rogue has a complicated role in Dungeons and Dragons, because they always rely upon stealth. In a game like Dungeons and Dragons where everyone sits around the table to play, many of the rules in Dungeons and Dragons relies upon combat. In combat, players take turns in initiative order to see how combat proceeds. In Dungeons and Dragons there is a Dungeon Master, a person who controls how the game works, and is required to know all the rules about the game. The Dungeon Master always must know where the monsters are, or the challenge presented to the players, and always must know where the players are located at any given time in the game. This becomes a complicated matter in terms of the Rogue because they are meant to be unseen, but because the dungeon master must know where all creatures are at a given time, it's difficult to not have monsters make decisions based upon where the player is located.
What does this mean? Well, it means Rogues have a difficult time playing the stealthy game, and it makes it hard to roleplay someone as stealthy and unseen, when their opponent, the Dungeon Master, always has to know their location.
There is one semi-solution to this issue: The Dungeon Master knows the intelligence of the creatures or non-player characters in the game. If for example a goblin, or boar, or some unintelligent or clumsy creature does not know the location of the Rogue. In this case, the Dungeon Master would know that, and the Rogue would make the proper stealth checks to stay hidden, and the issue is resolved.
The problem comes when you have very intelligent fantasy creatures like mind flayers in the game, and the Dungeon Master has to make the call: Is this creature smart enough to know where the rogue is, or do they just need to make perception checks to find the Rogue?
However, the Dungeon Master does it, it's always changing, and that is what either makes or breaks the fun for a Rogue, either being able to be stealthy or not.
So how is this fixed? The Dungeons and Dragons developers added more options for the Rogue class, so they do not need to just be stealthy, they have other ways to play the game.
In the older version of Dungeons and Dragons, there were ways of gaining advantage, which is the other way Rogues can do their "sneak attack". They had allies within 5 feet of the creature, acting as a "distraction" and so the Rogue could strike their weak points. This, however, only did extra damage, which was very cool, but it lacked the shine of having an impactful effect sometimes in battle, when creatures are just blocks of health, and doing damage doesn't have a meaningful impact.
What was that 2024 solution? Side effects. The cunning strikes effect was added to the Rogue class, which allowed you to take sneak attack damage dice, and substitute them for special effects, which many of them are very powerful. To be able to take one six-sided dice to substitute for poisoning the targeted creature, that is a much better effect than 2 damage on a sneak attack.
The whole point of Dungeons and Dragons is to have fun playing a cool character that does cool things, and being able to have more options in this game to do cool things is what specifically the Rogue needed. The Rogue needed to become more specialized, more unique in a new way, and now it has these features that are unique in their own style, which is an incredible update to the game.
So in total, is this an amazing update to the Rogue? Yes, it is incredibly helpful and make the age-old game of Dungeons and Dragons that much more enjoyable.
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