Rogues are a classic tabletop archetype, often giving the most varied approach to combat, the most eccentric characters for roleplay, and the most options for any given player. They don't have the raw power of some other character builds, but they always keep you guessing - that's obviously a challenge for the game designers, who need to have wide open choices for Rogues. Barbarians mostly just find the biggest club and hit things with it, but with Rogues, it's a little more complicated. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons tries to juggle these😼 changes, with OneD&D Unearthed Arcana Playtest 6 giving the Rogues a nice poliಞsh, but being afraid to offer anything more.
Drastic changes are not off the table entirely - Bard and Druid both got new subclasses this time around (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the dancing queen of College of🥂 D𒉰ance for Bard and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:🃏Aquaman-style Cir👍cle of the Sea for Druid), while Monk got an overhaul that, for my dice rolls, didn't go nearly far enough. Rogue's changes are not vast. With Rogues already so popular, 'if it ain't broke' is a smart motto to abide by. But it has been tinkered with so much throughout this process that it reminds us of the difficulties in making any changes at all.
In fact, the biggest change is not a change, which will probably be controversial. The subclass levels are back to the 5e levels, meaning choosing a subclass feature at 3rd Level then not getting a second one until 9th Level. This has always felt like a long wait, and the previous Playtests ditched it, giving us a subclass feature at 3rd Level, 6th Level, and 10th Level. This was a popular change, so the revert to 2014's rules here is surprising. Then again, these are all just tests while the kinks are worked out, so we don't know exactly what Wizards of the Coast will move forward with.
Of course, this is confusion Wizards has created for itself. D&D has frequently introduced new rulesets as it has gone (we call the current version 5e because it is the Fifth Edition after all), but in the modern world it is unsure what to do. Dungeons & Dragons has skyrocketed in popularity recently, having always had a large playerbase, and modern audiences are less wowed by the New Coke of it all. Players have spent thousands on books over the years, and changing the rules again will not go down well. That's why OneD&D claims to be an extension of 5e rather than a new game.
This is meant to be a live-service version of D&D, a now ever-evolving set of rules that will remain the same version (OneD&D 5e) that will be tweaked here and there and everywhere as Wizards see fit. To account for the spending on books, every manual you buy directly from Wizards of the Coast's website will come with an online version for free ('free' with an asterisk, as the base price has gone up), and subscribing to BeyondD&D is being slowly pushed as the best way to engage with the game. Personally I design my adventures and characters on an app and use Google Sheets for battle grids while DMing over webcam, so I can't exactly complain about the sanctity of the game, but it's clear the long term plan is to ditch books and proffer subscriptions with a more steady income stream as the path of the future.
It's a bad decision to backpedal on Rogue subclass levels from a gameplay perspective, but it makes sense in a world where you want changes to the 2014 rules to be powerful and impactful, to feel like major and necessary updates, rather than the smaller tinkering you might get with a revised version of the rules. If we were pushing ahead with 6e, I don't think we'd be flip-flopping on Rogues.
That's not to say there are no interesting changes at all, however. Sneak Attacks can now inflict more status damage with Improved Cunning Strike, and it's possible to trade in a Sneak Attack die to remain hidden even after attacking. Death Strike is also a Sneak Attack now, while Rogue Assassins can use Envenom Weapons. Playing as a Rogue in this version of the rules will be different to playing as a Rogue in the 2014 version of the rules. But it will feel the same, and maybe that's the issue.
I see the difficulty here, because ten years down the line with another boom in popularity, the timing is as right as it might ever be to update the rules. However, players who have invested in the game heavily over the last decade don't like the idea of their resources being useless. Of course, they won't be - people still play on 3.5e rules - but most players want to stay up to date. I'm not sure whether the right answer is to modernise and tweak broken elements of the rules again, or to leave everything the same as we’re currently enjoying one of the most popular periods D&D has ever enjoyed. But I do think a choice should have been made, and OneD&D is trying to please everyone while turning Dungeons & Dragons into a subscription service that will inevitably change rules for the sake of it to justify the new model. It's ironic that Rogues, the most diverse, crowd-pleasing, escape-from-any-situation class, has highlighted the restrictions in the new direction and gotten itself all knotted up.