DnD 5e Homebrewing

So one of my players wants to play a rogue thief, but feels like it's too weak compared to an assassin, and I agree with him. How do I fix the thief?

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Don't. Have him have to sneak around and interact with the envirnoment to stand a chance against real combat focused enemies.

Why is thief too weak?

In general, too many people try to immediately come up with house rules nad homebrew without first struggling with the system RAW and calibrating their expectations around what the game is actually supposed to be. The don't even give it a chance before getting it into their heads they need to overhaul it. It's like dumping a bunch of salt on your meal before you've even tasted it. It's more likely you're just ruining it before you even experience what it was intended to taste like. Find out from your player what he enjoys about RPGs and what he finds fun and interesting. Have those elements show up in the gameplay, setting, or story. No reason to get under the hood and start changing class features without first understanding what it is your player is trying to do.

A roug should not be a heavy hiter, it's a utility class. Has he looked in xantharas guide to everything? There are some more combat oriented roug archtypes there

>So one of my players wants to play a rogue thief, but feels like it's too weak compared to an assassin, and I agree with him. How do I fix the thief?

If he feels that way then he should play an assassin.

Thieves do not hit hard. If you want to hit hard as a rogue play an assassin, arcane trickster or swashbuckler. Thieves are skill monkeys.

This is intentional design and does not need fixing

This is true of other editions however given that 5e has no problem making bards a skill monkey and the best spellcaster, thieves being competent in combat is not a stretch.

The ability to steal shit and do shit while fighting in combat is a weird one, but when it does come up its fucking invaluable.

Thief is fine, it doesn't need changing.

That is not a problem with rogues, that is a problem with bards

Bards in 5e are OP

The other problem with 5e is that it is a wargame. Being good in combat is inherently better than being good at skills.

Thief isn't as good at level 3 as assassin, but by level 17 it's quite a bit better. Assassin has the broken level 3 feature and then the rest of the class sucks, while thief is good throughout.

Depends
on
the
campaign

So you take thief and suck for like a year while hoping the campaign doesn't end, your character doesn't die, and your group doesn't fall apart because at 17th level the thief gets to deal almost the same damage as the assassin plus an extra move.

No you retard
At level 3 it's a bit worse
At level 9 it's about the same
At level 13 it's better
At level 17 it's considerably better

You have absolutely no concept of what is better or worse in 5e. You either don't play or have a mental condition.

>This is what newfags believe

Disarming traps as a bonus action is good but situational
Being able to climb is decent
Advantage on sneaking is good
UMD is really really good
Double turn is really really good

DING DING DING

If the player wants to play a thief and not an assassin, throw him some problems that are best solved by a thief, not an assassin.

I will give you that 5e is pretty combat focused. I do not agree that that somehow 'inherently' makes a damage class better than a utility class.

There appears to be a logical disconnect here

There isn't, because 5e is a roleplaying game. The actual content of the game varies from DM to DM, thereby changing the effective powers of the classes.

At least in my opinion.

If you are playing 5e without a combat focus it begs the question: Why are you playing 5e?

There are better games for a non-combat driven campaign. 5e is focused on combat and when discussing class balance we should focus on the purpose of the game rather than the hypothetical wacky DM who plays 5e like a Burning Wheel game.

>If you are playing 5e without a combat focus it begs the question: Why are you playing 5e?
Personally, its because I have a burning hatred of social combat mechanics, so I'd rather play a fighty system and just roleplay through the social bits while ignoring the mechanics as much as possible.

Also, you're assuming that skills do nothing in-combat, which I'd also quibble with.

Assassin is like the weakest archetype in the game, and that's even compared to the barbarian who can rage himself to death. Thief gets some of the best tools in the game in a full on climb speed and access to using items on a bonus action, not to mention Use Magic Items. Whoops ninth level fireball on a bonus action then you swoop in and sneak attack whatever the fuck is still alive.

Assassin in comparison relies entirely on the Surprise rules that 9/10 dont even work because a surprised target is someone not expecting combat at all.

>UMD is really really good

Most items that UMD unlocks are items that you just need to be a spellcaster to use, so they can also be unlocked by taking arcane trickster, or a level in wizard or whatever. Thief rogues are also worse at using such items than spellcasters because their spellcasting modifier counts as +0. There's also some question of whether thief rogues can even use spell scrolls by RAW.

It can be a fun feature if your DM plays ball (and better than the Assassin's really shitty utility features) but not as good as people think.

I wish there was some sort of errata for this

There's no magic items with character level requirements, plenty with spellcaster level requirements, and no given clarification on the UMD feature. So should you be able to use all scrolls? Or none? I'd lean towards all, but that's just my interpretation of the writer's intent

The level 3 feature is dependent on so many factors- how does your DM interpret the surprise rules? Is your group any good at stealth if they rule enemies aren't surprised if one person gets heard? Do you even have an opportunity to hide before/during combat, or is there no cover?

If you want thief to be stronger interpret his bonus action more liberally, have lots of traps to be disarmed quickly, let him fuck with stuff enemies are holding like jamming a crossbow, and have interesting things to steal like potions worn openly on belts, documents, spell scrolls, spell foci, etc.

Just leave it as is and give him stuff that plays to Thief's advantages.

Being able to use items as a bonus action is immensely useful if he has access to stuff like acid flasks, wands, and other misc. magical toys to abuse. Sprinkle those in the loot. Putting traps on battlefields is also a good idea.

Put the party in environments where the mobility advantage is helpful since he can climb and jump freely.

At level 13 he gets Use Magic Device which is honestly kind of awful with just DMG's magic items but allows for some hilarious nonsense if you have some class/race-locked items prepped in advance. Excalibrand, the +3 holy sword of vengeance, can only be wielded by a Lawful Good High Elf Paladin...or Jeb the thief.

Thief's Reflexes is mostly irrelevant being level 17 but is very good on its own merits.

Assassin is front loaded garbage. If you take it to its next subclass feature you are retarded. Multiclass into ranger or something, hell, I would love to multiclass back into rogue if I could, all of the assassin features beyond assassinate are solo play shit that YOU SHOULD ALREADY BE ABLE TO DO. Seriously it takes them a class feature to make a convincing disguise with proper paperwork for an out of towner nobody knows over the course of WEEKS?? Fucking moronic. Whereas thief gets to zoom up a tower, shank the duke, and blow all of his bodyguard off the tower with a bag of winds or decanter of endless water or some shit

Assassins are a noob trap. Thieves and swashbucklers are what brilliant young men choose because they bother to think beyond the moment.

>thief
>too weak compared to an assassin
Congratz, neither of you know what you are talking about. Assassin is far and wide considered a weak subclass because it pidgeonholes you (and your group, and your DM) into a very specific playstyle to get use out of its features.
But by all means, join the ever-growing ranks of retards who make oodles of homebrew to "improve" a game they don't even understand. Don't forget to buff Warlock multiclasses, nerf Beastmaster Ranger, and get all sorts of great ideas from the geniuses at dandwiki.

>assassin
>good

Assassins are terrible. Thieves are great because they just let you Rogue better.
I buffed Assassin to just make it easier to actually use its features, because the base one is just terrible and wonky to use in practice?

But thief? You climb fast as fuck, you can jump greater gaps, you have an extra item interaction so go around throwing vials of acid to boost damage or ball bearings to trip up enemies or spikes to reduce their speed or any number of utility items your DM could let you get to disrupt a fight, possibly even give yourself advantage.
Thieves are wonderful, your player just doesn't understand the class or the game.

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How do you even nerf beastmaster it's already literally unusable?

Have you read dandwiki? Someone will find a way.

If you actually look at how stealth and suprise work its super hard to get assassinate w/o the rest of the party speccing into stealth or you going off on your own.
And for almost every round outside of one with surprise the theif does the same amount of damage

It does sound like op's player wants the benefits of the dmg subclass and the utility one rolled together. While it should make sense that the utility one has more utility and the dmg one has more dmg

Best statement ever.