D&D 5E What Is Sneak Attack "Equal" To, Balance-wise?

[Hriston]

I figure Sneak Attack is worth 3/4 of the benefits of Natural Explorer. I don't expect this to be a popular opinion.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What scaling on the sneak dice & with what weapons? It's a pain to compare rogue sneak attack to other stuff because there are 20 different levels of sneak attack but you can pick a few breakpoints.

I'm currently thinking maybe fewer, larger, dice, but first I'll do math using d6's and the same scaling, with one handed weapons and ranged weapons only.

Rangers only get 2 attacks so it's a little easier to make comparisons though.

Longbow is 1d10 & 20 dex is a reasonable baseline that at (5.5+5)*2=21 which works out to about the same as the level 11 rogue sneak alone or 1 attack+the level 5/6 sneak tacked on.

Rogue at level 6, lets say for giggles they got longbow somehow, is 1d10+5+3d6, for 5.5+5+10.5=22. Rogue damage goes up more gradually than Ranger, because Ranger damage goes up mostly by getting more spell slots and heftier spells, and a level 11 subclass feature. I suspect that level 11 is where the Ranger with Sneak Attack will get out of hand for a while, but I'd have to examine the features and spells available at that level with this in mind to be sure, since 1 less attack per turn would mean that some of them can't multiply.

A level 11 Rogue is averaging 31.5 damage per hit, if I'm not mistaken. Adding Volley, or an extra attack from a Beast Companion or a summoned Fey or both, onto that, could easily get crazy.

The ranger might be losing out with only one attack since weapon mods won't be multiplicative any more & it's a single all or nothing rather than two, however if the sneak die multiplies across targets hit by hail of thons once per round you might want to drop to the rogue 4/5 sneak.

I think sadly the Ranger would have to explicitly not allow more than one target taking SA from the same source per round.

If you limit it to something like a shortbow & 30ish feet or crossbow rather than rogue style threatened by an ally/unaware of you going to 5/6 might be reasonable. You could also aim a little higher & stretch it out over a longer period, rogue sneak scaling is rounddown +0.5d6/level & doing something like rounddown+1/3d6 per level would give rogue 5 & 9 sneak at 9 & 15 respectively with higher levels eventually scaling to rogue 11 at 20. Wih rangers generally being considered weak this might not be a bad thing.

I think that slowing the progression in the middle levels, so that the ranger is only doing 3-4 dice at level 11, should work out without needing to further restrict the feature beyond "one handed weapons and ranged weapons, with advantage or threatening ally, or against a favored enemy".

Could even slow it down considerably, and add a couple extra dice or use bigger dice when attacking a target that is incapacitated or unaware of the ranger.

Oh, absolutely. I’d say baseline that extra attack is worth about 4d6 worth of sneak attack. A normal attack will do about 10 points of damage, roughly, but the extra attack can stack with a lot more buffs and is much less conditional than sneak attack.

Great point.

Yea, auto SA against favored enemy makes a ton of sense. Lightening up the weapon restrictions would make sense also, maybe any one-handed melee or any ranged weapon for Ranger SA. A ranger should be able to take down enemies with a hatchet, IMO.

Agreed! Of course I think hatchets should be finesse anyway, but that's a different topic.

Jeremy Crawford has stated that WotC assumes that every Rogue can get Sneak Attack in every round of combat. Given that assumption, I'd put Sneak Attack closer to being a half caster than to a single extra attack.

Interesting. Do you disagree with the damage analysis @tetrasodium posted? I think if they're right, then Sneak Attack is much more comperable to Extra Attack and Fighting style, especially if it progressed as half level rounded down, rather than rounded up.

Maybe on my next day off I will do a full writeup of what the average damage at level 3, 5, 11, and maybe 15, would be for a standard ranger vs this proposal, and see how it stacks up. If SA Ranger blows standard Ranger out of the water, I may abandon the idea, but if it's only a little ahead, I'll count that as a good thing and run with it. If it lags behind it will do so at high level, and the Ranger's high level features mostly suck anyway, so boosting them won't make me sad.

 

[Xeviat]

At first level, sneak attack is worth a fighting style. Twfing with sneak attack and with the style are largely similar max damage, but sneak attack has higher expected damage because of the extra damage if only one attack hits.

The base rogue scales reasonably with the base fighter if the rogue is using twfing and getting sneak attack every round.

But, the Ranger has spell slots. The arcane trickster rogue has spell slots too, though, but those spells aren't used much for damage.

If you compare your ranger to a modified arcane trickster who uses their expertise on rangery things, you can probably target yourself well.

 

[Xeviat]

Jeremy Crawford has stated that WotC assumes that every Rogue can get Sneak Attack in every round of combat. Given that assumption, I'd put Sneak Attack closer to being a half caster than to a single extra attack.

I think its equal to fighting style, extra attack at 5th, attack feature at 11th, and capstone at 17th or 20th. It's big.

 

[tetrasodium]

Interesting. Do you disagree with the damage analysis @tetrasodium posted? I think if they're right, then Sneak Attack is much more comperable to Extra Attack and Fighting style, especially if it progressed as half level rounded down, rather than rounded up.

Maybe on my next day off I will do a full writeup of what the average damage at level 3, 5, 11, and maybe 15, would be for a standard ranger vs this proposal, and see how it stacks up. If SA Ranger blows standard Ranger out of the water, I may abandon the idea, but if it's only a little ahead, I'll count that as a good thing and run with it. If it lags behind it will do so at high level, and the Ranger's high level features mostly suck anyway, so boosting them won't make me sad.
[/QUOTE]
Crawford's not wrong, I suggested a limitation that rogues can do better on. Rogues can sneak from huge distances with a longbow if the target is unaware or threatened by an opponent or they can main hand/off hand for two attempts each round. Limiting it to a hortbow/xbow with a short 30-45ft range means the per round chance is probably closer to 60-80% & letting it multiply across hail of thorns to whatever is caught in the hail can be significantly more than lost if you get 2-3 targets
It's not really setup to do 1/round sneak type calculations with multiple attacks but this might help with mathing if you only look at the 1 attack totals

edit: I probably leaned at least mildly towarsds breakeven or doing better rather than breakeven or less if you use both

 

[Parmandur]

Interesting. Do you disagree with the damage analysis @tetrasodium posted? I think if they're right, then Sneak Attack is much more comperable to Extra Attack and Fighting style, especially if it progressed as half level rounded down, rather than rounded up.

I hadn't read the thread yet, I was just shooting from the hip. Might have underestimated Extra Attack, at least for the Ranger (I know it can get crazy for a Fighter when they start stacking).

I would suggest looking to the spell creation guidelines in the DMG as a mathematical base to analyze how both scale over the levels compared to a Spell slot, since HP and spell slots are also the base level units of measurement WotC is using to apply to Class abilities as well (source: listened to too much of the Happy Fun Hour back in the day).

 

[Parmandur]

I think its equal to fighting style, extra attack at 5th, attack feature at 11th, and capstone at 17th or 20th. It's big.

It is a significant chunk of what Rogues even get at all, so that's my initial gut impression.

 

[Xeviat]

It is a significant chunk of what Rogues even get at all, so that's my initial gut impression.

It's their whole offensive oomph. Rogues don't use shields and "should" two weapon fight to optimize damage, so comparing them to a great weapon fighter is fair. Notice, 2d6+3 is equal greatsword or short-sword plus sneak attack. If great weapon fighting style was better, it would line up closer with the +1d6 from sneak attack, but there's bonus action considerations.

Then, each 2d6+5 attack the fighter gains lines up roughly with each 3d6 (6 levels) the rogue gains. So fighter gains 3 attacks, rogue gains 18 levels, it's fairly close. Fighter gets to multiply magic weapons, so it's not quite comparable, but that's classes for you.

Sneak attack is big.

 

[Parmandur]

It's their whole offensive oomph. Rogues don't use shields and "should" two weapon fight to optimize damage, so comparing them to a great weapon fighter is fair. Notice, 2d6+3 is equal greatsword or short-sword plus sneak attack. If great weapon fighting style was better, it would line up closer with the +1d6 from sneak attack, but there's bonus action considerations.

Then, each 2d6+5 attack the fighter gains lines up roughly with each 3d6 (6 levels) the rogue gains. So fighter gains 3 attacks, rogue gains 18 levels, it's fairly close. Fighter gets to multiply magic weapons, so it's not quite comparable, but that's classes for you.

Sneak attack is big.

My rough analysis based on the spell creation rules is that Sneak Attack starts out at sub-cantrip damage, and ends at approximately a Level 3 Spell worth of damage for every hit by Level 20. Given about 8 combats lasting 2-3 rounds, if a Rogue can get Sneak Attack most every time they hit...that's a lot of Spell slots worth of damage.

 

[Xeviat]

My rough analysis based on the spell creation rules is that Sneak Attack starts out at sub-cantrip damage, and ends at approximately a Level 3 Spell worth of damage for every hit by Level 20. Given about 8 combats lasting 2-3 rounds, if a Rogue can get Sneak Attack most every time they hit...that's a lot of Spell slots worth of damage.

It's similarly on par with warlock eldritch blast.

Level 18 warlock (1d10+5)x4 = 42
Level 18 rogue 2d6+5+9d6 = 43.5

(Which also cements my belief that EB should be a class ability, not something that can be maxed with a 2 level dip).