Finally Really Figuring Out the Systems of Cyberpunk 2077

 Ah, ok!

So apparently the various bits of Cyberware you can get installed will often scale with a given attribute. I'm super-invested in Intelligence, so I've been going through and making sure that I get all pieces that scale with that, though there are some slots that don't seem to have any pieces that work with it.

My general sense is that a character will want to kind of mix their traits, but to largely focus on just two or maybe three. I've been racing to what I assume is the cap for Intelligence at 20 (I assume it's the cap for everything - not unlike stats in D&D) and then will probably go for Technical Ability next.

I'm not really champing at the bit to start a new V, though I have thought that a kind of corpo cyborg samurai would be fun, maybe going Body/Reflex and Cool?

Anyway, I am having the usual open world issue where part of me just wants to race through the main story missions while part of me doesn't want to get ahead of myself and ensure I'm doing enough side quests to keep all my gear as top-grade as possible.

I've now done a story chapter outside the city, which is a nice bit of scenery change, and I've met some of the Nomads, one of the three backgrounds you can pick, including one character I assume is going to be a major figure in the game moving forward.

The weird irony of my build is that I don't really care that much about weapons. I basically only fire when my hacking RAM is on cooldown. And I've gotten pretty good at hacking into cameras in a location and then using those to do quickhacks on the foes inside. Ideally, they're all down before I even step into the building. I did a side-gig where I had to rescue a doctor who had been held against her will by Maelstrom (a real psychotic and evil gang) and more or less wiped out all the enforcers there while sitting up on some ducts outside the building.

The risk here is that they can often trace your location when you do this, but ideally you take them all out before that becomes a problem. I can't recall if I have some perks that help me mitigate that.

Anyway, I now have all the cyberware slots filled (except the extra ones you unlock with perks in the Technical Ability tree) including an Intelligence-scaling Monowire, which has proven a pretty effective melee weapon.

Also, the Cyberpsychos don't seem so impossible to deal with now. You're generally supposed to take them down nonlethally (the overall goal of these missions is to try to find a way to rehabilitate them,) and luckily the game seems to assume that's what you're trying to do, so I think when they hit 1% they go down and turn off any Damage-over-time effects you have. (Contagion, a quickhack that does poison damage over time and spreads between foes, has proven a very efficient way to deal with big groups of enemies - though it doesn't work on robots and drones).

Anyway, I find myself flooded with various Fixers and people calling me with jobs, which I think is a measure of my Street Cred - basically, as you do more missions and jobs, you earn a reputation. Mine must be as a terrifying Netrunner who can wipe out a building without being seen. Indeed, given the things I've pulled off, I do think that it makes sense I'm making a name for myself.

I am super curious to see what the game's story is like for the other two backgrounds. It makes total sense that my Street Kid character would get mixed up in all of these dangerous jobs, but I'm really curious to see how a Corpo gets dragged into it. I could imagine a world in which it's a totally different story, or at least the route to getting involved in the biochip heist is a different one, but I don't know.

I Want Scarier Celestials in D&D

 So, I was browsing YouTube, as is my wont, and the Richaadeb cover of The Promised Consort showed up. His cover, and of course, the original, really sell the majesty of that boss fight. While my main memory of the fight in-game is beating my head against a wall until I finally just barely managed it on my most overpowered character (I've gotten to the fight on a couple other characters, but haven't beaten it a second time,) if you take a step back and really consider the context of the fight, it's profoundly epic: a fight against both a demigod and a newly-crowned actual god.

Much like our fight against the Elden Beast in the base game, I interpret the music that plays as essentially being an ethereal choir singing the praises of the divine power that we're in the middle of fighting, exhorting them to best us (though I sort of feel like maybe the choir in the Elden Beast fight starts to kind of sing instead of the fulfillment of fate as we gain the upper hand).

Demons (or fiends in general, if we're talking D&D) make for great monsters to fight because they're definitionally evil (well, depending on the setting and game, I suppose). Their capabilities make them terrifying, but there's a moral clarity that slaying demons is an automatically correct thing to do.

It's very rare in D&D that we fight Celestials. Largely, that's because player characters tend to be good guys, and Celestials are often also good guys. This isn't strictly always true - Celestials cover beings of the good-aligned upper planes, yes, but also the neutral planes, like the Rilmani of the Outlands, or Sphinxes (who were monstrosities in 5.0,) who aren't really tied to any specific plane.

In D&D's cosmos, Fiends and Celestials really play quite similar roles, being the denizens of the outer planes, and typically the servants of the gods.

I... sort of like the idea of a different distinction, though:

D&D's alignment system is iconic, of course, and it's also the organizing principle behind the Outer Planes, which I love. But it's also something that's been downplayed in recent years (I don't even remember if the 2024 Player's Handbook even suggests you declare an alignment).

I think it's notable that Devils are the Lawful Evil variety of fiends (ok, sure, Rakshasas are as well - and I do think it's kind of fascinating that they're also from the Nine Hells but exist outside of the diabolic hierarchy). Devils, though, are all kind of linked to one another as a single hierarchy that ultimately answers to Asmodeus. And while Asmodeus is a god, he is also, at least in older Planescape content, considered a lesser god because he's not in the Nine Hells by his own will. In a lot of ways, he's really just the most powerful archdevil, and figures like Mephistopheles or Mammon aren't gods at all, even if they might be extremely powerful.

While not unified like devils, demons are their equal and opposite numbers, inhabiting the Abyss and typically serving one demon lord or another. But similarly, these demon lords, even the mightiest among them, Demogorgon, aren't gods either.

It's almost like fiends sort of occupy this odd environmental niche within the Lower Planes.

Now, in fairness, it's specifically angels, and not Celestials in general, who I believe are described as directly serving gods. I can't recall if Guardinals or Archons are described as playing those roles.

But I do think there's a real opportunity here: that Celestials could be the creature type that serves gods - any gods.

In the 5.5 Monster Manual, they changed Empyreans in the following way: in 5.0, they were always Celestials, whereas in 5.5, they're described as being either Celestials or Fiends, depending on their alignment.

I actually don't love this. I think that a being that is so directly tied to the gods, maybe a minor deity in its own right, should be a Celestial. Again, that's a matter of taste and vibes, not an argument based on the canon lore.

The Celestial servant of an evil god would then make for a potentially epic encounter.

Let me tell you about some of the lore in my homebrew setting:

The broad pantheon is a little complex: the gods are not all the same kind of deity, with some that are ascended mortals, some that are from other settings (I caved and had a few canon deities show up in the world, though I think their worship is pretty rare) and there's one deity that some people consider to be the only true god of the setting while others think that it's just another deity that hasn't been accounted for in most religious traditions (they're both kind of right). One is even secretly a Great Old One (though a friendly one).

But the most commonly worshipped deities are at least depicted by mortals as a classical polytheistic pantheon akin to the Greek gods. And among these, there are gods of light and gods of dark. Generally, light and dark correspond with good and evil, but I really like there to be just a little bit of ambiguity there. Deities can choose which Outer Plane they reside in (or even if they want to live in a different part of the multiverse) so the fact that the goddess of the hunt resides in the Beastlands doesn't necessarily mean she's all that nice - but she does count as a Goddess of Light as a result.

The Gods of Darkness reside in the lower planes, but they have at least one powerful angel that serves them. None of the angels look remotely "normal" in their true forms (Magon, who's the supremely heroic and benevolent servant of Doros, the God of Sunlight and Justice, has a head like a blazing sun around which four floating masks orbit to just barely shield those who see him from his blinding glory - naturally, he takes on a more classically humanoid shape when interacting with mortals) but the Angels of Darkness are quite unnerving.

As an example, Valthatria is the Angel of Pain, and serves Vyssar, the Goddess of Murder, Torture, and Cruelty. Valthatria's most distinguishing feature is that her head is detached from her body, but held to her shoulders by six sculpted, iron hands that appear riveted in place to both her shoulders and her face.

There are a couple reasons I like making these Celestials instead of fiends.

The first is just an aesthetic one: I'll concede that the variety of fiends in the Monster Manual actually gives you a ton of flexibility in how one might look, from the classic fallen angel Erinyes to the weird rotting vulture-thing that is the Vrok, I just kind of think that I like calling these celestials.

The second is a mechanical distinction with lore implications: while it's not super-common, there are things that are more effective against Fiends, probably most famously Divine Smite. As elite servants of evil gods, I like the idea that a Paladin is no longer at any sort of advantage when fighting the Angel of Pain. Righteousness and just "being the good guy" aren't enough to help you against these beings.

I also like that it just kind of muddies the waters a bit: you can't be totally sure where you stand.

I'll note that I think Brennan Lee Mulligan and I are on a similar wavelength here, as the lore of Araman, the setting for Critical Role's fourth campaign, makes a major distinction. We haven't fully plumbed the depths, but with Tyranny, a player character who is explicitly a demon (and not in the way that Draw Steel Devils are basically just people who come from the Seven Cities of Hell, but truly an ancient being of pure concept only recently given flesh - though I suspect she uses Tiefling stats) we get a sense of what fiends are like (and it's actually a bit goofy) while Celestials, in this world where mortals felled the gods (who are way more petty like Greek, or even Norse, gods,) may have once been majestic, but are now basically eldritch horrors (not sure what aberrations are in that setting, or if they'll even use them).

I've never read or seen Berserk, the manga (and anime adaptation) that was a major influence on FromSoft's Soulsborne games, like Elden Ring, but I'm given to understand that "angels" and "gods" in that are truly horrifying things (and that the main villain is a former mortal and ally of the main character who betrayed everyone to achieve apotheosis - likely a major inspiration for Miquella, the ascendant god whose "promised consort" we fight). Indeed, I think a lot of Japanese media depicts angels as horrifying monsters (I know that's a big part of Neon Genesis Evangelion,) the cultural underpinnings of which I'm not super qualified to analyze.

I also think there are some interesting themes you could play with regarding Gnostic ideas: there's a concept in Gnosticism (though I sometimes conflate this with Manicheanism, so bear with me) where the physical world is a falsehood and prison created by the Demiurge, a being who thinks itself to be God, but is not - whether this is out of malice or out of misguided ignorance is open to debate. But the acts of this demiurge and the world created by them are blamed for the suffering and evils of the world. You could imagine that antagonistic Celestials are there to enforce the will of the Demiurge, and thus play an antagonistic role toward the heroic player characters.

The 2025 Monster Manual has 17 Celestials, which is way more than the 2014 one, due in large part to the changes to Sphinxes (and there are more of them) and the re-classification of many Beasts to now be Celestials (screwing over Moon Druids and anyone with the Polymorph spell). But that's compared to 54 Fiends found there - it's clear which type they expect players to fight more often.

But I guess what I'd look for is some really solid high-level Celestials. Angels are actually already there - the least powerful is CR 10. But I'd love to see plenty of CR 20+ Celestials to truly present epic encounters. Radahn from Elden Ring would probably have been a CR 10 Legendary creature in his first fight out in Caelid (where he's lost his mind with the Scarlet Rot) but is, like, maybe CR 30 when we fight him as the Promised Consort (being the hardest boss in all of Elden Ring and essentially the true final boss given that his defeat finishes the DLC).

(This is maybe a whole other post, but we could maybe also get some high-level, legendary humanoids as well. I kind of love that Draw Steel's "biggest, scariest monster" is just the greatest human soldier who has ever lived.)

Cyberpunk 2077 is Making Me Curious to Try the TTRPG

 I think I'm starting to get into the groove of Cyberpunk 2077. I think the game could do a little better job at tutorializing things, but I think I've more or less gotten the sense of how to upgrade my character. I still sometimes run into a Cyberpsycho that tears me apart super-quick, but I had a moment where I truly felt like I had "gotten" my character.

Focusing largely on Intelligence (though I'm not sure if I should be spreading my stats more widely or actually refunding everything to just go straight to the top with Int) my primary combat strategy is Quickhacks. Now that I've managed to purchase and upgrade some of these hacks (and upgrade my operating system, which is a piece of cybernetics that requires you to see a Ripperdoc) I've been able to pull off some super nasty things.

When on a mission to rescue a friend/associate from a place that makes "XBDs" (think the movie Strange Days, in which people make recordings of individuals' experiences to be able to live through them - normally this is something like fun sexy times. These are called "Braindances," or "BDs," but the black-market, real horrifying shit is referred to as either Black BDs or XBDs, which is stuff like snuff films and the like... kind of like in that movie, whose mere trailer gave me nightmares as a kid) I hopped up into a damaged building across from the one where the friend was being held, and took out the single guard sitting watching TV next to a computer console. Taking that guy out silently from behind, I hacked into the security system via the console, which gave me access to the security cameras. And from the vantage of the cameras, I was able to hack various other objects around the facility, drawing guards to various explosive objects with "Distract Enemies" and then detonating them with another quickhack. Those who weren't near any such objects, I simply hacked their cyberware directly, taking them down with Overheat and Short Circuit. With, I think, a single exception, none of this was with my own eyes, simply doing it via the cameras. Once the place was cleared out, I simply walked around and looted everyone.

It really made me feel like a legendary hacker, and while things were a bit messier down in the basement, it was one of those really satisfying times when everything felt like it was working as my character build was meant to.

I have an admittedly weird aversion to Cyberpunk as a genre. Maybe it's that the world it portrays is too much like the one that I live in. I mean, we're in a world where megacorp tech companies have absurd degrees of power and influence. I find it less fun that the genre depicts a world in which corporations and gangs are the biggest powers, with governments kind of hanging on as weak vestigial structures. The latter element in particular feels darkly relevant today, with the cheapening of America's government under the helm of the most unabashedly corrupt president in the country's history.

I guess when I think about stories built around betrayal and mistrust in a dark and grimy world, I gravitate more toward Cold War-era spy stories, where the big powers are the governments, and a lot of the darkness comes from the fact that both sides are so in the weeds about the tactical game of spycraft that they lose sight of the ideals that brought them into conflict in the first place.

Another thing that's kind of odd is that the characterization of the high-ranking "Corpos" is built very much around this kind of stoic Japanese honor, and also a focus on legacy. The real world's corporate overlords don't seem to be interested in building lasting institutions so much as getting while the getting's good. They're also much more strangely ideological, believing in weird science-fiction-y ideas without seeming to grasp that they'd be the villains in such stories.

Anyway, I'm curious to see how the game maps to the TTRPG system. Naturally, we've had plenty of games that are based on or at least inspired by TTRPGs. Baldur's Gate III works remarkably similarly to D&D 5E (with a few tweaks here and there). I believe the most recent edition of Cyberpunk is Cyberpunk RED, which is set between the eras of 2020 (the version from the 80s) and 2077 (not sure if there's a tabletop version of that or if it's just this game).

Funnily enough, having run a Ravnica-based D&D campaign for over six years now, I could for sure see a reimagining of the setting as a Cyberpunk one - just turn the Guilds into Megacorps and you're about 90% there. And hey, there's even precedent for Cyberpunk fantasy with Shadowrun. House Dimir is now an information technology corporation, the Orzhov Syndicate focuses on "corporate solutions." The Simic Combine is full-on biotech.

WoW/D&D Crossover Possibly Going to be Announced?

 According to this post on EN World, there was an accidental leak of an announcement for what appears to be a World of Warcraft sourcebook for D&D. Naturally, I'd be curious about that given that these two games are (I'd assume) the two that I have posted about the most on this blog (I do still play WoW, but I've felt like I have less to say about it in recent times).

Having played WoW for nearly 20 years (about twice the time I've been playing D&D,) I've often thought about how it would make a fantastic D&D setting. Notably, I'm not the first to think that, as there were official WoW products that came out in I believe the 3.5e era, and possible 4e.

Obviously, WoW is built on a similar structure to D&D, where players create characters who are members of certain races and classes and go on adventures, quests, and delve into dungeons. Warcraft's world is a deep and rich one, with lore that has really grown out from its very simple "orcs versus humans" origins.

While Warcraft began as an RTS series, its third entry added some RPG-like elements, paving the way for the MMO that, for the last 22 years, has been dominant or at least profoundly prominent within the medium (I think FFXIV did overtake it as the biggest subscription-based MMORPG, and of course there are tons of Free-to-Play MMOs that have more players. Not actually sure if FFXIV is still ahead of it or not). It's been in those 22 years of WoW that the story and lore of Warcraft has expanded profoundly, and you'd have far, far more than enough material to get you through a 20-level D&D campaign just by taking some of the stories of its now 11 expansions, before you even consider just coming up with your own original stories.

There's no way that a single sourcebook will be able to cover the entire game as it exists now, with its thirteen classes and 26 playable races.

My best friend and I are both D&D obsessives and longtime WoW players (both of us technically started during vanilla, though I only at the tail end of it and he stopped playing for a bit, picking it up again shortly before Wrath came out) and we've often talked about how to handle various things, re-skinning elements of the game.

Naturally, for classes, there are a lot of clear equivalents. Paladins, Rogues, Druids, Monks, and Warlocks are all in both games. Likewise, Priests are basically Clerics, Mages are basically Wizards, Hunters are basically Rangers, and Warriors are basically Fighters (though you could argue that one of their three specs/subclasses is really more Barbarians). However, it's less obvious how to handle things like Shamans, Death Knights, Demon Hunters, and Evokers (maybe the last one is Draconic Sorcerers?)

I'm not going to hold my breath for a sourcebook like this to add a new class.

However, for species/races, there are a fair number of options. From the get-go, Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Goblins, and Orcs are there. Night Elves are basically Wood Elves, Blood Elves are basically High Elves. Then, you can get to re-skinning a bit. I think that the Draenei could use the statistics of the Aasimar without too much trouble (oddly, they sometimes look more like Tieflings - I honestly think Jester from Critical Role's 2nd campaign really looks a lot like a Draenei, and even sounds like one with her vaguely-Greek-ish accent). Reborn can stand in pretty easily for the Undead, and Tauren are really just Warcraft's Minotaurs (if Minotaurs were really chill and nice). The new Lupin from Ravenloft basically gives us the Worgen (which are more specifically just Warcraft's version of werewolves). I think the Duergar could give us our Dark Iron Dwarves. Among the original 8 vanilla races, the only one I might struggle with is the Troll, which doesn't have a very obvious D&D equivalent.

In the Battle For Azeroth expansion (from 2018,) WoW added a huge number of "Allied Races" (including the aforementioned Dark Iron Dwarf) that are mechanically their own thing, but clearly meant as a "variant" on existing options. Some have pretty convenient options existing already in 5E (I think you could do Shadar-Kai as the Void Elves). But I doubt that they're going to work all of these in.

More core, though, are the handful of neutral races - Pandaren were the first (neutral meaning that they can belong to either faction,) and have no clear D&D equivalent. Dracthyr were introduced in 2022's Dragonflight expansion, and are clearly the equivalent of the Dragonborn (though less bulky, and with permanent wings).

One thing the book would maybe need to address is factions: In WoW, each character belongs to one of the two big factions, the Alliance and the Horde. Storywise, the two sides were at war with one another (the Alliance was actually formed to counter the Horde,) but there were ebbs and flows of conflict, often pushing the two to set aside their difference to face a greater threat. In recent years, that conflict has mostly died down, to the point that the current expansion, Midnight, has both factions operating out of one of the Horde's main cities (Silvermoon, home of the Blood Elves).

The restrictions have even lifted to the point where you can actually run dungeons and other content in parties that are mixed between members of the different factions (though "outdoor" content doesn't allow cooperation).

Thus, while I think that the Alliance/Horde division is very important to the lore of the world, I don't think there needs to be any built-in restriction in the rules to prevent you from having parties with, say, Goblins and Dwarves fighting alongside one another.

I'll be curious to see, though, if we get some cool legendary stat blocks for big Warcraft villains. While he's been deader-than-dead for a long time now (with a storyline that really emphasized they would never bring him back,) Arthas Menethil is probably the franchise's most iconic villain, a prince and paladin who allowed his obsession with vengeance to transform him into a death knight and ultimately saw him becoming the Lich King overseeing the undead Scourge that he once fought.

Getting stats for Faceless Ones (n'raqi) and C'thraxxi, the aberrant servants of the evil Old Gods, as well as some of the cool high-tech space demons of the Burning Legion would be really fun.

But I also think it'd be fun to just run lower-level adventures in places like Duskwood or Thousand Needles at the slower, more deliberate pace of D&D.

Anyway, we'll see if and when this book is actually announced.

Cyberpunk 2077

 Yeah, I'm late to the party.

But I guess my algorithm started showing me videos of Mike Pondsmith talking about the process of turning his TTRPG into a video game.

I've always felt a strange kind of disconnect from Cyberpunk as a genre. I've never read Neuromancer or Snow Crash, and I think the aesthetics of the genre aren't really my go-to vision of the future, even a dystopian one.

Futuristic sci-fi does, of course, often comment on the present, and the fact that Cyberpunk as a genre came out in an era in which American leadership grinningly dismantled the New Deal welfare state to empower massive corporations is not, you know, coincidental. Technology was also on a stratospheric rise, and people didn't really know where things would go.

It's a strange thing, because I feel like Cyberpunk got some things really spot-on (the growing power of corporations, the unsustainable privatization and commercialization of everything leading to profound wealth inequality and unaffordability) and some things quite off (Japan entrenching itself as the dominant global cultural force, everyone and their mother getting cybernetic implants).

There's a sequence in Cyberpunk 2077 that gives us a glimpse of 2023, but it's an alternate history version of it (to be fair, the game came out in 2022, so it was technically the "near future" at the time) that conforms to the established lore of the TTRPG - back in the 80s, 2023 seemed like a really long time off. This game, as the name implies, takes place 54 years later. Now, if I play my cards right and manage my health well, I could pretty plausibly live to see 2077. I doubt it'll look like this game does, but then, it's staying true to the genre more than trying to accurately depict the future.

I've just made it to "Act Two" of the game's main story, with Act One's conclusion leading to a real series of twists and turns. The game is an open-world, but the main story still impacts pretty hard. What I don't know is if I've failed to explore some of the game systems, or if they've been holding out on really pushing me toward them until we get a bit of that story underway.

Going pretty hard into Intelligence as a stat, my most powerful weapon is hacking, which I've been using to overheat foes I'm fighting. My stealth abilities aren't amazing, and I'm not sure if that's a skill issue or a matter of stats and character builds. But combat, at least so far (I'm on the normal/standard difficulty) is forgiving enough that I haven't had too many problems (I struggled a bit with a Cyberpsycho, who I kind of wound up cheesing, but I think those are supposed to be the optional, super-difficulty foes).

I'm curious to see to what extent different backgrounds make for different experiences. I've gone Street Rat, as that seems the most classic protagonist archetype for the genre.

I appreciate the ways in which the game doesn't seem to need you to micromanage things. You have a healing item that recharges over time, and your health regenerates out of combat. This isn't a game about carefully managing long-term damage, letting you be a bit more reckless in combat.

Anyway, I finally have enough money (Eddies, or "Eurodollars," the imagined merged currency) to buy some new gear, but I don't yet really know what I should get. I think probably I'll want to invest in cybernetics (and whatever gear governs my hacking abilities). But so far, I haven't really gotten any tutorials on crafting, so I think I wasted some resources making a gun that I thought I'd be able to deconstruct to get said resources.

As a note, I've also been checking out The Ghost in the Shell, a new anime adaptation of, you know, Ghost in the Shell. When I was in college, I watched Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (probably first seeing it on Adult Swim.) This show, and the 1995 movie, were very serious in tone, but evidently the new show is more in keeping with the manga it's based on, with moments of real cartoony silliness, a staple of anime/manga that was always kind of startling to me when watching such things (like Trigun, which can be deadly serious and then have Vash the Stampede have a cat face when he's acting cute).

Like Cyberpunk, I'm not really an "anime guy," but I do enjoy the occasional work of the medium. I liked how deeply philosophical Ghost in the Shell got, and I think that's there in the new show, but with a lot of that weird silliness in there as well.

Reimagining the Rogue

 I love Rogues on a conceptual level, and in other RPGs, I've often gravitated toward them as a kind of secondary archetype (or tertiary - I tend to like heavily armored melee/magic hybirds first and then some kind of spellcaster, often with a "dark" vibe second). In WoW, for example, my Undead Subtlety Rogue was the first I ever got to the then-level cap of 70 in Burning Crusade (19 years ago!) In D&D, at least in 5E, Rogues play a sort of weird role in a group. They're designed primarily as a utility class, but without the magical spells that a Wizard or Artificer brings to the table (though Arcane Tricksters, of course, lean back this way). Thanks to having more skill proficiencies, expertise, and eventually (and coming online earlier now than it did in 5.0) Reliable Talent, they're the "good at skills" class.

Personally, I don't think this really does the premise of the class justice. While it's certainly a cool thing to have, I A: don't think that this is necessarily the first thing you think of when you think of the Rogue as a fantasy archetype and B: seems to justify disempowering them in combat.

To be clear, the math on Rogue damage isn't all that straightforward. For one thing, Sneak Attack damage goes up every two levels, so there's less of a clear "breakpoint" in their damage output. This damage isn't necessarily consistent either: certain combat scenarios will take Sneak Attack off the table, such as if there's any source of disadvantage. Because it's such a giant chunk of a Rogue's damage, though, it also means that if we can find ways to make multiple attacks, this can boost our overall damage output significantly because as long as we hit with one of them, most of our damage is going through (I say most, but this doesn't really become the case until we get to around level 10 or 12).

I think that if we want to make the Rogue work in combat, we've got to make big changes to Sneak Attack - honestly, tearing the whole thing apart and building something with the same name might be the best option.

But, let's not get ahead of ourselves:

One thing I do think is worth preserving is that Rogues should be using lower-damage-die weapons. The classic archetype is a character who wields daggers and shortswords, and the Shortbow is a better fit for a sneaky Rogue (while Longbows are Heavy and thus can benefit from Great Weapon Master, I'm inclined to believe that without that, the fact that Shortbows have Vex make them usually the better weapon in 5.5).

Frankly, the lack of proficiency in higher-damage weapons is the only "price" I think Rogues should pay for getting some kind of source of additional damage. (Rapiers are actually toward the higher damage numbers, though I think probably most Rogues who are going for melee at all are probably dual-wielding a Shortsword and Scimitar).

Part of me wants to create an incentive to wield a dagger at least in the off-hand, but I think we'll just let the Thrown property do that for us (and maybe the Piercer feat).

Crucially, though, this means that the thing we're no longer taking away from the Rogue is that massive boost that all other martial characters (even some subclasses of not-typically-martial classes): Extra Attack.

Honestly, I think this will go a long way toward helping Rogues catch up. It's not enough to fully replace Sneak Attack, obviously, but it's a big start.

But what beyond that?

Well, now we need to address Sneak Attack.

In a vacuum, Sneak Attack adds 3.5 to 35 damage per turn over the course of your leveling journey. The actual number is a little more complicated because of the chance to hit and the chance to miss, as well as the chance that you're not actually going to get it. Actually calculating the chance you get Sneak Attack is kind of impossible, as all manner of scenarios might present themselves.

So, let's consider our first change:

You just get to choose to get Sneak Attack. No requirements to have advantage or an ally nearby, and you don't lose it if you had a source of disadvantage on the attack (as I interpret it, even if you cancel out disadvantage, if there's any source of disadvantage, you're SOL).

What impact would this have, then? I'm going to do a very quick-and-dirty version of my "vs Wyvern" calculations here: if we had a +9 to hit (not unreasonable for a level 10 Rogue) and were making two Shortbow attacks (we're ignoring Vex for brevity's sake) we'd be hitting on 5s or higher, getting an 80% chance to hit. Two attacks would mean 1d6+5, or 8.5, twice, which gives us 17 80% of the time and a crit bonus of 7 5% of the time (usually I do the attacks separately, but it's just a factor of two either way) so that's 13.6+.35, or 13.95. Then, our Sneak Attack at this level is 5d6, or 17.5 average. The chance we get it at all is 96% (the chance not to would mean the 20% miss chance happening twice) so that's 16.8, and then the chance we get a crit with it is 5% (chance on the first attack) or 5%x20% (chance we crit on the second attack after missing on the first) which is conveniently a 1% chance, so that's a total of 6%x17.5, or 1.05. Add it up and Sneak Attack is giving us 17.85, so when added to our normal damage, that's 31.8.

That's actually pretty decent damage, and it's even lowballing it because of the effect that Vex will have on it.

    So, if that satisfies you, we can just kind of stop here: just say you can do Sneak Attack once per turn when you hit with an attack. And, of course, give Rogues Extra Attack.

But I actually think this could be something of an overcorrection.

One of the issues we run into, I think, is that Great Weapon Master casts such a long shadow over martial damage. I'd be inclined to think that this might, for example, leave a class like the Barbarian in the dust (though unlike Rogues, Barbarians often get additional sources of damage from their subclasses). If we were looking at only a vanilla Barbarian who just relies on their Rage bonus, Sneak Attack very clearly outpaces it.

Part of what I think balances out the several d6s of damage Rogues get with a Sneak Attack is the fact that they only get one attack (unless they're dual-wielding). But I also think this element of design has really held Rogues back - there's a certain "feel bad" element to the class even if the numbers did line up because of what I talked about in this post. In short, that more attacks "smooths out" your damage output by effectively creating a larger sample size.

My initial inclination was simply to lower the amount of damage a given Sneak Attack does, but then slap it on every attack. If we were adding, say, our PB (or the equivalent scaling with Rogue levels) number of d6s to each attack, this would ultimately wind up giving us slightly more damage by tier 4, but it would work a bit more like Rage damage, Radiant Strikes, or even Hex/Hunter's Mark.

If that were too much damage, though, I thought about making it a limited resource. Perhaps it's actually just as much damage, but the Rogue can only do it a certain number of times per Short Rest (feels right that it'd be a Short Rest resource, like a Monk's Focus Points).

But thinking about this in thematic terms, I actually think limiting Sneak Attack to once per turn feels right. Mechanically, this could represent a careful and patient sniper lining up a kill shot or a scrappy street-brawler feinting and ducking under their foe's arm while bringing the blade up into their ribs.

Now, making it a limited resource I do think actually kind of works on theme, but this also might be an unnecessary nerf to a class that already kind of struggles to keep up.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to the simpler solution. One real advantage here is that it also disrupts as little as possible. Cunning Strikes would still work just fine.

Let's take a step back, though:

Ultimately, what this proposal would do is primarily just add a second attack. Sneak Attack is not guaranteed, but I think for the most part, in most combats, you'll have some means to get it (most often just by having a friend near the target, though the Vex mastery might really change this. I just haven't played with a Rogue since 5.5 came out, except my own in a campaign where we weren't allowed to upgrade). This just simplifies things, and I actually think helps the Rogue with brief solo fights, which the class feels kind of inclined toward.

I think we'd need to consider some other breakpoints, though. Given that I haven't been doing a whole bunch of "reasonable fights at level 5" calculations, I don't know how useful it would be to actually do that for this version of the Rogue.

But my main inclination is that by giving them Extra Attack, you'd put Rogues on the same basic chassis as all the other martial classes, and then you could get a broad sense of whether Sneak Attack measures up to the effects of Rangers' and Paladins' spellcasting, Barbarians' Rage and subclass damage bonuses, and such, and as long as those seemed to be in the same ballpark, you'd probably be good.

Ranged Battlemaster vs. Wyvern

 I like the flavor of Matt Mercer's Gunslinger subclass, which was famously used by Taliesin Jaffe in Critical Role's first campaign. But the downsides, mainly the chance at Misfire on your attacks, is a kind of class design that doesn't really fit with other 5E class and subclasses, with nearly all features being pure positives. It may have been a holdover from Pathfinder or 3.5, but it always bugged me that a non-Gunslinger in 5E could fire guns without worrying about their breaking while a Gunslinger did have that concern.

So, I have long thought that if I wanted to create a similar kind of character, I'd go Battlemaster. Indeed, the Battlemaster and Arcane Archer already have similar ideas to a Gunslinger, with a limited ability to alter shots, but I think the Battlemaster is the most versatile.

Now, ranged characters are a little nerfed in 5.5, thanks to the change to Sharpshooter. But I don't know that it's that terribly bad, especially when we consider a couple workarounds.

I see two primary paths here for damage, built around two specific feats: Crossbow Expert and Great Weapon Master.

Now, just to address the issue: this build probably won't work all that great with guns. The two firearms available in the PHB (formerly the "Renaissance era" firearms) hit hard, which is nice, but they have some major downsides. One is range - the Pistol only has a short range of 30 feet, and the Musket only 40. But the bigger one is that there's no feat in 5.5 that allows you to ignore their Loading property. While you could very easily just take the Gunner feat from Tasha's, if you're allowed to grab 5.0 material (which I generally assume,) this feat mostly just lets those weapons work rather than actually boosting their damage. Downgrading to a d8 from a d10 is not an enormous damage loss, and you get a lot in return.

Let's talk about what Crossbow Expert does for you: this is a feat that might play into the build in both of its iterations. The most crucial thing it does is let you ignore the Loading property, which would normally prevent the weapon from really being used with a class that uses Extra Attack. It also allows you to attack in melee without disadvantage if you're shooting a Crossbow, which is certainly nice. The last bit, and the one that may or may not actually be useful here, is that you can add your ability modifier to the bonus attack you get with the Light Property as long as the attack is made with a Hand Crossbow and you aren't already adding it (such as from the Two Weapon Fighting Style feat).

The latter piece basically enables you to dual-wield Hand Crossbows (like a Diablo III Demon Hunter) and even more or less gets you the Two Weapon Fighting Style as part of it to allow you to grab just Archery.

Now, even if we want to use a Heavy Crossbow, we'll want this feat anyway, so you could take it at level 4 and be a little freed up in terms of which option you want to use.

The other feat, Great Weapon Master, is more specific, and a little kludgy. While GWM boosts solely Strength and its Hew property only works on melee weapons, the Heavy Weapon Mastery aspect of it actually applies to two specific ranged weapons: the Longbow and the Heavy Crossbow. (Bizarrely, the Automatic Rifle, Shotgun, and Musket don't count).

Now, if we're dual-wielding Hand Crossbows, this won't do anything for us. That might be nice, as we could focus on Dex-based feats, but I also suspect this will be a bigger boost to our damage.

Just to figure that out before we go into other choices, let's figure it out really quick:

Fighters don't need their bonus action every round unless they're dual-wielding, so the two hand crossbows should be pretty easy to use most turns. With three feats by level 10, we could get our Dex to 20 (though we might be behind if we go with GWM). At this level, we could shoot three Hand Crossbow attacks per turn, each of which is adding Dex, so if we figure that's like 1d6+5 three times, that's 8.5x3, or 25.5 damage. If we are shooting a Heavy Crossbow twice, but getting to add our proficiency bonus because of GWM, even if our Dex is only +4 at this level, that's 1d10+8 twice, or 13.5x2, which is 27. It will be slightly less because of the fact that our hit chance is a little lower.

That said, Hand Crossbows have Vex, which is a more direct boost to damage than Heavy Crossbows' Push. Indeed, because we have Tactical Mastery at this level, both the Heavy Crossbow's Push and Longbow's Slow masteries are essentially worthless to us, as we'd be able to do that with any weapon.

Still, given that the scaling would favor the Heavy Crossbow at higher levels as both PB and our number of regular attacks go up, I'm going to go that way.

So, with that in mind, here's how I'd go with feats:

At level 1, our Fighting Style feat is of course going to be Archery, a very solid one, giving us +2 to hit with ranged attacks.

At level 4, I think we pick up Crossbow Expert. For the next two levels, we can freely swap between going Heavy Crossbow or two Hand Crossbows.

At level 6, we grab Great Weapon Master. We will need to have at least a 13 in Strength to grab this, but given that we're pretty single-ability-score-dependent, I don't think that'd be too taxing on our build. The main downside is that we won't cap Dex at level 8 unless we take a full ASI.

But, at level 8, I think we have a couple compelling options: Piercer is actually a pretty obvious choice - all ranged weapons save "futuristic" ones do piercing damage, so this should apply to basically everything we do, and we can even grab a rapier if we want and still benefit (though thanks to Crossbow Expert, we might as well still shoot our Crossbow).

Mage Slayer, of course, is always a good option as well.

I actually think I'm going to go with Mage Slayer, not because it's necessarily the best choice here, but because I don't want to have to worry about the once-per-turn reroll of damage.

As a note, if we prefer the aesthetic (or the very long range) of Longbows, we could swap out Crossbow Expert for Sharpshooter. Our damage takes a slight dip, but we will also be able to ignore cover and be fully effective at 600 feet (imagine being able to nail a foe at a length of two football fields - not that your DM is likely to put you in situations where you can actually do that).

Ok, that's feats and equipment sorted. Our final bit of set-up is Maneuvers.

We'll know seven maneuvers by level 10, and we have five d10 superiority dice.

Goading Attack is very nice on a ranged attack, as it might simply impose full disadvantage on the attack (though we can kind of get this by swapping in the Sap property).

Menacing Attack, imposing frightened at range, can literally stop a target in their tracks.

Pushing Attack might seem redundant with the Push Mastery, but consider that you can add both, potentially pushing a target away up to 25 feet.

Maneuvering Attack can help you play a kind of overwatch role, helping allies get into position or away from danger.

Commander's Strike might not be quite as exciting given that we're going to be hitting quite hard on our own, but it can massively improve the damage of a Rogue by giving them potentially a second Sneak Attack per round.

Precision Attack is not quite as important with the new Sharpshooter, but it will help prevent misses. Given that we'll have a pretty high attack bonus, I doubt we'll be using this a ton, but it can keep our damage consistent.

Honestly, I think this is going to rely a lot on your party makeup. But the key is that we can probably afford to use a maneuver on most turns, though we'll burn through them pretty quickly if we try to use them on every attack.

Let's assume the following:

If we land a critical hit, we'll burn a Superiority Die to get some extra damage. For the sake of our damage calculations, we'll assume we're not burning maneuvers outside of that scenario. This will deflate our damage output a bit, but one of the things that's really appealing about the Battle Master is that they don't necessarily just have a pre-programmed "rotation," and can be very reactive to the situation on the battlefield.

So, each turn, we attack twice. We'll burn a maneuver on a crit, meaning we might do that twice in a turn where we get very lucky and crit twice. We can say, just for the sake of consistency, that it's a Menacing Attack, or a Pushing Attack if they're already frightened of us.

If we do miss, we'll burn a die to try to hit with a Precision Attack.

Let's math it out:

We have a +4 to Dexterity, so with the Archery Fighting Style, our attack bonus is +10. Thus, we hit on a roll of 4 or higher. And if we roll a 2 or 3 (nat 1 is still an auto-miss) we can do a Precision Attack (we don't miss out on the Menacing/Pushing damage because we're already not critting). If we had rolled a 3 on the die, this will always turn it into a hit. If we had a 2, it's a 9/10 chance that it also turns it into a hit, so basically, within that 10% of rolling a 2 or 3, 95% of the time, it's still hit. So, that's 85% plus 9.5%, meaning we effectively have a 94.5% chance to hit. Our crit chance is the same standard 5%.

Our hit damage is 1d10+8, or 13.5 on average (the extra 4 coming from Great Weapon Master). However, our crit damage bonus is effectively 3d10 if we're saving maneuvers for crits, so that's 16.5.

Thus, we're looking at 13.5x94.5% or approximately 12.76, plus 16.5x5%, or .825, giving us 13.585 damage per attack. This then doubles with our two attacks to 27.17.

That's actually pretty low compared with some of the other things we've been doing. But let's assess some other elements:

First off, we'll probably do a little more damage because we might not save all our superiority dice for near-misses and crits. Also, the utility of inflicting the frightened condition can be pretty huge (or DC would be 16, which is decent). Against flyers, Trip Attack can actually be really powerful if they don't have Hover.

Also, this damage goes up by a full 50% at the next level, where it starts to look a lot more respectable.

I think the takeaway here is that you shouldn't expect to be the real damage-dealing powerhouse of the party. Instead, you've got a ton of utility you can apply while still making a meaningful contribution to the party's damage.