I realize that I might be biting off more than I can chew here, but let's consider the following:
The general consensus among the optimizers of YouTube is that Rogue damage falls behind compared to other Martial classes like Fighters, Barbarians, and Paladins. On a design intent level, this has always felt, if it's actually true, kind of wrong.
Balance in games is always a tricky thing - in a solo game, you could reasonably say that a build or class that leans more toward defense might sacrifice some damage to do so, but if you have a game like, say, World of Warcraft, where survivability is not really a primary concern for anyone other than a tank, it doesn't seem fair that the heavily-armored Fury Warrior would do less damage than the lightly-armored Frost Mage because the Warrior's armor isn't really doing anything to protect them if they're not the one getting hit. (For those who don't play or know about WoW, there's plenty of magical damage that gets tossed around at all players, but the characters playing the tank role should essentially always be the ones that are taking the direct physical hits from enemies and not any of the damage-dealers).
D&D's a bit different - no one is a tank, at least not in such explicit terms. Some subclasses, like Ancestral Guardians or Armorers (or Cavaliers, I think?) can at least incentivize a foe to attack them, but it's not the kind of deterministic thing it is in a game like WoW.
Rogues are a little squishier than most other martial characters - they only have a d8 hit die, and they only get light armor. While they can eventually hit equivalent ACs to medium armor, it takes longer (a level 2 Artificer who makes Smoldering Half Plate could easily get their maximum AC out of it while a Rogue needs to cap their Dexterity to get all they can out of Studded Leather).
Thus, it has always seemed to me, thematically, that a Rogue ought to be among the highest damage-dealers in the game. While a Fighter might suit up in heavy armor to endure the hordes, I think the fantasy of the Rogue is to be the one who takes the risk traveling light in order to go fast and hard to take out their foes.
Martials tend to do better in single-target situations due to the way that the game treats attacking with a weapon, of course (though often it can be demonstrated that spellcasters can overcome this intended balance) and I think the Rogue makes sense to really focus on that single-target damage anyway, striking with surgical precision (though I'll admit that this is really the "assassin" archetype, and you could argue a Swashbuckler maybe ought to be better at fending off multiple attackers, even if its subclass mechanics imply the opposite).
Rogues work differently than other martial characters. They're the only ones that don't get Extra Attack. Extra Attack does a couple things for classes that do get it, initially just doubling their damage potential, but also smoothing out bad luck. You can still miss twice on your turn as a Paladin, but if you have, say, a 60% hit chance, extra attack means there's only a 16% chance you don't hit at all on your turn.
Instead, Rogues get their damage scaling via Sneak Attack, adding a number of d6s to their damage equal to half their Rogue level rounded up.
There are conditions here that need to be met - you can never get Sneak Attack if you have any source of disadvantage (even if it's cancelled out by a source of advantage) and to get it, you either need to have advantage (pure advantage, thanks to the aforementioned clause) or have a non-incapacitated ally within 5 feet of the target.
Now, in fairness, Rogues also have numerous ways to get advantage - by level 2 they can hide as a bonus action to try to attack without being seen, or they can sacrifice their movement and bonus action to get advantage with careful aim. Lots of Rogue-friendly weapons like Shortswords and Shortbows have the Vex property, so one hit will set them up for more hits in the future.
However, in terms of game feel, I think you could argue that this creates a feel-bad situation. Rogues basically need Sneak Attack in order to feel like they're working properly, which places an onus on them that other martial characters don't have. A Barbarian will be more or less just as effective fighting some goblins out in a field as they would in a barn with a lot of posts holding the roof up. But a Rogue is going to have far fewer options for how they want to achieve their Sneak Attack if there's nothing but grass.
Rather than feeling like a cool bonus to their damage, Sneak Attack is the assumption. Rogue damage is balanced around that assumption, and that means losing it leaves the Rogue feeling broken (not in a good way).
But how good is Sneak Attack, then?
One thing I really have to hand to Sneak Attack is that it's one of the smoothest-scaling features in the game. Getting another die every two levels ramps your damage up much more granularly than, say, a Fighter getting an additional attack at 5, 11, and 20.
I'll also say that I think the theming makes sense: if we lean more into the Assassin archetype, the Rogue's goal is to hit hard with a precision attack for maximum devastating effect, rather than some mad frenzy of stabs. Fighters are the machine-gun class while Rogues are the sniper rifle class.
In a vacuum, let's see what kind of damage this come out to.
Fighters seem a good comparison. Generally considered the best martial damage-dealers, I think the Rogue actually ought to match them in power.
While the Rogue has less obvious breakpoints, we can look at those breakpoints for the Fighter:
At level 5, a Fighter gets Extra Attack, while a Rogue's Sneak Attack goes up to 3d6.
Let's assume a similar weapon loadout - the Fighter is going with a dual-wielding build (which I don't think is quite as strong for pure damage, but it also leaves them fairly capable with a ranged weapon when they need to be if they're going Dex).
Fighter 5:
We can assume a couple things: the Fighter likely has the Two Weapon Fighting Style, and I think it makes sense that they'd take the dual-wielder feat at level 4. Their Dex is +4 at this point.
Thus, the Fighter is making three attacks that deal 1d6+4 apiece (two with the main hand, one with the off-hand scimitar) and then a fourth, bonus action attack for just 1d6. Total damage output is 4d6+12, or 26 (yes, we're ignoring the higher crit chance thanks to probably using a Vex weapon in the main hand).
Rogue 5:
The Rogue won't get a Fighting Style. We could potentially imagine that they've taken the Dual Wielder feat as well - Rogues have more consistent need of their bonus action than Fighters, of course, but in situations where they have an ally granting Sneak Attack, they might like to have a way to weaponize it.
If we assume that such an ally is there (maybe that fighter) we can look at their damage in the following way:
Their main hand attack with a shortsword deals 4d6+4, and then they can make a scimitar attack for 1d6. Then, with Dual-Wielder, they make another Scimitar attack for 1d6. So that's basically 6d6+4, or around 25. Actually quite close.
As a note, dual-wielding on a Rogue is, in fact, quite good, because you get that many more chances to land the Sneak Attack. If you had a 60% hit chance, making these three attacks would give you a 93.6% chance to land your Sneak Attack, and that's before factoring in advantage from something like Vex.
Fighter 11:
By this point, the Fighter has likely capped Dexterity (even if only taking General half-feats, if they start off at 17, they could hit 20 thanks to their first bonus feat at level 6). I also think it's highly likely that they'll have at least a +1 weapon, and by 11, probably two (it will also make my life easier to assume the same bonus on both weapons). Dual Wielding doesn't quite benefit from feat-stacking like a GWM/PAM build does, but they might have gotten something like Mage Slayer and then, like, Medium Armor master or something.
Anyway, the Fighter is now making three attacks with its +1 Shortsword and then a nick attack with its +1 Scimitar, followed by a bonus action attack with said scimitar. That means basically four attacks for 1d6+6 and then a single attack for 1d6+1. So, 5d6+25, which comes out to 42.5 damage.
Rogue 11:
Likewise, we're looking at +1 weapons in both hands. Actually, Rogues and Fighters will have the same number of feats at this level, as Fighters get their first bonus feat at 6 and Rogues get their only bonus feat at 10. So we can, I think, likewise assume that Rogues are capped on Dexterity at this point.
The Rogue's Sneak Attack is now up to 5d6. So, their main attack is going to be 6d6+6 damage, and then they can make two off-hand attacks for 1d6+1 each, so we're looking at essentially 8d6+8 damage. That winds up looking like 36 damage.
That's more significantly behind the Fighter
Fighter 20:
11 to 20 is an enormous leap. At this stage, I'd want to have, like Vicious weapons, if not crazy legendary weapons. Vicious Weapons (or Flame Tongues) scale really well with more attacks, and the Fighter would undoubtedly shoot into the stratosphere.
So, to keep this somewhat more fair for the Rogues, we're just going to use +3 weapons.
The Fighter is now making four main-hand attacks on top of their two bonus dual-wielding ones. So, 5 attacks that are doing 1d6+8 each and then a single 1d6+3 attack. That's basically 6d6+43 damage, which comes out to 64 damage.
Rogue 20:
Sneak Attack by this point is 10d6. So, we have our main attack that deals 11d6+8, and then two off-hand attacks that deal 1d6+3, meaning a total of 13d6+14. That's 59.5 on average.
It's still behind the Fighter, though only by 5.5 points of damage.
Nuances:
There are a few elements here that I think we need to consider.
First, in the Rogue's favor:
The fact that the Rogue can get their full sneak attack damage as long as any of their attacks hit means that we've actually been devaluing their damage slightly. If we did the full "damage per attack" rather than "damage per hit" calculations, this fact would really help the Rogue's total.
Also, Rogues benefit more from critical hits because so much of their damage comes from rolled dice. If our Fighter lands a crit, they're only adding 3.5 damage on average, while a Rogue who gets lucky with a crit (on their first hit of the turn, to be fair) could, by level 20, be adding 38.5.
But in the Fighter's favor:
Fighters have tools to deal more damage. Action Surge can give them a giant boost in damage, and while this is a limited resource, in a game where combat tends to only last a couple rounds, a higher fraction of a Fighter's turns than you might think can have action surges in them.
Fighters will benefit enormously from anything that increases the damage of an attack. If they can get Conjure Minor Elementals up (easily done with a tier 4 Eldritch Knight) they'll be able to multiply that bonus thanks to all their attacks. The same goes for vicious weapons or even just picking up the Hex or Hunter's Mark spell somehow. Rogues don't get to do this as much because they focus everything into a single attack (though our build here does, at least, give them more of a benefit from it).
And again, there are scenarios in which a Rogue's sneak attack can be shut down - if the Rogue is poisoned, say good bye to sneak attack. Underwater, there are some weapons they can still use, so it might not be so bad. If a Fighter is blinded, they're less likely to hit, but they will still deal full damage. Not so with the Rogue. And even in the regular ebb and flow of combat, a Rogue might just not be able to get the advantage they need. Technically, the 2024 rules have Hide give you the Invisible condition, which means that in theory, a foe with Truesight or Blindsight cannot be hidden from, and even someone merely under the effects of a See Invisibility spell. (Granted, I tried that briefly as a DM and now think I'll rule differently. I actually kind of like the idea of mundane beating magical detection, like how using a Disguise Kit can sometimes work better than the Disguise Self spell because there's no magical illusion to see through, just physical make-up, wigs, and prosthesis).
The point I'm trying to make here is that there's a world in which I think that the Rogue ought to deal more damage than a Fighter. I get that a Fighter, you know, fights, and that's their whole thing. A Rogue does have its powerful skill-monkey features. But I think it would be nice if a Rogue got a little boost to damage.
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