Rogues and the Short Rest

As the Unearthed Arcana development of 5e.24 continues, the design team’s apparent campaign against the Short Rest has pivoted hard toward everyone getting back something but almost no one getting back everything on a Short Rest. Long-time readers may recall that I called for this exact thing more than a year and a half ago. Now there’s just one problem: Rogues.

The Problem

Just as much as it’s been noted that Bards, Fighters, Monks, and especially Warlocks thrive on a lot of Short Rests, Rogues get particularly little out of them. (Barbarians too, but… they’re likely pretty excited about Hit Die healing, because they burn through so many hit points. That’s outside the scope of this post, anyway.) At the same time, it’s not easy to figure out what you’d add to the very tightly tuned Rogue gameplay that wouldn’t become a greater problem.

I started thinking about the supporting fiction – that is, Rogue characters (uh, not Anna Marie LeBeau) in books, TV shows, movies, and so on. I’m thinking about characters like Vlad Taltos (I think about Vlad Taltos as often as a lot of guys apparently think about the Roman Empire – if I’m honest, my brain spends some days just oscillating back and forth between Dragaera and Rome), the whole Leverage team, and Plunkett & Macleane.

As a matter of narrative structure, in all of these stories we see roguish characters make particularly good use of time during longer and shorter resting periods. The story’s writers are using this time to establish things that are going to pay off in an upcoming scene; this is part of showing the roguish characters are cunning and well-prepared for dangerous situations. Maybe that’s carefully hiding knives and other hardware all over their body, or mixing up some weird concoction, or showing their companions how a card trick or confidence trick works. (The last two are also usually very fun for the audience to watch, because “how does the trick work” is always gonna hook us.)

The first time I played with this idea was my version of the Mastermind rogue. There’s a lot going on there and I’d like to both keep this generally lighter, and also give the Rogue a way to benefit themselves.

Proposal

The suggestion then is a single feature with multiple options. I feel like 2nd level isn’t a bad time to bring it in – even as ”big” as Cunning Action is – but 6thlevel could also work.

Preparation

Level 2 Rogue feature

Where others have powerful magic or incredible fortitude, you have cunning and preparation. When you finish a Short or Long Rest, pick one of the following.

· You hide daggers in secret compartments stitched into your clothing and armor. You hide up to three daggers or dagger-sized objects, and the DC for another character to spot them is 30. This feature lasts until you finish a Long Rest.

· You hide a spring-loaded dagger up your sleeve. When you are disarmed, or when you are Grappled, you can use your action to pop the dagger into your hand and attack with it. If you hit with this attack, you deal your Sneak Attack damage even if you otherwise don’t meet the requirements to deal Sneak Attack damage. This feature is expended when used or when you finish a Long Rest.

· You experiment with a weird alchemical concoction, which smokes, sizzles, or sparkles satisfyingly. At the time you use it, you can decide that it is a vial of acid, alchemist’s fire, antitoxin, basic poison, oil, a potion of healing, or incredibly concentrated peppermint soap (Dilute! Dilute! Ok). Creating a weird concoction requires you to have alchemist’s supplies on your person, and any concoction you create with this feature lasts until it is used or you finish another short or long rest.

· You demonstrate a new card trick or confidence trick to your companions. Choose up to five creatures present during the rest. When they fail a Deception, Insight, or Perception ability check, you can expend this feature to allow them to reroll the ability check and add your Charisma modifier (minimum +1) to the result. You don’t have to be present to allow this reroll. If not used, this feature lasts until you finish a Long Rest.

Design Notes

There are definitely some rough spots left in this that I’m not satisfied with, but this is a first draft. For one thing, it’s a lot of text for a single feature, and some bullet points get pretty fiddly. (It’d be great to fit in even more rogue tricks, frankly.)

I’m exploring the same problem, for the same reason, over in boffer LARP design. In working on early design for the upcoming Citadel LARP – which you’ll be hearing more about on this blog as the game approaches launch in 2025 – we’re very focused on short rests as things warriors and one of our caster types need, so it might be interesting to get scouts (rogues, whatever) in on the act too. ‘Scuse me while I pound my head against the implementation for another couple of days.