Quote Originally Posted by Dalinar View Post
Rogues are pretty popular at my table, and I've put some thought into why there's a gap between that and the perception here. Comes down to a few things:

  1. We have a couple players who are enamored with what the Rogue represents narratively, without regard for its mechanics;
  2. Cunning Action is very useful (I have joked that it is addicting);
  3. Our DM puts a lot of work into making sure skill proficiencies are useful (we put a LOT of miles on Arcana in particular; and we're also blessed with robust homebrew systems for travel and crafting, both of which are great ways to turn skill proficiencies into combat advantages);
  4. Our DM also very rarely ever gives us a white-room encounter, and when secondary objectives are present the Rogues tend to be really good at accomplishing them (like the one a couple months ago that involved disarming bombs);
  5. We also get long rests quite infrequently, which lowers the value of long-rest resources like most spellcasting, and of course Rogues don't really care much about that;
  6. While Sneak Attack is bad on paper, it puts out big individual damage numbers, which feels good despite the inconsistency inherent to Rogue damage. One crit for 30+ tends to be a session highlight, even if the average gets dragged down by all the misses
Makes sense. Love to see homebrewed crafting and traveling. That's stellar stuff that I can't believe 5e has never offered good rules for.

Quote Originally Posted by Dalinar View Post
IMO if you're making a tier list of most generally useful classes at most tables, you're going to have the most trouble selling Barbarian, Rogue, or Monk. I think Monk is probably the worst off of those three on average, but there's a lot of individual table reasons that it might be any of those (having lots of single-target fights favors Monk because of how big an action economy swing Stunning Strike is in those types of encounters; Barbarian is carried by Great Weapon Master in some respects, so absent that it can be a struggle, or against enemies that deal damage types Rage doesn't help against).
I will defend barb slightly by saying they're almost a "good" class. Like, give them some help in the saving throw dept (a bonus ASI at 6th wouldn't go amiss, considering the feat tax of GWM) and they might not be a top class but they'll at least be exactly what they're advertised as. Tough, hard to stop, and hit hard. Like, not optimal compared to a wizard or paladin or something, but they'll do what they're supposed to, at least through t2 (they still have scaling problems).

Monk and rogue can also be good, but it takes some working and game knowledge. Barb is much closer to being the newb friendly, out of the box basic character that still pulls their weight.