What drives a poor reputation for the Rogue class?

[Dr.Samurai]

IDK about the specific example of throwing the PCs in water or another plane--that's not usually what I was referring to when I mentioned just throwing scenarios at players.

As an example, I've grabbing one spell list arbitrarily (that first one in your quote) and gone through the latest encounters our group handled to see what they could do off the cuff.

• Clear a 2-floor building filled with monsters that have one-shot potential but are scared of light, the stairs between floors is a chokepoint: A celestial can be used to safely scout either floor. Multiple sources of radiant damage allow them to hit super effectively. With good scouting, death ward saves a fragile character with revivify saves someone if there's a big mistake.
• Survive an ambush in a magically sealed room full of heavy smoke and cover; multiple high-power enemies can apply mental conditions: At-will saves allow them to contribute damage without the hit penalty, wall of fire ignores sightlines completely and you can just guess. Greater restoration can save an MVP if they're charmed / frightened.. Someone is probably going to do, so revifify can bring them back.
• Get an artifact from a small tomb full of mephits and regenerating skeletons. A rival party shows up later to steal it: Turn/Destroy Undead is a freebie, reliable AOE allows them to take on multiple mooks, a summoned celestial or wall can block a chokepoint in a hallway. Banishment as an emergency tool against mephits. Getting someone to drop the artifact if it's stolen with command (drop) gives great post-dungeon insurance.
• Save a town from a dozen mooks with death throes and a fast melee boss in an open town square: Decent ranged attacks let them kite out the exploders, healing word & revifify brings up an ally if they sacrifice themselves to get in a good hit, blindness/deafness is a high-value debuff on the boss. Wall of fire puts something between townsfolk & mooks.
• Rescue someone from an invisible death knight with spell-enchanted armor and his unintelligent stone defenders in a looping dungeon complex: Saves and indiscriminate AOE like sunbeam will let you get full damage if you vaguely know the knight's location, dispel magic breaks his defenses, guidance can pump a stealthy person's check if they want to do solo recon.

All of this would be with regular contributions in combat from their cantrips and spiritual weapon, with small stuff like exploring without torches thanks to light, without considering what they could do if they had just a day to prepare (see the user's point on water walking), and without even considering the free-form options they have from innately-flexible tools like fabricate and creation.

And this isn't even particularly crazy. The cleric list doesn't have teleportation, stealth, I don't think it has detect thoughts, locking/unlocking, size alteration. It doesn't have a wizard's access to other flexible spells like fly, counterspell, haste. There's no on-demand defense like shield or absorb elements. Even this middlingly-flexible list designed for primarily PvP unlocks a such a massive breadth of approaches that I could hand them anything I've run since 2020 onwards and they could easily have contributed more than the martial half of the party. Most of my effort would be put towards making them weaker, probably by giving enemies radiant resistance, inflicting conditions that can't be restored, and threatening to separate them from their allies so they can't easily raise them.

I didn't make the spell lists, or select them, nor did I create these encounters, and I have to say that if this is the point being made I'm disappointed. Firstly, I've read nothing here that suggests to me non-casters are going to fail or die or can't proceed (we can explore without using torches... seriously?). Secondly, you can see the counter-point already in your example. You are valuing stealthy characters in your scenarios, kiting enemies, and things that undo damage to allies, and then wondering what sort of value a rogue can bring to the equation.

A lot of the commentary here is "you can bring someone back to life, and you can protect them with Death Ward". Yes, this is what cleric's do. However, I really have to call out, again, the incoherence throughout this thread. The rogue has been accused of having a selfish playstyle. Scouting is selfish, but here, when it comes to the cleric, scouting comes up in two of the scenarios as a versatile option for the spellcaster. Uncanny Dodge/Hiding are called out as selfish features that lend themselves to the selfish rogue playstyle, but here we are giving credit to the cleric's versatile options because they can protect allies from dying and bring them back to life. But if we're talking about heavy smoke and cover, then the rogue is Hiding and not being targeted (by attacks or the control effects in that scenario).

In the same vein, the rogue at this level (11) can't roll probably beneath a 23 on Stealth checks. The rogue's expertise with skills has been considered "winning more" throughout this thread, as a way to devalue what the rogue is strong at. But now, since it's a cleric, we consider guidance can pump a stealthy person's check if they want to do solo recon as a powerful and versatile option in the cleric's toolbox. Who is that "stealthy person" you may find yourself wondering? I don't know... probably a spellcaster, because the only kind of good stealth, is magic stealth. No one has outright said that, but they've been saying it this whole time .

And I mentioned previously adjudicating spell effects. There's vision impairments, enough to not target someone directly, but still know where to throw the AOE. You'll just know how to put up that Wall of Fire because... you know, spellcasters are smart and stuff. Look, there's a challenge, I can't see the targets but... watch me thread this Wall of Fire because I can just guess. If guesswork is enough, it strikes me as not noteworthy enough to mention.

Then we get to the ancient red dragon. We're bombarded with all the things that other classes can do in this same scenario. All these neat features to bump up saving throws and contend with Frightened. Well... we've forgotten one. Seems strange that in all of this talk about the "not selfish" classes, and all the amazing spells, we wouldn't just assume that the party has access to Heroes' Feast. Done. Never have to worry about the dragon's Frightful Presence ever again, or the Poison effects of its lair actions. Unless we're always going to draw this line for assumptions that hurts the rogue and helps everyone else.

With what they actually bring to the table, I think the rogue's value can't be seen because everyone just dismisses the skill system and thinks about only what magic can do, and then straight to combat. Either the rogue's skills are "winning more" or "no matter how high they get they can't do xyz" but either way it's okay not to think about it. In my experience, that's not how games typically work. When confronted with a challenge, players will brainstorm how to overcome it, or give themselves an Advantage.

Against an ancient dragon, a high level rogue could potentially steal a dragon egg and potentially lure the dragon to fight outside of its lair. I know it's difficult to quantify removing lair actions from the boss monster in Excel, but that's a pretty big contribution and can certainly happen in a game. Or if the dragon has a servitor, or is brought tribute from surrounding counties, the assassin can Impersonate one of these people, and kick off the encounter with an Assassinate, shaving off almost 1/3 of the dragon's hit points in turn 1.

The rogue can also hide in the Heavy Obscurement of the Noxious Smoke, or in the Light Obscurement of the volcanic gases with something like Skulker.

The rogue has a fair bit of survivability against the dragon's non-weapon attacks. Against Reliable Talent, the dragon has a 50% chance to spot the rogue with it's Legendary Action, which is 1 less action swatting someone with its tail (assuming the dragon is trying to keep its distance to strafe and use its breath weapon attack, otherwise Blindsight is in play).

This is my thought as well. When I refer to a caster's flexibility and power, I'm not really thinking of "can they handle the most esoteric and unlikely of situations with no forewarning" It's more that I'm not gonna worry about accidently checkmating the party by like...hitting them with a fear effect and locking them all in place, or entirely overwhelming them because of a lack of AoE.

Yeah, quite a bit different than what was said before but okay.

I am still skeptical. Because you don't control your players. Like all the scenarios that Just To Browse listed above... are the spellcasters always topped off on spells? Do they always have exactly what is needed? If you're the sort of person to upcast Banishment to deal with CR 1/2 mephits, do you really have the slots you need to cast the right spell at the right time?

This confidence in the spellcasters assumes they're going to be at 100% all the time, otherwise they might not actually have that thing they need to deal with the encounter in the way you're expecting or anticipating. It seems to me that we're really talking about spellcasters having access to AOE and... buffs/debuffs. Which... yeah, that's what they do.