What drives a poor reputation for the Rogue class?

[KorvinStarmast]

Abilities that let you do something new say "you can...". If, on the other hand, an ability is enhancing something you could already do, it will instead say "when you..."

Spoiler: nice summary

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As an example:

The first sentence is giving you the ability to do something you couldn't before (Help as a bonus action), so it uses "you can".

The second is improving something you could already do (Help a creature Attack), so it uses "when you"

Take another example:

Note the use of 'when you' at the start, because casting Mage Hand is something you can already do.

However, all the subsequent abilities are things you weren't previously able to do, and thus they use "you can".

Now look at the Assassin ability:


At no point does it say "when you..."

Thus, unless you are saying that WotC abandoned their writing style for this one ability, we must deduce that this entire ability is something only Assassins can do.

Otherwise it would say something to the effect of "When you use Disguise and/or Forgery kits to craft false personas and documents..." because it would then be something that other rogues can also do, and you merely get a better version of it.

Instead, the ability is clearly written in such a way as to indicate that crafting false personas is something you can only do if you are an Assassin of at least 9th level.

Thanks for the exposition on the writing style, it will be useful to me in the future.

ed a valuable subclass feature taken up with jank? More is not always better. Do you go around taping snickers bars to your steaks?

You ask that like it's a bad thing. Snicker Steak is a regular feature at the Starmast barbecue pit (when the pit master, moi, has had a few more tequilas than is healthy for him. For desert, we offer jalapeno topped banana splits). Just kidding.

I'm not saying that the Background Feature is what allows you to make more (it doesn't). I'm saying that if it tells you that your favorite scheme is "I put on new identities like other people put on clothes" or "I insinuate myself into people's lives to prey on their weakness and secure their fortunes," then it seems reasonable to expect that the game thinks you should be able to do that somehow. Such as, you know, with ability checks.

Let me ask you a question: Would you tell a player of a level 13 charlatan Eloquence Bard with disguise kit proficiency and the favorite scheme "I put on new identities like others put on clothes" that they are unable to attempt to adopt false identities?

For my part, I'll tell you when one shows up in my games. I do use (as a player) the "at will disguise self" invocation on my Celestial Warlock to do a great many things with fake identities. She almost always gets away with it, but a few times she has not. Which kills off that identity. Now and again, the deception or persuasion or performance check fails, or someone sees through the disguise self spell (true seeing, damnit!) and I am foiled. Dimension Door the heck out of there!

Deception lets you pass yourself off in a disguise, but it doesn't create the actual disguise. People can still spot a fake disguise, and the Disguise Kit is what governs the disguise that you make.

Tell me about it! See above. But I still think that the level 9 feature could use a bit of a boost. (Maybe advantage on all performance checks?)

The Assassin's Imposter ability, I will point out is worse than the mimicry the Actor feat enables.

To be fair, PHB assassin was published at a time when feats were an optional part of the game. But I agree with the points you made in that post. Also, Volo's Kenku is a mess.

What are the other players at the table doing? The entire point is a deep cover, right? Well to get advantage out of a deep cover, you have to spend a LONG TIME in cover.

I am in one campaign where we often gets stretches of down time that go from a week to a month. (Phoenix Phyre's campaign). In our Curse of Strahd campaign, we have so far gotten zero.

It's because the subclass is terrible at being part of a group.
It's an outstanding subclass for an NPC, or a single-player in a low-fantasy game... But who plays like that?

It's an OK sub class for a two-person party. I've seen that done. (Levels 3-7 with a Monk, Shadow). Urban setting. Two vHumans. But that's an edge case.