How to make an Inquisitor (Paladin-Rogue Multiclass) in DnD 5e - Build Guide

so I absolutely love both paladins and Rogues in D and D 5 the unfortunate thing is that they don't really work together the Paladin requires so many attributes to multiclass in or out you know you need strength and Charisma in order to multiclass into or out of Rogues you need dexterity it's a big ask and they seem to be a little bit at odds with one another when it comes to what their goal is but what if we found a way to to kind of mesh those ideas and make a bit of an Inquisitor a left hand of the church the Sinister idea that needs to get things done because the right side and the face of the church needs to keep its profile up I think that we're we're on to [Music] something so this is a build that I've been trying to mess with for quite a while and figure out the best way to get it done because naturally it kind of seems like it's going to fall behind in pretty much the early tiers of play once you get up into you know tier 2 and three it shouldn't matter so much but tier one seems like it really lags behind however I think we found a workaround so bear with me on this one this is my Inquisitor build I got a chance to kind of test it out in a bit of a one shot and I really really had a good time playing it I tried tried it at around a level 78 kind of a build um mathematically I think I came up with a good way to get from level one to wherever you play like I mentioned in one of my previous videos I'm only going to be doing builds from Level 1 to like 11 after you get to that point you should have a good idea of what's going on planning more than one or two levels at a time is kind of a big risk in general let's be honest most groups fall apart at the drop of a hat from scheduling things so trying to plan out a whole character you add your mind but this is also one of those few builds that I'm going to recommend multiclassing before level five and I'm going to do that mostly because well you only need two levels in Paladin to make it work our goal for this is to create that left hand of the church that works in the shadows to get things done kind of a very um Assassin's Creed kind of a view you know we work in the shadows to serve the lightake kind of a thing you know what I'm talking about right with that let's jump into to build I'm actually going to be running this through the r 20 character maner I kind of have it set up a little bit already um but we're going to be kind of jumping into that so you can see what the character Sheet's going to look like you're going to see what options you have at any given point and hopefully it'll kind of give you an obvious way to show how weird half and third Caster multi classing spell slots work I'm going to try and illustrate that as best as I can so bear with me on this one let's jump in so for this really realistically you can play whatever you want but I really recommend picking a race that is going to give you a can trip to start off with I chose high elf and we really want to have that booming blade it's going to help kind of balance our damage against all of the classes that are going to be getting their spikes where we're kind of lagging behind so in doing that we are going to start off with plus two in dexterity and plus one in Charisma that's going to help our multiclassing ability to let us get out of Paladin and into Rogue without you know the delayed ASI that we're going to look at we're not going to get our first ASI until level six with this build so we need to be really good in the early game and set us ourselves up for Success so like I said here we have an elf here we're going to do plus two to dexterity alignment doesn't matter but if you're going to be doing an Inquisitor kind of build let's be honest you're going to be LW of good all of this normal stuff pick up whatever you know languages stuff like that that you want or our plus one from being a High we're going to add that to Charisma that's also going to help our multiclassing situation language proficiencies doesn't matter I threw Celestial on here because you know you're going to hear the voice of your God in the back of your head and that'll just kind of Mak sense to me and then we're going to be starting off with a paladin and Paladin kind of brings a lot of things that we need right off the bat it's going to give us our weapon proficiencies it's going to give us heavy armor and shield proficiencies and it's going to let us take a couple of skills that we'll be able to use right off the bat from the this we're going to be the standard Rogue kind of skill monkey setup that's also going to be able to do a lot of Nova damage so for your skill proficiencies paladins I love uh persuasion and intimidation for this one you're going to go be going for your kind of Charisma face skills you're going to be getting the information that you need kind of at all costs you get lay on hands you get divine sence all that fun stuff and you get some decent starting equipment which is really nice the Rogue doesn't get nearly as good of a starting equipment because well they don't need as much they're going to be living in the leathers and all that we are going to be a Frontline Rogue so we need to have the heavy armor proficiency you'll see what I mean moving on for our abilities I strongly recommend that you go Point by on this one if you go standard array I do have my notes Here Point by you can see on screen we're going to be putting our 13 in strength because we need a 13 to get out of Paladin 15 into decks because that's going to be our primary ability score we're going to putting 12 into Constitution for plus one to our HP early on and Cones are always important we're to keep intelligence and wisdom at a 10 we don't want to be going negative into wisdom if we can help it intelligence less important because all the spells that we're going to be picking well you know you'll see we're not going to really care about our spell save DC and then we're going to be putting 13 into our Charisma now if you go standard array I recommend that the AR rayon look like this where you go 13 strength 15 decks 14 con eight intelligence 10 wisdom and 12 Charisma it's going to give you one more HP to start with but your intelligence is going to be negative probably throughout your entire career I really recommend the5 version that go with go with that for the background pick whatever background you want I really like spy because it gives us the third Charisma face skill we're going to be doing deception and stealth if you end up switching over to studded leather armor in the future because you find a magical version of that or you know for whatever reason you're finding that you're getting into stealth a lot more and the the heavy armor of plate and chain mail and all that stuff is detrimental to you well it'll work out for you and you get free Proficiency in thieves tools which means that when we get into Rogue we don't have to use one of our proficiencies on that we already have it other than that pick your game set pick your specialty all this stuff that's entirely up to you now we are a paladin so we get the Paladin starting equipment which means that we're going to start off with chain mail which is 16 AC I believe we're also going to be able to pick a shield and a marshall weapon of our choice obviously we're going to go Rapier because it's the highest damage that you can get on a finesse weapon but if you want reach I really recommend going with a whip it's actually a really good opportunity because we're not going to worry so much about you know the two damage on average that you would be getting right average as you go up in a dice size increases by one and D4 to D6 to d8 plus one plus one that's how that's going to work so whip is actually really good here and you might be able to get some really flavorful stuff going on here if you were to pick up you know thunderus Smite in the future or searing Smite those both are very whippy in my head but Javelin so we have a little bit of range and priest pack Explorer pack whatever it's it's really up to you for our spells we are high off so we get a can trip from The Wizard spell list like I said booming blade is your choice here it's going to help kind of balance out the fact that we won't be picking up extra attack and all that so and it's another you know thing to layer on to our sneak attacks we don't get a feat but if your table does do level one Feats I know it's a super common com rule it's what I do at my table there's a couple of options here piercer is going to be a really good one but your best option is probably mobile I know that we're going to be getting free Misty step from being a high Health in the future but being able to disengage for free is going to be a huge Boon when you're playing this kind of Hit and Run skirmisher kind of a play style other options I realistically other options realistically whatever you want telekinetic is a really good option you could do a magic initiate uh you could go ritual Caster anything that you want that's going to bolster your team you can go ahead and use that uh level one feat to go ahead and make yourself just overall more useful to your team bio we're not filling that out and that's pretty much what our level one character looks like so we are going to be able to consistently be able to hit with 1d8 plus our decks which is a three at this level and if you want to use it Hefty that's going to increase your dexterity that might be a good choice that'll kind of get you up into that plus four more regularly piercer is a really good option for that slasher is less good but if you go with the whip route I would go that way just whatever you want to use that he Fe to go ahead and get your deck up plus one that would be where I would put that for level two we're not going to be doing anything particularly interesting we're just going into level two Paladin it'll give us smites and some uh half Caster ability so we're going to stay right there not doing anything special uh we are do get a fighting style in this case there's two options that I recommend you either go dueling for the plus two to your damage on your Rapier or your whip or whatever or you go into defense to raise your AC by one either one is a good choice whichever one you want to play totally makes sense to me I personally am going to go with defense because I find that extra AC is going to be really good it makes you basically have plus one to whatever your armor or Shield is at that point you get to prepare and cast a couple of spells we're a paladin so you're going to go with the kind of standard ones here um I really like Shield of Faith again for plus two more I really like Shield of Faith here for plus two more AC like I said Thunder Smite is a really good one searing Smite is also another really good good one you could do a couple of other things wrathful or protection from evil and good all of that normal stuff but like I said we're going to be doing this kind of Inquisitor build so you're not going to be out there trying to do you know your your cure wounds you have a little bit of healing you have 10 points of HP um in your lay on hands that's not really going to be your primary goal um but also you're a palad you prepare your spells every day so go ahead and change them at the end of any long rest into whatever you think is going to be necessary and that's it that's level two there's nothing special about it but that is the end of our Paladin Journey we got a little taste but we don't quite think that we're ready to swear an oath yet we don't necessarily believe in the oath of the crown or the Ancients or of Vengeance or of Conquest that's not our calling we like to work in the shadows we're not going to announce the things that we are standing for we want them to find out after they're dead right so with our next level up this is where we move over to Rogue so we're going to ditch our Paladin level here we're going to pick up our multic class we are going to multiclass into Rook one level here we go so what do we get with Rogue well that's when we start to pick up some more of our skills we are going to be very skill heavy at this point I really like investigation for our first one or you can do slight of hand acrobatics maybe I think you're getting a little bit generous there so uh let's go ahead and pick investigation or Insight those would be the two that I would really recommend we thieves can't we get sneak attack and here's where we get our first bit of expertise I think you are going to be really wanting to be intimidating because you're you know doing the dark stuff that the church doesn't really want you to know about it you want people to keep their mouth shut or open if you know what I mean and then expertise in thieves tools is all always a great option it's going to make it so that you can get into those locked chests and doors and make sure that you're getting out of you know shackles or anything like that it's just going to make you overall more useful now we are kind of at a point where a lot of characters at least every character is going to have the option of having their subass at this point so how do we kind of match up against them well we have two first level slots that we can Smite with we're going to get 1 D6 on sneak attack and we have our standard Rapier we are able to stack on a couple of other bonus action spells if you know you get a point where someone has been hit with a whole person and you know that you're going to crit well that would be a good opportunity to use your bonus action to go ahead and uh pre-buff your damage and make sure that everything that's going to be coming out is going to be doing the most damage now levels four and five I'm going to combine them because let's be honest we're just on this Rogue path and we're trying to get to to level five where we're going to get our Rogue subass we we are going to pick the Arcane trickster this is going to make it so that we are going to continue to grow our uh amount of spell slots over the course of our journey this way we can get more smites and kind of effectively build ourselves into a really interesting dexen and we also get the Mage hand Ledger domain where this is where a bit of the RP comes in where you kind of have that hand of your God around with you it's an invisible Mage hand that has you know more power than a standard Mage hand you can U manipulate more objects with it Stow them all that fun stuff and go ahead and bring that up here you also get you know standard Rogue stuff right you're going to get your your um steady a you're going to get your uh what's it called cunning action where you get your bonus action disengage or hide or all that where you're going to be kind of giving yourself more options of what you can do in combat of how to move around keep yourself safe let's be honest you're not going to want to stand there you could you have the option of heavy armor at a shield but you're also going to be able to use your booming blade to create that distance to force enemies to move in order to hit you and take that Rider effect now that we have that going on also at this point Rogues get some spells our intelligence which is what the Rogues use for their casting ability is going to be pretty lacking so our goal here is to pick spells that don't require an attack roll or DC they're going to be very utility bed based spells so we get cantrips from either the illusion or enchantment schools on the wizard spell list there's not a whole lot there so kind of pick the ones you like I really like minor illusion for that um message is a really good one I think messages on there if not mind sliver could be really good friends is always a a really fun one to get advantage on a lot of your charisma checks stuff like that where even is the friends there it is I would pick my or luser friends honestly and we also are going to get a couple of the new spells from The Wizard spell that's first level spells like I said we're not going to be using this for damage it's mostly for utility and you know protecting ourselves and all that fun stuff because we're going to be going into dexterity if you want to switch out of your um chain and you know use that stealth ability that you have you're going to have the option of Mage Armor ultimately this would be better than plate mail Shield is a really good one to increase your AC by five detect magic is always a really good one find familiar is an absolutely good one you're going to be able to generate on demand sneak attack if you have an owl with flyby now your DM if they're smart is going to Target that familiar after kind of the first round or two of combat let's be honest if an ow is coming in harassing enemies they're going to focus on it and it may buy you you know an attack where you don't get hit but find familiar for L 100% where you want to go on this one feather fall is a great one somebody's got to have it and well you are somebody I'm going to recommend that you go with Shield find familiar and well whatever else you really want unseen servant is another kind of RP option identifies a good one you pick it it really doesn't matter I'm going to go with detect Magic on this build just for the sake all right we've hit level five we are effectively where most characters are going to be getting a pretty big Power Spike casters are getting their third level spells Marshall characters are getting extra attack he casters are getting their second level spell slots we don't get any of that and they've already gotten an ASI as well we don't get that either so where do we stand up well we're okay I guess we are going to be able to use our Rapier alongside booming blade to add an extra D so we're going to go ahead and throw that on the global damage here this is booming blade so what an average round of combat is going to look like is going to be a little bit up to you in your play style but this is going to be an up inyou face skirmisher kind of character you're going to get up you're going to attack with your Rapier with Advantage because of your Al familiar and flyby and you're going to deal sneak attack and you're going to have the option to Smite on top of it so if we go ahead and see what that looks like let me go ahead and just move my face here where we are going to attack with our Rapier we are being able to booming blade sneak attack and smite on top of that so we are going to get 1 d8 plus three which is kind of what the standard Rapier attack is and then we're going to get 2 d8 for viant Smite 2d6 for sneak attack and 1 d8 for booming blade and then if the enemy moves it's going to be another d8 on top of that so another five that's a lot of damage but what do our slots look like at that point well because we're multiclassing a half caster and a third Caster we have three first level slots it's not much believe me I know but it's what you get this is going to increase over time I'm going to be kind of kiding you know the the major points of that remember we still have six levels left in this video and then the epilog kind of an area where we talk about 12 through 20 but that's a shorter section also look at all of these skills that we are proficient or have expertise in right deception intimidation investigation perception persuasion stealth and themes tools we are just your standard skill monkey Rogue who can also throw smites on top of things so realistically just for fun at this point you're going to be getting Advantage so let's see what a uh a crit looks like on this build all right here we go that is a pretty good bit of damage we're looking at 19 + 26 now that is a pretty good bit of damage we're looking at 19 plus 26 that is 45 damage on a single hit that is that's not bad and that's not even a very good roll right we rolled well here on this one we got two ones on this one we got a one and everything rolled for or below let's go ahead and roll that a little higher look at that much much better right here's 40 55 damage on on better roles realistically is is kind of what we're looking at here the the the damage output is gpy you know you don't have a ton of resources you're not going to have smites all the time but you will have sneak attack every time remember you're a rogue you don't get extra attack so you're going to be try and get Advantage either from your allies from your familiar from being hidden as best you can all those different things you're going to be able to kind of CP fish wherever you can at this point from here then your next eight levels are from here your next six levels are all going to go into Rogue by the time you hit the end of campaign of level 11 you're going to be two Paladin nine Rogue it's a really nice spot to be you're going to pick up lots of stuff you are going to get uh two Asis your sneak attack is going to increase you're going to get a reaction uncanny Dodge to reduce one bit of incoming damage by half you're going to get more expertise and you're going to get evasions so all of your dexterity saves uh you're either going to take half or no damage on which is great as someone who's built as a you know pseudo Paladin with heavy armor to really increase your AC a great opportunity to pick up the shield Master feet as well all these different things kind of look like this so you're going to pick your expertise uh maybe you want to go into deception and investigation you want to find out really what what these Sinners are hiding from your God I realize I'm leaning into a very kind of Western Catholic culture with this Inquisitor but I mean it could be whatever God you want and and their church is feeling you know shorted by by whatever evil or you know maybe you maybe you are playing an evil character and your your evil God needs you to kind of do some stuff behind the scenes so that their you know their followers um don't get targeted as much there's lots of different RP opportunities here for you to work out with your DM and I strongly strongly strongly recommend that you work with your DM on this and you get this magical Ambush thing I don't think it's it's particularly interesting but you know your your DC isn't going to be high enough that it's going to make much of a difference but you will be able to kind of increase your ability to do spells that have have you know the enemies make saves against it in the end realistically you are going to want to bump decks maybe you want to grab that piercer feet like I talked about this will let you kind of max out your dexterity now and then you are also going to get more damage when you uh you get to roll one of your your Rapier damage Dice and you get to do basically the equivalent of a Savage attacker or the half orc critical um bonus reg extra dice it's a it's a nice feat because it'll kind of round out your dexterity ability as for spells again we're going for stuff that doesn't really require DCs so being able to do see invisibility or you know magic weapon is going to be really nice or invisibility is a really good one if I could find it out here there you go these are all really really good options for you because they don't necessarily require that your spell save DC be particularly High you just want to add Buffs that are going to improve you or your teammates when you get to this level 11 character you're not going to have a ton of spell slots right you're going to have uh three second level spell slots and four first level spell slots that's that's not a lot but that is seven opportunities to Smite most combat doesn't last more than three or four rounds so you are able to Smite on every single one of your turns alongside your booming blades your sneak attacks at this point your sneak attack is all the way up to 5d6 you uh you're in a a really really good spot when it comes to your ability to maintain dealing damage you've got lots of utility because you're mostly a rogue you've got Nova in being pal Paladin and be able to throw down some smites you've got the AC of a paladin you've got the saves of a rogue you've got the damage reduction of a rogue you've got the evasion of a rogue you've got the expertise of a rogue it's a really really fun build it lags just a tiny bit but we kind of tried to grab booming blade to compensate for the lack of extra attack again this is one of the only times I'm going to recommend that you multiclass before level five and it's because you need the two levels in Paladin to grab hold of a Smite there's other variations where you know you would instead take three levels of fighter if you get a action Surge and Champion to increase your critical range but I think this is more fun I think this provides more RP opportunity and I think that in general this is just a super fun build to play especially you know if you have mobile um you know if you find a way to get a mount and you can do you know mounted combatant if you pick up ritual Caster to increase your you know out of combat utility from a magical point of view I think that there's just so many really fun options for this that you are still relevant in combat but you know you're good outside of that because Rogues are great outside of combat that's my take on it for levels 12 through 20 there's a lot of different options you can either stay purely Rogue which I think is totally fine I think that you get lots of good options from that you you're going to get all of the stuff up to Rogue 18 like you're in a really good spot there um you could take another level in Paladin to get you know an oath so you get a channel Divinity you get your oath spells um you get all of the fun stuff that comes from either playing you know a Vengeance Paladin or a conquest Paladin or even a crown Paladin I I think that you know your kind of vanilla Paladin is still a really good option the chall venies are still excellent let's be honest you could go five levels into Paladin because then you're going to get access to fine Steed so going to have more Mobility remember that any spell that you cast that targets only you while riding your seed also applies to the Steed so you could you know be riding your Ste and cast invisibility enemies will still hear that steeve clomping around but they won't see it coming which you know could be a a fun little like you know Phantom Rider kind of a thing you could go three levels into fighter pick up your action surge your Champion to increase your uh critical range or um if you want to include more books you could go into if you want to include more books you could go into Echo knite to increase your range that way kind of act in multiple spots at once because you know you're you're serving your God and he has blessed you with the ability to be in multiple places at once or something like that um you could get really squirly and take two levels in Barbarian to pick up rage I don't recommend this one you get a access to Reckless attack but it needs to be made with strength attacks so I don't think it's a great option it's kind of up to you what you want to do I really recommend staying away from casting you just are not going to have the mental stats to make your spell save DCS and your spell attacks particularly good and it it's it's it's not your your best set of options at that case um Bard would be good so that you could throw around some baric Inspirations but again you're kind of already living in the skill World um with all these Rogue levels so my two recommendations would be that you go pure Rogue from here on out or you take Paladin maybe to level six because or protection is so so good but you just won't be getting it until way too late in the game to be relevant um maybe take one level on Paladin for some Chan amenities but I think the best way to build this is to say pure Road at this point and that's pretty much it I hope that you guys enjoyed this I really love this build I really enjoyed the the one shot that I got to play as this Inquisitor um I really kind of leaned into the RP of being uh a little bit of the dark side of the church um I did kind of go with the Western Catholic kind of a view very much the uh the hooded figure and you know the the you know working in the dark to serve the light kind of a thing u i Blended the Templars and the Assassins a little bit but it was super fun so let me know if you guys try this out let me know if you have any recommendations for changes to this one because let's be honest all builds can go a million different ways but this is the one that I think is super fun and super flavorful and still super effective so that's pretty much it thank you for watching and I will see you in the next video

Channel: FellstarDM

Views: 34,601

Keywords: Inquisitor build guide, Paladin Rogue multiclass, D&D character creation, RPG character builds, multiclassing guide, Paladin guide, Rogue guide, Dungeons and Dragons, tabletop RPG strategies, character build tips, divine smite, D&D 5e guide, role-playing game tips, ultimate character builds, fantasy gaming, D&D tips and tricks, RPG optimization, gaming strategies, how to play Paladin, how to play Rogue, D&D character optimization, multiclass character builds

Id: SjSP-SsTuFE

Length: 28min 46sec (1726 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024