New Rogue | 2024 Player's Handbook | D&D

our main job with the Rogue was to not mess it up yeah because it is it was very sound it is such a beloved solid class MH that our main goal with the Rogue was to take those really wonderful pieces of design and add some new twists and so in addition to giving the Rogue weapon Mastery as we have several of our other classes and weapon Mastery as you and I have discussed in in another video gives the Rogue and others some really exciting combo options and and tactical abilities as we discussed like short sword with the knife you're like hitting G advantage on the next attack lining up your sneak attack stuff like that glorious yeah uh but in addition to that the other biggie in the Rogue is a brand new feature called called cunning strike this ended up being a hit in the onar Arcana series and what cunning strike really boils down to is it gives the Rogue the ability starting at fifth level to trade sneak attack damage dice for other effects yeah because we realized the sneak attack bucket of dice it gets awfully big yes and sometimes the Rogue doesn't need all of those dice just to deal damage so the light bulb that went off for us in our in our design process with the Rogue was well what if we let the Rogue do other things with those dice cuz my goodness are there a lot of them uh and so cunning strike was then born cunning strike really is an answer to what if the Rogue could do other things with those Dice and so at the start what the Rogue can do is can trade sneak attack dice to do things like poison their target trip their target withdraw from melee uh without provoking opportunity attacks that sort of thing then at higher level you get even more options and then you also gain the ability to pile on multiple options to the same sneak attack and so it is all about giving the Rogue ways to do more than just bucket loads of damage without taking away the ability to do bucket loads of damage because sometimes the Rogue will still want to just take all their sneak attack Dice and apply all of it to damage but in those cases where it would be more helpful for you to poison the target knock them down withdraw or knock them down knock them out harmlessly because at higher level the Rogue also has even the option to just knock them out and not deal uh enough damage to actually slay them yeah you don't need to Assassin every NPC you meet exactly uh in addition to adding hunting strike to the Rogues kit uh We've also enhanced other features that were there uh we took reliable talent and moved it to a lower level uh we made it so that thieves can't now gives you an additional language in addition to uh allowing you to use thieves can't and we've also at level three added a brand new feature called Steady Aim this debuted in Tasha's cauldron of everything it's now graduated to the core books and this allows uh the Rogue To Be steady and give themselves advantage on their next attack roll a fact let's put a pin in that a fact we will return to when we get to the Assassin yes and uh the Assassin is especially glad that Steady Aim is now in the book uh we also even enhance slippery mind at higher level which used to just give you proficiency and wisdom saves it now gives you Proficiency in both wisdom and Charisma saves uh and the reason why that's relevant is it means now Rogues will be harder to banish since since most spells and other effects that uh forcefully teleport people away are banish them uh involve Charisma saving throws oh interesting and uh we wanted Rogues to have all around slippery minds and to to Really lean into a the theme that not only are Rogues really good at stealth devastating single strikes with sneak attack but they're also good at wiggling out of danger and a number of the rogue's abilities are all about wiggling out of either physical danger or uh mental or magical Danger and all of that together really I think achieves that goal that we had of take this Rogue that's beloved that's working really well and just crank up the volume a little bit I love having extra things to do with sneak attack I love turning that into a resource um we've seen that kind of design element with a couple of things in this new players handbook but that is something I adore because You' always wanted to have the to potentially poison a Target right or to knock out a Target even in the video games I I grew up playing like thief and dis honored like that's all very iconic for rogue to be able to do so that that's super exciting yeah and again just as with weapon Mastery it is something that we have loved playing with in our play Test games and again you have weapon Mastery to play with too now a rogue a rogue does not have as many masteries to play with as say the fight titer but still enough for it to make a difference yeah and uh it gives the Rogue some really interesting tactical mini games when especially once cunning strike is in the mix yeah to figure out each turn it's like okay what am I going to do with my weapon what am I going to do with my sneak attack uh a lot of fun then contributing to the rogue's enhanced profile yeah are the four subclasses now the Rogue has its two classic subclasses the Assassin and the thief and those are two arch types in the Rogue that go all the way back to first edition d and d and it's all about really do you want to emphasize the killing part of the rogue's Identity or do you want to emphasize the uh infiltrator and treasure hunter side of the Rogues identity right uh with the thief representing infiltration and uh treasure hunting and then the other two subclasses that are available just as in the fighter we have the eldrich Knight and the S Warrior taking the Baseline class and mixing it with stuff outside the class we have the same thing with the Arcane trickster and the Soul knife in the Rogue where you can take the Baseline Rogue and mix it either with spellcasting in the Arcane trickster or mix it with psionic power in the soul knife nice uh shall we start with the Assassin yes let's start with the Assassin my first character was an assassin so I have I've spent time with this subass so the Assassin is long ban a very popular Arch type but the 2014 version of the subass struggled in actual play uh too much of its core identity relied on surprising uh the other yeah the other combatants uh in a in a battle and that could be quite challenging to pull off and since we've changed the surprise rules in the new players handbook we didn't want to have anything in the Assassin that of course relied on that anymore we wanted to at the Baseline for the assassins abilities to be more reliable so that you could feel like your subass was actually doing something and so with that in mind uh we redesigned the assassinate feature first off it gives the Assassin advantage on initiative roles this for us was something we planned on doing for a long time once we revised the Assassin because we felt that the Assassin should have a better chance of going first uh than than most other combatants uh because of course to do their job of assassination getting the jump on others is a critical part of that now what we also did is we made it so that the extra damage that they can deal in the first round of combat is no longer reliant on someone being surprised but instead simply RI it on the other person not having acted yet so and so the the two parts of assassinate work together we gave advantage on initiative roles so that the Assassin is more likely to go sooner and going sooner means they have more potential targets to use their assassinate on because the the requirement to use it is simply that the the target has not acted yet uh in in the combat and we have found that in play testing this has achieved the goal of making the Assassin actually a bble to use their core stick uh reliably in most battles unless the D20 is just totally cruel to them right uh we also uh made a number of other enhancements uh simple ones like in Assassin's tools we now not only give you the proficiencies that we gave you before but now we also give you the tools themselves uh we were chuckling when we realized that a decade ago we gave you these proficiencies uh and then we're like well and and good luck yeah so now you actually get a disguise kit and a poisoners kit when when you reach uh the level where you get uh these proficiencies uh We've also then and this goes back to Steady Aim that we were talking about before we've completely redesigned infiltration expertise so that it it still include some of the mimicry that the Assassin was capable of before uh to make it easier for them to socially infiltrate uh certain uh places where they might be hunting uh someone or something down but we've also now made it so that they can use Steady Aim on the Move most Rogues when they use Steady Aim can't move for the rest of the turn because they are standing still as they line up and attack the Assassin who you know in the narrative you can often imagine would be in a sticky situation where they might need to be moving John Wick style uh as they as uh they are battling people we wanted them to be able to line up their shots even while they're running across the room right uh and to me this is actually one of the most cool things in in the Assassin just from a sort of cinematic standpoint right is is imagining them doing this uh we have also replaced the impostor feature that they used to have and given them a brand new feature called inv Venom weapons which ties into the new cunning strike feature in the Baseline Rogue uh which allows them to deal more damage and ignore poison resistance when they use the poison option of cutting strike we wanted assassins to be the best at using the new poison option that all Rogues have access to perfect uh and then finally uh Death Strike no longer relies on surprise uh instead you just have to sneak attack somebody in the first round of combat and you can potentially have your death strike uh so we did assassin so Arcane trickster yeah Arcane trickster is it's it's perfect it's always been perfect this is a hard one to improve upon well and the Arcane trickster because it was so solid and so fun it other than just getting some tweaks to integrate seamlessly into uh the rest of the players handbook really only got uh a few modifications uh and one bit of actual redesign so first on the front of just some nice enhancements the Arcane trickster's spellcasting ability no longer has any school of magic restrictions perfect uh and like the eldrich Knight who can now use an Arcane Focus the arcane trickster can now use uh an Arcane focus and the Arcane trickster continues to be the awesome spell wielding Rogue who can use Mage hand for Endless Shenanigans uh and we then allow even more Shenanigans with a new new version of versatile trickster which we've redesigned to now interact with cunning strike in the Baseline Rogue and just as the Assassin is now really good at using the poison option in cunning strike the Arcane trickster is really good at using the trip cunning strike because now when you as the Rogue trip someone you can also have your Mage hand trip somebody else and so you can imagine everyone's distracted by the Rogue doing something and then over there the Mage hand is going whoop and then someone else tumbles down uh so you will be able to get up to even more silliness as an Arcane trickster uh I have always loved this subass for truly delivering what's in its name being a trickster uh because there is so much prankish in this subass I theve a lot as hurricane trickster it is a very very fun subclass also really great at infiltration at triggering traps with without dying like there's is one of those perfect meshes of a of a rogue adding magic to a rogue to just get by a little bit better and it sounds like a small thing but in both of the eldrich Knight and the Arcane trickster us removing the school of magic restrictions in each of them is itself a big change because it means you will be able to uh build a mix of abilities that you could never build in the past uh because the school of magic restrictions in the past really kind of hedged you in yeah in the type of Arcane trickster you can build and and now you have way more options perfect the other Rogue subass that is mixing in Supernatural power with the Rogues Baseline abilities is the soul knife for me one of the things that that I enjoy about the Arcane trickster and the Soul knife is they are not only siblings to each other as the two Rogue subclasses that mix roguishness with Supernatural ability but they are also siblings to the other two subclasses in that the Arcane trickster is basically the magical equivalent of the thief and the Soul knife is the supernatural equivalent of the Assassin yeah and the soul knife manifests this psychic blade and uses it to terrifyingly attack people and leave no Trace that's the creepiest bit yeah and the Soul knife appeared originally in Tasha's cauldron of everything uh it will feel much the same here but it has enhanced presentation it's now been fully integrated into uh the rule set of the new players handbook but we also made a couple of critical functional changes to uh the use of the Soul knife itself because I'm guessing what these are now so and they're they're they're just like in the Arcane trickster it goes a long way us lifting the school of magic restriction in terms of how the subass will feel the soul knife has two important changes to the psychic blades one of them is you can now use them on your opportunity attacks yeah uh this was probably the most requested feature for the soul knife is being able to use the the psychic blades for opportunity attacks and now you can thank you the other you're welcome the the other cool thing that we've done for the psychic blades is we've given them a Mastery property we wanted the soul knife to feel like the were still getting to use the fun of the Mastery system even when using their psychic blades and so the psychic blades have the Vex Mastery property which is the property that sets up your next attack to have Advantage meaning if the soul knife is using their ability to make a a an attack with their action and then a second one with their bonus action that bonus action attack can now have advantage thanks to the Vex of their first attack yeah so you you are setting up your sneak attack very well and you've got this extra weapon Mastery yes so next up the thief uh let's talk about the thief so the thief has a number of fun enhancements as well as redesigns within it our goal here was to just make the thief even more thiefy um so one of the things that we did is in the fast hands feature we've given the thief the ability to activate magic items as a bonus action previously fast hands did not apply to magic items and now it does and so the thief will be able to take a magic item yeah that requires a magic action for Activation and be thanks to fast hands now Activa as a bonus action oh perfect we've also made it so that uh in Second Story work the thief can now use their dexterity instead of their strength when determining their jump distance and it now gives them a climb speed it technically gave them a climb speed before but did not call it a climb speed oh okay and so now now it Loops through the regular climb speed rules right uh We've also given you a new cutting strike option in Supreme sneak at level 9 uh which now allows you to make an attack while you're hidden and stay hidden it's nasty stuff and then finally in use magic device we've given the thief the ability to attune to up to four magic items instead of just the three that most characters are limited to uh it also gives the thief a chance of using a magic item that has charges in it of not actually expending any charges when using the item and we've also provided guidance on how the thief can use spell Scrolls that they wouldn't normally be able to use and so they are they're really great at kind of cheating number a number of the rules in the game and that's the Rogue it is a gloriously stealthy class uh that is now even trickier than it was before the new players handbook is available for pre-order right now on D and D Beyond you can find that link in the video description and you can also find the new core Rule books bundle for pre-order both physical and digital thank you so much for watching we have a ton of video content coming out about the new players handbook and all the new core rule books the new monster manual the new dungeon Masters Guide so be sure to check out all of that content and thank you for watching

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Keywords: Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, gaming, roleplaying game, ttrpg, forgotten realms, eberron, Wizards of the Coast, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, tabletop, RPG, Todd Kenreck, dnd, Wildemount, Critical Role, Vecna, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, D&D Beyond, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 3, BG3, Larian, Corerulebooks

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Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 24 2024