Rogue Guide - Classes in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

it is said that a blade in the dark is worth a thousand swords and dawn they are the masters of infiltration stealth and subterfuge today we talk about the road in Dungeons and Dragons pimp edition [Music] greetings scoundrels and thieves my name is Monty Barton and I am Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes on today's episode we're taking an in-depth look at the rogue class from D&D 5th edition yeah we're gonna take a look at everything you need to create your next rogue for your campaign we'll start with the ability scores races feats as and other build options that will help you prepare your rogue for any situation whether it's a back-alley brawl a dungeon infiltration or courtly intrigue we're also going to take a look at pop-culture references from film television comic books books and even history to get you inspired about playing your rogue and we've got lots of cool role-playing ideas and tips to help you flesh out your your rogues background and personality the rogue is the quintessential stealthy scoundrel yeah your character could be a master thief a deadly assassin a graceful Acrobat a tomb robber or any other fantasy archetype from your favorite story or movie no matter the way all rogues believe that the world is theirs for the taking but need to remember that curiosity killed the cat so let's get rolling why would we want to play a rogue why wouldn't you want to play a rogue they're sneaky they're mean and they can kill things with a lot of crazy moves and abilities they are such a fun and versatile class they have the ability to deal single-target damage with their thanks they're amazing sneak attack abilities yeah they get more skill proficiencies and tool proficiencies that any other class in the game especially with things like expertise and stuff like that exactly your skill bonuses are higher than virtually any other classes yeah right out the gate the other really big advantage I think for rogues and especially for new players is that they encourage a lot of creative thinking about situations especially because there's no resource management in the class whatsoever almost everything in the base class outside of archetypes is a useable completely at will so there's no bookkeeping to worry about you always know that you can use your best abilities whenever you need to although some of them have specific requirements and situational uses so that makes them really easy to manage but really fun to roleplay exactly which is kind of a killer combination I think that's probably why there's such a popular class in addition to the fact that they embody so many of our favorite archetypes and I think that some of the most well loved characters in fiction and fantasy are rogues because we love the killer for hire or the scoundrel with a heart of gold yeah so what role does the rogue play in the party I think that there's three different roles that every rogue ends up filling in an adventuring party the first right off the bat is going to be that single target damage dealer yeah they're not there to clean out an entire room full of enemies but they they pick the biggest enemy in the room or the one that needs to die the fastest and they say that's my target and they get to kill in it exactly and depending on your choice of archetype your sneak attack can be anything from a really nice hit to a one-shot kill beyond that every single rogue is an amazing skill specialist that is often depended on by the party to be the scout to disarm traps and they might even be the party face depending on how many social skills your rogue invested yeah but they do have that skill set to be the key infiltrator they're usually the ones that get sent ahead of the party they're the ones that have to do all that work which is really fun for role-playing but also very valuable for the party I think the biggest weakness all of the rogue is that often times they to be doing things off on their own and this means that a rogue does not have a lot of toughness innately they have a lot of wily ways about getting out of dangerous situations but it's very easy to get overconfident as a rogue and end up in over your head and then end up dead yeah just because you're a sneaky rogue doesn't mean you should split the party now if we want to get inspired to create our rogue we have a veritable rogues gallery of inspiration to choose from so you just love saying that I just yeah yeah I mean there's so many ways to get inspired about your rogue in in so many different places yeah I think because much like the fighter is the archetypal Big Damn hero the Rogue is another archetype that comes up in almost every mythology and fantasy story right from the get-go the trickster the infiltrator the liar the scoundrel the thief we love these types of characters and our inner fantasy and you can find them almost anywhere but we've got some of our favorites they always use that they always usually fall to be like second character to the lead but everybody seems to gravitate towards that character anyway yeah one of my favorite examples as you put it is every movie that has Harrison Ford in it yeah pretty much III think that Han Solo is the first character that everyone thinks of of the scoundrel rogue who ultimately has a heart of gold uh he doesn't really display a lot of good stealthiness in the movie actually fails a lot with yourself he does but as in terms of role-playing and in terms of personality and and like the just the way he presents himself he is the scoundrel yeah and even when he plays a character like Indiana Jones who I would also say is pretty roguish in the way that he behaves kind of embodying not the necessarily sneaky stealthy but the really cerebral and intelligent rogue who's great with dealing with traps explore environments and actually being a rather knowledgeable character as well great one from videogames is Nathan Drake from the popular Uncharted series yeah I think that those games again if you want to live the Indiana Jones yourself firsthand uh Nathan Drake is a perfect example straight up I think one of my favorite rogue characters by that's emerging in fiction right now in TV is Arya Stark Arya Stark every episode that she's in of game and throw Game of Thrones the longer I watched the show the more I get excited about her being a rogue and she just keeps getting better like I can see her leveling up through yet though I actually love Arya Stark as an example because she's such a great starting point for the backstory of a rogue like so many characters in fiction so many robes that we see play in game we never get to see them growing up in the streets or falling in with the mysterious Assassin's Guild and learning these weird skills so she's a really great example of thinking about what your your character did before they became an adventurer uh and also spoiler alert what the repercussions of who you turn your back on might be what about him what about Carmen Sandiego I love that show I love the whole mythos of Carmen Sandiego book being like the international thief that will steal anything right I love this idea of playing a rogue who is all about the heist yeah right and that is totally on board to steal the most absurd things ever if we want to look at comic books we also have star-lord it's another cool example of a rogue and of course Catwoman as Selena Kyle Catwoman is a phenomenal rogue like through and through yeah straight-up ultimately played straight also has that femme fatale angle as well that many rogues have you can be the seductress as well as being the thief and of course Black Widow if you want to have again that really complex backstory and complex motivations behind why your character fights for different sides also if you want to talk about Catwoman and Black Widow you have the perfect examples of the thief and the assassin yes exactly and a very clear difference although I think that probably both characters depending on which comic book you're reading have shifted yeah a crop across both of those as well going for our great Disney example I think Aladdin is probably a rogue as well yeah certainly the the Arabian Nights saga has so many great examples of thieves and rogues characters like the 40 thieves and Alibaba and all of those great myths and legends that can really inspire the where the origins of the road come from as that trickster character I think one of the best examples we always like to include a Lord of the Rings example when we can Bilbo Baggins is actually a great rogue yeah ultimately even though he's our reluctant hero at first I think a lot of what Bilbo Baggins does have really inspired the rogue character I think the other one that I would be completely remiss to not mention is cudgel the clever from Jack Vance is a dying earth and his adventures are pretty much the reason why we have the rogue class in Dungeons & Dragons that combined with probably Bilbo Baggins are the the instigators of this whole mess so now that we've talked about some of the inspiration let's talk about building your rogue there's a lot of great options here and like we said earlier you don't have to do a lot of management with them but you do have to make some pretty key choices yeah the ropes is an interesting class because unlike many classes that have lots of choices every time you level up I think a rogue only has a few really key decisions to make early on in their career and everything else from that is giving you tools that are making you better at being creative in play so if you're the type of person that really doesn't want to worry about a lot of bookkeeping both out-of-game when you level up your character uh and just managing stuff on your character sheet in play a rogue is really a perfect choice because mechanically the class is going to get more out of your own creativity about using what you have then the big choices that you have to make in character building yeah so the first thing that we're going to talk about is ability scores and for most rogues I'm gonna go ahead and say it's dexterity absolutely if you look at the rogue skill list if you look at their fighting styles and everything else it all points you towards being a fast and agile dexterous character and this should be your highest ability score and that doesn't just include shooting with a bow but also like the finesse weapons if you do want to be a close-range rogue you're gonna be using finesse weapons more likely than not the other big thing is that dexterity is just such a powerful stat because it also improves your armor class in light armor and gives you a higher initiative bonus many rogues really want to make that first strike in combat to take the biggest advantage possible so having that very high dexterity score out the gate and continuing to improve that is going to be the most important thing you can do for your rogue what other ability scores would we look at beyond next area I think at this point um with your row it's really gonna depend on how you want to roll play your character which makes that room very interesting because well there's a lot of mechanical benefits from each ability score from here it's really going to depend on how you imagine your rogue some people are going to want to play a very social character and they're gonna want to invest in the social skills so you'll want to improve your charisma but just like we talked about how Indiana Jones is a smart rogue intelligence can actually play a big part of being a roguish character too just as wisdom can be as well if you want to be a scout be very perceptive I was going to say wisdom because a lot of people rely on the road for that initial perception to not only detect traps enemies all sorts of things yeah so I find it's really hard to say which of these is the strongest because it's really gonna come down to the play style of both your campaign and what where do you want to go with the character I think that if you're looking at a classic dungeon crawler exploration I think wisdom is going to be your preference yeah but if you're expecting more of a social campaign I would lean more towards charisma with intelligence being probably they if you want to do the Cerebral rogue do it but it's probably the least compelling outside of role-playing choices similarly I think that your strength score is also one that is not terribly important um what about Constitution well I mean the idea of a rogue is to not get hit yeah I think that you know your constitutions not going to matter until it matters a lot yeah let's talk about some of the races that work best as a rogue I would immediately say any elves yeah all three of the elves because incidentally each of the elves gets either a charisma intelligence or a wisdom boost as well as as well as the bus to dexterity bonus so I think that all three of the rogues whether it's the wood elf the high off or the dark elf the drow are going to give lots and lots of great role-playing opportunities lots of different styles between all of them and all of them come with extra weapon training either a little bit of extra magic as well and really cool benefits that are just gonna make your rogue a little bit more versatile some of the most of the benefits to stealth as well with the wood elves ability to hide in natural terrain thanks to the mask of the wild really yeah what about halflings halflings as well oh the perennial favorite I think like there's nothing more classic than the halfling rogue I think that's why the D&D starter set always makes the halfling the rogue yeah right and again as a halfling you've got your choice of a constitution or charisma boost depending on whether you're strong heart or Whitefoot you have the naturally stealthy ability so you can hide behind larger creatures than yourself and again the +2 dexterity uh and you know what that halfling luck thing man halfling luck is always what so a while as a rogue you're gonna roll a one and you are gonna love that you have that lucky trait because it will save your but we also we all we always talk about the variant human which is a great choice here but one thing to keep in mind is the rogue doesn't need feats the way some of the other classes can really benefit from them but that's still there are some cool ones to pick and pick in the variant human can be really helpful yeah it's unlike other classes that really want to have a feet out the gate I don't think it's important as important for the road you also get an extra skill as a variant human but that's something that both the elves get because they get the perception skill automatically as well as other races like half elves also get that in addition to a whole other bunch of things the other thing that makes humans and halflings in particular less exciting than ELLs that can't be understated is humans do not have dark vision and choosing a race with dark vision is a gigantic advantage when it comes to being stealthy especially if you're fighting regular humans yeah yeah the advantages of darkness are huge and time and time again you play a human rogue it's like I want to hide in the dark well you can't see either yeah yeah you did mention half elves as well yeah I think that there are pretty solid choice yeah right especially for a social rogue that there's nothing bad about them and I think that the case could be made for them you could also if you've got Volvo's guide to monsters consider both the Tabac see and the Kangoo make fantastic non-standard rogues the tank whose mimicry ability is actually really cool in in certain types of social in stealth situations I would love to roleplay a campy rogue it just seems so cool yeah and we've headed to backseat rogue at our table who lived by that code of curiosity killed the cat but the speed bonus from the Taback see ya is huge for getting in and getting out as a road really really handy so if we look at the proficiencies of the rogue it kind of steers you towards that dexterity base class as well because you get like crossbows and some finesse weapons like the rapier and the short sword and all other simple weapons at hand crossbows yeah so the rogue is kind of weird because you don't get everything in the marshal weapon category but you get everything you want yeah anyways if you're taking that dexterity it gives you the weapons that you would be using anyway yeah the only one you don't get actually is the longbow and that makes the elves really compelling because they get the longer proficiency if you want that bigger damage die right but I think a lot of rogues are gonna like the style of the crossbow right yeah um you also are proficient in dexterity saving throws as well as intelligent saving throws and as you once you level up you'll get the slippery mind ability and you'll actually have proficiency in wisdom saving throws as well I don't think it's a rogue you're saving throws are gonna be stellar the one thing you're gonna be very very good at is dodging fireballs yeah but everything else you really want to watch it for it as a rogue you have a gigantic selection of skill proficiencies probably the most permissive one of any class in the game because you get to choose your choice of four skills right out the gate and then on top of that later we're gonna talk about expertise which ups those even more yeah but if you are looking at proficiencies to take I mean you should probably take stealth yeah and you probably don't want to pick up acrobatics as well because it's a natural compliment to that yeah I think most rogues are going to want to take perception so they can both locate the traps as well as disarm them and all robes are also proficient in thieves tools so you're gonna have that right out the gate that you're expected to be the one that disarms traps and opens locks I think is a rogue the more interesting choice is not what skills you have but what ones you don't have because sometimes more off not I find that people turn to the rogue and be like hey ro can you intimidate this guy in the Rogues like I don't have proficiency in intimidate I have deception yeah I can lie but I can't I can't be scary and I think deception is going to be the favorite one as well so I think you're probably right off the bat almost every rogue who's gonna take perception deception stealth and acrobatics and then you've got your background and pick up another couple and a few more if you get those from your race and I think that you kind of want to amass all these skills and just be able to do everything let's discuss some of the really cool things that robes can do we'll start with expertise yeah this one connects right back to your skill proficiencies because you at first level you get to choose two skills that you double your proficiency modifier in and as you level up you'll get to choose two more so this means that in total you'll have four skills that when you make your skill checks using them your proficiency bonus is doubled yeah and it's it's ridiculous to have double proficiency in something like stealth that just makes you really really sneaky like I've seen a single rogue that doesn't choose stealth oh yeah that that I mean it should be your expertise if you're planning on playing a rogue you're gonna be sneaky but getting like early on in the in the game you're getting like a plus 6 or a plus 8 through your stealth at very early levels so yeah I think the reason why you want to choose skills like stealth and deception is because stealth and deception are skills that are opposed to another creatures insight or perception check which means that you're rolling the dice against someone else's dice and that's where the double benefit really helps if you get a bad roll because they still need to get a really good roll to beat you whereas with other other ability checks you know that you can do those things more reliably but it really is like things like deception and stealth that I think that having expertise in is really really useful in would you choose these tools as an expertise uh-huh depends on the campaign if if I feel like it's going to come up some campaigns like I rarely use these still tools or see them coming out other ones there's like trap dungeons and like all sorts of things that you might be able to use the thieves tools for picking a lot of locks if that's kind of the way that you're gonna go then then yeah it might be beneficial I think that if you're gonna choose the thieves tools to disarm the trap you probably also want to think about choosing perception and investigation because all the expertise in the world isn't going to help you if you can't find the trap so probably the most famous ability that the Rogue has is the sneak attack sneak attack nothing feels better than getting that sneak attack and just being able to roll some extra dice this Fistful of dice just to know how cool you were in your attack it's probably one of the most awesome feeling abilities in the game especially when it happens so how sneak attack works is once on your turn um you can roll extra damage against a creature provided you have advantage on the attack role alternatively if you don't have advantage on the attack role but another creature who's an enemy of the creature your targeting is within five feet of it and not incapacitated you can also apply your extra sneak attack damage the amount of sneak attack damage that you get is directly related to your rogues level which basically improves by 1d6 on every odd level so if you're a seventh level rogue you have a 46 sneak attack and if you're a first level rogue you just have one extra die and I know that once upon a time as a new player one of the first characters I ever played was a rogue and Monty made me a nice little flowchart to tell me when I could use sneak attack and when I couldn't yeah it's pretty step by step but I find a lot of new rows and new players in general get really confused by all these requirements because even just saying it out loud is a giant mouthful right but in practice there's a few really key checks and balances that you need to make sure of the first thing that you need to always be doing to sneak it is you need to be willing a finesse weapon or a range weapon the next step is you must have advantage on the attack role if you don't have advantage on the attack role you can still apply your sneak attack damage provided you don't have disadvantage and another creature who is an enemy of whoever your sneak attacking is within five feet of them this applies for both even if you're making a melee attack or a ranged attack as long as there's an enemy of the target within five feet of it this means that the Rogue works really well in a team scenario where you have the fighter or the Paladin or somebody who can run up and engage the enemy allowing the rogue to then step back and get those sneak attacks off to finish off those enemies and I will say so sneak attack is one of those abilities that is quite permissive and in general as long as the rogue is working with their party members or teammates are creating an event Aegis situation they will be able to reliably sneak attack almost every single turn in fact you you really have to be at a disadvantage the situation to not find a way of getting that to happen either your allies aren't helping you out or you truly are on your own it can be sometimes surprising for DMS that oh man this sneak attack ability is happening every single turn but yeah it usually does an important thing to remember is that sneak attack can only happen once per turn even if you eventually get an ability that allows you to attack twice or anything like that used to only get sneak attack one time per turn that's a dual wielding can still be a good idea because it gives you two opportunities to land that sneak attack if you're fighting an opponent with a higher armor class and the absolute icing on the cake of sneak attack is its damage is multiplied by a critical hit so if you do score crit with your sneak attack you pick up all those dice and roll them twice or double them however your specific group does critical hits it does apply a lot of extra damage which makes all those other abilities like assassinate and the roguish tonight features really really scary yeah if you can assassinate which doesn't mean that you get sneak attack that's gonna be a pretty day ahead and I will say as well to that that some of the roguish archetypes gain additional circumstances under which they can apply their sneak attack so this is a general rule of thumb and we're gonna include a little handout that you can download in the links below so that if you have a rogue that's still not understanding it you can print them out based on what Kelly used in one of our campaigns how about that cutting action I think that's another favorite ability that you get pretty early on as well for a rogue yeah it's it's incredible because it kind of frees up your action to do the stealth kills that you want to do and gives you the ability to do a bunch of other stuff on your turn mm-hmm I think my favorite example of it is using it to disengage when you're at short range so you can move in attack disengage and move out provided you have enough movement left over it lets you get into the melee and get out safely but also just using it to - means that a rogue speed is twice as much as it always is at any time so you can really either catch someone that's running away or keep the distance on them but probably the most interesting use is using that bonus action to hide yeah because as we described earlier being able to to hide is very beneficial for you getting that sneak attack and all of that so if you can find a way in combat to attack move use your bonus action to hide then on the next turn if you were successful in doing so you can get another sneak attack yeah however bear in mind that the rules for stealth require that you must be completely hidden that means that a foe cannot draw a line of sight for to you in order for you to hide fortunately we've also got a great video on the rules for stealth so you can check that out as well if you need to figure out exactly how you can hide the best advantage in combat so the roguish archetype is one of the choices you're gonna have to make at level 3 which is pretty early on in the game and it's going to define what kind of rogue you want to be yeah there's three choices of archetype in The Player's Handbook which are the arcane trickster the assassin and the thief and their thirst guide to everything has four yeah which are the mastermind the inquisitive the swashbuckler and the scout in my experience I'm often surprised when someone doesn't choose the assassin it's it's kind of a go-to choice there are benefits of all of them and I've always looked at some of the other ones to be like would this be cool but I tend to go back to the assassin a lot well I think that the reason why is because people the let's talk about the assassin first because yeah you just say so people choose the assassin because they see that you get to automatically crit any creature that you have surprised and they lose their minds and how good this ability seems like it is on paper after that ability which assassins get right out the gate mm-hmm the assassin archetype doesn't get much else that is truly amazing until the very very high levels one thing to keep in mind is that the surprise option is not going to present itself that often unless you're really really good and your party is really really good at figuring that out but not generally speaking you're not gonna get to assassinate all the time it is still a very powerful ability and if you want to play that rogue that has the potential of one-hit killing some big monster the assassinate ability is going to be your best ticket to do that I think it really stands in contrast to other classes like the arcane trickster because there's an arcane trickster you're gonna get a small selection of magical spells from the schools of illusion and enchantment which are really gonna change the way your character plays where is the assassin is all about getting that one giant hit you have all these cool abilities that you can use as an arcane trickster later on in the fight you got to decide really before you just write all the other archetypes off and go for the assassin just how often that ability is come up and play because it's not as often as it seems like it will be on paper and what about the thief what's the thief really gain benefits from I think the thief kind of gets a bad rap because the thief gets to expand their options for cutting action which is something it's gonna come up all the time right they get a lot of great boost to their mobility as well as a result but they kind of do seem like the most bland I think the arcane trickster is personally my favorite because anytime I see spell-casting with illusion magic means oh that means my rogue can no misty step and invisibility pretty awesome yeah that's gonna help out a lot so I yeah a lot of people don't look at the arcane trickster they don't really make it past assassin when they're reading about it yeah I think the arcane the like you look at the assassin and you go okay I get this amazing sneak attack on the first round of combat but then you compare that to the arcane trickster who actually can cast invisibility on themselves and reliably set up the conditions to get another sneak attack off either in combat or escape yeah I also do think that these antithyroid options and some of them were relayed from the Sword Coast adventurous guys yeah there are some really cool ones in there one that actually has caught my attention the swashbuckler I actually really enjoy yeah the swashbuckler is really cool because it allows you to sneak attack someone that is just in melee with you so if it's only you and the creature adjacent to each other you can still use your sneaky attack against them which can be pretty handy especially if if you're rolling up a rogue and you go around the table and your party members like I want to play a wizard I want to play a ranged ranger I want to play a sorcerer I want to play a warlock and you realize you're the only person that's going to be interested in fighting in melee combat might be worth choosing I really like the Scout just because it's kind of this interesting bridge to the Ranger it gives you a lot lots of actually really useful abilities in wilderness exploration whereas the thief might be more of the dungeon delvar expert the other to the mastermind and what's the other one the inquisitive the inquisitive both are very interesting to me but I think that it's like a niche type of campaign that you might be looking at them place your mind lets you use the help action as a bonus as you're cutting which which is pretty amazing which is really really useful for setting up like kind of feeling like you're a leader I think the zenith are is anitha's guide to everything says that he would be a mastermind I think the roguish archetypes are a pretty small part of your pocket and all of them come with pretty niche abilities that it's worth talking to your DM about the sort of campaign you're gonna be playing because I think that the definitely campaigns with more of a political or social focus are really gonna favor ones like the arcane trickster the mastermind and the inquisitive whereas exploration campaigns are gonna make the the scout and the thief much stronger and you really have to be playing a combat heavy campaign for the assassin to be the number one pick in my opinion whereas the arcane trickster I'm biased I love the arcane trickster so when we're figuring out how to roleplay our rogue what are some of the questions we need to ask well the rogue is so diverse right because if you want to be that gruff mysterious guy that pulls up their hood and sits in the corner of the bar and speaks in the gruff voice and only is motivated by money you can play that way yeah but there are a lot of other options as well and actually one of my favorite things that we were discussing before we shot this video is talking about Han Solo as the rogue and how he's not a lone wolf he kind of comes off as a lone wolf yeah but he's not at all no he's got a best friend yeah and he would never ever betray that best friend and I think that's really important his robes being you know doesn't trust anybody but the people that they do end up trusting they stick with for life and like once you're friends with a rogue that's gonna go a long way yeah a lot of players want to play a rogue and they might take that as invitation to steal from their party members or lie to their party members if you want to play the indie that way thumbs up like go for it but play just because you're a rogue doesn't mean that you have to steal from your party members and in fact you probably want to not do that if you want to keep your friends yeah and also I mean it's it's a team-based game so I mean if other people at the table are saying like hey I would like to not be stolen from or backstabbed or Ally - then there are other options to still play that gruff mean rogue and you know have a close group of friends that you're like I would do anything for these guys but everybody else you're gonna die but I mean that's the interesting thing is that like every rogue in fiction deals with that tension and that's always an interesting character arc but you always see how like the roguish character has to deal with the fact that the party doesn't trust them and then they either have to break that trust and regain it or really figure out how to prove themselves so the rest of the group that they can be that asset or something has to happen like there's always a bit of character development and I think that if you're just playing your rogue is this one note character that's like I just want to steal from everybody no matter what you're really missing out on the opportunity to embrace the ways that rogues in fiction develop and that's why we love those characters like hounds all those turning point is that he comes back right yeah um every row comes back they had that like oh my god I'm not I need to support these people that believe in me in some way or that find that cause and your room needs to be like what is your cause what is the thing that's gonna motivate you right is it money is it a pretty face is there some sort of principle that your character realizes oh this is actually important to me um maybe it's revenge right what about backgrounds there's a lot of good backgrounds for rogues as well yeah I think that the Rogue is really cool because you can actually roll a die and get stuck with whatever background you end up with and it could work and that could work as a road I think everyone's like I wanted she was criminal I mean I actually tend to lean more towards the charlatan when I play my room yes but criminal charlatan you could even be like a hermit you could be a folk hero what about our noble what about a noble noble who's actually a sneaky thief I can think of a lot of great archetypes of how a noble person would actually be a rogue especially uh well rogue noble swashbuckler no noble swashbuckle yeah right give and take all the insults a rogue that learned like they were trained in fencing right in their castles so that's where they get all their skills from but like they spend some time in the senior side of society and they're out to make a profit what if your rogue was a sage what would it mean for a rogue to come from a scholarly background well there's Indiana Jones birchen is another like classic yeah type right we also think about iconic rogues they all have like a weird flaw and it usually is something related to either greed or lust yeah and playing into those flaws is actually in my opinion what makes the rogue such such a unique character and almost all fiction that we see is they always play into their flaws and they always end up overcoming them but some of my favorite stories are our rogues that have played into their flaws and that always creates a very dynamic dynamic and interesting roleplay opportunity I'm thinking of those circumstances where like the the rogue is totally enamored by a pretty face right and they will do anything for the man or woman that they've set their eye on too and that's it not like I think in a lot of ways you think of star-lord was trying to get away with with it like a rogue that's trying to get laid will go to any lengths as well so will a rogue that's trying to get paid it rhymes I one of my favorite stories for for a rogue playing into its weaknesses is a character that actually played a rogue in one of the games I was DMing was in the middle of a boss and somebody cast hold monster on the boss and then it was the rogues turn and rather than do anything useful he ran to the statue behind the boss to start grabbing diamonds out of the eyes which then triggered a trap but I gave him an inspiration point because there was nothing better than The Wizard be like okay I've got it held what are you gonna do now and the road going I'm gonna go steal that stuff right over there that's what I'm gonna do because that's what I'm after I like shiny things I could just see a road that was like loved good food and wine like an alcoholic rogue would be another one Jack Sparrow is all about the rum right and how's the rum gone yeah exactly like just they just want to get another drink right right or they just want to get out of here so they can have another cigarette or something like really really mundane right and all those are gonna give you great opportunities to just not screw over the party but escalate the situation in an interesting way and I think is a rogue that that you the coolest way to roleplay a rogue is to fight the balance between being overly cautious and being stupidly brave because you're greedy so this has been our guide to the rogue in Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition we hope that you feel inspired and that you're ready to go sneak attack some bad guys and of course please tell us about your rogue in the comments below whether you've got a great story some build tips or ideas that you think we missed in this episode or even just some great role-playing ideas to inspire other people please share that with us below and if you want to learn more about stealth we do have a video on that right over here rogues are all about their actions as well so check out our video guide to actions in combat right over here please subscribe to the channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching we'll see you next time in the dungeon

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Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book, rogue, stealth

Id: CSZygaMWPLs

Length: 41min 47sec (2507 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 05 2018