You Might Be an Arcane Trickster | Rogue Subclass Guide for DND 5e

hey have you ever been playing a wizard and thought to yourself I wish this guy was a little more stabby did you ever get so good at street magic you accidentally became magic well congratulations you might be an Arcane trickster but what is an Arcane trickster well sharpen your knives break out the top hat and start practicing your close-up magic I have two red balls and nothing cause we're getting tricky illusion Michael trick is something a [ __ ] does for money when you were first introduced to DND and started building a character what traits did you want them to have were they a little dark mysterious dangerous Debonair perhaps pansexual and above all else hot well you made Loki yeah yeah just straight up Tom Hiddleston is Loki that's your guy and you also made an Arcane trickster but you start out as a plain old Rogue meaning you get cool Rogue stuff like expertise Rogues are good at stuff and by default gooder than you so they get a lot of skills at level 1 you can choose 4 skills between acrobatics Athletics deception inside intimidation investigation perception performance Persuasions light of hand and stealth on top of whatever skills you can grab from your background then you can get real good by gaining expertise in two of them or one of them in your thieves tools stealth is a go-to for many rows but this lets you flavor up your character however you want you also get sneak attack allowing you to find the target's weak spots and do a bunch of damage at one time no that's a lot of damage this equates to an extra D6 every two levels you take in Rogue maxing out at 10 D6 you must be using a finesse arranged weapon have advantage on the roll or have an ally within five feet of the Target and you'll know you have Advantage because asking your DM every turn if you have sneak attack will never get old for anyone what could it is not that complicated you also get thieves can't thieves can't what thieves can't make up a language that makes sense apparently basically you talk like this I can't understand your accent and only other people who nope the can't can understand even though this is explained as a code thieves use to stay secret every Guild uses the same one so yeah same smart but don't you worry your DM will never remember this exists anyway second level gives us cunning action now here's the good good this allows you to dash disengage or hide as a bonus action the hide ability is especially useful as mechanically all enemies have baby brains and as long as you can beat their passive perception with a stealth check you can hug a dagger at them every round with Advantage at third level we become a for real for real Arcane trickster we gain something super special can you guess what it is go on no wrong answers can you oh that's right baby one of those books you stole must have been full of magic like the Hat on a snowman because you're a wizard Harry well kind of but this does open us up to a ton of potential to combo with our Rogue abilities while for now you only have access to illusion and enchantment spells your list has some absolute bangers on it for example did the dragon your DM accidentally introduce too soon in the campaign just hit you with a Nat 20. you can silvery barbs that as a reaction to give that Dragon disadvantage and give yourself a free sneak attack on your next hit want to make some extra money for the party use your expertise with deception and cast distort value to convince the NPC's shopkeep that that piece of Driftwood you found on the ground was actually really nice Driftwood and of course you get magehand as a Cantrell your Mage hand however is slick as hell not only is it now invisible you can straight up snatch [ __ ] out of people's pockets like an NPC in Skyrim with a slide of hand check still waiting on the ability to look through their inventory and see what you want though Arcane trickster buff win you can also control the hands as a bonus action using your cunning action ability so you can hit a bad guy with an arrow and Rob him at the same time I call it the classic shoot and loot you also get Steady Aim as an optional ability you can essentially burn everything but your action to gain automatic advantage on your next attack but since you have so much to do spell wise this one isn't as useful for you but could come in handy in a pinch fifth level gives us uncanny Doge stop it Dodge this allows us to burn a reaction to half the damage on an incoming attack as long as you can see the attacker great thing about this is that you can save those precious d8 hit dice since you usually don't have a ton to invest in Constitution allowing us to stay One Jump Ahead of the breadline a boy swing ahead of the sword level six gives us expertise and two more skills or one skill in your thieves tools if you took persuasion use it to bribe guards with a Charmed person or if you took performance distract your opponents with a card trick and then make a getaway level seven gets us evasion and second level spells evasion is an incredible skill that allows you to take half damage on a failed deck saving throw and no damage on a successful one like those guys who walk away from explosions you have learned to be completely unaffected by blast Force wins and something that should absolutely shatter your eardrums to look as sick as possible as far as spells go you got a lot of great choices here invisibility is an obvious choice for a rogue but you also have Mirror Image making you super annoying to hit hold person can result in an auto crit letting you make the most of those sneak attacks or cast magic mouth on a treasured statue of a hero in the middle of the Village Square to make it call everybody who passes by a Scrump muncher and watch as they try to figure out if that's an insult or not wait wait wait it's level eight so remember how I said you have to stick to enchantment and illusion spells well at level 8 your Arcane trickster gets a Brain Blast and you can pick one wizard spell from any school some obvious choices are shield for some extra protection cloud of daggers for straight damage or whip to lock an enemy in place level 9 already here we get magical Ambush what a cool ability if you cast a spell on a creature that you are hidden from they get disadvantage on the saving throw I love this ability and wish more subclasses hadn't eat stuff like this not only does it fit perfectly with the theme of a character who uses magic and sneaky and subversive ways it is actually mechanically fun to use okay so this next one is legitimately one of my favorite abilities in the game at level 11 Rose get reliable Talent meaning you can never roll below a 10 on an ability you were proficient at meaning if you invested in decks and took expertise in stealth the minimum you can roll on a high check at this level is a 23 and it will keep going up to a minimum of 27. if you're gonna be a skill monkey that monkey's got to have skills man but this also means you can do this with other abilities too want people to never know if you're telling the truth expertise and deception want to be the ultimate Grappler expertise in athletics want to make the party pet a gibbering mouth or animal handling maybe medicine to make it feel better or Arcana to kill it with fire versatile trickster lets you give your opponent the hand at level 13. literally you can now use your Mage hand to shove it in your opponent's face and give yourself advantage on a roll your magehand can't lift things and isn't very strong but it can give the mummy Lord some wet little slaps on the face until he's distracted enough for a sneak attack you also get third level spells like hypnotic pattern to confuse and distract your enemy or major image to create an illusory porta potty to hide in while making a getaway 14th level gives us blind sense letting you hear invisible creatures within 10 feet of you but it also gets us third level spells from any school so many great options here flame Arrows fly haste vampiric touch and of course Fireball 15th level games as proficiency and wisdom saving throws through slippery mind but 17th level gives us the ability spell thief this is another one I absolutely love as it fits the theme of the Arcane trickster so well when an enemy casts a Spell on You you can use the action to not only negate the Spell entirely by forcing expel save against them with their spell mod you add that spell to your list it does not have to be a wizard spell and for the next eight hours you can cast the spell as long as you have the spell level for it and the enemy spellcaster cannot at level 18 you have learned the skills of the Sneaky Snake to make sure no one gets advantage on you at level 19 gives us fourth level spells greater invisibility is an amazing Choice here but there are so many good options especially at the next level which is right now Stroke of Luck is our Capstone at level 20. once a day you can turn a missed attack into a hit or if you fail an ability check somehow you can instead treat that D20 roll as a straight 20. need to out grapple the Barbarian how about get unlossed from the forest need to read a book so much gooder you got it with Stroke of Luck you also get one last fourth level spell to choose from from any school and boy you got options polymorph wall of fire dimension door I could go on but you get it our cups run it over this subclass is just so full of flavor all the Arcane trickster abilities you get are the things you would want to feel like a sneaky little Mage you also have great mechanical Synergy with the Rogue abilities in and out of combat making it a powerful subclass in its own right I do have a special place in my heart for Marshall classes but that little bit of extra magic I think sets the Arcane trickster apart enough for it to be in a league of its own is it strong yes is it fun yes will you get what you're looking for if you wanted to try a Loki cosplay yes well what more can you ask for so if you're a fan of causing Mayhem dropped out of wizard school but pretty much got the gist of it and specialize in a very unique kind of magic I take the little white rope I place it in my ass you might be an Arcane Trickster

Channel: You Might Be A DND

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Keywords: dnd, 5e, guide, dnd one, dnd 5e, dungeons and dragons, ymba, rogue, sneak attack, arcane trickster, invisible, spells, rogue subclass, veth, magic, magic rogue, spellsthief, mage hand

Id: 2eRouHgS4z0

Length: 9min 4sec (544 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 14 2023