Rogue

Some rogues enhance their fine-honed skills of stealth and agility with magic, learning tricks of enchantment and illusion. These rogues include pickpockets and burglars, but also pranksters, mischief-makers, and a significant number of adventurers.

Starting at 9th level, if you are hidden from a creature when you cast a spell on it, the creature has disadvantage on any saving throw it makes against the spell this turn.

At 13th level, you gain the ability to distract targets with your mage hand. As a bonus action on your turn, you can designate a creature within 5 feet of the spectral hand created by the spell. Doing so gives you advantage on attack rolls against that creature until the end of the turn.

At 17th level, you gain the ability to magically steal the knowledge of how to cast a spell from another spellcaster.

Immediately after a creature casts a spell that targets you or includes you in its area of effect, you can use your reaction to force the creature to make a saving throw with its spellcasting ability modifier. The DC equals your spell save DC. On a failed save, you negate the spell's effect against you, and you steal the knowledge of the spell if it is at least 1st level and of a level you can cast (it doesn't need to be a wizard spell). For the next 8 hours, you know the spell and can cast it using your spell slots. The creature can't cast that spell until the 8 hours have passed.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

You focus your training on the grim art of death. Those who adhere to this archetype are diverse—hired killers, spies, bounty hunters, and even specially anointed priests trained to exterminate the enemies of their deity. Stealth, poison, and disguise help you eliminate your foes with deadly efficiency.

Your archetype grants you features at 3rd level and then again at 9th, 13th, and 17th level.

Starting at 9th level, you can unfailingly create false identities for yourself. You must spend seven days and 25 gp to establish the history, profession, and affiliations for an identity. You can't establish an identity that belongs to someone else. For example, you might acquire appropriate clothing, letters of introduction, and official-looking certification to establish yourself as a member of a trading house from a remote city so you can insinuate yourself into the company of other wealthy merchants.

Thereafter, if you adopt the new identity as a disguise, other creatures believe you to be that person until given an obvious reason not to.

At 13th level, you gain the ability to unerringly mimic another person's speech, writing, and behavior. You must spend at least three hours studying these three components of the person's behavior, listening to speech, examining handwriting, and observing mannerism.

Your ruse is indiscernible to the casual observer. If a wary creature suspects something is amiss, you have advantage on any Charisma (Deception) check you make to avoid detection.

Starting at 17th level, you become a master of instant death. When you attack and hit a creature that is surprised, it must make a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 + your Dexterity modifier + your proficiency bonus). On a failed save, double the damage of your attack against the creature.

You hone your skills in the larcenous arts. Burglars, bandits, cutpurses, and other criminals typically follow this archetype, but so do rogues who prefer to think of themselves as professional treasure seekers, explorers, delvers, and investigators. In addition to improving your agility and stealth, you learn skills useful for delving into ancient ruins, reading unfamiliar languages, and using magic items you normally couldn't employ.

Starting at 9th level, you have advantage on a Dexterity (Stealth) check if you move no more than half your speed on the same turn.

By 13th level, you have learned enough about the workings of magic that you can improvise the use of items even when they are not intended for you. You ignore all class, race, and level requirements on the use of magic items.

When you reach 17th level, you have become adept at laying ambushes and quickly escaping danger. You can take two turns during the first round of any combat. You take your first turn at your normal initiative and your second turn at your initiative minus 10. You can't use this feature when you are surprised.

As an archetypal Inquisitive, you excel at rooting out secrets and unraveling mysteries. You rely on your sharp eye for detail, but also on your finely honed ability to read the words and deeds of other creatures to determine their true intent. You excel at defeating creatures that hide among and prey upon ordinary folk, and your mastery of lore and your keen deductions make you well equipped to expose and end hidden evils.

Starting at 9th level, you have advantage on any Wisdom (Perception) or Intelligence (Investigation) check if you move no more than half your speed on the same turn.

Beginning at 13th level, your senses are almost impossible to foil. As an action, you sense the presence of illusions, shapechangers not in their original form, and other magic designed to deceive the senses within 30 feet of you, provided you aren't blinded or deafened. You sense that an effect is attempting to trick you, but you gain no insight into what is hidden or into its true nature.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses of it when you finish a long rest.

At 17th level, you learn to exploit a creature's weaknesses by carefully studying its tactics and movement. While your Insightful Fighting feature applies to a creature, your Sneak Attack damage against that creature increases by 3d6.

Your focus is on people and on the influence and secrets they have. Many spies, courtiers, and schemers follow this archetype, leading lives of intrigue. Words are your weapons as often as knives or poison, and secrets and favors are some of your favorite treasures.

Starting at 9th level, if you spend at least 1 minute observing or interacting with another creature outside combat, you can learn certain information about its capabilities compared to your own. The DM tells you if the creature is your equal, superior, or inferior in regard to two of the following characteristics of your choice:

• Intelligence score
• Wisdom score
• Charisma score
• Class levels (if any)

At the DM's option, you might also realize you know a piece of the creature's history or one of its personality traits, if it has any.

Beginning at 13th level, you can sometimes cause another creature to suffer an attack meant for you. When you are targeted by an attack while a creature within 5 feet of you is granting you cover against that attack, you can use your reaction to have the attack target that creature instead of you.

Starting at 17th level, your thoughts can't be read by telepathy or other means, unless you allow it. You can present false thoughts by succeeding on a Charisma (Deception) check contested by the mind reader's Wisdom (Insight) check.

Additionally, no matter what you say, magic that would determine if you are telling the truth indicates you are being truthful if you so choose, and you can't be compelled to tell the truth by magic.

You are skilled in stealth and surviving far from the streets of a city, allowing you to scout ahead of your companions during expeditions. Rogues who embrace this archetype are at home in the wilderness and among barbarians and rangers, and many Scouts serve as the eyes and ears of war bands. Ambusher, spy, bounty hunter—these are just a few of the roles that Scouts assume as they range the world.

At 9th level, your walking speed increases by 10 feet. If you have a climbing or swimming speed, this increase applies to that speed as well.

Starting at 13th level, you excel at leading ambushes and acting first in a fight.

You have advantage on initiative rolls. In addition, the first creature you hit during the first round of a combat becomes easier for you and others to strike; attack rolls against that target have advantage until the start of your next turn.

Starting at 17th level, you can strike with deadly speed. If you take the Attack action on your turn, you can make one additional attack as a bonus action. This attack can benefit from your Sneak Attack even if you have already used it this turn, but you can't use your Sneak Attack against the same target more than once in a turn.

You focus your training on the art of the blade, relying on speed, elegance, and charm in equal parts. While some warriors are brutes clad in heavy armor, your method of fighting looks almost like a performance. Duelists and pirates typically belong to this archetype.

A Swashbuckler excels in single combat, and can fight with two weapons while safely darting away from an opponent.

At 9th level, your charm becomes extraordinarily beguiling. As an action, you can make a Charisma (Persuasion) check contested by a creature's Wisdom (Insight) check. The creature must be able to hear you, and the two of you must share a language.

If you succeed on the check and the creature is hostile to you, it has disadvantage on attack rolls against targets other than you and can't make opportunity attacks against targets other than you. This effect lasts for 1 minute, until one of your companions attacks the target or affects it with a spell, or until you and the target are more than 60 feet apart.

If you succeed on the check and the creature isn't hostile to you, it is charmed by you for 1 minute. While charmed, it regards you as a friendly acquaintance. This effect ends immediately if you or your companions do anything harmful to it.

Starting at 13th level, you can use a bonus action on your turn to gain advantage on the next Dexterity (Acrobatics) or Strength (Athletics) check you make during the same turn.

Beginning at 17th level, your mastery of the blade lets you turn failure into success in combat. If you miss with an attack roll, you can roll it again with advantage. Once you do so, you can't use this feature again until you finish a short or long rest.

Many rogues walk a fine line between life and death, risking their own lives and taking the lives of others. While adventuring on that line, some rogues discover a mystical connection to death itself. These rogues take knowledge from the dead and become immersed in negative energy, eventually becoming like ghosts. Thieves' guilds value them as highly effective information gatherers and spies.

Many shadar-kai of the Shadowfell are masters of these macabre techniques, and some are willing to teach this path. In places like Thay in the Forgotten Realms and Karrnath in Eberron, where many necromancers practice their craft, a Phantom can become a wizard's confidant and right hand. In temples of gods of death, the Phantom might work as an agent to track down those who try to cheat death and to recover knowledge that might otherwise be lost to the grave.

How did you discover this grim power? Did you sleep in a graveyard and awaken to your new abilities? Or did you cultivate them in a temple or thieves' guild dedicated to a deity of death?

9th-level Phantom feature

When a life ends in your presence, you're able to snatch a token from the departing soul, a sliver of its life essence that takes physical form: as a reaction when a creature you can see dies within 30 feet of you, you can open your free hand and cause a Tiny trinket to appear there, a soul trinket. The DM determines the trinket's form or has you roll on the Trinkets table in the Player's Handbook to generate it. You can have a maximum number of soul trinkets equal to your proficiency bonus, and you can't create one while at your maximum.

You can use soul trinkets in the following ways:

• While a soul trinket is on your person, you have advantage on death saving throws and Constitution saving throws, for your vitality is enhanced by the life essence within the object.
• When you deal Sneak Attack damage on your turn, you can destroy one of your soul trinkets that's on your person and then immediately use Wails from the Grave, without expending a use of that feature.
• As an action, you can destroy one of your soul trinkets, no matter where it's located. When you do so, you can ask the spirit associated with the trinket one question. The spirit appears to you and answers in a language it knew in life. It's under no obligation to be truthful, and it answers as concisely as possible, eager to be free. The spirit knows only what it knew in life, as determined by the DM.

13th-level Phantom feature

You can phase partially into the realm of the dead, becoming like a ghost. As a bonus action, you assume a spectral form. While in this form, you have a flying speed of 10 feet, you can hover, and attack rolls have disadvantage against you. You can also move through creatures and objects as if they were 3, but you take 1d10 force damage if you end your turn inside a creature or an object.

You stay in this form for 10 minutes or until you end it as a bonus action. To use this feature again, you must finish a long rest or destroy one of your soul trinkets as part of the bonus action you use to activate Ghost Walk.

17th-level Phantom feature

Your association with death has become so close that you gain the following benefits:

• When you use your Wails from the Grave, you can deal the necrotic damage to both the first and the second creature.
• At the end of a long rest, a soul trinket appears in your hand if you don't have any soul trinkets, as the spirits of the dead are drawn to you.

Most assassins strike with physical weapons, and many burglars and spies use thieves' tools to infiltrate secure locations. In contrast, a Soulknife strikes and infiltrates with the mind, cutting through barriers both physical and psychic. These rogues discover psionic power within themselves and channel it to do their roguish work. They find easy employment as members of thieves' guilds, though they are often mistrusted by rogues who are leery of anyone using strange mind powers to conduct their business. Most governments would also be happy to employ a Soulknife as a spy.

Amid the trees of ancient forests on the Material Plane and in the Feywild, some wood elves walk the path of the Soulknife, serving as silent, lethal guardians of their woods. In the endless war among the gith, a githzerai is encouraged to become a Soulknife when stealth is required against the githyanki foe.

As a Soulknife, your psionic abilities might have haunted you since you were a child, only revealing their full potential as you experienced the stress of adventure. Or you might have sought out a reclusive order of psychic adepts and spent years learning how to manifest your power.

9th-level Soulknife feature

Your Psychic Blades are now an expression of your psi-suffused soul, giving you these powers that use your Psionic Energy dice:

13th-level Soulknife feature

You can weave a veil of psychic static to mask yourself. As an action, you can magically become invisible, along with anything you are wearing or carrying, for 1 hour or until you dismiss this effect (no action required). This invisibility ends early immediately after you deal damage to a creature or you force a creature to make a saving throw.

Once you use this feature, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest, unless you expend a Psionic Energy die to use this feature again.

17th-level Soulknife feature

You can sweep your Psychic Blades directly through a creature's mind. When you use your Psychic Blades to deal Sneak Attack damage to a creature, you can force that target to make a Wisdom saving throw (DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Dexterity modifier). If the save fails, the target is stunned for 1 minute. The stunned target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.

Once you use this feature, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest, unless you expend three Psionic Energy dice to use it again.

As magic has grown in the world, so too have its various practitioners: some study assiduously, some are born with innate magic, some draw upon nature or the divine. You, however, are of an order altogether new and unique, drawing upon the Weave of magic indirectly. You utilize the remnants of magic already cast, something unseen by most, but you have adopted a special attunement for discovering arcane echoes.

You have learned enough about magic to have an elementary grasp of some of its precepts. Choose 2 cantrips from the Wizard spell list. You can cast these cantrips at will. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for these cantrips.

In addition, you can cast detect magic and identify spells as rituals.

By the time you are 3rd level in this class, you have learned to identify spells and the echoes they leave behind. When a spell is cast, it leaves behind an echo you can see or feel until the start of the caster's next turn; you can absorb that arcane energy and use it to your benefit. Check out the Echo Table below for certain levels and the echoes of spells you can absorb. If a spell fits the criteria, you can absorb the echo of a spell that is cast since the end of your last turn using your bonus action. The absorption lasts until the start of your next turn. You can't feel or see the spell if the origin is under total cover, meaning you can't absorb it even if its distance matches, and you can have only one echo absorbed at a given time. Any effects on creatures due to an Echo's effects are negated if you gain a new Echo or the Echo's duration has elapsed.

The absorption's duration increases by 1 minute each time you gain a new Subclass Feature (at levels 9, 13, 17).

The distance of a spell addresses the origin of a spell, not the point it reaches or effects.

Echo Table

When you absorb a spell, you can improve your abilities to do one of the following while the echo remains absorbed by you:

Magical Sneak Attack. You can forgo 1d6 from your Sneak Attack dice to make your damage force damage, instead of the normal damage type of your weapon.

Elemental Sneak Attack. If you absorb a damaging spell that deals one of the damage types (acid, cold, fire, or lightning), you can change one of your Sneak Attack dice with the elemental type. For example, if you absorb a firebolt with your bonus action, you can change one of the 1d6s from your Sneak Attack pool to fire damage.

Mirror the Spell. You can cast the spell you absorbed with your bonus action. You can use this ability a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus and regain expended uses when you finish a long rest. The spell uses your spellcasting ability and if it requires concentration, you must concentrate on it. If the spell requires costly components, you must provide them as well, otherwise you can't ignore material components if there is no cost. If the spell was cast on a higher level than normal, it's counted as the lowest possible level.

Enhance Magical Defenses. You can use your reaction when you make a saving throw against a spell. The spell's echo lets you add 1d6 to the saving throw if you fail.

Improved Cunning Action. The next Cunning Action you take lets you choose two options from the list of available options, but you can't choose the same two options. You can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest. After 9th level, you can use this ability without needing to rest each time you take a Cunning Action.

By the time you reach level 9 in this class, your understanding of the Weave has increased greatly. You have Advantage on saving throws against spells or other magical effects.

In addition, when you hit a creature with an attack roll with a successful Sneak Attack, you can forgo using your Sneak Attack damage dice; if you do so, you can force the creature to make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, it can't cast spells or activate magical objects. Additionally, if it was concentrating on a spell, it loses concentration. This effect remains for 1 minute on the creature. At the end of each of its turns, it can repeat the saving throw to be free from the effect. You can use this ability a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus and regain expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Additionally, the absorption's duration increases by 1 minute.

At 13th level, your expertise in harvesting the echo of magic has blossomed to even greater heights. When you absorb an echo of a spell, you have these two options:

Perfect Strike. You don't need to have Advantage against a target to make a Sneak Attack while you have this spell echo. You can't use Sneak Attack if you have Disadvantage on the roll.

Precise Strike. You can instantly expend the echo to grant yourself a bonus on one attack roll you make this turn equal to the spell's level (+1 bonus if it's a cantrip).

You can use these features a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus and regain expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Additionally, the absorption's duration increases by an additional minute, and you can absorb an echo with a free action instead of a bonus action.

When you absorb a spell and cast it, you can use the spell attack bonus or spell save DC of the original caster if it's higher than your spellcasting ability.

In addition, while you have a spell absorbed, you have access to two new reactions: Echo Blast and Echo Shift.

Echo Blast. Each creature within 5 ft. of you must make a Dexterity saving throw against your Spell save DC or take 4d8 force damage, or half as much on a success.

Echo Step. You can teleport to a location within 5 ft. of the origin of the last spell you absorbed echo from. Additionally, the absorption's duration increases by an additional minute.