01 02 03 Harbinger of Doom 04 05 15 16 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 31 32 33

D&D 5e: Divine Trickster Rogue Archetype

34
For a campaign that started up this past Saturday, one of the players was looking for a way to play a more divine-side rogue, rather than an arcane trickster. Now, a straight replacement of Arcane -> Divine is one thing, but the campaign setting has laws of magic that significantly differ from the Player's Handbook, so there are some things here that look quite odd. Still, a holy trickster figure is a pretty cool idea by itself.

Divine Trickster (Reborn Campaign)

As a student of secrecy, vengeance, or both, you have entered into a compact with the Queen who rules the Dark. You have much in common with Her clerics, except that you work Her will at the end of knife. Divine tricksters learn to tear down corrupt forms of order, so that something new and clean can flourish; you comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Spellcasting

When you reach 3rd level, you gain the ability to cast spells.

Cantrips. You learn three cantrips. You may choose from the Cleric spell list, Necromancy cantrips, and minor illusion.
Spell Slots. As Arcane Trickster (Player's Handbook, p. 98)
Domain. Select one Domain from the Cleric class. You may choose its domain spells for your Spells Known.
Spells Known of 1st-Level and Higher. You know three 1st-level cleric spells of your choice, two of which you must choose from your domain's list. 
The Spells Known column of the Arcane Trickster Spellcasting table shows when you learn more cleric spells of 1st level or higher. You must learn your domain spells of spell levels 1-4 as soon as they become available to you; for example, the Spells Known slots that you gain at 7th and 8th level must go to learning your domain's 2nd-level spells, while the slots you gain at 10th and 11th levels may be spent on any spell that you can learn.
Whenever you gain a level in this class, you can replace one of the cleric spells you know with another spell of your choice from the cleric list. You are not required to respend Spells Known to complete the set of your domain spells, though you may do so if you wish.
Spellcasting Ability. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for your cleric spells. You use your Wisdom whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Wisdom modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a cleric spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.
Spellcasting Focus. You can use a holy symbol as a spellcasting focus.

Channel Divinity

Starting at 3rd level, you may use your domain's Channel Divinity power once, and recover all uses when you take a short or long rest. You may only use the Channel Divinity options that are available to 2nd-level clerics.

Secrecy and Vengeance

At 9th level, choose one of the two abilities below:

Blade of the Reaper: When you deal your Sneak Attack damage, the ever-vengeful Queen rewards you with a gift of vitality. Regain hit points equal to your character level or half the damage dealt, whichever is lower. Once you use this ability, you may not use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
Enrapture: When you deal damage that would reduce a creature below 1 hit point, you may instead negate all damage dealt. If you do so, the creature must roll a saving throw against your spellcasting DC. If it fails, it is charmed by you for one minute or until you or your allies deal damage to it. Once you use this ability, you may not do so again until you complete a long rest.
When you reach 17th level, you can replace the charmed effect with dominate person or dominate beast. You choose whether to charm or dominate the target at the time you make the attack.

Afflict the Comfortable

Starting at 13th level, you gain advantage on all Wisdom (Insight) checks and Charisma checks against someone of social status or rank higher than your own.

Shadow Dancing

Starting at 17th level, while in any light less than direct, noonday sunlight, you can activate one of the following abilities:
Once you use one of these abilities, you may not do so again until you complete a long rest.

Design Notes

In the Reborn campaign, the Queen is all about secrecy, knowledge, vengeance, and the Dark. Since I'm not about to offer a rogue more skills, I had to largely drop the "knowledge" aspect. Necromancy (as found in core D&D wizards) is also part of her portfolio, which is where I'm going with Blade of the Reaper - it's modeled loosely on Grim Harvest. I'm playing in this campaign, so there may be all sorts of themes I don't know about yet. All clerics serve the Queen, which is why all domains are open here - but I recognize that that ability is suuuuper risky, especially with Preserve Life on the table, until you realize that Preserve Life loses a lot of its power in the rules changes of the Reborn campaign.

I also wanted to draw on some of the themes of, you know, tricksters, who are often divine figures themselves; hence Afflict the Comfortable. Were I to adapt this archetype to more mainline D&D cosmology, I would push that theme much harder, probably dropping Blade of the Reaper and possibly Enrapture to play up that theme in some way. I would probably restrict domain options as well.

Afflict the Comfortable presumably uses Lifestyle expenses to measure various characters' social ranks if it's not otherwise self-evident that one character outranks another.

Shadow Dancing is sort of insane, but then the 17th-level abilities of the other rogue archetypes are completely crazypants too. Too good? Not good enough (because of its once-per-long-rest limit)? I dunno.

Labels: , ,

35 36 37 38