Rogue Subclasses 5e
Published on December 12, 2024
Explore our Rogue subclasses guide to see which roguish archetype fits your stealthy stabber in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. From the Arcane Trickster to the Swashbuckler, find the subclass that aligns with your character’s expertise.
Evyn Fong - Wizards of the Coast - Thieves’ Guild Enforcer
Arcane Eye may earn a small commission from affiliate links in this article.
Learn more.Your Guide to DnD 5e Rogue Subclasses
The Rogue’s subclass is key to shaping your approach to stealth, combat, and subterfuge. Each archetype offers a distinct playstyle, defining how you approach social situations, exploration, and encounters through a set of unique features that enhance your Rogue’s versatility.
Will you be an Arcane Trickster, weaving illusions and enchantments to outwit your enemies, or a Swashbuckler, dazzling foes with acrobatic flair and a quick blade? This guide takes a closer look at each Rogue subclass, offering tips on how to make the most of their strengths and maximize your impact on every mission!
What is this guide?
This guide is meant as a deep dive into the 5e rogues subclasses. For the full overview of the rogue class, check out our rogue class guide.
To allow you to scan through the options quickly, we use the following color rating scheme:
- Red : Isn’t going to contribute to the effectiveness of your character build at all
- Orange : Situationally good, but a below-average option otherwise
- Green : A good option
- Blue : A great option, you should strongly consider this option for your character
- Sky Blue: An amazing option. If you do not take this option your character would not be optimized
Arcane Trickster
Arcane Trickster Rogues can use the spells from the Enchantment and Illusion spell lists. The Rogue’s innate abilities and useful spells synergize incredibly well to make an even sneakier, more versatile Rogue.
Check out our
Arcane Trickster 5e guide for a more in-depth breakdown of the Arcane Trickster subclass, including build recommendations, playstyle breakdowns, and an example build.
Assassin
The Assassin rogue is pretty straightforward. They are great at infiltrating and dealing huge burst damage, hence their ability to assassinate the target. In the right campaign this subclass can be absolutely indispensable, but without much spying or infiltrating they can feel lackluster.
3rd level
- Bonus Proficiency: Disguise Kit and Poisonor’s Kit both have their uses, but don’t expect this to solve all your problems.
- Assassinate: The main reason Assassins need to carefully choose their feats and stats. Going first is super important to get the most mileage out of this. When it connects, your enemies are in big trouble.
9th level
- Infiltration Expertise: This will largely depend on the type of campaign you are playing. For combat-oriented play this will be useless, but story-driven narratives with significant time spent outside combat is where Infiltration Expertise really shines.
13th level
- Impostor: Same as Infiltration Expertise, but for story-driven narratives it’s probably even better.
17th level
- Death Strike: Another multiplier for your attacks. Pulling off Assassinate, Sneak Attack, PLUS Death Strike is insanely lethal.
Inquisitive
Inquisitive rogues excel at observing everything that is happening around them. The idea behind this subclass is to make Insight, Investigation, and Perception as powerful as possible. In a story-based, investigative campaign, the Inquisitive rogue is top-notch. If you’re going to be doing any amount of fighting, look elsewhere.
Check out our
Inquisitive 5e guide for a more in-depth breakdown of the Inquisitive subclass, including build recommendations, playstyle breakdowns, and an example build.
3rd level
- Ear for Deceit: While useful to figure out when someone is lying, it’s situational and also not the end of the world if you do end up getting deceived.
- Eye for Detail: Better than Ear for Deceit. Enemies that like to hide or go invisible can really hurt your party if you aren’t prepared for it, and not having to use a whole action to search for them is beneficial.
- Insightful Fighting: This is a compelling reason to try out an Inquisitive Rogue. Sneak Attacks are your main source of burst damage, so the chance to use them without having advantage is quite the buff.
9th level
- Steady Eye: Perception is a critical skill, and Steady Eye makes sure that you’ll be perceiving all that there is to perceive.
13th level
- Unerring Eye: Useful, but the lack of a high WIS score on most Rogues dampens the utility you’ll get out of this thing. Still, it could save you only multiple occasions throughout a campaign.
17th level
- Eye for Weakness: More multipliers to the Rogue’s Sneak Attack damage. Sadly, other Rogue subclasses can just pump out much higher numbers with their features.
Mastermind
As with the Inquisitive rogue, the Mastermind rogue is better suited to out of combat scenarios than dungeon crawls. Though this subclass comes with some combat utility, the Mastermind will be woefully underwhelming compared to other rogues in battle. Choose the Mastermind if you are playing a story-based, investigative campaign centered around social situations.
3rd level
- Master of Intrigue: This one is difficult to place. The value of the proficiencies you gain are really dependent on your creativity as well as your ability to use them in the context of the campaign.
- Master of Tactics: Master of Tactics makes the rogue less of a lone wolf and can enable some sick team plays. Help actions are always great, especially as a bonus action, but with so many viable bonus actions available to the rogue you may not be able to justify using this often.
9th level
- Insightful Manipulator: You won’t always have the chance to use this before a fight breaks out. Besides, finding out an enemy’s WIS, INT, or CHA scores doesn’t change how fights play out most of the time.
13th level
- Misdirection: Moving the damage to an ally who is already covering you is a pretty lame feature.
17th level
- Soul of Deceit: A disappointingly specific and situational ability. This is most likely the worst 17th level feature that Rogues can get.
Phantom
Phantom rogues manipulate the knowledge of the dead and use spirits to generate their power. All of the Phantom’s abilities work well with one another and will see lots of use in just about any campaign.
3rd level
- Whispers of the Dead: Another proficiency that you can change to whatever you wish every short rest is amazing! Keep it on something that comes up relatively often, then do a short rest before you need a specific tool or skill to gain the proficiency. There are endless possibilities when you can be proficient in every tool in the game.
- Wails from the Grave: Rogues can struggle with doing multi-target damage, and here’s a nice way to do just that. At early levels you don’t have too many Sneak Attack dice for this to feel worthwhile, but once you get to higher levels this can do a significant amount of damage to a second target.
9th level
- Tokens of the Departed: There’s so much here in one ability, and all of it is flavorful and fun. The trinkets are easy to get, so you can always have one on you so that you have permanent advantage on death saving throws and CON saving throws. Since they are so easy to get, you can often use them to get a free Wails from the Grave trigger and make a new one soon after. Spending your trinket on asking the spirit you captured a question won’t be used nearly as often, but it can be lots of fun and even useful in the right circumstances. Just be aware that they can lie.
13th level
- Ghost Walk: 10 whole minutes of flight, being able to move through solid objects, and forcing attack rolls to have disadvantage against you. This ability is simply amazing in and out of combat, and the best part is that you can refresh it by spending a Tokens of the Departed trinket if you don’t want to wait for a long rest. The flying speed is only 10 feet, but since Rogues can Dash as a Bonus Action that shouldn’t slow you down too much.
17th level
- Death’s Friend: Trinkets shouldn’t be too difficult to get, but it’s still nice that you will always wake up with one ready to go after a long rest. The improved Wails from the Grave is also fantastic since it boosts your Sneak Attack damage even higher to the primary target, starting at an extra 4d6 when you get this ability.
Scout
Scouts come with powerful combat options and bridge the gap somewhat between the Rogue and the Ranger classes.
3rd level
- Skirmisher: You can move as a reaction, but only after an enemy ends its turn close to you so you probably have already been attacked. It can be a better reaction than Uncanny Dodge in some situations, but usually it’s simply not. If you’re not trying to create some distance to use ranged weapons then Skirmisher is a pretty weak offering.
- Survivalist: More proficient skills, and Expertise in them at that! Nature and Survival are great skills to have if you don’t have a ranger in the party.
9th level
- Superior Mobility: More mobility is nice, but there are much better ways a rogue can achieve that than this feature.
13th level
- Ambush Master: Advantage on initiative and advantage on attack rolls until your next turn means loads of Sneak Attacks right off the bat. You will want to go first to make this useful so plan your DEX and feats accordingly.
17th level
- Sudden Strike: Yes, it’s more bonus action shenanigans, but this is one of the best available. Additional attacks means additional chances to get off Sneak Attacks.
Soulknife
Soulknife Rogues use their psychic abilities to accomplish their goals on and off the battlefield. By expending Psyonic Energy dice they can use a host of very powerful abilities as a kind of pseudo-spellcaster.
3rd level
- Psyonic Power: Psyonic Energy dice are what makes the Soulknife subclass unique and powerful. You don’t have a huge pool of dice to pull from, but the abilities granted by this subclass feature are all worthwhile.
- Psi-Bolstered Knack: You roll a Psionic Energy die every time you fail an important skill or tool ability check since the die is only expended if it succeeds with the added die.
- Psychic Whispers: Telepathic communication is very useful when trying to be quiet or when strategizing around prying ears. This is also a good way for DMs to mitigate some metagaming so that players have a reason to talk to each other across the table even when their characters might not be able to.
- Psychic Blades: The Psychic Blades are like rolling a melee weapon and a ranged weapon into one. The raw damage is good, and it uses psychic damage which the vast majority of creatures in D&D cannot resist. They can even be used for a Bonus Action attack, giving you more opportunities to land a Sneak Attack.
9th level
- Soul Blades:
- Homing Strikes: Great way to up your chances to land a hit for Sneak Attack if you miss. The die also isn’t expended on a miss so it won’t lead to any feel bad moments.
- Psychic Teleportation: Teleportation is always useful, whether to get somewhere out of reach or to escape a sticky situation. The only issue is that the range is unreliable because it depends on how well you roll.
13th level
- Psychic Veil: Being invisible for an hour is fantastic, and it doesn’t cost you anything. Note that, if you somehow have the ability to cast spells, you remain invisible when you cast a spell as long as you don’t deal damage or force a saving throw.
17th level
- Rend Mind: Stunned is a powerful condition that can reduce your biggest threat to nothing in an instant. The save DC will also be rather high since you can add your proficiency bonus plus your DEX modifier, making this a lot more reliable.
Swashbuckler
Swashbucklers have incredible mobility and single target damage in combat. They are able to reliably weave in and out of combat without the fear of getting stuck in a dangerous situation, and have a much easier time pulling off Sneak Attacks than other Rogue subclasses.
Check out our
Swashbuckler 5e guide for a more in-depth breakdown of the Swashbuckler subclass, including build recommendations, playstyle breakdowns, and an example build.
Thief
The Thief is the classic rogue archetype in D&D. They can do everything that you would expect from a rogue, but don’t come loaded with any unique or engaging mechanics to set them apart.
3rd level
- Fast Hands: More options for your Cunning Action bonus action. Using an item can be useful, but this only becomes quite good if your DM lets you use a potion, since they are technically “magic items” and don’t qualify for Fast Hands.
- Second-Story Work: Jumping farther is never all too exciting, and climbing faster isn’t much better.
9th level
- Supreme Sneak: You will be basically undetectable while sneaking. Very useful as long as your friends don’t get bored by you always feeling the need to scout ahead.
13th level
- Use Magic Device: I want to love this, but it really depends on what kind of toys your DM gives you to play with. If you manage to get your hands on some magical items that can cast powerful spells, this could easily be sky blue. Imagine having some of the utility of being a Wizard without the downside of multiclassing.
17th level
- Thief’s Reflexes: Sure the Thief isn’t all that flashy next to the Arcane Trickster or Assassin, but this is one darn good ability. Taking multiple turns in the first round of combat can immediately swing the odds in your favor, especially if you land two Sneak Attacks.
Sources Used in This Guide
- : 2014 Player's Handbook
- 2024 PHB: 2024 Player's Handbook
- BR: Basic Rules
- GotG: Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants
- SotDQ: Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen
- ERLW: Eberron: Rising from the Last War
- EEPC: Elemental Evil Player’s Companion
- EGtW: Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount
- FToD: Fizban's Treasury of Dragon
- GGtR: Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica
- MotM: Monsters of the Multiverse
- MToF: Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes
- MOoT: Mythic Odyessys of Theros
- PAitM: Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse
- PHB: Player's Handbook
- SAiS: Spelljammer: Adventures in Space
- SCoC: Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos
- SCAG: Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide
- TCoE: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything
- TTP: The Tortle Package
- WBtW: The Wild Beyond The Witchlight
- : Unearthed Arcana
- VRGtR: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft
- VGtM: Volo's Guide to Monsters
- XGtE: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything
Other Rogue Guides
Fill out the form below to receive Escape From Mt. Balefor for free!
Or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
