Actor 5e

Published on August 28, 2023, Last modified on April 19th, 2024

Step into the spotlight and prepare for your grand performance—we’re taking a look at the Actor feat in D&D 5e!

John Avon - Wizards of the Coast - Thespian's Stage

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What Is Actor 5e?

If your character is the type to steal the show, whether it’s through deception, performance, or just plain charisma, the Actor feat is your ticket to stardom. This feat allows you to increase your Charisma score, grants you proficiency in the Performance skill, and enables you to mimic voices and sounds you have heard. Ready to take center stage? Let’s dive in!

How Does Actor Work?

The Actor feat provides three main benefits:

Charisma Boost: You can increase your Charisma score by 1, up to a maximum of 20.
Performance and Deception Boosts: You get advantage on Deception and Performance checks when you’re trying to pass yourself off as someone you’re not.
Voice Mimicry: You can mimic the speech of another person or the sounds made by other creatures. You must have heard the person speaking, or heard the creature make the sound, for at least 1 minute.

Let’s break down these benefits:

This first boon is straightforward, but somewhat restrictive. This boost will provide better social interactions and stronger spellcasting for certain classes, but may not mean a whole lot for classes that don’t plan to stack into Charisma.

Gaining advantage on Deception and Performance checks when trying to pass yourself off as someone you’re not is where this feat starts to get fun. This will happen at least once in every campaign (and much more than that for certain groups or campaigns). It also combos extremely well with the third ability, which allows you to mimic the speech of another person (or sounds made by other creatures)

Is Actor Good?

We gave Actor a C Tier rating In our 5e Feats Tier List, making it a below-average feat in D&D 5e.

This is a cool feat, if a little clunky. The Mission Impossible-style abilities are solid for infiltration, though there are spells that are similarly as effective. The fact that it is a half-feat certainly makes up for it a bit, but it’s questionable to choose a feat that a spell like invisibility can accomplish quite easily, if in a different manner.

Actor 5e Interactions

Disguise Self

This feat is amazing when you combine it with disguise self. This combo of abilities will allow you to not only look like the person you’re trying to mimic, but also sound like them as well. For certain infiltration situtions where you can’t just invisibility or misty step you’re way in, this is going to feel extremely effective. Combine that with advantage on Deception checks to pass yourself off as your mimiced target, and you’ll be a regular Ethan Hunt.

Mimic Languages You Don’t Know

Seeing as the mimicry effect allows you to mimic sounds made by other creatures, you don’t necessarily have to even speak the language you’re trying to mimic. Just repeat the phrases you heard when you were observing the target. Hopefully they weren’t saying anything that would be suspicious to repeat.

Which 5e Classes Make the Most of Actor?

The color code below has been implemented to help you identify, at a glance, how good the Actor 5e feat is for a specific class/subclass.

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 is a good option
Blue is a great option, you should strongly consider this option for your character
Sky Blue is an amazing option. If you do not take this option your character would not be optimized

This is a fun feat that works best in campaigns focused on heists or politics. When it comes to the generally unoptimized feats that are present in 5e (Weapon Master, Dungeon Delver, etc.) this is probably the most useful and the most fun.

Artificer: Nothing here for an artificer.

Barbarian: Nothing here for a barbarian, who would rather smash their way in.

Bard: This feat is made for bards who love to be sneaky while hiding gregariously out in plain sight.

Cleric: Most clerics won't want anything to do with this feat, but Trickster Domain clerics could certainly make good use of it.

Druid: Nothing here for druids. If you want to infiltrate an enemy's base, just turn into a spider.

Fighter: Not usually a fighter's cup of tea, but Dexterity-focused fighters might have the resources to stack Charisma to become more well-rounded.

Monk: Nothing here for a monk.

Paladin: While not the best fit thematically, paladins could make use of the Charisma boost for their spellcasting and auras. The mimicry effects could also enable a more well-rounded build overall.

Ranger: Nothing here for a ranger. You'd probably rather use pass without trace to infiltrate an enemy's base.

Rogue: Can come in really handy in infiltration missions and pairs well with the Assassin.

Sorcerer: Decent way to boost Charisma and pick up some utility, but nothing special.

Warlock: This is a nifty half-feat to pick up if you are going to be leaning into the Mask of Many Faces invocation. Being able to mimic the voice of the person you are impersonating will make your disguise that much more effective. Plus, you get advantage on your CHA checks to remain undercover.

Wizard: Nothing here for a wizzard.

Mike Bernier

Mike Bernier is the lead content writer and founder of Arcane Eye. He is a Adamantine best-selling author of Strixhaven: A Syllabus of Sorcery on DMs Guild and is a contributing author at D&D Beyond. Follow Mike on Twitter.