"The Inquisitive subclass in Xanathar's guide is in many ways all about playing essentially Sherlock Holmes, this character who is fantastic at finding clues, discerning when other people are being deceitful, and then using that fact against them because the Inquisitive's abilities having to do with sneak attack are much more psychological than our other rogue types", says Crawford in a video for D&D Beyond.
[video=youtube;c4z9rvMfFfc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4z9rvMfFfc[/video]
"You know we've previously we've released the Swashbuckler in The Sword Coast adventurers guide which is very much about sort of derring-do and and fancy footwork and all of that, whereas the Inquisitive is the person who's going to beat you because they've outwitted you.
And often in D&D, the the intellectual character the character who is triumphant for their group because of the powers of the mind, we usually associate that with spellcasters, so the Inquisitive is a chance for us to have that kind of intellectual character but with a non spell-casting class, again this person who's going to spot the thing no one else spotted except for maybe the wizard who's having to use magic to do it. The Inquisitive is the one who just through the sheer power of their mind is going to figure this out. And again it's a great subclass for a person who wants to play a character that's a bit like a detective, maybe also somebody who's a bounty hunter, it would also be useful if you're in a setting where there might be an order of inquisitors and you could use the Inquisitive as a non-magical member of some kind of Inquisition so it has a lot of world-building potential and it's a nice change from the thief and the assassin in The Player's Handbook which tend to - as is appropriate for the rogue - lean into the class's sort of classic association with criminality of some kind.
Because the Inquisitive you can imagine making a rogue who's an Inquisitive who could also be a member of a city watch who's actually on the side of the law hunting down members of thieves guilds and that kind of thing or the Inquisitive could be a kind of spymaster and maybe a member of a Queen's Secret order that is either an order of spies or hunting down spies from an enemy Kingdom, so there's a lot of story potential with the subclass and I think that's why people responded positively to it, because people, again they like a subclass to carve out a place in the D&D multiverse that one of our Players Handbook subclasses isn't already carving out for them and the Inquisitive definitely does that.
So the Mastermind that originally appeared in the Sword Coast adventurers guide is another rogue subclass that is much more about psychological power than it is about again fancy footwork or getting the drop on somebody. I'd say if we were going to associate these characters with the classic ability scores, the Mastermind is all about Charisma whereas the Inquisitive is all about Intelligence and Wisdom. And I mentioned Wisdom here because in D&D, Wisdom is also associated not just with common sense or strength of will, but noticing things, and so the Mastermind is all about persuasiveness and in many ways unearthly persuasiveness where you're convincing people to do things or, typically it would be the domain of a spellcaster to be so beguiling, but the Mastermind is so charismatic that they're able to accomplish things that again would be the domain of magic. And so I think of the Inquisitive and the Mastermind as sort of being siblings as subclasses, they're each about cunning, but again one would be Sherlock Holmes whereas the other one, the Mastermind, would be this person who is a master manipulator, is just extremely effective at getting others to do what they want, and I could see a party where the two of them could work together as as a part of one of these like spy organizations hunting down other rogues.
There, again, a lot of story potential there for each of them individually as subclasses but even more if you imagine them working together, and you can even imagine a story where you could have an NPC of one of those subclasses being the rival of the character who has the other subclass, you know a Mastermind and an Inquisitive, very much like Holmes versus Moriarty, hating each other, one again the expert at figuring out what's going on and the other one the expert at manipulating people to make things happen.
So the Inquisitive, similar to the Horizon Walker in the Ranger, was one where people people were overall quite satisfied with how it was designed, so the version they'll see in the book really has some kind of definitely development tweaks to make things work a bit better, to make the explain or satisfying, but overall people really liked how the different abilities worked together to make the Inquisitive basically the detective character, that one who's going to figure out what's going on - to the adventuring party's advantage."
[video=youtube;c4z9rvMfFfc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4z9rvMfFfc[/video]
"You know we've previously we've released the Swashbuckler in The Sword Coast adventurers guide which is very much about sort of derring-do and and fancy footwork and all of that, whereas the Inquisitive is the person who's going to beat you because they've outwitted you.
And often in D&D, the the intellectual character the character who is triumphant for their group because of the powers of the mind, we usually associate that with spellcasters, so the Inquisitive is a chance for us to have that kind of intellectual character but with a non spell-casting class, again this person who's going to spot the thing no one else spotted except for maybe the wizard who's having to use magic to do it. The Inquisitive is the one who just through the sheer power of their mind is going to figure this out. And again it's a great subclass for a person who wants to play a character that's a bit like a detective, maybe also somebody who's a bounty hunter, it would also be useful if you're in a setting where there might be an order of inquisitors and you could use the Inquisitive as a non-magical member of some kind of Inquisition so it has a lot of world-building potential and it's a nice change from the thief and the assassin in The Player's Handbook which tend to - as is appropriate for the rogue - lean into the class's sort of classic association with criminality of some kind.
Because the Inquisitive you can imagine making a rogue who's an Inquisitive who could also be a member of a city watch who's actually on the side of the law hunting down members of thieves guilds and that kind of thing or the Inquisitive could be a kind of spymaster and maybe a member of a Queen's Secret order that is either an order of spies or hunting down spies from an enemy Kingdom, so there's a lot of story potential with the subclass and I think that's why people responded positively to it, because people, again they like a subclass to carve out a place in the D&D multiverse that one of our Players Handbook subclasses isn't already carving out for them and the Inquisitive definitely does that.
So the Mastermind that originally appeared in the Sword Coast adventurers guide is another rogue subclass that is much more about psychological power than it is about again fancy footwork or getting the drop on somebody. I'd say if we were going to associate these characters with the classic ability scores, the Mastermind is all about Charisma whereas the Inquisitive is all about Intelligence and Wisdom. And I mentioned Wisdom here because in D&D, Wisdom is also associated not just with common sense or strength of will, but noticing things, and so the Mastermind is all about persuasiveness and in many ways unearthly persuasiveness where you're convincing people to do things or, typically it would be the domain of a spellcaster to be so beguiling, but the Mastermind is so charismatic that they're able to accomplish things that again would be the domain of magic. And so I think of the Inquisitive and the Mastermind as sort of being siblings as subclasses, they're each about cunning, but again one would be Sherlock Holmes whereas the other one, the Mastermind, would be this person who is a master manipulator, is just extremely effective at getting others to do what they want, and I could see a party where the two of them could work together as as a part of one of these like spy organizations hunting down other rogues.
There, again, a lot of story potential there for each of them individually as subclasses but even more if you imagine them working together, and you can even imagine a story where you could have an NPC of one of those subclasses being the rival of the character who has the other subclass, you know a Mastermind and an Inquisitive, very much like Holmes versus Moriarty, hating each other, one again the expert at figuring out what's going on and the other one the expert at manipulating people to make things happen.
So the Inquisitive, similar to the Horizon Walker in the Ranger, was one where people people were overall quite satisfied with how it was designed, so the version they'll see in the book really has some kind of definitely development tweaks to make things work a bit better, to make the explain or satisfying, but overall people really liked how the different abilities worked together to make the Inquisitive basically the detective character, that one who's going to figure out what's going on - to the adventuring party's advantage."
