D&D 5E Bard Arcane Trickster?

[AverageCitizen]

I'm thinking about allowing rogues to use Bard as the base for a variant of the Arcane Trickster roguish archetype. I am considering making it exactly like the normal Arcane Trickster, except using Charisma as the spellcasting ability and the Bard spell list. Any thoughts?

 

[CapnZapp]

Go for it!

 

[PnPgamer]

Sounds cool enough. Might get slightly mad as rogues kind of need wisdom as well for detecting stuff. Otherwise, have your dashing rogues.

 

[Mercule]

Not sure why you'd bother. Bards are full casters and Arcane Tricksters are 1/3 casters, so the Bard is going to be better, caster-wise.

If the goal is to get the Mage Hand tricks for Bard, I'd probably disallowing it on the premise that that's one of the Rogue schticks. Class/level based systems have a myriad of legitimate issues, but they have benefits, too. There's a reason why I keep coming back to D&D after 30+ years of gaming. If you're doing a class/level system, you have to respect the boundaries or things go south. Leave the walls intact. YMMV, but that's my experience.

If I were the DM, I'd probably encourage the player to play a Rogue to 3rd level, then switch to Bard (or Bard 1, Rogue 3, back to Bard, depending on cherries to pick).

That said, it's your game. You may have different play goals than I do. I don't see anything concretely "wrong" or "unbalanced" with the idea. I just "smells wrong" and I suspect that you'll end up with some unintended consequences. I might be wrong. Even if I'm right, it can be a lot of fun to see how tweaks like that impact the system first-hand.

Short form: I don't advise it, but I'm not your mother and it's not bad-wrong-fun.

 

[kbrakke]

Not sure why you'd bother. Bards are full casters and Arcane Tricksters are 1/3 casters, so the Bard is going to be better, caster-wise.

If the goal is to get the Mage Hand tricks for Bard, I'd probably disallowing it on the premise that that's one of the Rogue schticks. Class/level based systems have a myriad of legitimate issues, but they have benefits, too. There's a reason why I keep coming back to D&D after 30+ years of gaming. If you're doing a class/level system, you have to respect the boundaries or things go south. Leave the walls intact. YMMV, but that's my experience.

If I were the DM, I'd probably encourage the player to play a Rogue to 3rd level, then switch to Bard (or Bard 1, Rogue 3, back to Bard, depending on cherries to pick).

That said, it's your game. You may have different play goals than I do. I don't see anything concretely "wrong" or "unbalanced" with the idea. I just "smells wrong" and I suspect that you'll end up with some unintended consequences. I might be wrong. Even if I'm right, it can be a lot of fun to see how tweaks like that impact the system first-hand.

Short form: I don't advise it, but I'm not your mother and it's not bad-wrong-fun.

I think you read it wrong, his goal is to get bard things for the rogue. He want's a 1/3 caster rogue using the bard spell list and cha. Not a full casting bard with mage hand tricks.

I think it's fine, it lets you make an arcane trickster who is still a face for the party. I would suggest restricting it more than just the bard list though. I would go with bard list and then perhaps Illusion, Enchantment and Conjuration. I added one more school because it's a different list, and added the restriction to make it more in line with the arcane trickster. Also without it, the levels where you get a spell from any school are not important, and as an arcane trickster those spells feel special to me, so I want to keep that feeling.

 

[PnPgamer]

I think you read it wrong, his goal is to get bard things for the rogue. He want's a 1/3 caster rogue using the bard spell list and cha. Not a full casting bard with mage hand tricks.

I think it's fine, it lets you make an arcane trickster who is still a face for the party. I would suggest restricting it more than just the bard list though. I would go with bard list and then perhaps Illusion, Enchantment and Conjuration. I added one more school because it's a different list, and added the restriction to make it more in line with the arcane trickster. Also without it, the levels where you get a spell from any school are not important, and as an arcane trickster those spells feel special to me, so I want to keep that feeling.

He could multiclass to bard though, but then he would've lost some caster levels in order to get arcane trickster shenanigans. He might get a bit different illusion/enchantment spells as well than normal arcane trickster.

 

[Mercule]

I think you read it wrong, his goal is to get bard things for the rogue. He want's a 1/3 caster rogue using the bard spell list and cha. Not a full casting bard with mage hand tricks.

I think it's fine, it lets you make an arcane trickster who is still a face for the party. I would suggest restricting it more than just the bard list though. I would go with bard list and then perhaps Illusion, Enchantment and Conjuration. I added one more school because it's a different list, and added the restriction to make it more in line with the arcane trickster. Also without it, the levels where you get a spell from any school are not important, and as an arcane trickster those spells feel special to me, so I want to keep that feeling.

Quite right. I don't see an issue with pulling from Bard instead of Wizard, but I'd probably still keep the Illusion and Enchantment restriction. Actually, I'd probably look at the breadth of spells available and see what I thought. I could see adding Transmutation (or Conjuration, depending on specific spells) to the list, but only if the total available spells didn't exceed what would be available to the RAW Trickster.

 

[Dausuul]

Speaking as a player with a 13th-level arcane trickster: This would be a significant boost. In 5E, Intelligence is basically useless for anything but spellcasting. Charisma is the basis of several powerhouse skills which dovetail nicely with the AT's spell selection.

Right now, you have to choose: Max out your social skills, max out your spellcasting, or try to keep them balanced. I chose to max social skills, so my character has Dex 20, Int 14, Cha 20. If I got to use Charisma for spellcasting, it'd mean +3 to my spell save DCs and spell attacks. Plus the bard spell list is a good deal more extensive than what the AT currently gets.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but it does mean a substantial power-up. Keep that in mind.

 

[Prism]

Speaking as a player with a 13th-level arcane trickster: This would be a significant boost. In 5E, Intelligence is basically useless for anything but spellcasting. Charisma is the basis of several powerhouse skills which dovetail nicely with the AT's spell selection..

I dunno. I'd miss search and arcana without a decent intelligence. You would struggle to disarm traps and secret doors. Though not all DM's use investigate it seems

 

[Mercule]

I dunno. I'd miss search and arcana without a decent intelligence. You would struggle to disarm traps and secret doors. Though not all DM's use investigate it seems

Search is generally supposed to be Perception (Wisdom), in 5E. Arcana is a very situational thing. With a true Wizard in our group, no one else seems to feel a need for arcana.