D&D 5E Acrobat ("Cat Burglar") subclass ideas

[Kobold Stew]

(the character can already climb 90' in 6 seconds, with no need to roll or make an athletics check)

 

[ECMO3]

I have a new young player whose Tabaxi Rogue just hit 3rd level. Based on the way he is playing and imagining his rogue, the Thief subclass is sort of an obvious choice...except that the Second Story Work feature is most redundant with Tabaxi. At first I thought about just tweaking it to emphasize the jumping, but then I started thinking about having some fun with it and designing a new subclass just for him.

How does this sound? It's a little complicated for the spirit of 5e, but it's meant for this one player, not as a published subclass.

Feline Leap
You may leap over a creature of size Medium or smaller, landing in the square that is adjacent to the creature and directly opposite from where you started. This uses 5' of movement and draws an opportunity attack from the creature you are leaping over, but if the attack hits you may, as a reaction, make a Dexterity(Acrobatics) check against a DC equal to the attack roll. On a success, the attack misses. If you then make an attack against the creature on this turn before using any more movement, attack is made with advantage.

At higher levels this could be usable against larger creatures.

I think the best thing to do is reskin the survivalist feature from scout to apply to acrobatics and athletics and replace the skirmisher feat with second story work from the thief subclass:

Level 3:

Tumbling: When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you gain proficiency in the Athletics and Acrobatics skills if you don't already have it. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses either of those proficiencies.

Second Story Work:
When you choose this archetype at 3rd level, you gain the ability to climb faster than normal; climbing no longer costs you extra movement.

In addition, when you make a running jump, the distance you cover increases by a number of feet equal to your Dexterity modifier.

Then use the 9th, 13th and 17th level features from Scout.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I don't know about the specific proposal, but the premise is the best argument I've seen for racially locked 5e subclass options. While the idea that there's could never be some dwarf who was willing to teach non-dwarves to fight in silly spiked armor struck me as ridiculous, it makes perfect sense that there could be a tabaxi-only subclass of rogue that played directly off of what seems possible with catman anatomy, and made up for a similar subclass having superfluous abilities for that race option.

Race-locked subclasses actually opens a lot of design space to make races that fit classes or subclasses thematically but had redundant features actually good picks for those classes or nearly the same subclass.