D&D 5E Is there a good Faceman option for rogues?

[Ruin Explorer]

And at 14 dex, if you you wait until YOU have advantage to attack you probably wouldn't miss THAT often and your DPR would come all from sneak attack anyway.

You're proposing using both your main Action and Bonus action to spam Help outside of that scenario.

You will thus pretty much never have Advantage yourself, outside of others granting it to you, because Rogues normally use their Bonus Actions to get into situations where they have Advantage.

So your only regularly-seen chance to make Sneak Attacks will likely be when "You don’t need advantage on the attack roll if another enemy of the target is within 5 feet of it" - i.e. 5E's quasi-flanking, because you're making zero effort to get Advantage for yourself (and instead granting it to people who gain far less from it!).

Thus you missing a bunch of DEX absolutely will lead to your DPR being lower even when you aren't using your action to spam Help (and doing the latter tanks your effective DPR to an incredible degree - Advantage on a single attack is not a huge deal).

The problem is that a Mastermind isn't a particularly good Face anyway. They're literally not any better at it than anyone else (anyway, they're Hannibal, not Face... just saying) beyond that they can fake an accent without a check, which not exactly something you use every session (it might be if it didn't require 1 min of solid listening to get).

You're much better off just putting Expertise in Persuasion or Deception (or both) if you really want to be a "great Face", than picking Mastermind, and then actually putting your best score in DEX and pumping DEX and using your actions on Sneak Attacks and getting into position for more Sneak Attacks.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

There's a feat that gives you a d6 BM maneuver dice and some maneuvers. It's not great though.

If you want a chassis that has maneuver type stuff I'd use ENW's Savant rather than the BM. Somewhere in there there's a great Face.

Just using an existing subclass would be way easier. The build gets a ton of options out of MCing too. lots of goodies. At will disguise self from Warlock would be my first choice there, plus it synergizes with the CHA build.

Maybe, but honestly a Swordmaster or whatever subclass for rogues that uses the superiority dice and manuevers is a really easy way to get to the goal.

Maybe you could mash together a new class by taking some of the class abilities from the glamour bard (Xanathar's) and putting them onto a rogue chassis? The bard abilities aren't spells, although they do apply the charmed condition, so I'd think they'd work in a low-magic setting.

Or you could just play the Leverage RPG, which I run frequently. It's pretty amazing.

The problem with running the LEverage RPG, is that it is a game for playing a group of criminals in the modern real world, not a game for playing a group of criminals in a dnd world.

I feel like I'm missing something big here, like Masterminds being able to grant Sneak Attack to others, but it sure isn't in the rules for them that I'm looking at.

I'd accept that as a homebrew addition to the subclass.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'd accept that as a homebrew addition to the subclass.

It does feel like if you could give your Sneak Attack to another if you used your Action (not Bonus Action) on the Help action would be mechanically sound - you'd still be losing DPR but only a little and it would feel quite Mastermind-y. You'd have to get the verbiage right so they couldn't just use their Bonus Action to off-hand-weapon attack and get two SAs on their own turn, as it were (it's fine if their Reaction gets an SA as will occasionally happen, that's a given for all Rogues).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It does feel like if you could give your Sneak Attack to another if you used your Action (not Bonus Action) on the Help action would be mechanically sound - you'd still be losing DPR but only a little and it would feel quite Mastermind-y. You'd have to get the verbiage right so they couldn't just use their Bonus Action to off-hand-weapon attack and get two SAs on their own turn, as it were (it's fine if their Reaction gets an SA as will occasionally happen, that's a given for all Rogues).

Right, the once per turn restriction would still be in place, so they couldn't get an extra one, and you'd just word it that if they hit with the attack you've given them advantage on, they can use SA.

 

[Parmandur]

Because it can get proficiency in Persuasion? That's not very unique. Sure Expertise is an option but rare for a rogue to use it on Persuasion.

Not so rare to put expertise in a category being focused on for character reasons.

 

[jayoungr]

The problem with running the LEverage RPG, is that it is a game for playing a group of criminals in the modern real world, not a game for playing a group of criminals in a dnd world.

Oh yes, definitely. My suggestion was not entirely serious. Should have put a smilie on it.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, DPR schmee-PR. It's a limiting way to look at character builds to begin with, and even less useful in this example. No offense meant @Ruin Explorer , I just don't see the importance here. The importance of DPR as a metric rises in direct relation to the importance of combat as en encounter resolution tool. The concept of the Face is, first, a low combat/DPR idea to begin with, and, second, a concept that would only really be considered for a low DPR game anyway. Obviously there's a sliding scale, and there are lots of stops between my position and yours.

What I'm getting at is that if I want to build a face, why would I concern myself with DPR at the cost of the core competencies for the concept I'm building? Assuming for a moment that I had decided that the campaign in question was the correct one to support such a build.

 

[CleverNickName]

Rogue is an excellent choice to be the "face" of the group. But really, any character with a high Charisma can do just fine. (Personally? I'd go with a half-elf bard, but to each their own.)

 

[Fenris-77]

Rogue is an excellent choice to be the "face" of the group. But really, any character with a high Charisma can do just fine. (Personally? I'd go with a half-elf bard, but to each their own.)

Yeah, if you were OK with casting as part of the concept a 1/2 Elf Lore Bard is a great pick, no doubt. Barring that I'd go VHum for the Feat, or a race that gets extra skills. Barring a race specific to the concept of course, I always work top down and I don't make all my decisions about builds based on optimization.

 

[Charlaquin]

Swashbuckler is good but doesn't get a unique social ability until level 9.

The distance between rogue archetype features really bothers me...

I feel that way about every class’s subs.