Jeremy Crawford on Xanathar's Rogue Inquisitive Subclass

"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."

 

[Yaarel]

5e has the best version of Wizard of all editions.

It seems to be shaping up to having the best version of Rogue of all editions.

Probably, 5e has the best Paladin.

The best Bard ever!

 

[GreenTengu]

I don't even need to see the final version of this class before confidently declaring it a failure. The most basic understanding of the mechanics of this game guarantee that this can't be anything but a failure.

The Rogue class is by default entirely triggered off of the Dexterity ability score-- the most powerful ability score in the game. A single score that dictates one's offense ability, one's defense ability against 75% of the attacks that will ever be launched at the character, one's ability to strike first, the most frequently used critical skills necessary for a character to survive or gain bonus wealth or advance the plot and, in the case of a Rogue, the ability for one to be able to trigger the use of their sneak attack ability.

This class wants a character to divest from that score to invest in Intelligence-- by far the most useless ability score in the game, a skill so useless that even those characters who are of a class whose magical ability is meant to trigger off of it are arguably better off ignoring it and just choosing spells that don't utilize the character's spell DC. The skills that are covered by Intelligence are never necessary for the survival of a character and virtually never necessary for the gain of additional wealth nor the advancement of the plot.

So it is a poor enough concept to make a subclass that is going to try to lure a player into divesting from Dexterity and investing at all in Intelligence in the first place that I am quite certain that the design team that did such a monumentally poor job balancing the PC races in Volo's is not remotely capable of designing abilities that would make it worth doing so... but totally unprompted, they now reveal that they are going to make this subclass even more multi-ability dependent that they decided to try to force the player to invest in Wisdom as well in order to make full use of abilities.... so a player would be required to have 3 20s on their sheet in order to have full bonus with all the subclass abilities.... meanwhile the standard Rogue over there is required to only have a 20 in the most powerful ability score in the game in order to have maximum bonus with all class abilities and allows you to set up the rest of your scores however you like for use of your additional skills.

No one plays the Mastermind as it is and now the design team that can't handle the most basic of design tasks set about creating something even further beyond their abilities.

 

[Hussar]

I don't even need to see the final version of this class before confidently declaring it a failure. /snip

Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.

 

[GreenTengu]

Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.

I think I did.

But, to be a little more fair, given the utter disparity between the sheer ridiculous power of the Dexterity ability score and the complete garbage that is the Intelligence score, without even getting into how dumb it is to try to pull Wisdom in there as well to make one's task harder when one is already trying to swim up a waterfall...

The only possible way to make the thing work, especially since those intelligence-triggered abilities (aside from, I imagine, being able to use Investigation vs. Insight instead of Stealth vs. Perception to trigger sneak attacks) are likely to be so very situational that one cannot be expected to even get to utilize them even once a day, is to make those abilities considerably more powerful than any spells one should be expected to have at that level. And we can be quite certain that they aren't going to give a non-magical class an ability that has an equal or larger game effect than what a magical character can do with a spell aside from maybe damage points (thus why the Warlord class was banished from the game) that there is simply no possible way to make the concept work.

Especially since, as a subclass, so much of the class is already dictated by the main class and one only has a small handful of bonus abilities to work with in order to define what the subclass can do.

Probably not even the most skilled designer could do it. And certainly not the complete incompetents who clearly don't understand the basics of the game that worked on Volo's.

 

[Hussar]

Sorry, [MENTION=6777454]TheHobgoblin[/MENTION], but it's really hard to take you seriously when you talk about how overpowering Dex is. Perhaps it's true in your games, but, it's not in mine. Int has been used quite often, for example. Particularly when dealing with traps, which I really like to use.

Dump statting Int means that you're eating all sorts of traps, and I loves me traps.

 

[Alexemplar]

Considering how "easy" a lot of people seem to find monsters and obstacles in 5e to overcome, you'd think more could get away with not maximizing every single combat advantage they could get and try making a character that's capable in other fields or aspects of the story.

 

[GreenTengu]

Sorry, @TheHobgoblin, but it's really hard to take you seriously when you talk about how overpowering Dex is. Perhaps it's true in your games, but, it's not in mine. Int has been used quite often, for example. Particularly when dealing with traps, which I really like to use.

Dump statting Int means that you're eating all sorts of traps, and I loves me traps.

Every time I have seen traps utilized in 5E so far, it has always been treated as a "make a Perception check to notice you are about to step on a trap" with an Investigation check to find the traps requiring that the person pro-actively make the check which means the 19/20 times there are no traps, they will be wasting everyone's time making that roll until they get the idea that the rest of the group is getting tired of them making pointless rolls and on that 1/20 times, chances are the DM set the DC so high that you'll have failed to make it-- or watch that be the one time you didn't bother to check as everyone started snapping at you for checking every single door and room and hallway and container.

And the only other skills tied to Intelligence are all very specific fields of "ask the DM a question and hopefully get an honest answer if you roll high enough", which often enough (too often I find) results in revealing the DM really hadn't put any thought into that aspect of their world and I am way off track or maybe the DM will call for people to roll it and maybe doll out a clue to help you get on the right track for the adventure... but, if no one catches it, the DM will have a more active method for pulling you on track. (In fact, usually the adventure is designed so that there is no shortcut through use of Intelligence skills and you are expected to be driven onto the track by the combat encounter regardless).


Go through the handful of published adventures WotC has released and count up how few instances the Intelligence attribute can even be useful... then compare that to just how often you roll Dexterity checks or have other things roll against a player with their Dexterity being checked (i.e. targeting AC). And also compare how often those very few instances of Intelligence skills even being something one can reasonable roll with an effect are actually contributing to the character or party surviving the adventure compared to how often those very common Dexterity checks determine whether the character and party as a whole are going to make it to the end of the adventure.

There really is no comparing these two attributes. Dexterity is absolutely essential for any character that can't wear heavy armor and even then good to have so you can go earlier in the initiative order. Intelligence is completely optional for any character that is not using it for Spell DC-- and among the optional attributes, it is the least often meaningfully useful and least impactful of the choices.

 

[JesterOC]

Sorry, [MENTION=6777454]TheHobgoblin[/MENTION], but it's really hard to take you seriously when you talk about how overpowering Dex is. Perhaps it's true in your games, but, it's not in mine. Int has been used quite often, for example. Particularly when dealing with traps, which I really like to use.

Dump statting Int means that you're eating all sorts of traps, and I loves me traps.

To be fair, the first thing you need to do to avoid traps is to perceive them. Which is wisdom based.
However I would easily let a player who is actively looking for traps to use int instead of wisdom. Passive perception still feels like a wisdom only domain.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

 

[Mistwell]

I don't even need to see the final version of this class before confidently declaring it a failure. The most basic understanding of the mechanics of this game guarantee that this can't be anything but a failure.

The Rogue class is by default entirely triggered off of the Dexterity ability score-- the most powerful ability score in the game. A single score that dictates one's offense ability, one's defense ability against 75% of the attacks that will ever be launched at the character, one's ability to strike first, the most frequently used critical skills necessary for a character to survive or gain bonus wealth or advance the plot and, in the case of a Rogue, the ability for one to be able to trigger the use of their sneak attack ability.

This class wants a character to divest from that score to invest in Intelligence-- by far the most useless ability score in the game, a skill so useless that even those characters who are of a class whose magical ability is meant to trigger off of it are arguably better off ignoring it and just choosing spells that don't utilize the character's spell DC. The skills that are covered by Intelligence are never necessary for the survival of a character and virtually never necessary for the gain of additional wealth nor the advancement of the plot.

So it is a poor enough concept to make a subclass that is going to try to lure a player into divesting from Dexterity and investing at all in Intelligence in the first place that I am quite certain that the design team that did such a monumentally poor job balancing the PC races in Volo's is not remotely capable of designing abilities that would make it worth doing so... but totally unprompted, they now reveal that they are going to make this subclass even more multi-ability dependent that they decided to try to force the player to invest in Wisdom as well in order to make full use of abilities.... so a player would be required to have 3 20s on their sheet in order to have full bonus with all the subclass abilities.... meanwhile the standard Rogue over there is required to only have a 20 in the most powerful ability score in the game in order to have maximum bonus with all class abilities and allows you to set up the rest of your scores however you like for use of your additional skills.

No one plays the Mastermind as it is and now the design team that can't handle the most basic of design tasks set about creating something even further beyond their abilities.

What's the name of your RPG or game company? I'd be intrigued to check out your stuff. You know, since you are so much smarter and better at game design, your games must be friggen AMAZING!

 

[Alexemplar]

What's the name of your RPG or game company? I'd be intrigued to check out your stuff. You know, since you are so much smarter and better at game design, your games must be friggen AMAZING!

To be fair, even if his game design was the best in the world, the nature of the industry alone would likely prevent him from having a game company- let alone a well known/succesful one.

But yeah, I agree that his criticism is off.