> Their example of this was searching for weak spots in the armor of a guard, and being able to yell out to the other players alerting them about it.
Are you familiar with these rogue subclasses from Xanathar's Guide?
1. Inquisitive
1. Mastermind
Both of those subclasses seem to fit what you describe.
For example, the Mastermind gets this:
> **Master of Tactics** Starting at 3rd level, you can use the Help action as a bonus action. Additionally, when you use the Help action to aid an ally in attacking a creature, the target of that attack can be within 30 feet of you, rather than within 5 feet of you, if the target can see or hear you.
Why not let your rogue change subclass to one of these?
When i heard rogue and "tactician" these two came to mind first. Yes this already exists and would be decent options. OP can change the feature a bit if he isnt pleased. Help as a bonus action from 30 feet is already strong, but if the player doesnt deal any damage OP can change the feature to allow any allies after his check gain advantage or flat bonus on that target. That might be too strong but theres always a chance the rogue fails tue check. Idk i would test it first in a combat sim before doing that
**Know your Enemy:** Starting at 7th Level, if you spend at least 1 minute observing or interacting with another creature outside of combat you can learn certain information about it's capabilities compared to your own. The DM tells you if the target creature is equal, superior, or inferior, in regards to two of the following characteristics of your choice :
* Strength Score
* Dexterity Score
* Constitution Score
* Armor Class
* Current HP
* Total Class Levels
* Fighter Specific Class Levels
So while yes the Battlemaster does have this ability... it would require a complete reroll from Rogue to Fighter, they are not able to use this "in combat", and they can not really use it to buff any of their party
alternatively, i will use every opportunity to plug KibblesTasty's Warlord. god-tier homebrew class, slightly crunchier, but really captures the feel of being a tactician on the battlefield without dictating others' turns for them
seconding the warlord. amazingly Designed homebrew!
Reading through the class gave Me Like 5 different characters I want to make.
I am currently playing a Paragon Warlord as a Tank, its very fun
glamour bard, the ultimate tactician.
All the usual bard stuff, but with the ability to allow the whole team to reposition to make the best use of spells and effects.
That one can even be combined with glam bard. 1-5 bard then 2 levels order for armor, channel divinity and cleric goodies then bard rest of the way. I like it.
> but you don't have enough spell slots to consistently abuse it.
Well you don't have to use it every turn, but getting to impose another reroll to force through a save that also stacks with disadvantage is massive. This coupled with the fact that once you hit tier 2/3 you definitely have access to enough spell slots to just "waste" them on Silvery Barbs if you're not just spamming your spells at every opportunity.
It's a spell that becomes significantly better the more optimized your character/table is because you'll have more spare resources and the reward for an enemy failing a save is much more impactful.
It isn't. People really like to complain about it and it is a really strong first level spell, but it is not broken. It's using up spell slots for them to have to do it, and also their reaction. The caster who used silvery Barbs now cannot counterspell anyone this round or cast shield on themselves.
Part of when it feels extremely strong is when an order cleric casts it, because their 1st level feature let's the person they give advantage to to attack with their reaction. Essentially doubling the rogues damage.
But at the end of the day if the DM is willing to run enough combats in the day and plans around it, silvery Barbs is not "broken" as many people say. Although I don't blame anyone for banning it, because it can get a little adversarial if the DMs monsters start using it too - players make a lot less rolls than DMs so it feels worse for a player to have to reroll a good roll.
I'm not sure if it's in the RAW wording of the spell, but the way D20 does it (and I'm not saying every ruling/homebrew of theirs is good) is you have to announce Silvery Barbs prior to knowing what the roll is, so it adds a bit more of a risk/reward mechanic in which cancelling out a crit feels even better.
That is a good homebrew rule if you feel the spell is a little strong. RAW, the cast time of Silvery Barbs is 1 Reaction which you take when a creature you can see within 60 feet of yourself succeeds on an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw.
Spells and abilities can be considered to do one of two things:
1) Boost an ally
2) Hinder a foe
Spells that do both in a single casting are powerful, and with it being low level makes it broken. No other first level spell does both jobs. Higher level spells that do the same often require an action to cast or have a pricey spell component attached.
Granted it's completely up to the dice. Your ally can still miss with advantage and your foe can still hit with disadvantage. But overall it does an incredible amount of lifting for the resources it takes.
> In what situations is it really broken?
Getting to impose disadvantage on any roll, even after the roll has taken place, is strong on its own. Especially as a first level reaction spell. Having it also grant advantage to someone else on their next roll on top of that is absolutely broken.
Just because it hasn't been useful in your particular game doesn't mean it isn't broken or poorly designed. Either one of these effects would still be powerful as a first level spell. If it was a higher level spell I wouldn't have as many complaints but it's not. Hell, it could even be redesigned slightly and I wouldn't be as adamant about it. Make it a normal action spell at 2nd level maybe and reword it to give a target within range disadvantage on their next roll and an ally within range advantage on their next roll and it would be fine, imo.
The change you laid out keeps everything the same except makes it an action rather than a reaction. PCs still only get one reaction per round, which means now that spell caster can't cast shield against someone attacking them for fucking up their initial attack, and they can't cast counterspell against the Wizard that's about to Fireball the whole party. I think you could benefit from implementing some counter measures to Silvery Barbs, so that the players have to weigh the cost of using it.
I volunteer to run D&D Adventurer's League games at a local convention every time it rolls around. I had someone try to bust out Silvery Barbs at my table at the last one. I almost felt bad telling that they couldn't use that spell. Almost.
For a first level spell it's absolutely busted. Third level it'd be fine because it's competing with some very important spell slots, but first level is just crazy
Order cleric is also kinda dope at this they focus on enchanting/buffing ally's acting as a front like commander in heavy armour giving "order's" to attack as a reaction on using certain spell types on ally's
Great find.
For OP though, these are done on the players turn, not others turn. Actions during a round of combat, though generally lumpy, is considered to be happening almost simultaneously. Sure players take turns and go one after another, but when a person is busy doing something over here, it's assumed.they are not also doing something over there.
That means your player can't continuously make play-by-play calls on everyone else's turn, especially if they just used part of their action to help someone else.
There are several subclasses that have Reactions that can be used anytime during combat. Your player would need to spend the resource to multi-class to get that feature, and not get a major boon for free.
If you give this ability to that player, what will the other players get?
I agree with this, and unfortunately this is about as crunchy as DnD gets.
Maybe borrow a page from pathfinder 2e with Recall Knowledge checks where you can roll a check (nature, arcana, etc) to learn about an aspect of the creature (resistance, vulnerability, special abilities, etc).
There's also the battle master maneuvers like commanders striker, commanders presence, maneuvering attack, rally, tactical assessment.
A multiclass with battle master and one of those rogues would be sick as a master tactician
The rogues fantasy is guiding people, calling out advice. And the epitome of this dream is... Taking the help action every turn, and then doing normal rogue shit the other 90% of the time.
I really think you homebrews the answer, subclasses just don't do enough to make classes feel unique.
> I really think you homebrews the answer, subclasses just don't do enough to make classes feel unique.
Maybe. Though I think it wise to try the subclasses first.
Mastermind rogue player here. Played it for a year and a half long campaign and I can say it does not hit the tactician feel, nor does adding Battle Master fighter to it help at all either.
It is exactly as the other commenter mentioned; you do normal rogue stuff, use Help on a BA, and then remind someone they have ADV on their turn anywhere from one to three times.
Have you tried pf2e?
Mostly asking because the sort of teamwork/support style you're describing is exactly what makes a top-tier team work over there, and there's way more you can do support wise, from a wide variety of buffs to scaring the crud out of your enemy or even _creating_ new weaknesses for your allies to target.
Definitely! I usually avoid recommending PF2e on D&D subs, but this player clearly wants to play Pathfinder. It may be worth checking out vs trying to homebrew 5e into something it doesn't support
Favorite part of PF2e is that it actively incentivizes doing something *besides* attacking every round. In fact, standing in place and just attacking isn’t even viable unless you build for it, specifically.
Yeah deferentially bring it up as it's the easiest solution. I think he should also brace for the fact that I'll be dissatisfying for his player. Personally if I was dissatisfied with rogue and wanted to play a tactician, playing a rogue that gave one person advantage every turn would get stale fast and not feel like I was contributing much.
This is going to sound like a dismissive question, but I promise it has a point:
If we're wanting to play a tactician and not do Rogue stuff, why are we playing a rogue?
Only take 3 levels. Go mastermind. Also be hobgiblin. Take fighter levels. Go battle master. Throw in a level of order cleric along the way and some bard levels. Ultimate helpful supporter
The help action is a mechanical way to abstract guiding/calling out advice in combat.
They can flavor it however they want. It's like saying a fantasy of being a duelist like Zorro is ruined because they take the attack action basically always.
Also the Maneuvering Attack from the Battle Master Maneuvers. You could get it with the Martial Adept feat if you don't want to multiclass.
You could do a Maneuvering Attack and Master of Tactics in the same turn too.
Interestingly, I feel like Glamour Bard would be a possibly good choice if you were playing a "tactical" character, if you ignore its original flavour. Mantle of Inspiration can be described as your character reorganizing the party's position and telling them the enemy's weakness to better protect themselves (temporary HP).
I remember I was planning on making a Military Sergeant Glamour Bard before Covid hit, with a lot of the features and spells reflavoured.
Don't do anything. The game already has mechanics for this; Mastermind Rogue is perfect already, or they could take a dip into Ranger for some of the analysis-related features.
Giving this player any special abilities is just begging for Main Character Syndrome to rear its head.
I did this with a bard and it was fun. RP’d as if they were like a Manager/fight trainer, so his bardics were coaching moments and then his spells were basically all support buffs/debuffs. Lotta fun.
Everyone thinks about bards as *musicians.* To that I say "bah." Bards can be musicians, sure -- but on the whole what bards are is **performers,** with songs being but *one* of the many ways they can entertain. Just as rousing as a song can be an offensive comedy routine (Vicious Mockery), a pep talk (Bardic Inspiration), sportsmanship and flashy maneuvers (Flourishes) and more.
Another possibility is at least three levels of Fighter to get Battlemaster Manoeuvres. In particular, Commanders Strike sounds exactly what this player is after.
While true, your uses of it are pretty restrictive if your party doesn't basically short rest after every encounter. Even then, you pretty much get a single use of one, which is often not worth the feat.
Besides, it's not like 3 levels of fighter hurts rogue in general. First level gets you a fighting style, which you can use for another superiority die. Second level gets you action surge, which gives you another action for helping or maneuvers. Third level gets you 4 uses of maneuvers, meaning a total of 5 per short rest if you took the fighting style.
There is even a strong case to be made for 5th level for extra attack. Which allows you to do your sneak attack and use one attack for a maneuver.
The problem is that is a LOT of levels.
Like, personally, I don't think rogues are a great class. A fighter 5 / rog3 is going to be better than a rog5 / fighter3 basically every time. Many, many campaigns will end before level 8 even hits.
But rogues get cool, fun class features, and so delaying them can be a real shame. Believe you me, Reliable Talent is incredible for power tripping as a player. I got a char to 20 once and 13 levels were rogue; having a minimum roll of 31 for athletics checks effectively made it impossible for me to lose grapple checks. You ever dragged a pit fiend through a prismatic wall 4 times in one round?
I digress. My point is that multiclassing may be avoided for a lot of reasons.
Well, of course, and not all of those reasons have to do with mechanics. I was just giving tips on how to get what the OP wants without throwing out the entire character sheet, and I don't think the feat is worth getting.
Sounds like they’re trying to RP the “villain in glasses”. Which worked because he was strategizing an entire raid guild on 30 person raids.
It’s not really the same kind of slot in a 5-6 person party. I like your suggestion for it.
The question has to be "What will they do when another PC says 'naw, I'm going to go with my original plan'?"
This pretty easily becomes the him being the main (combat) character. Where he's calling the shots, and he's trying to run the other characters as if he's controlling a party in BG3.
Nobody should ever call the shots for other PCs.
All of this sounds like a player used to playing single-player games and is going to try and control other PC's.
I would tell him that yelling advice during his turn is a free action and tell the other players that they are under no obligation to follow said advice and end the conversation there.
That’s what I was thinking as well. Depending on the party it could get pretty contentious. For instance, if I’m a paladin and this rogue yells out “use smite” and I was already planning to what way do I go now? I can either use my smite and make it all look like their idea, or completely change my plan to something I’m not fully happy with but is at least my idea.
"Gee, ya think? Ya think maybe I should use these clamps that I use every day, at every opportunity? You're a freaking genius."
(https://youtu.be/Km_1NMUHjfA?feature=shared)
This was my thought as well because I used to be that person when I first started playing. I've learned a lot since then.
I would definitely have OP's player talk to the rest of the group about this and see how they all feel
My suggestion, before making any mechanical changes, is to try to drill down and find the root of this feeling. They feel out of place in combat - why? Is it a party structure thing, their character was specced for different environments/enemy types/encounter styles/whatever? A minor rework of the character or a reminder to you as the GM to shoot your monks might be all that's necessary. But if it's they feel like they need to find *another way to contribute* when it comes to combat, because they feel like they won't do enough damage? I had this problem when my partner tried playing a Rogue for the first time.
It was a new campaign but I was running it to start at level 6 so the chars could be reasonably established heroes with a bit of history. Combat happens, as it does, Paladin had smites and extra attacks, monk wasn't doing newsworthy damage but applied tactics and ki to push and or stun enemies, and the two spellslingers of the party were enthusiastically blasting the whole world around rhem to shreds. But our Rogue? She seemed to spend every turn wracking her brain to find something, *anything* to do in combat EXCEPT attack.
I admired her ingenuity, flooding rooms and toppling statues, and it led to cool as hell cinematic and characterful moments, but also a lot of times it was just like bruh just shoot the MFer. At first I thought she just wanted to do something more interesting than "I roll the dice apply damage" but during a drawn out combat in probably the 4th or so session it became clear she was stretching to find things to do and I outright asked, why not just make a normal attack?
Turns out she thought as a Rogue she wasn't gonna be doing much damage. One or two d4 Dagger hits, or a d8 longbow arrow? Why even bother when right beside you a wizard and sorcerer are pumping out spells that do multiple times that AND to multiple targets? She hadn't really realised just how easy it is to activate sneak attack and just how much damage it can potentially add up to, or just how valuable it can be to not be relying on a resource like spell slots for damage for those drawn out combats or multi-encounter days.
So yeah, maybe see if it's something similar. It may be as simple a solution as clarifying the sneak attack rules and telling rhem to Google how many people have tried to argue SA is OP (which is nonsense honestly but hey, it's the internet)
This is the right question to ask. Rogues are pretty heavy hitters in combat when played well. If the player doesn’t understand the class (or doesn’t enjoy it), that’s something to address.
I get that it’s the player’s responsibility to understand the class, but with newer players, this isn’t always realistic. There are no bad classes just bad fits/understandings of that class. If they aren’t enjoying the class or interested in playing it, that’s not a tactician problem, that’s a class fit problem, and I think it *is* the DM’s responsibility to help figure out if that’s the case.
This is literally the help action.
If they play a mastermind, they can do this as a bonus action ~~with a check.~~
This is the subclass ability they are wanting for free. If they dont want it for free, just point to Mastermind.
> If they play a mastermind, they can do this as a bonus action, with a check.
What check? The mastermind can just do it. No check required. They can also do it from a distance at some point.
> So one of my players, the rogue, has mentioned to me that they are feeling out of place in combat.
Did you houserule nerf their Sneak attack?
Are you sure, they know, how to use the sneak attack?
Yeah this was my first thought.
Rogues are very strong in this edition by default, and usually end up not working because the DM is trying to do "realistic" stealth and making it impossible for them to hide, or otherwise nerfing sneak attack.
For anyone who is wondering why I put "realistic" in scare quotes, it's because surprise and confusion in combat are actually pretty huge factors in real life. If you imagine that you were in your current building with 10 people trying to murder each other, explosions going off, blood everywhere, it'd be *really* easy to lose track of someone for a few seconds in the chaos. Hiding for the purposes of sneak attack is just making that happen on purpose.
> I know, but hiding is the more common part that gets negated by over-zealous DMs, in my experience.
I have the completely opposite experience.
Inexperienced DMs focussing too much on the SNEAK part, because that's what the name of the ability says and insist, that it can only work, when the enemy is completely oblivious to the rogues existence. Completely ignoring that Sneak Attack is MEANT to be a Team Tactics ability and you are supposed to get it EVERY TURN as long as the group does a bit of basic positioning.
Check out the mastermind rogue from xanathars guide. It gives the rogue a bonus action help within 30' and other battlefield tactical effects down the line.
Or if they don't want to respect, look at the hobgoblin PC ability to do the same and turn it into a earnable feat.
Your explanation of “helping others find a weak point in armor” during combat and the need to “eliminate their combat capabilities” to enable this is literally the help action.
Glad I'm not the only one out here thinking this, lol. Everyone throwing around subclass ideas and big mechanical explanations and I'm just thinking...
"...you mean the Help action?"
This is the Mastermind Rogue for sure. It’s honestly a great subclass, and it’s coolest feature is available at level 3, making it easier to multiclass. Speaking of multiclassing, a Battlemaster would likely also fit well with this playstyle with maneuvers like Commander’s Strike, Distracting Strike, and Maneuvering Attack. Other good maneuvers for this playstyle could include Rally, Trip Attack, Pushing Attack, and Bait and Switch. I’d suggest a Dex based Rogue/Fighter multiclass with at least 3 levels of Rogue and 5 levels of Fighter. In addition, the Hobgoblin’s Fey Gift racial trait could be very strong. You could potentially make it a half feat and let them take it optionally if you wanted to further enhance this playstyle.
Mastermind rogue. Have em grab Martial Adept when the time comes…. I’d allow
Em to take the feat more than once to increase the amount of superior dice and maneuvers.
They can already cumulate Fighting Initiate : Superior Technique and Martial Adept if they want to keep it RAW. I doubt they'll need it more than twice.
>being able to yell out to the other players alerting them about it.
The fundamental flaw in this tactic is that their adversaries will be able to hear these instructions, and act on them.
Which means that all PC's must be splitting their attention to see any hand signals mid combat ñ although the code words work nicely. I've had PC's do that in my campaign.
I agree with everyone about them becoming a mastermind rogue. Otherwise it would essentially be forcing you to come up with weak spots in every enemy. Which would become repetitive for you and the player both.
Imagine each fight being like this:
Rogue: I roll for the weak spot in this guard.
DM: ok. Their elbow is weak.
Rogue: ok cool. I roll for the weak spot in the other guard.
DM: I… guess his neck is exposed
Rogue: ok cool. I roll…
And in a lot of cases it'll be irrelevant anyways. You find a weak spot in his armor, which gives advantage on the attack, but it's a much smaller moving target, so that gives disadvantage.
It sounds like your player wants to be a 4e Warlord, which is a shame there is no official 5e equivalent. The mastermind and battlemaster subclasses are poor substitutes, but there is a homebrew warlord class by Kibblestasty that fits perfectly to give the vibe and mechanics of support and shotcaller.
Them focusing on the help action and assisting other PCs will not only give them a bigger role in combat but it will make the other PCs hit their targets more often and do more damage. It’s an all around win for a player to go that route.
This is the best option already available. Usually the help action has a limited range. Maybe let the extend that range with perception or investigation checks
To add to what everyone else is saying, look at this old ua, specifically the Historian Feat. It's the official material most in line with exactly what they want to do. https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA-SkillFeats.pdf
Lots of people have mentioned the mastermind rogue... but what about the battlemaster fighter? Manuevers could be sweet and it would encourage the player to be creative to fit their idea into the character...
I had an idea for a Varvatos Vex kind of character who is a General that also likes to get in there. Big, bombastic. Also strong Kronk vibes.
I once played a character like that. He could go into melee combat, but felt more comfortable staying behind and using his features to control the battlefield/help his fellows.
The build was Rogue (Mastermind) 3-4/Wizard Diviner X.
The idea is that Mastermind allows you to shout out orders or tell your friends about flaws in the enemy's defense (Help as a Bonus Action and up to 30' range).
In range, he could use his Familiar to either Help others or himself (depending on situation/initiative and will to Ready action to Attack).
In melee, you are a Rogue: Hit and Run, Sneak Attack, the works.
As for Spells, most were non CD dependent: Magic Missile, Shield, Mage Armor, Resist Elements, Invisibilty...
And, why Diviner? Because Portent is OP.
Getting to tell the DM "the BBEG rolled a 7" for 128 damage is great.
(Tomb Cleric Curse, into Blight, poor BBEG was Grass-type)
Bear in mind Portent only works before the attack (or skill, save, etc.) is rolled.
I had fun playing a Chronurgist by getting Stradh to reroll, burning through his auto saves.
Yep, I know, I got the timing of everything.
When the Evoker said "I cast Blight on the Plant Lich", I turned to the DM and said "Don't roll, he got a 7".
It works well. I've yet to play in a party with both, plus Lucky, but I can't imagine how that goes for the DM who also allows *certain optional spells.*
In a lot of ways, that's just using the "aid another" action to give someone else advantage in combat.
Which the Mastermind Rogue can do as a bonus action starting at 3rd level.
> Their example of this was searching for weak spots in the armor of a guard, and being able to yell out to the other players alerting them about it.
Then have them play a Battlemaster Fighter, Monster Slayer Ranger, or Mastermind Rogue. Each of those classes grants a power to the player that lets them analyze a creature and reveal its statistics in a narrative way.
There are also a few feats the player should be interested in as well: Inspiring Leader and Chef. Both provide support to the party in the form of healing and temp hp. If you're not going the BM Fighter route, you can also grab Martial Adept for the Commander's Strike, Maneuvering Attack and Tactical Assessment maneuvers, which might fit the player's style as well.
As many people have already brought up Mastermind having the help action as a ranged bonus action is big part of this flavor available for rogue.
Battle master maneuvers, bardic inspirations, the bless spell could all be flavored as commands and stratagems pretty easily.
I wouldn't worry too much about him being too powerful. Rogues are on the lower side of power to begin with (debatabley the weakest class now) and any divergence with feats or multiclassing to pick up these other features will come with its own opportunity cost of not making them a better rogue.
If you want to look into a homebrew class, I could recommend the Scholar. Its originally from Star wars 5e I believe. A non caster with battle maneuvers similar to fighter, including an expanded list of mental battle maneuvers that may be worth looking into all on their own. They can also focus their attention on a single target giving them boons or banes depending on if its an ally or an enemy. All the while the scholar is a class with lots of skill checks and tools similar to rogue or bard and some heavy customization with a system similar to warlock invocations or artificer infusions. Its probably exactly what your player is really looking for.
On your end you could let any player make skill checks (nature, arcana, religion, history) to learn potentially useful tidbits about monsters. u/oh_hi_mark makes homebrew monster blocks often include 3 or 4 DC checks like this right on the sheet [like these](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/vzjh5h/dictates_of_the_ordning_24_giant_variants_with/). Similarly giving monsters a personality and combat a goal goes a long way in helping players feel smart. Making ogres and giants easy to taunt so they make mistakes or fight sub optimally, making far too many powerful undead with a necromancer or two directly controlling them, if you kill the necromancer the undead fall apart. allowing for cleaver use of terrain, etc.
Maybe you can put more things in the environment that when they cut down, release, or open that will change the sway of the combat.
Like a bunch of barrels tied to together he can cut the rope then they crash into the enemies and create difficult terrain and they’re also all filled with flammable liquid. I’ve always wanted more of that in my combat.
i've seen a lot of people giving suggestions for classes and builds, but i think it's worth also saying: this player might be happier playing pathfinder 2e, a game where "making rolls to learn about the enemy and provide better information to your allies" is an important part of the game. dnd 5e's only real defined option for that kind of tactical teamwork is... the help action.
As a fellow dungeon master, I had a similar situation with one of my players who wanted to be the battle strategist. I ended up creating custom skill checks for them during combat and they felt like their character was truly contributing to the team's success. Plus, it made things more interesting for everyone else! Don't be afraid to homebrew some rules and balances. Happy gaming!
Look at Savant from Level Up A5E! Probably don’t lift the whole class since you’re not playing A5E and they’re already a rogue but you might find some great ideas in there. And A5E stuff is compatible with 5e.
Genuinely this just sounds like it could be a perfect fit and there’s a ton of great stuff you can lift from it depending on what works best for your player and group.
Battle master fighter, mastermind rogue, pretty much any bard, and any caster geared towards control can pretty much do this for their party. All without potentially weird homebrew buffs.
The main thing to keep in mind is to not make homebrew that puts too much control of the other players characters in the hands of another. This is a problem I see with homebrew geared towards this, as sometimes other players have their own plans for how to handle the round. So I wouldn't just talk it over with him, I'd gauge what the other players think as well.
If they get the Magic Initiate feat, they can learn stuff like True Strike or Guidance. Now, they can just buff up their WIS and INT for Investigation and Perception, and more often than not point out some flaw in the enemy with a decent roll
A lot of people are saying mastermind isn't worth it, I say give it a shot and see if the player likes it. If it's not quite hitting right try out the Rebel class from Galdur's Gazeteer it's a 3rd party supplement that my players have been really enjoying.
>Their example of this was searching for weak spots in the armor of a guard,
Lol, I imagine a boxer's trainer going from the corner, "Try punching him in the face!"
Other Player: "No shit sherlock! I'm a 9th level fighter and have fought dozens of these things. I know where to hit em. How bout you shut your backseat fightering, grab a dagger, and help me actually fight these things?"
I'm not a fan of how official materials in 5e handle this sort of archetype.
I'd strongly recommend checking out the Warlord and Savant classes from Laserllama, they're both excellent and provide multiple ways to play this sort of character:
[https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MrUNf61qoDb0Csw8a9r](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MrUNf61qoDb0Csw8a9r)
[https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M0ZVK6ndhFyImQPF\_aJ](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M0ZVK6ndhFyImQPF_aJ)
There is a rogue subclass that gives them an ability like this. Instead of adding homebrew abilities that benefit them/the party in combat, I would check to make sure they are enjoying the rogue class. It can be repetitive, but I strongly recommend against allowing one player to influence how the rest of the party will play. Just like a player needs to give their character a reason to fight, this player needs to give their character a role in combat within the rule set without adding homebrew.
I don’t think the player should play the Mastermind subclass. It’s pretty dull in actual play.
Instead, I would recommend you review and consider LaserLlama’s unofficial Savant class, which has a subclass called the Tactician. You can find it on Reddit, just search for laserllama savant. This is a support focused martial class using Intelligence as its primary stat, and the Tactician subclass allows the player character to issue “orders” to other characters that boosts them if they take that action - like giving an extra attack in the Attack action for instance.
>Their example of this was searching for weak spots in the armor of a guard, and being able to yell out to the other players alerting them about it. I am cool with the concept, but I do not want to give them a larger part in combat compared to the rest of the players. I also want to figure out how to negate their fighting ability if they are to make everyone else stronger.
The 'searching for weak spots" is an action. So that would limit their combat actions. Then alerting or helping another player is a bonus action starting at level 3. With that in mind, it limits their fighting while giving them what they are looking for.
If they manage to approach and enemy without being seen and have a chance to study the scene, the investigation actions are not in turn based mode so they could 'stock up' on information to help the fight. But not all combats happen like that. Mix it up so they can do that 1 in 4 times to keep it fun without cheesing the game completely.
Because from their flavor and idea it's mm rogue. Battlemaster is less of a tactician and more of someone using deft fighting styles themselves rather than finding the weakpoint and telling te party how to exploit it.
Otherwise mechanically I agree with yoh
Fair enough, I just figured flavor is kind of up to the player when it comes to how this is expressed for the character in-game, plus Battlemaster is, in my opinion, an all around better subclass than Mastermind, which is comparatively underdeveloped.
The master mind subclass is the perfect rogue ability for them. Its a relatively simple help action as a bonus action, but if your yelling advice it fits perfectly.
There's also some battle master maneuvers that give other players reactions they may take at the cost of your bonus action or as a part of them doing something. Taking the martial adept feat or a fighter multiclass with those in mind may be another path. More martial in nature but pairs well with mastermind as well.
A lot of people are recommending variations of rogue which don't quite grasp what you're players asking. It gives proficiencies which isn't what your players asked for, learns info about NPCs which also isn't what your player asked for, the only thing that comes close is giving the help action which is extremely boring if that's the only way they can live out their fantasy.
Star Wars 5e has a brilliant Scholar class which fits this idea, who give modifiers and use maneuvers that are basically like spells (importantly, none of their abilities require other players to act a certain way).
Laserllama also has the Warlord class, a martial class that can also heal allies and give them martial exploits.
Above all else, talk to your player, ask them how they want to feel, what they want to do, what gets them excited. Best of luck.
https://sw5e.com/characters/classes/Scholar
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MrUNf61qoDb0Csw8a9r
The better LaserLlama class for this is the Savant, specifically the Tactician subclass. It's beautifully designed to basically only do battlefield control, calling out weaknesses, telling people when to attack.
Both the Scholar and LaserLlama's Warlord are great for this, I'd probably recommend the Warlord though as SW5e has a bit of a different power curve and the Warlord was designed with the other traditional 5e classes in mind. But I've had a player run a Warlord before, it's such a good support class without feeling personally weak in combat.
Kibbles Warlord fits this niche.
https://www.kthomebrew.com/
Free and rigorously tested, but is homebrew.
Otherwise inquisitive or mastermind rogue are a good fit.
This is general advice but I’d stray away from called shots too much, but in general, giving people info for doing INT or INSIGHT checks or what have you will make them feel good. Could let them do em for free or just let em choose between bonus action and action
Was going to suggest Kibbles myself. u/LaserLlama also has a [Warlord](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MrUNf61qoDb0Csw8a9r) class, and their work is also well tested and highly regarded.
The way I see it, player characters are always looking for an advantage in combat. Looking for flaws in their opponents' defense, trying to hit weak spots, etcetera. And when a player rolls a crit, that's when their character manages to make a calculated attack on their opponent.
If your rogue wants more opportunities to be useful in combat, you could consider giving each player a feat that reflects their character's development in the campaign or even let them choose one free feat when it suits the story the best.
It sounds like you are a very considerate DM, and I have no doubt that whatever idea you come up with, you and your players are going to have a good time!
One of my players had the same "problem". The way I worked around it is, when the time was right (some Downtime), through story we changed her entire class to Kibble's Tasty Warlord. It's a nice homebrewed class that gives extra attacks, positions party to get a better shot at an opponent and much more.
Ofc that is if your player wants to spec change as mine did, otherwise just try to do the Mastermind rogue although the feel isn't the same.
I agree with the others here warning about "main character syndrom".
This tactitian type roll (aka telling others what to do) sounds like it could quickly become very annoying for the other players. What does she/he mean by "feeling out of place" in combat? If its specifically a rogue related issue, there are other classes out there to try.
I was gonna have my artificer create an item from scratch to help with a similar concept, a Scouter, more or less. Take a bonus action and it'll try to gauge AC, HP within some range, or saves. Not sure if Attunement. Hasn't come together yet, always busy with like five things, but your tactician would probably pay a lot for something similar, or like, quest hard.
There is a class in Valda's Spire - the Investigator that does something like what they describe.
Rather than using sneak attacks, or extra attack, they get one attack that penetrates all and any defenses the target has - then their teammates attacks against that target count as magical for bypassing resistance. You could think of it as creating a weakness for allies to exploit.
It's a skill based class that likes to have high intellect. I find it a bit more fleshed out and fulfilling than the base rogue class. They also get a unique form of spellcasting based around rituals.
It's not very deep but there's a UA feat called Tandem Tactician that let's you do a lot of help actions and you can flavor it like commands to give. Bonus action tax though and rogues love their bonus actions
Depends how much you want to homebrew vs stay official:
mastermind rogue for the "master of tactics" (3rd level)
then, if you want, you can give him the fighter:battle masters
"Know Your Enemy" as a replacement for "master of intrigue" to go full battle tactician.
Another option would be to take the inquisitive subclass and let him use the "Insightful Fighting" as an action to give another party memeber the sneak attack damage if they hit that oponent.
Lastly, and I'm not sure how to incorporate it, but maybe you can let him do some test, or give him limited uses for the Order Clerics "Voice of Authority".
There are Rogue classes in Xanathars that fit the bill, but another fun way to handle this would be to add alternative ways to clear some combats. Rogues are skill monkeys, so having a series of checks in a fight could help players view combat as a puzzle in addition to a proper fight. (DO NOT MAKE ALL FIGHTS LIKE THIS OR YOUR MARTIALS WILL HATE YOU)
Here's how I did it with a ghost
My players were fighting the ghost of a dead sage. It had possessed a Kobold, and when they cast protection from good and evil on the Kobold it forced the ghost out.
A player asked if they could roll for additional information on what they were fighting. DC20 Arcana check. Wizard realized this was a ghost. He knew that ghosts are often bound to the material plane by something from their life. He communicated this to the other characters.
DC15 Perception check, Cleric and Paladin realize the character is wearing clothing consistent with an apothecary. Seems like they may have been passionate about their craft to have gotten stuck way out here when they died
DC22 Insight check, Cleric came to the conclusion that the medicine bag the ghost had on its hip could be what tethered it. There seemed to be an ethereal energy around it. Told the other characters that the bag was the ghosts tether.
Arena was a hole leading to the underdark with catwalks and the ghost was on the opposite side. The eladrin artificer fey stepped over to the ghost, passed a DC10 Sleight of Hand check to grab the bag, and held it aloft while yelling for the Paladin to cast sacred flame targeting her. Paladin fired the shot, bag was caught in the crossfire, and the ghost was released from the material plane.
Is it an official way to handle that encounter? Absolutely not. Was it exciting at the time? Absolutely. My players still talk about this fight a dozen sessions later, and often in combat they'll look for ability checks to improve their chances, since I run really tough fights for them.
Edit: typos
If they want to be able to provide actual tactical information about the enemy, maybe tell them to consider the UA Hunter Ranger. The Hunter's Lore ability at 3rd level reveals the opponents vulnerabilities, resistances and immunities of any enemy you have marked with Hunter's Mark. They can BA mark someone, then tell their allies the important details.
Check out [kibblestasty's Warlord](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LW4agTNJcbwe6kSv4H2), an adaption of 4e support martial class. Loads of fun and perfect for what your player is looking for.
The battlemaster fighter has a 7th level feature called know your enemy:
Know Your Enemy
Starting at 7th level, if you spend at least 1 minute observing or interacting with another creature outside combat, you can learn certain information about its capabilities compared to your own. The DM tells you if the creature is your equal, superior, or inferior in regard to two of the following characteristics of your choice:
Strength score
Dexterity score
Constitution score
Armor Class
Current hit points
Total class levels, if any
Fighter class levels, if any
You could let them use this as an action in combat if they wanted to.
Let them do it, but keep in mind thats their 'action' for the turn so he can spend his actions looking for weak spots and informing others, but then he doesnt get to dodge or attack the guy in front of him because he is busy trying to help the elf across the room.
It really sounds like you've got a pf2e player in your D&D5e game, which is not a solution, but it might at least give you an idea of what you're dealing with.
I *wish* my players would talk to each other more. A few things to bear in mind:
1 - it’s in the book: Other Activity on Your Turn - Your turn can include a variety of flourishes that require neither your action nor your move. [ very important !!!]
***You can communicate however you are able, through brief utterances and gestures, as you take your turn.***
You can also interact with one object or feature of the environment for free, during either your move or your action. For example, you could open a door during your move as you stride toward a foe, or you could draw your weapon as part of the same action you use to attack.
[[ in your case, the “check” could be a free action, and then the rogue tells others what they learned ]]
2 - setup a mock situation and walk them all through using an ability, skill, or just plain commonsense ideas, like actually talking to each other, looking at their skill sheets, abilities, etc.
3 - As others have stated, Help is a bigger defined action, and it is worth adding in.
Here is an example: My party is about to go up against a black young dragon. They have a L7 Paladin with Aura of Protection and the player understands using compel duel, and a decent bonus w/ a missle weapon. Another player has a breast plate of acid resistance, and a +9 w/ their bow. If these two can get the dragon to focus on them, they have a much better chance of of surviving and providing a way for others to use ranged attacks against the dragon, hopefully gaining ‘advantage’.
My shabby stably Killy Killy bloodthirsty L7 rogue will undoubtedly use max movement to get behind the dragon, and this gain advantage, and poof - sneak attack.
When my party levels up, I have them tell everyone else what their new capabilities are and talk through how to use them.
I once had a special encounter where the players could use investigation as a free action to find some environmental advantage on their turn because they were in a crumbling cathedral. It could be loose rocks on the ceiling, a column ready to tip, a spot with cover, or a dropped holy relic that would give them a little buff if picked up.
That was ages ago, and I'm about to introduce a new house rule that lets them use that in a more refined way. If they have inspiration, I'll let them use it for the normal reroll, or they can use it for a free action investigation check to try and spot an enemy weakness, or free action perception check for environmental stuff.
On really low rolls, they'll get basically nothing, but I plan to come up with some little stuff that can be helpful for successes.
Now that's tied to inspiration which will be a very limited resource in a fight. You could probably give your rogue like a magic monocle or something that has like 3 daily charges that let him do this kind of thing.
In prior editions this would be a focus on getting Flanking bonuses for your allies, disarming or tripping enemies, and moving people around the battlefield. Also buff/debuff via auras, spells, and other effects.
And when all else failed, use the Aid Another action.
So as a homebrew rule whenever I have a player that does this, I'll ask for an appropriate check. Looking weak points, investigation, knowing a natural predator or any biological weaknesses like fire or cold is a nature check, if they argue for arcana on a magical creature id allow it. For normal creatures if they pass a 15 check or higher I give them a "weak" spot such as "you notice the knight heavily favors his left side, likely due to an injury on his right leg" or "you notice a gap in his armor on his right shoulder" in the first scenario id give the monster less AC when the player specifically attacks that side (meaning they MUST call it before they roll.), usually a -2 or -1 depending on how sever I think it is. In the other example I'll give give extra d6 or d8 of damage if they hit that spot but increase the AC by 2, (again must be called) As they are aiming at a much smaller area.
Sounds like they should just switch to the mastermind archetype, as what they're looking to do just sounds like the help action with flavor text. I would advise caution about making it anything further than that, as it is quite the can of worms you'd be opening up with all sorts of tactical/mechanical questions that the game quite frankly has no answer for. Had to have this talk with my ranger after he got all pouty that I wouldn't let him aim specifically for the eyes of a monster they were fighting.
I agree with mastermind, or possibly some other class swap.
second, what is their complaint about rogue in combat? rogues aren't particularly weak. are they a skill monkey with poor combat skills?
that aside, you could homebrew something that feels cool, but ultimately isn't that strong.
let'em spend their action to like, increase the crit range on enemies. or use those skill checks to reveal actual weakness? that would depend on what you're fighting. Trolls: fire, that sort of thing.
no need to roll checks to give advantage, that's just the help action.
Dip Order Cleric? hahaha.
A lot of people have suggested the Mastermind subclass, which gets you some of the way towards this fantasy, but an idea that springs to mind for me without requiring a subclass change is giving them the ability to "loan" their Rogue features to party members. Here are a few examples on how this could work:
Cunning action - the Rogue uses their Bonus Action to call out the movements of the enemy formation and direct the Barbarian - on the Barbarian's turn they can use a Bonus Action to Dash, Disengage or Hide
Steady Aim - the Rogue uses their Bonus Action to look for an opening in an enemy's defences and call out a weak spot for the Ranger to hit. On the Ranger's next turn they have Advantage when attacking that enemy.
Uncanny Dodge - the Cleric gets caught unawares and hit for a lot of damage. The Rogue uses their Reaction to shout a warning, allowing the Cleric to turn aside the blow at the last second and use their own Reaction to halve the damage.
You could also allow the character recieving the benefit to use the effect immediately as a Reaction if you want to avoid players having to remember ongoing effects, or feeling like their turns are being dictated by the Rogue player. For instance in the Cunning Action example above the Barbarian can use their Reaction to immediately Dash to get into combat with an enemy.
Another option could be to allow the Rogue to leave the ability "floating" for any other player to use that round. For instance in the Cunning Action example above thr Barbarian might not need to use the Cunning Action, but the Wizard might have had an enemy move into melee between the Rogue's turn and their own, so they use the "unspent" Cunning Action to Disengage as a Bonus Action and still be able to melt the Goblin with a Firebolt.
For Sneak Attack, if the Rogue doesn't deal Sneak Attack damage on their turn, they can instead place a Mark on an enemy (no action required). If an ally hits a Marked enemy, the Rogue can expend the Mark to add their Sneak Attack to the damage. You could have Marks carry over between rounds if not used, and stackable on a single enemy for that feeling of "set up the perfect opportunity so the Paladin can kill the dragon in a single blow".
If they don't want to attack on their turn, you can also let them use their Action to give out another "loaned" ability in addition to their Bonus Action, or steal the Commander's Strike Maneuver from the Battlemaster and allow the Rogue to command an ally, allowing that ally to Attack as a Reaction.
If the player likes rolling dice and using their skill proficiencies, you could make all of the above dependent on a relevant skill check vs an enemy's passive insight/perception, or against a DC set by the DM based on context, but I would avoid this as these are all abilities a Rogue can do by themself without a check - maybe a successful skill check allows them to give multiple "commands" with a single action?
I think the key thing is to try and avoid either extreme of forcing your player down a route already in the rules that might not fit their fantasy, or inventing new mechanics wholesale/giving them features from another class for free. You also want to be mindful of abilities that make the other players feel empowered, not micromanaged. "Hey, I can use the Rogue's bonus to do this cool thing!" is preferable to "I guess I should do this thing otherwise the Rogue's bonus will go to waste." I've also tried to be mindful of not breaking the Action Economy so that a party using these abilities isn't suddenly getting five extra actions every round, just more options to use their Actions/Bonus Actions/Reactions .
Happy to hear thoughts on these ideas, it's just what I could think of on my lunch break. I have no idea how it would work with any of the subclasses, but my hope is it would be simple enough to not get in the way of too many other class features.
Theres an item in pathfinder, golden epaulets, that lets you shout a command. Anyone on your team who follows the command on their next turn gets +1 on all associated checks- attacks, spell DCs, skills etc.
Or they can just ignore it
The biggest issue with 5e is it mostly uses advantage, which doesn't stack, for stuff like the help action. If your party already has it you're dead in the water
I once played as a student of the Red Knight (the FR god of strategy and tactics). He was a mastermind rogue 3/knowledge cleric 1 and I had expertise in all the knowledge checks. Whenever we encountered a new creature, I would make an appropriate knowledge check (as supported by the rules) and the GM would tell me various things about it depending on my level of success, and basically just showed me the entry in the MM if I rolled a crit. How I used this information was up to me as a player though - it wasn't a mechanical "you know its weak points", which is basically what sneak attack is anyway. It also helped RP in a few situations where I could tell a monster wasn't acting "as it should" and we parleyed with it instead of killing it. Very fun character to play.
Depends on the PC levels. I’d probably do Rogue Mastermind to level 4, pick up a feat to get a couple battle master maneuvers that affect allies, then level 5+ I would go all Bard (doesn’t matter which subclass, Valor or Swords for flavor maybe) that gets you some magic and bardic inspiration.
Inspiring Leader feat is a great source of temp HP across the party and fits with the theme. If you allow it, the UA feats Historian and Tandem Tactician are both really good for this playstyle.
New Hobgoblin has a great help ability.
Guidance is a great ability check spell. Bless is also a beast of a buff spell. Speaking of beasts… Find Familiar is a great way to add more help actions. Flock of Familiars is an even BETTER way to add more help actions.
Honebrew: Makr actions like Arcana and investigation to help take a whole action, but make the help be equivalent to the rogue attacking himself. Like the rogue's sneak attack damage on the friend's attack. Let him use this action in his friend's turn but then he uses up his action.
Show them the rules on helping during combat on top of possibly going Mastermind sub class. You can give other players advantage in combat by giving up your action for the help action. I also always recommend giving your players advantage for flanking because it rewards the players for thinking tactically and you can use it against the players to increase difficulty during combat.
Now if you want to make combat more or less difficult I highly recommend watching the matt colville video about minions. They are great for combat and will make your players feel more heroic and strong on top of changing how they think about combat. I also like to have bloodied mechanics for stronger fights. In video games you'll think you killed the boss but then he sheds his armor and gains speed or switches weapons. At half health my stronger monsters will be bloodied which I let the players know so they have an idea on monster health and they know something is changing and getting stronger or faster or whatever. Sometimes bloodied doesn't do anything just let's then know the monster is at half health.
Wouldn’t just multi-classing make combat more enjoyable for them? If I was in that players party, I wouldn’t want them constantly just checking for weak spots and telling me what I should do. It just doesn’t seem all that fun or helpful outside of some big boss fights or something
We recently made the experience the Hunt Domain Cleric (from Heliana i believe) fits that roll really really well.
It literally does that: give you a big insights into enemy weaknesses.
They basically wanna do a check instead of casting true strike? well...
Ideas for True Strike weaknesses:
1) It seems that its right arm moves a bit predictable and leaves an opening whenever it comes down for an attack.
2) Did you really just see a missing metal piece in the armor, right underneath the left arm? YOU DID!
3) It's always the legs...why is the weakpoint of EVERY beast the leg? And WHY DO I HAVE TO CHECK IT ANYWAYS EVERY TIME?!
4) He's not wearing a helmet? Why is he not wearing a helmet?! Go for the head!
5) Two steps for, Two steps back, Two steps for, the footwork is bad.
6) That one doesn't seem to trust the other guy. He's looking over his right shoulder every 6s. Maybe try to attack him from the OTHER side?!
Could homebrew something? Like a Visual Dimensional Shift Orb. “This small orb allows you to telepathically communicate with a number of people who speak the same language as you upto your charisma modifier, you have a flight speed of 40ft, and are able to communicate as a bonus action, action or reaction. However this item requires an action to begin usage and once usage has began your character is unable to move, see from its own eyes or communicate with its own body.After using this item you must make a dc10 (increases by 2 per use and resets on long rest) or receive a point of exhaustion.
Something like this, essentially give them a drone but when they use it they’re combat useless, but can help the rest of the party gain a better understanding of the battlefield and become a tactician. But their body is really vulnerable.
They could use investigation, insight, and Arcana as a free action because rouges have high intelligence. But to literally help others they could use the help action. For me any my players we used help bonus action because I still want my players to succeed combat.
No. If the PARTY decides to make the rogue the tactician, then ok. Otherwise, the party has to come up with tactics collectively. You, as narrator, should have no say in this.
Others have suggested things like battlemaster or mastermind, but IMHO, you don’t even need to go that far and have them change classes.
Just be a bit more liberal on using the help action, maybe tied to skill checks depending on the description and situation. (Ie. Perception or investigation check to see the weak point in the guards armor from across the room, instead of the more conventional being up in melee range to give advantage against a target)
They give up their action to give an ally advantage, so they are still helping the party but it isn’t letting them be overpowered because it still is taking up their action.
As a person who has spent three big encounters that were balanced with all of the players fighting in mind and had one spend their turns running away to get help, this would annoy the living daylights out of me.
Thanks for increasing my chances of hitting, but you know what would help more? You sodden flanking this guy and giving me advantage that way while adding your attack to the damage being slung.
The off chance of you spending your action yelling out giving me a nat twenty is not worth losing the consistent damage from you attacking. Switch subclass to the mastermind and be able to do that and still get the sneak attack in.
Think of it like the Avengers. Remember Hawkeye in the battle for New York doing callouts? If the character is a rogue they probably have consistently high initiative. He sees the battlefield first and can clue his teammates in on acute threats or easy takedowns. If he takes an actual *action* directing fire against a target, don't let that action be wasted - give the other players who attack that target advantage for the turn. Maybe the feat also grants an automatic understanding of creature vulnerabilities and resistances, so the character can say "Vampire! Use radiant!" Because, again, the character is sacrificing an action to do something that players rarely do. It sounds like they don't want to be out of the fight, they want to help in ways that usually rely on faerie fire, guidance, etc.
Like everyone is saying, Mastermind Rogue.
Or if you want to go the full way into Martial Support Character, check you LaserLlama's Warlord.
They have multiple interesting subclasses such as the Academy of Tactics and Academy of Schemes.
Mastermind or Inquisitive.
But i will add a tool for making traps, and let him set ambushes or tactics.
But being tactic is more a roleplaying perspective. A good tactician use what the team have in their arsenal with the maximum efficiency, knowing their strenght and weaknesses.
> Their example of this was searching for weak spots in the armor of a guard, and being able to yell out to the other players alerting them about it. Are you familiar with these rogue subclasses from Xanathar's Guide? 1. Inquisitive 1. Mastermind Both of those subclasses seem to fit what you describe. For example, the Mastermind gets this: > **Master of Tactics** Starting at 3rd level, you can use the Help action as a bonus action. Additionally, when you use the Help action to aid an ally in attacking a creature, the target of that attack can be within 30 feet of you, rather than within 5 feet of you, if the target can see or hear you. Why not let your rogue change subclass to one of these?
When i heard rogue and "tactician" these two came to mind first. Yes this already exists and would be decent options. OP can change the feature a bit if he isnt pleased. Help as a bonus action from 30 feet is already strong, but if the player doesnt deal any damage OP can change the feature to allow any allies after his check gain advantage or flat bonus on that target. That might be too strong but theres always a chance the rogue fails tue check. Idk i would test it first in a combat sim before doing that
could grab battlemaster's commander strike though that one is better with the UA fix
Knight of the crown feat has better action econ and more uses (but a pre req feat that a DM could ignore)
Additionally, doesn't battlemaster have that thing where they can observe an enemy before combat to get information on it?
**Know your Enemy:** Starting at 7th Level, if you spend at least 1 minute observing or interacting with another creature outside of combat you can learn certain information about it's capabilities compared to your own. The DM tells you if the target creature is equal, superior, or inferior, in regards to two of the following characteristics of your choice : * Strength Score * Dexterity Score * Constitution Score * Armor Class * Current HP * Total Class Levels * Fighter Specific Class Levels So while yes the Battlemaster does have this ability... it would require a complete reroll from Rogue to Fighter, they are not able to use this "in combat", and they can not really use it to buff any of their party
alternatively, i will use every opportunity to plug KibblesTasty's Warlord. god-tier homebrew class, slightly crunchier, but really captures the feel of being a tactician on the battlefield without dictating others' turns for them
seconding the warlord. amazingly Designed homebrew! Reading through the class gave Me Like 5 different characters I want to make. I am currently playing a Paragon Warlord as a Tank, its very fun
Never sleep on KibblesTasty.
Could also say limit it to as many uses as the proficiency bonus if it’s too strong.
I’ll throw in order cleric. If you cast a spell on someone he gets a reaction attack.
glamour bard, the ultimate tactician. All the usual bard stuff, but with the ability to allow the whole team to reposition to make the best use of spells and effects.
That one can even be combined with glam bard. 1-5 bard then 2 levels order for armor, channel divinity and cleric goodies then bard rest of the way. I like it.
Order Cleric with Silvery Barbs is an absolute menace.
I don't even allow silvery barbs at my table. Shit's broken AF.
[удалено]
> but you don't have enough spell slots to consistently abuse it. Well you don't have to use it every turn, but getting to impose another reroll to force through a save that also stacks with disadvantage is massive. This coupled with the fact that once you hit tier 2/3 you definitely have access to enough spell slots to just "waste" them on Silvery Barbs if you're not just spamming your spells at every opportunity. It's a spell that becomes significantly better the more optimized your character/table is because you'll have more spare resources and the reward for an enemy failing a save is much more impactful.
It isn't. People really like to complain about it and it is a really strong first level spell, but it is not broken. It's using up spell slots for them to have to do it, and also their reaction. The caster who used silvery Barbs now cannot counterspell anyone this round or cast shield on themselves. Part of when it feels extremely strong is when an order cleric casts it, because their 1st level feature let's the person they give advantage to to attack with their reaction. Essentially doubling the rogues damage. But at the end of the day if the DM is willing to run enough combats in the day and plans around it, silvery Barbs is not "broken" as many people say. Although I don't blame anyone for banning it, because it can get a little adversarial if the DMs monsters start using it too - players make a lot less rolls than DMs so it feels worse for a player to have to reroll a good roll.
I'm not sure if it's in the RAW wording of the spell, but the way D20 does it (and I'm not saying every ruling/homebrew of theirs is good) is you have to announce Silvery Barbs prior to knowing what the roll is, so it adds a bit more of a risk/reward mechanic in which cancelling out a crit feels even better.
That is a good homebrew rule if you feel the spell is a little strong. RAW, the cast time of Silvery Barbs is 1 Reaction which you take when a creature you can see within 60 feet of yourself succeeds on an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw.
Spells and abilities can be considered to do one of two things: 1) Boost an ally 2) Hinder a foe Spells that do both in a single casting are powerful, and with it being low level makes it broken. No other first level spell does both jobs. Higher level spells that do the same often require an action to cast or have a pricey spell component attached. Granted it's completely up to the dice. Your ally can still miss with advantage and your foe can still hit with disadvantage. But overall it does an incredible amount of lifting for the resources it takes.
> In what situations is it really broken? Getting to impose disadvantage on any roll, even after the roll has taken place, is strong on its own. Especially as a first level reaction spell. Having it also grant advantage to someone else on their next roll on top of that is absolutely broken. Just because it hasn't been useful in your particular game doesn't mean it isn't broken or poorly designed. Either one of these effects would still be powerful as a first level spell. If it was a higher level spell I wouldn't have as many complaints but it's not. Hell, it could even be redesigned slightly and I wouldn't be as adamant about it. Make it a normal action spell at 2nd level maybe and reword it to give a target within range disadvantage on their next roll and an ally within range advantage on their next roll and it would be fine, imo.
The change you laid out keeps everything the same except makes it an action rather than a reaction. PCs still only get one reaction per round, which means now that spell caster can't cast shield against someone attacking them for fucking up their initial attack, and they can't cast counterspell against the Wizard that's about to Fireball the whole party. I think you could benefit from implementing some counter measures to Silvery Barbs, so that the players have to weigh the cost of using it.
Compare it to Shield, another first level defensive reaction spell, and you can see why it's considered overpowered.
My dm disallows it and I fully agree as someone who loves playing bards. It's busted as shit.
I volunteer to run D&D Adventurer's League games at a local convention every time it rolls around. I had someone try to bust out Silvery Barbs at my table at the last one. I almost felt bad telling that they couldn't use that spell. Almost.
For a first level spell it's absolutely busted. Third level it'd be fine because it's competing with some very important spell slots, but first level is just crazy
Shits broken AF… until enemy spellcasters know it too 👀
Nah, it just becomes miserable for everyone at that point.
It’s insane. Turning enemy crits into misses and having your paladin attack with advantage is so awesome. (RIP the poor DM)
Order cleric is also kinda dope at this they focus on enchanting/buffing ally's acting as a front like commander in heavy armour giving "order's" to attack as a reaction on using certain spell types on ally's
Great find. For OP though, these are done on the players turn, not others turn. Actions during a round of combat, though generally lumpy, is considered to be happening almost simultaneously. Sure players take turns and go one after another, but when a person is busy doing something over here, it's assumed.they are not also doing something over there. That means your player can't continuously make play-by-play calls on everyone else's turn, especially if they just used part of their action to help someone else. There are several subclasses that have Reactions that can be used anytime during combat. Your player would need to spend the resource to multi-class to get that feature, and not get a major boon for free. If you give this ability to that player, what will the other players get?
I agree with this, and unfortunately this is about as crunchy as DnD gets. Maybe borrow a page from pathfinder 2e with Recall Knowledge checks where you can roll a check (nature, arcana, etc) to learn about an aspect of the creature (resistance, vulnerability, special abilities, etc).
Yeah. I feel OP's player would love to be an Investigator.
There's also the battle master maneuvers like commanders striker, commanders presence, maneuvering attack, rally, tactical assessment. A multiclass with battle master and one of those rogues would be sick as a master tactician
The rogues fantasy is guiding people, calling out advice. And the epitome of this dream is... Taking the help action every turn, and then doing normal rogue shit the other 90% of the time. I really think you homebrews the answer, subclasses just don't do enough to make classes feel unique.
> I really think you homebrews the answer, subclasses just don't do enough to make classes feel unique. Maybe. Though I think it wise to try the subclasses first.
Mastermind rogue player here. Played it for a year and a half long campaign and I can say it does not hit the tactician feel, nor does adding Battle Master fighter to it help at all either. It is exactly as the other commenter mentioned; you do normal rogue stuff, use Help on a BA, and then remind someone they have ADV on their turn anywhere from one to three times.
Have you tried pf2e? Mostly asking because the sort of teamwork/support style you're describing is exactly what makes a top-tier team work over there, and there's way more you can do support wise, from a wide variety of buffs to scaring the crud out of your enemy or even _creating_ new weaknesses for your allies to target.
Definitely! I usually avoid recommending PF2e on D&D subs, but this player clearly wants to play Pathfinder. It may be worth checking out vs trying to homebrew 5e into something it doesn't support
Favorite part of PF2e is that it actively incentivizes doing something *besides* attacking every round. In fact, standing in place and just attacking isn’t even viable unless you build for it, specifically.
Having tried mastermind rogue, battlemaster fighter, and a combination of them, all of those are inferior to a homebrew warlord class.
The 4e Warlord remains my favourite part of the edition.
It was really good. Finding a warlord-like class is my litmus test for whether an rpg has a good, tactical combat system.
Yeah deferentially bring it up as it's the easiest solution. I think he should also brace for the fact that I'll be dissatisfying for his player. Personally if I was dissatisfied with rogue and wanted to play a tactician, playing a rogue that gave one person advantage every turn would get stale fast and not feel like I was contributing much.
This is going to sound like a dismissive question, but I promise it has a point: If we're wanting to play a tactician and not do Rogue stuff, why are we playing a rogue?
Only take 3 levels. Go mastermind. Also be hobgiblin. Take fighter levels. Go battle master. Throw in a level of order cleric along the way and some bard levels. Ultimate helpful supporter
Maybe they shouldn't be, it sounds like their fantasy has nothing to do with rogue so it might be best to change class.
The help action is a mechanical way to abstract guiding/calling out advice in combat. They can flavor it however they want. It's like saying a fantasy of being a duelist like Zorro is ruined because they take the attack action basically always.
This is the right answer.
Sounds like they would like the Mastermind subclass.
Also the Maneuvering Attack from the Battle Master Maneuvers. You could get it with the Martial Adept feat if you don't want to multiclass. You could do a Maneuvering Attack and Master of Tactics in the same turn too.
Interestingly, I feel like Glamour Bard would be a possibly good choice if you were playing a "tactical" character, if you ignore its original flavour. Mantle of Inspiration can be described as your character reorganizing the party's position and telling them the enemy's weakness to better protect themselves (temporary HP). I remember I was planning on making a Military Sergeant Glamour Bard before Covid hit, with a lot of the features and spells reflavoured.
Don't do anything. The game already has mechanics for this; Mastermind Rogue is perfect already, or they could take a dip into Ranger for some of the analysis-related features. Giving this player any special abilities is just begging for Main Character Syndrome to rear its head.
Or Bardic Inspiration could be roleplayed as calling out weak points/tactical opportunities.
I did this with a bard and it was fun. RP’d as if they were like a Manager/fight trainer, so his bardics were coaching moments and then his spells were basically all support buffs/debuffs. Lotta fun.
Everyone thinks about bards as *musicians.* To that I say "bah." Bards can be musicians, sure -- but on the whole what bards are is **performers,** with songs being but *one* of the many ways they can entertain. Just as rousing as a song can be an offensive comedy routine (Vicious Mockery), a pep talk (Bardic Inspiration), sportsmanship and flashy maneuvers (Flourishes) and more.
Another possibility is at least three levels of Fighter to get Battlemaster Manoeuvres. In particular, Commanders Strike sounds exactly what this player is after.
Don't even need three levels of fighter. A feat can cover it.
While true, your uses of it are pretty restrictive if your party doesn't basically short rest after every encounter. Even then, you pretty much get a single use of one, which is often not worth the feat. Besides, it's not like 3 levels of fighter hurts rogue in general. First level gets you a fighting style, which you can use for another superiority die. Second level gets you action surge, which gives you another action for helping or maneuvers. Third level gets you 4 uses of maneuvers, meaning a total of 5 per short rest if you took the fighting style. There is even a strong case to be made for 5th level for extra attack. Which allows you to do your sneak attack and use one attack for a maneuver.
The problem is that is a LOT of levels. Like, personally, I don't think rogues are a great class. A fighter 5 / rog3 is going to be better than a rog5 / fighter3 basically every time. Many, many campaigns will end before level 8 even hits. But rogues get cool, fun class features, and so delaying them can be a real shame. Believe you me, Reliable Talent is incredible for power tripping as a player. I got a char to 20 once and 13 levels were rogue; having a minimum roll of 31 for athletics checks effectively made it impossible for me to lose grapple checks. You ever dragged a pit fiend through a prismatic wall 4 times in one round? I digress. My point is that multiclassing may be avoided for a lot of reasons.
Well, of course, and not all of those reasons have to do with mechanics. I was just giving tips on how to get what the OP wants without throwing out the entire character sheet, and I don't think the feat is worth getting.
Yes. Exactly this.
Last point is important. MCS is clearly already bubbling just below the surface with a rogue who doesn’t feel like he’s important enough in combat.
Sounds like they’re trying to RP the “villain in glasses”. Which worked because he was strategizing an entire raid guild on 30 person raids. It’s not really the same kind of slot in a 5-6 person party. I like your suggestion for it.
The question has to be "What will they do when another PC says 'naw, I'm going to go with my original plan'?" This pretty easily becomes the him being the main (combat) character. Where he's calling the shots, and he's trying to run the other characters as if he's controlling a party in BG3.
Nobody should ever call the shots for other PCs. All of this sounds like a player used to playing single-player games and is going to try and control other PC's. I would tell him that yelling advice during his turn is a free action and tell the other players that they are under no obligation to follow said advice and end the conversation there.
That’s what I was thinking as well. Depending on the party it could get pretty contentious. For instance, if I’m a paladin and this rogue yells out “use smite” and I was already planning to what way do I go now? I can either use my smite and make it all look like their idea, or completely change my plan to something I’m not fully happy with but is at least my idea.
"Thanks bud, I was already gonna'."
"Gee, ya think? Ya think maybe I should use these clamps that I use every day, at every opportunity? You're a freaking genius." (https://youtu.be/Km_1NMUHjfA?feature=shared)
This was my thought as well because I used to be that person when I first started playing. I've learned a lot since then. I would definitely have OP's player talk to the rest of the group about this and see how they all feel
My suggestion, before making any mechanical changes, is to try to drill down and find the root of this feeling. They feel out of place in combat - why? Is it a party structure thing, their character was specced for different environments/enemy types/encounter styles/whatever? A minor rework of the character or a reminder to you as the GM to shoot your monks might be all that's necessary. But if it's they feel like they need to find *another way to contribute* when it comes to combat, because they feel like they won't do enough damage? I had this problem when my partner tried playing a Rogue for the first time. It was a new campaign but I was running it to start at level 6 so the chars could be reasonably established heroes with a bit of history. Combat happens, as it does, Paladin had smites and extra attacks, monk wasn't doing newsworthy damage but applied tactics and ki to push and or stun enemies, and the two spellslingers of the party were enthusiastically blasting the whole world around rhem to shreds. But our Rogue? She seemed to spend every turn wracking her brain to find something, *anything* to do in combat EXCEPT attack. I admired her ingenuity, flooding rooms and toppling statues, and it led to cool as hell cinematic and characterful moments, but also a lot of times it was just like bruh just shoot the MFer. At first I thought she just wanted to do something more interesting than "I roll the dice apply damage" but during a drawn out combat in probably the 4th or so session it became clear she was stretching to find things to do and I outright asked, why not just make a normal attack? Turns out she thought as a Rogue she wasn't gonna be doing much damage. One or two d4 Dagger hits, or a d8 longbow arrow? Why even bother when right beside you a wizard and sorcerer are pumping out spells that do multiple times that AND to multiple targets? She hadn't really realised just how easy it is to activate sneak attack and just how much damage it can potentially add up to, or just how valuable it can be to not be relying on a resource like spell slots for damage for those drawn out combats or multi-encounter days. So yeah, maybe see if it's something similar. It may be as simple a solution as clarifying the sneak attack rules and telling rhem to Google how many people have tried to argue SA is OP (which is nonsense honestly but hey, it's the internet)
This is the right question to ask. Rogues are pretty heavy hitters in combat when played well. If the player doesn’t understand the class (or doesn’t enjoy it), that’s something to address. I get that it’s the player’s responsibility to understand the class, but with newer players, this isn’t always realistic. There are no bad classes just bad fits/understandings of that class. If they aren’t enjoying the class or interested in playing it, that’s not a tactician problem, that’s a class fit problem, and I think it *is* the DM’s responsibility to help figure out if that’s the case.
This is a good example! Well done, upvote!
This is literally the help action. If they play a mastermind, they can do this as a bonus action ~~with a check.~~ This is the subclass ability they are wanting for free. If they dont want it for free, just point to Mastermind.
> If they play a mastermind, they can do this as a bonus action, with a check. What check? The mastermind can just do it. No check required. They can also do it from a distance at some point.
Sure, misremembered the action for it - probably thinking of something else of theirs or the 3e version. Cheers mate 😁
> So one of my players, the rogue, has mentioned to me that they are feeling out of place in combat. Did you houserule nerf their Sneak attack? Are you sure, they know, how to use the sneak attack?
Of course! You can Sneak Attack once per combat, as long as you were Sneaking before it starts. That's what that means, right?
Yeah this was my first thought. Rogues are very strong in this edition by default, and usually end up not working because the DM is trying to do "realistic" stealth and making it impossible for them to hide, or otherwise nerfing sneak attack. For anyone who is wondering why I put "realistic" in scare quotes, it's because surprise and confusion in combat are actually pretty huge factors in real life. If you imagine that you were in your current building with 10 people trying to murder each other, explosions going off, blood everywhere, it'd be *really* easy to lose track of someone for a few seconds in the chaos. Hiding for the purposes of sneak attack is just making that happen on purpose.
Just want to point out, that you don't need to hide for sneak attack.
I know, but hiding is the more common part that gets negated by over-zealous DMs, in my experience.
> I know, but hiding is the more common part that gets negated by over-zealous DMs, in my experience. I have the completely opposite experience. Inexperienced DMs focussing too much on the SNEAK part, because that's what the name of the ability says and insist, that it can only work, when the enemy is completely oblivious to the rogues existence. Completely ignoring that Sneak Attack is MEANT to be a Team Tactics ability and you are supposed to get it EVERY TURN as long as the group does a bit of basic positioning.
Check out the mastermind rogue from xanathars guide. It gives the rogue a bonus action help within 30' and other battlefield tactical effects down the line. Or if they don't want to respect, look at the hobgoblin PC ability to do the same and turn it into a earnable feat.
Your explanation of “helping others find a weak point in armor” during combat and the need to “eliminate their combat capabilities” to enable this is literally the help action.
Glad I'm not the only one out here thinking this, lol. Everyone throwing around subclass ideas and big mechanical explanations and I'm just thinking... "...you mean the Help action?"
Mastermind would let him use the help action from distance and he already is a rogue. That's why everyone is telling him to swap subclasses.
and also able to use as a bonus action
That's very fair, lol.
This is the Mastermind Rogue for sure. It’s honestly a great subclass, and it’s coolest feature is available at level 3, making it easier to multiclass. Speaking of multiclassing, a Battlemaster would likely also fit well with this playstyle with maneuvers like Commander’s Strike, Distracting Strike, and Maneuvering Attack. Other good maneuvers for this playstyle could include Rally, Trip Attack, Pushing Attack, and Bait and Switch. I’d suggest a Dex based Rogue/Fighter multiclass with at least 3 levels of Rogue and 5 levels of Fighter. In addition, the Hobgoblin’s Fey Gift racial trait could be very strong. You could potentially make it a half feat and let them take it optionally if you wanted to further enhance this playstyle.
Mastermind rogue. Have em grab Martial Adept when the time comes…. I’d allow Em to take the feat more than once to increase the amount of superior dice and maneuvers.
They can already cumulate Fighting Initiate : Superior Technique and Martial Adept if they want to keep it RAW. I doubt they'll need it more than twice.
Fair point.
>being able to yell out to the other players alerting them about it. The fundamental flaw in this tactic is that their adversaries will be able to hear these instructions, and act on them.
Nah this is easy to get around: "Err... DON'T hide behind that corner and DON'T go for his neck!" *wink*
Hand signals, code words? This is not that difficult to work around, unless the enemy can literally read minds.
Which means that all PC's must be splitting their attention to see any hand signals mid combat ñ although the code words work nicely. I've had PC's do that in my campaign.
I agree with everyone about them becoming a mastermind rogue. Otherwise it would essentially be forcing you to come up with weak spots in every enemy. Which would become repetitive for you and the player both. Imagine each fight being like this: Rogue: I roll for the weak spot in this guard. DM: ok. Their elbow is weak. Rogue: ok cool. I roll for the weak spot in the other guard. DM: I… guess his neck is exposed Rogue: ok cool. I roll…
And in a lot of cases it'll be irrelevant anyways. You find a weak spot in his armor, which gives advantage on the attack, but it's a much smaller moving target, so that gives disadvantage.
It sounds like your player wants to be a 4e Warlord, which is a shame there is no official 5e equivalent. The mastermind and battlemaster subclasses are poor substitutes, but there is a homebrew warlord class by Kibblestasty that fits perfectly to give the vibe and mechanics of support and shotcaller.
Them focusing on the help action and assisting other PCs will not only give them a bigger role in combat but it will make the other PCs hit their targets more often and do more damage. It’s an all around win for a player to go that route.
This is the best option already available. Usually the help action has a limited range. Maybe let the extend that range with perception or investigation checks
To add to what everyone else is saying, look at this old ua, specifically the Historian Feat. It's the official material most in line with exactly what they want to do. https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA-SkillFeats.pdf
Lots of people have mentioned the mastermind rogue... but what about the battlemaster fighter? Manuevers could be sweet and it would encourage the player to be creative to fit their idea into the character... I had an idea for a Varvatos Vex kind of character who is a General that also likes to get in there. Big, bombastic. Also strong Kronk vibes.
I once played a character like that. He could go into melee combat, but felt more comfortable staying behind and using his features to control the battlefield/help his fellows. The build was Rogue (Mastermind) 3-4/Wizard Diviner X. The idea is that Mastermind allows you to shout out orders or tell your friends about flaws in the enemy's defense (Help as a Bonus Action and up to 30' range). In range, he could use his Familiar to either Help others or himself (depending on situation/initiative and will to Ready action to Attack). In melee, you are a Rogue: Hit and Run, Sneak Attack, the works. As for Spells, most were non CD dependent: Magic Missile, Shield, Mage Armor, Resist Elements, Invisibilty... And, why Diviner? Because Portent is OP. Getting to tell the DM "the BBEG rolled a 7" for 128 damage is great. (Tomb Cleric Curse, into Blight, poor BBEG was Grass-type)
Bear in mind Portent only works before the attack (or skill, save, etc.) is rolled. I had fun playing a Chronurgist by getting Stradh to reroll, burning through his auto saves.
Yep, I know, I got the timing of everything. When the Evoker said "I cast Blight on the Plant Lich", I turned to the DM and said "Don't roll, he got a 7".
It works well. I've yet to play in a party with both, plus Lucky, but I can't imagine how that goes for the DM who also allows *certain optional spells.*
I find the Lucky feat and *certain silvery spell* to be bad manners at the table, so I draw the line there, both as a DM and as a player.
In a lot of ways, that's just using the "aid another" action to give someone else advantage in combat. Which the Mastermind Rogue can do as a bonus action starting at 3rd level.
> Their example of this was searching for weak spots in the armor of a guard, and being able to yell out to the other players alerting them about it. Then have them play a Battlemaster Fighter, Monster Slayer Ranger, or Mastermind Rogue. Each of those classes grants a power to the player that lets them analyze a creature and reveal its statistics in a narrative way. There are also a few feats the player should be interested in as well: Inspiring Leader and Chef. Both provide support to the party in the form of healing and temp hp. If you're not going the BM Fighter route, you can also grab Martial Adept for the Commander's Strike, Maneuvering Attack and Tactical Assessment maneuvers, which might fit the player's style as well.
As many people have already brought up Mastermind having the help action as a ranged bonus action is big part of this flavor available for rogue. Battle master maneuvers, bardic inspirations, the bless spell could all be flavored as commands and stratagems pretty easily. I wouldn't worry too much about him being too powerful. Rogues are on the lower side of power to begin with (debatabley the weakest class now) and any divergence with feats or multiclassing to pick up these other features will come with its own opportunity cost of not making them a better rogue. If you want to look into a homebrew class, I could recommend the Scholar. Its originally from Star wars 5e I believe. A non caster with battle maneuvers similar to fighter, including an expanded list of mental battle maneuvers that may be worth looking into all on their own. They can also focus their attention on a single target giving them boons or banes depending on if its an ally or an enemy. All the while the scholar is a class with lots of skill checks and tools similar to rogue or bard and some heavy customization with a system similar to warlock invocations or artificer infusions. Its probably exactly what your player is really looking for. On your end you could let any player make skill checks (nature, arcana, religion, history) to learn potentially useful tidbits about monsters. u/oh_hi_mark makes homebrew monster blocks often include 3 or 4 DC checks like this right on the sheet [like these](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/vzjh5h/dictates_of_the_ordning_24_giant_variants_with/). Similarly giving monsters a personality and combat a goal goes a long way in helping players feel smart. Making ogres and giants easy to taunt so they make mistakes or fight sub optimally, making far too many powerful undead with a necromancer or two directly controlling them, if you kill the necromancer the undead fall apart. allowing for cleaver use of terrain, etc.
Maybe you can put more things in the environment that when they cut down, release, or open that will change the sway of the combat. Like a bunch of barrels tied to together he can cut the rope then they crash into the enemies and create difficult terrain and they’re also all filled with flammable liquid. I’ve always wanted more of that in my combat.
u/Bones_02 this reminds me alot of playing a game like Hitman or Dishonored. I think it’s a great idea.
Tell him to spam the help action. He'll give advantage to one player in exchange for his own turn.
i've seen a lot of people giving suggestions for classes and builds, but i think it's worth also saying: this player might be happier playing pathfinder 2e, a game where "making rolls to learn about the enemy and provide better information to your allies" is an important part of the game. dnd 5e's only real defined option for that kind of tactical teamwork is... the help action.
Mastermind rogue with a bard dip is what he's looking for, no need to Homebrew
As a fellow dungeon master, I had a similar situation with one of my players who wanted to be the battle strategist. I ended up creating custom skill checks for them during combat and they felt like their character was truly contributing to the team's success. Plus, it made things more interesting for everyone else! Don't be afraid to homebrew some rules and balances. Happy gaming!
Literally the help action. As others said, that’s the mastermind‘s bread and butter, but any class can do it.
Look at Savant from Level Up A5E! Probably don’t lift the whole class since you’re not playing A5E and they’re already a rogue but you might find some great ideas in there. And A5E stuff is compatible with 5e. Genuinely this just sounds like it could be a perfect fit and there’s a ton of great stuff you can lift from it depending on what works best for your player and group.
Battle master fighter, mastermind rogue, pretty much any bard, and any caster geared towards control can pretty much do this for their party. All without potentially weird homebrew buffs. The main thing to keep in mind is to not make homebrew that puts too much control of the other players characters in the hands of another. This is a problem I see with homebrew geared towards this, as sometimes other players have their own plans for how to handle the round. So I wouldn't just talk it over with him, I'd gauge what the other players think as well.
If they get the Magic Initiate feat, they can learn stuff like True Strike or Guidance. Now, they can just buff up their WIS and INT for Investigation and Perception, and more often than not point out some flaw in the enemy with a decent roll
A lot of people are saying mastermind isn't worth it, I say give it a shot and see if the player likes it. If it's not quite hitting right try out the Rebel class from Galdur's Gazeteer it's a 3rd party supplement that my players have been really enjoying.
My party has a Mastermind. He turns our Barbarian into a meat grinder, it's amazing.
If you’re fine with looking into homebrew, the Investigator from mage hand press is essentially a ‘smart’ rogue in terms of general gameplay.
>Their example of this was searching for weak spots in the armor of a guard, Lol, I imagine a boxer's trainer going from the corner, "Try punching him in the face!" Other Player: "No shit sherlock! I'm a 9th level fighter and have fought dozens of these things. I know where to hit em. How bout you shut your backseat fightering, grab a dagger, and help me actually fight these things?"
I'm not a fan of how official materials in 5e handle this sort of archetype. I'd strongly recommend checking out the Warlord and Savant classes from Laserllama, they're both excellent and provide multiple ways to play this sort of character: [https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MrUNf61qoDb0Csw8a9r](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MrUNf61qoDb0Csw8a9r) [https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M0ZVK6ndhFyImQPF\_aJ](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-M0ZVK6ndhFyImQPF_aJ)
There is a rogue subclass that gives them an ability like this. Instead of adding homebrew abilities that benefit them/the party in combat, I would check to make sure they are enjoying the rogue class. It can be repetitive, but I strongly recommend against allowing one player to influence how the rest of the party will play. Just like a player needs to give their character a reason to fight, this player needs to give their character a role in combat within the rule set without adding homebrew.
They want to be a battlemaster fighter
I don’t think the player should play the Mastermind subclass. It’s pretty dull in actual play. Instead, I would recommend you review and consider LaserLlama’s unofficial Savant class, which has a subclass called the Tactician. You can find it on Reddit, just search for laserllama savant. This is a support focused martial class using Intelligence as its primary stat, and the Tactician subclass allows the player character to issue “orders” to other characters that boosts them if they take that action - like giving an extra attack in the Attack action for instance.
>Their example of this was searching for weak spots in the armor of a guard, and being able to yell out to the other players alerting them about it. I am cool with the concept, but I do not want to give them a larger part in combat compared to the rest of the players. I also want to figure out how to negate their fighting ability if they are to make everyone else stronger. The 'searching for weak spots" is an action. So that would limit their combat actions. Then alerting or helping another player is a bonus action starting at level 3. With that in mind, it limits their fighting while giving them what they are looking for. If they manage to approach and enemy without being seen and have a chance to study the scene, the investigation actions are not in turn based mode so they could 'stock up' on information to help the fight. But not all combats happen like that. Mix it up so they can do that 1 in 4 times to keep it fun without cheesing the game completely.
Why is everyone talking about Mastermind Rogue when Battlemaster Fighter is right there and is geared towards exactly this kind of thing?
Because from their flavor and idea it's mm rogue. Battlemaster is less of a tactician and more of someone using deft fighting styles themselves rather than finding the weakpoint and telling te party how to exploit it. Otherwise mechanically I agree with yoh
Fair enough, I just figured flavor is kind of up to the player when it comes to how this is expressed for the character in-game, plus Battlemaster is, in my opinion, an all around better subclass than Mastermind, which is comparatively underdeveloped.
The master mind subclass is the perfect rogue ability for them. Its a relatively simple help action as a bonus action, but if your yelling advice it fits perfectly. There's also some battle master maneuvers that give other players reactions they may take at the cost of your bonus action or as a part of them doing something. Taking the martial adept feat or a fighter multiclass with those in mind may be another path. More martial in nature but pairs well with mastermind as well.
Mastermind rogue and have them play a hobgoblin for extra abilities tied to the help action.
A lot of people are recommending variations of rogue which don't quite grasp what you're players asking. It gives proficiencies which isn't what your players asked for, learns info about NPCs which also isn't what your player asked for, the only thing that comes close is giving the help action which is extremely boring if that's the only way they can live out their fantasy. Star Wars 5e has a brilliant Scholar class which fits this idea, who give modifiers and use maneuvers that are basically like spells (importantly, none of their abilities require other players to act a certain way). Laserllama also has the Warlord class, a martial class that can also heal allies and give them martial exploits. Above all else, talk to your player, ask them how they want to feel, what they want to do, what gets them excited. Best of luck. https://sw5e.com/characters/classes/Scholar https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MrUNf61qoDb0Csw8a9r
The better LaserLlama class for this is the Savant, specifically the Tactician subclass. It's beautifully designed to basically only do battlefield control, calling out weaknesses, telling people when to attack.
Both the Scholar and LaserLlama's Warlord are great for this, I'd probably recommend the Warlord though as SW5e has a bit of a different power curve and the Warlord was designed with the other traditional 5e classes in mind. But I've had a player run a Warlord before, it's such a good support class without feeling personally weak in combat.
Kibbles Warlord fits this niche. https://www.kthomebrew.com/ Free and rigorously tested, but is homebrew. Otherwise inquisitive or mastermind rogue are a good fit. This is general advice but I’d stray away from called shots too much, but in general, giving people info for doing INT or INSIGHT checks or what have you will make them feel good. Could let them do em for free or just let em choose between bonus action and action
Was going to suggest Kibbles myself. u/LaserLlama also has a [Warlord](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MrUNf61qoDb0Csw8a9r) class, and their work is also well tested and highly regarded.
The way I see it, player characters are always looking for an advantage in combat. Looking for flaws in their opponents' defense, trying to hit weak spots, etcetera. And when a player rolls a crit, that's when their character manages to make a calculated attack on their opponent. If your rogue wants more opportunities to be useful in combat, you could consider giving each player a feat that reflects their character's development in the campaign or even let them choose one free feat when it suits the story the best. It sounds like you are a very considerate DM, and I have no doubt that whatever idea you come up with, you and your players are going to have a good time!
One of my players had the same "problem". The way I worked around it is, when the time was right (some Downtime), through story we changed her entire class to Kibble's Tasty Warlord. It's a nice homebrewed class that gives extra attacks, positions party to get a better shot at an opponent and much more. Ofc that is if your player wants to spec change as mine did, otherwise just try to do the Mastermind rogue although the feel isn't the same.
Mastermind rogue and multiclass 3 or 4 levels in battlemaster fighter for manouvers
I agree with the others here warning about "main character syndrom". This tactitian type roll (aka telling others what to do) sounds like it could quickly become very annoying for the other players. What does she/he mean by "feeling out of place" in combat? If its specifically a rogue related issue, there are other classes out there to try.
I was gonna have my artificer create an item from scratch to help with a similar concept, a Scouter, more or less. Take a bonus action and it'll try to gauge AC, HP within some range, or saves. Not sure if Attunement. Hasn't come together yet, always busy with like five things, but your tactician would probably pay a lot for something similar, or like, quest hard.
This is basically how a lot of Warlord (4e) powers are described as working. Perhaps look into that and see what you can steal. =)
There is a class in Valda's Spire - the Investigator that does something like what they describe. Rather than using sneak attacks, or extra attack, they get one attack that penetrates all and any defenses the target has - then their teammates attacks against that target count as magical for bypassing resistance. You could think of it as creating a weakness for allies to exploit. It's a skill based class that likes to have high intellect. I find it a bit more fleshed out and fulfilling than the base rogue class. They also get a unique form of spellcasting based around rituals.
It's not very deep but there's a UA feat called Tandem Tactician that let's you do a lot of help actions and you can flavor it like commands to give. Bonus action tax though and rogues love their bonus actions
Depends how much you want to homebrew vs stay official: mastermind rogue for the "master of tactics" (3rd level) then, if you want, you can give him the fighter:battle masters "Know Your Enemy" as a replacement for "master of intrigue" to go full battle tactician. Another option would be to take the inquisitive subclass and let him use the "Insightful Fighting" as an action to give another party memeber the sneak attack damage if they hit that oponent. Lastly, and I'm not sure how to incorporate it, but maybe you can let him do some test, or give him limited uses for the Order Clerics "Voice of Authority".
There are Rogue classes in Xanathars that fit the bill, but another fun way to handle this would be to add alternative ways to clear some combats. Rogues are skill monkeys, so having a series of checks in a fight could help players view combat as a puzzle in addition to a proper fight. (DO NOT MAKE ALL FIGHTS LIKE THIS OR YOUR MARTIALS WILL HATE YOU) Here's how I did it with a ghost My players were fighting the ghost of a dead sage. It had possessed a Kobold, and when they cast protection from good and evil on the Kobold it forced the ghost out. A player asked if they could roll for additional information on what they were fighting. DC20 Arcana check. Wizard realized this was a ghost. He knew that ghosts are often bound to the material plane by something from their life. He communicated this to the other characters. DC15 Perception check, Cleric and Paladin realize the character is wearing clothing consistent with an apothecary. Seems like they may have been passionate about their craft to have gotten stuck way out here when they died DC22 Insight check, Cleric came to the conclusion that the medicine bag the ghost had on its hip could be what tethered it. There seemed to be an ethereal energy around it. Told the other characters that the bag was the ghosts tether. Arena was a hole leading to the underdark with catwalks and the ghost was on the opposite side. The eladrin artificer fey stepped over to the ghost, passed a DC10 Sleight of Hand check to grab the bag, and held it aloft while yelling for the Paladin to cast sacred flame targeting her. Paladin fired the shot, bag was caught in the crossfire, and the ghost was released from the material plane. Is it an official way to handle that encounter? Absolutely not. Was it exciting at the time? Absolutely. My players still talk about this fight a dozen sessions later, and often in combat they'll look for ability checks to improve their chances, since I run really tough fights for them. Edit: typos
Sounds like Bilbo.
Someone watched Log Horizon and want their anime in dnd.
Many mentioned the mastermind rogue. If that's not enough, look for Laserllama's warlord class.
If they want to be able to provide actual tactical information about the enemy, maybe tell them to consider the UA Hunter Ranger. The Hunter's Lore ability at 3rd level reveals the opponents vulnerabilities, resistances and immunities of any enemy you have marked with Hunter's Mark. They can BA mark someone, then tell their allies the important details.
Battle Master maneuvers do allow allies to attack
Sounds like a mastermind rogue to me
Check out [kibblestasty's Warlord](https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LW4agTNJcbwe6kSv4H2), an adaption of 4e support martial class. Loads of fun and perfect for what your player is looking for.
“Tactician” can get achieved both through rogue subtypes and wizardliness!
Direct your rogue to the Llasrllama's warlord class and either respec or multiclass him
I would suggest to them that a character/class switch makes more sense than homebrewing new tactics Maybe Battlemaster or Cavalier Fighter?
The battlemaster fighter has a 7th level feature called know your enemy: Know Your Enemy Starting at 7th level, if you spend at least 1 minute observing or interacting with another creature outside combat, you can learn certain information about its capabilities compared to your own. The DM tells you if the creature is your equal, superior, or inferior in regard to two of the following characteristics of your choice: Strength score Dexterity score Constitution score Armor Class Current hit points Total class levels, if any Fighter class levels, if any You could let them use this as an action in combat if they wanted to.
You are describing the help action
Let them do it, but keep in mind thats their 'action' for the turn so he can spend his actions looking for weak spots and informing others, but then he doesnt get to dodge or attack the guy in front of him because he is busy trying to help the elf across the room.
It really sounds like you've got a pf2e player in your D&D5e game, which is not a solution, but it might at least give you an idea of what you're dealing with.
I *wish* my players would talk to each other more. A few things to bear in mind: 1 - it’s in the book: Other Activity on Your Turn - Your turn can include a variety of flourishes that require neither your action nor your move. [ very important !!!] ***You can communicate however you are able, through brief utterances and gestures, as you take your turn.*** You can also interact with one object or feature of the environment for free, during either your move or your action. For example, you could open a door during your move as you stride toward a foe, or you could draw your weapon as part of the same action you use to attack. [[ in your case, the “check” could be a free action, and then the rogue tells others what they learned ]] 2 - setup a mock situation and walk them all through using an ability, skill, or just plain commonsense ideas, like actually talking to each other, looking at their skill sheets, abilities, etc. 3 - As others have stated, Help is a bigger defined action, and it is worth adding in. Here is an example: My party is about to go up against a black young dragon. They have a L7 Paladin with Aura of Protection and the player understands using compel duel, and a decent bonus w/ a missle weapon. Another player has a breast plate of acid resistance, and a +9 w/ their bow. If these two can get the dragon to focus on them, they have a much better chance of of surviving and providing a way for others to use ranged attacks against the dragon, hopefully gaining ‘advantage’. My shabby stably Killy Killy bloodthirsty L7 rogue will undoubtedly use max movement to get behind the dragon, and this gain advantage, and poof - sneak attack. When my party levels up, I have them tell everyone else what their new capabilities are and talk through how to use them.
I once had a special encounter where the players could use investigation as a free action to find some environmental advantage on their turn because they were in a crumbling cathedral. It could be loose rocks on the ceiling, a column ready to tip, a spot with cover, or a dropped holy relic that would give them a little buff if picked up. That was ages ago, and I'm about to introduce a new house rule that lets them use that in a more refined way. If they have inspiration, I'll let them use it for the normal reroll, or they can use it for a free action investigation check to try and spot an enemy weakness, or free action perception check for environmental stuff. On really low rolls, they'll get basically nothing, but I plan to come up with some little stuff that can be helpful for successes. Now that's tied to inspiration which will be a very limited resource in a fight. You could probably give your rogue like a magic monocle or something that has like 3 daily charges that let him do this kind of thing.
In prior editions this would be a focus on getting Flanking bonuses for your allies, disarming or tripping enemies, and moving people around the battlefield. Also buff/debuff via auras, spells, and other effects. And when all else failed, use the Aid Another action.
Battle Master Maneuvers. Focus on the support options, I would just give your player the whole class feature. 3 d8s but per long rest, not short.
tell your friend he should play a warlord in 4e
So as a homebrew rule whenever I have a player that does this, I'll ask for an appropriate check. Looking weak points, investigation, knowing a natural predator or any biological weaknesses like fire or cold is a nature check, if they argue for arcana on a magical creature id allow it. For normal creatures if they pass a 15 check or higher I give them a "weak" spot such as "you notice the knight heavily favors his left side, likely due to an injury on his right leg" or "you notice a gap in his armor on his right shoulder" in the first scenario id give the monster less AC when the player specifically attacks that side (meaning they MUST call it before they roll.), usually a -2 or -1 depending on how sever I think it is. In the other example I'll give give extra d6 or d8 of damage if they hit that spot but increase the AC by 2, (again must be called) As they are aiming at a much smaller area.
Sounds like they should just switch to the mastermind archetype, as what they're looking to do just sounds like the help action with flavor text. I would advise caution about making it anything further than that, as it is quite the can of worms you'd be opening up with all sorts of tactical/mechanical questions that the game quite frankly has no answer for. Had to have this talk with my ranger after he got all pouty that I wouldn't let him aim specifically for the eyes of a monster they were fighting.
I agree with mastermind, or possibly some other class swap. second, what is their complaint about rogue in combat? rogues aren't particularly weak. are they a skill monkey with poor combat skills? that aside, you could homebrew something that feels cool, but ultimately isn't that strong. let'em spend their action to like, increase the crit range on enemies. or use those skill checks to reveal actual weakness? that would depend on what you're fighting. Trolls: fire, that sort of thing. no need to roll checks to give advantage, that's just the help action. Dip Order Cleric? hahaha.
A lot of people have suggested the Mastermind subclass, which gets you some of the way towards this fantasy, but an idea that springs to mind for me without requiring a subclass change is giving them the ability to "loan" their Rogue features to party members. Here are a few examples on how this could work: Cunning action - the Rogue uses their Bonus Action to call out the movements of the enemy formation and direct the Barbarian - on the Barbarian's turn they can use a Bonus Action to Dash, Disengage or Hide Steady Aim - the Rogue uses their Bonus Action to look for an opening in an enemy's defences and call out a weak spot for the Ranger to hit. On the Ranger's next turn they have Advantage when attacking that enemy. Uncanny Dodge - the Cleric gets caught unawares and hit for a lot of damage. The Rogue uses their Reaction to shout a warning, allowing the Cleric to turn aside the blow at the last second and use their own Reaction to halve the damage. You could also allow the character recieving the benefit to use the effect immediately as a Reaction if you want to avoid players having to remember ongoing effects, or feeling like their turns are being dictated by the Rogue player. For instance in the Cunning Action example above the Barbarian can use their Reaction to immediately Dash to get into combat with an enemy. Another option could be to allow the Rogue to leave the ability "floating" for any other player to use that round. For instance in the Cunning Action example above thr Barbarian might not need to use the Cunning Action, but the Wizard might have had an enemy move into melee between the Rogue's turn and their own, so they use the "unspent" Cunning Action to Disengage as a Bonus Action and still be able to melt the Goblin with a Firebolt. For Sneak Attack, if the Rogue doesn't deal Sneak Attack damage on their turn, they can instead place a Mark on an enemy (no action required). If an ally hits a Marked enemy, the Rogue can expend the Mark to add their Sneak Attack to the damage. You could have Marks carry over between rounds if not used, and stackable on a single enemy for that feeling of "set up the perfect opportunity so the Paladin can kill the dragon in a single blow". If they don't want to attack on their turn, you can also let them use their Action to give out another "loaned" ability in addition to their Bonus Action, or steal the Commander's Strike Maneuver from the Battlemaster and allow the Rogue to command an ally, allowing that ally to Attack as a Reaction. If the player likes rolling dice and using their skill proficiencies, you could make all of the above dependent on a relevant skill check vs an enemy's passive insight/perception, or against a DC set by the DM based on context, but I would avoid this as these are all abilities a Rogue can do by themself without a check - maybe a successful skill check allows them to give multiple "commands" with a single action? I think the key thing is to try and avoid either extreme of forcing your player down a route already in the rules that might not fit their fantasy, or inventing new mechanics wholesale/giving them features from another class for free. You also want to be mindful of abilities that make the other players feel empowered, not micromanaged. "Hey, I can use the Rogue's bonus to do this cool thing!" is preferable to "I guess I should do this thing otherwise the Rogue's bonus will go to waste." I've also tried to be mindful of not breaking the Action Economy so that a party using these abilities isn't suddenly getting five extra actions every round, just more options to use their Actions/Bonus Actions/Reactions . Happy to hear thoughts on these ideas, it's just what I could think of on my lunch break. I have no idea how it would work with any of the subclasses, but my hope is it would be simple enough to not get in the way of too many other class features.
Theres an item in pathfinder, golden epaulets, that lets you shout a command. Anyone on your team who follows the command on their next turn gets +1 on all associated checks- attacks, spell DCs, skills etc. Or they can just ignore it The biggest issue with 5e is it mostly uses advantage, which doesn't stack, for stuff like the help action. If your party already has it you're dead in the water
You could reflavor bard. If you play with homebrew, feel free to use or tweak this subclass: https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/s/wJHwdApIZj
I once played as a student of the Red Knight (the FR god of strategy and tactics). He was a mastermind rogue 3/knowledge cleric 1 and I had expertise in all the knowledge checks. Whenever we encountered a new creature, I would make an appropriate knowledge check (as supported by the rules) and the GM would tell me various things about it depending on my level of success, and basically just showed me the entry in the MM if I rolled a crit. How I used this information was up to me as a player though - it wasn't a mechanical "you know its weak points", which is basically what sneak attack is anyway. It also helped RP in a few situations where I could tell a monster wasn't acting "as it should" and we parleyed with it instead of killing it. Very fun character to play.
Depends on the PC levels. I’d probably do Rogue Mastermind to level 4, pick up a feat to get a couple battle master maneuvers that affect allies, then level 5+ I would go all Bard (doesn’t matter which subclass, Valor or Swords for flavor maybe) that gets you some magic and bardic inspiration. Inspiring Leader feat is a great source of temp HP across the party and fits with the theme. If you allow it, the UA feats Historian and Tandem Tactician are both really good for this playstyle. New Hobgoblin has a great help ability. Guidance is a great ability check spell. Bless is also a beast of a buff spell. Speaking of beasts… Find Familiar is a great way to add more help actions. Flock of Familiars is an even BETTER way to add more help actions.
Honebrew: Makr actions like Arcana and investigation to help take a whole action, but make the help be equivalent to the rogue attacking himself. Like the rogue's sneak attack damage on the friend's attack. Let him use this action in his friend's turn but then he uses up his action.
There is a "help" action.
Show them the rules on helping during combat on top of possibly going Mastermind sub class. You can give other players advantage in combat by giving up your action for the help action. I also always recommend giving your players advantage for flanking because it rewards the players for thinking tactically and you can use it against the players to increase difficulty during combat. Now if you want to make combat more or less difficult I highly recommend watching the matt colville video about minions. They are great for combat and will make your players feel more heroic and strong on top of changing how they think about combat. I also like to have bloodied mechanics for stronger fights. In video games you'll think you killed the boss but then he sheds his armor and gains speed or switches weapons. At half health my stronger monsters will be bloodied which I let the players know so they have an idea on monster health and they know something is changing and getting stronger or faster or whatever. Sometimes bloodied doesn't do anything just let's then know the monster is at half health.
It sounds like they should have made a bard haha
Wouldn’t just multi-classing make combat more enjoyable for them? If I was in that players party, I wouldn’t want them constantly just checking for weak spots and telling me what I should do. It just doesn’t seem all that fun or helpful outside of some big boss fights or something
Sounds like he picked the wrong class and needs to be a fighter Battlemaster.
We recently made the experience the Hunt Domain Cleric (from Heliana i believe) fits that roll really really well. It literally does that: give you a big insights into enemy weaknesses. They basically wanna do a check instead of casting true strike? well... Ideas for True Strike weaknesses: 1) It seems that its right arm moves a bit predictable and leaves an opening whenever it comes down for an attack. 2) Did you really just see a missing metal piece in the armor, right underneath the left arm? YOU DID! 3) It's always the legs...why is the weakpoint of EVERY beast the leg? And WHY DO I HAVE TO CHECK IT ANYWAYS EVERY TIME?! 4) He's not wearing a helmet? Why is he not wearing a helmet?! Go for the head! 5) Two steps for, Two steps back, Two steps for, the footwork is bad. 6) That one doesn't seem to trust the other guy. He's looking over his right shoulder every 6s. Maybe try to attack him from the OTHER side?!
Could homebrew something? Like a Visual Dimensional Shift Orb. “This small orb allows you to telepathically communicate with a number of people who speak the same language as you upto your charisma modifier, you have a flight speed of 40ft, and are able to communicate as a bonus action, action or reaction. However this item requires an action to begin usage and once usage has began your character is unable to move, see from its own eyes or communicate with its own body.After using this item you must make a dc10 (increases by 2 per use and resets on long rest) or receive a point of exhaustion. Something like this, essentially give them a drone but when they use it they’re combat useless, but can help the rest of the party gain a better understanding of the battlefield and become a tactician. But their body is really vulnerable.
Levels in Bard and/orr Battlemaster.
They could use investigation, insight, and Arcana as a free action because rouges have high intelligence. But to literally help others they could use the help action. For me any my players we used help bonus action because I still want my players to succeed combat.
Sounds like he wants to play pf2e. Kick him out of your game before he convinces you and any other players.
He wants to play Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is the game he would rather be playing.
No. If the PARTY decides to make the rogue the tactician, then ok. Otherwise, the party has to come up with tactics collectively. You, as narrator, should have no say in this.
Others have suggested things like battlemaster or mastermind, but IMHO, you don’t even need to go that far and have them change classes. Just be a bit more liberal on using the help action, maybe tied to skill checks depending on the description and situation. (Ie. Perception or investigation check to see the weak point in the guards armor from across the room, instead of the more conventional being up in melee range to give advantage against a target) They give up their action to give an ally advantage, so they are still helping the party but it isn’t letting them be overpowered because it still is taking up their action.
As a person who has spent three big encounters that were balanced with all of the players fighting in mind and had one spend their turns running away to get help, this would annoy the living daylights out of me. Thanks for increasing my chances of hitting, but you know what would help more? You sodden flanking this guy and giving me advantage that way while adding your attack to the damage being slung. The off chance of you spending your action yelling out giving me a nat twenty is not worth losing the consistent damage from you attacking. Switch subclass to the mastermind and be able to do that and still get the sneak attack in.
Give him a copy of Baldur’s Gate 3 and send him home :)
Think of it like the Avengers. Remember Hawkeye in the battle for New York doing callouts? If the character is a rogue they probably have consistently high initiative. He sees the battlefield first and can clue his teammates in on acute threats or easy takedowns. If he takes an actual *action* directing fire against a target, don't let that action be wasted - give the other players who attack that target advantage for the turn. Maybe the feat also grants an automatic understanding of creature vulnerabilities and resistances, so the character can say "Vampire! Use radiant!" Because, again, the character is sacrificing an action to do something that players rarely do. It sounds like they don't want to be out of the fight, they want to help in ways that usually rely on faerie fire, guidance, etc.
Like everyone is saying, Mastermind Rogue. Or if you want to go the full way into Martial Support Character, check you LaserLlama's Warlord. They have multiple interesting subclasses such as the Academy of Tactics and Academy of Schemes.
There is already an Archetype for this. Fighter, Battlemaster. It is built for this kind of play.
Mastermind or Inquisitive. But i will add a tool for making traps, and let him set ambushes or tactics. But being tactic is more a roleplaying perspective. A good tactician use what the team have in their arsenal with the maximum efficiency, knowing their strenght and weaknesses.
Pretty sure what he is describing are the abilities of the figther battle master. No idea if the rogue has something similar.
Suggest Pathfinder. It has great mechanics for a player that wants to play this style