Illrigger - D&D 5e Class Optimisation Guide

Become an agent of Hell and sow pain and discord with this 3rd party class for D&D 5e.

Once, long ago, the Archdevils of Hell accomplished something quite extraordinary. They came together in an agreement to create a group known as the Order of Desolation. This order was to serve the needs of Hell first and their patron second. Standing above the petty squabbles of the Archdevils, those of the order were trained as illriggers; specialist agents of Hell, sworn to sow pain and discord throughout the Realms.

Illriggers are typically evil characters, or at the very least, usually serve evil. They are knights, mages and assassins of Hell. They are available to perform acts that will best serve Hell’s interests, engaging in oft forbidden arts such as blood magic and mind control.

If you want to play a servant of Hell and an evil-leaning character, then an illrigger may be a good fit. They are most akin to paladins, though most lack spellcasting, but they do enhance their attacks with hellish magic.

The illrigger is also a 3rd party class designed by MCDM and available on D&D Beyond or as a PDF. Make sure you check with your DM before you use one. In this article, I’m going to be diving into the illrigger’s capabilities, tactics and how to optimise one. This article is based on the revised illrigger published in 2023.

At a glance

Strengths

Powerful martial warriors
Enhance attacks with magical seals
Particularly resilient against saving throws

Weaknesses

Lack the nova damage and spellcasting of paladins
Can be quite fiddly to play with lots of things to track
Need to pick abilities that interact well with your build

Tactics

The illrigger is a fairly complex class with a lot of options and abilities to track. Your playstyle can change a fair bit depending on your build and especially, the subclass and combat mastery you take. However, as a general rule, the illrigger most commonly fits a melee martial build.

To help, I’ve gone over tactics for important illrigger features below:

Combat masteries that complement your build

Combat masteries tend to work best for certain builds. For example, bravado is only good on a dexterity build (so you’ll want to be going sword and shield, dual wielding or ranged for this build), brutal is for strength builds using two handed weapons, inexorable is best for tank builds, lies is for builds where you want more feats and less ability score increases, lissome for builds that rely on being really mobile and unfettered is for ranged builds.

Some of these are more regularly useful than others. For example, bravado gives you access to higher AC than any other build (up to 22AC without magic items and with a shield). Inexorable means some really good saving throws if you can stay close to plenty of enemies. Lissome, on the other hand, makes you quite mobile in melee, but maybe isn’t as necessary for a non-hit and run kind of class.

Baleful interdict is your divine smite

If you want to keep up with a paladin in the damage department, then baleful interdict and your magical seals is how this is done. They aren’t as high damage as smites, but your seals are restored each short rest so are worth using often, and at level 2, you pick up extra effects that make them really worthwhile.

Choose your interdict boons wisely

Your interdict boons matter a lot as you should be using seals a lot. One thing to keep in mind is how much your seals are being expended. Some interdict boons are really potent, but require expending seals. Others just add passive bonuses despite being weaker, but in the long run, may be more impactful as they can be used more often.

For example, abating seal is quite strong. The effects are bigger than a normal burning of a seal (1d10 + half level in damage reduction Vs 1d10 damage caused) but you must burn a seal to make this happen. Bedevil and souleater on the other hand, don’t expend more seals, but add effects when seals are burnt like temporary hit points or worse saving throws.

Be aware that sometimes these boons don’t interact well either. Both bedevil and souleater require burning a seal on an interdicted creature, but abating seal burns a seal that isn’t on an interdicted creature meaning you can’t combine effects when using this. However, bedevil and souleater can both be used during the same burning of a seal. This means you may not want to take abating seal and bedevil or souleater.

In fact, you may want to take boons that either enhance baleful interdict, or give alternative uses of your seals, but not both, for this reason. You can grab abilities like teleportation, truesight and higher AC as alternative options to the extra damage from baleful interdict.

Devour is mathematically better than invigorate

But invigorate is useful when you desperately need a heal. These both relate to your internal conduit feature. Invigorate is a trade off, damage yourself to heal another so it’s just switching hit points around. Decent enough if someone needs recovering from 0HP and you have HP to spare, but healing word from a cleric is better for this (especially as this needs a whole action).

Conversely, devour lets you deal damage to an enemy and heal yourself in equal measure. This is mathematically better, but more likely to result in half damage and healing due to saving throws. Even then, the hit point economy remains net positive rather than net equal.

You probably want to keep the number of infernal conduit dice used for invigorate low (probably one) as you don’t want to expend too many hit points while having lots of opportunities to recover others if needed. For devour, you probably want to make the most of it as it takes a whole action so rather than doing small devours a few times, you’re better off doing a single devour using multiple infernal conduit dice simultaneously.

Blood price can be a strong trade off

Not all saving throws are a big deal (like getting knocked prone) but failing a nasty saving throw like against a fireball or an effect that stuns can be nasty and you really want to avoid it. At these times, expending a hit point die is a strong exchange. With d10 hit dice, an average increase of 5.5 is strong and you use this once you know you’ve failed the saving throw so you likely know if you were reasonably close to a success.

You don’t want to overuse this as you’ll run out of healing for short rests, but in most campaigns, you can spare a few of these each long rest, it’ll likely save you more hit points of damage anyway and adventures with shorter adventuring days likely won’t use all hit dice anyway.

Pick the right damage type for terrorising force

Some damage types are resisted more than others. Poison and fire are particularly common while cold tends to be less commonly resisted making it a good go to damage type for terrorising force. But you can also adapt your damage type to the enemies you face to some extent allowing you to switch this around.

This extra damage occurs on every hit with a weapon attack making it even more important to land as many of these as you can. There are a few ways to increase your attacking output as an illrigger. You can dual wield for bonus action attacks, you can use the swift retribution interdict boons to get more opportunity attacks, though this can be a little situational to engineer. Vengeful shot will give you more reaction attacks too and Dis’s onslaught will give you some bonus action attacks. Some feats will make reaction attacks more common too like sentinel.

Infernal majesty and master of hell are for nasty encounters

Both of these are quite powerful, but you can only use them once per long rest so I’d save them for really nasty encounters.

For master of hell, you may want to pick the version for your enemies. They all do high damage with a huge area and can avoid hitting allies in the area. Pestilence is the most likely to be resisted while darkness is the least. You may want to fit the saving throw ability to the creatures too. Inferno requires a dexterity saving throws while the others require constitution.

Pestilence is the only effect that will last the full minute on a failed saving throw as there are no subsequent saving throws. The burning from inferno can be ended by passing subsequent saving throws while the blindness from darkness can be avoided by leaving the area making pestilence the strongest option on paper as this is a fair bit of debilitation.

How good is the illrigger?

The illrigger is a fairly versatile class in a similar way to warlocks with modular abilities and subclasses that can alter your combat approach a fair bit. They don’t have the magical acumen of a warlock, but there’s a lot of potential variety to how you can build one.

With all these options does come some challenges. There are a lot of abilities and expendables to keep track of. This means tracking seals, infernal conduit dice, managing interdict boons and choosing combat masteries and tracking who has seals applied to them and how and when to burn these. It’s not the same level of choice that spellcasters must grapple with, but some of the options are more complex and harder to factor into your combat. And that doesn’t even include subclasses (one of which has spells of their own).

Generally, options do have their place and work quite well without being seriously over or under powered. Even where there are choices of options to take like interdict boons, the options are mostly well balanced. Some do feel better than others, with the main offenders being a bit situational (like how often do you get chance to make 2 opportunity attacks in a turn to make good use of swift retribution, unless you perhaps take the sentinel feat). But mostly, it felt like these were balanced options.

I would say though, that the illrigger lacks the pure damage levels of fighters and paladins or the resilience of a barbarian. But they do have more versatility than fighters and barbarians (though paladins are probably more versatile with their spellcasting). However, it doesn’t lag hugely behind these other classes and does have some unique options up it’s sleeve.

If you’re looking for a more complex martial class with an evil leaning, then the illrigger is a solid option. If you’d prefer something a bit more straightforward, then I’d recommend sticking to other martial classes.

3/5

Optimising an illrigger build

Building a strong illrigger isn’t too different to building a strong paladin, though the options are a little more versatile here (they lean a little more into dexterity for instance). Below I’ve gone through the options I’d recommend for a strong illrigger build.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Strength: Strength isn’t a must-have for an illrigger. A dexterity build is perfectly viable. But if you intend to go for higher damage attacks with two handed weapons, then you’ll likely want to build for strength. Without heavy armor proficiency though, illriggers can struggle to optimise for charisma, constitution, dexterity and strength.
Dexterity: Most illriggers will likely want at least 14 dexterity if they’re going for medium armor. Many may prefer a dexterity build though to reduce the number of ability scores you’re building for (this will mean you can dump strength). If you take the bravado combat mastery or go for a ranged build with unfettered, then you’ll definitely want to build for dexterity and make this a priority ability score.
Constitution: Most illriggers will want to be in the middle of the melee, which means having more resilience through constitution.
Charisma: This affects your saving throws from things like interdict boons as well as your face skills capabilities. It affects some subclass features too, like the architect of ruin’s spellcasting ability.

Options to avoid

Wisdom: You should dump wisdom, you’ve got too many other ability scores to focus on.
Intelligence: The same goes for dumping intelligence.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	8/15	12/15
Dexterity	15/14	15/14
Constitution	15/14	13/12
Intelligence	8/8	8/8
Wisdom	8/8	10/10
Charisma	15/12	14/13

First set of numbers represents a dexterity build, the 2nd is how you could approach a strength build.

Skills

Recommended options

Athletics: Good option if you’ve gone for a strength build, especially as you can’t grab acrobatics through your class.
Deception: As a potential party face and agent of hell, deception makes a strong option for an illrigger.
Insight: Your wisdom likely won’t be great, but you may need to be the party face, in which case, a decent insight can be useful.
Intimidation: Another good face skills, especially for an evil leaning class.
Persuasion: Usually the most important face skill and another important one for a party face.
Stealth: A lot of illriggers may go for a dexterity build, in which case, stealth is often used and a good choice.

Options to avoid

Arcana: Your lack of intelligence means there are likely to be better options for knowledge skills, especially as you’re better off focusing on face skills.
Investigation: similarly, you’ll lack the intelligence to be much good at this.
Religion: Another knowledge skill you’ll lack the intelligence to be good at.

Races

As an Illrigger, you’ll likely want your race to help you with certain aspects of your build including:

Toughen up: Most illriggers do best on the frontlines as a melee martial build. That means anything you can do to increase resilience will be beneficial.
Damage dealing: You also want to deal as much damage as possible meaning traits that can improve this will help.
Innate spellcasting: Most illriggers will have a decent or high charisma, making innate spellcasting a viable option. The architect of ruin can even repeat cast spells from racial traits too. They aren’t the best for innate spellcasting, but they can be decent.
Party face: Illriggers make a good option for a party face, but need a bit of help becoming competent at this. Face skill proficiencies and other features that improve your charisma capabilities will be useful for an illrigger.

Recommended options

Autognome: Improved AC without having to take bravado (so can grab a different combat mastery instead) is great on a dexterity build. Built for success means more reliable attacks or even saving throws and resistances and advantage on saving throws makes you more resilient.
Bugbear: Potentially more damage on the first round of combat, better reach for melee attacks and great at sneaking are all great on an illrigger, especially a dexterity build with high initiative.
Changeling: If you want to lean into the party face aspect of the class, then Changeling is a great option. Grab a couple of face skill proficiencies and be able to change your appearance. Great for a sneakier illrigger.
Dragonborn: Breath weapon gives you some crowd control and only costs one of your attacks. You also get a resistance and more depending on the type of Dragonborn you take.
Dwarves: The extra constitution and resistances are welcome to toughen you up. Hill Dwarf will get you more hit points, but you’ll have to take an extra wisdom which won’t be useful. Mountain will get you +2 strength which is great for a strength build, but armor training is no good on an illrigger that already has those proficiencies.
Forest Gnome: Even more resilience for saving throws, the minor illusion cantrip and the ability speak with small beasts.
Goblin: Some extra damage and bonus action hiding and disengaging is particularly good for a shadowmaster. This might fit a ranged build better and that can work for an illrigger.
Goliath: Cold resistance and some reduced damage is handy for the extra resilience.
Hobgoblin: Help as a bonus action with extra bonuses works well for the illrigger which tends to be light on bonus action options unless you take certain interdict boons. Plus you can grab some resilience, damage or speed from this. A boost to failed d20 rolls is great for more resilience and damage too.
Human (variant): An extra skill proficiency and a feat are handy, especially as that skill can help you flesh out those face skills.
Orc: Bonus action dash and temporary hit points to close the gap in melee and for some extra resilience and survive being knocked to 0HP too.
Shifter: Grab intimidation or acrobatics proficiency, a bunch of temporary hit points and some bonus effects like an AC boost, a bonus action attack or improved wisdom saving throws.
Warforged: Warforged have a bunch of resilience features like improved AC, resistance to poison, advantage against the poisoned condition and more.

Backgrounds

Primarily, you want your background to pad out your skills and with a party face requiring quite a few face skills, you’ll likely want to pad this out through your background. A dexterity build might also want to grab acrobatics or stealth proficiency too.

I’d recommend the following backgrounds for an illrigger:

Name	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency	Languages
Courtier	Insight, persuasion	None	2 of your choice
Criminal	Deception, stealth	Gaming set, Thieves’ tools	None
Faceless	Deception, intimidation	Disguise kit	1 of your choice
Faction agent	Insight and 1 intelligence, wisdom or charisma skill	None	2 of your choice
Gambler	Deception insight	Gaming set	1 of your choice
Smuggler	Athletics, deception	Vehicles (water)	None
Soldier	Athletics, intimidation	Gaming set, vehicles (land)	None

Choosing your subclass

At level 3 illriggers get their subclass, known as a diabolic contract. There are 5 to choose from which are:

Architect of ruin

Spellblades that are 1/3 casters and use their magic to weave deceptions to spy and outmanoeuvre their foes.

Hellspeaker

As manipulative as they are charismatic, hellspeaker weave subtle sorceries and enchantments into their words to control and influence others.

Painkiller

The war strategists of Hell, painkillers lead from the front, charging into combat. They are excellent combatants that follow the devilish version of a chivalrous code; one where they honour challenges by toying with their rivals and cheating when losing.

Sanguine knight

Belonging to a cult known as the chalice of vitality, sanguine knights drink of their enemies’ blood to imbue themselves with blood magic.

Shadowmaster

Spies, assassin’s and torturers, shadowmasters also run secret networks as a means of extending their influence.

Feats

From level 4 (or at level 1 if you’re playing a Human) you can grab a feat in place of an ability score increase. I’d suggest the following are some of your better options for an illrigger:

Fighting initiate: Grab a fighting style to complement your combat mastery.
Great weapon master: Some bonus action attacks (which combines nicely with terrorising force) and some higher damage, but less accurate attacks with heavy weapons.
Heavily armored: If you want a strength build without the dexterity investment, then you can grab this for a high AC and low Dex build.
Inspiring leader: Quite a lot of temporary hit points for the party every rest, especially if you’re a high charisma build.
Lucky: More reliable d20 tests.
Polearm master: A great option, especially with terrorising force which will enhance damage further for each attack you make. This guarantees an option for a bonus action attack each turn and makes opportunity attacks with your reaction much more likely. This combines really well with the swift retribution interdict boon for the potential of double reaction attacks too.
Resilient: Some more resilience for another saving throw.
Sentinel: More opportunity attacks means you get the effects of terrorising force more often and with swift retribution, you can do this more often too.
Tough: More hit points means more resilience, great for a melee martial.

Weapons

Illriggers are capable of fighting with any type of weapon they want. Much of your choice will depend on the combat mastery you take. Brutal will mean using two handed weapons, inexorable means taking any kind of melee weapons and unfettered is good for ranged builds.

Dual-wielders can be a good option if you want more attacks, perhaps to maximise on terrorising force.

Armor

If you’re a strength build, get your dexterity up to 14 and grab some half plate for maximum AC. If you want to do some stealthing, grab a breastplate instead.

For a dexterity build, you can go for studded leather and get your dexterity as high as possible. A shield is a solid option if you want to go for more defence over damage.

Your highest AC option is to go unarmored, but that will require considerable investment. You’ll need to take the bravado combat mastery and get your dexterity and charisma as high as possible (20 if you can). This gives you a 22AC potential with a shield though, or more with magic items.