Bring a bit of stealth and subterfuge to your party with the revamped rogue class for D&D 2024.
Burglars, spies, assassins, pickpockets, treasure hunters, fraudsters and all other kinds of illicit activity make up a rogue’s usual role. They’re the ones you use for activity that requires sneakiness, subterfuge and stealth. Where a barbarian bashes the door down, rogues have subtler methods; sneaking through windows, unpicking locks and scaling buildings.
Generally the kind of sneakiness that accompanies roguish activity lends itself well to criminal activity. While it is often true that many rogues are not of a lawful nature, this does not mean that all rogues are criminals. Spies are roguish in nature, but often do so on the side of the law (or at least the law of the government that hires them). Urchins, undercover police and treasure hunters also aren’t necessarily nefarious in nature either, but utilise a roguish skillset to acquire what they need.
Rogues are a hugely versatile class, capable of being deadly in combat while having a wide range of skills available outside of it too.
D&D 2024 brings with it a bunch of changes to the rogue class to improve and streamline it. This guide will take you through tactics and ways to optimise your rogue character.
At a glance
Strengths
- Stealthy class
- Has a lot of out of combat utility
- Also capable of a few, high damage attacks in combat
- Great at hit and run tactics
Weaknesses
- Missing with your single attack means losing out on big damage
- Tends to have a low AC for a sometimes melee combatant
- No spellcasting capabilities (unless you take the arcane trickster subclass)
What’s changing for rogues in D&D 2024?
Rogues performed pretty well in D&D 2014. They balanced combat capabilities with utility quite nicely. With the updated class, the core of a rogue doesn’t change too much, but they are made more tactical and brought in line with some of the other changes happening with the rules.
These changes include:
- Weapon mastery – Like other martial classes, rogues get weapon mastery allowing them to enhance their attacks with an effect.
- Thieves cant – Thieves now also get an extra language known.
- Steady aim – A new feature that lets rogues sacrifice their movement to gain advantage on their next attack that turn.
- Cunning strike – Another new feature that lets you sacrifice some of the damage from your sneak attack for an effect like poisoned or knocking prone.
- Reliable talent – Kicks in earlier at level 7 now instead of level 11.
- Slippery mind – This gets a little better by giving you advantage on charisma saving throws as well as wisdom saving throws.
- Stroke of luck – This has been improved to include saving throws and transforms your roll into a critical success (allowing you to turn sneak attacks into critical hits for huge damage)!
Tactics
Rogues are utility specialists, but can also be very dangerous in combat, causing high damage attacks to opponents. The trick is keeping them safe long enough to do the damage. This means working closely with allies.
Below are some tactics you can use when playing a rogue:
- Making sure your attacks qualify for sneak attack – Rogues don’t get a lot of attacks, so to keep up with other damage dealers, they need to land sneak attacks. This means either having advantage on your attacks or ensuring an ally is close to your target. Advantage is best though as it makes your attacks more likely to hit. You can do this by having allies knock enemies prone, by using the vex weapon mastery property, by attacking while hiding, through steady aim, from certain conditions or through other means. Work with your party to ensure you can get advantage on your target.
- Dual wielding – Even with advantage, you can still miss. But you can increase your chances of landing a sneak attack further by dual wielding for the extra attack or 2 it can grant. If you wield a weapon with the nick property, it will let you take your offhand attack without using a bonus action. If you also take the dual wielder feat, you can get another offhand attack as a bonus action. This gives you up to 3 attacks to land your sneak attack. Just remember though, you may want your bonus action available for other things (which is why nick is particularly useful here).
- Hit and run tactics – To stay safe, you’ll either want to attack at range, or use hit and run tactics. Melee attacks tend to have better potential for damage as you can dual wield them, but you can also dual wield thrown weapons for multiple attacks, like daggers. Daggers may not be as high damage as other weapons, but really you’re here for the sneak attack damage.
- Be cunning – Cunning actions may mean a sacrifice in damage, but reducing the effectiveness of an opponent (especially a dangerous one) can be more useful. Something like making an enemy poisoned or knocking them unconscious for less effective attacks is really useful.
Optimising a rogue
Rogues are not overly hard to build, and as long as you have a good dexterity and skills in the right places, you should be OK. Having said that, they can absolutely be optimised. And I’ve gone through how you can do that below.
Ability scores
Recommended options
- Dexterity: Important for AC, attacks, initiative and stealth skills. A must have for any rogue.
- Charisma: With all the sneaking and stealing, you may find you need to be a dab-hand at deception or persuasion to get out of a sticky situation (or into one) so a decent charisma is often a good option for a rogue.
- Constitution: You might be dodging in and out of danger, but you’ll still likely find yourself getting a bruising. Especially if you plan on getting close to your targets.
- Intelligence (optional): If you plan on playing an arcane trickster, you’ll need a solid intelligence score for your spellcasting. Intelligence is also good for the odd skill like investigation.
Options to avoid
- Wisdom: Only useful for skills and saving throws but you’ve got too much else to focus on anyway.
- Strength: Pointless on a rogue. You should dump this.
| Ability score | Point Buy | Standard Array |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 8 | 8 |
| Dexterity | 15 | 15 |
| Constitution | 15 | 14 |
| Intelligence | 8 | 12 |
| Wisdom | 8 | 10 |
| Charisma | 15 | 13 |
Skills
Recommended options
- Acrobatics: Good for any physical activities and works with your dexterity, unlike athletics.
- Deception: One of the best face skills, especially for someone often involved in subterfuge.
- Insight: Great face skill.
- Intimidation: Decent face skill, but probably the least important of these.
- Investigation: Good option for discovering things.
- Perception: Really important for the scout at the front, checking for traps.
- Persuasion: Top face skill, especially for a charismatic rogue.
- Sleight of Hand: You’ll need this for unpicking locks and disarming traps.
- Stealth: Essential for a rogue as you’ll definitely need to sneak around places.
Options to avoid
- Athletics: You’re far better off going for acrobatics due to the strength focus of this skill.
Species/race
I’d consider the following when picking a species for a rogue:
- Safety first: Rogues are not as tough as other martials so anything that can help keep you safe is a good option. Resilience features can be useful too, but they tend to be secondary as you’re better off just avoiding damage altogether.
- Innate spellcasting: This can be a good option for the spell lite arcane trickster. It can also work for other rogues too. Just be aware that you can’t repeat cast spells. Many rogues do have a decent charisma which they can use for spellcasting.
Recommended options
- Aasimar (2024): Resistance to necrotic and radiant damage increases your hardiness. For celestial revelation, all the options are useful but you usually want to avoid being surrounded by enemies, making flight your best option. Use this to launch projectiles from the relative safety of the skies. And you can still hide in the air, popping out from behind trees, buildings and other things. It’s also useful outside of combat for accessing awkward places. A bit of healing is a decent emergency option too.
- Elf (2024): Elves happen to have spells that can work well for a rogue. The Wood Elf’s extra speed and pass without trace are great options. A High Elf can get the minor illusion cantrip and misty step is useful for emergency escapes. Drow get darkness which is great for a stealthy class. An extra skill is also welcome for the skill specialist of the party.
- Halflings (2024): Much easier hiding is great for a rogue, allowing you to hide behind your wizard (or other ranged character of medium size) and jump out with sneak attacks. Luck is universally great, but especially good for a class with lots of high risk, high reward rolls like being stealthy, disarming traps, trying to deceive others and attempting to land sneak attacks. Brave gives you a little extra resilience which is always handy.
- Gnomes (2024): A Forest Gnome’s minor illusion and speak with animals actually work really well for a rogue as they don’t require spell slots. Minor illusion is a cantrip that’s great for distractions and speak with animals can be cast as a ritual for information gathering. Gnomish cunning is an excellent durability feature against some very common saving throws too.
Options to avoid
- Tiefling (2024): It’s hard to justify a cantrip attack over sneak attack, especially when your dexterity should usually be superior to any spellcasting ability. The other spells can only be cast once, and with an inferior spellcasting ability.
- Dragonborn (2024): Temporary flight is a useful feature, but the breath weapon just doesn’t work for a rogue as you can’t combine it with your sneak attack. A famage resistance is alright, but rogues are best avoiding damage rather than resisting it.
Backgrounds
Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 as the ability score increases previously tied to your race/species are now linked to your background. You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.
Dexterity is your most important ability score with charisma and constitution being next. Arcane tricksters will want to focus on intelligence too. As such, I’d suggest the below are your best backgrounds for a rogue:
| Name | Ability scores | Origin feat | Skill proficiencies | Tool proficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Criminal | Dexterity, constitution, intelligence | Alert | Sleight of hand, stealth | Thieves tools |
| Charlatan | Dexterity, constitution, charisma | Skilled | Deception, sleight of hand | Forgery kit |
| Entertainer | Strength, dexterity, charisma | Musician | Acrobatics, performance | One kind of musical instrument |
| Guide | Dexterity, constitution, wisdom | Magic initiate (druid) | stealth, survival | Cartographer’s tools |
| Wayfarer | Dexterity, wisdom, charisma | Lucky | Insight, stealth | Thieves’ tools |
Guide lacks charisma or a good origin feat for a rogue. Entertainer has your worst options for skills while criminal lacks the charisma increase. This leaves you with charlatan and wayfarer as your best options with strong choices across the board for both.
Choosing your subclass
Different rogues develop different skills to accomplish their schemes. Some become deadly killers, others are masters of thievery while some are able to master magical abilities to enhance their skills.
You can take a look at my rogue subclasses guide for advice on which subclass to choose. Below you can also find guides to all the rogue subclasses published so far in D&D 2024:
Arcane trickster
Some rogues recognise the inherent aid magic can grant in the pursuits of stealth and cunning. Known as arcane tricksters, these rogues dedicate themselves to supplementing their sneaky skills with spellcasting acumen.
Assassin
Whether by distraction or disguise, poison or blade, assassin’s have a whole arsenal of methods of death at their fingertips along with many ways to pass noticed.
Scion of the three
Rogues possessing the powers of the dead three, violent gods that encourage brutal and murderous devotion.
Soulknife
Soulknifes have been imbued with psionic powers which they use alongside their roguish cunning to devastating effect. Wielding psychic blades, they use psychic attacks to enhance themselves and stun their enemies.
Thief
Expert burglars and pickpockets, thieves are as sneaky as they come. They stick to darkness, operating unseen, preferring stealth to confrontation. Thieves have incredible dexterity, allowing them to pick locks, pockets and disarm traps faster and more capably than anyone else.
Feats
At 1st level, you can grab an origin feat through your background and from level 4, you can pick up a general feat (or another origin feat if you want) instead of an ability score increase. When you hit level 19 you can pick up an epic boon feat too. You can pick up additional epic boons each time you level up beyond level 20 too.
I’d suggest the following feats for a rogue:
Origin feats
Recommended options
- Alert – Assassins in particular will want to be going first as much as they can to land their assassinate feature so this can be really handy for them. Rogues in general though do well going early in combat to get somewhere safe and to land sneak attacks.
- Lucky – More ways to be reliable at important rolls is universally beneficial, but this is especially the case for rogues. Landing your sneak attack is really important, so if you’re in a situation where you can’t get advantage on an attack, lucky will let you do that. Not only does this mean you can use sneak attack, you’re more likely to land it as well.
- Musician – A universally great feat for dishing out heroic inspiration. Great for altruistic rogues. Plus you can ensure you have some heroic inspiration available too.
- Skilled – You may find you need a lot of skill proficiencies as you will likely end up as the party scout and possibly the party face as well.
General feats
Recommended options
- Actor – Great if you want to impersonate others a lot and tackle some subterfuge. You’ll need some high charisma and face skill proficiencies to pull this off though. If you don’t plan on impersonating much, then this feat isn’t worth taking.
- Charger – If you intend to play a melee rogue, you should be using hit and run tactics, in which case, this is an easy way to get an extra 1d8 of damage (or push your opponent). Faster dash is nice for a class that can dash more often than most too.
- Defensive duelist – Better AC at the expense of your reaction is a strong option.
- Dual wielder – If you can gain advantage through methods that don’t involve your bonus action, then this is a great way to get another attack on top of the nick weapon mastery property.
- Inspiring leader – Great for charisma-heavy rogues to grant temporary hit points to the party.
- Mage slayer – Best against mages, but having what is practically legendary resistance is also great.
- Piercer – Better damage for most of the best rogue weapons. Especially when you land a critical.
- Skulker – Become really reliable at hiding. Blindsight is also great in certain situations that you could even exploit in combat through things like the darkness spell (if you work with an ally).
- Speedy – Good for hit and run tactics when you don’t want to use your bonus action on disengaging.
Epic boon feats
- Boon of combat prowess – Never miss out on your sneak attack ever again! You’re basically just rolling to see if you land a critical (or for an offhand weapon attack).
- Boon of dimensional travel – Teleport every turn to get where you need to be in combat. Really useful for a hit and run specialist and means you can move further each turn and get out of things like grapples.
- Boon of fate – Get more reliable at sneak attacks and other things.
- Boon of the night spirit – Rogues love to lurk in shadows and invisibility is better and more reliable than hiding. Plus, you get resistance to most damage types too.
- Boon of truesight – Handle invisible creatures, illusions and darkness.
Weapons
You’ll want to go with finesse and ranged weapons that can take advantage of your dexterity for attacks. The specific weapons you choose though, will depend partly on how you want to fight and what weapon mastery properties you want to be using:
- Probably your best ranged option is a pair of daggers. Taking the nick weapon mastery property and possibly also the dual wielder feat allows you to get 2 or 3 attacks with a weapon that can be thrown or used in melee. It’s low damage, but that doesn’t matter as what you want to really ensure is that you land your sneak attack. If you just use nick, you’ll still have your bonus action free each turn, if you take dual wielder as well for a 3rd attack, you’ll have to compete between that 3rd attack and a bonus action to do something like disengage or hide (both important skills in a rogue’s repertoire).
- If you don’t want to be dual wielding, then a light crossbow is your next best ranged option with it’s 1d8 damage.
- For melee weapons, daggers work really well. You can also consider a scimitar which also has the nick weapon mastery (and deals slightly more damage). rapiers and shortswords will give you vex for some easy advantage, just be aware that a rapier isn’t a light weapon when it comes to dual wielding. You can mix and match these weapons though for the best combination.
Armor
Your only real option here is studded leather as it’s so cheap that it’s easily available and you can only wear light armor anyway. No other type of light armor is better than studded leather for a rogue.
Rogue builds
Rogues are pretty versatile characters. You’re likely going to be the most skillful character in your party and will often be needed in a utility role. You’re also a capable warrior (even if you can’t hold the frontline by yourself). You can build into different aspects of these roles if you want in a variety of ways including some of the example builds below:
Scout
Good for
Skulking around, being very sneaky and getting what they need without anyone knowing you were there.
Ability Scores (Point Buy/Standard Array)
- Strength: 8/8
- Dexterity: 15/15
- Constitution: 15/13
- Intelligence: 8/12
- Wisdom: 8/10
- Charisma: 15/14
Skills: Acrobatics, perception (expertise), sleight of hand, insight (background), stealth (background, expertise)
Species: Forest Gnome
Background: Wayfarer – For points buy, add +2 to dexterity and +1 to charisma. For standard array, add +2 to charisma and +1 to dexterity.
Subclass: Thief
Weapons: Daggers, light crossbow for longer range
Armor: studded leather
Blade
Good for
Fighting in combat, dealing lots of damage and nullifying enemies.
Ability Scores (Point Buy/Standard Array)
- Strength: 8/8
- Dexterity: 15/15
- Constitution: 15/14
- Intelligence: 8/12
- Wisdom: 8/10
- Charisma: 15/13
Skills: Acrobatics, perception, sleight of hand (expertise), insight (background), stealth (background, expertise)
Species: Halfling
Background: Wayfarer – For points buy, add +2 to dexterity and +1 to charisma. For standard array, add +2 to charisma and +1 to dexterity.
Subclass: Soulknife
Weapons: Psychic blades (you could also use a dagger for the nick weapon mastery for an extra attack, then stow that blade to give yourself a free hand to summon a second psychic blade)
Armor: Studded leather
Fraudster
Good for
Impersonating others, sneaking around and smooth talking their way into any places they need to be.
Ability Scores (Point Buy/Standard Array)
- Strength: 8/8
- Dexterity: 15/15
- Constitution: 15/13
- Intelligence: 8/12
- Wisdom: 8/10
- Charisma: 15/14
Skills: Stealth, perception, persuasion (expertise), deception (background, expertise), sleight of hand (background), intimidation (Human), insight (skilled), investigation (skilled), acrobatics (skilled)
Species: Human (lucky)
Background: Charlatan – For points buy, add +2 to charisma and +1 to dexterity. For standard array, add +2 to charisma and +1 to dexterity.
Subclass: Assassin
Weapons: daggers and a light crossbow (for longer range)
Armor: Studded leather
Other class guides
Not sure a rogue is for you? Not to worry. Why not check out one of our other D&D 2024 class and subclass guides.
