5e arcane trickster shadow blade booming blade

5E ARCANE TRICKSTER SHADOW BLADE BOOMING BLADE FREE

You’ll want to make sure you’re landing sneak attacks with your shots and one reliable way to do this is through the invisibility and greater invisibility spells. It will require using your bonus action to resummon the blades but you should usually be needing to use your bonus action to disengage. Alternatively, you could use shadow blade as described above to double your damage (but reduce your range). A light crossbow is your biggest damage dealing weapon here and the reload rule won’t impact your damage as you only get a single attack anyway. Instead of rushing heading into melee combat, you might instead choose to attack from range. Even better, the blade can be thrown and resummoned as a bonus action so can be used at range if needed too. It grants you 2d8 damage with a hard to resist damage type (psychic) and has the light property so can be wielded with another weapon. Once you have access to 2nd level spells, shadow blade can make a great alternative to your usual weapons and is a little less fiddly to make work than booming blade or green flame blade. This allows you to use your bonus action to make a 2nd attack against your opponent. To enhance your damage output a little more, and to give yourself another opportunity at a sneak attack, you can take a pair of short swords for two-weapon fighting and take the mobile feat which will allow you to safely disengage a single opponent if you’ve attacked them that turn without using your bonus action to disengage.

5E ARCANE TRICKSTER SHADOW BLADE BOOMING BLADE FREE

This leaves your bonus action free to disengage afterwards and move somewhere a little safer (particularly important with booming blade as you’ll need to coax your enemy into moving to get the bonus damage). These spells are cast as an action, but allow you to still make a weapon attack as part of that action. These are booming blade and green flame blade which both add extra damage to your attacks in different ways. Fortunately, there are a couple of cantrips you can take that allow you to do this while enhancing your attacks with spells. With this in mind, if you choose to get into melee combat, you’ll want to make sure you’re getting sneak attacks in as often as possible. Meleeįirstly, your sneak attack remains your most effective option for dealing damage. We’ll talk about a few different tactics you can use as an arcane trickster with spell ideas for how these can be utilised in different circumstances. This is because they aren’t limited by set subclass features, but rather, you get a small pool of spells you can choose to enhance yourself in the way you want to do things. A more left-field option might be the mutants Mystique and Nightcrawler who could shapeshift and teleport alongside their dexterous other abilities.Īrcane Tricksters are possibly the most flexible of the rogue subclasses. They might be wizards more than rogues, but they certainly fit the arcane trickster archetype. While few examples of arcane tricksters come to mind from popular cultures, some roguish characters do use magic to some extent such as Bilbo using the one ring (invisibility is a great spell for rogues by the way)! You might also consider troublemakers like Fred and George Weasley. Get them right, and arcane tricksters can be very powerful, get them wrong and you can find them a real challenge to play.Īrcane tricksters work as assassins in the night, supplementing their skill with deadly magic, as performers, tricking their audience with magical abilities or as comic relief, using their magic for mischief.

Not only do you have your rogue abilities to consider, but also options for many spells. With that spellcasting though, comes a wave of complexity that isn’t recommended for new players. They are rogues with a penchant for the magical, retaining their roguish nature and combining it with magical acumen.Ĭombining magic with stealth and thievery is a powerful combination weaving spells to supplement their natural stealth and penchant for skullduggery, arcane tricksters are a powerful option for rogues. The arcane trickster is a rogue subclass in D&D 5e introduced in the Player’s Handbook.

5e arcane trickster shadow blade booming blade