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The Best Feats for Rogues: D&D 5e Roguish Secrets
37K views
Sep 30, 2022
Follow along here: https://www.flutesloot.com/rogue-feat-selection-dnd-5e?utm_source=youtube (Scripted before Tasha's release, so I'll point out that Piercer is also a fine feat for Rogues.) Feats are powerful customizations for any character. Rogues get one additional Ability Score Improvement compared to other classes, allowing them to choose high stats and/or diverse feats. Given this versatility, it’s befitting to review which feats would be best for different types of Rogue characters. I’ll discuss the best choices, the good-but-not-best options, and the niche options that might not come up or pay off often. Read onward to find my top choices for Rogue feats! Want to use the background music featured in this video in your own campaign? You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9ykviAamoM ⏰Time Stamps: 00:00 Don't Sneak Away 00:18 The Best, Lesser, and Niche 00:28 Actor 01:07 Alert 01:37 Sneak Attack with Reaction Feats 02:00 Mage Slayer 02:34 Cunning Action Synergies 02:46 Mobile 03:18 Prodigy/Skill Expert 03:42 Resilient 04:15 Sentinel
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hey looters, flutes here. Today I want to talk about one of my favorite classes and the feats they should take
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I'm talking about rogue feet selection, so don't go sneaking away and stay tuned for our discussion
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So my sly ideas for what kind of feats are rogue should be picking are in three categories
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The best, the lesser, and the niche circumstantial. My first recommendation is the actor feat, which I'm a little biased towards because my first character was a rogue and I impersonated people like crazy
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Even before 5th edition came out, we were just playing the playtest next rules. And so there wasn't a feat like actor, but we just had me have expertise in deception
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The actor feat will give you a plus one to charisma as well as advantage on your deception roles when you're trying to pass off as someone else
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As a rogue, this is such a fun thing to pursue. if you're not out in the wilderness amongst beasts all the time in your campaign
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you're actually around people and there's like political intrigue or just any sort of intrigue with
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humanoids, the actor feat can be a lot of fun, so I recommend thinking about it. The alert feat is really good for a rogue because the way that surprise actually works
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there's no surprise round, there's just people that are surprised in the first round of combat
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Once they've had their turn, because their turn does still exist in that first round of combat
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they cease to be surprised. so you need to roll a high initiative so that you can be above them
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and attack them while they are surprised to get your sneak attack damage with advantage
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Especially if you are an assassin, you want them to be surprised so you can automatically critical hit them
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Another thing about rogues is they want to be using their reaction on other people's turns
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so that they can attack and get sneak attack on other turns. If you didn't know that
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sneak attack isn't a once per round ability. It is a once per turn ability
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so you can multiple times in a round get a sneak attack damage
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but it must not be on your turn that the second occurs
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Thus, the mage slayer feat is an excellent choice for rogues. If you can get up next to a spellcaster and they cast a spell
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you can use your reaction, even though they didn't move away from you as an opportunity attack
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you can use a reaction to attack them as a punishment to their spell casting
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With that, you will be able to sneak attack, hopefully as long as you have an ally next to you or you have advantage for some reason
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So you still got to respect the sneak attack rules. Plus, Mage Slayer has some other great benefits for rogues to be slippery
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and get out of those pesky spells that spellcasters are tossing out
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Rogues also have cunning actions so they can move around quickly with dashing as a bonus action
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So anything that you can do to buff your movement speed will basically be doubled in effectiveness
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So the mobile feat, which allows you to increase your movement speed by 10
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as well as not have to disengage from someone you attack, you could attack someone and then move away
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cunning action, dash, and then you end up like 80 feet away from them
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and they weren't able to opportunity to attack you. Even if they dash, the average fighter, let's say
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will only be able to move 60 feet if they dash up to you. So they'll be forced to do a range attack
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which may be less effective if that's not their specialty. And then you can move in and attack them again or attack them from range and kite them Another fun rogue feat is Prodigy if you are human or half human like a half or a half elf
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This will give you expertise in another skill, which is fun. That's one of my favorite parts about being a rogue is having very high skill check roles
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Rugs also just get a lot more skills than most of their classes, so getting one more just feels great
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I love becoming a skill Swiss Army knife as a rogue, so Prodigy is a good one too
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rogues are unique with their saving throws in that they get dexterity and intelligent saving throw proficiencies
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and then later with the slippery mind ability they gain wisdom saving throw proficiency so they'll have three high levels
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so if there's another type of saving throw like constitution that's been bothering you in your campaign
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take the resilient feat to get plus one in constitution or whatever saving throw has been causing you issues
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and then you will be proficient in it this will make you even more slippery as a rogue to pass saving throws and avoid getting locked down
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you want to be moving and you want to be grooving with those sneak attacks. Another feat that will enable you to use your reaction to make attacks to get sneak attack
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once again, like I mentioned before with a mage slayer, is Sentinel. If someone disengages from you, you're going to punish them anyway
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and you're going to keep them right there with the sentinel feet. So you can get sneak attack damage potentially on that reaction
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which normally would have been passed up because you would have lost the opportunity attack to the disengage
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and you kind of keep the ball in your court as they are stuck next to you
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Now I'm moving on to the lesser feats, which I think are still relevant to rogue
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That's why I bring them up at all. But they're just not as powerful or as archetype enabling like the previous feats I mentioned
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Sometimes it's just because they have mechanical lack of synergy with the class and other things you're trying to do
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So the first one is Bountiful Luck as a Halfling. If you've seen my other articles and videos about Feats, I love this feat
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It's for Halflings only, which is relevant to Rogues, so it's on here
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A lot of halflings like to go rogue. But it's going to use your reaction
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And as a rogue, you have the little ability called Uncanny Dodge
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which you want to maybe be using every round if you're under fire, unless you're totally out of danger and staying out of there
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It's a valuable reaction that allows you to have the damage of an attack that you can see coming
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And so if someone hits you with some whopping big attack, you can have it and increase your survivability
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You could still take the Bountiful Luck feat, because you're not always going to be using your elusive reaction
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You may want to use it another time to prevent a roll of one if you're not on the front lines taking damage
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Another feat that a lot of people really rave about is crossbow expert. I don't like it
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I think it's bad game design. But for a rogue, it can be pretty good
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It's just that rogues really only need one attack that lands per round
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And so I like to kind of bet that my one attack is going to hit and I try to get advantage on it
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and I try to beef that one attack up because the second attack is a rogue
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you're not going to have sneak attack and it's just going to be like a pute just like a little bit of damage
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And so crossbow expert gives you extra attacks as a bonus action when you're using a crossbow, hand crossbow
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But I prefer using like daggers and rapiers as a rogue myself
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When I making shots from the back lines it usually not a crossbow I be using That just my preference When I play a rogue I usually like to be fighting with daggers and rapiers and stuff and kind of weaving in and out of combat and having something like a crossbow as a backup and not something I focus on too much that I would invest a feat in And so for those reasons I pass on it
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but I know that a lot of people like this feat and it is a good one. Another feat that I have rated as lesser
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is defensive duelist. I like this feat a lot. It scales with your proficiency bonus and it uses
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your reaction to beef up your armor class against a single attack. But the thing is
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Rogues already have reaction fatigue, like I just mentioned, with their elusive ability
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They're already having damage from an attack per round if they're being damaged. And so I just put reaction-based feats a little bit down on the totem pole
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unless it's giving you an attack outside of your turn. Then it goes back up in my book
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One of my least favorite feats is Dungeon Delver, but if you're playing in a one-off or campaign that uses heaps of dungeons and traps
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and that's just your style with your DM, dungeon delver's great. Take it
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Not much else to say, but it's usually not going to be that good for you. next feat might surprise you is grappler. It's not required that a dexterity-based rogue be your
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build. You could focus on strength and just keep using your finesse weapon with strength to do sneak
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attack damage. And so if you want to be a sneaky buff rogue, an enforcer type, you can grapple
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people. You're probably going to be using a dagger, scimitar, rapier in one hand, and then you can
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grapple them to keep them in place. And while they're grappled, you'll have advantage to attack them
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that means you'll have sneak attack unless something else gets in the way
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If you're a teafling rogue, I recommend taking infernal constitution to give yourself resistance to cold and poison damage
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in addition to the fire damage you already get as a teafling. You're really good at dexterity saving throws
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one of the best saving throws to be good at in the game. So you might as well beef your constitution saving throws up a little bit too
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This will buff up that stat and give you resistances on the side to increase your survivability
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And the last two feats I'm putting as lesser are tough, just get more hit points and lucky just re-roll stuff they're boring but you can get them if you want right now
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for some pretty niche choices not that the other ones weren't niche i guess everything has its own niche in the game
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but um this one is drow high magic draw high magic can give you detect magic at will which i don't usually
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love detect magic but if i could do it at will i'd do it all the time and as a rogue you might be
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infiltrating places investigating things and otherwise just trying to sneak around without getting caught or falling
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into a trap, especially a magical one. And so it's important to detect magic while you're sneaking around and just have that
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like Batman infrared vision sort of thing for what you need to see. Especially if there's a magic item that you didn't expect to find
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You're probably going to get greedy and want that. I would. So another good feat, especially for like a swashbuckler or maybe an assassin that invest a little
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bit in their charisma scores. The inspiring leader feat is a great one for just boosting
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your overall party satisfaction and survivability. If no one else in the party is doing it and you have that charisma incentive to actually
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fit the prerequisite for this feat, it's always one of my favorites to do, inspiring leader
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And it is fun to role play, trying to do some sort of inspiring speech. Also if you a rogue there this stereotype that people tend to distrust you and maybe you earned that in your group But especially with new players they just going to be like oh you the rogue you going to steal stuff If you an inspiring leader it can kind of like reassure them that you on their side
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and you're not just some party thief who's trying to backstab everybody
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Next, the Magic Initiate Feet can be great to get a quick spell
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like a booming blade, let's say, a very powerful cantrip, or also getting some, like, mending
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so that you can, like, break apart a porcelain doll, I'll put a secret message in it and then mend it back together, stuff like that
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some real espionage type utility from these cantrip. Minor Aleutian is also a good cantrip that you would consider
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So these are great if you're not an arcane trickster, or even if you are and you just want to diversify your cantrip
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You'll also get a once per rest wizard spell. That could include disguise self, featherfall, find familiar, absorb elements
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The kind of spells that, like, you just want to have as like a contingency against certain problems
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or find familiar that's just kind of like a constant thing that you can benefit from. And so Magic Initiate can be a great way to diversify your options as a rogue and be a little bit more prepared for some
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problems that may occur. And then the booming blade or a green flame blade, whatever you want to pick, it's going to increase your damage output along with your sneak attack
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If you want to read lips and spy on people, take observant. If you want to cast spells as an arcane trickster without need to lose concentration on like invisibility
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or you want to do booming blade as a reaction with Warcaster
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with Warcaster. You can do that. And Jeremy Crawford has clarified that you can still do that with Warcaster
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even with the changes to booming blade and green flame blades descriptions in Tasha's
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Caldron of Everything. You could also cast other spells as an opportunity attack like Phantasmal Force, which is a fun spell for an arcane trickster to deploy on somebody
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My last recommendation is Wood Elf Magic, especially if you are a scout rogue, which is an
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archetype I love the Scout. This will give you an effective plus 10 to your movement speed as you can
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cast long strider and you can cast pass without trace so that your pesky party that you're usually
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dragging along with you trying to keep them quiet you can actually try to keep them quiet with a plus
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10 to their stealth roles this will help you set up ambushes which some of your scout abilities are
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tailored to even if you're an assassin this is a great feat for you to take it just only matters if you
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use movement a lot in your campaign and you're not just like theater of the mind where like movement
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isn't as important and the DM just lets you get where you want to go and if you are actually
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doing stealth roles and trying to set up ambushes as a party. So there you go. Can you tell which feats I'm a little biased towards and maybe I rated them too high or there's
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some that I rated too low because maybe I'm just not excited by them
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Let me know by casting a message in the comments section down below and check out the
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article associated with this video if you didn't take notes. There's an article where all the notes and recommendations are on fluteslute.com for rogues
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We've got a lot of other content on flutslute.com and we're trying to get to 100 articles by the end
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of 2020 and we are on track. so we're going strong. So rogues are a lot of fun
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Choose your feats wisely. Rogues get an extra ability score improvement compared to the average class
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So they get six. So you can afford to invest in some stats and maybe an extra feat
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Just for fun, if you're going to leave a comment down below, try putting it in thieves can't
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and we'll try to decipher what you mean. All right. Have fun guys and gals
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And I'll talk to you later
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