D&D 5e Rogue Subclasses (2014): All Nine Archetypes Ranked

Introduction

Sneak Attack is the Rogue. It is most of your damage at every level, it is the reason you take finesse weapons, and it is the thing your turn is built around from level 1 to level 20.

And it has a condition attached. You need advantage on the attack roll, or an ally within 5 feet of your target, and you must not have disadvantage. One of those has to be true or your 9d6 does not happen.

That condition is what actually separates the nine Roguish Archetypes, and almost nobody ranks them on it. Every archetype gives you some out-of-combat toys. Only some of them solve the problem that decides whether your turn works.

What each archetype gives you toward switching Sneak Attack on:

• Swashbuckler removes the condition entirely in a duel, for free, from 3rd level.
• Assassin gives you advantage on everything that has not acted yet, so round one is solved in every fight.
• Inquisitive sells you the condition for a bonus action and a contested check.
• Arcane Trickster buys you advantage on demand at 13th level, and before that leans on spells cast from hiding.
• Scout at 13th level makes your first hit of the fight grant advantage to everyone, and at 17th lets you do it twice.
• Phantom, Soulknife, Thief, Mastermind do nothing for the condition at all, and have to earn their place elsewhere.

That last group is not a dismissal. Thief's Use Magic Device is one of the best 13th-level features in the game, the Soulknife is never disarmed, and the Phantom is the only Rogue who damages two creatures with one Sneak Attack. But they are paying for those things by leaving you to solve positioning yourself, and you should know that going in.

The Nine Archetypes at a Glance

Rating key: ● fantastic, ● good, ● situational, ● bad.

What Separates Them

Three questions settle the pick, in this order.

Does it solve Sneak Attack, and what does it charge you? Free is better than cheap and cheap is better than a roll. Rakish Audacity is free. Assassinate is free but only in round one. Insightful Fighting costs a bonus action and can fail. Versatile Trickster costs a bonus action but cannot fail, and arrives at 13th level.

Does it compete with Cunning Action? Your bonus action is the most contested resource you own. Hide, Disengage and Dash are all excellent and all cost it. An archetype that also wants your bonus action every turn is quietly charging you one of the class's best features. Fast Hands, Eye for Detail, Insightful Fighting, Master of Tactics, Elegant Maneuver and the off-hand Psychic Blade are all in this queue.

Does it work when the campaign changes shape? Assassin needs surprise. Thief's best feature needs magic items. Scout's free Expertise needs wilderness. Mastermind and Inquisitive need social and mystery content. Swashbuckler, Arcane Trickster, Phantom and Soulknife work roughly the same in a dungeon, a city or a forest, which is worth something on its own.

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Hot Take: The only question that really matters is how your archetype helps you meet Sneak Attack's condition. Swashbuckler hands it to you free in any duel from 3rd level, Scout spreads it party-wide in round one but not until 13th, and Phantom does nothing for it at all. Everything else on these nine pages is decoration on that one line.

Swashbuckler

Source: Xanathar's Guide to Everything. The duelist. The most combat-self-sufficient Rogue in the game, and the one that needs the least help from the rest of the party.

Fancy Footwork ●

Level 3. During your turn, if you make a melee attack against a creature, that creature cannot make opportunity attacks against you for the rest of your turn.

The value compounds over every combat turn you will ever play. Every other melee Rogue who wants to strike and withdraw spends their bonus action on Cunning Action Disengage. The Swashbuckler does not: attacking is itself the Disengage, against the creature you attacked.

That freed bonus action becomes an off-hand attack, a Hide for next turn's advantage, a Dash to a different target, or Elegant Maneuver later. Across a four-round fight that is four bonus actions other Rogues did not get.

The limit is narrow but real: it only protects you from creatures you actually attacked in melee this turn, and only on turns where you made that attack. A turn spent entirely on movement or an object interaction gets no protection.

Rakish Audacity ●

Level 3. You add your Charisma modifier to your initiative rolls. You also do not need advantage on the attack roll to use Sneak Attack against a creature if you are within 5 feet of it, no other creatures are within 5 feet of you, and you do not have disadvantage on the attack roll.

Read that clause carefully, because it is the single most misplayed rule in the class, including in a lot of published guides. The 5-foot restriction is about creatures near you, not creatures near your target. Your target can be standing in the middle of its whole warband and Rakish Audacity still works, as long as nothing else has closed to melee range of you. An ally standing next to you turns it off. An enemy flanking you turns it off. The enemy's friends crowding around the enemy do not.

That reading makes the feature substantially better than the common misunderstanding, and it changes how you position: you want to be the one out on a limb, alone with a target, which is exactly the Rogue fantasy anyway.

The Charisma to initiative half is a flat passive that never costs an action. A Swashbuckler with 16 Dexterity and 14 Charisma has the same initiative bonus as a Rogue who maxed Dexterity, and a Swashbuckler who does both goes first in essentially every fight.

Together with Fancy Footwork, this is the strongest pair of 3rd-level features on the Rogue list. No roll, no resource, no ally, no setup.

Panache ●

Level 9. As an action, make a Charisma (Persuasion) check contested by a creature's Wisdom (Insight) check. The creature must be able to hear you and you must share a language.

Against a hostile creature, success taunts it: it has disadvantage on attack rolls against anyone but you, and it cannot make opportunity attacks against anyone but you. Against a non-hostile creature, success charms it for 1 minute and it treats you as a friendly acquaintance.

Three things end the taunt, and two of them are routinely forgotten. It lasts 1 minute, it ends if one of your companions attacks the target or affects it with a spell, and it ends if you and the target are ever more than 60 feet apart. The companion clause matters enormously at the table: you taunt the boss, your Fighter hits the boss, and the taunt is gone. Panache is a tool for peeling one dangerous creature away from your squishy allies, not a debuff you stack on the target everyone is already focusing.

It costs your whole action, which in a combat round is expensive for a class that lives on one big attack. Use it on the enemy that is about to reach your Wizard, not on the enemy you are already killing.

Elegant Maneuver ●

Level 13. As a bonus action, gain advantage on the next Dexterity (Acrobatics) or Strength (Athletics) check you make this turn.

The Swashbuckler's weakest feature. It matters in builds that grapple or shove, and it is a fair way to make a shove land before you attack a prone target. But shoving costs an attack, your bonus action is usually worth more as an off-hand strike or a Hide, and a 13th-level feature competing with those is thin.

Not dead, just clearly the low point of an otherwise excellent list.

Master Duelist ●

Level 17. If you miss with an attack roll, you can roll it again with advantage. Once per short or long rest.

One reroll, with advantage, on a miss. Because the Rogue puts everything into a single attack each turn, a miss is not a small loss: it is the entire round's damage. Converting one of those per short rest into a likely hit is worth more for this class than the same feature would be for anyone who attacks three times.

Save it for a turn where Sneak Attack is live and the target matters. It is weaker in raw output than Thief's Reflexes or Sudden Strike, but it is available in every fight, not just the ones that go a certain way.

Swashbuckler in play

Get into melee alone, attack, and take Sneak Attack without asking anyone for anything. Keep your allies off your elbow: they turn your best feature off by standing next to you, which is the opposite of every other Rogue's positioning advice, and it is worth saying out loud at session zero. Put Charisma at 14 to 16 so initiative and Panache both work, and spend the freed bonus action on an off-hand attack or a Hide.

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Arcane Trickster

Source: Player's Handbook. The wizard-adjacent Rogue. The most versatile archetype in the game and the only one that casts spells.

Arcane Trickster Spellcasting ●

Level 3. Third-caster progression using the wizard spell list, with Intelligence as your spellcasting ability. You start with Mage Hand plus two wizard cantrips and three 1st-level spells, two of which must be enchantment or illusion. You reach 4th-level spells at 19th level. Most later picks must also be enchantment or illusion, with free choice from any school at 3rd, 8th, 14th and 20th level.

Those four free-school picks are the most important decisions in the build. They are where Find Familiar, Misty Step and Shadow Blade come from, and picking them well matters more than anything else on your spell list.

Intelligence at 14 is the practical sweet spot. It gives a workable save DC without stealing points from Dexterity or Constitution. Understand what that buys: against creatures with strong mental saves your control spells will fail regularly, so favor spells that still do something useful on a successful save, or spells that do not allow one at all.

You have no spellbook and cannot ritual cast unless you take the Ritual Caster feat, which is a strong pickup here for Find Familiar and Detect Magic.

Mage Hand Legerdemain ●

Level 3. Your Mage Hand can be invisible, and it can stow an object in a container carried by another creature, retrieve an object from one, or use thieves' tools to pick locks and disarm traps, all at the hand's 30-foot range. You control it with the bonus action from Cunning Action, and you make a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check contested by the target's Wisdom (Perception) check to do any of it unnoticed.

This is the feature that justifies the name and it is one of the best exploration tools any class gets. Send an invisible hand through a keyhole and unlock the door from cover. Disarm the trigger plate from 30 feet back. Pick a guard's pocket from across a room, or plant something in it.

Note the resource cost honestly: it uses the same bonus action as Cunning Action, so the turn you spend picking a lock is a turn you did not Hide or Disengage. Out of combat that is free. In combat it is a genuine trade.

Mage Hand lasts 1 minute and requires no concentration, so you can keep the hand up through most of a fight once you have cast it.

Magical Ambush ●

Level 9. If you are hidden from a creature when you cast a spell on it, that creature has disadvantage on any saving throw it makes against the spell this turn.

This is what makes a 14-Intelligence spell save DC playable. Hypnotic Pattern, Hold Person and Tasha's Hideous Laughter all go from coin flips to real threats when the target rolls twice and takes the worse result.

The sequencing trips people up. You have to already be hidden when you cast. You cannot Cunning Action Hide and cast the spell in the same turn and get the benefit, because the hiding and the casting have to be separated by the enemy not having found you. Plan it a round ahead: Hide on turn one, cast on turn two.

Versatile Trickster ●

Level 13. As a bonus action, designate a creature within 5 feet of your Mage Hand. You have advantage on attack rolls against that creature until the end of the turn.

Advantage on demand, with no roll to fail and no ally required. This is the Arcane Trickster's answer to the Sneak Attack condition and it arrives ten levels after the Swashbuckler's. It costs a bonus action and requires Mage Hand to already be up and positioned, which are easy conditions once you build the habit.

It also stacks with everything else advantage does for you: it beats high AC, and it is how you set up a big hit on a boss without waiting for the Fighter to get into position.

Spell Thief ●

Level 17. Immediately after a creature casts a spell that targets you or includes you in its area, use your reaction to force it to make a saving throw with its own spellcasting ability modifier against your spell save DC. On a failure you negate the spell's effect against you and steal the spell: you know it for 8 hours and can cast it with your own slots, and the original caster cannot cast that spell at all until those 8 hours have passed. Once per long rest.

Both halves of that get misreported. It is once per long rest, not an at-will reaction, so it is a single decisive moment per day rather than a recurring tax on enemy casters. And the caster lockout is half the value: taking an enemy archmage's signature spell away from them for the rest of the day can matter more than the copy you gained, especially against a boss with one terrifying option.

The spell has to be one of a level you can cast, so 4th level or lower. That still covers a great many of the enemy spells that actually threaten a party. The reaction cost means no Uncanny Dodge that round, which is a real decision.

Arcane Trickster in play

Take Booming Blade and Mage Hand at level 3, use the free-school picks on Find Familiar and Misty Step, and keep the hand up in every fight. Before 13th level your Sneak Attack comes from hiding, from the familiar granting advantage through the Help action, or from an ally being adjacent. After 13th, Versatile Trickster covers it whenever you need it.

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Scout

Source: Xanathar's Guide to Everything. The mobile skirmisher. One of the best-built archetypes on the list, with no dead levels.

Skirmisher ●

Level 3. As a reaction, when an enemy ends its turn within 5 feet of you, you can move up to half your speed. This movement does not provoke opportunity attacks.

A free Disengage-and-move that costs your reaction instead of your bonus action, triggered automatically, with no uses per day. Melee enemies simply cannot pin you down: they close, they end their turn, you slide away, and they have to spend movement again next turn to get back to you.

The genuine cost is your reaction, which is also what Uncanny Dodge wants. Treat them as alternatives rather than a combo: Skirmisher when you can leave and avoid the damage entirely, Uncanny Dodge when you are stuck and have to eat the hit.

Survivalist ●

Level 3. You gain proficiency in Nature and Survival if you lack it, and your proficiency bonus is doubled for any check using either.

Free Expertise in two skills the Rogue does not normally have. The real benefit is indirect: it frees your four actual Expertise slots for Stealth, Perception, Thieves' Tools, Deception or Investigation instead of spending them on wilderness coverage.

Its value tracks your campaign directly. In a wilderness or travel campaign this is excellent. In an urban dungeon campaign, Nature rarely comes up and Survival less than you would hope.

Superior Mobility ●

Level 9. Your walking speed increases by 10 feet, and if you have a climbing or swimming speed, that increases by 10 feet as well.

An honest maintenance bonus. A 40-foot speed reaches more targets, escapes further with Disengage, and covers more ground in a chase. It does not change how a fight plays.

The climbing and swimming clause depends entirely on having such a speed already, which for a Rogue means a racial feature. On a Tabaxi or Lizardfolk Scout it is a real upgrade; on most builds it is dead text.

Ambush Master ●

Level 13. You have advantage on initiative rolls. In addition, the first creature you hit during the first round of a combat is easier for everyone to hit: attack rolls against it have advantage until the start of your next turn.

Two effects, both good, and the second is a party feature rather than a personal one. You hit the boss first, and then your Paladin, your Fighter and your Ranger all swing at it with advantage. For a party with heavy hitters, that is more total damage than almost anything the Rogue could have done alone.

Advantage on initiative also means you are reliably the one who hits first, which is what makes the second half fire in the first place.

Sudden Strike ●

Level 17. If you take the Attack action, you can make one additional attack as a bonus action. That attack can benefit from Sneak Attack even if you already used it this turn, but you cannot use Sneak Attack against the same target more than once in a turn.

Two Sneak Attacks in one turn, against two different creatures. No other Rogue archetype offers this reliably. At 17th level that is 9d6 plus 9d6 in a single round, before weapon dice.

The constraint is the one that matters: both attacks need to independently satisfy the Sneak Attack condition, and against two different targets. In a party with a front line, that is usually easy. Fighting one solitary boss, it does nothing at all.

Scout in play

Sit at the edge of melee and let enemies come to you, sliding away with Skirmisher every time one ends its turn adjacent. Do not spend Expertise on Nature or Survival. From 13th, make sure your first hit each fight lands on whatever the party most wants dead.

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Phantom

Source: Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. The death-touched Rogue. The only archetype that turns a single-target Sneak Attack into damage on two creatures.

Whispers of the Dead ●

Level 3. Whenever you finish a short or long rest, choose one skill or tool proficiency you lack and gain it. You lose it when you use the feature again to choose a different one.

More valuable than it looks. Every other character locks their proficiency list at creation. You get a rotating slot that answers whatever the next few hours demand: Thieves' Tools for the heist, Persuasion for the court, Alchemist's Supplies for the laboratory, Medicine for the wounded prisoner.

The constraints are fair. You hold one at a time, and you cannot swap in the middle of an encounter without a rest. Within those limits it is the most flexible utility feature on the Rogue list.

Wails from the Grave ●

Level 3. Immediately after you deal Sneak Attack damage to a creature on your turn, you can target a second creature you can see within 30 feet of the first. Roll half the number of Sneak Attack dice for your level, rounded up, and the second creature takes that much necrotic damage. Proficiency bonus uses per long rest, all of which return on a long rest.

The rounding is up, not down, and this is worth stating plainly because it is widely reported the other way and it changes the numbers at every odd tier. At 5th level your Sneak Attack is 3d6, so Wails deals 2d6, not 1d6. At 9th level it is 5d6, so Wails deals 3d6. At 17th level it is 9d6, so Wails deals 5d6, averaging 17 damage to a second creature for no action and no attack roll.

There is no saving throw and no attack roll on the secondary damage. It simply happens. The second creature has to be within 30 feet of your target rather than of you, which is easy: enemies cluster.

Necrotic is resisted by a fair number of undead and constructs. Know what you are fighting before you rely on it.

Tokens of the Departed ●

Level 9. As a reaction when a creature you can see dies within 30 feet of you, a Tiny soul trinket appears in your hand. You can hold a number equal to your proficiency bonus.

The trinkets do three things, and the middle one is the one that matters mechanically:

• While you carry at least one, you have advantage on death saving throws and Constitution saving throws. Constitution saves are the concentration save and half the nastiest effects in the game, so this is a real passive defense, not just a death-save cushion.
• When you deal Sneak Attack damage, you can destroy a trinket to use Wails from the Grave without expending a use of it. This is how a Phantom goes past the proficiency-bonus limit on their best feature in a long fight.
• As an action, destroy a trinket to ask the associated spirit one question, answered truthfully to the best of what it knew in life.

The question is the memorable one at the table. Kill the courier, ask the courier where the vault key went. But the Wails refresh is the one that changes your damage across an adventuring day.

Ghost Walk ●

Level 13. As a bonus action, assume a spectral form for 10 minutes. You gain a flying speed of 10 feet, you can hover, attack rolls against you have disadvantage, and you can move through creatures and objects as difficult terrain, taking 1d10 force damage if you end your turn inside one. Once per long rest, or by destroying a soul trinket.

Disadvantage on every attack against you for ten minutes is the headline, and it gets misreported as damage resistance. It is better than resistance against attack rolls and worse against anything that does not make one, which is a meaningful difference against spellcasters and area effects.

Flight, hovering and phasing through walls do the rest. Fly above a melee line and drop Sneak Attacks on things that cannot reach you, or walk through a locked door instead of picking it. Ten minutes covers a whole combat and then some, and destroying a soul trinket lets you do it twice in a hard day.

Death's Friend ●

Level 17. When you use Wails from the Grave, you now deal the necrotic damage to both the first and second creature. And if you have no soul trinkets at the end of a long rest, one appears in your hand.

Not a redirect: an addition. Your primary target now takes its full Sneak Attack plus another 5d6 necrotic on top, and the secondary target takes the 5d6 as well. That is roughly a 50% increase to your single-target damage and it fixes the archetype's one real weakness, which was that a solo boss fight turned off half the subclass.

Phantom in play

Use Wails from the Grave in every fight, and remember the rounding is up. Collect trinkets with your reaction whenever something dies, carry at least one at all times for the Constitution save advantage, and spend them to refresh Wails in long fights rather than hoarding them for questions.

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Assassin

Source: Player's Handbook. The ambusher. Consistently underrated because people judge it on the half that needs surprise.

Bonus Proficiencies ●

Level 3. Proficiency with the disguise kit and the poisoner's kit.

Thematic and occasionally useful. The poisoner's kit is the more interesting of the two, since it lets you craft poisons in downtime, but how much that is worth depends entirely on whether your DM engages with the poison rules. Neither does anything in a fight.

Assassinate ●

Level 3. You have advantage on attack rolls against any creature that has not taken a turn in the combat yet. In addition, any hit you score against a creature that is surprised is a critical hit.

Two effects, and the discourse is lopsided toward the second one.

The advantage clause is the one that fires every fight. It needs no surprise, no stealth and no ambush: it needs only that you act before the target does. In round one of nearly every combat, some enemies have not gone yet, and against all of them you have advantage, which switches Sneak Attack on for free. That makes Assassinate a real, reliable Sneak Attack enabler on the same tier as the Swashbuckler's, just limited to the opening round. Initiative investment converts directly into how much of it you get.

The automatic critical hits are the campaign-dependent half. They require the target to be genuinely surprised, which means the party successfully set an ambush. When it happens it is devastating, because a critical hit doubles every Sneak Attack die: at 11th level, 6d6 becomes 12d6 on top of doubled weapon dice.

An Assassin in a campaign that never ambushes anyone is still getting the advantage clause every fight. That is the honest floor, and it is higher than the archetype's reputation suggests.

Infiltration Expertise ●

Level 9. Spending seven days and 25 gp, you establish a false identity: a history, a profession and affiliations. Others believe the identity is genuine until given an obvious reason to doubt it.

This creates a persona, not a disguise. It does not make you look like a specific existing person, which is a distinct thing that arrives at 13th level. What you get is a documented, believable someone-else you can be.

Pure campaign dependency. In a game about infiltrating a court or a criminal organization it is powerful. In a dungeon crawl it never comes up. Ask before you commit.

Impostor ●

Level 13. After at least three hours studying a person's speech, handwriting and behavior, you can unerringly mimic all three. A creature that has reason to be suspicious can spot the impersonation with a Wisdom (Insight) check contested by your Charisma (Deception) check, which you make with advantage.

Note what this is and is not. It covers speech, writing and mannerisms. It is not a magical change of appearance, so you still need the disguise kit from 3rd level to look the part, which is why the two features are designed to work together.

The contested check is also part of the feature and often omitted. Casual observers are fooled outright. Someone already suspicious gets a roll, and you get advantage on your side of it.

Death Strike ●

Level 17. When you attack and hit a creature that is surprised, it must make a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 + your Dexterity modifier + your proficiency bonus). On a failure, double the damage of your attack against it.

Doubling an attack that was already an automatic critical hit. At 17th level against a surprised target: your weapon dice and 9d6 of Sneak Attack are doubled by the critical, and then the entire total is doubled again. It is the single largest hit available to any non-magical build in the game.

The DC is typically 19 at that level, which good Constitution saves will often beat. But the attack was already a critical hit before the save, so a successful save still leaves you with an enormous strike. There is no downside branch here, only a very good outcome and a spectacular one.

Assassin in play

Take Alert as early as you can and treat initiative as your main subclass resource, because it is what converts the advantage clause into a Sneak Attack every round one. Push for ambushes where the campaign allows, but do not build as though you will get them.

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Soulknife

Source: Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. The psionic Rogue. Always armed, always magical, and impossible to disarm.

Psionic Power ●

Level 3. You have Psionic Energy dice equal to twice your proficiency bonus, which are d6s, becoming d8s at 5th level, d10s at 11th and d12s at 17th. They return on a long rest, and you can regain one as a bonus action once per short rest.

Two uses at this level:

• Psi-Bolstered Knack. When you fail an ability check using a skill or tool with which you have proficiency, expend a die and add the roll to the check. Note the trigger precisely: it is proficiency-gated, not ability-gated, so it covers your good skills and not the raw Strength check you were hoping to rescue. Combined with Expertise and later Reliable Talent, it makes your trained skills nearly unfailable.
• Psychic Whispers. Establish telepathic communication with a number of creatures up to your proficiency bonus, lasting a number of hours equal to the die roll, working within a mile. The first use after each long rest is free and does not expend a die.

Psychic Blades ●

Level 3. When you take the Attack action, you can manifest a psychic blade and attack with it. It is a simple melee weapon with finesse and thrown (range 60/120), dealing 1d6 psychic damage, and it vanishes immediately after the attack. As a bonus action you can manifest a second blade that deals 1d4.

The properties matter more than the damage die:

• It is magical, so it bypasses resistance and immunity to nonmagical weapons without you needing to find a magic weapon.
• Psychic is among the least resisted damage types in the 2014 Monster Manual.
• It cannot be disarmed, confiscated or left behind. A captured, stripped Soulknife is still fully armed.
• It is thrown at 60 feet with no ammunition and no loading, so melee and ranged are the same build.

The bonus action blade is a free second attack with no Two-Weapon Fighting style required, though Sneak Attack is once per turn and will already have been spent on the first blade.

Soul Blades ●

Level 9. Two new uses for your dice:

• Homing Strikes. If you miss with a Psychic Blades attack, expend a die and add the roll to the attack. Spending one die to rescue a 5d6 Sneak Attack is one of the best resource trades in the class.
• Psychic Teleportation. As a bonus action, manifest a blade, expend a die, and throw it at an unoccupied space you can see up to 10 times the number rolled in feet, teleporting yourself there. At 9th level with a d8, that is up to 80 feet.

To be exact about the second one, because it is frequently described as a flying speed: it is a teleport to a space you can see, not flight, and it has no altitude of its own. It is also very long ranged compared with Misty Step, which makes it excellent for crossing a chasm, escaping a grapple, or reaching a rooftop.

Psychic Veil ●

Level 13. As an action, become invisible, along with everything you wear and carry, for 1 hour or until you dismiss it. It ends if you deal damage to a creature or force a creature to make a saving throw. Once per long rest, or again by expending a Psionic Energy die.

An hour of invisibility, no concentration, not a spell and therefore not dispellable. The action cost is real and is often reported as a bonus action: it is not, so you are giving up a turn to switch it on, which is why this is a scouting and approach tool rather than a mid-fight escape.

The recharge clause is the underrated part. Expending a die lets you use it again the same day, so a Soulknife with dice to spare is not limited to one veil per adventuring day.

Rend Mind ●

Level 17. When you use Psychic Blades to deal Sneak Attack damage, you can force that target to make a Wisdom saving throw (DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Dexterity modifier). On a failure it is stunned for 1 minute, repeating the save at the end of each of its turns. Once per long rest, or again by expending three Psionic Energy dice.

Three details here are commonly got wrong, and they matter for how you build:

• It is a Wisdom save, not an Intelligence one.
• The DC uses your Dexterity modifier, which you were maxing anyway. You do not need to invest in Intelligence for this feature. Any guide telling you to take Intelligence 16 as a Soulknife for Rend Mind's DC is working from a misreading.
• The stun lasts up to a minute, not one round, with a save at the end of each of the target's turns.

A stunned creature auto-fails Strength and Dexterity saves, takes no actions or reactions, and grants advantage to every attack against it, which for melee attackers within 5 feet means automatic critical hits. Landing this on a boss can end the fight.

Soulknife in play

Max Dexterity and ignore Intelligence entirely: every Soulknife feature that uses a DC uses Dexterity. Keep dice back for Homing Strikes on turns where Sneak Attack is live, use Psychic Teleportation as a long-range Misty Step, and treat Psychic Veil as the approach tool it is.

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Thief

Source: Player's Handbook. The classic. Nothing here helps you land Sneak Attack, and one feature is still among the best in the game.

Fast Hands ●

Level 3. You can use the bonus action from Cunning Action to make a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check, use thieves' tools to disarm a trap or open a lock, or take the Use an Object action.

Better than it looks, with an honest caveat: it competes with Hide, Disengage and Dash for the same bonus action, so every use costs you one of those.

What it buys is worth the trade in specific moments. Drink or administer a potion without giving up your attack. Throw down caltrops or ball bearings and still Sneak Attack. Pick the lock on the door you are all about to be cornered behind, mid-fight, without losing your action.

Second-Story Work ●

Level 3. Climbing no longer costs you extra movement, and when you make a running jump, the distance increases by a number of feet equal to your Dexterity modifier.

Be precise about this one: it removes the extra movement cost of climbing. It is not a climbing speed. You climb at your normal speed rather than half, which is a solid improvement, but it does not stack with or substitute for a racial climb speed the way a genuine climbing speed would, and builds recommending Tabaxi specifically to combine the two are working from a misreading.

Within its actual scope it is reliably useful. Vertical movement is a Rogue's natural habitat and paying full price for it is a real gain in urban and dungeon terrain alike.

Supreme Sneak ●

Level 9. You have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks if you move no more than half your speed on the same turn.

Clean and free. Advantage on your single most important skill, no resource, no action. The half-speed condition is nearly irrelevant during the careful infiltration where you actually want it, and a real cost in combat where you want to move.

Layered with Expertise and Reliable Talent at 11th, your Stealth becomes a number that most encounters cannot beat.

Use Magic Device ●

Level 13. You ignore all class, race and level requirements on the use of magic items.

One of the strongest 13th-level features in the game in the right campaign. Every restricted item in the book opens up: a wand that requires attunement by a spellcaster, a staff restricted to druids, a spell scroll of a level and class you could never cast.

It turns the Rogue into the party's universal item user, which changes how the whole group allocates loot. The party's unusable treasure becomes your arsenal.

The dependency is complete and worth naming: in a campaign that hands out few magic items, this is close to nothing. In an item-rich campaign it may be the best thing your character does.

Thief's Reflexes ●

Level 17. You can take two turns during the first round of any combat, the first at your normal initiative and the second at your initiative minus 10. You cannot use this when you are surprised.

Two complete turns in round one: two attacks, two bonus actions, two Sneak Attacks, since "once per turn" resets on your second turn. Against anything that can be killed in a round, this frequently kills it before it acts.

The "not surprised" clause is why Alert is close to mandatory here, and the minus 10 means very high initiative is what keeps both turns ahead of the enemy.

Thief in play

Ask your DM how item-rich the campaign is before you pick this, because 13th level is where the archetype either takes off or does not. Spend Fast Hands on consumables in combat rather than on lockpicking you could do after the fight. Take Alert for Thief's Reflexes.

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Mastermind

Source: Xanathar's Guide to Everything. The tactician and spy. One excellent combat feature, one bad one, and a lot of social content.

Master of Intrigue ●

Level 3. Proficiency with the disguise kit, the forgery kit and one gaming set of your choice, plus two languages. You can also mimic the speech patterns and accent of a creature you have heard speak for at least 1 minute, well enough to pass as a native speaker of a language you already know.

Three tool proficiencies and two languages, not a choice between them. The mimicry clause is the interesting half and often forgotten: it makes you sound local anywhere you have spent a minute listening, which is the actual infiltration tool in the package.

All of it is non-combat. In a dungeon-heavy campaign this feature will go whole sessions without firing.

Master of Tactics ●

Level 3. You can use the Help action as a bonus action. In addition, when you use Help to aid an ally in attacking a creature, that target can be within 30 feet of you rather than within 5 feet, as long as the ally can see or hear you.

This is the Mastermind's real feature and it is strong. The Help action is normally unusable in combat because it costs a full action and requires you to be adjacent. At a bonus action and 30 feet, it becomes a per-turn party buff you deliver from cover.

State clearly what it does not do: Help grants advantage to your ally's attack, not to yours. It does nothing for your own Sneak Attack. Guides that describe Master of Tactics as the Mastermind's Sneak Attack enabler are simply wrong about how the Help action works.

What it is worth instead is a party calculation. Giving a Paladin advantage on a smiting attack, or a Fighter advantage on the first of three attacks, frequently adds more damage to the round than your own Sneak Attack would. In a party of heavy hitters, the Mastermind contributes more by helping than by attacking, and that is a real and unusual role.

Insightful Manipulator ●

Level 9. If you spend at least 1 minute observing or interacting with a creature outside combat, the DM tells you whether it is your equal, superior or inferior in two characteristics of your choice from: Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, and class levels.

No check is involved: not an Insight check, not a contest. You observe for a minute and you are told. The list is also specifically the three mental scores plus class levels, not the physical ones, which is the detail most descriptions get wrong.

What it is good for is calibration before a negotiation or a fight you can still walk away from. Learning that the affable merchant has more class levels than you is the kind of information that changes plans.

Misdirection ●

Level 13. When you are targeted by an attack while a creature within 5 feet of you is granting you cover against that attack, you can use your reaction to have the attack target that creature instead of you.

Read the trigger closely. The creature you redirect the attack onto is the one giving you cover, which in practice is nearly always standing between you and the attacker, which in practice is nearly always an ally.

There are edge cases where it is fine: a summon, a familiar you are willing to spend, an already-unconscious ally in a specific situation. Mostly, though, this is a 13th-level feature whose function is to make a friend take your hit, and most Mastermind players never use it. It is the worst feature at its level on the Rogue list.

Soul of Deceit ●

Level 17. Your thoughts cannot be read by telepathy or other means unless you allow it. You can present false thoughts by making a Charisma (Deception) check contested by the reader's Wisdom (Insight) check. Magic that determines whether you are telling the truth shows you as truthful if you choose, and you cannot be magically compelled to tell the truth.

In an intrigue campaign this is excellent, because Zone of Truth and mind reading are exactly the tools that stop plans working, and you become the party member who can sit through an interrogation. In a dungeon campaign it never comes up.

Mastermind in play

Play it as a support Rogue and be honest with yourself that that is what you are doing. Stay behind cover, Help a heavy hitter every single turn, and use your action for your own attack when Sneak Attack is available. Take Charisma to 14 or 16 for the social half of the kit.

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Inquisitive

Source: Xanathar's Guide to Everything. The detective. The best investigator in the game and the weakest combatant on this list.

Ear for Deceit ●

Level 3. Whenever you make a Wisdom (Insight) check to determine whether a creature is lying, treat a d20 roll of 7 or lower as an 8.

A floor, not a bonus, and specifically for detecting lies rather than all Insight checks. It removes the arbitrary failure: you never blow a lie-detection roll because the die came up 3.

Take Insight Expertise alongside it. With Expertise, a decent Wisdom and eventually Reliable Talent, you reach a point where practically no NPC can lie to you successfully.

Eye for Detail ●

Level 3. You can use the bonus action from Cunning Action to make a Wisdom (Perception) check to spot a hidden creature or object, or an Intelligence (Investigation) check to uncover or decipher clues.

Perception and Investigation are the two most-called checks in exploration, and moving them to a bonus action means you can search and still act. Out of combat it is excellent.

In combat it is in the same queue as Hide, Disengage and Dash, and it usually loses.

Insightful Fighting ●

Level 3. As a bonus action, make a Wisdom (Insight) check against a creature you can see that is not incapacitated, contested by its Charisma (Deception) check. On a success, you can use Sneak Attack against that target even without advantage, though not if you have disadvantage. It lasts 1 minute or until you successfully use the feature against a different target.

This is the reason to play the Inquisitive and it is the clearest example of the cost question in this whole guide. It does solve the Sneak Attack condition, for a full minute, which usually means the rest of the fight. Most monsters are not built for Deception, so you will win the contest far more often than not.

But compare the price. The Swashbuckler pays nothing and cannot fail. The Assassin pays nothing in round one. The Inquisitive pays a bonus action and takes a roll that can fail, and on the turn it fails you have spent your bonus action for nothing.

Over a campaign that difference is what puts these two archetypes at opposite ends of the list, despite superficially doing the same job.

Steady Eye ●

Level 9. You have advantage on any Wisdom (Perception) or Intelligence (Investigation) check if you move no more than half your speed on the same turn.

Excellent out of combat, invisible in it. Searching a room is not a thing you do at a sprint, so the condition costs nothing when it matters. In a fight you want to move, and you are not making Investigation checks anyway.

Unerring Eye ●

Level 13. As an action, you sense the presence of illusions, shapechangers not in their original form, and other magic designed to deceive the senses within 30 feet, provided you are not blinded or deafened. You sense that something is trying to deceive you, but learn nothing about what is hidden. A number of uses equal to your Wisdom modifier, minimum one, regained on a long rest.

The use limit is Wisdom-based and per long rest, which is another reason the Inquisitive wants Wisdom higher than most Rogues. It is not once per short rest.

Against doppelgangers, Seeming, Mislead and disguise-happy villains, this defuses the ambush that this kind of campaign is built around. It costs a full action and tells you only that something is wrong, not what, which keeps it honest.

Eye for Weakness ●

Level 17. While Insightful Fighting applies to a creature, your Sneak Attack damage against that creature increases by 3d6.

No damage type is specified: it is simply more Sneak Attack damage, in whatever type the attack already deals. Descriptions calling it 3d6 psychic are adding something the feature does not say, which matters against anything with resistances.

At 17th level it takes your 9d6 to 12d6 against your marked target, a third more damage, in every fight where you keep Insightful Fighting up. It is not flashy next to Death Strike or Sudden Strike, but it applies constantly.

Inquisitive in play

Put Wisdom second only to Dexterity: it drives Insightful Fighting's contest, Ear for Deceit's value and Unerring Eye's uses. Activate Insightful Fighting in round one and keep it on the same target. Accept that this archetype earns its place in mystery and intrigue campaigns and struggles to justify itself in a dungeon.

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Ability Scores

Dexterity, then it depends. Every archetype wants Dexterity at 20 as fast as possible. It is attack rolls, damage, AC in light armor, initiative, Stealth, and the DC on both Death Strike and Rend Mind. There is effectively no Strength-based Rogue in 2014.

The second stat is the only thing the archetype changes:

Constitution at 14 is the floor for all of them. The Rogue has a d8 hit die and light armor and survives on not being hit, but Uncanny Dodge and Evasion only go so far.

Soulknives specifically should not invest in Intelligence. Rend Mind's DC uses Dexterity. This is worth repeating because the opposite advice is common.

Races

Wood Elf ● - +2 Dexterity, +1 Wisdom, 35-foot speed, Mask of the Wild and Darkvision. The default correct answer for most archetypes, and the best pick for Scout, Assassin, Thief and Inquisitive.

Lightfoot Halfling ● - +2 Dexterity, +1 Charisma, Lucky and Naturally Stealthy. Rerolling natural 1s matters more for a class that stakes its whole turn on one attack roll than for anyone else, and hiding behind a larger creature is a free Sneak Attack setup.

Variant Human ● - A feat at level 1. Alert for Assassin and Thief, Observant for Inquisitive. Straightforwardly the strongest option if you know which feat you want.

Half-Elf ● - +2 Charisma, two flexible +1s and two extra skills. The best fit for Swashbuckler and Mastermind, the two archetypes that actually use Charisma.

High Elf ● - +2 Dexterity, +1 Intelligence and a free wizard cantrip. Aimed squarely at the Arcane Trickster, since the Intelligence bump improves the spell save DC without an ASI and the cantrip can be Booming Blade.

Tabaxi ● - +2 Dexterity, +1 Charisma, Feline Agility and a climbing speed. Burst movement suits the Scout and the Swashbuckler. Note that the climbing speed does not combine with Second-Story Work in any special way, since that feature is not a climbing speed.

Shadar-kai ● - Necrotic resistance and a bonus-action teleport with resistance to all damage until your next turn. Thematically ideal for the Phantom and mechanically strong for any melee Rogue.

Feats

Alert ● - +5 initiative, immunity to surprise, and hidden attackers gain no advantage against you. Close to mandatory on Assassin (it converts directly into the advantage clause) and on Thief (Thief's Reflexes requires you not to be surprised).

Lucky ● - Three rerolls per long rest. The Rogue stakes an entire round on one attack roll, so a reroll on the turn Sneak Attack is live is worth more here than on almost any other class.

Skulker ● - You can hide when lightly obscured, missing does not reveal your position, and dim light does not penalize your Stealth. The hide-attack-hide loop breaks the moment a miss gives you away; this fixes it.

Crossbow Expert ● - No loading property on hand crossbows, a bonus action hand crossbow attack, and no disadvantage shooting in melee. The foundation of every ranged Rogue.

Sharpshooter ● - Ignore cover, no long range penalty, and a -5/+10 toggle. Cover-ignoring is the main draw, since you are shooting from concealment at things behind things. The +10 is worth less to a Rogue than a Fighter because you make fewer attacks, but on a critical Assassinate hit it doubles.

Observant ● - +5 passive Perception and Investigation, plus +1 Wisdom or Intelligence. Specifically excellent for the Inquisitive, where the Wisdom point also feeds Insightful Fighting and Unerring Eye.

Mobile ● - +10 speed and no opportunity attacks from creatures you attack. Partially redundant with Fancy Footwork on a Swashbuckler; strong on everyone else in melee.

War Caster ● - Arcane Trickster only, and only if you run concentration spells like Hypnotic Pattern or Shadow Blade.

Multiclassing

The Rogue wants to reach 11th level for Reliable Talent, and every dip delays it. Weigh accordingly.

Ranger 3 (Gloom Stalker) ● - Dread Ambusher gives an extra attack in the first round with +1d8 damage, plus Wisdom to initiative and invisibility in magical darkness. It amplifies exactly what the Assassin, Scout and Thief already do in round one. The strongest Rogue multiclass in the game.

Fighter 1 to 3 ● - Action Surge at Fighter 2 gives you a second Attack action, which is a second Sneak Attack in the same round only if you take it on a different turn; within one turn, Sneak Attack still fires once. What Action Surge actually buys a Rogue is an extra chance to land the attack that carries it. Fighter 3 adds Battle Master maneuvers, and Trip Attack is a clean way to manufacture advantage.

Warlock 2 to 3 (Hexblade) ● - Hex adds 1d6 to every hit and Hexblade's Curse adds your proficiency bonus to damage and expands your critical range to 19-20 against the cursed target, which pairs unusually well with the Assassin's crit-focused design.

Bard 3 (College of Swords or Whispers) ● - Charisma overlap makes this natural for Swashbuckler and Mastermind. Swords adds a fighting style and Blade Flourishes; Whispers adds Psychic Blades damage on expended inspiration.

Wizard 2 ● - Ritual casting for Find Familiar, Detect Magic and Identify. A familiar using the Help action is a permanent Sneak Attack enabler, which is genuinely relevant for the archetypes that have none of their own.

Cleric 1 (Knowledge) ● - Two skills and a Channel Divinity for doubled proficiency on Intelligence checks. Thematic for the Inquisitive; a thin return in practice.

Choosing by Campaign

• Dungeon crawl, mixed party: Swashbuckler or Arcane Trickster. Both work without any campaign support.
• Item-rich, high-magic campaign: Thief. Use Magic Device changes what your whole party can field.
• Wilderness and travel: Scout. Free Expertise in Nature and Survival, and Skirmisher against the melee that comes at you in the open.
• Ambush-friendly, stealth-forward table: Assassin. If your group actually plans approaches, the automatic critical hits arrive often enough to build around.
• Intrigue, court and politics: Mastermind, with Inquisitive second. Soul of Deceit and Insightful Manipulator are built for exactly this.
• Mystery and investigation: Inquisitive, without hesitation. This is the campaign it was designed for.
• Horror and undead-heavy: Phantom. Both thematically and because Wails from the Grave handles the swarms these campaigns like.
• Anywhere your gear might be taken: Soulknife. You are never unarmed and never without a magical weapon.

Related Guides

• D&D 5e Rogue Guide - the class itself: Sneak Attack, Expertise, Cunning Action, and level 1 to 20 progression.
• Best Feats for Rogue - the full feat priority list by level.
• D&D 5e 2014 Class Guides - every class in the system.

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