Arcane Trickster or Lore Bard

[Genoin]

I am looking to make a character for 5e, and I am deciding between these 2 concepts

Half Elf Lore Bard
--or--
High Elf (Elven Accuracy) Arcane Trickster

I am assuming that the primary differences are going to be that the bard will obviously have much better spellcasting (possibly the best in the game, from what I have heard), while the rogue will most likely have better damage and skill/tool proficiency (to some degree, especially thieves tools), while using their limited spells more for utility.

Feel free to post any pros and cons regarding each choice as well as any cool builds for each concept you may have.

Some specific questions I have:

I am assuming that lore bards will use a weapon for at least the first few levels, but is there a point when they transition to being a full caster generally?
What are some of the all star spells to choose from other lists as a bard?
Is it too much to build a Arcane Trickster with Crossbow Expert and Elven Accuracy (aka too many feats and not enough ability increases) assuming that for the early levels I would use the Attack/Move/Hide routine with Cunning Action?

Edit: I guess what I am asking overall is to fill in the blanks here "Choose Lore Bard if you want...." and "Choose Arcane Trickster if you wnat...."

[Contrast]

I won't get too much into the differences between the two but don't overestimate how much spell casting you'll be doing as an arcane trickster. You're 95% a rogue with some spells and whistles (admittedly I may be slightly biased here as the time I played an arcane trickster there was also an illusionist wizard in the party who would do all the magic I could but better so I never really cast much at all).


I am assuming that lore bards will use a weapon for at least the first few levels, but is there a point when they transition to being a full caster generally?

Same as all other casters really - levels 1 and 2 you're a dude with a weapon plus tricks a few times a day. Levels 3 and up you start to become a bit more of a full time spell caster.


Is it too much to build a Arcane Trickster with Crossbow Expert and Elven Accuracy (aka too many feats and not enough ability increases) assuming that for the early levels I would use the Attack/Move/Hide routine with Cunning Action?

Main problem here is bonus action economy. You need advantage to gain any benefit from elven accuracy. That probably means hiding which means no bonus action attack at which point how much benefit are you actually getting from crossbow expert compared to just using a bow with a higher damage die and pulling out a melee weapon for combat.

Keep in mind if you hide on a previous turn and then miss and intend to use crossbow expert for a second stab at sneak attack, unless you have skulker as well you aren't hidden for the second attack. Personally I'd be inclined to just stick to elven accuracy - increase chance of hilarious crit sneak attacks (warning - most of the time most of that damage will be wasted massively overkilling a mook). Also doesn't lock you into a specific weapon in case you find magic loot.

[Keravath]

Both classes are good but play very differently. Lore bard will typically have more skills since they pick up 3 at 3rd level. Lore bard and arcane trickster will end up with an equal number of skills with expertise but the rogue will get it sooner at level 6 rather than 10.

It sounds like you are looking at a ranged character rather than melee. In this case a rogue will tend to use a light crossbow while the bard will eventually shift over to cantrips. However at level 1-4 the bard will do as well with a light crossbow depending on your dex. Crossbow expert is a good feat since it allows you to fire adjacent without disadvantage and take a bonus attack with the hand crossbow. However, without sharpshooter the hand crossbow has a normal range of 30' so your rogue will have to be close to the combat to use a hand crossbow effectively without also the sharpshooter feat. Crossbow expert also conflicts with using cunning action to hide to enable advantage and sneak attack on your attack. This is situational and depends on the DM and whether there is sufficient cover somewhere nearby to be able to hide.

Arcane trickster spells are mostly for utility unless the trickster also has a high int to get decent DCs for the spells. Even then most of the spell choices are enchantment/illusion.

A bard has a much larger choice of spells and can pick up some good ones with magical secrets at level 6 (lore bard) and more at 10.

They are both good choices but play very differently especially as they advance in levels.

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From my own experience ... I made the following choices.
1) Lore bard lacks good sustainable DPS when not casting spells. I was in a group with 4 bards once and it was hilarious how bad four bards casting vicious mockery (the primary bard damaging cantrip) could be. The target gets a save for no damage and the spell will only do 1d4 from levels 1-4 though it also imposes disadvantage on the targets next attack if they fail the save. I just switched over to my light crossbow at that point since it did more damage and was more reliable.

My lore bard was variant human with the resilient con feat since constitution is important for maintaining concentration and you don't want to lose concentration on a critical hypnotic pattern for example.

So I multiclassed into 2 levels of hexblade warlock (for the story elements since it fitted my character) and for the mechanical benefits:
- proficiency with medium armor, shields and all weapons
- devils sight to overcome human lack of darkvision
- eldritch + agonizing blast for good ranged cantrip damage
- hex + shield spells added to bard list
- 2 short rest first level spell slots
- use charisma to hit on one non-heavy weapon, hexblades curse (lower priorities)

In my opinion, the delay on spell progression for the bard has been worth the trade off, particularly eldritch+agonizing blast. There are a surprising number of combat rounds when being able to do reasonable direct and scalable cantrip damage is a good choice (usually when I have cast hypnotic pattern on the first round and have some number of opponents locked down ... I can't cast another concentration spell). Though if there is a good target available, I could also cast blindness on them or drop a fireball on a group ... but if the choices are limited at least I can fall back on eldritch blast rather than vicious mockery (2d4 at level 5 - save for none) or a light crossbow (1d8+2 vs 2d10+8 for eldritch blast).

2) When playing a rogue, I have found that the most important thing is optimizing your chance to land sneak attack. If you can't use sneak attack (no one adjacent or lacking advantage) or can't hit then the rogue is particularly ineffective. Advantage gives both sneak attack and a substantially increased chance to hit .. so when playing a rogue I tend to find as many ways as possible to generate advantage so you can choose which to use.

- bonus action hide is built into the class so use it whenever possible
- arcane trickster can get the find familiar spell at level 3 ... not only can this make a great scout ... the familiar can also take the help action in combat to give advantage on the next attack against the target. Depending on how the DM likes to assign initiative to the familiar, the turn order, and whether the familar can hold a move and help action ... the familiar can usually be used to give you advantage to hit for one attack on one target (one is all you need since you only have one attack). The owl has the flyby feature so it can use the help action and fly out of the reach of the target without being subject to opportunity attacks. However, familiars can become easy targets for the DM so you want to choose when you use them.
- get party members to cast spells or take actions that will give you advantage on attacks.

There are several other methods of self-generating advantage but they require a multiclass
- 3 levels of warlock give darkness+devils sight ... bladepact could also give a +1 long bow/heavy crossbow and proficiency in whatever your pact weapon is
- fae warlock has faerie fire as a 1st level spell
- 5th level warlock has thirsting blade for 2 attacks - more chances to land sneak attacks
- 7th level warlock has shadows of moil or greater invisibility (fae) for always on advantage against targets that can't see you. However, you give up 3d6 sneak attack damage compared to a level 20 rogue ... though you also pick up a lot of utility and increase the spell casting ability substantially.

- 3 levels in shadow sorcerer offers the same darkness+devils sight option for darkness spells you cast with sorcery points ... but there is less synergy than with a bladepact warlock overall in my opinion.



The level 9 trickster ability that applies disadvantage on saves for spells you cast to creatures from whom you are hidden synergizes very well with a wide range of AoE spells even if the rogue DC may not be that good.


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One last comment :) ... for a high elf arcane trickster rogue ... a couple of levels of multiclass in the bladesinger wizard offers a lot of benefits .. though perhaps more for a melee rogue than a ranged one.

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[Genoin]

Thanks for the response! Sorry, I am pretty new to 5e and not overly familiar with how the bonus system works, now i see how the dual crossbow thing isn't great with EA. I will probably just stick with a bow then if I choose to go rogue and use EA with Attack/Move/Hide. I might not even go arcane trickster considering we are playing Lost Mines of Phandelver, which I just realized only goes to about level 5. Also, are you saying sneak attack damage can crit in 5e?

[Man_Over_Game]

Thanks for the response! Sorry, I am pretty new to 5e and not overly familiar with how the bonus system works, now i see how the dual crossbow thing isn't great with EA. I will probably just stick with a bow then if I choose to go rogue and use EA with Attack/Move/Hide. I might not even go arcane trickster considering we are playing Lost Mines of Phandelver, which I just realized only goes to about level 5. Also, are you saying sneak attack damage can crit in 5e?

When you crit on your attack roll, you double all dice as part of that attack. Sneak Attack damage counts as part of that critical, so they get doubled as well, as do any special bonus damage as part of the attack (like with a flaming weapon), so long as it comes specifically from DICE, and not a flat bonus.

A fix I use for the Arcane Trickster, to keep up in spellcasting, is by grabbing Ritual Caster. This means you can grab some powerful things, like Identify, Magic Mouth, and Find Familiar as rituals, and save your limited spell options for things like Fog Cloud. Since the Arcane Trickster has one of the best spellcasting features (forcing disadvantage on saving throws as long as you're hidden when you cast), it's a really good single-target debuffer, using things like Hold Person.

An Arcane Trickster is probably the best at disarming traps and stealing things, and they also deal solid damage. The Lore Bard will do more casting, but lacks damage and isn't as good of a sneak. It mostly comes down to how much stealth you want to use or what your team needs. If your team has a lot of Charisma characters, you won't stand out that much being a Bard. Generally, though, a lot of teams lack someone with a decent Intelligence score, so Arcane Tricksters get that going for them.

[Toadkiller]

The main campaign I’m running has a lore bard* and we just did a one off with an arcane trickster. The bard is a full caster with lots of skills. The AT is a rogue who focuses on sneak attack and can cast a few spells.

Both players seemed to enjoy the options available to them and made significant contributions to both combat and non-combat situations. But they were very different in what they could do.

*the bard in my main campaign is v-human with magic initiate sorcerer. Gives her a damaging cantrip- Firebolt I think. Has pushed her ability to do damage up for sure. I wouldn’t say it was essential, but it is something to consider.

[Contrast]

I might not even go arcane trickster considering we are playing Lost Mines of Phandelver, which I just realized only goes to about level 5. Also, are you saying sneak attack damage can crit in 5e?

I feel one of the undervalued benefits of arcane trickster is their ability to make the mage hand invisible. Really widens the array of things you can get away with using the spell. Expertise in sleight of hands and you'll be doing things unnoticed from 30ft away that a normal rogue couldn't even attempt. Being an arcane trickster also means you can pick up booming blade for melee without using up a feat. Rogue is one of my favourite classes and my scorn on their spell casting aside I feel arcane trickster is one of the best subclasses.

That said I'm currently playing a (glamour) bard so I'm sure you'll have a great time either way. One thing to consider if you play the bard is you're likely to have the best social skills so will default to the parties talker which you may or may not appreciate.

Edit - oh and people often expect you to be able to come up with a witty comment every turn you use cutting words. :smallannoyed: Could be worth getting a better damage cantrip just to avoid that :smallbiggrin:

[Man_Over_Game]

I feel one of the undervalued benefits of arcane trickster is their ability to make the mage hand invisible. Really widens the array of things you can get away with using the spell. Expertise in sleight of hands and you'll be doing things unnoticed from 30ft away that a normal rogue couldn't even attempt. Being an arcane trickster also means you can pick up booming blade for melee without using up a feat. Rogue is one of my favourite classes and my scorn on their spell casting aside I feel arcane trickster is one of the best subclasses.


My favorite maneuver is to cast Minor Illusion of an object (say, a silver candelabra), swipe it with Mage Hand, leave behind the illusion, and just walk away. The illusion will sit there for 1 minute. Most people don't actually touch their decorations, so it's unlikely most people would pay attention to the illusion.

[McSkrag]

I guess what I am asking overall is to fill in the blanks here "Choose Lore Bard if you want...." and "Choose Arcane Trickster if you wnat...."

Something to consider is your role in the party.

A Lore Bard should have have some great out of combat skills to help with talking to NPC's and having fun with RP. In combat your primary role should be helping your teammates with bardic inspiration, buffs, healing, and by disabling the enemy. You get a lot of different spells you can use in creative ways and a well placed faerie fire or hypnotic pattern can turn the tide of the battle.

As an Arcane Trickster, out of combat your skills and cantrips will help with scouting, investigation, and disabling traps and locks. In combat you will be trying land your sneak attacks and sometimes casting spells. Booming blade is a great cantrip for when you are in melee.

[Speely]

Choose lore bard if you want tons of versatile spellcasting, but don't choose it if you want good at-will damage. Your damage output will be bottom-tier aside from burning spell slots on things you grab via Magical Secrets. For those spells, I would snatch the most damaging spells you can from the Wizard list. You already have access to tons of utility and control. Amazing class, but not suited for consistent DPR at all. I loved playing a lore bard, fwiw. It's just a support, control, and utility subclass for sure.

Choose Arcane Trickster if you want to do good single-target damage while also being a good skill monkey with a little spell support. What's great is that even their limited spell selection starts being useful at level 3. Booming Blade is a really useful cantrip for a character with a bonus action Disengage, and Magical Ambush means you can end many fights before they begin. This is a rogue first and foremost, meaning damage and skill utility are your bread and butter. The spells are best used to support those roles. As versatile as they are, they can't match the Lore Bard for versatility, but then again no one really can. The upside is big resource-less damage.