Building a Plague Doctor

[Greywander]

I recently watched a video on YouTube that was a collection of greentexts of 4chan pretending to be plague doctors. It made me want to play a plague doctor character, so I started thinking about how to build one. What I'd like is a character who acts in a deadpan serious way, but his diagnosis of disease and prescribed treatments are wacky and off the wall (rub a dead rat on it twice daily, come back to me in a week), assuming that most sickness is caused by an imbalance in the humours or by demons. If a Medicine check is failed and the patient dies, it's obviously because they were actually a witch. Speaking of witches, he has a general distrust of magic (though see Ritual Caster feat below).

Here's what I'm thinking so far.

Race: Human Variant, Healer feat
Background: Custom, Bad Reputation feature - I am a doctor
Class: Assassin Rogue

Ability Scores:

STR 8
DEX 12
CON 15 (+1 from Resilient CON = 16)
INT 14
WIS 14
CHA 12

Skills: 1 from human, 2 from background, 4 from class, 7 total

Medicine - I am a doctor
Intimidation - No one cared who I was until I put on the mask
Insight - To read patients body language for symptoms/see if they are a witch
Religion - To know how to recognize and deal with witches and demons that cause illness
Investigation - IknowwhatI'mdoing.manuscript
Survival - For gathering rare ingredients needed to treat disease
Nature - To know about rare ingredients needed to treat disease

Tools: 1 from class, 2 from archetype, 2 from background, 5 total

Thieves' tools - Given by rogue class (would swap out for something else if I could)
Disguise kit - Given by Assassin archetype, make plague doctor costume
Poisoner's kit - given by Assassin archetype, do not piss off your doctor
Herbalism kit - I am a doctor
Alchemist's supplies - I am a doctor

Feats:

Healer - I am a doctor
Lucky - I am best doctor
Resilient (CON) - A doctor who gets sick is no doctor at all
Mage Slayer? - To purify witches
Ritual Caster? (cleric?) - Rituals for protection against disease, demons, and witches

I'm also considering a few levels of paladin for disease immunity. Spell slots can be spent smiting witches and demons rather than engaging in heretical witchcraft.

[Man_Over_Game]

I feel like Thief will get more mileage out of it, the idea being that you're talented with tools and can patch people up quickly.

Alternatively, Bard of Whispers seems like a solid idea, convincing people that there's nothing medically wrong with them, just that they're being driven insane by the people around them.

Inquisitive Rogue could also work rather well, being able to identify people and things with intense scrutiny.

[Talionis]

I agree disease immunity would be a goal for your character, but Paladin is pretty hard to get needing 13 Strength and 13 Charisma.

Monk 10 also gets disease immunity...

Mechanically you arent getting a lot from Assassin and Thief can use Healing Kits as a bonus action.

[Nhorianscum]

First of all I love that you've matched your skills to your fluff. 10/10

Assasin suits the fluff and I support the repurposing of it's features here.

Dumping CHA into dex would both represent your (likely) disfigured nature and provide another mechanical and fluff boost (gotta have nimble hands to cut people up). 16 dex gives enough to do this without making our good doctor too combat capable.

Assasin 17 seems mechanically solid here. Monster hunter (fighter) in the last 3 matches theme (it's very burn the witch) and gives some solid boosts including ritual detect magic and sup dice on saves, skills, and a pseudo smite with a mage slayer rider.

This should allow the build to dump ritual caster, res (con), and paladin levels by taking fighter 3/rougeX (MH gets a VERY good level 3, 2 skills on your wish list, sup dice, protection from evil and good and detect magic). Fluffing 2nd wind as self healing, surge as an adrenaline shot, and defense style as nerve damage should be simple enough.

Same overall package with 2 more ASI's and 16 starting dex for an eventual 18/18 or 20/16 dex/con. Also 1 more skill.