Swashbuckler Tank?

[shazor94]

Hey all,

I came up with an idea to play a rogue on level 7 with sentinel as kind of a tank and would like some feedback if it sounds reasonable.

My idea:

1. Pick Custom Race with Moderately Armored to get DEX to 18 and with Half Plate and Shield to get to AC 19.

2. Pick Swashbuckler at level 3.

3. Pick Sentinel at level 4.

4. (Optional) Get maybe a +1 shield or/and armor to boost AC further or maybe even a cloak of displacement.

5. Two playstyle options:
A.) Play defensive with dodge action for disadvantage against your 19+ AC and get in your sneak attack either if he moves away to chase a softer target OR if he attacks a different target so you get your sentinel off.
B.) Play offensive and choose an attack and get sneak attack regardless if there is an ally there or not and hope he either moves away from you for sentinel or chooses a softer target for sentinel too. Worst case is he attacks you with your AC 19+ and uncanny dodge/evasion instead of a softer target.


Do you guys think thats a workable build or anything i can improve upon or either enhance in later levels?

[stoutstien]

All rogues are surprisingly tanky on both the mitigation and threat fronts. (I rate them above most barbarians and fighters) Best bet is a quick fighter dip (if allowed) for armor Prof and fighting style. Not like the capstone is worth it if you get that far.

[shazor94]

All rogues are surprisingly tanky on both the mitigation and threat fronts. (I rate them above most barbarians and fighters) Best bet is a quick fighter dip (if allowed) for armor Prof and fighting style. Not like the capstone is worth it if you get that far.

Thanks thats a good idea. With 1 dip in fighter and getting the +1 AC fighting style and instead of the feat moderately armored getting the medium armor master its posstible to get an AC of 21 instead of 19 plus i can use second wind every short rest which helps in terms of hp a good amount.

[stoutstien]

Thanks thats a good idea. With 1 dip in fighter and getting the +1 AC fighting style and instead of the feat moderately armored getting the medium armor master its posstible to get an AC of 21 instead of 19 plus i can use second wind every short rest which helps in terms of hp a good amount.

Aye. Could go anywhere 1-5 with fighter and it's a sound split. Just depends on your party.
**If you're DM allows Tasha fighting style then interception is a beast at low lvs. Once you start getting some reaction competition you can switch it out for defense or blind fighting.**

[Speely]

Looks good. I'd start Fighter 1 then 6 Rogue. Uncanny Dodge is too good and Evasion is already being delayed by a level, and Evasion on a tank is really good.

[strangebloke]

The other thing I'll add is that the new earth genasi and shadarkai work really well with rogue. Limited use BAs that grant resistance will allow you to halve damage twice with uncanny dodge. You won't be able to use them every turn but you won't want to since you have cunning action using up your BA so often.

The battle master is really nice here as well. Ambush let's you boost initiative/stealth which will highly increase your damage and survivability.

Final point is that reaction attacks let you get a second sneak attack, which is one of the big payoffs for going into melee as a rogue. This will effectively double your damage when it happens, so it's worth taking sentinel or the Riposte and brace maneuvers from battlemaster. Huge damage potential! But it will eat your reaction and thus compete with uncanny dodge

[Speely]

Final point is that reaction attacks let you get a second sneak attack, which is one of the big payoffs for going into melee as a rogue. This will effectively double your damage when it happens, so it's worth taking sentinel or the Riposte and brace maneuvers from battlemaster. Huge damage potential! But it will eat your reaction and thus compete with uncanny dodge

I love that it competes with it here! Did you get hit? Uncanny Dodge! Did they miss? Riposte! Having options are nice. I vastly prefer having reactions competing for usage to not having them at all.

[Skrum]

I actually would not recommend BM, if you're going to stick with the tanky theme. You have exactly one reaction per turn, and if you spend it on an attack, you're not going to have a reaction to use uncanny dodge when you get hit.

Reaction attacks on a rogue are really good, but the competition for your reaction is really steep.

Also note that Sentinel is not synergistic with BM maneuvers. To drop their speed to zero, you specifically need to make an opportunity attack, and maneuvers aren't opportunity attacks. Ergo, it is yet more competition for your reaction.

Personally, I would not get more than 2 reactions that you intend to use frequently.

Also it's worth it to keep in mind how much rogues lose by multiclassing. SA scales kinda badly as is; taking other levels and it can become an afterthought.

[strangebloke]

I love that it competes with it here! Did you get hit? Uncanny Dodge! Did they miss? Riposte! Having options are nice. I vastly prefer having reactions competing for usage to not having them at all.
Precisely. I really like Riposte and Sentinel here, since they cover two cases where you didn't get hit. Brace is preemptive, done before the enemy has a chance to attack, and thus is riskier in that you may experience regret if you get the reaction attack and then get hit... or not, if you kill the enemy before they get to make an attack! With Sneak Attack all things are possible.

I actually would not recommend BM, if you're going to stick with the tanky theme. You have exactly one reaction per turn, and if you spend it on an attack, you're not going to have a reaction to use uncanny dodge when you get hit.

Reaction attacks on a rogue are really good, but the competition for your reaction is really steep.

Also note that Sentinel is not synergistic with BM maneuvers. To drop their speed to zero, you specifically need to make an opportunity attack, and maneuvers aren't opportunity attacks. Ergo, it is yet more competition for your reaction.

Personally, I would not get more than 2 reactions that you intend to use frequently.

Also it's worth it to keep in mind how much rogues lose by multiclassing. SA scales kinda badly as is; taking other levels and it can become an afterthought.

Yeah disagree. BM is worth it for Ambush alone, and maneuvers like trip attack or menacing attack are really good for a rogue, as well as the features that grant reaction attacks. Really, BM is just outrageously frontloaded and thus ideal for multiclass builds. They're already taking first level fighter, second level gives action surge which is always worth it, and then you have all those BM maneuvers. It's even possible to justify going as far as level 5, though that's more up to taste. For pure damage you definitely only want three levels.

It is worth mentioning that if you want just one maneuver, you can take 'superior technique' as your fighting style and have riposte as an option. I haven't done the math but I'd expect that on average it does better than dueling for DPR. Interception is really good early on and defense is solid too, of course.

Reaction attacks do compete with uncanny dodge, but with 19 AC you won't be getting hit every turn, and as mentioned above Sentinel and Riposte both cover situations where you aren't getting hit. Sure, riposte doesn't reduce speed to zero even if you have sentinel, but the point is getting the extra Sneak attack.

[Corran]

Do you guys think thats a workable build or anything i can improve upon or either enhance in later levels?
It's workable, but you can be overwhelmed. So dont hesitate to change to hit and run or fight from range either when your hp start running low or when the enemies seem too much for you to handle in melee. Otherwise I'd suggest sticking with option B as much as you can, ie stick next to a melee ally and try to get some sentinel reactions off on enemies.


I think you are in the right track for thinking about ways to boost your AC, as it's a huge part of making sentinel effective and it's also very important due to your risky apporach (ie staying in melee longer while wanting to commit your reactions offensively, meaning that both uncanny dodge and defensive uses of cunning action wont see tons of use when sentinel is doing work for you, which is also when enemies will want to focus you). Since ideally you'll want to stick next to a melee ally, I think that swashbuckler loses enough of its appeal and I would favor arcane trickster for this build, for a few reasons.
Reason #1: Blur (and potentially protection from good and evil; fog cloud and/or darkness probably too if paired with blindsense or the like). This gives you a very much needed defensive boost. It takes an action to set up and you need to shore up concentration, but IMO it's worth it for a sentinel rogue. Mirror image can replace blur if the enemy count is very low (in which case the added benefits is that you dont risk concentration and that RAW it even acts as a melee ally, ie triggering sentinel; be cautious though, cause it burns really fast, so use it when the enemies are very few and hit like trucks).
Reason #2: Booming blade. Skirmishing is an alternative combat approach that you'll need more often than you might think, so it's good to have the option to fall back to cunning action + BB.
Reason #3: Find familiar. One of the few ways to gain advantage on reaction melee attacks. Plus, a good spell anyway for manipulating action economy and scouting.
Reason #4: All the rest of an arcane trickster's goodies, though the really good stuff take some time to come online (haste -cheese- for turning yourself into a good ranged dpr probably once per day, hypnotic pattern/ levitate/ suggestion/ [enter any other save or suck spell I dont remember] paired with magical ambush, pairing obscurement spells with stuff like blindsense, BB and cunning action for either attacking corenered enemies or defending against persistent ones, and general spell goodness in the form of stuff like mold earth, silent image, disguise self, invisibility, phantom steed and the like, for havng options when it comes to manipulating terrain (mold earth + minor illusion/silent image), manipulating enemies (digsuise self -especially if paired with actor), sneaking (invisibility), kiting/escaping (phantom steed).



Regarding moderately armored, it's a top choice for a sentinel rogue, but, if you can multiclass, I would do that instead of spending a feat on it. And more specifically I would multiclass into battlemaster fighter. Reason being that there are some other feats I would really like to get, but also that the fighter mc gives me stuff that I cannot get via feats. So I prefer multiclassing into battlemaster as a package by a lot (though moderately armored is excellent if you cannot or dont want to mc).

Regarding the sentinel rogue, there are 4 things I am looking from battlemaster.
#1: Armor and shield proficiency (very much needed boost to your AC). Defense fighting style is nice if you really want to commit on the sentinel act, though blind fighting is easily the better choice if you are looking to even slightly leverage it (unless you are starting in a high enough level to have blindsense as a rogue feature).
#2: Con (and Str) save proficiency. Kind of saves me a feat that I dont have to spend on resilient con. I'll trade dex save prof with con save prof any day, even moreso for a build that has to protect concentration (if arcane trickster) which has other good uses for its feats.
#3: Action surge. Helps you set up a defensive buff (protection from evil/ blur/ mirror image/ darkness/ etc) without sacrificing sneak attacks. Same if instead of setting up sentinel you want to debuff via something like a save or suck spells along with magical ambush. Or at worst it can let you reroll a missed attack in order not to lose on sneak attack damage in your turn. Or use it to dash more (eg after having grappled an enemy), or dodge, or whatever. It's pretty useful and if you are using spells to set up an overloaded offensive action economy, it helps even more.
#4: Maneuvers. Precision is the real gem here (for obvious reasons), though on a sentinel rogue I would definitely, absolutely pick riposte. Ideally you never have to use riposte, but you still get it. That's your answer to if everyone focuses on you. Well, one of your answers. You can still run away and start kiting, or drop some obscuement and do some killing and hidding, but sometimes (especially if melee allies are involved), you will want to stick and suck up attacks from enemies who decided to try and take you down fast. In that case, a good effective AC and riposte is how you counter that and how you hopefully dissuade them from insisting on focusing you (cause if you've spent a feat on sentinel and considerable build points for making it work, you dont want to spend superiority dice for reaction attacks, you want to get them free via sentinel, for which you have already paid up front). Plenty of good choices for a third maneuver.

Additionaly, and this is by no way specific to sentinel rogues, the battlemaster dip gets you:
#5: Longbow proficiency. No way to use sentinel with a longbow, but sometimes ranged combat is the better option no matter how much you invested in melee. In which case a looong range can help more if you try to take advantage of it.
#6: Extra attack. If you want up to fighter 3 for battlemaster maneuvers, then at some point you are getting extra attack too. It will reduce the variance of your damage in your own turn, and it makes grappling about doubly efficient (and with stuff like expertise -athletics, cunning action dash, action surge, and assuming you want to really commit then potentially help from stuff like the enlarge spell and pushing attack), you can be a decent grappler when the opportunity for it comes up. It's also an additional way to potentialy get advantage on your turn (via shoving an enemy prone) without having to commit your familiar or your bonus action (advantage is nice on a rogue for many reasons, most important for when you want to cancel disadvantage).
#7: Blind fighting. Pair it with spells like fog cloud and darkness, apply some BB and hiding, defend against sight based spells, optionally sacrifice stealth to get some off turn sneak attacks via OA's, potentially create some havoc by some voice mimicry while in there. It's a great trick for when something nasty -but not too nasty- comes after you when you are exposed (eg ambushed at your bedroll or generally when away from the party eg because scouting or shooting from 600' away, etc), when you want to justify a very risky positioning in order to accomplish something important (eg take out a well protected glass cannon) in which case some added survivability will be needed to justify the risk, when trying to become a distration (evasion can also pair here nicely), or when facing enemies like beholders, medusas, basilisks and casters (generally anything that has dangerous abilities which though require sight to work). Blind fighting facilitates all these and it's very worth getting early even if eventually blindsense covers for it.

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ps: If losing panache down the road seems too much of a blow, I understand but I'd still urge you to give it a try. You may find (as I did) that spells make up for it (though it's seriously a very cool feature).

pps: Some very old thoughts (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?496792-Theorycrafting-sentinel-rogue) of mine about sentinel and rogues. Some stuff I would do very differently now (compared to what I am thinking in that thread), but just in case you find it useful.

[stoutstien]

Additional thought, booming blade has a lot of soft control built in and works well with rogue.

[RogueJK]

Additional thought, booming blade has a lot of soft control built in and works well with rogue.

Very true, in general. But in this instance, with them wanting to stick close to enemies and tank with the Sentinel feat, not so much.

[stoutstien]

Very true, in general. But in this instance, with them wanting to stick close to enemies and tank with the Sentinel feat, not so much.

Aye. I perfer a little diversity in my toolbox personally.

[shazor94]

Thanks for all the feedback but i think i got a good although very weird choice for my character now, a arcane trickster/fighter/forge cleric!

Since we play our adventure purely on level 7 and will change to a different campaign afterwards im not planning on leveling up this character.

I wanted a heavy AC tank with good DEX and maybe okayish CON for hitpoints so my stats are with Level 4 improvements 10 STR, 18 DEX, 16 CON, 8 INT, 14 WIS, 8 CHA.

First Level in Fighter for CON Saves (which is kinda good with +6), +1 AC fighting style, 1 Second Wind per short rest and Martial Weapons for Long Bow.

Second level in cleric with forge domain grants me +1 AC on my Armor and access to shield of faith

Five levels in Arcane Trickster for the 3d6 sneak attack, booming blade and all that rogue stuff.

With all that im able to wear plate and a shield so my AC is 18(plate)+2(shield)+1(fighting style)+1(forge domain)+1(potential magical item like shield +1 or cloak of protection)= 23 baseline AC and i can bump it to 25 with shield of faith!

Yeah the -10 feet movement from not having enough STR sucks but i can use cunning action for that and still get around relatively easy and disadvantage on stealth checks sucks but with +10 and an additonal guidance from myself it should be okayish plus guidance on sleight of hand and thieves tool is a nice bonus and i get detect magic and identify as ritual too!


Will be hard to come up with a fitting character concept in a sea faring adventure though....

[RogueJK]

Rather than strapping on heavy armor and dipping about into Fighter and Forge Cleric, consider just taking two levels of Artificer instead. Swashbuckler 5/Artificer 2.

Starting with a couple Artificer levels gets you medium armor and shields, plus CON save proficiency, plus additional INT-based spellcasting, plus the ability to infuse your armor and your shield for +2 AC.

Much less MAD, needing only DEX/INT/CON for both classes, and still with a high AC thanks to your infused +1 Half Plate and +1 Shield. Plus you're no longer slowed down by heavy armor.


Or, don't even multiclass. A Vhuman/Clineage Arcane Trickster 7 could start with the Moderately Armored feat for +1 DEX and medium armor/shield proficiency, then still take Sentinel at Rogue 4. By not diluting your Rogue levels, Rogue 6-7 gets you 4d6 Sneak Attack, two additional Expertise picks, 2nd level spells like Mirror Image or Blur or Shadow Blade, and that sweet, sweet Evasion. And you're still sitting at a 19 AC with half plate and shield, possibly 20 with a +1 shield or Cloak of Protection. That's just fine for a Level 7 Tank, especially when combined with Uncanny Dodge, and potentially even the Shield spell as your Arcane Trickster "any school" pick.


You only have one attack, so a Longbow doesn't really get you anything over sticking with the Light Crossbow. But if you're dead-set on it, you can get Longbow proficiency from most of the various Elven races, both PHB and MotM. High Elf gets you both Longbow and another INT-based cantrip too, for example.

[strangebloke]

If you're wearing plate, which I wouldn't advise, there's little reason not to just build for strength instead of dexterity. You can sneak attack with strength just fine as long as you're doing so with a finesse weapon. Finesse allows you to attack with dexterity but you don't have to.

I'd further say that by adding forge cleric here you're really watering down your connector both mechanically and in terms of flavor. Chasing 1 to 3 AC isn't worth all the lost sneak attack damage, and by the time this build comes online the game will probably be over.

Ultimately your character but I can't say I recommend this direction (I'd also prefer swashbuckler here. Most of what you want from AT comes down to BB and find familiar, which you can get from a single feat or mc level.