Roguish archetype: The Scout

[DanyBallon]

Scout
Any force on the move, whether it's an army or an adventuring group, needs information about what's ahead, what's behind and, more important, time to prepare for battle. A scout can navigate difficult terrain at good speed and she specialized in seeing her foe before the opponent ever detect her presence. In a dungeon or in the wild a scout is only seen when she wants to be.

Natural Explorer
At 3rd level you get Natural Explorer as the ranger ability (PHB p.91). You choose an additional terrain at 13th level. Add dungeon to the list of favored terrain.

Alert
Starting 3rd level, you add half your proficiency bonus to Initiative, and when in your favored terrain, the scout has advantage to Wisdom (Perception) ability checks.

Fast Movement
At 10th level, you get Fast Movement as the barbarian ability (PHB p.49)

Eagle Eye
You are trained to spot troops movement or distant hazards coming your way. Starting at 10th level you can see twice as far in open land.

Land's Stride
At 13th level you get as the ranger ability (PHB p.92)

Vanish
Starting at 17th level, when using your cunning action to hide, you become invisible until you make an attack action or cast a spell. You can use this ability once per long rest, or once per short rest if you are in your favored terrain.

[ruy343]

That vanish ability is good. Really good. I mean, hey, it's as good as the wizard's ability to get signature spells I guess, but the fact that it's a bonus action means that they could do it every round: that's the problem.

Perhaps limit the number of times per day that it can be done to their dex (or wisdom) modifier?

[DanyBallon]

It's closer to wizard's spell mastery feature, as invisibility is a second level spell and spell mastery remove the need to expand a spell slot with no limit of time you can do it. Still casting is an action.

Also, rogues have so different uses for their bonus action, they'll need to decide if it's worth to use it or not. But I agree that it's quite a strong ability as they can possibly gain advantage on their next attack every rounds while opponents will get disadvantage hitting them.

I'll try to playtest both. If you get the chance to do so, let me know of your results.

[Ninja_Prawn]

This is definitely the right way to go about creating a non-magical ranger.

I agree with Ruy that Vanish might be too powerful, and furthermore I'd argue that it doesn't fit the theme. It feels more like a Shadowdancer thing to me.

I'd like to see some kind of 'nimble escape' feature, so that if you run into an enemy while scouting ahead, you're more likely to get away. Also a ribbon that increases your maximum vision range (currently 2 miles for everyone, I think) in open terrain.

[DanyBallon]

What about limiting its use to favored terrain only? The objective of the Vanish feature was to build on the Hide in plain sight and Vanish features of the Ranger. But since rogues are already better at hiding than rangers. I concede that it fits better a Shadow dance them. As a matter of fact, my Shadow Dancer archetype get's it at 9th.

Edit: I just reread the others archetypes and definitely, as is, Vanish is way too strong. I fear that tying it to favored terrain won't prevent abuses, so what about, once per rest? or once per long rest, and once per rest if in favored terrain? (is this too complicated?)