Warmage Assassin?

[Citadel97501]

Hello all, I was just wondering if anyone else has looked at the benefits of playing a mix of Rogue: Assassin & Wizard: Warmage? It seems to me that this will allow a very high initiative, bonus action tricks, and some amazingly deadly alpha strikes? I am looking at this at the lower levels, and with point buy, where it seems to me that most people will play.

Dexterity/Intelligence: 16
Variant Human: Alert feat
Rogue: 3, Expertise Stealth & Perception for +9's
Warmage: 2, so only level 1 spells but that is still Sleep and other stealth related tricks for a wizard.
Armor class: 15 from light armor and for a reaction you get 17 or even 20.

So with these stats you get a +11 to initiative, and any strikes you make before people have a turn give you advantage so Sneak Attack, and the initial round is likely to give you 1 automatic critical sneak attack using Booming Blade with a Rapier for 4d8+4d6+3. Short Bow: 6d6+3

Advancement: Wizard up to 5, then back to Rogue 7 then back to Wizard 7, this will lead to a nicely effective combat style.

[elyktsorb]

The problem here is that there are better things to take than Assassin. Okay you get advantage against 1 creature at the start of combat, and similarly can get 1 crit on a creature at the start of combat. That's basically all Assassin is giving you. Unless you want to mess about with poisons, most of which kinda suck.

[Citadel97501]

The problem here is that there are better things to take than Assassin. Okay you get advantage against 1 creature at the start of combat, and similarly can get 1 crit on a creature at the start of combat. That's basically all Assassin is giving you. Unless you want to mess about with poisons, most of which kinda suck.

Any examples of better rogue sub-classes to take for a character like this?
1) Swashbuckler? Good mobility but takes you towards charisma for more traits, great for sneak attacks, I think this would work very well with a different themed Blade-lock though?
2) Arcane Trickster? Moves you towards intelligence but the subclass benefits have always seemed like junk to me unless you take it to 17 or so?
3) Scout? Skirmisher is actually really cool for a low AC character as it seems that most enemies are more dangerous in melee. But this provides no offensive benefit over assassin?
4) I can't think of any others that are worth taking?

[elyktsorb]

I mean assuming you put your Charisma at 12, and con at 10, and str at 9, if you took Swashbuckler that's at least another +1 to your initiative. Not to mention a more reliable way to have sneak attack. Something Assassin doesn't give you outside the 1st round of combat.

I'd actually recommend thief since there are a lot of utility options with being able to use items as a bonus action.

I mean at the end of the day Assassin just nets you some bonus damage on targets you probably didn't need the bonus damage on. I dunno how good war mage is on it's own but I'd probably just recommend sticking to it and only taking a 1 lvl dip in rogue if you really just want expertise.

[iTreeby]

Bard 2, swashbuckler 3, you add half proficiency to initiative as well as your charisma mod. There are lots of cool subclasses to chose with bard, blades is cool for the flourish abilities, or whispers for a more assassin vibe.

Also an FYI the chronurgy wizard subclass adds its intelligence to initiative as well, so you could swap that with warmage if you wanted, it's chronal shift ability doesn't restrict your cantrips but is only usable twice a long rest. If you use a Wizard/Rogue multiclasses, it's hard to go wrong with arcane trickster as it gives you more spell slots.