Arcane Trickster posing as wizard

[wookietek]

I tried asking for help over on Reddit, but all I got was advice on how to RP it. I'm just looking for build advice and spell suggestions.


I'm sure this is sub-optimal, but how would you build this? I'm thinking making an arcane trickster (v human) and taking the ritual caster feat at first and then magic initiate at 4th. This is mostly about flavor. I want to pose as a wizard, but still retain my sneakiness and good skills. We're starting at 5th. My rolls are 17,15, 14, 12, 12, 11- really hard to hate! What spell selection would you go with? Other suggestions?

All in all I'll be introducing myself as a wizard, but since I'm not I want to find spells and feats to help bridge the gap.

[whateew]

I tried asking for help over on Reddit, but all I got was advice on how to RP it. I'm just looking for build advice and spell suggestions.


I'm sure this is sub-optimal, but how would you build this? I'm thinking making an arcane trickster (v human) and taking the ritual caster feat at first and then magic initiate at 4th. This is mostly about flavor. I want to pose as a wizard, but still retain my sneakiness and good skills. We're starting at 5th. My rolls are 17,15, 14, 12, 12, 11- really hard to hate! What spell selection would you go with? Other suggestions?

All in all I'll be introducing myself as a wizard, but since I'm not I want to find spells and feats to help bridge the gap.

I recommend taking the shadow touched at first level rather than ritual caster. Invisibility is a well known and flashy second level spell, and likely synergizes well with your roguish nonsense. You could impersonate a rouge-like bladesinger, and everyone would expect you to be full of flourishes

[OldTrees1]

Well, as an arcane trickster you get a limited number of spells, and most are limited to 2 schools. So it would help if we knew what kind of wizard you were posing as.

Flexible Illusion/Enchantment spells
Minor Illusion (cantrip)
Silent Image (1st)
Hold Person (2nd)
Invisibility (2nd)
Suggestion (2nd)
Fear (3rd)
Major Image (3rd)
Confusion (4th)
Greater Invisibility (4th)

You get 1 spell without school limitation at 3rd, 8th, 14th, and 20th.

You can get around this a bit with Ritual Caster (or 1 level of Wizard). If you choose Ritual Caster, I suggest Detect Magic and Find Familiar. If you go Rogue 1 / Wizard 1 / Rogue +X instead, then you start with 6 1st level spells and you can increase that over time. Magic Initiate on the other hand only gives you 1 1st level, that is not very significant.

That concludes what you can do to pose as a Wizard.

So I would suggest including 1 level of Wizard into the Arcane Trickster. That lets you have 2 non illusion/enchantment 2md level spells at 9th (8+1). That turns into 3 non illusion/enchantment 2nd-3rd level spells at 15th (14+1). Basically the 1 level of Wizard duplicates both the Ritual Caster and Magic Initiate feats.

So what 2-3 2nd-3rd level spells do you see your "Wizard" casting?
What kind of Wizard is your "Wizard"?
Detect Thoughts, Locate Object, Sending
Dragon's Breath, Scorching Ray, Fireball, Melf's Minute Meteors
Web, Bestow Curse, Slow
Misty Step, Fly, Haste

[adb82]

With 15 INT i wouldnt pick any spell that require a saving throw.

As cantrips you can choose mage hand, minor illusion (typically wizardly) and booming blade. (BB and Green Flame Blade you need them only as a melee rogue, if you play ranged get something else, prestidigitation can be cool for pretend to be a wizard, control flames, mold earth and shape water as well, but with a ranged rogue you probably want shapeshooter or crossbow expert as feats and after get magic initiate and ritual caster i dont think you have space also for it, so i would go for a melee rogue, probably with 2 shortswords)

1 st lv get Disquise self, silent image (again both helping with making him looks like a wizard), sleep (also very common spell for wizards), for the one spell which you can choose the school you should get shield.

For magic initiate you can get Find familiar ( It give you advantage performing the help action, its good for scouting and its a ritual, very nice spell, plus familiar is other wizard stuff good for roleplaying), light and green flame blade.

As Ritual spells from ritual caster i probably would get Identify and detect magic, but its really ok whatever you chose.

I would consider fey touched or shadow touched, one slot for misty step or invisibility its lot of good for a rogue, while teleport and invisibility are tipically wizards things, plus one other spell of 1st lv and you can choose one ritual if you want. Ritual caster is ok as well, you can copy more spells in future and thats nice, but it dont bump Int and this make fey/shadow touched more desireable with your odd stats.

At lv 7 get Shadow Blade (if you play a melee rogue, if not invisibility, blur, mirror image, are all good options).

As 3rd lv spells i would get Major image, Hypnotic Pattern (if you are ready to dont use Shadow Blade for it), fly and melf's minute meteors (if you play ranged, but you can get one of them only at lv 14 character, as they are not illusion or enchantment), animate dead also is not bad, but again you can choose it only at lv 14.

4th lv Greater invisibility, whatever else.

In general anyway, Shadow Blade, Shield and Find Familiar are kinda mandatory in my opinion for this character (if it play melee), but as you dont want optimize it feel free to change them if your charatcter would do something else.

Ps as stats you can probably go with

11 Str
17 Dex
14 Con
15 Int
12 Wis
12 Cha

Int become 16 if you get shadow/fey touched and so you can get Charm person instead than sleep, because 16 INT is enough for play it and charm person is a spell you can use always, sleep after some levels will become useless...ritual caster help less from this point, because 15 Int is probably not enought for think about things like charm person or Hypnotic Pattern, if you get ritual caster, probably better stay with sleep and change Hypnotic pattern with something else and, at this point, dump int to 12 and, put 15 in Con, 14 wis and before the campaign end try to get resilient (con).

As feats later you can go for Squat Nimbleness or, if your DM allow you, Elven Accuracy (those of course exclude resilient feat, so if you get this is supposed you go for the 16 int route, without ritual caster, that is still the best in my opinion).

PS you can also think to start with 6 lv bladesiinger and than go Arcane Trickster till the end, in this way he will look much more like a wizard, without give up the roquish part, you get more spells, more slots and if you play melee shadow blade enter much earlier, better AC, 2 attacks, better Con saves, a cantrip instead than one attack, but you have to wait some lv for expertise, canning action and other sneaky things, but you also dont need ritual caster anymore and you can easly go for shadow/fey touched and 16 int, if i understand the character you want to play this is probably the best option, also because it dont limitate you on the spells you can choose and it give the ritual casting you want without expend resources in feats, where you can pick better things.
You can even go 4 BS/2 Rogue/2 BS/x Arcane Trickster (its suboptimal in my opinion as BS 6 is a great boost, but still viable) if you want expertise from the beginning and canning action after just one lv, and so if you want start already as a rogue also. But even just 1 lv dip of any wizard help a lot with your concept anyway.

[JellyPooga]

The question is whether this character identifies as a Wizard with a Roguish skillset or as a Rogue pretending to be a Wizard. The approach will differ depending on which one.

The latter will want to be as flash and ostentatious as possible; focusing on big, obviously "Wizardry" effects. They'll also want to use their spells as often as possible (a Cantrip focus might be appropriate?) and possibly even look toward spells/cantrips from other Classes ("I'm such a great Wizard I can do things other Wizards can't!"). This suggests getting Ritual Caster to get as many spells as possibly available to you and increase the frequency you're able to use magic. It suggests taking versatile rather than specialised spells for the same reason.

For the former, a specialised route is going to be appropriate. With limited spells known/available to cast, you're really going to want to nail down what you want your speciality to be. As an AT this is going to be Illusion or Enchantment. I suggest picking one and going to town.

[Sorinth]

Mechanically you want ritual caster and a collection of wands and scrolls. You basically use magic items as much as possible and ritually do what you can. The concept works a little better as an artificer. But can work fine as arcane trickster so long as you have access to wands/scrolls.

If you got expelled from a magic academy then 1 level of wizard might make sense and is maybe worthwhile.

[Vegan Squirrel]

With 15 INT i wouldnt pick any spell that require a saving throw.
...
Int become 16 if you get shadow/fey touched and so you can get Charm person instead than sleep, because 16 INT is enough for play it and charm person is a spell you can use always, sleep after some levels will become useless...ritual caster help less from this point, because 15 Int is probably not enought for think about things like charm person or Hypnotic Pattern, if you get ritual caster, probably better stay with sleep and change Hypnotic pattern with something else and, at this point, dump int to 12 and, put 15 in Con, 14 wis and before the campaign end try to get resilient (con).

The difference in spell attack and save DC between 15 Int and 16 Int is 1, which means the difference will matter about 5% of the time. As an arcane trickster with limited slots and useful non-save/attack utility spells and weapon attacks to use, I imagine that works out to one miss every 2 or 3 sessions. You'll rarely notice this extremely marginal difference. If 15 is too low, 16 is too low; if 16 is high enough, 15 is high enough.

[adb82]

The difference in spell attack and save DC between 15 Int and 16 Int is 1, which means the difference will matter about 5% of the time. As an arcane trickster with limited slots and useful non-save/attack utility spells and weapon attacks to use, I imagine that works out to one miss every 2 or 3 sessions. You'll rarely notice this extremely marginal difference. If 15 is too low, 16 is too low; if 16 is high enough, 15 is high enough.

The difference is marginal, but 16 is already lower than the standard 18/20 for a caster.
I think he can use better other spells that dont require a good DC, or still better put 12 to int and get better saves to wis if it have to stay at 15.
In my experience 16 int still work kinda well on this kind of spells, with 15 i wouldnt risk as there are anyway spells that can be used with low int, and that 15 can be used somewhere else as 15 or 12 is again just a +1 (and as you can see, "if 16 is enough than 15 is enough" dont work, bcs than if 15 is enough, 12 is enough too as its just -1...and it dont work like this because you get a no ending loop. There is a point after which its not worth anymore to focus on spell that use int, and for me this point is 16 int), for a stat that if you put to 15 you cant anyway make a great use of spells that require int, while that 15 in Con, Wis or Cha help you with other stuffs. 16 Int, invisibility or misty step + other first lv spell make it worth the resource in my opinion, otherwise i still see better use of that 15 and still would choose spells that dont require any int.

[wookietek]

Some good ideas floating around, thanks!

I like leaning fey touched for the moment. That'll help the odd int score go to 16, plus misty step is always useful. I'm hoping to get to level 12 at least with this campaign, which could mean 2 more feats... Might get some cool shenanigans from meta-magic initiate to further impress. I know this idea is gimmicky, but I still want to be effective.

[adb82]

Some good ideas floating around, thanks!

I like leaning fey touched for the moment. That'll help the odd int score go to 16, plus misty step is always useful. I'm hoping to get to level 12 at least with this campaign, which could mean 2 more feats... Might get some cool shenanigans from meta-magic initiate to further impress. I know this idea is gimmicky, but I still want to be effective.

If you want be more effective just get even a first lv of wizard (but i would recomend at least 4 Bladesinger for get fast Shadow Blade if you want play melee, but 6 would be better, bcs that second attack and Booming blade instead than one of those attacks its really strong) and you are much more effective, you dont neither need ritual caster anymore as the wizard let you copy spells, you have better AC and Better saves, with 16 int you have enough power to try use spells with saves, get nimbleness next asi and go 18 dex and you are pretty good, if you stop to 4 BS you can also add Alert or +2 dex as last feat.

If you want stay arcane trickster all the way you have to deal with the fact that you get less much rituals if you want fey touched and that Shadow Blade enter much more late (lv 7), you 'll have less spells, less choices, less AC and saves, but you get canning action, expertise, stronger sneak attack and earlier uncanny dodge and evasion.

Both are viable but multiclassing you probably get all you want earlier and still have a good part in combat.

[OldTrees1]

I know this idea is gimmicky, but I still want to be effective.

Don't worry about that. You have Expertise, Sneak Attack, and at least 1 ally. You will be sufficiently effective regardless of your other build choices. 5E is very forgiving.

[Milmoor]

Some good ideas floating around, thanks!

I like leaning fey touched for the moment. That'll help the odd int score go to 16, plus misty step is always useful. I'm hoping to get to level 12 at least with this campaign, which could mean 2 more feats... Might get some cool shenanigans from meta-magic initiate to further impress. I know this idea is gimmicky, but I still want to be effective.

Telekinetic is also very nice and fits the rogue does wizard theme.

[whateew]

Don't worry about that. You have Expertise, Sneak Attack, and at least 1 ally. You will be sufficiently effective regardless of your other build choices. 5E is very forgiving.

Oh, speaking of, you can take expertise in arcana to look like you Know what you're Doing

[wookietek]

Definitely taking expertise: arcana at 6th. Should I go shadow touched at 8th or metamagic initiate or ???

[Unoriginal]

Definitely taking expertise: arcana at 6th. Should I go shadow touched at 8th or metamagic initiate or ???

Have you considered playing a Drow instead, and going for the Drow High Magic feat?