Rogue/Bard Skill Master
The Why:
There are 3 basic types of encounters in Dungeons & Dragons: combat, social, and exploration. Most of the builds that I am interested in often focus on combat proficiency with some passable social and exploration abilities. But what if I dumped combat in order to maximize a character’s skillset? Introducing: the Skill Master.
There are 18 skills in D&D that characters can master, and in this build we explore what would happen if we make it our goal to get proficiency in all of them. Not only that, we will be getting expertise (double proficiency) in a bunch of skills too. There are many ways to get there, but not many with a killer capstone ability like mine. Let’s dive in!
The Build:
*As with all my builds, please note that my breakdown will mostly highlight the important stuff. If I don’t specify a choice, feel free to customize as you see fit 😊
Level 1 Rogue 1 (1RG): Let’s start by talking roleplaying choices. MinMaxers will love this build, but the average person might find it a bit tedious. Therefore, I wanted to come up with a reason for our character to be so skilled that made narrative sense. What I came up with is a character whose background is as a purveyor of ancient artifacts. At some point in his career, he comes across something that changes his life forever. This artifact opens up his mind to centuries of knowledge, guides his steps as he walks, and empowers his words. As he learns to listen to and trust the musical guidance of the artifact, he grows more and more powerful.
Now lets start counting skills. Our character comes into the D&D world as a Half-Elf Rogue with the Anthropologist background. The background mostly adds to the flavor of the build as we’ve outlined it, plus gives us our first two proficiencies: Insight and Religion (running count: 2). As a Rogue, we start off with 4 proficiencies, which is the highest number among level 1 classes, plus being a regular Half-Elf gets us an additional 2. From the Rogue list, we’re taking Stealth, Sleight of Hand, Investigation, and Perception (running count: 6), and from the remaining skills we’re taking Deception and Persuasion (running count: 8).
For our stats, we’re dumping (wait for it)… Constitution. I know, everyone needs health… not us. Hot take: not everyone should be running around with beaucoup amounts of health. That’s not balanced. Using the standard array, we’ll go Strength 8/ Dexterity 15/ Constitution 10/ Intelligence 14/ Wisdom 13/ Charisma 12. With our Half-Elf stat gains, we hit 16 Dex, 14 Wis and 14 Cha. Since we are going to be a skill monkey, it’s important to have bonuses in the appropriate abilities. For every skill except Athletics, we start out adding 2 or 3 to our skill checks. Great! Furthermore, we get expertise in either two skills or one skill plus thieves’ tools. We want to fulfill our party role as Rogue, so let’s get that expertise in Sneak and thieves’ tools (expertise count: 1). In combat, we stay back, we hide, we shoot with a short bow.
Our character (who is definitely not Indiana Jones) will be named Montana Smith.
Level 2 Rogue 2 (2RG): We continue following the rogue path for now and we pick up Cunning Action, which allows us to Dash, Disengage, or Hide as a bonus action, which is phenomenal. No other big changes for us, most of our combat will now be spent attacking as an action and hiding as a bonus action.
Level 3 Rogue 3 (3RG): At level 3, we pick up our Rogue archetype, and we’re going Scout. Why? Because we get 2 more expertise skills instantaneously: Nature and Survival (running count: 10, expertise: 3). The Scout’s Skirmisher ability also helps us by giving us additional movement to help us get out of sticky situations.
It’s at this point in time that we need to figure things out with the DM. Since I am the only one involved in the building process, I can decide that this is the point in which we find the magical artifact that starts imbuing us with our bardic powers. We also could claim that we had the artifact all along and that something awakened it at this point. One of the cool things about this build is that it invites collaboration from the DM who is likely looking for some story ideas from the players. In my mind, the magical artifact is an ornately decorated orb, fist-sized, with a seam and hinge around the middle. When opened, it starts playing otherworldly music in soft chimes, like an ancient spherical music box. I call it the Lexicon (vague shoutout to Skyrim there) 😊
Level 4 Bard 1 (3RG/1BA): Alright, our first dip into bard! Immediately, multiclassing into bard grants us the ability to choose whatever single skill proficiency we want, so we’ll be taking History as the Lexicon floods our brain with knowledge (running count: 11). At level 1, we also get 2 bard cantrips and 4 first level spells. We’ll take Mage Hand and Minor Illusion for their utility in various situations. For our spells, we’re going to lean into the artifact-as-a-source-of-knowledge theme and pick up spells accordingly. Spells like Identify and Comprehend Languages fit nicely into this theme, so we’ll grab those. We’ll also take Disguise Self to assist us with our sneaky sneaks and Healing Word as an emergency source of healing. We also get Bardic Inspiration, but we have to be very selective to whom we give our 2 dice per day…
Level 5 Bard 2 (3RG/2BA): Leaning a little further into bard, at level 5 we unlock the Jack of All Trades ability which allows us to add half of our proficiency bonus to any skill check we are not proficient in (includes initiative rolls!). This works great for our skill progression as it will still be a while before we are proficient in everything. A little boost to skill checks is always nice 😊. We also get Song of Rest to help our friends and ourselves heal better during short rests.
Level 6 Bard 3 (3RG/3BA): As you may have guessed by now, the bardic subclass we are picking is the College of Lore. This grants us 3 more skill proficiencies (running count: 14), I’m choosing Arcana, Medicine, and Performance. This continues the theme of knowledge-based skills and starts showing our character being carried by the music in his performances. What kinds of performances you ask? ALL KINDS! The ancient music box guides his fingers as he plays the lute and guides his steps as he dances. That’s the magic of music 😊. We also get two more expertise skills for a total of 5 thus far. For our purposes and roleplaying choices, I’m going with History and Arcana so that we will basically know all the things.
We also get to use our Bardic Inspiration for Cutting Words, which will help us to avoid dying with our low low low health (only 33 at this point).
Spells! Can’t forget about spells. We will have gotten 2 more by now and we have access to second level bard spells, so I’m picking Detect Thoughts because we start knowing even what others are thinking and Enhance Ability because now we can share some of the artifact’s knowledge with others. Pretty cool, ya?
Level 7 Rogue 4 (4RG/3BA): Now we’re going to start diving heavily into our rogue class, but we’re still grabbing skill proficiencies along the way. At rogue 4, we get to pick a feat and we’re going with Skilled to give us three more skill proficiencies. That’s a total of 17, just one shy of the full 18! At level 7! Plus all the other coolness we’ve been discussing! Sure we’re low on hit points, but we are killing it in the skills department. At this point, we grab Acrobatics, Animal Handling, and Intimidation, leaving Athletics as our final skill to collect. Keep in mind that we still get to add half of our proficiency to Athletics because of Jack of All Trades.
In combat, we’re still relying heavily on our ability to hide (+9 to stealth by the way because of our DEX and expertise). Hide as a bonus action, attack with advantage and get that sneak attack bonus whenever you can. So our short bow at level 7 would do an average of 13.5 per round. That’s not too bad considering that we’ve been avoiding any kind of combat proficiency thus far. Stay far away, stay alive, wow the party with your other skills later.
Levels 8 thru 14 Rogue 5 thru 11 (11RG/3BA): Our next 7 levels are all Rogue as we make a mad dash to the Rogue’s Reliable Talent ability. Along the way, we’ll pick up Uncanny Dodge and Evasion to help our survivability. At Rogue 6, we grab two more expertise skills: we’ll choose Sleight of Hand and Investigation (expertise: 7). At Rogue 8, we grab our last skill proficiency (Athletics) with the Skill Expert feat. Not only that, but we get expertise in one more skill (choosing Perception) and we get to add 1 to our Intelligence. At Rogue 9, Scout grants us +10ft movement (nice!) and at Rogue 10 we pick up the Telekinetic perk, increasing our Intelligence to 16. This gives Mage Hand some more utility and increases our Intelligence skill checks by +1.
Rogue 11 is where we get an ability that takes us from multi-skilled to unstoppable. We pick up the Reliable Talent ability, which says that any d20 ability roll for which we add our proficiency has a minimum value of 10; anything rolled lower gets immediately bumped up to 10. Since we’re proficient in EVERYTHING, our lowest minimum roll (Athletics) at this level is 10 + 5 – 1 = 14. And that’s just because we’re so weak. Also, our highest minimum roll at this level (Stealth for example) would be 10 + 5 + 5 + 3 = 23. Minimum! We are so stealthy!
Let’s not forget that our sneak attack value has also been growing during this time. We now do 6d6 extra damage for our sneak attack, so we’re still able to dish out some damage. Also, did I mention that our initiative roll is technically an ability check? That means we can add half of our proficiency to any initiative roll thanks to Jack of All Trades.
Levels 15 thru 20 Rogue 12 thru 17 (17RG/3BA): After level 14, we can go in several different directions, but the one that makes the most sense to me is to continue maxing out our Rogue stats. This way our sneak attack bonus continues to grow and we eventually unlock the Scout’s capstone ability that lets us potentially do sneak attack damage to two different creatures every round. That’s pretty insane! At Rogue 17, that sneak attack damage is 9d6. We also get the Scout’s level 13 ability which gives us advantage on initiative rolls. For our two ability score increases, we increase Dexterity and Intelligence to 18 each. The Rogue also gets Blindsense at level 14 and proficiency in Wisdom saves at level 15 (for us levels 17 and 18 respectively).
So to wrap up, at level 20 we are proficient in every skill. We get advantage and can add 7 to our initiative rolls thanks to our Dexterity and Jack of All Trades. We can deal 9d6 sneak attack damage on 2 distinct creatures per turn. Our lowest minimum skill roll is 15 and our highest maximum skill roll is 36. That’s ridiculous! I hope you had fun reading through the build and that you enjoy this character if you decide to put him in your own game. ‘Til next time!
