Best Feats for Assassin Rogue 5e
by Prince Phantom
The Assassin is my pick for the most overrated Rogue subclass, and potentially the most overrated in the whole of 5e. The standard Rogue gets 4 features, but we only get two. Don’t be deceived by the 9th and 13th level abilities. They will literally never come up and honestly I would probably let a character accomplish these things even if they weren’t an Assassin. Need proof? Critical Role (a group of people known for focusing on roleplay and out of combat exploration) in season one had an Assassin that at multiple points actively tried to use these features and was blocked at every turn by the restrictions imposed by the abilities themselves.
This leaves us with our 3rd and 17th level abilities. That represents a massive gap between subclass abilities, so these two better be good. Assassinate has so much potential to be amazing, but without Pass Without Trace, it’s quite hard to get in most parties because someone is bound to be lugging around heavy armor. This means I recommend playing an Earth Genasi and coordinating with your party to make as much out of Assassinate as possible, as it is a very powerful effect when it happens. The problem is that when it doesn’t happen, you’ll basically feel like a subclassless Rogue. 17th level sounds like a cool ability, except that it is dependent on your enemy failing a Constitution save, and no monster that you actually care about killing at that high a level will ever fail that save. This means you either make the most of Assassinate or you have no business playing this subclass. Let’s see what feats can help with that.
Best Feats for Assassin Rogue 5e
Crossbow Expert/Sharpshooter (ASAP): Thankfully the other benefit of Assassinate is advantage on attacks against creatures that haven’t had a turn in combat yet, meaning the penalty from Sharpshooter isn’t as harsh on turn one. Also, remember that Assassinate gives us a crit on EVERY attack we hit on a surprised target, meaning we want to be making as many attacks as possible, and Crossbow Expert helps a lot with that. A 5 level multiclass to Gloom Stalker Ranger might not be bad either…
Alert (Lv 8): Assassinate only triggers if we surprise a target and roll higher in initiative than them. Let’s break down how that works. If you start a fight with surprise, you roll initiative as normal. The surprised enemies spend their first turn surprised, and can take no actions. At the end of their turn, they are no longer surprised. This means that even if we surprise our target, we aren’t guaranteed Assassinate unless we beat them on initiative as well. Alert helps a lot in this regard, and I feel it is crucial to making this subclass actually function.
Ritual Caster (Lv 10): Did you know Silence is a ritual spell? Granted I’m still trying to figure out how to best use it as a ritual, but surely there’s some good way to incorporate that into an Assassination. In other news, Find Familiar is a pretty good spell and I recommend every Rogue find some way to get it. There’s also the fact that this feat just opens up a whole new range of potential abilities and options for your character that are pretty hard to replicate any other way without multiclassing, especially if you work with your DM to acquire more rituals as you progress through the campaign.
Piercer (Lv 10): If we are reliably getting Assassinate, we might as well make those crits as good as possible. Piercer’s crit effect is normally not that big of a deal on most builds, but Assassinate means that it actually counts for something for us, and the +1 to Dexterity is also exactly what we are looking for.
Shadow Touched (Lv 10): Invisibility is a really good way to get surprise, although it probably means we are separated from our party, as we can’t cast it on multiple people at once. Just be careful with that, as splitting the party is a famously bad idea. Silent Image also gives us a way to conceal our party if we know an enemy is approaching. Say we are in a cave and hear an approaching creature. Cast Silent Image and extend the wall of the cave just enough for us to hide our party in, then surprise the enemies as they walk past us!
Thank you for visiting!
If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.
The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.
‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.
