Flavortown: Why A Soldier Is A Rogue Not A Fighter

Often when playing D&D, the flavor implied by each class is necessary to avoid “Blank Slate Syndrome”. It’s hard to think of a character concept from nothing at all, and the descriptions of each class in 5e are very well written.

But other times your character ideas don’t line up fully with the available mechanics. This leads some people to homebrew classes, of which there are a ton of brilliant ones. But sometimes the simpler solution is a reflavor of an existing class. It gets around balance issues, and can be a fun exercise. I’ll walk you through one I did recently.

I love the Rogue mechanics, but I don’t like thieves. I’ve never found it interesting as a profession or character archetype. So, to start my brainstorming, I start with the core ability of the class. I’m not even going to name it, because I don’t want to think about what it’s supposed to represent, I only care about what it does. The ability basically is,

“Once per turn, if you had advantage on the attack roll, or if the target has another foe next to them, you may deal additional damage”

Alright. So we’re looking for someone who likes fighting in groups, and is good at leveraging advantage in combat. You know who that sounds like: A soldier. Not a warrior, a “fights in a tight formation”, “works under a strict hierarchy” kinda soldier. It’s a frontline martial character that focuses more on speed, positioning and defense than offense. So we’re homebrewing this brand new totally original class, the Soldier.

Now we look through the other abilities and see if they line up. The goal here is to rename abilities without changing them. Any changes have to be to minor or flavor abilities. You may not want to change anything, if so you’ll have to dig a little deeper to justify some abilities. Reading through, I only see a few things that totally don’t fit. Soldiers have to be quick to not die, and sneaky to pull off maneuvers, so those abilities all fit. These ones need work:

Proficiency in Thief’s Tools. We’re not a thief, and have never been a thief. I suggest changing this out for Proficiency in Land and Water Vehicles.

Thieves Cant. We have no reason to know the language of the criminal underground. I suggest changing this out for Military Code, a language used to send messages between commanders that’s hard to intercept and decode.

Fast Hands, and Mage Hand Legerdemain. These subclass abilities refer to your thieves tools. Replace those references with “operate/steer land and water vehicles”. Steer a boat with your mage hand!

If you’re still not happy with the legerdemain, perhaps change the invisibility and object theft to double weight capacity and range on mage hand. That’s a bit more change than I want to do here but it might be better.

Proficiency in Poison. The assassin gets this proficiency, and I think we’d be suited to switching it for proficiency in Forgery.

Spellcasting. It might be good to swap out the two spell schools. Not to Evocation or Abjuration, that just steps on the toes of the Eldritch Knight. I think Conjuration and Divination are the best options.

Everything else can stay as is. Now into the changes in name.

Sneak Attack → Battlefield Advantage

Thieves Cant → Military Code

Cunning Action → Tactical Action

Slippery Mind → Fortified Mind

Expertise, Uncanny Dodge, Evasion, Reliable Talent, and Elusive all work as is. A soldier has to be quick and clever to survive for long on the front lines. Blindsense and Stroke of Luck are fine, think of them as “combat awareness”.

Roguish Archetype → Soldier’s Specialization

Thief → Delver. A special corps of soldiers trained to fight underground, against Drow and other subterranean foes.

Second Story Work → Spelunking

Thief’s Reflexes → Delver’s Reflexes

Supreme Sneak and Fast Hands work fine.

Assassin → Operative. A group of soldiers that operates behind enemy lines, disrupting convoys, destroying equipment, and taking out key targets.

Assassinate → Takedown

Death Strike → Eliminate

Infiltration Expertise is already perfect and Imposter works well too.

Arcane Trickster → Arcane Trooper. A group of magically trained soldiers who use their abilities to disrupt enemies and aid their squad.

Mage Hand Legerdemain → Mage Hand Mastery

Versatile Trickster → Arcane Diversion

Spell Thief → Spell Reversal

Magical Ambush already sounds like a Soldier’s ability.

And there you have it. A complete, original class. It can be hard to break out of the mold of what a character is described as, but it can be fun to play a whole new type of character with old mechanics.

Thanks to the homebrewery for this hand class table.

Some other full flavor conversions that might be fun:

Paladin to Shaman, channeling the power of animist spirits instead of divine power. Your oath would be some sort of deal with a spirit you took into yourself.

Monk to Mutant. Basically making a Witcher.Martial arts is a little odd, but the superhuman speed Ki gives you lines up well with Witcher capabilities. As do a ton of the flavor abilities, like disease resistance.

Barbarian to Samurai. One I’ve seen talked about before. Rage is just battle focus.

Wizard to Inventor. Every prepared spell is a prepared gadget. Can’t give them to other people because they’re too damn complicated to use.

Bard to Warlord. Replace the instrument with a battle standard. Reflavor all songs as shouted orders. Vicious Mockery works great for this one.