The Bardic Rogue

If you've read my first post then you know I'm not a fan of Bards as spellcasters in DnD 5e. I much prefer the portrayals of Bards I see in media where they are unable to use magic, as opposed to the route that WotC has gone of making them wizards who draw power from language and copy other casters. I'm thinking Jaskier/Dandelion from The Witcher, Thom Merrilin from The Wheel of Time, and even Edgin Darvis from the 2023 DnD movie Honor Among Thieves. That last one feels quite vindicating to me, as it demonstrates how unusual the spellcasting of DnD Bards is when the classes are being portrayed for a broader audience. I intend to design a completely reworked Bard centered around a feature akin to what Level Up Advanced 5e calls "Battle Hymn," but that will take quite some time to make a reality and balance. Until then, that leaves us with what I think is the most obvious alternative --- the Bardic Rogue.

Bards and Rogues have a fair bit in common even mechanically in DnD and it's clear why. Lots of media depicts roguish characters as charming. Han Solo, Jack Sparrow, Indiana Jones, etc. The only thing that fictionally separates a Bard from a charming Rogue is that the Bard is an entertainer. Jaskier, Thom, and Edgin are all decidedly roguish. They just have that performance element that is missing from the swashbucklers. When it comes to mechanics and rules, Bards are the next best skill monkey class after Rogues. Jack of All Trades lets them add half their proficiency bonus to skills they aren't proficient in, sort of like being good at improv. They get Expertise in two skills at both level 2 and level 9. Rogues get Expertise at levels 1 and 6, so they get it earlier, but ultimately each class end with Expertise in 4 skills. With this in mind, I figured it couldn't be too hard to just... make a Bard subclass of Rogue.

If you strip away all the magic from DnD Bards, there's really only a handful of features left to distribute amongst the Rogue subclass levels. Bardic Inspiration is of course the core feature, given at level 3 and immediately able to be recovered on short rest. Also at level 3 is a performance style. This is my way of allowing each 2024 Bard subclass to be represented despite us only having one Rogue subclass to work with. Some of the features had to be slightly rejiggered to account for a lack of spellcasting, but ultimately they capture the essence of each in a way that doesn't interfere with your Rogue stuff (unarmed strikes can't sneak attack so the dance one is about movement). After level 3, I used whatever Bard subclass features seemed most on theme for a non-casting Bard. This included features not just from the 2024 subclasses, but also a couple from older supplements.

If your table doesn't allow homebrew content, the easiest way to play a Bardic Rogue would be to take the Entertainer background or be a human to get ahold of the Musician Origin feat. You'll just have to find more roleplay opportunities to emphasize the character's Bardic traits. I personally enjoy when gameplay mechanics can reinforce roleplay, so I wanted to design this subclass as an option for those who are interested in playing out that "lovable rogue" archetype without having to be a spellcaster. In order to make this homebrew publicly available on DnD Beyond I couldn't call the subclass "Bard", so it is instead named "Jongleur". This is a very old term defined as an "itinerant minstrel", which is pretty much the same thing as a traveling Bard.

You can find the write up for this homebrew here on DnD Beyond, and it should be functional on a character sheet in that ecosystem as well!