In which we brew up a muscle-bound Dwarven Assassin that specializes in athleticism that, by 11th level, can deal 2d8+12d6+5 damage on the first round of combat if he has surprise.

With the removal of the five-yard-long list of causes for opportunity attacks and the general removal of piddling little minor “feat” character options in Type V Dungeons & Dragons, several interesting options seem to open up before us. Let’s consider, for a moment, the Muscle Rogue. The Thief is the original add-on character class from OG D&D, expanding the list from Fighting Man, Magic User, and Priest to what many consider the iconic four core classes. Generally the Thief (now called Rogue) is sneaky and nimble and weak. Typically your best attributes would be Dexterity and Intelligence. What if we treat the Rogue instead as a variation of the Fighting Man (now called Fighter) class, and prioritize brawn?

One of the key mechanical concepts of the Rogue is his Sneak Attack. This can be performed with only with finesse or ranged weapons, allowing the Rogue to take advantage of his normally-high Dexterity for attack and damage purposes. It turns out that the finesse quality doesn’t compel you to use Dexterity, so you’re welcome to wield, for example, a Rapier with brute force, applying your Strength bonus for attack and damage purposes. This doesn’t change the fact that it’s a finesse weapon. So it’s still eligible. So far we’ve lost nothing by switching to Strength.

Dexterity considered a highly useful attribute for any character. It applies to initiative, armor class, and several very useful skills. Clearly this is much better than Strength, which only applies to attack and damage with certain weapons, and a single skill. Oh, but what a skill. Athletics is used for climbing, swimming, running, jumping, and generally doing adventurous stuff. You wanted to do adventurous stuff, right? You’re playing Dungeons & Dragons, so hopefully that’s an unqualified “yes.” Athletics is also handy in a scrap, being used in opposed ability checks for grappling, shoving, tripping, and other improvised actions that stray from “I strike with my weapon” or “I cast a spell” bread & butter of your typical character. By opting for proficiency in Athletics and prioritizing Strength, any character can become a big bad bag of tricks in a fight.

That applies to any character, including character classes that already lend themselves to high Strength. Barbarian, Fighter, and Paladin come readily to mind. Why focus on it for a Rogue, our nimble backstab-monkey? Because Rogues and Bards have a lovely little class feature called Skill Expertise. It allows a 1st level Rogue to pick two skills to get twice the normal proficiency bonus. A +2 for Athletics checks becomes a +4. At high levels a +6 becomes a +12. Later on Rogues get the Reliable Talent feature, letting them treat any roll of 9 or less on any ability check involving a skill they’re proficient in. So an 11th level Muscle Rogue, with a 20 Strength, would have +5, +4, and +4 to any Athletics checks, treating his minimum possible roll as a 23. At the same level a Fighter would have a +9 and could run the gamut from a 10 to a 29 for his result.

Unfortunately actions like tripping or grappling an opponent are just that, actions. Rogues get a lot of possible bonus actions from their Cunning Action feature, but not for these purposes. Happily any character can wield two weapons and gain a bonus action to make an additional attack. Attacks can be swapped out for maneuvers like grapples or shoves, so our stalwart Muscle Rogue, armed with a Short Sword in one hand and a Dagger in the other, may use his normal action to attack with the Short Sword, gaining for himself a bonus action to attack with the Dagger, which he then uses to trip. You get to choose when in your turn your bonus actions happen, so he trips before actually rolling his main attack. If the target goes prone, the Muscle Rogue (and anybody else within five feet) gains advantage on attack rolls, so the Short Sword attack is at advantage, with sneak attack damage. This means sacrificing the use of the Cunning action to dash, disengage, or hide, but the option was there if he wanted to take it.

Please note that you need to take a feat to get Two-Weapon-Fighting benefits with non-light weapons, so our Muscle Rogue will need to use a Short Sword if he wants to take advantage of this kind of bonus action. Maybe he’ll opt for a Brace of Rapiers fighting style later in his career.

This still leaves initiative and armor class as possible problems. Initiative can be helped through the Alert feat, among other things, grants a +5 bonus here. This would come at the cost of an improvement to attributes, which may or may not be worth it. If the Muscle Rogue opts for the Assassin archetype, he will benefit greatly from winning initiative, so that should be taken into consideration. Regarding armor class, Dexterity is normally a big factor in a Rogue’s ability to withstand rough treatment. Having Studded Leather armor and a high Dexterity can pump your armor class to 17. If the Muscle Rogue only has a 14 Dexterity, that’s going to be limited to armor class 14. That isn’t going to feel very safe when a Bugbear is breathing down your neck. The solution? Be a Mountain Dwarf. In addition to a +2 racial modifier for both Constitution and (hey!) Strength, Mountain Dwarves get proficiency in medium armor. He buys himself a Chain Shirt at character creation for a 13 base armor class, then saves up for a Breastplate or Half-Plate to bump that up to 14 or 15 later on. Half-Plate gives him disadvantage on stealth checks, but being sneaky isn’t really the Muscle Rogue’s thing.

With a standard attribute array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 as suggested in the Player’s Handbook, a Mountain Dwarf Muscle Rogue can start with a 17 Strength, 14 Dexterity, 15 Constitution, 12 Wisdom, 10 Intelligence, and 8 Charisma. Switch the Intelligence and Charisma to taste, but keep the Wisdom for perception and saving throws. At 4th level he can bump up to 19 Strength. At 8th level he can bump up to 20 Strength and 16 Constitution. He may want to delay either of these ability boosts to pick up Alertness earlier. It’s okay, he’ll have another chance at 10th level to top things off.

At 11th level, using a Breastplate to avoid disadvantage on Sneak checks, he Muscle Rogue attacks once at +9 with his Short Sword for 1d8+5 damage, plus 6d6 sneak attack damage. With Two-Weapon Fighting he may also attack at +9 with his Dagger for 1d4 damage or attempt an Athletics-based maneuver at +13 as a bonus action. With the Alert feat, he has a +7 on initiative checks, and during the first round of combat he automatically has advantage against opponents that haven’t acted yet. This means he may want to use his Cunning Action to dash into the fray, moving 50 feet to close the gap instead of his normal 25 feet of movement. If the target is surprised, the attack is automatically treated as a critical if it hits. The Muscle Dwarf at 11th level does 2d8+12d6+5 damage on a critical sneak attack with a Rapier, 14d6+5 with a Short Sword. To increase the odds of winning that precious automatic critical hit and the oodles of accompanying dage, the Muscle Dwarf has Expertise and Reliable talent in effect, granting a +10 to sneak checks with a minimum effective roll of 21.

Please feel free to use in your own adventures, with or without attribution or even remembering where you got the idea. Games are made to be played.