Arcane Trickster Rogue Spells 5e: Guide to the Best Arcane Trickster Spells – RPGBOT (2024)

Introduction

Arcane Trickster spells’ focus on Enchantment and Illusion spells solidifiestheir niche as tricky and deceptive, but largely locks them out of directlyoffensive or defensive spell options. While these options can often complementthe core rogue’s capabilities, they don’t replace them.

This page applies almost exclusively to Arcane Tricksters. Other rogues whotake Magic Initiate may also find this section beneficial. Because ArcaneTricksters are mostly limited to Enchantment and Illusion spells, I’ll focuson those spells here, but I will note some notable options for the total of 7spells which you can learn that go beyond the school limitation.

It may be helpful to see myWizard Spell List Breakdownfor more advice on spells which go beyond this limitation. Also remember thatyour cantrips are not limited to Enchantment/Illusion.

When selecting spells, remember that your Intelligence is likely much lowerthan a comparable wizard, and that you can’t deal Sneak Attack damage withspell attacks. Try to avoid spell attacks and spells which require a savingthrow from targets unless you can reliably use them while undetected sinceMagical Ambush can offset your relatively poor save DC. Also remember thatyou’ll typically only get one get spell of each spell level which goes beyondthe Enchantment/Illusion school limitations. You can now retrain yournon-Enchantment/Illusion spells thanks to the2020 PHB errata.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Disclaimer
• Arcane Trickster Rogue Spells
  • Cantrips
  • 1st-Level Spells
  • 2nd-Level Spells
  • 3rd-Level Spells
  • 4th-Level Spells

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

• Red: Bad, useless options, or options whichare extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
• Orange: OK options, or useful optionsthat only apply in rare circ*mstances. Useful sometimes.
• Green: Good options. Useful often.
• Blue: Fantastic options, often essentialto the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.

Arcane Trickster Rogue Spells

Optionalspellsaremarkedbelowwith(Optional)followingthespell’sname.Thesespellsareconsideredoptionalrules,asdescribedinTasha’sCauldronofEverything.ConsultyourDMbeforedecidingtousethesespells.

Cantrips

Because Sneak Attack only works with weapon attacks, I’ve omitted cantripswhich rely on spell attacks. Use a weapon instead. I’ve also omitted mostoffensive cantrips which rely on saving throws. Because your Intelligence willlag behind dedicated spellcasters, it’s unlikely that targets will fail theirsaving throws. If you want to deal damage, use Sneak Attack. Reserve yourcantrips primarily for utility purposes.

• Booming Blade ^{(SCAG / TCoE)} (Optional):Attack, then use Cunning Action to Withdraw. Instant hit-and-run tactics,and if enemies chase you they take extra damage.

  Note that Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything published an updated version ofBooming Blade.

• Create Bonfire^(PHB): The damage isn’t asgood as a Sneak Attack, but rogues don’t have a lot of spells which requireConcentration so if you can set this up before combat or on a turn when youcan’t deliver a Sneak Attack it could provide some useful area control.
• Dancing Lights^(PHB): An amusing distraction,but you can usually accomplish the same thing using Mage Hand and a candleor torch.
• Green-Flame Blade^(XGtE) (Optional): Allows youto attack two enemies at once, which rogues are generally bad at doing.

  Note that Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything published an updated version ofGreen-Flame Blade.

• Prestidigitation^(PHB): Versatile andfantastic, a creative rogue can do a lot between this and Minor Illusion.For suggestions on how to use Prestidigitation to its fullest, see myPractical Guide to Prestidigitation.
• Mage Hand^(PHB): You get it forfree.
• Message^(PHB): Rogues do a lot ofsneaking around, which frequently involves being separated from your party.Use this to send messages without revealing your position. Of course, thespell requires Verbal components and it’s not clear how loud verbalcomponents are intended to be, so take precautions if possible.
• Minor Illusion:^(PHB): Room for plenty ofcreative, deceptive uses. The 5-foot cube is easily enough to createsomething to hide behind, provided that your enemies don’t see you createthe illusion.
• Shape Water^{EEPC / XGtE}: This is as abusable and versatile as Prestidigitation. Freeze a solid 5foot cube of water and drop it on someone. Pour water into a lock, freezeit, and allow the ice expansion to break the lock. Put a dome of ice oversomething you’re protecting. Build a small bridge in 5-foot segments. Blocka hallway. Freeze a door in place. The uses are numerous and fantastic. Ifyou have a barrel of water and this cantrip, you have a solution to mostproblems. Honestly the fact that this spell is so much better than its otherelemental equivalents (Control Flames, Gust, and Mold Earth) is a goodindication of just how awful those spells are. See myPractical Guide to Shape Waterfor more on how great Shape Water is.
• Sword Burst ^{(SCAG / TCoE)} (Optional): Ifyou are in a position where it makes sense to use this, you should probablybe running away. Rogues are really good at eliminating single targets butreally bad at handling crowds, and this cantrip won’t solve thatproblem.
• True Strike^(PHB): If you can afford thetime to cast this the round before attacking, you can guarantee yourselfAdvantage on your attack. If you’re in combat, you’ll have better resultsattacking twice over two turns instead of wasting an Action on this. But ifyou can do this before combat starts, it may be worth it. True Strike onlyhas Somatic components, making it easy to cast without revelaing yourselfwhile hidden.

1st-Level Spells

• Absorb Elements^(PHB): Outside of your schoollimitations. Uncanny Dodge and Shield mitigate damage from attacks, andEvasion mitigates damage from effects which require Dexterity saves, whichincludes most energy damage effects like fireballs and most breath weapons.You can use Absorb Elements to mitigate damage from other sources, but sincethere’s so much overlap with the Rogue’s other features, it’s a situationalbenefit with not a lot of payoff consider that you only get two unrestricted1st-level spells. The best use cases for this are effects like a greendragon’s poison breath which calls for a Constitution save, but fortunatelythose effects are uncommon.
• Disguise Self^(PHB): Learning a single spellis cheaper than proficiency in a Disguise Kit, but remember that your SpellSave DC probably won’t match a dedicated spellcaster so this may not be asreliable as using a Disguise Kit.
• Find Familiar^(PHB): Outside of your schoollimitations. An owl can move into melee range, then Dash away using itsFlyby ability to avoid provoking Opportunity Attacks. This allows you toeasily target foes for Sneak Attack with very little effort on top of theother fantastic benefits of having a familiar. I just wish that the owlwasn’t so significantly better than every other option so that there was agood reason to consider other types of familiars.
• Mage Armor^(PHB): Outside of your schoollimitations. This will raise your maximum AC by 1 compared to StuddedLeather. That’s a great benefit, but you get so few spells outside of yourschool limitations that it’s hard to justify.
• Shield^(PHB): Outside of your schoollimitations. In most cases, this is redundant with Uncanny Dodge. However,Shield boosts your AC until your next turn, potentially negating multipleattacks. In situations where you’re being targeted with numerous attacks,Shield will be considerably more protective than Uncanny Dodge. Still, inthose situations ideally you have a tanky ally like a fighter to drawattention, or you’re using other spells like Blur or Mirror Image to protectyourself.
• Silent Image^(PHB): While not nearly aspowerful as Major Image, if you just want an object or a visual effect,Silent Image does the job just as well. Throw up a fake wall, door, orportcullis to slow pursuers. Create a piece of furniture like a box or achest, then hide inside it and stab people when they try to open it like apointy jack in the box. Illusions are limited more by your creativity (andyour DM’s willingness to play along) than by the spell’s text.
• Silvery Barbs^(SCoC): Extremely powerful,but also very complicated. See myblog post on Silvery Barbsfor details on the numerous abuse cases which the spell allows.

2nd-Level Spells

• Blur^(PHB): A fantastic defensivebuff, especially if you’re fighting in melee where you’re going to betargeted by a lot of attacks.
• Borrowed Knowledge^(SCoC): A great way to pretendto be good at a skill for a little, but it’s outside the Arcane Trickster’sschool limitations and it may not be consistently useful enough tojustify.
• Darkvision^(PHB): Outside of your schoollimitations. Darkvision is crucial for a class that benefits so much fromfighting in the dark, so if you don’t have this from your race or from anally, you should strongly consider it.
• Gift of Gab^(AI): Are you playing asilver-tongued rogue, but in real life you’re barely able to string twosyllables together? Here’s your solution. But be warned: while the spelldoesn’t allow a saving throw, it only fixes the past 6 seconds.
• Invisibility^(PHB): Essential.
• Kinetic Jaunt^(SCoC): This is what CunningAction is for.
• Mirror Image^(PHB): As effective as Blur(at least until you take a couple hits), and it doesn’t requireConcentration.
• Misty Step^(PHB): Outside of your schoollimitations. Fantastic short-range teleportation with only Verbalcomponents, so you can use it to easily escape grapples and restraints.
• Magic Mouth^(PHB): Find a way to castThaumaturgy to raise your voice’s volume, then cast this spell on a piece ofpaper and scream into it for as long as you are physically capable. Set thetrigger to “when the paper is unfolded”. Leave the paper for someone tofind, or use mage hand to open it at a distance. Instant distraction. Thematerial component is inexpensive by the time you can cast this, and theduration is “until dispelled”, so you can carry about a big stack ofpre-cast Magic Mouth spells for all sorts of shenanigans.
• See Invisibility^(PHB): Outside of your schoollimitations. Rogues don’t have any other good options for dealing withinvisible foes.
• Shadow Blade^(XGtE): Basically a magicrapier that deals psychic damage, which is very rarely resisted. The bladehas both finesse and thrown, so it has all the best parts of a dagger withtwice the damage of a rapier.

  You can upcast the spell to increase the damage dice, but you reallydon’t need to. Guaranteed Advantage while attacking a target in dim lightor darkness means that you can easily apply Sneak Attack, and compared toyour pile of sneak attack dice the extra d8 isn’t worth your extremelylimited higher-level spell slots.

  The updated versions of Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade now requirethat you use a weapon with a monetary value, and unfortunately ShadowBlade doesn’t meet that requirement so you can’t combine Shadow Blade withan attack cantrip.

• Tasha’s Mind Whip^(TCoE) (Optional): Theproblems solved by this spell can generally be solved by Cunning Action.
• Vortex Warp^(SCoC): Very good, but outsideyour school limitations and it doesn’t affect you.

3rd-Level Spells

• Fly^(PHB): It’s hard to overstatehow powerful flight is.
• Haste^(PHB): Used as intended, Hasteis a decent short-term buff that will give you either some extra movement oran additional chance to hit if your one attack per turn misses. In mostcases, you can get the same benefits from your Bonus Action by using CunningAction for movement or Two-Weapon Fighting for an additional attack.

  But Haste also has an abuse case which you can use to reliably get aSneak Attack outside of your turn. On your own turn, use the bonus Actionfrom Haste to attack. If you miss, you’ve still taken the Attack action onyour turn, so you still qualify for two-weapon fighting if you needanother attack (and provided that you meet the other requirements). Thenspend your normal Action to take the Ready action.

  Use a sufficiently broad condition like “anyone other than me moves oracts”, and choose to attack as your response to the condition. Then whensomeone else tries to do something you can attack using your Reaction,potentially dealing another Sneak Attack (remember that Sneak Attack isonce per turn, not once per round).

• Major Image^(PHB): Fantasticallyversatile, and creatures don’t make a saving throw. Instead, they need toknow to touch the illusion or make an Intelligence (Investigation) check, orthey need to physically interact with the illusion. Even then, you can buyyourself a great deal of time while the target tries to figure out yourillusion.
• Nondetection^(PHB): Good, but not totallyessential. Divination spells include things like See Invisibility, so if youor your party relies on invisibility of any kind this protects from severalmaigcal countermeasures to both stealth and invisibility. However, mostenemies aren’t spellcasters and won’t have access to those divinationoptions, so you can’t justify casting this every day. The spell also has anexpensive material component specifically to deter you from casting this allthe time. Still, with an 8-hour duration, if you need this spell it’s goingto do exactly what you need it to do.
• Phantom Steed^(PHB): By the time you cancast this, your allies can likely produce much better ways to travel longdistances.

4th-Level Spells

• Arcane Eye^(PHB): Outside of your schoollimitations. Scouting safely is important, and it’s a major part of theRogue’s role in the party. Still, you’ve been scouting for 18 levels withoutthis and you’ve somehow survived this long.
• Dimension Door^(PHB): Outside of your schoollimitations. While Misty Step solves the vast majority of your teleportationneeds (especially in combat), Dimenion Door has considerably longer rangeand doesn’t require line of sight, thus allowing you to quickly infiltrateor escape an area which might otherwise be impenetrable.
• Fabricate^(PHB): Outside of your schoollimitations. I really wish that this spell was better, but it’s simply toosituational. It only works on raw materials, so you can’t pull tricks liketurning a door into toothpicks or something equally useful.
• Greater Invisibility^(PHB): Probably the mostimportant spell that anyone can cast on a rogue.
• Hallucinatory Terrain^(PHB): Situational. Unless youspecifically need the 24-hour duration and the massive area of effect, MajorImage will suffice.
• Polymorph^(PHB): Tempting andpotentially very powerful, but you can’t use Sneak Attack with the naturalweapons which you usually gain from being polymorphed and you’ll deal moredamage with Sneak Attack and a dagger than you will by turning into atyrannosaurus.
• Stone Shape^(PHB): This is one of the mostuseful spells in the game. Castles, dungeons, caves, mountains, and allmanner of other locales include an abundance of stone. The ability toreshape that stone to your purposes in an instant is immensely useful. Thisis a spell limited only by your imagination. A 5-foot cube is plenty ofspace to wreak all kinds of havoc if you’re clever.