The truth of the matter is that the strengths of the Arcane Trickster are lost in translation in this game. Or, at least in it’s current iteration. In tabletop 5e, the subclass is an S-Tier Rogue, and arguably the best rogue subclass. It is the most versatile class in the game that takes all the best things about rogue and adds spellcasting to make it one of the best for both utility, social encounters, and battlefield manipulation. It’s Marquee feature, Mage Hand Legerdemain, is incredibly useful, sinister, and powerful in a variety of circumstances.
In Larian’s version, as the game currently exists, limited spellcasting features such as the lack of a Shield spell, the lack of Owl Familiars providing help actions, the limited usefulness of Disguise Self and the lack of Melee cantrips such as booming blade… all this strips some of the fun out of the “Caster” part of the Arcane Trickster. I was incredibly happy, however, when I saw that Larian added Tasha’s Hideous Laughter to the spell list. It’s a great battlefield control spell. However there are still limitations on control spells for this class. Spells like Suggestion and Phantasmal Force require a certain level of player imagination to implement, and thus impossible to work or code into the game for liberal use. If Larian could make it happen, even in limited scale, it would certainly add more to the class’s toolkit.
And the fact still remains that Legerdemain lacks any functionality beyond shoving things. And if you want to shove things then you would have been a fighter. So essentially the best and most fun part of this rogue - stealing, trap disarming, and general mischief using an invisible a-hole of a hand-helper - does not exist.
Maybe some or all of these will get fixed at the game’s release or in future patches, but for now it feels like a sub-par class.
And don’t even get me started on the general lack of Rogue Expertise, which they are supposed to get at Level 1… Taking that out or not implementing that was a total either a dick-move, or something Larian hasn’t implemented yet because that’ll come when Bards are introduced to the game.
If you’ve ever played a rogue on the tabletop, you’d know how important this first level feature is to the class. If its removal was intentional, it was a huge blunder. If it is an early access thing, than I hope it’s something we players who love this class get to look forward to in future patches, and at Level 1.
