Rogue - Firestarter
Firestarter Rogue, by Duong Thanh Lam
Feeling a chill in your bones? Ask a Firestarter to help! This rogue subclass controls the battlefield with sprays of sticky grease and showers of sparks, and can set enemies up for oh-so-annoying damage over time. They're saboteurs, rabble-rousers, and troublemakers - but it's up to you just who that trouble's for.
Role-wise: the Firestarter works best as skirmisher - slipping in and out of melee and using their Flaming Grease to control enemies. Their Pyrotechnics abilities offer an alternate route to securing Sneak Attacks, one that requires a little more setup but pays off in guaranteed damage-over-time and some light terrain modification. When they get to high levels, their firebombs allow for another route, and help with some of the damage scaling problems that rogues get to in tier 3 and 4.
Design-wise: this one went through a couple rounds - I really wanted a balanced way to deal sneak attack damage directly from 3 with pyrotechnics skills, but I just couldn't achieve it in a way that wasn't breakable. Firebombs is very strong, since it allows "free" Sneak Attacks, but I put a bunch of thought and surveyed both official options and high-quality homebrew to figure out how much was fair here, and rogues do tend to need the help in tier 3/4. The prompt was "arsonist", and designwise, my aim was to get something that would be dynamic, have interesting choices, with special abilities that stay relevant. The reliance on fire damage is an issue (but also inevitable here), but allowing Elemental Adept helps to mitigate this problem a lot, as does just talking to your DM.
As always, you're invited to come discuss and offer feedback on Discord!
