D&D 5E Replacing Use Magic Device

[JEB]

The Rogue's ability to "fake" the requirements for using magic items has always bugged me. 5E came tantalizingly close to removing this, but it's still part of the Thief subclass.

So, does anyone have any suggestions for an alternative Thief ability to replace it? Has this been addressed in previous D&D material?

(BTW, please don't make this thread about why I'm wrong and Use Magic Device is awesome. If you want to use it in your games, that's fine, but I don't.)

 

[Authweight]

Something that comes to the top of my head would be the ability to "fake" having tools. Basically, at 13th level a thief can use whatever he has on hand to act as though he has any tools with which he is proficient.

The thief is so skilled he can pick a lock using a rusty nail and disarm a trap with shoestring and bubblegum.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Anyone can take it in 3E, in fact pretty much everyone does as being able to scroll the cleric back to life can frequently come in handy.

 

[doctorhook]

My advice would be to compare to the other 13th-level subclass features for rogues; both could work fine for a thief, although the arcane trickster's feature would need to be somehow divorced from having mage hand.

Anyone can take it in 3E, in fact pretty much everyone does as being able to scroll the cleric back to life can frequently come in handy.

We're only two posts into the thread and you've already threadcrapped in exactly the specific way the OP asked respondents not to. Neato.

 

[Authweight]

Another cool thief ability would be the ability to create excellent forgeries of objects, including magic items.

The thief can make a dexterity check to forge an item, adding his proficiency bonus. The forgery, at a glance, resembles the forged object. If anyone interacts with it for any length of time, they get to make an intelligence (perception) check to tell the difference between the real and the fake. They get to make this check each time they interact with the forgery for more than a minute.

If they do not quickly recognize it as a forgery, the DM can assume the forgery is revealed in 1d4 days.

If the forgery is of a magic item and someone attempts to activate it, then the forgery is revealed immediately.

 

[was]

You could replace it with a variant of the monk's Slow Fall ability.

 

[Leatherhead]

Some ability that makes traps/devices/poisons.

You can call it MacGyvering.

 

[MarkB]

Something that comes to the top of my head would be the ability to "fake" having tools. Basically, at 13th level a thief can use whatever he has on hand to act as though he has any tools with which he is proficient.

The thief is so skilled he can pick a lock using a rusty nail and disarm a trap with shoestring and bubblegum.

Another cool thief ability would be the ability to create excellent forgeries of objects, including magic items.

Some ability that makes traps/devices/poisons.

You can call it MacGyvering.

How about combining all this into a skill called Jury-Rigging.

A rogue can use a Jury-Rigging check in place of any Craft check in order to create a useful or valuable item. Items can be assembled in only five minutes per 5-foot cube, and any item which does not require specific high-value materials (i.e. gold, silver, mithral, adamantium) to function can be built using any improvised materials to hand. An item which does require such materials can be constructed using only 10% of the materials required for normal crafting.

These items are fragile, and function only for a short time. They possess only 10% (rounded down) of the hardness and hit points of an equivalent properly-crafted item (minimum hardness 0 and 1 hit point), and will generally only last for five uses or five minutes of continuous use, whichever occurs first - i.e. a jury-rigged sword will shatter after five attacks. Additionally, if the item is used as part of an attack, skill check or saving throw, rolling a natural 1 on the attack, check or save will result in the item breaking.

This skill can also be used to create imitations of valuable art items or similar specific objects. Such imitations are non-functional for any practical use, and crafting one requires the expenditure of 10% of the valuable materials required to create the genuine article, and takes 5 minutes per 500 gp of value. Characters gain a +5 bonus to checks made to recognise the object as fraudulent.

 

[The_Gneech]

[MENTION=53176]Leatherhead[/MENTION] beat me to the MacGuyver ref. Darn it! But yes, that.

-TG

 

[JEB]

Thanks for the replies, all! I like where this is going, a "jury-rigging" or "MacGyver" ability. [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION], that's an excellent start, though it'll need to be streamlined and modified to be more 5E-like. (For starters, I'd probably drop the skill check and just require a certain length of time.)

I'll try and take a stab at it myself later this weekend (not happening right now), but if anyone else wants to develop this further...


As a sidenote, in this situation, I could see Use Magic Device sticking around as a feat. Mainly because feats are supposed to represent an unusual or exceptional talent (as opposed to UMD being something any Thief can do).