Corvo from dishonored in 5e?

[Trickster]

I saw a video from DnD shorts mentioning Artificer + Rogue to make a spy master. That got me thinking about what would happen If I did assassin rogue + artillerist artificer, maybe adding in warlock for weird whale god(?) flavor.

While I am not hyper aware of the lore and powers of the dishonored games I'm extremely interested in how they would translate into DND.

For instance, what infusion's would be useful? Or how would I replicate the blink or rat swarm abilities?

[Psyren]

Lorewise, Corvo would be a Warlock, with the Stranger as his patron. None of the existing patrons map totally cleanly onto the powers the Stranger provides however; there are shades of Archfey, Hexblade, Undead and Great Old One in there, but nothing is a particularly great fit, so it would need a homebrew patron that makes the Warlock more adept at being sneaky and roguelike.

As far as his abilities, you can approximate a number of them using existing spells. Corvo's Blink for instance is Misty Step, Agility is Jump, Bend Time 1 is Haste while Bend Time 2 is Time Stop and so on. Others you will likely have to borrow/convert from Pathfinder or 3.5; his Possession ability for example works like Greater Possession from PF (i.e. Magic Jar without the Jar), and his Devouring Swarm ability works closer to PF's Summon Swarm than 5e's Insect Plague.


TL;DR the more faithful a representation of Corvo you're after, the more homebrew you'll need, but it's doable without too much work.
If you're looking to just get a Corvo-like character, I would go with a Hexblade or Archfey Blade Pact Warlock multiclassed with either a Rogue or Bard.

[kazaryu]

Lorewise, Corvo would be a Warlock, with the Stranger as his patron. None of the existing patrons map totally cleanly onto the powers the Stranger provides however; there are shades of Archfey, Hexblade, Undead and Great Old One in there, but nothing is a particularly great fit, so it would need a homebrew patron that makes the Warlock more adept at being sneaky and roguelike.

As far as his abilities, you can approximate a number of them using existing spells. Corvo's Blink for instance is Misty Step, Agility is Jump, Bend Time 1 is Haste while Bend Time 2 is Time Stop and so on. Others you will likely have to borrow/convert from Pathfinder or 3.5; his Possession ability for example works like Greater Possession from PF (i.e. Magic Jar without the Jar), and his Devouring Swarm ability works closer to PF's Summon Swarm than 5e's Insect Plague.


TL;DR the more faithful a representation of Corvo you're after, the more homebrew you'll need, but it's doable without too much work.
If you're looking to just get a Corvo-like character, I would go with a Hexblade or Archfey Blade Pact Warlock multiclassed with either a Rogue or Bard.

i don't neccesarily think that you'd need to homebrew a patron mechanically.

narratively speaking corvo is a solid mix of rogue and warlock, with access to an artificer to get him his fancy equipment. you're right that narratively speaking the Outsider doesn't have a good analogue in 5e. So you would need to reflavor the patron feature. but hexblade definitely makes the most sense i think, as it gets the fewest abilities that are difficult to map to corvo.

assassin rogue probably makes the most sense, generally, but unless you're playing this character in a campaign that is specifically designed to feel like dishonored (i.e. being able to sneak around constantly popping in and out of combat to proc assassinate) then I think i'd lean more toward arcane trickster or thief in order to adapt the character to be more fitting in a team based game. an interesting note would be that phantom rogues 9th level feature has some vibes that kinda feel like both the bone charms and the heart. so thats something.

personally, because its basically im possible to built a character that can do the sneaky assassin thing while also doing some of the more powerful magics, i'd be more tempted to focus on the rogue side, as that feels more core to corvo. So i'd be less inclined to worry about getting access to the high level magic like possession and time stop. maybe put 2 levels into warlock (maybe 3rd third just to get 2nd level slots) but probably no more. and outside of that focus on rogue levels.

[Unoriginal]

i don't neccesarily think that you'd need to homebrew a patron mechanically.

narratively speaking corvo is a solid mix of rogue and warlock, with access to an artificer to get him his fancy equipment. you're right that narratively speaking the Outsider doesn't have a good analogue in 5e. So you would need to reflavor the patron feature. but hexblade definitely makes the most sense i think, as it gets the fewest abilities that are difficult to map to corvo.

assassin rogue probably makes the most sense, generally, but unless you're playing this character in a campaign that is specifically designed to feel like dishonored (i.e. being able to sneak around constantly popping in and out of combat to proc assassinate) then I think i'd lean more toward arcane trickster or thief in order to adapt the character to be more fitting in a team based game. an interesting note would be that phantom rogues 9th level feature has some vibes that kinda feel like both the bone charms and the heart. so thats something.

personally, because its basically im possible to built a character that can do the sneaky assassin thing while also doing some of the more powerful magics, i'd be more tempted to focus on the rogue side, as that feels more core to corvo. So i'd be less inclined to worry about getting access to the high level magic like possession and time stop. maybe put 2 levels into warlock (maybe 3rd third just to get 2nd level slots) but probably no more. and outside of that focus on rogue levels.

From what I recall of the games with Corvo, I don't think Assassin would fit him.

Sure he can kill people by surprise, but mostly regular people who would also die quickly without the surprise. In contrast to Daud, who is a bonafide assassin.

IMO the Thief subclass fits Corvo the best, as he's very adept at infiltrating, parkour, climbing, puzzle-solving and using tools ad magic items (both those he carries with him and those he finds on the place he's exploring).

I agree that Corvo wouldn't have Artificer levels.

Corvo definitively fits Pact of the Blade Warlock, but yeah, none of the Patrons is a 100% match. I would say Hexblade or the Undying are the most fitting.

[Witty Username]

Archfey warlock, into swashbuckler (strike that, reverse it)

Corvo is pretty good in a direct fight, as well as being subtle and is mentioned in several bits of Dishonored and 2 as renowned as a swordfighter and deulist.

That being said, Arcane Trickster makes alot of sense from a Kiss principle if you just want the basic feel.

You could also go with shadow sorcerer if that has more interesting mechanics, it fits fairly close to the themes involved.

[Psyren]

Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of video game, movie and other non-D&D fictional protagonists are intended to operate alone rather than as part of a party. So many of them get powersets that would be unbalanced if they were D&D characters. So accurate representation of such characters might involve using rules that would be overpowered in a typical D&D campaign like Gestalt, or granting them specific magic items. Again, it's all a matter of how much fidelity you're after.

[Shadean207]

I once built Corvo (on paper), and he turned out as a 10/10 Swords Bard / Phantom Rogue.

The Phantom has lots of flavor related to Dishonored, Wails from the Grave can be a retrained Domino from Dishonored 2 for example.
And the Bone Charms are close to the Tokens of the Departed feature.

Swords Bard lets him use the sword as a spell focus, and Bardic Inspiration gets used to fuel the Flourishes rather than typical Bard-y stuff.

Magical Secrets lets you pick up Conjure Animals and Misty Step, you get the Dueling fighting style, variant human can start with Crossbow Expert, and you have a total of 5 ASIs or feats to customize your "skill tree".

Bard spells like Locate Creature for Nightvision, Knock/Shatter for the Wind Ability, Dominate Person for exactly that and Misty Step from Magical Secrets get you reasonably close to the Dishonored spell set.

The Warlock makes sense in theory, but as stated above, none of the patrons fit 100%, so I found this combination to be quite accurate.

[kazaryu]

From what I recall of the games with Corvo, I don't think Assassin would fit him.

Sure he can kill people by surprise, but mostly regular people who would also die quickly without the surprise. In contrast to Daud, who is a bonafide assassin.

IMO the Thief subclass fits Corvo the best, as he's very adept at infiltrating, parkour, climbing, puzzle-solving and using tools ad magic items (both those he carries with him and those he finds on the place he's exploring).

thief is ok, but less core i think. second story work makes a decent stand-in for specific in game perks/abilities (like athletics). but the core of corvos character is that he's an assassin. and i mean that both in the mechanics of the games and the narrative.

in terms of the narrative the story of the game is structured around corvo sneaking into places he isn't meant to be and assassinating people, out of revenge and in an effort to save his daughter. Obviously you don't *have* to kill anyone when you play. you can opt for character assassination. but the goal of those missions is basically never just "go in and steal something" Daud is a mercenary assassin, but that doesn't make corvo less of an assassin.

and as far as mechanics and general game play, assassin makes more sense. at least, the assassinate feature does. yes, thief has some abilities that map to specific options you can take, but the surprise assassinations are a core part of the gameplay, even in the second game where you're given the option to turn them non-lethal as a default. its still basically the same mechanic. leave combat, catch someone alone, hit them for a "ton" of damage in the surprise round. hide the body. disappear into the shadows.

the only other subclass that makes sense from a gameplay perspective would be swashbuckler, or inquisitive. if you were looking for a more fightery playthrough. swashbuckler due to it allowing you to get sneak attack when fighting alone, and inquisitive because insightful fighting feels easy to map to the "timed block into assassination" gameplay loop that is core to dishonored's combat. at least dishonored 2, i never really fought much, don't remember how present it was in the first game. But i don't think anyone thinks that this is like...actually how corvo is meant to be characterized. the game was marketed around its stealth mechanics, and the games encourage low chaos, which is affected by how often enemies see you and actually engage you in combat.

so from a purely accurate perspective, assassin/warlock makes the most sense.

However, i do agree with you in that i'd almost certainly not go pure assassin for an actual campaign, unless it was a solo campaign that was specifically being designed around it. In translating the character to DnD you gotta acknowledge that you're not likely to be in a campaign that leans into that aspect of it. so almost any other sub-class is likely to be preferable.

[Trask]

Honestly I would say that Arcane Trickster gets the job done perfectly, but the Warlock theme is pretty strong here. I think I'd go Arcane Trickster and take Eldritch Adept to simulate it.

[Dork_Forge]

I'd go with Thief for the parkour support and the added ability to use gadgets.

Cunning Action:Dash, is also a more appropriate way of doing Blink than Misty Step or similar. Blink isn't teleportation, it's rapidly moving forwards (which is why it shatters windows), similar to how the anime adaptation of of Solo Leveling did Dash.

Rogue in general covers him pretty well, I'd mix in some Warlock (probably Chain) for the other supernatural abilities.