What class and archetype to start out with, to be(come) a mastermind manipulator?

Question

I want to play a character that is a master at manipulating people to do his bidding, staying out of combat for the most part. I want my character to be a bit sinister, kind of like Loki from Norse mythology.

At first I thought an Arcane Trickster Rogue with a high intelligence and charisma, taking expertise in deception and persuasion, but the more I thought about it — all rogues seem to be pretty heavily reliant on sneak attack. They are a secondary spell caster and I would prefer using spells over weapons.

So I then thought perhaps a Bard would work, but bards seem to be too well... nice, to be Loki-like. They have healing and other helpful abilities built into their kits, which would be fine, but I want more of and malicious and nihilistic type of character.

How can I make a 1st level character most focused on manipulating others?

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I do not have access to the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide, however I am open to its content.

Answer 1

A bard is not constrained by alignment.

A Bard can be as sneaky and evil as you want them to be. The limit is only found in what you try to pull off. You might want to re-examine your assumptions about the Bard class.

A Lore Bard

At level 3, choosing Lore Bard complements a spell-heavy / information-heavy approach to your Svengali/Rasputin influence peddler and manipulator. Spells and social skills combine to provide you with choices in how to influence a given situation.

1. Dragon slaying? Not so much, unless you can fool one.
2. Getting the vizier to help you and your party, when your goal is to trigger a coup d'etat? Right up your alley.

How do I influence or control others?

Some good early spell choices include but are not limited to:

1. Cantrip: Vicious Mockery, Minor Illusion
2. 1st level spells: Charm Person, Dissonant Whispers, and Disguise Self

3. 2d level spells: Crown of Madness, Detect Thoughts, Suggestion, Enhance Ability, and Enthrall

   The above menu of spells is thematic, based on getting others to do what you want them to do, or, to at least confuse and befuddle them. The spells are not aimed at causing maximum damage, which you leave to the rest of the party. Your role is to confuse and befuddle your enemies, or avoid fighting at all due to your ability to baffle them with BS.

The Lore Bard feature Cutting Words gives you greater chances for success. It lets you use your reaction to expend a Bardic Inspiration point and influence another creature's die roll. (At 14th level, Peerless Skill helps you succeed at a given ability check). Since you are in a pass / fail mode with most social skills, and spells, that influence what people see and believe, every bonus you can give yourself is one you that you should apply.

Skills (the tyranny of choice)

You get three skills as a Bard to begin with. No matter what your background is I would recommend Persuasion, Deception, and Performance to be locked in. If you begin as a half elf, you will get more two more skills to start with. Choose proficiency in Sleight of Hand, Perception, and Insight as soon as you can manage, though Investigation might be the better choice in an urban campaign.

When Expertise arrives at 3rd level, you double your proficiency score for two skills. I'd go with Persuasion and Deception as the default. Depending on your campaign, and how often you are using your music to sway and move groups of people, Performance might be a better choice. Getting the audience/crowd on your side can make or break a tense situation.

Evil intentions? While Deception and Persuasion are your core skills, using Investigation, Insight, Arcana, History and Sleight of Hand all aim toward getting information.

• Information provides you with an edge. Exploit that edge mercilessly.

  For an exhaustive look at the Bard as both con artist and party face, there is a well presented guide here at a well known D&D forum that is far more in depth than this answer.

Ability Scores:

Charisma, Dexterity, and Constitution are each important, but consider where you want your mental skills to round out.

• Wisdom, to boost Perception and Insight attempts, or

• Intelligence to boost Investigation, History and/or Arcana checks.

  Repeated for emphasis: a key currency for your character is information, that you use and abuse for your own ends. (Muahahahahahaha!)

  The Bard needs high Charisma regardless of any other choices. It's the class spell casting ability, as well as where bonuses for social interaction are centered, and is critical to making the most of your spell DC's. Mind control and mind influence is in a lot of cases pass/fail, so you want to give yourself the edge when you cast a spell to influence others.

Background

TO leverage a Bard's natural talents, a background as Charlatan (skills from this are Deception and Sleight of Hand) or Entertainer (Acrobatics and Performance skills). These background choices free you up to select others from the class skill list.

• Entertainer provides a disguise tool kit proficiency that helps you fool people into thinking that it is someone else, not you, that they are dealing with -- complementing various efforts at Deception.

• Acrobatics is something you'll probably need to survive in the dangerous world of adventuring, and sometimes entertain. (Hey, look over here the bard is doing back flips ... while the Rogue picks pockets).

• Back by popular demand is a feature of the Entertainer background that will ensure that you always have room and board, and sets up situations that can lead to making contacts. You don't have to be of good alignment (just appear that way when necessary) to exploit these advantages, just talented. Information, and personal contacts: what devious mastermind doesn't make the most of both of those?

Looking Ahead

As you progress in levels, once you boost your Charisma, you may wish to consider the feat Actor (PHB, p. 165). It gives you advantage on Deception and Performance checks when you are trying to pass yourself off as someone else. That's equivalent to a +5 bonus, roughly, and makes infiltration far more likely to succeed.

An evil, devious, manipulative Bard? That role leaps off of the pages of the PHB.

Caveats

This advice is campaign dependent

• This approach requires a lot of role playing and interaction with NPC's and monsters. If your DM is running a combat heavy campaign, it will be a bit tougher than in a more balanced campaign.
• Charm and Suggestion spells (particularly the lower level spells) are of short duration; charm person has side effects that turn the target against you. Use with care.

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Experiential Note: our first 5e group featured a half-elf Lore Bard whose alignment was not good (and it got worse due to a cursed item). He was pretty effective, though he occasionally got us all into a lot of trouble. (That's fun too, getting out of trouble). Contra to the guide I linked to, which advocates using Intimidation, he didn't go for intimidation at all (leaving that sort of thing up to our Dwarf Paladin) but went for a softer sell: persuasion/deception. It worked pretty well.

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Another Bard approach: College of Whispers

Now that Xanathar's Guide To Everything has come out, the Bard's College of Whispers bard school might fit your needs as well as a Lore Bard. While the general Bard class will do you just fine for levels 1 and 2, some of your requirements for being malicious fit the College of Whispers like a glove ... once you choose that college at third level.

1. Psychic blades provide psychic damage;

2. Words of Terror puts fear into people.

3. Mantle of Whispers (at 6) lets you kill someone and then put on their appearance for an hour (what better way to get away with murder?)

4. Shadow Lore (at 14) is "blackmail in a magic bag" that you can use to influence someone.

Answer 2

How does D&D 5e let me manipulate people?

Here's a brief survey of things from the core rules, independent of class, that I think might be good for manipulating people.

Skills you may find useful:

• Sleight of Hand: what coins?
• Investigation: They were around here somewhere.
• Insight: You don't believe me at all.
• Deception: There weren't any coins there.
• Persuasion: I'm pretty sure you spent those coins at the bar last night.
• Intimidation: If you don't shut up about those coins, you're going to regret it.
• Stealth: I wasn't even there.

Feats you may find useful:

• Actor: I'm a foreign noble!
• Keen Mind: I'm sure you agreed to this.
• Linguist: languages and ciphers; what's not to love?
• Observant: read my lips, I know what you're thinking.
• Skilled: see the above list of skills.
• Skulker: I see you there.

Entire Schools of Magic you may find useful:

• Conjuration: I've got your gold right here.
• Divination: I know you're lying to me.
• Enchantment: We're still friends, right? * does Jedi mind trick *
• Illusion: Hey, look over there!

Classes also provide some extremely useful stuff.

• Bards offer things like double bonuses to skills, bonus proficiencies, and they're full casters with a focus on enchantment and illusion. What's not to love?
• Clerics have some really cool stuff in the trickery domain, if you like to get clever.
• Druids can literally turn into innocent-looking animals. Blackmail spying, anyone?
• Monks of the Way of Shadows variety get some good sneaking, but doesn't seem to have the overt manipulation you're looking for.
• Rogues are the stereotypical choice here, and for good reason. They get skill bonuses, an excellent selection of the social skills, and a high number of skills. The archetypes are all good as well:
  • Thief gets you sneakiness for blackmail material and planting evidence.
  • Assassin has some great options for false identities.
  • Arcane Trickster has enchantment/illusion spellcasting.
  • Mastermind (SCAG 134) gives bonus proficiencies and languages; the ability to learn specific things about someone by chatting with them; the ability to lie through truth-detecting spells and avoid mind reading; and some combat-related manipulations.
• Sorcerers are great for a smaller, fixed spell list and they focus on Charisma as well. Metamagic for Subtle Spell seems like a great choice for "he did it" moments.
• Warlocks have some excellent stuff here, too. They get some reusable magic and the option for either an invisible familiar linked to your mind directly, or a bunch more spells. The great options with Invocations include seeing through any darkness, disguise self at will, silent image at will, proficiency in deception and persuasion, and an enhanced connection to your potentially invisible familiar. The archetypes aren't exactly lacking, either:
  • Archfey gives you some excellent manipulation spells, along with the handy Fey Presence ability.
  • The Great Old One archetype gives you at-will telepathic communication and a bunch of spells for literally driving people insane.
• Wizards are more flexible in their casting than sorcerers, but focus intelligence.

On the Racy side:

• Human Variants get a skill and a feat.
• Half-elves get two skills and some languages.
• Gnomes (forest) get bonuses to illusions.
• Tieflings get some intimidation-related things.

My Recommendation

Since you're going for a sinister caster, I'd recommend the following choices (in this order):

• Warlock of the Great Old One
• Warlock of the Archfey
• Bard of Lore
• Cleric with the Trickster domain
• Rogue Arcane Trickster

Answer 3

The easiest way to make a character who's both a strong spellcaster and good at manipulating people generally is to pick a Charisma-based casting class so you can focus your stats there. That's Bard, Sorcerer, or Warlock.

All of these have adequate skill proficiencies if you take Charlatan or another appropriate background, so no worries there.

Sorcerer will be the best at pure magic, but if you really want to be a master manipulator, you want people to think everything was their own idea, not get mad at you as soon as your spells wear off. So let's look at the other two, since both have other benefits.

Bards get Vicious Mockery as their basic cantrip, which has great flavor. Expertise doesn't come as early or often as it does for rogues, but still lets you improve two skills (probably Persuasion and Deception) beyond what would otherwise be possible. Obscure lore could come in handy for some bluffs/cons. The spells have a nice selection of enchantments and illusions, which is easily flavored as using your words and music to hypnotize people.

It's true that they also have healing and support spells, but nothing says you have to cast them. And you could think of Bardic Inspiration as knowing exactly what to say to get under your allies' skin and push for the outcome you want. Overall, bards can be as dark as you can imagine. So a Bard (going for College of Lore) is one good option.

Warlocks have the advantage of being a little sinister right off, when it comes to concept. Their magic is more limited, but recovers quickly and includes a lot of the spells you'd want. Pact of the Tome could get you access to a few spells from other classes, always good for a laugh or the old Impersonating a Cleric. But probably the most interesting thing about warlocks for your purposes are the invocations, many of which are right up your alley with disguise and deception as major themes - some let you cast certain spells like Alter Self at will, without using a spell slot. As for you patron, probably go with Archfey for the charm+ illusions, or Old One for the spookiness and telepathy. If I were creating a master manipulator, Warlock (fey+ Tome) is probably what I'd pick.

By the way, if you don't mind juggling two attributes, and subject to GM approval depending on setting, you could literally be a Cleric of Loki. That gets you the Trickery domain, which has some interesting stuff. I don't think it's exactly what you're going for, but just throwing it out there.

Answer 4

A School of Enchantment Wizard is an ideal Mastermind Manipulator

(Many of the existing answers focus on the "manipulator" aspect of your character concept. This one incorporates the "mastermind" as well.)

A manipulator calls for a high charisma score, and a mastermind calls for a high intelligence. This matches the "quick build" guidance for a wizard planning on joining the School of Enchantment: "Intelligence should be your highest ability score...If you plan to join the School of Enchantment, make Charisma your next-best score." (PH, p. 113). An enchanter hones his "ability to magically entrance and beguile other people and monsters." (PH p. 117)

Choose a Charlatan or Criminal background to get proficiency in the Deception skill. From the Wizard class skill list, choose whichever mastermind-like knowledge skills that fit your character concept best: arcana, religion, history, insight, and investigation all seem like pretty good fits.

Pick Friends as one of your cantrips, and consider Charm Person and Disguise Self as one of your first level spells. For the mastermind aspect, choose a knowledge spell or two such as Identify or Detect Magic. And the spell Illusory Script seems to fit both aspects of the mastermind manipulaor.

Starting at second level, your School of Enchantment powers will help you charm and beguile your foes, starting with a Hypnotic Gaze. (PH p.117)