So my group recently found 5th Edition, and will be starting a campaign very soon. I have elected to go the route of the Arcane Trickster. I am confident in my ability outside of combat, but I am unsure of whether I should go Two-Weapon Fighting with two short swords, or if I should stick with a single rapier. What do you guys think?
Depends on if you have better uses for your minor action or not. If not, go with TWF. You can only SA once per round, but two attack rolls give you more chances to land that hit.
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Yeah, it's really a personal call as to whether you want to get an extra chance of landing a sneak attack or use your bonus actions for other things.
I'm actually in a game that has two rogues: one arcane trickster and one assassin. The assassin uses TWF because she doesn't do much else than attack, but the arcane trickster has used lots of bonus actions in combat for other things.
Best thing of course, it's super easy to change depending on your needs. You could carry a rapier and a couple of daggers, and over time figure out which works best. There's no entry-cost to TWF competently in 5e, after all.
My first game of 5e was with an Assassin Rogue, and I expected to be a switch hitter. Opening with an arrow, then closing with the rapier. But in the end, I almost always just used the longbow, because it's easier to get SA at range. Something I didn't expect after playing lots of 3.x.
Our Arcane Trickster uses her Cunning Action A LOT. Like, maybe twice she didn't use it during a round of combat. I have a Thief that uses it a lot too, but I don't get to play him too much. I also used to GM for an Assassin that used it pretty much constantly.
We also had a Fighter/Rogue/Wizard for a while that did 2 weapon fighting, and he eventually re-built it as an Eldritch Knight with 2-weapon fighting because he had too many options for his Bonus Action each round, and found it frustrating that he couldn't Two-Weapon Fight AND use Cunning Action AND use Second Wind AND some of his Bonus Action spells. But mostly the combination of Two-Weapon Fighting and Cunning Action doesn't work well if you want to use both consistently.
If you want to mostly use Cunning Action, and use Two-Weapon Fighting as your trump card, or mostly use Two-Weapon Fighting, and use Cunning Action as your trump card, might work better.
You just have to manage your action economy.
In the two campaigns I am in cunning action is used by the rogues almost every round......I have seen the archer eye them with envy!