Promethean
A Promethean steals fire from the gods to share with others, pressing stolen divine flame into the hands of those who need it most. Some who follow this path act from defiance, taking what powerful beings would hoard; others believe themselves chosen to spread those gifts.
Promethean Fire (Level 3)
You know the Dancing Lights cantrip, and Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for it. When you cast it, the lights appear as flickering flames, drifting embers or torches made of fennel stalks. They require no Concentration, can't be extinguished by nonmagical means, and you can dismiss them with no action required.
Piercing Flame. Magical darkness is suppressed within each flame's Bright Light radius.
Flame-Bearer. While a creature holds one of your flames, it is immune to the Frightened condition and has Advantage on Death Saving Throws.
Sharing the Flame. As a Bonus Action, you can give one of the flames to a willing creature within 30 feet of you. That creature becomes a flame-bearer and controls the flame's movement for up to 1 minute. You can reclaim a flame from a flame-bearer within 30 feet of you, no action required. The flame also returns to your control automatically if its bearer becomes Unconscious or the duration expires.
Number of Uses. You can share a flame a number of times equal to your Proficiency Bonus, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Short or Long Rest.
Design Note
You can't have a subclass inspired by Prometheus and not use the Promethean Fire. Dancing Lights seemed like an interesting vehicle to attach other mechanics too, and with the added buffs brings some utility.
Neither an Immunity to Frightened nor Advantage on Death Saving Throws are particularly powerful benefits, but in the right encounters they can be absolutely huge, and hopefully they do encourage the player to spread out their flames.
Being able to illuminate Magical Darkness is a pretty rare ability in this game, and while it's unlikely to come up often, it could make playing with a Darkness/Devil's Sight Warlock at the table a whole lot nicer!
Foreknowledge (Level 3)
You see what is to come. Immediately after you roll Initiative, you can swap your Initiative count with that of one other creature in the same combat. An unwilling creature makes a Wisdom saving throw (8 plus your Wisdom modifier and Proficiency); if it succeeds, the swap doesn't occur. You can't use this feature if either you or the target creature has the Incapacitated condition.
Number of Uses. You can use Foreknowledge twice, regaining all expended uses when you finish a Short or Long Rest.
Design Note
Prometheus is the Titan god of forethought, and his name is often considered to mean as much. Letting the Promethean manipulate combat before it's even started felt like a cool thematic fit. The ability to manipulate an enemy's position in turn order is obviously very powerful, so a saving throw here was definitely needed.
Note that you can use this together with Alert, if you really want to annoy your DM!
Blinding Flare (Level 9)
You gain the following Cunning Strike option.
Blinding Flare (Cost: 1d6). The target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw (8 plus your Wisdom modifier and Proficiency Bonus) or have the Blinded condition until the end of its next turn.
Design Note
Building on the utility kit of the Promethean, we're adding a way to dish out the Blinded condition here. Blinded is particularly useful for a Rogue, as it will set up their next Sneak Attack, and for melee Rogues can help them survive in a tough spot.
Stolen Spark (Level 9)
Once per turn, immediately after a flame-bearer hits a target with an attack roll, the flame-bearer can add 1d6 Fire damage to that attack's damage roll.
Design Note
As we're approaching Tier 3 of play, Rogues generally fall behind other classes in terms of damage. I wanted to bring some more damage into their kit here, without doubling down on Sneak Attack. Sticking with the buffing and party utility, we're instead incentivizing sharing Promethean Fire to start adding chip damage in every round.
Improved Foreknowledge (Level 13)
Your Foreknowledge feature changes in the following ways.
Number of Uses. You can use Foreknowledge four times, regaining all expended uses when you finish a Short or Long Rest.
Primed Strike. When you swap Initiative counts with a willing creature using Foreknowledge, that creature has Advantage on attack rolls until the end of its next turn.
Ill Omen. When you successfully swap Initiative counts with an unwilling creature using Foreknowledge, that creature has Disadvantage on attack rolls until the end of its next turn.
Design Note
By the time a character is level 13 they are supposed to feel heroic. They aren't quite gods, but realistically they aren't that far away. Before their fiery capstone, I wanted to come back to Foreknowledge and make it feel both more accessible and more impactful.
In these later tiers of play DM's will often start throwing fairly tough encounters at you throughout an adventuring day to exhaust some resources before the big encounters, so Prometheans shouldn't feel punished for using their features early.
Eternal Flame (Level 17)
You can release your stolen fire all at once. When you take the Magic action, you can expend one or more uses of Promethean Fire to cast Fireball, ignoring its material components and using Wisdom as your spellcasting ability. The spell is cast at 3rd level. For each additional use you expend, the spell level increases by 2, to a maximum of 9th level.
The Fireball can originate from a Flame-Bearer of your choice rather than from you. If it does, that creature's flame is extinguished and it is no longer a Flame-Bearer.
Design Note
Nearing level 20, characters are ridiculously strong. That said, one thing a Rogue will still struggle to do at this stage of the game is AoE damage. And what spell would be better than good old Fireball? And you know what's better than a regular Fireball? A Fireball delivered by a pet bird who flew into the backline!
This capstone gives the Promethean a very strong late-game burst option, at the cost of reducing their utility.
When you think of theft and defiance, one of the first stories from Greek mythology that comes to mind is probably Prometheus stealing fire from Mount Olympus, against Zeus's orders.
While Prometheus may not be a character you'd immediately imagine as being a Rogue, I think the story offers a pretty good framework for building one - a Rogue who shares their gift of fire with allies and uses foresight to manipulate battles.
Rogues are traditionally not a very supportive class, and typically fall behind other classes in damage in the later stages of play. With this subclass, I've tried to make the Promethean Rogue more a of a team player, helping their allies out in a variety of ways.