When I posted the Secretary rogue, I mentioned that I had made other roguish archetypes before that point. Well, here is one of them: the Inkling is the first roguish archetype I ever homebrewed! And to be honest, I think I like it better than the Secretary—not to say the Secretary isn't good. I just think the Inkling is better.
The Inkling was another homebrew I made as a present. My friend was very into Splatoon at the time, and while I was not much of a player (I haven't played a third-person shooter since the original Star Wars Battlefront II, and that was on PC), I did enjoy the liveliness, personality, and idea of it. So, I set out to make Inklings into an archetype!
A roguish archetype seemed to suit the idea best: lightly armored, highly mobile, and friendly to both ranged and melee combat. From there, the features required some creativity, and I'm pleased with the way they turned out. That's in large part why I say I like my Inkling more than my Secretary. I think Splattershot is more creative and unique as a core feature.
I've talked before about making "extra" content to fill out a page. Here, the Inkling concept art I used to spruce up the homebrew was quite small; the size you see it on the page is the maximum size without it getting blurry, in fact! So, I had just a little bit of extra space and a question of what to fill it with. I've previously filled such space with spells, such as I did with the Oaths of Benevolence and Society (which had the added benefit of filling out their Oath Spells tables). But that's obviously not an option with a roguish archetype. Another possibility was to create a quirks table—for example, that's what I did for the Oath of Detachment. I considered that, but I figured that Inklings have enough memetic overhead to them outside of Dungeons & Dragons—in other words, people are already pretty familiar with what Inklings are and can be like through other sources, like Splatoon—that a quirks table wouldn't be able to add much.
So instead, I created two new magic items. You've seen this from me before in the Oath of the Hero, which included a Master Sword magic item. But I actually wrote the Inkling long before writing the Oath of the Hero, which makes this the first time I included thematic magic items alongside a subclass homebrew.
The magic items I included with the Inkling aren't too complicated. They're based on weapons from Splatoon, naturally enough, and I wanted to make one ranged weapon and one melee weapon. Neither do anything crazy, but I hope they do something a little unexpected and a little interesting. Making the Splat Roller a d12 finesse weapon was especially fun!
Something that both magic items do which is a little different is require attunement by a creature with a specific subclass. Magic items in the Dungeon Master's Guide sometimes require attunement by a creature with a specific class or range of classes, but never a specific subclass. This isn't necessarily a drastic innovation—it's just a kind of extraploation—but I figured I would at least point out that it is different.
All that to say: enjoy the Inkling! You're a kid now; you're a squid now!
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