Elder Scrolls BotSE Chef Class Guide: Skills, Strategy, and Tips

Quick answer

Play the Chef as a support bruiser: use cooking and provisioning skills to keep the party topped up, then spend your remaining actions on melee attacks or objectives. Prioritize skills that generate consumables or heal allies over pure damage, because the Chef's real value is stretching the party's resources across a full session.

The Chef is one of the more misunderstood classes in The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era. New players often build it like a straightforward fighter, then wonder why the party runs out of healing and buffs halfway through a delve. The class is actually a resource engine: you convert downtime and ingredients into consumables, then use those consumables to keep everyone else in the fight.

This guide walks through the practical steps for building and running a Chef, from your first skill choices to the small habits that separate a useful cook from a dead one. It assumes you already know the basic turn structure and are looking for tactical advice, not a rules recap.

Step 1: Decide your role before you pick skills

Before you spend a single skill point, agree with your table on what the Chef is doing. If your group already has a dedicated healer, build the Chef as an off-tank who cooks buffs and holds a line. If your group is squishy, build toward consumable generation and ally support. This decision changes which skills are worth taking and which are traps.

The most common mistake is taking every cooking-flavored skill because it fits the theme. Theme is fine, but a Chef with no combat or objective tools becomes a passenger in the second half of a session. Pick one lane and commit to it.

• Checkpoint: can you describe your Chef's job in one sentence before the first encounter?

Step 2: Prioritize resource-generating skills first

Your early skill picks should generate or stretch resources. Anything that creates consumables, reduces the cost of resting, or lets you share a buff with an ally is worth more than a flat damage bump. Damage numbers look exciting, but the Chef's damage is rarely the difference between winning and losing a fight.

Once you have one reliable resource engine online, you can branch into either melee tools or party-wide support. Avoid splitting between the two until you have at least one skill that pays for itself every round.

• Mistake to avoid: buying a second resource skill before the first one has actually triggered in play.

Step 3: Build a repeatable combat loop

The Chef plays best with a simple, repeatable loop: spend one action on a support or cooking effect, then use your remaining actions on attacks or objectives. Write this loop down on a scrap of paper. When a turn feels confusing, default to the loop instead of improvising.

If your loop requires three or more setup steps before it does anything, it is too fragile. Trim it down to two steps that work even when you are engaged with an enemy.

• Checkpoint: your loop should still function when you are adjacent to a hostile enemy.

Step 4: Position like a support, not a tank

Chefs tend to have enough melee capability to feel brave, which is exactly how they die. Stay one step behind your front line so you can reach allies with support effects without being the first target. If you must engage, engage late, after the enemy's attention is already committed elsewhere.

This positioning also keeps your consumables in range of the people who need them. A heal you cannot deliver is the same as no heal at all.

• Mistake to avoid: charging the biggest enemy on turn one because your attack stat looks respectable.

Step 5: Spend consumables before the crisis, not during it

New Chefs hoard consumables for an emergency that never quite arrives, then lose the session with a full pantry. Use buffs at the start of a fight and healing before someone drops to their last few health. Prevention is cheaper than rescue, especially when your actions are limited.

If you end a session with unused consumables, ask yourself which round you should have spent them. That habit alone will improve your play faster than any skill swap.

• Checkpoint: at the end of each fight, note whether you spent at least one consumable.

Step 6: Adapt your build between sessions

Campaign play rewards flexibility. If your party added a dedicated healer, shift the Chef toward buffs and melee. If your group lost a damage dealer, invest in attack tools and stop pretending you are only a support. Rebuilding between sessions is normal, not a failure.

Keep a short list of the skills you are considering so you can swap quickly instead of re-reading the whole class sheet mid-session.

• Mistake to avoid: refusing to change your build because you already committed to a theme.

Chef quick-start checklist

1. Confirm your party role: Ask the table whether they need a healer, a buffer, or an off-tank before you spend skill points. Checkpoint: write your role on your character sheet.
2. Take one resource skill: Choose a single skill that generates consumables, reduces rest costs, or shares buffs with allies. Do not take a second resource skill until the first has triggered in play.
3. Write your two-step loop: Define one support action and one attack or objective action you can repeat every round. If the loop needs three setup steps, simplify it.
4. Position one step back: Stay behind your front line so support effects can reach allies without making you the first target. Checkpoint: end each round not adjacent to the biggest threat.
5. Spend consumables early: Use buffs at the start of a fight and healing before allies drop low. If you finish a session with unused consumables, review which round you should have spent them.
6. Reassess between sessions: Adjust skills if your party composition changed or a role is now covered by someone else. Keep a short list of swap candidates ready.

Where Chip Theory Games products fit in

• Too Many Bones: Nugget (The Treasure Hunter): Nugget is a Gearloc who can switch between melee and ranged combat, using a bolo, dagger, and longblade up close or slinging stones from range. If you enjoy the Chef's hybrid support-and-attack feel, Nugget is a natural next character to try in Too Many Bones because she rewards the same flexible positioning habits.
• Too Many Bones: Trover: Trover is a kobold who does not have many skill dice of his own but has access to all of the Tyrant Dice in Too Many Bones. Trover is a good pick if you like classes that win through resource access rather than raw personal stats, similar to how the Chef converts ingredients into party value.

The Chef rewards preparation more than raw power. Pick one lane, build a repeatable loop, and spend your resources before the crisis hits. Do that, and your party will notice the difference long before the final encounter.