Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Rogues, bonus actions, and Sneak Attack

I've been away from Early Access for a while, but Patch 9 and the Paladin brought me back. I'm sad to see that the rogue's sneak attack is still not being done correctly. Being able to dual wield and attempt a sneak attack with an off-hand attack if your first attack misses is important for Rogue damage, and it is important to keeping the melee rogue balanced against the ranged rogue (whose best strategy is to try to hide every round to get advantage).

This is frustrating, and it holds back rogue damage compared to fighters and barbarians.

+1

I guess sneak attack could be implemented the same way as smites now
Hit connects - advantage/disadvantage check - sneak attack check triggers

That...
+ AOO ...

+ Battlemaster manouvers with AOO (including effects, not just damage as Riposte do)

In general a lot of older stuff don't seem to benefit from the new system. I do hope it is a transitiory phase, and not intended design.

It'd be super helpful if someone created a separate thread after playtesting the whole spectrum of reactions. To point out what needs some extra work, so it'd attract Larian attention like something that bothers the players. I'd do it myself but I can't download the damned patch!! 4 steam download resets already

yeah well good luck with that they said EA is more or less over now if you read between the lines. No more big patches and this ones wasn't even big. Apart from level 5 that we all knew it was coming at some point anyway. All i wanted was a fixed sneak attack but nooooo to much i guess. At least the level 5 extra attack was done right so that's good.

They've also said that they'd still be looking at suggestions though! The reaction system is already integrated into the game, so adding a few actions/spells to it should not be overly problematic? Or should it?

For all i know is they could think sneak attack is fine as is? No way to know. They dont say much about anything anyway.

Loads of suggestions so far didn't get in. All you can do is wait and hope i guess. Like we waited for the new reaction system that turned out to be nothing more thean a pop up from Solasta.

So here is me hoping! Again that they scrap their weird design and just go with Solasta design once again for sneak attack as well.

One key feature of Rogue also is the ability to Sneak attack once per turn. Allowing for multiple sneak attacks per round, so if you trigger attack of opportunity and have flanking / advantage from stealth or other source you should be able to Sneak attack during someone else's round. With this new reaction system, this would be a perfect fit.

yeah i was hoping they would fix it with new system and they didn't... apparently they think active skill is fine.

I see two possibilities:

1) They didn’t get around to that - released system so players can play around with it, and they will get around to reimplementing other stuff later

2) they believe that only skills that consume per rest resources are worth having control over.

I created an account here just for this very reason, to voice my concern about the ACTION sneak attack after Patch 9 announcement. (Thanks you OP!)

I am glad I am not the only rogue bonus action SA fanatic here.

My hopes was that the patch 9 would have a different implementation, but in char creation its still the same.

Short story is that its not critical to my experience, but would be nice (skip the rest for short explanation),

and would help as I am playing multiplayer with my "younger" (29y old) brother in the release. He has not played bg1 and bg2 (like I have in my youth). and
In the ideal scenario I´m a skilled character to prevent save scumming, saving the day while he deals justice to our enemies.

It would be nice to do some dmg at least as a Lore bard/Arcane rogue.

However I agree with Wormerine first point that they just made a fast implementation of the function.

Now that reactions are implemented properly as of patch 9, I have hope that sneak attack will be revamped to work 'properly' as well. Of course it is not an actual 'reaction', but neither is smiting, and it works similarly.

I think you're correct with #1. They've said multiple times that we're not seeing, in EA, everything they plan to implement at full launch. We are probably just seeing a bare-bones implementation of the Reaction System to see how it plays out, and they'll probably implement a more refined version of the mechanic in the final game-applied to everything that should be reaction based.