Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What's the best way to create a sneaky Bard?

Hello all! I'm a complete newbie, and have been doing a LOT of reading; I think I'm settled on playing a Bard (I love the idea of supporting my party with an instrument), but would also like to be the thief of the group.

I'm planning on playing a Lightfoot Halfling (so there's the stealth aspect), so what else do I need to specialise in becoming a thief?

Another silly question, sorry, I've heard multiclassing is a thing (which I understand little), should I do that with Bard/ Rogue maybe? Or stay pure Bard?

Thanks loads everyone!

If you want to maximise stealthiness, the Deep Gnome is the best racial choice.

Apart from that, all you need is proficiency, later upgrading to expertise, in Stealth and Slight of Hand, and a good DEX. So Bard is fine, no need to multiclass.

In D&D theft is generally done with the sleight of hand skill which as a bard you could in theory gain proficiency in. Now the sleight of hand skill is in the game, at least it's listed on the wiki. But I don't know how useful it actually is in the game in terms of how many people you can actually steal from or whether you get anything worthwhile out of it.

BG3 uses Slight of Hand pretty much all the time. PnP 5e uses Thieves Tools proficiency for picking locks and disarming traps, but BG3 doesn't have that so it folds it all into Slight of Hand (along with picking pockets, close up magic, etc).

If you get 2 levels of rogue, you can hide as a bonus action which is helpful during combat because in the full release, hiding during combat will take a full action. You can do three things on your turn in a round of combat: an action, a bonus action, and move.

Actions are what you use to attack and cast (most) spells. A bonus action is a simple thing like drinking a potion, attacking with an offhand weapon, jumping, etc. So you can imagine that being able to hide and also attack on the same turn can be useful to get advantage. Hiding and casting a spell is only useful if the spell offers an attack roll, which bards don't have a lot of. So I would only recommend taking rogue levels if you plan on being a martial-bard (valor or swords). If you just want to be sneaky, bards can do that fine without taking rogue levels.

Halfling is a good choice. Skill proficiency in sleight of hand and stealth is really the only thing you need. I would advise against multiclassing unless you *really* want to rehide during combat all the time. It's generally better to keep advancing your original class.

The College of Valour doesn't allow expertise in Stealth or Sleight of Hand in EA, only The college of Lore (and we don't know about College of Swords).
Rouge 1 Bard 3 does then give you expertise in 4 skills at level 4 so if you want a non-lore college and expertise in stealth and sleight of hand this might be the way to go. It just depends how whether you want a more martial bard or more of a caster staying out of the way sort of bard.