Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Why is Sneak Attack capped at 5d6?

I assume it's an attempt at balance?

I've leveled 3 rogues to 12 and all three cap at 5d6 SA dice. By 5e rules, they all should have gone to 6d6 at level 11 but BG3 caps them at 5. Has Larian ever shared why?

Good question.
I am certainly of the belief that the class could use a leg up in this regard, especially since bringing up the max would only help the pure/near-pure class rogues.

Yeah, if it is balance, it's oddly placed. With the limit of one sneak attack per round and a very limited set of conditions where it can be used, capping sneak attacks at 5d6 makes no sense.

I mean, I get it, BG3 combat is really just surviving while Lae'zel runs around and kills everything but, still, Sneak Attack is the signature skill of the class and shouldn't be capped outside of the existing restrictions.

Probably a bug? Or an oversight.

No way it is for balancing reasons.1d6 @ 11th level will have close to no impact on combat performance. It makes no sense.

It sounds like a bug...I'd report it.

I do disagree with "With the limit of one sneak attack per round and a very limited set of conditions where it can be used" - it is exceptionally easy to SA, you can even do it at range (which I think is already hard to justify from a logic perspective as 'precision damage' due to distraction). All you need is a party member attacking the same foe. And having it apply to every attack would be overpowered. Martial classes have limits - paladins can only smite while they have spell slots (at low level these go quickly), and are then weaker damager dealers than a regular fighter, all things being equal. Fighters have 1 action surge (at low levels) and by end game 3/4 attacks per round (excluding haste) - but they are *the* martial experts, its all they can do. They have little outside of combat. Allowing rogues to add 5d6 or more on *every* attack (ranged or melee) would be unreasonable in terms of balance. Clearly the designers of 5e agreed. The problem is that Larian has broken a lot of class uniqueness/scaling by ignoring rules left, right and centre. I think rogues are already very well equipped to support combat - I used Astarion and he dealt huge amounts of damage and could also do neat things like bonus disengage, hide, high mobility etc.

As someone who played A LOT of 3E, "only 1 sneak attach per round" still feels off... Rogues had no limit to how many sneak attacks they could do before. On top of receiving extra attacks, like Fighters, Paladins and other martials do in 5E.

So in 5E Rogue looks really gimped - only 1 attack, and only 1 sneak attack per round. That is why this singular attack should hit hard. Capping it at 5d6 is definitely a bug.

My point around the "once per turn" SA rule is that THAT is how 5e balanced SA. So there is no need for Larian to further balance it by capping the damage as well.

If SA was a passive that applied on every attack that qualified (like off-hand attacks), I could see them possibly wanting to balance it further but that's not the case. Fortunately, as stated above, losing 1d6 of SA at level 11 isn't a game changer but it really waters down the pure rogue build. There's really no strong reason to go past Rogue 9 imo. And that's disappointing.

And I have reported it as a bug. I don't have a lot of confidence that it will be resolved given the sheer number of bugs in the game currently.

Reliable talent.

I didn't even know this. Larian really beginning to lose my trust yet again.

If you "beginning to lose your trust" because of one probable bug I'm surprised you're still here.

There are lists of bugs that may destroy your trust entirely.

Feel free to refund the game.

Is there an official list of known bugs? Or a least a relative complete list? I'd love to see if Larian even recognizes this bug. When I was researching the problem, I was very surprised that I didn't see it discussed more often. That made me think it was intentional vs. a bug.

QUICK UPDATE:

Patch 3 fixed the cap, increasing it to 6d6.