Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback (FEEDBACK) Arcane Trickster - Let’s chat...

First off, this is a great game. Beyond great! Huge thanks to you folks at Larian and your ability to crafting a world truly worth exploring and experiencing. It’s hard to believe that this is Early Access! This place is crammed with things to explore. And for me, exploration is the most important pillar in any great RPG.

Full disclaimer: I understand wholeheartedly that that this is early access and that some things have yet to be implemented and fixed. I also understand how not everything is going to translate from the 5E rules to video game mechanics. I also get that it’s been a week and bugs and crashes need addressing first for EA.

With that said, let’s have a chat about my most beloved class in D&D - The Arcane Trickster - and things that need to be fixed, added or changed...

1. At level 1 - we’re talking out of the gate - Rogue Expertise is missing. Is this being implemented? I hope so. This makes rogues, frankly, rogues. It seems that every other class is getting their front-loaded class features at level 1 or 2 with some normally level 2 Rogue Bonus Actions added to their repertoire. So why not Rogue? Expertise makes the rogue unique. I should be better at stealth and sleight of hand than a Dex fighter, if I want to be, because expertise is MY JAM. So if you’re implementing this later, great! Otherwise, consider putting this in.

2. Last I checked, Sneak attack scales up by a 1d6 every two levels after Level 1. Larian! My dudes! My dude-ettes! Where my d6s at?

3. Upon choosing Arcane Trickster as a sub-class, you are either missing a cantrip or failing to automatically give the Mage Hand cantrip along with the two selections. One less cantrip sort of sucks some of the “Arcane” out of being an Arcane Trickster.

4. Speaking of Mage Hand, let’s talk about the legerdemain feature and my current inability to pick a pocket, or carry candles to explosive barrels, or carry things in general, or tie some enemy’s shoelaces together, or have it in any way be unique from anyone else’s Mage Hand other than “it’s invisible.” Again, this may all be part of the “not implemented yet” stuff, so I apologize if there’s some general eye-rolling going on. (Remember, This all comes from a place of love!) I also apologize if any of these have been implemented and I just can’t figure out how to make it work. I can push people... That’s something, right? But before an enemy encounter, I want to be able to steal their sword with my expertised Sleight of Hand.

5. Did I mention that sneak attack damage scales by 1d6 every two levels..? I did? Just checking. My bad.

6. Let’s talk about the Trickster part, specifically as it pertains to spellcasting. At it’s core the Arcane Trickster is about fooling people, pranking people, distracting people, and generally causing mischief and chaos across the RPG spectrum (I’m seriously giddy just talking about it), using all the tools at their disposal, including spells, to do so. On the table-top, this is a class designed for creative problem solving, and I like to be a mischievous prick in solving my problems. First, Let’s get Tasha’s Hideous Laughter in there soon, folks. Making people laugh all the way to their grave is the only way let an enemy know you care. Second, let’s talk about the limitations of illusions in a video game. There’s only so much you can do, whereas on the tabletop, the possibilities created by illusions are limited by the players’ imagination. So maybe if I can’t use my illusion in unique ways, I should be able to pick two spells from any school instead of one for my spell list. Just a thought.

7. Like the Warlock, in 5e the Arcane Trickster has the ability to swap out spells each time a level is gained in this class. Can I do this in Early Access? Will I be able to this down the road?

I think that I’m echoing the thoughts of many of my fellow rogues out there when I say that the class feels a little bit lacking at the moment when compared to others, maybe there’s more going on under the hood, but really I see an extra D6 for damage and not much else from the class.

But I also want to acknowledge - like so many already - that I love playing this game and that you folks have done such fantastic work already. So much story. So much substance. This is a great game, and I’m so happy to be able to play it early. Thank you for all your efforts. Once this iteration is done, I sincerely hope you’ll consider focusing on expansions that take us further up and down the Sword Coast. With the amount of people who have been thirsting for a good D&D VG out there, you’ll never go broke!

Stay awesome folks, and stay the course.

Also, I’m open to everyone telling me how wrong I am about everything and that I’m just rogue-ing wrong.

+2147483647

Sneak attack, I do believe, scales if you look at the damage it's just multiplied by a single D6 roll. You'll see it in the combat log as something like 2(1d6) or some crap.

+1

Another rogue thread, I think this is the class with the most things to change, I Hope they are mostly bugs/not implemented yet. Not even gonna talk about the tief, New highest dpt class at level 3, outdamaging fighters at 5, Rangers at 5, any other martial class at 5 basically, even 2 levels lower.

Some clarifications worth mentioning:

I did not try arcane tricksters yet, but Warlock can swap spells, so I imagine arcane tricksters can too as this is already an implemented feature for other classes.

You are actually getting the +1d6 each 2 levels above one for sneak. But instead of getting an extra d6 they just made 1d6*2 for level 3, which by the way still sucks, because it heavily changes the damage spread, making it much more extreme instead of more avarage, and It leaves such a sour taste when you roll a 1, before the chance of getting 2 on sneak was 1/36, now It is 1/6, the same is true for a 12, but still I'd Very much prefer if It rolled multiple dice.

I also do believe the missing features for mage hand here are something that might be harder to implement properly, here's tô hoping we get some cool flavour options for the arcane tricksters magehand as it's, at least for me, the most fun feature this subclass brings to the table

+1

[quote=pgmoro]+1

Another rogue thread, I think this is the class with the most things to change, I Hope they are mostly bugs/not implemented yet. Not even gonna talk about the tief, New highest dpt class at level 3, outdamaging fighters at 5, Rangers at 5, any other martial class at 5 basically, even 2 levels lower.

Some clarifications worth mentioning:

I did not try arcane tricksters yet, but Warlock can swap spells, so I imagine arcane tricksters can too as this is already an implemented feature for other classes.

You are actually getting the +1d6 each 2 levels above one for sneak. But instead of getting an extra d6 they just made 1d6*2 for level 3, which by the way still sucks, because it heavily changes the damage spread, making it much more extreme instead of more avarage, and It leaves such a sour taste when you roll a 1, before the chance of getting 2 on sneak was 1/36, now It is 1/6, the same is true for a 12, but still I'd Very much prefer if It rolled multiple dice.

I also do believe the missing features for mage hand here are something that might be harder to implement properly, here's tô hoping we get some cool flavour options for the arcane tricksters magehand as it's, at least for me, the most fun feature this subclass brings to the table

[/quote]

+1

So my bad on both the phrasing of Sneak attack and failing to see that it was implemented. I own that.

After achieving level 4 with this class, I can tell you that you can’t swap out spells. But the warlock can.

Hello, has the class been updated ? this post is from 2020 ...

I didn't play this class so no answer here except for the magic hand which is currently still useless.

Notice that I have seen a mod on nexus to transform the magic hand as extra character which allows more interactions. I have not tested it however.

Magic hand is great (ahem) for pushing creatures off ledges. I’ve notice a lot if not all 100% push chances.

The fact we can pushing creatures off ledges is ok, but the essential raison arcane trickster love the magic hand is because we can pickpocket and defuse traps. Imagine a cleric without heal spell, this is like I see the arcane trickster now.

I tryed this subclass once ... back in patch 1, when i was curious about litteraly everything.

I finded it useless as a Rogue, as well as a Caster ... i never used it again since then.

The truth of the matter is that the strengths of the Arcane Trickster are lost in translation in this game. Or, at least in it’s current iteration. In tabletop 5e, the subclass is an S-Tier Rogue, and arguably the best rogue subclass. It is the most versatile class in the game that takes all the best things about rogue and adds spellcasting to make it one of the best for both utility, social encounters, and battlefield manipulation. It’s Marquee feature, Mage Hand Legerdemain, is incredibly useful, sinister, and powerful in a variety of circumstances.

In Larian’s version, as the game currently exists, limited spellcasting features such as the lack of a Shield spell, the lack of Owl Familiars providing help actions, the limited usefulness of Disguise Self and the lack of Melee cantrips such as booming blade… all this strips some of the fun out of the “Caster” part of the Arcane Trickster. I was incredibly happy, however, when I saw that Larian added Tasha’s Hideous Laughter to the spell list. It’s a great battlefield control spell. However there are still limitations on control spells for this class. Spells like Suggestion and Phantasmal Force require a certain level of player imagination to implement, and thus impossible to work or code into the game for liberal use. If Larian could make it happen, even in limited scale, it would certainly add more to the class’s toolkit.

And the fact still remains that Legerdemain lacks any functionality beyond shoving things. And if you want to shove things then you would have been a fighter. So essentially the best and most fun part of this rogue - stealing, trap disarming, and general mischief using an invisible a-hole of a hand-helper - does not exist.

Maybe some or all of these will get fixed at the game’s release or in future patches, but for now it feels like a sub-par class.

And don’t even get me started on the general lack of Rogue Expertise, which they are supposed to get at Level 1… Taking that out or not implementing that was a total either a dick-move, or something Larian hasn’t implemented yet because that’ll come when Bards are introduced to the game.

If you’ve ever played a rogue on the tabletop, you’d know how important this first level feature is to the class. If its removal was intentional, it was a huge blunder. If it is an early access thing, than I hope it’s something we players who love this class get to look forward to in future patches, and at Level 1.

Yup, they still need to fix these things too. Along with plenty other things. But hopefully it's getting there! =)