Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Sneak Attack Damage Calculations

After hitting level 3 with a rogue, I was surprised to see that my sneak attack damage dice didn't increase either in the tooltip or in the level-up screen. Since this is a staple feature of the rogue class in 5e's pen and paper version, I started looking closer at my damage in combat and saw this:



So, instead of rolling 2d6 as a level 3 rogue like you would in pen and paper, you roll 1d6 and then it's multiplied by a number derived from your level. If I'm reading the numbers correctly, this has the same range of results as if I were rolling 2d6 sneak attack damage (2-12). However, the set of possible results is only multiples of 2 (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12) with this version rather than the usual set of (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) when rolling 2d6.

My main question here is: why? Is it easier for the engine to handle this way? If so, why aren't spells that involve multiple dice rolls at once and can scale up in damage, such as burning hands, affected? Is it just because it scales natively off of your level without needing to use a discrete resource like a higher-level spell slot?

More importantly, why isn't any of this explained in the tooltip or in the entry for the rogue class? It's a pretty key component of the rogue's damage-dealing output and if I weren't already familiar with the pen and paper version, I would probably assume that I was stuck with 1d6 sneak attack damage forever.

tl;dr: sneak attack damage uses a really bizarre calculation for scaling as you level up that should really be explained somewhere.

Please fix this Larian. It's a needlessly complicated addition to what should be an exceedingly simple mechanic.