Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Elite Build - Dark Sniper - Drow Rogue - Thief Subclass

This is a pretty straightforward Build.

Drow get Superior Darkvision -which is double the normal 12m/40 feet range of regular darkvision- usually there is a limitation on the Rogues ranged sneak attack from height where the darkvision doesn't cover the range of the weapon. In addition rogues are only able to use simple/rogue ranged weapons which usually means Shortbows and light crossbows, which limit damage. This build fixes those issues.

Starting Stats:
Str: 14
Dex: 17
Con: 14
Int: 9
Wis: 10
Chr: 10

You can play with these a bit but 17 Dex is important for later.
Higher strength helps with carry weight, jump distance and shoving/resistance to being shoved
I strongly recommend sticking with 14 con.


The main four skills to have are - Athletics, Acrobatics, Stealth, Sleight of Hand you get Perception for free as a Drow.

At Level 3 you will take Thief as your Subclass.

At Level 4 you Will take the Feat Weapon Master and choose the extra point in Dex and the following weapons: Longbow, Scimitar, Heavy Crossbow and whatever for the 4th.


At this point with a Heavy Crossbow + 1 at Height you are looking at 1D10 + 5 + 2d6 sneak attack + Poison damage/fire damage with a +7 proficiency Bonus and Advantage on attacks to a range of 24 Meters/ 80 Feet.

That's a damage range of 9- 31 damage per hit with a very high chance to hit due to Advantage on all attack rolls.

You will also have high mobility, resistance to being shoved, great jump range and a very good chance of shoving others so you will be the undisputed "King of the Mountain". In addition as a rogue you get Dash and Disengage as a bonus action but a solid shove is a good play if someone tries to close the distance with you.

If you want to throw Wyvern Poison in the Mix and Potion of speed you go to 1d10 + 5 + 2D6 + 7D6 damage. 15- 80 damage. 13- 68 damage (second attack).

Obviously there are other buffs which will increase damage and accuracy. Bless, Cats Grace, Ritual Dagger buff, Gloves of Power with absolutes Mark.

Happy Murdering!

Tried this build, thanks for posting, it's working pretty well.
How are you calculating 2d6 from sneak attack? I'm only getting 1d10 + 5 + 1d6. Doesn't 2d6 unlock at lvl 5?
Also, although the range for superior darkvision is 24m, the range for the heavy crossbow is at 18. Doesn't make sense that heavy crossbows/longbows have the same range as their lighter equivalents, but that's the case right now, so you can only have advantage up to a range of 18m.

Wait nevermind I just saw where the 2d6 comes from in the combat logs. Strange that the sneak attack tooltip wouldn't reflect this ?

yeah you get the 2d6 at 3rd level and it jumps to 3d6 at 5th and then every 2 levels another 1d6. They don't really label it properly but it's there.

As for the Range Heavy Xbow/Longbow is supposed to be 30 Meters and Light Xbow/shortbow is supposed to be 24 meters. Not sure where 18 meters came from but its interesting that it will work slightly outside that range and with the 24m of darkvision assures that you will be able to range sneak attack.

I experimented with Sunwalkers Gift to see if it would do something similar but it appears to only illuminate objects to the regular darkvision range of 12m.

Getting the 18m from the tooltip (see screenshot below). Looks like they have some work to do on the tooltip itself then, doesn't look like they reflect the true situation in some cases.

Anyway, thanks for reconciling me with rogue. It's my favorite archetype and I was a little bit disappointed with the level of nerfs in Patch 5. Turns out all that's needed is a slightly different style of gameplay.

Nice! Looks like the Githyanki bit off more than they could chew!

Ha, Roguey McRogueface!

Let me know if you come across any improvements or equipment synergies. Would love to hear them.

edit: Oh as for the range, I was looking it up on the D&D 5E equipment sheets and that's where I got the ranges. Not sure why Larian opted for 18m for everything. Oh well!

It's simpler that way, obviously.

On topic: why so much STR? Just for jump distance? Considering that Thief is the biggest bonus action spender out there, I don't see much benefit in this. At first glance, without actually trying, I would prefer WIS for Perception / Insight, if nothing else...

But yeah, interesting. Drow are natural assassins, but in 3.5 this was countered by photophobia and +2 level adjustment. Here, they just come out as OP as they could possibly be.

Question ...
Even tho its a sniper, sometimes enemy come to close range ... is there any benefit for using daggers instead shortswords? O_o

Its mainly for jump distance and shove proficiency - since you are in high ground a lot you will have enemies try to close the distance and making sure you can use a bonus action to push them down and also still shoot them in the same round makes sense. This is also why you want to have both Athletics and Acrobatics since they both make your shove stronger and make YOU harder to shove. The jump distance ability is huge in-game anyway.

Not really. Shortswords or Scimitars (once you have weapon master feat) have a better damage range.

The Ritual Dagger can be worth using if you want to use its ability to add +1 to your attack rolls and saving throws for 1 round.

Also Worgfang is situationally useful because it provides Disadvantage to Goblin attacks.

I don't know, has anyone actually tested the Shove math in BG3? I mean, whether any of these 2 proficiencies actually help resisting it. I don't recall any numbers in the combat log...

There are probably going to be some changes to weapons in general. Apart from proficiency, it doesn't really make sense why anyone would prefer a shortbow to a longbow, or a longbow to a heavy crossbow. They do include the "heavy" and "loading" keywords in the description of the heavy xbow, but those don't affect gameplay at all, so the only thing that matters in the end is damage. I haven't played D&D, so not sure if it's the same there, but this also applies for shortsword vs dagger. As you said above, the benefits of wielding daggers are situational at most.

As for STR, yeah, since patch 5 I mainly use bonus actions for disengage + jump. Dash is better for CQC rogues, but since this is a more long-range version, jump ends up being very useful, so those extra meters of range really count.

Heavy crossbow actualy is heavy ... kinda too heavy to my liking to be honest.
It made me choose bow instead (this, and the fact that i just dont like crossbows at all) ...

And please feel free to corect me, but dont "loading" only means that you cannot attack the weapon twice in single turn?
Therefore it should not have any meaning before level 5? ... Or is that suppose to include potion of speed?

Not quite, Rag, but you're mostly right: If the do it correctly, 'Loading' means that you cannot take more than one shot any time you use an action, bonus action or reaction to attack something. You can, however attack, attack again with a bonus action, action surge and attack again, have an active potion of speed and attack again, and if you're really lucky, and something triggers your reaction somehow, you can do that too; each time you're using a different action, so they're all fine to doonthe same turn, even with a loading property weapon.

The loading property mostly just affects Extra Attack, and a few other specific niche things that would otherwise let you make multiple attacks with the same specific action.

In terms of the game so far, you're correct that they aren't able to have any effect 'Yet', since no-one has any class abilities that allow us to make multiple attacks with a single action/bonus action/reaction.

Thank you
That was indeed enlightening.

With this new patch, I can finally play the game again. Rogue is the class I always choose 1st and I like this build a lot. Thank you!!

Glad you like it! Let me know how it works out!

For those using this build the Patch 6 changes require some minor tactical adjustments.

1) Height no longer allows for sneak attacks, just a +2 bonus or -2 if below the attacker.
2) Easiest solution is to hold SHIFT to see the enemy sight lines without entering stealth. Move to a clear space and then go into stealth/crouch/hide which will cost you a bonus action and then hit them with a sneak attack/ranged or melee.

The build is still REALLY strong and has become my favorite because of the great tactical options rogues tend to have.

uh did they change sneak attack to actual d6 rolls? originally it was 1d6 X/multi whatever

So it's not on the tooltip, but the sneak attack damage scales properly according to 5E rules. So 1d6 at levels 1-2, and 2D6 at levels 3-4, and it will jump to 3D6 at level 5.

I think that's what you were asking but I may have misunderstood your question. If so my apologies.