Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Astarion (dis?)advantage

Astarion seems not to be able to SA when he should be. It says "Must have advantage against target" even if an ally is adjacent to the enemy. He also has a dark magic effect around him, looks like. What's up?

Does he have disadvantage on the attack? If so, even with an ally adjacent to the enemy, you won't be able to sneak attack. When you attempt an attack, it should say if it's being affected by disadvantage.

You should be able to find any effects he's under by checking his portrait or inventory/character page.

This is what I see.

[img]https://www.dropbox.com/s/huypuy71fik9wb6/bg3ss.png?dl=0[/img]

The text on the screen says "Can't have Disadvantage against target," indicating you have disadvantage on your attack and thus can't sneak attack.

I would guess that it's that little purple symbol on Astarion's and your 3rd PC's profile pictures, but idk exactly what status effect that signifies. Right click either their portraits or their characters and then click "Examine" to bring up a window where you can check current status effects on them.

Alternately/in addition, click the normal "ranged attack" button and when you're hovering over an enemy to target them, the game should say what your chances to hit are and whether you have advantage or disadvantage, and maybe the source of said modifier.

I'm not sure if THIS specific problem is tied to this factor, but it's worth noting that Astarion's default light armor gives him disadvantage on stealth checks and you should change as soon as possible.

Yeh, I hadn't! Thanks.

Well, some armors give disadvantage to sneak skills, not to attacks.
If you stay outside vision cones, even a char with 1 dex and a full plate would be hidden and have advantage on attacks.
This makes the stealth skill (and thus disadvantage of it) almost pointless.

There has always been an issue with sneak attack in that if you have any source of disadvantage, it does not apply sneak attack. This is not correct behaviour, but happens because Larian either misinterpreted the rules, changed them, or because they coded the ability to make its checks at the wrong stage.

To be clear, I don't mean attacking with disadvantage, I mean simply having any source of disadvantage, at all - so for example, if you are invisible (advantage) and are attacking an enemy with guiding bolt on them (advantage), but you're shooting from long range (disadvantage), and your target has an ally fighting them in melee (sneak attack qualifier)... you won't get sneak attack, because even though you are making a normal attack roll (not at disadvantage), and you have an enemy of your target engaging them (and thus you should get sneak attack), you have *a* source of disadvantage, so it nixes sneak attack automatically.

As of patch seven, rather than using a normal attack when you click sneak attack if it thinks you don't qualify, it now gives you an error and tells you that you can't sneak attack. this made the bug far more visible to far more people, but Larian still don't seem interested in actually fixing it yet, as far as I've seen.