Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Please let Rogues to sneak attack with any weapon

its more that two handed feat added as well lol...

It is a buff, because of how resistances work. Sneak attack against a skeleton with a hand hammer can be a devastating one shot, while attacking an ochre jelly with a scimitar can be a complete disaster.

You are spinning out some highly situational examples. But you are right about one thing: there are no bludgeoning melee weapons that you can sneak attack with. And for a pure rogue, none that do slashing damage (with proficiency), either. So a pure rogue would never attack an ochre jelly with a scimitar.

Unless your game has you fighting nothing but skeletons, overall it would be no buff at all.

Ah, but using Str weapons with sneak attack allows a rogue to use Heavy Weapons and GWF.

Even if you restrict it to non-heavy weapons, BG3 seems like it'll have a plethora of magic weapons with various effects. Allowing rogues to sneak attack with e.g., longswords would greatly expand the # of magic weapons they can use.

Let's not, and leave it to the modders.

Now we are back to the house rule allowing for sneak attack with 2-handed weapons. As I mentioned above, I play a barbarian/rogue and the DM allows sneak attack with any 1-handed weapon. That was his house rule from the beginning. When I made the character, I assumed I would be restricted to finesse weapons as per RAW. And the reason he gave was "A longsword does a d8. A rapier does a d8. What's the difference?" As a DM, I'd let a player try GWF with sneak attacking to see how it works in practice. Such a rogue character does have to sacrifice something. Either they short their DEX and are not as good at doing a lot of rogue-y things or they short their STR and are not quite as good at using STR-based weapons, so it's not a complete free ride Or they short CON and/or WIS, two stats rogues don't normally dump.

That's a total meta reason. I would not accept that as a reason in a PnP game.

That's *your* house rule, but OP is suggesting that we should be able to sneak attack with "any weapon." My original post was in response to that.

In a vacuum and/or for mostly-RAW PnP, I agree that I wouldn't allow a rogue to sneak attack with Heavy Weapons, let alone any non-finesse weapon. But we're discussing BG3 specifically, which as I mentioned above, already introduces many homebrew that buff other (caster) classes. At this point, I'm arguing for balance between the classes rather than a return to something closer to 5e RAW. And the presence of magic items that synergize with certain classes is definitely important for that.

That's not my house rule, that's the house rule of another DM. I said I would be fine allowing sneak attack in connection with GWF to see how that goes. My thing about it in BG3 is that it's probably a lot of buck for very little bang.

if you're gonna base your argument on some sort of class balance thing, I don't see how rogue sneak attack needs beefing up in terms of it being too wimpy compared to other class abilities. it's a pretty strong ability as is. And letting it work with d10/d12 2-H weapons doesn't make it all that much stronger (setting aside GWF for the moment).

Arguing the semantics of whether or not a houserule in a game you play in counts as "your house rule" is a bit too off-topic, so I'll focus on the second part of your post.

That's missing the forest for the trees: considering sneak attack in a vacuum and as a singular ability compared to other single abilities.

OP asked for sneak attack to be usable with all weapons. This is strictly a buff to primarily rogues and multiclassed martials. My (partly facetious, admittedly) argument is that: since casters are overall buffed compared to martials in BG3, sure let's also give martials a buff to help counteract that! I'm not comparing the power of the individual ability that is Sneak Attack to any specific other class ability. And as GWF is a feat implemented in BG3, there's no reason to set it aside. (Even if we did, none of the above premises change. It's still a strict buff for rogues).

Do you disagree with any of the premises above? And if not, do you think that giving rogues the ability to sneak attack with all (including heavy) weapons would make them too strong in BG3 or wouldn't be enough of a buff? You've specifically said that [paraphrased] "allowing sneak attack with any non-heavy weapons wouldn't be much of a buff;" do you still think so if we include heavy weapons, along with GWF and any other heavy-weapon related ability?

Let's assume for the sake of argument spellcasters were buffed for BG3. Perhaps Larian thought they needed buffing, If you think they didn't need buffing, or that they were buffed too much, that's another argument.

How many times do I have to say that as a PnP DM, I'm fine with it. If it were a trivial change for BG3, fine, But nothing is trivial about changing a computer program as big and complex as BG3 undoubtedly is. As I mentioned above, too little bang (because it's a minimal buff) for too much buck. And, as I said, if the change makes it so that it applies only to one-handed weapons, it's no buff at all. So the only way it's worthwhile is if the change allows 2-handed weapons to sneak attack. Once we get to that point, then we can then say "OK, now, do we think it's too much of a buff since now we can combine sneak attack with GWF." One issue at a time. I have no idea if sneak attack with GWF is too powerful. As I mentioned, I would allow it in a PnP game to see it in action before passing final judgment.

Not even with Great Weapon Master feat?

I mean +10 dmg wouldnt be so devastating on level 12 ... probably.
But on first levels it would. :-/

Alright. Not much else to say then, at least until you try it out in PnP. I move that we agree to disagree and let others respond to our posts and/or have their own discussion ITT. Cheers.


If anyone else wants to discuss whether rogues being allowed to sneak attack with all weapons in BG3 would be too powerful, not powerful enough, or otherwise is too icky of a change even for BG3 (something something "adding homebrew to fix homebrew is bad"), reply!

Otherwise, I'll end my presence ITT by repeating my original half facetious statement: with an addendum that Larian won't actually make this change at this point in development, and I'm skeptical that a modder will, so the discussion is mainly academic.

I get a feeling that branmakmuffin is here to disagree rather than to have an argument. So the 'agree to disagree' seems to be the best option indeed. It was initially about the common sense and the freedom of choice, therefore my comment about the indirect buff via resistance mechanics has never been important, it was rather a small notion. Whether thats a big buff, a small buff or a non-buff, restricting the choice for the weapons that can be used in a sneak attack is not very logical. At least when it comes to the light strength based weapons like hand hammers and hand axes.

What are we even disagreeing on?

We all know that's the case, which is why I never made that argument against it. I suspect that if it were easily modded, a modder wouild have already done it.

I think you can also interpret "agree to disagree" in this context as simply "stop talking about it". Which I think is a good decision, as it feels as though everyone has made their points and we're not now going anywhere useful.