Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion How to play Rogue?

Problem I have with melee rogues is they're squishy.

You get hit once you're dead.

Just my experience. Hit and run isn't exactly great.

My default way of playing the rogue (in combat) is:

(start with max Dex and 14 Con at minimum, decent Wis; dump Str and Int-- or Cha, depending on personal playstyle, preference)

1. Keep at range with two hand crossbows,

2. Never use the "sneak attack" melee and range icon option to target. Instead, set the sneak attack reaction to always ask. It will trigger whenever possible.

3. If you go Thief (which I tend to think is the best), do not click off the double attack auto action button. instead, always try to start with the offhand attack first, so as to be careful that you don't waste a second attack on someone you might kill with one attack. The reason to leave on the double attack auto action is because it gives you a second attack with any attacks of opportunity you might make.

4. I generally prefer multiclassing into fighter a bit. 1 or 2 or 4 or 8 levels of fighter with the rogue work well, in my opinion. It gives you a fighting style, of which there are three strong options (archery, defense, two weapon fighting), and it gives you medium armor (which is fantastic with the yuan-ti scale mail armor that allows all of your dex bonus to AC), and it gives you the possibility to wear a shield if you want to stay ranged and still have a great AC. In addition, you can go further and pick up Action Surge, or even higher to make sure you don't miss out on feats (giving you 4 total feats by level 12), and if you go all the way to level 8, then you get two main hand attacks and two offhand attacks along with action surge.

For feats, max dex quick, then sharpshooter, and I like savage attacker. If you go with the fourth feat build, then pick something that fits your style and preference.

This is an all around fun build. It's solid. It's versatile with skills. It keeps up in combat. It can scout well.

It's not the assassin/gloomstalker kill 'em on the first round build, which I find kind of... well, just not as fun.

What happened to be Barb and Pally?! You said "it is still not as much as the "martial" having two or three more attacks.", and a Barb and Pally have the same number of attacks; if hasted/bloodlusted/speed they have ONE more, never 2 or 3. To now say you're only comparing against Fighter 11 is like saying "But what about Monk6/Barb4/Druid2?" Martials aren't just one build, Fighter 11 indeed has a lot of attacks and dishes out significant damage, I would *hope* a Rogue with at will invisibility, reliable talent, skills for days, Evasion, and Bonus Action flexibility wouldn't outdamage them! That would make them absolutely and completely worthless, instead of just worthless outside of combat and replaceable inside of it.

Sure an unoptimized Short Sword attack does nothing compared to GWM, but why would the Rogue in your comparison not be using Sharpshooter? The whole point is, 2d6+3+6+10 before any of the hilarious extra damage per hit sources, is not substantially different from 1d6+3+6+10 before any of the hilarious extra damage per hit sources that Sharpshooter is doing.

That's simply not true though. A Fighter who dashes consumes their action, a ranged build Fighter who dashes gets *one* attack after doing so, not two. A melee Fighter who dashes gets *zero* attacks after doing so, as GWM and PAM bonus actions are both conditional.

If we're talking ranged, sure, again I would hope Fighters specifically would do so as that's literally their entire value to the party. But what happened to Pally and Barb? If we're talking a Melee fighter, the kind who has Strength for jumping, then we get into the situation below.

But that's the entire point - I've seen it play out personally multiple times, a Martial character has 3 worthless adds nipping at their feet. They would love to go after the big bad but taking 3 opportunity attacks to do so sucks, and the pathing to get there with them in the way doesn't really work out anyway. So they spend the turn attacking the things that are barely a threat, while if a Rogue is surrounded they can disengage and still fire back on whatever was in that cluster also freeing up space for party members to AOE it if warranted thanks to how turns work, or can spend the 2 attacks on the big bad or whatever else actually warrants it.

If fighters strength is huge, they're melee, and in that case, no, they can't equal the range of a crossbow's field of fire in a single bound, even with super jump on, and that's not typically on in combat. This is inaccurate.

Sure thing.
5d6(Sneak)+1d6(Hand Crossbow)+2(Enchant)+6(Dex)+10(Sharpshooter)+1d4(Fire)+1(Ring)+2(Archery)= 28-61 damage from primary attack (average 44)
1d6(Hand Crossbow)+2(Enchant)+6(Dex)+10(Sharpshooter)+1d4(Fire)+1(Ring)+2(Archery)+1d4(Piercing)= 24-35 damage each (2 bonus attacks, average 29, total 58)
Granted, "Every turn" is a bit of a misleading statement, as certainly there are misses, times where it's worth it to turn off sharpshooter, overkill, and times where the damage averages on the low side. But there are also times where I hit the high end (including the 10%+ of the time where I crit, which for me means an extra 20+ damage), and this is ignoring Bless or other buffs, elemental arrows, and so forth. So yeah, average damage, 100+ per round. Obviously this is late game with a lot of magic items at play, but you asked for the math, and this is what my character is doing

We've already covered disengage (which eats their whole turn), but yeah, varied elevation is also very much so a thing, as is hazardous terrain, and suboptimal positions to end your turn. Maybe it's never been a problem for you, but it's certainly a problem for them.

Not really, just saying. I picked up Medium Armor on my Rogue because it granted +1 Dex and gave shields and access to, of course, medium armor. Not just the actual armor itself which is never worth it, but the gloves and so forth as well, in which case Barb has no equipment advantage whatsoever over Rogue. But of course not every Rogue will do that, there just aren't that many other good feats to take a 17 Dex to an 18 while providing another tangential benefit, and it's certainly an option as they have an extra feat compared to Barbs etc.

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Hey YMMV, if it hasn't worked out for you it hasn't worked out for you. I'm just saying my experience in my campaigns, both Multiplayer where I'm playing as one and Single Player where I've got Asterion filling that role, is that they've been absolutely tops on damage due to the nature of ranged attacks and have contributed massively out of combat as well. If you can't find suitable targets for a ranged character to take out while having no problem with melee positioning that's, well, rather unusual in my opinion but entirely fair, it just hasn't been my experience whatsoever.

Okay, from the top...
This started off with rogues vs other martials in combat effectiveness. So the baseline is not 1 attack +2 offhand attacks. I am comparing against Fighter 11/12, because it brings the simplest calculation possible in the form of a non-expendable 3 attacks (compared to paladin smites, barbarian rages, hex, hunter's mark, spells, etc.) It is also the most directly comparable one to Rogue, as it also uses a non-expendable resource (and, in the case of trickster, some meaningless attack spells).

That's not how haste/speed/bloodlust works, though. It gives you a whole action. For a rogue, that's one attack. For a fighter, that's *three*. For a ranger, paladin, barbarian, bladelock, that's two.

We really need to set some boundaries here about what we are and are not comparing. Why compare the melee to the ranged? If you require one side of the comparison be ranged sharpshooter, why not the other? Especially since the other side does it better thanks to 2 extra attacks, Archery style, and no positioning/hide/flank requirement.
If you have the melee fighter on one side, you gotta have the melee rogue on the other. Ditto ranged.

It is if you hit more times; and per-hit bumps only scale more with more hits.

I have seen exactly one fleeing target that threatened to pull in more adds in the entire game, and chasing that one is meaningless since it is bugged and always "succeeds" anyway (the goblin going for the drum in Act 1).

Sure. And a fighter that jumps can cover an entire movement's distance (and more!) in one leap, and then still move to get in range and unleash full attacks (minus the bonus action one, I guess).

Chasms? Fighter jump them better.

Again with the dirty comparison of melee fighter vs ranged rogue. Why? Is there a rule that prevents fighters from being hand-crossbow-sharpshooters in your game?

If something is surrounding the fighter and actually has worrying amounts of damage that you'd rather not eat as opportunity attacks, then it is not a worthless add, and is instead fully worth it to invest fighter attacks into killing. If it is a worthless add, and there is a move juicy target somewhere else, the fighter is easily best served eating the opportunity attacks (relying on superior AC and health), and just going for the high value target.

Again. Do you have a homerule against sharpshooter fighters, or something? Ditto melee rogues?

That's... actually pretty nice, yeah.

Again, I really can't take into consideration playstyle and refusal to use the Jump ability in this comparison.
I have encountered more phantom railings becoming impenetrable projectile-blocking than I have terrain that I can't work around with a leap.

There are three no-max-dex medium armors in the game. With them, you can get *hilarious* AC values at ~no cost to the rest of your build.

For this reason, I stopped taking odd main stats on most builds. An ASI and a feat to get a 17 to 20 has the same total cost as two ASIs to gt a 16 to 20, and few of the +1 Ability feats are really good.

No, you misunderstand. I can *find* the suitable target, but that suitable target is also more swiftly dealt with by just a bonk to the face... even if this again gets us back to the unclean comparison of melee fighter vs ranged rogue.

I fully understand how a ranged rogue can be effective, if not the optimal choice for the role. Far as I'm concerned, the *crucial* lacking territory is in any melee rogue variant; it is just never ever worth it to risk being so exposed to the front line and in plain view of all the enemies, just to stab someone in the spleen for ~1.5x of a fighter's basic attack.

Stop thinking about multiclassing and sort of. I give you the most optimize and easiest way to play Rougue. Play Durge + pick Dark Elf + straight assassin 12 level with him.

Assassin only worth to take if you have the most OP item in this game: Deathstalker Mantle. What this item do is to make you invisible right after you kill someone, no check, even in clear area. This means as long as you kill someone, you can always get out of combat to 'surpirse' the enemies again.

So, this is what happens in Tactician mode, Goblin Camp. We have lvl4 Durge with it, 4-11 normal Crossbow, and a feat to increase Dex to 18. That's it. If you do not get to lvl4, just kill the random lvl2 Goblins nearby.
Our enemy is the miniboss True Soul Gut who has 52HP, 14 AC.

First, we sneak somewhere a bit high, but still sneak and attack him in turn based mode -> 11 - 18 damage.
Suprised attack -> we get to attack again, this time, it will be a crit -> 2d8 + 4 + 4d6 -> 10 - 44 damage. (for whatever reason, it is 4d6 instead of my PB here)
Then, because we have +5 initiative -> we get to attack again for the 3rd time, hooray -> another 11 - 18 damage.
-> 32 - 80 damage. Turn off karmic dice and you can get the average value to kill him. Even if you do not, just change to melee and slash him when he dashes to you.
Yep, you literally have 4 turns to kill him as assassin (not 2 like most people think), and if he is not dead by then, you are doing something wrong.

All these attacks have 88% hit rate and if you climb on the beam, 94%.

Then, you think, now, what happens after you kill him?
Nothing. You are invisible now. Just run straight to a place that does not have any guard, wait a bit, rinse and repeat until you finish the game.

If you feel guilty and need some redemption because you play the game like Assassin Creed or the game is still too hard, you can multiclass into 5 Ranger Gloomstalker to get the Talk With Animals for Scratch to ease your guilt after 4 Assasin, and the rest to 3 Fighter Champion or 3 Warlock (the frighten one). So, your sneak attack will be weaker, but now you have...
-> +3 more to initiative. 4 turns are always available for you now.
-> additional attack that +1d8. Worse than Hide + Sneak Attack, but the initiative is worth it.
-> +2 to bows. So now you can use hand crossbow instead of normal crossbow or bow.
-> Extra attack. Always good to have.
-> Duel weapon from Fighter so that in case of turn 4 happens, slash them with 2 shortwords. Or +1AC if you are into it.

After that, there is only 1 item that you desperately need to have. It is the Risky Ring sold by the one ask you to donate blood, which costs like 200 gold. In return, you always have Advantage in weapon rolls.
Enjoy playing Assassin Creed, people.

A lot of boss combats begin with a forced cutscene, so you get no surprise round. Along with lots of enemy types in act 2 and 3 that see through invisibility and cannot be surprised.

That's my whole point though - the assertion was that Rogue damage compares unfavorably to Martials in general, under the premise that Rogues have 2-3 less attacks. My point is that Martials in general do not, ever, have 2-3 more attacks. Barbarians or Paladins have the same number of attacks in the general case, and while hasted, have 2(Action)+2(Action)+1(Bonus Action) for 5, compared to a Hasted Rogue having 1(Action)+1(Action)+2(Bonus Actions), for 4; a difference of 1, not 2-3. I will grant that the specific case of a Hasted Fighter 11+ has more attacks, but a) that applies to them vs Barbarians and Paladins as well, and b) that doesn't represent the majority of the game even for that specific case anyway. As such, the general assertion that Martials have superior damage is not proven through the specific case of a hasted fighter. A Rogue's sneak attack damage compares favorably to a Barbarian's Rage damage bonus or even a Paladin's Smite in most cases, the difference in number of attacks often cited as the reason why their damage is inadequate would mean that a Fighter 11+ is in your opinion the only adequate damage and the only true "martial" character. It is that idea, that a Fighter 11+ is the only "adequate" damage, as well as the idea that a Rogue is far behind the damage of Rangers, Barbarians, Paladins, or the rest of the Martial characters, that I disagree with.

Again all of your characterizations rely on specifically comparing the Rogue vs the Fighter. I don't want to disagree for the sake of disagreeing - I readily grant that a ranged fighter deals greater average damage than a ranged Rogue, as they must in my opinion for the game to be balanced, since they have way less going on outside of damage output. I noticed btw the number of non-conditional additional attacks claimed crept back up to 2 btw when a non-conditional (non-hasted) fighter only has 1 more, but whatever. Can you agree that the Rogue does *not* have significantly less damage output than martial characters in a general sense, and that the number of hits advantage does not exist to a significant extent outside of specifically a Fighter? Can you also agree that a Rogue brings more to the party out of combat than said fighter does? I agree it's important to delineate what exactly we're disagreeing about.

The above is an example of a logical fallacy, I can't recall the name offhand. Why am I comparing a melee fighter to a ranged rogue? Because you keep talking about jump capabilities! A ranged character, fighter or otherwise, will not have a huge strength score, and thus won't have an advantage in their jump capabilities vs a ranged rogue! EITHER they have great jump capabilities compared to a ranged rogue, OR they are ranged, there is no point in comparing against an impossible superposition of all the possibilities for a fighter being simultaneously applied. Though again, the difference in jump capabilities will *never* be greater than dash distance as it's capped at 5m before things like Athlete are applied, much less greater than the range of a crossbow at 30m diameter, you vastly overstate how much better of jumpers high Str characters are vs Str 10 characters, just saying.

But the entire benefit of a Fighter or Martial character is that they can apply multiple hits to the same target. If you have 3-5 small targets you're best off with someone with AOE damage (typically a caster) clearing them, while the martial / high DPS character chunks down the big threat. It's not that the Fighter *Can't* kill the small guys around him, it's that it's an inefficient use of resources. The spellcaster pops off a crowd control spell, then while maintaining concentration on that, AOEs down the little stuff. And if they just ignore the little stuff and take the hits, that's more time spent by other characters dishing out healing instead of doing other things. Either way, the fight overall takes longer and consumes more resources.

Right?! That's the entire point. I'm not saying a Rogue does more damage than a Fighter 11. It would be a poorly balanced game if they did. I'm saying they do perfectly acceptable damage, on par with "martial" characters in general, while contributing a *ton* outside of combat.

Those statements seem to be at odds with each other, just saying. I don't think a dip of more than 1 away from Rogue is worth it, I'd never give up Reliable Expertise. So the choices are a) dip Ranger or Fighter, which doesn't increase Dex, b) Start with a lower dex and put another point or two in a stat I don't care about, then pump two ASIs into Dex instead of 1, or c) Take Moderately Armored, and gain access to all the medium armor equipment in general, as well as some hilarious AC values (your words). IMHO C is the obviously superior choice of those 3.

I fully agree a melee Rogue is a terrible option. The only difference of opinion there is, I don't think it's important for it to be a good option, and don't think it would be particularly balanced if it was.

Split the team into 1-3. Let the 3 scout the area / loot / talk first. If they see any enemies, pull out your bow and start blasing and let the trio retreat.
The only cutscenes that are forced are from the main boss in main story. Any other minibosses can have their cutscenes skipped by blasting them in the face before they even start talking.
Joking aside, the build is still viable even in boss fight. If you want to be more useful, use 3 Warlock instead of 3 Fighter so that you can Hex them as a bonus action. Your DPS will drop for sure, but you going first with Gloomstalker will always knock down 1 foe, making the fight less hard.

Rogue is actually pretty insanely OP as a Hit-and-Run depending on how you use it and play to its strength (stealth and sneak attacks). Dare I say, its actually pretty broken (in Rogue's favor).

I'm running a solo / no companion pure Rogue (no multiclass) playthrough and cheesing almost every fight while taking very little damage. I'm pretty late into Act 3 (defeated Thorm and Orin). I've noticed the fights actually get harder for Rogue in a party than when its doing its thing on its own/split from everyone else (I picked up Shadowheart, Karlach, and Halsin, but they mostly stay at camp). Which seems accurate for a Rogue class.

The only fight where I got absolutely hardstop blasted was the Portal fight where the Shadow-Cursed enemies zerg you, since that is one quest you absolutely cannot just sneak attack the enemies before dialogue, but otherwise Rogue is incredibly strong flying solo.

The trick for me is to spec into the Thief class for an extra bonus action, equip gear that gives you Momentum after bonus actions like Dash and increased overall movement distance (which you can get early into the game in Blighted Village and the Goblin Camp respectively), Misty Step and invisibility for pinch situations, and being careful where and when you Hide. You'll also want the Mobile Feat which again, increases your travel distance per turn/Dash and makes it so difficult terrain doesn't cut your movement capabilities in half whenever you use Dash. Tough is a pretty good Feat to have as well since you have more HP to work with.

In particular with Hide, you never want to use it in close proximity to entities and then move away, forcing them to "search" for you. Its actually better to sneak on an enemy, wait a turn, hit them, dash to a far distance away and then Hide, since the game's AI is pretty bad at responding to stealth outside a certain distance. I find sneak attack Bow is a lot better for this because it does high damage while only using an Action turn, instead of an Action and Bonus Action. When the Rogue is the only fighter on your side of combat, it essentially tricks the enemy into skipping a turn, except for things like heal and buff spells, since the AI can't find you. If you're dealing with purely melee enemies (no ranged), having the increased movement and Momentum buffs will also let you snipe down a lot of enemies without having to rely on Hide by keeping just out of range each turn and having them waste their own actions trying to Dash you down.

Its also a good idea to unlock all the illithid powers as you collect tadpoles. In particular, Luck of the Far Realms is great because it can turn regular attacks into critical hits, and Cull The Weak is an absolute must-have since you can basically auto-kill almost any enemy in the game once their HP is brought lower than the number of tadpoles you've consumed (16 HP without the half-Illithid powers, 27 with all of them). A lot of the time, Cull The Weak + Surprise Attack or any AOE like Repulsor will insta-kill a lot of enemies.

High places that are only reachable by Fly or ladders are also great for Rogue. Climb up and destroy the ladders, and 99% of enemies can't make actions against you.

There's only a few fights where this doesn't really work, like the very last boss fight in Act 2 with its universal AOE attacks rendering Hide basically useless, or one of the Act 3 bosses that has a permanent Haste buff. For those situations, its good to pack some of the more rare/powerful scrolls like Globe of Invulnerability, Chain Lightning, and Disintegrate. Also explosives like Smokepowder Bombs. Lots and lots of Smokepowder Bombs.

As a last tip, its not a bad idea to "reset" a lot of fights after taking down a few enemies so you can get in multiple Surprise rounds. Or at least make the fight easier once you've eliminated the trash mobs/extras to focus-DPS the boss down. In fact, there are a ton of times where I've cleared entire rooms of enemies by sniping one or two down, hiding, repositioning, and sniping again without even triggering a fight.

Cawcklest King the one thing I'd add / modify on to that is that you never need to use the action/bonus action auto combo that occurs if you choose "sneak attack". Just set Sneak Attack to always "ask" in your menu (for me sneak attack is always ask except on crit where it's automatic), then a regular bonus action attack with a hand crossbow will trigger asking as long as it's eligible for sneak attack and you can throw that on there. The one reason it might be worth it is for the difference in range, but it's only 3m extra (15m vs 18m).

Yeah, you can toggle to only one blade or set it to "ask".

What I was saying is I prefer to use the crossbow because you often do about the same or more damage using only one Action than you often get using dual-wield/an Action + Bonus for attack, at least with daggers (might be different if you use other weapons instead, but I run daggers and crossbow), which means you get to do a lot of damage in one attack and then have 2 bonus actions left over for a Dash and then Hide.