Level Rogue to 4 (take Thief at 3) pick up sharpshooter feat at 4. Take 1 lvl of fighter or 2 levels of ranger for archery weapon style. Equip gloves of archery. Dual wield hand crossbows and get 3x attacks at 1d6 +15 dmg each (10 from sharpshooter, 2 from gloves of archery, 3 from 16+ Dex). This easily goes higher with higher dex and weapon enchants (18 dex and +1 hand crossbow = 1d6 +17dmg each). This isn't even factoring in crit or sneak attacks. Throw in Drow Poison and solo all combat encounters.
Note this is possible in part because hand crossbows in offhand is benefitting from ability modifiers when it shouldn't and bg3's implementation of hand crossbows essentially gives you the crossbow expert feat for free.
I am having a problem looking at that favorably, compared to a straight 12 Champion Fighter with the same dual crossbow sharpshooter dexterity build. Four attacks, better armor proficiency (
because there are *two* no-max-dex medium armors in Act 3
), more HP, more feats/ASIs (can take Skilled if you want to monkey around with stealth/steal/perception), and doesn't depend on the possibly-will-be-nerfed free off-hand full-dex-to-damage thing, as it can use longbows, too (
one of which gives hilarious bonuses and constant advantage, which, when combined with crit-enhancing gear, absolutely skyrockets the damage output
)...
I am honestly kinda meh about the whole thief/assassin melee backstab thing. You have to walk everywhere because you lack the strength for battlefield-wide jumps, your once-per-round sneak attack is good, but they for some reason made it a Special Dedicated Main Hand Attack Skill, which entirely defeats all the reason to dual-wield as a rogue in 5E (second chance to backstab if you somehow fail), you need Special Limited Equipment for off-hand dex-to-damage (unlike ranged, which gets it for free), and in-combat stealth is of very limited use in melee (yet absolutely ridiculous at range). Meanwhile, an equivalent-level bonk-master (paladin, fighter, barbarian, etc.) will just deal pretty much backstab damage with each attack, right in the face, and has significantly more "take out this dangerous target fast" capabilities than a rogue. Not to mention shove, lol
Please help me understand how melee rogues are supposed to work.
