Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Modding Mod Request: Fix Sneak Attack in reactions

I am still looking for someone to finally fix the Rogue base class.

Rogues consistently get the weakest rating in all class ratings. Even the strongest rogue subclasses barely reach average ratings. Thats NOT by design. The original rules intended Rogues to be on same footing as all other classes. It is because Larian screwed up the implementation of the base class.

By the original rules, Rogues can backstab once per TURN.

The problem with Larian and their descriptions is that they constantly confuse ROUND and TURN. In fact, reading Larian descriptions, you may end up having no idea what a ROUND even is. They call everything turn. I dont think they ever even mention the term round anywhere, ever.

A ROUND is the core unit of D&D, into which they split their battles. During a round, every player and every NPC and monster gets a TURN.

This means that Rogue can sneak attack once per turn, they can sneak attac once during an action or bonus action, which happends during their OWN turn, but ALSO a second time during their reaction, for their reaction does NOT occur during their own turn, but on the turn of whatever opponent triggers their reaction.

Since Larian clearly thinks turns and rounds are the same, or even think the D&D term for round would be turn, they missed this detail.

So all I want is a mod that adds the missing functionality:

Rogue: Reaction: Opportunity Attack: Sneak Attack

Which allows to sneak attack during reactions independent of the question if you have sneak attacked during your action or bonus action.

Why has nobody implemented this ? I checked all available rogue mods and nobody seems to have cared. I checked the bugfix mods and they dont offer this either. Is it actually impossible to fix base classes ?!?

To me this is the most bothersome error in BG3.

Nevermind, you apparently need a Nexus mod for that, not an ingame mod.

I don't mean to disrespect anyone who started on newer D&D rules, or who got them working for their group, but it's actually still mind-boggling to me that people have been playing D&D for a quarter of a century with WotC combat rules. The original AD&D (2e) rules were convoluted, confusing, often frustrating and showing signs of age, but they only needed a cleanup (do I have to roll high or low for this?), some fresh concepts (Saving Throws, damage flavours,...) and maybe a little less anti-player bias. But, WotC seems to have confused the often counter-intuitive AD&D rules themselves. Or maybe in some sense, D&D 3e continued only old D&D's straightforward simple but far less granular rules, while AD&D was discontinued. However, seeing how the rest of the rules were treated, I have severe doubts that this was by design.

The 2e-based combat rules I use at the table have combat phases (determined by initiative, number of attacks and speed factor of weapons/spells/actions), combat rounds (which combatant's turn it is - duh, but we're playing in German) and combat turns which renew after every combatant has used up their actions. This means the first one to act would use their first attack, then the next character would use their first attack, or maybe draw the attack to parry for higher AC, retreat or do whatever. Then you'd proceed to second attacks and so on. Dropping combat phases has led to this awful taking of turns with attacks (you hit me thrice, then I hit you thrice) that made everything post-Y2k unplayable for me. In 2e, thieves and (some of) their subclasses can use backstab on any surprised opponent. To use this ability, the thief must be behind the victim and the victim must be unaware that the thief intends to attack them. This usually boils down to one backstab per combat encounter, as you'd expect a comrade dropping to the ground with a knife in the back to be a bit of a giveaway, but this is a limit that can be pushed with magic, clever use of terrain or skill.

Thats something you could add back with homebrewn rules.

Anyway, the rule specified by Einstein about physics is "make it as easy as possible, but not any easier". This is also a good idea for rule design for games.

AD&D was definitely not designed with this rule in mind. AD&D was completely bloated with endless individual tables for all kinds of things.

And the central goal of game design is always that the players are enjoying the game. Not realism.

Likewise D&D is designed for P&P. Making the rules easier speeds up the whole game. So in that regard I can see how simplifying the rule about attacks may have been a good idea. Even if its less "realistic".

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D&D5 solved a lot of essential design problems of earlier versions. The proficiency bonus is an example. In previous editions of D&D, your level 20 fighter would end up with +20 to attack. Which means armor class was worthless, for you couldnt reach sufficient armor class anyway.

Knights of the Old Republic used d20, which was a simplified version of D&D3, and I have seen countless people make characters who focus on armor class and never understood why. I would forgo armor class and just put everything into offense and hitpoints, and I was much more efficient this way. For example a character like that can kill the final boss, who is like a half an hour on a defense focused character, within two minutes or less.

In D&D5 we get only a proficiency bonus of up to +6 from level 17 on, which is much less extreme. Armor class stays meaningful here.

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The real complaint for me about D&D5 is that D&D5 dropped the essential Delay Action. This allowed your character to delay acting until the character later in the initiative queue would act. This was absolutely essential, but yet was "optimized away".

For example on the Nautiloid, when I want to do the final battle, I often reload if I dont like the initiative queue. It makes a huge difference and without Delay, I cannot fix it. You need someone before Zhalk, or after the Mindflayer, otherwise you cannot push the Mindflayer so Zhalk has to move and you get Attacks of Opportunity.

As a consequence, in BG3 absolutely every character has to take Alert as their first feat, unless of course they are Gloomstalker Ranger or Barbarian, who get a weaker version of Alert on level 3 and 7, respectively. Only then all your characters end up at the top of the initiative queue, always, and can coordinate what they do.