Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Sneak Attack once again. :D And hopefully for the last time ...

So ...
The game is released, there are no secrets anymore.

And i have two questions for anyone who were complaining about Sneak Attack for last two years, if they are still even around:

1) Do you like final implementation?
2) Really? O_o

I for one feel urge to say that im very disapointed that Larian kept this mechanic (for lack of better therm) hidden from us for so long, and as it seems didnt took under concideration even single feedback we give them.
I was first step into right direction, sadly ... last one aswell. :-/

- We still cant Sneak Attack with our offhand ...
- Toggle seems to be working only sometimes ... the worse part on this is that im personably unable to find out under what circumstances the game feel like i cant Sneak Attack. :-/
- We have litteraly single Sneak Attack per round ... rather than per turn as it should be, so if we SA with AOO, we have nothing for rest of the turn. :-/
- There is still no way to add Sneak Attack damage to any special move, or amunition ... wich effectively ruins both. :-/

Do you like it? single choice
	I do, its perfect.
	I do not, its awfull.
	Kinda ... there is still room for improvements.
	Chicken! (Read as: Dont know, dont care, not having opinion still wanting to vote tho ... all those other irellvant bullshit things.)
Votes accepted starting: 14/08/23 01:28 PM
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Easiest way to take the teeth out of rogue is to deny them sneak attack, and multiple rogue subclasses offer additional ways of gaining sneak attack because it's how you do significant damage as a rogue. You don't get extra attacks, or smites, or high-powered damaging spells, you have your increasing sneak attack dice. DMs know this, rogue players know this, Larian seem to be the only ones who don't.

I don't use Astarion much, so I might be recalling incorrectly, but I'm pretty sure I've been able to sneak attack with my offhand. I have a memory of attempting (and failing) to hit & SA with my main hand, but then using my offhand attack and SA was automatically applied. Idk if this extends to special arrows since I didn't use them.

I'm much less confident in this, but I think I've also used sneak attack outside of my turn...maybe? A random reddit comment I found says that sneak attack refreshes at the end of your turn, so you *can* use it outside of your turn but then you can't SA during your next turn (which is dumb).

Your game might be bugged, what with your toggle not working correctly and not being able to sneak attack with your offhand?

You were?
Ok, i will test it futher on weekend.

I do ...
And im like 95% sure its impossible.

Certainly!
As i said, i used SA with my AOO ...

But Rogues now have only one charge per whole round ... while they should have one in their own turn, AND (and this is very important for Rogues) still be able to use another outside their turn. > With AOO.

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/quest...added-to-attacks-made-outside-their-turn

Well, this option is sadly omnipresent ...

But that is exactly the reason why i think that it was HUUUUUUUUUUGE misstake that Larian didnt give us this toggle option in last patch, so we can test it a bit. :-/
I dont really want to sound harsh, but it seems like they once again thought they know best ... and as it turned out, they didnt.

Yep, I can definitely sneak attack with my character's offhand weapon using the reaction system, both with ranged and melee weapons (my sorceror/rogue is using hand crossbows and shortswords, so most of her sneak attacks are with her off hand as she's mainly casting spells with her actions). Sneak attack also fires with special ammunition, and, eg piercing shot. And much as I'm willing to accept there are bugs here (there are enough elsewhere!) I personally haven't noticed any occasions when sneak attack should have fired and it hasn't.

I haven't really paid attention to sneak attack behaviour outside of her turn, though, and as she's mainly at range I'm not getting many AoOs with her, so I'm willing to accept that she's not sneak attacking on AoOs when she's already used her sneak earlier in the round. But as that wasn't even something I'd been considering, so far I'm content with sneak attack in the full release and there's nothing that's been bugging me. I'm sure it can be improved, as everything can, but I've voted option 1 as even it it turns out not to be perfect per RAW, I'm certainly perfectly happy to stay as it is. Not that I'd object to is being adjusted to RAW behaviour, either.

EDIT: By the way, and with apologies that this is tangential at best, I do have a problem with the way AoOs are implemented more generally with dual wielding. It seems as though if we have the toggle to attack with both weapons on, then they'll both be used in an AoO, whereas if we don't only the main hand weapon will be used. I don't know what's per RAW, but I certainly don't think that whether we have what I think should only be a QoL feature activated should make a difference.

I can't even play Rogues because of how they are handling stealth. It's too insulting for a Rogue that anyone in Plate Mail without any skill can sneak just as good as them by simply staying out of vision cones. Which can of course be exploited to hell and back by being in turn based mode and freezing enemies in time. Basically anyone can sneak past anything.

It should be vision and hearing RADIUS instead of some braindead cones, very narrow ones at that. You should not be able to sneak right behind someone for a melee attack in plate mail with a 100% success rate. It's really dumb but there it is, in full release.

Even invisible characters should make noise and make enemies look for them. Make that an easy DC 5 check only low Dex characters with Disadvantage and no skill are likely to fail. Make that armor Disadvantage and lack of skill proficiency MATTER.

Anyway onto Sneak Attack... I made a Rogue and it was really confusing because SA was both a Reaction and an Activated Ability now. Sometimes it happened automatically, but apparently not with off-hand attack? Off hand SA is 95% of the reason to dual wield in the first place because of how bad it is without SA. Also agree on the point that SA should of course work with special arrows.

The game needs to give mouseover feedback if an attack will be a sneak attack. Like Disadvantage is shown as red, make sneak attack black and add a stabby knife symbol next to the hit %. Why is it still so unfinished after all these years?

I think the Sneak Attack can only land once on your attack turn. So if you are dual wielding and it's a situation where it counts as a Sneak Attack - if both hits land only the main one will add sneak attack damage. But if the mainhand misses and the offhand hits it will add Sneak Attack damage. I highly recommend using it as a reaction as opposed to using the active sneak attack ability, and also setting it so you manually control the offhand swing instead of it auto occurring.

The UI makes it look like I have to use either Dread Ambusher or Sneak Attack on my Gloom Stalker/Assassin, but when I use Dread Ambusher, it also grays out Sneak Attack afterward and says "ability can only be used once per turn," so it must be applying anyway?

I would like SA to always apply, with a quick way to switch it off in case you're trying to finish off something with 1hp. Having to confirm a reaction prompt every time just because on some rare occasion you might not want it to happen is a bit much.

You can set it to automatic, dont ask.

I've mainly had sneak attack just set to auto-trigger (ie without asking) in the reaction system and haven't noticed any problems. I generally don't bother even turning it off for low HP enemies, as if the enemy is killed by the initial weapon damage then the sneak attack damage doesn't trigger, and is automatically saved for another potential attack in the same round. If I did want to turn it off, I could just click the (admittedly small) reaction icon up at the top right of the quick bar to open up the page that would let me adjust the settings. Which isn't superconvenient, but as I've not had to do it yet except when I've wanted to set sneak attack to "Ask" so I can test it properly, it's good enough for me.

Well, it may not be the best implementation I've seen, but both Reckless Attack and Sneak now being usable as a prompted reactions rather than pre-claimed actions is far better than it used to be.

Special arrows, I'm decidedly less happy about and I hardly ever use them.

Yes, using a surprise attack as a reaction is rather the right option. But you can also do this. Use a sneak attack either as a primary action or as a secondary one, preventing the player from using one of the two actions

I can't say I've encountered this problem, though I haven't had an opportunity to sneak attack as an AoO and manage to meet sneak attack requirements. When I take control of Astarion sneak attack only procs once as per 5e rules without needing to select it. I assume it's a toggle under passives?

Sneak attack is on the "Reactions" tab when you open the character sheet. (Like Divine Smite and some other things that aren't really reactions, it uses a variation on the same mechanic as reactions.)

I definitely have seen Sneak Attack trigger on AoOs, but I can believe that's only when my character hasn't already used their Sneak Attack that round.

I just did a sneak attack on my turn and then a sneak attack the very next creature's turn on an AoO.

Interesting to know! I still haven't seen that, but then my character is usually at range.

Odd instance where Astarian and another character both started combat in melee range of the enemy (the Gul monster hunter). Astarian did a melee sneak attack on him and then on his turn the Gul moved away, provoking AoO and I got the prompt to apply sneak attack agian.