Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Expertise, cunning actions, and sneak attack dmg

The latest patch is a step in the right direction with getting rid of cantrip surfaces, but these are core things missing from the game. The rogue class is currently almost entirely useless without them. The ranger class can do everything a rogue can do but the ranger does it better, with the exception of dual wielding better than a thief. A properly made ranger can start at level one with 9 skill proficiencies, 11 if you include the disguise kit and thieves tools, and rogues who are supposed to have the most skills cannot get that many. Expertise and cunning actions are part of what defines a rogue. Sneak attack doesn't even increase in damage as you level up like it is supposed to, so hunters mark is superior because it is more reliable. The rogues cunning actions have been given to every class in the game by just making them bonus actions for everyone. Expertise would not be difficult to implement, it just double proficiency bonus, and would make the rouge feel more useful and customizable as they should be. The only thing rogues have going for them currently is the addition of an extra bonus action to thieves, which makes them far better brawlers than they are supposed to be and will make multiclassing with rogue to level 3 mandatory for any dual wielding build.

Adding expertise and making sneak attack damage increase would go a long way towards making rogues viable even if Larian is dead set on giving every class access to cunning actions instead of giving them back to just rogues.

One big issue I see, is that they gave the thief a way to compensate for the undercutting of cunning action, but not the rogue class as a whole. I'm planning out a detailed post about cunning action and a proposal on how to improve it.

I hope your post reaches Larian, the undercutting of cunning action alone is a huge hit to the usefulness of the rogue. Fixing any one of these things would help greatly, it's just having all three problems combined makes the rogue almost pointless.

Thanks, I think I'm going to postpone working on it until some of the Patch 3 feedback slows down. If you want, I can DM you it when I think it's ready, if you want to put any input on it.

I think they are probably working on expertise, so I'm not too worried about them adding it. It wouldn't make much sense to take away Rogue's ability to be expert sneaks/ skillmonkeys.
As for sneak attack, I think I saw it mentioned that it does apply scaling, but instead of rolling 2d6, it rolls 1d6 and doubles it. Hopefully they can get that fixed soon so that its damage isn't so finicky. Add the ability to use it as an on/off toggle and then we'll be cooking with gas.

I sure do hope that they add many things that make it more close to the core ruleset.