Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Rogues, not living up to expectations.

During my play through of Early Access in multiplayer I played a Rogue, arcane trickster to be exact.
And I must say the class was a bit of a disappointment to play. Part of it is due to bugs I think, other's seem to stem from design decisions.

Sneak Attack
Even though I was hidden, I had advantage on my attack, was shooting the enemy in the back, the enemy was threatened, and I hit... I still did normal damage.
This seems like a bug to me. But a very frustrating bug.

In 5e, you get 2d6 on your sneak attack at lvl 3. This doesn't seem to have been implemented? Which makes sneak attack even more lack luster.

Suggestion For Sneak Attack
Don't make it a skill I have to chose to use, make it a toggled ability similar to Great Weapon Master.
Further more, there should be a tool tip either at the cursor, or at the Chance to Hit box, that indicates if the attack will trigger sneak attack.

A rogue steals, but everyone stole from the rogue
Cunning actions are abilities that sets Rogues apart from other classes, and while I thing changing many actions into reactions made the game better all in all, it leaves the Rogue a little hanging.
I noticed a lot of work was put into making the Thief subclass fit the video game better, and I really like the changes, but I feel similar changes should be given to the Rogue in general.

Not an Expert?
Another thing that seems to be missing from BG3 is expertise? Rogues are known as "skill monkeys" for a reason, and the loss of expertise is another thing that makes the Rogue feel more shallow.


With a buggy Sneak Attack, and lack of uniqueness, I'm more inclined to play a Ranger than a Rogue. The Ranger get's so many more choices from the get go. Both classes has similar playstyles, especially early on.

Thief still seems reasonable to play, the additional bonus action is a superb ability for a dual wielding Rogue. I just wish the same care that was put into translating the Thief to BG3 was put into the Rogue as a whole.

PS: Still had lots of fun playing, just felt a little underwhelmed.

+1 there have been multiple reqiests about those, specialy the sneak toggle, I'm still not sure if those are things they chose tô change mostly or things they overlooked, but currently sneak attack 100% needs tô be a toggle, and rogue needs expertise

It would be great if Larian would just tell us what was left out by design and what is still in development. It would cut down threads like these, not that I do not agree with the OP.

Very true. Although, I would still post it if it was left out by design, and no replacement was given.
Having Cunning Actions reduced to "you can run as a bonus action" isn't very exciting to get on a level up.

To quote a friend of mine "Rogues bring a lot to a party, so they don't need to be the best damage dealers. But when you take away the things that makes a rogue exciting to play, you get a very boring character"

You forgot the biggest issue... EVERYONE has "Cunning Action: Hide" from the get-go.
I'm sure this is the DOS2 engine DNA showing through, but they really need to fix that.

I managed to solo the first three brain doggies without taking a point of damage on a Warlock simply by getting to just outside range and then doing a: move into range, snipe with EB, move out of range, hide (which I shouldn't have been allowed to do).
I was going to try a Rogue, but quickly realized (playing other characters) that there is really very, very little advantage to it, or, even any point (if the sneak attack damage is bugged as you say).

I think that's by design.

I like that changing weapons, and disengage, is bonus actions for everyone. It just speeds up the game.
Hide on the other hand is a very specific skill, that would be better off as a cunning action.


I think a Thief can be fun though. Thief gaining an extra bonus action actually makes up for cunning action being nerfed.

All in all though the Rogue translated from paper to videogame very poorly, and needs some tender love and care.

The sneak attack currently simply has to be selcted from your ablities on the right rather than being included into your normal attacks on the left of the tool bar, not to say that this is optimally solved but it actually makes sneak attack better as it allows you to ignore it's triggering conditions. Besides you get a free Two weapon fighting fighting style as Rogue which just means you get stuff from other classes as well (notice the absurd off hand dmg, yeah that's cuz your modifier gets into the dmg calculation which technically it wouldn't, without two weapon fighting) Not to mention Thief being able to use 2 bonus actions to stab people. To me Rogue felt very powerful. Thief atleast, Arcane trickster is weak in 5e too soooooo that's in line(also it's an issue with the limtied spells at the moment, no Shield in particular hurts Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster)

The issue isn't how Sneak Attack is used, it's that it doesn't actually proc at all.
And to rely on another bug(or feature?) of dual wielding to make up for the fact is silly. Besides I played a ranged rogue so none of that applied. (It also didn't help that the Mobile feat is bugged, so I couldn't get out of combat without getting hit also... all in all my first character got a really bad hand handed to her)

If I had known thief and dual wielding was OP I would have specked for that.

Have to say my AT on the tabletop has never felt weak. Here I dropped rogue and restarted after getting to level 2 and realising that all of my abilities were basically already accessible by every other member of the party without being considered "class features".

Once again, like I said in another thread, sneak attack cannot be a toggle. You have to think multi attacks. At higher level, your character will have more than one attack a round. You can only use sneak attack once a round. And so you will be happy if you can choose on which one of them you want to add the bonus.

And I am pretty sure this is why it's not a toggle in the first place.

+1 I'd a suspicion they'd be a good test as a class (I was also curious about how 5e plays vs the 13th Age I'm familiar with and figured Rogues would get plenty of skills to test out). As someone who doesn't play 5e in RL, they feel lackluster.

I don't think taking away from other classes is the solution though. Hopefully WoTC will allow some leeway in making them more interesting

Except, Rogues don't get multiple attacks. Sneak Attack is their "thing" instead of multiple attacks.
Some rogue subclasses gain the ability to make more attacks, but none of those are in the players handbook.
So the only place it would matter is for opportunity attacks.

Interestingly enough off hand attack is it's own skill, but happens automatically if you just right-button attacks an enemy.

Here's the thing though, Great Weapon Master is a toggled ability. It shows up where your Reactions are, where you can turn it on or off.

Yeah. Sneak shouldnt be a toggle. It should apply automatically each round.

IMHO, as a DM, It should default to the first attack of the round, but if that misses then the player should be able to add their sneak to their offhand attack.
At least thats hnow I run it in my campaigns.

As a side note: If you did a sneak in game and it was low dmg, was it just a bad roll?

When it comes to criticals, I max out the extra dmg dice(excluding sneak dice obvs) so crits actually mean something. There is nothing more frustrating for
a player when they finally manage to get a crit, roll an extra dice and get two 1s. But I warn players that it works both ways. Though sometimes I might fudge
this if the party looks like its about to die.

Personally I even like to let players double Sneak dice. It's along the lines of the spell crits that are in BG3 and my 5e campaigns as well. I see no point in making crits less awesome just let everyone have to full fun that is hitting a 20, eldritch blast crit go roll twice the dice, sneak attack crit, okay bois, go fish for all your d4 so we don't have to wait 5 minutes for him to finish rolling.

That might be how you houserule It, but as per rules It should be chosen by the player after the attack roll, so the thing that comes closer os a toggle as a popup every hit would be anoying, and If you like the automatic better... Leave the toggle on?
Really I don't get people advocating for automatic when all It does is limit things for those who want the Full feature as per PHB, and you can just leave the toggle on and get everything you want as well, you literally lose nothing, just take away from others

I agree a toggle is probably the best solution.
Just have a hard time thinking of when a rogue would sneak attack twice in a round, unless you are multi classing. So yeah toggle is the best solution in either case.
But I would still like to see in the "to hit" box or something if Sneak Attack would apply, because right now it's not always obvious (especially when it's bugged)

They can't. 5e specifically states that Sneak attack can only occur once per turn, that is per turn not per round. If the Rogue would react with advantage they could also apply Sneak attack, but thats the only way to use it twice in one round.

I don't think Sneak attack should be a toggle. A toggle is something you need to manage. There is no reason to add something which should be automatic into something you need to manage.

Additionally, if the Rogue is hidden at the start of their turn, and they can reach a target with their movement in that turn, they should get Sneak Attack even if their Stealth check fails along the way, which is the rules.



Agreed, bring this back. It's vital. It's Reliable Talent, not Expertise which is borderline broken.


I'll put in my own thoughts.

Give Rogues back their CLASS FEATURE of Thieves Tools proficiency
It's hard to tell what's going on with TT prof., but the tooltips suggest that it has been moved to Sleight of Hand. This is an unacceptable change, and I will explain why:
Rogues still get four skills to be proficient in, and they do not automatically get Sleight of Hand. This means that it's quite possible to build a Rogue with no proficiency in thieves tools, despite this being one of their most important CLASS FEATURES.

Giving them Sleight of Hand as an automatic proficiency isn't the answer, as a Rogue who DID intend on taking SoH now has an extra skill to take. This is not a complicated problem, and this is not a thing which needed to be changed. Make TT it's own separate thing which Rogues and certain Backgrounds get for free. This is what the rules say, and they work fine.


Rogues SUCK at jumping and falling
Jump distance is based on the Strength Modifier. Athletics is not considered, so Rogues have less reason to take proficiency in that skill. Acrobatics has no use in the game, as it does not help for jumping, nor do you make Acrobatics checks to reduce falling damage or avoid falling prone.

If you need someone to explore across decent-sized gaps, the only one who can do it is the guy in heavy armor. Better hope there's no need for Investigation or unlocking/disarming over there.

I think he meant qualify for sneak twice in a round, like multiclass im fighter 5 one attack you chose to not togle and the extra attack you do, rogue multiclass is something I play a lot with and that's something I very much intended to use.



Can you explain why you advocate tô take away a feature given to the players in the rules, to chose when to apply sneak and not do It automaticaly, because as a toggle you can just leave It on, but you are actively advocating for dumbing down of the rules só that it limits others experience? Even though the toggle gives exactly what you want too? Why??

It's like If I started complaining that attack of opportunity is a toggle, I hardly ever play with other uses of a reaction só I think It should be automatic and people should not have the option to have fun doing different builds with it.
Well they should, Just because I don't intendo to use a feature doesn't mean it shouldnt be there. And I can just never touch the toggle of the opportunity attack, and guess what, I get exactly the experience I want without hindering others

Oh well thats another matter though that can happen rather frequently. Lets assume a Rogue dual wields daggers, he does have advantage because the enemy is engaged in melee (assuming flanking is a thing), he qualifies on his attack action but misses, so he uses his bonus action to attack with his off-hand, which also qualifies for Sneak Attack.