Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Sneak attack and other martial abilities activation

As a start, I believe the systems as they currently are implemented work well for this already amazing game, but I would like to share some thoughts that could be beneficial for the end product and the future of the game, in terms of new content being added (sub-classes, feats, etc) and multi-classing possibilities.

Most of the post will be based around Sneak attack and his sinergy with other abilities and it's current differences with DND 5e ruleset.

Current Baldur's Gate 3 Sneak Attack:

-Two activable abilities for melee or range.
-Requires an action.
-Recharge once per turn
-Requires to be performed with a finesse or ranged weapon in your main hand.
-Requires you to have advantage, or another Enemy of the target is within 1.5 m of it and you don't have disadvantage.


Differences with 5e:

• The ability in 5e can be choosed to be used when you hit with an attack and you met said conditions once per turn. This is important because currently in BG3 the following scenarios don't apply:
- Use Sneak attack with off hand attacks (giving you more chances to apply it).
- Use sneak attack when hitting with attack of opportunity (even if you already applied it inside your turn, because it recharges per turn, not per round).
- Use it along with other abilities, like Battle Master manuevers (really important for multi-classing and also with Martial Adept feat), using it along with divine smite and possible future implementations (official or mod) like "Booming Blade" cantrip.
- Currently, while you can use it as ranged attack, this only applies for bows and crossbows but it left out throwing daggers, an staple of rogues. (Also you can't throw daggers with your offhand).
- For the game you homebrew some cool active abilities that you get depending on your weapon, but you can't use them along with sneak attack but it may be a balance thing so it's okay.


My Solution:

-A Toggable ability in your action bar, like the passives, but that it occupies the same space that the current Sneak Attack ability has.
When activated it has the circling animation, you know the drill.



-When hovering on the enemy to make the attack, you will have a tooltip below his healthbar that tells you if Sneak Attack applies, if not, it tells you why like: Requires Finesse weapon, Enemy not threatened and so on.



So, any time that you attack and the ability is activated it checks for the conditions, this allows you to get the sinergy with other abilities (maneuvers, smites, etc).
Let's say you thow something, if the object has "thrown" and "finesse" it can apply sneak attack (only daggers and darts do in DnD 5e).


This way, most people will have it always turned on. They hit, it applies sneak attack in their first attack of the turn, whether it's on their turn or out of it with for example: attack of opportunity or brace (battle master maneuver), and that's it. This shouldn't make the UI more cumbersome.
But, with this sistem, if you like to delve a little deeper, you would be able to make an attack first on a low health enemy to kill it and then move forward to do heavy damage to a second target. For this you just turn the abilty off, attack the first target, move forward, turn it on again and kill the second scumbag.


Final Thoughts:

Again, I think the game is coming along brilliantly and I will try to forget this is based on DnD 5e and play it as an amazing new Larian game.

As you can probably tell, this is mostly based on how the multiclassing sinergy will play out, in DnD, martial classes usually suffers when you compare them with spellcaster because it's better to be invisible than to hide, it's better to fly than to climb, it's better to charm someone or mind control him than to persuade him in a course of action, etc. but this is a videogame so this rules don't necessary apply. That being said, martial classes abilities are built toward sinergizing really well in combat, and they get a bit of an edge in those scenarios against spellcaster (specially in one-on-one combat).

I think that attending this features could open up a lot of fun builds that invites players to delve deeper into mechanics and add some replayability. I can't wait to put some rogue in everything.

Well written and thorough suggestion!

There is only one small room for improvement: Use reaction system instead.
It works exactly the same + offers additional control.

Yeah totally, with the reaction system it would work great too. My only doubts with it are if the "Ask" bit would be annoying to be notified and freezed (while some builds will give you many attacks, like thief with dual weild has 3, most of the time you will apply it in the first hit, so it's actually not a big deal) and also about semantics because Sneak Attack is not a Reaction, but that's just me being super pedantic.

It would be cool because with Reaction system you kinda make sure to always apply it properly without forgetting to turn on/off the ability though.

I'm kinda buying into it

There is nothing easier than simply uncheck Ask and have it on auto.
For example ...
IN GENERAL i see no reason to have "ask" turned "on" on off-hand attack, or AOO ... either you have allready used Sneak Attack > therefore it does nothing ... or you still have it > therefore you want to use it, bcs you most likely dont get another chance.

I know there are potential scenarios, where you want to use your off-hand attack first, and while save SA to another strike ... like when you have 1hp goblin close to you.

But they are quite rare in my opinion, and if such scenario appears more often, its also nothing easier to turn Ask back on.

Thats why i said system.
Smite is not a reaction either, and it works just fine.

Exactly ...
That ... and as we know from Paladin, there is nothing stoping you still having Sneak Attack as action button.

Thats what i like about this the most ...
You have action button ... you have popup message ... you have toggle ... and you use whatever suits your taste the best! :3

Now the only thing i wish, is for Battlemaster manouvers, Sneak Attack, and some spells ... is to get same treatment. :3

Dont remove anything Larian, just give us theese options, we will pick ourselves.

Exactly!

if only that was true heheh IF only...
But right now for some reason it's all over the place

Some on hit weapon attacks use action buttons liek sneak attack others have toggle like GWM and yet again things like Smite use reaction...


Again for the 1000 time cab't stress this enough!!! sneak and all weapon on hit attacks, spells and abilties should have :


Action button ... popup message ... toggle ... and you use whatever suits your taste the best!

You need to read whole post Lastman.
I was talking about how Smite is implemented.

So ... sneak attack =/= smite ... GWM =/= smite

But yeah ... in ideal world them both (and many, many many more) would work the same way.