The BEST ASSASSIN in Baldur's Gate 3 - Rogue / Astarion Build Guide

hello my friends hope you're all doing well and welcome back to another Baldur's Gate 3 build guide today I'm going to be taking you through the best assassin character in Baldur's Gate 3. an assassin character being one that intends to end fights before they even start by striking from stealths and doing overwhelming damage to the enemies killing them before they ever get a turn this is the actual build that I use for Astorian so I'm going to be using him as the example character but I think this is also an excellent build for a main character and in fact one of the best builds for soloing Baldur's Gate because you will end so many encounters before they even start from stealth without the enemies ever knowing you were there if you do want to use this for a main character I recommend choosing deep gnome drow or wood elf as your racial choices drow because you can cast Darkness on yourself and stay hidden deep gnome because you have a racial advantage on stealth checks and wood elf because the plus 5 movement speed is incredibly valuable for every character but let's take Astorian through this bill from levels one through level eight I think are very set so I'm going to be building it up to there and then after that it's kind of dealer's Choice as to how you want to finish off your last four levels now you might think that we will be starting with Rogue because that's the sort of natural point class for an assassin character but in fact for this build we're going to be starting somewhere else the class that you're going to start with at level one is the Ranger there's a reason for that which we'll talk about when we get to level three but for now bear with me so with the ranger we get access to a couple minor bonuses here in terms of favored enemy I recommend for this one either Ranger Knight which gives you heavy armor proficiency that seems a little counter-intuitive because we intend to be sneaking heavy armor gives you disadvantage on stealth checks but in this game actually having you don't make a lot of stealth checks you will typically stealth typically stealth is done just by avoiding enemy sight so it's actually not a huge penalty to have heavy armor and because we intend to have expertise in our stealth skill we'll probably make a lot of the stealth checks that we're asked to make anyways even in heavy armor so Ranger Knight is good if you want to start off with heavy armor proficiency though we will be getting that later but probably the best one is Bounty Hunter because disadvantage on the ensnaring strike save can be extremely valuable for making that happen an engineering strike is a very powerful skill under the natural Explorer option I think the best one you could go with Beast Tamer because familiars have a lot of uses but probably the best one is Wasteland Wanderer for fire just having fire resistance it's a very efficient way to stop yourself from taking damage and fires the most common damage type in this game and in Dungeons and Dragons in general for our stat point spread I recommend for Astorian that you go with me zero these all out yet the get him to 16 decks and 16 Constitution at least and then probably 14 wisdom just as your other uh skill this is just because wisdom is the most important saving throw and he won't be making intelligence or Charisma rules that often strength can be useful just for jump distance and carry weight if this is for a main character and you want to have some conversation skills you can move the points from strength over to Charisma and if you intend to use the way that you get to increase a stat by one relatively early in the game which I won't spoil for you in case you haven't played that far then you can pull these out and put that extra point into dexterity and then do something like this but for now let's assume that you've gone with this stat split because if you start with 17 dexterity and then get the plus one then you can get yourself to 18. for your skills the only ones that really matter are sleight of hand and stealth I recommend having perception but the rest don't matter I think it's probably best to put the last one into Athletics because sneaking up behind someone and pushing them into a pit is a good way also to end encounters before they even start but mostly you just need stealth and of course sleight of hand is very useful for any character that wants to be stealthing around and perception will stop you from running into traps for our second level we will be taking an additional level of Ranger and for our spells we'll of course take a snaring strike because uh engineering strike is very powerful an entangled enemy you have advantage against so when we have sneak attack damage starting at level four that will allow you to trigger your sneak attack very easily and of course it also keeps them in place which lets you shoot them from range again and Hunter's Mark is also probably very valuable just increases your overall damage sustained damage output in later rounds of a fight finally for our fighting style we'll be going with archery since of course this is an Archer build where we intend to kill people from a long distance at level 3 we get the reason why we're in Ranger and that is the gloomstalker Ranger so gloomstalker Ranger is extremely powerful for basically one reason and that's that this subclass feature you get a plus three bonus to initiative and on the first turn of combat you get 10 extra move speed and you can make an attack that deals an additional 1d8 damage I think this is actually a very badly written tool tip because what it doesn't say is that this attack is an extra attack made as a bonus action so where most characters have to wait until level five to get a second attack the gloomstalker ranger gets an extra attack starting at level three with additional damage so it makes your Nova potential really high you will typically get an attack from stealth to start the encounter and then you get your dread Ambush or attack giving you additional damage against an enemy our spell doesn't really matter so probably just take long Strider or enhance leap leap can be very good to get to locations you otherwise wouldn't reach foreign we're going to deviate and go into rogue rogue of course gives you sneak attack so an extra D6 of damage against any enemy that doesn't know what you're there or is threatened by an ally or that you have advantage against all relatively easy conditions to trigger and you get some expertise and you get expertise in sleight of hand which is extremely or in stealth which is extremely valuable since of course we're trying to hide Rogue level 2 brings some cunning actions but the cunning action hide is actually duplicated by a bloomstalker feet both give you a bonus action hide uh still extremely useful and cunning action Dash is very good for repositioning and disengage is a very useful safety tool so absolutely great to have finally at level 3 of Rogue we get an additional sneak attack die bringing our sneak attack up to 2d6 and we get the reason that we're in Rogue the Assassin Rogue the Assassin Rogue gets the initiative assassinate so you get advantage on attack rolls against any enemy that hasn't acted yet which is great because it lets you trigger a sneak attack against enemies that haven't acted yet but even more importantly you get Ambush any successful attack role against a surprised creature is a critical hit an automatic critical hit Critical Hits multiply any damage dice that you're rolling by two which means that your sneak attack dice are doubled your weapon damage die is doubled and your Gloom stalker bonus d8 is also doubled and you can guarantee this on every attack let's put this all together because level 6 is where this build really comes together so in a typical encounter you're going to have an opener shot that you make from stealth before the enemies know you're there that opener shot will be let's say you're using a heavy crossbow which you get access to as a ranger because you get martial weapons so that's a d10 plus 2d6 of sneak attack damage Plus your three dexterity for a total average damage of 15 and a half maximum damage of 25. then you get your Gloom stalker hit as a bonus action after a combat starts because the enemy will be surprised this is a going to be a critical hit and because the Assassins alacrity will have restored your action at the start of combat now whether this lets you uh trigger your sneak attack again I have found pretty inconsistent sometimes the game will give you the the sneak attack a second time sometimes it won't if it won't you want to save the sneak attack until after combat starts because that's when you'll get the guaranteed critical but for this math I'm going to assume that it lets you do both sneak attacks because it often will so your gloomstalker hit is going to be a d10 from your normal heavy crossbow with no enchantments a d8 from your loom stalker hit 2d6 from your sneak attack and all of that is doubled plus three from your dexterity for an average damage of 37 on that attack or a 63 maximum damage and then you get your normal bonus attack which is just a d10 but it's a critical because d10 plus three but it's critical because you get two attacks with guaranteed criticals thanks to being a gloomstalker for 14 average damage or 23 Max that means in your opening Nova round against an opponent you have an opening Nova of 71.5 average damage with a theoretical maximum damage in the first round of combat of 111. that's enough to kill pretty much anything except for even the toughest late game bosses in this game and that's already available to you at level 6 with this build this build of course is also totally fine before this combo comes online but at level 6 you start doing incredible damage but let's say that that's not enough for you and you want to increase your damage even more the best way to do that I think is to then put levels into a third class and that class is fighter fighter gives you an at level one doesn't do a ton for you although second wind is never bad to have and an extra armor from your fighting style is fine you also get access to Heavy Armor and shields in case you happen to want them um which Shields is actually really Shield proficiency is really useful for archers in this game because you still get your AC bonus when you have your ranged weapon equipped so you can just have a weapon and a shield equipped as your melee weapon and gain the shield bonus to AC so that's that's a huge reason to have Shield proficiency even on archers and but at level two you get action surge action surge allows you to take an extra action in your opening round of combat for another attack which is also a bonus critical um because you are gaining an extra attack because it's the enemy still has not acted yet and is still surprised when you action surge so this gives you a whole extra critical hit basically allowing you to increase the damage of your combo up to something like 130 um with an extra attack feature such as from a level five Ranger or level 5 fighter you can increase that even further by making additional attacks and the action surge will give you two more extra Critical Hits they won't trigger seek attack and they won't trigger the gloomstalker damage but you can create your opponent something like four or five times and the Damage calculations that I did are just with a default unenhanced completely unenchanted heavy crossbow which is very easy to find relatively early in the game but there are also weapons that give you extra dice of damage which are incredibly powerful for this build because each of those dice is doubled every time you get a critical hit another thing that you can do is have a paladin Ally cast radiant weapons on you for an additional D4 of damage which is then doubled um any flaming weapon or there's some crossbows to provide a D4 of psychic damage that will all be doubled as well incredibly powerful character I think also very fun because you get to play around with the site cones of enemies and one chop them from stealth before they ever know you're there a lot of the time if you can just keep making yourself checks you can just keep hitting them from from stealth before you even have to trigger your opening around Nova combo but when you do you will one shot pretty much everything all right my friends I hope that you have enjoyed this look at this character oh I guess I should actually mention one other thing I think probably the best way to level this character is just to go to 444 in each uh class because that will get you three feet and your three feets will be two ability score increases to bring your dexterity up to 20 and um the sharpshoot repeat which lets you reduce your chance to hit by five but increase your damage output by 10 that 10 damage won't be doubled by your Critical Hits but since you intend to attack four times in the four or five times in the opening round that's just an extra 50 damage and since all your attacks will be made at Advantage the to hit penalty is not particularly bad um here let me just pull that up I also think that the fighter that you want to be is a Battle Master fighter because then you can use Maneuvers to trip enemies to push enemies off of things I think probably you want um trip attack Precision attack and pushing or menacing strike menacing attack of course does an additional d8 damage which is also multiplied by your Critical Hits and so that becomes sorry Precision attack menacing attack and then either tripping or pushing or something along those lines because menacing does an additional d-8 of damage frightens the target trip attack does an additional d8 docks the prone frightened is extremely good because then the enemies won't be able to come towards you and you can keep hitting them with your ranged attacks at level four you get access to a feat [Music] and I think that most of the time you're just going to want to boost your dexterity but also really good for this build is Sharpshooter giving you an additional bonus 10 damage and since you will be attacking um something like five times in your opening round once you get access to extra attack that will be an additional 50 damage to your Nova at maximum level or by level 11. all right my friends I hope that you have enjoyed this look at my pick for the best assassin in Baldur's Gate 3 I think this build is super fun super strong will serve you very well great build for Astorian great build for the main character and as always if you've enjoyed this video definitely please leave a like and a comment that helps a ton with the algorithm and you can subscribe to my channel for more of this and other strategy game content cheers my friends and I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 167,324

Keywords: Etarran, Cephalopocalypse, Baldur's Gate 3, Larian, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Build, Guide, Strategy, Tactics, Tutorial

Id: mNUOrha6AiA

Length: 15min 37sec (937 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 29 2023