My assassin rogue build is super strong when it should be useless

Baldur’s Gate 3 offers tons of different playstyles. MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus is currently playing a rogue build that shouldn’t actually work as well as it does. The secret lies in the composition of the groups.

This is the build: With my assassin villain, I rely purely on critical hits and opponent control. I use two one-handed swords, a lot of deception and tons of poisons. And yes…I know how ironic it is that I’m not playing the best class in the game, which I constantly rave about myself.

My approach is actually quite simple: kill what cannot defend itself. And when a real fight is inevitable, I have my bodyguards beat up people who refuse to die immediately.

In itself, my build is a mixture of “stealth gameplay” and brute force. Finesse while it works and brutal slaughter as plan B.

Why shouldn’t it work? Villains are found in the B tier of Baldur’s Gate 3’s tier list, and Assassins are one of the weaker tiers here as well. The problem with assassins stems from their role in Dungeons & Dragons:

Still, in Baldur’s Gate 3 I managed to polish the build to the point where I can pick and choose almost any fight. Only “scripted”, i.e. unavoidable fights still cause me problems.

Here are tips for all classes directly from the developers:

Assassin Rogue: The most important attributes

The most important values ​​are skill and charisma. Dexterity increases damage with finesse weapons and improves stealth skill. Charisma helps you avoid fights when you don’t want to fight them.

The +2 bonus on creation should be set to Dexterity accordingly. The +1 bonus goes to Charisma or Constitution depending on your level of trust in the dice. The ideal race for the build are Drow because of their proficiency with hand crossbows and enhanced darkvision.

Assassin Rogue: Key Talents

The advantage of the assassin is that you only have to pay a little attention when leveling. You get most of the talents automatically and don’t have to choose them. You already get the most important talent at level 3: Assassination.

Attacking a surprised creature is an automatic critical hit. You also have an advantage against creatures who haven’t had their turn yet. This is important for using sneak attacks, the special rogue ability.

As an assassin, you also regenerate your action and bonus action at the beginning of a fight. This means: if you stab first and thus open the fight, you have 2 full attacks with both weapons free, one of which is guaranteed to critically hit.

How to level correctly:

Strategy: How the build works

Use your Charisma to intimidate, deceive or persuade NPCs – depending on whether you are good or evil. This way you can better choose which fight you want to fight and which you don’t. Tip: Your skill helps enormously when robbing merchants.

Once you have decided on a fight, you separate the villain from the group and let him sneak in order to take any target out of the fight right at the start of the fight. Invisibility is hugely helpful here. Then you pull the rest of the group into battle – also insidiously or openly.

After the opening comes the point that actually makes the build so strong: poisons. Initially, you’ll mostly want to use drow poison, later Karabasan’s poison, or anything else that disables enemies.

I would also advise building up the parasite powers. With these you can later critically hit more often, strengthen attacks or even remove attributes.

The best companions for the villain

The idea is that you cause opponents to become defenseless. This allows the rest of the party (or yourself) to auto-crit melee. Therefore, the ideal companions for the build are:

Your party can easily slaughter a defenseless opponent. The high armor class of all members ensures that they can withstand a lot themselves and paladins and clerics can support them with healing and other spells.

Big advantage: the short rest helps you enormously with regeneration:

More benefits and tips

Another advantage is that a short rest is enough for you to regenerate almost your entire combat strength. You don’t have an annoying magician who suddenly can’t do anything anymore. But that is also the biggest weak point: without resistances you are at the mercy of many strong spells. Try to kill casters as directly as possible in turn 1.

Incidentally, the ideal origin for the build is “Dark Desire”, which is actually not very suitable, especially for beginners. But later you will unlock some options here that will turn your villain into a real fighting machine in battle. And for some, the Dark Urge is actually the reason to love the game:

I started Baldur’s Gate 3 twice and was disappointed: I didn’t like it until I did what many warn against