Suffering from chronic restartitis I’ve just had an idea about a semi unique build I have not seen much discussion about anywhere. I’ve been wondering whether it would be viable or not.
As per title, the gist of the build is going full rogue- but instead of going full DEX we would keep it just high enough to gain +2 to AC and instead go full STR. The benefits of this would be:
- Longer jumps
- (literally) Reliable pushing thanks to profeciency in athletics and the lvl 11 reliable talent
- Sneak attack procs from throwing daggers, which combined with Tavern Brawler could do some serious damage - havent done the math though.
- More carry weight obviously
- could equip one of the
versatileedit: finesseable longswords and take advantage of GWM while still being able to proc sneak attacks
The cons would be lower AC and worse sneaking and pickpocket, though the Reliable talent again would solve those issues at lvl 11.
As for the subclass Thief would work best for extra bonus action I think. Though assassin would probably work too? The guaranteed crit throw sneak attack would obliterate an enemy before the combat even started.
Have anyone tried this?
Edit: as for race obviously Githyanki and maybe Shield dwarf would work best for free Medium armor prof.
Edit2: fixed mistakes
Isn’t there still a bug where throwed weapons disappear? That would hamper a throwing build quite a bit. Nice idea nonetheless.
No idea. You could just stock up on generic daggers and throw those. No big loss if some got lost.
There is a spear in Act 3 that returns to your inventory upon throw.
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Nice, didn’t know there was one in Act 1. Also didn’t know the difference.
But please, don’t use Fextralife wiki. It steals from other wikis and inflates the streamer numbers by embedding the Twitch stream on the sidebar.
Would not work for this build as spears are not finessable.
You could always have a hirling spec into Eldritch Knight, make a weapon their bound weapon, and then give it to your thrower.
Then you can just use your favorite dagger in Act 1.
Pretty much any build using Tavern Brawler and throwing stuff will be viable. And as long as sneak attack procs on thrown finesse weapons, you’d be good to go. A bit less damage than the standard barb build, but you’d have a ton of extra utility to make up for it.
The crux of this build would be finding the best medium armor that doesn’t impose disadvantage on stealth, or else mitigating that otherwise (taking Lightfoot Halfling as your race, for example). And collecting all the daggers.
The medium armor by Dammon on the ground would work for act 1 and for act 2 I’d use Yuan-ti scale armor from the quartermaster at Last Light. Act 3 I’d grab the armor of agility from the armor vendor near Sorcerous Sundries.
Have you considered spacing into Dex and just drinking Str pots? Later on you could grab the club of hill giant strength and dual wield that with your dagger for a set Str of 18 and whatever your dex is.
I’ve played a quite a bit of bg3 (and DM’d some DnD) and can offer some thought. Please excuse the wall of text. I wouldn’t go pure rogue, and get eldritch knight, for Weapon Bond. You will lose Reliable Talent, but pushing people isn’t as useful in the third act, where you’d get the feature anyway. Going 3 fighter 9 rogue gets you the weapon bond, weapon and armour proficiencies, and the 5d6 sneak attack bonus on finesse weapons. Your weapon progression won’t be limited to Returning Pike > Nyrulnea & Dwarven thrower plus the stuff you pick up from the ground and instead you’ll get a progression that looks more like Ritual Dagger > Phalar Aluve > Dancing Breeze. All finesse weapons you will be able to bond with. Take thief and you’ll pop out of the shadows with a throw, dash to reposition, and hide again. Great single target damage, and you’ll have plenty of skills to boot.
On the other hand, you could go EK 7 / Thief 3 / Abjuration 3. EK gets spells from the abjuration school natively, weapon bond, and an attack as a bonus action (I think the Throw action counts, but could be wrong), thief gets the extra bonus action, and abjuration wizard lets you learn new spells (up to level 2 spells) and a shield that increases each time you cast an abjuration spell. You’ll get the option to either throw the same weapons mentioned above, protect/heal someone or yourself, or do magic damage. Probably will be harder to manage, and each long rest you’ll want to keep an eye on trader inventories to see if there are any Abjuration spells on sale, but could be more interesting/less monotonous. Stat spread will also be a bit MAD, being Strength, followed by Intelligence and then Constitution. You can get the headband of intellect, however, which will give you a +3 to any Spell Save DC or modifiers.
As for assassin, it works great on characters that can nova. For example, an Oath of Vengeance Paladin with Assassin 3 can blow up single enemies really, really easily (plus, fits thematically, like an inquisitor or something). Give them a finesse weapon (for example, the Shadow Blade), stack some extra damage (with the ring that gives extra psychic damage while concentrating, which the Shadow Blade does), two level 2 Divine Smites, and one off-hand crossbow with the Ne’er Misser, guarantees you will be able to one-turn beefy enemies (especially with the Shadow Blade combo, psychic resistance isn’t common). On a throw build, I can see the appeal, but you’d need to have your rogue start fights, which means they’d be up-front, without much in the way of AC or HP. Thief allows you to stand back a bit. Assassin also falls short later in the game, as some enemies have the Alert feat, which means they cannot be surprised. That, coupled with the low dexterity, means they’d probably go ahead of your character in initiative. Plus, returning weapons (as in, weapons that have the Returning trait) are somewhat bugged. If you start a fight by surprising someone, weapons don’t always return. You could end up wasting the second turn by picking up that weapon and equipping it. I haven’t gotten my EK far enough to test whether Weapon Bond weapons also behave like this, however.
Thanks for such thoughtful respose. I agree that 3 levels of fighter would go a long way in increasing the builds power, but this means losing the utility of reliable + extra feat. Honestly, given how plentiful daggers are in the game I might just forgo the returning weapons and lob those at enemies.