Astarion's too squishy. How to make him die less?

[gungadin22000]

I gave Astarion the +2 AC ring when unarmoured ring and pumped his dex to 19 at level 7, but his AC is still a pitiful 16, meaning he bites more dust than throats in many of my fights. I run him as a dual wielder (cuz that's what rogues do!), but am sorely tempted to give him a shield.

Any hints on how to make a squishy rogue less squishy? Not interested in respeccing him.

[LordOfTheBread]

Use him as intended: a rogue in teh shadows.

[v.aurimas91]

Choose proficiency with medium or heavy armour then.

[Orion Invictus]

What ring are you talking about?

[talemore]

Use a paladin to enforce them to not target the Rogue.

Cross over to warlock so that he actually can do stealth.

Rogue gets cunning action allow to dash and attack and extra attack. They messed up their subclass from being intelligence to charisma, likely an intelligent player would find spells who don't use any checks to be more useful on a Rogue.

This is the thing about D&D 5th edition that it do help to read the 1st edition to understand that stats like charisma, wisdom and intelligence is not a min/max since it only provide bonus spells as long the player has 10-12 in these stats they will still gain spells. A class like Rogue is not going to waste spells to cast fireball.

You get shield from trickster. You get sleep and you get utilities for smart people. Mage hand can throw any bottle. Fire, grease, sleep. Pick your poison and drop it on the ground and the mage hand will stealth around throwing it. Who need cunning action just sit in a smoke cloud and throw bottles.

You know what if you really want to cheese it you could just leave the Rogue behind and come back when the battle has started.

[Sardorim]

Give him 2 Hand Crossbows, get Sharpshooter feat, and have Shadowheart use her spell that shares damage between them.

[FunkyMonkey]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

What ring are you talking about?

Probably the bracers.

For the OP, if you want to make your melee rogue die less, you might want to try the Arcane trickster, they get Shield spell, that might help you some. Then you can also grab some utility stuff on Astarion too, like Longstrider, Enhance leap and Featherfall.

[Moonbane]

Turned Astarion into a college of swords bard, survival is pretty solid.

[Dank Sidious]

Max out dex. Early on go with light armors and starting in act 2 you will get access to medium armors that don't have dexterity cap. Then your Astarion will be just as hard to hit as heavy armored shield users.

It's also pretty important how you use your character through positioning. You don't want to send characters with low AC to the front line, where it's easy for enemy fighters to just pummel them.

[Lil Grandpa]

Until you get a good sword or something for him, use him as a ranged character. Getting into people's faces as a rogue is generally something to avoid when you're lower level.

[Quacksalber]

He practically never dies for me if I leave him as rogue. Use the disengage, dash and sneak functions if you are struggling.

[nuther]

I always re-class Astarion to Paladin.

[Hyrind]

If you're going unarmored, you can have someone cast Mage Armor on him. That will take him from a 16AC to a decent 19. To be honest, that's slightly better than my endgame rogue. Your rogue isn't going to have amazing AC unless you really stack for it, that's for fighters and such. You have rogue mobility, use it to run circles around enemies, get out of there after you strike.

[Wutzlinger]

So if you dont want him to be a cool deathmetal bard
stick to
stealth - crit - disengage - stealth - crit!

[Kernest]

Maybe don't give him no armour if you don't want him to be low AC?

Those Bracers that give +2 AC are meant for Barbarians or Monks, not Rogues.

With a base 13 AC Light Armour and +4 dex modifier he should be 17 AC.

Or get him medium armour proficiency and stick him in some medium armour, those are perhaps the most plentiful and best in the game.

The Medium Armour proficiency feat even gives you 1 DEX, so you'd still get to 18 AC at level 4. And it also gives you shield proficiency!

This isn't an issue of Astarion being squishy, this is an issue of OP not knowing how to play the game.

[Dank Sidious]

Originally posted by Kernest:

Maybe don't give him no armour if you don't want him to be low AC?

This isn't an issue of Astarion being squishy, this is an issue of OP not knowing how to play the game.

Well OP was asking for tips instead of whining that the game is just unfair and bad like some people do when they are facing difficulties. I personally don't like to be too harsh on people asking genuinely for advice.