Exploiting the Thief subclass for fun and profit

[Tornado]

So I am thinking about the full release of the game when you can go level 10 and multiclass. The Rogue Thief two bonus actions per turn feature is incredibly powerful, like summons it allows you to break the action economy of the game. Rogue themselves though can not benefit much from it to pump damage, for single class Rogues it is more an enabler by providing tons of mobility

So I was theorycrafting some builds, but I wanted to avoid the obvious Fighter7/Thief3/Sharptshooter/CrossbowExpert (4x 1d6+10 damage attacks +2d6 sneak attack, average 54 damage per turn) and I arrived at the following build:

half-elf str 8, dex 16, con 15, int 8, wis 10, cha 16
Rogue Thief 3 / Divine Soul Sorcerer 7
feats: Resilient (+1 CON to total 16) if starting as rogue or Increased Stats if starting as Sorcerer. CON saving throw proficiency is really important

The idea is to abuse the Spiritual Weapon Cleric Spell (hence Divine Soul Sorc) which allows you to summon a ghost weapon and as a bonus action, attack for (X/2)d8+cha (X is the spell level). Spiritual Weapon doesn't require concentration so you can concentrate in another spell at the same time. Casting it is also a bonus action and you can attack with it immediately after casting, you get one level 4 slot per day so it can be doing 2d8+cha per bonus action

One disadvantage of this build is that the Spiritual Weapon can't deliver sneak attacks (it is a spell attack), so to take advantage of sneak attack you need to rely on either using a ranged weapon and single attack every time or use Booming Blade which will scale better after level 5

For our go-to concentration spell I am leaning towards Haste so we can single-attack(sneak-attack) + cantrip/spell + 2 spiritual weapon bonus attacks every turn. This makes a ranged build more viable, although a melee build could have two chances to deliver sneak attack damage (one melee attack + one booming blade). You can also do a single attack immediately after casting haste, so you can still sneak attack, but by RAW you can't cast two non-cantrip spells in a single turn, so you can't cast Spiritual Weapon in the same turn you cast Haste.

You can also just dual weild a dagger and hand-crossbow and choose which one to use based on the situation (dagger-attack+booming-blade when in melee for more damage, hand-crossbow+ranged-cantrip for when in range), this depends on the rules for spellcasting and somatic components though (or you could take the warcaster feat, although I don't think it is worth it)

For metamagic Twinned Spell and Heightned Spell are probably the way to go, Twinned Haste is very yummy. Quickned spell can be useful to try to Booming Blade to deliver the sneak attack if you fail your main action attacks though.

damage per turn (melee with rapier, haste, lvl4 spirit weapon):
single sneak attack:
1d8+dex(+2d6 from sneak attack)

booming blade (level >=5):
1d8+dex+1d8(+2d6 from sneak attack if you miss your other attack) (+2d8 if target moves)

Spiritual weapon (level 4 slot, once a day):
2d8+cha (x2)

total 7d8+2xDEX+2xCHA+2d6(+2d8 if target moves), -2d8 if Spiritual Weapon is casted with a lvl 2 slot. Avarage 50.5 damage (+9 if target moves)

Quickened booming blade to deliver sneak attack is definitely worth it if you miss your main-action attacks, but it is very expensive considering we don't have a lot of slots/sorcery-points to play around and every battle you are using at least 2 (haste/concentration-spell-buff and spiritual weapon).

The key about this build is the versatility, you are still a level 7 sorcerer and now you can both cast any normal spell AND deliver a sneak attack AND deliver 2x Spiritual Weapon attacks (or disengage/dash then x1 Spiritual Attack). Oh did I mention that this build can also cast any heal-spell with its main action and still do a bunch of damage? Also your spirit weapons can attack other targets than you so you don't have to be in melee to the really dangerous targets if you don't want to


Alternative builds are
Rogue Thief 5 / Divine Soul Sorcerer 5
For more rogue perks, +1d6 sneak attack damage, +1 feat, less spell slots. I would probably go for increased charisma or dex, this build doesn't really need feats

Rogue Thief 3 / Hexblade Warlock 1 / Divine Soul Sorcerer 5 (last level either warlock 2 for more lvl 1 pact slots and invocations or rogue 4 for one extra feat or sorcerer 6 for Empowered Healing and +1 lvl 3 slot and +1 sorc point)
half-elf str 8, dex 14, con 16, int 8, wis 12, cha 17
feats: elven accuracy (+1 CHA to round off to +18), either start as sorcerer or get rogue4 to get resilient CON
So we can weapon attack with CHA and dump dex, Spiritual weapon will be weaker though (no level 4 slots). Hexblade gives you Hex for concentration and Hexblade Curse which improves the damage per attack, medium armor and shields for survivability. This is probably a more powerful version of the build, you lose your single level 4 slot, but gain a ton of damage because of hex and hexblade curse. Although I would probably still use haste (instead of hex) for the harder fights (more survivability), hex can be useful to save on lvl3 spell slots and before we get haste at level 9. Hexblade Curse takes a bonus action to apply, but we got plenty of those and it is not a spell so it can be applied in the same turn we cast hex/haste/spiritual-weapon

damage per turn (with haste, hexblade curse and Spiritual Weapon): 5d8+4xCHA+2d6+16(+2d8 if target moves), crits on 19-20. +16 from hexblade curse at proficiency level +4 (4 attacks per turn). Avarage 61.5 (+9 if target moves)

damage per turn (with hex, hexblade curse and Spiritual Weapon): 4d8+3xCHA+5d6+12(+2d8 if target moves), crits on 19-20. +12 from hexblade curse at proficiency level +4, 5d6 is 2d6 sneak attack + 3d6 from hex (3 attacks per turn). You only have one chance to deliver sneak attack, but you could quicken booming blade for another if you miss. Avarage 59.5 (+9 if target moves) damage

With elven accuracy you can crit fish on advantage attacks, 3 chances to roll between 19-20 is like 20% chance to crit I believe. At 3/4 attacks per turn you will crit every other turn in one of your attacks (hopefully the sneak attack)

This build should give 15 (halfplate) + 2(dex) + 2(shield) + 2(haste) + 5(shield spell) = 26 AC, pretty good. Proficiency in CON/DEX/INT or CON/CHA saving throws (depending on start class and feats) and advantage on DEX saving throws from Haste. Lots of skills and expertise if you start as rogue

Rogue Thief 3 / Divine Soul Sorcerer 4 / Warlock Hexblade 3
Same as the previous one but you can make your pact weapon a ranged weapon so you can deliver sneak attack at range using CHA, but you lose access to booming blade, level 3 spell slots (haste), only one chance to deliver the sneak attack per turn, can not cast spells and deliver sneak attacks in the same turn. But can be a lot more trigger-happy due to your level 2 warlock slots. I don't think this is worth the tradeof, but it is a far more safe build as you will be at range

Rogue Thief 3 / Any Cleric 7
I prefer Sorcerer because metamagic is so useful and divine soul perks are nice, but going cleric gives you better WIS saves which are more useful than CHA saves. If Divine Soul and Hexblade are not available in the game (it is not on players handbook) this could work too, but not if mixed with hexblade due to MAD. This is a significantly weaker build though as you also lose access to booming blade and metamagic (any twinned concentration spell also breaks the action economy of the game). Divine Soul and Hexblade though are some of the most popular subclasses in 5e, people love them. The companion Wyll seems to be intended to be a hexblade so I think it just hasn't been implemented yet



What is your theorycrafting builds for the thief? Anything that is not in the game can be used as RAW (no unearthed arcana though). Personally I think this 2 bonus actions is completely overpowered, they should have made it like "Once per turn you can Dash, Jump, Disengage or Hide as a free action" instead so it can't be used for extra attacks

[Aldaris]

How come they've given a thief 2 bonus actions a turn?

[N/A]

Originally posted by Aldaris:

How come they've given a thief 2 bonus actions a turn?

When translating D&D5e Larian made changes to some mechanics. Being able to hide and disengage with a bonus action used to be rogue abilities, but they gave them to every class, so they gave thieves an extra bonus action to even it out
Disengage is a full action again as of patch 5 but we're still here, so

[Space Dog]

Larian messing with the action economy is clearly a huge mistake. Already at low levels it pushes the DPS of a Thief too high. At higher levels it will get worse when you can be sipping multiple powerful potions and such on the same turn or abuse the actions in other creative ways by multiclassing as described in the original post.

Another mistake (5e this time, not Larian) was mixing basic attacks and Bonus Actions with dual wieding. The off-hand attack shouldn't have to compete against BA's such as Cunning Action Disengage or drinking a potion in BG3. Dual wielding should of course give you more attacks but those should be balanced by an attack penalty rather than taking away other actions.

[Tornado]

Originally posted by Space Dog:

Larian messing with the action economy is clearly a huge mistake. Already at low levels it pushes the DPS of a Thief too high. At higher levels it will get worse when you can be sipping multiple powerful potions and such on the same turn or abuse the actions in other creative ways by multiclassing as described in the original post.

I disagree, the main problem was that Thief was already very weak in 5e and added to that its benefits as written wouldn't benefit in a video game too much. On a single class rogue the BG3 thief extra bonus action it is about equivalent to arcane trickster in power, as you grow in levels the less impact using the the bonus action to perform a off-hand attack has because sneak attack damage starts becoming more important. It basically increases your chance of delivering a sneak attack which is quite useful, but not game-breaking
It does cause lots of problems with multiclassing though (and maybe items?) because other classes have lots of ways to use bonus actions for damage

I think that giving the Thief something like: "Once per turn you can Dash, Jump, Disengage or Hide as a free action" instead of an extra bonus action would fix all issues really. You get to be extremely mobile and if dual-wielding you can still have two chances to deliver sneak attack

And to be fair the hexblade1/divine-soul5 combo that I have presented would have worked in pen&paper well as well (although not as broken as some simpler builds like divine smite sorcerer)