Assassin | Baldurs Gate 3 Wiki

There is a special multiclass combination where assassin fits in perfectly:

-Warlock: the great old one + one with shadows
-Ranger: gloomstalker + two weapon fighting style
-Rogue: assassin
-2 hand-crossbows

The method: you bonus-attack only with your offhand-attack-hand-crossbow while standing on an obscured (semi or heavily) location. After the attack you cast "one with shadows" as a normal action. Enemies now will search for you and when they do not find you, the fight ends. Then you attack again with your offhand-hand-crossbow and then the fight starts again: at that moment, everyone is surprised, your actions are fully restored and you have an additional attack from the gloomstalker. Your next attack will always be a critical hit because everyone is surprised - and after that "mortal reminder" kicks in and frightens the target and everyone around it. Then you cast „one with shadows“ again and the cycle starts again.

Even better: once you have the illithid fly-power, you can fly while "one with shadows“ is active, so enemies will never find you but the combat sill ends.

This way, you can kill nearly everyone with a solo-character on tactician, even Raphael, although it takes some time - but it makes a lot of fun.

And in case there are no obscured locations, you still can create one with the darkness-spell from warlock combined with devil´s sight.

Submit

Ok as someone who played as Assassin for 50 hours, it wasn't worth it for me. I recently switched to thief because it has a bonus action which contributes more in majority of battles where you can't take out all enemies in like 3 turns. The ambush is very dope but I didn't encounter many enemies I had a chance to use it on so it went to waste in my hands. Even tho I'm doing an evil playthrough, I want to talk to people before attacking

Submit

It’s fun qnd bad in same time…
A great class with ****ed up skills… the bad thing you must ti skip the dialogies if you want its skills!
Very bad you can make supraise effect only before combat and even can’t if you are in dialogie! Litereally there is the attack buttom but still mothing… the class is useless if you want dialogies too…

Even would be the best if once per combat you can make supraise effects if you attack them in hide…

Submit

Made a demiorc assassin for fun, 2H phalar aluve at LVL 4 the dude did 80 dmg. Heavy hitter works on a 2h dex weapon, the surprise attack is a critical and gives another free heacy attack. Then battle starts and another 2 attacks. Cant wait to put a martial class to get 4 or 6 attacks after the 2 of the initial ambush or even 8 or 10 with haste and fighter free turn.

Submit

If someone hasn't gone lock2/assassin10, you really need to for fun. 200 damage with eldritch, hex and sneak is really satisfying with the right gear.

Submit

The subclass is great if you like murdering groups of things, because that means slowly thinning the herd by luring away outliers and killing them in one round. Rinse, repeat.
Boss fights and forced encounters are a different story, but there's literally "everyone else" for that sort of thing. It would be nice if Assassins actually had something else over to contribute if you're actually forced to use one during a boss fight though, like some sort of poison-based feat which would be in line with its 5E implementation.

Submit

It's a fun subclass but don't forget that most bosses (like 80% of them) in this game can't be surprised and/or will start the fight after a dialogue.
So it's really really good to ambush randoms ennemies but pretty useless versus bosses.

Submit

So I'm trying to figure out all the assassin hate here. It's obviously a multiclass intended subclass (as imo almost every subclass in bg3) so let's say you take the obvious and go gloom stalker.

Even with a gloomstalker 6 assassin 6 build you probably will sneak attack an encounter to surprise, with eventually taking the alert feat you are pretty much guaranteed 1st place on initiative so you get 2 full rounds of attacking before anyone else with one having crit on every attack. So let's say you take a haste potion on your first round instead of off hand attack you get a free crit sneak attack followed by 5 other crits of which one is also a sneak attack and one is an extra d8. Some goes for the second round only that you now have 6 attacks because of the off hand attack you used on the haste potion last round. So all in all you get 12 attacks with 3 sneak attacks and 2 GS extra attacks of which 6 are Auto crits before anyone else even moved an inch (don't forget every attack is also on advantage etc.) I know thief gets an extra attack or extra utility but that is the point of the multiclasses. Thief is for utility, assassin is for round 1 burst. That's why it's called an assassin. It picks the biggest thougest guy and takes him out before he can react

Submit

This is not a dps focused subclass whoever made this article this is clearly burst damage. it would only be dps if the combat went one round.
Thief is literally more dps then this dps means damage per second by the way, thief gets an extra bonus therefore somewhat more utility unless you somehow manage to surprise a boss as a leveled war fighter clerc but then thief would still get like 4 main hand attacks

Submit

If you don’t take the Alert feat, at least try to stick up on Elixirs of Vigilance.

Most of the features don’t work unless you go first in initiative, yet Assassins have no bonus to initiative rolls.
Gloomstalkers do despite not even needing it, though <_<

Submit

Elixir of Bloodlust is HUGE on an Assassin, and very easy to make.

Get the jump on some enemies, critical sneak attack one to kill them, get your action back, do the same to a second target, then hide.

Submit

I would say that this is better than Arcane Trickster, but not Thief in general, but it can still be very situationally powerful. With both assassin and thief, you want to multiclass into this after getting extra attack, typically from a fighter or ranger. Thief is far better overall, typically focusing on dual wielding weapons. Assassin is slightly better until the opponent attacks, then the bonuses drop off. However, due to how the bg3 system works, compared to tabletop where a human gamemaster wouldn't let you manipulate the AI of npcs, sometimes you can stay at range and just pick off foes before alerting anyone.

Submit

I think you're all just bad, 12 Assassin felt perfectly fine on tactician mode. Consider taking bonus action's balls out of your mouth for a second.

Submit

I think you guys are just playing this class wrong, what you need to do is get sharpshooter mastery and gloves of archery. Then have a fighter/barb get into everyone's face. Now you are doing over 30 damage per turn at level 4. Rouges late game in normal dnd fall off really hard as well but early game they are so freaking fun for both formats.

Submit

Assassin is good for speed runs?

Submit

if assassin could proc backstab twice as a class feature it would be great instead we got disguise self which is a free cast if you get the digital deluxe edition

Submit

Once you're past lvl 5, Assassin is pretty lackluster. I feel even Thief with the double bonus action hand crossbow brings more to the table than the Assassin.

Submit

is there any reason to pick this instead of gloomstlaker?its seems better in every aspect except outside combat

Submit

Personally, I'd like Assassin more if there were fewer forced dialogues that magically detect hidden characters.

Of course, there's always the option to Charisma out of dialogue safely and then murderize people, but if I wanted to Charisma my way through everything I'd play a Bard not an Assassin...

Otherwise, it's a decent subclass. The alpha strikes you can get with a double turn of guaranteed crits + sneaks can blow away annoying targets.

Submit

Assassin might be bad in DND 5e but in BG3 it's is the best Rogue. Guaranteed crit on starting opponent, then you get another full turn, then you also get advantage on any surprised opponents.

It out-damages fighter until 5 where martials get multi-attack.

You also need a dex character for all the sleight of hand traps, doors, chests and pickpocketing.

Submit

Assassin is purely for multiclassing because on it's on it is rather boring. Rogue as a whole is lackluster. Wish they would have gave it the Monk treatment and homebrewed it aswell. The direct translation of a skill monkey from tabletop 5e does not translate to well in video game form. You can get of one maybe 2 good hits on an enemy and the rest of the time you are basically a less effective fighter or running trying to get back into stealth. Gloomstalker and Shadowmonk are the better "rogues" heck I'd argue even bard bring more to a fight.

Submit

The guaranteed crit from Assassian multiclassed with Warlock Great Old One subclass that has an AOE frighten on a crit is a crazy strong way to start combat. If you get the drop on an opponent to surprise them you not just Crit, Sneak attack, but you also debuff them and anyone around them.
Combine with about a 10%/turn to get a crit (assuming you're maximizing advantage for sneak attacks) means an entire battle could be cleaned up by getting a second critical.

Warlock has some nice ways to assist with guaranteeing sneak attack as well. Such as invisibility, or Darkness+Devil Sight for a multi-turn way to guarantee advantage while giving opponents disadvantage.

Submit

This multiclasses very well with Gloomstalker or Way of Shadow

Submit