Sneaking is op because you can start a battle with a sneak attack from Astarion and then the combat tracker is just Astarion and the enemies that saw him, or maybe only the little pillar of light that shows up.

Once Astarion gets locked into the combat tracker you can still maneuver everyone else around the enemies sight lines and get a few more alpha strikes in outside of the combat tracker. My paladin – in full plate – can walk right up to an enemy that’s frozen in the combat tracker as long as he doesn’t walk into the sight cone.

I beat dror, m, and gut in the goblin camp all without any of them taking any turns because I was able to alpha strike them into the dirt by just starting combat with the whole party sneaking, and then walking them right up outside of the combat tracker.

Is there a party that can really exploit this? Ranger, wolf barb, shadowharts +10 party sneak, and an assassin rogue? Just alpha strike everything.

  • pyrflie@lemm.eeEnglish
    26·
    9 months ago

    So the current stealth mechanics are definitely powerful, and if you wanted to you could solo the game with a Gloomstalker 5/Assassin 7 (though Thief 7 would still be better most of the time) extremely easily.

    I never really bothered with it after Act 1 though. The game gives abilities, items, and consumables that break the action economy and increase damage beyond what could be considered reasonable for the levels at play. These items/abilities are also much less tedious to use than all of the setup work that goes into positioning the party for the type of ambush situations you describe.

    That means it mostly comes down to how you want to play it. You want to be a sneaky boy, great you can and the game even rewards you for that type of playstyle. I don’t really think it’s broken though, unless you happen to be of the opinion that the whole combat system is broken, since it seems to follow the game’s design philosophy of giving tools, a sandbox, and seeing what we make of it.

    For a full stealth party I would run a Gloomstalker 5/Thief 7 Sharpshooter, Battlemaster 11/Rogue 1 TavernBrawler/Drunken Equipment, Draconic Sorcerer 11/Wizard or Cleric 1 Magic Missile caster, Tigerheart 8/Thief 4 DexGWM Cleave.