BEST Baldur’s Gate 3 Rogue Subclasses Ranked
This Best Baldur’s Gate 3 Rogue Subclasses guide will teach players which of the three Rogue subclasses are considered to be the best and why.
If you’re playing Baldur’s Gate 3, it’s likely you’ll end up using a Rogue in your party at some point. Each of the classes in the game have subclasses, and the Baldur’s Gate 3 Rogue Subclasses are no different.
The three Baldur’s Gate 3 Rogue subclasses are: Arcane Trickster, Thief and Assassin.
So which of the three Baldur’s Gate 3 Rogue subclasses is considered the best, and which is the worst? And why? After three playthroughs and over 100 hours in Baldur’s Gate 3, I can give you my opinion.
Without further ado, here are the Best Baldur’s Gate 3 Rogue Subclasses Ranked.
1. Thief – Best Baldur’s Gate 3 Rogue Subclasses
Thief is the best of the Thief subclasses hands down. The main reason for this is because Thief gets the Fast Hands ability, which gives you an extra bonus action. An extra bonus action is not just good for Rogues, it’s also good and borderline broken on a ton of different classes.
An extra bonus action means an extra offhand attack for Fighters and Rangers. It means a second Flurry of Blows for Monks. Even Sorcerers can use it to cast two quickened spells.
Nine times out of ten, if you’re multiclassing into Rogue, you’re doing it specifically to get the Thief’s Fast Hands ability/
2. Assassin – Best Baldur’s Gate 3 Rogue Subclass
Assassin is strong and if it wasn’t overshadowed by the Thief, it would be a popular choice and a more popular multiclass option.
Assassins are great at starting fights. They’re good as a pure Rogue build that takes advantage of having a huge backstab multiplier. They’re also a popular multiclass option for Gloom Stalker, because the Assassin playstyle synergizes well with Gloom Stalker’s opening attack and its bonuses to initiative and stealth.
With Assassin, you have advantage (which means higher hit rate and backstab damage) on enemies that haven’t taken a turn yet. If you start a fight from stealth and surprise the enemies, you have guaranteed critical hits on the first round. Finally, if you start a fight from stealth, the Assassin gets all its actions back, making whatever you opened the fight with a free action.
This is all really good stuff. Thief is more popular because the bonus damage adds so much consistent extra damage to so many builds, but Assassin and Gloom Stalker Assassin are powerful units in their own right.
3. Arcane Trickster – Best Baldur’s Gate 3 Rogue Subclasses
Arcane Tricksters are thematically fun, and they do get an interesting subclass feature that improves Mage Hand by making it invisible, which allows you to easily steal items and pickpocket in the overworld. However, they’re probably the least popular option when it comes to the best Baldur’s Gate 3 Rogue subclasses by a significant margin.
Arcane Trickster’s gimmick is that it gets level 1 and 2 mage spells, and mostly you take the utility ones like Feather Fall, Mirror Image and Blur. In practice, it’s not too much different than a Rogue multiclassed into Wizard for one or two levels, and you give up Thief’s bonus action and all the Assassin damage buffs to cast a handful of utility spells.
It’s not a bad option, it’s not unfun, but it’s hard to deny it’s less effective than what Assassin and, especially, Thief bring to the table.
That about covers it when it comes to the Best Baldur’s Gate 3 Rogue Subclasses. Be sure to check the Baldur’s Gate 3 section for more content like this and check out the main page for a full list of RPGs we’ve covered on our site.
Ryan Night is a lifelong RPG fan and a professional writer. His favorite games include Final Fantasy 7, Xenogears and Metal Gear Solid. He’s been writing RPG guides since the early 2000s and has been a veteran of the games industry for over two decades. His new sci-fi novel, Draconis, is coming out soon. He also has a YouTube channel, where he talks about RPGs and movies.
