Rogue

Explore the Rogue's strengths, weaknesses, and four unique subclasses: Assassin, Streetfighter, Trickster, and Debonaire. Learn strategies and tips for playing this stealthy class in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.

Rogues excel at subterfuge and deal high damage, but have lower durability. They use the Guile resource and have strong bonuses to Reflex, Accuracy, and Deflection, with lower Fortitude.

Base Rogue Stats:

• Resource: Guile
• Health: 42 + 12 / level (High)
• Accuracy: 20 + 3 / level
• Deflection: 20 + 3 / level (Medium)
• Fortitude: 15 + 3 / level (Low)
• Reflex: 30 + 3 / level (Very High)
• Will: 20 + 3 / level (Medium)
• Skill bonuses: +2 Bluff, +2 Mechanics, +2 Sleight of Hand, +2 Stealth, +2 Streetwise.

Rogue Subclasses

Assassin

• Attacking from Stealth or Invisibility grants +25 Accuracy, +4 Penetration, and +50% Crit damage.
• Takes +15% damage from all sources.

Streetfighter

• +50% Sneak Attack damage and -50% Recovery Time when Flanked or Bloodied.
• +100% Crit damage with weapons when both Flanked and Bloodied.
• +20% Recovery Time when neither Flanked nor Bloodied.

Trickster

• -10% Sneak Attack damage.
• Gains a Wizard spell at each Power Level (PL), castable as many times as Guile allows.

Trickster Spells:

PL	Ability	Cost
1	Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights	1
2	Mirrored Image	1
3	Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage	1
4	Llengrath's Displaced Image	2
5	Confusion	2
6	Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment	2
7	Gaze of the Adragan	2
8	Kalakoth's Freezing Rake	3
9	Wall of Many Colors	3

Debonaire

• Gains access to the Roguish Charm ability.
• 100% Hit to Crit against Charmed enemies.
• 15% incoming Hit to Graze when not affected by any Afflictions.
• Cannot Engage enemies.
• -10 Accuracy and -10 to all defenses if no allies are within 2.5m.

Playing a Rogue:

Rogues offer greatly enhanced weapon damage with rather low durability. If you want to play things a little less fast and loose, you can attack from range. However, since most Rogue abilities work with a Full Attack, you might prefer to dual-wield and manage the inherent risk.

The Rogue has several abilities that de-aggro enemies, starting with Escape at 1st level. With Smoke Veil at level 2, the Rogue gains the ability to become invisible for a short period. This not only breaks aggro but allows you to respond with maximum violence via the Backstab passive. Escape and its upgrades provide a massive but short-lived boost to Deflection. This can be extended if you have a friendly Priest able to cast Salvation of Time in a timely manner. However, the only way that Invisibility can be extended is through the Rogue's own resources since "untargetable" applies to friendly effects as well.

From 1st level and Crippling Strike, the Rogue can debuff enemies to set them up for Sneak Attacks. The Arterial Strike upgrade can be lethal when used from range - enemies moving to attack their tormentor bleed out quickly. Although it comes with a higher Guile cost, the Blinding Strike line inflicts more powerful debuffs and Gouging Strike is unusual since the damage over time has unlimited duration. The Withering Strike line ups the ante again and Toxic Strike is lethal against enemies not immune to Poison.

Later on, Sap provides a cost-efficient way of applying a couple of nasty effects. Do not take the upgrade, however, due to the friendly fire potential. Confusion spreading among your own ranks can quickly turn a winning situation into a losing one. If you use it as the start of an encounter, Gambit can be effectively free since you will have a 70% chance or thereabouts of turning a hit into a critical and recovering the Guile that using the ability cost you. You can game this with a Blunderbuss since each projectile can result in a crit.

The Rogue has some outstanding passives. Persistent Distraction means that you only need to Engage enemies to land Sneak Attacks. This gets weaponised further by the Deathblows passive.

The Assassin makes the risk-reward balance rather more pronounced. The massive damage when attacking from invisibility is good but +15% damage received is horrible. The choice starts to pay off when you unlock Smoke Veil. The Streetfighter also makes the risk-reward balance more pronounced but in a silly way. You are worse than the base Rogue unless you are outnumbered or taking a beating. You can game this by using the Blunderbuss modal to self-inflict Flanked but that is very micro-heavy. And silly. The Trickster, on the other hand, is full of win. The benefits (Mirrored Image addressing the squishiness problem, Repulsive Visage terrifying fools) are huge while the downside of slightly reduced Sneak bonus damage is minor. Tricksters have the same PL scaling as other Rogue archetypes so you will end up with +60% rather than +70% bonus damage which is neither here nor there. In comparison, the Debonaire is kinda rubbish with the potential to suck. Negating Persistent Distraction is not a good start and the kith-only Charm does not make up for the downsides.

Rogues are very multiclass-friendly. The obvious Fighter pairing plugs the principal downside of playing as a Rogue in the first place with a bunch of defensive passives. If the Rogue half is a Trickster, it's more like playing 2.5 classes. You will actually want to multiclass a Trickster regardless, since you'll want to spend Guile on the Trickster abilities rather than, say, Crippling Strike. Pairing a Rogue with a Cipher, especially a Beguiler, is also obvious, since the Rogue's many sources of bonus weapon damage means lots of Focus. Debonair can be good here as well. Normally, 100% Hit to Crit on Charmed kith is not great compared to simply allowing their former allies to kill them. However, a Cipher can Charm anything without buffing it and a guaranteed critical with Disintegrate will leave a mark. The only problem with a Cipher pairing is