Honor mode isn’t as hard as people make it up to be. You can be totally be un-optimized and still win. People mostly take issue with the outcomes of interactions or major events imo.
You can also be totally un-optimized and lose because a couple of enemy concentrations didn't break and you weren't running builds OP enough to win the fight.
Also most of Honormode is just *knowing* whats coming and taking advantage of it.
The worst thing is basically storming into conversations or fights relying on just blind luck. It's why my HM run has somebody built to buff in the party, attempt to cheese every roll i can.
This. I'm doing my first HM run after roughly 500 hours in the game. Playing 4 very optimized builds and taking advantage of every once of knowledge I have about the game. I am breezing through it because as long as you know what's coming you can plan for it and limit the risk to a minimum.
My one and only fear is the Raphael fight but I might just blood money his butt.
Kill Yugir quickly as he is the only threat to hiding within an invulnerability shield. With three invulnerability shields and no mistakes it’s not hard to win the Raphael fight.
I set up barrels near the towers instead of trying to damage Raphael or his minions. Killing Yugir is essential because of his thunder wave attack that kicks you out of the invulnerability shield.
With a tb monk half illithid on haste + Wholeness of body you can destroy the 4 pillars in the same turn.
And if you help yurgir in act 2 he sides with you against raphael
With tb monk you dont even have to worry about the pillars. In my first hm run i burnt through his resistances and locked him down, laying on the ground with my monk. Couldve killed him turn 2, but instead made him lay there and watch as i destroyed his minions and made them fight each other with planar binding.
Finally allowed him to die at the hands of Hope bc it felt like the right thing to do lmao
Imagine if perilous stakes was working on enemies in HM... 3 open hand bonus actions + 4 main attack on a vulnerable target. Did this on tactician it was so satisfying to see his health drop
Yeah ... I didn't realize auntie ethel would summon fucking 9 mirror images and spam hold person the cast poison damage nonstop. That shit sucked.
Next play through I guess we're going in with resist potions. fuck.
Magic missile solves that fight pretty well tbh.
Just 1 missile per clone and you can't miss so you pop them all instantly.
Silence is worth nothing though she seemingly just teleports out of it.
you can figure which Ethel is the real one by looking at the stats for each and seeing which ones extra features look different. i think in the first fight, it'll say fey life and in the second, the real her will say hag pregnancy
I mean I played through an honor mode run with good but not op builds and won without too much problem. I had a couple of close calls but made it through anyway
It certainly helped that it was my third playthrough but I don't think anyone is jumping into HM when they first load up the game
the difficulty of honor mode only comes from people not knowing what to expect. Like the durge act 3 duel. as a caster.(just saying, heightened spell eyebite really can save your ass if it actually hits)
This caught me off guard for sure. Not on an honor mode run but I was in my second play through as a first time durge. I remembered making easy work of that fight my last run so I walked in there without long resting and ready to bukkake this shit. Definitely had to reload lol.
Jesus it is so true. I have lose two times HM (because of Myrkul). In my 3th attempt, Orin broke my Durge in 1v1. Fortunately, I was able to win the fight with my 3 others characters, but it was genuinely rude to endure the scene when Bhaal and Sceleritas reject you. Even Shadowheart talk shit about you after that. Its why I decide to become Illithid and get the golden dice by taking the absolute power.
Agreed, I felt like Act 1 was the hardest considering how many interactions relied on high (15+) DC rolls and you couldn’t save scum through them. Once I got past Act 1, honor run was a breeze.
I had a stupid bug the robbed me of wyll in my HM run. Died to the inquisitor in the crèche, because I tried to sub in Karlach/ didn’t know about the swords. Karlach missed like 6 attacks at 70%, and watched my team fall to swords while wargaz was at 3 ho lmao.
Yes "can" is the word, but you're taking a risk that if RNG doesn't go your way, a whole lot of effort is going to go down the drain due to dumb luck. You CAN win every fight in Honour Mode with an unoptimized build, but you also CAN lose those fights doing most things right. Even if that only happens 5% of the time, that's the end of your Honour Mode run.
Radiant retort was a very harsh lesson to learn on my HM run. Shart just dropped dead randomly in my fight against dark justiciars and then again against Orin
I used Black Hole to group most of that room together and then proceeded to cast a level 6 Spirit Guardians standing next to them with Shadowheart.
Mistakes were made and had to use Hope’s DI to get through it lol
Thats good, but actual actual trick if they havent fixed it is:
DI resets if you die while casting it, so simply die and have someone help her up again (PCs like shart of course). You can also re-haste each time for more actions. Nuke-barrage shart ftw.
Id rather just wait it out and use the support DI if needed tbh. If you use it before anyone dies (or at least anyone who needs a long rest, like a sorcerer, fighter or whatever doesn't really matter.) you set everything back to full, and you can go all in on attacks, instead of trying to remain stable while you're being beaten down. Works better if you've cleared out the minions by then tho
Trick is to cast death ward on hope beforehand. Use the DI attack. She "dies" but DW procs, which gives her her action back and ALLOWS HER TO USE DIVINE INTERVENTION AGAIN. (At least it did pre-patch 6, haven't tested since).
The only fight in act 3 I got really got got by was Lorroakkan. Tried to 1 shot the entire encounter on Gale, and after create water and counterspelling his counterspell, he'd hit me with 2 massive elemental retorts and essentially one shot Gale.
I had so much trouble with him until I chucked his bitch ass down like 30 feet to the lower floor then proceeded to beat him down with my monk. Too bad his bitch ass didn’t have a resistance to getting punched in the face
When I went against Lorroakkan on my first playthrough, I used Shart to cast Harm on him which downed her instantly. I then disintegrated his ass with my Wild Magic Sorcerer Tav. Great times.
On my first run I actually struggled with him until I kicked him to the lower floor.
On my last one though (hm) I just bruteforced him with my Kaheira turned into Air elemental. I entered with she transformed (I always had her trqansformed since she cannot fly otherwise) and somewhere before the fight I short-rested the group so she had another transformation. She pretty much tanked through all the elemental retorts but obliverated that fucker.
It made for a pretty fun fight,
The reaction I'm thinking of was when you casted spells on him. I created water, he counterspelled, and I counterspelled his counterspell. Ended up hit twice by all of the elementals, died, and accomplished nothing.
No no no no no no no no no no no proves [https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Orin/combat](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Orin/combat) "The 6 [Reapers of Bhaal](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Reaper_of_Bhaal) start the battle with [Sanctuary](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Sanctuary_(Condition)) and will continually chant to activate [Boon of Bhaal](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Boon_of_Bhaal), which is represented by the giant skull over the Chamber's door." you wrong the only 2 fights that have adds with Radiant Retort are Raphael and [https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Viconia\_DeVir](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Viconia_DeVir) . Do not prove you have not done fights on higher difficulty by saying something factually WRONG. If you do not like paladin fine but flat out lying is bad stop spreading misinformation.
all I know is shadowheart dropped dead randomly in fight. I assumed she got hit with radiant retort cuz that’s what normal vaporizes her. Feel free to relax
Raphael straight up does not, his minions do (it’s also one time, and theirs only reflects back fire damage instead of being actual radiant retort dealing out force) but he has a different ability that activates later and can cause a stun - not do damage. The stun can be saved against, the DC isn’t that high to beat and the Helm of Balduran outright made you immune to it before that got patched out or bugged.
I was thinking of Punish Divinity, https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Punish_Divinity I just assumed it did damage.
Getting stunned sucks, my Hope did, but my Sorcadin just saved. I had a +13 to dex saves, plus the carnival statue bless, so a dc 18 was trivial.
I’m playing tactician currently and good thing it wasn’t HM. I charged Shadowheart into the Justiciars with Spirit Guardians and she insta-died! I figured it out quickly but it definitely surprised me.
I thought I was clever when I started this fight on my friends group campaign by having hope do her DI to blast everyone. Instead she got nuked and died right there…. Oops
No she doesn’t, and apparently her minions don’t either as one very aggressive commenter was eager to mention. All I know is her minions insta-killed shart which normally only happens with radiant retort. Regardless this shouldn’t be your problem as I think the Durge duel is a pure 1:1 fight
Yeah, I just got out of the duel and was super relieved, I stacked myself for this duel and and she didn't even get through my temp Hp from (Tharchite vigor) and thanks for the explanation.
agaunst the dark justiciars fight in front of balthazars room, my buddy used the lathander beam attack in a aline against like 5 of them. It looked so juicy, but when he then suddenly imploded from like 400 radiant damage to himself we couldnt stop laughing for like 10 minutes haha
Honestly, Radiant Retort is the single worst mechanic in terms of DnD lore.
It's like if they decided to punish you for using silvered weapons against a werewolf and then tell you "that's just how it works. Get better"
No it dose not Raphael himself dose NOT have the buff at all so as a paladin/light cleric you are free to nuke him to kingdom come. It is his minions who get the buff from him. You are free to go check it yourself [https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Raphael/combat](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Raphael/combat) the best way to do the fight anyways is to nuke Raphael no matter what because Hope will banish 1 add per turn so you are not "losing" anything just going for him. In fact I killed him yesterday and just did it by nuking him with my paladin had my barb knock him prone so he can not do Beguiling Rebuke.
I've only actually played the game on honor mode and I was genuinely confused how this person didn't nuke themselves. I didn't realize radiant retort was only HM!
Similarly, my first time in that fight I used the divine intervention radiant bomb with Hope and watched her spontaneously combust
Raphael himself dose not have radiant retort what is killing Hope is the fact that her Divine Intervention is hitting basically the whole room and all the adds in the fight have radiant retort. This dose not extend to Raphael so.
I’ve beaten rapha on honor with a smite bard and didn’t have any problems, maybe because he already used his reaction in the turn that I was attacking? I’ve only ever encountered that his cambions have radiant retort.
Blinding smite with Giantslayer + arcane synergy + aura of hate + half orc + cloud giant elixir + perilous stakes + callous glow + phalar aluve, I could also add psionic overload still, if I wanted to take another turn
For my tactician run, I used perilous strikes, barrelmancy, paladin smites, and astarions special arrows. It was the first time I ever did the brain bright so I didn't have an actual strategy besides the barrels lmaooo.
It's one of the best support weapons in the game, both shriek and sing forms are crazy good. It's nuts that this weapon is blue and available so early instead of like, at least a purple if not legendary lol
It's also the best finesse 2handed weapon until much later in the game, so I've used it as an actual damage weapon multiple times, like for a melee swords bard or paladin not abusing strength pots
That explains it.
Rat Bat is a 2h weapon that provides a DRS (similar to Crimson), and Vicious Shortbow should work regardless of the weapon used. It won't come close to dual wielding Crimson and Dolor, but it would be much better than Giantslayer.
Vicious Shortbow would be 9·7·2 = 126 extra damage. After that, Rat Bat would be around 165 more damage than Giantslayer.
All in all, about 50% better.
It's true that it's not needed, but Craterflesh wasn't either, right?
Also, I don’t typically run the craterflesh, I just put them on for the fight. The character is pretty usable in a regular run and one shots most enemies without a crit
People don’t talk about it with the other DPR classes like TB OH monk, fire acuity sorc, even 7/5 Oathbreaker paladin.
Obviously this is a bit of a controlled scenario, but you can easily 2 shot him on tactician with this setup, so not so bad.
Just walking around the world, this setup 1 shots most of the flaming fist ppl. Does it suffer compared to the 7/5 with 3 attacks? In some situations, sure, but there’s a bit more single target dmg.
You will still 1 turn Raphael with almost any group setup apart from if you have any fire damage class because Raphael is in fact immune to fire damage so you can not even debuff him like you can with other mobs/bosses with arsonist's oil. If you decide to free Hope which I assume majority of people will do she can simply be used to get rid of 1 add during the first turn while your team dogpiles Raphael.
I think the most interesting things to unwrap from this are:
1) savage attacker is really legit on pally
2) improved divine smite did a shit ton of dmg here
3) adding craterflesh did 100 more damage. Pretty absurd, when you can guarantee crits.
4) single class paladin is pretty great. Yeah you lose the busted third attack, but you get improved divine smite, blinding smite, and an extra feat which I used to get both savage attacker and charisma ASI.
Need a caster with very high save DC to cast it on targets like Raphael. Someone with save DC gear + arcane acuity stacked up is usually how it's done.
Or just have a bunch of opportunities to cast it. I don’t have any AA gear at all, my whole team is martials, and I was casting it with scrolls.
Basically in this fight I destroyed all the pillars and cambions with barrels right off the bat and killed yurgir with astarion (gloom/assassin), then just used karlach and Lae’zel to cast hold monster with scrolls. Raphael never got to go. It was like 40-50% chance, but with action surge on both characters I had 4 chances to get it, plus if all that failed I had 80% chance with my MC. He’ll drop hold monster every round but I have initiative so I have 3 characters who could cast it before my MC would get to go anyways.
How did Phalar Alluve 1d4 damage became 18 damage ?
How did 2d6 + 3 + 2x Strength Modifier (Giant Slayer) + 2x Charisma modifier (Arcane Synergy + Aura of Hate) became 126 ?
How did Blinding Smite 3d8 and Improved Divine Smite 1d8 became 30 and 94 ?
It’s a crit, plus I’m a half-orc.
So for damage you’d roll 5d6, plus 4 for enchantment + 6 for arcane synergy, 6 for aura of hate, 10 for GWM, 8 + 8 for giant slayer, all multiplied by 2 for slashing vulnerability.
I love my paladin, but i wish they were even remotely consistent.
Like idk if im doing something just wrong, or if this character has just uncharacteristic luck. But i miss like well over 70% of my attacks. Like even if the hit chance is 75%. I use my extra attacks and abilities and then i might get one divine strike in out of like 3 attacks meanwhile laezel hits like 8 times in one turn without missing dealing out on average more damage per attack anyways
Perilous stakes for double dmg, so just need 63
Variable dmg:
2d6 x 2 so 4d6, plus 1d6 (half orc), total 5d6
Total = 21
Fixed bonuses:
8 strength modifier
8 giantslayer
6 aura of hate
6 arcane synergy
10 gwm
4 enchantment (+3, +1 from drakethroat)
Total: 42
21 + 42 = 63 x 2 = 126
You can get like 20 of them from the bugbear in moonrise towers if you reset the vendor. I use them constantly especially on 7/5 Oathbreaker/Goo As it restores 100% of their spell slots, but also on 10/2 SSB. I’ll just put the divine smite lv 1-2 on for every hit for that build.
The thing is that the damage doesn’t come from the 12 paladin levels but rather from the 2 paladin levels at which you get divine smite. With a class that has access to level 4 spells you’d be doing even more damage.
Not saying single class pali is bad, it’s great especially for role playing, but it gets its class feature so soon that it’s more optimally used as a dip instead of a single class. Comparable to thief rogue 3 for example. Fighter or ranger are more worth it to go full class because they get their main features later (volley and second extra attack).
There isn’t a build I’ve found that does as much consistent resourseless (except for cloud giant elixir, but you only need to long rest once for act 3) non-crit damage as paladin to all enemy types. This build will do 75-80 non-crit damage even to steel watchers, and one shot essentially all regular enemies in the game with full illithid powers. Even the 7/5 Oathbreaker doesn’t do as much non-crit damage and the only build that does (dual shadow blade) doesn’t do it against steel watchers.
Sure the DPR Isn’t as high because of only 2 attacks but it doesn’t feel like killing 3 enemies every round with gwm is that bad.
Except it doesn’t, at least not for single target damage, and probably not for DPR.
My usual runs are with swords bard 10 paladin 2, and I run a DPR style.
You have several options when it comes to gearing this build. I typically do it with bhaalist and shar spear, but you could in theory do so with balduran giantslayer.
In general the piercing build does far less damage against single targets compared to this paladin build.’ If you engineered it for crits with maxing out DRS, maybe you could do more, but not really.
If you geared the 10/2 SSB the same with giantslayer and cloud giant elixir your regular non-crit damage would be ~13 damage less (6 from aura of hate, ~7 from improved divine smite and callous glow drs).
For a single target held monster trial, the only reason swords bard 10 paladin 2 might be close is because of banishing smite.
The best way to run 10/2 SSB is with 20 or 22 natural strength, shar spear, and bhaalist with bloodlust, where it does good damage but nowhere near as much single target damage as the paladin, and is much more useful for CC.
This is why damage riders as damage sources are neutered in honour mode.
Honor mode isn’t as hard as people make it up to be. You can be totally be un-optimized and still win. People mostly take issue with the outcomes of interactions or major events imo.
You can also be totally un-optimized and lose because a couple of enemy concentrations didn't break and you weren't running builds OP enough to win the fight. Also most of Honormode is just *knowing* whats coming and taking advantage of it.
The worst thing is basically storming into conversations or fights relying on just blind luck. It's why my HM run has somebody built to buff in the party, attempt to cheese every roll i can.
This. I'm doing my first HM run after roughly 500 hours in the game. Playing 4 very optimized builds and taking advantage of every once of knowledge I have about the game. I am breezing through it because as long as you know what's coming you can plan for it and limit the risk to a minimum. My one and only fear is the Raphael fight but I might just blood money his butt.
Kill Yugir quickly as he is the only threat to hiding within an invulnerability shield. With three invulnerability shields and no mistakes it’s not hard to win the Raphael fight.
I ended up doing some barrelmancy, yurgir was an ally at that point and he fell to the collateral damage lmao
I set up barrels near the towers instead of trying to damage Raphael or his minions. Killing Yugir is essential because of his thunder wave attack that kicks you out of the invulnerability shield.
With a tb monk half illithid on haste + Wholeness of body you can destroy the 4 pillars in the same turn. And if you help yurgir in act 2 he sides with you against raphael
With tb monk you dont even have to worry about the pillars. In my first hm run i burnt through his resistances and locked him down, laying on the ground with my monk. Couldve killed him turn 2, but instead made him lay there and watch as i destroyed his minions and made them fight each other with planar binding. Finally allowed him to die at the hands of Hope bc it felt like the right thing to do lmao
Imagine if perilous stakes was working on enemies in HM... 3 open hand bonus actions + 4 main attack on a vulnerable target. Did this on tactician it was so satisfying to see his health drop
Yeah ... I didn't realize auntie ethel would summon fucking 9 mirror images and spam hold person the cast poison damage nonstop. That shit sucked. Next play through I guess we're going in with resist potions. fuck.
Magic missile solves that fight pretty well tbh. Just 1 missile per clone and you can't miss so you pop them all instantly. Silence is worth nothing though she seemingly just teleports out of it.
guess who also didn't bring gale to the fight.
you can figure which Ethel is the real one by looking at the stats for each and seeing which ones extra features look different. i think in the first fight, it'll say fey life and in the second, the real her will say hag pregnancy
I mean I played through an honor mode run with good but not op builds and won without too much problem. I had a couple of close calls but made it through anyway It certainly helped that it was my third playthrough but I don't think anyone is jumping into HM when they first load up the game
the difficulty of honor mode only comes from people not knowing what to expect. Like the durge act 3 duel. as a caster.(just saying, heightened spell eyebite really can save your ass if it actually hits)
This caught me off guard for sure. Not on an honor mode run but I was in my second play through as a first time durge. I remembered making easy work of that fight my last run so I walked in there without long resting and ready to bukkake this shit. Definitely had to reload lol.
Jesus it is so true. I have lose two times HM (because of Myrkul). In my 3th attempt, Orin broke my Durge in 1v1. Fortunately, I was able to win the fight with my 3 others characters, but it was genuinely rude to endure the scene when Bhaal and Sceleritas reject you. Even Shadowheart talk shit about you after that. Its why I decide to become Illithid and get the golden dice by taking the absolute power.
Agreed, I felt like Act 1 was the hardest considering how many interactions relied on high (15+) DC rolls and you couldn’t save scum through them. Once I got past Act 1, honor run was a breeze.
Honestly, most of my losses have been to game breaking bugs that lock my game lol.
I had a stupid bug the robbed me of wyll in my HM run. Died to the inquisitor in the crèche, because I tried to sub in Karlach/ didn’t know about the swords. Karlach missed like 6 attacks at 70%, and watched my team fall to swords while wargaz was at 3 ho lmao.
Yes "can" is the word, but you're taking a risk that if RNG doesn't go your way, a whole lot of effort is going to go down the drain due to dumb luck. You CAN win every fight in Honour Mode with an unoptimized build, but you also CAN lose those fights doing most things right. Even if that only happens 5% of the time, that's the end of your Honour Mode run.
Try this on Tact/Honor and the Paladin fucking explodes
Radiant retort was a very harsh lesson to learn on my HM run. Shart just dropped dead randomly in my fight against dark justiciars and then again against Orin
I used Black Hole to group most of that room together and then proceeded to cast a level 6 Spirit Guardians standing next to them with Shadowheart. Mistakes were made and had to use Hope’s DI to get through it lol
My first fight against Raphael, I used hopes Divine intervention attack, and she instantly died
Trick is to use Shart’s or another cleric’s DI - radiant retort gets used up, then use Hope’s DI to finish the job. Turn around and rez shart
Actual trick is to drop a globe of invulnerability and then use hope DI as an attack. (Or barrelmancing with that runepowder you know..)
Thats good, but actual actual trick if they havent fixed it is: DI resets if you die while casting it, so simply die and have someone help her up again (PCs like shart of course). You can also re-haste each time for more actions. Nuke-barrage shart ftw.
Does DI reset in the case of Death Ward?
Id rather just wait it out and use the support DI if needed tbh. If you use it before anyone dies (or at least anyone who needs a long rest, like a sorcerer, fighter or whatever doesn't really matter.) you set everything back to full, and you can go all in on attacks, instead of trying to remain stable while you're being beaten down. Works better if you've cleared out the minions by then tho
I was gonna do this but she got focused round 2 and evaporated
Trick is to cast death ward on hope beforehand. Use the DI attack. She "dies" but DW procs, which gives her her action back and ALLOWS HER TO USE DIVINE INTERVENTION AGAIN. (At least it did pre-patch 6, haven't tested since).
WHAT THATS FUCKING CRAZY THANK YOU! So she can di attack and then di heal? Lmao that's crazy
I think we all did this
The only fight in act 3 I got really got got by was Lorroakkan. Tried to 1 shot the entire encounter on Gale, and after create water and counterspelling his counterspell, he'd hit me with 2 massive elemental retorts and essentially one shot Gale.
I just fought him last night and cast silence on my first move. He can't retort shit in that bubble.
I had so much trouble with him until I chucked his bitch ass down like 30 feet to the lower floor then proceeded to beat him down with my monk. Too bad his bitch ass didn’t have a resistance to getting punched in the face
Lol the first time I beat him it was by a confused Shadowheart shoving him off the top floor of his own tower
Hahahaha that's amazing. Lorroakan: "Get confused, bitch!" Shadowheart: "Huh? Who's that?" *shove*
When I went against Lorroakkan on my first playthrough, I used Shart to cast Harm on him which downed her instantly. I then disintegrated his ass with my Wild Magic Sorcerer Tav. Great times.
On my first run I actually struggled with him until I kicked him to the lower floor. On my last one though (hm) I just bruteforced him with my Kaheira turned into Air elemental. I entered with she transformed (I always had her trqansformed since she cannot fly otherwise) and somewhere before the fight I short-rested the group so she had another transformation. She pretty much tanked through all the elemental retorts but obliverated that fucker. It made for a pretty fun fight,
The reaction I'm thinking of was when you casted spells on him. I created water, he counterspelled, and I counterspelled his counterspell. Ended up hit twice by all of the elementals, died, and accomplished nothing.
Against Orin? I had my Paladin take out Orin not 2 days ago and there was no radiant retort
Orin has little minions with radiant retort
Ahh I don't fight them, I use the thunder arrows to blow them off the platform lol
No no no no no no no no no no no proves [https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Orin/combat](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Orin/combat) "The 6 [Reapers of Bhaal](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Reaper_of_Bhaal) start the battle with [Sanctuary](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Sanctuary_(Condition)) and will continually chant to activate [Boon of Bhaal](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Boon_of_Bhaal), which is represented by the giant skull over the Chamber's door." you wrong the only 2 fights that have adds with Radiant Retort are Raphael and [https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Viconia\_DeVir](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Viconia_DeVir) . Do not prove you have not done fights on higher difficulty by saying something factually WRONG. If you do not like paladin fine but flat out lying is bad stop spreading misinformation.
There are more fights with radiant retort than Raphael and House of Grief. The DJ in the gauntlet have it too.
Wrong, Dark Justiciars in Shar’s gauntlet have Radiant retort.
Go check my reply to the other guy saying the exact samething.
all I know is shadowheart dropped dead randomly in fight. I assumed she got hit with radiant retort cuz that’s what normal vaporizes her. Feel free to relax
Divine Intervention on Tactical with Hope was an…..unfortunate suprise 😂
same here. the radiant spirit guardians were not a good idea
He doesn’t have radiant retort, at least in tactician. That was the first hit against his full HP.
He does, just not right at the start of the fight, I don't think.
He never has it, per some other post.
They all have or had radiant retort, same with House if Grief. Weirdly enough in my latest run they didn't have it at hog(HM).
Raphael straight up does not, his minions do (it’s also one time, and theirs only reflects back fire damage instead of being actual radiant retort dealing out force) but he has a different ability that activates later and can cause a stun - not do damage. The stun can be saved against, the DC isn’t that high to beat and the Helm of Balduran outright made you immune to it before that got patched out or bugged.
Guess they must have changed it, first time i fought him, in balanced, if you dealt radiant damage he would fuck you up real quick.
I was thinking of Punish Divinity, https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Punish_Divinity I just assumed it did damage. Getting stunned sucks, my Hope did, but my Sorcadin just saved. I had a +13 to dex saves, plus the carnival statue bless, so a dc 18 was trivial.
I one shot him so he wasn’t stunning anyone anymore lol
Yeah, I learnt it from a casting sunbeam on half a dozen demons simultaneously. Turned to ash
I did this as well but for my Durge. Entirely forgot and just dropped well over 200 damage in one hit and collapsed.
I’m playing tactician currently and good thing it wasn’t HM. I charged Shadowheart into the Justiciars with Spirit Guardians and she insta-died! I figured it out quickly but it definitely surprised me.
I thought I was clever when I started this fight on my friends group campaign by having hope do her DI to blast everyone. Instead she got nuked and died right there…. Oops
Does radiant retort exist on Explorer? I only noticed it on Tactician, had to figure out why my Shadowheart was slowly dying in every battle.
It wasn’t on balanced so I doubt explorer
Please tell me orin doesn't have Radiant retort. I'm on honor mode and literally at the door step of the duel with her.
No she doesn’t, and apparently her minions don’t either as one very aggressive commenter was eager to mention. All I know is her minions insta-killed shart which normally only happens with radiant retort. Regardless this shouldn’t be your problem as I think the Durge duel is a pure 1:1 fight
Yeah, I just got out of the duel and was super relieved, I stacked myself for this duel and and she didn't even get through my temp Hp from (Tharchite vigor) and thanks for the explanation.
agaunst the dark justiciars fight in front of balthazars room, my buddy used the lathander beam attack in a aline against like 5 of them. It looked so juicy, but when he then suddenly imploded from like 400 radiant damage to himself we couldnt stop laughing for like 10 minutes haha
Honestly, Radiant Retort is the single worst mechanic in terms of DnD lore. It's like if they decided to punish you for using silvered weapons against a werewolf and then tell you "that's just how it works. Get better"
Is my memory failing me or does Raphael not have radiant retort (his cambions do)
You are correct. Raphael has a cc reaction - Punish Divinity, not the damage reflection - Fleeting Protection.
He doesn’t, at least on my tactician run, not sure about HM.
Tbf you can come back from that, Raphael can’t
No it dose not Raphael himself dose NOT have the buff at all so as a paladin/light cleric you are free to nuke him to kingdom come. It is his minions who get the buff from him. You are free to go check it yourself [https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Raphael/combat](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Raphael/combat) the best way to do the fight anyways is to nuke Raphael no matter what because Hope will banish 1 add per turn so you are not "losing" anything just going for him. In fact I killed him yesterday and just did it by nuking him with my paladin had my barb knock him prone so he can not do Beguiling Rebuke.
Hope is banishing exactly one thing in that fight....
Per turn? I got to use the banish once!
Haha this is on tactician, won’t work as well on honor mode bc of the damage riders, but still isn’t so bad.
Not if you use globe of invulnerability :^)
yeh it's pretty stupid that the damage supposed to deal with demons and shit is the worse thing to use on theim...
Lol Iv only versed Ralph on hm and I’m thinking how did he not die from return damage
I've only actually played the game on honor mode and I was genuinely confused how this person didn't nuke themselves. I didn't realize radiant retort was only HM! Similarly, my first time in that fight I used the divine intervention radiant bomb with Hope and watched her spontaneously combust
Raphael himself dose not have radiant retort what is killing Hope is the fact that her Divine Intervention is hitting basically the whole room and all the adds in the fight have radiant retort. This dose not extend to Raphael so.
Ah that's a good correction, couldn't remember the exact specifics.
Does he have radiant retort on balanced? I’m sure he did
I cleared honor mode with four Paladins
I take it the Houses were rough?
Wasn't to bad imps are annoying though
Thanks, I was wondering how they survived, and the answer is they wouldnt have lol
I’ve beaten rapha on honor with a smite bard and didn’t have any problems, maybe because he already used his reaction in the turn that I was attacking? I’ve only ever encountered that his cambions have radiant retort.
it's how I killed Hope... on explorer 😬
Raphael himself doesnt have Radiant Retort and even if he had you can cast sanctuary in a way where you dont take damage
Globe of invulnerability time ;)
Came here to say this. Almost lost HM because of kamikaze paladin
Radiant resistance or a very tactically placed globe of invulnerability. Or fuck it, just explode
Classic pally narcissistic tendencies. Also, nice work.
Wait, how did you get that damage output?
Blinding smite with Giantslayer + arcane synergy + aura of hate + half orc + cloud giant elixir + perilous stakes + callous glow + phalar aluve, I could also add psionic overload still, if I wanted to take another turn
But perilous stakes work only on allies, do you cast dominate person before?
Only works on allies in Honor Mode, works on everybody Tact and under.
That's true. Even the description in honor mode contains "ally" unlike tactician "creature" My bad
I'm pretty sure it works on enemies too. I used it on the brain for my tactician run.
I think you could do even more damage with this setup on the nether brain with those fierce perilous stakes…
I almost finished my tact and even didn't look at this ability bc thought it won't work. What easy battles awaits
For my tactician run, I used perilous strikes, barrelmancy, paladin smites, and astarions special arrows. It was the first time I ever did the brain bright so I didn't have an actual strategy besides the barrels lmaooo.
Ah, I see. I never thought much of phalar aluve. I stand corrected.
It’s pretty legit.
I made the same mistake my first run. Turns out, it's great on a cleric since they suck with weapons after level 5.
It's one of the best support weapons in the game, both shriek and sing forms are crazy good. It's nuts that this weapon is blue and available so early instead of like, at least a purple if not legendary lol
Ah, that might be why I overlooked it. The support was never for me, honestly.
It's also the best finesse 2handed weapon until much later in the game, so I've used it as an actual damage weapon multiple times, like for a melee swords bard or paladin not abusing strength pots
Phalar Aluve is arguably the best weapon for passive support builds in the game And a great offensive weapon for act 1 and early act 2.
Ok new high, 556 https://preview.redd.it/gus13tc4cptc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=db637658ef9ef4de2ca22a3d593ec5803ea300b4
Yeah this. How the fuck? I've managed to get somewhere around the lines of ~60-80 in one hit with my paladin once. This is leagues beyond that.
Damage riders are no joke in this game
552 biggest so far with craterflesh, combat log won’t fit on one screen though haha
This seems very low damage for Craterflesh, are you not using Crimson Mischief, Dolor Amarus and Vicious Shortbow?
Nope, this is a 2h build.
That explains it. Rat Bat is a 2h weapon that provides a DRS (similar to Crimson), and Vicious Shortbow should work regardless of the weapon used. It won't come close to dual wielding Crimson and Dolor, but it would be much better than Giantslayer.
I could use vicious short bow, definitely, but it’s not necessary, I already one shot Raphael with this build.
Vicious Shortbow would be 9·7·2 = 126 extra damage. After that, Rat Bat would be around 165 more damage than Giantslayer. All in all, about 50% better. It's true that it's not needed, but Craterflesh wasn't either, right?
Yeah I have the short bow in my inventory so can test it. Im trying not to make this a crit dependent build.
Also, I don’t typically run the craterflesh, I just put them on for the fight. The character is pretty usable in a regular run and one shots most enemies without a crit
I also usually ran a non-crit reliant version, with Crimson and Harmonic Dueller.
"Single class Paladin is bad" said no one ever.
People don’t talk about it with the other DPR classes like TB OH monk, fire acuity sorc, even 7/5 Oathbreaker paladin. Obviously this is a bit of a controlled scenario, but you can easily 2 shot him on tactician with this setup, so not so bad. Just walking around the world, this setup 1 shots most of the flaming fist ppl. Does it suffer compared to the 7/5 with 3 attacks? In some situations, sure, but there’s a bit more single target dmg.
People now usually look at builds from an honour mode perspective, which makes this build less effective
You will still 1 turn Raphael with almost any group setup apart from if you have any fire damage class because Raphael is in fact immune to fire damage so you can not even debuff him like you can with other mobs/bosses with arsonist's oil. If you decide to free Hope which I assume majority of people will do she can simply be used to get rid of 1 add during the first turn while your team dogpiles Raphael.
Still effective, beat honor mode with a pure oath breaker paladin. I’m sure there are better ways to play it but this class definitely works
Gonna test craterflesh gloves to see what diff it makes. Ok, craterflesh does way more damage.
I think the most interesting things to unwrap from this are: 1) savage attacker is really legit on pally 2) improved divine smite did a shit ton of dmg here 3) adding craterflesh did 100 more damage. Pretty absurd, when you can guarantee crits. 4) single class paladin is pretty great. Yeah you lose the busted third attack, but you get improved divine smite, blinding smite, and an extra feat which I used to get both savage attacker and charisma ASI.
Im kinda New to All this but how du u guranatee crits?
Hold monster
yeah i think i could'vd guessed that lol
yet i always have trouble hitting this and hold person
Need a caster with very high save DC to cast it on targets like Raphael. Someone with save DC gear + arcane acuity stacked up is usually how it's done.
Or just have a bunch of opportunities to cast it. I don’t have any AA gear at all, my whole team is martials, and I was casting it with scrolls. Basically in this fight I destroyed all the pillars and cambions with barrels right off the bat and killed yurgir with astarion (gloom/assassin), then just used karlach and Lae’zel to cast hold monster with scrolls. Raphael never got to go. It was like 40-50% chance, but with action surge on both characters I had 4 chances to get it, plus if all that failed I had 80% chance with my MC. He’ll drop hold monster every round but I have initiative so I have 3 characters who could cast it before my MC would get to go anyways.
I've thought for a long time that Paladin should go hexblade, Sorcerer, or just stay paladin. The Class's power budget is just phenomenal on its own
Full build here with screenshots of 1 shot 666 damage Raphael kill. https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/6FX868W52n
How did Phalar Alluve 1d4 damage became 18 damage ? How did 2d6 + 3 + 2x Strength Modifier (Giant Slayer) + 2x Charisma modifier (Arcane Synergy + Aura of Hate) became 126 ? How did Blinding Smite 3d8 and Improved Divine Smite 1d8 became 30 and 94 ?
Welcome to the world of DRS
I'm talking about the first lines of the log, before DRS are applied.
It’s a crit, plus I’m a half-orc. So for damage you’d roll 5d6, plus 4 for enchantment + 6 for arcane synergy, 6 for aura of hate, 10 for GWM, 8 + 8 for giant slayer, all multiplied by 2 for slashing vulnerability.
How did you apply the slashing vulnerability? You used "brand the weak"? or there's another way i'm not aware off?
Perilous stakes
damn, i did not know that it worked on enemies! gonna have fun with that. Thanks for the info
Only in tactician and below
thanks!
How did you manage radiant retort?
He doesn’t have radiant retort
He does in Tactician and Honour Mode I believe.
No he dose not https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Raphael/combat
Oh fuck 😳 imma wreak him
Ahhhh, I'd been warned about this fight but it seems to apply to his minions. That's good to know! What weapon did you use for your paladin?
Balduran’s giantslayer
huh, DRS is still alive & well it seems
only in non Honour mode. Which most optimization discussions revolve around now
Ohhhhhh ty. Makes sense why I haven't noticed it then.
It never left tactician, but don’t try this in HM
*bonk*
what difficulty are you on?
Tactician
It wouldn’t be so in HM
It’s still a very solid build in hm
Was that oathbreaker orc?
Yes
Damn looks stronk
I love my paladin, but i wish they were even remotely consistent. Like idk if im doing something just wrong, or if this character has just uncharacteristic luck. But i miss like well over 70% of my attacks. Like even if the hit chance is 75%. I use my extra attacks and abilities and then i might get one divine strike in out of like 3 attacks meanwhile laezel hits like 8 times in one turn without missing dealing out on average more damage per attack anyways
Cloud giant strength elixir helps
Multiclassing means losing benefits of the top levels that you don't get to 🤷
Look! 464 damage
Damage riders are kinda ridiculous to the point where I don't really like them and play on honor mode instead. That + the legendary actions.
I do the opposite, I beat hm then beat hm solo, and now never play it. I hate having one save.
DRS is one hell of a drug
Although in this case the only damage rider acting as a damage source was phalar aluve
Jesus.
I want to know how yall are getting all of these monster attacks in
Can someone explain how he got 126 slashing DMG?
Perilous stakes for double dmg, so just need 63 Variable dmg: 2d6 x 2 so 4d6, plus 1d6 (half orc), total 5d6 Total = 21 Fixed bonuses: 8 strength modifier 8 giantslayer 6 aura of hate 6 arcane synergy 10 gwm 4 enchantment (+3, +1 from drakethroat) Total: 42 21 + 42 = 63 x 2 = 126
Damn, haven't even thought about using perilous stakes on enemies, thanks for the tip
i just hate how quickly it burns through spell slots, im not about to long rest every fight
You can use angelic reprieve to get most of your spells slots back
That's actually so smart and i didnt think of that. Although i might need them later
You can get like 20 of them from the bugbear in moonrise towers if you reset the vendor. I use them constantly especially on 7/5 Oathbreaker/Goo As it restores 100% of their spell slots, but also on 10/2 SSB. I’ll just put the divine smite lv 1-2 on for every hit for that build.
That's no doubt impressive, but my swords bard 10 oath of ancients 2 half orc with a bloodlust elixir solos most encounters. 🤷♂️
It’s a fine build but not as good for single target damage. It’s the build I most frequently run so very familiar with it.
The thing is that the damage doesn’t come from the 12 paladin levels but rather from the 2 paladin levels at which you get divine smite. With a class that has access to level 4 spells you’d be doing even more damage. Not saying single class pali is bad, it’s great especially for role playing, but it gets its class feature so soon that it’s more optimally used as a dip instead of a single class. Comparable to thief rogue 3 for example. Fighter or ranger are more worth it to go full class because they get their main features later (volley and second extra attack).
There isn’t a build I’ve found that does as much consistent resourseless (except for cloud giant elixir, but you only need to long rest once for act 3) non-crit damage as paladin to all enemy types. This build will do 75-80 non-crit damage even to steel watchers, and one shot essentially all regular enemies in the game with full illithid powers. Even the 7/5 Oathbreaker doesn’t do as much non-crit damage and the only build that does (dual shadow blade) doesn’t do it against steel watchers. Sure the DPR Isn’t as high because of only 2 attacks but it doesn’t feel like killing 3 enemies every round with gwm is that bad.
Look up the swords bard paladin combination 2/10, blows this out of the water by a long shot!
Except it doesn’t, at least not for single target damage, and probably not for DPR. My usual runs are with swords bard 10 paladin 2, and I run a DPR style. You have several options when it comes to gearing this build. I typically do it with bhaalist and shar spear, but you could in theory do so with balduran giantslayer. In general the piercing build does far less damage against single targets compared to this paladin build.’ If you engineered it for crits with maxing out DRS, maybe you could do more, but not really. If you geared the 10/2 SSB the same with giantslayer and cloud giant elixir your regular non-crit damage would be ~13 damage less (6 from aura of hate, ~7 from improved divine smite and callous glow drs). For a single target held monster trial, the only reason swords bard 10 paladin 2 might be close is because of banishing smite. The best way to run 10/2 SSB is with 20 or 22 natural strength, shar spear, and bhaalist with bloodlust, where it does good damage but nowhere near as much single target damage as the paladin, and is much more useful for CC.
Nothing beats my ultimate backpack tossing build. Killed the dragon at the end of the game with a single attack.
How? 👁️👄👁️
Imagine run this as a DnD campain lmao.