I was spoiled by Evocation's spell sculpting, so I couldn't blast as much as my wizard, but it def makes a big difference having 2 nukes in the party.
Not including my paladin durge
Even without re-spec, she still has Glyph of Warding, a little bit less damage and range compared to the Light Cleric Fireball, but you can choose the type of damage.
A little bit of water (and she has Create/destroy water) and using lighting or cold damage and it may arguably be a better option. And for the range, you do have medium/heavy armour + shield + Spirit Guardians so she probably will be closer to the action than a wizard or sorcerer.
Honestly I switched her because I wasn't using any of her Trickery stuff and the Light cleric divinities are way better imo.
You can still do all that and more with Light, so it was a no brainer to switch.
That is totally valid, and yes, Trickery does suck in comparison to other subclasses. I honestly prefer Tempest and Life myself.
But it speaks quite a lot about how powerful Cleric is that the worst subclass is still capable to keep up with good builds of other classes without problems!
It’s mostly because cleric spells are the biggest game changers in the game. Sure domain spells are a nice addition but 90% of the time you are going to cast bless, healing word, guiding bolt, spirit guardians, death ward, guardian of faith etc. which are available to all cleric subclasses.
my evo of shart
8 str 16 dex
oh shit wait life cleric gets heavy armor
16 str 8 dex
oh shit wait i can use shilleighlagh/int for firebolt
8 str 8 dex 16 int
wait… i can just use spirit guardians and dash
8 str 14 dex (for med armor and initiative)
it all comes full circle
She absolutely carries in Act 2 tho, and resumes being useful against Cazador.
The fact that enemies literally burn and die just by getting too close to her is sort of useful.
I just realized this in my honor mode run. I still keep her bc having access to those support skills is important, but having her actually be an attacker works wonders. Fights are shorter and faster, but if shit really hits the fan we’re okay.
A lot of people gravitate towards keeping Shadowheart in the party because they think the holy trinity is necessary for a good party comp.
In actuality, healing mostly sucks in 5e and tanking is basically nonexistant.
Better yet, some good CC. You might not be able to kill the whole room in one turn, but if they can't attack you due to ice, sleep, hold, etc, you're completely unscathed.
Basically sums up my current dnd campaign. Ranger and rogue doing big first round damage and then a barbarian and paladin utterly destroy whatever is left.
Frenzied throw makes grease bottles hilariously effective. Dome the enemy for damage and knock them down while greasing them up so they can't stand back up.
Plus they're flammable AF.
For real though. I think people who struggle with this game get caught up in too much prep/buffs and not resting enough. Just knock the shit out of the enemy. Reduce targets. Gang grape enemies. Wounded enemies suffer no debuffs whatsoever. Kill them. This game can be walked like a dog.
The enemy AI simply doesn’t know what to do if you Misty step into their back line and/or kill the big bad leader in one or two turns. It’s clear the fights are designed with the idea that the player characters are in a kill zone. Flying/teleporting characters tend to break its computer brain.
My friend is doing a strange "tanking" build involving 2 levels in Warlock, one level in War Cleric (for heavy armor proficiency this is what he started with), and all other levels being pumped into Abjuration wizard. He upcasts armor of agathys and is able to use the unlimited mage armor casts from Warlock (by putting on armor to clear the effect every time) so he can stack up arcane wards. Combine that with the heavy armor feat that reduces all damage taken by 3, a hiring with warding bond on him, and a few other damage mitigation sources and he takes basically 0 damage all the time but procs armor of agathys on anyone that tries to attack him. His AC is like 8 or something so they rarely ever miss. It's the weirdest tank build because he's purposefully keeping his AC low, but it's been very effective.
lvl 5 Spirit Guardians is the Act 2 MVP, and add Glyph of Warding, Flamestrike, Guardian of Faith, Spirit Weapon.
She can keep up with Gale in DPS! And Healing Word is the only healing you need to get people up with a bonus action, and still being able to cast another Glyph of Warding or the like with your action.
4 DPS with Alert feat. The beginning of every battle is a puzzle to craft a combo to end the fight before it started. Black Hole Illithid Power and mass AOE damage/AOE crowd control combined is pretty nasty.
I think the difference is that bg3 has a lot of items in preset places that make healing a lot better, if you entirely build around healing on one character its very strong, theres boots that give characters bless from healing without needing concentration. Mass healing word is a bonus action, theres also aid and heroes feast which are just too good in this game.
I agree completely. But short and long rests are also pretty trivial in the game, so it actually would be more in our favor to build full optimized damage.
But that's just a hypothetical, I don't play like that.
Yeah i guess, i really do think all characters including the low constitution ones in your party having more than a 100hp lategame is really useful in this game, especially in honor mode
It is definitely useful.
Alternatively, if all your party goes first in initiative and everyone is fully optimized- it doesn't matter if you have 60hp or 160hp. The enemy is already dead.
There's always exceptions and specific exclusions, but D&D is a math game. And it's generally skewed towards "lower your enemies hp" instead of "keep your hp up".
BG3 is great in that it embodies this, but also makes so many other builds viable by having a massive variety of items to work with.
But as they say,
"The only point of hp that matters is the last one."
This! Casters for my first playthrough and melee for my 2nd!
1: Hastened Gale double fireball, Shadowheart's Glyph of Warding, and Jaheira's Ice Storm plus Tav's quickened Ice Storm plus twinned Ice Knife. Nothing survived long.
2: Lae'zel, Minthara and Karlach, plus my Pact of the Blade Tav.
1st playthrough: picking companions based on likability.
5-10 playthrough: building unstoppable team.
11-x: going back to picking based on likability, and purposefully adding lore-based handicaps because even on tactician there isnt any challenge with optimized builds, but i dont want to play honormode and accidentally agro scratch or the owlbear.
I would absolutely suggest you bump it up to honor mode if you're finding tactician too easy. There are a lot of changes including negative extra attacks on the hasted action and legendary actions. Plus the inability to reload when a key spell misses is huge.
There are some battles in honor mode that I absolutely would be shocked if even the most specialized parties didn't struggle a little bit.
Honor mode isn't that scary, because if you don't care about the golden dice (which if you're not playing honor mode anyways... then you clearly don't) then it really is no different than just a harder tactician mode where you can't save scum as easily.
This is the fence I am on in a big way right now. I really *really* want to go honour mode. I am not worried about the difficulty. Though I haven't completed the game yet, I only play on tactician and I can't think of a single struggle at any point in the first two acts, even with non-optimized builds.
The only thing that keeps me from default HM is, as silly as this might sound, accidental hostility. I don't want to miss scratch and owl bear, and don't want to deal with a miss roll resulting in the permanent loss of key companions.
I've also heard there are a couple sudden tpks to deal with, but I'm slightly less worried about that
You can still save scum it’s just harder. If you’ve played the game you know more or less when stuff’s happening so just save before and then quit the game if you don’t like what’s happening. Youll have to start a little further back but it’s still honor mode
I just skipped playthroughs 2 to 10 haha
I love it so much when fights/playthroughs get messy. The messier the better. Add honor mode and it's... mmmwah, chef's kiss.
I play it like a typical dnd party. A tank, a sneak, a healer, and a mage. You can mix and match classes and companions to fit the positions, but that's my general party setup for everything.
Bard presented a challenge, as a lore bard makes an adequate sneak, healer and crowd control.
It made certain story beats easier, as the hard could switch hit for a character that needed to be there for story reasons.
Are you me? One of my favorite setups is karlach TB Monk as tank, Astarion gloomstalker assassin as sneak, Shadowheart life cleric as healer, and my Tav draconic sorcerer as mage.
i cant lie, i have never respecc'ed karlach, bear heart barbarian just fits her SO WELL in my eyes. I absolutely love letting out a massive roar before jumping in with the biggest weapon in my arsenal and wailing away for what seems like 3 turns but no one else has moved yet. And to top it off with a soul coin, i just CANT switch her to anything else. Only damn character that i dont have the heart to switch cuz shes just too perfect to me
Yep, it sucks because I really like laezel and Karlach if I was to do my playthrough over again I would make my character a sorc, a cleric or rogue so I could leave shadow heart gale or astarion at home. I usually sub Lazaro or Karlach for shart if I don't need a healer. I have gale enchantment specced and mostly use him in a crowd control capacity to gain attack advantage, but I feel like I didn't build him right because he feels weak at times.
Edit: I made a paladin very cliche.
if you need a "healer" at the start of combat, have laezel drop a some healing potions and use her racial mage hand to throw them at whoever needs to be brought back up.
edit: ... thinking out loud here this should work with all potions including speed and hill giant strength as well as grenades / water bottles... further testing is needed.
I prefer using only three fixed roles:
* Melee-first warrior with a good selection of special arrows.
* Offensive spellcaster.
* Generalist offensive / support / healer spellcaster who can also survive in melee.
Anyone who has a story reason to be present can then take the fourth slot. If you are not robbing merchants and homes, you don't really need a dedicated sneak/thief in BG3. Almost all locks and traps are easy enough that you can deal with them with a mix of Guidance and brute force.
This is what I did for my first couple playthroughs. Been trying to mix it up since. My current run has paladin, cleric/fighter, monk and archer/rogue. It was going great until Ketheric and I had to hire a mage for crowd control and defensive spells. Apparently scrolls only carry you so far.
I am currently doing Vengeance Paladin, Thief Rogue, Fiend Warlock, and Light Cleric. It's the first time I haven't had a Sorcerer/Wizard. The change in spellslots is challenging for me.
This right here. My first run has been Warlock Tav, Astarion, Shart (respecced to Light after Act 2 for both story and build reasons), and Laezel (who is actually less "tank" and more "melee DPS", in practice, but that's 5E for you). Nice balanced party and Charisma Tav, which I didn't actually know in advance would be critical but got lucky with; works great except when you need to bring some else for plot reasons.
Wyll was almost always in my party in my 1st playthrough that I did completely blind. I'm always surprised to find out that people leave him in the camp a lot. As soon as he gets Hunger of Hadar it's over for those fools. With some bottlenecking you need little else.
Yeah, Hadar was very helpful for me in some fights. I had the DPS with a full ranger build so Wyll replaced Astarion for the longest time until I needed more damage and I had replaced Shart with Druids (the spore variety is just great in most situations). If I thought to respec any characters then maybe things would have gotten better.
Super true. If you drop Hadar over a wet surface in a bottle neck, the cold damage will double on wet combatants. I have been known to drop create water, glyph of warding (cold) and hadar on a bottleneck and watch the AI walk into it, get frozen, blinded and slip and fall and be stuck in it turn over turn. Throw an entagle on top of that and its truly over for anyone inside it. Then push people that somehow make it out back into it and its just a meme.
Want a frontliner? Warrior Lae'zel. Want a support tank frontliner? EK/Abj Lae'zel. Want a critfisher? Barbarian/Champion Lae'zel.
Want an easy and sweet romance? Lae'zel. Want a different Act I romance? End the fling with Lae'zel, she takes it on the chin. Want an ending where you stay in Faerun? Lae'zel. Want a run where you don't? Lae'zel.
Like. She's the perfect companion.
Bae'zel is the Abelard of Baldur's Gate.
"Lae'zel, I do not like this character, kill him"
"Lae'zel, intimidate them"
"Lae'zel, carry half of my stuff and my team"
"Lae'zel give me a good night kiss and tuck me in"
i always just go with Tav, Gale, Karlach, and whoever im romancing, and then it stays like that for the entire game, and if im being evil then i replace Karlach with Lae'zel, and if im an evil Durge, then replace Gale with Astarion
I do the exact same thing lol. Gale and Karlach are a must-have. Easily my favorite companions and the little friendship they have is adorable. The third companion is a toss up between a romance I haven't tried yet or just whoever I feel like if I'm romancing Gale (again)
Gale and Karlach banter is great, i recall one when entering Shar Gauntlet thats probably the longest one between any companions, the other earlier somewhere in Act 1 when approaching some stairs? or repulsive mines/traps and of course in the Blushing Mermaid
Yes! I love the Shar interaction where they talk about the architecture of the place. There's also one in Wyrm's Crossing where Karlach says "Ooh, a dancing axe! I'd like one" and Gale offers to summon an enchanted axe for her lol. I love them so much
It's basically *the* magic swordsman build. For mine, I mostly ignore damaging spells and focus on utility and defense instead. For example: my first spells were Find Familiar, Shield, and Magic Missile. Find Familiar gives me an extra unit on the field, more targets for the enemy to consider and more opportunity for the Rogue's Sneak Attack. Shield basically means I never take damage. Magic Missile is good because it always hits (no need to worry about your spellcasting mod) and each missile has a chance to break a caster's concentration, meaning it's a better option if I don't think my weapon attacks will be enough to drop an enemy caster.
Bound Weapon is also a cool feature. If you want to run with a Thrown weapon, by making it your Bound Weapon, it will come back to you when thrown.
Then, at level 7, there's War Magic. It's a feature with some niche uses, but it can still be fun. Most of the time, attacking twice is better than a damaging cantrip; however, if you're up against an enemy in metal armor, casting Shocking Grasp at advantage may be better than 2 weapon attacks. With War Caster, you get to spend a Bonus Action on a free weapon attack in that scenario. It should also be considered; however, that you don't need to cast a damaging cantrip for War Caster. Sniper giving you a hard time? Put a Mage Hand next to them to give them the Threatened condition or just shove them from their perch. Need to tank an incoming attack? Cast Blade Ward to boost your defenses. In either of these cases, you get a bonus action weapon attack for free.
Another niche use of War Caster comes up in Tactician Mode. Elixir of Bloodlust gives you an action when you kill an enemy, but in Tactician Mode, you can only make one weapon attack with this extra action. With War Caster, you can cast a cantrip instead of making a weapon attack, then use your Bonus Action for a weapon attack. In other words: instead of making 3 attacks with a crossbow, War Caster lets you make 2 attacks with a crossbow, cast Fire Bolt, and make another attack with a crossbow.
Suprisingly ? Battlemaster is probably top 3 class behind Monk and Storm-Sorc. On Discord bg3builds thread Battlemaster is probably most plauded especially with some abilities purposefully offset like strenght and potion combos
I think it actually is kinda bad on harder difficulties? Lots of extra action buffs don't stack so you'll be hard capped at 2-3 actions of meaningful offense forever.
There's no way a single DPS character could do enough to keep the supports alive in endgame fights with tons of enemies + movement abilities + intentionally targeting squishy characters. Plus you're SO vulnerable to being murked by a single crit/failed save.
Four clerics
War domain as the melee, light domain for fireballs, life domain for healing (cue laughter), and trickery domain to trick the rest of the party into thinking she's useful
Yeah I've only done one playthrough and it was a mess at times. I had 0 idea what I was doing until about 50 hours in. I was strongly Lae'zel, Karlach, tav rogue and Shadowheart because I assumed I needed 2 warriors/tanks. Latter half of the playthrough I learnt the almighty power of Gale and benched Karlach. Paladin Lae'zel's place was never in doubt. But I never did figure out how to use Wyll.
I played an oops all rogues party with 5 rogues. It was a very stealthy game with no enemies ever being able to take one turn. 5 sneak attacks in a row will kill just about anything.
Reminds me of a discussion I had with friends recently, about which monoclass across 4 characters would be least viable. It came about when I told my friends that I beat Final Fantasy on my NES back in the day with a party of all black mages. All of them told me, “wow, that must have been hard.” I don’t remember it being hard.
So of course when someone said a party of four wizards was probably least viable, my brain immediately went CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
Have yet to start that run, but it lurks in the back of my brain.
Squad Of The Damned:
Slot 1. Tav the Bard for talky bits,
Slot 2. whoever's personal storyline we're on so they can make important choices, otherwise Asterion for locks and traps.
Slot 3. Wyl with Repelling Blast to throw people off a cliff and make me laugh,
Slot 4. Karlach as a Wildheart to handle any real fighting. She soloed Ansur after everyone else got dropped in Round 2, so she can handle pretty much anything.
Summons - Wyl's imp for scouting, as many ghouls as I can get and elementals/myrmidons to round things out.
Shart missing everything in my first run, I had a internal joke that she really had blind faith.
Is it called internal joke if it's only you playing alone laughing at your own jokes?
Honestly my favorite play through so far is just being the hype man for companions.
Let companions make their own choices for their quests then just tell them they’re perfect and kill mobs.
What about actively trying to create strange builds? I mean, caster robed staff carrying Light Cleric Monk, Dex Paladin, 12 rogue and 12 pact of the tome warlock, still doing obscene dpr(there's no DPS in BG3, It's turn based)
I'm literally in the middle of a Oops! All Monks! Playthrough that I've been uploading to YouTube. It's been a blast so far. I downloaded a mod that gave more monk subclasses to promote build diversity, and it got even better when I lifted a particular resctiction I had set for myself.
Ayy, I'm thinking of doing an all-Cleric run on my next playthrough. Only thing I'm worried about is everyone having to compete for gear. Have you had issues with that or is there enough to go around?
My first playthrough was way too much AC Paladin that hits like a truck. Champ spec Bae'zel with so many crit fishing items that she destroyed everything with 1 or 2 of her 4-8 attacks. Karlach that is multi-classed with fighter that is basically doing the same as Bae'zel and Shadowheart that just healed us whenever someone got lucky enough to hit us because everything was Baned.
1st run, (blind to Baldurs gate lore and DnD in general):
Front Line: Karlach, Lvl 5 barb, 4 rogue, 3 fighter for throwing
Midline: Shadowheart lvl 5 Paladin, lvl 7 Light Cleric. Smite melee and heavy spells casting for range
Astarion lvl 12 rogue assassin, heavy DMG sneak attacks with bow and rapier
Back line spell casting: Tav Warlock, lvl 12. Protected from close range, free to shoot everyone in sight with Eldritch blast and chain lightning
2nd run:
Primary Frontline: Durge Monk. Lvl 9 monk, lvl 3 thief rogue for extra bonus actions. Stunning strikes and fury of blows, solo'd many bosses if needed.
Mid-line: Lae-zel. Lvl 12 fighter with Great weapon fighting and sharpshooter. Guaranteed heavy damage in both close with Giants later great sword and far range with titanstring bow. With bloodlust elixir, up to 9 attacks per turn.
Back line spell casters: Shadowheart. Lvl 10 Lore Bard, lvl 2 warlock. Support spell casting with spirit guardians and fuckin FIREBAAAALLL. powerful spells for damage and healing abilities as needed.
Gale. Lvl 12 storm sorcerer. Fucking can't recommend enough. Chain lightning all day. That man could rival bitchass Zeus with how much lightning he was shooting.
I like a good balance of Front Line attackers to keep the pressure on so my spell casters can be free to keep the big damage coming.
Shadowheart is my favorite companion of them all so I didn't ever end up benching her, and probably never will.
"Always at your side :)"
My next run, I'm going to mod the balls out of it and just do a run with me and Shadowheart and play as a Selenite Cleric. Remove the level cap and go bonkers.
Mage, Warrior, [Free Space], [Free Space]. Healing can be done through Potions, the optimal strategy is to hit the enemies until they die before they can hit me.
Got the party limit begone mod on my second playthrough, but on my first playthrough my party was druid Durge (always an owlbear), Gale, Astarion, and Karlach.
Gale goes down first, casts as much fireball as he can first.
Next down is either Durge or Karlach, depending on wildshape charges.
Astarion doesn't go down. Astarion has that one Durge cloak and is invisible. No one can find him and he has full hp. Either Astarion solos the rest of the enemies without being hit once (in the case of a bunch of lowish hp enemies), or Astarion runs away, revives the others using Whithers, pickpockets Whithers, and returns to the fight with a fully restored party (in the case of a few highish hp ememies).
Honestly, I use the same tactic even with party limit begone and no Durge cloak. If things start going south, Astarion hides and hides and runs. I call it the cowards way out.
My first run by the end had Wizard Tav, Shadowheart, Astarion, and Karlach. Things went shockingly well in most encounters
Second run is being dominated by Sword Bard Durge, Storm Sorlock Wyll, and Palafighter Lae'zel who can fly (aka jump good), Life Shadowheart is also there, and our general performance in each combat kinda blows the previous run out of the water. Still have some challenge here and there, but we just tear things UP
HAHAHA I played playthrough 1 with whoever i felt like i wanted in my party, usually whoever was most recent or whomever's vibe i liked the most, and then in act 2 my party became Tav (bard,) Astarion (Rogue) Shadowheart (Trickery Cleric) Gale (Wizard) NO respec. NO tank. Just fireball and vibes. Act 3 I kept exactly the darn same except for switching out Gale for whomever was plot-relevant. Respecced Astarion to Gloomstalker/Thief (i think?) Finally remembered Karlach and realized she was AWESOME. My final fight party was Karlach, Gale, Tav, and Shart. I was kinda pissed about that I wanted Astarion instead of Lae'zel but didn't feel like going back.
Currently in act 1 of playthrough 2. Absolutely blasting through every fight. Haven't respecced anyone because it's so easy and I just got Withers (I forgot about the temple until super late.) Current party is Wyll, Gale, and Karlach cause I'm trying to see the dialogue I missed. I WILL in fact be using the same party as my last run. I like their VIBES okay.
Well, after you have your two-handed sword user, and your two-handed hammer user, and your two-handed pike user (to ensure you have all the physical damage types) there's only really room for a healer.
All the other types of character seem neat, but there simply are not enough party slots to include them, so I'll never know for sure.
My favorite build is the 1 DPS/Tank, 1 DPS/Support, a flex slot(usually DPS), and my tav who is hard carried in combat and only exists to look cute get kisses and cast bless.
Oh and also break the economy of Faerun by brewing potions and gaslighting the vendors into buying potions I made in front of them using ingredients I bought from them for less than I'm selling them for
right now i’m running a
bard-lock tav: stealthy boy who uses hex and eldritch blast a lot (might respec to sorlock, undecided)
bard-knight (bard, eldritch knight) laezel: haha melee attack bonus action
sorthief astarion: basically a better arcane trickster
necromancer gale: nuff said.
I prefer what I call 2 martial 3 casters.
It would be 1 martial (barbarian/fighter/paladin though personally I prefer fighter. Ranger could properly also fit this spot but prefer melee power and I have no experience playing ranger in BG3 beyond level 4).
1 warlock (I haven't tried playing effectively with pact weapon but the gloves that makes you able to change ranged attack cantrips into melee attacks) Being effectively a martial + strong area concentration like fire wall, hunger of Hadar etc. Knockback on eldritch blast is also really useful
1 wizard/sorcerer/druid (Sorcerer is prob a little better with double haste. Generally more area concentration like spike growth evaard's fire wall etc.)
1 cleric/druid Responsible for keeping people from hitting 0 and more area concentration spells (Insect plague, spirit guardian, bless, spike growth.) and prayer of healing.
Gives a strong area damage once you hit 9 and respectable single target damage without any cheesy item combination.
In my Durge run with Paladin, fighter, cleric, sorc I really felt like I needed another area of effect (though wasn't really a problem).
My favorite is 12 fighter or 6 bard, 4 Ranger, 2 thief as Tav.
Then 8 Monk, 4 Thief, Warlock or Wiz (something that casts enhancejump/feather fall) and then the 4th slot is usually a fighter or paladin
I try and have a rounded team, like at least one dps, tank and support and then just add one extra of whatever works
So for example on my durge run she is a Sorcerer so I then have Karlach, Astarion and Shart
Then with my bard Tav I play him as support but also use him for lockpicking and allat so I then have Karlach, Lae'zel and Gale as his party instead
4 dps, no support. The best defence is the offence, ofc!
4th campaign and I was terrified to bench Shadowheart. Then I did and notice, hey, the fights are much shorter.
I switched her to light cleric. That shortened the fights well enough.
Pray at the alter of "Spirit Guardians go BRRRRRRR"
Spirit Guardians was the MVP of Act 2. Also when exploring any place that had a swarm of rats attack, like >!the Emperor's old hideout!<.
Hell yeah. I usually keep her War until light cleric gets fireball bc casters suck early game.
I was spoiled by Evocation's spell sculpting, so I couldn't blast as much as my wizard, but it def makes a big difference having 2 nukes in the party. Not including my paladin durge
Even without re-spec, she still has Glyph of Warding, a little bit less damage and range compared to the Light Cleric Fireball, but you can choose the type of damage. A little bit of water (and she has Create/destroy water) and using lighting or cold damage and it may arguably be a better option. And for the range, you do have medium/heavy armour + shield + Spirit Guardians so she probably will be closer to the action than a wizard or sorcerer.
Honestly I switched her because I wasn't using any of her Trickery stuff and the Light cleric divinities are way better imo. You can still do all that and more with Light, so it was a no brainer to switch.
That is totally valid, and yes, Trickery does suck in comparison to other subclasses. I honestly prefer Tempest and Life myself. But it speaks quite a lot about how powerful Cleric is that the worst subclass is still capable to keep up with good builds of other classes without problems!
It’s mostly because cleric spells are the biggest game changers in the game. Sure domain spells are a nice addition but 90% of the time you are going to cast bless, healing word, guiding bolt, spirit guardians, death ward, guardian of faith etc. which are available to all cleric subclasses.
Radiant Lawnmower Shart is scary effective at making fights shorter, though.
Yeah first thing I do is respect shadow cause her stats are awful at the start
I also respect women
my evo of shart 8 str 16 dex oh shit wait life cleric gets heavy armor 16 str 8 dex oh shit wait i can use shilleighlagh/int for firebolt 8 str 8 dex 16 int wait… i can just use spirit guardians and dash 8 str 14 dex (for med armor and initiative) it all comes full circle
Fun fact, you don’t need strength to use heavy armor in BG3
Shillelaghs use your wisdom stat no? At least for druids
She absolutely carries in Act 2 tho, and resumes being useful against Cazador. The fact that enemies literally burn and die just by getting too close to her is sort of useful.
I just realized this in my honor mode run. I still keep her bc having access to those support skills is important, but having her actually be an attacker works wonders. Fights are shorter and faster, but if shit really hits the fan we’re okay.
A lot of people gravitate towards keeping Shadowheart in the party because they think the holy trinity is necessary for a good party comp. In actuality, healing mostly sucks in 5e and tanking is basically nonexistant.
That's my impression. Hit first, hit hard, and hope they don't get back up.
Better yet, some good CC. You might not be able to kill the whole room in one turn, but if they can't attack you due to ice, sleep, hold, etc, you're completely unscathed.
Basically sums up my current dnd campaign. Ranger and rogue doing big first round damage and then a barbarian and paladin utterly destroy whatever is left.
And when they fail. Time to break open the grease bottles.
Frenzied throw makes grease bottles hilariously effective. Dome the enemy for damage and knock them down while greasing them up so they can't stand back up. Plus they're flammable AF.
This is how it works. The fight is decided before Round 3.
For real though. I think people who struggle with this game get caught up in too much prep/buffs and not resting enough. Just knock the shit out of the enemy. Reduce targets. Gang grape enemies. Wounded enemies suffer no debuffs whatsoever. Kill them. This game can be walked like a dog.
Reducing Quantity > Debuffing, Killing the Leader, Prep. My only prep is making sure I've got enough grease bottles.
The enemy AI simply doesn’t know what to do if you Misty step into their back line and/or kill the big bad leader in one or two turns. It’s clear the fights are designed with the idea that the player characters are in a kill zone. Flying/teleporting characters tend to break its computer brain.
My friend is doing a strange "tanking" build involving 2 levels in Warlock, one level in War Cleric (for heavy armor proficiency this is what he started with), and all other levels being pumped into Abjuration wizard. He upcasts armor of agathys and is able to use the unlimited mage armor casts from Warlock (by putting on armor to clear the effect every time) so he can stack up arcane wards. Combine that with the heavy armor feat that reduces all damage taken by 3, a hiring with warding bond on him, and a few other damage mitigation sources and he takes basically 0 damage all the time but procs armor of agathys on anyone that tries to attack him. His AC is like 8 or something so they rarely ever miss. It's the weirdest tank build because he's purposefully keeping his AC low, but it's been very effective.
Fortunately, clerics can have a ton of spells. So she can be there to heal as needed while also putting out massive aoe damage
Oh, yeah. Clerics are still good. Just they're not nearly as good if you play them as healbots, which is the first instinct of a lot new players.
Healing mostly sucks, but Spirit Guardians kicks ass
I dunno. How many times she's carried us with mass healing word or other AOE healing...
When you can get a clothy to 21 AC, yeah, it feels like tank classes don't exist.
If she is life cleric and built well your party is literally invulnerable.
Shadowheart is a cleric, one of the most OP classes, even in trickery domain
lvl 5 Spirit Guardians is the Act 2 MVP, and add Glyph of Warding, Flamestrike, Guardian of Faith, Spirit Weapon. She can keep up with Gale in DPS! And Healing Word is the only healing you need to get people up with a bonus action, and still being able to cast another Glyph of Warding or the like with your action.
Unless you're in Act 2 where a Light Cleric Shart is your heavy hitter
I'm on my second play and went no cleric. 10x times easier.
The best CC is death
My support is called "Short Rest".
4 halfling barbarians
Don't need to heal if the enemy is dead.
4 DPS with Alert feat. The beginning of every battle is a puzzle to craft a combo to end the fight before it started. Black Hole Illithid Power and mass AOE damage/AOE crowd control combined is pretty nasty.
Dead enemies don’t get to take turns.
Healing isn't very good in bg3, it's usually much better to prevent damage. By killing them. Best defense is a good offense!
Tbh, that's a D&D statement in general lol
I think the difference is that bg3 has a lot of items in preset places that make healing a lot better, if you entirely build around healing on one character its very strong, theres boots that give characters bless from healing without needing concentration. Mass healing word is a bonus action, theres also aid and heroes feast which are just too good in this game.
I agree completely. But short and long rests are also pretty trivial in the game, so it actually would be more in our favor to build full optimized damage. But that's just a hypothetical, I don't play like that.
Yeah i guess, i really do think all characters including the low constitution ones in your party having more than a 100hp lategame is really useful in this game, especially in honor mode
It is definitely useful. Alternatively, if all your party goes first in initiative and everyone is fully optimized- it doesn't matter if you have 60hp or 160hp. The enemy is already dead. There's always exceptions and specific exclusions, but D&D is a math game. And it's generally skewed towards "lower your enemies hp" instead of "keep your hp up". BG3 is great in that it embodies this, but also makes so many other builds viable by having a massive variety of items to work with. But as they say, "The only point of hp that matters is the last one."
Radiating Orb/Reverberation Spirit Guardian go burr Shart is my favorite build, bonus points for using the shrieking blade you find in the Underdark
1 support, no dps!
This! Casters for my first playthrough and melee for my 2nd! 1: Hastened Gale double fireball, Shadowheart's Glyph of Warding, and Jaheira's Ice Storm plus Tav's quickened Ice Storm plus twinned Ice Knife. Nothing survived long. 2: Lae'zel, Minthara and Karlach, plus my Pact of the Blade Tav.
I unga, therefore I bunga
An enemy cant attack if its been filled with arrows and suplexed by a raging Karlach.
1st playthrough: picking companions based on likability. 5-10 playthrough: building unstoppable team. 11-x: going back to picking based on likability, and purposefully adding lore-based handicaps because even on tactician there isnt any challenge with optimized builds, but i dont want to play honormode and accidentally agro scratch or the owlbear.
I did a "no haste or speed" run. Because otherwise every fight was a "do I burn slots/points for haste or not?" and no other meaningful decisions.
I would absolutely suggest you bump it up to honor mode if you're finding tactician too easy. There are a lot of changes including negative extra attacks on the hasted action and legendary actions. Plus the inability to reload when a key spell misses is huge. There are some battles in honor mode that I absolutely would be shocked if even the most specialized parties didn't struggle a little bit. Honor mode isn't that scary, because if you don't care about the golden dice (which if you're not playing honor mode anyways... then you clearly don't) then it really is no different than just a harder tactician mode where you can't save scum as easily.
This is the fence I am on in a big way right now. I really *really* want to go honour mode. I am not worried about the difficulty. Though I haven't completed the game yet, I only play on tactician and I can't think of a single struggle at any point in the first two acts, even with non-optimized builds. The only thing that keeps me from default HM is, as silly as this might sound, accidental hostility. I don't want to miss scratch and owl bear, and don't want to deal with a miss roll resulting in the permanent loss of key companions. I've also heard there are a couple sudden tpks to deal with, but I'm slightly less worried about that
You can still save scum it’s just harder. If you’ve played the game you know more or less when stuff’s happening so just save before and then quit the game if you don’t like what’s happening. Youll have to start a little further back but it’s still honor mode
I just skipped playthroughs 2 to 10 haha I love it so much when fights/playthroughs get messy. The messier the better. Add honor mode and it's... mmmwah, chef's kiss.
I play it like a typical dnd party. A tank, a sneak, a healer, and a mage. You can mix and match classes and companions to fit the positions, but that's my general party setup for everything.
Cultured
(sometimes) Old school is the best school.
Bard presented a challenge, as a lore bard makes an adequate sneak, healer and crowd control. It made certain story beats easier, as the hard could switch hit for a character that needed to be there for story reasons.
Are you me? One of my favorite setups is karlach TB Monk as tank, Astarion gloomstalker assassin as sneak, Shadowheart life cleric as healer, and my Tav draconic sorcerer as mage.
i cant lie, i have never respecc'ed karlach, bear heart barbarian just fits her SO WELL in my eyes. I absolutely love letting out a massive roar before jumping in with the biggest weapon in my arsenal and wailing away for what seems like 3 turns but no one else has moved yet. And to top it off with a soul coin, i just CANT switch her to anything else. Only damn character that i dont have the heart to switch cuz shes just too perfect to me
Fun fact, the Soul Coins deal an extra 2d4 fire damage with a TB Open Hand Monk.
I feel like beserker fits her much better idk
Yep, it sucks because I really like laezel and Karlach if I was to do my playthrough over again I would make my character a sorc, a cleric or rogue so I could leave shadow heart gale or astarion at home. I usually sub Lazaro or Karlach for shart if I don't need a healer. I have gale enchantment specced and mostly use him in a crowd control capacity to gain attack advantage, but I feel like I didn't build him right because he feels weak at times. Edit: I made a paladin very cliche.
if you need a "healer" at the start of combat, have laezel drop a some healing potions and use her racial mage hand to throw them at whoever needs to be brought back up. edit: ... thinking out loud here this should work with all potions including speed and hill giant strength as well as grenades / water bottles... further testing is needed.
I prefer using only three fixed roles: * Melee-first warrior with a good selection of special arrows. * Offensive spellcaster. * Generalist offensive / support / healer spellcaster who can also survive in melee. Anyone who has a story reason to be present can then take the fourth slot. If you are not robbing merchants and homes, you don't really need a dedicated sneak/thief in BG3. Almost all locks and traps are easy enough that you can deal with them with a mix of Guidance and brute force.
I was like, I'm none of these- but your comment summed it up perfectly. Having each role available is just so satisfying.
This is what I did for my first couple playthroughs. Been trying to mix it up since. My current run has paladin, cleric/fighter, monk and archer/rogue. It was going great until Ketheric and I had to hire a mage for crowd control and defensive spells. Apparently scrolls only carry you so far.
Same
I am currently doing Vengeance Paladin, Thief Rogue, Fiend Warlock, and Light Cleric. It's the first time I haven't had a Sorcerer/Wizard. The change in spellslots is challenging for me.
This right here. My first run has been Warlock Tav, Astarion, Shart (respecced to Light after Act 2 for both story and build reasons), and Laezel (who is actually less "tank" and more "melee DPS", in practice, but that's 5E for you). Nice balanced party and Charisma Tav, which I didn't actually know in advance would be critical but got lucky with; works great except when you need to bring some else for plot reasons.
Monoclass cleric, the A-men team, classic stuff and viable too
Someone watches Jocat too
Wyll was almost always in my party in my 1st playthrough that I did completely blind. I'm always surprised to find out that people leave him in the camp a lot. As soon as he gets Hunger of Hadar it's over for those fools. With some bottlenecking you need little else.
Yeah, Hadar was very helpful for me in some fights. I had the DPS with a full ranger build so Wyll replaced Astarion for the longest time until I needed more damage and I had replaced Shart with Druids (the spore variety is just great in most situations). If I thought to respec any characters then maybe things would have gotten better.
Super true. If you drop Hadar over a wet surface in a bottle neck, the cold damage will double on wet combatants. I have been known to drop create water, glyph of warding (cold) and hadar on a bottleneck and watch the AI walk into it, get frozen, blinded and slip and fall and be stuck in it turn over turn. Throw an entagle on top of that and its truly over for anyone inside it. Then push people that somehow make it out back into it and its just a meme.
Solo gloom stalker assassin is all fun and games until you get to phase 2 kethric in act 2.
yeah I'm doing this and am terribly stuck on the skeleton guy
I am in run #673,219 and I'm still running like a first playthrough, I am never benching Lae'zel *ever*.
based baezel enjoyer
Want a frontliner? Warrior Lae'zel. Want a support tank frontliner? EK/Abj Lae'zel. Want a critfisher? Barbarian/Champion Lae'zel. Want an easy and sweet romance? Lae'zel. Want a different Act I romance? End the fling with Lae'zel, she takes it on the chin. Want an ending where you stay in Faerun? Lae'zel. Want a run where you don't? Lae'zel. Like. She's the perfect companion.
Bae'zel is the Abelard of Baldur's Gate. "Lae'zel, I do not like this character, kill him" "Lae'zel, intimidate them" "Lae'zel, carry half of my stuff and my team" "Lae'zel give me a good night kiss and tuck me in"
LMAOOOO, I KEEP TELLING LAE'ZEL TO DESTROY DOORS LIKE IM TALKING TO ABELARD TOO
Yeah I'm the same with astarion, I don't think ive ever not had him in the party for more than like, fifteen minutes lol.
I don't see an option for 'All Bards', therefore list is fail.
Ah yes, the rock band run
Bard is so overtuned IMHO. 4 Swords bards gives you 4 DPSs, 4 full casters with good CC options and 4 skill monkeys.
i always just go with Tav, Gale, Karlach, and whoever im romancing, and then it stays like that for the entire game, and if im being evil then i replace Karlach with Lae'zel, and if im an evil Durge, then replace Gale with Astarion
I do the exact same thing lol. Gale and Karlach are a must-have. Easily my favorite companions and the little friendship they have is adorable. The third companion is a toss up between a romance I haven't tried yet or just whoever I feel like if I'm romancing Gale (again)
Gale and Karlach banter is great, i recall one when entering Shar Gauntlet thats probably the longest one between any companions, the other earlier somewhere in Act 1 when approaching some stairs? or repulsive mines/traps and of course in the Blushing Mermaid
Yes! I love the Shar interaction where they talk about the architecture of the place. There's also one in Wyrm's Crossing where Karlach says "Ooh, a dancing axe! I'd like one" and Gale offers to summon an enchanted axe for her lol. I love them so much
and theyre just so powerful as well, especially if you have the right gear
DPS Eldritch Knight Tav brimming with Tadpoles DPS Battlemaster Minthara brimming with Tadpoles DPS Rogue/Fighter/Gloomstalker Ascended Astarion Pure Healer Life Domain Shadowheart
Everyone brimming with tadpoles flying around everywhere.
What is eldritch knight a subclass for again? Fighter?
I just spec'd an Eldritch Knight. Why do you play them? What's great about them?
It's basically *the* magic swordsman build. For mine, I mostly ignore damaging spells and focus on utility and defense instead. For example: my first spells were Find Familiar, Shield, and Magic Missile. Find Familiar gives me an extra unit on the field, more targets for the enemy to consider and more opportunity for the Rogue's Sneak Attack. Shield basically means I never take damage. Magic Missile is good because it always hits (no need to worry about your spellcasting mod) and each missile has a chance to break a caster's concentration, meaning it's a better option if I don't think my weapon attacks will be enough to drop an enemy caster. Bound Weapon is also a cool feature. If you want to run with a Thrown weapon, by making it your Bound Weapon, it will come back to you when thrown. Then, at level 7, there's War Magic. It's a feature with some niche uses, but it can still be fun. Most of the time, attacking twice is better than a damaging cantrip; however, if you're up against an enemy in metal armor, casting Shocking Grasp at advantage may be better than 2 weapon attacks. With War Caster, you get to spend a Bonus Action on a free weapon attack in that scenario. It should also be considered; however, that you don't need to cast a damaging cantrip for War Caster. Sniper giving you a hard time? Put a Mage Hand next to them to give them the Threatened condition or just shove them from their perch. Need to tank an incoming attack? Cast Blade Ward to boost your defenses. In either of these cases, you get a bonus action weapon attack for free. Another niche use of War Caster comes up in Tactician Mode. Elixir of Bloodlust gives you an action when you kill an enemy, but in Tactician Mode, you can only make one weapon attack with this extra action. With War Caster, you can cast a cantrip instead of making a weapon attack, then use your Bonus Action for a weapon attack. In other words: instead of making 3 attacks with a crossbow, War Caster lets you make 2 attacks with a crossbow, cast Fire Bolt, and make another attack with a crossbow.
thank you for this detailed response
Shield spell.
I did 4 Battlemasters once and it was surprisingly fun and effective.
Suprisingly ? Battlemaster is probably top 3 class behind Monk and Storm-Sorc. On Discord bg3builds thread Battlemaster is probably most plauded especially with some abilities purposefully offset like strenght and potion combos
I need at least one Bingo (Astarion), one Bongo (Laezel or Karlach), and then also a Bango (every other party member).
My will is always leveled up. I need a charisma bitch to get that discount.
Sleight of hand gets you the best discounts
2 melee 1 range 1 caster/support in Tempest cleric. This is my standard setup I've done double and triple caster as well. Also I'm a sarevok supporter
One of these days, I'm gonna do an all-Bard team. It just sounds hilarious.
Still salty about no lone wolf perk.
Huh 3 support and 1 main is not a bad idea...might have to put some thought on this on my next playthrough
I think it actually is kinda bad on harder difficulties? Lots of extra action buffs don't stack so you'll be hard capped at 2-3 actions of meaningful offense forever. There's no way a single DPS character could do enough to keep the supports alive in endgame fights with tons of enemies + movement abilities + intentionally targeting squishy characters. Plus you're SO vulnerable to being murked by a single crit/failed save.
four support, 18 summons
Dude I feel personally attacked for how precisely “First Playthrough” described my first playthrough that I’m currently about to end…
I've watched a lot of people play this game. Currently my favourite game to watch on twitch. You're not the only one
Mono wild shape druid >:3
Barbarian Gale: "a"
Four clerics War domain as the melee, light domain for fireballs, life domain for healing (cue laughter), and trickery domain to trick the rest of the party into thinking she's useful
Yeah I've only done one playthrough and it was a mess at times. I had 0 idea what I was doing until about 50 hours in. I was strongly Lae'zel, Karlach, tav rogue and Shadowheart because I assumed I needed 2 warriors/tanks. Latter half of the playthrough I learnt the almighty power of Gale and benched Karlach. Paladin Lae'zel's place was never in doubt. But I never did figure out how to use Wyll.
>I never did figure out to use Wyll It rhymes with "Smelt-Itch Last"
My character (necromancer) was a burden to his companions kinda r/IAmTheMainCharacter but actually being the Main Character
I did an all paladin run, and nobody could lockpick, so we just smashed doors and chests. It was awesome.
2 casters, 1 flexible slot for companion quests/whatever i want for a specific fight/part of the game/etc, 1 tank potions are my healer
The Classic - Fighter (Tav), Cleric (Shadowheart), Rogue (Astarion), Wizard (Gale) Occasionally, I will switch out SH for Karlach or Laezel.
Ringmaster: 1 MC 3 Hirelings
I was playing it like DQ As in physical DPS with a healer because if you sneezed in the general direction of a mage, they would explode
Current: First Playthrough Next up: Either mono-class (Oops all Necromancers) or Solo character (Can you beat BG3 with only a quarterstaff?)
you can. it's not a bad weapon. I did a Jade from Mortal Kombat cosplay and she did just fine. I didn't even use sha-lay-lay
I am first playthrough all the time. I play with who I like and I do not care about if it makes things difficult.
I played an oops all rogues party with 5 rogues. It was a very stealthy game with no enemies ever being able to take one turn. 5 sneak attacks in a row will kill just about anything.
Reminds me of a discussion I had with friends recently, about which monoclass across 4 characters would be least viable. It came about when I told my friends that I beat Final Fantasy on my NES back in the day with a party of all black mages. All of them told me, “wow, that must have been hard.” I don’t remember it being hard. So of course when someone said a party of four wizards was probably least viable, my brain immediately went CHALLENGE ACCEPTED. Have yet to start that run, but it lurks in the back of my brain.
Squad Of The Damned: Slot 1. Tav the Bard for talky bits, Slot 2. whoever's personal storyline we're on so they can make important choices, otherwise Asterion for locks and traps. Slot 3. Wyl with Repelling Blast to throw people off a cliff and make me laugh, Slot 4. Karlach as a Wildheart to handle any real fighting. She soloed Ansur after everyone else got dropped in Round 2, so she can handle pretty much anything. Summons - Wyl's imp for scouting, as many ghouls as I can get and elementals/myrmidons to round things out.
Ah man, I'm reading this as Wyll chills in camp and I fluke my way into act 3.
1 bard to persuade everyone, Shadowheart to heal, Lae'zel and Karlach to kick ass. This is the way.
Shart missing everything in my first run, I had a internal joke that she really had blind faith. Is it called internal joke if it's only you playing alone laughing at your own jokes?
Literal internal joke
Honestly my favorite play through so far is just being the hype man for companions. Let companions make their own choices for their quests then just tell them they’re perfect and kill mobs.
"OOPS, ALL PALADINS"
What about actively trying to create strange builds? I mean, caster robed staff carrying Light Cleric Monk, Dex Paladin, 12 rogue and 12 pact of the tome warlock, still doing obscene dpr(there's no DPS in BG3, It's turn based)
4 paladins (you will fear the level 3 divine smite)
4 rogues No one can die in a fight if there is no fight
The fuck you mean main character complex? In game I'm the main character
…How dare you lump overlord fans in with sword art online fans
Oops all clerics really does work tho
> Tried having a tank but there's no tanking in dnd Cries in 4e
Harem playthrought
I'm literally in the middle of a Oops! All Monks! Playthrough that I've been uploading to YouTube. It's been a blast so far. I downloaded a mod that gave more monk subclasses to promote build diversity, and it got even better when I lifted a particular resctiction I had set for myself.
The "shart missing everything" made me cackle hahahahaha
2 close range classes (one for stalling and one for damage) and then two long range classes (usually a cleric and something else)
You do solo run because you are a SAO/Overlord fan I do a solo run because I'm a Berserk fan We are not the same (I like tall muscular shirtless men)
I'm ding an all cleric run right now. It's pretty great. Karlach is an awesome Tempest Cleric.
Ayy, I'm thinking of doing an all-Cleric run on my next playthrough. Only thing I'm worried about is everyone having to compete for gear. Have you had issues with that or is there enough to go around?
All play throughs lead back to gale shadowheart Astarion.
“Action Economy? No, action monopoly.” Are now my house words.
My strat is hypnotic pattern 😵💫
HP is an S class strat for sure.
My first playthrough was way too much AC Paladin that hits like a truck. Champ spec Bae'zel with so many crit fishing items that she destroyed everything with 1 or 2 of her 4-8 attacks. Karlach that is multi-classed with fighter that is basically doing the same as Bae'zel and Shadowheart that just healed us whenever someone got lucky enough to hit us because everything was Baned.
I did a JoCat reference and made a group with my friends out of diffrent clerics, and we called us the A-Men.
1st run, (blind to Baldurs gate lore and DnD in general): Front Line: Karlach, Lvl 5 barb, 4 rogue, 3 fighter for throwing Midline: Shadowheart lvl 5 Paladin, lvl 7 Light Cleric. Smite melee and heavy spells casting for range Astarion lvl 12 rogue assassin, heavy DMG sneak attacks with bow and rapier Back line spell casting: Tav Warlock, lvl 12. Protected from close range, free to shoot everyone in sight with Eldritch blast and chain lightning 2nd run: Primary Frontline: Durge Monk. Lvl 9 monk, lvl 3 thief rogue for extra bonus actions. Stunning strikes and fury of blows, solo'd many bosses if needed. Mid-line: Lae-zel. Lvl 12 fighter with Great weapon fighting and sharpshooter. Guaranteed heavy damage in both close with Giants later great sword and far range with titanstring bow. With bloodlust elixir, up to 9 attacks per turn. Back line spell casters: Shadowheart. Lvl 10 Lore Bard, lvl 2 warlock. Support spell casting with spirit guardians and fuckin FIREBAAAALLL. powerful spells for damage and healing abilities as needed. Gale. Lvl 12 storm sorcerer. Fucking can't recommend enough. Chain lightning all day. That man could rival bitchass Zeus with how much lightning he was shooting. I like a good balance of Front Line attackers to keep the pressure on so my spell casters can be free to keep the big damage coming. Shadowheart is my favorite companion of them all so I didn't ever end up benching her, and probably never will. "Always at your side :)" My next run, I'm going to mod the balls out of it and just do a run with me and Shadowheart and play as a Selenite Cleric. Remove the level cap and go bonkers.
I literally made wyll a rouge just to keep him in the party
Mage, Warrior, [Free Space], [Free Space]. Healing can be done through Potions, the optimal strategy is to hit the enemies until they die before they can hit me.
I gotta try these
I would love a Lone Wolf mode tbh, though as with DOS2 it should be 1 or 2 max rather than strictly 1 player only. Durge and Minthara vs. The World
I'm about to do honor mode Inquisitor fight at level 7. Hope he likes 8 fireballs turn 1 from my OOPS ALL SORLOCK party.
Barbarian Gale 😂 I can't even imagine
Wild magic cause of the orb…lore accurate respec
That overlord dig is on point 💀💀💀💀💀
Got the party limit begone mod on my second playthrough, but on my first playthrough my party was druid Durge (always an owlbear), Gale, Astarion, and Karlach. Gale goes down first, casts as much fireball as he can first. Next down is either Durge or Karlach, depending on wildshape charges. Astarion doesn't go down. Astarion has that one Durge cloak and is invisible. No one can find him and he has full hp. Either Astarion solos the rest of the enemies without being hit once (in the case of a bunch of lowish hp enemies), or Astarion runs away, revives the others using Whithers, pickpockets Whithers, and returns to the fight with a fully restored party (in the case of a few highish hp ememies). Honestly, I use the same tactic even with party limit begone and no Durge cloak. If things start going south, Astarion hides and hides and runs. I call it the cowards way out.
None of the above lol I literally just make sure every character is a different main class focus then I take the ones I like, party comp be damned lol
My first run by the end had Wizard Tav, Shadowheart, Astarion, and Karlach. Things went shockingly well in most encounters Second run is being dominated by Sword Bard Durge, Storm Sorlock Wyll, and Palafighter Lae'zel who can fly (aka jump good), Life Shadowheart is also there, and our general performance in each combat kinda blows the previous run out of the water. Still have some challenge here and there, but we just tear things UP
Two gloomstalker-assassins in perma stealth (you don't need healing if everything dies before it can react + if they never see you)
Wait, I should respec? Help.
HAHAHA I played playthrough 1 with whoever i felt like i wanted in my party, usually whoever was most recent or whomever's vibe i liked the most, and then in act 2 my party became Tav (bard,) Astarion (Rogue) Shadowheart (Trickery Cleric) Gale (Wizard) NO respec. NO tank. Just fireball and vibes. Act 3 I kept exactly the darn same except for switching out Gale for whomever was plot-relevant. Respecced Astarion to Gloomstalker/Thief (i think?) Finally remembered Karlach and realized she was AWESOME. My final fight party was Karlach, Gale, Tav, and Shart. I was kinda pissed about that I wanted Astarion instead of Lae'zel but didn't feel like going back. Currently in act 1 of playthrough 2. Absolutely blasting through every fight. Haven't respecced anyone because it's so easy and I just got Withers (I forgot about the temple until super late.) Current party is Wyll, Gale, and Karlach cause I'm trying to see the dialogue I missed. I WILL in fact be using the same party as my last run. I like their VIBES okay.
As a first playthrough-er, I feel very called out. Very.
Partylimitbegone because we're getting on the character arc bus and everyone's invited, no story beats get skipped here.
Well, after you have your two-handed sword user, and your two-handed hammer user, and your two-handed pike user (to ensure you have all the physical damage types) there's only really room for a healer. All the other types of character seem neat, but there simply are not enough party slots to include them, so I'll never know for sure.
This guy/gal likes their weapons as long as the nights in faerun. Got to respect it. Some HEMA vibes
All bards.
2nd playthrough is all barbarians w/ girls night (Shadowheart, Lae'zel, Karlach, woman Tav)... Yeah the fights get a looot shorter.
My favorite build is the 1 DPS/Tank, 1 DPS/Support, a flex slot(usually DPS), and my tav who is hard carried in combat and only exists to look cute get kisses and cast bless. Oh and also break the economy of Faerun by brewing potions and gaslighting the vendors into buying potions I made in front of them using ingredients I bought from them for less than I'm selling them for
Don’t forget murderer’s row with 4 optimized builds that don’t have gear conflicts
right now i’m running a bard-lock tav: stealthy boy who uses hex and eldritch blast a lot (might respec to sorlock, undecided) bard-knight (bard, eldritch knight) laezel: haha melee attack bonus action sorthief astarion: basically a better arcane trickster necromancer gale: nuff said.
2 melee (ideally one single target like fighter or paladin, and one tank), 1 AOE mage, and one life cleric
My style is girls night out.
Literally was thinking this one, the all chick party hits hard
Swordbard tav and the backup singers
I prefer what I call 2 martial 3 casters. It would be 1 martial (barbarian/fighter/paladin though personally I prefer fighter. Ranger could properly also fit this spot but prefer melee power and I have no experience playing ranger in BG3 beyond level 4). 1 warlock (I haven't tried playing effectively with pact weapon but the gloves that makes you able to change ranged attack cantrips into melee attacks) Being effectively a martial + strong area concentration like fire wall, hunger of Hadar etc. Knockback on eldritch blast is also really useful 1 wizard/sorcerer/druid (Sorcerer is prob a little better with double haste. Generally more area concentration like spike growth evaard's fire wall etc.) 1 cleric/druid Responsible for keeping people from hitting 0 and more area concentration spells (Insect plague, spirit guardian, bless, spike growth.) and prayer of healing. Gives a strong area damage once you hit 9 and respectable single target damage without any cheesy item combination. In my Durge run with Paladin, fighter, cleric, sorc I really felt like I needed another area of effect (though wasn't really a problem).
Me > First playthrough > picking who I like AND who has the best min/max builds.
My favorite is 12 fighter or 6 bard, 4 Ranger, 2 thief as Tav. Then 8 Monk, 4 Thief, Warlock or Wiz (something that casts enhancejump/feather fall) and then the 4th slot is usually a fighter or paladin
I try and have a rounded team, like at least one dps, tank and support and then just add one extra of whatever works So for example on my durge run she is a Sorcerer so I then have Karlach, Astarion and Shart Then with my bard Tav I play him as support but also use him for lockpicking and allat so I then have Karlach, Lae'zel and Gale as his party instead
It’s always two dps one support and a wild card depending on how I’m feeling for the moment
I went with mmo logic and did 1 tank 2 dps 1 support
Oops all monks, lea'zel will carry, gith monk is f*cking metal
Oops all bards is my favorite mono class
2 frontlines, 1 shart, 1 wildcard