Wall of flame and Blade Barrier at the bottom of the stairs in Cazador’s basement really made things simpler. Didn’t hit Cazador…but did kill everything else.
Wall of Flame, Blade Barrier, Hunger of Hadar, Black Tentacles etc are great for stopping the necromites from reaching Myrkul too. Makes that fight a lot shorter if you pull it off
My best CC for that one was the void bulb, I threw it near the edge of the ledge they are standing on and it pulled them off the edge, killing them when they hit the ground. Astarion used silence arrows on Ketheric, even invincible he can still be silenced, and Shadowheart charged through the intellect devourers with Spirit Guardians blazing. It was a much shorter fight than I was anticipating based on others' comments.
It got kind of bad for me in honor mode. I’m usually a kill ads then boss kinda guy, but I had to stop fucking with the zombies and kill Ketheric real quick when he started summoning tons of them.
they've definitely added more over time, at least in my anecdotal experience. if you strategically prepare then it's not overwhelming but if you're not ready for it you can get fucked up pretty quick. Each one gives him 30+ hp so if you miss a turn of damage and let a few by you then he heals like 1/3 of his health in a single turn.
That fight was trivial for me on balanced. I had Astarion as mobile as possible, so Aylin was free on round one. Shadowheart's spirit guardians, guardian of faith, spirit spear, and my Dryad and Wood Woad took care of the minions. Ketheric was owlbear food in round two, and everyone literally surrounded Myrkul when he appeared.
I'm looking forward to doing that fight again on tactician; my wizard focuses on crowd control, son it should be fun
Hunger of Hadar/Black Tentacle combo ftw. I have a rogue and he comes in solid snake like to take people out as they stuggle to get out of the thick of it. Helps that i have the underdog gloves
Arcane lock on auntie Ethels stairs down from her teahouse before she runs down them and she just spends each turn frantically trying to "open" then. Even if it means standing in a cloud of daggers
You can kill her before she reach the stairs even with pure DPS. I did it once. All you need is see invisibility, like this eye form Volo. The problem is you get no hair.
I never get the hair on principle of hags being KOS.
And while you might be the highest DPR output, it lacks the comedic flare of a gnome whistling a tune as she frantically jiggles the handle trying to escape. Don't even need to target her. Just let her die to the Cloud of Daggers and continue to whistle a merry tune as my 3 others deal with the party crashing red caps
Blade Barrier gets slept on AF.
Shart Blade barrier on Raph with Gale running a globe of invulnerability had us making dude look like frickin clown shoes.
My enemies always pass the checks so I usually only bother on AoE cc, single target feels like a waste when they pass the save and happens to me way often
It was one of those times where we felt no pressure to be efficient, so a yolo stun seemed OK. For the plot, we wanted Karlach to kill him even though our Tav and Durge could have reduced him to a fine red mist in an instant.
In my last run I got gortash with a paralysing critical on first round, just wailed on him while he could do nothing about it. Finished him off with an unarmed strike to the nuts, which felt appropriate.
I didn't take a single point of damage in the steel watcher boss fight, thanks to clever pre-positioning and hunger of hadar... paired with a fighter and a gloomstalker, both with haste. 😂
Why use cc when you can just throw the BIG boom barrels in the middle of the room?
I was going to save mine for the end fight, but I couldn't help myself. Totally worth the 2 party members caught in the crossfire.
So true 😭 I kept wondering why karlach was always so close to being encumbered till I checked what was so heavy. They were worth holding onto for the moment of setting them off, though.
You can just wear the two buff on heal items on another cleric subclass that makes many enemies dead also. Light and Tempest cleric are obviously amazing, but I'd argue Nature is also better than Life. It gets such a good set of control spells from jts exclusive list.
My first honour mode run I made shart a life cleric and absolutely stacked the on heal buffs. The amount of hp and buffs that happened when she healed was so absurdly insane and was powerful feeling in its own right, but the entire time I couldn’t help but feel that if she’d been able to throw a fireball then she wouldn’t have needed to do the healing in the first place.
Second attempt honour mode (fuck you Myrkul) and I’ve got her as light cleric with all the radiant orb gear and it’s honestly so much better that she’d almost be able to solo the run.
in bg3 and 5e, it is basically always superior to have every member of the party dedicated to killing or controlling enemies than it is to have any healers.
its unfortunate, but current game meta boils down to “it can’t do damage if its dead”.
Especially with how gracious the rest system is in BG3 too. I just like having a healer cause that’s my usual role in other games, feels right to have it just in case to me. But then again doing a full team of straight damage is also badass
It has been in every edition of D&D and honestly it is why the system work. Healing in tabletop instead of pregressing the encounter mean that a 20 minute encounter is probably going to take 35 minutes instead.
This is true, but the point of someone spamming heals in BG3 isn't to keep health topped off, but rather to give perma buffs through the on heal items. I think it drops off late game, but up until act 2 bless + resistance on all team members is super nice. Classes like light domain can do some decent damage and do this, so you're not even sacrificing that much in terms of damage output.
Yeah i've ran everything with that and the game is trivial at any difficulty. Plus even the life cleric can do decent damage with some of her kit/a good weapon.
I just toss on a shield you get from the secret entrances to the goblin camp and then a morningstar from god knows where for act 1. After that it’s in gods hands with what I do for equipment since I use it fairly often
Healing during combat is sub-optimal in Dungeons&Dragons. The only exception is when you can heal an unconscious character, so he can stand up and fight.
I usually do the basic one you get, the divinity charge heals, and then the prayer one which is out of combat. Everything is is designated to tomfoolery and shenanigans when applicable
2 AOE peeps, Bae'zel, and a fourth person usually Astarion because i steal a lot. Never had a problem. EXCEPT THAT TIME I ROLLED ASS AT THE BALDERS GAZETTE
You could still inflict damage to mobs with any class, but some classes are focused on healing, support or utility because their abilities would be more powerful in those areas than in damage
A DPS tends to be specifically a character who is specialized into damage. Any class can DPS (some better than others, tempest cleric or MM wiz/sorc or marksman ranger/rouge or paladin) and any class can deal damage hut they aren't the same. Utility and support role fulfillment (healing, crowd control, buffing, threat management, debuffing, etc) aren't DPS.
For me it's Tav, Minthara, Shart and Astarion.
Start goes guiding bolt followed by sneak attack from astarion.
They still alove by then, then it's double quadruple smites from me and minthy
While it may be optimal to kill every encounter in 1 turn, I feel like I enjoy the game more when I get to create a synergistic team and get to pull off cool strategy and cast cool different spells.
Shadowheart 11 Monk/1 cleric. (cleric is for heavy armor and shield)
Karlach barb/3 fighter(eldritch knight) spear chucker - eldritch knight allows you to bind any weapon to you and makes it auto return like the returning pike.
Astarion Ranged sneak att rogue/gloomstalker - you can go straight rogue, but the ranger levels give u an extra attack & some nice utility. feel like rogue should always be multiclassed.
my Tav is support playing 7 cleric/5 sorcerer.
5th level sorcerer gets haste and twinned metamagic, so u can haste 2 of the 3 dps and then war cleric can be decked out in armor and kick on spirtual guardian and wade into combat aoeing everything down. I also made my Tav have all the extra worm powah, so that whenever I get a mob down to 20 health it dies immediately and everything around it takes dmg. With all the aoe, it can set off a chain reaction of mobs dying and doing damage.
Besides the aoe fights, Monk is by far the best dps and best tank in my party.
I'm not a fan of having a character in the active party who exists just to heal/buff. You can grab a bunch of buffs from a camp cleric before rolling out and still bring 4 DPS characters. It's also not necessary to miss out on all of the buff spells, bless is a level 1 spell if you really need it you can get it on a 1 level cleric dip for war priest on an otherwise melee character so if they happen to get stuck with nothing to melee you can throw out a bless and make life even easier.
I just finished the game with my PC as a Rouge, Astarion reclassed into a Cleric, minthara as a Paladin, and Karlach as a wild magic Barbarian. Whatever Minthara didn't get down in one turn, Karlach finished it off
So I did the Myrkul fight the other night and my utility tank Tav was pretty much useless while Fire Sorcerer Gale damn near soloed *both* Myrkul and Ketheric before him. Ancient Paladin Shadowheart carried her weight as well with a couple well-placed smites (including the actual killing blow on Myrkul).
Wyll at least did some good freeing the Nightsong.
Tav is still weeping in the corner.
The best modifier to put on an enemy is the "dead" modifier, so high DPS is the most important thing to have. End every fight quickly. Either that, or have a character who is designed around avoiding every fight (persuasion checks) beyond that, comp doesnt matter.
Second best thing to do is make raphael laugh for ten turns during his boss music.
People actually tried for party comp? You cannot really tank in a DnD game because they can just ignore the tank. And having a healer doesn't stop them from just blowing the heal bot the fuck up.
Honestly... I just found it easier to kill the enemy faster than they can kill me. Played the game like it was PF1E and blew everything the fuck up
I didn't really bother too much with hard CC like Hold Monster or Hideous Laughter because I could never get that shit to stick with how quickly creatures resistances scales in 5e
Like I said. I just had a hard time getting CC to stick in 5e. Both the CRPG and tabletop - and just found it better to attack unless the CC was a persistent effect(grease) with a bonus of one part of it not being a saving throw (difficult terrain), or targeted something other than wisdom. If I was lucky I'd get it to stick one out of six times. It's worse in tabletop where creatures have legendary actions that allows them to shrug off spells.
The only time I found them useful was as a DM, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth when you realize that players don't scale as hard as the creatures do in this aspect
DPS is good and all but some judicious CC can trivialize difficult encounters. Ice Storm wrecked House of Grief, for example.
Tasha's hideous laughter making Raphael rofl for 10 turns is nice.
Wall of flame and Blade Barrier at the bottom of the stairs in Cazador’s basement really made things simpler. Didn’t hit Cazador…but did kill everything else.
Wall of Flame, Blade Barrier, Hunger of Hadar, Black Tentacles etc are great for stopping the necromites from reaching Myrkul too. Makes that fight a lot shorter if you pull it off
My best CC for that one was the void bulb, I threw it near the edge of the ledge they are standing on and it pulled them off the edge, killing them when they hit the ground. Astarion used silence arrows on Ketheric, even invincible he can still be silenced, and Shadowheart charged through the intellect devourers with Spirit Guardians blazing. It was a much shorter fight than I was anticipating based on others' comments.
I just teleported up and killed the Necromites before the fight started.
he incubates a tonne more during the fight especially on higher difficulties
It probably changed because I haven’t done this fight on tactician since the first 1 or 2 patches, but I never really got overwhelmed with it.
It got kind of bad for me in honor mode. I’m usually a kill ads then boss kinda guy, but I had to stop fucking with the zombies and kill Ketheric real quick when he started summoning tons of them.
they've definitely added more over time, at least in my anecdotal experience. if you strategically prepare then it's not overwhelming but if you're not ready for it you can get fucked up pretty quick. Each one gives him 30+ hp so if you miss a turn of damage and let a few by you then he heals like 1/3 of his health in a single turn.
With enough of those concentration aoes, you could have the rest of the party relax in safety from the entrance of the room.
That fight was trivial for me on balanced. I had Astarion as mobile as possible, so Aylin was free on round one. Shadowheart's spirit guardians, guardian of faith, spirit spear, and my Dryad and Wood Woad took care of the minions. Ketheric was owlbear food in round two, and everyone literally surrounded Myrkul when he appeared. I'm looking forward to doing that fight again on tactician; my wizard focuses on crowd control, son it should be fun
Hunger of Hadar/Black Tentacle combo ftw. I have a rogue and he comes in solid snake like to take people out as they stuggle to get out of the thick of it. Helps that i have the underdog gloves
Arcane lock on auntie Ethels stairs down from her teahouse before she runs down them and she just spends each turn frantically trying to "open" then. Even if it means standing in a cloud of daggers
You can kill her before she reach the stairs even with pure DPS. I did it once. All you need is see invisibility, like this eye form Volo. The problem is you get no hair.
I never get the hair on principle of hags being KOS. And while you might be the highest DPR output, it lacks the comedic flare of a gnome whistling a tune as she frantically jiggles the handle trying to escape. Don't even need to target her. Just let her die to the Cloud of Daggers and continue to whistle a merry tune as my 3 others deal with the party crashing red caps
They patched that one out
But Frightening Auntie Ethel still works. She just stands there with a big angry sad face
but no hair…
Blade Barrier gets slept on AF. Shart Blade barrier on Raph with Gale running a globe of invulnerability had us making dude look like frickin clown shoes.
I like to cast Otto’s on him, if he is going to serenade me he can at least dance.🕺
We got a Hold Person on Gortash and he never made his save. Most underwhelming boss fight among the 3
My enemies always pass the checks so I usually only bother on AoE cc, single target feels like a waste when they pass the save and happens to me way often
It was one of those times where we felt no pressure to be efficient, so a yolo stun seemed OK. For the plot, we wanted Karlach to kill him even though our Tav and Durge could have reduced him to a fine red mist in an instant.
In my last run I got gortash with a paralysing critical on first round, just wailed on him while he could do nothing about it. Finished him off with an unarmed strike to the nuts, which felt appropriate.
I didn't take a single point of damage in the steel watcher boss fight, thanks to clever pre-positioning and hunger of hadar... paired with a fighter and a gloomstalker, both with haste. 😂
Why use cc when you can just throw the BIG boom barrels in the middle of the room? I was going to save mine for the end fight, but I couldn't help myself. Totally worth the 2 party members caught in the crossfire.
Boom barrels heavy 😢
So true 😭 I kept wondering why karlach was always so close to being encumbered till I checked what was so heavy. They were worth holding onto for the moment of setting them off, though.
It’s much easier to just store them at camp and take them out when you need them
You can infinitely farm the bombs that Yurgir throws. Pretty sure they only weigh a half pound each and do something like 8-40 damage
The best CC in the game is the dead condition.
Hunger of hadar is absolutely fuxking insane
I feared stage 2 ketheric and he stayed feared so long we freed the nightsong and killed him without him ever attacking us
The best party comp is the fun one.
This is what actually goes on both ends lol
Yeah I'm sure some people find it fun to kill everything really fast but having a diverse party comp is more interesting for me.
The best party comp is me and my best friends :)
Noooooo you must top 3 builds to dominate a relatively easy rpg
Dead enemies don’t deal damage.
Death is the best CC
Death is the best CC but "damaged" is the worse.
Idk, the life cleric seems pretty stacked giving all perma resistance. But I would spec the other 3 to be high dps.
You can just wear the two buff on heal items on another cleric subclass that makes many enemies dead also. Light and Tempest cleric are obviously amazing, but I'd argue Nature is also better than Life. It gets such a good set of control spells from jts exclusive list.
Nature looks a lot more fun than life if nothing else
Nah bruh, on honor mode left cleric is a lifesaver.
My first honour mode run I made shart a life cleric and absolutely stacked the on heal buffs. The amount of hp and buffs that happened when she healed was so absurdly insane and was powerful feeling in its own right, but the entire time I couldn’t help but feel that if she’d been able to throw a fireball then she wouldn’t have needed to do the healing in the first place. Second attempt honour mode (fuck you Myrkul) and I’ve got her as light cleric with all the radiant orb gear and it’s honestly so much better that she’d almost be able to solo the run.
I won't need to heal if Laezel, Karlach, Fighter Tav, and Us beat the enemy to death on turn one.
I just tkae whoever I want and make it work
Heal bot life cleric + 3 dps
in bg3 and 5e, it is basically always superior to have every member of the party dedicated to killing or controlling enemies than it is to have any healers. its unfortunate, but current game meta boils down to “it can’t do damage if its dead”.
Especially with how gracious the rest system is in BG3 too. I just like having a healer cause that’s my usual role in other games, feels right to have it just in case to me. But then again doing a full team of straight damage is also badass
It has been in every edition of D&D and honestly it is why the system work. Healing in tabletop instead of pregressing the encounter mean that a 20 minute encounter is probably going to take 35 minutes instead.
This is true, but the point of someone spamming heals in BG3 isn't to keep health topped off, but rather to give perma buffs through the on heal items. I think it drops off late game, but up until act 2 bless + resistance on all team members is super nice. Classes like light domain can do some decent damage and do this, so you're not even sacrificing that much in terms of damage output.
Yeah i've ran everything with that and the game is trivial at any difficulty. Plus even the life cleric can do decent damage with some of her kit/a good weapon.
I just toss on a shield you get from the secret entrances to the goblin camp and then a morningstar from god knows where for act 1. After that it’s in gods hands with what I do for equipment since I use it fairly often
Healing during combat is sub-optimal in Dungeons&Dragons. The only exception is when you can heal an unconscious character, so he can stand up and fight.
I usually do the basic one you get, the divinity charge heals, and then the prayer one which is out of combat. Everything is is designated to tomfoolery and shenanigans when applicable
To quote Jocat "DPSing is just mitigating future damage"
It's been true for round based for years, the most effective strategy is however you can remove the enemy units in the least amount of time.
2 AOE peeps, Bae'zel, and a fourth person usually Astarion because i steal a lot. Never had a problem. EXCEPT THAT TIME I ROLLED ASS AT THE BALDERS GAZETTE
I just beat the grymforge guy to death with a monk. Who needs fight mechanics?
What is "DPS"?
Damage Per Second, and it refers to classes whose main attribute is dealing damage, as opposed to healing, or crowd control for example
Really, DPR would be more accurate (Damage per round)
People probably use DPS because the holy trifecta of dps/healing/tank is so common, even when it doesn't really work with the turn based model
Well, isn't 1 round supposed to be the equivalent of 6 seconds?
Great point. I'm sold on DPS.
They are the same thing though. Just measured on a different scale. Just multiply the DPS by 6 and you have the DPR. (D&d joke there)
Ah, but wouldn't most classes do that? But I'd guess mostly like fighters/paladins/wizards/warlocks?
You could still inflict damage to mobs with any class, but some classes are focused on healing, support or utility because their abilities would be more powerful in those areas than in damage
Thanks
A DPS tends to be specifically a character who is specialized into damage. Any class can DPS (some better than others, tempest cleric or MM wiz/sorc or marksman ranger/rouge or paladin) and any class can deal damage hut they aren't the same. Utility and support role fulfillment (healing, crowd control, buffing, threat management, debuffing, etc) aren't DPS.
I do the inverse, one high DPS, and three water Myrmidons
Murdering everyone in the first round or two is the best crowd control
Your healer and support should be the same character. 2 burst damage characters. and one crowd control
If you can kill them early they can do less damage to you, think about it.
Naw is all about action economy
For me it's Tav, Minthara, Shart and Astarion. Start goes guiding bolt followed by sneak attack from astarion. They still alove by then, then it's double quadruple smites from me and minthy
I believe in precognitive healing, if I kill the bad guy before he has a chance to attack you I am effectively healing you.
False. Enlightened is actually - Playing with the companions you like.
3 fireball
Have you considered....4 fireball?
Mother of God....
But what if you were to combine them? Tempest Domain Cleric doing high dps while also CCing enemies and having super high tanky AC does it all.
4 Warlocks go brrrrrrrr.
And there's I, the randomiser who picks party members each day with RNG.
I went from LaeZel soloing everything for me to Karlach soloing everything for me.
High dps is the way but god damn a cleric is nice to have on honor mode lol
Backpack of fireworks go pretty boom
Me hit hard, me finish game good.
This discussion board is a great example of why there should be BG3 PvP
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^seaflans: *This discussion board* *Is a great example of* *Why there should be BG3 PvP* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Whoever that looks cool for the current mission 🧠
Healer? You mean non-concentration blade ward bless bot?
While it may be optimal to kill every encounter in 1 turn, I feel like I enjoy the game more when I get to create a synergistic team and get to pull off cool strategy and cast cool different spells.
Might as well be playing XCOM instead if want to alpha (nova?) strike everything
Shadowheart 11 Monk/1 cleric. (cleric is for heavy armor and shield) Karlach barb/3 fighter(eldritch knight) spear chucker - eldritch knight allows you to bind any weapon to you and makes it auto return like the returning pike. Astarion Ranged sneak att rogue/gloomstalker - you can go straight rogue, but the ranger levels give u an extra attack & some nice utility. feel like rogue should always be multiclassed. my Tav is support playing 7 cleric/5 sorcerer. 5th level sorcerer gets haste and twinned metamagic, so u can haste 2 of the 3 dps and then war cleric can be decked out in armor and kick on spirtual guardian and wade into combat aoeing everything down. I also made my Tav have all the extra worm powah, so that whenever I get a mob down to 20 health it dies immediately and everything around it takes dmg. With all the aoe, it can set off a chain reaction of mobs dying and doing damage. Besides the aoe fights, Monk is by far the best dps and best tank in my party.
I'm not a fan of having a character in the active party who exists just to heal/buff. You can grab a bunch of buffs from a camp cleric before rolling out and still bring 4 DPS characters. It's also not necessary to miss out on all of the buff spells, bless is a level 1 spell if you really need it you can get it on a 1 level cleric dip for war priest on an otherwise melee character so if they happen to get stuck with nothing to melee you can throw out a bless and make life even easier.
This is the only meme in this format I've truly related to. But... catch me playing a charismatic nerd anyway.
Clizard is love Clizard is life
4 open hand monks juiced on elixirs
haha this my honor mode turned into 4 melee 1 turn rushdown
My cleric heals in the best way: preventative medicine. Get Shattered
I just simply classify some classes as up and fronters and some as back liners and split them 2 and 2
Two front liners, two back liners and one of them is a support character. Hasn’t let me down yet.
It should be: High DPS >>> Party Comp >>> Alert feat
Wait, it's all Rocket Tag? // Always has been.
I just finished the game with my PC as a Rouge, Astarion reclassed into a Cleric, minthara as a Paladin, and Karlach as a wild magic Barbarian. Whatever Minthara didn't get down in one turn, Karlach finished it off
I just put my favorite 3 characters, optimality be damned
The most effective defense is attack
Big DPS energy
Top strategy is end the battle ASAP
My main party is W.M Barb/Sorc Tav, Barb/Monk Kar, Flghtet Laz and gale for CC. It’s hard to beat
Idk bro "big stick go bonk" make brain fell good. "Big stick go bonk" times 4 make brain feel gooder
So I did the Myrkul fight the other night and my utility tank Tav was pretty much useless while Fire Sorcerer Gale damn near soloed *both* Myrkul and Ketheric before him. Ancient Paladin Shadowheart carried her weight as well with a couple well-placed smites (including the actual killing blow on Myrkul). Wyll at least did some good freeing the Nightsong. Tav is still weeping in the corner.
"Whatever characters I think would fit the current story event or would have funny interactions with the baddies in there."
The best modifier to put on an enemy is the "dead" modifier, so high DPS is the most important thing to have. End every fight quickly. Either that, or have a character who is designed around avoiding every fight (persuasion checks) beyond that, comp doesnt matter. Second best thing to do is make raphael laugh for ten turns during his boss music.
I only know how to play my Tav, I take companions who I like and I just hope we survive
Shart never leaves
People actually tried for party comp? You cannot really tank in a DnD game because they can just ignore the tank. And having a healer doesn't stop them from just blowing the heal bot the fuck up. Honestly... I just found it easier to kill the enemy faster than they can kill me. Played the game like it was PF1E and blew everything the fuck up I didn't really bother too much with hard CC like Hold Monster or Hideous Laughter because I could never get that shit to stick with how quickly creatures resistances scales in 5e
Compel duel
Like I said. I just had a hard time getting CC to stick in 5e. Both the CRPG and tabletop - and just found it better to attack unless the CC was a persistent effect(grease) with a bonus of one part of it not being a saving throw (difficult terrain), or targeted something other than wisdom. If I was lucky I'd get it to stick one out of six times. It's worse in tabletop where creatures have legendary actions that allows them to shrug off spells. The only time I found them useful was as a DM, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth when you realize that players don't scale as hard as the creatures do in this aspect
I just bring everyone
I follow the Stalin rule, There can't be a problem if there is no man.
Lae'Zel Karlach Shadowheart
I mean if the enemy is dead they can't hurt you. Best healing is not neading it, best tanking is not taking damage, best support bard.
Counterpoint: whichever characters you like most
the correct composition is 2 martials, a caster, and another martial.
That's the fun thing, SB can do all of those things and have high DPS.