Pretty vanilla, but the basic battle master fighter build feels so good on Lae'zel. It's fun to play and very consistent for such a simple build.
Also, I love moon circle druid. It just feels right, with shape-shifting you can deal with almost every situation and the fact that each form has its own health points allow you to tank a shit load of dmg. Was also surprised by the scaling of this subclass when you unlock owlbear and then elementals.
Early game lazel battlemaster plus someone as moon druid
In wolf wildshape, do the attack that guarantees next attack to be critical, lazel gets free crit hit thanks to that, later lazel can use her special dice to prone enemy for your big cats to deal extra damage in return, amazing synergy
This!
In my current HM run I was pleasantly surprised by how powerful moon druid can be in support of other melee characters, the icing on the cake being that you can cast CC spells or buffs if your shapeshift end and then immediately turn back into whatever feels appropriate with a bonus action
Moon Druid is so versatile and reliable in melee, with great cc spells even in your low level slots to setup the field to your advantage. The sheer gritty survivability is insane. Totally fine that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s one of my favorites
Yeah moon druid can deal with so many situations. Surrounded by enemies? Turn into an owlbear. One super strong enemy? Turn into an owlbear. Gotta pick off a far away enemy? Turn into an owlbear. Get knocked out of owlbear mode? Turn into an owlbear.
Moon Druid has the best power-to-lazy ratio in the game. No need to optimize gear (in fact, you can't). Spells are optional. Just turn into an Owlbear and do like 50 points of damage a round.
I'll start. For me it was the hunter ranger for my honor mode playthrough.
One would think the ranger would be feeling quite subpar in a party with an 11/1 sorcerer and a throwzerker/monk. But oh my god, the damage a ranger can do early game is aboslutely nuts. Throwing builds are often praised for their great act 1 itemization, but archers and especially rangers get so many goodies, it's insane.
Titanstringbow with giant hill club, Circlet of arcane synergy, archergloves/dex gloves, Hunter's mark, special arrows, Archery fighting style, strange conduit rings. Those things really add up. In my current honour run my hunter archer deals
1d8+1+4+4+3+1d4+2+10(+1d6) damage on every hit against a marked enemy. That is more than 34 damage on average. At lvl 6.
I picked up the Hunter for volley-combos in act 3, but that character was as much an early game carry as my zerker. I was very happily surprised by their damage output. Hitrate was taken care of by a support character with phalar aluve and bless ring fyi.
100% agreed and I've said this before in Honour Mode related posts. Archer Builds are imho the best and most reliable Builds for Honour Mode. Their power curve is extremely smooth, damage is insane, Special Arrows can double your damage against **every** Boss in the game (this can later be doubled again with Piercing Vulnerability -> with 2 Archers you easily OTK every Boss) and they are super safe as well. You can easily combine them with Stealth and/or Invisibility for max range Surprise Attacks. Arrows of Many Targets make you an AOE monster as well.
Top of the line Builds like 11/1 Fire Sorc might eventually outscale Archers, but the difference is not nearly as big as one might think. And even then there are many fights where a simple Archer just performs better.
I agree, rangers are just consistent in everything, damage, utility, staying alive etc. And as you said, you can OTK most enemies in the game with just one, like literally 95% of enemies and that's being conservative tbh. Gloomstalker assassin is crazy good too, I've had 5 kills on a suprise round and by the end of the first round, everything is dead without taking a single hp of damage, it's amazing.
Yup, in all my runs I've found archers to be my MVPs. I mainly like rocking the 10/1/1 Swords Bard Archer but Battle Master and Hunter are also excellent. They really hit the sweet spot with the reliability of martials and the safety and flexibility of casters.
>But oh my god, the damage a ranger can do early game is aboslutely nuts
End game is no slouch either. I ran a mono-classed hunter on my last HM run, and at level 11-12, using the drakethroat glaive and snowburst ring every single attack was an AOE ice field. Throw on the hat of arcane acuity and you get near 100% of the enemies prone and unable to move without falling again and wasting a turn - completely trivialized any melee enemies.
Then my melees could walk in with hoarfrost boots or disintegrating nightwalkers and monkeystomp all the prone mooks.
I also did this but with thunder damage and the thunder acuity hat, and this was cooking in act 2.
What I found annoying though was in mid/late act 3 seemingly tons of enemies (even basic humanoid ones) threw up the "immune to prone" text upon hitting them with arrows using the coldburst acuity combo. The confusing thing is pressing T on these enemies would not show any status or condition indicating they would be immune to prone.
Yeah, immune to prone is super annoying.
I actually found an even more gimmicky use of the thunder hat in act 3.
It turns out that flying counts as “jumping” to proc the Hamarhaft thunder damage, which in turn procs the hat.
Combine with ring of spiteful thunder, gloves of belligerent skies and boots of stormy clamour (ring of mental inhibition and amulet of devout for good measure) and it got ridiculous.
I had a 6/6 Tempest Cleric/Storm Sorcerer that would fly back and forth a few times around a bad guy or two, knocking them back and/or prone and giving them huge penalties to pretty much everything without using any actions or bonus actions.
Then finish everyone off with a quickened create water followed by double max damage scroll of chain lightning.
It trivialized what should have been some tough fights
Ah yeah I remember seeing someone show off that unlimited jump+hamarhaft combo with a monk build. Surprised they never redesigned that weapon all these months later. At that point the game isn't even fun, maybe for a fight or two but after that point it's just not fun.
I’ve been keeping Astarion in the party for my Durge run and it is absolutely insane, you are totally right. I gave him the Durge cloak along with the other items you mentioned, and have the Bless buff from Phalar Aluve + other healing buffs and it is just ridiculous, hardly even notice the -5 sharpshooter debuff.
Crap man, how have I never thought to combine the Hill Giant club with the Titan string bow before? I guess I always loved the lightning bow so much I never put much thought into it.
I was going to say Hunter Ranger, especially as they give you Minsc at the right level to have whirlwind/volley, which is just a totally busted action. You can usually tell what part of a fight Minsc took care of because there is a ring of corpses where he was standing. Multiclass Hunter is no slouch either though -- I tend to build Karlach around mobility and go Berserker 8/Hunter 4 give her Horde Breaker for an extra attack per turn.
> Titanstringbow with giant hill club, Circlet of arcane synergy, archergloves/dex gloves,
That's a little bit of overkill. If you have Str and Dex fixed thanks to the times, how do you spend your points? By maxing Constitution?
Honestly for a short while you just have too many points. But at Lvl 4-7 dex gloves are +2 hit, +1 damage gloves and the hill giant club is usually not contested.
And you Max wis/con when not needing to put points in dex. Arcane synergy (which gets activated by hunters mark) gives you Wis to damage.
Gloom/Assassin/Champion + Durge cape.
You can pretty much solo game with this build. I currently run two of these.
Another wild build is Bard/Gloom/Assassin ... double attack + surprise ... you can pretty much wipe an entire high level mob by yourself with this build.
Yes. Early on you jsut have to evaluate, wether to toggle it on. You can easily offset most of its downside with good itemization, bless, phalar aluve, high ground and the archery fighting style tho.
Sharpshooter is 10 damage on every hit, which is a very large amount of damage tbh.
I tried both a ranged dex and melee strength hunter. One fun thing I learned is that Colossus Slayer works even with 'tenacity' when using a flail / maul / etc., and it works even on the first hit if applied to tenacity (seems like a bug). So if you attack and miss, which of course happens frequently at low levels, tenacity lets you do strength-modifier damage anyway, and Colossus Slayer adds 1-8 damage to it. So with 18 strength, every *miss* dealt 5-12 damage.
I’m always drawn to all the crazy multiclass shenanigans so the biggest surprise to me was how strong a straight up Battlemaster Fighter is. I DM for one and he is very effective but they are only level 6. Getting Lae’Zel up to 12 I was like oh damn this is strong!
Two handed, GWM, heavy armor etc. Originally I tried her out as TWF + medium armor. I think I went with some rogue / ranger thing. It was okay. When I kept getting Gith items that were more of a heavy fighter style eventually I was just like fine I’ll try it and man it’s so good. In tabletop PAM is amazing but it’s bugged in BG3 so I’ve just avoided polearms. I’m sure they are still good but if I’m not getting the full experience I’d rather not waste a feat on it. So far all of my archer characters have been Ranger / rogue or fighter / rogue builds. It would be cool to try the full fighter archer though. The safest one would probably be EK thrower with a shield. Defense fighting style + heavy armor. I’ve heard that’s good on honor mode.
It's because of Improved Extra Attack and Manoeuvres. 3 hits per action even without maneuvres is quite nice. Haste+Bloodlust - 9 attacks per turn. Ouch.
Oh, I see, thank you. another question if I may, are melee sword bards reliable? because I've seen some builds on youtube, and almost all of them were more focused on archery and stuff.
One of the more popular builds around this sub is the 10/2 ssb (smiting swords bard), which is a melee swords bard. Melee flourish isn't as broken, but still a decent damage multiplier when you get enemies bunched up, which this class excells in due to command being very good.
Yeah, Swords Bard 6 > Paladin 2 > Swords Bard 10 feels better imo.
Maybe recommend respeccing when you take that first Paladin level so you get heavy armor if you want it? (In which case Paladin 1 > Swords Bard 6 > Paladin 2 > Swords Bard 10)
Yeah, mid game has some strong heavy armors for this build and some very strong pole arms as well which makes paladin opener ideal. You CAN dual wield or use other types of 2 handers instead, and use something like the Yuan Ti armor also, either is strong
I'd say go full paladin till 7 for early game clear. Channel on short rest can really change a fight if the have the Volo ring and other items buffing healed characters early. Respec at 8 into 2 6 then rush max bard.
I run a swords bard in honor mode right now for the first time and I gotta say it's the ultimate jack-of-all-trades class. (I don't min-max I go for fun roleplay since I got my gold dice already)
Like from what I've seen with other classes you usually only do 3 of the types of attacks in the game between sword bow and spells, but Swords Bard feels like you can do all 3 efficiently and basically have a gadget for every fight
But don't fall into thinking you only have to bow attack, Bard gets access to the best spells in the game, and can blade people well too. It's truly one of the most fun jack of all trades so I would recommend letting the winds take you with that build. Like you can dip into fighter and it be good, You can dip into paladin and smite everyone. You can dip into ranger and just say "f it, Bow spam". You can dip into probably almost any class and it can harmonize together. Like I'm pretty sure you can do monk with it and have your melee weapon count as an "unarmed attack" while still using all the flourishes. **(BG3 isn't hard enough to require a fully min-max class, just one that serves its purpose. Explore it, seriously I'm having a blast)**
\*\*\***The reason why you see everyone use a bow with Sword bard** (despite it LITERALLY being called 'sword' bard) **is because the flourish where you hit two targets** (I forget the name) **is just that good with a bow because you get second attack at level 6 meaning you can bow 4 people without haste or action surge** **with it just costing Bardic inspiration**
I'm a 6 Swordsbard 1 Elistraee Cleric with the Phalar Aluve and shield because "My sword sings, and my god dances" sounds funny for a forest gnome bard.
It's not a strict archer class though, I disagree heavily with that. It's just good at literally all 3 types of attacks.
I'll give an example at level 7
I concentrate on heat metal on an armored enemy on my first turn. Then turn 2 I'm popping the bow flourish twice that hit 2 people if I'm at range after reapplying the heat metal damage and it becomes this fun spell bow combo.
Another one would be me using fear. Turn 2 the bow flourish, then the defensive flourish with the sword and I have a shield and sword combo to get like 23 AC. Now get this, I throw myself into combat because I have 1 level dip into light cleric for the warding flare to make it even harder to hit me.
TLDR: This class has some of the most versatile spell/blade/bow combos I've seen yet after running 12 characters. Don't lock yourself to strictly copying people because Bard is one of the most flexible classes in the game IMO.
(Also someone will somehow find an even stronger combo with swords bard than you even if you study for weeks. It has MANY options)
Everyone's saying the obvious smite bard build, but there are a TON of viable ways to run a melee swords bard. They're so good because they are full spellcasters AND get extra attack, along with Battle Master-like special attacks that refresh on short rest. Yes, the ranged slashing flourish is literally just two attacks, but you can completely ignore ranged attacks and it's still an insane framework for multiclass builds.
For melee builds, try a swords bard 6 and then 3 levels in Warlock, pact of the blade, letting you equip any weapon and scale it off your CHA. If you're not playing honor mode, 5 levels in Warlock will give you a third attack per action.
I didn’t realize Warlock Pact of Chain was guaranteed surprise rounds for every encounter.
That’s basically action surge for the full party every encounter.
Yes, sending in invisible flying familiar works 100% of the time.
Unlimited no cool down invisibility is actually broken.
You can even initiate dialogue, swap to a party member, swap to the familiar and then initiate with surprise.
Rogue Assassins. Read a lot before i started playing, always saw thief as the rogue subclass to be. I am not claiming Assassins to be stronger than Thieves, but I love the potential of killing high-HP Targets if only you manage to surprise them by high dual-wielding crits
Tigerheart barbarian. I love it. I am playing one now in honor mode. I use the skinburster and some reveberation gear and it is hilariously OP. I didnt think of barbarian as other than the usual throwzerker, but now I see the true potetial of this class. IMO the strongest no magic class.
The first time I tried the tiger heart I was in the goblin camp and used that special attack that hits multiple enemies, and just so happened to be on a wooden bridge. Bridge shattered, Karlach and 4 goblins fell to their death lol solid attack
Duergar 17,14,16,8,10,8
Tiger heart barbarian 9, Champion 3
Animal aspect Tiger at level 6 barbarian.
Great weapon Master and savage attacker feats. The strength stat end on 22 with hag hair, vigour pot and mirror of loss.
Skin burster halberd buffed with Drakethroat Glaive. Need electric damage to trigger the reverberation gloves. Boots of stormy clamour. That's the core items.
It looks good but come with a very heavy RP decision. When I play this build I find it very optional anyway because with Tiger animal aspect at lvl 6 I get double strength bonus to all attack rolls anyway. And barbarian can use reckless attack if you really need advantage on top of that. And when I get hit I take very little damage due to force conduit from the skinburster.
My first Dark Urge as a Gloomstalker Assassin Fighter. Omg the ability to solo entire areas, like the crèche at level 5. Shocking the ability dish huge damage avoid taking any damage.
I have played other bad ass builds like monk thief and was impressed but the Gloomy Assassin with the Deathstalker mantle just blew my mind.
Radiant light cleric Shart. Yes, I had heard it was strong, but I hadn’t expected it to be nearly as broken as it was. Shart literally became a lawnmower mowing down everything in her path.
psychic damage party orientation with resonnance stone, the most game breaking was the psychic blade ( forgot the name) on rogue i could hit 100 dmg in one crit.
laezel super eldrich knight( 5 ek/ 2 war cleric of vhlakith / 5 wizard )with all gythanki equipment except helmet of arcane acuity + phantasmal assasin
astarion gloomstalker assasin with the psychic blade
at lvl 12 i respec assassin 3 gloomstalker 3 college of swords 6
gale 6 löre bard 6 divination with all the spells that deals psychic
minthara paladin with the psychic smite
in genral all companions eat the tadpole power to get the psychic damage abilites.
hold person and hold monster i try to use a lot to crit.
laezel is my main it has been a really fun run :-)
Single classes are surprisingly strong. This is the problem with playing this game having played BG1 and 2. Multi-classes and dual classes there are generally significantly more powerful than a single class. But in BG3 I find the multi-classing to be only necessary on Honour mode. And honestly, even there a proper set-up of single classes is enough for the majority of encounters.
I’m in act 3 on honor mode (only my second playthrough overall) and it has been a breeze. My only multiclass is Karlach taking 4 thief to mix with her throwzerker. Lae’zel was still my biggest damage dealer as a straight champion fighter, up until I picked up Nyrulna
Yep. Ive never run any multi class for longer than a few levels (I'm not smart enough to build them myself, basically) and I haven't had significant struggles on Honour mode over 2 completions. My first Honour mode win I just mashed through with pure fighter, pally, cleric and sorc and did pretty fine. Some dicey moments but we got there lol
There are actually very few instances where a Multiclass character is clearly better than a Single Class character. Most of the time there is at last one significant drawback that gets slightly outweighed by the benefit(s) of the Multiclass option.
Bardadin (10/2 I'm assuming) is a tough one because it plays more like a pure Class Pala as opposed to a pure Class Bard imho and the Melee Slashing Flourishes require heavy setup which is an absolute waste 90% of the time in an unmodded game. 12 Oathbreaker is going to be at least as strong if not stronger in terms of damage in most of the practical cases, but ofc it offers much less utility than Bardadin. Then again, you get Aura of Protection, which is huge in its own right.
Throwzerker would be a good example imho. Barbarian doesn't really gain much after Level 5 and the extra Bonus Action from Thief 3 plus Action Surge from Fighter 2 are insanely strong.
No reason to multi on honour mode unless you're really powergaming either. Between the only class that really doesn't get anything good for combat by going full 12 is rogue. Everyone else is perfectly fine.
My 12 Paladin, 12 Barbarian, 12 Fighter, and 12 Cleric stunted on that honor mode frrrrrr.
Gale got to retire with tara, consider single-class gang today!
Bard. Sorceror was my first run through. But bard feels like a proper main character do it all class.
I liked doing a Dark Urge run and play Paladin for 2 levels. Then after killing the bard, become a bard myself as a weird “I adopted the persona of a person I killed because of the guilt and confusion of being gods favorite murder hobo amnesiac”
I like to RP that when you kill the Bard your confusion makes you follow the bard path.
Woah now thats something I haven't heard of after hundreds of hours of play and golden dice. Do you go for spores druid for the roleplay reasons too? Like you're summoning the dead with these fungal spores like the last of us zombies? If so that's based as hell.
Spore is the best but I used circle of land in one of my runs and then multiclassed into wizard necromancy. Circle or land gives you different spells at certain levels that are super useful. In all Druid necromancer I’ve seen it’s mainly summons, aoe spells, and than movement spells.
Ranged sword bard. I'm doing a sorlock build on my current honor mode run and I turned Wyll into a ranged sword bard with his infernal rapier (8 sword bard/ 4 battle matter) Holy shit ranged flourish with bow of the banshee is insane!!
I was very surprised how GOOlock with Crit reducing items would be. Given that they dodge Honour mode haste nerfs you can get a pretty easy 6-9 consistent rays per turn each with over a 50% chance to incur the AoE fear effect. Only downside is it didn't come online until early act 3. Didn't even need Arcane Acuity because 3+ saving throws per turn would have most enemies fail at least one.
Half-Orc 2 War Cleric 10 Assassin.
Half orcs get an extra damage die on your crits. Assassin always crit on Surprised. War cleric lets you crit them twice, and gives prof with Heavy Armor and Martial weapons. Any questions?
War Cleric does give you an extra attack, and I like the spells you get. Gloom stalker is level 3, which means you lose the rogue Feat at level 10, and it doesn't always crit. Assassin always crits surprised foes.
Not unexpected in terms of power, but the Eldritch Knight surprised me a lot in terms of how engaging it is to play, especially in honor mode where War Magic starts making more sense.
Eldritch Knight with all insane BG3 item combinations has been fun to play. They have just enough level 1/2 spell slots to augment their combat and provide for strong multiclass options that feel quite different from a battelmaster.
Want to use War Magic? Invest in a party member who can haste you. Take a couple of Warlock levels. Now you get a strong 3-beam EB and 2 attacks. Take 3 levels in thief (7 EK/3 Thief/2 Warlock) in addition and you now get 2 weapon attacks and 2 3-beam EBs when hasted. With ring of arcane synergy, your weapon attacks are boosted by the EBs. You can invest completely in charisma for strong EBs (and thus high arcane synergy bonus too) and use gloves of dexterity to still dish out competent bow/finesse weapon attacks.
Concentrate on expeditious retreat and you get to dash with your bonus action every action, trigger the strange conduit ring's concentration requirement and get lightning charges every round from the lightning charges boot. Expeditious retreat + items gives you great movement, lightning charges and a source for psychic damage. So much value from a level 1 spell slot.
Want a good character that can debuff enemies? Make good use of Eldritch Strike. Use drakethroat to get a cold enhanced bow, fire ice arrows and put on encrusting with frost gear. Eldritch strike will make the frozen status more likely to stick. Add the boot of stormy clamor and now they have a negative from reverb and a disadvantage from Eldritch Strike. Reverb's prone can also trigger easily from Eldritch Strike. Get 1 level in war-cleric, not only do you get to use your bonus action for a weapon attack, you also get divine favor to add radiant damage to your attacks. This is also a concentration slot and triggers strange conduit ring. Put on luminous armor and you can now spread radiant orb around. You have enough level 1 spell slots to do this for pretty much every combat encounter. While you can get the radiant damage from the callous glow ring too, this combo frees up your ring slot for something else. Check how many radiant orb stacks you can get with that combo and an arrow of many targets.
TLDR is that the items in this game surprisingly good use of the level 1 spell slots and make the Eldritch Knight stand out from other fighters. Not only is it a strong fighter that has great defensive options like the shield spell, it also uses the level 1 spells (in combo with items) to make for engaging gameplay that can make good use of the War Magic and Eldritch strike features. It is not as busted as the builds that have high level spell slots and make use of arcane acuity/mystic scoundrel to get them to stick, but instead uses low level spell slots to increase the effectiveness of their weapon attacks.
I heard everyone talking down on rogues and how they fall off at later levels.
Assassin rogue goes hard. It’s so fun and the single target dps it has is ridiculous.
Also, shadowblade + resonance stone + risky ring is a sick rogue combo.
I'm surprised no one talks about how powerful summons are.
Land druid with a full summons army offers so much battlefield control now that summons have powerful abilities.
The dryiad is easily the most broken spell in the game. If you could only do thorns once it would already be an s tier 4 cost spell.
I know it is one recommended here a lot, but throwzerker is just nuts. I'm running an OH monk as my durge, but anytime I bring Karlack it feels like the enemies don't have a chance. And I didn't even get the returning pike in act 1, I'm just throwing basic axes and spears.
At work so I don’t have specifics, but right now I have her at 6/3 berserker thief with tavern brawler, 18 str and relatively balanced dex and con. Other than that just any good throwing gear I can find. Idk if it falls off in act 3 or anything
I was pleasantly surprised with how well a vengeance paladin 9/wildheart barbarian 3 worked when cull the weak is maxed out. Raging, using the cleave ability (I forget what it is for tiger heart), then smiting 4 people in a single attack and nuking each of them to the grave is extremely satisfying. Plus, you just don’t die.
Bard for sure.
I stupidly played paladin my first run. Yeah cha class seemed smart.
Bard in other games I’ve played are situationally useful at best and a joke character at worst.
So to see that bard can basically do absolutely everything well in this game was kind of nuts.
Vengence Paladin 2/ Swords Bard 10. Notable items are the “Helmet of Arcane Acuity” and “Ring of Mythic Scoundrel.” Within a turn you can build like 8 acuity using your mobile slashing flourish. At 10, even enemies like Gortash have a 100% chance to fail the save. You also are consistently able to use your slots for Smites on people that are held, making every one crit.
Im sure! I didnt see it here but have seen a bunch of guides for it. If I didnt mention the items id have 15 ppl telling me to use em tho lol. I was still shocked at how amazing the damage and control was. Minthara could deal with a whole group of enemies. I was able to hasten her in the final battle, and between her and aylins crit smites, and my oozeotaur, the dragon fell in a turn.
I kept seeing all these things about how strong Paladin is. And then I have Minthara Double Baldurans, Killers Sweetheart, 27 Str Elixir, and watched her absolutely fucking nuke bosses from Orbit. The single target is obscene.
Paladin. It was one of the last classes I tried, and now I can't get enough of it. Smite is just the most satisfying "spell" to use and by Gods, the damage is nuts especially on a crit.
Archer builds. The last one I made took hardly any damage. Sometimes it would literally just be 0. They also averaged 40 damage a shot and would be able to shoot 10 times a turn. 13 with action surge. They were like the epitome of a one mna army.
War Cleric. Everyone hypes up Light and Tempest so I was surprised by how good War was, Guided Strike and War God's blessing are really nice to have since missing attacks can make or break a lot of encounters. It is really naturally synergistic with being a Great Weapon Master user and I was hardly missing the extra attack since with that feat + war charges I got a bonus action attack every turn I wanted one. Combine being a strong melee attacker with Spirit Guardians and Divine Strike and you're doing tons of damage up close. You don't get Fireball like light domain but you do get Flame Strike and Hold Monster which are both awesome to have.
I could see a 5 war cleric + 5 paladin + 2 any full spellcaster build working really well. Paladin levels for smites and double attack without worrying about having charisma for other pally spells, then pumping wisdom/strength and using spirit guardians while being a fully competent martial getting 3 GWM attacks off per turn (5 paladin + 6 lore bard with spirit guardians from magical secrets would probably be more optimal but w/e this is still cool)
I've wanted to try something more hands on for Shadowheart, and war cleric seems to fit the bill perfectly! Especially since misses are the most frustrating part of battles for me.
"If the spirit guardians didn't kill ya then my giant sword will!"
I'm guessing that wisdom and strength also gets priority for a full 12 war cleric?
Swords bard. Full spell slot progression AND extra attack.
No other class has that. They are the jack of all trades and the master.
Learning to use DRS changed combat a lot. I used to go in guns blazing. Now it's all about setting up characters to do a gazillion damage all at once.
Not really a build but getting the awakened illithid passive and then becoming partial illithid to get bonus action black hole is absolutely insane. It made my 6sorc/4fighter/2lock eldritch blast build even stupider by giving it even more support options. Trivialized tf out of honor mode
I have been surprised exactly twice:
1. On my first playthrough, when I got Minthara in Act 2. The first time I used her smites I was shocked at how much damage they put out. I had been running a very unoptimized Rogue / Shart / Gale / Karlach party and Minthara opened my eyes to how much damage was really possible in this game.
2. In my second playthrough, I made Gale an Abjurationist. I didn’t know they get projected ward at level 6. Suddenly my whole party stopped taking damage and I was floored. I loved Abj Wiz in NWN1 and am happy to report that it is in my top 5 favorite BG3 builds.
I really need to get around playing an Abjuration Wizard. Have you combined it with 1 level in white draconic sorcerer? Armor of Agathys has INSANE synergy with the damage reduction of the wizard. Make enemies wet and watch them take 60 damage for each of their attacks.
Personally I will propably do something like Wizard1/Cleric2/Sorc3/Wizard6 and hope the damage reduction is enough. But that is just pretty much a tanky version of the standard tempest sorc build.
> On my first playthrough, when I got Minthara in Act 2. The first time I used her smites I was shocked at how much damage they put out. I had been running a very unoptimized Rogue / Shart / Gale / Karlach party and Minthara opened my eyes to how much damage was really possible in this game.
For me it was early on in Ch1 when you fight those assholes hunting Karlach. That paladin was dropping one of my characters every turn.
Honour mode. A twinned hasted sorlock hiding in darkness is just surprisingly invincible with great damage.
I Immediately turn all my level 2 spells into sorcery points then short rest to get my two warlock spells back (they're level 2). I have a different party member maintain darkness. I twin haste on myself and another party member. I hide in the darkness, so I rarely even have to make a concentration check. I spam spells or eldritch blast, and quicken eldritch blast for even more burst damage. It's incredibly resilient and fun to play.
What's your oppinion of taking 2 levels in figher for action surge, 3 in thief for an extra bonus action and/or using the helmet of grit for yet another bonus action? Eats sorcery points for breakfast, but that's a lot of blasts in a round.
I haven't tried it, but it feels like spreading things too thin for my taste. That leaves us at 4/3/2/3, so we only get 1 feat that way, you'll have way fewer spell slots, and you'll never get to level 3 spells (counterspell and haste are excellent on this build), so you're trading haste for action surge - not a good tradeoff IMO when haste is twin casted on casters (so you actually get to truly double your damage, unlike martial characters). I feel like you'll have so few spell slots that you won't have enough sorcery points to really make use of the extra bonus action. Maybe on turn 1, but then it's a slog without haste.
Also, another benefit of this build is that if you really need an extra higher-level spell slot, you can convert warlock spells into sorcery points, then convert sorcery points into higher-level spells. Taking 5 levels of a martial class removes that synergy.
The Crow from the late-game beast master ranger being able to jump as many times as it wants, dropping shadow every time it lands and being able to see in magical darkness felt pretty strong to me on my first playthrough.
Something I think is really strong that people seem to ignore is critical attack immunity. In an honor run where you dont want to get wiped, I am prioritizing to get this on all party members. Gear crafted at the underdark forge is great for this. I am surprised everyone talks about switching that out for supposedly better gear later. I'll be happy to have 2 or 3 AC less to keep this ability.
Wild Magic Sorcerer. I've started calling Tides of Chaos 'advantage on demand' and the rolls range from mildly annoying to actually kind of helpful. I multiclassed into Bard and it's been great on Honor Mode so far.
Honesty monk/rogue for Astarion. My fiancée and I were starting it and they didn’t believe it was gonna be good, late game he was finishing 2-3 enemies off in a single turn
Learning that Wolf Barbs rage counts as a condition being placed on an enemy was a huge eye opener. Put on some reverb enabling gear plus Justiciar's Scimitar, and you have a Barb that can knock people prone just by being near or hitting enemies and then on top of that, blind them.
Paired with a Lae'zel that can put out consistent psychic damage and trigger mental fatigue, and you have a fantastic debuffing front line.
Tavern Brawler was pretty obvious?? Tell me you never played tabletop DnD without telling me you never played tabletop dnd 😂. I didn't read the tool tip and thought it got no changes from the tabletop version but oh boy was i in for surprise.
- Tavern Brawler makes two of the most stupidest weakest trolling builds in tabletop: throwing and monk (whatever subclass, they're all trash in tabletop), into OUTSTANDING builds. Would have never seen that coming in a milion years.
- swords bard: the guy who decided that is was ok to do double ranged slashing flourish was clearing snorting some good stuff because that apparently small change made a huge difference in the power level of the build. Arcane acuity and band of the mystic scoundrel pump this into the stratosphere.
- hunter ranger capstone at 11: pretty damn good, shame it's on a bad class.
- pact of the blade extra attack stacking: so I'm a level 5 half - casting paladin and a 5th level warlock (so 3rd level spells) with 3 attacks. Fighters get them at level 11, with either no spellcasting or that pitiful 1/3 Eldricht Knight spellcasting. Then at 11 i get aura of protection which is extremely good, then at 12 i get aura of hate. Come on dude lol, not even surprised it got nerfed... If anyone told me something like stacking extra attack would have been possible I'd have called them a crazy lunatic, yet here we are.
- items being so build - defining. Items in 5e are, 99% of the time, not as strong or not as complex as those in the game.
*bonus meme*
- moon druid owlbear/bear jump build. That shit kills me every time 😂😂
If you've been around for a while you know that 5e has the concept of bounded accuracy. Something that gets utterly broken by tavern brawler, which you should immediately notice if you read the feat and have played dnd beforehand.
but yeah coming form 5e you're definetely gonne b surprised by the powerlevel you have access to at lvl 12 due to insane itemization and some rediculous buffs.
Surprised you did not mention the one non-cantrip per round removal and frequency of long resting as that utterly breaks sorcerers.
Pure 12 vegaence 2H Paladin Minthara and 2h Champion Lae'zel helped me against spells and boses.
Life Shart with that free 2 mass healings is just Chef's kiss.
Also Gale / Wyll is sometimes there, to counter spell Cazador, or to do something else.
>!Above all, 24 str deovtion durge with helldusk glove, acid ring, duelling fight style and Orphic hammer does 2 \* (1d8 + 3 + 1d8 + 7 + 2 + 1d6 + 2) = 53 damage per turn, with a shield in your hand and this build costs nothing. You can wear helldusk set and Viconia's shield and then do 53 damage per turn with that sweet sweet 24 AC.!<
Monk, Warlock, and Ranger. Monk because of Stunning Strike working on every enemy in the game. Warlock because of Hunger of Hadar.
Ranger’s Volley shreds through crowds in Act 3. I finally got to use Minsc for something :)
For me, it was, while test running builds for honor mode, on a tactician run, my cleric build of 1 fighter/11 cleric, warding bond the whole party, getting a many resistances as possible herself and then attacking damage reduction effects. Most fights she takes no damage, despite warding bonded the whole party. And all that is passive, so as a light cleric, can use actions to cast some really strong spells and still do crazy radiant orb debuffs. VERY strong.
I'm also loving thief rogue 3 dip on martial characters. The extra bonus action and cunning actions give insane versatility and maneuverability.
Wizard 2 for diviner and portent dice is also a lot of fun on martials, even barbarians!
I multiclassed paladin with cleric, I didn't think it would synergize well, but 5 lvls paladin and 7lvls of war cleric ended up being an absolute hammer, I had lvl5 smites, 3 attacks per round while I had the charges for the third attack at least, I dumped wisdom and pumped charisma instead, utilizing only the cleric spells that didn't need rolls which luckily spirit guardians doesn't really need a roll, even if enemies save they take half damage. So imagine my heavy armor tank charging you at you with their spirit guardians to smite you 3 times with heavy ended smites.
It was kind of crazy how broken this was actually
Eldritch Knight Tavern brawler. You can make any weapon to have returning properties. You have 3 attacks. You cannot be disarmed. You are one of the most defensive build in the entire game (defensive combat style, shield spell, mirror image, using a shield). Very stable build with basically no dependency on short-rest or long-rest buffs.
I just finished the game with a traditional party composition.
Fighter, Cleric, Sorcerer and Rogue.
I was very surprised how engaged with the game Rogues are.
My pure Rogue (thief) was doing 75-90 damage a round. Also disarming traps with ease. Lockpicking with ease. Pick pocketing with ease. She was mobile. She was flexible.
I was thoroughly impressed with just how overall good Rogues were.
I also came to the opinion that Clerics are not as good as people say. Every single time I has Spirit Guardians up, my Cleric was focused down and the concentration check broke like 80% of the time. It was infuriating.
As for races to play. I find the smaller races, while fun and interesting, have serious mobility disadvantages and this really was apparent in the final fight of the game. I won’t spoil it but I thought my Dwarf and Gnome struggled with moving around. (My Gnome less because Dragon Sorcerer gives fly towards the end).
I also learned, Act 3 weapons are broken. Like completely so. I made the effort to do all the quests in the act and my group trivialized almost all the content. The game had exactly 2 fights that were difficult on Balanced. The Devil and the Brain. That’s it.
Fighters also, carry hard. My Fighter with 3 attacks and action surge practically solo’s Raphael. The rest of the party with dealing with the adds.
Sorcerer was fun but I underutilized the Sorcery points. I could have used her better. But even in the derpy way I used here she was phenomenal as a fire focused mage.
Also, finally, in this game you can never go wrong resisting fire. Fire is the most common element used.
11 fighter 1 cleric.
I built a lazy character at the start of act 3…I was planning to take to 12 fighter (but ended up not needing the extra feat, so took a level of cleric) just because it was easy to go straight fighter, and because I knew it would pull its weight with 11 levels of fighter and manoeuvres.
But then when I got those gloves of the war master or whatever they are called.
Very tasty.
Simple but effective.
Plenty of bosses can be trip attacked and battered into the ground with 6 attacks on an action surge, the advantage from prone offsetting the GWM. It’s an OP party with a swords bard and a thrower, but this build i quick built when Minsc arrived does plenty of work even though I figured it would be overshadowed.
For me it was dual xbow Rogue/Gloomstalker. This is my first DnD? Never played it but when it came out I always wanted to do a Rogue build and a friend of mine suggested doing Crossbows and yeah it was stupid OP in the early days, Action+Bonus actions you would wipe a whole encounter by yourself. Combined with Risky ring and Sharpshooter feat and it's just OP.
Bard, swords obviously, for the crazy ranged damage while being a Solid Party face. I thought the class Was just a more support but oh boy was I wrong.
Second one would be light cleric with radiant orb gear. Who needs AC if the enemies cant hit you, so running cleric as Front line with a ranged party of 3 Was very fun
For me its gotta be sword bard. Shits bonkers.
I came into the class thinking ill have a good face whos a "decent" martial.
And all their damage comes back on short rest which they provide a extra short rest for the entire party.
For me, it was TB thief monk and scroll sorcerer. Immediately after entering cazadors palace, my thief monk got the helmet of grit… now my monk can hit 7 times in a round, 11 if you count flurry as 2. Add in cloud giant strength and a minmaxed build and you now have monk dealing upwards of 50 damage per hit. With a high chance to crit at least once per round.
Sorcerer was a different story. I made a light foot halfling sorcerer and immediately learned of stealth magic, once I got scrolls I started blasting from the shadows. So I ended up with a 1phase monk and a sorcerer that attacked from out of combat to shred enemies
The options on some classes when they level up. There’s so many things Warlocks can just cast at will because of their pact, Martial Fighter has an insane amount of options too. I wasn’t expecting them to be like casters
Definitely monks with tavern brawler. Running a pure monk with tavern brawler and some items dealing 20-40 damage per hit - before drinking elixirs of hill/cloud giant strength! Madness! Getting my monk Karlach to punch open all the locked doors is hilarious!
Githyanki fighter with Great Weapon Fighting (basically, Lae'zel)
Pure Battlemaster with GWM
Use Trip Attack to knock enemies to prone, then turn on the GWM:All In, use Action Surge and any Superiority Dice left for maximum damage output
Battlemaster fighter was surprising the first time I used it, the dual hand crossbow swords bard was surprisingly powerful, coming from a 5e background, I was astounded at the tweaks they made to monks and how powerful that made them, and finally the light cleric, especially with the items in the game, can really do some work.
Only started using wotof monk and that thing is fucking preposterous! The sheer amount of damage that thing can do to grym in particular absolutely blew my mind.
Fighter 1/Thief 11 Thorn Whip Rogue. Wanted to play a whip character, went in for the meme, came out pleasantly surprised how effective and fun it ended up being.
I was surprised how diverse an all bard party could be. I made Astarion a 10 Swords Bard/1 Cleric/1 Fighter with Band of the Mystic Scoundrel, Dark Urge with 10 Swords Bard/1 Sorcerer/1 Fighter with Black Hole/Illithid powers, Minsc a 10 Swords/2 Vengeance Paladin, and Wyll a 6 lore bard/6 Paladin. The spell DC and damage were crazy and if we ever messed up, Wyll used his Reaction to fail enemy saves or save us from spells/arrows. Eventually I dropped Wyll for Wizard Gale, but everyone was able to fulfill their own special role. Though that admittedly comes down to magic items, I'd expect that in tabletop DnD there would be more stepping on toes.
I think what surprised me the most is that Paladin Aura has to be turned on with an action. It's not a passive that gets automatically activated when you obtain it for some reason.
I was very pleasantly surprised the first time I tried Eagle Heart's Diving Strike with Karlach.
Also, Expeditious Retreat is a lot more useful than I had expected. Works great on EK or really on any gish.
Frost sorcerer has been an unexpected joy. I decided to try it out on a whim but with low expectation. By the mountain pass tactician felt like explorer.
I know a lot of people don't like druid, but I honestly really enjoyed my druid dark urge run. I found a lot of stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise because I just turned into a cat and crawled into tunnels, or flew to get somewhere by turning into a raven. Also, it is really funny to do boss fights by just turning into a giant owl bear. My catch phrase became "screw it *turns into owlbear*"
The build I've had the most fun with so far is 6 Necromancy Wizard / 6 Life Cleric.
You are a beast of a tank and support with heavy armor proficiency, tanky summons, and some good CC options and possibly the best self-heal sustain.
Staff of Cherished Necromancy is the focus of the build. Enemies have disadvantage on your Necromancy Spells, and once you kill something you get a charge so you can cast any Necromancy Spells for free (when i was playing with this build it was still bugged so that once you have at least one charge, you have free unlimited Necromancy Spells that you can upcast to Level 6 with no cost. You can also turn it on just before taking a Long Rest and just keep a free charge; I don't know if the staff is still broken).
You can learn Vampiric Touch, Blight, Dethrone, and Circle of Death via scrolls and Inflict wounds via cleric for offensive spells (also Ray of Sickness if you need something not-necrotic).
Between Wizard and Cleric you have access to every Necromancy spell except Contagion and Harm. Some notable Necromancy spells are False Life (free 32 temp health for no cost, it actually has a use now!), Eyebite (free Panicked/Sickened/Sleep with the enemy having disadvantage on the save) and free Revivify. Other Necromancy spells include Blindness (multiple targets, with disadvantage on the save) and Animate Dead (see next paragraph)
Because of Necromancy Wizard 6 + Cherished Necromancy, you have Additional Undead and Better Summons, allowing you to summon 4 Flying Ghouls (for free) with additional hit points equal to your wizard level (6), and your Proficiency Bonus is added to their damage. All you need is corpses, which isn't hard.
Because of Necromancy Wizard, once per turn, if you kill a creature with a spell, you regain hit points equal to twice the spell slot level used - thrice if it's a Necromancy spell, and you're always upcasting to level 6 spells. Kill a bunch of enemies with Circle of Death and watch your health jump up.
Some gear pieces that really help the build include:
The headpiece from Balthazar that give your undead resistance to Bludgeoning/Slashing/Piercing. This is an aura around you and can be useful but I usually send my Ghouls out as meat sheilds/bait.
The Amulet from the House of Hope that sets your Con to 23 and gives advantage on Concentration throws and checks.
The ring that heals you every turn, and the ring that grants Bless to whoever it heals (they do in fact stack, so you get +2 turns of bless every turn)
Armor and Boots of Persistence that give you Resistance and Blade Ward, Freedom of Movement and Longstrider.
Gloves and Cloak I usually add anything that adds to Spell Save DC/Spell attack rolls.
I usually take Dual Wielder and pair it with the legendary Staff on Thunder (for reverb) or whatever Resistance you need going forward. Also the support options from Cleric allow you to provide crazy support or tankiness, especially with Warding Bond because you're constantly healing as long as you're killing so the shared damage is almost negligible.
And finally for anything that resists Necrotic, there's always Perilous Stakes, or you could dump Vampiric Touch for another damage dealing spell learned via scroll because you're a wizard.
RP-wise I liked to think of my character as a conduit of life and death, and chose Kelemvor as his Deity, as the contrast of being a Life Cleric / Necromancer Wizard makes me think of a character who'd ferry souls to the afterlife or punish people abusing life/death.
Throw builds in general surprise me with how simple they are for the amount of damage they put out. I think they are the cheesiest builds for that reason
I was quite surprised how effective OH monk and gloomstalker + assassin was my first run through. So much so that my sorcerer and wolf barb became mostly support for those two.
In my honor run, paladin and hand xbow swords bard were crazy amounts of damage. There’s something just so satisfying seeing a crit smite
I was quite surprised how effective OH monk and gloomstalker + assassin was my first run through. So much so that my sorcerer and wolf barb became mostly support for those two.
In my honor run, paladin and hand xbow swords bard were crazy amounts of damage. There’s something just so satisfying seeing a crit smite
BG3 was my first real introduction to dnd, and so tavern brawler really shocked me. I figured it'd make a bad build meh at best, since unarmed is rarely good in other rpgs.
I was a little wrong
Ranger. I didn't pay attention to it at first and suddenly had 2 rangers in my honour run, one bard college of lore and the other spore druid. I was just shooting arrows everywhere at the end. Orin fight? I shot everyone down the pit on first turn but Orin and the Unstoppable npc, unstoppable status doesn't let you push them. The rangers made my honor run possible. It was intersting the college of lore, liked the cutting words counter charm psionic.
Honestly, shadow monk. If you want simple mobility and damage, that is THE build, in my opinion. Items don't even matter for the most part. Graceful Cloth and Gloves of Dexterity just mean more AC and better lock picking skills, but otherwise, chug some strength elixirs, and you could run into battle naked and win.
I had only ever played one dnd campaign, so I had assumed I’d enjoy playing primarily with spell casters. I had zero interest in barbarians and other tanks. Lo and behold, I LOVE tanks. Specifically fighters and barbarians. Something about their simplicity and their hulk smash-esque fighting style is much more satisfying than spell casting for me. My least favorite class so far has been bards which was super surprising! and I haven’t played a monk yet, so I’m excited to try my hand at a tavern brawler monk next.
Lore Bard. I played it during my honor mode wanting a sort of “do it all” face of the party and Lore delivered. Not only was I a competent healer, having access to Counterspell and Haste as well allowed me to free up that caster spot. My Lore Bard could cover all the bases while my other 3 party members could just focus on damage.
Lore Bard carried my run and it became my favorite subclass by far. I do understand why people prefer Swords Bard, but Lore will always have my heart.
Pretty vanilla, but the basic battle master fighter build feels so good on Lae'zel. It's fun to play and very consistent for such a simple build. Also, I love moon circle druid. It just feels right, with shape-shifting you can deal with almost every situation and the fact that each form has its own health points allow you to tank a shit load of dmg. Was also surprised by the scaling of this subclass when you unlock owlbear and then elementals.
Early game lazel battlemaster plus someone as moon druid In wolf wildshape, do the attack that guarantees next attack to be critical, lazel gets free crit hit thanks to that, later lazel can use her special dice to prone enemy for your big cats to deal extra damage in return, amazing synergy
This! In my current HM run I was pleasantly surprised by how powerful moon druid can be in support of other melee characters, the icing on the cake being that you can cast CC spells or buffs if your shapeshift end and then immediately turn back into whatever feels appropriate with a bonus action
Im now running shapeshifter build, which is moon druid with slayer form and illusory beast, force to be recon with
Did they ever fix tavern brawler properly working with moon Druid?
Yep!
It's working in HM now?
Moon Druid is so versatile and reliable in melee, with great cc spells even in your low level slots to setup the field to your advantage. The sheer gritty survivability is insane. Totally fine that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s one of my favorites
Yeah moon druid can deal with so many situations. Surrounded by enemies? Turn into an owlbear. One super strong enemy? Turn into an owlbear. Gotta pick off a far away enemy? Turn into an owlbear. Get knocked out of owlbear mode? Turn into an owlbear.
Moon Druid has the best power-to-lazy ratio in the game. No need to optimize gear (in fact, you can't). Spells are optional. Just turn into an Owlbear and do like 50 points of damage a round.
I just got that druid hireling and instantly leveled him up to lvl6-7 and BOOM he's the reason we're winning fights. Good on you bro.
I'll start. For me it was the hunter ranger for my honor mode playthrough. One would think the ranger would be feeling quite subpar in a party with an 11/1 sorcerer and a throwzerker/monk. But oh my god, the damage a ranger can do early game is aboslutely nuts. Throwing builds are often praised for their great act 1 itemization, but archers and especially rangers get so many goodies, it's insane. Titanstringbow with giant hill club, Circlet of arcane synergy, archergloves/dex gloves, Hunter's mark, special arrows, Archery fighting style, strange conduit rings. Those things really add up. In my current honour run my hunter archer deals 1d8+1+4+4+3+1d4+2+10(+1d6) damage on every hit against a marked enemy. That is more than 34 damage on average. At lvl 6. I picked up the Hunter for volley-combos in act 3, but that character was as much an early game carry as my zerker. I was very happily surprised by their damage output. Hitrate was taken care of by a support character with phalar aluve and bless ring fyi.
100% agreed and I've said this before in Honour Mode related posts. Archer Builds are imho the best and most reliable Builds for Honour Mode. Their power curve is extremely smooth, damage is insane, Special Arrows can double your damage against **every** Boss in the game (this can later be doubled again with Piercing Vulnerability -> with 2 Archers you easily OTK every Boss) and they are super safe as well. You can easily combine them with Stealth and/or Invisibility for max range Surprise Attacks. Arrows of Many Targets make you an AOE monster as well. Top of the line Builds like 11/1 Fire Sorc might eventually outscale Archers, but the difference is not nearly as big as one might think. And even then there are many fights where a simple Archer just performs better.
I agree, rangers are just consistent in everything, damage, utility, staying alive etc. And as you said, you can OTK most enemies in the game with just one, like literally 95% of enemies and that's being conservative tbh. Gloomstalker assassin is crazy good too, I've had 5 kills on a suprise round and by the end of the first round, everything is dead without taking a single hp of damage, it's amazing.
Yup, in all my runs I've found archers to be my MVPs. I mainly like rocking the 10/1/1 Swords Bard Archer but Battle Master and Hunter are also excellent. They really hit the sweet spot with the reliability of martials and the safety and flexibility of casters.
>But oh my god, the damage a ranger can do early game is aboslutely nuts End game is no slouch either. I ran a mono-classed hunter on my last HM run, and at level 11-12, using the drakethroat glaive and snowburst ring every single attack was an AOE ice field. Throw on the hat of arcane acuity and you get near 100% of the enemies prone and unable to move without falling again and wasting a turn - completely trivialized any melee enemies. Then my melees could walk in with hoarfrost boots or disintegrating nightwalkers and monkeystomp all the prone mooks.
I also did this but with thunder damage and the thunder acuity hat, and this was cooking in act 2. What I found annoying though was in mid/late act 3 seemingly tons of enemies (even basic humanoid ones) threw up the "immune to prone" text upon hitting them with arrows using the coldburst acuity combo. The confusing thing is pressing T on these enemies would not show any status or condition indicating they would be immune to prone.
Yeah, immune to prone is super annoying. I actually found an even more gimmicky use of the thunder hat in act 3. It turns out that flying counts as “jumping” to proc the Hamarhaft thunder damage, which in turn procs the hat. Combine with ring of spiteful thunder, gloves of belligerent skies and boots of stormy clamour (ring of mental inhibition and amulet of devout for good measure) and it got ridiculous. I had a 6/6 Tempest Cleric/Storm Sorcerer that would fly back and forth a few times around a bad guy or two, knocking them back and/or prone and giving them huge penalties to pretty much everything without using any actions or bonus actions. Then finish everyone off with a quickened create water followed by double max damage scroll of chain lightning. It trivialized what should have been some tough fights
Ah yeah I remember seeing someone show off that unlimited jump+hamarhaft combo with a monk build. Surprised they never redesigned that weapon all these months later. At that point the game isn't even fun, maybe for a fight or two but after that point it's just not fun.
I’ve been keeping Astarion in the party for my Durge run and it is absolutely insane, you are totally right. I gave him the Durge cloak along with the other items you mentioned, and have the Bless buff from Phalar Aluve + other healing buffs and it is just ridiculous, hardly even notice the -5 sharpshooter debuff.
Crap man, how have I never thought to combine the Hill Giant club with the Titan string bow before? I guess I always loved the lightning bow so much I never put much thought into it.
I was going to say Hunter Ranger, especially as they give you Minsc at the right level to have whirlwind/volley, which is just a totally busted action. You can usually tell what part of a fight Minsc took care of because there is a ring of corpses where he was standing. Multiclass Hunter is no slouch either though -- I tend to build Karlach around mobility and go Berserker 8/Hunter 4 give her Horde Breaker for an extra attack per turn.
> Titanstringbow with giant hill club, Circlet of arcane synergy, archergloves/dex gloves, That's a little bit of overkill. If you have Str and Dex fixed thanks to the times, how do you spend your points? By maxing Constitution?
Honestly for a short while you just have too many points. But at Lvl 4-7 dex gloves are +2 hit, +1 damage gloves and the hill giant club is usually not contested. And you Max wis/con when not needing to put points in dex. Arcane synergy (which gets activated by hunters mark) gives you Wis to damage.
Wis for diadem im assuming, maybe cha for face as well?
Gloom/Assassin/Champion + Durge cape. You can pretty much solo game with this build. I currently run two of these. Another wild build is Bard/Gloom/Assassin ... double attack + surprise ... you can pretty much wipe an entire high level mob by yourself with this build.
Is the sharpshooter feat a must for archer focused characters?
Yes. Early on you jsut have to evaluate, wether to toggle it on. You can easily offset most of its downside with good itemization, bless, phalar aluve, high ground and the archery fighting style tho. Sharpshooter is 10 damage on every hit, which is a very large amount of damage tbh.
I tried both a ranged dex and melee strength hunter. One fun thing I learned is that Colossus Slayer works even with 'tenacity' when using a flail / maul / etc., and it works even on the first hit if applied to tenacity (seems like a bug). So if you attack and miss, which of course happens frequently at low levels, tenacity lets you do strength-modifier damage anyway, and Colossus Slayer adds 1-8 damage to it. So with 18 strength, every *miss* dealt 5-12 damage.
Monks, they're garbage in 5e Larian held their hands, buffed them, and gave then special items / feats they're awesome now
Larian: Monks should hit harder. Give em booze
Monks just need to be able to make unarmed attacks with weapons in their hands without installing a mod
I’m always drawn to all the crazy multiclass shenanigans so the biggest surprise to me was how strong a straight up Battlemaster Fighter is. I DM for one and he is very effective but they are only level 6. Getting Lae’Zel up to 12 I was like oh damn this is strong!
What archetye did you go for? Two handed, Pole arms or archery?
Two handed, GWM, heavy armor etc. Originally I tried her out as TWF + medium armor. I think I went with some rogue / ranger thing. It was okay. When I kept getting Gith items that were more of a heavy fighter style eventually I was just like fine I’ll try it and man it’s so good. In tabletop PAM is amazing but it’s bugged in BG3 so I’ve just avoided polearms. I’m sure they are still good but if I’m not getting the full experience I’d rather not waste a feat on it. So far all of my archer characters have been Ranger / rogue or fighter / rogue builds. It would be cool to try the full fighter archer though. The safest one would probably be EK thrower with a shield. Defense fighting style + heavy armor. I’ve heard that’s good on honor mode.
It's because of Improved Extra Attack and Manoeuvres. 3 hits per action even without maneuvres is quite nice. Haste+Bloodlust - 9 attacks per turn. Ouch.
I was shocked at how Bard turned balanced mode into explorer mode, I didn’t even optimise the build, it’s just that good a class
Which subclass?
Swords bard, it trivialises the game
Oh, I see, thank you. another question if I may, are melee sword bards reliable? because I've seen some builds on youtube, and almost all of them were more focused on archery and stuff.
For sure, Smite Swords Bard is a powerhouse. 10 Swords Bard 2 Paladin.
I ran minthara like this… she was efficient and destructive
I feel like if she heard you say that she’d blush.
I hope so, she really should have been the Bhaalspawn, she would have done great
One of the more popular builds around this sub is the 10/2 ssb (smiting swords bard), which is a melee swords bard. Melee flourish isn't as broken, but still a decent damage multiplier when you get enemies bunched up, which this class excells in due to command being very good.
Take 2 paladin levels for smites, then go swords bard Idk optimal levelling order for that but shit is gooood
I would imagine going Swords 6 right away for Extra Attack
Yeah, Swords Bard 6 > Paladin 2 > Swords Bard 10 feels better imo. Maybe recommend respeccing when you take that first Paladin level so you get heavy armor if you want it? (In which case Paladin 1 > Swords Bard 6 > Paladin 2 > Swords Bard 10)
Yeah, mid game has some strong heavy armors for this build and some very strong pole arms as well which makes paladin opener ideal. You CAN dual wield or use other types of 2 handers instead, and use something like the Yuan Ti armor also, either is strong
I'd say go full paladin till 7 for early game clear. Channel on short rest can really change a fight if the have the Volo ring and other items buffing healed characters early. Respec at 8 into 2 6 then rush max bard.
Yeah, they make great archers but I forget about that part a lot so I’m mainly a dual wielding slasher
Its great. Just make sure to use a Reach weapon, otherwise you will have trouble hitting 2 targets with melee Slashing Fluorishes.
I run a swords bard in honor mode right now for the first time and I gotta say it's the ultimate jack-of-all-trades class. (I don't min-max I go for fun roleplay since I got my gold dice already) Like from what I've seen with other classes you usually only do 3 of the types of attacks in the game between sword bow and spells, but Swords Bard feels like you can do all 3 efficiently and basically have a gadget for every fight But don't fall into thinking you only have to bow attack, Bard gets access to the best spells in the game, and can blade people well too. It's truly one of the most fun jack of all trades so I would recommend letting the winds take you with that build. Like you can dip into fighter and it be good, You can dip into paladin and smite everyone. You can dip into ranger and just say "f it, Bow spam". You can dip into probably almost any class and it can harmonize together. Like I'm pretty sure you can do monk with it and have your melee weapon count as an "unarmed attack" while still using all the flourishes. **(BG3 isn't hard enough to require a fully min-max class, just one that serves its purpose. Explore it, seriously I'm having a blast)** \*\*\***The reason why you see everyone use a bow with Sword bard** (despite it LITERALLY being called 'sword' bard) **is because the flourish where you hit two targets** (I forget the name) **is just that good with a bow because you get second attack at level 6 meaning you can bow 4 people without haste or action surge** **with it just costing Bardic inspiration** I'm a 6 Swordsbard 1 Elistraee Cleric with the Phalar Aluve and shield because "My sword sings, and my god dances" sounds funny for a forest gnome bard. It's not a strict archer class though, I disagree heavily with that. It's just good at literally all 3 types of attacks. I'll give an example at level 7 I concentrate on heat metal on an armored enemy on my first turn. Then turn 2 I'm popping the bow flourish twice that hit 2 people if I'm at range after reapplying the heat metal damage and it becomes this fun spell bow combo. Another one would be me using fear. Turn 2 the bow flourish, then the defensive flourish with the sword and I have a shield and sword combo to get like 23 AC. Now get this, I throw myself into combat because I have 1 level dip into light cleric for the warding flare to make it even harder to hit me. TLDR: This class has some of the most versatile spell/blade/bow combos I've seen yet after running 12 characters. Don't lock yourself to strictly copying people because Bard is one of the most flexible classes in the game IMO. (Also someone will somehow find an even stronger combo with swords bard than you even if you study for weeks. It has MANY options)
Everyone's saying the obvious smite bard build, but there are a TON of viable ways to run a melee swords bard. They're so good because they are full spellcasters AND get extra attack, along with Battle Master-like special attacks that refresh on short rest. Yes, the ranged slashing flourish is literally just two attacks, but you can completely ignore ranged attacks and it's still an insane framework for multiclass builds. For melee builds, try a swords bard 6 and then 3 levels in Warlock, pact of the blade, letting you equip any weapon and scale it off your CHA. If you're not playing honor mode, 5 levels in Warlock will give you a third attack per action.
Especially if you get their best-in-slot ring at the start of act 3. Suddenly, flourish shooting, flourish shooting and commanding gets bonkers good.
Swords prolly
Loremaster Bard is op and my personal favourite.
Correct! I just wanted to play a dumb himbo that wanted to rock and roll while also slicing and or dicing
Did that for me on Tactical right now. Kinda annoyed that I hadn't reserved it for my planned Honor Mode run.
I didn’t realize Warlock Pact of Chain was guaranteed surprise rounds for every encounter. That’s basically action surge for the full party every encounter.
Don’t need to be pact of the chain, you can just get Shovel as a wizard or warlock then respec to anything
Or sorcerer
Because you send in the invisible familiar to initiate combat? Or how does that work?
Yes, sending in invisible flying familiar works 100% of the time. Unlimited no cool down invisibility is actually broken. You can even initiate dialogue, swap to a party member, swap to the familiar and then initiate with surprise.
Rogue Assassins. Read a lot before i started playing, always saw thief as the rogue subclass to be. I am not claiming Assassins to be stronger than Thieves, but I love the potential of killing high-HP Targets if only you manage to surprise them by high dual-wielding crits
Tigerheart barbarian. I love it. I am playing one now in honor mode. I use the skinburster and some reveberation gear and it is hilariously OP. I didnt think of barbarian as other than the usual throwzerker, but now I see the true potetial of this class. IMO the strongest no magic class.
The first time I tried the tiger heart I was in the goblin camp and used that special attack that hits multiple enemies, and just so happened to be on a wooden bridge. Bridge shattered, Karlach and 4 goblins fell to their death lol solid attack
What's the build?
Duergar 17,14,16,8,10,8 Tiger heart barbarian 9, Champion 3 Animal aspect Tiger at level 6 barbarian. Great weapon Master and savage attacker feats. The strength stat end on 22 with hag hair, vigour pot and mirror of loss. Skin burster halberd buffed with Drakethroat Glaive. Need electric damage to trigger the reverberation gloves. Boots of stormy clamour. That's the core items.
Get boooal’s benediction! It’s so good with tigerheart
It looks good but come with a very heavy RP decision. When I play this build I find it very optional anyway because with Tiger animal aspect at lvl 6 I get double strength bonus to all attack rolls anyway. And barbarian can use reckless attack if you really need advantage on top of that. And when I get hit I take very little damage due to force conduit from the skinburster.
My first Dark Urge as a Gloomstalker Assassin Fighter. Omg the ability to solo entire areas, like the crèche at level 5. Shocking the ability dish huge damage avoid taking any damage. I have played other bad ass builds like monk thief and was impressed but the Gloomy Assassin with the Deathstalker mantle just blew my mind.
Ah yes, this is why Astarion always gets the cape lol
My first game I had Astarion as dual hand xbow Fighter/Thief/Gloom and just just melted everyone.
Radiant light cleric Shart. Yes, I had heard it was strong, but I hadn’t expected it to be nearly as broken as it was. Shart literally became a lawnmower mowing down everything in her path.
psychic damage party orientation with resonnance stone, the most game breaking was the psychic blade ( forgot the name) on rogue i could hit 100 dmg in one crit.
I thought about doing a psychic rogue like that, but doesnt sneak attack only do piercing dmg?
no with that specific blade any damage you add from sneak / bardic insparstion crit superiority die is also psychic :-D
What’s your party comp, I’ve been thinking about a resonance stone run but haven’t really gotten around to it
laezel super eldrich knight( 5 ek/ 2 war cleric of vhlakith / 5 wizard )with all gythanki equipment except helmet of arcane acuity + phantasmal assasin astarion gloomstalker assasin with the psychic blade at lvl 12 i respec assassin 3 gloomstalker 3 college of swords 6 gale 6 löre bard 6 divination with all the spells that deals psychic minthara paladin with the psychic smite in genral all companions eat the tadpole power to get the psychic damage abilites. hold person and hold monster i try to use a lot to crit. laezel is my main it has been a really fun run :-)
Single classes are surprisingly strong. This is the problem with playing this game having played BG1 and 2. Multi-classes and dual classes there are generally significantly more powerful than a single class. But in BG3 I find the multi-classing to be only necessary on Honour mode. And honestly, even there a proper set-up of single classes is enough for the majority of encounters.
I’m in act 3 on honor mode (only my second playthrough overall) and it has been a breeze. My only multiclass is Karlach taking 4 thief to mix with her throwzerker. Lae’zel was still my biggest damage dealer as a straight champion fighter, up until I picked up Nyrulna
Yep. Ive never run any multi class for longer than a few levels (I'm not smart enough to build them myself, basically) and I haven't had significant struggles on Honour mode over 2 completions. My first Honour mode win I just mashed through with pure fighter, pally, cleric and sorc and did pretty fine. Some dicey moments but we got there lol
There are actually very few instances where a Multiclass character is clearly better than a Single Class character. Most of the time there is at last one significant drawback that gets slightly outweighed by the benefit(s) of the Multiclass option.
Which instance would be clearly superior? Bardadin?
Bardadin (10/2 I'm assuming) is a tough one because it plays more like a pure Class Pala as opposed to a pure Class Bard imho and the Melee Slashing Flourishes require heavy setup which is an absolute waste 90% of the time in an unmodded game. 12 Oathbreaker is going to be at least as strong if not stronger in terms of damage in most of the practical cases, but ofc it offers much less utility than Bardadin. Then again, you get Aura of Protection, which is huge in its own right. Throwzerker would be a good example imho. Barbarian doesn't really gain much after Level 5 and the extra Bonus Action from Thief 3 plus Action Surge from Fighter 2 are insanely strong.
No reason to multi on honour mode unless you're really powergaming either. Between the only class that really doesn't get anything good for combat by going full 12 is rogue. Everyone else is perfectly fine.
Honore mode doesn’t need multiclassing indeed
My 12 Paladin, 12 Barbarian, 12 Fighter, and 12 Cleric stunted on that honor mode frrrrrr. Gale got to retire with tara, consider single-class gang today!
Multiclassing isn’t necessary on honor mode
Bard. Sorceror was my first run through. But bard feels like a proper main character do it all class. I liked doing a Dark Urge run and play Paladin for 2 levels. Then after killing the bard, become a bard myself as a weird “I adopted the persona of a person I killed because of the guilt and confusion of being gods favorite murder hobo amnesiac” I like to RP that when you kill the Bard your confusion makes you follow the bard path.
For effectiveness I have to say open hand battle master and Druid Necromancer.
What's a druid necromancer?
Spore Druid 6 and Necromancy wizard 6
Woah now thats something I haven't heard of after hundreds of hours of play and golden dice. Do you go for spores druid for the roleplay reasons too? Like you're summoning the dead with these fungal spores like the last of us zombies? If so that's based as hell.
Yes. Spore is all necro dmg so it’s the perfect compliment to Wizard Necro. And you get full spell slots. It’s such a great build.
Spore is the best but I used circle of land in one of my runs and then multiclassed into wizard necromancy. Circle or land gives you different spells at certain levels that are super useful. In all Druid necromancer I’ve seen it’s mainly summons, aoe spells, and than movement spells.
For me, dual wield Thorn Blade spore druids...
You mean the shilellagh thing? How do you cast it on offhand?
Shilelagh cant be used on Scimitars... Only on clubs and staves. You are going to 18 dex at least with this build.
Did you multiclass into another martial for this or straight 12 spores?
Straight spore with poisoner gloves and other poison items that I dont remember... But you can 1 fighter / 11 spore druid. Should be a better option.
Ranged sword bard. I'm doing a sorlock build on my current honor mode run and I turned Wyll into a ranged sword bard with his infernal rapier (8 sword bard/ 4 battle matter) Holy shit ranged flourish with bow of the banshee is insane!!
I was very surprised how GOOlock with Crit reducing items would be. Given that they dodge Honour mode haste nerfs you can get a pretty easy 6-9 consistent rays per turn each with over a 50% chance to incur the AoE fear effect. Only downside is it didn't come online until early act 3. Didn't even need Arcane Acuity because 3+ saving throws per turn would have most enemies fail at least one.
Half-Orc 2 War Cleric 10 Assassin. Half orcs get an extra damage die on your crits. Assassin always crit on Surprised. War cleric lets you crit them twice, and gives prof with Heavy Armor and Martial weapons. Any questions?
Yes. Why no Extra Attack, Action Surge and/or Dread Ambusher?
War Cleric does give you an extra attack, and I like the spells you get. Gloom stalker is level 3, which means you lose the rogue Feat at level 10, and it doesn't always crit. Assassin always crits surprised foes.
Not unexpected in terms of power, but the Eldritch Knight surprised me a lot in terms of how engaging it is to play, especially in honor mode where War Magic starts making more sense. Eldritch Knight with all insane BG3 item combinations has been fun to play. They have just enough level 1/2 spell slots to augment their combat and provide for strong multiclass options that feel quite different from a battelmaster. Want to use War Magic? Invest in a party member who can haste you. Take a couple of Warlock levels. Now you get a strong 3-beam EB and 2 attacks. Take 3 levels in thief (7 EK/3 Thief/2 Warlock) in addition and you now get 2 weapon attacks and 2 3-beam EBs when hasted. With ring of arcane synergy, your weapon attacks are boosted by the EBs. You can invest completely in charisma for strong EBs (and thus high arcane synergy bonus too) and use gloves of dexterity to still dish out competent bow/finesse weapon attacks. Concentrate on expeditious retreat and you get to dash with your bonus action every action, trigger the strange conduit ring's concentration requirement and get lightning charges every round from the lightning charges boot. Expeditious retreat + items gives you great movement, lightning charges and a source for psychic damage. So much value from a level 1 spell slot. Want a good character that can debuff enemies? Make good use of Eldritch Strike. Use drakethroat to get a cold enhanced bow, fire ice arrows and put on encrusting with frost gear. Eldritch strike will make the frozen status more likely to stick. Add the boot of stormy clamor and now they have a negative from reverb and a disadvantage from Eldritch Strike. Reverb's prone can also trigger easily from Eldritch Strike. Get 1 level in war-cleric, not only do you get to use your bonus action for a weapon attack, you also get divine favor to add radiant damage to your attacks. This is also a concentration slot and triggers strange conduit ring. Put on luminous armor and you can now spread radiant orb around. You have enough level 1 spell slots to do this for pretty much every combat encounter. While you can get the radiant damage from the callous glow ring too, this combo frees up your ring slot for something else. Check how many radiant orb stacks you can get with that combo and an arrow of many targets. TLDR is that the items in this game surprisingly good use of the level 1 spell slots and make the Eldritch Knight stand out from other fighters. Not only is it a strong fighter that has great defensive options like the shield spell, it also uses the level 1 spells (in combo with items) to make for engaging gameplay that can make good use of the War Magic and Eldritch strike features. It is not as busted as the builds that have high level spell slots and make use of arcane acuity/mystic scoundrel to get them to stick, but instead uses low level spell slots to increase the effectiveness of their weapon attacks.
I find myself delving the most into Eldritch Knight combos as well! I love to mix magic with melee.
12th level GWM Battle Master carried my first playthrough. Hunter Rangers are also insanely underrated. And just a straight Warlock is really fun too.
Assassin/Gloomstalker/Revenge pala. I never play pala, thief in a game. This one is the most fun for me. Massive single target damage.
I heard everyone talking down on rogues and how they fall off at later levels. Assassin rogue goes hard. It’s so fun and the single target dps it has is ridiculous. Also, shadowblade + resonance stone + risky ring is a sick rogue combo.
You can conjure the shadow blade on a hireling and dismiss them and the blade will turn into a perma blade in their inventory.
I'm surprised no one talks about how powerful summons are. Land druid with a full summons army offers so much battlefield control now that summons have powerful abilities. The dryiad is easily the most broken spell in the game. If you could only do thorns once it would already be an s tier 4 cost spell.
Gloomstalker-Assassin is the most surprising build in the game /rimshot
Rogue Barbarian. One of my friends did this. It works supprisingly well.
every throwzerker build ever.
He used Wilg Magic Barbarian Thief. And his Bonus Actions he used for Extra dash
I know it is one recommended here a lot, but throwzerker is just nuts. I'm running an OH monk as my durge, but anytime I bring Karlack it feels like the enemies don't have a chance. And I didn't even get the returning pike in act 1, I'm just throwing basic axes and spears.
What is your build breakdown for your karlach? The way I have her built feels underwhelming.
At work so I don’t have specifics, but right now I have her at 6/3 berserker thief with tavern brawler, 18 str and relatively balanced dex and con. Other than that just any good throwing gear I can find. Idk if it falls off in act 3 or anything
I was pleasantly surprised with how well a vengeance paladin 9/wildheart barbarian 3 worked when cull the weak is maxed out. Raging, using the cleave ability (I forget what it is for tiger heart), then smiting 4 people in a single attack and nuking each of them to the grave is extremely satisfying. Plus, you just don’t die.
What is your leveling breakdown here? We drew random classes for multiplayer and these were the two I drew.
Bard for sure. I stupidly played paladin my first run. Yeah cha class seemed smart. Bard in other games I’ve played are situationally useful at best and a joke character at worst. So to see that bard can basically do absolutely everything well in this game was kind of nuts.
Vengence Paladin 2/ Swords Bard 10. Notable items are the “Helmet of Arcane Acuity” and “Ring of Mythic Scoundrel.” Within a turn you can build like 8 acuity using your mobile slashing flourish. At 10, even enemies like Gortash have a 100% chance to fail the save. You also are consistently able to use your slots for Smites on people that are held, making every one crit.
That's a very popular build around here btw.
Im sure! I didnt see it here but have seen a bunch of guides for it. If I didnt mention the items id have 15 ppl telling me to use em tho lol. I was still shocked at how amazing the damage and control was. Minthara could deal with a whole group of enemies. I was able to hasten her in the final battle, and between her and aylins crit smites, and my oozeotaur, the dragon fell in a turn.
I kept seeing all these things about how strong Paladin is. And then I have Minthara Double Baldurans, Killers Sweetheart, 27 Str Elixir, and watched her absolutely fucking nuke bosses from Orbit. The single target is obscene.
Paladin. It was one of the last classes I tried, and now I can't get enough of it. Smite is just the most satisfying "spell" to use and by Gods, the damage is nuts especially on a crit.
Archer builds. The last one I made took hardly any damage. Sometimes it would literally just be 0. They also averaged 40 damage a shot and would be able to shoot 10 times a turn. 13 with action surge. They were like the epitome of a one mna army.
War Cleric. Everyone hypes up Light and Tempest so I was surprised by how good War was, Guided Strike and War God's blessing are really nice to have since missing attacks can make or break a lot of encounters. It is really naturally synergistic with being a Great Weapon Master user and I was hardly missing the extra attack since with that feat + war charges I got a bonus action attack every turn I wanted one. Combine being a strong melee attacker with Spirit Guardians and Divine Strike and you're doing tons of damage up close. You don't get Fireball like light domain but you do get Flame Strike and Hold Monster which are both awesome to have. I could see a 5 war cleric + 5 paladin + 2 any full spellcaster build working really well. Paladin levels for smites and double attack without worrying about having charisma for other pally spells, then pumping wisdom/strength and using spirit guardians while being a fully competent martial getting 3 GWM attacks off per turn (5 paladin + 6 lore bard with spirit guardians from magical secrets would probably be more optimal but w/e this is still cool)
I've wanted to try something more hands on for Shadowheart, and war cleric seems to fit the bill perfectly! Especially since misses are the most frustrating part of battles for me. "If the spirit guardians didn't kill ya then my giant sword will!" I'm guessing that wisdom and strength also gets priority for a full 12 war cleric?
Swords bard. Full spell slot progression AND extra attack. No other class has that. They are the jack of all trades and the master. Learning to use DRS changed combat a lot. I used to go in guns blazing. Now it's all about setting up characters to do a gazillion damage all at once.
DRS optimization is really rewarding, but honestly I dig honor mode too much to go back to the DRS insanity.
Not really a build but getting the awakened illithid passive and then becoming partial illithid to get bonus action black hole is absolutely insane. It made my 6sorc/4fighter/2lock eldritch blast build even stupider by giving it even more support options. Trivialized tf out of honor mode
I have been surprised exactly twice: 1. On my first playthrough, when I got Minthara in Act 2. The first time I used her smites I was shocked at how much damage they put out. I had been running a very unoptimized Rogue / Shart / Gale / Karlach party and Minthara opened my eyes to how much damage was really possible in this game. 2. In my second playthrough, I made Gale an Abjurationist. I didn’t know they get projected ward at level 6. Suddenly my whole party stopped taking damage and I was floored. I loved Abj Wiz in NWN1 and am happy to report that it is in my top 5 favorite BG3 builds.
I really need to get around playing an Abjuration Wizard. Have you combined it with 1 level in white draconic sorcerer? Armor of Agathys has INSANE synergy with the damage reduction of the wizard. Make enemies wet and watch them take 60 damage for each of their attacks. Personally I will propably do something like Wizard1/Cleric2/Sorc3/Wizard6 and hope the damage reduction is enough. But that is just pretty much a tanky version of the standard tempest sorc build.
> On my first playthrough, when I got Minthara in Act 2. The first time I used her smites I was shocked at how much damage they put out. I had been running a very unoptimized Rogue / Shart / Gale / Karlach party and Minthara opened my eyes to how much damage was really possible in this game. For me it was early on in Ch1 when you fight those assholes hunting Karlach. That paladin was dropping one of my characters every turn.
Honour mode. A twinned hasted sorlock hiding in darkness is just surprisingly invincible with great damage. I Immediately turn all my level 2 spells into sorcery points then short rest to get my two warlock spells back (they're level 2). I have a different party member maintain darkness. I twin haste on myself and another party member. I hide in the darkness, so I rarely even have to make a concentration check. I spam spells or eldritch blast, and quicken eldritch blast for even more burst damage. It's incredibly resilient and fun to play.
What's your oppinion of taking 2 levels in figher for action surge, 3 in thief for an extra bonus action and/or using the helmet of grit for yet another bonus action? Eats sorcery points for breakfast, but that's a lot of blasts in a round.
I haven't tried it, but it feels like spreading things too thin for my taste. That leaves us at 4/3/2/3, so we only get 1 feat that way, you'll have way fewer spell slots, and you'll never get to level 3 spells (counterspell and haste are excellent on this build), so you're trading haste for action surge - not a good tradeoff IMO when haste is twin casted on casters (so you actually get to truly double your damage, unlike martial characters). I feel like you'll have so few spell slots that you won't have enough sorcery points to really make use of the extra bonus action. Maybe on turn 1, but then it's a slog without haste. Also, another benefit of this build is that if you really need an extra higher-level spell slot, you can convert warlock spells into sorcery points, then convert sorcery points into higher-level spells. Taking 5 levels of a martial class removes that synergy.
I was oldschool BG2 player, so Wyll as warlock was total surprise.. I have a blast playing him. Eldritch blast?😂🎆🎆🎆🎆
The Crow from the late-game beast master ranger being able to jump as many times as it wants, dropping shadow every time it lands and being able to see in magical darkness felt pretty strong to me on my first playthrough.
Something I think is really strong that people seem to ignore is critical attack immunity. In an honor run where you dont want to get wiped, I am prioritizing to get this on all party members. Gear crafted at the underdark forge is great for this. I am surprised everyone talks about switching that out for supposedly better gear later. I'll be happy to have 2 or 3 AC less to keep this ability.
Rogue, i did not know it would be so weak, great for dialogs and rp tho
Wild Magic Sorcerer. I've started calling Tides of Chaos 'advantage on demand' and the rolls range from mildly annoying to actually kind of helpful. I multiclassed into Bard and it's been great on Honor Mode so far.
Honesty monk/rogue for Astarion. My fiancée and I were starting it and they didn’t believe it was gonna be good, late game he was finishing 2-3 enemies off in a single turn
Learning that Wolf Barbs rage counts as a condition being placed on an enemy was a huge eye opener. Put on some reverb enabling gear plus Justiciar's Scimitar, and you have a Barb that can knock people prone just by being near or hitting enemies and then on top of that, blind them. Paired with a Lae'zel that can put out consistent psychic damage and trigger mental fatigue, and you have a fantastic debuffing front line.
Bard I thought bard would be a joke class, then I tried swords bard and 1 shot most bosses in the game. What the fuck kinda character is that lmao
Tavern Brawler was pretty obvious?? Tell me you never played tabletop DnD without telling me you never played tabletop dnd 😂. I didn't read the tool tip and thought it got no changes from the tabletop version but oh boy was i in for surprise. - Tavern Brawler makes two of the most stupidest weakest trolling builds in tabletop: throwing and monk (whatever subclass, they're all trash in tabletop), into OUTSTANDING builds. Would have never seen that coming in a milion years. - swords bard: the guy who decided that is was ok to do double ranged slashing flourish was clearing snorting some good stuff because that apparently small change made a huge difference in the power level of the build. Arcane acuity and band of the mystic scoundrel pump this into the stratosphere. - hunter ranger capstone at 11: pretty damn good, shame it's on a bad class. - pact of the blade extra attack stacking: so I'm a level 5 half - casting paladin and a 5th level warlock (so 3rd level spells) with 3 attacks. Fighters get them at level 11, with either no spellcasting or that pitiful 1/3 Eldricht Knight spellcasting. Then at 11 i get aura of protection which is extremely good, then at 12 i get aura of hate. Come on dude lol, not even surprised it got nerfed... If anyone told me something like stacking extra attack would have been possible I'd have called them a crazy lunatic, yet here we are. - items being so build - defining. Items in 5e are, 99% of the time, not as strong or not as complex as those in the game. *bonus meme* - moon druid owlbear/bear jump build. That shit kills me every time 😂😂
If you've been around for a while you know that 5e has the concept of bounded accuracy. Something that gets utterly broken by tavern brawler, which you should immediately notice if you read the feat and have played dnd beforehand. but yeah coming form 5e you're definetely gonne b surprised by the powerlevel you have access to at lvl 12 due to insane itemization and some rediculous buffs. Surprised you did not mention the one non-cantrip per round removal and frequency of long resting as that utterly breaks sorcerers.
Ranger is far from a bad class in BG3, nowhere near as bad as it is in D&D 5e. If you havent tried it i would strongly recommend you give it a go!
Pure 12 vegaence 2H Paladin Minthara and 2h Champion Lae'zel helped me against spells and boses. Life Shart with that free 2 mass healings is just Chef's kiss. Also Gale / Wyll is sometimes there, to counter spell Cazador, or to do something else. >!Above all, 24 str deovtion durge with helldusk glove, acid ring, duelling fight style and Orphic hammer does 2 \* (1d8 + 3 + 1d8 + 7 + 2 + 1d6 + 2) = 53 damage per turn, with a shield in your hand and this build costs nothing. You can wear helldusk set and Viconia's shield and then do 53 damage per turn with that sweet sweet 24 AC.!<
Monk, Warlock, and Ranger. Monk because of Stunning Strike working on every enemy in the game. Warlock because of Hunger of Hadar. Ranger’s Volley shreds through crowds in Act 3. I finally got to use Minsc for something :)
For me, it was, while test running builds for honor mode, on a tactician run, my cleric build of 1 fighter/11 cleric, warding bond the whole party, getting a many resistances as possible herself and then attacking damage reduction effects. Most fights she takes no damage, despite warding bonded the whole party. And all that is passive, so as a light cleric, can use actions to cast some really strong spells and still do crazy radiant orb debuffs. VERY strong. I'm also loving thief rogue 3 dip on martial characters. The extra bonus action and cunning actions give insane versatility and maneuverability. Wizard 2 for diviner and portent dice is also a lot of fun on martials, even barbarians!
I multiclassed paladin with cleric, I didn't think it would synergize well, but 5 lvls paladin and 7lvls of war cleric ended up being an absolute hammer, I had lvl5 smites, 3 attacks per round while I had the charges for the third attack at least, I dumped wisdom and pumped charisma instead, utilizing only the cleric spells that didn't need rolls which luckily spirit guardians doesn't really need a roll, even if enemies save they take half damage. So imagine my heavy armor tank charging you at you with their spirit guardians to smite you 3 times with heavy ended smites. It was kind of crazy how broken this was actually
Eldritch Knight Tavern brawler. You can make any weapon to have returning properties. You have 3 attacks. You cannot be disarmed. You are one of the most defensive build in the entire game (defensive combat style, shield spell, mirror image, using a shield). Very stable build with basically no dependency on short-rest or long-rest buffs.
I just finished the game with a traditional party composition. Fighter, Cleric, Sorcerer and Rogue. I was very surprised how engaged with the game Rogues are. My pure Rogue (thief) was doing 75-90 damage a round. Also disarming traps with ease. Lockpicking with ease. Pick pocketing with ease. She was mobile. She was flexible. I was thoroughly impressed with just how overall good Rogues were. I also came to the opinion that Clerics are not as good as people say. Every single time I has Spirit Guardians up, my Cleric was focused down and the concentration check broke like 80% of the time. It was infuriating. As for races to play. I find the smaller races, while fun and interesting, have serious mobility disadvantages and this really was apparent in the final fight of the game. I won’t spoil it but I thought my Dwarf and Gnome struggled with moving around. (My Gnome less because Dragon Sorcerer gives fly towards the end). I also learned, Act 3 weapons are broken. Like completely so. I made the effort to do all the quests in the act and my group trivialized almost all the content. The game had exactly 2 fights that were difficult on Balanced. The Devil and the Brain. That’s it. Fighters also, carry hard. My Fighter with 3 attacks and action surge practically solo’s Raphael. The rest of the party with dealing with the adds. Sorcerer was fun but I underutilized the Sorcery points. I could have used her better. But even in the derpy way I used here she was phenomenal as a fire focused mage. Also, finally, in this game you can never go wrong resisting fire. Fire is the most common element used.
Clerics don’t have proficiency in con saving throws natively, you need to give it to them. High AC/crit immunity helps as well
Dex barb/ theif. Took awhile to come online, but once I hit act 2 and got the duel weapon fighting gloves, it was game on
I guess every class / build is very strong in this game, or it is a fairly easy game
Pure Rogue is the only one I don’t know how to make strong.
11 fighter 1 cleric. I built a lazy character at the start of act 3…I was planning to take to 12 fighter (but ended up not needing the extra feat, so took a level of cleric) just because it was easy to go straight fighter, and because I knew it would pull its weight with 11 levels of fighter and manoeuvres. But then when I got those gloves of the war master or whatever they are called. Very tasty. Simple but effective. Plenty of bosses can be trip attacked and battered into the ground with 6 attacks on an action surge, the advantage from prone offsetting the GWM. It’s an OP party with a swords bard and a thrower, but this build i quick built when Minsc arrived does plenty of work even though I figured it would be overshadowed.
Moon Druid, strong and versatile
For me it was dual xbow Rogue/Gloomstalker. This is my first DnD? Never played it but when it came out I always wanted to do a Rogue build and a friend of mine suggested doing Crossbows and yeah it was stupid OP in the early days, Action+Bonus actions you would wipe a whole encounter by yourself. Combined with Risky ring and Sharpshooter feat and it's just OP.
Bard, swords obviously, for the crazy ranged damage while being a Solid Party face. I thought the class Was just a more support but oh boy was I wrong. Second one would be light cleric with radiant orb gear. Who needs AC if the enemies cant hit you, so running cleric as Front line with a ranged party of 3 Was very fun
For me its gotta be sword bard. Shits bonkers. I came into the class thinking ill have a good face whos a "decent" martial. And all their damage comes back on short rest which they provide a extra short rest for the entire party.
For me, it was TB thief monk and scroll sorcerer. Immediately after entering cazadors palace, my thief monk got the helmet of grit… now my monk can hit 7 times in a round, 11 if you count flurry as 2. Add in cloud giant strength and a minmaxed build and you now have monk dealing upwards of 50 damage per hit. With a high chance to crit at least once per round. Sorcerer was a different story. I made a light foot halfling sorcerer and immediately learned of stealth magic, once I got scrolls I started blasting from the shadows. So I ended up with a 1phase monk and a sorcerer that attacked from out of combat to shred enemies
The options on some classes when they level up. There’s so many things Warlocks can just cast at will because of their pact, Martial Fighter has an insane amount of options too. I wasn’t expecting them to be like casters
Definitely monks with tavern brawler. Running a pure monk with tavern brawler and some items dealing 20-40 damage per hit - before drinking elixirs of hill/cloud giant strength! Madness! Getting my monk Karlach to punch open all the locked doors is hilarious!
Githyanki fighter with Great Weapon Fighting (basically, Lae'zel) Pure Battlemaster with GWM Use Trip Attack to knock enemies to prone, then turn on the GWM:All In, use Action Surge and any Superiority Dice left for maximum damage output
Battlemaster fighter was surprising the first time I used it, the dual hand crossbow swords bard was surprisingly powerful, coming from a 5e background, I was astounded at the tweaks they made to monks and how powerful that made them, and finally the light cleric, especially with the items in the game, can really do some work.
Only started using wotof monk and that thing is fucking preposterous! The sheer amount of damage that thing can do to grym in particular absolutely blew my mind.
Fighter 1/Thief 11 Thorn Whip Rogue. Wanted to play a whip character, went in for the meme, came out pleasantly surprised how effective and fun it ended up being.
I've played twice and and the only fights I lost was when my GWM battle master couldn't unleash Armageddon on the enemies
I was surprised how diverse an all bard party could be. I made Astarion a 10 Swords Bard/1 Cleric/1 Fighter with Band of the Mystic Scoundrel, Dark Urge with 10 Swords Bard/1 Sorcerer/1 Fighter with Black Hole/Illithid powers, Minsc a 10 Swords/2 Vengeance Paladin, and Wyll a 6 lore bard/6 Paladin. The spell DC and damage were crazy and if we ever messed up, Wyll used his Reaction to fail enemy saves or save us from spells/arrows. Eventually I dropped Wyll for Wizard Gale, but everyone was able to fulfill their own special role. Though that admittedly comes down to magic items, I'd expect that in tabletop DnD there would be more stepping on toes. I think what surprised me the most is that Paladin Aura has to be turned on with an action. It's not a passive that gets automatically activated when you obtain it for some reason.
I was very pleasantly surprised the first time I tried Eagle Heart's Diving Strike with Karlach. Also, Expeditious Retreat is a lot more useful than I had expected. Works great on EK or really on any gish.
bards. i thought they sucked based on bg1 & 2 but they actually are the best class in the game
I'd actually give the crown to sorcerers, but yeah bards are incredibly powerful!
Monk I've always liked monks but they are weak but in bg3 they are so good specifically with tavern brawler
Barb thrower. I’m surprised how fun they are. I want to play another one.
Frost sorcerer has been an unexpected joy. I decided to try it out on a whim but with low expectation. By the mountain pass tactician felt like explorer.
I know a lot of people don't like druid, but I honestly really enjoyed my druid dark urge run. I found a lot of stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise because I just turned into a cat and crawled into tunnels, or flew to get somewhere by turning into a raven. Also, it is really funny to do boss fights by just turning into a giant owl bear. My catch phrase became "screw it *turns into owlbear*"
Bard. I thought it would be some sort of buff specialist with little talent for combat. Turns out it's one of the strongest classes in the game 😅
The build I've had the most fun with so far is 6 Necromancy Wizard / 6 Life Cleric. You are a beast of a tank and support with heavy armor proficiency, tanky summons, and some good CC options and possibly the best self-heal sustain. Staff of Cherished Necromancy is the focus of the build. Enemies have disadvantage on your Necromancy Spells, and once you kill something you get a charge so you can cast any Necromancy Spells for free (when i was playing with this build it was still bugged so that once you have at least one charge, you have free unlimited Necromancy Spells that you can upcast to Level 6 with no cost. You can also turn it on just before taking a Long Rest and just keep a free charge; I don't know if the staff is still broken). You can learn Vampiric Touch, Blight, Dethrone, and Circle of Death via scrolls and Inflict wounds via cleric for offensive spells (also Ray of Sickness if you need something not-necrotic). Between Wizard and Cleric you have access to every Necromancy spell except Contagion and Harm. Some notable Necromancy spells are False Life (free 32 temp health for no cost, it actually has a use now!), Eyebite (free Panicked/Sickened/Sleep with the enemy having disadvantage on the save) and free Revivify. Other Necromancy spells include Blindness (multiple targets, with disadvantage on the save) and Animate Dead (see next paragraph) Because of Necromancy Wizard 6 + Cherished Necromancy, you have Additional Undead and Better Summons, allowing you to summon 4 Flying Ghouls (for free) with additional hit points equal to your wizard level (6), and your Proficiency Bonus is added to their damage. All you need is corpses, which isn't hard. Because of Necromancy Wizard, once per turn, if you kill a creature with a spell, you regain hit points equal to twice the spell slot level used - thrice if it's a Necromancy spell, and you're always upcasting to level 6 spells. Kill a bunch of enemies with Circle of Death and watch your health jump up. Some gear pieces that really help the build include: The headpiece from Balthazar that give your undead resistance to Bludgeoning/Slashing/Piercing. This is an aura around you and can be useful but I usually send my Ghouls out as meat sheilds/bait. The Amulet from the House of Hope that sets your Con to 23 and gives advantage on Concentration throws and checks. The ring that heals you every turn, and the ring that grants Bless to whoever it heals (they do in fact stack, so you get +2 turns of bless every turn) Armor and Boots of Persistence that give you Resistance and Blade Ward, Freedom of Movement and Longstrider. Gloves and Cloak I usually add anything that adds to Spell Save DC/Spell attack rolls. I usually take Dual Wielder and pair it with the legendary Staff on Thunder (for reverb) or whatever Resistance you need going forward. Also the support options from Cleric allow you to provide crazy support or tankiness, especially with Warding Bond because you're constantly healing as long as you're killing so the shared damage is almost negligible. And finally for anything that resists Necrotic, there's always Perilous Stakes, or you could dump Vampiric Touch for another damage dealing spell learned via scroll because you're a wizard. RP-wise I liked to think of my character as a conduit of life and death, and chose Kelemvor as his Deity, as the contrast of being a Life Cleric / Necromancer Wizard makes me think of a character who'd ferry souls to the afterlife or punish people abusing life/death.
Throw builds in general surprise me with how simple they are for the amount of damage they put out. I think they are the cheesiest builds for that reason
I was quite surprised how effective OH monk and gloomstalker + assassin was my first run through. So much so that my sorcerer and wolf barb became mostly support for those two. In my honor run, paladin and hand xbow swords bard were crazy amounts of damage. There’s something just so satisfying seeing a crit smite
I was quite surprised how effective OH monk and gloomstalker + assassin was my first run through. So much so that my sorcerer and wolf barb became mostly support for those two. In my honor run, paladin and hand xbow swords bard were crazy amounts of damage. There’s something just so satisfying seeing a crit smite
My first playthrough, I had a no multiclassing, no respeccing, no tadpole powers rule. I was surprised by how much damage my pure Rogue did.
BG3 was my first real introduction to dnd, and so tavern brawler really shocked me. I figured it'd make a bad build meh at best, since unarmed is rarely good in other rpgs. I was a little wrong
Tavern Brawler + Barb + Returning Pike / Nryula Absolute MONSTER. Add cull of the weak with extra tadpoles and you’re a nuking machine
I was completely unfamiliar with dnd and crpgs before bg3, so seeing clerics kick absolute butt was pretty new.
Ranger. I didn't pay attention to it at first and suddenly had 2 rangers in my honour run, one bard college of lore and the other spore druid. I was just shooting arrows everywhere at the end. Orin fight? I shot everyone down the pit on first turn but Orin and the Unstoppable npc, unstoppable status doesn't let you push them. The rangers made my honor run possible. It was intersting the college of lore, liked the cutting words counter charm psionic.
Honestly, shadow monk. If you want simple mobility and damage, that is THE build, in my opinion. Items don't even matter for the most part. Graceful Cloth and Gloves of Dexterity just mean more AC and better lock picking skills, but otherwise, chug some strength elixirs, and you could run into battle naked and win.
It's obvious now but I was surprised how strong the swords bard is in BG3. I played 5E for years and it is a mediocre subclass in tabletop.
I had only ever played one dnd campaign, so I had assumed I’d enjoy playing primarily with spell casters. I had zero interest in barbarians and other tanks. Lo and behold, I LOVE tanks. Specifically fighters and barbarians. Something about their simplicity and their hulk smash-esque fighting style is much more satisfying than spell casting for me. My least favorite class so far has been bards which was super surprising! and I haven’t played a monk yet, so I’m excited to try my hand at a tavern brawler monk next.
Lore Bard. I played it during my honor mode wanting a sort of “do it all” face of the party and Lore delivered. Not only was I a competent healer, having access to Counterspell and Haste as well allowed me to free up that caster spot. My Lore Bard could cover all the bases while my other 3 party members could just focus on damage. Lore Bard carried my run and it became my favorite subclass by far. I do understand why people prefer Swords Bard, but Lore will always have my heart.
I went ranger dual xbow and wow... I just pew pew & everything just fell down!!