What build would be fun when you take stat spread to the extreme? Doesn't have to be 20+ strength, could be like 20+ Charisma, 8 to everything else. This would be with mods as there's no way to do this at the start of the game, mostly for flavour and challenge.

Like the title says, it doesn't necessarily have to be the Assassin class, but needs to have some of that vibe (made my DnD rogue in Bg3, so for RP reasons). The melee dual wield is a must.

I would like things like huge damage numbers (maybe not completely broken things which make the game stop being fun), frequent crits, high number of actions per turn. Basically the build should excel in dps.

I was looking into the melee version of Gloomstalker Assassin. Not sure how great that is now, especially the melee version.

Another suggestion I got was to go for Shadow Blade with 11 Arcane Trickster + 1 War Cleric / Hexblade. I'm not interested in being a caster but if the shadow blade is as OP as I hear, then I'd love to use it for a regular rogue play style.

Please suggest what's the current consensus on this archetype of build. I love melee rogues but they don't seem to come up in the conversation when great DPS builds are talked about. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks.

so i saw it a few times now that people recommend this build to other people but never really explain why the 1 Hexblade is needed in it.

1. you can attack with charisma

why would I need this? I can get strength much higher more easily, and you still need INT for your spells so except when you are the party face it does almost to nothing

2. The proficiency you get are all useless because the fighter is already proficient in all of these

3. the only thing that would make sense for me is the Curse, I mean it's good yeah but is the dip really worth it for only this feature and nothing more?

thanks in advance

Hi everyone. I wanted to know how I could possibly improve my pickpocketing hireling. Current build is:

- Halfling hireling to avoid nat 1s.

- Dex to 18

- 11 Thief for reliable talent / 1 trickery domain for free disguise self and guidance

- Graceful cloth for advantage (cat's grace) and 20 dex

- Smuggler's ring for +2 to SoH

- Shape shifter's boon ring for that 1d4 bonus while disguised (usually as a gnome)

- Nimblefinger gloves for SoH +1 (idk if the +2 to dex applies if I disguise as a gnome)

- Cloak of cunning brume to steal from fog / bail if caught

- Menzoberranzan hood for invisibility if I get in a pickle

- Stealth +1 shield

- Devensive flail for more AC in case I enter combat with somebody who can see invisibility

Question says it all. I’m on a durge honor mode and am a gold Dragonborn gold dragon sorcerer. Is there a way to learn wizard spells if I keep going in sorcerer but dip 1 in wizard, or is there a better path for spell retention for the more powerful scrolls?

I used to play BG3 a long while ago (before the newest subclasses were added) and remember Tavern Brawler being OP because it hit multiple times and it was SEVERE on Barbs. However, I decided in a new run to test Karlach's new STR as a Giant Barbarian with the Ring of Flinging.

Imagine my shock to see my Paladin Tav doing more damage with a normal Greatsword of Tyr attack (no smite at all) using Auntie's hardcore steroids than Karlach did with 18 STR, TB, the RoF, and Giant Raging.

How does this happen? How does a normal @ss greatsword attack deal more damage than the near-strongest possible Spear throw?

Edit: The Damage fron throwing a weapon is showing one impact from the throw instead of 2 as it's supposed to. The damage is only proccing once, not showing up multiple times. I'm supposed to get 2 damage numbers, but I only get one.

I tested this on two other saves where other characters have TB as well. One worked as intended, the other didn't like this version of Karlach, but with a Berserker Barb instead of Giant Barb. The one that DID work wasn't a Barb at all, he was a Monk. This shouldn't make a difference though, and they were all Honour Mode saves.

Impossible Challenge

I recently completed the impossible challenge and thought I'd share some of my findings and strategies.

The impossible challenge includes enemies with more actions, bonus actions and a lot more HP. There's a few other good posts around this on the subreddit, and Morgana evelyn has streamed her run.

My main goal was to be challenged and be able to min max a little more than usual, retaining the party building aspect, without trivialising the content.

This was one of the most fun runs I've done, and easily my longest (well over 200 hours, most of which was spent in act 1).

Restrictions

I avoided anything that, entirely subjectively, felt too much like cheating to me. So I allowed scrolls, arcane acuity, all gear (including rushing them as soon as they are available), consumables, but didn't use darkness, camp casting (with one or two exceptions), barrelmancy, or outright exploits (well, many). I had warding bond up throughout but brought a long a cleric running it. I also trialled Remus' arcane ward abusing druid build - very powerful but exploiting to get the stacks wasn't satisfying for me within the scope of this challenge, so I canned it after a fight or two. Did look fun for a slayer form durge run though.

In hindsight, I'd probably ban globe of invulnerability next time too.

I used several QoL addons:

• Automatic / permanent longstrider/enhanced leap / featherfall
• Weightless + infinite gold. Gold is functionally infinite anyway with the hexblade exploit and/or pickpocketing.
• Extra adamantine ore. I got this in case I wanted to trial the adamantine shields, which is my usual choice. I ended up not even crafting more than the usual 2 as adamantine heavy armor was so effective.
• Infinite camp supplies. Already pretty trivial to get as many as you like. Also pointless for me since I avoid long resting as much as possible, but hey, I had it.

Act 1

This is easily the hardest part of the challenge. In act 2 but especially act 1 I rotated builds a lot on a per fight basis. In pretty much every party setup I included a titanstring archer (arcane archer early on, gloomstalker from 8-10, EK 11 onwards) and something with at least 4 levels of cleric for heavy armour proficiency, warding bond, and heavy armour mastery (feat).

Act 1 builds

Act 1 I mostly used:

• Titanstring arcane archer. Using bane on hit and rider gear.
• Life Cleric4/div wizard multi. Warding bond on whole team + adamantine armour + HAM on whole team. Responsible in act 1 for keeping people alive with the usual on heal buff gear, and scroll or hard casting sleet storm largely.
• Berserker barb - necessary damage.
• Monk - only from level 5. Stunning strike was very potent in this setup.
• Duergar shove thief. Used to safely farm XP from level 4-5 and clear out Duergar in Grymforge.

I experimented with a few others:

• Warlock for hunger of hadar. Was strong but ran into damage problems. 10 turns of hadar + sleetstorm isn't actually all that much when you have two (cleric, warlock) low damage characters.
• Bard archer - I found this pretty underwhelming. Low damage (titanstring was taken) and squishy.
• Druid - I think this one does have potential. I thought TB + spike growth would be a solve for early act 1, but the combination of low AC + concentrating meant this was squishy, even with the extra health. Would try this again and build around it a little more next time, there is potential.
• Abjuration - I thought this would be really strong with retaliation damage scaling with enemy actions. But early on this just crashed and burned. Not enough stacks to last back until your own turn again. Not enough damage when AoA goes down quickly either. Also fairly tedious to play. This one probably also has potential if you're building around it.

Main solves

• Warding bond + Heavy armour master on the cleric and fighter + adamantine plate. This made the fighter functionally immune to most enemies.
• Gravity. By far the most damage done in this act. I had elixir of strength on all characters, and the most impactful action most of the time was throwing. Even for the archer in certain key fights like the grove defence, throwing a goblin far enough is just higher impact than a shot from titanstring in many instances. Was also a good use of action + bonus action (shove) for the cleric a lot of the time.
• Out of combat cheese. I used minor illusion + shove thief to pick off stragglers where I could.
• Scroll of sleet storm. Fairly self explanatory.

Act 1 : Route / main fights - pre goblin leaders

• Started as sorceror with enhanced leap / feather fall.
• Avoided/ran past final combat in the nautiloid.
• Skipped grove door fight by stealthing / jumping around the outside.
• Did a non-combat route to hit level 4 and get two copies of adamantine plate, cheesing the Grym fight. (Although, this got hairy when the fire mephits spawned. I threw them back down to Grym who took care of it).
• Githyanki patrol: skipped this to get XP
• I didn't quite get to level 5 since I hadn't reviewed the optimal route beforehand or done that before. Once I had the fighter / cleric combo ready and double adamantine plate I started to take easier fights like goblins.
• Seeing the efficacy of the damage mitigation, I decided to take on the owlbear at level 4 and was immediately humbled. The bard archer and throwzerker were pretty much immediately gibbed. It was a very long fight (no extra attack) with the archer fighter whittling them down while trying to kite and healing with potions. Cleric ran away almost immediately to give me an insurance policy.
• I did some thief / minor illusion shove cheese to get to 5 safely after that.
• Tried hadar/sleet storm combo and ran into damage issues. Pivoted to throw barb / monk / cleric / fighter archer which handled most of the rest of the act.
• Goblin leaders: Minthara was handled at the grove defence. I let priestess glut capture me to automatically handle her. For Dror I opened with surprise and MVP banishing arrow on him allowed me to use gravity (and the spiders) to take down everyone else first.
• Grove defence. This was a complete bloodbath. I hadn't really done the grove defence before, so thought impossible challenge honour mode was the natural time to start. I hadn't appreciated that despite killing everyone I could find in the goblin camp, there is a large amount of enemies and they are thrown onto the battlements. This was like defending helms deep and was one of the closest fights of the whole challenge. I used the ogres here but even so most of the grove were killed in the valiant defence. Most rounds consisted of trying to cc the spiders up on the battlements, throw the goblins that had made it up back down onto other goblins for damage and prone, and desperately try to heal up the vast amounts of incoming damage. It felt like forever but eventually we won, though with all the corpses of grove inhabitants around us it was a somewhat pyrrhic victory.

Act 1.5/2

• With timebound content out the way I immediately progressed to act 1.5 and act 2 to get lots of new gear. Big ones being everything from act2 vendors and the hat of arcane acuity.
• At this point I switched to bow of the banshee bard archer with hat of arcane acuity, drakethroat ice + snowburst ring for control. Arcane acuity in act 1 is pretty gamebreaking and a little exploit-y, I admit. Ice pools from the bow shots, fear and sleet storm everywhere largely handled all remaining act 1 fights like the gnolls - except Ethel.
• Of all fights the eagles at the top of the creche was harder than expected. You lack the damage to kill them before they can summon friends, and crucially they are immune to fall damage. This fight was a drawn out slog relying on heavy armour mastery mitigation and the fighter brute forcing it.
• I unintentionally cheesed the inquisitor. I made a mistake in getting a surprise round and decided to reset, but with all of the bonus actions the inquisitor and friends managed to travel from the room all the way out into the bridge in a single turn. So I improvised and used the power of chasms, paying the price of losing out on the diadem of arcane synergy.

Act 2 builds

At this point I started to add a few more builds into the mix:

• Heavy armour radiant orb monk. Credit to Morgana for this one, it's very effective.
• Ultra high AC and saves paladin with the radiant reflection helm from the creche. This character was immune to attack rolls and was a pretty effective and safe solve for lots of fights. I also used this character to take on Ethel solo. The hag clones all instantly killed themselves with the radiant reflection, and Ethel's only option was to fire off the relatively weak vicious mockery cantrip. With warding bond, and high paladin saves, this did minimal damage.
• Fire sorceror. This got more useful as I started to get more spell slots around the level 8-9 mark. I didn't multiclass with warlock, preferring scrolls of confusion (S+++ tier spell in this mode given it scales with enemy damage) and the higher casting level.
• Switched the fighter to a gloomstalker assassin archer. It was a little underwhelming in this mode to be honest. While forced crits are never bad, the HP pools you're dealing with make it less effective.
• Duergar hireling shove thief with the bull cloth. Used to clear out no name NPCs in moonrise as much as possible as before, largely to save time.

One of the things I really like about this challenge is it forces you to not take any encounter for granted. Two no-name guards in moonrise managed to instagib the monk by war cleric +attack roll comboing into a crit thundering smite + shove pushing into a chasm. Equally I got too cocky with the paladin taking on the karniss convoy and got mass shoved into a chasm.

Main solves

• Ultra high AC
• Radorb stacking from a monk or paladin
• Arcane acuity
• Confusion. Works versus undead. AoE, doesn't hit allies, scales with the enemies damage. Hugely powerful spell in this format.
• Scroll of globe of invulnerability (one or two later fights)

Rest of act 2

• I talked down the various thorms, mostly to save time.
• Githyank ambush was solved by the fire sorceror. Minor illusion + fire acuity + confusion, I don't think they got to a roll single attack roll. This was a glimpse of things to come in act 3.
• Shambling mound. For this one I surprised everyone else and triggered a mass explosion from the plants to take down the vast majority of them, bard ice proning the remainders. The mound itself is vulnerable to hold monster, so the fire sorc was on CC duty just for him. Even forcing crits from hold monster and firing full spell slot scorching rays crits into the mound, it took several rounds to bring down.
• I cheesed the Halsin portal defence. I realised that if I waited for long enough in the act for level 6 spells to start to appear, I could cast an extended globe of invulnerability around the portal itself and defend it trivially. Some of the wraiths had attacks that went past the globe, one of the stat drains, but that was easily dealt with. Next time without using globe I think I'd try to block in with walls of x spells a little more and sleet storm + hadar. As soon as the fight was over I needed to use another globe to prevent Halsin suiciding on the remnants of a wall of fire (learnt this the hard way the last honour mode run...) but all fine.
• Cleared out all of moonrise as safely as possible with the shove build, then picked off the remainders with the main party. I also cleared all of the roof top with the thief shover, after isolating Ketheric.
• Did the last light defence. I kidnapped everyone I cared about here (vendors) and brought them to the gauntlet of shar, and used invisibility + sanctuary to prevent isobel from dying.
• Around now I entered the gauntlet of shar. The sharran prior to Balthazzar took a long time, since I couldn't kill the globes fast enough to stop them spawning all of the adds. Not that I particularly wanted to either, as I was trying to maximise XP if possible. This fight took forever though. Lots of wall of fire kiting back down past the trial rooms.
• Stripped party naked for the reflection trial and surprised them. Pretty straight forward.
• Decided to leave Balthazzar until the Shadowfell to maximise XP. In hindsight this was a mistake as this was a very hard fight and one where I genuinely feared for the run. Was the first time I really needed to use globe heavily. I don't think I'd ever fought Balthazzar here before in previous runs, and hadn't appreciated that there is a lot of adds. Globe being ever powerful got us through as we picked off the adds slowly until killing Balthazzar himself.
• Yurgir fight was straight forward. Controlled yurgir while novaing the rest of the enemies with gloomstalker and wet + chain lightning (scrolls) nuking.
• I messed up the morninglord radiance buff by coming back to act 1.5 to take on the death shepherds, resulting in another forced rest I hadn't accounted for. Bummer.

Myrkul

Then it was a question of preparing for the illithid colony and Myrkul. Myrkul was a fun fight to prepare for, I spent a fair amount of time strategising it and had a fairly extensive checklist to get ready. Experience honour mode players will know the main things that solve this fight, but to summarise the main ones:

• Mindflayer has to die as soon as possible. I decided to make this easy and just throw it off into a chasm, but I was ready with speed potions and gloomstalker burst to bring it down.
• Greater and lesser elementals from scrolls are very useful to take down the necromite eggs and bait out the legendary reaction.
• Damage: Arrow of undead slaying + Ne'er misser. Wet + high level lightning spells.
• Control: stunning strike. Radiant orbs. Arrow of darkness onto Myrkul. Command: drop on the scythe, boosted with fire acuity. At some point prior to Myrkul I decided that the fire sorceror was too squishy and the wizard/druid (stars) levels on the cleric weren't leaving with me very impactful actions. So I combined them. 4 cleric/6 fire sorcm playing largely like a fire sorceror but sitting in heavy armour with warding bonds on the party and heavy armour mastery.
• Doomhammer. Wielded by an EK (switched out the bard archer for this fight) for all of the attacks. Contingency in case I couldn't deal with the necromites, but wasn't necessary.

I probably overprepared for this one in all honesty, it didn't really feel very close. It was nowhere near as difficult as Balthazzar, for example.

I'll be honest, that's pretty much functionally the end of the run. As soon as I entered act 3 I beelined towards all the overpowered gear options and entered god mode. But I'll summarise anyway...

Act 3

• Re-specced to make sure I succeeded the persuasion checks to take half illithid form on all companions. The cleric had the awakened buff from the creche too - forgot to mention that.
• Farmed all the Rivington vendors and used Duergar invisibility + flight to skip straight to the lower city. Farmed all vendors there too, grabbed Marko, amulet of the devout, became an unholy assassin and grabbed all of the overpowered bhaalist gear. Came back to Rivington and grabbed helm of balduran, skipping ansur for now. I deliberately failed the challenges and ran through invis to save time. Grabbed band of the mystic scoundrel and nyrulna and respecced everyone, hitting level 11 at some point into the murder tribunal I think.

Act 3 builds

I barely needed to make any changes to these four. We just walked into most fights, often without resting while down on spell slots, and ran over them:

• Control: 12 bard archer. I wasn't resting very often, and in this challenge the value of the nova round is diminished. I tried a few different options but ultimately landed back with bow of the banshee + acuity + drakethroat ice + snowburst, and stacked DC gear. Feats were alert, ASI CHA for spell save DC and dual wielder, running rhapsody and one of the spell save DC staffs. BotMS user.
• Control: 4 cleric 8 fire sorceror. Played like a traditional fire sorc, for the most part. Swapped in some damage pieces where needed. Also respecced out of life cleric because we were taking very little damage at all as a party, went with tempest for twinned marko chain lightning nova options. Spell save DC, heavy armour, but that aside largely core fire sorceror items.
• Damage: EK archer. Was it really going to be anything else? This should have been 11 EK / 1 war cleric, but I realised that too late so it was a straight EK throughout. Bhaalist armour, as many riders as possible. This fellow deleted full impossible challenge buffed up Raphael in one round. It's notorious for a reason.
• Damage: EK 11/1 hexblade shadowblade. Maximum AC gear and brain drain gloves (you weren't planning on passing any of the controllers saves, were you?).

Everyone had alert.

Act 3 Gameplay loop

Most fights went something like this:

• Bard and fire sorc cast hold monster or hold person on a few key targets, else confusion.
• EK archer use slaying arrows or AoMT into the held target to delete the biggest threat
• EK shadowblade focuses on big threats that can't be as easily controlled/brought down fast. As well as doing silly damage, he's also unhittable and can block enemies from getting through. Used this for the Viconica fight for example.

After assembling the dream team we started killing all of the bosses, not even bothering to reach level 12 - it wasn't necessary.

Orin fight was trivial since I was Durge and speared the nightsong (forgot to mention that). Used the EK shadowblade build with acuity and BotMS equipped, forcing an initial crit with the illithid power and surgeons amulet combo. The damage was so high that a follow up cast wasn't even needed, action surge and two rounds worth of shadowblade crits were enough.

Other fights

• Cazador: I unintentionally cheesed this one. I wanted to start the fight by getting rid of the eyebite caster, but in doing so grouped them up and thunder wave was able to actually clear out the vast majority of the fight less Cazador. The fight itself became the loop I describe above with Otto's irresistable dance as the control spell of choice.
• Ansur: regular loop + confusion. Used globe for good measure.
• Raphael: I heavily over prepared for this one. Took inspiration from Morgana and brought a full retinue of elementals with the illithid shield up (the long rest faucet). I also skipped all of the NPCs here with invisibility, because by this point I was getting close to the end. Convinced Yurgir to join my cause, hold monster on Raphael, full nova from the EK archer single handedly deleted Raphael in one turn with slaying arrows. He did something like 2300 damage, that kind of ballpark. Rest of the fight was trivial and easily controlled. I let hope sit in a globe of invulnerability since otherwise she'd probably just get gibbed.
• Sarevok: killed in one round, same as above.
• Gortash: this one was actually interesting, because a) I messed up and slipped on my own ice fields and b) the NPCs here have control spells. This was one of the fights where we came closest to wiping, all it would have taken is a few more failed saves against the command: grovels coming out. Despite having alert, Gortash outsped most of the team but not the archer, so the combo wasn't quite as fluent as in other fights. We had a clutch globe of invulnerability from the EK archer to protect the others at one point.

At this point I decided the run was functionally over and just headed straight to the brain, skipping everything else. I prepared for the brain fight but Gale ultimately allowed me to skip. I find this one of the more tedious fights so I generally skip it on my runs if I can.

Reflecting on the challenge

There were effectively four different power break points:

• Level 5: access to elixir boosted stunning strike, sleet storm + hunger of hadar.
• Post goblin leaders: access to act 2 gear and arcane acuity/snowburst/banshee combo for mass skipping enemy turns. You also start to find arrow of many targets around this point, to make it even stronger.
• Level 8-9: at this point you start to get enough spell slots that one of the other ultra powerful builds comes online - fire sorceror. I didn't bother with warlock multi, preferring to use confusion and sacrifice my concentration slot.
• Rivington: at this point the challenge effectively ends and your party reaches god status.

Power levels of the various overpowered mechanics

Based purely on my subjective opinion in this challenge, I'd rank the overpowered mechanics like this:

1. Scrolls. These are 'just' very strong in act 1. Largely sleet storm and misty step. But in act 2 and especially 3 it's completely game breaking. Everyone, caster or otherwise, has unlimited disintegration, chain lightning, globe of invulnerability (!), confusion spells ready to go. Casters are a little less powerful in this mode in a sense, because the HP pools means spell slots being a limited resource is actually relevant. But scrolls completely negates that. They are also magnified by the second item on this list.
2. Arcane acuity. This isn't in the first spot because it isn't available for the hardest part of the game, and is also competing against globe of invulnerability in act 3. However, it is a big proponent for completely solving the big fights in act 3.
3. Consumable arrows. Next time I would be tempted to swap out the EK shadowblade user for another archer, because piercing + crit + slaying (or AoMT) arrows are just silly.
4. All other consumables. Potion spam was pretty necessary in act 1, and likewise strength elixirs.
5. Tavern brawler. I didn't use it that heavily in this run, honestly. It did some reasonable damage in act 1, but it wasn't as powerful as the warding bond backed archer - in my opinion. The best user IMO is a monk, but by the lategame monk is a somewhat reasonable controller with cloud giant backed stunning strike also doing fairly good damage, but both control and damage pales in comparison to more specialised options. BoMTS and/or fire acuity abusing control is more reliable and battlefield wide, and slaying arrows into piercing vulnerability is just a completely different level of damage.

The 'strongest' party discussions

My act 3 party is ultimately just a bunch of meta builds slapped together. But after running this challenge I now strongly believe to be even considered for the title of strongest party, a party needs to be strong in act 1, because it's pretty difficult not to steam roll act 3, certainly in regular unmodded gameplay. I haven't run it myself but I suspect that means a darkness party is objectively the best looking holistically across the whole game.

What next?

Well for me I've started to relax into a regular honour mode run with RP builds. It's a nice change of pace after the hectic act 1 bloodbath of the impossible challenge. I may also look at optimising act 1 impossible challenge, inspired as I said by grousedrum.

This post was a lot longer than I intended! Ended up being a brain dump, hopefully it's useful for anyone else taking the challenge in future. It was a LOT of fun and I'd strongly recommend it!

Would this be a viable build?

I was thinking 5 level Hexblade warlock for the extra attack, hexblades curse for extra damage

and 7 Levels Swachbuckler for full feats and uncanny dodge and evasion

or would 4 levels rouge and 8 warlock be better?

Edit: also would going for shadow blade be worth it? with 8 warlock this would mean 3d8 + 2 damage with sounds a lot lol

Hello everyone, last time I posted here I got some nice feedback, I'd like to ask some questions I've been playing with but it's difficult for me to test or look up without just asking someone.

> 3 moth swarmkeeper + 4 swashbuckler + 5 hex

1. does the blind from the mothswarm help with landing rakish sneak attack swashbuckler hits?
2. if I take an early level in hex (for example level 2, after level 1 ranger knight proficiency), will the rest of the damage I deal through this build scale with charisma? Even if I take different levels elsewhere? I'm always a bit confused what spells require what modifier. The build will largely focus on melee hits/blinding though.
3. can I take both Volo's and Ethel's eyes for two fake eyes? Are there big disadvantages to this?
4. for the purposes of a blinding, is the pet + moth plenty, or should I take 4 levels in swash for pocket sand instead of a 6th level for zombie passive of hex?
5. I'm assuming double wielding crowd the action economy, so would a scimitar work to RP a dread captain with a bird and a complex around blindness? or maybe a gith with the psychic damage dealing blade

> 2 star + 7 glamour + 3 thief

6. I want a support build (perhaps RP-heavy) that can heal and buff, I thought this could be an interesting idea. If I take levels in star druid first, will this character deal charisma-based damage later with glamour/thief levels?
7. Would the extra bonus actions offered by 3 thief levels be worth it for Mantle of Majesty and the Star Druid bonus action from dragon/archer?
8. Would healing chalice work (twice?) if I use a bardic heal spell, or heal through an item by casting a bard spell on someone?

> Bladesinger 7 + Fighter 2 + Wild Magic Sorc 3

9. If I take Bladesinger levels first, those spells will keep scaling with INT right?
10. The spells cast by Wizard will still activate Wild Magic?
11. Are 3 meta magics and the occassional Wild Magic worth it over simply a few more bladesinger levels?
12. Summons like Azer don't trigger wild magic right? When they use their spells or so?

Thank you for your help!

Hi, I am a new player and still trying to understand the mechanism.

I have watched a few abjuration wizard with magic missile build video, they add intelligence to 16+.

From my understanding, intelligence affects "Spell Attacking Roll", but due to magic missile grantee the hit, so theoretically such wizard actually don't need intelligence?

Hi guys, I am currently doing a full Rogue only monoclass run and it's a blast. The tips on my previous post helped making cool builds for them. It's making me realize to focus less on min-maxing builds, and I'm enjoying some of the cool Rogue features such as Panache and Magic Ambush, even though a multiclass with Gloom Stalker or Fighter might be way stronger.

Which lv 12 monoclasses did you enjoy a lot? I'm currently contemplating also doing a lv 12 Ranger monoclass run, I'm curious to see how for example a lv 12 Gloom Stalker would play with Stalker Flurry, since it's almost always monoclassed with Assassin.

I plan to tackle honor mode after the current play through. I think it would be a good idea to have an abjuration wizard on the team. I have never done a full caster wizard, I am not quite sure what gears and feats to give him. I don’t know if battle mages gloves,helm of arcan acuity or the band of mystic scoundrels is best utilized on a casting wizard compare to a melee wizard.

8 str, 14 dex, 16 con, 12 Wis, 16 int and 8 ch. 1/11 wizard split. Feats: alter and asi.

Gear ideas:

Snowburst ring, ring of arcane synergy. Spinehudder amulet. Boots of speed. Coldbrim hat. Winters’s clutch gloves or gloves of dexterity. With glove of dexterity, I could skip the alter feat and pick up the dual wield feat.

Spellspeckler and mourning frost of early and mid game. Markoheskir and staff of cherish necro for late game

I like the concept of cursed equipment and wished we had more of them. They are usually better compared to their equals, but come with drawbacks you have to work around. The Light of Creation surely is a badass piece of equipment: It is a +1 magic weapon at a point where good weapons are rare, has a DR, and has Extra Reach and Cleave on top of that. However, on every strike there is a chance you get stunned, which would be awful and will happen at the most inopportune of times. It does not apply to constructs and the wiki recommends the Gloves of the Automaton, which would turn you into into a construct. That piece of advice is not very good though; the gloves are only available a bit into Act 2, at which point you have competing options without drawbacks like the Unseen Menace or the Halberd of Vigilance, and they also occupy the coveted hand slot. We can do better.

Every strike you need to succeed a DC 10 CON save. That is actually pretty achievable with just some minor accommodations. The goal is to use the weapon between Level 5 to 8, because the biggest perk of this weapon is its availability. You can push Bernard off the tower with Thunderwave or Repelling Blast while the rest of your party waits at the bottom. He will not quite die from the fall, so your party better be in turn-based mode to prevent him from getting up and heal himself. Anyway, his weapon is technically accessible without having to property fight anything beyond the grove battle, which can not be said about the Mourning Frost - and you might want to delay receiving the powerful, but temporary and only one-time Bliss Spores buff until you wrap up more important checks.

Fighter/Barbarian

CON Bonus at Level 5

Fighter or Tiger Heart Barbarian derive the most value out of a powerful weapon due to being able to attack the most targets via Action Surge or Tiger's Bloodlust. They also happen to come with CON proficiency, which makes things a lot easier. In the same vein, a Human or Half-Elf Sorcerer would also be able to wield it. A more martially oriented Blue Draconic Sorcerer might even have some fun with Lightning type Booming Blade. Just note, that they rely a bit on Hill Giant elixir until they can dip Hexblade at Level 6 or 7.

The sources of CON saving throw bonuses are following:

• +3 Proficiency
• +3 CON modifier
• +1 Helmet
• +1 Ring of Protection

Start with 17/15/16 STR/DEX/CON. The 15 DEX is not actually redundant, because on an Initiative tie, the higher DEX wins. There are a lot of 14 DEX enemies that 15 DEX allows you to jump over, like a good bunch of goblin types.

The Ring of Protection is assumed to be available. You can steal the idol relatively early if you are careful, but you usually confront the Shadow Druids at Level 4, so it is assumed to be within the bounds.

That's +8 right there. You always roll at least a 1, and the DC check does not fail on a natural 1, so any other source of a +1 will guarantee imperviousness against the backlash. Those are:

• Be Astarion, Be Happy
• Bless (or The Whispering Promise)
• Warding Bond
• Resistance cantrip (takes Cleric or Druid concentration)
• Bliss Spores (one-time, not repeatable)

Use two of them if you have 14 or 15 CON.

You could hypothetically also spend a feat to gain the remaining +1, but that one is to be avoided, since the ones wielding it really want Great Weapon Master or Savage Attacker instead. For the same reason we'd avoid picking Resilient CON with another class.

Fighter or Barbarian Astarion have the least trouble wielding it, because the Happy status is until Long Rest has no upkeep or downsides. The Whispering Promise at that stage of the game is likely best on the wielder itself in order to save spell slots and is also generically available. Warding Bond does require a Cleric, but is the most hands-off method aside from the Happy status. If your Cleric or Druid is not that reliant on concentration (yet), you can also cast Resistance before an encounter.

Other Options

While Fighter and Barbarian are the ones who get the most mileage out of this weapon, there are a few more niche builds. They all have in common that they need to be at least Level 6 to safely wield it, which is around the time you deal with the Grymforge.

GWM War Cleric

One way to play an early game War Cleric is with GWM and Cleave as a Short Rest nuke to milk Guided Strike for all its value. They are not Level 6 yet and can't pass the +10 Attack to other characters, but Guided Strike applies to their own attacks, and coincidentally, this weapon happens to be a halberd, an Extra Reach weapon with Cleave. 1 Sorcerer 4 Cleric would allow you to do that at Level 5, same time as the Fighter or Barbarian. As a personal preference, I usually play them as 2 Sorcerer 3 Cleric to leverage twinned Magic Weapon - by itself a questionable use of your concentration, but is more interesting when done on two weapons at the same time. They can still safely wield the Light (assuming Astarion or just casting Bless/Resistance), but GWM just comes a bit later.

I also usually play 2 Sorcerer 4 Cleric with Level 6 Sharpshooter, because Level 6 is the point where Arrows of Many Targets become available and upkeeping twinned Magic Weapon when ranged. The caveat I am getting at is that in a party where a Sorcerer War Cleric is present, the Light of Creation is rarely their weapon; they are there to enhance it, the Titanstring, or the Githyanki Greatsword for two dedicated GWM or Sharpshooter damage carries. Also, twinned Healing Word with Whispering Promise for concentration-less Bless.

Magic Weapon + Elemental Weapon

Paladin/Sorcadin

Whether a Level 6 Paladin activates Aura of Protection to compensate for the lack of proficiency or start as a Sorcerer for CON proficiency, they both come online at Level 6. The catch is that they come with no STR unless you entirely dump DEX. If you can hang on one more Level, you will be able to add a Hexblade dip to make it scale with CHA, which at that point of the game should take about 2 or 3 Elixir of Hill Giant Strength if you pace it generously.

If your Paladin increases CHA with the hag's hair, they will have +4 from the aura, which is equal to +3 proficiency and one of the requisite +1s.

PAM Tempest Cleric

A Tempest Cleric has the combo of Sleet Storm and Thunderbolt Strike on a weapon attack to knock back approaching enemies that save against the ice. That combo comes online at Level 6 at the earliest, when Thunderbolt Strike unlocks. They will pick Polearm Master as their feat, so there is no means of gaining CON proficiency on their own. What they can do is pairing up with a Paladin and their Aura of Protection, or a Transmutation Wizard and their Transmuter's Stone. Either of them will grant you enough CON saving throw bonuses.

Just like the Paladin, they will not come with enough STR by default. Unlike them, they do not have an equivalent of a Hexblade dip, at least not for this weapon. The preferred one is the Cacophony, on which they can apply Shillelagh in order to scale with WIS. The upside of the Light of Creation (Extra Reach aside) is mainly availability; it can be obtained without having to resolve the grove raid.

As of Patch 8, it should also be noted that the niche of having a Lightning or Thunder weapon with team mate support is diminished. Running a Hexblade Tome Warlock, whose main draw aside from Eldritch Blast (with Repelling Blast synergy) and summoning minions is to permanently concentrate on Elemental Weapon solves that set of problems all on its own independently from the weapon. Just cast Elemental Weapon on the Returning Pike, Monster Slayer Glaive, or Melf's First Staff and be done.

Atm I'm lv5 ranger with the jellyfish swarmkeeper subclass (I dislike stealth and the jellyfish bonuses are hella fun so far).

My problem is I'm not sure what items would best compliment the build? At first I planned to set dex and str to 8 (and max out charisma for easier dialog rolls) and use Club of hill giant with Graceful Cloth+Golves of Dexterity for 19str and 20 dex but apparently they don't stack, so I have no idea what gear to get. Rn I'm still in the goblin camp, was thinking of maybe stealing the Gloves of Archery from trader Grat then going for that hill giant club, maybe later try getting the aa diadem from the creche too and the acid ring, but idk if that's the way to go and clueless about what items to attempt getting afterwards.

Hey guys,

One of my friends who plays this game always rants and raves about the Lockadin and I know it’s great at what it does, but I’ve always been partial to Sorcadin. Anyways, I’m running a Lockadin this run.

I was thinking the newest hexblade might be best, because of the level 1 weapon scaling, but the spell list seems pretty subpar.

I’m really considering Fiend because:

• Blasting if needed ( although this breaks 3 attacks that round )
• Temp HP but let’s face it, there are other sources

Great Old One

• Mortal Reminder seems awesome
• Spell list has lots of control and area denial spells

I’m sure there are other things to consider, though, what are you guys’ thoughts on this?

For context, I’m doing 7 Oathbreaker/Warlock

So I am trying to figure out the armours I want to aim for everyone by the end of the game. As it stands right now, I think I’m going to end up with 3 characters who can use Heavy Armour: Shadowheart, Lae’zel, and Minthara (maybe also a hireling but I can’t guarantee that atm). I am currently at the Adamantine Forge, and I’m going to make the shield, but I don’t know between the medium or heavy Armour which to make. I think part of the concern is the Adamantine Backlash effects imply lower overall Armour Class is better because it means a greater chance to get the effect to work. Do I go with the medium Armour because I’ll have more characters in theory who can benefit from that level?

On a different but related note, how good is the Psionic Ward Armour? I want to use that on Lae’zel but I wish it was a heavy armor instead.

Hey there. I am currently brainstorming about making use of the "burning" condition to regularly inflict burning, thus triggering the Hat of Fire Acuity regularly. However, I do not have acess to the hat yet and I‘m not sure whether this works at all: Do creatures set aflame by the character wearing it boost the hat when recieving the damage? Because I know that some of those conditions do not actually count as the one inflicting it doing the damage but the one having the condition. (That‘s also why (for some reason) burning yourself while having "Elemental adept: Fire" bypasses instances of your own fire resistance.)

Does anyone know whether this works or has a save at hand to test it? Thanks very much.