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Swords Bard is definitely my #1 pick for a first time player, but I’d suggest that since the class is skewed more towards weapon combat than spells, leave Cha at 16 and have dex at 17 (and make dex the stat you focus on improving)
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Dec 20, 2023 04:13
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Waffleopolis posted:Okay so I bought BG3 months ago, and I have yet to play it. It's a combination of being nervous trying a new genre, being distracted by other games, and various other daily poo poo. Gonna pull the band-aid and get this going. My newbie recommendations: Swords Bard: There's little they can't do tbh. There's absolutely no scenario where a bard's presence is a bad idea. Normally the jack-of-all-trades gimmick is "good at everything, master of nothing" but in BG3 they're "great at everything and master of almost everything." Storm Sorcerer: They thrive on Charisma for both speech checks and their spells scale off of it. They get a suite of thunder/lightning spells at lvl 6(?) and have a unique ability that lets them fly after casting a spell, and this flight will not trigger opportunity attacks. You can also do cool things like casting a Twinned Haste spell to make two of your party members faster and able to do more stuff per turn using only a single spell slot. Evocation Wizard: The glass cannon, these guys are squishy but can deal devastating amounts of damage to large crowds later on. Evocation Wizards specifically gain a passive that protects your party from friendly-fire so you can Cone of Cold and Fireball to your heart's content and never have to worry about slaughtering your allies. Open Hand Monk: Just punch the living poo poo out of everything in your path. From the very beginning of the game they gain an extra attack as a bonus action and their armor scales off both DEX+WIS which means with a proper stat investment you become very difficult to injure very early in the game. From lvl 6 onwards your best source of damage is literally just your fists (and appropriate gloves), no weapons required. Tempest Cleric: This Cleric is how you roleplay as Thor. They immediately gain proficiency with martial weapons and heavy armor, meaning their weapon selection is more varied and they are difficult to injure. This Cleric subclass supports allies by electrocuting everything with blasts of thunder and lightning, they can also retaliate against attackers with a reaction. They still gain all the typical cleric stuff like trolling undead/demons, support spells, etc. Light Cleric: Like Tempest Cleric but instead of Thunder and Lightning it's Radiant damage and Fire. Can't use heavy armor or martial weapons like the Tempest Cleric, but you'll learn to incinerate your opposition. They also get a reaction ability that can cause enemy attacks to miss. As for races: anything tall and with innate Darkvision is simply miles ahead of the other picks if you care about minmaxing. Tieflings, Drow, Elves, Half-Elves, and Half-Orcs are great beginner picks. Your attribute spread is going to vary based on the class you pick. Some classes benefit from Wisdom, some from Charisma, pretty much every non-Wizard class can dump INT to 8, etc. Always have a minimum CON of 14. CON determines your HP, and you always want lots. You always want your stats to be a multiple of 2. Having 14 STR adds +2 to STR checks, having 15 adds +2, having 16 adds +3, etc. There are very, very few ways to increase your mainstats. Every 4 levels you can choose to raise one ability by 2, two abilities by 1, or taking certain feats will let you add +1 to a stat while gaining a unique passive ability. Starting with 17 in a particular stat is desirable for this reason. Horace Kinch fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 04:13
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Here’s my noob build: put the game on balanced or explorer, pick a guy that looks cool and remove this thread from your bookmarks.
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Dec 20, 2023 04:23
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Knuc U Kinte posted:Here’s my noob build: put the game on balanced or explorer, pick a guy that looks cool and remove this thread from your bookmarks. the best advice tbh. but you can come back if you get stuck.
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Dec 20, 2023 04:24
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Yeah I strongly recommend doing something with decent Charisma and taking Persuasion proficiency for your first/only playthrough main character. This game is very heavy on dialogue and skill checks stuff and it's nice for your player character to be able to talk gud. Swords bard or whatever flavor of paladin are your best two options imo because they aren't represented in the companions (well, Minthara is a paladin by default but you get her later on and many/most players won't unlock her first playthrough anyway). Sorceror or warlock are also charisma based, but you have Gale who only makes sense thematically as an arcane caster (wizard or sorceror) and Wyll only makes sense as a warlock. So if you're not trying to minmax I'd just go bard or paladin your first playthrough. re: races, gith have really strong racial abilities and a good amount of cool dialogue interactions. If you want to be a space iguana fantasy Klingon. They rule tbh. The only thing that brings them down mechanically is they don't have darkvision which is easy to remedy. They get swords and medium armor proficiencies, powerful racial cantrips (Misty Step at level 5 is amazing and Jump and the Mage Hand are good too) and their Astral Knowledge ability lets them have proficiency in all of the Intelligence or Wisdom based skills or whatever. All around a very strong pick. Honestly though just pick whatever race you think is fun or cool, they will have special dialogue options. Larian removed the stat differences between races so honestly there aren't huge differences between races. You're not going to screw yourself over by making a dwarf mage or a halfing barbarian or whatever, you'll just miss out on a couple minor abilities.
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Dec 20, 2023 04:24
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Moon Slayer posted:I never finished Kingmaker but there are just so many options and when I was looking up info on it lots of places said that it's absurdly easy to take something suboptimal at level 4 and basically cripple yourself as to make the endgame unbeatable. I wouldn't say it's easy to make a character so bad you can't beat the game on the normal difficulty, but you can certainly make yourself a lot less effective. The end game in Kingmaker is hard if you don't know the various gimmicks going on or you don't have a kineticist with deadly earth. I haven't played Pathfinder tabletop, but I've read that Owlcat changed some of the rules. It's far more complicated than any 3rd edition D&D game I've seen. I like the two Owlcat games. May even buy the last couple of DLC for Wrath if I ever finish BG3.
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Dec 20, 2023 04:45
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Act 2 spoilers I encountered the Potion of Everlasting Vigour for the first time. I had Lae'zel drink it, and her strength only went up by 1. She was at 20 (17 base, 2 from the ability score feat, one from heavy armor mastery) so I was expecting to hit 22. Did I hit some cap? I'm not sure if this is an honor mode thing or if I misunderstood
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Dec 20, 2023 04:54
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Pellisworth posted:Yeah I strongly recommend doing something with decent Charisma and taking Persuasion proficiency for your first/only playthrough main character. This game is very heavy on dialogue and skill checks stuff and it's nice for your player character to be able to talk gud. to add to this, Half orcs have a particularly good bonus for anyone doing weapon combat; and half elves are the best if you wanna roleplay being a hot twink.
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Dec 20, 2023 04:59
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Boogan posted:Any ideas on how I can quickly break a Paladin Oath in Act 2? Currently Paladin of the Ancients. Go to Moonrise prison or docks and start killing cultists. Make sure the paladin gets a killing blow.
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Dec 20, 2023 05:48
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Act 2 spoilers There are some buffs that have bonuses (up to level 20) and then they just stop bounding you if you hit that number. I tried and tried and tried to make the math work on some of them, but the game has a set order to how it adds your permanent buffs. They’re stacked before temporary ones usually and thus the temporary ones don’t break the 20 threshold
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Dec 20, 2023 05:56
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I always cringe a little at Bard being suggested for a newbie and I realize that’s just because I don’t think I like bards. They’re fine. I’m sure at some point they’ll click with me but they’re probably the class I’m least interested in. So uh … play whatever sounds cool to you. It’ll be great. I am really enjoying Minthara and Gale’s interactions, which boil down to ”he should be dead””she just needs someone to be a good listener.”
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Dec 20, 2023 06:10
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Trevor Hale posted:There are some buffs that have bonuses (up to level 20) and then they just stop bounding you if you hit that number. I tried and tried and tried to make the math work on some of them, but the game has a set order to how it adds your permanent buffs. They’re stacked before temporary ones usually and thus the temporary ones don’t break the 20 threshold I think it's a bug. I respeced her with Withers and picked Athlete to increase strength rather than heavy armor master, and now my strength is 22. Can't think of why one feat would work and the other wouldn't
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Dec 20, 2023 06:51
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[BARD] dialogue options are often being catty or bullshitting someone so if you like being the clever mischievous bard archetype it fits well for that. Bards make a good PC because they get a ton of skill bonuses for dialogue and other checks, they have good utility spells (speak with animals and the dead, longstrider, disguise, feather fall, detect thoughts etc) and if you go College of Swords they're also one of the best martial fighty-type dudes. Bard spells are pretty mediocre in combat. They have some good ones but their spellbook is overall pretty lackluster for combat, imo. If you want to lean into spellcasting then you want Lore college for more Magical Secrets to add some better spells to your repertoire, but even with that you're still fairly limited. anyway it's great for your first/only playthrough mainly for the dialogue and skill checks. it also happens to be good at fighting edit: somewhat related but I find it pretty easy to keep the Diadem of Arcane Synergy buff up pretty consistently, even after they fixed it. Tons of things still count as conditions. What this means is I should be able to get 2x Charisma damage bonus as a 5 swords bard / 7 oathbreaker paladin or up to 3x as a 5 blade warlock / 7 oathbreaker paladin. +18 damage is pretty baller Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 06:53
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Pellisworth posted:[BARD] dialogue options are often being catty or bullshitting someone so if you like being the clever mischievous bard archetype it fits well for that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8OP_gMPrUQ
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Dec 20, 2023 07:06
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The other nice part of Bard is that none of your other companions come specced as a Bard out of the box, so you do at least feel like you're unique and not doubling someone's niche (which is definitely a problem I felt as a Fighter and why I multi'd into Paladin on my first character). I also don't think the Bard list is that bad. Sure, they have very few damage options, but they have a bunch of good utility, both to help your allies (everyone loves Heroism, Longstrider is actually extremely good, Healing Word is great in a pinch) and to harm your enemies (Hideous Laughter is good, Sleep is reliable, Hypnotic Pattern is incredible), and they even have some reasonable damage options that people in the thread like (Shatter is good enough to pull its own weight, Cloud of Daggers is hilarious). The main problems are that their go-to damage cantrip (Vicious Mockery) is a piddly d4 of damage and they only learn one spell per level, so you're quite as much of a do-everything bot as the Wizard and need to pick what two from the lanes of "healing" "support" "damage" and "control" you're specializing in.
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Dec 20, 2023 07:12
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Are there any interesting items or bg3-specific gameplay interactions that are cool for Arcane Tricksters? AT seems... perfectly fine and cool so far at level 5, though nothing stands out about it. I'm guessing that the best thing to do with spellcasting ability is to just wear the 17 int headband and make good use of scrolls, rather than trying to build my character to lean into spellcasting. Without extra attack, rogues seem especially bound by their sneak attack scaling to stay competitive as damage dealers.
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Dec 20, 2023 07:16
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Cephas posted:Are there any interesting items or bg3-specific gameplay interactions that are cool for Arcane Tricksters? AT seems... perfectly fine and cool so far at level 5, though nothing stands out about it. I'm guessing that the best thing to do with spellcasting ability is to just wear the 17 int headband and make good use of scrolls, rather than trying to build my character to lean into spellcasting. Without extra attack, rogues seem especially bound by their sneak attack scaling to stay competitive as damage dealers. Without mods Arcane Trickster might be one of the worst subclasses unfortunately. I’m playing Arcane Trickster and I’m going to make it work but the one major function you get from the class “Magical Ambush” comes late in Act 2 when you hit lvl 9. I modded in booming blade and green flame blade. SCAG Cantrips Cap of Arcane Acuity custom mod I made to make some Act 2 and 3 hats into clothing so I could use the mage armor spell. Going pure Arcane Trickster gets you 4 feats and Lvl 2 spells with magical ambush and an invisible mage hand. In comparison to other wizards who will have multi target CC's available by lvl 9 you will be lacking unless you really like casting hideous laughter in my experience. What I did was AT 10 / Wizard 2 (Divination). This gets you 3 feats and access to lvl 3 spells with magical ambush. Now you can attack with harder hitting cc spells with Magical Ambush like Slow, Fear, and Hypnotic Pattern. I think going AT 9 / Wiz 4 will get you 1 level 4 slot which could give you a cast of greater invisibility as long as you have a scroll to copy. Useful items I have found that work with this build. Graceful Cloth Arrow of Many Targets to activate Act 2 Helmet. Elixir of Vigilance Every scroll of greater invisibility you can steal Act 2: Helmet of Arcane Acuity up to +10 spell DC when conditions are met Infernal Rapier +1 to spell DC, attacks with your spell casting modifier so this is a weird one Act 3: Cazadors dagger that gives up to +3 to spell DC when conditions are met You are sacrificing pure damage for utility but a well placed slow is devastating much like hasted Lae'zel. Black Noise fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 07:23
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Bards clicked for me when I realized that I didn’t have to personally win the fight. My companions are all good as poo poo, so I can just hang back and buff them. Prancing around casting water for tempest cleric/wizard shadowheart who nukes a room is fun to me. Took a one level life cleric dip and I’m essentially just a dude hanging back and going “you good?” while my friends wipe the floor
Trevor Hale fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 07:27
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Cephas posted:Are there any interesting items or bg3-specific gameplay interactions that are cool for Arcane Tricksters? AT seems... perfectly fine and cool so far at level 5, though nothing stands out about it. I'm guessing that the best thing to do with spellcasting ability is to just wear the 17 int headband and make good use of scrolls, rather than trying to build my character to lean into spellcasting. Without extra attack, rogues seem especially bound by their sneak attack scaling to stay competitive as damage dealers. There's an item in Act 3 that lets you cast an illusion or enchantment spell as a bonus action if you do melee damage. Bards usually pick it up because quickened Vicious Mockery is really strong, but I could also see it working on a Arcane Trickster. You're definitely gonna have to work a bit harder to juice AT compared to Thief or Assassin, since most of its tricks before Magical Ambush are doing poo poo with Mage Hand, and that doesn't work near as well here as it does in tabletop. I think there's some other gear I saw that was I was like "this seems like it would work well for an Arcane Trickster" but I can't remember off the top of my head. Monathin fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 08:02
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Lore Bards are great because they can learn Magical Secrets at Level 6 for Counterspell and they already have the amazing Cutting Words, which combined ensures that nothing ever hits your party. Both of those are reactions so you can use your active turns for Haste or Confusion to lock down the entire enemy army. Their biggest drawback is that they have no innate shield proficiency and can’t wear anything above light armor, so consider potentially mixing in a meatier multiclass if you’re getting bomBARDed.
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Dec 20, 2023 08:51
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Hulk Krogan posted:Good call. I really need to go through and properly set up the radial menus for all my characters, because digging through the inventory for oils and scrolls on console isn't the best. This is the only real downside to playing on console that I've felt. It takes a while to organise the radials, and every time you equip different weapons it moves stuff around. If you carry a lot of consumables you end up with loads of them randomly scattered across various wheels. Made me not want to bother with them. I wish there was some grouping, or sub-wheels, for e.g. potions, scrolls, common actions (then maybe you can set up your spells and weapon actions how you like)
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Dec 20, 2023 09:50
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exquisite tea posted:Lore Bards are great because they can learn Magical Secrets at Level 6 for Counterspell and they already have the amazing Cutting Words, which combined ensures that nothing ever hits your party. Both of those are reactions so you can use your active turns for Haste or Confusion to lock down the entire enemy army. Their biggest drawback is that they have no innate shield proficiency and can’t wear anything above light armor, so consider potentially mixing in a meatier multiclass if you’re getting bomBARDed. If anyone is looking to juice up their pc version - might I suggest the feat every level mod. It even has a ton of versions so maybe you just want a feat every two levels or at levels 3, 6, 9 and 12. Getting alert, mobile, athlete and tough at the same time make you feel like a god.
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Dec 20, 2023 15:29
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Now that patch 5 has been out a while, is there any indication of Halsin leaving the party if you keep Minthara on a good playthrough? Does Minthara have banter with Characters that you wouldn’t originally have been able to have in the same party as her - Karlach, Wyll, Halsin, etc?
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Dec 20, 2023 17:26
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The Lord Bude posted:Now that patch 5 has been out a while, is there any indication of Halsin leaving the party if you keep Minthara on a good playthrough? I just picked up Minthara on my good Durge character and none of them have had any reaction to her joining the party. I think I got some approval from Karlach but no commentary or anything in camp (which makes sense because in normal circumstances, none of them would be there since I would have blown up the grove). Halsin hasn't actually joined my party officially yet so we'll see what goes down with that.
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Dec 20, 2023 17:52
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The Lord Bude posted:Now that patch 5 has been out a while, is there any indication of Halsin leaving the party if you keep Minthara on a good playthrough? I had both in my honor run for the entire game.
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Dec 20, 2023 17:54
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Monathin posted:There's an item in Act 3 that lets you cast an illusion or enchantment spell as a bonus action if you do melee damage. Bards usually pick it up because quickened Vicious Mockery is really strong, but I could also see it working on a Arcane Trickster. There's a video by "Ian is too common" on YouTube that talks about how to squeeze every last drop of juice from Mage Hand. Absolute pro-click. The fact that your Mage Hand can stay invisible and thus never enter the turn order gives it unlimited action economy. Good for barrelmancy and similar shenanigans.
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Dec 20, 2023 18:13
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Boogan posted:There's a video by "Ian is too common" on YouTube that talks about how to squeeze every last drop of juice from Mage Hand. Absolute pro-click. The fact that your Mage Hand can stay invisible and thus never enter the turn order gives it unlimited action economy. Good for barrelmancy and similar shenanigans. the Githyanki racial psionics mage hand is also invisible and can do all these shenanigans, though you only get one cast of it per long rest so it's a bit more limited. still potentially very strong. I think gith are probably the best all-around race mechanically, only really lacking darkvision but that's pretty easy to rectify
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Dec 20, 2023 18:26
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Boogan posted:There's a video by "Ian is too common" on YouTube that talks about how to squeeze every last drop of juice from Mage Hand. Absolute pro-click. The fact that your Mage Hand can stay invisible and thus never enter the turn order gives it unlimited action economy. Good for barrelmancy and similar shenanigans. It only sticks around for a minute in real time though so you need to be on the ball for something like that to work
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Dec 20, 2023 18:34
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Pellisworth posted:the Githyanki racial psionics mage hand is also invisible and can do all these shenanigans, though you only get one cast of it per long rest so it's a bit more limited. still potentially very strong. I would have to break my habit of immediately picking up and adding to wears anything with "darkvision" in the name
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Dec 20, 2023 18:58
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Pellisworth posted:the Githyanki racial psionics mage hand is also invisible and can do all these shenanigans, though you only get one cast of it per long rest so it's a bit more limited. still potentially very strong. Astral knowledge is really nice to have if your party doesn’t include a rogue or bard. Otherwise I’m tempted to say if we’re going strictly by best racial bonuses: Human if you’re playing a wizard or sorcerer; since you get shield proficiency. (Unless you’re multi classing into something that gives you shield proficiency like cleric). Easy AC boost; and there is a shield that will give you a spell DC boost which is much tidier than taking dual wield to carry two staves around. Dwarf if you’re playing a throwing barbie; since they get that incredible hammer that requires a dwarf. Half orc if you’re playing any other character that does melee attacks - their racial bonuses are insanely good. For me personally though none of the above matters because I’m fussy about how my character looks and half elves have all the good faces.
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Dec 20, 2023 18:59
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I personally love half-wood-elf. You get the human equipment proficiencies (particularly the shield), stealth proficiency, charm resistance, darkvision and permanent extra movement. I wouldn't say it's the best but I like it a lot.quote:Dwarf if you’re playing a throwing barbie; since they get that incredible hammer that requires a dwarf.
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Dec 20, 2023 19:05
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The male half-elves look real smug
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Dec 20, 2023 19:07
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Is Pam still bugged?
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Dec 20, 2023 19:11
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ChronoReverse posted:I personally love half-wood-elf. You get the human equipment proficiencies (particularly the shield), stealth proficiency, charm resistance, darkvision and permanent extra movement. I wouldn't say it's the best but I like it a lot. Hmm… still means you gotta look like a dwarf though. Jay Rust posted:The male half-elves look real smug I love small body half elf men. Best bard faces.
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Dec 20, 2023 19:15
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Every critical failure in Honor Mode just makes me miss my Halfling Bard. I enjoyed passing every single speech check, guaranteed.
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Dec 20, 2023 19:18
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Look at this guy that's never had a critical failure with a halfling with advantage
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Dec 20, 2023 19:23
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Mr. Lobe posted:It only sticks around for a minute in real time though so you need to be on the ball for something like that to work Arcane Trickster Mage hand is persistent. Making it once per short rest and unable to pickpocket in exchange for “lol I shove da goblin” is still lame.
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Dec 20, 2023 19:24
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Black Noise posted:Arcane Trickster Mage hand is persistent. Making it once per short rest and unable to pickpocket in exchange for “lol I shove da goblin” is still lame. Ok but have you tried giving it a potion of hill giant strength and a longsword?
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Dec 20, 2023 19:30
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yeah probably the racial ability that has the biggest impact is human or half-elf light armor and shield proficiencies for wizards, sorcs, warlocks, bards. Unless you multiclass to get the proficiencies, wearing light armor and a shield is a significant boost in AC from unarmored or no shield. This is particularly true on higher difficulties because the AI likes to prioritize your lower-AC and/or concentrating party members, so having the AC is pretty important for your squishy arcane casters. edit: of course, githyanki and shield dwarves get light and medium armor prof as racials but they don't get shields.
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Dec 20, 2023 19:32
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The Lord Bude posted:Astral knowledge is really nice to have if your party doesn’t include a rogue or bard. No I'm pretty sure the dragonborn and half orcs get the good faces
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Dec 20, 2023 19:42
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