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exquisite tea posted:There's kind of no point to making a custom Wizard, is there? Sorc does pretty much everything they do but 2x while also acing their speech checks and you gotta play as Gale to get some of the best spellcaster buffs. Correct, although you should give your sorcerer 1 level of wizard so you can learn Art of War and scribe a few utility scrolls. not sure what you mean about the caster buffs Jack Trades posted:Sorcerers don't have the flexibility that Wizards have, who can just switch spells in and out depending on what the problem is. You don’t really need the flexibility though, there’s only a relatively small handful of spells actually worth using,and you get more than enough spells to play with as a sorc; especially if you have another character who can cast a handful of the ritual spells. Chain lightning Art of War (needs 1 level of wizard to scribe) Ice Storm Blight Greater Invisibility Fireball Lightning bolt haste Fly Scorching Rays Magic Missile Shield longstrider That’s basically the full list of arcane spells that are actually worth using and you can honestly cut Fly Later on since you can give everyone the ability to fly if you want via ilithid Powers or items. There a couple others that have marginal early game utility but which you can replace later. The long term summoning spells are ok too if you want to roleplay that kind of Caster, but there isn’t really a pressing need for them when combats are over so quickly. Edit: Forgot Counterspell. You definitely want that. I’d probably cut longstrider for it, there are so many other classes that can cast it. The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Dec 10, 2023 |
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Dec 10, 2023 02:21
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grack posted:It matters a lot if you're using weapon attacks that don't use a STR/DEX as a damage base. A classic Bard 5/Paladin 7 build with GWM will get 3-4 attacks per round. If you have 22 Charisma, that's an extra 24 damage per round, a non-trivial amount. Add in stuff like Haste, Bloodlust and Action Surge and that number goes even higher. yea that circlet basically reads ‘add your charisma modifier to weapon damage’. If you’re playing a class that primarily attacks with a weapon and wants high CHA it’s pretty much BiS the whole game. It’s definitely not optimal to use Infernal rapier just for that though, you’re better off being dex based and leaving your CHA at 16, since bardadins don’t really actually need CHA for that much besides dialogue checks
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Dec 10, 2023 02:26
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Shwqa posted:Just use the set int to 17 circlet that is in act 1. My paladin has a 17 int and 18 dex due to act 1 equipment and I basically never switch for any checks and 17 int is totally fine for a build that is 1 level of wizard just for extra spells on top of being a different caster class. There are so many spells where your caster stat is totally irellevant
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Dec 10, 2023 02:29
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Forsythia posted:I'm impressed by the incredible quality of this game, and I'm enjoying the questing, conversations, and looting, but there's one area of BG3 that is giving me trouble. I'm very unfamiliar with how the specifics of DnD combat works, and I sometimes find the big fights against many different foes overwhelming even on the lowest difficulty settings. I'm guessing there is something important I'm overlooking that would make them more manageable – crowd control spells, consumables, cleaving attacks? – but I have no idea where to begin, since I don't know the rules well enough to understand which potential tools have value. There of course are additional facets of the game such as character builds and party compositions that contribute to the outcome of fights too, but I don't know if I should go that far in depth yet. 1. Playing defensively is usually not correct. You can’t outheal damage in this game, healing is something you do to make use of bonus actions where you have nothing better to do, and to emergency revive downed characters. 2. Combat usually comes down to, you want to try and take out enemies as soon as possible so they stop being able to damage you. Especially early on, this means focusing on one at a time, though later you’ll have enough AOE capability to take out groups at once 3. Very early on, when your characters can’t reliably hit the broad side of a barn, it can be helpful to use spells that incapacitate some enemies so they can’t attack you (also an enemy that is tripped over or restrained in some way is easier to hit); but this becomes a waste of time as you get more powerful 4. Focus on making your characters do as much damage as possible, and hit as often as possible. This means giving fighters a 2h weapon, or dual wielding; not 1h and shield. Other characters like paladins and bards are ok with a 1h weapon and shield because much of their damage comes from add on effects. 5. Companions tend to have poor default builds/stat distributions, in particular shadowheart, respeccing her to light cleric and fixing her stats will make a big difference. 6. You’ll do more damage in the early to mid game dual wielding 1h weapons (as long as your character has access to 2 weapon fighting style) than you will with a 2 handed weapon. 7. Try and have a balanced party composition that covers all your bases, especially as a new player. It doesn’t have to be crazy optimised, if you have a Fighter, a Cleric and a Sorcerer or wizard, plus one extra class of your choosing you’ll do fine.
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Dec 10, 2023 02:43
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Pellisworth posted:the bg3 wiki is a really good resource and I haven't found it to be inaccurate anywhere: https://bg3.wiki/ I’ll have to test it, if Larian ever gets around to giving Mac users a patch so they can play the game again. Depending on how loosely they define ‘condition’ it’s probably still worth using, but if you have to spend your first action in a combat doing anything other than attacking an enemy to trigger it, then the item is hot garbage.
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Dec 10, 2023 02:49
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Lord Cyrahzax posted:Thinking about doing an actual Durge run, anything I need to know about College of Swords or does it play pretty straightforwardly? This is only on normal It’s great. Assuming you’re going dex based as is typical, you’ll end up with crazy high AC. You’ve got one flourish that lets you do full damage to 2 enemies at once, and another that adds 4 AC till the end of turn. The flourishes also do an extra 1d8 damage. If you’re debating whether to go 2 weapon or duelist, know that there is an insanely powerful rapier in act 3 that requires you to not be holding anything in your off hand. If you want to get fancy, consider going sword bard 6, then taking 2 levels of paladin - you can configure paladin smites to trigger via the reaction menu, so you do your flourish, and you get a pop up asking whether you want to expend a spell slot for a smite, this way you can stack the damage and also smite 2 enemies per attack using the flourish that lets you hit 2 enemies. You can either go back to leveling bard for the last 4 levels or take 4 levels in champion fighter for the extra action and more crit chance.
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Dec 10, 2023 04:21
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Forsythia posted:I got to level 8 on a multiplayer campaign but had to restart to a single player campaign and am just at level 4 now. Currently using a crossbow-oriented ranger as my custom character, and Astarion, Shadowheart, and Lae'zel with their starter builds. I know you can easily redo the playable character's specializations and classes and have heard that Shadowheart really should be redone, but I've held off because I don't know what I should be picking. Normally I don't have any trouble with selecting and experimenting with worthwhile abilities and builds for characters in RPGs and would just wing it, but something about the DnD combat ruleset overwhelms me and gives me choice paralysis. Shadowheart’s problem, aside from trickery being garbage, is that her stats are split up across strength and dex in a way that makes her super useless in combat. You can respec her to light, and give her 17 wis/16 str/14 con/10 dex As for wizards and sorcerers, they are very powerful but start out quite weak early on. Level 5 is where they really kick off, because that’s when you get fireball and lightning bolt which can do high damage to a bunch of enemies at once.
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Dec 10, 2023 04:45
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Forsythia posted:if people say sword bard is versatile and competent, I want to give it a shot. I have no idea where to begin with it though, as I have never touched the bard class. Can anyone give me some pointers as to what exactly I should be doing with it? You want to have 17 dex and 16 cha and 14 con to start. Use a finesse weapon and a shield (towards the end of the game you’ll get a rapier that specifically requires you not to have anything in your offhand but until then a shield is compatible with duelist fighting style.) Your focus is to get your Dex up high - if you get the item in Act 1 that lets you add one point to a stat of your choosing you’ll end up with 22 Dex. First feat is +2 Dex, second feat is savage attacker. Once you get to choose sword bard spec you’ll get flourishes that you can use in combat. You can use your bonus actions for things like healing word. Take duelist fighting style Grab the medium armours that let you use full dex bonus. Grab items that add damage to your attacks. For spells you want vicious mockery, healing word, and alll the utility stuff like longstrider, speak with dead, talk to animals. Buff yourself with talk to animals after each long rest. Buff the whole party with longstrider after each long rest. Be the face of the group and talk to everyone. After you have 6 levels of bard, take 2 levels of paladin - this will let you use smites. You need to set them to ‘ask’ in the reaction menu. When you use a flourish or a regular attack, you’ll get a pop asking if you want to spend a spell slot on a smite and which level spell slot you want. (They do 1d8 damage per spell level, up to 4). The flourish that lets you hit 2 enemies with one attack lets you smite both. Take defence fighting style for extra AC at paladin level 2. Put your final 4 levels into fighter and choose the champion spec - this will give you action surge and also increased chance to critically hit.
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Dec 10, 2023 08:25
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Geekboy posted:I'm in Act 3 and have both Minthara and Halsin in my camp, so the new patch lets you keep them both. Just curious, does Minthara have banter dialogue with companions she would normally be mutually exclusive with?
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Dec 10, 2023 12:22
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DeadlyMuffin posted:I was able to take out the hag in my honor mode game before she got to her little arena area. Got her in the fireplace. I hated that fight my first go-through! Ha! That’s actually bad, because you miss out on the dialogue check to get her to give you the hair for the +1 stat boost but at least it doesn’t flat out break the quest any more.
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Dec 10, 2023 12:24
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twistedmentat posted:With the other, my coworker told me to just shove Cazador off the platform, and i did that, multiple times and he would just reappear where he was shoved off. This used to work, but they fixed it in like patch 4 (because it didn’t make sense that you could kill a person who can turn into a cloud of bats at will by knocking them off a cliff)
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Dec 10, 2023 12:26
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exquisite tea posted:Trying to do something a little different with Shadowheart this time around. Would it be dumb to have her go 6 War Cleric / 6 Open Hand Monk and just dive into melee with Spirit Guardians, feeding Crusader's Mantle to Lae'zel? Sounds like that could be pretty fun. It wouldn’t work cause you can’t have 2 Concentration effects up at once. Using Crusader’s mantle would cancel Spirit guardians and vice versa. Besides which, monk and cleric don’t synergise because Cleric abilities revolve around using actions to cast spells or do a weapon attack, and Monk is all about punching things, neither class has anything to make the other better at doing it’s thing - you’re just left with a character that can do one or the other, but not particularly well; which is never what you want in D&D. Multiclassing is only good if you’re layering complimentary abilities. For example Monk/Thief works because the thief levels give the monk another bonus action with which to punch. Cleric 7/Paladin 5 works because the Paladin Levels give the Cleric the ability to use better weapons and expend spell slots to smite when they attack with them, while also letting you use Healing word and mass healing word with your bonus actions, and having spirit guardians or Crusader’s mantle up as you wade into melee.
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Dec 10, 2023 15:39
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AstraZenmaster posted:Forgive me for the boring tech support question. I picked this up yesterday with high hopes of couch co-op (splitscreen) multiplayer, but am having all sorts of controller issues. We're on a Mac M2 and are using two Switch Pro Controllers. Can’t help you with Controllers, but I wanted to warn you - the Mac version of the game is currently broken, you basically won’t be able to play once you hit Act 3. Larian broke the game for everyone with patch 4, but they are being unusually tardy in pushing patch 5 out to Mac users - we are now 1 major patch and 2 hotfixes behind. Everyone else got the patch on december 1 iirc. they’ve been extremely poo poo with communication too, it took them 4 days to even acknowledge that the patch wasn’t available to Mac users yet, made a vague statement that it was ‘undergoing further testing and would be out shortly’ and haven’t said a word to anyone since. you should consider refunding the game if you can, at least until they finally get around to issuing an update. the delay between patching the Mac version and WIndows/Console also breaks cross platform multiplayer and saves every time it happens, although this is the first time since launch that there has been such a large gap. The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Dec 10, 2023 |
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Dec 10, 2023 19:18
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unattended spaghetti posted:What spells can only be learned by scroll? Been hanging onto one of everything to scribe and wouldn't mind being spoiled on that. There are like 2 or 3; but you’ll find them in the sorcerous sundries vault in act 3. Only one of them is worth using, and that’s art of war, which is basically magic missile, except each missile does 50 damage.
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Dec 11, 2023 03:53
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twistedmentat posted:Okay, all the chosen are down. Just Wyll and Lae'zels things besides what its obviously the final part of the game. I have not had Wyll in my party, and i kinda have no idea how Warlocks work. what do you mean, both of them very explicitly have seperate magic powers based on which hand you use them in? The short sword does an extra 7 damage when in the main hand when you attack with advantage; but it effectively gives you two weapon fighting style when held in the off hand (and it applies to an offhand hand crossbow, not just that weapon) which is pretty useful if you’re using it with a class that can’t get access to fighting styles (a single class rogue for eg) The dagger gives vulnerability to piercing damage when held in the main hand (which is pretty powerful) but in the off hand you get +1 AC, and every time someone attacks you and and misses in Melee you get a free attack on them which can apply true strike. If you’re playing a character with levels of fighter or sword bard, you hold the short sword in the main hand and the dagger in the offhand, if you’re playing a pure rogue you hold the dagger in the main hand and the sword in the off hand. The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Dec 11, 2023 |
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Dec 11, 2023 07:51
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grinnard posted:Surely it's always better to have the dagger in the main hand? You can't beat doubling your damage for every strike on an enemy after the first one. I’m not sure. I’ve always wanted someone to create an online damage simulator for the game where you can plug in gear and stats and stuff and have it work that out. If you get a few enemies on you and you have a high AC it’s a fair few extra hits you get from having the dagger in the off hand. And your character will typically have a bunch of damage riders that won’t be doubled by giving piercing vulnerability.
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Dec 11, 2023 09:39
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exquisite tea posted:I think if you’re a Swords Bard your ultimate goal is the rapier from Act 3, in which case you probably want to take dueling style anyway. Of course you could always just respec further on down the line. Oh certainly, for a swords bard I wouldn’t be dual wielding. I’m happy enough just using my bonus action to cast healing word or use the bonus weapon action that my weapon has until I get the act 3 rapier. If you’re doing the 2 levels of Paladin for smites you can also trigger smites off of things like pommel strike and other weapon bonus actions.
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Dec 11, 2023 10:02
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Thundarr posted:I'm unclear on whether the Organ Rearranger effect on the Knife of the Undermountain King only applies to attacks with it specifically, or to all of that character's attack rolls. Either way it's in sword bard/thief/fighter Astarion's off hand and nothing lives long enough for him to have to worry about melee anyway It applies to everything that character can do that can crit. Attacks, ranged attacks, spells, you name it. that’s one of the reasons it often doesn’t make the cut for a dual wielding melee character - there are other better weapons by act 3 for that specifically, but knife of the undermountain king has a great passive effect for a dual wielding wizard or sorcerer for eg.
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Dec 11, 2023 15:03
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Jack Trades posted:Uhh...not the Githyanki Greatsword from the Creche? That's like, the second best weapon in the game for her. nah, the second best 2h weapon in the game is Voss’s sword from Act 3. The best of course is Balduran’s greatsword.
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Dec 11, 2023 15:05
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Yeah to be clear you can give him any random green item, it doesn’t need to be valuable
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Dec 11, 2023 15:27
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I’m pretty certain people have already finished the game on tactician with one character without any mods. Not sure why, since the party banter and interactions is a huge parrt of the charm of the game for me, but they’ve done it.
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Dec 11, 2023 19:50
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I don’t remember anything about the final boss fight, all this talk of globes and platforms isn’t ringing a bell at all. I remember killing a bunch of stuff on top of the brain, then sending one guy inside, and then you just do the cinematic where you pick what happens? I dunno if it’s because I made sure everyone in my party could fly or teleport. If Larian ever gets around to releasing patch 5 on Mac I’ll pay closer attention next time.
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Dec 12, 2023 13:27
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Tonetta posted:Start as a class that has command:drop at level one, get the good sword, get your party of 4, clear everything south and east of the grove before entering it. Do small stuff until you hit 3 then harpies are reasonable to do. Skip the owlbear until preferably you hit level 5. Once you're level 5, you can just go back to playing regularly aside from checking notable enemies for legendary actions, which can be circumvented by knocking the enemy prone, so bring 2 people capable of that ideally. shadowheart can do command:drop, no need to start as a certain class
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Dec 12, 2023 15:36
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Larry Cum Free posted:Time to start a new game! I want to do a Githyanki Paladin Durge as I haven't done Durge yet. Can always just make Gale a sorcerer. Personally I’d still take 1 level of wizard so you can scribe art of war. You’ll get 4 wizard spell slots to spend on stuff that isn’t Int score dependant like Magic missile, shield, Art of war, Counterspell, situational buff/utility stuff. For Monk, Lae’zel is fun because she does a lot of ‘haiyaa’ martial arts movie sound effects when she punches people; but Minsc also works thematically I think, considering how often he talks about punching and kicking evil. Personality wise he’s also the closest thing this game has to Goku given how innocent and naive he is. Druid you have 2 of already by default. Minsc is already a ranger by default so you could just use him as a ranger. Otherwise I guess any of the more ‘martial’ companions would work; but try as I might I just can’t bring myself to like Druid or Ranger (especially ranger). They just seem to underperform compared to other choices you could make. Bard and Paladin work really well together, you could always do Swords Bard 6/Paladin 2/Fighter 4 for your Durge; it’s a fantastic build.
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Dec 12, 2023 18:16
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Geekboy posted:I said it in the last thread but Karlach makes a great Monk because all her “hi-yahs!” have Miss Piggy Energy. Hmm, I’m committed to minsc this run but I might make her a monk next run.
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Dec 12, 2023 19:05
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grack posted:Wait, I'm doing the Creche on Honour Mode attempt 2... does the warfare trainer kick one of the students to death? yes, although you can intervene to stop it if you want. On Casters, while you can of course put them in armor if you have the proficiency, from racial bonuses or multiclassing or whatever, it’s not really worth doing because none of those light or medium armors have caster oriented bonuses. In the case of a warlock, you’d be missing out on the best warlock item in the game, the robe that lets you add charisma bonus to cantrip damage; as a wizard or sorcerer, you’re missing out on Robe of the weave, which gives +2 AC anyway and also gives you +1 to spell DC and spell attack. AC on casters really isn’t an issue - draconic sorcs start at 13; which doesn’t stack with armor, wizards can get the 13 from mage armor; you’ve got the bracers in Act 1 that give you 2 AC - there’s really nobody else to give them to since a monk would want gloves that add elemental damage to punches; and there aren’t a whole lot of useful caster gloves before Act 3. Then you have the shield spell - even using a level 1 slot shield basically makes your caster untouchable, and you never use up all your level 1 slots anyway. The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Dec 13, 2023 |
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Dec 13, 2023 05:08
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grack posted:Items that Gale can absorb will be described as such. Generic +1 weapons don't work. I think they have to be named items, not generic, but act 1 is loaded with useless green flavour items
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Dec 13, 2023 05:18
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Ratios and Tendency posted:It's a dickhead thing to do with no mechanical benefit, that people are apparently doing even on honour mode where it's legit dangerous. So yeah, I don't understand. It gives XP doesn’t it? Besides, the owlbear had it coming, she ate big brother.
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Dec 13, 2023 05:20
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isndl posted:Sure, but when you Action Surge for an extra three throws on the first turn you can outright kill things instead, which is the better form of crowd control. Use that bonus action jumping to reposition and get high ground advantage. Nobody is suggesting going barb 12. You typically go barb 5/ thief 3/ champion fighter 4; which gets you the benefits of frenzy barb and action surge/more crits.
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Dec 13, 2023 10:22
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Jack Trades posted:I wonder if it would be worth it dipping into Swordlock for throwing build for the ability to make any weapon returning. If you wanted that feature, you’d just take eldritch knight instead of Champion as your spec for your 4 fighter levels but I’m not sure it’s worth giving up the extra crits.
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Dec 13, 2023 10:24
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grinnard posted:I gave my sorcerer Tav the helldusk armour which gives you 23 AC and reduces incoming damage by 3, a significant boost over what you'd get with a robe. The gloves from the same set have +1 spell save DC and attack rolls, which compensates for not wearing robes. The result: a sorcerer who can give it AND take it. It’s still better to just have the robes and have higher spell DC, there isn’t a ceiling on that. The helldusk armor is more useful on someone who is up front actually getting hit (and who can’t just adjust their AC up by 5 on the fly as required)
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Dec 13, 2023 16:30
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Larry Cum Free posted:This + the health boost amulet you get in the same place (I think +50%?) un-squishies anyone pretty drat quick. I had that on my rogue Tav who was utterly indestructible. it sets your con to like 23.
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Dec 13, 2023 16:31
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Brazilianpeanutwar posted:So am i right in thinking this games a T-posing stuttery mess for everyone else as well? (A good entertaining mess) What part of the game are you in and what platform are you playing on?
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Dec 14, 2023 04:44
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Wait is he serious? I just assumed he was joking. Who has a platter drive in 2023?
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Dec 14, 2023 05:37
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CodFishBalls posted:Have a 4tb platter for photos and research stuff I've downloaded, along with two external platters via USB-A. But playing a game off it? No. I haven’t owned a platter drive since 2011
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Dec 14, 2023 06:06
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From what I’ve seen on Youtube Durge does has some good stuff with Jaheira as well.
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Dec 14, 2023 11:19
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trevorreznik posted:Gosh darn it, I completely screwed up my honor playthrough. Was being careful and cautious and managed to hit level 4 by killing priestess gut with silence, dipping into underdark for the radiant armor, and coming back up. I’d make Lae’zel the monk and astarion the bard. If you want a fighter, a dex based dual wielder is going to be better than a 2 handed fighter for most of the game. 4 thief rogue 8 champion fighter. Although if I was playing honour mode I’d be tempted not to have a monk right away - they get crazy powerful but they start out behind the curve. Probably better to respec someone once you hit act 2 or so.
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Dec 14, 2023 19:07
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Patch 5 is finally out for MacOS, so I guess I can actually start playing the game again.
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Dec 15, 2023 02:27
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FalconImpala posted:I made a 99-cent-store Geralt of Rivia and he got wiped by bandits after falling through a hole in the floor Just short rest whenever you need and long rest when you’re out of spells/short rests. Long rests do advance time for certain quests though.
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Dec 15, 2023 10:30
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Any reason not to rest after every fight? I know almost nothing about D&D and it's hard to tell how often I should be sleeping
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Phlegmish posted:Judging by all the angry Steam posts, they really underestimated how many people would be playing this on a Mac It was the worst possible time for them to do this - normally a patch delay wouldn’t be such a big deal (for me at least - a lot of people are annoyed at multiplayer between platforms getting broken every other weekend by a version mismatch) but Patch 4 literally broke the game. If you hadn’t already hit act 3 when it dropped you basically couldn’t keep playing once you got to act 3. It was bad enough for the PC folk to be in this situation for a week or so, but those of us on Mac were left unable to play the game for 3 weeks, it was an appalling fuckup. But really even that I could have tolerated if they had just loving communicated with us. Instead they didn’t even tell anyone it wasn’t available on Mac till days after it dropped for windows, leading a bunch of people to reinstall the game to try and troubleshoot why the patch wasn’t installing; then they just said ‘it’ll be out soon’ and never said another word for 2 weeks. If they’d apologised and been upfront and said it would be a couple of weeks I would have been able to move on with my life and play something else and come back to it but instead I spent the past 2 weeks angrily googling ‘bg3 patch 5 MacOS’ every couple of hours while aimlessly watching YouTube videos because I tend to just play or watch one thing at a time and I didn’t want to start another ‘big thing’ in case the patch dropped. I just hope they learned from all this; and hopefully based on some of the hiring news they might be bringing the Mac porting in house.
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Dec 15, 2023 14:22
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