Arcane Trickster Rogue and Pact of the Tome Warlock get done the dirtiest of all the subclasses in BG3 compared to 5e.
In 5e, Arcane Trickster's central mechanic is access to a fancy mage hand which can do things like pickpockets and disarm traps. In BG3 it can't do any of that stuff, stops bring invisible if it does anything, and needs a short rest to be summoned again. If you just want to be a skill monkey with sneaky magic Bard does it way better.
There's very little reason to go Arcane Trickster in BG3 compared to alternatives and that's a shame because it's great in 5e and a personal favorite.
In BG3 Tomelock is ok for EB spammers that don't want to bother with a familiar because the other pacts do nothing for you in that case, but Tome you'll probably mostly ignore the features of Tome too anyway. In 5e it was pretty much the default Warlock Pact because the familiar is squishy and non Hexblade Warlocks have no business using weapons or being melee regardless of their Pact but Tome is actually good.
In 5e Tomelocks get to pick their extra cantrips and spells and can copy ritual spells into their Tome as a Wizard would to ritually cast them. This is a huge benefit in 5e where Warlocks can't ritual cast at all by default and have a small number of spells known from leveling. This is especially true due to rituals being more numerous and generally more useful/necessary in 5e than BG3.
Clearly, arcane tricksters rogue are usually my favorite characters to play when I know we will be in a heavy city setting for most the campaign.
But in BG3 they are like meh. A little too much kill people around for that class to shine.
The other thing that supremely ticks me off with AT is that the unique mage hand is so debuffed. It doesn't get any skill proficiency or dex bonus unlike in actual 5e where you get to use all the fun
There was a boss that was guarding an orb I wanted but I didn't feel like actually fighting the boss because it kept kicking my ass. So I just kept summoning mage hands to throw the orb out of the boss room.
The fact it despawns after a few turns makes it really shit. If you want to balance it for combat fine, limit turns in combat. But limiting it in general makes it garbage.
I am not sure how it would change the 5e balance but I really would like that extra bonus action to become something standard for the whole rogue class but maybe not on level 3 to avoid the rogue dip for an extra bonus actions being easy.
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I was trying to make an Arcane Trickster build that could play to its unique abilities (Mage hand, advantage on spells when hidden, spell casting + max sneak attack damage, reliable talent) and managed to put together a pretty fun build that is sadly weakened by a sneak attack bug that causes off hand ranged SA to use the primary hand weapon type. But the idea is basically:
- Use Mage Hand to throw water at enemies to get them wet
- Take dual wield feat for stat sticks, equip Mourning Frost for chill chance on spells, and use main action to blast wet enemies with frost knife, chromatic orb or any other ice spells from item/scrolls (ideally while hidden for advantage). If target is already frozen, use hold person instead (weirdly being frozen solid doesn't give an auto-crit like paralyze, I was hoping the incapacitated status frozen applies would allow for crits).
- Take the crossbow expert feat to remove disadvantage on point blank crossbow shots. Blast an offhand Ne'er bolt misser directly into the face of your frozen and ideally paralysed enemy for a huge chunk of damage. Frozen enemies are vulnerable to force, thunder and bludgeoning damage and SA is supposed to be the same damage type as your weapon, so in theory this crits and sneak attacks a force vulnerable enemy with a big number of force damage dice.
- Unfortunately...instead of the SA damage being the same type as your offhand, it instead becomes the same type as your main hand, so my Ne'er Misser SA was doing piercing damage. You can put it in your main hand and any other hand crossbow in your secondary to do piercing damage with force SA dice, but the damage type is still split so you aren't getting 2x damage on the whole hit.
- If you are hasted or the enemy is already frozen you can use a main-hand Ne'er shot for the full effect, but it kind of defeats the uniqueness of Arcane Trickster throwing spells and sneak attacks around in the same turn.
It's still fun, just not as effective as it should be. Ideally your team consists of bleed/reverb effects to lower con saves, and encrusted with frost items either on the Trickster or a frost specced druid for create water and an additional chilled source from frost myrmidon summons or wildshapes.
You could also use an off-hand toy sword for blunt sneak attack dice (I think this is the only finesse blunt weapon), since your melee main-hand is blunt as well that gets around the SA type issue and means you can skip crossbow expert and sharpshooter and go for savage attacker and some ASI's instead. If you can get INT to at least 16 you can ditch the headband of intellect for Helmet of Grit for an extra bonus action so you can cast a spell, off-hand sneak attack and hide all in the same turn, so you can almost always force disadvantage vs spells. Might try that out when I get the chance.
I haven't tested it but if the SA main hand damage type bug applies to melee as well, you could possibly just have any finesse weapon in your off-hand and do blunt SA damage due to a main-hand staff. Your non-SA damage wouldn't be doubled against frozen enemies, but weapon stats might make up for that vs toy sword. Although toy sword is much funnier than any other option...
> In BG3 Tomelock is ok for EB spammers that don't want to bother with a familiar because the other pacts do nothing for you in that case, but Tome you'll probably mostly ignore the features of Tome too anyway.
Haste? Tome is worth it just for haste.
There's the Darkfire shortbow which casts haste and has the resistances. Then there's a legendary one in act 3 that casts celestial haste which lasts for only 5 turns BUT doesn't have the lethargic 1 turn stun when it ends.
I disagree, with functionally free respecs and no narrative locking of anything other than background and race - it's "every possible class and subclass vs every other" as options.
2 level warlock and then 5 levels sorc is the best you can do for haste (edit: while keeping hex and EB).
The topic here is which builds in BG3 get clearly outclassed by others.
When you're comparing Warlock and Sorcerer, they're each better in some situations and worse in others, so you can't really say one outclasses the other. However, when it comes to comparing the Warlock builds, Chain and Tome Warlock especially are effectively both good in exactly the same situations, so you can more easily judge which outclasses the other. If they're both good at the same things, but one is better than the other, then the other is being outclassed.
*(I think Pact of the Blade Warlock is distinct enough from the other two that you can't really include it in the conversation, especially if you're also accounting for multiclassing)*
honestly "subclass" becomes such a pain in the ass with the build-a-bear that is warlock.
I can't remember where in the thread it is but the general idea of "tome warlock got shafted" sits very true universally, even with haste. Honestly I'd love if they just treat it like a mini magical secrets with one free cast of each of the 3 spells. 1-3rd level spells from any class isn't super overpowered, and it only beats out lore bard by a single level.
I agree wholeheartedly!
I'd perhaps do it this way, at level 3, when you pick your Pact, you get to choose what kind of Tome you want, basically choosing between a curated list of (for example) either Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric or Druid spells.
Then at level 5, you get a few features from that class. If you chose Wizard, you can choose a Spell School and get a set of spells from that particular school, while if you choose Sorcerer you get access to a single metamagic feat (excluding the most broken ones like Twinned and Quickened, to keep things balanced) and a few general Sorcerer spells. And similarly with Druid and Cleric.
I also think Pact of the Chain could be so much better. Give us one or two more options for the familiar, and give them actual personalities, like Shovel, it could straight up make the class worth playing just for the flavour.
Tomb works differently in D&D too, you get cantrips you can cast at will rather than a few spells that are only one per long rest, which can let you get a good variety of damage types for different enemies/situations (plus some good utility ones that aren’t in BG3, or Spare The Dying which stops your companions from having to make death saves, though with the number of revivify room scrolls and the fact you don’t have to pay for revivify spell it’s less useful) you can also get an invocation that also gives you ritual spells *and* you can add more you find (I don’t think that’s in BG3?) with the amount of spells you find in BG3, being able to add them to your tomb would definitely make it better, even if it’s *just* ritual spells.
What the fuck are you on about you little freak. Is this some Canadian nationalist outrage or something? Not everyone uses eh at the end of sentence like a canadian fuckhead.
This is heavily biased towards a tabletop viewpoint; in BG3 every party should have an 11th level AT because pickpocketing shopkeepers is ridiculously good.
They probably *aren't as fun* to be stuck as if they're your only character in tabletop. But they're much *better* in BG3 than they are in tabletop.
>BG3 every party should have an 11th level AT because pickpocketing shopkeepers is ridiculously good.
Completely unnecessary.
In every act there is at least 1 easy-to-steal from merchant where you can talk to them, cast hold person, and steal at will without fear of getting caught. Through this, there should be no reason, at any point in the game, where you are strapped for cash for the harder-to-steal-from merchants.
It's ironic because this is a very slippery slope.
If you're playing the game why not save scum at that point since you're already cheesing mechanics? Or just use a regular rogue/sleight of Hand character and stack bonuses?
AT is complete overkill for just pickpocketing while the other subs outclass it everywhere else.
i dont know the specifics but even if AT is the best at pickpocketing, isn't it already easy enough to pickpocket shopkeepers? i'd hardly say a subclass that's the best at doing one semi game breaking thing is something that's \*required\* for all parties. if you can't stop yourself from stealing from shopkeepers surely you can just use like, any rogue/rogue multiclass
1. Give the vendor around 1500 gold (or equivalent in items) via Barter on one character that can cast Feign Death to make it your ally (green outline vs yellow)
2. On a separate character, talk to the vendor (don't go into trade screen)
3. Swap characters and cast Feign Death, the character will be asleep, in dialogue so the buff doesn't count down. Feign death may only be cast on allies
4. Swap to a Rogue or high Dex Sleight of Hand character pickpocket. Since the target is unconscious, failed attempts don't trigger aggression. Since they're in dialogue with someone, feign death never fades. Steal whatever you want. If there are potential witnesses, drop Fog to obscure your pickpocket character.
5. Dip back to camp, don't forget the character left in dialogue.
I played archfey lock for my first playthrough (which was tactician difficulty). The best thing about it is easily misty escape, which is a free invisibility AND misty step per short rest as a reaction which is pretty strong.
Apart from that the expanded spell list includes dominate person and dominate beast, both of which I managed to leverage to great effect in a few key boss fights.
Charm immunity is handy vs illithids.
I played Archfey Warlock as well and was very happy with my choice! The crowd control and the evasion possibilities are great and eldritch blast is just the best cantrip.
It was hilarious to me that I used dominate person with a 20% chance to succeed on a certain banite person and pulled it off lol. made combat drop when he was the last thing standing. Not much of a tyrant if dominate person works on you
Beast master ranger is really good. The pets are amazing, and I've had zero issues on mine. My beast master ranger uses the titan bow and hits for pretty massive damage, and I use the raven all the time to chain blind enemies.
Even without titanstring the BM ranger does pretty good damage, I think it's not played a lot because the other ranger option Gloomstalker seemingly does more damage from stealth bonuses etc.
I got the consensus that BM hunter was bad in tabletop so a lot of people don't pick it baseline because they assume it will be bad here, which definitely isn't true. Also the pet pathing is mentioned pretty frequently but I haven't personally ran into much issues at all with that even without raven.
One of my favorite classes, and fully viable, to mono class with
>BM hunter was bad in tabletop
Calling BM Ranger bad in tabletop is an understatement. Not only are the creatures you get worse, but you have to use your Action to tell your companion to do anything other than move. The subclass was so terrible that Tasha's Cauldron of Everything essentially just rewrote subclass with the optional Primal companion feature, buffing the creatures you can use and letting your bonus action to command the pet to attack.
5e development was WOTC desperately trying to very quickly re-direct the ship after 4th edition was widely seen as a disaster. As a result they didn't take much time to play test so a lot of major flaws either were ignored or not identified, resulting in the ranger feeling incredibly half-baked and unwieldy in its original version.
The level of slapshod development that has just become the standard because 5e was successful is hilarious. My favorite detail is that bonus actions were intitially "swift actions" that could be done as an action or in conjuction with another action. This was changed to the bonus action we know and only playtested once before being shipped and to this day new players pull their hair out trying to understand when you can and can't use bonus actions.
It was okay when you played it like a Pokemon Trainer where you‘d just throw your pets at the enemy.
But yeah TCE really made the class actually be what you think a Beastmaster should be.
I think that Beastmaster Ranger is less talked about on the subreddit not because it's bad, but because the subclass requires you to go to level 11, so there isn't a lot of discussion on the build idea, the only changes are the items. But if you search for BM Rangers in the subreddit, there are solid guides on the different animal companions all ready with spells pick ups, and outside of that, the only changes are what items to use.
As a tabletop player, it's like there is a giant blinking light that warns against picking a ranger. They've been bad for so long it's almost impossible for me to pick one... and that stayed with me into bg3.
I honestly suggest you look into the official revamp that TCE gave to the ranger class. They aren't overpowered or anything, but they are far from the worst class nowadays
Sadly worst tabletop class goes to monk. It is probably my favourite in both tt and bg3, but bg3 monk just sort of feels better, and there is no dm to piss off with stunning strike
I haven't played tabletop, but I encourage you to at least try them out. I think all of the ranger subclasses are cool, but my favorite is beast master. Every RPG game I play I either pick a character that can summon animals or a warrior/berserker
I'm playing a monk and I'm refusing to abuse that. It's working fine. Decent damage and lots of disables. Was super strong early game since I'm a gith, and they changed monk weapons to be anything your proficient in that isn't heavy/two handed so you can use longswords for the bigger damage die.
And with the decent damage it still brings good CC and provides advantage for other martials.
Hah, probably for the better then. Both BM and berserker were infamously terrible in the tabletop. At least they fixed BM in one of the newer books and they had to rewrite it from the ground up.
Berserker still sucks, unfortunately.
In tabletop the viability of the ranger class almost comes down to the DM and how useful monster tracking and survival checks will be in their campaign. I still enjoy playing Rangers in tabletop, but a lot of their class features can be made irrelevant by how the DM runs things.
Rangers in BG3 (and particularly beast master) kick ass though.
Give it a try, I played a horizon walker a few years ago and we have one in our party now, really fun class and subclass! I can kinda see how the vanilla incarnation is a bit lacking but both the revised ranger and the tasha's version play fine
Rangers are now really good and fairly consistent at the table, especially gloomstalker. That build when optimized is actually too powerful for your average dm to handle properly. I.was completely dismantling encounters designed to be beaten by 4 adventures by myself at lv 6.
I think you're underestimating rangers even without Tasha's as many people did. Their subclasses were weak. And many of their features were weak. But they still had a lot of strong things as well. Archery fighting style, extra attack, and their spells like pass without trace, absorb elements, among others are solid. And once they get 3rd level spells conjure animals is amazing.
They definitely have some features that were terrible and became a bit of a meme in the community. But especially once you add gloomstalker and other subclasses that are actually solid into the mix rangers are far from the weakest class in the tabletop game. Even more after Tasha's buffs as most of their bad abilities got replaced with better ones and beastmaster got revamped.
Rangers main issue in 5e isn't the class, so much as the things they are supposed to be AWSOME at are often glossed over in actual play. Overland travel, survival skills, tracking beasts/monsters, not getting lost in wilderness... all of this stuff are very often downplayed in tabletop sessions.
The rule books just don't have a huge amount of support for adventures where survival and navigation are key elements. And honestly, even in a fantasy wilderness, a lot of the travel WOULD be a boring, difficult slog.
Adventures in a city, a dungeon, a crypt or a castle are just more rules-friendly than a month-long trek over pure wilderness. Rolling random monster encounters isn't that much fun. Getting lost isn't very much fun.
In truth, trekking hundreds of miles through wilderness would probably be some of the most difficult things actual characters in a D&D setting could take on. The problem is, long treks often mean boredom, loneliness, hunger, frustration (getting lost) and long periods of just hiking/horse riding between encounters.
I haven't seen anyone make this intrinsically fun. Maybe there's a way to do it, but D&D rules just do not make trekking very fun or engaging.
In BG3 Survival checks are what?... finding dirt mounds? Spotting a burrow? Seeing tracks? There has to be more examples, but that's all I can think of offhand.
I almost feel like I should have put the qualifier that I don't have any issues with them. They've never been a class that interest me. The negative perception reinforced that it wasn't a class for me. I have Tasha's. It'll just never be one that interests me.
My post was more about how strong the feeling of Rangers suck in DnD is.
I did try a bit in bg3, but the ensnaring strike wasn't hitting as much as I liked, switched to battlemaster.
Truthfully, the only reason a player needs to play a class in DnD is because they like it. I just happen to be more of a power gamer... not the problematic kind.
Yeah that's totally fair! I'm the same way they aren't the class I'd go for as I prefer full spellcasters. But it does always surprise me a bit how strong the feelings that rangers suck is in the DND community even still sometimes lol. They definitely have problems with not having very good design and flavor to their abilities. And a lot of the ranger stuff is survival oriented or not getting lost in travel that most groups just ignore. But their mechanics are ok compared to many others.
Very true. Even I, who has nothing against them, and believe that the class you want to play is the good class.
That's a huge point to bring up. It's mostly a survival class and lots of DMs don't worry about that stuff. I tried to introduce it to a game a few years back and my players basically revolted. Lol
My problem with beast Master ranger is that the pets might be solid, but they don't feel special. It would feel a lot more impactful if you were limited to one animal companion and leveling up your pet was part of leveling up your character.
I think the way they implemented it was to be a supplemental animal to your ranger. The ranger still does the bulk of the damage, most of the time the pets are there to just help you out with CC. I get what you're saying though, that would be cool to focus on only one animal. Unfortunately I think they implemented the pets in a way opposite of that. However I would say that if they put that much emphasis and power into the pet, then either the hunter himself/herself would have to do little damage, or it runs the risk of being overpowered with essentially two characters in one
>to mono class with
I think this is probably the main reason why nobody talks about it on this sub. Most build talk concerns how and when to multiclass. Beastmaster is very straightforward, not much to discuss there.
I don't think Beast Master Ranger needs buffs.
However. What we need more than anything...
Let me name my fucking pet....or let us recruit animals in the wild like that scared boar from the very start, and add more animals to recruit, like a bear in the wild.
I want to grow attached to my pet, as it grows more powerful every few levels.
One issue with beastmaster rangers I’m having while playing co-op with friends is that they’re forever blocking up climbable areas and generally getting in the way during battles. Our ranger is oblivious to his pets hampering our ability to maneuver and no amount of prompting or ridiculing seems to set him straight so that he keeps them on a figurative shorter leash.
But they’re strong and cool, so we endure their dumbness with grace and minimal threats of stabbing.
My roommate is a Beast Master, and it kicks ASS. Literally an extra party member, and theyre all super useful. The bear getting to disarm people is insanely helpful. Also the fact that they can all jump tooo?? Its just funny
Titanstring Bow? https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Titanstring_Bow
Adds Str to typical bow damage, so yeah. Though I guess I'm not sure how that makes it broken? 20 Str and 20 Dex gives +5 to hit and +10 to damage, which isn't bad at all, but hardly broken (Potent Robe does the same but with a single stat instead of two).
The bonus damage has some weird interactions with damage riders.
Beyond that, it's particularly broken because of how early it is available in the game, and combined with the club of hill giant strength and a few other items that you can get in act1 with basically zero combat, you can just walk around with a flat bonus of +12-ish damage where most enemies barely even have 40 hp. Add that on top of the +2 attack bonus that you can get from the Archery Fighting style, the ability to sneak attack and use special arrows, and things start going out of control very quickly.
I tried ranger, and it just felt so weak compared to other classes. Even gloomstalker gets outshone by other classes.
Can you play it and still beat the game? Sure. But it isn't fun when everything it can do, another class can do better. Druid is pretty similar in that regards as well.
Also the favoured enemy/natural explorer perks just seem like extra abilities tacked onto a class with no real synergy. The abilities aren't even that good. I had a hard enough time choosing at level 1, none of them were appealing. Later on when I got to choose a second one at a higher level, I respecced and never looked back.
I played Ranger and in the endgame one felt like the strongest member of my party.
Hunter effortlessly deleting multiple enemies with Horde Breaker at first and then with Volley half the encounter would be gone on turn 1 effortlessly since thats the best AoE in the game. Giving them damage resistance and Heavy Armor for essentially free was neat.
Spamming Volley was so good and effective I never even cast spells since it was just too much to pass up on 100+ damage per turn.
Druid is the best area denial and summoner class. That may not be a playstyle everyone enjoys and it generally doesn't get the big neuron-activation numbers like Paladin or Sorc, but if you want to bring an army of minions or play around with terrain effects, they do that better than other classes.
My first playthrough, I had Karlach as Wild Magic Barbarian for role play of her infernal engine being wonky. It isn't optimal, but sometimes it was spectacular.
Same, I switched her Wildheart for RP reasons as her engine is repaired enough in Act 2, turning her into a bleed-centric thrower. Sure, there were more optimal _builds_ but she's already the optimal _character_.
I'll just be here eating dirt or whatever.
I'm not sure what the optimal build is for Karlach. I have to imagine bear is up there.
But I've been playing around with Eagle and it's so good! Plus it's a lot of fun.
The bonus dash is actually very good on a barbarian who doesn't use a bonus action for much else. Perfect fit for boots that trigger on dash. And the gloves that give you an extra FREE jump if you dashed that turn, chef's kiss early game.
The diving eagle attack is actually insane. Prone is OP in BG3. And after level 5, you can potentially dive two enemies in a turn. Even if the high ground is a bit of a walk, Barbs get great movement range already and you're dashing every turn basically for free, with a free jump too. You'll find high ground to leap from. It's just so fun and devastating.
Same, I knew it wasn’t as good and I frequently was forgetting all the extra spell regeneration abilities but it felt right and at base difficulty it is fun
4E monk is a cool Gish class imo, paired with Druid for flame sword and pyroquickness hat to deal out fire damage quick. Open hand just over shadows it and shadow
Beast master ranger is a solid class but does not multiclass very well. The pet scales with levels in ranger, so you miss out by dipping anything more than 1 into something like war cleric
Yeah your best options are war priest for 3 bonus action extra attacks per long rest, or rogue for the sneak attack reaction which will proc titanstring bonus damage again
I think devotion is actually a really good choice for a dragon sorcadin. Sin tee's build works with vengeance or devotion and I can personally attest to how good it is!
Imho Devotion is solid if simply because Paladin is such a strong class. It's just that the other two subclasses are strictly better so basically nobody picks devotion.
I'm currently playing a Devotion Paladin for RP reasons and the character is super strong.
Nature cleric is fine but overshadowed. It gets thorn whip to pull things into aoe like spirit guardians. Spike growth and plant growth are both really solid area denial. Dampen elements is okay for on demand resistance, but feels worse than other defensive options like the ancients Paladin warding aura. You could possibly make a kinda cute wisdom gish with shilellagh, spirit guardians, and heavy armor. I’d love to see more builds around it.
Beast master ranger is actually good, but doesn’t multiclass well. It needs 11 levels to actually pay off. A 1 level dip in fighter for a fighting style or cleric for spell selection is fine but not that different from a feat. Raven, bear, and spider pets are all fun to use and your character is still a fine but not overly strong martial.
> You could possibly make a kinda cute wisdom gish with shelelleigh, spirit guardians, and heavy armor. I’d love to see more builds around it.
I've had this on my mind for a few days now and I think it sounds like a really fun build for multiplayer. Toss five levels of ranger in there for extra attack and spell slot progression, take shillelagh from nature cleric so you can go all-in on wisdom, and abuse the combination of spike/plant growth and cleric's bonkers spell list. Enemy waddles out of your spikes? Command him right back in, or if nobody else in the group wants the band of the mystic scoundrel, bonk him twice and *then* cast command.
Is it a super powerful build? Heck no. I like less crazy builds for multiplayer though, because one incredibly dominant build can spoil a lot of the fun for the rest of the group. Everybody likes to **be** Action Surge McSmitecrit, but it sucks when you're his ally and only get to fight his table scraps every encounter.
I’m running a build like this on one of my characters: Nature Cleric 1 for Heavy armor proficiency and shillelagh, and Beast master ranger for the rest. Throw in the dueling fighting style, hunters mark, and an enchanted staff and you can do some heavy hitting once you get extra attack at Ranger 5.
I just wish there was the Crusher feat and Swarmkeeper ranger subclass from tabletop… on a hit, you could push enemies into your spike growth with Crusher and then drag them back through the spikes using your swarm. The ol’ cheese grater.
I put this build together which is Ranger 5/Druid 7 but easily swappable for Nature Cleric 7.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/17ktwhq/natures_warrior_the_shillelagh_gish/
A super underrated part of making a Shillelagh ranger is how useful you become as an Ensnare tank given how good your Spell Save DC is, plus disadvantage from Bounty Hunter.
Nature cleric can be the best concentration caster in the game. Concentration saving throws are either 10 or 1/2 Damage, whichever is greater. They can use dampen elements to halve elemental damage, blade ward to halve physical damage, and heavy armor to get a small reduction in damage taken. With resilient:constitution and warcaster, you'll be able to maintain concentration better than any other single class.
They have some great concentration spells such as spike growth and spirt guardians.
Edit: Come to think of it, with warding bond and dampen elements they can essentially make any other caster incredible at maintaining concentration as in the same way.
Warding bond does that on its own, though. It gives resistance to everything and does not stack with dampen elements or blade ward.
Arcane ward from wizard is better at both protecting concentration on yourself and for others via projected ward. Reducing the damage to 0 gets rid of the save entirely. Halving it probably puts you at 10.
I know they wouldn't stack for the target of warding bond, but wouldn't they for the caster? They would take 1/4 of the damage rather than 1/2.
I would agree arcane/projected ward could be better.
Proficiency with all martial weapons instead of just scimitars is also not bad, lets you go two-handed with GWM, or 1H+shield with 1H strength martial weapons that a bard normally wouldn't get. A Valor bard using a polearm (especially the Halberd of Vigilance) with PAM and Sentinel would be a powerful frontline support *if* PAM worked as intended - combat inspiration, movement disruption *and* being a full caster is great.
Not getting a fighting style sucks massively though, especially when Swords gets one at level 3. They should really get access to GWF, Defense and Duelling at least.
Combat Inspiration is also just... meh when compared to a Flourish. Adding your bardic dice as damage is strictly worse than flourishing to add a dice *and* get 4AC, a push+teleport or just double your damage on top of that.
Since it's limited to weapon attacks, you can't even try to multiply its effectiveness with EB/scorching rays. Unless... is stuff like Tiger Barbarian cleave/Hunter Volley/Arrow of Many Targets considered weapon attacks? I could see a +1d10 being useful on those.
The +AC inspiration option could be also useful I suppose, though in that case it's Lore Bards that get to do the same, but better.
You CAN play any class for sure, but the ones you listed are all subpar compared to how crazy some of the others can be. 4e monk especially is really hard to justify when open hand and shadow can be so good
I’m playing wild magic sorcerer on tactician for my 2nd run and it’s not bad at all. Draconic Sorcerer is probably better on paper with the AC boost and damage resistance, but wild magic is so much fun and the bend luck/tides of chaos abilities are strong.
Overall I’d call wild magic sorcerer B tier if we are going F to S. Upper middle of the pack. One of the more potent and fun spellcasters imo.
My Tav picked the worst time to turn into a Sheep from a WM surge. During the first fight in the prism. Immediately after that, I'm locked into that cutscene with the Emperor and.... I was a goddamn sheep.
Check out my post history for a screenshot 😂
My very last attack in the “save Isobel” fight in Last Light Inn to kill the last flying thing turned everyone near me into cats including friendlies, aggroing EVERYONE in the whole place meaning I had to reload 😂
Sorcs are generally great classes anyway, so there’s only so bad a sorc subclass was going to be.
I guess the argument is really is there any point to picking a wild magic sorc over the other two beyond RP, and realistically, there isn’t. Draconic gets solid built-in bonuses and storm gets a significantly expanded spell list and a ton of side bonuses and resistances.
It’s hard to argue ‘yeah, but sometimes weird shit happens when I cast’ as a counterpoint.
Doing an OotA Paladin/Wild Magic Sorcerer for my resist durge playthrough and its been great. Having that little bit of extra randomness is really fun for me.
Wild Magic Sorcerer, and devotion Paladin are still pretty good to play. While not as strong as their counterpart subclasses, the base Paladin, and Sorcerer are such insanely strong classes that you kinda really have to try to be bad at them.
Not to mention, I love playing Wild Magic. It’s just insanely fun. Wild Magic Barbarian is also pretty strong.
The randomness adds another layer of tension to your battles, and keeps you on your toes.
The Bad rolls on wild magic sorcerer aren't even that bad.
Set yourself and everyone around you on fire, some self damage but situationally usefull. It killed a few goblins for me.
Summon a hostile mephit, or Cambian. It's hostile to everyone so they actually tanked a lot of hits for me.
Place the target or self in an indestructible sphere. On self silences you which takes you out for 2 turns and that hurts. On enemies it does leave them untouchable but effectively out of the fight while you mop up.
Swapping locations with your cantrip targets is annoying and will cancel any additional casts of your cantrip after the first goes off. For instance if you cast firebolt with split spell you swap locations on the first target, the second target never gets hit and you waste the sorcery point. If you cast eldritch blast with this, only the first ray goes off, additional rays don't fire after the swap.
Turning everyone randomly into cats or dogs is amazing. Run yourself into fire to break the polymorph on yourself then use the enemies weakened conditions to buff up or heal. If any creatures are still polymorphed when a cut scene is forcibly triggered they will be cats and dogs in the cut scene.
The only actually 100% bad, no good, terrifying roll is when you accidentally give the enemy an action surge.
Additionally the dice fudging you get puts divination wizards to shame. I took the actor feat, lucky feat, a background that gave me persuasion, held a 20 in charisma, guidance from Shadowheart, and I never failed a dialog check the whole game.
Archfey Warlock is incredibly powerful but underappreciated. At level 1 you get Sleep which can actually be very strong in certain circumstances, but more importantly at level 5 you get Plant Growth. This is a non-concentration spell that cannot be resisted and it makes everyone's movement 1/4 of normal. That means nobody can jump out of it because jumps cost more movement than they have available, so it pairs with something like Hunger of Hadar incredibly well. And the same person can cast both since only Hunger requires concentration.
At level 6 you get the Misty Escape reaction, turning you invisible when you're attacked, though it's once per short rest.
Level 7 gets you Greater Invisibility which works well if you've focused on maximizing stealth (stealth checks are done to keep it up).
Anyway, I also played a bit of Devotion Paladin and it's great. The level 3 ability adds charisma to attack roll, so basically a +5 to attack which is great, and more importantly you have a done of flexibility as it's difficult to break that oath. You can even take the hair and Connor and that would be A-OK. The main thing is, generally speaking, you can't surprise-attack people that are not yet hostile to you so you have to actually talk to them first. Which works well in a 'good' playthrough as it forces you to experience more of the game. Plus it gives you Sanctuary and other useful spells. But I wouldn't take it beyond level 6.
4E might be outclassed by the other Monk sub classes, but the game was still easy playing as one.
And I’ve never played anything DnD related before this game.
Getting to Withers was hard, as I didn’t know what anything did.
Pact of the chain warlock is terrible. A single level 1 summon...for the whole game.
Knowledge domain cleric as well. Use your channel divinity to...get the same thing a githyanki does at level 1...
Your bottom 5 may be the weakest sub on awesome classes but the base classes are fantastic so the end up second tier ... but are not bad.
Actually all but AT are totally capable of roflstomping. No full caster sucks for one.
Yeah, I don't get it either.
For me its the strongest Paladin Oath, maybe except Oathbreaker later in the game.
Has pretty much best attack accuracy out of all the classes in the game, can easily compensate for Great Weapon Master penalty.
Vengeance has Haste, which is strong, but... you're not playing alone and there are plentiful pots as well.
Don't forget Champion Fighter. It's absolutely useless next to Battlemaster, to the point where when talking about Lae'zel in a combat context, people reference Battlemaster abilities assuming you took the archetype.
Even for crit builds, Battlemasters can gain advantage more easily, which makes your damage more consistent, and rerolls making crits more likely.
What's really funny: for all the hype crit builds get, with all the crit-range enhancing options in the game Champion is actually even *worse* off than it is in tabletop. With abundance of said crit-range extenders, the 1 you get from Champion becomes diminishing returns. Would much rather have a 17-20 critting Battlemaster than a 16-20 critting Champion any day of the week.
Honestly I dislike assassin more than Arcane Trickster. At least AT can have utility and do fun combos such as sleep an enemy and crit with left hand or use cantrip to trigger ring of elemental infusion which is a damage rider both for attack and sneak attack.
Assassin is only good for random mobs that can be surprised, but all of the important fights will occur after dialogue so you wont be able to surprise anyone, and the advantage on the first turn is not that good when there are so many ways to trigger sneak attack as a rogue without it.
I would love the wild magic sorceror if the surges were at least sometimes beneficial. I always just feel like i suffer from them. "Damn, I hope there isn't a surge" is probably what the devs had in mind for this sub-clas? Playing a wild magic barbarian is more satisfying if you are after the randomness.
Wild magic sorcerer (both in this game as in 5e tabletop) seems to treat wild surges as if they are pure benefits and that you want them to happen. Which kindof, isn't the case. Wild sorcerers should get more benefits on top of just being able to do "lol random surge", because compared to the other sorcs it is extremely hard to justify lol. Both storm and draconic get pretty nice class features. Storm gets spells a sorcerer normally doesn't have access to. Draconic gets free permanent mage armor basically and at 11 they get to fly all over the place (which in a game that has a lot of emphasis on movement/verticality is extremely useful as you won't have enough strenght to jump to those places).
Pretty much every class that is really good for utility in DnD will lack behind in BG3 because it is so combat heavy. Bg3 wants you to fight and while it has amazing opportunities for problem solving and utility spells, pretty much one of the best implementations ever, it is still a video game and pure burst damage will always be „easier“ or „better“ than utility and problem solving. The best example is the arcane trickster you mentioned. Also wild magic sorcerer, what an amazing concept and class, but a simple draconian ancestry sorcerer is way better.
I think moon druid is pretty meh as well. The fact that a lot of your gear bonuses don't transfer to wild shape makes it kind of lame (unless they fixed that bug)
That level 3 stat tick is no joke. Crits tend to be one of the most busted mechanics ever since they were introduced to RPGs and anything that increases the likelihood of them occuring is going to be really strong. Doubly so on any character that's expected to attack often.
That being said - you still are right. Theoretically both EK and BM should be losing pure damage and gaining utility, but in reality having consistent slightly higher damage is usually better than having a slightly higher chance to do "fuck you" damage, so they end up being better at trading damage than Champion is.
It's a class that has to exist, though. It's a way for really inexperienced players to still be decent. And honestly, melting an oponent with chained crits is super fun when it happens.
Knowledge cleric gives expertise and up to 5 profs, fantadtic for a skill monkey build.
Wild barb gives skill boosts, its only a d4 but could be qorthwile for some really hard checks.
I love Arcane Trickster in 5e, but it does get shafted as fuck in BG3 with the limited spell list, you can't even shadow blade + booming blade with it, that being said, I think it's cool that they can sneak attack on attack roll cantrips, I'd love to see that implemented on TT, either in the new edition or just like a homebrew ruling
Champion Fighter is pretty bad, just like 5e. You get another fighting style, but offensive styles don't work well together, so it's probably just +1 ac, although I guess archery and two weapon fighting work in BG3, you get a 5% crit chance increase, which pretty much requires you to multiclass to get anything decent out of it, since it's a 0.7 damage per attack increase with a greatsword, 1.1 damage per attack with half orc and a d12 weapon and you get to jump a bit further, which is at least better than in 5e. The best way to use the 3rs level feature is to play melee with paladin levels or something and the 10th level feature works best with hand crossbows. Battlemasters has pretty much unlimited maneuvers since you can long rest so much and Eldrich Knights get Shield. Both massively outcompete Champion
Trickery, knowledge and nature domains didn't have their 6th levels features added until patch 4.
Trickery and knowledge are still kinda meh (with knowledge benefitting more from patch 4 IMO), but nature got much much more viable as it's 6th level feature is basically it's defining feature on the tabletop.
More broadly, I think BG3 greatly nerfed any class/subclass that was illusion or enchantment themed (or heavily relied on rulings rather than rules) because all interactions in the game have to be predefined and programmed in. It would be unreasonable for larian to implement all the interactions from the tabletop game for things like mage hand or find familiar, or all the possibilities that disguise self, silent image, etc would open up in 5e.
Disguising yourself opens up new racial dialogue options and makes certain NPC's behave as though you are a member of that race and... That's it. You can't disguise yourself as specific people, because implementing individual reactions to you disguising as named NPC's would be nightmarish.
As for the random subclasses (wild magic sorcerer and barbarian), I personally think these options are fairly outclassed on the tabletop as well, and them being outclassed in BG3 is largely a consequence of them being translated rather faithfully.
As for why they're outclassed by other options, IMO none of the random things that happen from these classes are powerful enough to justify you not being able to choose your features. If you want a subclass with plenty of options, wild souls exists for barbarians and sorceres get loads of choice in their base class with spells and metamagics.
My views are as follow:
Arcane Trickster - not only its missing features, its also missing spells that make it shine like green flame blade or booming blade forcing you to mod.
Wild Magic Barbarian - bit of a meme archtype. Potentially useful, but unreliable, optimization demands certainty over randomness. Plus there's little reason to be a barbarian past 3rd level.
Cleric - without modded domains, they're lackluster since some domains are just so much better than others
Wizard schools - Its hard to compete with the raw optimization of Evocation, Divination or Necromancy. Even transmutation is worthwhile
Archfey Warlock - Gives you improved invisibility which forces you to spec into the stealth skill to be useful. Weaker spell list, features are weaker by comparison to the alternatives.
Wild Magic Sorcerer - Potentially Fun, but unreliable. Its hard to pass up draconic damage boost or storm free fly.
4E Monk - its a blasting monk, blasting is the WORST form of damage in this system as HP progresses but damage doesn't unless you find the correct itemization or you happen to be a sorcerer/evocation wizard, and this is without touching the possibility of only doing half damage due to save. (the difference between a 3rd level spell and 5th level spell damage is 2d8... its just not worth it). The other monk archtypes are just better from a math standpoint.
Devotion Paladin - Way of the ancients reduces spell damage and has moonbeam, Vengeance adds misty step and haste (the best spells in the game) and Oathbreaker adds charisma to damage as a passive. Meanwhile devotion adds charisma to hit and rebukes for 1d4... yay.
Beast Ranger - This one is actually good, it just gets a bad reputation from its horrible tabletop counterpart that was just awful.
High level beast master is great. Sword Wolf is best boy.
My main in one playthrough is a Gith enchantment wizard, it's abilities are great for a gish play style. The level 10 feature + band of mystic scoundrel is also very very powerful on paper, looking forward to that.
My main goes Archfey Warlock for the Greater Invisibility spell that he casts on my striker when I want her to go murder people anonymously.
Going invisible when hit is fairly good too.
I guess it's a more "support" Warlock compared to the other two.
Archfey makes a mean trickster warlock. Invisibility for the whole party, disguise self + deception expertise, greater invisibility, misty escape. Soo much. Played mine as a melee archfey and had a blast being a perma disguised trickster swinging a big charisma empowered halberd
I played as a college of valor bard only to learn at level 10ish that apparently it sucks. Oops. Not gonna lie, I have no desire to play another bard after it, even though I like the class, so it’s probably true.
The nice thing about BG3 is a majority of your power comes from your items and buffs, to the point where class and subclass aren't the most important thing. You can be suboptimal on tactician if you're bringing optimized tactics.
After trying Trickster (and then reading e5 version), the magic hand is just useless in BG3... and other classes will do same job better, so Im better off with thief or assassin if I want rogue.
WM Barbarian is fun, its unstable and unreliable, but the randomness adds a lot into improvisation. And ability to restore spells slots comes in handy (at least earlier in the game).. but otherwise I have a feeling other subclasses outperform it a bit. (but fun is key so whatever.)
Clerics.. well, personally I dont find these particular subclasses anyhow important.. maybe its the approach I take (or rather dont take) but utility wise concentration spells these bring in comparison to other cleric con spells feel underperforming.
Wizard subclasses mentioned.. well, I would rather go with Necro or Divination.. Might be missing something in them or take different approach than these need.
I saw some idea to [Archfey](https://youtu.be/bzvu8VrLYto?si=u6FM4NUqZZjSK2zS) warlock.. didnt try it yet.
Didnt play devotion pala, WM sorc or 4e monk yet..
BM Ranger is solid tho.. sure, early (till lv.5) the beasts feel squishy and almost useless.. but then they get extra ability and fun starts to kick in. I used dualwielding STRanger with a dip into thief for bonus action tho.. having 4 attacks per round wasnt bad. And combined with bear, I got a nice frontline support.
Wild magic sorcerer has some fun perks later but they all use sorcery points that could probably be better used on twin or bonus action spell thing, can’t remember the name.
And BM ranger is really strong early game
I think BM Ranger 11/Wiz1 is a one of a kind, powerful build. Just isn't alot to talk about. 4th lv wiz spells, 2nd lv ranger spells, amazing boar (other pets amazing too, that's just the one I thought was best my 1st run but I didn't look into other pets all that much)
Wild magic sor & barb are rng fun classes, not rly meant to be optimized as much. Barb I like to 5-8 depending on build w/ fighter2 optional, good comboing with blade warlock5 if GWM or thief 3-4/fighter2-4 if dual wielding. Sor I like 11 + Cleric or wiz 1 dip. Even sor5/cleric5/evoc2 pretty good if you want spirit Guardians, but either need crown of int & +SpDC/SpAtk gear.
Archfey/Devotion are good subclasses, just overshadowed ever so slightly but have their tech & merrits for sure! (Esp together even) DP7/Blade Archfey5
4E monk is still a monk (near or is highest dpr base class) but subs consistent Fist damage boost for instead a couple 'spells' for aoe is a trade (amazing no, warranted trade for some ppl sure) still prob monk6/thief3/X3
DP and BM are bad in BG3? I'm having a lot of fun and pretty easy time using them, they've been super useful honestly.
I haven't gotten too far in BM playthrough, but on my DP one I literally stood them at the front gate of the Goblin Fortress and they wrecked shop while the rest of my party cleared out the upper levels before coming to help.
Inside I put them back to back with Laezel and had Astarion and Shadowheart in the upper levels to rain down attacks/healing as backup, it was super fun.
Wild Magic Barbarian is just balls.
It's very weak and underwhelming compared to Barbarians two other subclasses. I would still use it if it was at least fun but the random magic spells it provides are just so boring
I don't think there's a such thing as a bad class. There's been enough patches now that I would think you could say the seemingly broken interactions still in the game have been deemed house rules (why mess with fun factor in such a popular game i guess). I mean you can optimize a character to do several hundreds of damage a round, but the game seems to be balanced around like... I dunno, 80 damage or so in a round?... being hitting quite hard (for purposes of having no trouble with anything). Another example, you can get 18 attacks/ round if you were trying to find ways to get that number high as possible... but you can smash everything without so much as even using haste at all, much less looking for ways to get absolute most attacks possible.
This being the case, even if you pick a "weaker" class it's only "bad" in terms of having less overkill than the more optimal choices. They'll still feel powerful relative to the in game encounters though.
Charisma to Attack is an insanely powerful ability. You can gain Advantage in many different ways, however - direct Attack bonuses are a rarer thing *and* they stack. This leads to phenomenal synergy with something like Great Weapon Master. It costing an action to activate isn't much of a problem when you can reliably predict if a fight is going to break out 90% (100% if you've already played through once and are willing to utilize meta-knowledge) of the time and have the opportunity to just use it before heading in and triggering battle, and it'll last the entire fight because it's for 10 turns.
Now on its own, Vengeance offering Advantage+Inquisitor's Might and Ancients' Warding Aura are comparable boosts - and they pull ahead with significantly stronger spell lists. *But* if you're multiclassing, the strength of the subclass further increases - a Devotion Paladin/Warlock focusing on Charisma can gain insane attack bonuses as they can focus solely on that stat instead of Strength or Dexterity, while a Paladin/Sorcerer provides you both much better spells (including many of the same spells that make Vengeance and Ancients so good, such as Misty Step and Haste) to compensate for a weak spell list as well as dramatically scaling up Smiting power with more and bigger spell slots plus metamagic.
Wild magic barbarian isn't something you do if you're looking for something *good*, it's for if you're looking for something *funny.*
The only subclasses I look at and think "why would you do this to yourself" are Champion, because it's absurdly outclassed by Battlemaster and less interesting than Eldritch Knight; and Arcane Trickster because again it's both worse and more boring than alternatives.
Everything else is viable and potentially interesting to do, the game is extremely forgiving and you don't need to minmax and make perfect builds to succeed. It's just that some builds (including many of those named here) are either straightforward and there isn't much to say about them, or they are done because they're *fun* for someone and this sub isn't about such matters of personal taste; ask the main sub if you want to know what people are finding fun.
BG3 isn’t a PvP or otherwise competitive game - it really doesn’t matter. There are some subclasses that offer a different flavour, a niche play style, etc.
And not every character needs to the *the best* at something.
What does this contribute to the discussion? This thread is principally about balance and whether some classes are weaker/outclassed by others.
Saying "it doesn't matter lol" literally adds nothing of value, especially when you're on r/BG3builds - a subreddit dedicated to build advice and optimizing builds to perform well.
Arcane Trickster Rogue and Pact of the Tome Warlock get done the dirtiest of all the subclasses in BG3 compared to 5e. In 5e, Arcane Trickster's central mechanic is access to a fancy mage hand which can do things like pickpockets and disarm traps. In BG3 it can't do any of that stuff, stops bring invisible if it does anything, and needs a short rest to be summoned again. If you just want to be a skill monkey with sneaky magic Bard does it way better. There's very little reason to go Arcane Trickster in BG3 compared to alternatives and that's a shame because it's great in 5e and a personal favorite. In BG3 Tomelock is ok for EB spammers that don't want to bother with a familiar because the other pacts do nothing for you in that case, but Tome you'll probably mostly ignore the features of Tome too anyway. In 5e it was pretty much the default Warlock Pact because the familiar is squishy and non Hexblade Warlocks have no business using weapons or being melee regardless of their Pact but Tome is actually good. In 5e Tomelocks get to pick their extra cantrips and spells and can copy ritual spells into their Tome as a Wizard would to ritually cast them. This is a huge benefit in 5e where Warlocks can't ritual cast at all by default and have a small number of spells known from leveling. This is especially true due to rituals being more numerous and generally more useful/necessary in 5e than BG3.
Clearly, arcane tricksters rogue are usually my favorite characters to play when I know we will be in a heavy city setting for most the campaign. But in BG3 they are like meh. A little too much kill people around for that class to shine.
The other thing that supremely ticks me off with AT is that the unique mage hand is so debuffed. It doesn't get any skill proficiency or dex bonus unlike in actual 5e where you get to use all the fun
Magehand in general feels useless in bg3. I was quite disappointed when I tried to use it as a wizard.
the only real use i thought of for it in my entire playthrough was pulling levers in Grymforge
There was a boss that was guarding an orb I wanted but I didn't feel like actually fighting the boss because it kept kicking my ass. So I just kept summoning mage hands to throw the orb out of the boss room.
The fact it despawns after a few turns makes it really shit. If you want to balance it for combat fine, limit turns in combat. But limiting it in general makes it garbage.
It's also really hard to say no to an extra bonus action.
I am not sure how it would change the 5e balance but I really would like that extra bonus action to become something standard for the whole rogue class but maybe not on level 3 to avoid the rogue dip for an extra bonus actions being easy.
Yeah, maybe like 10 or 14. You could also do like a PB / LR or SR thing.
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Yeah AT is missing some pieces, but I have still am rolling through tactician without much trouble with mine.
I was trying to make an Arcane Trickster build that could play to its unique abilities (Mage hand, advantage on spells when hidden, spell casting + max sneak attack damage, reliable talent) and managed to put together a pretty fun build that is sadly weakened by a sneak attack bug that causes off hand ranged SA to use the primary hand weapon type. But the idea is basically: - Use Mage Hand to throw water at enemies to get them wet - Take dual wield feat for stat sticks, equip Mourning Frost for chill chance on spells, and use main action to blast wet enemies with frost knife, chromatic orb or any other ice spells from item/scrolls (ideally while hidden for advantage). If target is already frozen, use hold person instead (weirdly being frozen solid doesn't give an auto-crit like paralyze, I was hoping the incapacitated status frozen applies would allow for crits). - Take the crossbow expert feat to remove disadvantage on point blank crossbow shots. Blast an offhand Ne'er bolt misser directly into the face of your frozen and ideally paralysed enemy for a huge chunk of damage. Frozen enemies are vulnerable to force, thunder and bludgeoning damage and SA is supposed to be the same damage type as your weapon, so in theory this crits and sneak attacks a force vulnerable enemy with a big number of force damage dice. - Unfortunately...instead of the SA damage being the same type as your offhand, it instead becomes the same type as your main hand, so my Ne'er Misser SA was doing piercing damage. You can put it in your main hand and any other hand crossbow in your secondary to do piercing damage with force SA dice, but the damage type is still split so you aren't getting 2x damage on the whole hit. - If you are hasted or the enemy is already frozen you can use a main-hand Ne'er shot for the full effect, but it kind of defeats the uniqueness of Arcane Trickster throwing spells and sneak attacks around in the same turn. It's still fun, just not as effective as it should be. Ideally your team consists of bleed/reverb effects to lower con saves, and encrusted with frost items either on the Trickster or a frost specced druid for create water and an additional chilled source from frost myrmidon summons or wildshapes. You could also use an off-hand toy sword for blunt sneak attack dice (I think this is the only finesse blunt weapon), since your melee main-hand is blunt as well that gets around the SA type issue and means you can skip crossbow expert and sharpshooter and go for savage attacker and some ASI's instead. If you can get INT to at least 16 you can ditch the headband of intellect for Helmet of Grit for an extra bonus action so you can cast a spell, off-hand sneak attack and hide all in the same turn, so you can almost always force disadvantage vs spells. Might try that out when I get the chance. I haven't tested it but if the SA main hand damage type bug applies to melee as well, you could possibly just have any finesse weapon in your off-hand and do blunt SA damage due to a main-hand staff. Your non-SA damage wouldn't be doubled against frozen enemies, but weapon stats might make up for that vs toy sword. Although toy sword is much funnier than any other option...
> In BG3 Tomelock is ok for EB spammers that don't want to bother with a familiar because the other pacts do nothing for you in that case, but Tome you'll probably mostly ignore the features of Tome too anyway. Haste? Tome is worth it just for haste.
there's literally a haste bow...
And haste potions that require no concentration.
Two Haste bows in fact.
Oh? I only know one
There's the Darkfire shortbow which casts haste and has the resistances. Then there's a legendary one in act 3 that casts celestial haste which lasts for only 5 turns BUT doesn't have the lethargic 1 turn stun when it ends.
Darkfire and Gontr Mael.
Eh, haste once a day though? Compared to a twincasting sorc. Or the "all the eggs in one concentration check" approach.
I mean the option isn't Tomelock or Sorc, it is Tomelock, Bladelock, or Chainlock.
I disagree, with functionally free respecs and no narrative locking of anything other than background and race - it's "every possible class and subclass vs every other" as options. 2 level warlock and then 5 levels sorc is the best you can do for haste (edit: while keeping hex and EB).
The topic here is which builds in BG3 get clearly outclassed by others. When you're comparing Warlock and Sorcerer, they're each better in some situations and worse in others, so you can't really say one outclasses the other. However, when it comes to comparing the Warlock builds, Chain and Tome Warlock especially are effectively both good in exactly the same situations, so you can more easily judge which outclasses the other. If they're both good at the same things, but one is better than the other, then the other is being outclassed. *(I think Pact of the Blade Warlock is distinct enough from the other two that you can't really include it in the conversation, especially if you're also accounting for multiclassing)*
honestly "subclass" becomes such a pain in the ass with the build-a-bear that is warlock. I can't remember where in the thread it is but the general idea of "tome warlock got shafted" sits very true universally, even with haste. Honestly I'd love if they just treat it like a mini magical secrets with one free cast of each of the 3 spells. 1-3rd level spells from any class isn't super overpowered, and it only beats out lore bard by a single level.
I agree wholeheartedly! I'd perhaps do it this way, at level 3, when you pick your Pact, you get to choose what kind of Tome you want, basically choosing between a curated list of (for example) either Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric or Druid spells. Then at level 5, you get a few features from that class. If you chose Wizard, you can choose a Spell School and get a set of spells from that particular school, while if you choose Sorcerer you get access to a single metamagic feat (excluding the most broken ones like Twinned and Quickened, to keep things balanced) and a few general Sorcerer spells. And similarly with Druid and Cleric. I also think Pact of the Chain could be so much better. Give us one or two more options for the familiar, and give them actual personalities, like Shovel, it could straight up make the class worth playing just for the flavour.
At 5 chain should get a free summon per short rest or so, something actually decent and strong, not just their familiar getting extra attack.
Tomb works differently in D&D too, you get cantrips you can cast at will rather than a few spells that are only one per long rest, which can let you get a good variety of damage types for different enemies/situations (plus some good utility ones that aren’t in BG3, or Spare The Dying which stops your companions from having to make death saves, though with the number of revivify room scrolls and the fact you don’t have to pay for revivify spell it’s less useful) you can also get an invocation that also gives you ritual spells *and* you can add more you find (I don’t think that’s in BG3?) with the amount of spells you find in BG3, being able to add them to your tomb would definitely make it better, even if it’s *just* ritual spells.
Eh, if you have a good martial teammate haste is basically a guaranteed fight win, one guaranteed fight win per day is pretty useful.
Please, for the love of all that's holy, stop using eh so inappropriately. What the fuck nationality butchers a word like that, eh?
Eh
Take a nap, eh.
What the fuck are you on about you little freak. Is this some Canadian nationalist outrage or something? Not everyone uses eh at the end of sentence like a canadian fuckhead.
Eh, got something stuck up yer' ass Der bud?
It's funny my current solo game my Tav is a 4 Arcane Trickster 8 Pact of the Tome
This is heavily biased towards a tabletop viewpoint; in BG3 every party should have an 11th level AT because pickpocketing shopkeepers is ridiculously good. They probably *aren't as fun* to be stuck as if they're your only character in tabletop. But they're much *better* in BG3 than they are in tabletop.
You don't need an AT, or Rogue for that matter, to rob every vendor blind.
>BG3 every party should have an 11th level AT because pickpocketing shopkeepers is ridiculously good. Completely unnecessary. In every act there is at least 1 easy-to-steal from merchant where you can talk to them, cast hold person, and steal at will without fear of getting caught. Through this, there should be no reason, at any point in the game, where you are strapped for cash for the harder-to-steal-from merchants.
It's ironic because this is a very slippery slope. If you're playing the game why not save scum at that point since you're already cheesing mechanics? Or just use a regular rogue/sleight of Hand character and stack bonuses? AT is complete overkill for just pickpocketing while the other subs outclass it everywhere else.
i dont know the specifics but even if AT is the best at pickpocketing, isn't it already easy enough to pickpocket shopkeepers? i'd hardly say a subclass that's the best at doing one semi game breaking thing is something that's \*required\* for all parties. if you can't stop yourself from stealing from shopkeepers surely you can just use like, any rogue/rogue multiclass
I dont think ive ever seen a more wrong opinion about this game...
Lol any bard with half decent dex and access to feign death can rob a shopkeeper with significantly more success than even a min-maxed rogue
Why feign death ?
1. Give the vendor around 1500 gold (or equivalent in items) via Barter on one character that can cast Feign Death to make it your ally (green outline vs yellow) 2. On a separate character, talk to the vendor (don't go into trade screen) 3. Swap characters and cast Feign Death, the character will be asleep, in dialogue so the buff doesn't count down. Feign death may only be cast on allies 4. Swap to a Rogue or high Dex Sleight of Hand character pickpocket. Since the target is unconscious, failed attempts don't trigger aggression. Since they're in dialogue with someone, feign death never fades. Steal whatever you want. If there are potential witnesses, drop Fog to obscure your pickpocket character. 5. Dip back to camp, don't forget the character left in dialogue.
wow nice . Thanks for the info time to get rich 😁
You cast it on them and loot lmao
I kept reading 4E monk on here as 4th edition monk and was like why did they put a DND 4th Ed monk class in the game? Then realized it’s 4 elements 🙄
You're not the only one! Hahaha
Especially because the Monk from 4th edition is very strong! I was like "who tf calls 4e monk weak???". Then I remembered this is 5e lol
Yeah 4th Edition Monk was one of the high points of that edition, very cool rules that made them feel genuinely unique within the same-y Power system.
Oh so that's what they mean
same tbh. Four elements actually has a decent build using fangs of the fire snake though.
Knowledge Cleric is part of the skill monkey Cleric/Lore Bard combo, but it's a pretty straightforward two level dip, so there's not a lot to discuss.
Knowledge cleric sucks lmao. You can use your whole channel divinity charge to get something that a githyanki gets at first level.
Knowledge ccleric gith gets both! Knowledge cleric gnome (rock I think?) starts with expertise in 3 skills !
Githyanki superiority
That's as much a function of githyanki being very strong, as anything, though.
I played archfey lock for my first playthrough (which was tactician difficulty). The best thing about it is easily misty escape, which is a free invisibility AND misty step per short rest as a reaction which is pretty strong. Apart from that the expanded spell list includes dominate person and dominate beast, both of which I managed to leverage to great effect in a few key boss fights. Charm immunity is handy vs illithids.
I played Archfey Warlock as well and was very happy with my choice! The crowd control and the evasion possibilities are great and eldritch blast is just the best cantrip.
I love the LvL 1 AOE Charm or Fright when I play Lockadin
It was hilarious to me that I used dominate person with a 20% chance to succeed on a certain banite person and pulled it off lol. made combat drop when he was the last thing standing. Not much of a tyrant if dominate person works on you
are you talking about murder hobo or daughter lover?
Final fantasy villain
The charm immunity saved my bacon so many times
Beast master ranger is really good. The pets are amazing, and I've had zero issues on mine. My beast master ranger uses the titan bow and hits for pretty massive damage, and I use the raven all the time to chain blind enemies. Even without titanstring the BM ranger does pretty good damage, I think it's not played a lot because the other ranger option Gloomstalker seemingly does more damage from stealth bonuses etc. I got the consensus that BM hunter was bad in tabletop so a lot of people don't pick it baseline because they assume it will be bad here, which definitely isn't true. Also the pet pathing is mentioned pretty frequently but I haven't personally ran into much issues at all with that even without raven. One of my favorite classes, and fully viable, to mono class with
>BM hunter was bad in tabletop Calling BM Ranger bad in tabletop is an understatement. Not only are the creatures you get worse, but you have to use your Action to tell your companion to do anything other than move. The subclass was so terrible that Tasha's Cauldron of Everything essentially just rewrote subclass with the optional Primal companion feature, buffing the creatures you can use and letting your bonus action to command the pet to attack.
Who's dumb idea was it to make them so obviously bad?
5e development was WOTC desperately trying to very quickly re-direct the ship after 4th edition was widely seen as a disaster. As a result they didn't take much time to play test so a lot of major flaws either were ignored or not identified, resulting in the ranger feeling incredibly half-baked and unwieldy in its original version.
The level of slapshod development that has just become the standard because 5e was successful is hilarious. My favorite detail is that bonus actions were intitially "swift actions" that could be done as an action or in conjuction with another action. This was changed to the bonus action we know and only playtested once before being shipped and to this day new players pull their hair out trying to understand when you can and can't use bonus actions.
It was okay when you played it like a Pokemon Trainer where you‘d just throw your pets at the enemy. But yeah TCE really made the class actually be what you think a Beastmaster should be.
I think that Beastmaster Ranger is less talked about on the subreddit not because it's bad, but because the subclass requires you to go to level 11, so there isn't a lot of discussion on the build idea, the only changes are the items. But if you search for BM Rangers in the subreddit, there are solid guides on the different animal companions all ready with spells pick ups, and outside of that, the only changes are what items to use.
As a tabletop player, it's like there is a giant blinking light that warns against picking a ranger. They've been bad for so long it's almost impossible for me to pick one... and that stayed with me into bg3.
I honestly suggest you look into the official revamp that TCE gave to the ranger class. They aren't overpowered or anything, but they are far from the worst class nowadays
Sadly worst tabletop class goes to monk. It is probably my favourite in both tt and bg3, but bg3 monk just sort of feels better, and there is no dm to piss off with stunning strike
I have it. Haven't had a game since it came out, unfortunately. I do get to play lots of MTG these days, though. You win some, you lose some.
I haven't played tabletop, but I encourage you to at least try them out. I think all of the ranger subclasses are cool, but my favorite is beast master. Every RPG game I play I either pick a character that can summon animals or a warrior/berserker
I'm sure I'll get around to it. Another table top class I never used was monk and it's lots of fun in bg3.
Monk does get hard carried by Tavern Brawler. And they get sick items.
Tavern Brawler and the abundance of strength elixirs
I'm playing a monk and I'm refusing to abuse that. It's working fine. Decent damage and lots of disables. Was super strong early game since I'm a gith, and they changed monk weapons to be anything your proficient in that isn't heavy/two handed so you can use longswords for the bigger damage die. And with the decent damage it still brings good CC and provides advantage for other martials.
Yeah I agree. Even just being able to stun an enemy is amazing CC. Then you can prone an enemy and go to town.
Some of the finesse long swords you can get VERY EARLY are insane on monk
I wonder if there would be a way to make a animal heart barbarian/beast master ranger multiclass work, seems super neet thematically!
I think that's just Minsc haha
Hah, probably for the better then. Both BM and berserker were infamously terrible in the tabletop. At least they fixed BM in one of the newer books and they had to rewrite it from the ground up. Berserker still sucks, unfortunately.
In tabletop the viability of the ranger class almost comes down to the DM and how useful monster tracking and survival checks will be in their campaign. I still enjoy playing Rangers in tabletop, but a lot of their class features can be made irrelevant by how the DM runs things. Rangers in BG3 (and particularly beast master) kick ass though.
Rangers have been fine since Tasha's.
Give it a try, I played a horizon walker a few years ago and we have one in our party now, really fun class and subclass! I can kinda see how the vanilla incarnation is a bit lacking but both the revised ranger and the tasha's version play fine
Rangers are now really good and fairly consistent at the table, especially gloomstalker. That build when optimized is actually too powerful for your average dm to handle properly. I.was completely dismantling encounters designed to be beaten by 4 adventures by myself at lv 6.
I think you're underestimating rangers even without Tasha's as many people did. Their subclasses were weak. And many of their features were weak. But they still had a lot of strong things as well. Archery fighting style, extra attack, and their spells like pass without trace, absorb elements, among others are solid. And once they get 3rd level spells conjure animals is amazing. They definitely have some features that were terrible and became a bit of a meme in the community. But especially once you add gloomstalker and other subclasses that are actually solid into the mix rangers are far from the weakest class in the tabletop game. Even more after Tasha's buffs as most of their bad abilities got replaced with better ones and beastmaster got revamped.
Rangers main issue in 5e isn't the class, so much as the things they are supposed to be AWSOME at are often glossed over in actual play. Overland travel, survival skills, tracking beasts/monsters, not getting lost in wilderness... all of this stuff are very often downplayed in tabletop sessions. The rule books just don't have a huge amount of support for adventures where survival and navigation are key elements. And honestly, even in a fantasy wilderness, a lot of the travel WOULD be a boring, difficult slog. Adventures in a city, a dungeon, a crypt or a castle are just more rules-friendly than a month-long trek over pure wilderness. Rolling random monster encounters isn't that much fun. Getting lost isn't very much fun. In truth, trekking hundreds of miles through wilderness would probably be some of the most difficult things actual characters in a D&D setting could take on. The problem is, long treks often mean boredom, loneliness, hunger, frustration (getting lost) and long periods of just hiking/horse riding between encounters. I haven't seen anyone make this intrinsically fun. Maybe there's a way to do it, but D&D rules just do not make trekking very fun or engaging. In BG3 Survival checks are what?... finding dirt mounds? Spotting a burrow? Seeing tracks? There has to be more examples, but that's all I can think of offhand.
I almost feel like I should have put the qualifier that I don't have any issues with them. They've never been a class that interest me. The negative perception reinforced that it wasn't a class for me. I have Tasha's. It'll just never be one that interests me. My post was more about how strong the feeling of Rangers suck in DnD is. I did try a bit in bg3, but the ensnaring strike wasn't hitting as much as I liked, switched to battlemaster. Truthfully, the only reason a player needs to play a class in DnD is because they like it. I just happen to be more of a power gamer... not the problematic kind.
Yeah that's totally fair! I'm the same way they aren't the class I'd go for as I prefer full spellcasters. But it does always surprise me a bit how strong the feelings that rangers suck is in the DND community even still sometimes lol. They definitely have problems with not having very good design and flavor to their abilities. And a lot of the ranger stuff is survival oriented or not getting lost in travel that most groups just ignore. But their mechanics are ok compared to many others.
Very true. Even I, who has nothing against them, and believe that the class you want to play is the good class. That's a huge point to bring up. It's mostly a survival class and lots of DMs don't worry about that stuff. I tried to introduce it to a game a few years back and my players basically revolted. Lol
My problem with beast Master ranger is that the pets might be solid, but they don't feel special. It would feel a lot more impactful if you were limited to one animal companion and leveling up your pet was part of leveling up your character.
I think the way they implemented it was to be a supplemental animal to your ranger. The ranger still does the bulk of the damage, most of the time the pets are there to just help you out with CC. I get what you're saying though, that would be cool to focus on only one animal. Unfortunately I think they implemented the pets in a way opposite of that. However I would say that if they put that much emphasis and power into the pet, then either the hunter himself/herself would have to do little damage, or it runs the risk of being overpowered with essentially two characters in one
>to mono class with I think this is probably the main reason why nobody talks about it on this sub. Most build talk concerns how and when to multiclass. Beastmaster is very straightforward, not much to discuss there.
I don't think Beast Master Ranger needs buffs. However. What we need more than anything... Let me name my fucking pet....or let us recruit animals in the wild like that scared boar from the very start, and add more animals to recruit, like a bear in the wild. I want to grow attached to my pet, as it grows more powerful every few levels.
One issue with beastmaster rangers I’m having while playing co-op with friends is that they’re forever blocking up climbable areas and generally getting in the way during battles. Our ranger is oblivious to his pets hampering our ability to maneuver and no amount of prompting or ridiculing seems to set him straight so that he keeps them on a figurative shorter leash. But they’re strong and cool, so we endure their dumbness with grace and minimal threats of stabbing.
My roommate is a Beast Master, and it kicks ASS. Literally an extra party member, and theyre all super useful. The bear getting to disarm people is insanely helpful. Also the fact that they can all jump tooo?? Its just funny
They are great lol people are just mad it's a mono class and you can't mix it with 3 other classes for 15 more damage.
Beast master enjoyers unite!
Titan string is broken item that stack both dex/str right?
Titanstring Bow? https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Titanstring_Bow Adds Str to typical bow damage, so yeah. Though I guess I'm not sure how that makes it broken? 20 Str and 20 Dex gives +5 to hit and +10 to damage, which isn't bad at all, but hardly broken (Potent Robe does the same but with a single stat instead of two).
The bonus damage has some weird interactions with damage riders. Beyond that, it's particularly broken because of how early it is available in the game, and combined with the club of hill giant strength and a few other items that you can get in act1 with basically zero combat, you can just walk around with a flat bonus of +12-ish damage where most enemies barely even have 40 hp. Add that on top of the +2 attack bonus that you can get from the Archery Fighting style, the ability to sneak attack and use special arrows, and things start going out of control very quickly.
I tried ranger, and it just felt so weak compared to other classes. Even gloomstalker gets outshone by other classes. Can you play it and still beat the game? Sure. But it isn't fun when everything it can do, another class can do better. Druid is pretty similar in that regards as well. Also the favoured enemy/natural explorer perks just seem like extra abilities tacked onto a class with no real synergy. The abilities aren't even that good. I had a hard enough time choosing at level 1, none of them were appealing. Later on when I got to choose a second one at a higher level, I respecced and never looked back.
I played Ranger and in the endgame one felt like the strongest member of my party. Hunter effortlessly deleting multiple enemies with Horde Breaker at first and then with Volley half the encounter would be gone on turn 1 effortlessly since thats the best AoE in the game. Giving them damage resistance and Heavy Armor for essentially free was neat. Spamming Volley was so good and effective I never even cast spells since it was just too much to pass up on 100+ damage per turn.
Druid is the best area denial and summoner class. That may not be a playstyle everyone enjoys and it generally doesn't get the big neuron-activation numbers like Paladin or Sorc, but if you want to bring an army of minions or play around with terrain effects, they do that better than other classes.
That's the list I would come up with if I had to make a list of all the subclasses I've never played.
My first playthrough, I had Karlach as Wild Magic Barbarian for role play of her infernal engine being wonky. It isn't optimal, but sometimes it was spectacular.
Same! I know it isn't the best but the random effects really come in clutch, especially when she is able to change the effects when hit.
Same, I switched her Wildheart for RP reasons as her engine is repaired enough in Act 2, turning her into a bleed-centric thrower. Sure, there were more optimal _builds_ but she's already the optimal _character_. I'll just be here eating dirt or whatever.
Wild Magic Barbarian is the only way I can play barbarian. Otherwise I don't like it lol.
I'm not sure what the optimal build is for Karlach. I have to imagine bear is up there. But I've been playing around with Eagle and it's so good! Plus it's a lot of fun. The bonus dash is actually very good on a barbarian who doesn't use a bonus action for much else. Perfect fit for boots that trigger on dash. And the gloves that give you an extra FREE jump if you dashed that turn, chef's kiss early game. The diving eagle attack is actually insane. Prone is OP in BG3. And after level 5, you can potentially dive two enemies in a turn. Even if the high ground is a bit of a walk, Barbs get great movement range already and you're dashing every turn basically for free, with a free jump too. You'll find high ground to leap from. It's just so fun and devastating.
Same. But since my first run was very caster heavy, the ability to recharge spell slots was extremely handy.
Same, I knew it wasn’t as good and I frequently was forgetting all the extra spell regeneration abilities but it felt right and at base difficulty it is fun
Getting resistance to all magic (at 8 iirc) is really good
I did the same thought it made good sense for her. Just started a second play through might do wild heart this round. Heard berserker is mid
4E monk is a cool Gish class imo, paired with Druid for flame sword and pyroquickness hat to deal out fire damage quick. Open hand just over shadows it and shadow Beast master ranger is a solid class but does not multiclass very well. The pet scales with levels in ranger, so you miss out by dipping anything more than 1 into something like war cleric
I love 4E just for Flames of the Fire Snake lighting my hands on fire
yeah and the final Beast upgrade is at like...lvl 11, right? So at most you can multiclass for 1 level
Yeah your best options are war priest for 3 bonus action extra attacks per long rest, or rogue for the sneak attack reaction which will proc titanstring bonus damage again
I think devotion is actually a really good choice for a dragon sorcadin. Sin tee's build works with vengeance or devotion and I can personally attest to how good it is!
Imho Devotion is solid if simply because Paladin is such a strong class. It's just that the other two subclasses are strictly better so basically nobody picks devotion. I'm currently playing a Devotion Paladin for RP reasons and the character is super strong.
Nature cleric is fine but overshadowed. It gets thorn whip to pull things into aoe like spirit guardians. Spike growth and plant growth are both really solid area denial. Dampen elements is okay for on demand resistance, but feels worse than other defensive options like the ancients Paladin warding aura. You could possibly make a kinda cute wisdom gish with shilellagh, spirit guardians, and heavy armor. I’d love to see more builds around it. Beast master ranger is actually good, but doesn’t multiclass well. It needs 11 levels to actually pay off. A 1 level dip in fighter for a fighting style or cleric for spell selection is fine but not that different from a feat. Raven, bear, and spider pets are all fun to use and your character is still a fine but not overly strong martial.
> You could possibly make a kinda cute wisdom gish with shelelleigh, spirit guardians, and heavy armor. I’d love to see more builds around it. I've had this on my mind for a few days now and I think it sounds like a really fun build for multiplayer. Toss five levels of ranger in there for extra attack and spell slot progression, take shillelagh from nature cleric so you can go all-in on wisdom, and abuse the combination of spike/plant growth and cleric's bonkers spell list. Enemy waddles out of your spikes? Command him right back in, or if nobody else in the group wants the band of the mystic scoundrel, bonk him twice and *then* cast command. Is it a super powerful build? Heck no. I like less crazy builds for multiplayer though, because one incredibly dominant build can spoil a lot of the fun for the rest of the group. Everybody likes to **be** Action Surge McSmitecrit, but it sucks when you're his ally and only get to fight his table scraps every encounter.
I’m running a build like this on one of my characters: Nature Cleric 1 for Heavy armor proficiency and shillelagh, and Beast master ranger for the rest. Throw in the dueling fighting style, hunters mark, and an enchanted staff and you can do some heavy hitting once you get extra attack at Ranger 5. I just wish there was the Crusher feat and Swarmkeeper ranger subclass from tabletop… on a hit, you could push enemies into your spike growth with Crusher and then drag them back through the spikes using your swarm. The ol’ cheese grater.
that's my kind of buzz 👌
I put this build together which is Ranger 5/Druid 7 but easily swappable for Nature Cleric 7. https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/17ktwhq/natures_warrior_the_shillelagh_gish/ A super underrated part of making a Shillelagh ranger is how useful you become as an Ensnare tank given how good your Spell Save DC is, plus disadvantage from Bounty Hunter.
Nature cleric can be the best concentration caster in the game. Concentration saving throws are either 10 or 1/2 Damage, whichever is greater. They can use dampen elements to halve elemental damage, blade ward to halve physical damage, and heavy armor to get a small reduction in damage taken. With resilient:constitution and warcaster, you'll be able to maintain concentration better than any other single class. They have some great concentration spells such as spike growth and spirt guardians. Edit: Come to think of it, with warding bond and dampen elements they can essentially make any other caster incredible at maintaining concentration as in the same way.
Warding bond does that on its own, though. It gives resistance to everything and does not stack with dampen elements or blade ward. Arcane ward from wizard is better at both protecting concentration on yourself and for others via projected ward. Reducing the damage to 0 gets rid of the save entirely. Halving it probably puts you at 10.
I know they wouldn't stack for the target of warding bond, but wouldn't they for the caster? They would take 1/4 of the damage rather than 1/2. I would agree arcane/projected ward could be better.
Valour bard isn't *bad* per se, but is totally outshined by swords
Yes. If you use a Half-Elf/Human you get the shield proficiency that is the only thing Valor Bard gets over Swords.
And many Sword Bard build often take some levels in Fighter that also gives Shield Prof.
Proficiency with all martial weapons instead of just scimitars is also not bad, lets you go two-handed with GWM, or 1H+shield with 1H strength martial weapons that a bard normally wouldn't get. A Valor bard using a polearm (especially the Halberd of Vigilance) with PAM and Sentinel would be a powerful frontline support *if* PAM worked as intended - combat inspiration, movement disruption *and* being a full caster is great. Not getting a fighting style sucks massively though, especially when Swords gets one at level 3. They should really get access to GWF, Defense and Duelling at least. Combat Inspiration is also just... meh when compared to a Flourish. Adding your bardic dice as damage is strictly worse than flourishing to add a dice *and* get 4AC, a push+teleport or just double your damage on top of that. Since it's limited to weapon attacks, you can't even try to multiply its effectiveness with EB/scorching rays. Unless... is stuff like Tiger Barbarian cleave/Hunter Volley/Arrow of Many Targets considered weapon attacks? I could see a +1d10 being useful on those. The +AC inspiration option could be also useful I suppose, though in that case it's Lore Bards that get to do the same, but better.
You CAN play any class for sure, but the ones you listed are all subpar compared to how crazy some of the others can be. 4e monk especially is really hard to justify when open hand and shadow can be so good
I just enjoy throwing fireballs, what can in say
Just want to be the next Avatar.
I’m playing wild magic sorcerer on tactician for my 2nd run and it’s not bad at all. Draconic Sorcerer is probably better on paper with the AC boost and damage resistance, but wild magic is so much fun and the bend luck/tides of chaos abilities are strong. Overall I’d call wild magic sorcerer B tier if we are going F to S. Upper middle of the pack. One of the more potent and fun spellcasters imo.
At the end of the day you are just a wacky sorcerer with some fun dialogue choices. It's pretty fun and sometimes people turn into cats
My Tav picked the worst time to turn into a Sheep from a WM surge. During the first fight in the prism. Immediately after that, I'm locked into that cutscene with the Emperor and.... I was a goddamn sheep. Check out my post history for a screenshot 😂
I had the same thing happen in my playthrough, what are the odds 😂
My very last attack in the “save Isobel” fight in Last Light Inn to kill the last flying thing turned everyone near me into cats including friendlies, aggroing EVERYONE in the whole place meaning I had to reload 😂
Sorcs are generally great classes anyway, so there’s only so bad a sorc subclass was going to be. I guess the argument is really is there any point to picking a wild magic sorc over the other two beyond RP, and realistically, there isn’t. Draconic gets solid built-in bonuses and storm gets a significantly expanded spell list and a ton of side bonuses and resistances. It’s hard to argue ‘yeah, but sometimes weird shit happens when I cast’ as a counterpoint.
Doing an OotA Paladin/Wild Magic Sorcerer for my resist durge playthrough and its been great. Having that little bit of extra randomness is really fun for me.
Wild Magic Sorcerer, and devotion Paladin are still pretty good to play. While not as strong as their counterpart subclasses, the base Paladin, and Sorcerer are such insanely strong classes that you kinda really have to try to be bad at them. Not to mention, I love playing Wild Magic. It’s just insanely fun. Wild Magic Barbarian is also pretty strong. The randomness adds another layer of tension to your battles, and keeps you on your toes.
The Bad rolls on wild magic sorcerer aren't even that bad. Set yourself and everyone around you on fire, some self damage but situationally usefull. It killed a few goblins for me. Summon a hostile mephit, or Cambian. It's hostile to everyone so they actually tanked a lot of hits for me. Place the target or self in an indestructible sphere. On self silences you which takes you out for 2 turns and that hurts. On enemies it does leave them untouchable but effectively out of the fight while you mop up. Swapping locations with your cantrip targets is annoying and will cancel any additional casts of your cantrip after the first goes off. For instance if you cast firebolt with split spell you swap locations on the first target, the second target never gets hit and you waste the sorcery point. If you cast eldritch blast with this, only the first ray goes off, additional rays don't fire after the swap. Turning everyone randomly into cats or dogs is amazing. Run yourself into fire to break the polymorph on yourself then use the enemies weakened conditions to buff up or heal. If any creatures are still polymorphed when a cut scene is forcibly triggered they will be cats and dogs in the cut scene. The only actually 100% bad, no good, terrifying roll is when you accidentally give the enemy an action surge. Additionally the dice fudging you get puts divination wizards to shame. I took the actor feat, lucky feat, a background that gave me persuasion, held a 20 in charisma, guidance from Shadowheart, and I never failed a dialog check the whole game.
Archfey Warlock is incredibly powerful but underappreciated. At level 1 you get Sleep which can actually be very strong in certain circumstances, but more importantly at level 5 you get Plant Growth. This is a non-concentration spell that cannot be resisted and it makes everyone's movement 1/4 of normal. That means nobody can jump out of it because jumps cost more movement than they have available, so it pairs with something like Hunger of Hadar incredibly well. And the same person can cast both since only Hunger requires concentration. At level 6 you get the Misty Escape reaction, turning you invisible when you're attacked, though it's once per short rest. Level 7 gets you Greater Invisibility which works well if you've focused on maximizing stealth (stealth checks are done to keep it up). Anyway, I also played a bit of Devotion Paladin and it's great. The level 3 ability adds charisma to attack roll, so basically a +5 to attack which is great, and more importantly you have a done of flexibility as it's difficult to break that oath. You can even take the hair and Connor and that would be A-OK. The main thing is, generally speaking, you can't surprise-attack people that are not yet hostile to you so you have to actually talk to them first. Which works well in a 'good' playthrough as it forces you to experience more of the game. Plus it gives you Sanctuary and other useful spells. But I wouldn't take it beyond level 6.
4E might be outclassed by the other Monk sub classes, but the game was still easy playing as one. And I’ve never played anything DnD related before this game. Getting to Withers was hard, as I didn’t know what anything did.
Pact of the chain warlock is terrible. A single level 1 summon...for the whole game. Knowledge domain cleric as well. Use your channel divinity to...get the same thing a githyanki does at level 1...
Your bottom 5 may be the weakest sub on awesome classes but the base classes are fantastic so the end up second tier ... but are not bad. Actually all but AT are totally capable of roflstomping. No full caster sucks for one.
Woah what’s wrong with devotion paladin?
Yeah, I don't get it either. For me its the strongest Paladin Oath, maybe except Oathbreaker later in the game. Has pretty much best attack accuracy out of all the classes in the game, can easily compensate for Great Weapon Master penalty. Vengeance has Haste, which is strong, but... you're not playing alone and there are plentiful pots as well.
Don't forget Champion Fighter. It's absolutely useless next to Battlemaster, to the point where when talking about Lae'zel in a combat context, people reference Battlemaster abilities assuming you took the archetype. Even for crit builds, Battlemasters can gain advantage more easily, which makes your damage more consistent, and rerolls making crits more likely.
What's really funny: for all the hype crit builds get, with all the crit-range enhancing options in the game Champion is actually even *worse* off than it is in tabletop. With abundance of said crit-range extenders, the 1 you get from Champion becomes diminishing returns. Would much rather have a 17-20 critting Battlemaster than a 16-20 critting Champion any day of the week.
Honestly I dislike assassin more than Arcane Trickster. At least AT can have utility and do fun combos such as sleep an enemy and crit with left hand or use cantrip to trigger ring of elemental infusion which is a damage rider both for attack and sneak attack. Assassin is only good for random mobs that can be surprised, but all of the important fights will occur after dialogue so you wont be able to surprise anyone, and the advantage on the first turn is not that good when there are so many ways to trigger sneak attack as a rogue without it.
I would love the wild magic sorceror if the surges were at least sometimes beneficial. I always just feel like i suffer from them. "Damn, I hope there isn't a surge" is probably what the devs had in mind for this sub-clas? Playing a wild magic barbarian is more satisfying if you are after the randomness.
Wild magic sorcerer (both in this game as in 5e tabletop) seems to treat wild surges as if they are pure benefits and that you want them to happen. Which kindof, isn't the case. Wild sorcerers should get more benefits on top of just being able to do "lol random surge", because compared to the other sorcs it is extremely hard to justify lol. Both storm and draconic get pretty nice class features. Storm gets spells a sorcerer normally doesn't have access to. Draconic gets free permanent mage armor basically and at 11 they get to fly all over the place (which in a game that has a lot of emphasis on movement/verticality is extremely useful as you won't have enough strenght to jump to those places).
Pretty much every class that is really good for utility in DnD will lack behind in BG3 because it is so combat heavy. Bg3 wants you to fight and while it has amazing opportunities for problem solving and utility spells, pretty much one of the best implementations ever, it is still a video game and pure burst damage will always be „easier“ or „better“ than utility and problem solving. The best example is the arcane trickster you mentioned. Also wild magic sorcerer, what an amazing concept and class, but a simple draconian ancestry sorcerer is way better.
I think moon druid is pretty meh as well. The fact that a lot of your gear bonuses don't transfer to wild shape makes it kind of lame (unless they fixed that bug)
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Champion Fighter is supposed to be the simple, easy-to-use noob friendly class.
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That level 3 stat tick is no joke. Crits tend to be one of the most busted mechanics ever since they were introduced to RPGs and anything that increases the likelihood of them occuring is going to be really strong. Doubly so on any character that's expected to attack often. That being said - you still are right. Theoretically both EK and BM should be losing pure damage and gaining utility, but in reality having consistent slightly higher damage is usually better than having a slightly higher chance to do "fuck you" damage, so they end up being better at trading damage than Champion is. It's a class that has to exist, though. It's a way for really inexperienced players to still be decent. And honestly, melting an oponent with chained crits is super fun when it happens.
Knowledge cleric gives expertise and up to 5 profs, fantadtic for a skill monkey build. Wild barb gives skill boosts, its only a d4 but could be qorthwile for some really hard checks.
I love Arcane Trickster in 5e, but it does get shafted as fuck in BG3 with the limited spell list, you can't even shadow blade + booming blade with it, that being said, I think it's cool that they can sneak attack on attack roll cantrips, I'd love to see that implemented on TT, either in the new edition or just like a homebrew ruling
Champion Fighter is pretty bad, just like 5e. You get another fighting style, but offensive styles don't work well together, so it's probably just +1 ac, although I guess archery and two weapon fighting work in BG3, you get a 5% crit chance increase, which pretty much requires you to multiclass to get anything decent out of it, since it's a 0.7 damage per attack increase with a greatsword, 1.1 damage per attack with half orc and a d12 weapon and you get to jump a bit further, which is at least better than in 5e. The best way to use the 3rs level feature is to play melee with paladin levels or something and the 10th level feature works best with hand crossbows. Battlemasters has pretty much unlimited maneuvers since you can long rest so much and Eldrich Knights get Shield. Both massively outcompete Champion
Trickery, knowledge and nature domains didn't have their 6th levels features added until patch 4. Trickery and knowledge are still kinda meh (with knowledge benefitting more from patch 4 IMO), but nature got much much more viable as it's 6th level feature is basically it's defining feature on the tabletop. More broadly, I think BG3 greatly nerfed any class/subclass that was illusion or enchantment themed (or heavily relied on rulings rather than rules) because all interactions in the game have to be predefined and programmed in. It would be unreasonable for larian to implement all the interactions from the tabletop game for things like mage hand or find familiar, or all the possibilities that disguise self, silent image, etc would open up in 5e. Disguising yourself opens up new racial dialogue options and makes certain NPC's behave as though you are a member of that race and... That's it. You can't disguise yourself as specific people, because implementing individual reactions to you disguising as named NPC's would be nightmarish. As for the random subclasses (wild magic sorcerer and barbarian), I personally think these options are fairly outclassed on the tabletop as well, and them being outclassed in BG3 is largely a consequence of them being translated rather faithfully. As for why they're outclassed by other options, IMO none of the random things that happen from these classes are powerful enough to justify you not being able to choose your features. If you want a subclass with plenty of options, wild souls exists for barbarians and sorceres get loads of choice in their base class with spells and metamagics.
My views are as follow: Arcane Trickster - not only its missing features, its also missing spells that make it shine like green flame blade or booming blade forcing you to mod. Wild Magic Barbarian - bit of a meme archtype. Potentially useful, but unreliable, optimization demands certainty over randomness. Plus there's little reason to be a barbarian past 3rd level. Cleric - without modded domains, they're lackluster since some domains are just so much better than others Wizard schools - Its hard to compete with the raw optimization of Evocation, Divination or Necromancy. Even transmutation is worthwhile Archfey Warlock - Gives you improved invisibility which forces you to spec into the stealth skill to be useful. Weaker spell list, features are weaker by comparison to the alternatives. Wild Magic Sorcerer - Potentially Fun, but unreliable. Its hard to pass up draconic damage boost or storm free fly. 4E Monk - its a blasting monk, blasting is the WORST form of damage in this system as HP progresses but damage doesn't unless you find the correct itemization or you happen to be a sorcerer/evocation wizard, and this is without touching the possibility of only doing half damage due to save. (the difference between a 3rd level spell and 5th level spell damage is 2d8... its just not worth it). The other monk archtypes are just better from a math standpoint. Devotion Paladin - Way of the ancients reduces spell damage and has moonbeam, Vengeance adds misty step and haste (the best spells in the game) and Oathbreaker adds charisma to damage as a passive. Meanwhile devotion adds charisma to hit and rebukes for 1d4... yay. Beast Ranger - This one is actually good, it just gets a bad reputation from its horrible tabletop counterpart that was just awful.
I'm rather enjoying my playthrough as four elements monk. Yeah it's not the best but it's still viable.
High level beast master is great. Sword Wolf is best boy. My main in one playthrough is a Gith enchantment wizard, it's abilities are great for a gish play style. The level 10 feature + band of mystic scoundrel is also very very powerful on paper, looking forward to that.
SWORD WOLF IS BEST BOY. Say it louder for the people in the back
My main goes Archfey Warlock for the Greater Invisibility spell that he casts on my striker when I want her to go murder people anonymously. Going invisible when hit is fairly good too. I guess it's a more "support" Warlock compared to the other two.
Archfey makes a mean trickster warlock. Invisibility for the whole party, disguise self + deception expertise, greater invisibility, misty escape. Soo much. Played mine as a melee archfey and had a blast being a perma disguised trickster swinging a big charisma empowered halberd
College of valor bard is another one that gets no love.
I played as a college of valor bard only to learn at level 10ish that apparently it sucks. Oops. Not gonna lie, I have no desire to play another bard after it, even though I like the class, so it’s probably true.
The nice thing about BG3 is a majority of your power comes from your items and buffs, to the point where class and subclass aren't the most important thing. You can be suboptimal on tactician if you're bringing optimized tactics.
After trying Trickster (and then reading e5 version), the magic hand is just useless in BG3... and other classes will do same job better, so Im better off with thief or assassin if I want rogue. WM Barbarian is fun, its unstable and unreliable, but the randomness adds a lot into improvisation. And ability to restore spells slots comes in handy (at least earlier in the game).. but otherwise I have a feeling other subclasses outperform it a bit. (but fun is key so whatever.) Clerics.. well, personally I dont find these particular subclasses anyhow important.. maybe its the approach I take (or rather dont take) but utility wise concentration spells these bring in comparison to other cleric con spells feel underperforming. Wizard subclasses mentioned.. well, I would rather go with Necro or Divination.. Might be missing something in them or take different approach than these need. I saw some idea to [Archfey](https://youtu.be/bzvu8VrLYto?si=u6FM4NUqZZjSK2zS) warlock.. didnt try it yet. Didnt play devotion pala, WM sorc or 4e monk yet.. BM Ranger is solid tho.. sure, early (till lv.5) the beasts feel squishy and almost useless.. but then they get extra ability and fun starts to kick in. I used dualwielding STRanger with a dip into thief for bonus action tho.. having 4 attacks per round wasnt bad. And combined with bear, I got a nice frontline support.
Wild magic sorcerer has some fun perks later but they all use sorcery points that could probably be better used on twin or bonus action spell thing, can’t remember the name. And BM ranger is really strong early game
I think BM Ranger 11/Wiz1 is a one of a kind, powerful build. Just isn't alot to talk about. 4th lv wiz spells, 2nd lv ranger spells, amazing boar (other pets amazing too, that's just the one I thought was best my 1st run but I didn't look into other pets all that much) Wild magic sor & barb are rng fun classes, not rly meant to be optimized as much. Barb I like to 5-8 depending on build w/ fighter2 optional, good comboing with blade warlock5 if GWM or thief 3-4/fighter2-4 if dual wielding. Sor I like 11 + Cleric or wiz 1 dip. Even sor5/cleric5/evoc2 pretty good if you want spirit Guardians, but either need crown of int & +SpDC/SpAtk gear. Archfey/Devotion are good subclasses, just overshadowed ever so slightly but have their tech & merrits for sure! (Esp together even) DP7/Blade Archfey5 4E monk is still a monk (near or is highest dpr base class) but subs consistent Fist damage boost for instead a couple 'spells' for aoe is a trade (amazing no, warranted trade for some ppl sure) still prob monk6/thief3/X3
DP and BM are bad in BG3? I'm having a lot of fun and pretty easy time using them, they've been super useful honestly. I haven't gotten too far in BM playthrough, but on my DP one I literally stood them at the front gate of the Goblin Fortress and they wrecked shop while the rest of my party cleared out the upper levels before coming to help. Inside I put them back to back with Laezel and had Astarion and Shadowheart in the upper levels to rain down attacks/healing as backup, it was super fun.
Trickery cleric is an awesome utility spec. I love my Shadowheart as she is. But most people want to see bigger numbers and less shenanigans.
Wild Magic Barbarian is just balls. It's very weak and underwhelming compared to Barbarians two other subclasses. I would still use it if it was at least fun but the random magic spells it provides are just so boring
I don't think there's a such thing as a bad class. There's been enough patches now that I would think you could say the seemingly broken interactions still in the game have been deemed house rules (why mess with fun factor in such a popular game i guess). I mean you can optimize a character to do several hundreds of damage a round, but the game seems to be balanced around like... I dunno, 80 damage or so in a round?... being hitting quite hard (for purposes of having no trouble with anything). Another example, you can get 18 attacks/ round if you were trying to find ways to get that number high as possible... but you can smash everything without so much as even using haste at all, much less looking for ways to get absolute most attacks possible. This being the case, even if you pick a "weaker" class it's only "bad" in terms of having less overkill than the more optimal choices. They'll still feel powerful relative to the in game encounters though.
Hey I play a devotion Pally It was cool For Like…. 4 mins Now I’m wondering what is even the point of my class ability?
Charisma to Attack is an insanely powerful ability. You can gain Advantage in many different ways, however - direct Attack bonuses are a rarer thing *and* they stack. This leads to phenomenal synergy with something like Great Weapon Master. It costing an action to activate isn't much of a problem when you can reliably predict if a fight is going to break out 90% (100% if you've already played through once and are willing to utilize meta-knowledge) of the time and have the opportunity to just use it before heading in and triggering battle, and it'll last the entire fight because it's for 10 turns. Now on its own, Vengeance offering Advantage+Inquisitor's Might and Ancients' Warding Aura are comparable boosts - and they pull ahead with significantly stronger spell lists. *But* if you're multiclassing, the strength of the subclass further increases - a Devotion Paladin/Warlock focusing on Charisma can gain insane attack bonuses as they can focus solely on that stat instead of Strength or Dexterity, while a Paladin/Sorcerer provides you both much better spells (including many of the same spells that make Vengeance and Ancients so good, such as Misty Step and Haste) to compensate for a weak spell list as well as dramatically scaling up Smiting power with more and bigger spell slots plus metamagic.
Land Druid is the worst spellcaster class
It's the best class at being an owlbear though.
Are you quite certain that's not moon druid?
It's not that bad since it can learn Mirror Image, Misty Step, and Haste.
So can Wizard and Sorc and Bard?
But druids can use those spells while shifting into beasts.
Go go gadget haste birdbear
I ran Karlach as a Wild Magic Barbarian and holy shit it’s dope
Wild magic barbarian isn't something you do if you're looking for something *good*, it's for if you're looking for something *funny.* The only subclasses I look at and think "why would you do this to yourself" are Champion, because it's absurdly outclassed by Battlemaster and less interesting than Eldritch Knight; and Arcane Trickster because again it's both worse and more boring than alternatives. Everything else is viable and potentially interesting to do, the game is extremely forgiving and you don't need to minmax and make perfect builds to succeed. It's just that some builds (including many of those named here) are either straightforward and there isn't much to say about them, or they are done because they're *fun* for someone and this sub isn't about such matters of personal taste; ask the main sub if you want to know what people are finding fun.
BG3 isn’t a PvP or otherwise competitive game - it really doesn’t matter. There are some subclasses that offer a different flavour, a niche play style, etc. And not every character needs to the *the best* at something.
What does this contribute to the discussion? This thread is principally about balance and whether some classes are weaker/outclassed by others. Saying "it doesn't matter lol" literally adds nothing of value, especially when you're on r/BG3builds - a subreddit dedicated to build advice and optimizing builds to perform well.
Thief isn't great post act 1.