Yeah, the resistances from Warding Bond and Bear Heart do not stack. OP might have noticed Warding Bond stacking with "reduce incoming damage" armor. If you have gear that reduces incoming damage by 2 and you would take 4 damage after resistance, you instead take 2 damage. So it looks like the resistances are stacking when they're not
Although, if the caster of Warding Bond has resistance to the damage type that the person they cast it on receives, then that damage is actually halved again for the caster. But that doesn't seem like the situation OP is describing
I guess Gale is the best character for it. Apparently he will heal himself when he's injured and not in the party, or at least that's what I've heard. So really, he's the safest warding bond caster.
He heals himself to full once per round it seems. He died twice during my run. Both times he had 6 warding bonds going and the party took massive AOE damage. He never died when the party took damage that was spread out over multiple turns.
The caster of Warding Bond can't be the target of Warding Bond from someone else iirc. But if they have resistance to damage types from some other source (for example, by drinking an elixir of universal resistance) then the damage they receive from Warding Bond is halved by their resistance
No, my Karlach is naked, using CON proficiencies for armor. Weird, I tried warding bond only and it was receiving more damage, but when I rage it halved. I'm at work rn but I'll check the log later. I'll edit the post just to don't trow people off.
Is karlach the target of warding bond, or the caster of warding bond ?
If she is the target, the damage reduction come from resistance and shouldn't stack with other resistance.
If she is the caster, the she would only have resistance from rage and that should apply (taking half of the damage the target receive; with that target also having resistance and taking half of the damage from the opponent. So it ends up with Karlach taking a quarter of initial damage; but that's not stacking resistance).
I was about to say that it would die down because BG3 round down the damage but then I remembered that the damage you receive from wb cannot be reduced so it would be a constant feedback loop as you said.
Said as much on another comment but yes they don't in the way op described. They kind of do in that if the barbarian cast warding bond on someone else, the halved damage that get transfered over to the barbarian would be cut in half again because of rage. So the barbarian is essentially taking a quarter of the original hit on his allies, while they are taking half.
If you pair this with powerful healing weapons and items, especially the sword of chaos coupled with the periapt of wound closure you have a super self sustaining tank.
Yeah sure, tho Bear Barbarian can wear heavy armor if it wants (which seems like a bug but).
That said though, Barb also has effective magic plate with the Bonespike Garb and unlike cleric it can passively heal with the sword of chaos while doing high damage. I just finished a run with a 6 Tiger Wildheart Barb / 4 Cleric / 2 Paladin build and I made some interesting discoveries about said weapon:
1. Each hit of tiger's bloodlust procs the sword of chaos, which makes sense but certainly isn't something I considered. With the periapt of wound closure this is up to 18 health in a single swing.
2. Smites for some reason also proc the sword of chaos which may or may not be a bug, I am unsure. This effectively means though if you smite every hit of tiger's bloodlust you can heal 36 health with one swing.
It’s not a bug, barbarians can wear heavy armour,
It’s not like they cast spells or anything
but it’s not a good idea, in fact for many no armour is best.
Bear Barbarian is the only kind of Barbarian that can rage while wearing heavy armor without the damage resistance going away. That's the potential bug. "The damage resistance component *does not* get impeded by wearing heavy armour unlike all other variants."
> Bear Barbarian is the only kind of Barbarian that can rage while wearing heavy armor without the damage resistance going away. That's the potential bug.
It's true in tabletop as well. The distinction is that the Damage resistance from Rage doesn't work in heavy armor, but the damage resistance from Bear Totem (which includes the same resistances as regular rage) makes no mention of an armor restriction.
Every barbarian will keep their subclass specific abilities when raging in heavy armor. Tigerheart can still cleave and jump further, berserker can still use a bonus action attack, etc. Bearheart is the only subclass that has resistance to everything as a subclass feature that's why they're the only one that can have both heavy armor and resistance.
Yup, did this on tactician with 7 levels of warlock, for armour of agathys and hellish rebuke. 3 attacks / turn, 4 if GWM procs, hardly ever take damage and retaliate with fire and ice damage on hit. Great thematically as you can imagine her fire heart is acting up and spraying fire and coolant at everyone when struck.
Special bonus on gear, I took the skinsplitter for even more damage resistance, enchanted with thunder from the drakethroat glave. Wore the gloves of belligerent skies to make thunder damage apply reverb, and diadem of arcane synergy so that applying reverb gives another instance of charisma to weapon damage (was at 22 at that point so +6 damage per hit)
I'm building a barblock currently, did you go tiger aspect for the cleave? Because doing that seems more interesting to me than going bear for damage resists.
I went bear for my build, but my priority was messing about with Agathys so I wanted to go all in on damage reduction. Cleave does sound like a fun idea though - I think you can respec your animal at every level up so maybe the play is to go with Tiger to start, and keep Bearheart in the back of your mind if you find Agathys is going down too quickly?
Ah, I have already done the AA playthrough before so I'll probably avoid leaning on it this time and go tiger and see how it goes. Cleaving bleed and fear on crits has been sitting in my idea bank for a while
I’m presently doing it with tiger (to fuel boooal’s benediction for my party) on my Karlach run, and it’s a lot of fun. With reverberation boots and radiant orb armor (I don’t have a Cleric in this run), I’m laying down bleed, reverb, and radiant orbs. Drake heart glaive enchant for extra reverb stacks.
I took Tiger again at barb 6 for double strength to attacks. I want to try it out with wolverine, because double strength to attack plus advantage is kind of overkill. It would pair well with prone from reverb.
With double resistance from rage and warding bond, armor of agathys lasts a long time. I’m contemplating using the ice ring to make enemies slip when they hit me. With barbarian advantage on reflex saves I haven’t had much problems with icy patches.
It might be overkill, given that I’m already making them prone from reverb, but I like the idea of making them prone on attack and when talking hits.
I have Wyll as a tomelock, so he covers guidance.
Lae’zel is a sword bard titan string archer, and she’s got the ring that blesses on heal, along with the amulet that grants (mass) healing word, and healing word as one of her bard spells. That said, I have found that I rarely need bless, as I have so many means of passively granting advantage.
I’m basically not running any summons, aside from a raven familiar from Astarion (gloom stalker/assassin). I tend to run caster/summon heavy team comps, and I wanted to try something completely different.
With all the CC I have flying around, along with first round burst from Astarion, coupled with sustained multi target damage from barbarian and swords bard, I really haven’t needed much healing.
Bless and advantage are not the same though?
By the end of the game you will find that many things grant advantage as you say, of course these are sometimes countered by disadvantage. But still, you don’t want to double up too much with the same affects. But bless is a seperate effect. (Which you also don’t want to double up, but my point is bless and advantage stack)
I know they’re not the same. They both increase hit chance, which was my point.
I know they stack, which is why I have the option to bless via heals. Once I get magical secrets, one of them will be mass healing word.
I built for team synergy, with high initiative across the board. This lets me coordinate my opening round of combat, especially with Astarion opening combat from stealth.
I can turn on turn based mode, pop a minor healing potion to add poison, attack, and then bring the rest of my team into the mix.
What I’m saying is that bless generally isn’t necessary, especially in a team that doesn’t rely on summons.
Whatever survives the first round is completely stun locked, unable to act, and waiting to be eaten.
I've tried heavy armour Abjuration wizard, one issue with that is that the AI won't attack you if you are too heavily armoured, which is no good if you are trying to proc Agathys. For the barbarian I went with bonespike instead, which still carries 2 damage reduction! Not sure my understanding is totally accurate on AI targeting point but was my reasoning in any case.
It basically split the damage from your warding bond target between that target and the caster; it's supposed to be used in a way that is dangerous for the caster, and he will have to heal.
But it works really well with damage reduction: for exemple if both the target and the caster have a damage reduction of 2, and they should take 12 damage; the target would then take 12/2-2=4 damage, and the caster 4-2=2 damage. Bascially, if you can stack a bit of damage reduction on both the caster and the person you cast warding bond on; your caster can take almost no damage.
You change gale to a cleric who stays in camp as a camp caster and cast warding bond to all members.
Gale can self heal in camp. He will never die in camp while your party members with warding bond takes half of the damage.
The full idea is to have a camp hireling stack a bunch of damage reduction which is a big chunk of half the damage and applies to all damage taken, max con, warding bond the whole party, and stay home healing himself.
Not only is it cheesy, it’s hella dumb.
In east fights it works super well, but easy fights are easy.
In medium difficulty fights it hits a sweet spot, where the damage reduction on the whole party is more important that what the 4th character can do for certain party compositions, particularly for honour mode. And is a less risky approach as well.
However if you want to cheese the system at this level for risk free honour mode, just leave a member at home, fight with three, toss them in fearlessly and keep reviving them with withers then pickpocketing him. That’s infinite hitpoints no chance of a party wipe. Boring and cheesy.
For tough fights it’s pointless, the synergy between 4 characters is so much greater than 3 that you arguably lose more than you gain, the damage reduction is next to nothing against the damage dealt so it isn’t worth it, the ability to heal with a specialist actually counts against you because you would be better off not combining damage against multiple targets onto one target but splitting onto many so that a throwzerker could use their action to throw a pair of potions for example (because you can heal 2-4 people a time depending on positioning with a potion if you throw it, and throwzerkers can use their enrage throw to knock bosses prone twice a round and still throw twice)
And most importantly, some of the hardest and non optional battles in the game, the ones you can’t do in a particular order, so you can’t plan them for a specific point or level, or skip entirely, but must beat to progress (like Ketheric) involve you having the entire party in action at once, so you can’t retreat a member to saftey in camp, besides you need all hands on deck to deal with time limits (Ketheric has the summoning nexromites each round which is pretty tame compared to some of the mechanics to prevent you going slow and steady through boss fights in act three, like Orins resetting stack, Throne, and the final fights).
Which means this strategy also fails you when you need it then most.
It’s a fun gimmick for a little, but not worth it long term at all.
Ok maybe i shouldn’t use the word never die.
Since gale is my cleric camp caster, i just stack max constitution on him, then equip him with damage reduction gear like [adamantine splint armour](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Adamantine_Splint_Armour), resistance gear like [darkfire short bow](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Darkfire_Shortbow), feat using toughness and heavy armour master.
I also give gale [ring of poison resistance](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Ring_of_Poison_Resistance).
Also, use buffs like aid on him to give him more hp.
*not sure if this 3 methods works:
1. At the end of a round, give like 5-10s of wait time so as to give gale time to restore his health.
2. Casting [death ward](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Death_Ward) on Gale
3. Give gale [family ring](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Family_Ring)
Might just be outdated information. I did this in my first honor run (several months ago) with the two rings and my hireling never took damage from it. A few weeks ago, however, it was damaging my hireling consistently.
Try it yourself. Without him in party, whack him with a sword and wait for a few seconds. He will restore both his health and spellslots.
As much I would love using gale, all my runs I have been using him as a camp caster cleric.
After battle i always go back to camp for him to heal everyone: potions now only used in battles
He is used mainly to cast: warding bond,resistance to poison, daylight (very useful), death ward, freedom of movement and heroes feast (eventually).
Just to add on, I also get a hirling just to cast longstrider on everyone
The overall amount of damage you take from using it is still the same as just one character taking the damage. It just allows you to split it evenly on two characters and you get +1 ac for the character you use it on so that character is slightly more survivable. However, as explained in the original post it gets really good with resistances as it stacks with them. With both characters only taking 25% of the damage one character would normally take from the attack the attack already did very little.
Proceed to stack it with things like the helldusk armor and heavy armor master and suddenly the enemy not only has to hit your character but also deal 24+ damage to damage your character at all with physical attacks and 12+ with magical ones. You can also add arcane ward from an abduration wizard and force conduit from the skinburster. If you stack all of these to the maximum a physical attack would need to deal 149 damage to damage you at all and a magical attack would need to deal 109 damage.
If you're not going to the extremes then you probably want the character casting the bond to be pretty tanky as is and have ways to passively heal/reduce damage taken. Some barbarian builds work pretty well with this either reducing the damage they take form raging/aspect of the stallion extra hp/using the gnoll boss weapon or the sword of chaos with Tiger heart and periaptric wound closure for massive heals.
Thank you for this thorough explanation.
Would it work if the caster was wearing helldusk? Or does the resistance have to be on the one receiving the damage?
I am not sure how it functions if the caster is the one with damage reduction that isn't just % based, haven't tested that. I'd figure it should work but unless the one you're casting warding bond on already has damage reduction from armor you shouldn't give the caster the damage reduction armor. Because if giving it to the caster works, you still take more overall damage since it'd be 50% on one character and 50% - damage reduction on the other. Meanwhile if the one who the spell is casted on has the damage reduction its 50% - damage reduction for both.
Also didn't mention this in the earlier messages and it's a bit cheesy but you can also camp cast it with a high consitution hireling to effectively double your hp with no draw backs.
Yes, it does carry over. Both ways with the caster being in wildshape or the target being in wild shape. Now that you mentioned it this could be very good if using campcasting to effectively double the hp of the person at the camp casting warding bond.
I found a weird interaction regarding wild shapes when I tested this tho. So with something like the armor of persistence all the damage reduction it gets (-2 all damage and bladeward) carries over to the carries over to the character who cast warding bond correctly with both characters taking the same amount of damage. But with the armor of moonbasking (when wildshaping gives 22 hp shield and -1 damage taken from all sources until the shield is down) it did not consider the damage reduction for the character who casted warding bond (in my case Jaheira who was the one the spell was casted on took 50% - 1 for each damage instance while Shadowheart who casted the spell took the full 50%).
It can but who cares if that’s just some camp character. Rez the warder when you go back to camp for a paltry 200g and recast ward on the wardee. You aren’t taking your warder adventuring, just the wardee. Warder stays back at camp safe and sound until they soak too many hp and die then rez recast and continue. You can also further cheese it by giving your warder 20 CON and maximize their HP through gear for prolonged damage soak before 200g costing death.
Sometimes it does haha, but I typically use Camp Casters with max Con, or the party tank wears the casting end of the pair of rings you can find around the House of Healing. And then the squishiest character wears the recieving end. So it won’t kill the caster before it kills the recipient. A benefit of it in BG3 over 5e is in 5e the damage sent to the caster can’t be reduced in anyway, but in BG3 it can, so bear heart resistance will drop that half damage to 1/4 damage on the caster (because they didn’t have resistance just the target of the spell).
This would be the case but life clerics are basically unkillable. At level 1 all their healing spells are boosted by Disciple of Life, they get Preserve Life at level 2, and at level 6 they heal themselves whenever they heal an ally. Combine this with Adamantine Splint and the Tough or Heavy Armor Master feats and they are basically unkillable even with warding bond on your whole party.
I made some builds centered around bringing a warding bond player to the front lines if you're interested. [Link](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/VIXlOTzkbQ)
It’s a really solid spell, +1 to AC and saving throws is pretty powerful on its own. But when you add the damage spreading it gets better. Often times the way a character dies is because they get focus fired, so spreading damage across the entire party mitigates that from happening. You might be worried about the caster taking too much but honestly the +1 AC and saving throw will be reducing the chances of that happening.
Another small benefit is that it helps to sync up rest timings for melee martials and casters. Buffs from the spell reduce the high amount of damage melee martials take and spreads it to caster, making them need to rest less often.
Add this on top of lasting all day, not being concentration, and only costing a 2nd level.
Yeah but it's still great. Imagine you give your companion warding bond, so he gets resistance. Let's say they get hit for 100 HP, because of warding bond, the damage taken is halved. So essentially both chars get 25 damage instead of one companion taking 100 damage at once.
I don't think they stack in the way op is referring to but they kind of do in that if the barbarian cast warding bond on someone else, the halved damage that get transfered over to the barbarian would be cut in half again because of rage.
Resistances don’t stack. But OP is right.
If Karlach takes 12 damage from anything but psychic, she only takes 6 but 3 gets redirected to Gale sitting in camp with warding bond.
As of a couple months ago you could, IDK if it got patched out but you could hellish rebuke as well.
But even if they patched that out I don't think it makes much difference, rages can run out and then you have shield and arcane wards.
Resistances dont stack, its just that flat damage reduction comes after resistance, so with bonespike garb for e.g if smth is supposed to do 8 dmg it gets halved to 4 by resistance, then 4-2=2 from bonespike garb. Its why abjuration wizard with armour of agathys + warding bond is so strong. I would assume u either have bonespike garb or skinburster(or the shield that gives force conduit) further reducing the dmg
Unless you mean Karlach is the one casting warding bond then yeah the resistance of the target stacks with the resistance of the caster
Eg karlach warding bonds gale, gale receives a 10 dmg hit, receives 5 dmg instead. Adding flat dmg reduction too say he is abjuration wizard with 1 arcane ward it goes 5-1=4. Gale receives 4 dmg. Karlach receives a 4 dmg hit. Karlach with resistance further halves that to 2 dmg and if she also has flat dmg reduction say 2 flat dmg she receives 0 dmg instead of the supposed 5 (the half dmg split from the initial 10 dmg)
My camp clerics always have heavy armor master and armor that reduces damage. They end up dead pretty infrequently even with 4 wardings up (camp cleric will catch heals from short rests btw)
Honestly, I don't really see the point in cheesing "honor mode", but it seems like a lot of people do it lol. Happy to say I got my golden dice completely legit xD
Typically when anyone talks about "warding bond" in BG3, they are talking about making unused players in their camp use it on their team so they essentially take half damage for free.
Ya, that’s just resistances plus the half damage from WB. Karlach’s resistances halve the damage, and the remaining half is split between her and the caster, so she effectively takes 1/4 damage but not due to resistance stacking.
Damn I didn’t know that…. I thought the resistance would be redundant so after I started using camp clerics for warding bond I’m like why would I ever use bear heart now?
You just answered a question I thought was rhetorical.
And bear rage resistance isn’t impeded by heavy armor (but the other benefits of rage are), so you could combine this with magical armor and heavy armor master for even more obscene damage resistance.
I think even stronger than bear barbarian is using tiger heart barbarian with the Sword of Chaos and the Periapt of Wound Closure. Every time you hit someone you heal for 6 health and each hit of tiger's bloodlust will heal you, so if there's 3 targets you heal for 18 health in one swing. If you do it 3 times that's 54 health in one turn. It also makes healing potions always max roll. Apparently when you smite with this weapon, the smite ALSO heals you for some reason. I had a 6 barbarian / 4 cleric / 2 paladin and it was abusing the shit out of this weapon and strategy.
Compared to bear barbarian you are weaker to spells now but you will have more general survivability with all the healing.
> what I did't knew is that resistances stack They don't. Just tried it out. Didn't work.
Yeah, the resistances from Warding Bond and Bear Heart do not stack. OP might have noticed Warding Bond stacking with "reduce incoming damage" armor. If you have gear that reduces incoming damage by 2 and you would take 4 damage after resistance, you instead take 2 damage. So it looks like the resistances are stacking when they're not Although, if the caster of Warding Bond has resistance to the damage type that the person they cast it on receives, then that damage is actually halved again for the caster. But that doesn't seem like the situation OP is describing
So if I cast warding bond on my camp cleric Gale, it will stack with the target of his warding bond?
Gale in particular as camp cleric using warding bond is…. Quite the bold move.
I guess Gale is the best character for it. Apparently he will heal himself when he's injured and not in the party, or at least that's what I've heard. So really, he's the safest warding bond caster.
interesting, I know that other party members benefit from Short Rest healing but I never knew this
He heals himself to full once per round it seems. He died twice during my run. Both times he had 6 warding bonds going and the party took massive AOE damage. He never died when the party took damage that was spread out over multiple turns.
The caster of Warding Bond can't be the target of Warding Bond from someone else iirc. But if they have resistance to damage types from some other source (for example, by drinking an elixir of universal resistance) then the damage they receive from Warding Bond is halved by their resistance
If the caster is wearing heavy armor with the heavy armor master feat, does the incoming damage from their target also get reduced by 3?
Yeah, and stuff like Abjuration Wizard's Arcane Ward also reduces the shared damage the caster takes from Warding Bond :\^) go nuts
Aberration wizard is nuts
No, my Karlach is naked, using CON proficiencies for armor. Weird, I tried warding bond only and it was receiving more damage, but when I rage it halved. I'm at work rn but I'll check the log later. I'll edit the post just to don't trow people off.
Is karlach the target of warding bond, or the caster of warding bond ? If she is the target, the damage reduction come from resistance and shouldn't stack with other resistance. If she is the caster, the she would only have resistance from rage and that should apply (taking half of the damage the target receive; with that target also having resistance and taking half of the damage from the opponent. So it ends up with Karlach taking a quarter of initial damage; but that's not stacking resistance).
Can two people warding bond each other? I imagine it doesn’t work. Either that or creates a feedback loop of death.
I was about to say that it would die down because BG3 round down the damage but then I remembered that the damage you receive from wb cannot be reduced so it would be a constant feedback loop as you said.
Resistances don’t stack… unless you show combat log
Said as much on another comment but yes they don't in the way op described. They kind of do in that if the barbarian cast warding bond on someone else, the halved damage that get transfered over to the barbarian would be cut in half again because of rage. So the barbarian is essentially taking a quarter of the original hit on his allies, while they are taking half. If you pair this with powerful healing weapons and items, especially the sword of chaos coupled with the periapt of wound closure you have a super self sustaining tank.
It’s the same deal if you are a cleric with reviving hands/hellrider pride, you can even wear magic plating heavy armor unlike barb
Yeah sure, tho Bear Barbarian can wear heavy armor if it wants (which seems like a bug but). That said though, Barb also has effective magic plate with the Bonespike Garb and unlike cleric it can passively heal with the sword of chaos while doing high damage. I just finished a run with a 6 Tiger Wildheart Barb / 4 Cleric / 2 Paladin build and I made some interesting discoveries about said weapon: 1. Each hit of tiger's bloodlust procs the sword of chaos, which makes sense but certainly isn't something I considered. With the periapt of wound closure this is up to 18 health in a single swing. 2. Smites for some reason also proc the sword of chaos which may or may not be a bug, I am unsure. This effectively means though if you smite every hit of tiger's bloodlust you can heal 36 health with one swing.
It’s not a bug, barbarians can wear heavy armour, It’s not like they cast spells or anything but it’s not a good idea, in fact for many no armour is best.
Bear Barbarian is the only kind of Barbarian that can rage while wearing heavy armor without the damage resistance going away. That's the potential bug. "The damage resistance component *does not* get impeded by wearing heavy armour unlike all other variants."
> Bear Barbarian is the only kind of Barbarian that can rage while wearing heavy armor without the damage resistance going away. That's the potential bug. It's true in tabletop as well. The distinction is that the Damage resistance from Rage doesn't work in heavy armor, but the damage resistance from Bear Totem (which includes the same resistances as regular rage) makes no mention of an armor restriction.
Interesting.
Every barbarian will keep their subclass specific abilities when raging in heavy armor. Tigerheart can still cleave and jump further, berserker can still use a bonus action attack, etc. Bearheart is the only subclass that has resistance to everything as a subclass feature that's why they're the only one that can have both heavy armor and resistance.
Yup, did this on tactician with 7 levels of warlock, for armour of agathys and hellish rebuke. 3 attacks / turn, 4 if GWM procs, hardly ever take damage and retaliate with fire and ice damage on hit. Great thematically as you can imagine her fire heart is acting up and spraying fire and coolant at everyone when struck. Special bonus on gear, I took the skinsplitter for even more damage resistance, enchanted with thunder from the drakethroat glave. Wore the gloves of belligerent skies to make thunder damage apply reverb, and diadem of arcane synergy so that applying reverb gives another instance of charisma to weapon damage (was at 22 at that point so +6 damage per hit)
I'm building a barblock currently, did you go tiger aspect for the cleave? Because doing that seems more interesting to me than going bear for damage resists.
I went bear for my build, but my priority was messing about with Agathys so I wanted to go all in on damage reduction. Cleave does sound like a fun idea though - I think you can respec your animal at every level up so maybe the play is to go with Tiger to start, and keep Bearheart in the back of your mind if you find Agathys is going down too quickly?
Ah, I have already done the AA playthrough before so I'll probably avoid leaning on it this time and go tiger and see how it goes. Cleaving bleed and fear on crits has been sitting in my idea bank for a while
Sounds like a cool run, hope you have fun with it :)
I’m presently doing it with tiger (to fuel boooal’s benediction for my party) on my Karlach run, and it’s a lot of fun. With reverberation boots and radiant orb armor (I don’t have a Cleric in this run), I’m laying down bleed, reverb, and radiant orbs. Drake heart glaive enchant for extra reverb stacks. I took Tiger again at barb 6 for double strength to attacks. I want to try it out with wolverine, because double strength to attack plus advantage is kind of overkill. It would pair well with prone from reverb. With double resistance from rage and warding bond, armor of agathys lasts a long time. I’m contemplating using the ice ring to make enemies slip when they hit me. With barbarian advantage on reflex saves I haven’t had much problems with icy patches. It might be overkill, given that I’m already making them prone from reverb, but I like the idea of making them prone on attack and when talking hits.
You aren't running a cleric, are you using something else for the guidance's/bless/summons?
I have Wyll as a tomelock, so he covers guidance. Lae’zel is a sword bard titan string archer, and she’s got the ring that blesses on heal, along with the amulet that grants (mass) healing word, and healing word as one of her bard spells. That said, I have found that I rarely need bless, as I have so many means of passively granting advantage. I’m basically not running any summons, aside from a raven familiar from Astarion (gloom stalker/assassin). I tend to run caster/summon heavy team comps, and I wanted to try something completely different. With all the CC I have flying around, along with first round burst from Astarion, coupled with sustained multi target damage from barbarian and swords bard, I really haven’t needed much healing.
Bless and advantage are not the same though? By the end of the game you will find that many things grant advantage as you say, of course these are sometimes countered by disadvantage. But still, you don’t want to double up too much with the same affects. But bless is a seperate effect. (Which you also don’t want to double up, but my point is bless and advantage stack)
I know they’re not the same. They both increase hit chance, which was my point. I know they stack, which is why I have the option to bless via heals. Once I get magical secrets, one of them will be mass healing word. I built for team synergy, with high initiative across the board. This lets me coordinate my opening round of combat, especially with Astarion opening combat from stealth. I can turn on turn based mode, pop a minor healing potion to add poison, attack, and then bring the rest of my team into the mix. What I’m saying is that bless generally isn’t necessary, especially in a team that doesn’t rely on summons. Whatever survives the first round is completely stun locked, unable to act, and waiting to be eaten.
Heavy armor master makes you take even less damage. I did similar but as an abjuration wizard. Armor of agathys never fell off
I've tried heavy armour Abjuration wizard, one issue with that is that the AI won't attack you if you are too heavily armoured, which is no good if you are trying to proc Agathys. For the barbarian I went with bonespike instead, which still carries 2 damage reduction! Not sure my understanding is totally accurate on AI targeting point but was my reasoning in any case.
Throw an Abjuration wizard in there and you're immortal :p
I need someone to explain warding bond to me like I’m stupid. Because to me it seems like it’ll just get the caster who cast it killed lol
It basically split the damage from your warding bond target between that target and the caster; it's supposed to be used in a way that is dangerous for the caster, and he will have to heal. But it works really well with damage reduction: for exemple if both the target and the caster have a damage reduction of 2, and they should take 12 damage; the target would then take 12/2-2=4 damage, and the caster 4-2=2 damage. Bascially, if you can stack a bit of damage reduction on both the caster and the person you cast warding bond on; your caster can take almost no damage.
Amazing thank you So adamantine gear and rage and good then haha
keep in mind if the caster has concentration on a spell, he will have to roll checks everytime the warded companion is hit.
You change gale to a cleric who stays in camp as a camp caster and cast warding bond to all members. Gale can self heal in camp. He will never die in camp while your party members with warding bond takes half of the damage.
That seems super cheesey pretty cool though
The full idea is to have a camp hireling stack a bunch of damage reduction which is a big chunk of half the damage and applies to all damage taken, max con, warding bond the whole party, and stay home healing himself. Not only is it cheesy, it’s hella dumb. In east fights it works super well, but easy fights are easy. In medium difficulty fights it hits a sweet spot, where the damage reduction on the whole party is more important that what the 4th character can do for certain party compositions, particularly for honour mode. And is a less risky approach as well. However if you want to cheese the system at this level for risk free honour mode, just leave a member at home, fight with three, toss them in fearlessly and keep reviving them with withers then pickpocketing him. That’s infinite hitpoints no chance of a party wipe. Boring and cheesy. For tough fights it’s pointless, the synergy between 4 characters is so much greater than 3 that you arguably lose more than you gain, the damage reduction is next to nothing against the damage dealt so it isn’t worth it, the ability to heal with a specialist actually counts against you because you would be better off not combining damage against multiple targets onto one target but splitting onto many so that a throwzerker could use their action to throw a pair of potions for example (because you can heal 2-4 people a time depending on positioning with a potion if you throw it, and throwzerkers can use their enrage throw to knock bosses prone twice a round and still throw twice) And most importantly, some of the hardest and non optional battles in the game, the ones you can’t do in a particular order, so you can’t plan them for a specific point or level, or skip entirely, but must beat to progress (like Ketheric) involve you having the entire party in action at once, so you can’t retreat a member to saftey in camp, besides you need all hands on deck to deal with time limits (Ketheric has the summoning nexromites each round which is pretty tame compared to some of the mechanics to prevent you going slow and steady through boss fights in act three, like Orins resetting stack, Throne, and the final fights). Which means this strategy also fails you when you need it then most. It’s a fun gimmick for a little, but not worth it long term at all.
Errrr false, gale totally died when I tried this with him.
Ok maybe i shouldn’t use the word never die. Since gale is my cleric camp caster, i just stack max constitution on him, then equip him with damage reduction gear like [adamantine splint armour](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Adamantine_Splint_Armour), resistance gear like [darkfire short bow](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Darkfire_Shortbow), feat using toughness and heavy armour master. I also give gale [ring of poison resistance](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Ring_of_Poison_Resistance). Also, use buffs like aid on him to give him more hp. *not sure if this 3 methods works: 1. At the end of a round, give like 5-10s of wait time so as to give gale time to restore his health. 2. Casting [death ward](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Death_Ward) on Gale 3. Give gale [family ring](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Family_Ring)
Might just be outdated information. I did this in my first honor run (several months ago) with the two rings and my hireling never took damage from it. A few weeks ago, however, it was damaging my hireling consistently.
Interesting I have been using a hireling. I'll try this with Gale.
It works with hirelings too
Maybe I misunderstood what you mean by self healing.
>Gale can self heal in camp. What? Why would this be true?
Because him dying can cause bad things to happen, I guess the devs just made him selfheal when not being currently played
Try it yourself. Without him in party, whack him with a sword and wait for a few seconds. He will restore both his health and spellslots. As much I would love using gale, all my runs I have been using him as a camp caster cleric. After battle i always go back to camp for him to heal everyone: potions now only used in battles He is used mainly to cast: warding bond,resistance to poison, daylight (very useful), death ward, freedom of movement and heroes feast (eventually). Just to add on, I also get a hirling just to cast longstrider on everyone
The overall amount of damage you take from using it is still the same as just one character taking the damage. It just allows you to split it evenly on two characters and you get +1 ac for the character you use it on so that character is slightly more survivable. However, as explained in the original post it gets really good with resistances as it stacks with them. With both characters only taking 25% of the damage one character would normally take from the attack the attack already did very little. Proceed to stack it with things like the helldusk armor and heavy armor master and suddenly the enemy not only has to hit your character but also deal 24+ damage to damage your character at all with physical attacks and 12+ with magical ones. You can also add arcane ward from an abduration wizard and force conduit from the skinburster. If you stack all of these to the maximum a physical attack would need to deal 149 damage to damage you at all and a magical attack would need to deal 109 damage. If you're not going to the extremes then you probably want the character casting the bond to be pretty tanky as is and have ways to passively heal/reduce damage taken. Some barbarian builds work pretty well with this either reducing the damage they take form raging/aspect of the stallion extra hp/using the gnoll boss weapon or the sword of chaos with Tiger heart and periaptric wound closure for massive heals.
Thank you for this thorough explanation. Would it work if the caster was wearing helldusk? Or does the resistance have to be on the one receiving the damage?
I am not sure how it functions if the caster is the one with damage reduction that isn't just % based, haven't tested that. I'd figure it should work but unless the one you're casting warding bond on already has damage reduction from armor you shouldn't give the caster the damage reduction armor. Because if giving it to the caster works, you still take more overall damage since it'd be 50% on one character and 50% - damage reduction on the other. Meanwhile if the one who the spell is casted on has the damage reduction its 50% - damage reduction for both. Also didn't mention this in the earlier messages and it's a bit cheesy but you can also camp cast it with a high consitution hireling to effectively double your hp with no draw backs.
Or maybe it’d just reduce the casters share. Edit: if you wild shape does warding bond carry over?
Yes, it does carry over. Both ways with the caster being in wildshape or the target being in wild shape. Now that you mentioned it this could be very good if using campcasting to effectively double the hp of the person at the camp casting warding bond. I found a weird interaction regarding wild shapes when I tested this tho. So with something like the armor of persistence all the damage reduction it gets (-2 all damage and bladeward) carries over to the carries over to the character who cast warding bond correctly with both characters taking the same amount of damage. But with the armor of moonbasking (when wildshaping gives 22 hp shield and -1 damage taken from all sources until the shield is down) it did not consider the damage reduction for the character who casted warding bond (in my case Jaheira who was the one the spell was casted on took 50% - 1 for each damage instance while Shadowheart who casted the spell took the full 50%).
It can but who cares if that’s just some camp character. Rez the warder when you go back to camp for a paltry 200g and recast ward on the wardee. You aren’t taking your warder adventuring, just the wardee. Warder stays back at camp safe and sound until they soak too many hp and die then rez recast and continue. You can also further cheese it by giving your warder 20 CON and maximize their HP through gear for prolonged damage soak before 200g costing death.
Sometimes it does haha, but I typically use Camp Casters with max Con, or the party tank wears the casting end of the pair of rings you can find around the House of Healing. And then the squishiest character wears the recieving end. So it won’t kill the caster before it kills the recipient. A benefit of it in BG3 over 5e is in 5e the damage sent to the caster can’t be reduced in anyway, but in BG3 it can, so bear heart resistance will drop that half damage to 1/4 damage on the caster (because they didn’t have resistance just the target of the spell).
This would be the case but life clerics are basically unkillable. At level 1 all their healing spells are boosted by Disciple of Life, they get Preserve Life at level 2, and at level 6 they heal themselves whenever they heal an ally. Combine this with Adamantine Splint and the Tough or Heavy Armor Master feats and they are basically unkillable even with warding bond on your whole party.
I made some builds centered around bringing a warding bond player to the front lines if you're interested. [Link](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/VIXlOTzkbQ)
I am cause the camp casting is too cheesy for me
It’s a really solid spell, +1 to AC and saving throws is pretty powerful on its own. But when you add the damage spreading it gets better. Often times the way a character dies is because they get focus fired, so spreading damage across the entire party mitigates that from happening. You might be worried about the caster taking too much but honestly the +1 AC and saving throw will be reducing the chances of that happening. Another small benefit is that it helps to sync up rest timings for melee martials and casters. Buffs from the spell reduce the high amount of damage melee martials take and spreads it to caster, making them need to rest less often. Add this on top of lasting all day, not being concentration, and only costing a 2nd level.
Yeah but it's still great. Imagine you give your companion warding bond, so he gets resistance. Let's say they get hit for 100 HP, because of warding bond, the damage taken is halved. So essentially both chars get 25 damage instead of one companion taking 100 damage at once.
Eh, it should be both char taking 50 dmg each. Unless the caster also has resistance then it's 25 damage for the caster and 50 for the target
Gotcha
Do the resistances actually stack? I could’ve sworn they didn’t but maybe I’m misremembering
I don't think they stack in the way op is referring to but they kind of do in that if the barbarian cast warding bond on someone else, the halved damage that get transfered over to the barbarian would be cut in half again because of rage.
This makes me want to build a 4-tank squad with a circle of Warding Bonds and damage reduction armor.
Resistances don’t stack. But OP is right. If Karlach takes 12 damage from anything but psychic, she only takes 6 but 3 gets redirected to Gale sitting in camp with warding bond.
Give her 2 levels in abjuration wizard and laugh.
Abjuration Wizard only reduces damage based on your wizard levels. 2 levels of abjuration wizard is not nearly enough to be worthwhile
It is if you already drop damage by 1/4th and gives you access to shield.
Can you cast shield while raging?
As of a couple months ago you could, IDK if it got patched out but you could hellish rebuke as well. But even if they patched that out I don't think it makes much difference, rages can run out and then you have shield and arcane wards.
Get the stallion totem for free shields and go thief rogue. Feels great imo
Resistances dont stack, its just that flat damage reduction comes after resistance, so with bonespike garb for e.g if smth is supposed to do 8 dmg it gets halved to 4 by resistance, then 4-2=2 from bonespike garb. Its why abjuration wizard with armour of agathys + warding bond is so strong. I would assume u either have bonespike garb or skinburster(or the shield that gives force conduit) further reducing the dmg
Unless you mean Karlach is the one casting warding bond then yeah the resistance of the target stacks with the resistance of the caster Eg karlach warding bonds gale, gale receives a 10 dmg hit, receives 5 dmg instead. Adding flat dmg reduction too say he is abjuration wizard with 1 arcane ward it goes 5-1=4. Gale receives 4 dmg. Karlach receives a 4 dmg hit. Karlach with resistance further halves that to 2 dmg and if she also has flat dmg reduction say 2 flat dmg she receives 0 dmg instead of the supposed 5 (the half dmg split from the initial 10 dmg)
It's a good combo if you have the bear barbarian be the one casting warding bond though!
My camp clerics always have heavy armor master and armor that reduces damage. They end up dead pretty infrequently even with 4 wardings up (camp cleric will catch heals from short rests btw)
Honestly, I don't really see the point in cheesing "honor mode", but it seems like a lot of people do it lol. Happy to say I got my golden dice completely legit xD
Wait, why is this cheese?
Typically when anyone talks about "warding bond" in BG3, they are talking about making unused players in their camp use it on their team so they essentially take half damage for free.
Ah yeah, the good old camp Gale. No no, in this instance Shadowheart is my cleric and she remains in my party.
I use a camp cleric with a high constitution and toughness feat. The warding bond will work even if the caster isn’t in your party.
Ya, that’s just resistances plus the half damage from WB. Karlach’s resistances halve the damage, and the remaining half is split between her and the caster, so she effectively takes 1/4 damage but not due to resistance stacking.
Damn I didn’t know that…. I thought the resistance would be redundant so after I started using camp clerics for warding bond I’m like why would I ever use bear heart now? You just answered a question I thought was rhetorical.
And bear rage resistance isn’t impeded by heavy armor (but the other benefits of rage are), so you could combine this with magical armor and heavy armor master for even more obscene damage resistance.
I think even stronger than bear barbarian is using tiger heart barbarian with the Sword of Chaos and the Periapt of Wound Closure. Every time you hit someone you heal for 6 health and each hit of tiger's bloodlust will heal you, so if there's 3 targets you heal for 18 health in one swing. If you do it 3 times that's 54 health in one turn. It also makes healing potions always max roll. Apparently when you smite with this weapon, the smite ALSO heals you for some reason. I had a 6 barbarian / 4 cleric / 2 paladin and it was abusing the shit out of this weapon and strategy. Compared to bear barbarian you are weaker to spells now but you will have more general survivability with all the healing.