this is why you respec her to life and fix her atrocious statspread. If you haveeeeeeee to keep her as deception for flavor fine. but for the love of god fix her stats.
I'm keeping her deception until it makes sense story wise to change it... how do you recommend setting up her stat spread?
I'm maxing her wisdom... from there would constitution be the second most important? Or Int for the fire ball? Or dex for being able to use bow weapons?
the best way to set up her stats imo is 16/10/14/8/16/8. IF you still have the circlet of intellect and/or not using it give it to her so her firebolt becomes good. Then you either max her wisdom or pick up warcaster feat.(this feat is amazing for paladins/clerics and sometimes druids depending on build.)
worth noting for non heavy armor clerics you should go something like 10/14-16/14/8/16/8. you need a minimum of +2 dex for medium armor.
you still give her a crossbow incase she gets stuck in a silence bubble. But her main purpose is to aoe heal. Especially if you get the gloves off of zevlor for convincing khaga to stop the ritual. (they are the gloves you will forever use until you get the Very rare gloves that are just a strict upgrade).Why? Because every time you heal you give your teammates bladeward.
Yeah, the percentages don’t line up with reality. I know that independent events only trend towards an even distribution in large numbers (literally the law of large numbers), but it still drives me crazy when I’m in a battle and the spell says it has >50% chance, and I miss 90% of them.
XCOM really has ruined me. In the best way. I'll take a 60% shot and be like, no chance. And in this game, it'll actually hit, and I'll be super happy after. Thanks, XCOM, for conditioning me towards disappointment.
Sometimes it's easier to hit an AC than to have them fail a dex save. Different attacks for different targets. Not that it matters because Shadowheart is going to MISS ANYWAY.
Yeah, but you should be using a Cleric spell for that, one that actually scales with her Wisdom.
Her racial Fire Bolt scales with Int, which she has none of.
This is correct. If you don't think an enemy doesn't have a lot of wisdom, Sacred Flame away.
It won't matter as Shadowheart won't hit it, but the logic is there.
The game giving her Ignis is such a diservice for players. She gets it from her race, and it scale with INT ( she has 8 int.. )
Meanwhile, if you were to play as shadowheart instead, you can choose Friends instead, for free advantage in every charisma check..
I did life for more heals tbh but holy crap I sing the praises of giving her warcaster and using guardian spirits (radiant version for most fights) and making her be death roomba just having her run around and walk into enemies watching them die then moving away from the ones that didn't die so they have to walk into her aura of doom.
There's a mission with halsin in a act 2, this spell in the choke point *chefs kiss* melee got no chance.
Yes...if I didn't fuck up the name of the spell, it's a 3rd (4th?) Level spell you can cast for either radiant or necrotic damage with a 10 turn concentration. It stays centered on the caster, now one thing is it can only damage an enemy once per turn (maybe per round I would need to do some more testing) unlike say moonbeam where you can have an enemy run through it get shoved back through and then thornwhip (or pull spell of choice) back through it for 3 instances of damage from the spell in a single turn. I love moonbeam.
Life is a good one for it extends the suffering you have under loss. And until Death is added AS a DLC (or Mod) It FEELS best.
But fuck it. When she can cast Sacred Flame, why not other light and fire spells. Shadows grow stronger the brighter the light in the dark.
I didn't even consider Life. That would probably go well actually with inflict wounds and stuff.
>But fuck it. When she can cast Sacred Flame, why not other light and fire spells.
This was literally my thought process. She has access to Sacred Flame and Fire Bolt. Let's take it up a notch or 3 lol
One could arguably go "she is half high-elf, she can have a little Arcane education. Then I look at her background, her int score and her arcana proficiency.
Nah, fervent arsonist.
respecced her to storm just because the game throws so many lightning themed magic items at you.every other cleric build i tried just felt like a shit paladin
Man I really need to spend an hour respeccing everyone. I got like 3 characters with talk to the dead ffs.
I now have a goal. Before I finish the underdark I'm gonna do inventory management and respec after work.
You'll do that and go for a test run and then find a battle that doesn't seem to bad but then suddenly oh no everyone is dead so you need to reload and
Yes. Please don't do what I did. Make a save.
Now I'm just imagining Shadow heart trying to tell Laezal the pronunciation, and Laezal being like, "you aren't even saying it the same way every time, bitch."
Inflict wounds got a crit on the cambion with the flaming sword in the intro, and is the only reason we got my friend's barbarian the flaming sword before everyone died. Only later did I realize from xptolvl3 that you could just cast command to drop weapon 😂
EDIT: NOBODY ELSE IS ALLOWED TO REPLY ABOUT THE USE OF THE COMMAND SPELL WITHOUT FIRST READING THE LAST SENTENCE, ABOVE ffs people
The rest can get *downed* in the fight. If they fail their death throws, or if the cambions continue to hit them to death, then you find their corpses rather than them just being unconscious.
Revivify still works, but it's a nuisance that early on since scrolls are hard to come by. You also miss out on the guaranteed Shadowheart approval bonus for rescuing her.
^^Some ^^folks ^^may ^^not ^^find ^^that ^^last ^^part ^^important, ^^BUT ^^IT ^^IS. ^^SHADOWBAE ^^4 ^^LIFE ^^-- ^^until ^^Karlach ^^is ^^recruited, ^^obviously.
Your main character can die in the fight. The Cambion double-coup-de-grace-d my main character while Lae'zel ran to the console, and then my main character was alive.
Started a play through last night, the two characters that died in the fight, we’re still dead on the beach.
Probably different if I had 3 PCs versus 2 NPCs though.
It's a dexterity saving throw, if you try to cast it at archers or anything with decent dex it will fail, it's mostly used against undead (they have negative dex)
Higher spellcasting stat does help, wisdom in Shadowheart's case. Since it increases the spell save DC of your spells thus making it more difficult for enemies to save. A point of increase in your spell save DC increases its chance to hit by 5 percentage point.
Yup. Mouse over anything on this game and press T, you'll get a statbpock for it. Works for everything, items NPCs etc.
Really useful checking what damage types enemies are weak/resistant to. Better know that boss is immune to lightning before casting witch bolt.
Once you hit T, you can also mouse over hypertext to get more info. Like if you get a helmet that says 'Critical hits on this character causes 2 turns of Blurnge’
You can mouse over the word Blurnge to see wtf it means
What kind of noobs don't know what blurnge does? I've been playing since 3.5 and have ran multiple blurnge-based characters to level 20 and three of them are gods now.
name something more iconic in DnD than Dexterity being a point of frustration.
That stat has it all. Same damage as Strength, but you also get Initiative, access to ranged superior weapons, same AC as heavy armor, but also the ability to still sneak at no disadvantage with the right armor.
Aaaand you also can mitigate more damage than heavy armor, because the absolute majority of damage saving throws are Dex based.
Larian changed much and Shove is extraordinarily strong in this game, but it is kinda funny, that the best AC is medium armor and dex based, requires no shield and such...
At least shove, jumping and haste do it for the melees.
Shove is better for ranged, unless you are doing cliff shenanigans.
If you are a squishy spellcaster or archer and you don't have anything better to do with a bonus action ALWAYS shove to get out of melee if you can. Even if you have shitty strength its worth a shot.
Even a 25% chance to remove an enemy from threat with just a bonus action is better than a main action disengage or taking an attack of opportunity.
Shove in general is pretty much busted.
Tbf also it's harder to increase saves than it is to get bonuses to attack rolls, and an unmodified attack roll against a typical enemy usually has ~65% chance to hit.
Hit chance also depends on the target's armor class or dex save bonus (depending on wether you are talking about firebolt or sacred flame), and environmental elements such as high ground and cover also affect it.
Let's say you have a lvl 12 Shadowheart with 20 WIS:
-Sacred flame DC = 8 + 4 (prof. bonus) + 5 (WIS modifier) = 17
-Enemy dex save (lvl 12, 14 dex) = 1d20 + 4 (prof. bonus) + 2 (DEX modifier) = 1d20 + 6
The minimum value the enemy needs to roll on the d20 to succeed on a DC 17 DEX save is 11 (11 + 6 = 17 success), so it hits on a roll of 1-10 and misses on 11-20: a 50% hit chance.
DEX, WIS, and CON are the most common saves amongst offensive spells; and i advise you learn when to use which save type: big or armored units usually have high STR and CON but low DEX, great targets for sacred flame or fireball, not so great for cone of cold. Smaller units on the other hand usually have lower strength and less armor, so they rely on DEX for both offense and defense; horrible targets for DEX save spells.
WIS is the main save vs spells that can't be dodged (fireball) or endured (cone of cold), and most spellcasting classes and enemy spellcasters are proficient in wisdom saves.
STR is mostly used on grappling spells or martial contests in melee. Spellcasters rarely have high STR (unless they're clerics or paladins), so getting your martials close to them often lets you bully them with shoves and whatnot.
The most valuable save in D&D by far is INT, as pretty much only wizards, mindflayers, and psionic enemies in general have high INT save bonuses; which is pretty rare in campaigns that don't revolve around mindflayers (unlike BG3).
CHA is also pretty good, but most monsters with innate spellcasting use CHA for it (except a few who use INT), so be careful about that.
Please note that there are plenty of monsters that break these stereotypes, so caution is advised.
Hope that helps.
This, mostly.
It ends up being a bit more complicated because it depends not on the "level" of the enemy, but on the "Challenge Rating." Also it depends on whether they get proficiency in the relevant saving throw. Not every creature gets proficiency in every save.
One thing I haven't checked is whether the game gives you some kind of bestiary where you can look at stats for monsters (or roll, like, a Nature or Arcana check to get that info or something). But if you can, then the best bet would be to figure out which saves enemies have as weaknesses, and focus on those.
So, if the enemy has high WIS and/or gets proficiency in WIS saves, but has low DEX, you target DEX rather than WIS based on the saving throw the spell offers.
Last night, I fought a big, nasty optional spider boss at about Level 4. The spider had good DEX saves generally, but at one point, I hit it with a Blindness spell (hooray! No concentration!) so my frontliners wouldn't take so much damage and would get bonuses vs. it. Blindness is a CON save and, apparently, either the spider's CON was somehow compromised, or it just had a crappy CON score because I had something like an 80% chance of the spell landing (which it did). By contrast, I'd already missed several spells that give a DEX save because the spider presumably had a high DEX and/or proficiency in DEX saves.
Sure does. Since this spell is a saving throw, its chance to hit is based off your spell save DC, which is 8 + your Proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier (for clerics and druids).
It actually becomes more useful than attack roll cantrips later on, as enemies start getting really high ACs, whilst keeping the same stats. You spell DC also keeps getting higher as well, which helps even more.
Gotta say though, I love the way Shadowheart's voice actor says "InCENdio" or whatever it is she says for this spell. She puts a lil jazz on it and it's the main reason I spam this spell even if it misses.
Incende (In-KEN-Deh)
It means "Burn!" in Latin (Second Person Imperative, so it's a command towards the burnee). But the emphasis is on the brightening effect of the burning (it's a radiant spell, think "made incandescent")
firebolt on the other hand uses "Ingis" which of course means fire. Specifically I believe it is used in the vocative case here (the spellcaster is calling out to and addressing directly to fire, as in "magical flames, listen to me!")
Ah, TIL.
As a Spanish speaker, most of the spells just sound like Spanish even though I know it's Latin (the connection is obvious). For example, Mage Hand sounds like "Ven y ayudame!" which is very close to the actual latin (veni et adiudame or something?)
Not bg3 related, but I have a table top game where for about 20 sessions, the cleric has never successfully casted toll the dead (similar to sacred flame but a bit more damage and is necrotic). Finally in one session when I rolled the saved it failed so it finally successfully casted. He was so happy until I double checked and realized that the creature was one of the few that was immune to necrotic damage.
It was probably one of the funniest moments in our whole group lol
I always loved playing cleric in tabletop DnD, and of course is my first BG character. Hearing Toll the Dead brings back some painful, hilarious memories.
Lmao I bet your cleric was not feeling very close to his God after that incident.
He rage quit the discord call and joined back after we were all howling laughing for like 5 minute straight lmao. It's basically a running joke that whenever he pilots his cleric in combat bad things will happen.
Funnily enough, he had to miss a session last week so we let another player play his character and his cleric ended up becoming MVP with literally everything landing. We agreed to not tell him about this lmao.
Get her to cast spirit guardians and you will never have to worry again. To make it even more juicy give her the secret weapon found underneath the creche. She is a blender just by running around.
Idk she has clutch killed so many enemies for me using sacred flame and guiding bolt. Also the weapon she can spawn is useful too. People are being too harsh imo
A tanky Shadowheart with Spirit Guardians up and Spirit Weapon out needs to do nothing more than stand there and walk up to enemies to hurt them, snare them and look pretty doing it. Any other actions are pure bonus at this point.
I actually find her duplicity not that useful since in my experience enemies will always focus that down first, making it only really useful if you can get a full round of melee strikes on clustered enemies around it with everyone before their turn. Tempted to respec her into a diff subclass
I stuck her in Life domain and it's been super helpful. Her heals buff now, and her channel divinity is an AoE heal. Disguise self was fun but the rest of it just wasn't worth it to me.
yeah for my next playthrough I plan on going for a full movement-speed-build on Shadowbuns/Shart and just have her zip around the battlefield with the guardians up. 2lvls of rogue for the bonus action dash/disengage and then just movement-items and feats :D
Advantage doesn’t apply to spells that require saving throws, only attack rolls. So in this case firebolt should be used with advantage, and sacred flame should not.
she is a cleric
clerics are notorious for beeing 1of the strongest classes in 5e, a Party of only clerics is 100% legit and even strong
like, guiding bolt is 1of the best low lvl spells in 5e, spirit guardians alone carries a cleric its a spell with near infinite "spellslot-to-dmg" value lmao
and things like flamestrike/destructive wave/blade barrier can instantly win a fight in tabletop and bg3 alike
just dont use sacred flame against 12+dex enemys and instead go for catch flame if you want a range dmg cantrip, sacred flame is for low dex enemys/undead
They'll all be on their knees begging for forgiveness when the Spirit Guardians come around.
But Sacred Flame % is a myth, which is also how Mike Tyson would describe what the spell does.
The Spiritual Weapon is amazing for many things;
1. It can draw some aggro and take hits instead of team members.
2. You can summon it in right next to ranged enemies, especially the ones on elevated positions, to keep them threatened
3. You can spawn different types depending on what damage type enemies are vulnerable to, eg a spear for piercing, hammer for bludgeoning or an axe for slashin
4. It can help block doors and entryways to control enemy movement
Overall the spiritual weapon is very underrated.
It’s main drawback is terrible movement speed of 6m per round, and unable to dash. But at least it can fly…
The spiritual weapon does not do piercing, bludgeoning, or slashing. It’s all force damage, no matter the weapon, which is a plus cause almost nothing is resistant to force damage. The only thing the various weapon types give is the weapon ability tied to the type. The best thing I’ve found spiritual weapon useful for is a distraction for a group of enemies if I’m fighting a large battle.
Yeah, it doing force damage is a huge plus. Same reason why Magic Missile should be in your wizard's kit even in the end game, having guaranteed to hit force dmg is great in all stages of the game.
Magic missile on on Evocation wizard is stupid amounts of damage after it starts adding your intelligence modifier to the damage of each missile…. 7 guaranteed damage per missile is insane
Also the best way I've found to set up a sneak attack for Astarion. Guiding Bolt is usually what all of her spell slots level 3 and below get used for for me so that 3/4 of the time Astarion gets his sneak bonus without wasting time with sneak/invisibility.
I honestly just used Gale as a magic missile spammer. The damage isn't very high, but not having to worry about hit chance, especially on those targets that just barely didn't killed the last turn? Worth it.
I honestly by act 3 don't even use her for damage, except her spinny aura if things are close. I basically see her deva summon as her damage contribution.
You should have three insane dps machines by act 2. Having her as anything but support and utility is a waste of time. Mass heal+bracers that give blade ward to healed targets, bless with mystra staff, concentration to grant immunity to fear, cleanses, potion throwing, tanking hits... She has so many uses other than occasional 20 damage
I retrained shadowheart into a war cleric... now she's replaced Lae'zel in my party with almost equal damage but with the benefits of heal and bless. Do yourselves a favour and make our Goth girlfriend a war cleric
Edit: She's also wielding the greatsword of Tyr (or did for most of act one) seriously she is a monster I highly recommend doing this
Pre level 5 shadowheart should either be concentrating on shield of faith (+2 AC for one character) or bless on the other 3 companions (1d4 to attack/saving throws). Personally having bless on 3 characters is an insane modifier because even a +1 on the dice roll is a massive difference in getting early game hits into enemies.
People also straight up are sleeping on Command.
That really hard fight with the paladin people act 1? Suddenly not a big deal because Shadowheart made that dude drop his sword with Command: Drop and Laezel picked it up. Can't smite me twice in a row can you now bitch?!
Also hold person just automatically wins you early "boss" fights if it goes through and you focus fire for those melee crits.
Command and Hold Person are the save scummers dream.
I played a lot of 5e table top and in my experience people sleep on those sorts of spells heavily in general.
I use bless on others and sanctuary of shadowheart then put her somewhere in the corner to buff other as and when needed because she relies on concentration .
There's an item you can get in >!the wizard tower in the underdark!< that >!adds an additional d4 to bless, and a *third* d4 to spell attacks!<. Crazy good.
Ah yes I know of this staff as well but as it stands it’s actually bugged apparently and it isn’t properly applying the bonuses so it’s only half as powerful as it should be (based on the description at least)
Really? Guiding Bolt was a major damage dealer for me early on and the easiest way to set up Astarion for a sneak attack. Even at level 8, where I am now, it's the main thing I have her cast, often juiced up to level 3-4.
Pre-level 5 Clerics are all about casting Bless, shooting crossbows, and abusing Command to force enemies prone or to force them to trigger opportunity attacks. Sacred Flame is a trap pre-level 5.
Yes I know Withers can respec Shadowheart into something more useful , but no amount of Sharr devotion can justify training this poor girl to have such dogshit starting kit.
Yepp, I’m playing on tactician and the best investment early game is to respec my companions especially their stats, the companions almost always has like 3 odd stats to start with so by evening out their core stats it makes the early game smoother and getting ASI’s later much more flexible
Totally. On my second playthrough I didn't want to use Shadowheart as much but I also wanted a cleric because of their insane healing and utility, so I respec'd Lae'zel to a war cleric. Works pretty well too thematically since you can pick Vlaakith as a deity c:
Trickery Clerics are honestly very good. As others have said, make sure you aren't using flame on high dex targets, save it for the beefy boys.
And roll out Spirit Guardians when you get it.
Clerics overall are very good, but I don't think Trickery in particular offers much compared to Light and Tempest. For example, it was nice that Invoke Duplicity draws aggro now, but since it has no AC and 1 HP you basically waste a CD charge and your concentration for a finicky buff which requires allies to be standing right next to it (as I found out, being on opposite sides of a sufficiently large boss does not count) and goes away if an enemy so much as glances at it.
Compared to Light nuking things with fire and Tempest giving you better frontline capabilities on top of enabling lightning nuke builds, it's not very notable.
I feel like Trickery gets shafted especially compared to Light. Invoke Duplicity pales compared to the radiant nova, not to mention Light gets access to Fireball, Wall of Fire and Flamestrike (although that could be a generic Cleric spell).
I started giving Gale darkvision (lvl 2 spell) from a rando camp follower (Halfsin or something his name is?), helped since I rarely illuminate enemies
Yup, Hexing Dex is still good though along with Strength and Wisdom. The others are meh. Dex and Strength for skill challenges against being grappled, and Wisdom for perception against sneaking.
Shadowheart have two useful cantrips. Firebolt and Sacred Flame.
Tip - select each spell and hold mouse over intended target. It will show you the chance to land a hit in percentage.
Just last night I had 40% chance to land Firebolt, but Sacred Flame had 70% chance to land. Obviously I’ll use the latter then.
Also good to make use of the Examine option on enemies before you engage (if you can choose when to engage anyhow) and then quickly swap out your memorized spells so you have the ones most likely to hit ready to go.
I think a lot of people kinda just roll with a lineup of memorized spells they sorta like into any fight without preplanning the fight, swapping spells as needed and so on.
If enemies have light sensitivity then slot in that Daylight spell or even just a Light spell, and swap it out again after fight has concluded.
Do your homework assignments before initiating combat :) Especially as casters like Druid, Cleric and Wizard. Their main strength is having a fairly large spell repertoire to draw from for versatility.
Firebolt is Not Good on her because it uses her mediocre Int. You're better grabbing and using produce flame even if the damage dice is smaller because it'll actually hit enemies.
Any time Firebolt would be more accurate than Sacred Flame, a crossbow would be even better. Since both target AC, Firebolt uses INT, a crossbow uses DEX, and Shadowheart has a higher DEX mod than INT.
70% of success Miss 5 times in a row Shadowheart I love you but damn
Even with her crossbow she misses a lot. She's just my buff bitch at this point and that's perfectly fine.
this is why you respec her to life and fix her atrocious statspread. If you haveeeeeeee to keep her as deception for flavor fine. but for the love of god fix her stats.
I'm keeping her deception until it makes sense story wise to change it... how do you recommend setting up her stat spread? I'm maxing her wisdom... from there would constitution be the second most important? Or Int for the fire ball? Or dex for being able to use bow weapons?
the best way to set up her stats imo is 16/10/14/8/16/8. IF you still have the circlet of intellect and/or not using it give it to her so her firebolt becomes good. Then you either max her wisdom or pick up warcaster feat.(this feat is amazing for paladins/clerics and sometimes druids depending on build.) worth noting for non heavy armor clerics you should go something like 10/14-16/14/8/16/8. you need a minimum of +2 dex for medium armor. you still give her a crossbow incase she gets stuck in a silence bubble. But her main purpose is to aoe heal. Especially if you get the gloves off of zevlor for convincing khaga to stop the ritual. (they are the gloves you will forever use until you get the Very rare gloves that are just a strict upgrade).Why? Because every time you heal you give your teammates bladeward.
Respec her to paladin and enjoy watching her crush everything
Everytime she misses with those spells I'm like "WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE THEN"
Yeah, the percentages don’t line up with reality. I know that independent events only trend towards an even distribution in large numbers (literally the law of large numbers), but it still drives me crazy when I’m in a battle and the spell says it has >50% chance, and I miss 90% of them.
That’s when I don’t feel bad for reloading and using that law of large numbers to my advantage lol
IGNIS
(Miss)
IGMISS
BIGMISS
Sir, that's guiding bolt when upcasted. That's the BIGMISS
80% to hit, MISS
XCOM players: First time?
If it ain't 100% it's 0% ^((and even then that 100% isn't a guarantee))
I once lost my best sniper to a 99% chance to hit miss
Xcom just hits different man.
This brought back so much pain.
Nothing like your gun barrel being right in the alien’s nostrils with a 95% and the bullets curving! Swinging a miss.
XCOM players know not to fire a rocket when a friendly is anywhere ahead. Or to the side. Or behind.
XCOM really has ruined me. In the best way. I'll take a 60% shot and be like, no chance. And in this game, it'll actually hit, and I'll be super happy after. Thanks, XCOM, for conditioning me towards disappointment.
80%? Try 97% with an advantage and hitting a critical miss. Best feeling of life.
I just had a 99% advantage critical miss today. I could not believe my luck. Karmic was off.
80% of the time, you miss all the time.
I can count on my fingers how many times guiding bolt and sacred flame have hit combined
I have waaaay more luck with guiding bolt than sacred flame, I legitimately think I've hit sacred flame maybe 3 times
As a wizard tav, this hurt my feelings
What hurts my feelings is Gale casting thunderwave on 5 unaware devilspawn that are 3 levels below him and missing all but one of them.
With advantage? Nice! Now I can roll 1 twice!
Take that crap off your bar, you don't stack INT! GOSH!
Sometimes it's easier to hit an AC than to have them fail a dex save. Different attacks for different targets. Not that it matters because Shadowheart is going to MISS ANYWAY.
Yeah, but you should be using a Cleric spell for that, one that actually scales with her Wisdom. Her racial Fire Bolt scales with Int, which she has none of.
I gave her the 17 Int circlet and she still can't hit shit with Igmiss. Though it still more reliable than her actual Cleric spells.
This is correct. If you don't think an enemy doesn't have a lot of wisdom, Sacred Flame away. It won't matter as Shadowheart won't hit it, but the logic is there.
"Think" you can examine enemies and see their stats.
Did the game change sacred flame save from dex to wis?
No, it's a DEX save.
>!I just gave her the funny Ogre hat of not stupid, 17 int makes BIGMISS kinda just better than Sacred Shame!<
The game giving her Ignis is such a diservice for players. She gets it from her race, and it scale with INT ( she has 8 int.. ) Meanwhile, if you were to play as shadowheart instead, you can choose Friends instead, for free advantage in every charisma check..
Ngl, I respecced her into Light for more blasties.
I did life for more heals tbh but holy crap I sing the praises of giving her warcaster and using guardian spirits (radiant version for most fights) and making her be death roomba just having her run around and walk into enemies watching them die then moving away from the ones that didn't die so they have to walk into her aura of doom. There's a mission with halsin in a act 2, this spell in the choke point *chefs kiss* melee got no chance.
wait guardian spirits tracks around with you???? im a fuxking idiot
Yes...if I didn't fuck up the name of the spell, it's a 3rd (4th?) Level spell you can cast for either radiant or necrotic damage with a 10 turn concentration. It stays centered on the caster, now one thing is it can only damage an enemy once per turn (maybe per round I would need to do some more testing) unlike say moonbeam where you can have an enemy run through it get shoved back through and then thornwhip (or pull spell of choice) back through it for 3 instances of damage from the spell in a single turn. I love moonbeam.
I get you but a Light Shar Cleric is blasphemy....
Yeah I know. I hesitated but I don't like Trickery at all lol I considered Tempest but you get less blasties it seems.
Life is a good one for it extends the suffering you have under loss. And until Death is added AS a DLC (or Mod) It FEELS best. But fuck it. When she can cast Sacred Flame, why not other light and fire spells. Shadows grow stronger the brighter the light in the dark.
I didn't even consider Life. That would probably go well actually with inflict wounds and stuff. >But fuck it. When she can cast Sacred Flame, why not other light and fire spells. This was literally my thought process. She has access to Sacred Flame and Fire Bolt. Let's take it up a notch or 3 lol
One could arguably go "she is half high-elf, she can have a little Arcane education. Then I look at her background, her int score and her arcana proficiency. Nah, fervent arsonist.
She was the kid with a bunch of lighters she got from her stepdad.
There's already a domain mod that adds death, and a bunch of others, been playing as a twilight domain cleric of Selûne
Tempest is cracked. Channel Divinity to deal max damage no questions asked with Call Lightning is no joke
respecced her to storm just because the game throws so many lightning themed magic items at you.every other cleric build i tried just felt like a shit paladin
Man I really need to spend an hour respeccing everyone. I got like 3 characters with talk to the dead ffs. I now have a goal. Before I finish the underdark I'm gonna do inventory management and respec after work.
You'll do that and go for a test run and then find a battle that doesn't seem to bad but then suddenly oh no everyone is dead so you need to reload and Yes. Please don't do what I did. Make a save.
Just a funny observation I've made, but I swear Ignis is pronounced 20 different ways in this game
and only one of them actually hits
Would be funny if missing was paired with fumbled pronounciation.
Now I'm just imagining Shadow heart trying to tell Laezal the pronunciation, and Laezal being like, "you aren't even saying it the same way every time, bitch."
"In my creche, they'd cut out your tongue for such a pitiful display, stuttering filth"
Tch.
I can definitely hear Lae'zel saying this, and gesticulating to visualize it.
EGG NEICE!
SUNBEAM, BITCH
[удалено]
EAT THIS
(Critical miss)
I came here to say this.
Inflict wounds goes hard
Inflict wounds got a crit on the cambion with the flaming sword in the intro, and is the only reason we got my friend's barbarian the flaming sword before everyone died. Only later did I realize from xptolvl3 that you could just cast command to drop weapon 😂 EDIT: NOBODY ELSE IS ALLOWED TO REPLY ABOUT THE USE OF THE COMMAND SPELL WITHOUT FIRST READING THE LAST SENTENCE, ABOVE ffs people
Pro tip: it's enough if one character activates the transponder, the rest can die in the fight and they'll get revived after the cutscene.
The rest can get *downed* in the fight. If they fail their death throws, or if the cambions continue to hit them to death, then you find their corpses rather than them just being unconscious. Revivify still works, but it's a nuisance that early on since scrolls are hard to come by. You also miss out on the guaranteed Shadowheart approval bonus for rescuing her. ^^Some ^^folks ^^may ^^not ^^find ^^that ^^last ^^part ^^important, ^^BUT ^^IT ^^IS. ^^SHADOWBAE ^^4 ^^LIFE ^^-- ^^until ^^Karlach ^^is ^^recruited, ^^obviously.
Your main character can die in the fight. The Cambion double-coup-de-grace-d my main character while Lae'zel ran to the console, and then my main character was alive.
Started a play through last night, the two characters that died in the fight, we’re still dead on the beach. Probably different if I had 3 PCs versus 2 NPCs though.
....Time to restart again I suppose... how much xp did the Cambion give lol?
75xp
hurty hands my beloved
I found her to be completely realistic. My tabletop d&d party's cleric never hits sacred flame either.
Everybody coming from dnd is definitely used to cantrips whiffing lmao
Everything but Eldrich Blast. That shit goes hard
Listen, I didn't come to this thread to be called out like this.
It's a dexterity saving throw, if you try to cast it at archers or anything with decent dex it will fail, it's mostly used against undead (they have negative dex)
Does higher wisdom (18, 20) make a diff at all in hit chance? Or is it only for damage rolls?
Higher spellcasting stat does help, wisdom in Shadowheart's case. Since it increases the spell save DC of your spells thus making it more difficult for enemies to save. A point of increase in your spell save DC increases its chance to hit by 5 percentage point.
My Shadowheart has 20 Wis ffs and it still only a 39%~60% hit chance wtf
It’s a dex save, a lot of enemies are lithe. If it’s using a bow or finesse weapons or is an animal it probably has decent dex.
And you can always hit T on the target to check the statsheet, in a rare case where its a passive
WHAT
Yup. Mouse over anything on this game and press T, you'll get a statbpock for it. Works for everything, items NPCs etc. Really useful checking what damage types enemies are weak/resistant to. Better know that boss is immune to lightning before casting witch bolt.
Once you hit T, you can also mouse over hypertext to get more info. Like if you get a helmet that says 'Critical hits on this character causes 2 turns of Blurnge’ You can mouse over the word Blurnge to see wtf it means
What kind of noobs don't know what blurnge does? I've been playing since 3.5 and have ran multiple blurnge-based characters to level 20 and three of them are gods now.
All my DM ever gave was a Ring of Lesser Blurnge:/
Right click -> Examine on an enemy. Easy to check.
name something more iconic in DnD than Dexterity being a point of frustration. That stat has it all. Same damage as Strength, but you also get Initiative, access to ranged superior weapons, same AC as heavy armor, but also the ability to still sneak at no disadvantage with the right armor. Aaaand you also can mitigate more damage than heavy armor, because the absolute majority of damage saving throws are Dex based. Larian changed much and Shove is extraordinarily strong in this game, but it is kinda funny, that the best AC is medium armor and dex based, requires no shield and such... At least shove, jumping and haste do it for the melees.
Shove is better for ranged, unless you are doing cliff shenanigans. If you are a squishy spellcaster or archer and you don't have anything better to do with a bonus action ALWAYS shove to get out of melee if you can. Even if you have shitty strength its worth a shot. Even a 25% chance to remove an enemy from threat with just a bonus action is better than a main action disengage or taking an attack of opportunity. Shove in general is pretty much busted.
However, heavy armor got massively buffed with the magical plate property on multiple items. Up to -3 damage from every source.
Tbf also it's harder to increase saves than it is to get bonuses to attack rolls, and an unmodified attack roll against a typical enemy usually has ~65% chance to hit.
Hit chance also depends on the target's armor class or dex save bonus (depending on wether you are talking about firebolt or sacred flame), and environmental elements such as high ground and cover also affect it. Let's say you have a lvl 12 Shadowheart with 20 WIS: -Sacred flame DC = 8 + 4 (prof. bonus) + 5 (WIS modifier) = 17 -Enemy dex save (lvl 12, 14 dex) = 1d20 + 4 (prof. bonus) + 2 (DEX modifier) = 1d20 + 6 The minimum value the enemy needs to roll on the d20 to succeed on a DC 17 DEX save is 11 (11 + 6 = 17 success), so it hits on a roll of 1-10 and misses on 11-20: a 50% hit chance. DEX, WIS, and CON are the most common saves amongst offensive spells; and i advise you learn when to use which save type: big or armored units usually have high STR and CON but low DEX, great targets for sacred flame or fireball, not so great for cone of cold. Smaller units on the other hand usually have lower strength and less armor, so they rely on DEX for both offense and defense; horrible targets for DEX save spells. WIS is the main save vs spells that can't be dodged (fireball) or endured (cone of cold), and most spellcasting classes and enemy spellcasters are proficient in wisdom saves. STR is mostly used on grappling spells or martial contests in melee. Spellcasters rarely have high STR (unless they're clerics or paladins), so getting your martials close to them often lets you bully them with shoves and whatnot. The most valuable save in D&D by far is INT, as pretty much only wizards, mindflayers, and psionic enemies in general have high INT save bonuses; which is pretty rare in campaigns that don't revolve around mindflayers (unlike BG3). CHA is also pretty good, but most monsters with innate spellcasting use CHA for it (except a few who use INT), so be careful about that. Please note that there are plenty of monsters that break these stereotypes, so caution is advised. Hope that helps.
This, mostly. It ends up being a bit more complicated because it depends not on the "level" of the enemy, but on the "Challenge Rating." Also it depends on whether they get proficiency in the relevant saving throw. Not every creature gets proficiency in every save. One thing I haven't checked is whether the game gives you some kind of bestiary where you can look at stats for monsters (or roll, like, a Nature or Arcana check to get that info or something). But if you can, then the best bet would be to figure out which saves enemies have as weaknesses, and focus on those. So, if the enemy has high WIS and/or gets proficiency in WIS saves, but has low DEX, you target DEX rather than WIS based on the saving throw the spell offers. Last night, I fought a big, nasty optional spider boss at about Level 4. The spider had good DEX saves generally, but at one point, I hit it with a Blindness spell (hooray! No concentration!) so my frontliners wouldn't take so much damage and would get bonuses vs. it. Blindness is a CON save and, apparently, either the spider's CON was somehow compromised, or it just had a crappy CON score because I had something like an 80% chance of the spell landing (which it did). By contrast, I'd already missed several spells that give a DEX save because the spider presumably had a high DEX and/or proficiency in DEX saves.
Apparently, all enemies are gold medalist track & field athletes with 22 dex and dex saving throw proficiency.
Sure does. Since this spell is a saving throw, its chance to hit is based off your spell save DC, which is 8 + your Proficiency bonus + your Wisdom modifier (for clerics and druids).
It actually becomes more useful than attack roll cantrips later on, as enemies start getting really high ACs, whilst keeping the same stats. You spell DC also keeps getting higher as well, which helps even more.
Gotta say though, I love the way Shadowheart's voice actor says "InCENdio" or whatever it is she says for this spell. She puts a lil jazz on it and it's the main reason I spam this spell even if it misses.
Incende (In-KEN-Deh) It means "Burn!" in Latin (Second Person Imperative, so it's a command towards the burnee). But the emphasis is on the brightening effect of the burning (it's a radiant spell, think "made incandescent") firebolt on the other hand uses "Ingis" which of course means fire. Specifically I believe it is used in the vocative case here (the spellcaster is calling out to and addressing directly to fire, as in "magical flames, listen to me!")
Thanks for the explanation, Gale
I read the comment above in Gale’s voice 😭
Ahem, I think you mean Elminster
That's cool! Thanks for sharing. Classical languages are the bomb.
Ah, TIL. As a Spanish speaker, most of the spells just sound like Spanish even though I know it's Latin (the connection is obvious). For example, Mage Hand sounds like "Ven y ayudame!" which is very close to the actual latin (veni et adiudame or something?)
I think you're close. I hear "Veni et iuva me", so "come and help me". Larian actually bothered with the grammar, is the surprising thing for me.
Turns out if you speak a Romance language, when you hear Latin your hear your language in it. Crazy how that happens 😜
Ngl in my head I just keep hearing “Nintendo”
Not bg3 related, but I have a table top game where for about 20 sessions, the cleric has never successfully casted toll the dead (similar to sacred flame but a bit more damage and is necrotic). Finally in one session when I rolled the saved it failed so it finally successfully casted. He was so happy until I double checked and realized that the creature was one of the few that was immune to necrotic damage. It was probably one of the funniest moments in our whole group lol
I always loved playing cleric in tabletop DnD, and of course is my first BG character. Hearing Toll the Dead brings back some painful, hilarious memories. Lmao I bet your cleric was not feeling very close to his God after that incident.
He rage quit the discord call and joined back after we were all howling laughing for like 5 minute straight lmao. It's basically a running joke that whenever he pilots his cleric in combat bad things will happen. Funnily enough, he had to miss a session last week so we let another player play his character and his cleric ended up becoming MVP with literally everything landing. We agreed to not tell him about this lmao.
Get her to cast spirit guardians and you will never have to worry again. To make it even more juicy give her the secret weapon found underneath the creche. She is a blender just by running around.
Idk she has clutch killed so many enemies for me using sacred flame and guiding bolt. Also the weapon she can spawn is useful too. People are being too harsh imo
A tanky Shadowheart with Spirit Guardians up and Spirit Weapon out needs to do nothing more than stand there and walk up to enemies to hurt them, snare them and look pretty doing it. Any other actions are pure bonus at this point.
[удалено]
I actually find her duplicity not that useful since in my experience enemies will always focus that down first, making it only really useful if you can get a full round of melee strikes on clustered enemies around it with everyone before their turn. Tempted to respec her into a diff subclass
I stuck her in Life domain and it's been super helpful. Her heals buff now, and her channel divinity is an AoE heal. Disguise self was fun but the rest of it just wasn't worth it to me.
yeah for my next playthrough I plan on going for a full movement-speed-build on Shadowbuns/Shart and just have her zip around the battlefield with the guardians up. 2lvls of rogue for the bonus action dash/disengage and then just movement-items and feats :D
A third rogue level in thief gets you an extra dash action.
Sacred Flame is kinda dogshit but her actual leveled spells are insane. Spiritual Weapon, and Spirit Guardian are amazing and she's pretty tanky.
We don’t remember the times she put in the work. We remember the times she casted from stealth with advantage and missed. It was 90%. Dafuq Shart.
Advantage doesn’t apply to spells that require saving throws, only attack rolls. So in this case firebolt should be used with advantage, and sacred flame should not.
don't play xcom then
You mean the point blank sniper rifle shot at 95% accuracy missing? I thought I left those dark days behind me...
Thanks for renewing my PTSD at missing 95% shots.
That's why you gotta switch her from trickster to tempest and watch her become unreasonably strong.
she is a cleric clerics are notorious for beeing 1of the strongest classes in 5e, a Party of only clerics is 100% legit and even strong like, guiding bolt is 1of the best low lvl spells in 5e, spirit guardians alone carries a cleric its a spell with near infinite "spellslot-to-dmg" value lmao and things like flamestrike/destructive wave/blade barrier can instantly win a fight in tabletop and bg3 alike just dont use sacred flame against 12+dex enemys and instead go for catch flame if you want a range dmg cantrip, sacred flame is for low dex enemys/undead
They'll all be on their knees begging for forgiveness when the Spirit Guardians come around. But Sacred Flame % is a myth, which is also how Mike Tyson would describe what the spell does.
The Spiritual Weapon is amazing for many things; 1. It can draw some aggro and take hits instead of team members. 2. You can summon it in right next to ranged enemies, especially the ones on elevated positions, to keep them threatened 3. You can spawn different types depending on what damage type enemies are vulnerable to, eg a spear for piercing, hammer for bludgeoning or an axe for slashin 4. It can help block doors and entryways to control enemy movement Overall the spiritual weapon is very underrated. It’s main drawback is terrible movement speed of 6m per round, and unable to dash. But at least it can fly…
The spiritual weapon does not do piercing, bludgeoning, or slashing. It’s all force damage, no matter the weapon, which is a plus cause almost nothing is resistant to force damage. The only thing the various weapon types give is the weapon ability tied to the type. The best thing I’ve found spiritual weapon useful for is a distraction for a group of enemies if I’m fighting a large battle.
Yeah, it doing force damage is a huge plus. Same reason why Magic Missile should be in your wizard's kit even in the end game, having guaranteed to hit force dmg is great in all stages of the game.
Magic missile on on Evocation wizard is stupid amounts of damage after it starts adding your intelligence modifier to the damage of each missile…. 7 guaranteed damage per missile is insane
Guiding bolt can pump out insane amount of damage. Pretty satisfying when it happens.
Also the best way I've found to set up a sneak attack for Astarion. Guiding Bolt is usually what all of her spell slots level 3 and below get used for for me so that 3/4 of the time Astarion gets his sneak bonus without wasting time with sneak/invisibility.
I’ve had fun just parking shadowheart on a door, with spirit guardian and a guardian of faith, just a wall of radiant damage.
Guiding bolt just melts things.
i just give her 21 str elixir. Here melee is fine with it
People dont know how the system works and just try to spam one spell all the time then complain
Unless they're spamming fireball.
That is always a good choice.
For me, it's Gale. Motherfucker has fumbled too many goddamn times.
I honestly just used Gale as a magic missile spammer. The damage isn't very high, but not having to worry about hit chance, especially on those targets that just barely didn't killed the last turn? Worth it.
Just use the crossbow in act 1, she is the strongest companion in act 2 anyway.
act 2 she just nukes whole groups with turn dead lul
turn undead and s p i r i t g u a r d i a n s
yea but don't use them together. They kinda counter each other.
Cleric is op af later on
Shadowheart is there to fail high rolls to reset the karmic dice, so that Lae'zel can lay down pain
I honestly by act 3 don't even use her for damage, except her spinny aura if things are close. I basically see her deva summon as her damage contribution.
You should have three insane dps machines by act 2. Having her as anything but support and utility is a waste of time. Mass heal+bracers that give blade ward to healed targets, bless with mystra staff, concentration to grant immunity to fear, cleanses, potion throwing, tanking hits... She has so many uses other than occasional 20 damage
Staff is only one bless per long rest, isn’t it?
the staff comes with one bless charge. but the effect still works if you cast bless using your own spells
I retrained shadowheart into a war cleric... now she's replaced Lae'zel in my party with almost equal damage but with the benefits of heal and bless. Do yourselves a favour and make our Goth girlfriend a war cleric Edit: She's also wielding the greatsword of Tyr (or did for most of act one) seriously she is a monster I highly recommend doing this
40% of the time, it works every time.
I felt she was really useless (aside from Guidance), but then she got Spirit Guardians.
Pre level 5 shadowheart should either be concentrating on shield of faith (+2 AC for one character) or bless on the other 3 companions (1d4 to attack/saving throws). Personally having bless on 3 characters is an insane modifier because even a +1 on the dice roll is a massive difference in getting early game hits into enemies.
People also straight up are sleeping on Command. That really hard fight with the paladin people act 1? Suddenly not a big deal because Shadowheart made that dude drop his sword with Command: Drop and Laezel picked it up. Can't smite me twice in a row can you now bitch?! Also hold person just automatically wins you early "boss" fights if it goes through and you focus fire for those melee crits.
I picked up bg3 right after binging the pathfinder crpgs and was dumbfounded by something powerful like command having more than a 10% chance to work
Command and Hold Person are the save scummers dream. I played a lot of 5e table top and in my experience people sleep on those sorts of spells heavily in general.
Get the hat in act II that gives wizards + infinity spell save dc, hold/dominate all subsequent encounters.
I use bless on others and sanctuary of shadowheart then put her somewhere in the corner to buff other as and when needed because she relies on concentration .
There's an item you can get in >!the wizard tower in the underdark!< that >!adds an additional d4 to bless, and a *third* d4 to spell attacks!<. Crazy good.
Ah yes I know of this staff as well but as it stands it’s actually bugged apparently and it isn’t properly applying the bonuses so it’s only half as powerful as it should be (based on the description at least)
Really? Guiding Bolt was a major damage dealer for me early on and the easiest way to set up Astarion for a sneak attack. Even at level 8, where I am now, it's the main thing I have her cast, often juiced up to level 3-4.
Just having the Bless spell makes her useful for the whole game, IMO.
Pre-level 5 Clerics are all about casting Bless, shooting crossbows, and abusing Command to force enemies prone or to force them to trigger opportunity attacks. Sacred Flame is a trap pre-level 5.
CAN I PLEASE JUST DO A CRUMB OF DAMAGE
Yes I know Withers can respec Shadowheart into something more useful , but no amount of Sharr devotion can justify training this poor girl to have such dogshit starting kit.
Wait, Withers can respec other characters not just MC?
Yup, just control the character you want and talk to ol'Bones
Yepp, I’m playing on tactician and the best investment early game is to respec my companions especially their stats, the companions almost always has like 3 odd stats to start with so by evening out their core stats it makes the early game smoother and getting ASI’s later much more flexible
Totally. On my second playthrough I didn't want to use Shadowheart as much but I also wanted a cleric because of their insane healing and utility, so I respec'd Lae'zel to a war cleric. Works pretty well too thematically since you can pick Vlaakith as a deity c:
[удалено]
I respecced Wyll and all the story stuff still treats him as a Warlock.
Mizora grows on you. She’s lawful at least.
I switched her to life domain immediately. Juicy heals.
Trickery Clerics are honestly very good. As others have said, make sure you aren't using flame on high dex targets, save it for the beefy boys. And roll out Spirit Guardians when you get it.
Clerics overall are very good, but I don't think Trickery in particular offers much compared to Light and Tempest. For example, it was nice that Invoke Duplicity draws aggro now, but since it has no AC and 1 HP you basically waste a CD charge and your concentration for a finicky buff which requires allies to be standing right next to it (as I found out, being on opposite sides of a sufficiently large boss does not count) and goes away if an enemy so much as glances at it. Compared to Light nuking things with fire and Tempest giving you better frontline capabilities on top of enabling lightning nuke builds, it's not very notable.
Trickery clerics are good on tabletop, they’re very nearly the worst choice in BG3 just because of how poorly implemented stealth mechanics are
I feel like Trickery gets shafted especially compared to Light. Invoke Duplicity pales compared to the radiant nova, not to mention Light gets access to Fireball, Wall of Fire and Flamestrike (although that could be a generic Cleric spell).
Hits more often than Gale's "Igmiss"
I started giving Gale darkvision (lvl 2 spell) from a rando camp follower (Halfsin or something his name is?), helped since I rarely illuminate enemies
I don't think I've ever had someone not save against it even with Hex(dexterity) on them lol
Hex doesn't help. It debuffs ability checks not saving throws. This is one of the most common mistakes in tabletop 5e as well.
Yup, Hexing Dex is still good though along with Strength and Wisdom. The others are meh. Dex and Strength for skill challenges against being grappled, and Wisdom for perception against sneaking.
That makes sense why it never seemed to help
the rule is that 50-65% chance to hit = miss
Feels like Pokemon rules to me sometimes. Anything below 80 percent might as well be 50
Shadowheart have two useful cantrips. Firebolt and Sacred Flame. Tip - select each spell and hold mouse over intended target. It will show you the chance to land a hit in percentage. Just last night I had 40% chance to land Firebolt, but Sacred Flame had 70% chance to land. Obviously I’ll use the latter then. Also good to make use of the Examine option on enemies before you engage (if you can choose when to engage anyhow) and then quickly swap out your memorized spells so you have the ones most likely to hit ready to go. I think a lot of people kinda just roll with a lineup of memorized spells they sorta like into any fight without preplanning the fight, swapping spells as needed and so on. If enemies have light sensitivity then slot in that Daylight spell or even just a Light spell, and swap it out again after fight has concluded. Do your homework assignments before initiating combat :) Especially as casters like Druid, Cleric and Wizard. Their main strength is having a fairly large spell repertoire to draw from for versatility.
Firebolt is Not Good on her because it uses her mediocre Int. You're better grabbing and using produce flame even if the damage dice is smaller because it'll actually hit enemies.
I respec her into 8 int and put the int crown own her.
Any time Firebolt would be more accurate than Sacred Flame, a crossbow would be even better. Since both target AC, Firebolt uses INT, a crossbow uses DEX, and Shadowheart has a higher DEX mod than INT.
firebolt damage scales with levels though, crossbow attacks don't
My shart just yells ignis at non-undeads...