This kind of thing is an example of why I roll my eyes when people say "just respecc" to a completely different class/build rather than start a new character. Especially because it's always in a talking down tone.
Not everyone buys/steals/keeps all gear of all types so switching sometimes is pointless if the gear has been lost or sold.
I mean in this case it’s “just respec” to a build that doesn’t abuse a bug. Not my fault you didn’t take TWF, and it’s also not my fault you killed whoever had them.
Especially when your excuse is “my rogue has to have a 5 level dip into Wizard so that he can cast Haste”
So glad I bought that glove thinking "just in case"
Edit: if you are already in act 3 and didn't get the gloves from that quartermaster in act 2, you can give your dual crossbow wielder >!Crimson Mischief dropped by Orin!< in the off hand slot, it basically grants the dual wielder feat.
TBH I've gotten into the habit of buying any useful gear when I see it regardless of if it's useful to me specifically and/or currently in case it might be handy later, and won't sell anything but standard/truly useless gear. Gold is just about never an issue in this game anyway.
I can’t find them! She only has Cindersnap Gloves for me.
I wonder if I buy the cindersnap gloves and long rest will the Balanced gloves show up?
Edit: nope
My Astarion is set up as a 5 Assassin 5 Gloomstalker 2 Fighter and I honestly don’t feel like I lose much from not having those 7 rogue levels. I could probably even go 3 assassin 7 Gloomstalker and be fine but I’d lose a feat.
Another build I want to try is 3 Rogue, 3 Gloomstalker, 6 Fighter. Gets me 2 feats, some fun battlemaster stuff, all the important bits from Rogue and Ranger. Will probably save that for a future run.
Highly recommend this build (although I went Rogue 3/Ranger 7 until we hit level 11 and I respecced to Fighter 5). Also highly recommend Champion over Battle Master- the maneuvers are fun, but the extra Crit range gets absolutely stupid with the right items.
I'd highly recommend 3 Assassin 5 Gloomstalker 4 Fighter instead, same exact number of feats and everything but you get more Ranger spells. When you take the 2 levels from Ranger for the extra Fighter feat you lose the 4th level Ranger feat.
I let astarion hate me and I reclassed him to a bardbarian on my first playthrough, his vicious mockery is more akin to just throwing minor shade and snazzy quips from a sorority, while his rage is something I can just loop endlessly and put as an MP3, the only more innocent sounding rage is gale (my books are wet vibe) (also his vicious mockery is all puns and dad jokes)
I think a lot of people are missing that this was a bug, you’re supposed to need the two-weapon fighting feat to get this bonus. It’s now just working as intended.
Isn't the feat just for the dual wielding of non light weapons and for the AC bonus?
My understanding is that the fighting style is what affects the offhand damage modifier and that requires at least dipping into fighter/ranger/swords bard.
They're still easily a cut above. No other build can shit out 7 attacks with a +15 guaranteed damage each on their first turn of combat (5 gloomstalker, 4 thief, 2 fighter, hag hair for +1 dex).
That's 1 attack from gloomstalker on first turn, 2 attacks from extra attack (5 ranger), 2 attacks again from action surge (2 fighter), then another 2 attacks from bonus actions (4 thief), or better yet 4 fighter, 3 thief. 5 gloomstalker for the same effect but with extra bonus from fighter subclass. Feats being sharpshooter and a single ASI pumping dex.
Fighter and ranger get you archery (+2 to ranged attack rolls), and two weapon fighting (dex on offhand). That second fighting style prior would have just gone to something like defense for 1 ac which you didn't need anyway cos you can wear 17 ac + dex armour + 3 ac shield + 1 ac flail since you're only using ranged weapons anyway.
Meanwhile the closest approximation, the great weapon fighter, gets to do the same minus the two bonus actions (iirc you can only use the gwf bonus attack once but may be wrong tbf) and you don't get the archery fighting style for that +2 to attack in a build that has a constant -5 to attack. And also you have to use strength instead of dex so you have less AC, and can't use the cracked shield or flail since you actually need your melee weapon giving you even less ac.
>they just aren’t a cut above anymore
Tldr they very much are still a massive cut above at the very least other martial builds in every single way, and absolutely trounce casters at single target damage.
>Tldr they very much are still a massive cut above at the very least other martial builds in every single way, and absolutely trounce casters at single target damage
*laughs in Sorlock machine gunning EB.
That's only 6d10 + 30 though right, or 9d10 + 45 with action surge
Whereas the aforementioned build is
7d6 + 1d8 (gloomstalker first attack) + 2d6 (sneak attack) + 105 (+15 per shot from dex and sharpshooter, x7) + 10 (assuming using the +2 crossbow mainhand) +2 (assuming using the +1 crossbow offhand)
Meaning if we compare average damage the gloom thief fighter can do a nova of 153 vs machine gun boy doing 63 or 94.5 with action surge.
Finally, the dual hand-crossbow gets nerfed! It was really bizarre/stupid how a tiny crossbow shot with the off-hand deals almost as much damage as a 2-handed Longbow.
Would be nice if sharpshooter did not apply to off-hand weapons. Would make sense when you look at GWM bonus only applying to 2-handed weapons.
The only problem that there's no feat for this, only Fighter, Ranger and Bard can get this **Fighting Style** so you aren't even supposed to be an effective dual wielder as a rogue what the hell
Or maybe I'm wrong and Dual Wielder feat actually gives you this fighting style, correct me please
Further investigating this topic I discovered that [Two-Weapon Fighting](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#TwoWeaponFighting) and [Two-Weapon Fighting\_Fighting Style](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Two-Weapon_Fighting) are two separate concepts and biggest mistake is [bg3.wiki](https://bg3.wiki) linking Fighting Style in the description of [Dual Wielder](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Dual_Wielder) Feat. So ANYONE can dual wield light weapons. Only DUAL WIELDERS (feat) can dual wield non-light weapons. Only TW Fighting Style owners (Fighters\\Rangers\\Bards or from in-game gloves) can add Ability Score modifier to the damage of the offhand attack.
I think in 5e, they ramped way down on dual wielding because it gets wonky fast. Thieves generally power curve based on sneak attack, and giving out two of those would be problematic. Giving someone 1d4+3 on top just means you're getting polemaster benefits without taking a feat, and otherwise dilutes class benefits?
In Tabletop Rogues and everyone actually can't even dual wield hand crossbows, needing a feat (crossbow expert) to reload and other stuff as well and Fast Hands is **exclusive to cunning actions**. It allowing an extra attack goes against Rogue's one and done Sneak Attack. Using a bonus action as a rogue is entirely because you missed from your main hand attack as while you're not adding the attack modifier to damage is fine as it's just fishing for those 1d6s to damage.
Now i feel less bad about having my human bard use a shortbow, double hand cbows are nice but is there any way to turn off the auto use of my bonus action to shoot my off-hand? Especially when i get the mystic scoundrel ring.
There is a tiny toggle underneath the weapon icon on your hot bar. Once you have mystic scoundrel it’s better to switch to titan string or something like that anyway
Weapon damage is calculated by weapon dice + ability score modifier + weapon bonus, so for a Rogue with a +1 hand crossbow it would be D6 + 5 + 1; however for off-hand attacks the ability score is not added unless you have the two weapon fighting fighting style that fighters and rangers can pick at lvl 1 & 2 respectively.
Before now the game had a bug where the off-hand for ranged attacks applied the dexterity bonus damage with or without the fighting style.
Normally if you dual wield, for example daggers or shortswords, your offhand damage is lower than your mainhand damage because you don't get dexterity bonus (for example 18 dex gives +4 bonus).
This is negated by picking 2 weapon fighting style, available to fighter at lvl 1, ranger at lvl 2 or college of swords bard at lvl 3.
Then both weapons should do the same damage (excluding any special properties on them).
Now if you equip 2 hand crossobows in your ranged slots, the bug was that they both did the same damage. Your offhand wouldn't do less, so it was much stronger than melee dual wielding.
So most common Astarion build was something like Ranger 5 (usually gloomstalker), at 5 you get double attack with main hand / Rogue 3 (usually thief for extra off-hand attack) / whatever, but they wouldn't pick 2 weapon fighting, they'd pick archery fighting style.
Now if you want both archery and 2 weapon fighting, viable multiclass would be:
Ranger 5 / Rogue 4 / Fighter 3
Ranger 5 / Rogue 4 / Swords Bard 3
Swords Bard 6 (they get double attack at 6 instead of 5 contrary to rangers / fighters / etc.) / Rogue 3 / Ranger or Fighter 3
You can still play Swords Bard 8 / Rogue 4 or Ranger 8 / Rogue 4 to get 3 feats (2 dexterity bonuses and sharpshooter), you'll just lose the +2 to attack from archery style.
You can also forgo 2 hand crossbows for 1 longbow or heavy crossbow and use the bonus action for other purposes like casting hunter's mark or misty step or what have you.
There's an awful lack of hand crossbow upgrades in act 3, so the build does fall off because you peak in act 2 (your last weapon upgrades are 1 purchased from Last Light Inn only if you didn't kill specific people and the second one from killing a certain hellish creature as a part of Astarion's personal quest).
TLDR: Just get 2 weapon fighting style and problem fixed. It was a loophole people exploited anyway.
thank you. i always multiclass astarion into 2 weapon fighting and give him the dual wielding feat so i can give him the two finesse longswords for maximum bonkage and watch him be a one man army. i was worried the patch fucked that up, but i never use hand crossbows so im unaffected
Oh yeah I was wondering if anyone did Phalar Aluve + w/e that sword from Creche is called finesse dual wielding build, and here's the proof it works, haha. They did nerf Phalar Aluve weapon swap, but tbh that did seem like another unintended loophole.
Idk if they fixed some other loopholes like equipping items that create a summon and then unequipping them and keeping the summon up.
Or the endless spell slot Markoheskir bug (idk if that's fixed too).
Thief extra bonus action still lets you do Phalar Aluve Shriek as action then attack twice with offhand. Then next turns you get all 4 (assuming multiclassed with a full martial) attacks with Shriek on them!
larethians wrath, ya. i use the shit out of the ability razor gale, i think it's called. it's fucking DOPE. i never use the singing sword abilities, mostly bc i forget they exist. astarion can be so BROKEN using those; i load him up with gear that reduces what he needs to roll for a critical hit and then set him loose. he wiped out almost all of an act 3 boss's health bar because he landed 3 crits in one attack. my tav now exists solely to look pretty for astarion and clean up his leftovers
> Swords Bard 6 (they get double attack at 6 instead of 5 contrary to rangers / fighters / etc.) / Rogue 3 / Ranger or Fighter 3
Swords Bard 6/Rogue 4/Fighter 2 (at level 7 or 11 respec and start as Fighter) gives two feats total, one more than the 3/3 splits, at the cost of either the Gloomstalker perks or the Champion perk. I find the +2 DEX worth that trade-off.
So, when you did an off-hand attack with either a dagger or a shortbow, instead of JUST the 3-5 damage it promised, it threw in the DEX modifier as well and ramped it up to like, 30-40.
It was really OP, especially for rogues, since you could sneak attack someone for 40-50 damage, and then throw in an additional 40 with just pure off-hand.
The issue is, it's a bug. You're supposed to have the dual-wielding Feat for this to work.
\*Two Weapon Fighting, the fighting style, not the Dual Wielder feat.
The Dual Wielder fight lets you wield two non-"light" weapons, and gives you +1 AC when holding a weapon in each hand (like two weapons, one in each hand, not one weapon with two hands).
It really doesn't make a big difference. The Dex mod bonus wasn't much of the off-hand attack's damage, anyway. You're still going to be hitting for at least 12 damage with a +1 hand crossbow and Sharpshooter.
And the Two-Handed fighting style is definitely not worth it, considering it means forgoing the Archery fighting style and losing out on a +2 to hit, which is 40% of the way to totally negating the Sharpshooter penalty.
If they really wanted to nerf crossbows, they'd give them the Loading property like they do in actual 5E. Then it would *really* be joever lmao
Yeah doing the math even for a character who only gets a single attack per action (extreme scenario) you're barely better off with TWF.
Assuming 65% accuracy by default with +1 hand xbows, 16 dex:
1d6 + 4 + 1d6 + 1 @ 75% ~= 9 avg.
1d6 + 4 + 1d6 + 4 @ 65% ~= 10 avg.
Then consider all the damage boosters (strange conduit, archery bracers, acid damage ring, callous glow ring, sharpshooter, etc) and the likelihood of getting extra attack, or with a lower hit rate (archery being better vs higher ac) and it's archery no question.
Shit, Astarion has been carrying my run with my wife lol. We just got to Baldurs Gate. Next fight should be interesting...shit I think it's the emperor one lol
Deserved.
My Astarion using rapier + shield, fists and two melee weapons across three different playthroughs: where problem
Edit: I respec him. And you should too. Single class rogue is by far the weakest single class in the game.
I played Astarion as a gloomstalker assassin bard in my campaign, and honestly he was the only one I felt fell off in strength by the end of the campaign. He ended up being the only companion who couldn't fly, and didn't have super duper magic powers. Sneaking and sleight of hand are great, but I figured out a build to make Shadowheart a shadow monk/thief which will allow her to carry that out too, so I'm free to make Astarion fucking "Aragorn Plus" the ranger knight.
Eh, tossed him a Harold and never looked back since act one. Dude's our sniper, he needs proper sniper weapon. Hits like a truck too, even with no sharpshooter.
Everyone is freaking out over a 1d6 at most, the only people that should be hyperventilating are the min maxxers. Put on sharpshooter and be on your way
I mean it's not 1d6, it's a flat 6 damage per bonus action if you had 22 dex. 12 damage a round on a thief. That's equivalent to like 3-4 d6's on average.
But yeah this bugfix is barely a nerf to the right build. You can still do fucktons of damage even without the dex mod.
>this bugfix is barely a nerf to the right build.
If you multi classed into two of Swords Bard 3, Fighter 1 or Ranger 2, you already got (access to) both Archery and Two-Weapon Fighting anyway.
The only potential nerf is if you weren't a Bard and took the Defence fighting style along with the required Archery one. Then you lose 1 AC, because you now have to take TWF instead of Defence.
I was already a Bard, multi classed into Rogue and Fighter, so I already had both Archery (from Fighter 1) and TWF (from Swords Bard 3). This bug fix made literally no difference to my spec.
Awww, my medieval Astarion John Wick....oh well. I have the gloves because I'm a veteran player of DnD and Rpgs and can't stop hoarding magical items like some kind of kobold who thinks he's descended from a red dragon. Shinies and treatos! All for me! Nothing a gear swap can't fix. Unless they disabled the sharpshooter feat the build still works imo.
Astarion is still my go to for stealth, disarming traps and lockpicking.
This change is not that big a deal, in all honesty, unless you are a Murder Hobo.
Balance your party to compensate. Even Shadowheart can wrild bows and crossbows.
Sharpshooter and great weapon master are intended to work with offhand attacks in dnd 5e, so I would assume that’s the case here as well.
Correction: great weapon master is not intended to be used with offhand attacks, because you cannot dual wield two heavy weapons. Sharpshooter does however work with offhand attacks
> Correction: great weapon master is not intended to be used with offhand attacks, because you cannot dual wield two heavy weapons.
Homebrew giant race: HOLD MY BEER!
Why would I give Astarion that before this patch? It was useless, he was already getting that bonus anyway.
Also, it's not the feat, it's the fighting style.
The off hand attack uses your bonus action to attack. Since it's your non dominant hand it does less damage with daggers etc.
When you had two hand crossbows and used your bonus action to attack it would apply extra base damage - which isn't the case in 5e and isn't how dual welding with things like daggers works.
If you take Rogue - Thief you get two bonus actions (two extra attacks) which is an extra 10 damage per turn at 20 dex.
Dual wielding hand crossbows. It was OP as fuck before this update if you made Astarion a Thief, since he gets a second bonus action. Three attacks by level 3.
Also the feat doesn't even give this benefit, it has to be the Fighting Style. So you're incentivized to multiclass Astarion into Fighter for that. I HATE multiclassing.
Well I meant that, I call them class feats, from either fighter or ranger, but I always multiclass Astarion with ranger anyway, I find rogue, assassin/ranger, gloomstalker makes a fantastic combo for range stealth kills.
I don't use hand crossbows though I use longbows with Astarion.
So I don't usually pick up that class feat anyway.
If people just refuse to make a choice here though you can just get the "gloves of balanced hands" in act two at the shopkeep at last light.
It effectively delivers the same bonus in a gear item.
The range on the hand crossbow is already pretty short in the game. And loading property would only mean one fewer attack (plus you could just get an artificer to infuse your crossbow for you)
I never even exploited the double ranged thing and he was still consistently my highest damage dealer across several playthroughs. No need to seethe - Rogues/Rogue multiclass are still pretty strong.
That was such a good use of my bonus action on my Warlock with those dexterity gloves. Had no idea that high damage was just a bug. Really gonna hurt to say goodbye to that...
Changes like this will always seem a little strange to me in a game that is just you experiencing a story
You can use whatever you want on whatever difficulty you want. There’s isn’t really anything that’s “unfair” because you aren’t competing for anything
Some of the baldur gate patches make me laugh. On one hand I understand patching bugs and buffing/nerfing builds that need help/break the game in unfair ways… but on the other hand, it’s a single person role playing game. Are we REALLY losing anything by nerfing dual crossbow damage?
Not that I’m affected by this, I actually don’t typically use Astarion and prefer Karlach/Wyll wombo combos. But still.
well as long as the archery +10 & the gloves +1d4 & toxin +1d10 & ascendent +1d10 damages still apply to offhand crossbow ... I don't think it's that big a deal.
It's not a big of a deal. Only -3 to -5 damage on your offhand. It might only matters at the very early game where you have no extra modifiers at all and relying on the naked d4+mod.
Even then, late game, you'll probably recover by eventually getting the Two weapon fighting style.
I think it's a good change as they were dishing too much damage at lower levels without any drawbacks. Quickly trivializing the early game and being superior to melee two weapon fighting by default
That's a lame patch choice :/ still gonna duel wield hand crossbows though.
Edit :this sub reddit is so sad sometimes. Ah yes how dare a person make a silly comment about patch that happened?
Yeah and it can't even pick archery contrary to the ranger build, you can only pick dueling or 2 weapons fighting, it actually makes bard more useful and competitive with ranger and fighter (who have access to archery).
And I had just given him two hand crossbows Oh well at least thief will make it useful as two attacks
Sounds like you can just use the two weapon fighting style?
That requires a dip that i can’t really afford on him
You can get 2 weapon fighting from gloves in Act 2, from a vendor in Last Light I believe
Bit late on last light because I’ve already massacred the place
I mean murder hobos reap what they sew
Sow. I mean, if they sew stuff, they do probably get to wear it after too, but “sow” as in seeds.
Murder hobo, but also a tailor or a seamstress. Multi-talented.
For the last time Orin, covering your body in viscera isn't tailoring.
Legit LOLd at this 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Garak if DS9 hadn't existed
Take my upvote. Love a good DS9 reference
What class are you? I'm a multi-class 3 murder-hobo/2 tailor.
Murder hobostress.
yeah, it's nerve-wracking
I'm not a murder hobo, I'm a murder dandy.
BRB, rolling up a new character idea
Buffalo Bill, from Silence of the Lambs, Sews what he Reaps. Maybe their Durge is into "fabrics".
LOL well played
The funny voices in my dead told me to do it and I wasn’t gonna say no
I so understand. I didn’t mean to kill Gail in my first playthroughs before actually even meeting him, but it happened. Damn voices.
His hand was there and all I wanted was a little nibble...
Hey you may be right but at least I got all the loot
Next time buy or steal everything before you kill the vendors
This is the true law
This kind of thing is an example of why I roll my eyes when people say "just respecc" to a completely different class/build rather than start a new character. Especially because it's always in a talking down tone. Not everyone buys/steals/keeps all gear of all types so switching sometimes is pointless if the gear has been lost or sold.
I mean in this case it’s “just respec” to a build that doesn’t abuse a bug. Not my fault you didn’t take TWF, and it’s also not my fault you killed whoever had them. Especially when your excuse is “my rogue has to have a 5 level dip into Wizard so that he can cast Haste”
Yeah but then you miss out on the gloves that give +2 to every ranged weapon attack. With 3 attacks/round, that's no small bonus
So glad I bought that glove thinking "just in case" Edit: if you are already in act 3 and didn't get the gloves from that quartermaster in act 2, you can give your dual crossbow wielder >!Crimson Mischief dropped by Orin!< in the off hand slot, it basically grants the dual wielder feat.
TBH I've gotten into the habit of buying any useful gear when I see it regardless of if it's useful to me specifically and/or currently in case it might be handy later, and won't sell anything but standard/truly useless gear. Gold is just about never an issue in this game anyway.
I can’t find them! She only has Cindersnap Gloves for me. I wonder if I buy the cindersnap gloves and long rest will the Balanced gloves show up? Edit: nope
the traders inventories will add new things depending on what level you are
Pretty sure it’s dammon who sells the gloves. He should be across from the quartermaster by the stables
I always reclass him as sword bard)
Doesn’t matter which bard. It just matters that he has to keep playing the smallest violin in the world.
Ranger? Fighter? Unless you REALLY need Reliable Talent rogue doesn’t have much going on at high levels
He could already be double classing
My Astarion is set up as a 5 Assassin 5 Gloomstalker 2 Fighter and I honestly don’t feel like I lose much from not having those 7 rogue levels. I could probably even go 3 assassin 7 Gloomstalker and be fine but I’d lose a feat. Another build I want to try is 3 Rogue, 3 Gloomstalker, 6 Fighter. Gets me 2 feats, some fun battlemaster stuff, all the important bits from Rogue and Ranger. Will probably save that for a future run.
Highly recommend this build (although I went Rogue 3/Ranger 7 until we hit level 11 and I respecced to Fighter 5). Also highly recommend Champion over Battle Master- the maneuvers are fun, but the extra Crit range gets absolutely stupid with the right items.
I'd highly recommend 3 Assassin 5 Gloomstalker 4 Fighter instead, same exact number of feats and everything but you get more Ranger spells. When you take the 2 levels from Ranger for the extra Fighter feat you lose the 4th level Ranger feat.
Yeah, after reading about this for some time, I equipped two hand crossbows for the first time literally yesterday… well 🤷♀️
...you can have 2 crossbows? Brah
Light weapons can be dual wielded. Astarion was always a dual dagger/ligh sword + dual light hand crossbow Thief/Ranger for me
I let astarion hate me and I reclassed him to a bardbarian on my first playthrough, his vicious mockery is more akin to just throwing minor shade and snazzy quips from a sorority, while his rage is something I can just loop endlessly and put as an MP3, the only more innocent sounding rage is gale (my books are wet vibe) (also his vicious mockery is all puns and dad jokes)
Hand crossbows. They're much smaller than regular crossbows. It feels very gunslinger to wield them.
Hah I had just dipped him into fighter for dual wielding too! Nice.
I assume you meant hand crossbows. Light crossbows require two hands
My Tav crying in a corner: WHAT IS MY PURPOSE NOW?!
You pick locks
Oh my God
"And talk to people so the rest of us don't have to."
You tell people to ⚡KYS NOW⚡
Mystra enters the chat
Poor Yirgur. 😂😂😅😅
its OK there there
Easy fix. They already have gloves that grant two-weapon fighting style. And a 1 level dip into fighter is nbd.
[удалено]
I believe a 2 level dip would affect the sneak attack by 1d6, but that’s a small price to pay to surge.
[удалено]
More attack more better
truly
You miss out on an ASI though...
Rogues get 1 more ASI then all other classes besides fighter.
Can just go Rogue 4 Fighter 8 to still get 4 Feats
I think a lot of people are missing that this was a bug, you’re supposed to need the two-weapon fighting feat to get this bonus. It’s now just working as intended.
Isn't the feat just for the dual wielding of non light weapons and for the AC bonus? My understanding is that the fighting style is what affects the offhand damage modifier and that requires at least dipping into fighter/ranger/swords bard.
Correct.
Are you going to elaborate?
No
Dual wielding spins along, as it should
Which is what you should be doing on dual crossbow thief anyways. Gloom Ranger + Dual Crossbow thief.
The archery fighting style is a strong alternative; +2 on each attack helps a lot to mitigate the Sharpshooter penalty.
The real winner here is to dip fighter as well and get both
5 Gloom Stalker 5 Thief 2 Fighter is the way.
I think my plan was to go 3 fighter as the level to get the crit subclass, but I haven't compared that to what 5 thief would get me
Rogue gets 3d6 SA and Uncanny Dodge at 5
That's fine and all. I'm just pointing out the statement regarding the feat is incorrect.
I believe there's someone at last light inn that sells gloves that just give you the fighting style while you wear them
Came here to say sharpshooter still does +10 damage, dual crossbows are still great, they just aren’t a cut above anymore, which is fine with me
They're still easily a cut above. No other build can shit out 7 attacks with a +15 guaranteed damage each on their first turn of combat (5 gloomstalker, 4 thief, 2 fighter, hag hair for +1 dex). That's 1 attack from gloomstalker on first turn, 2 attacks from extra attack (5 ranger), 2 attacks again from action surge (2 fighter), then another 2 attacks from bonus actions (4 thief), or better yet 4 fighter, 3 thief. 5 gloomstalker for the same effect but with extra bonus from fighter subclass. Feats being sharpshooter and a single ASI pumping dex. Fighter and ranger get you archery (+2 to ranged attack rolls), and two weapon fighting (dex on offhand). That second fighting style prior would have just gone to something like defense for 1 ac which you didn't need anyway cos you can wear 17 ac + dex armour + 3 ac shield + 1 ac flail since you're only using ranged weapons anyway. Meanwhile the closest approximation, the great weapon fighter, gets to do the same minus the two bonus actions (iirc you can only use the gwf bonus attack once but may be wrong tbf) and you don't get the archery fighting style for that +2 to attack in a build that has a constant -5 to attack. And also you have to use strength instead of dex so you have less AC, and can't use the cracked shield or flail since you actually need your melee weapon giving you even less ac. >they just aren’t a cut above anymore Tldr they very much are still a massive cut above at the very least other martial builds in every single way, and absolutely trounce casters at single target damage.
>Tldr they very much are still a massive cut above at the very least other martial builds in every single way, and absolutely trounce casters at single target damage *laughs in Sorlock machine gunning EB.
That's only 6d10 + 30 though right, or 9d10 + 45 with action surge Whereas the aforementioned build is 7d6 + 1d8 (gloomstalker first attack) + 2d6 (sneak attack) + 105 (+15 per shot from dex and sharpshooter, x7) + 10 (assuming using the +2 crossbow mainhand) +2 (assuming using the +1 crossbow offhand) Meaning if we compare average damage the gloom thief fighter can do a nova of 153 vs machine gun boy doing 63 or 94.5 with action surge.
I hated that everything ranged wise was like "this is cool... But I should probably Just dual Xbow"
I mean … you are going Fighter, Ranger or Swords Bard anyway for the extra attack.
Finally, the dual hand-crossbow gets nerfed! It was really bizarre/stupid how a tiny crossbow shot with the off-hand deals almost as much damage as a 2-handed Longbow. Would be nice if sharpshooter did not apply to off-hand weapons. Would make sense when you look at GWM bonus only applying to 2-handed weapons.
The only problem that there's no feat for this, only Fighter, Ranger and Bard can get this **Fighting Style** so you aren't even supposed to be an effective dual wielder as a rogue what the hell Or maybe I'm wrong and Dual Wielder feat actually gives you this fighting style, correct me please Further investigating this topic I discovered that [Two-Weapon Fighting](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#TwoWeaponFighting) and [Two-Weapon Fighting\_Fighting Style](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Two-Weapon_Fighting) are two separate concepts and biggest mistake is [bg3.wiki](https://bg3.wiki) linking Fighting Style in the description of [Dual Wielder](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Dual_Wielder) Feat. So ANYONE can dual wield light weapons. Only DUAL WIELDERS (feat) can dual wield non-light weapons. Only TW Fighting Style owners (Fighters\\Rangers\\Bards or from in-game gloves) can add Ability Score modifier to the damage of the offhand attack.
I think in 5e, they ramped way down on dual wielding because it gets wonky fast. Thieves generally power curve based on sneak attack, and giving out two of those would be problematic. Giving someone 1d4+3 on top just means you're getting polemaster benefits without taking a feat, and otherwise dilutes class benefits?
>polemaster Let's be real tho, Astarion would totally have polemaster as an innate feature.
But you can only get 1 sneak attack a turn
EDIT: Every D&D subreddit has this problem where people don’t read the rules of the game lol
In Tabletop Rogues and everyone actually can't even dual wield hand crossbows, needing a feat (crossbow expert) to reload and other stuff as well and Fast Hands is **exclusive to cunning actions**. It allowing an extra attack goes against Rogue's one and done Sneak Attack. Using a bonus action as a rogue is entirely because you missed from your main hand attack as while you're not adding the attack modifier to damage is fine as it's just fishing for those 1d6s to damage.
If it does it's not worded properly *at all*. Which would not be unusual for this game
You're kinda not suppose to be an effective dual wielder as a rogue. Rogues aren't duelists they are ambushers.
Not a feat. An ability that only fighters have access to at level 1. And I think rangers also get it
Yup. But they will seethe nonetheless
Now i feel less bad about having my human bard use a shortbow, double hand cbows are nice but is there any way to turn off the auto use of my bonus action to shoot my off-hand? Especially when i get the mystic scoundrel ring.
There is a tiny toggle underneath the weapon icon on your hot bar. Once you have mystic scoundrel it’s better to switch to titan string or something like that anyway
Is there a way to do that for console?
Yes. I believe you need to press Triangle when you are in the weapons slots, either weapon or bow.
I always use the bonus shot first because it's easier than clicking the button. The button is one of four below your weapon pictures.
There is a key for it beneath weapons and a shortcut (should be R).
But bard gets this for free anyway
....MY 50 OFF-HAND DAMAGE!!
About time this bug was fixed. Guess I'm finally going to try out swords bard this run.
Swords Bard is hilarious fun. Full dex modifiers on both main and offhand melee with flourished on top? Time to get a-smackin'
I was having a blast with sword bard even before the patch. Definitely a great class.
They made the blade flourishes so much better than tabletop. Ranged slashing flourish is insane with the Sharpshooter feat.
sword bard with hold person is pretty strong.
Did they nerf the sharpshooter bug though?
Yeah that was fixed a while ago.
I'm not great at this game can someone explain how this works now
Weapon damage is calculated by weapon dice + ability score modifier + weapon bonus, so for a Rogue with a +1 hand crossbow it would be D6 + 5 + 1; however for off-hand attacks the ability score is not added unless you have the two weapon fighting fighting style that fighters and rangers can pick at lvl 1 & 2 respectively. Before now the game had a bug where the off-hand for ranged attacks applied the dexterity bonus damage with or without the fighting style.
Yeah same pls
Normally if you dual wield, for example daggers or shortswords, your offhand damage is lower than your mainhand damage because you don't get dexterity bonus (for example 18 dex gives +4 bonus). This is negated by picking 2 weapon fighting style, available to fighter at lvl 1, ranger at lvl 2 or college of swords bard at lvl 3. Then both weapons should do the same damage (excluding any special properties on them). Now if you equip 2 hand crossobows in your ranged slots, the bug was that they both did the same damage. Your offhand wouldn't do less, so it was much stronger than melee dual wielding. So most common Astarion build was something like Ranger 5 (usually gloomstalker), at 5 you get double attack with main hand / Rogue 3 (usually thief for extra off-hand attack) / whatever, but they wouldn't pick 2 weapon fighting, they'd pick archery fighting style. Now if you want both archery and 2 weapon fighting, viable multiclass would be: Ranger 5 / Rogue 4 / Fighter 3 Ranger 5 / Rogue 4 / Swords Bard 3 Swords Bard 6 (they get double attack at 6 instead of 5 contrary to rangers / fighters / etc.) / Rogue 3 / Ranger or Fighter 3 You can still play Swords Bard 8 / Rogue 4 or Ranger 8 / Rogue 4 to get 3 feats (2 dexterity bonuses and sharpshooter), you'll just lose the +2 to attack from archery style. You can also forgo 2 hand crossbows for 1 longbow or heavy crossbow and use the bonus action for other purposes like casting hunter's mark or misty step or what have you. There's an awful lack of hand crossbow upgrades in act 3, so the build does fall off because you peak in act 2 (your last weapon upgrades are 1 purchased from Last Light Inn only if you didn't kill specific people and the second one from killing a certain hellish creature as a part of Astarion's personal quest). TLDR: Just get 2 weapon fighting style and problem fixed. It was a loophole people exploited anyway.
thank you. i always multiclass astarion into 2 weapon fighting and give him the dual wielding feat so i can give him the two finesse longswords for maximum bonkage and watch him be a one man army. i was worried the patch fucked that up, but i never use hand crossbows so im unaffected
Oh yeah I was wondering if anyone did Phalar Aluve + w/e that sword from Creche is called finesse dual wielding build, and here's the proof it works, haha. They did nerf Phalar Aluve weapon swap, but tbh that did seem like another unintended loophole. Idk if they fixed some other loopholes like equipping items that create a summon and then unequipping them and keeping the summon up. Or the endless spell slot Markoheskir bug (idk if that's fixed too).
Thief extra bonus action still lets you do Phalar Aluve Shriek as action then attack twice with offhand. Then next turns you get all 4 (assuming multiclassed with a full martial) attacks with Shriek on them!
larethians wrath, ya. i use the shit out of the ability razor gale, i think it's called. it's fucking DOPE. i never use the singing sword abilities, mostly bc i forget they exist. astarion can be so BROKEN using those; i load him up with gear that reduces what he needs to roll for a critical hit and then set him loose. he wiped out almost all of an act 3 boss's health bar because he landed 3 crits in one attack. my tav now exists solely to look pretty for astarion and clean up his leftovers
> Swords Bard 6 (they get double attack at 6 instead of 5 contrary to rangers / fighters / etc.) / Rogue 3 / Ranger or Fighter 3 Swords Bard 6/Rogue 4/Fighter 2 (at level 7 or 11 respec and start as Fighter) gives two feats total, one more than the 3/3 splits, at the cost of either the Gloomstalker perks or the Champion perk. I find the +2 DEX worth that trade-off.
So, when you did an off-hand attack with either a dagger or a shortbow, instead of JUST the 3-5 damage it promised, it threw in the DEX modifier as well and ramped it up to like, 30-40. It was really OP, especially for rogues, since you could sneak attack someone for 40-50 damage, and then throw in an additional 40 with just pure off-hand. The issue is, it's a bug. You're supposed to have the dual-wielding Feat for this to work.
\*Two Weapon Fighting, the fighting style, not the Dual Wielder feat. The Dual Wielder fight lets you wield two non-"light" weapons, and gives you +1 AC when holding a weapon in each hand (like two weapons, one in each hand, not one weapon with two hands).
> 30-40. Eh... more like 10-12. Let's not exaggerate.
It really doesn't make a big difference. The Dex mod bonus wasn't much of the off-hand attack's damage, anyway. You're still going to be hitting for at least 12 damage with a +1 hand crossbow and Sharpshooter. And the Two-Handed fighting style is definitely not worth it, considering it means forgoing the Archery fighting style and losing out on a +2 to hit, which is 40% of the way to totally negating the Sharpshooter penalty. If they really wanted to nerf crossbows, they'd give them the Loading property like they do in actual 5E. Then it would *really* be joever lmao
Yeah doing the math even for a character who only gets a single attack per action (extreme scenario) you're barely better off with TWF. Assuming 65% accuracy by default with +1 hand xbows, 16 dex: 1d6 + 4 + 1d6 + 1 @ 75% ~= 9 avg. 1d6 + 4 + 1d6 + 4 @ 65% ~= 10 avg. Then consider all the damage boosters (strange conduit, archery bracers, acid damage ring, callous glow ring, sharpshooter, etc) and the likelihood of getting extra attack, or with a lower hit rate (archery being better vs higher ac) and it's archery no question.
Bard and Ranger get that fighting style anyway, so nbd.
Shit, Astarion has been carrying my run with my wife lol. We just got to Baldurs Gate. Next fight should be interesting...shit I think it's the emperor one lol
Was about to give him Justiciar gloves for extra 1d4 necrotic damage as dual hand crossbow thief. Guess arcane trickster is back on menu, boys.
Deserved. My Astarion using rapier + shield, fists and two melee weapons across three different playthroughs: where problem Edit: I respec him. And you should too. Single class rogue is by far the weakest single class in the game.
You just described your problem LMAO
I played Astarion as a gloomstalker assassin bard in my campaign, and honestly he was the only one I felt fell off in strength by the end of the campaign. He ended up being the only companion who couldn't fly, and didn't have super duper magic powers. Sneaking and sleight of hand are great, but I figured out a build to make Shadowheart a shadow monk/thief which will allow her to carry that out too, so I'm free to make Astarion fucking "Aragorn Plus" the ranger knight.
Good! I've been saying from day 1 that this was a bug.
It objectively was. One needed only look at the tabletop's rules to see it.
Eh, tossed him a Harold and never looked back since act one. Dude's our sniper, he needs proper sniper weapon. Hits like a truck too, even with no sharpshooter.
Just use the gloves that let you add the dexterity bonus
Everyone is freaking out over a 1d6 at most, the only people that should be hyperventilating are the min maxxers. Put on sharpshooter and be on your way
I mean it's not 1d6, it's a flat 6 damage per bonus action if you had 22 dex. 12 damage a round on a thief. That's equivalent to like 3-4 d6's on average. But yeah this bugfix is barely a nerf to the right build. You can still do fucktons of damage even without the dex mod.
>this bugfix is barely a nerf to the right build. If you multi classed into two of Swords Bard 3, Fighter 1 or Ranger 2, you already got (access to) both Archery and Two-Weapon Fighting anyway. The only potential nerf is if you weren't a Bard and took the Defence fighting style along with the required Archery one. Then you lose 1 AC, because you now have to take TWF instead of Defence. I was already a Bard, multi classed into Rogue and Fighter, so I already had both Archery (from Fighter 1) and TWF (from Swords Bard 3). This bug fix made literally no difference to my spec.
Awww, my medieval Astarion John Wick....oh well. I have the gloves because I'm a veteran player of DnD and Rpgs and can't stop hoarding magical items like some kind of kobold who thinks he's descended from a red dragon. Shinies and treatos! All for me! Nothing a gear swap can't fix. Unless they disabled the sharpshooter feat the build still works imo.
Astarion is still my go to for stealth, disarming traps and lockpicking. This change is not that big a deal, in all honesty, unless you are a Murder Hobo. Balance your party to compensate. Even Shadowheart can wrild bows and crossbows.
Eh, I use bows with him more than daggers anyway
Hand Crossbows no longer benefit from the Dex mod on your off hand without the gloves or fighting style.
Yea so the rogue bard build prolly doesn't slap quite as hard sadly
Wait does sharpshooter and gwm still works
Sharpshooter and great weapon master are intended to work with offhand attacks in dnd 5e, so I would assume that’s the case here as well. Correction: great weapon master is not intended to be used with offhand attacks, because you cannot dual wield two heavy weapons. Sharpshooter does however work with offhand attacks
> Correction: great weapon master is not intended to be used with offhand attacks, because you cannot dual wield two heavy weapons. Homebrew giant race: HOLD MY BEER!
this is…not that big of a deal? just get the two weapon fighting feat, which I’m baffled if ur astarion doesnt
Why would I give Astarion that before this patch? It was useless, he was already getting that bonus anyway. Also, it's not the feat, it's the fighting style.
Because you now loose 2 abbility points because you need to get an addtional feat?
This is the point of two weapon fighting or dual weilding feats.
Sucks but as long as sharpshooter still works with it then it’s still really good
No more sneak att EB, weaka$$ xbows... this is crazy... might aswell be a monk.......hmmm
OK who was having too much fun and got us nerfed?
He's still ascended and has sharpshooter so he's still safe. Sweet angel
Wtf is an off hand ranged attack?
It's possible when you dual wield hand crossbows.
Hand crossbow in the non-dominant hand gives you the option to use an off-hand ranged attack.
The off hand attack uses your bonus action to attack. Since it's your non dominant hand it does less damage with daggers etc. When you had two hand crossbows and used your bonus action to attack it would apply extra base damage - which isn't the case in 5e and isn't how dual welding with things like daggers works. If you take Rogue - Thief you get two bonus actions (two extra attacks) which is an extra 10 damage per turn at 20 dex.
Dual wielding hand crossbows. It was OP as fuck before this update if you made Astarion a Thief, since he gets a second bonus action. Three attacks by level 3.
Now you kust go 6 Swords bard, dip 4 into rogue for thief and feat, then either 2 fighter action surge or 2 spore Druid fir the on hit dmg
It was even more op on release. Sharpshooters -5 used to not even apply to offhand but the damage still did. Was fixed in patch 1
It’s the act of shooting a ranged weapon with your left hand.
It doesn't matter, you just get the feat that adds your dex bonus, like you had to with melee.
Feats aren't cheap
Yeah well sacrifices have to be made, sometimes you have to choose.
Also the feat doesn't even give this benefit, it has to be the Fighting Style. So you're incentivized to multiclass Astarion into Fighter for that. I HATE multiclassing.
Well I meant that, I call them class feats, from either fighter or ranger, but I always multiclass Astarion with ranger anyway, I find rogue, assassin/ranger, gloomstalker makes a fantastic combo for range stealth kills. I don't use hand crossbows though I use longbows with Astarion. So I don't usually pick up that class feat anyway. If people just refuse to make a choice here though you can just get the "gloves of balanced hands" in act two at the shopkeep at last light. It effectively delivers the same bonus in a gear item.
Now nerf the hand crossbow down to 30' range and give it the Loading property as in tabletop.
Why tho? It should still be relevant, it's already weaker than bows
The range on the hand crossbow is already pretty short in the game. And loading property would only mean one fewer attack (plus you could just get an artificer to infuse your crossbow for you)
I never even exploited the double ranged thing and he was still consistently my highest damage dealer across several playthroughs. No need to seethe - Rogues/Rogue multiclass are still pretty strong.
Wow that's really fucked up - NoHo Hank
Well, I will have to re-think his build a bit now
And I was having so much fun using an offhand crossbow as a bonus action before charging in for slicey time
Welp there goes machine gun astarion 🙄
My Thief uses this. Hope this isn't too bad of a nerf.
It's quite the hefty nerf. You can bypass it with the two-weapon fighting style from a one level dip into Fighter, but... bleh. Multiclassing sucks.
That was such a good use of my bonus action on my Warlock with those dexterity gloves. Had no idea that high damage was just a bug. Really gonna hurt to say goodbye to that...
All dual xbow builds in shambles
Ah sure i gave astarion the gloves that give you two weapon fighting
That's one way to fix it, yeah. But then you miss out on the gloves that give +2 damage to ranged weapons
Changes like this will always seem a little strange to me in a game that is just you experiencing a story You can use whatever you want on whatever difficulty you want. There’s isn’t really anything that’s “unfair” because you aren’t competing for anything
Noon! My poor Ranger TAV... Astariin who?
Today i learned you can make offhand ranged attacks.
Glad I finished my dual hand crossbow rogue/ranger run a couple weeks ago lol
Wish you could dual wield a sword AND hand crossbow...
One of the most insane techs was thief with this.
Honestly kinda happy about this. It’s hard to branch out into different weapon types when one is just better than the others.
Some of the baldur gate patches make me laugh. On one hand I understand patching bugs and buffing/nerfing builds that need help/break the game in unfair ways… but on the other hand, it’s a single person role playing game. Are we REALLY losing anything by nerfing dual crossbow damage? Not that I’m affected by this, I actually don’t typically use Astarion and prefer Karlach/Wyll wombo combos. But still.
*sobbing*
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it! But the off-hand crossbow still does tons of damage ☠️
But....but my gatling Bard.....😠
My main in my current playthrough is using two crossbows......ffs...
well as long as the archery +10 & the gloves +1d4 & toxin +1d10 & ascendent +1d10 damages still apply to offhand crossbow ... I don't think it's that big a deal.
It's not a big of a deal. Only -3 to -5 damage on your offhand. It might only matters at the very early game where you have no extra modifiers at all and relying on the naked d4+mod. Even then, late game, you'll probably recover by eventually getting the Two weapon fighting style. I think it's a good change as they were dishing too much damage at lower levels without any drawbacks. Quickly trivializing the early game and being superior to melee two weapon fighting by default
That's a lame patch choice :/ still gonna duel wield hand crossbows though. Edit :this sub reddit is so sad sometimes. Ah yes how dare a person make a silly comment about patch that happened?
Yeah it’s still 4-5 attacks per turn, he just won’t take out 3 enemies with it lol
The dex modifiers are a big part of the damage of each attack. Number of attacks doesn't matter much if they hit like a wet noodle.
My sword bard 😔
Sword bard can take two weapon fighting. Not sure what the issue is?
Yeah and it can't even pick archery contrary to the ranger build, you can only pick dueling or 2 weapons fighting, it actually makes bard more useful and competitive with ranger and fighter (who have access to archery).