Baldur's Gate 3 by Larian Games
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j00t
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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a young red dragon is a CR10, so the perfect level for a lvl 10 party, and a beholder is a CR13 (CR14 in it's lair) so a lvl 12 party CAN kill a beholder if they are really smart about it.
but to your point, the CR value is a LITTLE bit subjective in that it's for a specific party makeup. a smaller, non-optimal group might all be lvl 4, but could really struggle against certain cr4 encounters, whereas a large party size forces the dm to mess with a creatures stats even if it's the appropriate CR level for them. in critical role campaign one, when the group was like, lvl 8 and 9, they killed a pretty beefed up beholder. matt (the dm) consistently has to increase hp, ac and sometimes saves. an ancient black dragon is a CR 21, and they fought and killed one at 13-14 that had over twice the hp of a normal ancient black dragon
my point is that a good dm should be tweaking the encounters to make them appropriate for the party and CR levels become less and less accurate the higher level you are anyway. i don't really see an issue with adding tweaked higher level creatures here and there as long as they aren't just straight up push-overs
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Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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I'd be interested to know what end-game CR value mobs would do to make themselves unbeatable to a group of level 12 adventurers, given the changes in BG3 vs 5e.
I know in BG1/2 AC, THAC0 and saves would scale with level, so if you were waaay underleveled you had a hard time landing shit. When you meet Drizzt you pretty much only score hits on nat20s. The real-time nature of the game made it difficult to even act against them in a lot of cases. In BG3 once you get access to a haste pot you can do a *lot* in a single turn against a mob. Even if that mob has higher initiative they might be low-impact in their turn before you get a chance at bat. Conversely against say, dragons in BG2 that would spam their AE wing buffet, you aren't doing shit if you can't resist it. In BG3 even if you get knocked three rooms down you can fly your ass back into the fight on your turn and take 5 swings on a mob.
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j00t
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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honestly, yeah i'd be interested too. i love larian but i think they painted themselves into a corner with all the changes they made to 5e. monks running around with their increased movement speed plus making 8 attacks per turn, storm sorcs/tempest clerics dropping 280 damage lightning bolts... there's hardly any normal 5e high level encounters to look at for a blueprint, then you go and tip the scale so dramatically into the player's hands and it gets really pretty impossible to kill bg3 players
Brikker
Trump's Staff
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My Tav is a Gloomstalker using +1 heavy xbow right now, with the intent to go Gloom / thief / fighter for lots of extra attacks using two 1h xbows. Is this idea shit now? It was gonna take Sharpshooter too but don't think the bug mattered...
I'm only lvl 4 in act 1, very slow player!
Got a basic build for this? My Shadowheart is just tempest cleric now. I'm a D&D noob.
Pasteton
Blackwing Lair Raider
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game just starts to break down at the higher levels. shadow hearts planar ally + jaheirs myrmidon wildshape are just duo'ing all the battles while i have my other characters go exploring different locations its kind of a timesaver lol
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Dual hand-xbow is still amazingly good, you just don't get an extra +5 to hit on your offhand. There are a *lot* of circumstances where you can assassinate enemies from the shadows. It's not really necessary but it is fun. They are no slouch in normal 'just walked into it' combat either, especially given how common the various magic arrows are.
There's not much to storm sorc/tempest - basically start as storm sorcerer, do 2 and 3 as tempest cleric, then the rest as storm sorcerer. For maximum value nominate someone in the party as 'buff bitch', get them to take the alert feat, and have them start every combat by throwing bottles of water at enemies (or using create water if you have another cleric). You *can* do quickened create water then call lightning/whatever yourself, but quicken is still 3 sorc points which is absurdly wasteful.
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Burns
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Hand Crossbow tip: The Teifling blacksmith can sell +1 hand crossbows randomly, which will refresh on each long rest. So it's good to check him after each long rest, since hand crossbows are rare, otherwise.
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j00t
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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i've said it before, but in my weekly tabletop game i have a 9storm sorc/2 tempest cleric (which always makes my heart warm whenever i see people talk about how popular the class is in bg3) but i haven't played a sorc in bg3 yet. is quicken spell really 3 sp? it's only 2 in tabletop. in tabletop a storm sorc doesn't add any spells to his spellbook either, so no call lightning, for example, but my dm let me reflavor some spells so it didn't matter much to me.
anyway, yeah, for those who haven't done it or who aren't familiar, the key part of the build is the tempest cleric's channel divinity, which they get at 2nd level. it allows them to instead of rolling dice for thunder or lightning damage, you just deal max damage. so a 3rd level lightning bolt does 8d6 lightning damage in a straight line. if you use your channel divinity: destructive wrath it just does 48 damage to anyone it hits, barring a dex save from them for half damage.
at 2nd level a cleric can use their channel divinity once per short rest, so it's not something you can typically do all the time, but the way a lot of people play bg3 is literally resting after every single encounter, which i find tedious. but this multiclass combo also allows some healing if you need it. i don't know how bg3 does it, but what's also interesting about this multiclass is that it doesn't do anything to your spell progression. you'll still end up with the exact same amount of spell slots, and while you SHOULD be casting spells a level behind the curve, when sorcerers pick their spells at level up, they can pick them for whatever level they have spell slots for. so, a lvl 8 wizard can only pick spells up to level 4 and a lvl 10 wizard can pick spells up to level 5, a level 8 sorcerer/2 cleric can pick sorcerer spells up to level 5.
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Blazin
Creative Title
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Forgive the dumb question it's been a long time for me but I seem to recall from decades past that not having high cha on your main tends to make life difficult but I'm wanting to play a human fighter do I give up points somewhere to at least get to 10 charisma or can I go with the 8?
Hateyou
Not Great, Not Terrible
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You can use other party members for high charisma if you want your custom dude to be a fighter. You can switch who is having the conversation. I’m not far in the game so I don’t know if there are restrictions on that later.
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Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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8 cha is fine. Not only because of what Hateyou said, but also because you can get buffs to help your charisma-based rolls. I also took the Noble background to get Persuasion proficiency, though I don't know if I'd go that route again.
Also you can reroll anytime for pennies and chagne your starting stats. You can't change your race or background though (Which I dislike, but whatever). This is useful because you'll find gear that boosts your stats to a static level, and having a reasonable 14 dexterity while wearing those gauntlets feels pointless, so you'll want to reroll just to drop that dexterity into the gutter to boost other stats.
Also be careful about having odd numbers for stats. 13 dexterity is as good as 12 dexterity.
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Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Battle Master is a versatile subclass, using a shield with it is fine. I didn't find shields on a tank class that useful because the AI is smart enough to prefer weaker targets. I used shields on my casters.
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Harshaw
Throbbing Member
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Eh. Odd stats are good If you plan on using a feat to add points later. Odd stats on Dex and Con for instance. You can use a feat to add a point to both and get two upgrades.
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If you want a tank you have to properly build a tank which is like fighter/pally and I think pally has the taunt stuff like compell duel and another skill which makes whatever attack you for 2 turns because it cannot attack anything else. I mean its quite situational in this game where most fights are vs group of trash or trash and a few +trash. But you can make it work.
But I agree with you the AI ususally just targets your lowest AC peeps like 99% of the time. They just B line for your squishies. So its prob more advantageous to build for burst and aoe dmg vs defense because its way more effective to just kill shit quick vs using shit like taunt.
Shmoopy
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Finished game in ~90 hours. For 90% of the game I used two plate + shield Tavern Brawler Monks, lightning Cleric, and Bard.
TBH on a replay I'd probably do 3 Tavern Brawler Monks + a Bard. When stuff needs to die they kill it. If it cannot die in one round, its guaranteed to be stunned.
I did the 8 Monk 4 fighter route, but the 8 monk 4 Rogue might be even more OP.
TBH on a replay I'd probably do 3 Tavern Brawler Monks + a Bard. When stuff needs to die they kill it. If it cannot die in one round, its guaranteed to be stunned.
I did the 8 Monk 4 fighter route, but the 8 monk 4 Rogue might be even more OP.
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