D&D General BG3 Massive Spoiler Thread

[Paul Farquhar]

On the harpies: Silence is available at 3rd level.

 

[Zardnaar]

On the harpies: Silence is available at 3rd level.

So is calm emotions and you can still cast spells and it moves with you. Effects the whole party.

Titanstring Bow - Baldur's Gate 3 Wiki

Add potion of hill giant strength. Win. Best bow in game until Act3 available level 3.

Gontr Mael | Baldurs Gate 3 Wiki

I used both last tactician game vs Netherbrain. It lasted 1 round same with the dragon.

Also doubles as crowd control. Win initiative not much will be left alive.

30 odd damage a shot act 1. Around 50-100% more later.

 

[Zardnaar]

So fought Myrkuls avatar at the end of ActII honor mode. Wife was watching last gane it wasn't that hard but she's built him up in her mind as a super boss.

Anyway completely flubbed it up. I was planning on switching weapons to the Doom hammer on Karlach who's an oath of the ancients paladin. Didn't do it.

The party also got stuck on terrain so when I used the illithid refresh thing it only got a couple of people. This meant Wyll and Shadowheart were mostly out of spells. Shart had a single 5th level slit all the others were lvl 1-2 via angelic sleep potion.

Also left most of my scrolls on gale.

Had to sacrifice sorcerers points so Wyll gets a single even 3 slot.

Karlach lvl 9 OotA Paladin.
Tav lvl 8 battle fighter/war cleric 1
Shart lvl 9 life cleric radiant gear.
Wyll Sorcerer 7, Warlock 2

So yeah not much spells. Paladin was also depleted but had an angel potion for lvl 1-2 spells.

Precast Protection from evil on Tav and a twinned hast o Wyll. Forgot to add the twin part on Shart.

Fight starts no spell slots to get close to mindflayer and release Arilyn. Move around the map everyone has a summoned elemental and Wyll also has a cambion.

Mindflayer stuns all of my PCs and breaks haste concentration. Poo rains down Tav is reduced to 0 hp. Things are looking bleak.

Reason I use life clerics and OotA Paladins on honor mode. Insurance policy. Healing time PCs recover. Katherine dies Avatar of Myrkul. Resistant to non magical bludgeoning and all piercing and slashing. Last game I had a Monk.

Elementals do stuff mostly tanking and necromite mop up. Rain out of Aberration slaying arrows last 1 kills the mind flayer though.

4 arrows of undead slaying left think gale has some more doh.

2 arrows miss start to beat down.

Karlach switches from vigilance polearm from Moonrise towers to a weapon bought level 3 Goblin camp.

Doom Hammer | Baldurs Gate 3 Wiki

AKA screw you Myrkul.

Several radiant smites later Myrkul is pushing up daisies. On to act 3 Tav had 12 hp left after chewing through 200 odd hp.

Also forgot my clerical buffs eg warding bond.

Complete dogs breakfast of a fight.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That’s good. Can’t have them nerfing Game of Throws!

Right? It was absolute madness.

I'm now playing on Honor mode, which is weird for me, because I'm not a big ironman guy outside of "storytelling"-type games like Crusader Kings 3 or Wildermyth, but honestly I like a lot of the rules fixes that are literally only available on Honor mode - it's just too trivial to cheese things with the way damage riders work otherwise - it's not like the game isn't full of powerful items and so on. The only change I'm against is that the nerfed Haste for melees but not for casters - either both or neither Larian! Also I kind of want to see the tougher bosses.

And it is extremely noticeable how differently you play when you're essentially "chancing it all" every major fight, and where using or not using certain abilities could be life or death, and where in a conversation, there's no take-backsies except the Inspiration re-rolls. I think I may already have screwed up in the longer term by a flippant comment to some Tieflings, but we shall see.

I just had the fight with Minthara, which I started very foolishly and un-Honor mode-ly by walking up to her and threatening her in conversation, and she and her minions mostly won initiative (I could have just thrown a spear at her dumb head... I'm a moron - I might even have had a surprise round). They dropped everyone in the party to like 70% to 50% health with various thrown bombs, started making a run for the drums, cast hold person on my main character and were close to my thrower (Karlach) that I couldn't throw in the first round. I managed to drop the guy going for the drums but not much else round 1, at the start of round 3 Lae'zel got Shoved into the pit and died, the main character got absolutely iced by Minthara's smite (Hold Person will do that!), and at the start of round 4 Shadowheart got dropped by goblins throwing rocks (one of them hit for 18 damage! None of them missed - I feel like this is not using the same improvised weapon rules as me!).

So it became a case of:

And thus over the course of the next three rounds, a Frenzied Karlach systematically threw all the remaining goblins into the hole, and Shoved Minthara into it (RIP pretty decent items and a great camp outfit, but I literally couldn't take any chances, because one round of smites could have dropped Karlach easy), got Shadowheart back up, threw a couple more goblins who had arrived in the hole, and then killed the alarm-eye thing. Then burned literally my two remaining res scrolls getting people back up - if I'd been smarter I'd have gone back to camp and asked Withers to do it. Oh well. But the important thing is, we lived! I would have just reloaded at the beginning of the fight normally.

We'll see if I still enjoy it after the Dror Ragzlin fight of course.

Update: Dror Ragzlin also went south but less drastically so - I was doing my patented "Sneak above him and his dudes and throw barrels of smokepowder directly on to their heads" (the candles etc. for the ritual will ignite them) manuever which I developed all the way back in beta (you do get some firing back up but mostly they're very ineffectual and those who can melee run for the ladders and then you shove them off as they come up). However, whilst I was still fiddling around trying to get my STR 8 Bard able to jump up from the top of the high wall around his area on to the beams, I got spotted. Still, only Dror and a fraction of his force came for us, and got absolutely wasted by the barrels, spears, javelins, etc. thrown down at them. This is with the Honor mode rules too so you don't get the almost multiplicative damage from Tavern Brawler and so on either (though it is still very impressive).

Also Karlach continues to crack me up after god knows how many hours - I had her sneaking and she was sneaking along, I stopped for a second and she suddenly whispers "Shadowlach!" like she's just thought of this! Then she attacks someone and says "You're not going to like this mate" as she's running towards them, just perfect (indeed they did not like it).

 

[DarkCrisis]

Got my honor mode tempest cleric of talos to the Druids and trying to play all aloof and the snake killed the little girl and now I feel bad.

I hate not being a hero

 

[Zardnaar]

Right? It was absolute madness.

I'm now playing on Honor mode, which is weird for me, because I'm not a big ironman guy outside of "storytelling"-type games like Crusader Kings 3 or Wildermyth, but honestly I like a lot of the rules fixes that are literally only available on Honor mode - it's just too trivial to cheese things with the way damage riders work otherwise - it's not like the game isn't full of powerful items and so on. The only change I'm against is that the nerfed Haste for melees but not for casters - either both or neither Larian! Also I kind of want to see the tougher bosses.

And it is extremely noticeable how differently you play when you're essentially "chancing it all" every major fight, and where using or not using certain abilities could be life or death, and where in a conversation, there's no take-backsies except the Inspiration re-rolls. I think I may already have screwed up in the longer term by a flippant comment to some Tieflings, but we shall see.

I just had the fight with Minthara, which I started very foolishly and un-Honor mode-ly by walking up to her and threatening her in conversation, and she and her minions mostly won initiative (I could have just thrown a spear at her dumb head... I'm a moron - I might even have had a surprise round). They dropped everyone in the party to like 70% to 50% health with various thrown bombs, started making a run for the drums, cast hold person on my main character and were close to my thrower (Karlach) that I couldn't throw in the first round. I managed to drop the guy going for the drums but not much else round 1, at the start of round 3 Lae'zel got Shoved into the pit and died, the main character got absolutely iced by Minthara's smite (Hold Person will do that!), and at the start of round 4 Shadowheart got dropped by goblins throwing rocks (one of them hit for 18 damage! None of them missed - I feel like this is not using the same improvised weapon rules as me!).

So it became a case of:

View attachment 351933

And thus over the course of the next three rounds, a Frenzied Karlach systematically threw all the remaining goblins into the hole, and Shoved Minthara into it (RIP pretty decent items and a great camp outfit, but I literally couldn't take any chances, because one round of smites could have dropped Karlach easy), got Shadowheart back up, threw a couple more goblins who had arrived in the hole, and then killed the alarm-eye thing. Then burned literally my two remaining res scrolls getting people back up - if I'd been smarter I'd have gone back to camp and asked Withers to do it. Oh well. But the important thing is, we lived! I would have just reloaded at the beginning of the fight normally.

We'll see if I still enjoy it after the Dror Ragzlin fight of course.

Update: Dror Ragzlin also went south but less drastically so - I was doing my patented "Sneak above him and his dudes and throw barrels of smokepowder directly on to their heads" (the candles etc. for the ritual will ignite them) manuever which I developed all the way back in beta (you do get some firing back up but mostly they're very ineffectual and those who can melee run for the ladders and then you shove them off as they come up). However, whilst I was still fiddling around trying to get my STR 8 Bard able to jump up from the top of the high wall around his area on to the beams, I got spotted. Still, only Dror and a fraction of his force came for us, and got absolutely wasted by the barrels, spears, javelins, etc. thrown down at them. This is with the Honor mode rules too so you don't get the almost multiplicative damage from Tavern Brawler and so on either (though it is still very impressive).

Also Karlach continues to crack me up after god knows how many hours - I had her sneaking and she was sneaking along, I stopped for a second and she suddenly whispers "Shadowlach!" like she's just thought of this! Then she attacks someone and says "You're not going to like this mate" as she's running towards them, just perfect (indeed they did not like it).

I think honor mode is errata they would like to do but would piss off a large chunk of players.

Custom difficulty honor mode difficulty but allowing tactician saves not sure if you can do that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Custom difficulty honor mode difficulty but allowing tactician saves not sure if you can do that.

You cannot.

I don't understand why not. But you cannot. There isn't even a mod which can do it AFAICT. I do expect that given sufficient time they will in fact add it, because I think people will eventually get bored of the Honor mode one-save thing but still want the restrictions.

Amazingly despite some incredible screw-ups I am still alive in my current Honor game. I found a completely new-to-me area (a certain organisation's massive hide-out in act 1), got over-cocky with the Friends spell because I thought I'd be out of there before it dropped, or could just pay the guy off, so had to kill a bunch of guys (thankfully as per True Lies "Yeah but they were all bad!"). That worked out though it did upset the artist I was trying to purchase.

I continued searching the place, amazed at how large it was, was casually shooting some traps with my bow, and an NPC ran up to me and was like "Wth are you doing" and I had the choice "pay up" or "admit guilt", went with the latter, shooting starting again due to my bad life/dialogue choices, and during the fight I made another amazingly bad life choice of not casting Shield when a guy with a hand crossbow shot me, because I was on high health (on Lae'zel), which resulted in an amazing explosion and fire which I had not considered (apparently he was using a special arrow), and which dropped my entire party to 30% health or lower - Lae'zel was downed! - including blowing precious Karlach off a cliff and down like 30ft, where she landed on the very edge of a rope bridge right next to an angry berserker she'd just pushed off a cliff, and on maybe 5 HP!

I had to frantically shuffle my best healing potions around the party and bring out the biggest spells I had (which is not very big, at L4), but amazingly, everyone lived, albeit we had to cause a lot of destruction and blow a lot of spells to do it.

But the big takeaway was that after 290 hours, most that in Act 1 in Early Access or just restarted games (I've finished it once), there are (were?) still whole bits of Act 1 I hadn't even seen. I knew there was a hideout there but I assumed it was like two guys and mule, not a massive and extensive base full of loot (and so many smokepowder barrels - I pressed "Send to camp" an awful lot of times). If I live long enough, somebody is going to get their ass blown to high heaven with those.

 

[Dausuul]

No. But it’s a pretty large area and you can cast it on the singing harpy so you’re guaranteed to start the fight without being charmed.

You can also just cast it around your own party and you'll be immune the whole fight, as long as you don't move out or lose concentration. Requires you to have ranged non-spell attacks, but you should have those anyway; throwing weapons for the Strength builds, crossbows for everyone else. Don't forget to switch back to melee weapons after attacking, so you can take OAs when the harpies do their attack-and-fly-away shtick.

I get the most mileage out of Silence in Act 2, along with Minor Illusion. Those two spells make it much easier to pick apart the guards in Moonrise Towers and kill them piecemeal: Minor Illusion to draw a couple guards away from the pack, Silence (and closing doors) to stop them calling for help when I ambush them. Rinse and repeat. My first Honor run, Jaheira and the Harpers just strolled in because I'd already killed everyone in the place except Ketheric and his goons on the roof.

Even if you don't go that far, it's by far the simplest way to free the prisoners in the dungeons.

 

[Zardnaar]

You can also just cast it around your own party and you'll be immune the whole fight, as long as you don't move out or lose concentration. Requires you to have ranged non-spell attacks, but you should have those anyway; throwing weapons for the Strength builds, crossbows for everyone else. Don't forget to switch back to melee weapons after attacking, so you can take OAs when the harpies do their attack-and-fly-away shtick.

I get the most mileage out of Silence in Act 2, along with Minor Illusion. Those two spells make it much easier to pick apart the guards in Moonrise Towers and kill them piecemeal: Minor Illusion to draw a couple guards away from the pack, Silence (and closing doors) to stop them calling for help when I ambush them. Rinse and repeat. My first Honor run, Jaheira and the Harpers just strolled in because I'd already killed everyone in the place except Ketheric and his goons on the roof.

Even if you don't go that far, it's by far the simplest way to free the prisoners in the dungeons.

Did that fight this weekend. I kinda liked having them bunch up.

Wife likes her Striker heavy builds but they can come up short vs certain fights.

She discovered the power of summoned elementals and water+ lightning or cold.

Probably focus on Minor Illusion more when I get around to challenge runs eg dex based paladin.

 

[Zardnaar]

You cannot.

I don't understand why not. But you cannot. There isn't even a mod which can do it AFAICT. I do expect that given sufficient time they will in fact add it, because I think people will eventually get bored of the Honor mode one-save thing but still want the restrictions.

Amazingly despite some incredible screw-ups I am still alive in my current Honor game. I found a completely new-to-me area (a certain organisation's massive hide-out in act 1), got over-cocky with the Friends spell because I thought I'd be out of there before it dropped, or could just pay the guy off, so had to kill a bunch of guys (thankfully as per True Lies "Yeah but they were all bad!"). That worked out though it did upset the artist I was trying to purchase.

I continued searching the place, amazed at how large it was, was casually shooting some traps with my bow, and an NPC ran up to me and was like "Wth are you doing" and I had the choice "pay up" or "admit guilt", went with the latter, shooting starting again due to my bad life/dialogue choices, and during the fight I made another amazingly bad life choice of not casting Shield when a guy with a hand crossbow shot me, because I was on high health (on Lae'zel), which resulted in an amazing explosion and fire which I had not considered (apparently he was using a special arrow), and which dropped my entire party to 30% health or lower - Lae'zel was downed! - including blowing precious Karlach off a cliff and down like 30ft, where she landed on the very edge of a rope bridge right next to an angry berserker she'd just pushed off a cliff, and on maybe 5 HP!

I had to frantically shuffle my best healing potions around the party and bring out the biggest spells I had (which is not very big, at L4), but amazingly, everyone lived, albeit we had to cause a lot of destruction and blow a lot of spells to do it.

But the big takeaway was that after 290 hours, most that in Act 1 in Early Access or just restarted games (I've finished it once), there are (were?) still whole bits of Act 1 I hadn't even seen. I knew there was a hideout there but I assumed it was like two guys and mule, not a massive and extensive base full of loot (and so many smokepowder barrels - I pressed "Send to camp" an awful lot of times). If I live long enough, somebody is going to get their ass blown to high heaven with those.

Did you get to loot the titanstring bow?