Gaming Baldur's Gate III by Larian Studios (PS5, PC, Mac, Xbox Series X|S)

I don't share that opinion. I find clerics very strong and useful in the game. They have strong abilities to buff the group, keep it alive and can remove negative statuses. Blessing for one as @Grylte said or sanctuary as a bonus action saved me many times for example. Also her radiant damage is very strong in Act 2 against all those undead. You can even use her as a tank when you give her the legendary healer mace, that also blinds undeads in certain range. Last but not least, her summonings are also very useful. The weapon can do and tank damage and the guardian is very strong.
This. In act 2 just cast spirit guardian(radiant) and run around all your turn causing havoc.
 
I think shadowheart is probably the strongest character. Even with the shitty default domain. Its probably an act 2 thing though.
 
Yeah she’s basically a healer for me in act one, and my bard can already heal anyway. But Astarian and Karlach deal so much damage that it doesn’t really matter.

I do feel like magic classes are a bit redundant. Aoe damage isn’t worth it and their spells miss too much. It’s way easier to have weapon based characters dealing out the damage. I basically use my bars for all the crowd control stuff like frighten and hold enemy and stuff and that does the job.
 
Yeah she’s basically a healer for me in act one, and my bard can already heal anyway. But Astarian and Karlach deal so much damage that it doesn’t really matter.

I do feel like magic classes are a bit redundant. Aoe damage isn’t worth it and their spells miss too much. It’s way easier to have weapon based characters dealing out the damage. I basically use my bars for all the crowd control stuff like frighten and hold enemy and stuff and that does the job.
Fireball man… fireball
 
Fireball man… fireball
Pretty much. Higher level spells get pretty crazy. I leave Gale in camp and drag him out for tough fights and just go nuts and throw level 4 spells around like candy. Fighter and barbarian will pump out a solid stream of decent single target damage always and thats enough for most fights and convenient because you dont need to go back to camp often but spells are great.
I swap around a lot really
Theres probably too much crossover with bard for shadowheart to be that useful.
 
I do feel like magic classes are a bit redundant. Aoe damage isn’t worth it and their spells miss too much. It’s way easier to have weapon based characters dealing out the damage. I basically use my bars for all the crowd control stuff like frighten and hold enemy and stuff and that does the job.

That's the beauty of the game. You're not forced to have a certain class in your group. You can play entirely the way you want to play. It doesn't matter if you have 4 melee fighters, 4 casters, or the usual tank, healer, utility characters. Of course there are pros and cons, but in the end you can beat the game with any composition.

edit: And yeah, as @WI_Red said, there are some juicy AoE spells like fireball or Hunger of Hadar. You don't need them, but they can shorten fights against big groups. It really depends on your playstyle.
 
Ive found shadowheart to be weakest link. I think she just offers nearly nothing in combat.

Yeah act 1 she doesn't offer much. But then she starts out as trickster domain, which doesn't give much. Should probably respec to life if wanting to play her as support or tempest/war for damage dealing. War cleric can use bonus as an extra attack, tempest can apparently hit really hard as there are ways to multiply the thunder dmg, not sure if that needs a multi-class though.

Could experiment with other multi-class options, two levels in paladin gets divine smite, Cleric/bard mix is supposed to be the ultimate support. With how accessible respecing is in this game, I don't think its really intended to just leave your companions as default. Change them to whatever works for your party and how you want to play.

Cleric is still strongest class act 2 either way, because of one particular spell (just get war caster feat, or high CON to avoid concentration break frustrations). Act 1 she was still mega for me as her aoe heals put blade turning and bless on everyone, from some items I found.
 
Wait you can respec everyone at the skeleton dude not just your own character? :nervous:
 
I don't share that opinion. I find clerics very strong and useful in the game. They have strong abilities to buff the group, keep it alive and can remove negative statuses. Blessing for one as @Grylte said or sanctuary as a bonus action saved me many times for example. Also her radiant damage is very strong in Act 2 against all those undead. You can even use her as a tank when you give her the legendary healer mace, that also blinds undeads in certain range. Last but not least, her summonings are also very useful. The weapon can do and tank damage and the guardian is very strong.

Where do you get the mace?
 
Kept getting caught in the crèche after sneaking in until I realised that

you can switch to Lae'zel and have her walk forward before the cutscene, which gives you Gith responses that stop the guards from attacking you

I'm starting to wonder what other conversations are different if you switch characters...
 
Where do you get the mace?

Inside the Rosymorn Monastery, located in the mountain pass between Act1 and 2. There is a secret chamber, that leads to some puzzles and after that a big room where the weapon is. Shadowheart equipped with this weapon against undeads is absolutely OP
Blood-of-Lathander-Weapon-Stats-for-BG3.jpg
 
1. Withers can respec all characters you play and change them to level 1 with the class & attributes you want for 100 gold per person. They keep their exp so you can level them right back up again.

2. Loads of different scenarios happen depending on your conversations and who does them, what stats you have and what successes you get on dice rolls. Sometimes a dice roll alone isn't enough and you need a extra check to go your way.

3. You can, in the camp, click on your party members icon to control them an talk with others.

4. Barrelmancy is insanely strong. Stock up on some explosive barrels by right clicking them and pick them up and then send to camp. If you find a problem in the road try blasting it to space.

5. Clerics are insane. Free legendary weapon at level 11? Yes please. "Free" unlimited supply of legendary weapons and potions through Withers recruits as Clerics? Yes please. Blood of Lethander for a automated revive every long rest, that also heals allies when you go down, and with Lethanders light that blinds enemies within a 6 meter radius (basically a bit above melee range) to make them less likely to hit you and you more likely to hit them... On top of a goddamn level 6 spell in Sunbeam to blast foes into the depths of hell, Glyph of warding (all elemental damages in aoe), Spirit guardians so you can even do damage while getting close to enemies.you can even summon helpers to take some focus off. Insane amounts of heals with Beacon of Hope + Prayer of healing from the life domain? Don't even need to with the life domain special healing, but why not both just in case. Banish to remove a toxic enemy? Sweet music in my ears. Cantrips like sacred flame and fire bolt to keep range damage up in fights you otherwise want to save spells on? Yaaas.

If you don't like it to be a very supportive one you can spec into light domain and get more damage spells, not that I'd know why you'd want to when you can have everything on a life cleric.
Want to be even more destructive against a boss? Multiclass into paladin x2 to get thunderous smite with luck of the far realms to guarantee a crit into a divine smite. Tons and tons of damage. Get gloves of dexterity and you can drop your dex to 8 and invest more into str or constitution and avoid having to move last every fight. Again, you can respec as you get the gear, 100 gold is nothing.

Hell, I'm running both a smiter and a pure life cleric in my party while pushing enemies back hard with eldritch blast from my fighter/warlock Karlach built to keep enemies spread out while being a capable fighter in close quarters. Gale kills everything with fireballs unless i expect an enemy to be difficult, then he also has banish so that they can be focused later.


Basicaly builds and classes in general don't start to matter beyond level 5 as the power you get from there and up is just so massive compared to the beginning. As long as you don't reroll your party into stats that actively doesn't work for them then you should look for different approaches (targets, dialogue options, maybe explore a different area) if you get stuck as it is very unlikely to be down to your build early on unless you are playing on tactician.
 
1. Withers can respec all characters you play and change them to level 1 with the class & attributes you want for 100 gold per person. They keep their exp so you can level them right back up again.

2. Loads of different scenarios happen depending on your conversations and who does them, what stats you have and what successes you get on dice rolls. Sometimes a dice roll alone isn't enough and you need a extra check to go your way.

3. You can, in the camp, click on your party members icon to control them an talk with others.

4. Barrelmancy is insanely strong. Stock up on some explosive barrels by right clicking them and pick them up and then send to camp. If you find a problem in the road try blasting it to space.

5. Clerics are insane. Free legendary weapon at level 11? Yes please. "Free" unlimited supply of legendary weapons and potions through Withers recruits as Clerics? Yes please. Blood of Lethander for a automated revive every long rest, that also heals allies when you go down, and with Lethanders light that blinds enemies within a 6 meter radius (basically a bit above melee range) to make them less likely to hit you and you more likely to hit them... On top of a goddamn level 6 spell in Sunbeam to blast foes into the depths of hell, Glyph of warding (all elemental damages in aoe), Spirit guardians so you can even do damage while getting close to enemies.you can even summon helpers to take some focus off. Insane amounts of heals with Beacon of Hope + Prayer of healing from the life domain? Don't even need to with the life domain special healing, but why not both just in case. Banish to remove a toxic enemy? Sweet music in my ears. Cantrips like sacred flame and fire bolt to keep range damage up in fights you otherwise want to save spells on? Yaaas.

If you don't like it to be a very supportive one you can spec into light domain and get more damage spells, not that I'd know why you'd want to when you can have everything on a life cleric.
Want to be even more destructive against a boss? Multiclass into paladin x2 to get thunderous smite with luck of the far realms to guarantee a crit into a divine smite. Tons and tons of damage. Get gloves of dexterity and you can drop your dex to 8 and invest more into str or constitution and avoid having to move last every fight. Again, you can respec as you get the gear, 100 gold is nothing.

Hell, I'm running both a smiter and a pure life cleric in my party while pushing enemies back hard with eldritch blast from my fighter/warlock Karlach built to keep enemies spread out while being a capable fighter in close quarters. Gale kills everything with fireballs unless i expect an enemy to be difficult, then he also has banish so that they can be focused later.


Basicaly builds and classes in general don't start to matter beyond level 5 as the power you get from there and up is just so massive compared to the beginning. As long as you don't reroll your party into stats that actively doesn't work for them then you should look for different approaches (targets, dialogue options, maybe explore a different area) if you get stuck as it is very unlikely to be down to your build early on unless you are playing on tactician.
4 is a fantastic way to beat difficult fights, especially early on when you're still quite weak. I stacked 3 barrels in front of
the hobgoblin king dude in the fortress and a few near his guards and blew the lot of em up.
feels almost like cheating.
 
4 is a fantastic way to beat difficult fights, especially early on when you're still quite weak. I stacked 3 barrels in front of
the hobgoblin king dude in the fortress and a few near his guards and blew the lot of em up.
feels almost like cheating.
Nah, barrelmancy is a long-standing Larian tradition. Hell, they should release an April Fools patch that adds barrelmancer as a class. WoC would probably be down with it.
 
Finally back from holidays so I can play the next three nights straight till I‘m off again! :lol:
 
Bah, just had my first crash, was about to finish off a fight I'd taken like 30 mins on too. Won't take as long this time at least.

Shoutout to the music in the bossfight at house of hope. That was amazing.
 
Was just about to write that..pretty annoying at the moment as it constantly crashes now. Didn‘t happen once before a week ago.
 
weird, I've not had a single crash and I'm using a laptop that barely meets requirements.
 
Act 3 is growing on me. That evening together with Shadowheart swimming and building sand castles was definitely worth the wait :drool:
Afterwards I had very a strange, but hot sexy time with Mizora, (which Wyll strongly disapproved of, I don't know why :nervous:) but more importantly Shadowheart approved and last, but not least I had a foursome together with Shadowheart and 2 Drow siblings in some Underdark themed brothel room for 1000 gold. Best game ever :drool::lol:
 
It's funny how the combat in these games always gets easier the further you get. The first few hours every encounter can kill you before you even act and now I'm just destroying everything so badly it almost makes me feel bad.
 
It's funny how the combat in these games always gets easier the further you get. The first few hours every encounter can kill you before you even act and now I'm just destroying everything so badly it almost makes me feel bad.
That’s a shame cause in Divinity 2 I thought they did a great job keeping the combat challenging and varied throughout.
 
That’s a shame cause in Divinity 2 I thought they did a great job keeping the combat challenging and varied throughout.
Isn't it the result of D&D 5e? That's also a reason they set the lvl cap at 12, because further spells would annihilate everything.
 
Just played divinity 2 for a few hours. Obvious to see how much they are alike apart from the AAA production values for BG3. After binge playing BG3 i thought i needed to start something different after being on act 3 in my 2nd playthrough. Of course it feels like a downgrade but the game 6 years old. Im hoping the game lives up to its reviews.
 
It's funny how the combat in these games always gets easier the further you get. The first few hours every encounter can kill you before you even act and now I'm just destroying everything so badly it almost makes me feel bad.
Yeah finding the same. Just finished act 2 last night and a character was downed against the last guy. Think it was the first time since midway through act 1 (i suppose i got killed in gith creche a couple of times). Found divinity 2 did a better job of it. Think a lot of the rpg mechanics were better in that to be honest. Maybe its a videogame thing that d&d doesn't mesh particularly well with.
 
Just played divinity 2 for a few hours. Obvious to see how much they are alike apart from the AAA production values for BG3. After binge playing BG3 i thought i needed to start something different after being on act 3 in my 2nd playthrough. Of course it feels like a downgrade but the game 6 years old. Im hoping the game lives up to its reviews.
Divinity has a better combat system I think because it’s not dice based. Still a great game overall.
 
Two things:

1. I finally found a seriously annoying bug(??): the pathing is BG (the city) is horrible. My companions are constantly getting stuck in other buildings, and I have to manually move them to reform my group.

2. I respecced to a monk/rogue hybrid (bored with my ranger just pew pewing his way through every battle).... and holy feck.
 
Two things:

1. I finally found a seriously annoying bug(??): the pathing is BG (the city) is horrible. My companions are constantly getting stuck in other buildings, and I have to manually move them to reform my group.

2. I respecced to a monk/rogue hybrid (bored with my ranger just pew pewing his way through every battle).... and holy feck.
Having fought a few monks they seem pretty bonkers. Rogue does keep getting better and better too. A lot of other stuff feels like it peaked about lvl 5 and hasnt really changed since.
 
Having fought a few monks they seem pretty bonkers. Rogue does keep getting better and better too. A lot of other stuff feels like it peaked about lvl 5 and hasnt really changed since.
interrupted the dryad and fist's sexy time in the brothel and the fist went full tentacle. Monk did all 65 point of damage in 2 punches and a flurry with a flurry to spare. One more levle of rogue and I'll have another flurry to use. Madness.
 
Divinity has a better combat system I think because it’s not dice based. Still a great game overall.

100. DoS has the far superior battle system by quite the distance. You can feel with BG3 that its combat is based on table top and the design isn't amazing and can be irritaitng in a video game.
 
100. DoS has the far superior battle system by quite the distance. You can feel with BG3 that its combat is based on table top and the design isn't amazing and can be irritaitng in a video game.
I dont know. Push, throw and jump are kind of great, i'd be kind of disappointed if they weren't in DoS3. The floor not being lava in every single fight is nice too. I mostly agree, i'd hope that if they do another they'll diverge from the tabletop game more.
 
Lost my first companion in combat, at the end of Act 2 last night. I've had them die before, but it's always resulted in a wipe (I'm looking at you bulette). Thankfully it felt like a pretty fitting end for Wyll and he wasn't just one turn, Fosbury flopped into the abyss.

After seeing his dad get infected he died to the God of Death. He got downed by Ketheric Thorm, just before the second phase of the fight began. I tried to push him out of the bone chill aura, but you can't push downed companions and I couldn't kill the boss quick enough to save him.

The tragic part for me is he had just graduated from eldritch blast spammer. I respecd him to pact of the blade and picked up a nice two hander with additional bonus when used as a pact weapon. All the more reason for me to wish it was Shadowheart who kicked it.

I'm down to 3 of the original 6 companions, with a couple of druid latecomers filling out the bench.
 
Lost my first companion in combat, at the end of Act 2 last night. I've had them die before, but it's always resulted in a wipe (I'm looking at you bulette). Thankfully it felt like a pretty fitting end for Wyll and he wasn't just one turn, Fosbury flopped into the abyss.

After seeing his dad get infected he died to the God of Death. He got downed by Ketheric Thorm, just before the second phase of the fight began. I tried to push him out of the bone chill aura, but you can't push downed companions and I couldn't kill the boss quick enough to save him.

The tragic part for me is he had just graduated from eldritch blast spammer. I respecd him to pact of the blade and picked up a nice two hander with additional bonus when used as a pact weapon. All the more reason for me to wish it was Shadowheart who kicked it.

I'm down to 3 of the original 6 companions, with a couple of druid latecomers filling out the bench.

You can resurrect them at camp, right?
 
Lost my first companion in combat, at the end of Act 2 last night. I've had them die before, but it's always resulted in a wipe (I'm looking at you bulette). Thankfully it felt like a pretty fitting end for Wyll and he wasn't just one turn, Fosbury flopped into the abyss.

After seeing his dad get infected he died to the God of Death. He got downed by Ketheric Thorm, just before the second phase of the fight began. I tried to push him out of the bone chill aura, but you can't push downed companions and I couldn't kill the boss quick enough to save him.

The tragic part for me is he had just graduated from eldritch blast spammer. I respecd him to pact of the blade and picked up a nice two hander with additional bonus when used as a pact weapon. All the more reason for me to wish it was Shadowheart who kicked it.

I'm down to 3 of the original 6 companions, with a couple of druid latecomers filling out the bench.

Withers
 
You can resurrect them at camp, right?

Yeah I could, but I'm not a fan of that mechanic. I wont use it for my first playthrough at least.

I try and do very light roleplay when playing. I pick the choices my character would do, instead of the best gameplay choices (it's why I really like the inspiration mechanic). For example, I knew Lae'zel was one of the companions, but when she approached me and told me to come with her for "cleansing" I had to politely refuse.

I do wish the character would react to the death though, just a short cut scene next time I return to camp would be good.
 
Yeah I could, but I'm not a fan of that mechanic. I wont use it for my first playthrough at least.

I try and do very light roleplay when playing. I pick the choices my character would do, instead of the best gameplay choices (it's why I really like the inspiration mechanic). For example, I knew Lae'zel was one of the companions, but when she approached me and told me to come with her for "cleansing" I had to politely refuse.

I do wish the character would react to the death though, just a short cut scene next time I return to camp would be good.
Resurrection is such a core component of DnD that "real" character death is rare unless there is a TPK, so I am guessing that explains the lack of cutscene. I respect the dedication to your strategy though.