Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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Funny, the Bard was easily the MVP in my playthrough. Bardic Inspiration makes a huge difference for any skill check in dialogue and in combat they dominated the battlefield with Cutting Words to make enemies miss or fail crucial attacks or saving throws, crowd control spells like Hypnotic Pattern and Confusion and Counterspell from Magical Secrets.
Bards are awesome.
Dual hand crossbows and the sharpshooter feat makes for a hell of a combat monster.
Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you
So we're fighting monks today?
I said maybe
We can put the past away.
To me Bards are all about using charisma to avoid fights, or create distractions while the rest of the party does the important work.
But if you play a sorcerer, you can have charisma for when you want to avoid fights and fireballs for when you don't!
But if you're a lore bard, you get both fireball AND eldritch blast for when you don't want to avoid fights.
A dex based bard with two levels in paladin is easily the most powerful build in this game.
My experience in the game mostly feels like any turn that a character isn't dealing damage is a wasted action.
Sure there's a few exceptions, like putting haste on Karlach is insanely powerful. But I'm struggling to figure out how to use most support actions or classes effectively
Use more save or sucks. Stunning an enemy character(or - bless - several) is also super valuable, it puts the fight to a 3v4 right away. On the bard’s spell list alone, Sleep is incredibly valuable, you’ve got Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, Blindness, Hold Person, Silence, Fear, Confusion, I could go on.
Admittedly haven't tried bard itself yet, but I've got access to all those spells on Gale, and I find a well-placed fireball usually ends up being the better choice. The main problem i have is that I almost never saw those conditions last for even one turn, they would just pass a save and it was like the spell might as well have just missed.
It's a little frustrating, because surely there must be value in using those spells... But I'm definitely not doing it correctly when I try them out.
For what it's worth I played tactician mode right from the start, which probably colored my learning curve a bit
Right click enemy -> find their lowest save -> cast save or suck that cripples them specifically.
You give the enemy barbarian an intelligence save, not a strength one.
Now that you have spelled it out for me, I realize this should have been obvious. I have not been paying attention to what kind of saves each spell has, or how to make sure I use the right one on the right enemy.
I imagine that should help quite a bit
It’s okay - DMing multiple campaigns for sweaty tryhards just massively overprepared me for anything BG3 could throw at me 😅 the solution to many dumb character builds is ~~talking to them about it outside of the game like an adult~~ “okay, roll me a [weakest stat] save”.
Many bosses will be immune to several effects, and scouting what exactly you’ll be facing is time consuming if even possible, so it definitely can fall into a “run into fight - oh I need change my spell list - reload quicksave” which is a little lame but you can’t always be prepared for everything unfortunately.
Also! Make sure to check their save proficiencies - It should be represented with a little hexagon around 2 or so ability scores. Obviously you usually want to avoid rolling against that score.
The main problem i have is that I almost never saw those conditions last for even one turn, they would just pass a save and it was like the spell might as well have just missed.
Some of the spells mentioned require concentration. As an example, if you cast Tasha's Hideous Laughter one turn, and then any other spell that requires concentration the next turn like Hex or Bless or any of the hundred or so spells, your character stops concentrating on Tasha's Hideous Laughter, thus ending its effects.
I really wish the game gave me a confirmation button if I'm about to cast a new concentration spell over my last one, I keep wasting spells
I mean, there's a "concentration" tag on the spell, and the character's picture in the turn display has an icon added when concentrating.
I know, I'm just dumb
Use more save or sucks.
How are you getting reliable success with any spell that allows for a saving throw? I'm seeing pretty terrible odds with my bard's offensive enchantment spells (on Tactician difficulty).
I actually have the same issue with Gale. Dude misses like every third shot.
Lucky. For me, Gale usually doesn't live long enough for three shots.
Lol, he's pretty much always the first to die. For some reason, he's targeted first every time, taken out after 1 turn, and then continually taken out every time I try to revive him.
I may just need to replace him with Wyll. Haven't used Wyll all that much yet.
Wyll is a bit less squishy. And he's handy to have around if he has repelling blast.
Debuffs will rarely be outright reliable, they'd be broken if they did considering how much they swing the turn economy.
That said, boosting spell save DC goes a long way (either by primary stat or gear) and gets pretty strong by late game. Upcasting gives you more targets to try your luck on, too. Early game you're bound to have some misses just like your martial fighters do, but Sleep does very well then, as does Phalar Aluve: Shriek.
In general, having options that check against different saves and being smart about your targets helps a lot. Don't try to throw Hold Person on an enemy druid or cleric, and use Bane on low CHA targets like undead and constructs, for example.
This strategy is only okay until you reach act 3, and then it gets crazy powerful with all the items that bump your spell save DC up.
Bard in BG3 can be one the single highest burst classes in the game if you go college of swords/sharpshooter/dual crossbows. And you can do that three times a day with the bard shirt rest. It’s absolutely disgusting.
I felt the same way. It's 4v4. My turn is to make it 4v3 as quick as possible because even one hit on anyone other than karlach or a tank character will take me 1/2 hp. And God forbid they take 2 hits, then they're out of the battle. My main is a bard (I'm still in the first map dealing with the goblin camp) and I'm using karlach as my tank, but if my bard isn't doing a damage attack on an enemy I feel I'm worse off. I know I'm doing something wrong because this isn't the way support moves are balanced to be.
Use your Bard's abilities to buff your allies to give them advantage, or to break your enemies to give them disadvantage. Bards can also put enemies to sleep, make them fall prone with laughter, and sling horrible insults like "you have a visage well suited for scroll-writing." This will make your allies less likely to take damage, and more likely to deal more damage themselves. A bard can also heal, so at least in the early game you can run 3 dedicated DPS and a bard and have no issues in most situations.
Buffing and breaking make DPS easier. If your DPS units are taking less damage, that means fewer turns are needed for healing, so your healer can do some other buffing, or even some damage. Heck, at least in the early game, you could run a bard as your healer and support, who on off-turns could also deal damage, then use three dedicated DPS units. That'll help you out with your desire to see big bonks.
Keeping in mind that Shadowheart is basically a DPS character if you cast Spirit Guardians and...
Nope, that's it. Very balanced spell.
Spirit Guardians: For when you want to trivialize the shadowlands.
Spirit guard trivializes any difficult encounter that isn't a boss fight really. Specially when weak enemies run right into it.
I do play on medium difficulty so maybe I should just raise the difficulty but I'm not that interested in a challenge really. I'm already challenged enough as it is
I do, I do want to trivialize the Shadow Lands!
Fuck you, scary ghosts, my ancestors or whatever got my back 😤
Bard level 6. More proof that bards are superior! lol
Having a bard in the party is like this... except there's a dude actually playing Immigrant Song:
Starting my first Bard playthrough right now. I'm thinking Bard with Fighter Subclass. So far it's OP af as a support character and eventually I got plans to dish out high damage too
you'd have to be particularly proficient to be able to fret and pluck in handwraps
My character this playthrough is a Bard, and I think he is probably the most powerful character I've played so far. He is excellent at everything except AOE spellcasting, and he's even better at damage than a fighter or barbarian. I'm definitely rolling a bard next time I play D&D.