this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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Baldur's Gate 3
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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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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.
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
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.