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Notes -
Talk about your Baldur's Gate 3 characters!
I'm playing a Way of the Open Hand monk. Reached level 4 and picked Athlete as the feat. His armor class is pretty crazy - 19. Due to getting Dexterity up to 18 and using gloves that give +2 AC to unarmored characters.
I'm going to play him as a good person mostly, an enlightened monk who mainly uses non-deadly means. That's why he's equipped with a quarterstaff instead of a slightly more damaging sharp weapon. :)
I don't have the game, but my brother swears by it. He's built a barbarian who makes vigorous use of the new jumping rules. So he can leap 10 meters to wallop a caster or archer. The next action, he can pick it up and hurl it at other enemies. He once escaped a prison cell by wrestling a jailor and suplexing him behind the bars. Perhaps it's not supposed to work that way, but I like it.
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Dwarf Male Tempest Cleric, somewhere in the LG/NG/LN range (though certainly not a pacifist, especially against the traditional enemies of dwarves and clerics), up to level 6 so far.
The emphasis on verticality has made for some very fun thunderwaves, and spirit guardians + spiritual weapon remains excellent even after the changes to both spells.
I think that is a really interesting component of the game as well. Makes all of the movement abilities like psionic jump and mist walk feel rewarding and fun. I also quickly regretted not picking up feather fall thinking there would likely be no opportunity to use it.
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Dwarves! My next playthrough might be with a pint sized person. Maybe a LOTR-inspired Halfling.
What's the relation between thunder attacks and verticality? Enemies get pushed off ledges?
I just respecced Shadowheart to be a tempest cleric, but haven't had a chance to test out her thunder spells yet. I'm hoping she won't get hit by her own lightning magic, hah. I've put her in heavy armor.
One thing disappointed me a little about the verticality in this game. Even if you push an enemy to get them to fall 10 meters and land on their back, they only take ~2 hp damage. It should scale upward much more than that IMO.
Based on the recent community update they did, the only thing less popular than the short folk (halflings, gnomes, dwarves) were Githyanki, so absolutely give em' some love.
Yup, thunderwave shoves then if they fail the save. Really easily to avoid hitting hit by your own stuff as a Cleric, unless you go light cleric you don't have anything with quite the radius of a fireball to worry about.
Yeah, the normal damage isn't great, but lots of instakill things you can shove them into. Otherwise mostly nice to make their ranged have disadvantage or force their melee to run back up.
I'll just ask this here because you're higher level than me, though anyone is welcome to answer:
I started the game on explorer difficulty because I wanted to reduce the amount of loading saves and retrying fights I'd have to do. But after getting to level 4 I felt confident. Turned it up to balanced right before a fight. Lost 1/3 of my hp on each character because easy-mode gives a huge hp boost (in addition to better hit rolls) and balanced doesn't give anything like that. Got my ass kicked in the fight. Retried and took the high ground and succeeded. But one of my characters got downed twice, and I had to use many potions. One time Wyll got taken from full hp to 0 in a single attack. Dang.
This was the gnoll/Missing Shipment fight with quite a few enemies and a boss gnoll with really high hp. Is this supposed to be a particularly difficult fight or do I just suck at the game? :)
It's not an easy fight, but it isn't one of the ones that felt particularly difficult (I've run into about 3 really rough ones so far).
Glad you figured out the high ground, though, it makes a big difference in a lot of these fights. Positioning and getting the drop on enemies is essential. Also, there's 1 fight in the first zone that I would very much not advise until you hit level 5, so heads up if you run into a brick wall.
One thing that may help-
While Warlocks and Wizards do not normally have shield proficiency, humans in BG3 get it as a racial. Great idea to slap a shield on Wyll and Gale, 2 AC goes a long way.
Approx where is this really tough fight in the first zone?
I will definitely be more keen on gaining high ground and stealth opportunities from now on. :) And I've got hex on Wyll so I'll examine the toughest enemies, hex an ability, and then target that weakness with a spell or weapon action to gain Advantage.
I've got a shield on Gale. The +2 AC seems to remain even though I've got his ranged weapon active. On Wyll I'm using the flaming greatsword (pact bound), so I'll have to find a decent one handed weapon for him first. He definitely got hit harder than the others due to only having 14 AC.
I also noticed the importance of Initiative. When I respecced Shadowheart I put her dexterity at 10 because I wanted her in heavy armour which rules out any dex bonus to AC. But every enemy gets to act before her, lol.
The northwestern corner of the first map. Bit of a doozy.
Assuming that's the gith gang. They wiped the floor with my party. I loaded and succeeded with dialogue checks instead. Got over 300 xp, but it would have been fun to kill them and get their stuff too. Maybe next playthrough. :)
Edit: I don't like how enemies get 3 attacks per turn. If that's a feature for the rest of the game... I'll be sad.
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Human Male Battlemaster Fighter for the first time around.
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Not making much progress as I've had a busy week, but I've been playing a Paladin/Warlock. I'm at 1 level on Ancients Paladin and 2 of Warlock, itching to get the third Warlock level for pact of the blade. I'll take Warlock to 5 and then Paladin to 5 and then decide how to finish from there.
The character is a lot of fun because I'm pretty strong in both melee and ranged. Reasonably tanky, especially with the incredible Warlock spell buffs. And, killer at conversation from high charisma. It feels strong enough to be fun without being so strong as to be broken.
Sounds fun. I assume Paladin benefits from Charisma being the primary ability as well. I sometimes wish I had high Cha for some dialogues. Mine is at 10 lol. But I can use Wyll for some of those dice rolls. He's my Warlock. I picked Pact of the blade for him, so that I could use the flaming greatsword I got from the prologue by killing the devil creature who was fighting the mindflayer. Wyll is limited in terms of armor and weapon proficiencies, but the Pact gives proficiency for whatever weapon you use it on. :)
What race is your character? My monk is a Wood Elf, because they get extra movement.
I did the Seldarine drow, for reasons that currently escape me.
The Paladin and Warlock spells both benefit from charisma, and pact of the blade will make it my primary attack stat for physical attacks with the pact weapon. I also use the everburning blade from the nautilus, which is carrying me for melee attacks right now because my strength is only 10, and I need another level to take pact.
I've never played 5e before and honestly I find the multiclassing kind of clumsy (but I guess it always is). That said, the benefits of having a high charisma plate wearer who got to hit hard and do fun conversation stuff with intimidate and persuasion was too good to pass up.
I was disinclined to ever use Intimidation, but I'm warming to it after turning up the difficulty level, hehe. I started on easy, now I'm on balanced. Getting more rewards and avoiding some fights seems more important now.
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