Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 - tips, tricks & helpful information

[whydoibother]

Spoiler

According to "Descent to Avernus" set shortly before BG3 Dead Three is still alive, but have less power and walk along mortals. Dark Urge could be Bhaal himself.

Would explain why he has he has an impish butler, just like you-know-who.

It would also be a pretty lazy kotor plot twist ripoff

Uhm, sir, we call these "references" and "homages", okay?

 

[Grunker]

When you link to fextralife
You link with Hitler!

 

[whydoibother]

We need a wordfilter in these threads, which redirects all Fextralife wiki links to the community wiki.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

When you link to fextralife
You link with Hitler!

They'll do same videos after release.

 

[Serious_Business]

Fextra are content parasites.

Yes. Always half-baked shit as far as I can tell, jumping on every new release bandwagon, disgusting.

This kid puts in a lot of effort :

https://www.aestusguides.com/guides/baldur-s-gate-3-class-tier-list-and-guide

Not sure if the game warrants these great analysis, but to be fair I did the same with the original games when I was a teenager and they were much more simplistic in many ways (oh no). I like what I've seen of 5e so far, seems better than 3e and Pathfinder (can't stand the AC and AB stacking, plus the buffs, blech). I haven't played it much but it does seem like Solasta does the system better, we'll have to see how things stand independantly of presentation and narrative.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Would be very interesting if the Dark Urge was bhaal himself.

Anyways, these 3 videos are still the best analysis of the game mechanics pre release

 

[jackofshadows]

^ that is a proper nerd who really knows the priorities when it comes to gameplay. We need to somehow invite his ass here unless he's already a member (doubt, he was talking about posting on reddit though).

 

[DemonKing]

A guide "How to avoid all romances" could be bery useful and appreciated.

It would be good if you could set your romance preferences at the start of the game ("none", "hetero", "anything goes" etc) so you don't have to engage with that crap if you don't want to.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Fextra are content parasites.

Yes. Always half-baked shit as far as I can tell, jumping on every new release bandwagon, disgusting.

This kid puts in a lot of effort :

https://www.aestusguides.com/guides/baldur-s-gate-3-class-tier-list-and-guide

Not sure if the game warrants these great analysis, but to be fair I did the same with the original games when I was a teenager and they were much more simplistic in many ways (oh no). I like what I've seen of 5e so far, seems better than 3e and Pathfinder (can't stand the AC and AB stacking, plus the buffs, blech). I haven't played it much but it does seem like Solasta does the system better, we'll have to see how things stand independantly of presentation and narrative.

Control: The hallmark of a controller is having effects which ruin your enemy’s day, but not because they do a lot of damage. Controllers manipulate the battlefield with an arsenal of status effects and debuffs.

Defender: The role of a defender is to draw aggro and control enemy movement by throwing yourself into them.

Striker: The role of a striker is to generously dispense damage. That damage can be done to a single target or to many. It can be sustainable damage over a long period or focused into single turn. It can be dealt at range or at melee. All this counts as striking in my book.

Support: Supporters enable their allies through buffs and healing. Again, there are a lot of different kinds of buffs – offensive, defensive, mobility, etc – but they all enable allies, so all count as support for me. In previous editions of D&D this role was called “leader,” but I prefer the straight-forward description of support.

This sounds like an absolute pleb but I'll keep on reading.

 

[MerchantKing]

Builds? There are no builds in 5e... At least no fun builds. Given that this is DOS3, barrel stacking and tossing will be your winning build.

 

[AwesomeButton]

His video on the cleric class was very good, and I like his style of delivery, not trying to go 300 words per minute.

Builds? There are no builds in 5e... At least no fun builds. Given that this is DOS3, barrel stacking and tossing will be your winning build.

I tend to agree, even more in BG3, the game will likely be very easy even on Tactician, but I'm watching class guides out of curiosity.

 

[Necrodancer]

A guide "How to avoid all romances" could be bery useful and appreciated.

It would be good if you could set your romance preferences at the start of the game ("none", "hetero", "anything goes" etc) so you don't have to engage with that crap if you don't want to.

But then I couldn't "accidentally" stumble across some hardcore bear stuff, secretly enjoy it then complain about it afterwards so that won't fit my narrative I'm afraid.

 

[AwesomeButton]

As I watch more of this guy's guides, my impression is that the action economy pushes the player towards repetitive tactics where you are almost always better off opting to spend your action or concentration on the same type of "literal action"/ability usage.

When discussing the paladin and cleric he often discounts spells with the argument "your concentration should be spent on bless anyway" or "you are better off using your action on attacking an enemy than providing conditional heal on an ally".

I guess similar "Occam's razor" tactics will be present for other classes.

 

[Saravan]

As I watch more of this guy's guides, my impression is that the action economy pushes the player towards repetitive tactics where you are almost always better off opting to spend your action or concentration on the same type of "literal action"/ability usage.

When discussing the paladin and cleric he often discounts spells with the argument "your concentration should be spent on bless anyway" or "you are better off using your action on attacking an enemy than providing conditional heal on an ally".

I guess similar "Occam's razor" tactics will be present for other classes.

Much of this circles back to 5e being simplified to speed up TT sessions which doesn’t translate well to CRPGs. 3.5e would be much better but it’s not going to happen nowadays.

 

[Fedora Master]

As I watch more of this guy's guides, my impression is that the action economy pushes the player towards repetitive tactics where you are almost always better off opting to spend your action or concentration on the same type of "literal action"/ability usage.

When discussing the paladin and cleric he often discounts spells with the argument "your concentration should be spent on bless anyway" or "you are better off using your action on attacking an enemy than providing conditional heal on an ally".

I guess similar "Occam's razor" tactics will be present for other classes.

TT problem. When you read RPGBOT guides on the PnP classes they often go "Just use <one signature ability> and ignore the rest", especially concentration based stuff.

 

[Readher]

If you kill your enemies, you win.

 

[whydoibother]

I guess similar "Occam's razor" tactics will be present for other classes.

You could just use skills you like. Even where X is optimal, you can instead choose to stealth, go around, climb up, and push one guy to fall on top of another guy, because its fun, even if its less damage.

 

[MerchantKing]

Fextralife is terrible. Their builds suck too.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Yeah. The guy whose videos Kem0sabe shared is good though. In fact I had started watching his Thoughts Pt 1 video but since I lacked any context, I thought it was just someone's outpour of autism. The class guides he has done are actually good. It's also good he does them in text form as well, for easier searching.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Making tutorial for EA game has no sense, methinks.

 

[Theodora]

Start by learning all the shit Larian has changed from 5e. I can only conclude from these changes that the devs plays casters.

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1YEOShhKLfy5-_CE-KGIyUTPHwZICga70/mobilebasic?pli=1

Damn that's useful, thank you!

A guide "How to avoid all romances" could be bery useful and appreciated.

Just be a dick to people. (Works in real life, too!)

 

[Grunker]

Saravan are you still maintaining the document? Do you know how advantage works in BG3? In Solasta they wisely changed the rules so you sum up total amounts of adv and disad and then retain whatever has most counts, as the TT rules (where any adv cancels any disadv and vice versa) is purely a question of upkeep costs, which are non-existant on a PC.

 

[whydoibother]

After giving it the Big Think™, I think I'll play as a Dark Urge monk with shadow specialization.
Makes sense to be a monk fighting inner demons through discipline, makes sense to be a shadowy guy if you are a serial killer, and makes sense as a solo class in case I sorta kinda kill everyone else.

What's a good build for multiclassing this? I don't want to splash too much, or too late, because I want my ki points and martial bonuses, but maybe a bit of Rogue? For sneak attacks? Or a lot of rogue, for Assassin?

 

[Grunker]

After giving it the Big Think™, I think I'll play as a Dark Urge monk with shadow specialization.
Makes sense to be a monk fighting inner demons through discipline, makes sense to be a shadowy guy if you are a serial killer, and makes sense as a solo class in case I sorta kinda kill everyone else.

What's a good build for multiclassing this? I don't want to splash too much, or too late, because I want my ki points and martial bonuses, but maybe a bit of Rogue? For sneak attacks? Or a lot of rogue, for Assassin?

Depending on how Larian implemented Wild Shape, Druid/Monk can be an extremely fun and versatile build. It hinges on them implementing monk abilities and flurry for wild shape, however. Even if they don't, a work-around is to take Druid of the Spores since that subclass effectively replaces Wild Shape with your spores, and synergizes with being in melee.

It's probably not a top tier meta-build, but I have been strongly considering it. I think I'm going to end up with pure class Lore College Bard Dark Urge though. The prospect of succeeding on every skill roll ever with just 1 character is too good.

Unless I'm mistaken in how difficult skill rolls will become later on, I believe every single online guide currently is *dead wrong* on how to build a Bard skill-wise. After preliminary testing, I believe it is a GIANT mistake to take proficiency in Persuasion, Deception and Intimidation. With Friends being active on every single diplomacy roll + Guidance on most of them, the Bards CHA-modifier + Jack of All Trades will absolutely demolish those rolls. This means you automatically have all speech skills covered just by picking bard. Hence, you save three skill proficiencies to put in stuff like Perception and flavor skills.

If you forego optimizing for combat attributes (which isn't necessary on a bard anyway - you just need CHA), this means that you could theoretically cover *almost every single skill in the entire game on just your MC*.

For a first playthrough, that seems hella fun, and since with how Cutting Words works with saving throws, you can bypass the useless implementation of Bardic Inspiration and just use your Bardic Inspiartion to control enemies (by making them fail their saves vs your CC spells). So you'll have a completely AS-independent support character who can cover all your skill check needs while being a fairly versatile caster (control spells when needed, buffs when not, cantrips can be damaged focused or Vicious Mockery for debuffing as needed).

Do note that the above assumes a Lore College bard, as they have Cutting Words + gain three skill proficiencies.

Yosharian might have opinions on monks

 

[whydoibother]

pure class Lore College Bard Dark Urge

Unless I am mistaken, the point of the Dark Urge character might be as a replacement for Lone Wolf runs from DOS2. You kill your party members, and gain power, so you can push through solo. Of course, you can deny the urge, but I think that's the design there.
And since the tadpoles seem like a sort of talent tree, where you gather tadpoles to get bonuses, killing party members for their brainworms is directly an increase of power.
So, along those lines, a bard (party based class) might not be a good fit for the Dark Urge (a solo character, as per my speculation).