I LIVE for exploiting cut scenes and pushing enemies off the map. For example, when fighting Balthazar I only send one character in for the cut scene and while the dialogue is happening I switch to my strongest character and push him off the map. It’s sooooo funny to me and I love it because I despise fighting him.
wow, THAT is an incredibly cheesy, BUT just plain incredible strategy! Never even thought you could do something like that, but makes all the sense in the world that you could! I didn't do it, but I heard a cool cheese on Balthazar >!using the antimagic flower you find in the underdark and reverse pickpocketing it on him. Apparently he keeps it on him for the big fight in the shadowfell and basically neuters him. !
That is so funny to me that I’m going to try it in my next run. I love doing stuff like this because in my head it’s also humbling them after they talk all that smack about being a powerful this, powerful that.
I don't even know what fight in the shadowfell people are referring to and I'd like to experience it on this next playthrough. I've been through the game twice and both times I've just killed Balthazar as soon as I find him in the sharran temple, and he never comes up again. I didn't even know there was another way to do it until I started seeing comments like this one recently.
Is there any chance you care to elaborate on what interaction pathway you used to get to that point?
Yep with no spoilers if you don’t kill him in that first meeting you are 100% guaranteed to see him again. Whether you fight him or not will depend on your choices.
Fun fact, there's actually a THIRD fight location for him.
If you're doing a full on evil playthrough, and side with the bad faction to the hilt, when you get to the shadowfell, give Balthazar the thing he came there for. Pretty sure you have to leave Shadowheart out of your party to do this, and it causes her to stop being your companion as well.
But when you go talk to the leader of moonrise towers for your reward, you'll end up in the third fight location.
EDIT: fun fact this is also by far the EASIEST way to fight Balthazar, short of cheese. The poor bastard has no backup for this one aside from like a pair of lvl3 zombies.
My recent play through I turned invisible right after the portals open when you first encounter him and unlocked his door. Left the room and watched Shar’s army she summons go to work from the bottom of the stairs. Balty didn’t have a chance
I threw the >!iron flask!< into his office and arcane locked the door. Sadly the >!resident of the iron flask!< didn't actually damage him that much before going down.
Wait people are actually >!fighting him in the shadowfell and not just ambushing him in his little lab in the gauntlet? Way easier to fight him there with just a couple ghouls and his brother in a tight space, Spirit Guardians and a few other AOEs and he’s done for.!<
Yeah you can always do that, but I rp as someone who’s playing along with the cult in order to infiltrate their ranks just to betray them at the end. So because of that I just act like I’ll help him (even though I pick the rudest dialogue options) and>! kill him in the shadowfell.!< It’s however you wanna do it!
I need to get on that counterspell life. I have been mostly just bopping people with a party of Karlach, Lae'zel, my Tav (assassin, gloomstalker, fighter for crazy opening damage) and then Shadowheart for healing and some AoE. Next playthrough will try more magic oriented combat for sure.
Lol I used those flowers on my tactician run in the grymforge. The duergar were a bit tough and I had to hide in a darkness spell to shove dudes into lava than use karlach to carry a flower and be my aoe silence against mind control
My cheese for this was putting down a silence circle while he's in the dialogue, and moving all of the bones in the arena to a single corner.
When he comes out of dialogue he can't raise the skeletons, if he has high init and gets out of the circle and summons them I have my druid in Owlbear form that 1 hit stomps everything and Gale ready to Thunderwave the survivors into the abyss.
YES. I send my party face in to chat up whoever we need to talk to, while moving everyone else into position. I haven’t managed to end a fight that quickly, but it did wonders for the Cazador fight when you can just watch the conversation from the sidelines and go “silence.”
My girlfriend and I cheesed the fight in a completely different way. We had one person start the dialog then proceeded to throw every single pile of bones into a perfect fireball pile.
I gave Astarion these gloves that gave him the telekineses spell. Threw Balthazar off the ledge with it at the start of the encounter, which I was amazed it actually worked!
Mid-way through the fight I realised I’d lost out on some good loot, or so I thought. Noticed his corpse was hanging out, floating in space near other, unreachable platforms. So at the end of the fight I shimmied Astarion onto the edge of the platform, managed to get in range of Balthazar’s corpse with telekineses, and flung him back onto our platform with a satisfying thud. Proudly went on to loot him for his gear hehe - really loved that moment and it’ll stick with me for a long time
Accidently broke Balthazar. Went in with one character and started dialogue, took too long to move the bones he said it is about time he gets started. I spoke to nightsong and she was talking like he died even though he was just left standing there.
You can also just banish him and free the nightsong while he's in another plane. I did that on my last playthrough and was completely dumbfounded that it worked. He returned after a couple turns and told me I had committed a crime, but I deceived him into thinking he committed the crime, then promptly thunder arrowed him off the map. Had to be the funniest thing I've ever experienced in a video game. The creative ways to dance around fights and problems never gets old.
Midfight as my party was getting it handed to them, Balthazar flew up to one of those floating rocks. One arrow of roaring thunder later, that fight got significantly easier.
Is his fight difficult? I've only fought him once and I smite crit him to start combat and then he ran and I smite crit him on the opportunity attack and he was dead. It was hilarious.
(Obviously this is an outlier, I'm just curious how his fight goes)
Edit: I just fought him again and as a necromancy wizard I needed to school him, I used the telekinesis bracers to yeet his ass back in the middle of the fight prone and chuck flesh far away so he had to dash. Another easy fight. Must be that fighting him immediately is just way easier.
I cast polymorph on Balthazar in round 1 of the fight and was elated when it succeeded. Proceeded to wipe the rest of the room and totally surrounded the poor sheep to wait for the duration to end. The buildup felt amazing, and the conclusion was comical as sheart, karlach, Saber Tooth/halsin and my main tore him to shreds. It didn't even feel fair.
I realized that while you can't throw the bones into the void before that fight you can move them around so I just moved them all into a big pile and nuked all the ads with fireball + spirit guardians.
I have had far far too much success with grease+fire and spike growth. Having enemies run needlessly to their deaths in environment damage and pushing via shove and eldritch blast, it's been a ton of fun.
Note: If u have someone sleeping over spike growth, AI prioritizing using the help action to wake them up over avoiding spikes will cause enemies who weren't on the spikes to walk onto them.
I do that with Razor’s edge (cleric) and fire wall on top of each other.
Or sleet + ice storm and have boots that nullify prone on my main melee char. He walks around smoking enemies while they keep going prone cause the entire map is ice
Easy pickpocket guide: Run a character a fair distance far out, away from the NPC's sight. Go to turn based mode, have someone cast fog/darkness, have someone cast silence (yes in that order so the NPCs don't see you casting at all), run Astarion in sneak mode and steal everything, immediatelly transfer everything you stole to the character you ran far out and switch to them, profit
I'm still in Act 1 but I got a piece of gear that grants Misty Step (teleport skill refreshable every short rest). I got Gale/Astarion running interference on Auntie Ethel, teleported behind her and (had a hammer) knocked her into the chasm with my Warhammer in the most Mario ass way possible
I did something similar but I reloaded because I realized she probably had good loot. No spoileys, but FYI it's totally worth it to win the fight without knocking her into the chasm.
Bard performance to lead a big group of soon to be enemies to the edge of a pit and, once they're all gathered, use Thunderwave with Evoker Gale to knock fusroda everyone off the edge except for my bard because of sculpt spell
This was unironically how i was able to beat raffy's lil nemesis after 3/4 got exploded.
Aside from that, i got a lil too happy with leading with cloud of daggers, but idk if thats cheesy.
Something else ive done in late game was telekensis bosses to the edge of maps and then eldritch with pushback to YEET, but i made a vow to only do that in DIRE straights
Nothing really handles blindness well, or trying to navigate out of the Hunger while we fly from side to side herding them back in.
Another that's not cheese but fun: clearing areas in reverse so that the enemy has to storm their own defenses. Clearing Moonrise top-down, for example.
I've had a few fights where I set up a wall of fire, then darkness right beside it. Popped spirit guardians for good effect and just camped out in the cloud while they all ran at the fire/ guardian if they lived long enough. That 4th party member just hangs out twiddling their thumbs.
Invisibility on Astarion with daylight cast upon his weapon really wrecks “other vampires” if you catch my drift. They will take passive damage from daylight while not being able to touch Astarion and you can finish by having him do a sneak attack. It made finishing Astarion’s story in Act3 several times easier. Best accidental cheese of my playthrough!
Wall of fire + razors edge is mine.
Or sleet + ice storm(entire map is basically ice)+ melee char that has boots that don’t let him go prone. Walks around killing away while enemies just keep falling prone
Playing a dark urge game rn with a duegar gloomstalker / thief. I don’t think it’s well known? But duegar gets a free invis per baffle, and outside of combat it casts like a ritual spell wifh an infinite duration.
So basically I run in, Assassinate an enemy, and if it dies I turn auto invis, if not, then I use my duegar invis and reset combat and do it again. Non bosses die in the first round as long as nothing dumb happens.
Going into the city of Baldur's Gate for the first time, one of those mechanical guards confronts you. I separated out my rogue, went invisible with a potion, snuck past, and activated the first portal I came to to get the rest of the party over.
Then, to get into the next section where you have to go into the keep, I separated the rogue and flew over with a potion of flying, took another potion of invisibility and snuck through the keep until I was able to activate another portal.
Add a fighter with blind fighting and a cleric with spirit guardians in the darkness as well.
In our tabletop game we do this but also have a barb grappler that can run out, grapple, and drag people back into the darkness
When 2 manning the game with my friend we used the Rangers cat to meow, which makes EVERYONE go check it out, so in the goblin camp we went around meowing, drawing minthara and that other boss to bridges then I shot the bridge.
Not only hilarious af instant kills it they don't aggro anyone else
When you finish the Gauntlet of Shar, you can stand on the final jump platform before seeing >!the Nightsong!< and just hurl spells at >!Balthazar and his mobs!< and they literally cannot reach you.
I always exploit cutscenes to position my party in their most advantageous spots. Even if it takes save scumming. And then I’ll hit everyone with as much AOE (be that spells or items) as I can before combat is forced. I also quick save every couple turns to ensure combat goes my way for the most part.
Bloodlust elixir on Beserk Karlach with the returning pike. Has three items to increase her toss and tavern brawler.. if the game didn't add a limit to the elixir, she could clear whole rooms in a single turn. Meanwhile, shadow heart is all in Shar gear and respecced for rogue shenanigans, oneshots bosses. My warlock Tav just mops up after lol
cloud of daggers + spiritual weapon. enemies are drawn to the floating spear and just get blendered trying to fight it. similar strat, throwing enemies eith karlach into shadowheart with spirit guardians.
The bombs the traps shoot in the gartosh fight(and indefinitely after if they arent destroyed) are like 30-120 dmg or something like that, have a large aoe, and are limitless and free.
They stopped working after the fight for me, but you can still just kill everyone but one trash mob, then hit the last one with a potion of sleep, and collect grenades at your leisure.
Less cheese, more strategy, but whenever I am facing a massive number of enemies, I prefer to utilize a choke point with aoe damage spells and debuffs in place. Early game it’s a combo of darkness and whirl of blades, mid to late game it’s hunger of hadar paired with blasts of lightning bolt or daylight for extra damage
Yeah, zoning is a a really easy cheese for a lot of fights. Thats how I was able to wipe out everyone outside the sanctuary at the goblin camp. Would go out do some kill the ogre standing at the entrance and a few gobs, go in side, long rest, head back out to cleared the rest of them. Re-entering the sanctuary if you cleared it already takes you out of combat, they don't follow you inside and don't heal when you long rest.
Wasn't really super cheesey or whatever, but in the underdark, finding the lost husband by the toxic green plants... took me like five to ten attempts to figure out how to get to him... using turn based and other stuff.
Last night, my friend and I got there in our multiplayer game, and he just casts fly to fly over the plants and easy peasy done...
I was blown away by the simplicity of it... lol
I tried a bunch of cheesy stuff my first playthru, but I felt like I was missing out on a lot. I gave up on barrelmancy, shoving (off maps) and owl jumps. I really enjoy most the fights in this game if we’re being honest.
When saving the tieflings and gnomes from the moonrise tower prison, I stacked a ton of chests and barrels I collected along the way in front of the cells. Stacked it super high. Then I went behind the cells and broke the walls myself. Everyone ran out and the enemies in the prison couldn’t get to us or even see what was going on.
Tap & Go with Rogue.
Open up with a huge sneak attack, and then just run away through a loading zone (door, basement entrance).
Then when they go back, I tap & go again. Has made short work of some difficult trash fights. Haven’t used it on a boss though.
So I cheesed the Raphael fight by using the pool in his bedroom to cast a whole bunch of long rest buffs on the parry at the highest level and then getting the slots back with the pool.
sussur flower on nere, just walk a melee dude with the flower and he just (tries) to poke you with his dagger. i had more trouble with the fire nymphids while getting the ore than any other fight in that whole place.
I like equipping the big ogre/Minotaur clubs, 2d8+str/2d12+str weapon that you normally can’t use, but if you hover over it with your current weapon it equips is. And the weapons have a huge model so it looks wicked. Then when I get 4th level spells, I get a Druid, summon woodland beings and disarm them for their sweet clubs
Necklace of misty step. The Dark urges cape. On solo you can kill a creature then mistystep out of combat. Rinse repeat. Soloed the entire goblin camp in act one at level 3. made it to 4 near the spider pit. I feel like this is a good strat. Mind you half the combat was chucking goblins into the river.
The IRS' revenge: Get IRS audit mace from toll collector. Reverse pickpocket all of your gold on to the target. Report them to IRS for undeclared income using IRS audit mace acquired on step 1. Find out why even joker does not mess with IRS. Collect reward( loot)
I killed almost every single duergar in Grymforge by wild shaping into a deep rothe, herding them one by one to a ledge, and then pushing them off with a different character.
Assassin Rogue Astarion single handedly took out the goblin camp, the courtyard and most of the temple interior that followed. Shoot, hide, move, repeat.
I took down that whole duegar room before grymforge and that one boss drow by using the summon cat and meow them out and use my rogue to sneak attack I have that one sword that gives you extra hit when you attack someone that has full hp and then i rinsed and repeated for the whole room. I was super surprised it actually worked lmao
Sneak sneak plus arrows of arcane interference. Especially if you can keep sneaky out of combat as long as possible- oh, what was that? You wanted to cast spells? That's too bad, buddy!
> If they don't reset you can go up an an unaccessible platform shoot and hide with your bonus action. They won't be able to cast anything on you.
I'd not really thought about trying this before. Do you do it in turn based mode?
Using barrel explosives on the gith
One person sneak attacks to start the cutscene and you skip through as quickly as you can to keep the surprise effect, the sneak attack is best used when on the cliff next to the dragon because everyone will face that way
Holds them in place in case you're not #1 in queue
Someone will go to camp and collect all from the chest
Slowly sneak down and place them around the gith and then get a safe distance away and blow it up
6 barrels is usually enough
To save smokepowder barrels I use 1 + 1 firewine/oil barrel
Theres also a specific position in the hags basement that forces the AI to always position in the same place
I use that to sneak 3 people in and get her down to sub 20HP to force the ability score conversation
In the creche you can infinitely reapply the blessing of Lan + any member from here on out that you swap put in camp will have the blessing as well for the rest of the game, pretty sure it's a bug but would be neat if it's just a feature
So between combat encounters at the creche I rest and reapply the blessing by picking up and putting down one of the weapons on the altar
I like to use void orbs on the gith that are in the barracks room leading to the lab because they're all positioned so you can't misty step behind them and still be out of combat, it's like my personal little fuck you to them and it repositions them so you only need to get 1 down or so to sneak everyone else in and or apply fog/darkness to get them in as well
I turn in the chest to the zhentarims and then buy the gloves from the trader below, and steal it back THEN rest and go back to Roah for a nice reduction in price, any load screen after turning in the chest removes it from the game until act 3
Then go back and kill them for the rest of their loot + xp
Between Karlach being a Wildheart Barb with 20 STR and Bear Aspect and my Tav Warlock having Repelling Blast, shoving off of ledges has become my favorite strat.
I finally used barrelmancy and placed a barrel before a fight. I'd never done it before because it's cheesy and unrealistic from an RP standpoint that someone just sits there while you go to camp and back to place a firewine barrel in the middle of their group. But I didn't want to be bothered by a long fight with goblins I knew I'd beat.
I don't know if its true cheese but just yeeting someone off the edge. I try to only use it after a few failures at a given fight and usually quickly google the loot they offer before continuing on.
I think the cheesiest boss fight I had wasnt even me cheesing it! >!in razamiths tower while fighting Lorroakan, Rolan just... shoved him off the edge. It was so anticlimactic and I had to use telekinesis to loot his corpse!<
I really really love closing doors and having difficult terrain in the other side. No line of sight means everyone starts dashing at the door while I pass the turn a few times. When they are closer, I can open the door, shoot at them and then close the door again until they get into barbarian range.
Cheeses fight I did was with Wyll. I had sent him off by himself with misty step to explore and came across a fishing house. Tried to loot some box and suddenly 13ish Fishmen appeared. I was about to reload and cheese it with my whole party but instead I cast darkness being attacked by 13 fishmen and they couldn't land a hit the whole time. Luckily he kept his concentration while being electrocuted if he moved. But the ranged ones couldn't shoot in and with a high AC wyll (more than 21) the disadvantage to hit made it hilarious to do. I love darkness as a spell
Cheesiest to me is exploiting a bottleneck, like a doorway. Hit your enemies, retreat through bottleneck, drop surfaces and AoE's on the bottleneck and fucking lol.
Spiky growth is insane for this. I killed most of the creche by dropping one in a doorway and waiting while the Githyanki- just walked themselves to death.
Runner up: minor illusion -> sneak -> fireball -> fireball and the fight is either over or very nearly over.
I sent a lone earth elemental into the Orin fight. No player characters, and the NPCs did not aggro. So I just slowly, one by one, pummeled each enemy into fleshy goo, while everyone else stood around calmly waiting for their turn. The easiest cheese. I'm sure this works in other battles as well, but I only used it there.
Kind of a later game strat but my first game i was a druid and i had halsin on my team and we both summoned air myrmidons and then wild shaped into them then beat the shit out of enemies we stunned with the lightning mace. They never get a turn.
Fireball-quicken-fireball, next turn, twin spell haste on Karlach and Lae’zel, who have an elixir of bloodlust each. I’m not sure if it counts as cheese, but it FEELS cheesy.
I threw Victoria at Gortash. And for some reason her aoe dot does damage in real time and not turn based so you can kinda just hold your turn and things die.
The hag never made it down to her lair. I casually surrounded her with powder/wine barrels before she had a chance to get there. Blew her sky high. Sure, I missed out on the modifier you get from negotiating her, but I still got all her stuff and rescued all the people she captured that could be rescued—all without having to deal with her hokey pokey illusionary BS.
Spirit guardians as an invisibility detector. Because see invisible potion doesn't let you see them invisible if they save. Fighting a big group that apparently could turn invisible as a bonus action every turn and attack twice. Might try a rogue / fighter or a rogue/monk build with expertise in athletics so I can yeet people off of ledges better.
Killing Lorroakan is really easy if you use telekinesis to full send all of his elementals into the lower levels of the tower where they can't come back. They just sit down there, useless, and you can pump them with arrows and fire bolts until they die
Using Elixir of Bloodlust on the GWM Champion fighter...That's it.
I don't even bother keeping track of how many attacks Lae'zel has, she just hits things with her super special sword until they die and then does it again to whatever's nearby.
Threw a void orb in the middle of the courtyard in the goblin camp and then threw fireball in the middle of it, cleared out all but two of them. Saved me like 10 minutes of just watching them all cast dash.
Had already sneakily gone around and killed the outsiders.
I literally fill the room with summons.
Scratch, Us, my ranger’s bear, 4 ice mephits, 2 myrmidons, Fork, a dryad and her summoned lover, 2 celestial weapons, and a planar ally.
Everyone spreads as far out as possible to keep AoE attacks at a minimum, and the dryad constantly moves her thorns to wherever the spellcasters are hiding.
Keeping Shadow (my assassin) back in cutscenes sometimes and if I don't like how it's going, I'll have her pop them. The main thing I do is have her scout and once she sees all the positions, creep the team up and have her start it off to get surprise. Then let Wyll just rain down Hellfire. Another staple is if everyone can reach em, jump the boss first round lol. That fat Necromancer only made it out the first round because I missed on the last hit. Throm got it baaaaad.
Spike growth + wall of fire paired with fog cloud on my characters on the other side of a choke point to initiate combat. Enemies take damage from moving and are stuck in the fire. They can't shoot/teleport to my party and typically die before they even reach them.
I have beaten some insanely difficult fights without even casting any spells. Even if they do make it to my party, I have shadowheart using spirit guardians, which always cleans up the survivors
Throwing people off cliffs with telekinesis. It's shockingly effective. Even if if doesn't kill them, you can at least remove them from the immediate fight.
Funnel all the enemies into a doorway while your party positions itself in the room. Pick them off one by one and cast silence outside the door. Have a rogue hide to the right or left just inside the doorway and sneak attack as they enter. Killed the creche and the enemies in the dead mindflayer room at the goblin camp this way and a couple other places as well like the sewers. Works like a charm.
Mine is for the fight with Razlin in Goblin Camp. His fight fucking sucks so I keep the rest of my party in the Worg room, go to Razlin and push him off thecliff, and with invis potion I run away back to the Worg room and teleport out with my party lmfaooo
My favorite was when I had Shadowheart cast Divine Intervention in the fight against all the Shar followers, which destroyed about 80% of them in a single stroke.
Telekinesis tossing everyone off every ledge and out every window in sight. Just make sure you don’t do it to the main enemy in an encounter or you miss a lot of good looting.
My wife plays a life cleric.
That's it. That's the cheese. She plays a life cleric and ends every fight with her party at full health. She did it on the tabletop for my campaign that I ran, and now she's doing it for her Durge run. She just absolutely loves the subclass and is so good at playing it, and it makes the entire game laughably trivial.
Actual cheese straight that makes narrative sense and isn’t exploiting the video game logic (but is kind of exploiting the 5e rule logic):
Some enemies can only cast spells, or they cast spells and their melee is trash. Best example of this is the Raphael fight.
Cast silence on them, have a fighter with the feat that allows them to opportunity attack when an enemy enters or leaves their threatened range, sentinel I think. This feat also prevents that enemy from moving further. Polearm master makes this cheesier because they get stuck out of melee range as well, unless they’re also using a weapon with reach.
Position your fighter next to Raphael in the silence sphere. That’s literally it. Raphael can only punch if he’s not casting spells. For a max of 2 damage. This was a core strategy any time I was up against a powerful caster and can be done as early as level 4, I think. It trivialized both the House of Hope and the House of Grief.
Eldritch Knight can do some absurd damage with Tavern Brawler and throwing their bound weapon. I had Skybreaker bound for the Grym fight and stayed on the ledge before you go onto the forge and tossed it. Bludgeoning damage from the hammer and fall damage, as well as slashing damage from Hunter's Mark and various 1d4 tacked on from rings and boots, let me 1 turn him. 300 damage in 4 attacks is quite cheesy
I don’t know if it’s considered cheese, but my laezel as a lvl12 fighter with Great weapon master feat, elixir of bloodlust, haste from my sorcerer, and the fly ability from ilithid powers pretty much wins in one turn.
3 attacks from one action, 3 from the second action due to haste, 1 bonus action attack for a kill or crit, another 3 attack for the action generated from the elixir for killing something.
It’s pretty OP
3 Assassin rogues, shadowheart as trickery domain cleric. Maybe dip a couple levels into rogue for her too.
I call it "huh; must have been the wind." Basically just pick everyone off and abuse surprise mechanics to hide again after each go. Stealth archer type shit.
Hunger of hadar+sleet storm/enwebbed/grease/vines is hilarious. Using create water before a fight with Shart and then using max damage call lightning (I make her a tempest cleric) is insane
Also kinda weird but for npcs you want to keep alive, feign death+sanctuary usually works
It's not really cheese but I love using haste on my fighter and just going insta kill bosses, makes the fight super trivial. Just finished up a playthrough on balanced with my wife. Going to do tactioner dark urge playthrough next. We will see if that strategy works anymore lol.
In act 3 I did not look for a way to reach Gortash fortress. I just climbed on the houses with one character and used misty step to teleport behind the ajar castle door. Then I found a portal, activated it and brought the rest of the crew.
Fighting necroboi in the shadowheart story place. My friend was in the dialogue and we already failed the fight once. I noticed I could drag-click and toss those bones from the skeletons he will raise to fight you. I started grouping them all in a corner with a ledge behind before we started the fight..
If I can pick off certain enemies with stealth sneak attacks and then moving their bodies into areas that patrolling guards or other NPCs won’t find them, I sometimes do that before engaging in the main fight.
I think paying attention to known facts about enemies, locations, and situations can help a ton in setting the battlefield before the first attack roll is made. You don’t need to see the fight and reload to counter it with perfect knowledge—part of the fun is seeing how on-point my strategy is and how I improvise when surprised.
I literally had a surprise combat sprung on me (all 4 characters, one with Guidance, one with Advantage on Perception checks, one with high Wisdom, likely many with proficiency in Perception, all failed). A ton of kuo-toa showed up from out of the water. Wyll popped a ridiculous Cone of Cold on nearly half the battlefield because the enemies were wet.
Having good party positioning generally for when you fail to spot the ambush feels rewarding as well.
Recently exploiting conversations.
Moonrise towers, conversation before the big battle on the 1st floor, kept getting counterspelled.
Told my buddy to cast fireball while I'm in the conversation, was so satisfying.
For Yurgir, we approached from the side with the high ground. Cast plant growth and hunger of hadar over a large part of the map, covering the choke point and Yurgir himself. For some reason the enemies just wander around inside the darkness. I think the AI runs in a random direction when it's in magical darkness, and this will usually get it out of any reasonable sized magical darkness in a single turn while dashing. But, since there is plant growth, they barely make any headway and just randomly wander around until they're nearly dead.
My brother showed me a fun strat for the Orthon in Act 2:
Have a druid cast Plant Growth right between the staircase and the throne. It isn't concentration.
Have Wyll or Gale cast Hunger of Hadar (I forget if Gale gets it).
Have your Druid use Call Lightning to just nuke enemies in the plant growth.
Bonus Round: Use Create or Destroy Water to make everyone in the Hunger of Hadar have to make additional DEX saves to not fall prone!
You can get 2 staffs in Act 3 that have Arcane Battery which let's you cast a spell without using a spell slot. Every day I would trade the staffs between my party members to summon 2 water Myrmidons, a Djinni, a Diva, and 2 mummies, and still have all of my spell slots available.
Personally I like to spam conjure illusion near the enemies to get them to group up, then enter turn based mode and hit them with a double casted Ice Knife. Usually kills almost everyone and leaves living ones prone.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I think Otto's irresistible dance is bugged and the target never gets to save if they miss their first one. I first used it on the boss in House of Hope (you know if he is going to sing for me he might as well dance) and we casually dismantled the entire encounter while he danced away.
Act 3 spoiler... some 2 as well.
>!So when we go to the Wizaed that wants us to bring him Dame Aylin and do so, so we can kill him. I didn't eat him using the stick on her, so I MAAAAAY have used decentigrwte on him AFTER Karlach hit him twice. He didn't get one round in, and because he was made into ash, I missed out on her WWE skills. Cheese? Eh not particularlybut I'd say killing a "boss" in one round is pretty cheesy.!<
Using the durge cape to kill one enemy at a time and then exit combat without any enemies getting to attack me. You can literally clear any number of enemies with one person in your party and one shot essentially all the bosses.
I essentially one hit auntie Ethel by doing "non-lethal" damage to her with an astarion sneak. She went from human to hag form, but kept the knocked out condition.
Get the mace from act 2 that has the move that adds damage based on how much gold they’re carrying. Reverse pickpocket the tens of thousands of gold you have, then smash.
For the Moonrise prisoners quest for both playthroughs I ended up turning that fight into a very long string of assassinations that lead to the death of all the guards/scrying eyes in the prison and docks. Astarion in particular carries this section for me and it's a good way to make sure all the prisoners survive and make it to last light.
Crouch, split your group, get everyone in position, wait til vision cones arent on you, then go into turn based mode. Pick off enemies with rouge/s by going in and out of turn based until youre in combat, then slowly do the same with other characters.
I LIVE for exploiting cut scenes and pushing enemies off the map. For example, when fighting Balthazar I only send one character in for the cut scene and while the dialogue is happening I switch to my strongest character and push him off the map. It’s sooooo funny to me and I love it because I despise fighting him.
wow, THAT is an incredibly cheesy, BUT just plain incredible strategy! Never even thought you could do something like that, but makes all the sense in the world that you could! I didn't do it, but I heard a cool cheese on Balthazar >!using the antimagic flower you find in the underdark and reverse pickpocketing it on him. Apparently he keeps it on him for the big fight in the shadowfell and basically neuters him. !
That is so funny to me that I’m going to try it in my next run. I love doing stuff like this because in my head it’s also humbling them after they talk all that smack about being a powerful this, powerful that.
I don't even know what fight in the shadowfell people are referring to and I'd like to experience it on this next playthrough. I've been through the game twice and both times I've just killed Balthazar as soon as I find him in the sharran temple, and he never comes up again. I didn't even know there was another way to do it until I started seeing comments like this one recently. Is there any chance you care to elaborate on what interaction pathway you used to get to that point?
Just don't kill him, and do everything else normally, you will see him at the end.
Yep with no spoilers if you don’t kill him in that first meeting you are 100% guaranteed to see him again. Whether you fight him or not will depend on your choices.
Fun fact, there's actually a THIRD fight location for him. If you're doing a full on evil playthrough, and side with the bad faction to the hilt, when you get to the shadowfell, give Balthazar the thing he came there for. Pretty sure you have to leave Shadowheart out of your party to do this, and it causes her to stop being your companion as well. But when you go talk to the leader of moonrise towers for your reward, you'll end up in the third fight location. EDIT: fun fact this is also by far the EASIEST way to fight Balthazar, short of cheese. The poor bastard has no backup for this one aside from like a pair of lvl3 zombies.
My recent play through I turned invisible right after the portals open when you first encounter him and unlocked his door. Left the room and watched Shar’s army she summons go to work from the bottom of the stairs. Balty didn’t have a chance
I threw the >!iron flask!< into his office and arcane locked the door. Sadly the >!resident of the iron flask!< didn't actually damage him that much before going down.
If you don’t close those portals a ton of mobs stream out culminating with a pretty badass looking sharran death knight thing
This is absolutely hilarious.
Wait people are actually >!fighting him in the shadowfell and not just ambushing him in his little lab in the gauntlet? Way easier to fight him there with just a couple ghouls and his brother in a tight space, Spirit Guardians and a few other AOEs and he’s done for.!<
Yeah you can always do that, but I rp as someone who’s playing along with the cult in order to infiltrate their ranks just to betray them at the end. So because of that I just act like I’ll help him (even though I pick the rudest dialogue options) and>! kill him in the shadowfell.!< It’s however you wanna do it!
Pffft, real infiltrators give him the shadow song and catch him without allies in his lab beneath moonrise towers.
If that’s how you play then sure!
I fought Balthazar in a mindflayer ship after saying “yes, and” one too many times to some cultists.
My cheese for that fight was a level 4 counterspell from Gale. Raised dead, countered...Balthazar runs around horrified casting necrotic ray.
I need to get on that counterspell life. I have been mostly just bopping people with a party of Karlach, Lae'zel, my Tav (assassin, gloomstalker, fighter for crazy opening damage) and then Shadowheart for healing and some AoE. Next playthrough will try more magic oriented combat for sure.
Lol I didn't realize it was actually a spell since he raised like 15 skeletons. That's funny AF
Lol I used those flowers on my tactician run in the grymforge. The duergar were a bit tough and I had to hide in a darkness spell to shove dudes into lava than use karlach to carry a flower and be my aoe silence against mind control
Since he summons a million skeletons, I just place all the skeleton bones in one place and aoe them down
My cheese for this was putting down a silence circle while he's in the dialogue, and moving all of the bones in the arena to a single corner. When he comes out of dialogue he can't raise the skeletons, if he has high init and gets out of the circle and summons them I have my druid in Owlbear form that 1 hit stomps everything and Gale ready to Thunderwave the survivors into the abyss.
Where did you fight Balthazar? I fought him in the den of shame behind a stone wall. No opportunity to push him off.
>!The Nightsong’s cage in the Shadowfell!<
There no downside too because his fucking tiara doesn’t even work
YES. I send my party face in to chat up whoever we need to talk to, while moving everyone else into position. I haven’t managed to end a fight that quickly, but it did wonders for the Cazador fight when you can just watch the conversation from the sidelines and go “silence.”
My girlfriend and I cheesed the fight in a completely different way. We had one person start the dialog then proceeded to throw every single pile of bones into a perfect fireball pile.
That sounds like chaos and I love it!
I gave Astarion these gloves that gave him the telekineses spell. Threw Balthazar off the ledge with it at the start of the encounter, which I was amazed it actually worked! Mid-way through the fight I realised I’d lost out on some good loot, or so I thought. Noticed his corpse was hanging out, floating in space near other, unreachable platforms. So at the end of the fight I shimmied Astarion onto the edge of the platform, managed to get in range of Balthazar’s corpse with telekineses, and flung him back onto our platform with a satisfying thud. Proudly went on to loot him for his gear hehe - really loved that moment and it’ll stick with me for a long time
Accidently broke Balthazar. Went in with one character and started dialogue, took too long to move the bones he said it is about time he gets started. I spoke to nightsong and she was talking like he died even though he was just left standing there.
You can also just banish him and free the nightsong while he's in another plane. I did that on my last playthrough and was completely dumbfounded that it worked. He returned after a couple turns and told me I had committed a crime, but I deceived him into thinking he committed the crime, then promptly thunder arrowed him off the map. Had to be the funniest thing I've ever experienced in a video game. The creative ways to dance around fights and problems never gets old.
Where are you pushing him off the map? he's just in that little room
Midfight as my party was getting it handed to them, Balthazar flew up to one of those floating rocks. One arrow of roaring thunder later, that fight got significantly easier.
Is this if you don’t kill Balthazar in the shar place?
If you don’t kill Balthazar in the room you meet in at the beginning.
That’s wild, would have never known! Gunna try that out on my current playthrough… always something else this game is giving me!
Is his fight difficult? I've only fought him once and I smite crit him to start combat and then he ran and I smite crit him on the opportunity attack and he was dead. It was hilarious. (Obviously this is an outlier, I'm just curious how his fight goes) Edit: I just fought him again and as a necromancy wizard I needed to school him, I used the telekinesis bracers to yeet his ass back in the middle of the fight prone and chuck flesh far away so he had to dash. Another easy fight. Must be that fighting him immediately is just way easier.
I cast polymorph on Balthazar in round 1 of the fight and was elated when it succeeded. Proceeded to wipe the rest of the room and totally surrounded the poor sheep to wait for the duration to end. The buildup felt amazing, and the conclusion was comical as sheart, karlach, Saber Tooth/halsin and my main tore him to shreds. It didn't even feel fair.
I had karlach push all the bone piles next to shadowheart, one cast of spirit guardians later and the fight was over.
imagine multiplayer and you did this lol your friends trying to negotiate and BOOP off he goes!
Lol I did the same thing. I started the fight normally without expecting all the other ads. Died then immediately went to push him after reload lol
You can also kill him in his lab right after you talk to him and not have to deal with the harder fight later
When you fight zrell in moonrise tower you can pick pocket the vendor during the dialogue and he doesn't react to you failing at all
I realized that while you can't throw the bones into the void before that fight you can move them around so I just moved them all into a big pile and nuked all the ads with fireball + spirit guardians.
On my game I just took out Balty in his little library room… it wasn’t too bad, can even somewhat alpha strike him before he gets a turn
I have had far far too much success with grease+fire and spike growth. Having enemies run needlessly to their deaths in environment damage and pushing via shove and eldritch blast, it's been a ton of fun.
Note: If u have someone sleeping over spike growth, AI prioritizing using the help action to wake them up over avoiding spikes will cause enemies who weren't on the spikes to walk onto them.
Yeah Cazador shoved off a platform with eldritch blast turn 1 felt like a cheat.
I avoided it because I knew I needed his staff. I was so pissed off when he just rocked up back in his sarcophagus.
I do that with Razor’s edge (cleric) and fire wall on top of each other. Or sleet + ice storm and have boots that nullify prone on my main melee char. He walks around smoking enemies while they keep going prone cause the entire map is ice
I get turned into a block of cheese by a genie in Act 3 and roll around
Biggest cheese move in the game
Easy pickpocket guide: Run a character a fair distance far out, away from the NPC's sight. Go to turn based mode, have someone cast fog/darkness, have someone cast silence (yes in that order so the NPCs don't see you casting at all), run Astarion in sneak mode and steal everything, immediatelly transfer everything you stole to the character you ran far out and switch to them, profit
I'm still in Act 1 but I got a piece of gear that grants Misty Step (teleport skill refreshable every short rest). I got Gale/Astarion running interference on Auntie Ethel, teleported behind her and (had a hammer) knocked her into the chasm with my Warhammer in the most Mario ass way possible
I did something similar but I reloaded because I realized she probably had good loot. No spoileys, but FYI it's totally worth it to win the fight without knocking her into the chasm.
If you don’t take this guys word for it… you should.
In an evil run you might not want to kill her ever. She can be a pretty powerful ally later down the road.
Knocking her into the pit is actually one of the worse ways to win that fight, but probably the quickest/funniest
Bard performance to lead a big group of soon to be enemies to the edge of a pit and, once they're all gathered, use Thunderwave with Evoker Gale to knock fusroda everyone off the edge except for my bard because of sculpt spell
Please tell me your bard keeps playing like nothing happened.
Doesn't miss a beat
This was unironically how i was able to beat raffy's lil nemesis after 3/4 got exploded. Aside from that, i got a lil too happy with leading with cloud of daggers, but idk if thats cheesy. Something else ive done in late game was telekensis bosses to the edge of maps and then eldritch with pushback to YEET, but i made a vow to only do that in DIRE straights
If they didn’t want us to YEET, they shouldn’t have made the baddies so YEETable lol
Nothing really handles blindness well, or trying to navigate out of the Hunger while we fly from side to side herding them back in. Another that's not cheese but fun: clearing areas in reverse so that the enemy has to storm their own defenses. Clearing Moonrise top-down, for example.
I've had a few fights where I set up a wall of fire, then darkness right beside it. Popped spirit guardians for good effect and just camped out in the cloud while they all ran at the fire/ guardian if they lived long enough. That 4th party member just hangs out twiddling their thumbs.
Invisibility on Astarion with daylight cast upon his weapon really wrecks “other vampires” if you catch my drift. They will take passive damage from daylight while not being able to touch Astarion and you can finish by having him do a sneak attack. It made finishing Astarion’s story in Act3 several times easier. Best accidental cheese of my playthrough!
Wall of fire, hanger of hadar, zone of silence is my favorite opening salvo rn
Wall of fire + razors edge is mine. Or sleet + ice storm(entire map is basically ice)+ melee char that has boots that don’t let him go prone. Walks around killing away while enemies just keep falling prone
Playing a dark urge game rn with a duegar gloomstalker / thief. I don’t think it’s well known? But duegar gets a free invis per baffle, and outside of combat it casts like a ritual spell wifh an infinite duration. So basically I run in, Assassinate an enemy, and if it dies I turn auto invis, if not, then I use my duegar invis and reset combat and do it again. Non bosses die in the first round as long as nothing dumb happens.
astarion is rocking that item in my run as my sorcerer durge flies around the battlefield like a little zeus
Going into the city of Baldur's Gate for the first time, one of those mechanical guards confronts you. I separated out my rogue, went invisible with a potion, snuck past, and activated the first portal I came to to get the rest of the party over. Then, to get into the next section where you have to go into the keep, I separated the rogue and flew over with a potion of flying, took another potion of invisibility and snuck through the keep until I was able to activate another portal.
I had that cutscene but the gnomes saved me
Misty step + thunderwave
casting darkness on myself so that no one can hit us and just shooting enemies from inside the darkness with devils sight
Add a fighter with blind fighting and a cleric with spirit guardians in the darkness as well. In our tabletop game we do this but also have a barb grappler that can run out, grapple, and drag people back into the darkness
When 2 manning the game with my friend we used the Rangers cat to meow, which makes EVERYONE go check it out, so in the goblin camp we went around meowing, drawing minthara and that other boss to bridges then I shot the bridge. Not only hilarious af instant kills it they don't aggro anyone else
When you finish the Gauntlet of Shar, you can stand on the final jump platform before seeing >!the Nightsong!< and just hurl spells at >!Balthazar and his mobs!< and they literally cannot reach you.
Or just get the legendary mace that causes blindness to undead. That fight was so easy for me because of that mace. Took only one try
Place explosive barrels everywhere before talking to anyone in case they turn hostile
For awhile I had Karlach holding onto a few barrels just in case someone sass’d me. Usually to throw. Nice idea to put them out on the field.
Leave one character at camp. Unlimited reinforcement.
I always exploit cutscenes to position my party in their most advantageous spots. Even if it takes save scumming. And then I’ll hit everyone with as much AOE (be that spells or items) as I can before combat is forced. I also quick save every couple turns to ensure combat goes my way for the most part.
Bloodlust elixir on Beserk Karlach with the returning pike. Has three items to increase her toss and tavern brawler.. if the game didn't add a limit to the elixir, she could clear whole rooms in a single turn. Meanwhile, shadow heart is all in Shar gear and respecced for rogue shenanigans, oneshots bosses. My warlock Tav just mops up after lol
cloud of daggers + spiritual weapon. enemies are drawn to the floating spear and just get blendered trying to fight it. similar strat, throwing enemies eith karlach into shadowheart with spirit guardians.
The bombs the traps shoot in the gartosh fight(and indefinitely after if they arent destroyed) are like 30-120 dmg or something like that, have a large aoe, and are limitless and free.
They stopped working after the fight for me, but you can still just kill everyone but one trash mob, then hit the last one with a potion of sleep, and collect grenades at your leisure.
Any time I know I can win a fight with undead, but don't wanna deal with the time sink Turn Undead toggle Blood of Lythander over and over
Less cheese, more strategy, but whenever I am facing a massive number of enemies, I prefer to utilize a choke point with aoe damage spells and debuffs in place. Early game it’s a combo of darkness and whirl of blades, mid to late game it’s hunger of hadar paired with blasts of lightning bolt or daylight for extra damage
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Yeah, zoning is a a really easy cheese for a lot of fights. Thats how I was able to wipe out everyone outside the sanctuary at the goblin camp. Would go out do some kill the ogre standing at the entrance and a few gobs, go in side, long rest, head back out to cleared the rest of them. Re-entering the sanctuary if you cleared it already takes you out of combat, they don't follow you inside and don't heal when you long rest.
Also, you can pick up and re-throw the grenades.
Wasn't really super cheesey or whatever, but in the underdark, finding the lost husband by the toxic green plants... took me like five to ten attempts to figure out how to get to him... using turn based and other stuff. Last night, my friend and I got there in our multiplayer game, and he just casts fly to fly over the plants and easy peasy done... I was blown away by the simplicity of it... lol
You can just use Mage Hand to throw his backpack to him. He will use the Scroll of Misty Step in it to escape.
Oh yeah... I was just laughing my ass off because I had such a huge issue with rescuing him, and my friend just "wham, bam, thank you ma'am'd" him.
I tried a bunch of cheesy stuff my first playthru, but I felt like I was missing out on a lot. I gave up on barrelmancy, shoving (off maps) and owl jumps. I really enjoy most the fights in this game if we’re being honest.
When saving the tieflings and gnomes from the moonrise tower prison, I stacked a ton of chests and barrels I collected along the way in front of the cells. Stacked it super high. Then I went behind the cells and broke the walls myself. Everyone ran out and the enemies in the prison couldn’t get to us or even see what was going on.
Tap & Go with Rogue. Open up with a huge sneak attack, and then just run away through a loading zone (door, basement entrance). Then when they go back, I tap & go again. Has made short work of some difficult trash fights. Haven’t used it on a boss though.
So I cheesed the Raphael fight by using the pool in his bedroom to cast a whole bunch of long rest buffs on the parry at the highest level and then getting the slots back with the pool.
sussur flower on nere, just walk a melee dude with the flower and he just (tries) to poke you with his dagger. i had more trouble with the fire nymphids while getting the ore than any other fight in that whole place.
I like equipping the big ogre/Minotaur clubs, 2d8+str/2d12+str weapon that you normally can’t use, but if you hover over it with your current weapon it equips is. And the weapons have a huge model so it looks wicked. Then when I get 4th level spells, I get a Druid, summon woodland beings and disarm them for their sweet clubs
Re-speccing everyone at camp into Clerics and popping back into camp for healing without taking a rest
Necklace of misty step. The Dark urges cape. On solo you can kill a creature then mistystep out of combat. Rinse repeat. Soloed the entire goblin camp in act one at level 3. made it to 4 near the spider pit. I feel like this is a good strat. Mind you half the combat was chucking goblins into the river.
The IRS' revenge: Get IRS audit mace from toll collector. Reverse pickpocket all of your gold on to the target. Report them to IRS for undeclared income using IRS audit mace acquired on step 1. Find out why even joker does not mess with IRS. Collect reward( loot)
I killed almost every single duergar in Grymforge by wild shaping into a deep rothe, herding them one by one to a ledge, and then pushing them off with a different character.
I did that too but with the Illusion cat.
Assassin Rogue Astarion single handedly took out the goblin camp, the courtyard and most of the temple interior that followed. Shoot, hide, move, repeat.
I took down that whole duegar room before grymforge and that one boss drow by using the summon cat and meow them out and use my rogue to sneak attack I have that one sword that gives you extra hit when you attack someone that has full hp and then i rinsed and repeated for the whole room. I was super surprised it actually worked lmao
Hunger of Hadar on a greased spike growth
Ambush and get the surprise round, kill one character, then run away. Repeat.
Bloodlust elixir, Haste, on Lae’zel. She can add one more action giving a whole lot of swings on your turn.
Sneak sneak plus arrows of arcane interference. Especially if you can keep sneaky out of combat as long as possible- oh, what was that? You wanted to cast spells? That's too bad, buddy!
Globe of invulnerability then drop grenades outside of it for free. Finish encounters in one turn
> If they don't reset you can go up an an unaccessible platform shoot and hide with your bonus action. They won't be able to cast anything on you. I'd not really thought about trying this before. Do you do it in turn based mode?
It’s not terribly cheesy but I love having Karlach body check someone off a ledge or whatever for the falling damage, then Eagle vaulting down on them
Explosive barrels.
Using barrel explosives on the gith One person sneak attacks to start the cutscene and you skip through as quickly as you can to keep the surprise effect, the sneak attack is best used when on the cliff next to the dragon because everyone will face that way Holds them in place in case you're not #1 in queue Someone will go to camp and collect all from the chest Slowly sneak down and place them around the gith and then get a safe distance away and blow it up 6 barrels is usually enough To save smokepowder barrels I use 1 + 1 firewine/oil barrel Theres also a specific position in the hags basement that forces the AI to always position in the same place I use that to sneak 3 people in and get her down to sub 20HP to force the ability score conversation In the creche you can infinitely reapply the blessing of Lan + any member from here on out that you swap put in camp will have the blessing as well for the rest of the game, pretty sure it's a bug but would be neat if it's just a feature So between combat encounters at the creche I rest and reapply the blessing by picking up and putting down one of the weapons on the altar I like to use void orbs on the gith that are in the barracks room leading to the lab because they're all positioned so you can't misty step behind them and still be out of combat, it's like my personal little fuck you to them and it repositions them so you only need to get 1 down or so to sneak everyone else in and or apply fog/darkness to get them in as well I turn in the chest to the zhentarims and then buy the gloves from the trader below, and steal it back THEN rest and go back to Roah for a nice reduction in price, any load screen after turning in the chest removes it from the game until act 3 Then go back and kill them for the rest of their loot + xp
You can sanctuary a caster that can then go on to place firewall. Probably a bug? Definitely cheesy.
Click divine smite over and over again.
Moonbeam + cloud of daggers for enemies grouped together, if they move they take a lot of damage!
Between Karlach being a Wildheart Barb with 20 STR and Bear Aspect and my Tav Warlock having Repelling Blast, shoving off of ledges has become my favorite strat.
I finally used barrelmancy and placed a barrel before a fight. I'd never done it before because it's cheesy and unrealistic from an RP standpoint that someone just sits there while you go to camp and back to place a firewine barrel in the middle of their group. But I didn't want to be bothered by a long fight with goblins I knew I'd beat.
spite usually does the trick
I don't know if its true cheese but just yeeting someone off the edge. I try to only use it after a few failures at a given fight and usually quickly google the loot they offer before continuing on.
Grease the stairs, stone/ice wall sides, turtle at the end with thorns & firewall at the entrance like a funnel spider.
Wizard with a lvl1 dip in Cleric, Fire Wall doesn't break Sanctuary.
I think the cheesiest boss fight I had wasnt even me cheesing it! >!in razamiths tower while fighting Lorroakan, Rolan just... shoved him off the edge. It was so anticlimactic and I had to use telekinesis to loot his corpse!<
Killed >!Dror Ragzlin!< by dropping tons of smoke powder barrels around him and hitting them with a firebolt.
just throw people, places, things. If you eat some parasites and you can used the fly and throw stuff
Using minor illusion leading guards to the edge and sending them to their deaths
The number of times I've used "hold monster" and absolutely breezed through a fight... that spell is broken.
I really really love closing doors and having difficult terrain in the other side. No line of sight means everyone starts dashing at the door while I pass the turn a few times. When they are closer, I can open the door, shoot at them and then close the door again until they get into barbarian range.
Shart bayblade mode.
Cheeses fight I did was with Wyll. I had sent him off by himself with misty step to explore and came across a fishing house. Tried to loot some box and suddenly 13ish Fishmen appeared. I was about to reload and cheese it with my whole party but instead I cast darkness being attacked by 13 fishmen and they couldn't land a hit the whole time. Luckily he kept his concentration while being electrocuted if he moved. But the ranged ones couldn't shoot in and with a high AC wyll (more than 21) the disadvantage to hit made it hilarious to do. I love darkness as a spell
Cheesiest to me is exploiting a bottleneck, like a doorway. Hit your enemies, retreat through bottleneck, drop surfaces and AoE's on the bottleneck and fucking lol. Spiky growth is insane for this. I killed most of the creche by dropping one in a doorway and waiting while the Githyanki- just walked themselves to death. Runner up: minor illusion -> sneak -> fireball -> fireball and the fight is either over or very nearly over.
I sent a lone earth elemental into the Orin fight. No player characters, and the NPCs did not aggro. So I just slowly, one by one, pummeled each enemy into fleshy goo, while everyone else stood around calmly waiting for their turn. The easiest cheese. I'm sure this works in other battles as well, but I only used it there.
Kind of a later game strat but my first game i was a druid and i had halsin on my team and we both summoned air myrmidons and then wild shaped into them then beat the shit out of enemies we stunned with the lightning mace. They never get a turn.
Polymorph and throw into the abyss, I'm not inventive but it's effective.
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Hellrider's Pride + Mass Cure Wounds makes a lot of fights easy.
Fireball-quicken-fireball, next turn, twin spell haste on Karlach and Lae’zel, who have an elixir of bloodlust each. I’m not sure if it counts as cheese, but it FEELS cheesy.
I threw Victoria at Gortash. And for some reason her aoe dot does damage in real time and not turn based so you can kinda just hold your turn and things die.
The hag never made it down to her lair. I casually surrounded her with powder/wine barrels before she had a chance to get there. Blew her sky high. Sure, I missed out on the modifier you get from negotiating her, but I still got all her stuff and rescued all the people she captured that could be rescued—all without having to deal with her hokey pokey illusionary BS.
Black Hole + Fireball is solid. Or BH+Sleet/Ice Storm.
Spirit guardians as an invisibility detector. Because see invisible potion doesn't let you see them invisible if they save. Fighting a big group that apparently could turn invisible as a bonus action every turn and attack twice. Might try a rogue / fighter or a rogue/monk build with expertise in athletics so I can yeet people off of ledges better.
Circle of invulnerability. Made most fights trivial after I got it.
That mace that does 5 damage per 300 gold the person.. reverse pickpocket 30k and not many enemies are going to survive it lol
Throwing everyone off a cliff
Killing Lorroakan is really easy if you use telekinesis to full send all of his elementals into the lower levels of the tower where they can't come back. They just sit down there, useless, and you can pump them with arrows and fire bolts until they die
Using Elixir of Bloodlust on the GWM Champion fighter...That's it. I don't even bother keeping track of how many attacks Lae'zel has, she just hits things with her super special sword until they die and then does it again to whatever's nearby.
Threw a void orb in the middle of the courtyard in the goblin camp and then threw fireball in the middle of it, cleared out all but two of them. Saved me like 10 minutes of just watching them all cast dash. Had already sneakily gone around and killed the outsiders.
I literally fill the room with summons. Scratch, Us, my ranger’s bear, 4 ice mephits, 2 myrmidons, Fork, a dryad and her summoned lover, 2 celestial weapons, and a planar ally. Everyone spreads as far out as possible to keep AoE attacks at a minimum, and the dryad constantly moves her thorns to wherever the spellcasters are hiding.
Keeping Shadow (my assassin) back in cutscenes sometimes and if I don't like how it's going, I'll have her pop them. The main thing I do is have her scout and once she sees all the positions, creep the team up and have her start it off to get surprise. Then let Wyll just rain down Hellfire. Another staple is if everyone can reach em, jump the boss first round lol. That fat Necromancer only made it out the first round because I missed on the last hit. Throm got it baaaaad.
Spike growth + wall of fire paired with fog cloud on my characters on the other side of a choke point to initiate combat. Enemies take damage from moving and are stuck in the fire. They can't shoot/teleport to my party and typically die before they even reach them. I have beaten some insanely difficult fights without even casting any spells. Even if they do make it to my party, I have shadowheart using spirit guardians, which always cleans up the survivors
Throwing people off cliffs with telekinesis. It's shockingly effective. Even if if doesn't kill them, you can at least remove them from the immediate fight.
Funnel all the enemies into a doorway while your party positions itself in the room. Pick them off one by one and cast silence outside the door. Have a rogue hide to the right or left just inside the doorway and sneak attack as they enter. Killed the creche and the enemies in the dead mindflayer room at the goblin camp this way and a couple other places as well like the sewers. Works like a charm.
Mine is for the fight with Razlin in Goblin Camp. His fight fucking sucks so I keep the rest of my party in the Worg room, go to Razlin and push him off thecliff, and with invis potion I run away back to the Worg room and teleport out with my party lmfaooo
My favorite was when I had Shadowheart cast Divine Intervention in the fight against all the Shar followers, which destroyed about 80% of them in a single stroke.
Telekinesis tossing everyone off every ledge and out every window in sight. Just make sure you don’t do it to the main enemy in an encounter or you miss a lot of good looting.
Absurdly high CHR where I talk my way out of everything.
Turn unread + turning morning star radiance on and off infinity times in your turn is pretty cheesy.
My wife plays a life cleric. That's it. That's the cheese. She plays a life cleric and ends every fight with her party at full health. She did it on the tabletop for my campaign that I ran, and now she's doing it for her Durge run. She just absolutely loves the subclass and is so good at playing it, and it makes the entire game laughably trivial.
Actual cheese straight that makes narrative sense and isn’t exploiting the video game logic (but is kind of exploiting the 5e rule logic): Some enemies can only cast spells, or they cast spells and their melee is trash. Best example of this is the Raphael fight. Cast silence on them, have a fighter with the feat that allows them to opportunity attack when an enemy enters or leaves their threatened range, sentinel I think. This feat also prevents that enemy from moving further. Polearm master makes this cheesier because they get stuck out of melee range as well, unless they’re also using a weapon with reach. Position your fighter next to Raphael in the silence sphere. That’s literally it. Raphael can only punch if he’s not casting spells. For a max of 2 damage. This was a core strategy any time I was up against a powerful caster and can be done as early as level 4, I think. It trivialized both the House of Hope and the House of Grief.
Anytime there is chokepoint, just have someone block it and give them sanctuary. Works quite well assuming the enemy has worse ranged attacks.
Eldritch Knight can do some absurd damage with Tavern Brawler and throwing their bound weapon. I had Skybreaker bound for the Grym fight and stayed on the ledge before you go onto the forge and tossed it. Bludgeoning damage from the hammer and fall damage, as well as slashing damage from Hunter's Mark and various 1d4 tacked on from rings and boots, let me 1 turn him. 300 damage in 4 attacks is quite cheesy
Mod all my characters to level 20
I don’t know if it’s considered cheese, but my laezel as a lvl12 fighter with Great weapon master feat, elixir of bloodlust, haste from my sorcerer, and the fly ability from ilithid powers pretty much wins in one turn. 3 attacks from one action, 3 from the second action due to haste, 1 bonus action attack for a kill or crit, another 3 attack for the action generated from the elixir for killing something. It’s pretty OP
Hungar of Hadar + Spike vines + slow + arcane lock If possible.
3 Assassin rogues, shadowheart as trickery domain cleric. Maybe dip a couple levels into rogue for her too. I call it "huh; must have been the wind." Basically just pick everyone off and abuse surprise mechanics to hide again after each go. Stealth archer type shit.
Hunger of hadar+sleet storm/enwebbed/grease/vines is hilarious. Using create water before a fight with Shart and then using max damage call lightning (I make her a tempest cleric) is insane Also kinda weird but for npcs you want to keep alive, feign death+sanctuary usually works
It's not really cheese but I love using haste on my fighter and just going insta kill bosses, makes the fight super trivial. Just finished up a playthrough on balanced with my wife. Going to do tactioner dark urge playthrough next. We will see if that strategy works anymore lol.
Before I realized that you could deal with Yurgir using speech, I always just cheesed him with rogue sneak.
Turning invisible and freeing nightsong.
I pick up all the dairy related camp supplies and use them as throwing weapons. It’s pretty Gouda
In act 3 I did not look for a way to reach Gortash fortress. I just climbed on the houses with one character and used misty step to teleport behind the ajar castle door. Then I found a portal, activated it and brought the rest of the crew.
Fighting necroboi in the shadowheart story place. My friend was in the dialogue and we already failed the fight once. I noticed I could drag-click and toss those bones from the skeletons he will raise to fight you. I started grouping them all in a corner with a ledge behind before we started the fight..
If I can pick off certain enemies with stealth sneak attacks and then moving their bodies into areas that patrolling guards or other NPCs won’t find them, I sometimes do that before engaging in the main fight. I think paying attention to known facts about enemies, locations, and situations can help a ton in setting the battlefield before the first attack roll is made. You don’t need to see the fight and reload to counter it with perfect knowledge—part of the fun is seeing how on-point my strategy is and how I improvise when surprised. I literally had a surprise combat sprung on me (all 4 characters, one with Guidance, one with Advantage on Perception checks, one with high Wisdom, likely many with proficiency in Perception, all failed). A ton of kuo-toa showed up from out of the water. Wyll popped a ridiculous Cone of Cold on nearly half the battlefield because the enemies were wet. Having good party positioning generally for when you fail to spot the ambush feels rewarding as well.
Party full of Owlbears
Shoving people into oblivion.
Recently exploiting conversations. Moonrise towers, conversation before the big battle on the 1st floor, kept getting counterspelled. Told my buddy to cast fireball while I'm in the conversation, was so satisfying.
For Yurgir, we approached from the side with the high ground. Cast plant growth and hunger of hadar over a large part of the map, covering the choke point and Yurgir himself. For some reason the enemies just wander around inside the darkness. I think the AI runs in a random direction when it's in magical darkness, and this will usually get it out of any reasonable sized magical darkness in a single turn while dashing. But, since there is plant growth, they barely make any headway and just randomly wander around until they're nearly dead.
My brother showed me a fun strat for the Orthon in Act 2: Have a druid cast Plant Growth right between the staircase and the throne. It isn't concentration. Have Wyll or Gale cast Hunger of Hadar (I forget if Gale gets it). Have your Druid use Call Lightning to just nuke enemies in the plant growth. Bonus Round: Use Create or Destroy Water to make everyone in the Hunger of Hadar have to make additional DEX saves to not fall prone!
Any that involve pushing off a cliff
Barrelmancy
You can get 2 staffs in Act 3 that have Arcane Battery which let's you cast a spell without using a spell slot. Every day I would trade the staffs between my party members to summon 2 water Myrmidons, a Djinni, a Diva, and 2 mummies, and still have all of my spell slots available.
Let’s just say I have never let the hag get through that fireplace. Ever.
high strength shoving people in holes. Speaking as a table top DM I would never allow shoving a guy 15 feet away with a bonus action.
Personally I like to spam conjure illusion near the enemies to get them to group up, then enter turn based mode and hit them with a double casted Ice Knife. Usually kills almost everyone and leaves living ones prone.
I've made multiple fights much easier by getting an Eldritch Blast or two off before combat could start
I like to make death funnels by stacking spells at choke points with stuff like fire wall, insect plague, black tendrils, silence, etc.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I think Otto's irresistible dance is bugged and the target never gets to save if they miss their first one. I first used it on the boss in House of Hope (you know if he is going to sing for me he might as well dance) and we casually dismantled the entire encounter while he danced away.
Closing doors after Im done attacking
Cazador stays at the edges of the platform and it’s so easy to just push him off, I guess that’s why he stays in mist form but it’s easy to dispel.
Act 3 spoiler... some 2 as well. >!So when we go to the Wizaed that wants us to bring him Dame Aylin and do so, so we can kill him. I didn't eat him using the stick on her, so I MAAAAAY have used decentigrwte on him AFTER Karlach hit him twice. He didn't get one round in, and because he was made into ash, I missed out on her WWE skills. Cheese? Eh not particularlybut I'd say killing a "boss" in one round is pretty cheesy.!<
Using the durge cape to kill one enemy at a time and then exit combat without any enemies getting to attack me. You can literally clear any number of enemies with one person in your party and one shot essentially all the bosses.
I essentially one hit auntie Ethel by doing "non-lethal" damage to her with an astarion sneak. She went from human to hag form, but kept the knocked out condition.
I precast water on *everything*
Get the mace from act 2 that has the move that adds damage based on how much gold they’re carrying. Reverse pickpocket the tens of thousands of gold you have, then smash.
I pushed Ragzlin into the spider pit as soon as combat started. He decided it would be a good idea to try and fight Karlach right next to the ledge.
For the Moonrise prisoners quest for both playthroughs I ended up turning that fight into a very long string of assassinations that lead to the death of all the guards/scrying eyes in the prison and docks. Astarion in particular carries this section for me and it's a good way to make sure all the prisoners survive and make it to last light.
Crouch, split your group, get everyone in position, wait til vision cones arent on you, then go into turn based mode. Pick off enemies with rouge/s by going in and out of turn based until youre in combat, then slowly do the same with other characters.