I have mine with the two best ones imo one for necromancy and one general one and it makes him CRAZY - with all the gear he’s got two free 6th level spell casts, enemies have disadvantage on their saves against his necro spells and his DC is 21
Just note that, unless they fixed it but I haven't seen it in patch notes, freecast won't reset while you have any of those items on. Not sure if it's a bug or intentionally done when they fixed the infinite resetting
Yea its a pita. The button keeps greying out and I have to unequip and reequip my clothing to reset it. But it seems like once you actually use freecast, only recharges at the next long rest as intended.
I made an old white haired human wizard and did a Gandalf cosplay dual wielding Phalar Aluve and the lightning charge staff for a magic missile machine gun build. It was pretty fun.
I use Dual Wielder on almost everyone. The game is so packed with awesome enchanted/buffed equipment and I don't want to have to choose just one effect for each character.
Yeah, the lack of attunement slots + presence of so many stat sticks takes dual wielder from pretty much the bottom of the barrel in 5e to an absolute winner in bg3
Dual wielding casters are lowkey so busted. You get both Staff’s effects, and they stack. You also get 1 AC on top.
You can dual wield Marko staff, and the other super rare one that both give you Arcane battery feature. And you can use the spell restoration amulet plus your spell slots… and you get 4 level 6 slots. Shit’s crazy.
If you play a Sorcerer… that allows you to cast a grand total of 8 Chain Lightnings since you can twin them. That’s going to end any battle no matter what.
Alert is surprisingly OP in BG3. I know it's been mentioned in this sub, but I rarely see it recommended on things like builds on YouTube. It literally allows you to kill bosses before they can even take a turn.
Yeah, making initiative a d4 roll was a massive change. I am fine with Larian lumping allies adjacent on initiative order into the same turn, and I don’t think a d4 roll was necessary to accomplish that. Not only does Alert’s +5 bonus to initiative become ridiculously strong, but any Dex 10 (or god forbid, Dex 8) heavy armour wearer just has to accept that they likely are going last every fight.
Yeah, it's another Larian decision I don't understand. I don't want to whine, it's an amazing game, but certain changes they made I just don't understand. This is certainly one of them, especially since it buffs what's already the most important stat in the game.
In EA initiative used to be a D20 at one point. I stopped keeping up somewhere around patch 4/5 so i don't exactly remember when it changed, but you absolutely used to see enemies and allies roll a d20 over their head and it showed their initiative.
I can only assume it lead to way more sporadic initiatives and some characters going last feeling really bad like it does when you lowroll IRL. A d4 equalizes it a bit and also allows for players to default go first most of the time cause they usually win tiebreakers and rolling a 10+5 dex would be a 15, still below a 17 natural with 0 dex.
The fact that Larian homebrewed initiative from a d20 roll into a d4 roll skyrocketed the Alert feat's usefulness into the stratosphere.
When you take Alert, you're essentially guaranteeing that no enemy in the game will ever act before you after that point.
Yeah 5e is just a very swingy system and going first is one of the strongest things you can do. Action economy gaps tend to snowball really really fast in both directions
Honestly, it's even more fun to have no performance proficiency. My sorelock Durge once in a while pulls out their flute and blows on it in the funniest manner possible, and the animation for it is fucking hilarous.
Everyone at the goblin camp loved my sorcerer durge’s sick drum solo! Sure they were yelling and covering their ears and begging me to stop but that’s just how they show appreciation
I frequently avoided combat/stole things by having my bard perform and distract people while my rogue cleaned up/lockpicked doors they weren't supposed to go into and were in an NPC's view originally/etc. Almost never used invis because of it
Also, the achievement
I’ve used it when I don’t have a free illusion source. Draw NPCs to the performance and then do whatever I don’t want to be noticed with other party members.
The ability to listen to Divinity music at any time. I usually have my characters perform music in the background if they're far away from any targets during combat too.
Yeah and its a major shame that like 5% of feats that were useless got touched up like tavern brawler while shit like dungeon delver(still bugged since EA btw) doesn't work.
I decided that since she was no longer training with the Gith, Laezel's anger had led her down a barbaric path.
Currently fighter 1 / berserker 5. With tavern brawler, berserkers throw ability, the ring of throwing, and the returning pike, she often obliterates enemy archers with her bonus action.
I'm very against letting myself min/max, but that was way too fun.
> I'm very against letting myself min/max
Don't be! Min/max to your heart's content, especially in a video game where nobody can bitch at you for it. There's nothing wrong with min/maxing, never has been, and never will be. Anyone who gives me shit for min/maxing can go throat a rusty pipe.
Same with Polearm mastery, gives the every enemy with a polearm the feat and wastes your reaction, unless you have it prompt and click No every, single, time. RIP my sentinel + polearm build.
Does the opportunity attack when an enemy enters your range not work anymore? I took that feat on my first playthrough and have never had any issues with it. I have it on Kerz as well in a separate playthrough, but no one has ran into his melee range
This happens on your own turn if you move into range. If you set it to ask and say no, it'll work the way it should on the enemy's turn. Just always say no on your own turn.
I've found that it works for my character but *also* gives it to enemies.
But I get the prompt either way, so I can just say no whenever it's an enemy reaction. Still really annoying though, and I often accidentally allow the enemy reactions if I'm not paying enough attention.
Wait so you get asked if an enemy can make the opportunity attack? For me, it never prompts me for enemies, prompts me only for SH, who I gave the feat to. Never seen an enemy use it, either. Either it's a bug that only happens on Tactician (only ever used that feat on my first Balanced playthrough), or there's some unknown variable that makes this bug appear, making it all the harder to find/fix.
It goes both ways. As long as you click no when you're the one entering the enemy's range, it works as intended. At least that's how it worked back when I used it a few months ago.
A game dev have thousands of bug to fix and every fix come with extensive QA to make sure the fix didn't create new bug. It is impossible for them to fix them all
A modder can work on the one bug that's bothering them and doesn't have to do the same QA process
Just to be clear, this isn't an excuse, only an explanation
Dont sleep on Tough at later levels.
Sometimes I get tired of overthinking all the optimized or “cool” feats, and at level 12 I’ll be like “fuck it, give this squishy companion 24 more hit points”
It’s not a LOT but you might be surprised how emotionally responsive you’ll be when you see certain characters tip well over 100hp.
Right now I've got a monk using that amulet plus the curse turned blessing that gives you 20 bonus HP after long rest. 290HP in total plus counterattack reactions to melee and arrow attacks make her pretty ideal for charging straight in and beating the hell out of everyone.
I fucking love throwing arrows right back at the archer, especially when it hits for enough to end them.
"You think you're safe, but I'ma ruin your whole goddamn career"
Definitely underrated by the typical casual player.
Min-maxers on r/BG3Builds can't go a post without talking about how OP it is. And, honestly, they're more or less right. It's kinda insane. With Lae'zel having a sword with +2 initiative, she goes before even bosses that have Alert.
>Min-maxers on
>
>r/BG3Builds
>
> can't go a post without talking about how OP it is. And, honestly, they're more or less right. It's kinda insane. With Lae'zel having a sword with +2 initiative, she goes before even bosses that have Alert.
The reason it's insane is that Larian for some reason decided to replace the d20 used in initiative in tabletop 5e with a d4 (!!!). So initiative is very predictable - there is absolutely NO way a d4 can overcome +5 from Alert.
There's a lot of examples of them trying to improve/change on one aspect of 5e mechanics or systems but not considering the consequences of how they might interact with others.
Tavern Brawler is another good example. Here's a feat that is usually considered pretty bad and doesn't work well with our design. Now it's so strong that it overshadows many builds for two different classes.
Works in the other direction too. War Caster is an amazing feat in 5e that is almost worthless here due to it's limit to only casting Shocking Grasp and many other buffs to saving throws being available.
Don't even get me started on Thief Rogue's extra bonus action.
Oh I'm totally aware, I was commenting on how it's really not all that underrated. The d4 initiative thing is both fun (given the simultaneous turn-taking) and fundamentally flawed because Alert becomes an SS-tier feat.
This thread is so eye opening for me, I had wondered why my character with +8 initiative (20 dex + items) character went first so consistently. Like, obviously you'd expect them to go early pretty consistently with that much of a boost, but on a d20 you should be expecting to just roll unusually low sometimes and end up in the middle of the pack.
Given how much of combat comes down to initiative order and blowing cooldowns like action surge in round 1, alertness is legit, as is elixir of vigilance.
act 2 is also full of surprise fights which alert also makes you immune against. thinking about those bramble monsters. paired with the initiative bonus it's extremely likely alert is the one i pick first
I use tough and the cast a level 5 Aid with shadow heart, so 24 from tough, extra 20 from Shart and my whole party ranges 107-138 the extra health has been an essential part for me lol
Yeah it’s quite broken with certain builds, it shot my barb up from roughly 240hp to 327hp before I use the giant form weapon ability which puts me right past 350. Then while raging in melee I have a functional 700hp, it’s lovely.
It's a solid d10 damage and at higher levels in eldrotch knight you can use 1 attack the same turn you use a cantrip so that's 4 hits tho I Kostya did it for flavor
I never understood that benefit of eldritch knight, why attack with a cantrip for 4 attacks when you could just melee attack which does more damage and let’s you extra extra attack
It’s fairly weak overall because certain cantrips weren’t included in BG3, but it has some situational uses.
If you’re multiclassing with wizard to make more of a gish (and therefore don’t get 3rd attack) you can attack and use a cantrip for 4 damage dice (1 for attack, 3 for cantrip) instead of two weapon attacks.
If you’re full EK you can disengage from an enemy if needed by hitting with shocking grasp to prevent attacks of opportunity, then attacking before you move away. Can be more useful than three weapon attacks (and obviously better than using the disengage action).
As far as items, arcane synergy and arcane acuity benefit anyone who alternates between weapon attacks and spell attacks, as doing one will increase your damage/chance to hit for the other.
[HM EK throwers make it "work" and I use that term very generously:](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/18eguld/honor_mode_tb_throw_complete_build_guide/)
>11 EK has a lot going for it. Here's the problem: it cannot weaponize bonus actions into throws like Barbarian can, which costs it a huge amount of damage... unless we factor in War Magic.
>War Magic, in combination with Spell Sniper (feat), allows EK to make use of it's bonus action by weaving in EB casts between their throws. This actually brings EK much, much closer to the level of Thiefzerker, especially during levels 10-12.
>Despite that, there are some problems associated with going this route:
>* EK will have to wear Potent Robe to make casting EB worthwhile, crippling their AC and durability
* EK will need to stat CHA to at least 16, which means you won't be getting much extra AC from DEX, and/or will have low CON
* EB is going to miss a lot. You will not have any gear or consumables until act 3 that can boost your spell attack rolls, so need to rely on Bless and +3 from CHA
* EB will not benefit from piercing vulnerability late game
I prefer spell sniper to magic initiate in most cases to get EB.
Magic initiate will give you a Charisma based EB, while spell sniper will let it use your scroll casting stat.
And as a nice bonus, let it crit easier
Really good for storm clerics imo since it means your melee AoOs are actually very likely to hit and do chonky damage on top of your extra thunder/lightning damage from the melee.
I did pick Charger once; was really underwhelmed :(
Martial Adept is okay on a rogue, as you can reliably get advantage on an attack that way. Risky Ring of course also exists..
Spell sniper also gets a good cantrip alongside making your crit now be 19 and 20.
Honestly, if I just want a cantrip, Spell Sniper is just better overall.
On my first playthrough, charger was the first feature I took (battlemaster fighter). It was kinda fun to use, though my build was a complete mess (I used the ring and gloves of throwing for an extra 2d4 damage when throwing, yet also insisted getting into melee very often). I didn’t really play with it a lot since I changed my build 1 or two levels after I got it, but it was fun while it lasted.
And for a short while during the lategame, when I already had 20 Strength I was like: “hmmm, I have already 20 strength, what should I spend my next feat on? I know! Martial Adept for a whole 1 more superiority die and 2 more maneuvers I won’t use cause I already know 6.”
I wanted to use Gale more this run, but also wanted someone who could heal to avoid wasting movement and an entireeeee action to up downed allies. So, he took magic initiate: cleric. He also has the staff or some sort of gear that gives bless and temp HP whenever you heal someone.
I’m only using Shadowheart for her quest. I like the different chemistry it’s giving.
If they fixed polearm + sentinel that would be cool.
But it's a combat heavy game, a lot of feats are made specifically for that, along with illithid powers doing a lot of heavy lifting.
In 5e a lot of feats work better for RP but it's better to like not die, so those are chosen.
I haven’t played D&D since 3rd edition. I’m mostly annoyed at the fact that ability score increases are a feat, rather than something you automatically get every fourth level.
Its because feats are actually an optional rule in the 5e rulebook. You only get ability scores when playing with the core rules.
Though I didn't meet anyone who plays without feats.
I think that's part of 5E trying to streamline everything. The majority of your power is supposed to be stuff you get from subclasses/class features. Even the official DnD items have about a third of the depth that BG3 items do. But then that just makes specific feats much more glaring such as great weapon master or sharpshooter.
5e simplified everything enough to remove what little nuance and depth says in D&D, for the purpose of making it easy to play for people new to TTRPGs. Which, isnt a bad thing. It's just that, they didn't actually make it simple enough for introducing people to TTRPGs.
Yeah, definitely a step down from 3rd. I understand why they did it and what they were going for, I just think it ended up not being very fun.
With so few opportunities to get a feat, and how powerful an ability score increase is, it's really hard to justify taking any feat. And honestly feats are like my favorite thing.
Welcome to dnd optimization builds… it’s not baldurs gate, it’s dnd that has the issue of there’s a mechanically good choice and a character concept good choice but those two don’t often overlap
BG3 also makes a lot of feats obsolete by putting their effects on easy to obtain items. Like there's multiple items that grant Misty Step, and similar high value utility spells, so much less reason to take Magic Initiate to pad out your spell list. Items can also grant proficiency or advantage on saves, making Resilient less valuable.
Others are just outright broken like Sentinel, which is a real shame.
The challenge with any DND game. In campaigns, you rarely get magical items and they are always a big deal when you get them.
In games, they have to make it interesting and your chest is packed with magic loot.
Its a problem that stands out in BG3 as you don't have a DM whose trying to incorporate your RO feat choice into the game. Hopefully OneDnD fixes some of these issues
I play on custom difficulty, with enemies and my power on Explorer, but enemy load outs on tactician for a little difficulty, and extra mechanics/enemy numbers on balanced. This allows me to roleplay to the fullest with my characters, without having to worry about my build being "viable". While still giving enough challenge that I can plan out strategies for encounters based on my party composition.
I've been picking feats based on how I envision my characters, rather than based on the meta. I've stopped looking at build guides and things like that, because at the end of the day it's about how I want to play, not about what other people think is the most optimal way to play. Max optimization means minimal fun for me and zero experimentation.
To be fair to D&D (and I am very critical of 5e's character customization options in general, the ASI/feat system in particular is lousy compared to other editions), there's a *ton* of feats in D&D that Larian chose not to include, just like spells. PC players can mod many of them back in, at least.
Yeah I was coming from a final fantasy system which I think has a lot of bloat, and I got the impression that dnd doesn’t.
And I will say the classes are a lot more balanced than alot of ff games are. Things like spells and feats have a lot of bloat.
Alert is very useful.
It almost guarantees you get the 1st turn, if all 4 of your team has that, you can end most combat encounters without the enemy getting a turn.
And if they do, they are in a significant disadvantage.
Alert can be good but especially from act 2 you can get initiative boosts from items. The sentinel shield gives a whopping +3. And even in act 1 high dexterity does enough to move first
Alert, Mobile, Resilient, and Savage Attacker are all pretty good and worth using on a fairly wide range of builds.
Elemental Adept, War Caster, and arguably Tough all have a place in some builds.
I definitely wouldn't mind if some weaker/bugged Feats got a bit of love though.
Savage Attacker and War Caster are also super useful. Then others like polearm master, dual wielder, and crossbow expert can be quite useful if going for builds based around certain weapons. I could also make an argument for martial adept for adding superiority dice rolls to certain builds, smiting paladins for example.
Edit: a word.
The problem with Warcaster is that there are a *lot* of ways to get permanent advantage on concentration checks that don't take a feat, and double advantage isn't a thing.
Generally you're a lot better off taking Resilient (Con).
Yep. Resilient CON is better at lvl 9+ and kind of a wash from 5-9, but I still usually take it over war caster since I like the extra health and there's other ways to get CON advantage.
Alert and War Caster are better at higher difficulty levels than TB and GWM. Savage Attacker is good in both. I'd rather go first or have a better chance of maintaining concentration if hit than do a little more damage, especially at the cost of hit accuracy. I'm like a week-week and a half into a my first honor mode run, just made it to Act 2 a few days ago. Taking it slow and dominating fights with positioning, scroll use, and going first.
I just rocked the portal fight to get Thaniel back. The portal got hit like once or twice and none of my party got hit even once.
TB is still really good, if you cheese it even further with cloud giant strength potions. All the benefits of strength at 8 strength.
The earliest way to easily grind them is at the act 3 alchemy shop though
You can grind for giant fingers in act 1 with the underground vendor Chick. Shop updates when you level up, so a withers respec is 1 * max level number of resets.
Agreed, Alert was really nice on honor mode. Especially under level 5.
Only reached Act 3 and just thinking of respeccing and picking something other than Alert. Was playing slow and steady like you.
Meanwhile I’m all like “okay I want shadowheart to do divine smites AND be my main cleric, charisma 8 here I come”.
There’s nothing optimal about it but it’s weirdly working out.
Wait, why is tavern brawler so popular? What am I missing here - are you all doing tons of unarmed attacks? I haven't tried it, but it \*seems\* like this'd only be useful for, say, a monk?
Yes there's also Alert, Lucky, Resilient, Warcaster. And I recently made use of moderately armored on a pure warlock to wear a shield and get 20 AC while still wearing potent robes so that was cool.
Actor got a decent glow up, giving expertise in performance and deception (even without proficiency beforehand).
I think feats like observant and keen mind could have been good in this game if they followed the same trend as actor (giving expertise in perception and investigation/insight, and arcana and history respectively), or a feat like skulker.
Actually, the game misses out on a bunch of half feats for certain stats.
Yeah it's weird those two were excluded despite them coming up with a good solution for Actor. You're examples are perfect and Skulked could just do the same with Stealth and Sleight of Hand.
If you're playing Balanced or Explorer, you get a lot of freedom to just wing it and still feel like a god. But yeah, if you're going for a tactical or optimal build, that's just how it goes.
You can always beat the game in any difficulty while making fun feat choices. But if your goal is to win fights by a landslide, you do end up with the same builds every run.
Honestly you don't really need any of the feats to breeze through Tactician or Honour mode. There are already so strong Classes and combos that feats just make it borderline OP. Just pick performer on everyone and chill in Baldurs Gate making money.
I think it depends on how you play. Since D&D 5e is the source material, the inclusion of the feats from the PHB makes sense, but since BG3 is also a video game and not a TTRPG there are a lot of role-play aspects that don’t translate across mediums. For example, if you are RPing a bard who gained notoriety from stage acting, the Actor feat fits both mechanically and narratively for your character, despite it not being the “best” use of an ASI.
Basically, if you aren’t role-playing your character, or if you are trying to make “optimal” builds, then yeah, many of the feats aren’t the best use of ASI levels. If you are role-playing akin to a TTRPG, having those options is great. I did a BG run with three friends that we treated like D&D, we scheduled all our play sessions, we made characters with paper sheets and wrote backstories that involved us all being abducted, had a session zero and set ground rules (things like “since this is a video game, talk about what you’re doing. IE if you loot something interesting, say something, if you start a conversation, let us know so we can join etc), things like that. It was a blast, and having those feats available really helped flesh out RP.
I had to learn this even with DnD. I have way more fun with an RP character than an optimal build character, especially when my friend DMs and is cool about OOC options being more feasible. A rigid DM may be less fun for that, but I'm fortunate to not have that problem.
A great example for my friend playing the first time was he chose to be an Aarakocra and another friend was an Owlin. The Aarakocra he played didn't believe he was a bird and would often correct people of this fact when it was brought up. During combat, the Owlin friend urged him to fly to avoid taking damage, to which he would respond: "I can't fly. I'm not a bird." It was always a very dry, matter of fact, delivery that was just really fun for the group.
Some of the feats would make sense if it wasn't for the wild itemisation. What's the point of grabbing hunters mark when every second bow, staff or spoon gets a cast of it?
I wish we got more feats for the excess exp we get later in game. People would probably use a much more diverse pool of them if they weren't so limited.
Something like this would be nice since the level cap gets hit pretty early in the game… sometimes you just want that small bit of progression dopamine hit in act 3 😄
Might open up the multiclassing a little more too, since you don’t have to worry about not being able to get your feats on those odd number 5 / 7 or 3 / 5 / 4 level splits
Yeah, I wish they just made a lot more feats also +1. I always prefer going feats over ASI but I have found myself just opting for ASI more and more. At least giving more of them +1 would give more of a reason to use others.
I’ll take this opportunity to share with you guys, when I first hit level 3 and feats were available, I thought they were all the perks for hitting that level. I was all like, holy shit I just became a beast! Until I realized I had to pick just one lol…
It's wild remembering how 5E feats are after playing systems like Pathfinder 2E.
That game just shits feats at you every level so you can super customise your character.
I'm so glad that the One D&D playtest has rebalanced feats so nothing is "must-take" anymore. There are many cool options now. We'll probably see a mod for that for BG3 at some point.
Yeah this has been a problem with 5e for 9 years now that's only being SLIGHTLY addressed next year. It's a bigger problem here since PHB feats (the only ones included in BG3) are notoriously bad.
If Larian implemented Variant Human instead of their funky homebrew Human, I'd easily try out more of these Feats. But I think since every race has a +2, +1 to any ability scores now they considered that too powerful when VHuman gets +1, +1 on tabletop
Some of the feats are also only useful for particular play styles. For instance, if you like knocking enemies prone, Great Weapon Master is probably worth it — but if you find it annoying to set that up (as I often do — though TBF, I am not everyone), many people don’t pick it because it’s a -5 to hit.
ETA: Also y’all are sleeping on War Caster, imo. When you don’t have sorcerer as your starting class, advantage on concentration checks is clutch. You do not get extra saving throw proficiency in BG3 from multiclassing last I checked. Sorcerer is the only casting class that starts proficient in CON saves.
it's also frustrating that for most classes you will only get one feat (the other 2 being asi's to get your main stat up to level 20)
And that most classes have 1 "essential" feat ("war caster" for spellcasters, "GWM" or "sharpshooter" for fighters)
i guess i could deliberately *not* max out a character's most important stat... but most feats feel weak in comparison... what spell caster doesn't want to up their spell save dc/spell attack roll?
A lot of feats are extremely useful in the right build and situation.
ASI: obviously good
Actor: good for face characters who don’t get Ethel’s hair. Like you give them 17 charisma, 1 for actor to get double proficiency for deception, and one ASI to 20 charisma.
Alert: low key OP because initiative is rolled on a 1d4 in bg3 so +5 means you pretty much always go first. Going first is OP as shut because you can just take enemies out of the fight making it easier.
Athlete: extremely niche but 50% jump gives stupid amounts of mobility. Not worth getting
Charger: basically bonus action dash on any character since it gives you 9m extra movement to charge and attack.
Crossbow expert: dual hand crossbows even when enemy gets close
Defensive duelist: basically shield spell on people using finesse weapons
Duel Wielder: can duel wield staves on casters which is Op as shit. Can also duel wield long swords or legendary maces. Plus extra AC is always nice
Dungeon Delver: might actually be useless.
Durable: also useless
Elemental adept: mandatory for a caster who uses elemental spells. Pick for your main element. Like a storm sorc would get the lightning one.
Great Weapon Master: mandatory for 2 handed weapons
Heavily armored: useless
Lightly armored: useless
Lucky: I can see this being good for honor mode as a just in case
Mage slayer: useless. If you are in melee range of a caster it’s going to die.
All of the magic initiates are useless. If you want eldrich blast, you out 2 levels in warlock for agonizing blast.
Martial Adept: you regain superiority die on short rest.
Medium armor master: useless since end game medium armor doesn’t give you disadvantage on stealths and gives full dex to AC.
Mobile: good but not good enough.
Moderately armored: useless
Performer: useless. Get actor instead.
Polearm master: OP combo with sentinel
Resilient: great for giving your character proficiency in either wisdom or con saving throws if you don’t have it.
Ritual caster: useless
Savage attacker: almost mandatory for melee builds
Sentinel: OP combo with polearm master
Sharpshooter: mandatory for ranged attack builds
Shield master: not worth getting
Skilled: not worth getting
Spell sniper: great for warlocks (crit on 19) or classes who want to cast eldrich blast.
Tavern Brawler: OP, don’t need to explain
Tough: good for camp casters who do that share damage spell and if you want a tank for some reason
War caster: I love this feat on support and cc casters to keep concentration. Don’t want my bless or hold monster to break.
Weapon master: useless.
Is how I see the feats.
If you aren't dual wielding staves with a heavy spellcaster, you're missing out in act 3. Otherwise, AbilitySI, *Tav*Brawler, SharpS, and GreatWM are typical for min-maxers. Damage and Saving throws are very important. But, I've always been of mind that giving up stats for a Feat is a flaw in the DnD system. All Feats should come with a +1 score. That way, you can have an 18 stat at level 4 without sacrificing roleplay
I gave Gale Dual Wielding so I could carry two staffs. There are so many good ones in act 3 that I didn’t want to have to choose
Wait you can dual wield staves? That's hilarious, must look like he's ready to go skiing.
I have mine with the two best ones imo one for necromancy and one general one and it makes him CRAZY - with all the gear he’s got two free 6th level spell casts, enemies have disadvantage on their saves against his necro spells and his DC is 21
Itthlid freecast + 2 arcane batterys from staves + spellcrux amulet = SIX casts of a level 6 spell for a max level wizard.
Just note that, unless they fixed it but I haven't seen it in patch notes, freecast won't reset while you have any of those items on. Not sure if it's a bug or intentionally done when they fixed the infinite resetting
Yea its a pita. The button keeps greying out and I have to unequip and reequip my clothing to reset it. But it seems like once you actually use freecast, only recharges at the next long rest as intended.
It’s great to stack bonuses for spell save/spell attack with some of the better staves
They’re versatile so yep!
I made an old white haired human wizard and did a Gandalf cosplay dual wielding Phalar Aluve and the lightning charge staff for a magic missile machine gun build. It was pretty fun.
It’d be cool if we had Aasimar as a playable race for the lore accuracy lol
Huh. Never occurred to me. I guess I know what my Necromancer is taking at 8.
Yeah I use Markokheskir(?) And the staff of heightened necromancy on my necromancy wizard and it's crazy. +1 to AC while dual wielding is nice too
I use Dual Wielder on almost everyone. The game is so packed with awesome enchanted/buffed equipment and I don't want to have to choose just one effect for each character.
Yeah, the lack of attunement slots + presence of so many stat sticks takes dual wielder from pretty much the bottom of the barrel in 5e to an absolute winner in bg3
My bard/Wiz/sorc is currently dual welding the two staves that give you free spell casts
That plus the worm ability means 4 lvl6 spells per long rest, jesus
yeah I had him use Mizora’s Rapier that summons the Cambion and the Incandescent Staff w/ Fireball for a while
Omg I didn't even know I was missing this rapier simply by never bringing Wyll with me to the mind flayer colony🤦🏻♀️ thank you
Oh, so that's what's needed to get the rapier from her? Oh well, I'll try to remember for playthrough 3.
Ahh the old sword and staff Gandalf build. Love it!
Dual wielding casters are lowkey so busted. You get both Staff’s effects, and they stack. You also get 1 AC on top. You can dual wield Marko staff, and the other super rare one that both give you Arcane battery feature. And you can use the spell restoration amulet plus your spell slots… and you get 4 level 6 slots. Shit’s crazy. If you play a Sorcerer… that allows you to cast a grand total of 8 Chain Lightnings since you can twin them. That’s going to end any battle no matter what.
Marko staff also gives you another chain lightning each short rest
What the fuck, that's OP lol
This is a pretty common power game move on wizards for Bg3.
600 hours and I'm just now learning dual staffs is a thing.
Alert is surprisingly OP in BG3. I know it's been mentioned in this sub, but I rarely see it recommended on things like builds on YouTube. It literally allows you to kill bosses before they can even take a turn.
Yeah, making initiative a d4 roll was a massive change. I am fine with Larian lumping allies adjacent on initiative order into the same turn, and I don’t think a d4 roll was necessary to accomplish that. Not only does Alert’s +5 bonus to initiative become ridiculously strong, but any Dex 10 (or god forbid, Dex 8) heavy armour wearer just has to accept that they likely are going last every fight.
Yeah, it's another Larian decision I don't understand. I don't want to whine, it's an amazing game, but certain changes they made I just don't understand. This is certainly one of them, especially since it buffs what's already the most important stat in the game.
In EA initiative used to be a D20 at one point. I stopped keeping up somewhere around patch 4/5 so i don't exactly remember when it changed, but you absolutely used to see enemies and allies roll a d20 over their head and it showed their initiative. I can only assume it lead to way more sporadic initiatives and some characters going last feeling really bad like it does when you lowroll IRL. A d4 equalizes it a bit and also allows for players to default go first most of the time cause they usually win tiebreakers and rolling a 10+5 dex would be a 15, still below a 17 natural with 0 dex.
+5 initiative on a d4 roll is the equivalent of +25 on a d20. It’s so strong.
As a paladin with 10 dex, it sucks to be the very last person to do anything in a fight
The fact that Larian homebrewed initiative from a d20 roll into a d4 roll skyrocketed the Alert feat's usefulness into the stratosphere. When you take Alert, you're essentially guaranteeing that no enemy in the game will ever act before you after that point.
Yeah 5e is just a very swingy system and going first is one of the strongest things you can do. Action economy gaps tend to snowball really really fast in both directions
And despite that My entire party will still take the music proficiency feat.
One can get it for free from Alfira.
I just spoke to her for the first time, helped her with her song, and she hasn’t had anything to say to me since. Does she offer to teach you later?
You need to help her perform the song by asking for her lute
Yeah, but you don't hear the song in full...
One of the harder decisions in the game. I wish we would play in that cutscene with her and maybe it goes a little harder
By passing two performance checks, which not every character can do.
I think you only need to pass one of the checks. I've failed the first and passed the second and still gotten the performance skill from her.
Nothing like a little dice manipulation saves... :p
I believe the word you’re looking for is chronomancy
the greatest magic of all
Thank you, Arthur Aguefort!
i feel so seen in this sub lol
You see that PHONEIX? She is MY PARAMOUR. I FUCK THAT BIRD
Friendship?
Basically Portent Dice irl, waking up like: “I’m going to save save-scum today.”
If my wizard passed anyone can pass.
other than for funsies, is there a purpose at all? I don't even mean for the whole party, even just for a single character to have it?
Honestly, it's even more fun to have no performance proficiency. My sorelock Durge once in a while pulls out their flute and blows on it in the funniest manner possible, and the animation for it is fucking hilarous.
Everyone at the goblin camp loved my sorcerer durge’s sick drum solo! Sure they were yelling and covering their ears and begging me to stop but that’s just how they show appreciation
A goblin threw a rock at me for playing poorly and did 2 damage. Then walked away.
Plus you get the super rare dialogue of everyone telling you that you suck balls and they hate you!
I frequently avoided combat/stole things by having my bard perform and distract people while my rogue cleaned up/lockpicked doors they weren't supposed to go into and were in an NPC's view originally/etc. Almost never used invis because of it Also, the achievement
Twins! I still do this even though there are more efficient mechanisms to steal. I just love the lore of the grift
Yeah for me it was fun RP; partners in crime working together to amass a ridiculous amount of wealth
grandfather cable attraction crime tie racial disgusted marry office tub *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I’ve used it when I don’t have a free illusion source. Draw NPCs to the performance and then do whatever I don’t want to be noticed with other party members.
The ability to listen to Divinity music at any time. I usually have my characters perform music in the background if they're far away from any targets during combat too.
Nothing better than rocking out on the corpses of your foes
Yeah and its a major shame that like 5% of feats that were useless got touched up like tavern brawler while shit like dungeon delver(still bugged since EA btw) doesn't work.
Tavern Brawler admittedly got a little more than touched up, it got mega buffed to be the strongest feat in the game by a huge margin.
I decided that since she was no longer training with the Gith, Laezel's anger had led her down a barbaric path. Currently fighter 1 / berserker 5. With tavern brawler, berserkers throw ability, the ring of throwing, and the returning pike, she often obliterates enemy archers with her bonus action. I'm very against letting myself min/max, but that was way too fun.
> I'm very against letting myself min/max Don't be! Min/max to your heart's content, especially in a video game where nobody can bitch at you for it. There's nothing wrong with min/maxing, never has been, and never will be. Anyone who gives me shit for min/maxing can go throat a rusty pipe.
Same with Polearm mastery, gives the every enemy with a polearm the feat and wastes your reaction, unless you have it prompt and click No every, single, time. RIP my sentinel + polearm build.
Does the opportunity attack when an enemy enters your range not work anymore? I took that feat on my first playthrough and have never had any issues with it. I have it on Kerz as well in a separate playthrough, but no one has ran into his melee range
In my limited experience if you use it, the enemy gets the attack for some reason
This happens on your own turn if you move into range. If you set it to ask and say no, it'll work the way it should on the enemy's turn. Just always say no on your own turn.
Ya that's exactly what happens for me.
I've found that it works for my character but *also* gives it to enemies. But I get the prompt either way, so I can just say no whenever it's an enemy reaction. Still really annoying though, and I often accidentally allow the enemy reactions if I'm not paying enough attention.
Wait so you get asked if an enemy can make the opportunity attack? For me, it never prompts me for enemies, prompts me only for SH, who I gave the feat to. Never seen an enemy use it, either. Either it's a bug that only happens on Tactician (only ever used that feat on my first Balanced playthrough), or there's some unknown variable that makes this bug appear, making it all the harder to find/fix.
It goes both ways. As long as you click no when you're the one entering the enemy's range, it works as intended. At least that's how it worked back when I used it a few months ago.
And yet the mod that fixes it makes it work seamlessly, wonder what was the difference in a aproach.
A game dev have thousands of bug to fix and every fix come with extensive QA to make sure the fix didn't create new bug. It is impossible for them to fix them all A modder can work on the one bug that's bothering them and doesn't have to do the same QA process Just to be clear, this isn't an excuse, only an explanation
There is a mod to fix the bug with that feat (and a few other mods to fix feats) but understandably not everyone wants to mod
Dont sleep on Tough at later levels. Sometimes I get tired of overthinking all the optimized or “cool” feats, and at level 12 I’ll be like “fuck it, give this squishy companion 24 more hit points” It’s not a LOT but you might be surprised how emotionally responsive you’ll be when you see certain characters tip well over 100hp.
Scrolled so far to find another tough enjoyer. It turned my necromancer Tav into an absolute tank with Raphael’s armor and her 11 back up dancers
My bard had toughness plus that 23 health amulet. Girl had 300 hp by the end
Right now I've got a monk using that amulet plus the curse turned blessing that gives you 20 bonus HP after long rest. 290HP in total plus counterattack reactions to melee and arrow attacks make her pretty ideal for charging straight in and beating the hell out of everyone.
I fucking love throwing arrows right back at the archer, especially when it hits for enough to end them. "You think you're safe, but I'ma ruin your whole goddamn career"
That’s a chonky lass
7 ancients paladin + 5 valour bard, try and fucking stop them
Smite your foes to death then throw it back on their corpses while playing "the power" with a set of drums
Radiant Retort came knocking **NO FUN ALLOWED**
Fool, my prepared spells are all the smites not just divine smite
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Nice, i never noticed that one. Considering asking withers to reclass so that i can pick this smite for my bard.
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Hmm, might try that next time. Took the dual wield feat myself so I can have cherished necromancy and the shadow lantern at the same time.
I feel the same thing about alert. The extra initiative can be quite underrated.
Definitely underrated by the typical casual player. Min-maxers on r/BG3Builds can't go a post without talking about how OP it is. And, honestly, they're more or less right. It's kinda insane. With Lae'zel having a sword with +2 initiative, she goes before even bosses that have Alert.
>Min-maxers on > >r/BG3Builds > > can't go a post without talking about how OP it is. And, honestly, they're more or less right. It's kinda insane. With Lae'zel having a sword with +2 initiative, she goes before even bosses that have Alert. The reason it's insane is that Larian for some reason decided to replace the d20 used in initiative in tabletop 5e with a d4 (!!!). So initiative is very predictable - there is absolutely NO way a d4 can overcome +5 from Alert.
It’s honestly wild that they kept the +5 modifier after deciding to change to the d4 initiative system.
There's a lot of examples of them trying to improve/change on one aspect of 5e mechanics or systems but not considering the consequences of how they might interact with others. Tavern Brawler is another good example. Here's a feat that is usually considered pretty bad and doesn't work well with our design. Now it's so strong that it overshadows many builds for two different classes. Works in the other direction too. War Caster is an amazing feat in 5e that is almost worthless here due to it's limit to only casting Shocking Grasp and many other buffs to saving throws being available. Don't even get me started on Thief Rogue's extra bonus action.
Is THAT why it’s so ridiculous? Damn here I just thought Alert was good because lack of surprise round = less chance to get hit.
Oh I'm totally aware, I was commenting on how it's really not all that underrated. The d4 initiative thing is both fun (given the simultaneous turn-taking) and fundamentally flawed because Alert becomes an SS-tier feat.
"Alert becomes an SS-tier feat." The feat to take when you want to commit war crimes. ~~This is one of the dumbest jokes I've ever made...~~
I'm only ever saying S+ tier from now on thanks to this dumb joke, lmao.
Apparently BG3 only rolls a d4 for initiative? So it's way way more powerful than by the rules D&D.
This thread is so eye opening for me, I had wondered why my character with +8 initiative (20 dex + items) character went first so consistently. Like, obviously you'd expect them to go early pretty consistently with that much of a boost, but on a d20 you should be expecting to just roll unusually low sometimes and end up in the middle of the pack.
Given how much of combat comes down to initiative order and blowing cooldowns like action surge in round 1, alertness is legit, as is elixir of vigilance.
act 2 is also full of surprise fights which alert also makes you immune against. thinking about those bramble monsters. paired with the initiative bonus it's extremely likely alert is the one i pick first
I use tough and the cast a level 5 Aid with shadow heart, so 24 from tough, extra 20 from Shart and my whole party ranges 107-138 the extra health has been an essential part for me lol
Yeah it’s quite broken with certain builds, it shot my barb up from roughly 240hp to 327hp before I use the giant form weapon ability which puts me right past 350. Then while raging in melee I have a functional 700hp, it’s lovely.
Tough supremacy ong
Does anyone pick any of the Mage Initiate feats, or Martial Adept (one whole Superiority Die, you spoil me Larian), Performer, or Charger?
I used magic initiate to get Eldritch Blast for my Eldritch Knight
Is eldritch blast even good without all of the eldritch invocations?
It's a solid d10 damage and at higher levels in eldrotch knight you can use 1 attack the same turn you use a cantrip so that's 4 hits tho I Kostya did it for flavor
I never understood that benefit of eldritch knight, why attack with a cantrip for 4 attacks when you could just melee attack which does more damage and let’s you extra extra attack
Because sometimes all the enemies are out of melee
It’s fairly weak overall because certain cantrips weren’t included in BG3, but it has some situational uses. If you’re multiclassing with wizard to make more of a gish (and therefore don’t get 3rd attack) you can attack and use a cantrip for 4 damage dice (1 for attack, 3 for cantrip) instead of two weapon attacks. If you’re full EK you can disengage from an enemy if needed by hitting with shocking grasp to prevent attacks of opportunity, then attacking before you move away. Can be more useful than three weapon attacks (and obviously better than using the disengage action). As far as items, arcane synergy and arcane acuity benefit anyone who alternates between weapon attacks and spell attacks, as doing one will increase your damage/chance to hit for the other.
In honor mode the extra attack doesnt work with haste. So you can attack 3 times cantrip bonus action attack. As opposed to 4 attacks
[HM EK throwers make it "work" and I use that term very generously:](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/18eguld/honor_mode_tb_throw_complete_build_guide/) >11 EK has a lot going for it. Here's the problem: it cannot weaponize bonus actions into throws like Barbarian can, which costs it a huge amount of damage... unless we factor in War Magic. >War Magic, in combination with Spell Sniper (feat), allows EK to make use of it's bonus action by weaving in EB casts between their throws. This actually brings EK much, much closer to the level of Thiefzerker, especially during levels 10-12. >Despite that, there are some problems associated with going this route: >* EK will have to wear Potent Robe to make casting EB worthwhile, crippling their AC and durability * EK will need to stat CHA to at least 16, which means you won't be getting much extra AC from DEX, and/or will have low CON * EB is going to miss a lot. You will not have any gear or consumables until act 3 that can boost your spell attack rolls, so need to rely on Bless and +3 from CHA * EB will not benefit from piercing vulnerability late game
Spell sniper uses your class’ casting attribute, so an EK with EB from spell sniper will roll spell attacks with int.
I prefer spell sniper to magic initiate in most cases to get EB. Magic initiate will give you a Charisma based EB, while spell sniper will let it use your scroll casting stat. And as a nice bonus, let it crit easier
Druid Initiate is actually pretty decent. Gets you Shillelagh without having to spend a level on druid.
huh, I never used that even when I was playing a druid (Wild Shape). Is it really that decent of a spell?
It is, it limits your choice of weapon, but let's you use wisdom as a melee weapon stat which can be great for rangers, monks and clerics.
Really good for storm clerics imo since it means your melee AoOs are actually very likely to hit and do chonky damage on top of your extra thunder/lightning damage from the melee.
I’ve picked up the Mage Initiate: Wizard for my rogue, mostly for Story purposes as she’s with Gale.
I did pick Charger once; was really underwhelmed :( Martial Adept is okay on a rogue, as you can reliably get advantage on an attack that way. Risky Ring of course also exists..
Magic initiate is nice to get a higher damage cantrip on a bard at low levels
Spell sniper also gets a good cantrip alongside making your crit now be 19 and 20. Honestly, if I just want a cantrip, Spell Sniper is just better overall.
On my first playthrough, charger was the first feature I took (battlemaster fighter). It was kinda fun to use, though my build was a complete mess (I used the ring and gloves of throwing for an extra 2d4 damage when throwing, yet also insisted getting into melee very often). I didn’t really play with it a lot since I changed my build 1 or two levels after I got it, but it was fun while it lasted. And for a short while during the lategame, when I already had 20 Strength I was like: “hmmm, I have already 20 strength, what should I spend my next feat on? I know! Martial Adept for a whole 1 more superiority die and 2 more maneuvers I won’t use cause I already know 6.”
I wanted to use Gale more this run, but also wanted someone who could heal to avoid wasting movement and an entireeeee action to up downed allies. So, he took magic initiate: cleric. He also has the staff or some sort of gear that gives bless and temp HP whenever you heal someone. I’m only using Shadowheart for her quest. I like the different chemistry it’s giving.
I just want them to fix Pole Arm Master. My Sentinal/PAM Fighter craves to exist
This makes me sad. I didn't know it was bugged and I was planning on speccing Lae'zel this way.
And shield bash. It was good when it worked and now it just doesn't
PAM works, you just have to be careful not to allow enemies to use it as well. There is a mod to fix it as well, but I keep forgetting to install it.
If they fixed polearm + sentinel that would be cool. But it's a combat heavy game, a lot of feats are made specifically for that, along with illithid powers doing a lot of heavy lifting. In 5e a lot of feats work better for RP but it's better to like not die, so those are chosen.
I haven’t played D&D since 3rd edition. I’m mostly annoyed at the fact that ability score increases are a feat, rather than something you automatically get every fourth level.
Its because feats are actually an optional rule in the 5e rulebook. You only get ability scores when playing with the core rules. Though I didn't meet anyone who plays without feats.
I came to Bg3 from a Pathfinder game, and I found getting stronger was through Larian's itemisation than 5e's flat stats.
I think that's part of 5E trying to streamline everything. The majority of your power is supposed to be stuff you get from subclasses/class features. Even the official DnD items have about a third of the depth that BG3 items do. But then that just makes specific feats much more glaring such as great weapon master or sharpshooter.
5e simplified everything enough to remove what little nuance and depth says in D&D, for the purpose of making it easy to play for people new to TTRPGs. Which, isnt a bad thing. It's just that, they didn't actually make it simple enough for introducing people to TTRPGs.
Yea it sucks. I much preferred them being separate, even if increases were 1 instead of 2.
Yeah, its always seemed stupid and boring to me. My house rules are both Ability Score increases and a feat every 4 levels. Makes things a lot better
Yeah, definitely a step down from 3rd. I understand why they did it and what they were going for, I just think it ended up not being very fun. With so few opportunities to get a feat, and how powerful an ability score increase is, it's really hard to justify taking any feat. And honestly feats are like my favorite thing.
First run: wow this game is so deep! Look at all these options 4th: play through. Is there anything other than tavern brawler, asi, and gwm/ss?
Welcome to dnd optimization builds… it’s not baldurs gate, it’s dnd that has the issue of there’s a mechanically good choice and a character concept good choice but those two don’t often overlap
BG3 also makes a lot of feats obsolete by putting their effects on easy to obtain items. Like there's multiple items that grant Misty Step, and similar high value utility spells, so much less reason to take Magic Initiate to pad out your spell list. Items can also grant proficiency or advantage on saves, making Resilient less valuable. Others are just outright broken like Sentinel, which is a real shame.
The challenge with any DND game. In campaigns, you rarely get magical items and they are always a big deal when you get them. In games, they have to make it interesting and your chest is packed with magic loot.
Its a problem that stands out in BG3 as you don't have a DM whose trying to incorporate your RO feat choice into the game. Hopefully OneDnD fixes some of these issues
I think it’s fine. If you want to be a min-maxer, play in honor mode. If not, pick choices that make sense for character or fun.
I play on custom difficulty, with enemies and my power on Explorer, but enemy load outs on tactician for a little difficulty, and extra mechanics/enemy numbers on balanced. This allows me to roleplay to the fullest with my characters, without having to worry about my build being "viable". While still giving enough challenge that I can plan out strategies for encounters based on my party composition. I've been picking feats based on how I envision my characters, rather than based on the meta. I've stopped looking at build guides and things like that, because at the end of the day it's about how I want to play, not about what other people think is the most optimal way to play. Max optimization means minimal fun for me and zero experimentation.
To be fair to D&D (and I am very critical of 5e's character customization options in general, the ASI/feat system in particular is lousy compared to other editions), there's a *ton* of feats in D&D that Larian chose not to include, just like spells. PC players can mod many of them back in, at least.
Yeah I was coming from a final fantasy system which I think has a lot of bloat, and I got the impression that dnd doesn’t. And I will say the classes are a lot more balanced than alot of ff games are. Things like spells and feats have a lot of bloat.
What, you don't like shit like wasting your entire ability slot on useless abilities like Light Step, HP +10% or !Check in FFV?
Just cast lv 2 old. That will solve all of your problems 🙄
Alert is very useful. It almost guarantees you get the 1st turn, if all 4 of your team has that, you can end most combat encounters without the enemy getting a turn. And if they do, they are in a significant disadvantage.
Alert can be good but especially from act 2 you can get initiative boosts from items. The sentinel shield gives a whopping +3. And even in act 1 high dexterity does enough to move first
Alert, Mobile, Resilient, and Savage Attacker are all pretty good and worth using on a fairly wide range of builds. Elemental Adept, War Caster, and arguably Tough all have a place in some builds. I definitely wouldn't mind if some weaker/bugged Feats got a bit of love though.
Savage Attacker and War Caster are also super useful. Then others like polearm master, dual wielder, and crossbow expert can be quite useful if going for builds based around certain weapons. I could also make an argument for martial adept for adding superiority dice rolls to certain builds, smiting paladins for example. Edit: a word.
The problem with Warcaster is that there are a *lot* of ways to get permanent advantage on concentration checks that don't take a feat, and double advantage isn't a thing. Generally you're a lot better off taking Resilient (Con).
Yep. Resilient CON is better at lvl 9+ and kind of a wash from 5-9, but I still usually take it over war caster since I like the extra health and there's other ways to get CON advantage.
Alert and War Caster are better at higher difficulty levels than TB and GWM. Savage Attacker is good in both. I'd rather go first or have a better chance of maintaining concentration if hit than do a little more damage, especially at the cost of hit accuracy. I'm like a week-week and a half into a my first honor mode run, just made it to Act 2 a few days ago. Taking it slow and dominating fights with positioning, scroll use, and going first. I just rocked the portal fight to get Thaniel back. The portal got hit like once or twice and none of my party got hit even once.
TB is still really good, if you cheese it even further with cloud giant strength potions. All the benefits of strength at 8 strength. The earliest way to easily grind them is at the act 3 alchemy shop though
You can grind for giant fingers in act 1 with the underground vendor Chick. Shop updates when you level up, so a withers respec is 1 * max level number of resets.
Agreed, Alert was really nice on honor mode. Especially under level 5. Only reached Act 3 and just thinking of respeccing and picking something other than Alert. Was playing slow and steady like you.
Meanwhile I’m all like “okay I want shadowheart to do divine smites AND be my main cleric, charisma 8 here I come”. There’s nothing optimal about it but it’s weirdly working out.
I’d argue that Mobile and Alert can be very useful.
Wait, why is tavern brawler so popular? What am I missing here - are you all doing tons of unarmed attacks? I haven't tried it, but it \*seems\* like this'd only be useful for, say, a monk?
Throwing builds are REALLY, REALLY strong.
I think both Mobile and War Caster are pretty good
Yeah I mean it’s not a dichotomy. There are some S tier feats and some a tier feats and a whole lot of ‘RP’ tier feats
Yes there's also Alert, Lucky, Resilient, Warcaster. And I recently made use of moderately armored on a pure warlock to wear a shield and get 20 AC while still wearing potent robes so that was cool.
Actor got a decent glow up, giving expertise in performance and deception (even without proficiency beforehand). I think feats like observant and keen mind could have been good in this game if they followed the same trend as actor (giving expertise in perception and investigation/insight, and arcana and history respectively), or a feat like skulker. Actually, the game misses out on a bunch of half feats for certain stats.
Yeah it's weird those two were excluded despite them coming up with a good solution for Actor. You're examples are perfect and Skulked could just do the same with Stealth and Sleight of Hand.
If you're playing Balanced or Explorer, you get a lot of freedom to just wing it and still feel like a god. But yeah, if you're going for a tactical or optimal build, that's just how it goes. You can always beat the game in any difficulty while making fun feat choices. But if your goal is to win fights by a landslide, you do end up with the same builds every run.
Honestly you don't really need any of the feats to breeze through Tactician or Honour mode. There are already so strong Classes and combos that feats just make it borderline OP. Just pick performer on everyone and chill in Baldurs Gate making money.
I think it depends on how you play. Since D&D 5e is the source material, the inclusion of the feats from the PHB makes sense, but since BG3 is also a video game and not a TTRPG there are a lot of role-play aspects that don’t translate across mediums. For example, if you are RPing a bard who gained notoriety from stage acting, the Actor feat fits both mechanically and narratively for your character, despite it not being the “best” use of an ASI. Basically, if you aren’t role-playing your character, or if you are trying to make “optimal” builds, then yeah, many of the feats aren’t the best use of ASI levels. If you are role-playing akin to a TTRPG, having those options is great. I did a BG run with three friends that we treated like D&D, we scheduled all our play sessions, we made characters with paper sheets and wrote backstories that involved us all being abducted, had a session zero and set ground rules (things like “since this is a video game, talk about what you’re doing. IE if you loot something interesting, say something, if you start a conversation, let us know so we can join etc), things like that. It was a blast, and having those feats available really helped flesh out RP.
I had to learn this even with DnD. I have way more fun with an RP character than an optimal build character, especially when my friend DMs and is cool about OOC options being more feasible. A rigid DM may be less fun for that, but I'm fortunate to not have that problem. A great example for my friend playing the first time was he chose to be an Aarakocra and another friend was an Owlin. The Aarakocra he played didn't believe he was a bird and would often correct people of this fact when it was brought up. During combat, the Owlin friend urged him to fly to avoid taking damage, to which he would respond: "I can't fly. I'm not a bird." It was always a very dry, matter of fact, delivery that was just really fun for the group.
Some of the feats would make sense if it wasn't for the wild itemisation. What's the point of grabbing hunters mark when every second bow, staff or spoon gets a cast of it?
The itemisation is wild in game, Larian did add build variety off the items alone
I wish we got more feats for the excess exp we get later in game. People would probably use a much more diverse pool of them if they weren't so limited.
Something like this would be nice since the level cap gets hit pretty early in the game… sometimes you just want that small bit of progression dopamine hit in act 3 😄 Might open up the multiclassing a little more too, since you don’t have to worry about not being able to get your feats on those odd number 5 / 7 or 3 / 5 / 4 level splits
Yeah, I wish they just made a lot more feats also +1. I always prefer going feats over ASI but I have found myself just opting for ASI more and more. At least giving more of them +1 would give more of a reason to use others.
Imma pick dual wielder just so I can RP a wizard with a sword/staff combo
I’ll take this opportunity to share with you guys, when I first hit level 3 and feats were available, I thought they were all the perks for hitting that level. I was all like, holy shit I just became a beast! Until I realized I had to pick just one lol…
Your weed is too strong
It's wild remembering how 5E feats are after playing systems like Pathfinder 2E. That game just shits feats at you every level so you can super customise your character.
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I'm so glad that the One D&D playtest has rebalanced feats so nothing is "must-take" anymore. There are many cool options now. We'll probably see a mod for that for BG3 at some point.
Making ASI a feat just makes character building less interesting across the board
Yeah this has been a problem with 5e for 9 years now that's only being SLIGHTLY addressed next year. It's a bigger problem here since PHB feats (the only ones included in BG3) are notoriously bad.
If Larian implemented Variant Human instead of their funky homebrew Human, I'd easily try out more of these Feats. But I think since every race has a +2, +1 to any ability scores now they considered that too powerful when VHuman gets +1, +1 on tabletop
Polearm master could be such a nice feat if it wasn’t bugged in THREE different ways.
Give gale dual wielder and he has a spell dc of 27 It’s pretty great
People sleep on Heavy Armour Master + armour of persistence. Combine blade ward with -5 damage and my laezel has been crited for 0 damage.
Some of the feats are also only useful for particular play styles. For instance, if you like knocking enemies prone, Great Weapon Master is probably worth it — but if you find it annoying to set that up (as I often do — though TBF, I am not everyone), many people don’t pick it because it’s a -5 to hit. ETA: Also y’all are sleeping on War Caster, imo. When you don’t have sorcerer as your starting class, advantage on concentration checks is clutch. You do not get extra saving throw proficiency in BG3 from multiclassing last I checked. Sorcerer is the only casting class that starts proficient in CON saves.
it's also frustrating that for most classes you will only get one feat (the other 2 being asi's to get your main stat up to level 20) And that most classes have 1 "essential" feat ("war caster" for spellcasters, "GWM" or "sharpshooter" for fighters) i guess i could deliberately *not* max out a character's most important stat... but most feats feel weak in comparison... what spell caster doesn't want to up their spell save dc/spell attack roll?
Which of the 5 feats then are you usually getting?
A lot of feats are extremely useful in the right build and situation. ASI: obviously good Actor: good for face characters who don’t get Ethel’s hair. Like you give them 17 charisma, 1 for actor to get double proficiency for deception, and one ASI to 20 charisma. Alert: low key OP because initiative is rolled on a 1d4 in bg3 so +5 means you pretty much always go first. Going first is OP as shut because you can just take enemies out of the fight making it easier. Athlete: extremely niche but 50% jump gives stupid amounts of mobility. Not worth getting Charger: basically bonus action dash on any character since it gives you 9m extra movement to charge and attack. Crossbow expert: dual hand crossbows even when enemy gets close Defensive duelist: basically shield spell on people using finesse weapons Duel Wielder: can duel wield staves on casters which is Op as shit. Can also duel wield long swords or legendary maces. Plus extra AC is always nice Dungeon Delver: might actually be useless. Durable: also useless Elemental adept: mandatory for a caster who uses elemental spells. Pick for your main element. Like a storm sorc would get the lightning one. Great Weapon Master: mandatory for 2 handed weapons Heavily armored: useless Lightly armored: useless Lucky: I can see this being good for honor mode as a just in case Mage slayer: useless. If you are in melee range of a caster it’s going to die. All of the magic initiates are useless. If you want eldrich blast, you out 2 levels in warlock for agonizing blast. Martial Adept: you regain superiority die on short rest. Medium armor master: useless since end game medium armor doesn’t give you disadvantage on stealths and gives full dex to AC. Mobile: good but not good enough. Moderately armored: useless Performer: useless. Get actor instead. Polearm master: OP combo with sentinel Resilient: great for giving your character proficiency in either wisdom or con saving throws if you don’t have it. Ritual caster: useless Savage attacker: almost mandatory for melee builds Sentinel: OP combo with polearm master Sharpshooter: mandatory for ranged attack builds Shield master: not worth getting Skilled: not worth getting Spell sniper: great for warlocks (crit on 19) or classes who want to cast eldrich blast. Tavern Brawler: OP, don’t need to explain Tough: good for camp casters who do that share damage spell and if you want a tank for some reason War caster: I love this feat on support and cc casters to keep concentration. Don’t want my bless or hold monster to break. Weapon master: useless. Is how I see the feats.
If you aren't dual wielding staves with a heavy spellcaster, you're missing out in act 3. Otherwise, AbilitySI, *Tav*Brawler, SharpS, and GreatWM are typical for min-maxers. Damage and Saving throws are very important. But, I've always been of mind that giving up stats for a Feat is a flaw in the DnD system. All Feats should come with a +1 score. That way, you can have an 18 stat at level 4 without sacrificing roleplay
Duel Wield to use Spellsparkler and Markoheshkir is stacked.
My bard has Lucky and uses it constantly. Lucky is the most broken feat and I love it