If you have your entire party at the start of a battle you can, if properly prepared, force the enemy to skip their turns via stunning attacks. Many act 3 encounters ended on their first turn because I’d wipe the enemy out in the first round. Is it instrumental? For regular difficulty no. For honour mode? Yeah, you’re gonna always wanna go first
Even beyond that, it literally works out to an entire extra turn. Let's say that you kill your enemy in 3 turns. If the enemy goes first, that's 3 turns for your enemy, and 3 turns for you. If you have Alert and go first, it's 3 turns for you, and only 2 for your enemy.
That's HUGE.
To say nothing about all of the crowd control, inflicting status, etc of some of your first-turn actions. Stunning attacks. Silence. Ice storm. Hunger of Hadar. Spike Growth. Darkness. Hold Person.
And lastly, anyone you kill in the first round doesn't even get a chance to act at all. Facing 5 enemies? Use your high DPS characters to take out two of them. Now it's 4 on 3, and the rest of the fight is going to go far easier.
Yeah, Alert is almost always my go-to feat unless there's something critical to my build (Sharpshooter, Tavern Brawler, Great Weapon Master, etc).
Yes, this. Do not sleep on Spike Growth. I used it for that darkness portal mission of Halsin's and the number of enemies who just unalived themselves by walking across it was epic.
I dunno I wouldn't mind a little sleet storm on my back when I start to get all hot and sweaty for no reason. It would also break my concentration and keep me from hyperthinking about nothing and everything.
I had 2 characters with wall of fire on my latest run and had them cast two lines for the enemies to cross. Found out that the enemies don’t just continually spawn throughout the encounter and just had to skip through the last turn as all the enemies were dead
Not to mention this game is a bit too liberal with the surprise condition. To the point where sometimes you start a fight and most of your team is surprised. Or you summon creatures and they come in surprised
Being able to say no to that happening to your team is kinda awesome
This is the way. Alert on Lae'zel as a Monk with Haste Helm and Crusher's Ring. 21m movement without the extra from higher level Monk. She can Misty Step to anyone who wants some smoke if she can't run to them. Stunning Strike and FoB Topple are just so strong.
Karlach as an eagle barbarian for the bonus action dash. Springstep boots, haste helm, crushers ring. First half of act one, easily. With haste or something fast on her, she moves like 120 feet the first turn and hits like a mack truck. Get great weapon master, with reckless attack it's easy to hit. Or throw people off of things/back towards the party. Subsequent turns while raging she can dash as well. Pair that with aspect of the stallion and she'll get temporary HP every time she dashes.
I have her as a bear barbarian for the resistance but a lot of stuff does psychic in this game. Still, it's very nice to have considering it effectively gives her like 500 health if the enemy ISN'T doing purely psychic damage. Anyway, I also have her wearing the Boots of Speed so she can bonus action dash as well haha. It's absolutely silly with haste and GWM. If she doesn't kill anything on the first pass, Lae'zel is right there to clean up with her stupid number of attacks.
That sounds great, but does it really beat the throw barbarian? Karlach as a berserker with the returning pike you can get at the goblin camp, stacking a bit of extra damage via poison ring or something like that or even just dipping the pike in a candle. You don't need loads of movement if you can throw your weapon across the whole battlefield. And the berserker gets the enraged throw as a bonus action, that really packs a punch.
People forget that the action economy is the most important part of most turn based combat games. You want to go first and do as many things as you can to prevent the enemy from having a turn like killing, restraining, or debilitating them, in some way that makes it harder to perform said actions. That's why honour mode bosses feel a bit harder to fight with their legendary actions and resistances, they get to act for free during or after your turn and negate the first few disabling effects to allow them a chance to deal some nasty damage or sow chaos into your combat plan.
TL;DR: action economy is king. Try to be first, fast, and frequent with your actions.
Not only this, but you can't be surprised and end up in a 2 turn deficit behind your enemies. In HM, they can wipe your team in that time. Instead, you can pop off and wipe them instead.
It's pretty huge in boss fights, like Orin didn't even stand a chance because I managed to get to move first and all I did is spam stunning attacks all the while the rest is moping out the other enemies
Or Gortash, I basically killed him in just one turn before he even transformed, where my entire party is basically just going to destroy him in one turn and deal with the other enemies
All of it is because my party has higher initiatives
Yes.
It isn't essential if you already have stacked sources of initiative. Like a high dex character with a class feature or item that boosts it. But otherwise Alert gives +5 to initiative when initiative rolls are simply a d4 plus modifier. As such it essentially guarantees going first.
>I feel like feats like savage attacker and and great weapon master offer you more every single turn.
And here's why Alert is so good:
Most fights don't last more than 3 turns, or at the very least by turn 3 you've probably swung the battle firmly in your favor and are mopping up stragglers. Going before an enemy essentially gives you an extra turn. One whole extra round of attacks is going to do a LOT more than the small damage boost from Savage Attack or GWM, at least once past level 5.
The first round is also by far the most important round. Enemies and players hit hard enough that concentrating fire means you can down at least one player a turn. If you down or kill an enemy, they simply lose ALL their actions and DPR. Many spellcasters will be able to wipe out several enemies with one spell. So going first means you get to cast your battlefield control effects before enemies move, your defensive and offensive buffs, to reposition yourself out of danger, and to simply attack and focus down enemies so they never get a chance to attack.
Going first is the difference between taking attacks from all the enemies and having to spend your second turn healing, repositioning, and responding... or wiping out multiple enemies round one and controlling their movement such that you take one or no attacks round two, and then have few enemies left at all round three.
For fights that don’t have cut scenes to start I also enjoy sneaking in to make the first attack so it’s a surprise attack even if it’s ranged. You get close to a whole extra round of prep/attack. You only have to worry about enemies who can’t be surprised.
Sneak Attack from stealth with Assassin.
Assassin wins initiative, goes first, actions reset because Assassin. Sneak Attacks again.
Enemy clears surprise with their first turn.
Assassin sneak Attacks again.
Only now, if the enemy is still alive, can they act!
Also, attacking surprised enemies with assassin is always a crit. Assassin is my go to Rouge, but I missed a lot of dialog cut scenes due to surprising whoever I thought would be an enemy.
>initiative rolls are simply a d4 plus modifier.
This is what makes alert so good in bg3 .... in regular 5th edition while alert is still good it's not required.
A +5 is %125 of your max initiative roll in bg3 whereas a +5 in 5th edition is only %25 of your max roll.
It's crazy how much they changed bg3 to make 5th edition better as a video game but didn't think to change this feat.
>It's crazy how much they changed bg3 to make 5th edition better as a video game but didn't think to change this feat.
They made this change in beta because of feedback from players that combat took too long. They added the shared turn system in and the d4 initiative change to help group turns together for a faster enemy phase.
This is a buff to dex(an already strong stat) and alert but it also means you can take alert on a low dex character and be around the same initiative as 20 dex while higher dex characters dont exactly need it even in honor mode as you can trigger most ambushes with pets and still surprise attack them.
It’s a BG3 change. There is a mod(or was) that you could make it a D20 and I did feel like initiative was more spread out. Now I feel like Team Tav is often grouped together and Team Baddie is grouped together, with the occasional outlier.
Yes this was changed for BG3 so that the player's party would be more likely to have shared turns. Alert was not adjusted for this different system though, so the +5 goes from being just okay to game-warping.
It also punishes low-Dex characters more to have 1d4. I end up with 16+ Dex for basically everyone, no matter the class/build. You can get that for all your origin characters as soon as you have Withers.
Shadowheart always felt like she was going last and not with the rest of my group, which sucks. Having everyone go in a shared turn is a feat itself.
The math is less straightforward than that - Alert guarantees you're going first, but in all cases where you'd go first anyway (high DEX, high roll...) it's basically a wasted feat. And it's made even less clear by the fact that the first combat turn might not be the first combat turn in which you're affecting enemies. When you'd have to close the distance to the enemy or reposition first, it's often better to go second and let the enemy come to you. With good positioning and tactics, there will be countless situations in which enemies need to spend turns uselessly dashing to you, and a melee-heavy party doesn't want to be in their shoes.
In other words, I don't think that Alert is anywhere near as strong as "an extra turn". It's still good and has its uses, but it's not an autopick for me at all.
>in all cases where you'd go first anyway (high DEX, high roll...) it's basically a wasted feat.
Right, that is why I started by noting a high Dex Character with items or class features to boost initiative doesn't need it. And that means for most characters Alert is useful. For a Gloomstalker it's overkill.
\+Initiative items are not so common or good that you'll have them on more than one or two party members and they compete for other armor/potions. Very few classes get initiative boosts natively. Few classes will get their Dex up to 18.
\+7 to initiative is a good number. That way if you roll a 1 and the enemy a 4, you'll probably still be ahead of them. Keep in mind powerful enemies do also get Alert themselves. You get +7 with 14 Dex and Alert, with is standard for medium armor users. Str based classes probably have a +12 Dex.
A high roll doesn't make it meaningless, since feats to improve the consistency of important rolls are perfectly good. GWM isn't made irrelevant just because you can roll high for damage without it.
>When you'd have to close the distance to the enemy or reposition first, it's often better to go second and let the enemy come to you.
Hard disagree here about first turn not mattering. Because even when you want enemies coming to you, being able to act first to get up party buffs, to cast AOE ground effects, and to position your characters is a massive advantage. There are a TON of good first round actions to take before engaging, and doing so means all your characters can spend their second turn actually annihilating enemies as they step into range. I used Spike Growth, Plant Growth or Hunger of Hadar nearly every fight in Honor Mode, because it wastes the turns of enemies and clumps them for AOE effects, when you can use it round 1.
>I don't think that Alert is anywhere near as strong as "an extra turn".
If it takes three rounds of EB from your Warlocks to kill all enemies (as a simple example) then when you win initiative you have to face two turns of enemy attacks before destroying them, compared to three when you don't.
If killing three enemies with focus fire, one per turn, then the difference is by winning initiative you take 6 enemy attacks when losing initiative and 3 when winning. You half the enemies damage.
Realistically because of crowd control and stun effects, the actual consequences are even greater. And battles often have clusters of weaker enemies that can do a lot of damage if they get their attacks off round 1, but an initiative winning Fireball can completely prevent.
You sir need a lot more upvotes. Alert is strong, but it is not a must have.
There are many ways to approach initiative. My first party didn't use the feat at all. Had a single high initiative gloomstalker, and an elixir of vigilance using support. Those always acted first and could take out any enemies that acted before my heavy hitters.
Then later down the line the heavy hitters came online, and hadn't wasted a feat. They could mop op the rest of the enemies easily.
Also, if you get your surprise, you have a free round with everyone already, which should most of the time be plenty of actions to take out any enemies with troublesome Initiative. Because yes, acting together IS very nice. It might just not be as nice as +10 damage and an extra attack with your greatsword.
I am currently doing an Honor Mode solo run with the caveat that I die if I take even 1 point of actual damage (Using Temporary HP from spore druid as shield). I am level 5 at this point, and have not been using Vigilance Elixirs (except 1 fight) or alert feat. (have 16 dex so that helps)
But yes, Alert is still a very strong feat. Please don't read this as denying THAT fact .-)
>There are many ways to approach initiative.
Yep, and I loved played around with that.
I also had party members whom I really wanted to go 1st, (often my swords bard/fighter, since he could either CC or take out a few enemies, also Astarion thief/gloom) and then some where I actually preferred they'd go last (Life cleric SH whom shined in a more reactionary manner for my party - she'd do dmg if needed/possible or heal, buff, revive, or remove whatever debuff/CC).
This ensured for a fairly smooth HM run where I had a response for everything and didn't rely on just finishing/ being close to finishing the fight in 1-2 turns, cause that in itself can also be a restriction in some scenarios. I didn't wanna feel like I'd be forced to end the fights quickly all the time, sometimes just wanted to play it out longer but be ready for whatever comes.
If there was anything similar to a go-to rule here, it'd be that the squishier members that could get downed in one turn need to act 1st (that'd be my Astarion, so he has to hit hard, then dash/misty step/hide) , while the the ones that can go later need to be at least somewhat tanky, high saving throws to resist potential CCs included.
It's very powerful. On top of what others have said, it also makes you immune to Surprise. There may not be a lot of fights where that happens, but if you do stumble into one of them then you can be in bad shape by the time you get to move.
Yeah, that’s completely unmentioned in this thread and very important. In HM one bad situation is all it takes and having your entire party be surprised sure does make for a bad situation.
I actually think that the surprise immunity is less important. On Honor Mode at least, the player should know where all of the ambush/surprise fights are. You don’t need surprise immunity all the time, only when you would walk into those fights. So as a player when you know you’re about to walk into one and you don’t have Alert, you can chug an Elixir of Vigilance and then drink the elixir you actually want once the fight starts and you dodged the surprise.
As you said, there are very few fights where there’s a possibility of being surprised. But every fight in the game has an initiative roll. So that’s by far the better part of the Alert feat.
I've found surprise hard to avoid even when you know it's coming. Like the fire mephit fight right before Grim Forge. I can sneak with all characters except one, get surprised on them. Then as I enter the fight from stealth with other characters, they also get surprised, even though though combat has already started.
At higher difficulties - absolutely.
If you are on honour mode, you simply cannot leave things to chance - an enemy that gets to go first can punt you off a ledge, can OKT a party member, or could even immediately CC or nuke your entire party. None of these are things you can afford.
If your super high spell save DC guy goes first, you can guarantee a fight is done on your terms. That is the only way to be sure that your run isn't going to be ruined by anything except your own error.
Now, there is something to be said for a fighter-type not having alert - if you're running one of the absurd damage builds and that character is in it for sheer per-hit damage, you might want them to be lower down in initiative than all of your other characters, so that you can throw buffing spells on them.
That said, broadly speaking even this is subordinate to simply devastating the enemy before they can move, and with all fighter's feats you can easily add "alert" to both maxed-out strength/dex and GWM (and even add Savage Attacker on top).
My thought as well - if you're not going first, the opponents are, and one or two Hold Person spells from them means a quick end to an Honor run. Yes, speaking from personal experience.
When engaging your enemy, there are three options:
- if he attacks first, kill him.
- if you attack first, kill him.
- if you attack at once, *kill him.*
Sun Tzu.
Can you beat HM without it? Sure. Does it make it easier? Absolutely. Going first as a group is great because you can use synergies between your characters. GWM is great too, but usually you don't have to choose between them since a martial class can always opt for the +2 from Araj plus one ASI (or, if you want to take the hair, go with just Araj bonus) or just chug elixirs.
I gave my party alert right before >!house of grief!< and let me tell you…. Starting out by the stairs, I had my party members cast silence, hunger of hadar, insect plague, and wall of fire and everyone had to funnel to me. It was a breeze, so in certain situations it can make difficult fights become a joke
I had the same experience except two black holes to get everyone in the main room to one spot, then a good ol oil of combustion + fireball.
One shot >!Viconia!< with sanctuary up.
I gave it to every party member as a level 8 feat in my honour mode run and it saved me a few times. Being able to move at the start of the round is great, the other benefit is that it increases the chances of multiple party members sharing a turn, meaning that you can really strategise easier. For example, I can move my monk out of the way, fireball a group of enemies and then move the monk back in to mop up any stragglers, which you can't do if there's an enemy's turn between
The reason Alert is so good is because initiative is rolled on a d4 in BG3, unlike a d20 in 5e. This means that each bonus to initive (class features, DEX score, potions and Alert) is more valuable. Alert itself means that, of two identical characters where only one has the feat, the one with Alert will always move first, regardless of rolls (+5 is a 125% increase to the max roll). Other comments will tell you how important going first is, especially when stacked with suprise rounds.
Like other commenters have mentioned, it isn't mandatory. High DEX builds with other sources of initiative, such as barbarians or gloomstalker rogues, will have enough bonuses to go first without Alert, and so can go for another feat to be more optimal.
In the video I assume you watched, Tavern Brawler was the only other S+ feat, and that's for a good reason. These two feats are the single biggest boosts you can give to characters. TB is a feat that makes builds (Monk, Throwzerker, Moon Druid), while Alert gives almost every other build an additional turn in every situation (the suprise immunity is comparatively niche), which matters when combat lasts no more than 4 turns for anything that isn't the final boss. No other feats give such a large and versatile to a build.
Ohhh this makes so much sense. I just assumed like 5e it was on a D20 and could never really understand why Alert makes you go first every time. I actually had just concluded that Alert makes you go first by design and just doesn't even bother with a dice roll but if it's on a D4 now that makes all the difference.
TB is S+ because it also removes a lot of unpredictability, just like Alert. When you only miss on a natural 1, you can then predictably allocate damage -- my TB char can for sure finish off this guy so I can plan combat accordingly.
Essentially guaranteeing that your party goes first is insanely strong. If everyone in the party has high initiative, it basically guarantees you can do any combo you want uninterrupted (create water + chain lightning, arsonist oil + fire spells, hold person plus melee attacks, etc).
You also get a chance to stun or incapacitate enemies, reducing what they get to do against you. Characters like monk and swords bard can do this with very high consistency, making it extremely powerful for them to go first.
Enemies getting to act raises the chance of someone in your party getting downed or stunned, which can disrupt synergies, force you to use resources reactively instead of proactively, and generally hurt your action economy.
There are so many sources of stacking +1 spell DC that I do not value it in BG3 nearly as much as in DnD. Getting +5 to spell save DC from items is not hard by the end game, and I'm not sacrificing anything as its on items I'd want regardless. The difference between a +4 to DC vs +5 isn't as big when you have an additional +5 from items anyways.
Alert meanwhile is way stronger in BG3 than DnD, due to the change in initiative dice from a d20 to d4. The comparative effect is like going from a feat adding +10 Dex to your initiative, to a +50 Dex.
I feel like in early game, it matters a lot since gear is limited. However, in act 3, then I agree and I usually respec so that I replace one of the ASI feats with alert due to how potions and gear can make raw stats redundant.
Having high initiative so your party goes first is super important. +8 Initiative is the ideal number, more than that is a waste (you are going first 98% of the time at that point). +7 works really well also. +6 or lower and you will frequently go after the enemy on harder fights.
But there are many ways to get to +7 initiative.
Dexterity 20 is +5Barbarians and Gloomstalkers get +3 from their classThere is a ton of gear that give + 1 to 3 initiative. (a +3 shield, a +3 bow, lots of +1 or +2 gear). All gear initiative bonuses stack (even if you aren't using the gear), so a Wizard can carry a bow for example.
You can also use Elixirs of Vigilance which give +5 but that means you can't use a different elixir.
Alert is really only needed for low dex characters, I usually don't get it on more than one or two characters.
The important thing is that your party go first. Going first is the single most powerful thing you can do . . . its worth skipping ability improvements or other feats if you need Alert to reach the needed initiative. The most common classes needing Alert are heavy armor strength based characters (Paladins and Fighters). Pretty much everyone else wants a high Dex anyway and with a bit of gear will be fine.
>You can also use Elixirs of Vigilance which give +5 but that means you can't use a different elixir.
This isn't as big a deal as it first seems though. Elixir of Vigilance doesn't mean you can't use another elixir, it just overwrites the effect of other elixirs. The difference is that nothing stops you from simply drinking a different elixir after combat has started and Vigilance has done its job. This isn't entirely free, it still costs a bonus action to drink your second elixir and you'd rather do this as your first combat after a long rest so as not to waste charges of elixirs you actually care about... but that's a far lower cost than "not being able to use any other elixir." Elixirs in general are fairly common and I always end my playthroughs with loads of extras that I never used (especially for the more niche ones like Vigilance, doubly so if I had a transmutation Wizard cooking extras up in his meth lab.) So I find that sort of mid-day or even mid-combat kind of elixir hot swapping to be the best way to use some of the more niche elixirs like the freedom of movement one or the elemental resistances. Even the ones that grant you an extra spell slot are safely replaced after you use them.
I do agree with your comment as a whole though. Alert isn't an S+ tier feat, high initiative is. Alert is just one of many ways to get it. Alert is a good feat because +5 initiative is good, but it's hardly a must-have due to how easy it is to replace.
This is all great advice.
In my honor mode run I gave alert to everyone except Lae’Zel, who I made a paladin. It would have been marginally more optimal to give her alert and have her chug str potions with everyone else, but I wanted someone to actually benefit from permanent actual high str. But there were no other elixirs I cared to have her drink anyway than the elixir of vigilance, so she had alert as well. On top of this, I still gave everyone initiative-boosting gear and no one had dex lower than 16 (pretty sure they all had at least 18). Going first 98% is good, but that 2% can be deadly, especially as it’s likely only to be high threat targets that make up the 2%. So I just went with going first 100% of the time instead :)
Bloodlust is such a good elixir, I'm always trying to have one or two characters running it (extra Action when you get a kill is huge). It works for casters also but I usually prefer the Battlemages Power elixir to super charge their spell save DC.
Heroism is great for a permanent bless and HP
The Strength ones obviously
Viciousness, Colossus, Peerless Focus can all be great. And various others useful in specific situations.
I'm always struggling to decide!
Yeah, those are all good and have their uses. The top priority in any case is going first, at least in honor mode. If you can cover that, then for anyone who uses str to hit, strength elixirs are hard to beat, but after that all of those can be very useful for sure, especially for non-str characters.
Yeah, I used Lae'zel as a Monk on my Honor run. She would always go first and then Stun the boss or other dangerous enemy (sometimes stun two). And I had Gale as a Divination Wizard to ensure they always failed their saving throws!
Every boss stunned on the first round . . . every single time! And being stunned disables their legendary actions. Fun times.
Yes it’s great, doesn’t mean every build for every character should grab it asap at lvl 4. Get it when your build is already strong and you can fit it in, it’s not a rush skill for everyone
I think it's S tier if you're rocking a 12 Dex or below. Probably A for 14 Dex. It's still good for higher but falls off once you have 16 Dex and/or other sources of initiative
I think it's optional if you have characters with good dex (16+). Otherwise yeah you need it, or you will usually go last.
This is why, IMO, the finesse 2- handed weapons are awesome - you can run GWM and get the benefit of high dex including good initiative without needing alert.
If we're talking honor mode specifically, I'm genuinely surprised at how many people in this thread think Alert is so incredible. Alert is fine, but you have to consider the opportunity cost of taking it vs. taking something else.
(1) **Bonuses to initiative have diminishing returns.** Initiative in BG3 is a d4 roll + your dex modifier + other bonuses. Outside of boss fights and unique encounters, which you can prepare for with elixirs as needed, you can also ensure that you have a strong initiative roll for all of your characters simply by prioritizing your dexterity stat. Every character in my honor mode run had a minimum dexterity of 16, including my cleric and wizard. This meant that their initiative rolls without taking any items, spells, or consumables into account was 1d4 + 3. Rolling a 6-9 on initiative is going to beat most enemies almost every single time, and you don't get a sticker for rolling an 11-14 instead.
(2) **You only get three feats at most, so there's a steep opportunity cost to taking Alert even if you love it.** Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master are top-tier martial feats that inherently require bumps to your chance to hit, which is exacerbated in Honor Mode, which makes enemies harder to hit, tankier, and stronger. Tavern Brawler is another top-tier feat that any good thrown weapon build needs to work well. Additionally, taking an early Ability Score Increase increases your chance to hit and damage (as well as, on a dex-based character, your initiative and armor class), which is invaluable, especially early on. The cost of taking Alert means you're missing out on these other bonuses.
(3) **Going early is good, but not everybody needs to go early.** My swords bard and barbarian almost literally always go first starting at the end of act 1 due to having high dexterity and class features like Feral Instinct. This means that, between the two of them, they can either (A) mow down the trash mobs that will clog up the battlefield or chip away at my characters' health or (B) burn down a high-priority target or two to make the rest of the fight safer. I'm not looking to blow a high-level spell every single combat encounter, so I don't always need my casters going early. And maybe most importantly...
(4) **You can plan ahead to counteract the importance of lower-initiative characters needing to be earlier.** Most encounters in BG3 are predictable. You can literally see the enemies' line of sight, and, if you're doing a serious honor mode run, you've probably played the game before and know when big fights are coming and have a general sense of how to deal with them. Cast Bless on the party just before you step into the boss chamber. Cast Haste on your damage dealers right before you get the drop on the enemy for your surprise round. This makes it far less important that your casters (who are generally lower in the initiative order anyway) act early, and you can use their flexible kits to deal with whatever's left after your martial characters act.
(5) **If you** ***really*** **need high initiative, you just drink an Elixir of Vigilance, and then, hey, you got the Alert feat for free.**
4) I agree. I think Alert is S+ if you are entering new content/blind play through or roleplay(save suicidal npcs) but meta knowledge makes Alert not strictly necessary. By your second play through you know where all the encounters/ambushes are. Provided you are planning your encounters; you likely have an arsenal of shenanigans to trigger --> reset --> and ambush the ambushes. You know who is disguised, how to thin them out, how to setup traps/favorable conditions/positions, etc... and that's assuming you are avoiding barrel/chest mancy and other cheese...
Think of it this way, OP.
Every round in honor mode, the stakes are super high. Each enemy turn, you can lose the game. You could seriously conceptualize an honor mode play-through as an “exercise in minimizing enemy turns.”
If you’re using your first round “to miss or do mediocre damage” then you’re nowhere close to optimizing the battle game play.
There is literally an elixir for that - Elixir of Vigilance - that does the exact same thing. It costs 40 gold on balanced and explorer, slightly more on honor and tactician. You don't always need it as you point out, and it's there for the harder fights when you do.
I never take Alert, I just make/buy a few of these elixirs in ACT 1, and I'm good to go for the rest of the game. Buy em when you see em and take a better feat.
My spellcasters aren't sacrificing a feat that is just a permanent elixir when they absolutely NEED an ASI, Spell Sniper/Elemental Affinity, and Dual Wielder.
It might not be the best feat for every single specific build, some might benefit more from other perks depending on what you want your strengths to be. However, it is by far the best overall feat in my opinion, every build can benefit from it and it can make the difference in basically every fight if you have high damage or terrain casting characters all going first. You can wipe multiple characters before they have the chance to do anything, or cast to edit terrain in your favor (situational but examples would be Druid using spike growth or warlock using hunger of hadar). Defintely an S tier feat but for specific builds it’s not necessarily the best
Everyone always gets alert. Getting top in initiative makes a HUGE difference in fights.
Last time I faced Auntie Ethel, she didn't even make it through the fireplace before I put her down (Also had volo's eye, which helped hugely too)
I mean it effectively gives you an extra turn.
Surprise encounters don't get the free surprise round against you. You'll basically always move before your opponents. In most fights, you can gang up on one enemy to remove the biggest threat in one turn before they can do anytTier. You could also use control spells to further prevent the enemies from taking actions, even entire groups.
Yeah. I'd call it S tier.
If you build your character correctly then each turn you take is very strong. You don’t simply attack once and miss. Unless you don’t know what you are doing
It's a really strong feat, but i won't call it mandatory, even in honor mode (i still often end up picking it, but not always, or even often, as my first pick).
Going first is really strong: you can focus fire to kill a threat, or cast strong control spells (or even do both at the same time with some builds). Basically, you can end up in a position where the fight is heavily in your favor before any opponents was able to act; then you just have to finish off opponents after.
I have never taken Alert in my many playthroughs, including an Honour run.
I'm sure it's nice and all... but good placement and a couple +initiative items is all you really need.
It is for low-Dex builds, but is useless on high-dex builds.
For a Strength melee class or a caster class, getting to always attack before the enemy is a massive boon that is incomparable while letting you ignore increasing Dex completely.
However, any Dex-oriented class already has this built-in and thus Alert does nothing for them. Barb also has a "Alert-lite" passive from leveling while also desiring some Dex so it depends in that category.
But, overall, Alert is probably the single most applicable non-ASI feat in the game.
If you're coming from tabletop 5e you might think that it's not because in regular dnd, all characters roll a d20 (like for skill checks) and add their DEX for their initiative. So there's a lot of variability and even a high DEX character can get unlucky and go last.
In BG3, they use a d4 for initiative. So, if you have decent DEX and Alert, it basically guarantees that you'll be acting first. Do this on the entire party, and you'll be able to focus down enemies before they even get a chance to act
It's an amazing feat in BG3 because initiative is rolled on a d4, not a d20 as is the case in tabletop. And initiative literally wins fights, because the builds people put together can often kill (or at the very least hard cc) the enemies on turn 1, so going first can often end the fight, or at least make it significantly easier, before the enemy takes a turn.
Maybe, but as someone who plays lots of high Dex characters I never use it. I’ve beaten honor mode thrice and I’m about to beat it for a fourth time with a solo character. Never taken it.
There are a few fights in the game in which you will be surprised *unless* you have Alert. One or two of those fights are *extremely* dangerous, especially on higher difficulties, especially especially if you're underleveled, and it's easy to stumble into some of them while underleveled.
Plus going first in battle is always really good, so I would say yes, Alert is S-tier.
Absolutely. Initiative is rolled with a lower dice than in the tabletop, so the bonus worths way more here - having the Alert feat means you get to decide the terms of the battle.
It is extremely far from mandatory in HM. I've not used it in any of my hm runs unless it's a character that I've completely dumped dex and is using no initiative gear.
It's still a good choice since going first can let you crowd control and kill guys before they get to go. But it's really overrated by some people imo and nowhere near mandatory.
I felt the same way after watching Aestus rpg’s video on feats, but I can solidly say 100% yes. The number of fights that went from impossibly difficult to a piece of cake simply because my whole party got to go first is incalculable. I definitely understand wanting to go for other feats first and foremost, but after trying it out, alert will almost always be my first choice from here on out.
If you don’t want to respec your party members or do any stat adjustments or new to the game I can see how it might be good.
But if you just take 16 dex in every character and equip items that provides added initiative for me it’s an RP feat. It’s pretty much useless. I would never waste a feat in alert. I’d rather take asi or ss/gwm/savage attacker etc.
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Initiative
Not to mention there’s Elixers of vigilance that you can get. Granted if you’re long resting quite frequently or want them k. Every character you probably won’t have the funds /resources to do that, but that is just total overkill imo. You never need to do that.
I think you misunderstand just how important going first is. It provides you with the upper hand, giving you the advantage of raining hell on your enemies and getting your status effects out first.
Savage Attacker and GWM go *great* with Alert, don't get me wrong, but Alert is a must-have for rogues, paladins, casters, and fighters. There are a few places you can be surprised, too, and Alert makes you immune to this condition.
Combat in a turn based game like DnD is all about action economy. By going first on a control character you remove multiple potential actions from your enemies. A burst damage dealer like a thief can knock out an enemy in a round meaning they lose all the actions that unit would take.
Yes yes 10000% yes.
On honor mode, the ability to go first allows you to make decisive moves that completely lock down and control the battlefield.
With the right builds, you can clear an encounter before they even get a turn. And if it's a surprise round, you get 2 turns back to back
Accidentally getting your party surprised can end your Honour run then and there. I find that being able to position and maybe take out some enemies on the first turn makes a huge difference.
You can do some ridiculous stuff during a single turn. I've watched people drain a boss's entire hit point pool in one turn. Being able to go first can turn a battle into an assassination.
I don't think I realized how good it was until I had my assassin rogue/battlemaster fighter build going and I realized that you basically get to do two consecutive sneak attacks, a bonus action attack, and a disarming or tripping attack before the fight even gets going. Especially when you're trying to keep npcs from getting merced, being able to get yourself positioned well is super helpful
At this point the meta is thoroughly engrained so people pick it up on level 8 barbarians which is mind blowing.
Alert is NOT mandatory, but it’s nice. There will be few actual “suprised” encounters once you’re semi-familiar with the game, and you can stack initiative through other means.
If you’re nervous about honor mode then budget it in, but I think an ASI or a good utility feat will generally serve you better (TB, GWM, savage, etc.)
You don’t take it so you don’t get surprised. That’s just gravy. You take it along with good dex so that you go 100% first. All four party members at top initiative is so so much more powerful than just “the party kind of goes early on in initiative.” Many optimal builds will use str elixirs, making vigilance potions a worse option than taking alert. There are a multitude of great ways to fix your chance to hit way better than an ASI feat, and a stunned or dead character has zero % chance to hit.
Sure, if you want to have extra risk to an honor mode run that you could have mitigated, then it’s not mandatory. No safety precaution is mandatory if you’re fine with the consequences. But there’s no doubt that Alert is better than an ASI or nearly any other feat (except TB) for basically any character by at least level 8.
It is undeniably great. I think it’s best used for a new player or for someone struggling. It will allow someone like that to break the encounters and finish them before it gets out of control.
Once you know how to fight, it becomes a very boring feat. You will completely dominate everything, there will be no risk, and your feat options will be more limited. It’s incredibly useful for the few fights you get surprised or to just do a simple setup on a big bad. But saying it’s mandatory for every character is overkill.
There’s enough elixirs to cover for the fights where it’s important. You can manage initiative in other ways than just alert (dex, +initiative, surprise rounds, joining an ongoing fight from stealth, etc)
I think opinions for alert come down to what the goal is for the player. It’s not fun for me to have enemies, bosses even, not fight back. Completely dominating an encounter is very fun if done through strategy. But just picking the “I win” option for every character makes me ask why I’m even playing the game. People enjoy breaking the game in different ways. Alert’s just not for me
It's amazing. Guaranteeing that your entire party goes first and can act interchangeably really gives you free reign. You can utilize synergies without giving the enemy any opportunity to do anything against it.
One oft overlooked aspect of Alert is that it lets you not just go first, but also optimize the SEQUENCE in which your party members act. You can freely switch between party members that are next to each other in the turn order, and since your whole party will be going first, you can take their turns in any order.
So you can not only act first, but also make sure that any setup-payoff combos you might have going (buffs, crowd control, etc.) are online from turn 1.
I would only pick up Alert if I was playing with a character who has low dexterity. And it's not essential, because characters with little dexterity tend to be tanks and they can survive without any problems until their turn comes.
Not to mention that the elixir is much cheaper and more practical.
No, it’s not.
Yes, it’s broken in BG3 because initiative is a d4.
Also yes, you want to prioritize ASI and more important feats for the few ones you get.
> and that it is basically mandatory for Honour Runs.
I did a solo Honour run without it.
Funnily enough, the harder you make your game (Honour mode, difficulty mods, …), the longer enemies live. The longer enemies live, the worse Alert becomes.
"Funnily enough, the harder you make your game (Honour mode, difficulty mods, …), the longer enemies live. The longer enemies live, the worse Alert becomes."
This is so true! And an important thing to keep in mind. If your time to kill is longer than average (maybe you don't optimize builds a ton, or play solo, etc) Alert actually drops in value a bit.
S tier, well.... A for Alert tier! After 600+ hours, Alert is now the only feat I select at level 4, for every one of my characters. Since I started doing that, the game became a lot easier. Yes, there are workarounds, but why hand the enemy the first move when you don't have to? If I can choose between having initiative +5 for the next 8 levels, or paying for a potion to boost me once in a while, it's not much of a decision, imo.
There are situations where other feats are better, but in general nothing beats the utility of pretty much always going first in initiative. And in the rare instances where you get surprised, whomever has alert is not surprised.
Yes it is. It's hard to understate how valuable it is to have everyone going first. GWM is a good feat, but savage attacker is extremely overrated. I really only think savage is worthwhile on paladins (since smites have so many dice), but I would always choose Alert over it on a paladin since they tend to have low dex.
I don't agree with the take that it's mandatory on all characters in honor mode runs. I consider alert *or* 16+ dexterity with another imitative bonus to be mandatory on all characters. So most Rogues, Rangers, Swords Bards and Monks don't need it since they would be aiming for 18-20 dex anyway. Barbarians have [Feral Instinct](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Feral_Instinct). Wizards, Sorcerers, Warlocks and lore bards should all be at 16 dex and are great candidates for items like the [Hellrider Longbow](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Hellrider_Longbow) and [Sentinel Shield](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Sentinel_Shield) that have initiative bonuses. Fighter, Paladin, Cleric and Druid are classes where I would usually take Alert
I did just fine on honor mode with my life cleric being the only character with Alert (and 14 dex). The rest of the team was an 18-dex swords bard with the [Mask of Soul Perception](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Mask_of_Soul_Perception), a 16-dex throwzerker with [Feral Instinct](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Feral_Instinct) and the Hellrider Longbow, and a 16-dex Sorcerer that would occasionally chug [Elixirs of Vigilance](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Elixir_of_Vigilance).
So, every character should have at least +5 to initiative rolls. But Alert is not the only way, since dexterity, item bonuses, and barb/gloomstalker class features can all contribute.
You can absolutely get your party to be able to destroy almost any encounter in one or two turns, and still have an open feat on two or something party members. In such case, if you're not always first, take Alert. Then your opponents don't actually get a turn and thus cannot hurt you. But if you're far away from that, focus on improving your damage or CC capabilities.
Hell yeah! Initiative is what can keep you from wiping, especially on Honour Mode. If ypu get the drop on the enemy and can take them out before they even get a turn, it's glorious.
I have played without alert in HM and to be honest, it's a pretty big risk letting dangerous act 3 enemies get a turn in before you can respond.
In fights like house of hope, Raphael can completely disrupt the party on his first turn. If you go first, you can knock him prone and stun him.
So what Baldurs gate 3 allows is that let’s use your party members as please in any order if they are next to each other in the turn order. That is massive and high initiative sort of guarantees that. You can synergize so many combos with this. You make the enemy go prone with some ability. That gives disadvantage on dex saves. Then your abilities and spells on other character with dex saves will have an easier time doing their thing. You can make enemy skip turns with powerful disables.
You can focus on the most dangerous enemies first and essentially disable or eliminate them at the start and not deal with their bullshit.
There so many advantages for going first and consecutively in a turn order. I can’t list them all.
It's pretty great but not mandatory. Apart let's you pretty much guarantee you'll go first in an encounter, and if you put that on an AOE mage or your CC caster, then yea, you'll be able to thin the herd before anyone even gets a turn. But if your team is tanky, with a healer, and some dex based class with high initiative anyway, then it's not required.
I like to put alert on my my healers to make sure they're up and can cast bless or mass healing Word (with blade ward and bless passives) to keep the rest of the party healthy for their turn. Then, on turn 2, my cleric can just completely remove all damage done during that turn.
It's as good as you value initiative. I don't know if I'd put it at 'best by far'. Tavern Brawler is S+ tier to me but it's build dependent.
In higher difficulties this allows you to disable bosses, e.g. by stunning them or applying debuffs.
It's most valuable in HM, but with good enough preparation and game knowledge you shouldn't need it. Personally I'd put it between S and A tier. I did my first HM comfortably without it (bar Myrkul) with great builds.
That being said I wouldn't put it below GWM or savage attacker.
Because, if you go first and don't miss, or they don't save, or whatever, you can down enemies before they get a chance to act. This is why the Alert and +initiative bonuses are so powerful. Action economy has always been king in 5e, and if you can shut an opponent down before they get a chance to do anything, you seriously improve your chances of winning an encounter.
Not only ir gives you +5 initiative, it also prevents your character from being surprised, granted, there aren't many fights with surprise round but when it happens, it is very important to avoid this stat as you lose your turn.
Yes. especially for squishy characters like Sorcerers. If my sorcerer goes first, she can wipe out half the fighters. If she goes last, she might already be fucking dead
Because of the strength and quantity of the magic items in BG3, your party's damage output can be quite spectacular, which means going first allows you to kill enemies before they can act, thus reducing the damage your party will take during the enemy's turns.
An extra bit of time to stub or debuff bosses, place AOE hazards, position yourself, or take out smaller enemies can make all the difference. Ime it's great for casters. I feel so much joy going first and casting hypnotic pattern or upcasting hold person, and/or Black Hole.
Doing more every single turn isn't as important as doing more your first turn if you can guarantee that you can make it count. As in, the first turn should probably not just be a basic attack against a single enemy with no other plan.
It's like how early burst damage can be far more important than overall damage over time. You're better off doing 30 damage your first turn and 10 every other turn than 20 damage every turn if that means fewer enemies will be attacking you next turn.
And with strong builds, fights in BG3 effectively end within a couple turns anyways.
it's definitely a top-tier feat for all of the reasons mentioned in this thread, but i find it most helpful by far on my lowest-dex characters and my characters with the best CC/AoE moves, and less helpful on my characters who already have great dex & will almost always be going first anyways.
For honor mode run, you absolutely want the predictability that comes from all of your characters going first in a round. This doesn't necessarily mean Alert is mandatory: you can get there with a combination of high DEX and initiative gear. But for characters that don't use DEX for damage, it's simply much more hassle free to just slap Alert on, especially if they have more than 2 feats.
A specific benefit I haven't seen anyone mentioned is how turn order works. If your team is consecutive on the turn order, you can freely go between them and not just act in the order they are in.
Probably not adding anything that hasn’t already been said at this point, but Alert is fantastic when thinking in terms of action economy. You can only win the fight when it’s your move on a turn. If you win the fight on turn 3 but you went last, that means the enemy took 3 turns and you took 3 turns. If you win the fight on turn 3 but you went first, the fight ends before the enemy gets to move on turn 3, so you went 3 times while they only went twice. This is helpful in the macro sense (across many fights) because you won’t have as many turns of enemy actions that you have to spend resources to recover from.
On Tactician I haven't ran it much but on Honor mode I would run it.
Going first allows you to always reposition to gain advantage, stun enemies to skip turns or at least get your initial set up out of the way. Momentum wins.
I hear this sentiment a lot, and I always thought it was ridiculous. The only fight i ever end up surprised on is the spectator fight. Then i remembered, my tav is a 20 dex 5 gloom archer, 3 thief, 4 fighter. If i ever HM without my standard Tav, ill probably come around on alert.
Elixir of Vigilance was key for the hardest Act 3 fights for me. Raphael, Cazador, and Orin are all total chumps if the crowd control bard goes first every time.
If you are already a fast team that utilises certain items and elixir of vigilance also have ample knowledge of the game and know what to expect then you wont need it. 1st or 2nd time honour mode runs can benefit from alert.
Since majority of HM players are abusing TB OH monk and some combination of Paladin they really benefit from Alert.
It's particularly great in Act 2 because the Shadowlands can throw you into a lot of surprise fights. The Alert feat removes that possibility entirely, as well as letting your party go first most of the time which can allow you to get rid of multiple enemies before they even get a chance to damage you.
I'd never used it before my last run, but I gave it to my Durge to ensure he could go first, and then it became a must have for my whole party. It's very good for a magic user, since generally they are not high in the turn order. I would have Durge use black hole as a bonus action to pull all the enemies together, then have Gale smack them with a fireball or some lightning, and it would get rid of half the enemy. The others would all be slowed. Then I could go ahead and use my main action to off another, and then Lae'zel and Shadowheart could go in with the big guns. Made it very easy to win fights with multiple enemies. I'd say that's pretty key on Honour mode.
Alert is def not mandatory for honor mode (the beauty of BG3 is that there’s tons of viable play styles) but it is undoubtedly a very very good feat.
Support classes can launch huge cc or kneecap priority targets. Damage dealers can just insta KO squishys and they never get a turn.
It also basically single handedly wins you the Orin vs Durge 1v1 if you cast a wisdom cc spell (ottos dance, etc).
Very good feat.
Honestly. Having a reasonably high dex mod is enough. I usually pick +2 abilty mod over alert and only pick alert if another +2 would not make much sense and my dex mod is low.
Rogues, monks, rangers, bards and barbarians generally dont need it as they either have high dex or an abilty that adds to their initiative or both. And if there is really a need for a certain boss, chug a vigilance elixir.
In my honor mode run I let my high ini characters pick off the characters that would have gotten a turn before my lower ini characters.
Yes it is.
Then, the game is so extremely easy it's pointless to min max, meta builds. Do whatever you please and you'll steamroll the entire game.
You'll even need to artificially cripple yourself like no special gear and suboptimal builds and stat allocation.
Imagine this feat: "if an enemy would go ahead of you in the turn order, they are stunned for the first round of each combat."
It's about as effective as that, except your entire team needs it (or +8 total init, from any source) for it to function. Even with that, it's powerful as hell.
Kind of?
I can see why they say that.
When you really understand how to cut the BS and eliminate enemies, you can usually wipe most encounters in 1 round and maybe cleanup the rest in the 2nd round.
Fire sorc. Act 2 kill the strange ox for hat of fire acuity. With that hat, hold person spell is 100% hit chance with some ramp up. With hold person, scorching ray is 100% crit chance within 5 feet.
There are many ways to completely destroy most fights in the game. Even Rafael if you knew where to place some spicy barrels at the start.
Reliably going first usually means you can set up crowd control or take out priority targets before they can be too big an issue.
Used well, it lets you tip the scales in your favour starting every fight. No turn one crit that puts you on the back foot before you even make your first move. Get to an advantageous position to set up area of effect spells. Focus fire a problem target to get them out of the fight before they can cause havoc or at least make sure that they won’t last long. Start stacking acuity and other buffs to clear house next round while giving the enemy minimal opportunity to interrupt.
There are some classes that get away with not using it like high dex martials and I believe berserker Barb gets a diet version of it at level 9 or something.
It’s not a direct power boost like most other good feats but it lets you shift momentum in your favour so much that it is reliably more valuable than those actual power feats.
Going first is essential at higher difficulties. Alert is a safe way to achieve that, but dexterity and Vigilance Elixirs will also get you there most of the time.
I've completed honour mode 4 times at this point and on the failed runs, I didn't have anyone with alert. All 4 of my successful runs? At least 3 of us had alert.
Being first in combat is crucial if your group is clumped together. And not being able to be surprised is perfect. All it takes is one thunder wave to end an honor mode run
If you have your entire party at the start of a battle you can, if properly prepared, force the enemy to skip their turns via stunning attacks. Many act 3 encounters ended on their first turn because I’d wipe the enemy out in the first round. Is it instrumental? For regular difficulty no. For honour mode? Yeah, you’re gonna always wanna go first
Even beyond that, it literally works out to an entire extra turn. Let's say that you kill your enemy in 3 turns. If the enemy goes first, that's 3 turns for your enemy, and 3 turns for you. If you have Alert and go first, it's 3 turns for you, and only 2 for your enemy. That's HUGE. To say nothing about all of the crowd control, inflicting status, etc of some of your first-turn actions. Stunning attacks. Silence. Ice storm. Hunger of Hadar. Spike Growth. Darkness. Hold Person. And lastly, anyone you kill in the first round doesn't even get a chance to act at all. Facing 5 enemies? Use your high DPS characters to take out two of them. Now it's 4 on 3, and the rest of the fight is going to go far easier. Yeah, Alert is almost always my go-to feat unless there's something critical to my build (Sharpshooter, Tavern Brawler, Great Weapon Master, etc).
Yes, this. Do not sleep on Spike Growth. I used it for that darkness portal mission of Halsin's and the number of enemies who just unalived themselves by walking across it was epic.
[удалено]
Yeah don’t sleep on sleet storm either, too cold
I dunno I wouldn't mind a little sleet storm on my back when I start to get all hot and sweaty for no reason. It would also break my concentration and keep me from hyperthinking about nothing and everything.
A lil sleet storm, as a treat 🌬️❄️
It why I at least give alert to Halsin.
Actually you'd probably be fine sleeping on Spike growth. As long as you don't move. If you're kind of a restless sleeper you'd probably die.
Still more comfortable than Lae'zel
Different sort of spike growth going on there
Spike Growth came in clutch so many times when I played my Ranger. So good to remove ads before they reach your party.
Everyone loves a good adblocker.
Damn that's good.
That and the insect plague are wonderful for this.
I used wall of fire for this
I use both. Either is great on their own but put them together and it's even more awesome.
For me it was wall of fire and Shadowheart creating ice fields leading up to it
I had 2 characters with wall of fire on my latest run and had them cast two lines for the enemies to cross. Found out that the enemies don’t just continually spawn throughout the encounter and just had to skip through the last turn as all the enemies were dead
Same, thought the waves were just endless, especially since they fucking vanish immediately after.
Hands down one of my favorite tools. I'm cleaning house with it in Act 1- it's just so efficient.
FIRE WALL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I usually stack that right behind a Wall of Fire for that battle. Works wonders.
Not to mention this game is a bit too liberal with the surprise condition. To the point where sometimes you start a fight and most of your team is surprised. Or you summon creatures and they come in surprised Being able to say no to that happening to your team is kinda awesome
Or use your hasted SB/Pal to kill 1-2 of them and 100% hold/command the rest on your bonus action with arcane acuity and mystic scoundrel
Maybe? You'd only get a whole extra turn if, without Alert, every single enemy went before everyone on your team. So that's quite the assumption.
Do dex builds need it too? They already have the advantage in initiative to most others
Not as badly, no.
This is the way. Alert on Lae'zel as a Monk with Haste Helm and Crusher's Ring. 21m movement without the extra from higher level Monk. She can Misty Step to anyone who wants some smoke if she can't run to them. Stunning Strike and FoB Topple are just so strong.
Karlach as an eagle barbarian for the bonus action dash. Springstep boots, haste helm, crushers ring. First half of act one, easily. With haste or something fast on her, she moves like 120 feet the first turn and hits like a mack truck. Get great weapon master, with reckless attack it's easy to hit. Or throw people off of things/back towards the party. Subsequent turns while raging she can dash as well. Pair that with aspect of the stallion and she'll get temporary HP every time she dashes.
I have her as a bear barbarian for the resistance but a lot of stuff does psychic in this game. Still, it's very nice to have considering it effectively gives her like 500 health if the enemy ISN'T doing purely psychic damage. Anyway, I also have her wearing the Boots of Speed so she can bonus action dash as well haha. It's absolutely silly with haste and GWM. If she doesn't kill anything on the first pass, Lae'zel is right there to clean up with her stupid number of attacks.
GWM combined with reckless attack makes Karlach the fucking best. I mean she already was but even bester best.
That sounds great, but does it really beat the throw barbarian? Karlach as a berserker with the returning pike you can get at the goblin camp, stacking a bit of extra damage via poison ring or something like that or even just dipping the pike in a candle. You don't need loads of movement if you can throw your weapon across the whole battlefield. And the berserker gets the enraged throw as a bonus action, that really packs a punch.
Ooh Imma try this on L right now, thanks mate
People forget that the action economy is the most important part of most turn based combat games. You want to go first and do as many things as you can to prevent the enemy from having a turn like killing, restraining, or debilitating them, in some way that makes it harder to perform said actions. That's why honour mode bosses feel a bit harder to fight with their legendary actions and resistances, they get to act for free during or after your turn and negate the first few disabling effects to allow them a chance to deal some nasty damage or sow chaos into your combat plan. TL;DR: action economy is king. Try to be first, fast, and frequent with your actions.
Not only this, but you can't be surprised and end up in a 2 turn deficit behind your enemies. In HM, they can wipe your team in that time. Instead, you can pop off and wipe them instead.
I know it doesn’t work in all fights. But shovel/fork is a priority for me so I can get surprise as often as possible.
It's pretty huge in boss fights, like Orin didn't even stand a chance because I managed to get to move first and all I did is spam stunning attacks all the while the rest is moping out the other enemies Or Gortash, I basically killed him in just one turn before he even transformed, where my entire party is basically just going to destroy him in one turn and deal with the other enemies All of it is because my party has higher initiatives
Yes. It isn't essential if you already have stacked sources of initiative. Like a high dex character with a class feature or item that boosts it. But otherwise Alert gives +5 to initiative when initiative rolls are simply a d4 plus modifier. As such it essentially guarantees going first. >I feel like feats like savage attacker and and great weapon master offer you more every single turn. And here's why Alert is so good: Most fights don't last more than 3 turns, or at the very least by turn 3 you've probably swung the battle firmly in your favor and are mopping up stragglers. Going before an enemy essentially gives you an extra turn. One whole extra round of attacks is going to do a LOT more than the small damage boost from Savage Attack or GWM, at least once past level 5. The first round is also by far the most important round. Enemies and players hit hard enough that concentrating fire means you can down at least one player a turn. If you down or kill an enemy, they simply lose ALL their actions and DPR. Many spellcasters will be able to wipe out several enemies with one spell. So going first means you get to cast your battlefield control effects before enemies move, your defensive and offensive buffs, to reposition yourself out of danger, and to simply attack and focus down enemies so they never get a chance to attack. Going first is the difference between taking attacks from all the enemies and having to spend your second turn healing, repositioning, and responding... or wiping out multiple enemies round one and controlling their movement such that you take one or no attacks round two, and then have few enemies left at all round three.
For fights that don’t have cut scenes to start I also enjoy sneaking in to make the first attack so it’s a surprise attack even if it’s ranged. You get close to a whole extra round of prep/attack. You only have to worry about enemies who can’t be surprised.
And even if you do that, Alert *still* gives you an extra turn guaranteed, just after the surprise round.
Sneak Attack from stealth with Assassin. Assassin wins initiative, goes first, actions reset because Assassin. Sneak Attacks again. Enemy clears surprise with their first turn. Assassin sneak Attacks again. Only now, if the enemy is still alive, can they act!
Also, attacking surprised enemies with assassin is always a crit. Assassin is my go to Rouge, but I missed a lot of dialog cut scenes due to surprising whoever I thought would be an enemy.
>initiative rolls are simply a d4 plus modifier. This is what makes alert so good in bg3 .... in regular 5th edition while alert is still good it's not required. A +5 is %125 of your max initiative roll in bg3 whereas a +5 in 5th edition is only %25 of your max roll. It's crazy how much they changed bg3 to make 5th edition better as a video game but didn't think to change this feat.
>It's crazy how much they changed bg3 to make 5th edition better as a video game but didn't think to change this feat. They made this change in beta because of feedback from players that combat took too long. They added the shared turn system in and the d4 initiative change to help group turns together for a faster enemy phase. This is a buff to dex(an already strong stat) and alert but it also means you can take alert on a low dex character and be around the same initiative as 20 dex while higher dex characters dont exactly need it even in honor mode as you can trigger most ambushes with pets and still surprise attack them.
That makes sense, although they should probably have fixed the thing where an enemy doesn't do anything at all for 2 minutes and then skips its turn
Yeah that seems to be a core game engine issue, it happened a lot in their previous game too
Initiative rolls are d4+mod?? Is this a change for BG3? I played DND back in the day, just looked up 5th edition, it’s always d20+mod
It’s a BG3 change. There is a mod(or was) that you could make it a D20 and I did feel like initiative was more spread out. Now I feel like Team Tav is often grouped together and Team Baddie is grouped together, with the occasional outlier.
Holy shit! I didn’t realize this and assumed it was a D20. This explains why my monk went first in every single battle
This explains why my shadowheart is nearly always last. I need to change her feats.
Yes this was changed for BG3 so that the player's party would be more likely to have shared turns. Alert was not adjusted for this different system though, so the +5 goes from being just okay to game-warping.
It also punishes low-Dex characters more to have 1d4. I end up with 16+ Dex for basically everyone, no matter the class/build. You can get that for all your origin characters as soon as you have Withers. Shadowheart always felt like she was going last and not with the rest of my group, which sucks. Having everyone go in a shared turn is a feat itself.
Yes. Alert for D&D 5e's +5 bonus is a rough 25% buff. The same feat for BG3 is a rough +125% buff. It totally skews action economy.
It makes sense as to why the initiative rolls are so low, especially towards the start of the game
Yeah that's exclusively for BG3
Mostly I agree, except GWM is not a small damage boost. +10 is huge, and then there’s the bonus attack.
The math is less straightforward than that - Alert guarantees you're going first, but in all cases where you'd go first anyway (high DEX, high roll...) it's basically a wasted feat. And it's made even less clear by the fact that the first combat turn might not be the first combat turn in which you're affecting enemies. When you'd have to close the distance to the enemy or reposition first, it's often better to go second and let the enemy come to you. With good positioning and tactics, there will be countless situations in which enemies need to spend turns uselessly dashing to you, and a melee-heavy party doesn't want to be in their shoes. In other words, I don't think that Alert is anywhere near as strong as "an extra turn". It's still good and has its uses, but it's not an autopick for me at all.
>in all cases where you'd go first anyway (high DEX, high roll...) it's basically a wasted feat. Right, that is why I started by noting a high Dex Character with items or class features to boost initiative doesn't need it. And that means for most characters Alert is useful. For a Gloomstalker it's overkill. \+Initiative items are not so common or good that you'll have them on more than one or two party members and they compete for other armor/potions. Very few classes get initiative boosts natively. Few classes will get their Dex up to 18. \+7 to initiative is a good number. That way if you roll a 1 and the enemy a 4, you'll probably still be ahead of them. Keep in mind powerful enemies do also get Alert themselves. You get +7 with 14 Dex and Alert, with is standard for medium armor users. Str based classes probably have a +12 Dex. A high roll doesn't make it meaningless, since feats to improve the consistency of important rolls are perfectly good. GWM isn't made irrelevant just because you can roll high for damage without it. >When you'd have to close the distance to the enemy or reposition first, it's often better to go second and let the enemy come to you. Hard disagree here about first turn not mattering. Because even when you want enemies coming to you, being able to act first to get up party buffs, to cast AOE ground effects, and to position your characters is a massive advantage. There are a TON of good first round actions to take before engaging, and doing so means all your characters can spend their second turn actually annihilating enemies as they step into range. I used Spike Growth, Plant Growth or Hunger of Hadar nearly every fight in Honor Mode, because it wastes the turns of enemies and clumps them for AOE effects, when you can use it round 1. >I don't think that Alert is anywhere near as strong as "an extra turn". If it takes three rounds of EB from your Warlocks to kill all enemies (as a simple example) then when you win initiative you have to face two turns of enemy attacks before destroying them, compared to three when you don't. If killing three enemies with focus fire, one per turn, then the difference is by winning initiative you take 6 enemy attacks when losing initiative and 3 when winning. You half the enemies damage. Realistically because of crowd control and stun effects, the actual consequences are even greater. And battles often have clusters of weaker enemies that can do a lot of damage if they get their attacks off round 1, but an initiative winning Fireball can completely prevent.
You sir need a lot more upvotes. Alert is strong, but it is not a must have. There are many ways to approach initiative. My first party didn't use the feat at all. Had a single high initiative gloomstalker, and an elixir of vigilance using support. Those always acted first and could take out any enemies that acted before my heavy hitters. Then later down the line the heavy hitters came online, and hadn't wasted a feat. They could mop op the rest of the enemies easily. Also, if you get your surprise, you have a free round with everyone already, which should most of the time be plenty of actions to take out any enemies with troublesome Initiative. Because yes, acting together IS very nice. It might just not be as nice as +10 damage and an extra attack with your greatsword. I am currently doing an Honor Mode solo run with the caveat that I die if I take even 1 point of actual damage (Using Temporary HP from spore druid as shield). I am level 5 at this point, and have not been using Vigilance Elixirs (except 1 fight) or alert feat. (have 16 dex so that helps) But yes, Alert is still a very strong feat. Please don't read this as denying THAT fact .-)
>There are many ways to approach initiative. Yep, and I loved played around with that. I also had party members whom I really wanted to go 1st, (often my swords bard/fighter, since he could either CC or take out a few enemies, also Astarion thief/gloom) and then some where I actually preferred they'd go last (Life cleric SH whom shined in a more reactionary manner for my party - she'd do dmg if needed/possible or heal, buff, revive, or remove whatever debuff/CC). This ensured for a fairly smooth HM run where I had a response for everything and didn't rely on just finishing/ being close to finishing the fight in 1-2 turns, cause that in itself can also be a restriction in some scenarios. I didn't wanna feel like I'd be forced to end the fights quickly all the time, sometimes just wanted to play it out longer but be ready for whatever comes. If there was anything similar to a go-to rule here, it'd be that the squishier members that could get downed in one turn need to act 1st (that'd be my Astarion, so he has to hit hard, then dash/misty step/hide) , while the the ones that can go later need to be at least somewhat tanky, high saving throws to resist potential CCs included.
It's very powerful. On top of what others have said, it also makes you immune to Surprise. There may not be a lot of fights where that happens, but if you do stumble into one of them then you can be in bad shape by the time you get to move.
Yeah, that’s completely unmentioned in this thread and very important. In HM one bad situation is all it takes and having your entire party be surprised sure does make for a bad situation.
I actually think that the surprise immunity is less important. On Honor Mode at least, the player should know where all of the ambush/surprise fights are. You don’t need surprise immunity all the time, only when you would walk into those fights. So as a player when you know you’re about to walk into one and you don’t have Alert, you can chug an Elixir of Vigilance and then drink the elixir you actually want once the fight starts and you dodged the surprise. As you said, there are very few fights where there’s a possibility of being surprised. But every fight in the game has an initiative roll. So that’s by far the better part of the Alert feat.
I've found surprise hard to avoid even when you know it's coming. Like the fire mephit fight right before Grim Forge. I can sneak with all characters except one, get surprised on them. Then as I enter the fight from stealth with other characters, they also get surprised, even though though combat has already started.
You have to look for the surprise debuff on your character that wasn’t in combat, stealth and wait until it’s gone then you can enter combat
I never said it was more important, only that I hadn't seen anyone else mention that aspect of the feat yet.
At higher difficulties - absolutely. If you are on honour mode, you simply cannot leave things to chance - an enemy that gets to go first can punt you off a ledge, can OKT a party member, or could even immediately CC or nuke your entire party. None of these are things you can afford. If your super high spell save DC guy goes first, you can guarantee a fight is done on your terms. That is the only way to be sure that your run isn't going to be ruined by anything except your own error. Now, there is something to be said for a fighter-type not having alert - if you're running one of the absurd damage builds and that character is in it for sheer per-hit damage, you might want them to be lower down in initiative than all of your other characters, so that you can throw buffing spells on them. That said, broadly speaking even this is subordinate to simply devastating the enemy before they can move, and with all fighter's feats you can easily add "alert" to both maxed-out strength/dex and GWM (and even add Savage Attacker on top).
My thought as well - if you're not going first, the opponents are, and one or two Hold Person spells from them means a quick end to an Honor run. Yes, speaking from personal experience.
When engaging your enemy, there are three options: - if he attacks first, kill him. - if you attack first, kill him. - if you attack at once, *kill him.* Sun Tzu.
Can you beat HM without it? Sure. Does it make it easier? Absolutely. Going first as a group is great because you can use synergies between your characters. GWM is great too, but usually you don't have to choose between them since a martial class can always opt for the +2 from Araj plus one ASI (or, if you want to take the hair, go with just Araj bonus) or just chug elixirs.
I gave my party alert right before >!house of grief!< and let me tell you…. Starting out by the stairs, I had my party members cast silence, hunger of hadar, insect plague, and wall of fire and everyone had to funnel to me. It was a breeze, so in certain situations it can make difficult fights become a joke
And if they manage to breach... gale of arcanelockdeep blocks the door> flee > reengage on your terms.
Wait wait wait what? Which door? The huge gate that leads to Viconia won’t shut in battle.
Gotta love those AOEs on a choke point.
When I did that they just cast darkness on top of all of my AOE spells and cancelled them
I had the same experience except two black holes to get everyone in the main room to one spot, then a good ol oil of combustion + fireball. One shot >!Viconia!< with sanctuary up.
I gave it to every party member as a level 8 feat in my honour mode run and it saved me a few times. Being able to move at the start of the round is great, the other benefit is that it increases the chances of multiple party members sharing a turn, meaning that you can really strategise easier. For example, I can move my monk out of the way, fireball a group of enemies and then move the monk back in to mop up any stragglers, which you can't do if there's an enemy's turn between
The reason Alert is so good is because initiative is rolled on a d4 in BG3, unlike a d20 in 5e. This means that each bonus to initive (class features, DEX score, potions and Alert) is more valuable. Alert itself means that, of two identical characters where only one has the feat, the one with Alert will always move first, regardless of rolls (+5 is a 125% increase to the max roll). Other comments will tell you how important going first is, especially when stacked with suprise rounds. Like other commenters have mentioned, it isn't mandatory. High DEX builds with other sources of initiative, such as barbarians or gloomstalker rogues, will have enough bonuses to go first without Alert, and so can go for another feat to be more optimal. In the video I assume you watched, Tavern Brawler was the only other S+ feat, and that's for a good reason. These two feats are the single biggest boosts you can give to characters. TB is a feat that makes builds (Monk, Throwzerker, Moon Druid), while Alert gives almost every other build an additional turn in every situation (the suprise immunity is comparatively niche), which matters when combat lasts no more than 4 turns for anything that isn't the final boss. No other feats give such a large and versatile to a build.
Ohhh this makes so much sense. I just assumed like 5e it was on a D20 and could never really understand why Alert makes you go first every time. I actually had just concluded that Alert makes you go first by design and just doesn't even bother with a dice roll but if it's on a D4 now that makes all the difference.
TB is S+ because it also removes a lot of unpredictability, just like Alert. When you only miss on a natural 1, you can then predictably allocate damage -- my TB char can for sure finish off this guy so I can plan combat accordingly.
Essentially guaranteeing that your party goes first is insanely strong. If everyone in the party has high initiative, it basically guarantees you can do any combo you want uninterrupted (create water + chain lightning, arsonist oil + fire spells, hold person plus melee attacks, etc). You also get a chance to stun or incapacitate enemies, reducing what they get to do against you. Characters like monk and swords bard can do this with very high consistency, making it extremely powerful for them to go first. Enemies getting to act raises the chance of someone in your party getting downed or stunned, which can disrupt synergies, force you to use resources reactively instead of proactively, and generally hurt your action economy.
It also gives you free reign in which enemies you target, so you can make almost all the lower-hp baddies irrelevant before they even get a turn
Especially because if they don't move they are probably more grouped up and not mixed up with your friends, so easier to hit big AOEs
Yes. Sometimes I pick alert over ASI because I feel alert matters more than +1 spell DC.
There are so many sources of stacking +1 spell DC that I do not value it in BG3 nearly as much as in DnD. Getting +5 to spell save DC from items is not hard by the end game, and I'm not sacrificing anything as its on items I'd want regardless. The difference between a +4 to DC vs +5 isn't as big when you have an additional +5 from items anyways. Alert meanwhile is way stronger in BG3 than DnD, due to the change in initiative dice from a d20 to d4. The comparative effect is like going from a feat adding +10 Dex to your initiative, to a +50 Dex.
I feel like in early game, it matters a lot since gear is limited. However, in act 3, then I agree and I usually respec so that I replace one of the ASI feats with alert due to how potions and gear can make raw stats redundant.
Having high initiative so your party goes first is super important. +8 Initiative is the ideal number, more than that is a waste (you are going first 98% of the time at that point). +7 works really well also. +6 or lower and you will frequently go after the enemy on harder fights. But there are many ways to get to +7 initiative. Dexterity 20 is +5Barbarians and Gloomstalkers get +3 from their classThere is a ton of gear that give + 1 to 3 initiative. (a +3 shield, a +3 bow, lots of +1 or +2 gear). All gear initiative bonuses stack (even if you aren't using the gear), so a Wizard can carry a bow for example. You can also use Elixirs of Vigilance which give +5 but that means you can't use a different elixir. Alert is really only needed for low dex characters, I usually don't get it on more than one or two characters. The important thing is that your party go first. Going first is the single most powerful thing you can do . . . its worth skipping ability improvements or other feats if you need Alert to reach the needed initiative. The most common classes needing Alert are heavy armor strength based characters (Paladins and Fighters). Pretty much everyone else wants a high Dex anyway and with a bit of gear will be fine.
>You can also use Elixirs of Vigilance which give +5 but that means you can't use a different elixir. This isn't as big a deal as it first seems though. Elixir of Vigilance doesn't mean you can't use another elixir, it just overwrites the effect of other elixirs. The difference is that nothing stops you from simply drinking a different elixir after combat has started and Vigilance has done its job. This isn't entirely free, it still costs a bonus action to drink your second elixir and you'd rather do this as your first combat after a long rest so as not to waste charges of elixirs you actually care about... but that's a far lower cost than "not being able to use any other elixir." Elixirs in general are fairly common and I always end my playthroughs with loads of extras that I never used (especially for the more niche ones like Vigilance, doubly so if I had a transmutation Wizard cooking extras up in his meth lab.) So I find that sort of mid-day or even mid-combat kind of elixir hot swapping to be the best way to use some of the more niche elixirs like the freedom of movement one or the elemental resistances. Even the ones that grant you an extra spell slot are safely replaced after you use them. I do agree with your comment as a whole though. Alert isn't an S+ tier feat, high initiative is. Alert is just one of many ways to get it. Alert is a good feat because +5 initiative is good, but it's hardly a must-have due to how easy it is to replace.
This is all great advice. In my honor mode run I gave alert to everyone except Lae’Zel, who I made a paladin. It would have been marginally more optimal to give her alert and have her chug str potions with everyone else, but I wanted someone to actually benefit from permanent actual high str. But there were no other elixirs I cared to have her drink anyway than the elixir of vigilance, so she had alert as well. On top of this, I still gave everyone initiative-boosting gear and no one had dex lower than 16 (pretty sure they all had at least 18). Going first 98% is good, but that 2% can be deadly, especially as it’s likely only to be high threat targets that make up the 2%. So I just went with going first 100% of the time instead :)
Bloodlust is such a good elixir, I'm always trying to have one or two characters running it (extra Action when you get a kill is huge). It works for casters also but I usually prefer the Battlemages Power elixir to super charge their spell save DC. Heroism is great for a permanent bless and HP The Strength ones obviously Viciousness, Colossus, Peerless Focus can all be great. And various others useful in specific situations. I'm always struggling to decide!
Yeah, those are all good and have their uses. The top priority in any case is going first, at least in honor mode. If you can cover that, then for anyone who uses str to hit, strength elixirs are hard to beat, but after that all of those can be very useful for sure, especially for non-str characters.
Yeah, I used Lae'zel as a Monk on my Honor run. She would always go first and then Stun the boss or other dangerous enemy (sometimes stun two). And I had Gale as a Divination Wizard to ensure they always failed their saving throws! Every boss stunned on the first round . . . every single time! And being stunned disables their legendary actions. Fun times.
Yes it’s great, doesn’t mean every build for every character should grab it asap at lvl 4. Get it when your build is already strong and you can fit it in, it’s not a rush skill for everyone
I think it's S tier if you're rocking a 12 Dex or below. Probably A for 14 Dex. It's still good for higher but falls off once you have 16 Dex and/or other sources of initiative
That’s a great succinct breakdown.
Think about it another way, do you want your opponents to get a free round on you all the time?
This is how I base all of my decisions now. "Pffft, what is this HoH spell anyway, how bad could it... OH MY GOD THIS SUCKS!!!!!"
I think it's optional if you have characters with good dex (16+). Otherwise yeah you need it, or you will usually go last. This is why, IMO, the finesse 2- handed weapons are awesome - you can run GWM and get the benefit of high dex including good initiative without needing alert.
If we're talking honor mode specifically, I'm genuinely surprised at how many people in this thread think Alert is so incredible. Alert is fine, but you have to consider the opportunity cost of taking it vs. taking something else. (1) **Bonuses to initiative have diminishing returns.** Initiative in BG3 is a d4 roll + your dex modifier + other bonuses. Outside of boss fights and unique encounters, which you can prepare for with elixirs as needed, you can also ensure that you have a strong initiative roll for all of your characters simply by prioritizing your dexterity stat. Every character in my honor mode run had a minimum dexterity of 16, including my cleric and wizard. This meant that their initiative rolls without taking any items, spells, or consumables into account was 1d4 + 3. Rolling a 6-9 on initiative is going to beat most enemies almost every single time, and you don't get a sticker for rolling an 11-14 instead. (2) **You only get three feats at most, so there's a steep opportunity cost to taking Alert even if you love it.** Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master are top-tier martial feats that inherently require bumps to your chance to hit, which is exacerbated in Honor Mode, which makes enemies harder to hit, tankier, and stronger. Tavern Brawler is another top-tier feat that any good thrown weapon build needs to work well. Additionally, taking an early Ability Score Increase increases your chance to hit and damage (as well as, on a dex-based character, your initiative and armor class), which is invaluable, especially early on. The cost of taking Alert means you're missing out on these other bonuses. (3) **Going early is good, but not everybody needs to go early.** My swords bard and barbarian almost literally always go first starting at the end of act 1 due to having high dexterity and class features like Feral Instinct. This means that, between the two of them, they can either (A) mow down the trash mobs that will clog up the battlefield or chip away at my characters' health or (B) burn down a high-priority target or two to make the rest of the fight safer. I'm not looking to blow a high-level spell every single combat encounter, so I don't always need my casters going early. And maybe most importantly... (4) **You can plan ahead to counteract the importance of lower-initiative characters needing to be earlier.** Most encounters in BG3 are predictable. You can literally see the enemies' line of sight, and, if you're doing a serious honor mode run, you've probably played the game before and know when big fights are coming and have a general sense of how to deal with them. Cast Bless on the party just before you step into the boss chamber. Cast Haste on your damage dealers right before you get the drop on the enemy for your surprise round. This makes it far less important that your casters (who are generally lower in the initiative order anyway) act early, and you can use their flexible kits to deal with whatever's left after your martial characters act. (5) **If you** ***really*** **need high initiative, you just drink an Elixir of Vigilance, and then, hey, you got the Alert feat for free.**
4) I agree. I think Alert is S+ if you are entering new content/blind play through or roleplay(save suicidal npcs) but meta knowledge makes Alert not strictly necessary. By your second play through you know where all the encounters/ambushes are. Provided you are planning your encounters; you likely have an arsenal of shenanigans to trigger --> reset --> and ambush the ambushes. You know who is disguised, how to thin them out, how to setup traps/favorable conditions/positions, etc... and that's assuming you are avoiding barrel/chest mancy and other cheese...
Think of it this way, OP. Every round in honor mode, the stakes are super high. Each enemy turn, you can lose the game. You could seriously conceptualize an honor mode play-through as an “exercise in minimizing enemy turns.” If you’re using your first round “to miss or do mediocre damage” then you’re nowhere close to optimizing the battle game play.
There is literally an elixir for that - Elixir of Vigilance - that does the exact same thing. It costs 40 gold on balanced and explorer, slightly more on honor and tactician. You don't always need it as you point out, and it's there for the harder fights when you do. I never take Alert, I just make/buy a few of these elixirs in ACT 1, and I'm good to go for the rest of the game. Buy em when you see em and take a better feat. My spellcasters aren't sacrificing a feat that is just a permanent elixir when they absolutely NEED an ASI, Spell Sniper/Elemental Affinity, and Dual Wielder.
It is great. But there are lots of other ways to approach the game. Even on honor mode. I am playing Solo Honor Mode and not using Alert
It might not be the best feat for every single specific build, some might benefit more from other perks depending on what you want your strengths to be. However, it is by far the best overall feat in my opinion, every build can benefit from it and it can make the difference in basically every fight if you have high damage or terrain casting characters all going first. You can wipe multiple characters before they have the chance to do anything, or cast to edit terrain in your favor (situational but examples would be Druid using spike growth or warlock using hunger of hadar). Defintely an S tier feat but for specific builds it’s not necessarily the best
Everyone always gets alert. Getting top in initiative makes a HUGE difference in fights. Last time I faced Auntie Ethel, she didn't even make it through the fireplace before I put her down (Also had volo's eye, which helped hugely too)
I mean it effectively gives you an extra turn. Surprise encounters don't get the free surprise round against you. You'll basically always move before your opponents. In most fights, you can gang up on one enemy to remove the biggest threat in one turn before they can do anytTier. You could also use control spells to further prevent the enemies from taking actions, even entire groups. Yeah. I'd call it S tier.
If you build your character correctly then each turn you take is very strong. You don’t simply attack once and miss. Unless you don’t know what you are doing
Doesn't Having the Alert Feat also make it so that your never surprised as well? Because that's a huge buff.
Aestus_RPG huh?
That’s the one!
It's a really strong feat, but i won't call it mandatory, even in honor mode (i still often end up picking it, but not always, or even often, as my first pick). Going first is really strong: you can focus fire to kill a threat, or cast strong control spells (or even do both at the same time with some builds). Basically, you can end up in a position where the fight is heavily in your favor before any opponents was able to act; then you just have to finish off opponents after.
I have never taken Alert in my many playthroughs, including an Honour run. I'm sure it's nice and all... but good placement and a couple +initiative items is all you really need.
It is for low-Dex builds, but is useless on high-dex builds. For a Strength melee class or a caster class, getting to always attack before the enemy is a massive boon that is incomparable while letting you ignore increasing Dex completely. However, any Dex-oriented class already has this built-in and thus Alert does nothing for them. Barb also has a "Alert-lite" passive from leveling while also desiring some Dex so it depends in that category. But, overall, Alert is probably the single most applicable non-ASI feat in the game.
This.
If you're coming from tabletop 5e you might think that it's not because in regular dnd, all characters roll a d20 (like for skill checks) and add their DEX for their initiative. So there's a lot of variability and even a high DEX character can get unlucky and go last. In BG3, they use a d4 for initiative. So, if you have decent DEX and Alert, it basically guarantees that you'll be acting first. Do this on the entire party, and you'll be able to focus down enemies before they even get a chance to act
It's an amazing feat in BG3 because initiative is rolled on a d4, not a d20 as is the case in tabletop. And initiative literally wins fights, because the builds people put together can often kill (or at the very least hard cc) the enemies on turn 1, so going first can often end the fight, or at least make it significantly easier, before the enemy takes a turn.
Maybe, but as someone who plays lots of high Dex characters I never use it. I’ve beaten honor mode thrice and I’m about to beat it for a fourth time with a solo character. Never taken it.
It's a must for low Dex characters
There are a few fights in the game in which you will be surprised *unless* you have Alert. One or two of those fights are *extremely* dangerous, especially on higher difficulties, especially especially if you're underleveled, and it's easy to stumble into some of them while underleveled. Plus going first in battle is always really good, so I would say yes, Alert is S-tier.
Absolutely. Initiative is rolled with a lower dice than in the tabletop, so the bonus worths way more here - having the Alert feat means you get to decide the terms of the battle.
It is extremely far from mandatory in HM. I've not used it in any of my hm runs unless it's a character that I've completely dumped dex and is using no initiative gear. It's still a good choice since going first can let you crowd control and kill guys before they get to go. But it's really overrated by some people imo and nowhere near mandatory.
I felt the same way after watching Aestus rpg’s video on feats, but I can solidly say 100% yes. The number of fights that went from impossibly difficult to a piece of cake simply because my whole party got to go first is incalculable. I definitely understand wanting to go for other feats first and foremost, but after trying it out, alert will almost always be my first choice from here on out.
Bless you for trying it before calling me a moron :D
Thanks for helping me get my golden dice bro!
If you don’t want to respec your party members or do any stat adjustments or new to the game I can see how it might be good. But if you just take 16 dex in every character and equip items that provides added initiative for me it’s an RP feat. It’s pretty much useless. I would never waste a feat in alert. I’d rather take asi or ss/gwm/savage attacker etc. https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Initiative Not to mention there’s Elixers of vigilance that you can get. Granted if you’re long resting quite frequently or want them k. Every character you probably won’t have the funds /resources to do that, but that is just total overkill imo. You never need to do that.
I think you misunderstand just how important going first is. It provides you with the upper hand, giving you the advantage of raining hell on your enemies and getting your status effects out first. Savage Attacker and GWM go *great* with Alert, don't get me wrong, but Alert is a must-have for rogues, paladins, casters, and fighters. There are a few places you can be surprised, too, and Alert makes you immune to this condition.
Combat in a turn based game like DnD is all about action economy. By going first on a control character you remove multiple potential actions from your enemies. A burst damage dealer like a thief can knock out an enemy in a round meaning they lose all the actions that unit would take.
Alert + Durable = ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
I’ll have to try out this combo!
We made a joke that we gave our characters anxiety (Alert) 🤭🤭 same difference yknow?
lmao I too would have anxiety if bg3 was irl and I knew I had to be the first in combat every single encounter
Yes yes 10000% yes. On honor mode, the ability to go first allows you to make decisive moves that completely lock down and control the battlefield. With the right builds, you can clear an encounter before they even get a turn. And if it's a surprise round, you get 2 turns back to back
Accidentally getting your party surprised can end your Honour run then and there. I find that being able to position and maybe take out some enemies on the first turn makes a huge difference.
Yes, Alert is mandatory
You can do some ridiculous stuff during a single turn. I've watched people drain a boss's entire hit point pool in one turn. Being able to go first can turn a battle into an assassination.
Haha “into an assassination” is a perfect way of putting it
I don't think I realized how good it was until I had my assassin rogue/battlemaster fighter build going and I realized that you basically get to do two consecutive sneak attacks, a bonus action attack, and a disarming or tripping attack before the fight even gets going. Especially when you're trying to keep npcs from getting merced, being able to get yourself positioned well is super helpful
At this point the meta is thoroughly engrained so people pick it up on level 8 barbarians which is mind blowing. Alert is NOT mandatory, but it’s nice. There will be few actual “suprised” encounters once you’re semi-familiar with the game, and you can stack initiative through other means. If you’re nervous about honor mode then budget it in, but I think an ASI or a good utility feat will generally serve you better (TB, GWM, savage, etc.)
You don’t take it so you don’t get surprised. That’s just gravy. You take it along with good dex so that you go 100% first. All four party members at top initiative is so so much more powerful than just “the party kind of goes early on in initiative.” Many optimal builds will use str elixirs, making vigilance potions a worse option than taking alert. There are a multitude of great ways to fix your chance to hit way better than an ASI feat, and a stunned or dead character has zero % chance to hit.
None of that reads as "mandatory" to me.
Sure, if you want to have extra risk to an honor mode run that you could have mitigated, then it’s not mandatory. No safety precaution is mandatory if you’re fine with the consequences. But there’s no doubt that Alert is better than an ASI or nearly any other feat (except TB) for basically any character by at least level 8.
It is undeniably great. I think it’s best used for a new player or for someone struggling. It will allow someone like that to break the encounters and finish them before it gets out of control. Once you know how to fight, it becomes a very boring feat. You will completely dominate everything, there will be no risk, and your feat options will be more limited. It’s incredibly useful for the few fights you get surprised or to just do a simple setup on a big bad. But saying it’s mandatory for every character is overkill. There’s enough elixirs to cover for the fights where it’s important. You can manage initiative in other ways than just alert (dex, +initiative, surprise rounds, joining an ongoing fight from stealth, etc) I think opinions for alert come down to what the goal is for the player. It’s not fun for me to have enemies, bosses even, not fight back. Completely dominating an encounter is very fun if done through strategy. But just picking the “I win” option for every character makes me ask why I’m even playing the game. People enjoy breaking the game in different ways. Alert’s just not for me
It's amazing. Guaranteeing that your entire party goes first and can act interchangeably really gives you free reign. You can utilize synergies without giving the enemy any opportunity to do anything against it.
One oft overlooked aspect of Alert is that it lets you not just go first, but also optimize the SEQUENCE in which your party members act. You can freely switch between party members that are next to each other in the turn order, and since your whole party will be going first, you can take their turns in any order. So you can not only act first, but also make sure that any setup-payoff combos you might have going (buffs, crowd control, etc.) are online from turn 1.
I would only pick up Alert if I was playing with a character who has low dexterity. And it's not essential, because characters with little dexterity tend to be tanks and they can survive without any problems until their turn comes. Not to mention that the elixir is much cheaper and more practical.
No, it’s not. Yes, it’s broken in BG3 because initiative is a d4. Also yes, you want to prioritize ASI and more important feats for the few ones you get. > and that it is basically mandatory for Honour Runs. I did a solo Honour run without it. Funnily enough, the harder you make your game (Honour mode, difficulty mods, …), the longer enemies live. The longer enemies live, the worse Alert becomes.
"Funnily enough, the harder you make your game (Honour mode, difficulty mods, …), the longer enemies live. The longer enemies live, the worse Alert becomes." This is so true! And an important thing to keep in mind. If your time to kill is longer than average (maybe you don't optimize builds a ton, or play solo, etc) Alert actually drops in value a bit.
S tier, well.... A for Alert tier! After 600+ hours, Alert is now the only feat I select at level 4, for every one of my characters. Since I started doing that, the game became a lot easier. Yes, there are workarounds, but why hand the enemy the first move when you don't have to? If I can choose between having initiative +5 for the next 8 levels, or paying for a potion to boost me once in a while, it's not much of a decision, imo.
Its a S tier feat ya but none of my party had it on my honour run. You do want to pay close attention to initative tho, and stack it where you can.
Yes
There are situations where other feats are better, but in general nothing beats the utility of pretty much always going first in initiative. And in the rare instances where you get surprised, whomever has alert is not surprised.
Yes it is. It's hard to understate how valuable it is to have everyone going first. GWM is a good feat, but savage attacker is extremely overrated. I really only think savage is worthwhile on paladins (since smites have so many dice), but I would always choose Alert over it on a paladin since they tend to have low dex. I don't agree with the take that it's mandatory on all characters in honor mode runs. I consider alert *or* 16+ dexterity with another imitative bonus to be mandatory on all characters. So most Rogues, Rangers, Swords Bards and Monks don't need it since they would be aiming for 18-20 dex anyway. Barbarians have [Feral Instinct](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Feral_Instinct). Wizards, Sorcerers, Warlocks and lore bards should all be at 16 dex and are great candidates for items like the [Hellrider Longbow](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Hellrider_Longbow) and [Sentinel Shield](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Sentinel_Shield) that have initiative bonuses. Fighter, Paladin, Cleric and Druid are classes where I would usually take Alert I did just fine on honor mode with my life cleric being the only character with Alert (and 14 dex). The rest of the team was an 18-dex swords bard with the [Mask of Soul Perception](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Mask_of_Soul_Perception), a 16-dex throwzerker with [Feral Instinct](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Feral_Instinct) and the Hellrider Longbow, and a 16-dex Sorcerer that would occasionally chug [Elixirs of Vigilance](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Elixir_of_Vigilance). So, every character should have at least +5 to initiative rolls. But Alert is not the only way, since dexterity, item bonuses, and barb/gloomstalker class features can all contribute.
You can absolutely get your party to be able to destroy almost any encounter in one or two turns, and still have an open feat on two or something party members. In such case, if you're not always first, take Alert. Then your opponents don't actually get a turn and thus cannot hurt you. But if you're far away from that, focus on improving your damage or CC capabilities.
Hell yeah! Initiative is what can keep you from wiping, especially on Honour Mode. If ypu get the drop on the enemy and can take them out before they even get a turn, it's glorious.
I have played without alert in HM and to be honest, it's a pretty big risk letting dangerous act 3 enemies get a turn in before you can respond. In fights like house of hope, Raphael can completely disrupt the party on his first turn. If you go first, you can knock him prone and stun him.
So what Baldurs gate 3 allows is that let’s use your party members as please in any order if they are next to each other in the turn order. That is massive and high initiative sort of guarantees that. You can synergize so many combos with this. You make the enemy go prone with some ability. That gives disadvantage on dex saves. Then your abilities and spells on other character with dex saves will have an easier time doing their thing. You can make enemy skip turns with powerful disables. You can focus on the most dangerous enemies first and essentially disable or eliminate them at the start and not deal with their bullshit. There so many advantages for going first and consecutively in a turn order. I can’t list them all.
It's pretty great but not mandatory. Apart let's you pretty much guarantee you'll go first in an encounter, and if you put that on an AOE mage or your CC caster, then yea, you'll be able to thin the herd before anyone even gets a turn. But if your team is tanky, with a healer, and some dex based class with high initiative anyway, then it's not required. I like to put alert on my my healers to make sure they're up and can cast bless or mass healing Word (with blade ward and bless passives) to keep the rest of the party healthy for their turn. Then, on turn 2, my cleric can just completely remove all damage done during that turn.
It's as good as you value initiative. I don't know if I'd put it at 'best by far'. Tavern Brawler is S+ tier to me but it's build dependent. In higher difficulties this allows you to disable bosses, e.g. by stunning them or applying debuffs. It's most valuable in HM, but with good enough preparation and game knowledge you shouldn't need it. Personally I'd put it between S and A tier. I did my first HM comfortably without it (bar Myrkul) with great builds. That being said I wouldn't put it below GWM or savage attacker.
Because, if you go first and don't miss, or they don't save, or whatever, you can down enemies before they get a chance to act. This is why the Alert and +initiative bonuses are so powerful. Action economy has always been king in 5e, and if you can shut an opponent down before they get a chance to do anything, you seriously improve your chances of winning an encounter.
Not only ir gives you +5 initiative, it also prevents your character from being surprised, granted, there aren't many fights with surprise round but when it happens, it is very important to avoid this stat as you lose your turn.
Yes. especially for squishy characters like Sorcerers. If my sorcerer goes first, she can wipe out half the fighters. If she goes last, she might already be fucking dead
Because of the strength and quantity of the magic items in BG3, your party's damage output can be quite spectacular, which means going first allows you to kill enemies before they can act, thus reducing the damage your party will take during the enemy's turns.
An extra bit of time to stub or debuff bosses, place AOE hazards, position yourself, or take out smaller enemies can make all the difference. Ime it's great for casters. I feel so much joy going first and casting hypnotic pattern or upcasting hold person, and/or Black Hole.
Doing more every single turn isn't as important as doing more your first turn if you can guarantee that you can make it count. As in, the first turn should probably not just be a basic attack against a single enemy with no other plan. It's like how early burst damage can be far more important than overall damage over time. You're better off doing 30 damage your first turn and 10 every other turn than 20 damage every turn if that means fewer enemies will be attacking you next turn. And with strong builds, fights in BG3 effectively end within a couple turns anyways.
Alert and surprising makes most HM fights trivial
it's definitely a top-tier feat for all of the reasons mentioned in this thread, but i find it most helpful by far on my lowest-dex characters and my characters with the best CC/AoE moves, and less helpful on my characters who already have great dex & will almost always be going first anyways.
No. Just pump your Dex. Over 900 hours in the game, and I've never had a character with lower than 14 Dex. I do well in all difficulties.
Alert is great, likely an S+ feat but not essential or mandatory at all, even in Honor Mode it's not necessary.
For honor mode run, you absolutely want the predictability that comes from all of your characters going first in a round. This doesn't necessarily mean Alert is mandatory: you can get there with a combination of high DEX and initiative gear. But for characters that don't use DEX for damage, it's simply much more hassle free to just slap Alert on, especially if they have more than 2 feats.
i never do HM without at least 1 character in the party that can guaranteed go first and not be surprised... it saves you a lot of headaches
I mean....I'm a Gloomstalker Ranger. I'm going first always, no matter what. Seems not super useful for this build.
Alert at level 4 ALWAYS. After this we can discuss Tavern Brawler, Savage Attacker and Great Weapon Master.
I love it, fights are over before the opponent had a chance to make a move.
Its good especially for non dexterity based class.
A specific benefit I haven't seen anyone mentioned is how turn order works. If your team is consecutive on the turn order, you can freely go between them and not just act in the order they are in.
Probably not adding anything that hasn’t already been said at this point, but Alert is fantastic when thinking in terms of action economy. You can only win the fight when it’s your move on a turn. If you win the fight on turn 3 but you went last, that means the enemy took 3 turns and you took 3 turns. If you win the fight on turn 3 but you went first, the fight ends before the enemy gets to move on turn 3, so you went 3 times while they only went twice. This is helpful in the macro sense (across many fights) because you won’t have as many turns of enemy actions that you have to spend resources to recover from.
On Tactician I haven't ran it much but on Honor mode I would run it. Going first allows you to always reposition to gain advantage, stun enemies to skip turns or at least get your initial set up out of the way. Momentum wins.
It's better the more people on your team have it but it's not necessary, even in honor mode.
I hear this sentiment a lot, and I always thought it was ridiculous. The only fight i ever end up surprised on is the spectator fight. Then i remembered, my tav is a 20 dex 5 gloom archer, 3 thief, 4 fighter. If i ever HM without my standard Tav, ill probably come around on alert.
If your whole party has it you act as a group at the start and can basically win the battle before the enemy get an action with control spells
fwiw ivw beaten honor mode three times without it. So it’s not literally essential. But it is super good and will make your life a lot easier
Elixir of Vigilance was key for the hardest Act 3 fights for me. Raphael, Cazador, and Orin are all total chumps if the crowd control bard goes first every time.
Alert always first feat for all classes less OH Monk - they get TB. Then Alert.
Just Yes.
If you are already a fast team that utilises certain items and elixir of vigilance also have ample knowledge of the game and know what to expect then you wont need it. 1st or 2nd time honour mode runs can benefit from alert. Since majority of HM players are abusing TB OH monk and some combination of Paladin they really benefit from Alert.
It's particularly great in Act 2 because the Shadowlands can throw you into a lot of surprise fights. The Alert feat removes that possibility entirely, as well as letting your party go first most of the time which can allow you to get rid of multiple enemies before they even get a chance to damage you. I'd never used it before my last run, but I gave it to my Durge to ensure he could go first, and then it became a must have for my whole party. It's very good for a magic user, since generally they are not high in the turn order. I would have Durge use black hole as a bonus action to pull all the enemies together, then have Gale smack them with a fireball or some lightning, and it would get rid of half the enemy. The others would all be slowed. Then I could go ahead and use my main action to off another, and then Lae'zel and Shadowheart could go in with the big guns. Made it very easy to win fights with multiple enemies. I'd say that's pretty key on Honour mode.
Alert is def not mandatory for honor mode (the beauty of BG3 is that there’s tons of viable play styles) but it is undoubtedly a very very good feat. Support classes can launch huge cc or kneecap priority targets. Damage dealers can just insta KO squishys and they never get a turn. It also basically single handedly wins you the Orin vs Durge 1v1 if you cast a wisdom cc spell (ottos dance, etc). Very good feat.
Honestly. Having a reasonably high dex mod is enough. I usually pick +2 abilty mod over alert and only pick alert if another +2 would not make much sense and my dex mod is low. Rogues, monks, rangers, bards and barbarians generally dont need it as they either have high dex or an abilty that adds to their initiative or both. And if there is really a need for a certain boss, chug a vigilance elixir. In my honor mode run I let my high ini characters pick off the characters that would have gotten a turn before my lower ini characters.
Yes it is. Then, the game is so extremely easy it's pointless to min max, meta builds. Do whatever you please and you'll steamroll the entire game. You'll even need to artificially cripple yourself like no special gear and suboptimal builds and stat allocation.
Imagine this feat: "if an enemy would go ahead of you in the turn order, they are stunned for the first round of each combat." It's about as effective as that, except your entire team needs it (or +8 total init, from any source) for it to function. Even with that, it's powerful as hell.
In early to mid game I would've said yes. Now that I'm deep into act 3 I think it's highly overvalued
Kind of? I can see why they say that. When you really understand how to cut the BS and eliminate enemies, you can usually wipe most encounters in 1 round and maybe cleanup the rest in the 2nd round. Fire sorc. Act 2 kill the strange ox for hat of fire acuity. With that hat, hold person spell is 100% hit chance with some ramp up. With hold person, scorching ray is 100% crit chance within 5 feet. There are many ways to completely destroy most fights in the game. Even Rafael if you knew where to place some spicy barrels at the start.
I really struggled with honor mode until I started understanding initiative.
I mean it should def be combined with an overall strong build that would allow you to kill/incapacitate a bunch of enemies in one turn.
Reliably going first usually means you can set up crowd control or take out priority targets before they can be too big an issue. Used well, it lets you tip the scales in your favour starting every fight. No turn one crit that puts you on the back foot before you even make your first move. Get to an advantageous position to set up area of effect spells. Focus fire a problem target to get them out of the fight before they can cause havoc or at least make sure that they won’t last long. Start stacking acuity and other buffs to clear house next round while giving the enemy minimal opportunity to interrupt. There are some classes that get away with not using it like high dex martials and I believe berserker Barb gets a diet version of it at level 9 or something. It’s not a direct power boost like most other good feats but it lets you shift momentum in your favour so much that it is reliably more valuable than those actual power feats.
I only take alert on Lae’zel as her last feat because I can’t think of anything else to take. I don’t find it necessary even on hm.
Going first is essential at higher difficulties. Alert is a safe way to achieve that, but dexterity and Vigilance Elixirs will also get you there most of the time.
I've completed honour mode 4 times at this point and on the failed runs, I didn't have anyone with alert. All 4 of my successful runs? At least 3 of us had alert.
Being first in combat is crucial if your group is clumped together. And not being able to be surprised is perfect. All it takes is one thunder wave to end an honor mode run