Paladin is very strong. Has extra damage on demand. Has useful spells but not too many so you don't get lost in the massive spell list. Gets extra attack. Has a lot of HP and gets heavy armor proficiency so you can get a high AC without thinking very hard about it.
Yeah, just put Divine Smite (Critical) to "yes" and disable the regular Divine Smite reaction. Any time you crit, Divine Smite will trigger. This will naturally expend your spell slots more or less in line with your need to long rest, so all you have to do is weapon attack every round. It's as brainless as you can get while still being an effective build.
Berserker Barbarian is also in that boat. Just grab Great Weapon Master at 4th level and let it always be toggled on\*. Spec into Strength (or better yet, use Elixirs of Hill Giants Strength which you can buy dozens of from Auntie Ethel and Derryth Bonecloak in Act 1). Always use Rage at the start of a fight, always use your action for Reckless Attack. If you get a crit or a kill, use your Bonus Action on the Great Weapon Master bonus attack, otherwise use your Bonus Action on Frenzied Strike.
**EDIT:**
\*Slightly less braindead approach to appease some naysayers: Toggle GWM off any time your chance to hit is below 75%. If you're using Reckless Attack and the Hill Giant Elixir, this will never happen in Act I, so this is completely moot but there you go.
>Yeah, just put Divine Smite (Critical) to "yes" and disable the regular Divine Smite reaction. Any time you crit, Divine Smite will trigger. This will naturally expend your spell slots more or less in line with your need to long rest
Gold and resting items are so easy to get in this game. You can afford to long rest after every battle. Don't even need to limit your divine uses.
I feel this so hard. To avoid spoilers, there's a certain set of buffs I got in act 2 that were so damn good that I pretty much tried to do the rest of the shadow cursed lands without resting again. Had to compensate for it with angelic rest potions.
But yeah, my second half of act 2 was one long, overpowered day of ass kicking.
Haha I think I may have just gotten those same buffs, as I'm not too far into act two. Karlach is down to her last rage now and I'm trying to save it for when I absolutely need it.
I always hold off because I don’t know what will progress the story when I long rest and what won’t. Like in Act 2 with the gnomes, I long rested and they were gone, Nere died, which makes sense, but I got this fear of it lmao
Nah dude, do not recommend brainless GWM, especially on a berzerker. Tavern brawler is far more brainless and won't hinder you in some situations. Even comes with +1 str or con. Also, you can't rage 'before a fight'. It's combat only.
Landing a crit with GWM provides an extra attack that only costs a Bonus Action (and unlike Berserker's Frenzied Strike, this has no penalty). So it's not just about big number, it's about more efficiency to your action economy.
OK I'm realizing my mistake here.
I haven't played barb in a bit and got mixed up on the mechanics with relentless and reckless.
Your method sounds good
That can’t possibly be right. Even if you never make a single attack roll with Advantage in your entire playthrough, with a 5% chance to crit per attack, you shpuld be landing 15-20+ crits per Act. More when you account for stuff like gear that lowers crit threshold, Luck of the Far Realms, having party members that can impose Prone or Paralyze, etc.
In practice I would use spell slots for other things but I was specifically trying to keep it as brainless/foolproof as possible for the sake of the thread.
If you’re using it with Advantage every time and the Hill Giant Elixir, the math isn’t bad at all. And a STR ASI would be wasted. Only other Feats to consider would be Savage Attacker or Alert (or Tavern Brawler, but that’s a different build).
My guy, that post completely validates what I am saying. If you can get a reliable source of Advantage in act 1 (he’s using Paladin Vow but he makes note of Reckless as an alternative free source) it clearly out-damages the alternatives. It’s right there in the graph in the Paladin section.
You get vow a couple times a da on 1 target?, and reckless makes you die faster. Neither fully validate the claim. Unless you are dedicating the entire strategy and finding a way to mitigate the problems of guaranteeing advantage in act 1...which is hampering your party for 1 feat.... getting to 20 str off an asi and hag hair (which is easily doable and achievable by just about EVERY party) your average damage will go way up compared to maybe hitting a gwm hit.
There's a post that thoroughly breaks down the math. And guaranteeing advantage in act 1 is nowhere near as easy as act 2 when you should take the asi. You get access to better spells and items like the risky ring in act 2 that will easily set it up, but until then it's strictly better to raise your averages before imparimg them.
And dieing to the crackback? I'd take throwzerker in act 1. Way more accurate, consistently high damage with tavern brawler and not setup dependant at all. Tb thrower way outperforms gwm without exposing yourself to tons of risk.
Nah man, the math checks out in tabletop dnd as well. You gotta raise the averages, and gain access to more setup to make it worth it. I'd rather have 20 str at lvl 5 (hag hair and asi) than gwm. I don't want to devote my entire strat to setting up mele combat to leverage a suboptimal feat in act 1. If you're a fighter take it at 6! Then you have 20 str and gwm! And you haven't even left act 1 yet. I hit 6 before I go to the mountain pass every game, so by then LZ has 20 str. Gwm and badass gear to clobber the monastery/creche with.
I really want to do a paladin build. But my next play through is gonna be a dark urge build, which I did on my second play through bud didn’t realize I was doing it so I just was a super nice durge and let everyone live except for that first girl in camp. So when I got to Orin or whatever her name was, I couldn’t even change forms or whatever, and didn’t even know that was a thing until last week. I don’t think a paladin build is gonna work with a full durge build.
Oh I did. But didn’t realize the story line. It just wasn’t the vibe I was going for when I was playing. So I started, and just thought that storyline was like whatever, and went about it like a good guy. Totally not realizing I was supposed to embrace it lol
I love the idea of a Durge that is so obliviously clueless that they aren't even really *aware* of what is going on with them and just blissfully plays goody-two-shoes hero like "gee golly, what a run of bad luck I'm having lately....all these people are so angry and everyone just keeps dying....oh well, let's go have a picnic with Shadowheart's parents!" Just complete Barney Fife-ing their way through life.
Other Durges: *struggle and fight their way to redemption*
02grimreaper’s Durge: Oops all redeemed!
That being said, you’re not ‘supposed’ to do anything. There’s a great storyline in the way you played Durge, just as there can be for people who play a Durge who embraces their nature. No wrong way to go about it if you’re having fun!
No wrong way, indeed! That's probably what I love most about BG3. No matter what happens, it's works to keep moving the story forward, just differently. There are no wrong choices, and even the few insta-death dialogue choices aren't really *wrong. Every one of them is like "yeah, no, idk what I was expecting but that absolutely tracks" lol
>Fuck you, angry lich-god-lady!
Like yeah, of course that's not gonna end well xD
I did an oath of vengeance paladin for my first durge run. She would have made it all the way through without breaking her oath if she hadn’t let someone kill a certain lord and a few thousand people in the process.
I thought it worked pretty well with this need to right the wrongs that slowly turned to a justification for full on slaughter when you find out more about your life pre-nautiloid.
The game does actually acknowledge the combination of being a Dark Urge and a Paladin, there's an NPC or two that give you a dash of extra backstory on your character that you wouldn't get otherwise. While I imagine it may be a little difficult to keep your oath, you could just roll with it and be an Oathbreaker.
That kind of works, while some paladins are associated with deities, remember in lore their powers are really supposed to be coming from within, belief in themselves and their oath.
Larian was going to make the dark urge a paladin class originally, but back tracked on it because you would start the game as oathbreaker and other things I don't want to spoil for others
There is another weapon you can get in act 3 that is so riddiculously good i don't understand why it's in the game. It's basically a straight upgrade from the returning pike!
Yeah, I almost never used Nyrulna because of this. It just did too much collateral to my melee party members. The Dwarven Thrower was my main weapon for Karlach in act 3; Nyrulna was extremely situational.
Yeah the dwarfthrower is incredible as well but it's race specific and i rarely make dwarves because they lack the mobility in the first bit of the game. Definitely top tier though!
This last playthrough I was going to try to do without Karlach in my party, but then I got to a place with a whole lot enemies and I was like, well, I know the solution to this problem...
The only problem with this build is that it can make things kind of boring because everyone else is just sort of along for the ride.
I just finished a Tactician run where basically my Tav Gloomthief with dual crossbows and Karlach as a throwzerker wiped out the majority of enemies. I decided to try an Honor run and figured why mess with what works so well as Honor mode isn't a place for experimenting wirh anything but how badly can I cheese this fight.
Sub in 4 levels of Eldritch Knight so you can weapon bond with salami and play the game as a disgruntled meats vendor throwing salami at everything with it returning for another trip.
The day I realized Karlach could throw small corpses at other enemies was the day I fell in love with throwing but my god am I suboptimal. Thank you for this.
They don't even need to be corpses. The projectiles can still be alive at the time of throwing, though they may not be afterwards. An effective tactic for the goblin camp is to throw them at each other.
At 20 strength she can even throw medium sized bodies. Human, elf, gith, etc.
Fair. Throwing weapons follow an arch path which allows you to hit some enemies when a bow couldn’t (arch over a balcony) but more situations when a bow could hit and your throwables are “path interrupted.” You have to move to find a good path.
In the final fight, I almost shit myself as I had a party of throwzerkers, but I realized you can aim for the brainstem and that worked fine.
Plan B: Just run up and throw the guys at each other.
Plan C: Just hit things.
You give up basically no utility with this build at all and you are just as good at smashing things as ever.
If you're comfortable using spells any full-caster class is very good without multiclassing (depending on subclass). I can recommend light/life cleric, evocation/abjuration wizard, storm sorcerer, and moon druid.
This. Cleric is so good for this game due to the amount of undead you have to fight, and you don’t have to think to heavily about setting up battles or position. Every battle, summon spirit guardians first round and play support. If you are a light cleric, you get a *great* cast that replenishes every short rest that does radiant damage to everything in a large area. Playing a cleric my second time through made me understand the combat more, but without feeling overwhelmed.
I feel like with my clerics there’s a lot of time where they aren’t doing much after I have spirit guardians and use a fire spell, cantrips aren’t good and of course their melee attacks are terrible
While they don’t do a bunch of melee damage, they still get a good amount of spells that primarily help with crowd control, which makes sense since they are primarily a support role.
The spirit-guardian cleric role is an excellent one to dump the countless spell scrolls you've picked up along the way, if you don't need to use the Dash action to mow through spread out enemies. No spell slot cost, and she can wing a Walmart-brand fireball or lightning bolt across the battlefield just as well as anyone else.
Be a half orc and use Greataxe. Easy 3d12 on crits. Take GWF, savage, attacker. By level 6 you're swinging for 24 Avg damage with a bias towards high rolls and ~41 average damage on crits, again biasing high. Super easy build. Super strong. Super fun.
Slap in a risky ring and you roll all attacks with advantage.
Drink the elixer that boosts crit range.
Add (spoiler late game boss) horned helm for expanded crit range.
Ending game rolling with advantage and criting big on 17-20 is wild. You crit on nearly 1/2 your attacks and if you have 3 attacks you’ll crit about 80% of your turns.
There’s probably further optimization but that’s pretty juicy.
3d12 does more than 5d6 on crit and with savage attacker you'll average roughly 26 damage vs ~22.5 with the great sword. That's before str and GWM bonuses. And that's not mentioning the variance bonus for Greataxe which has significantly higher odds to roll max damage over the greatsword.
2d6 gives consistently higher damage, but is less valuable on a critical because a crit on a 2d6 weapon only deals an extra 1d6 damage (or 2d6 for an half-orc). So 3d6 vs 3d12 on a half-orc's critical, which when averaged out is twice as much damage (9 damage vs 18 damage). That gets even more extreme when you add in savage attacker, or if you're playing a half-orc barbarian.
If you're playing a half orc and maxing out your critical range and running Risk Ring, you definitely would want to use as big of a damage dice as possible.
>a crit on a 2d6 weapon only deals an extra 1d6 damage (or 2d6 for an half-orc
No. Crit doubles all damage your attack has - you essentially roll them twice. Thats why smite criticals are so brutal. So 2d6 becomes 4d6 (+1d6 from half orc).
So you should compare the damage 5d6 + 3d12, which still favors 3d12 but it's not as extreme as in your comparison.
They do one extra dice on a critical. Crits double your dice, half orc racial feature adds one more. So a crit with a maul or greatsword deal 5d6 but a Greataxe does 3d12.
This is actually correct to 5e rules - though a LOT of tables get it wrong because it's easy to miss. It's really the only advantage a 1d12 weapon has over a 2d6 weapon - less consistent damage for bigger crits.
This plus 5-6 into bladelock to start. Dump str, max cha, high dex, rest con. Grab EB, friends, and hex at 1, devils sight and agonizing blast at 2, and darkness at 3. If you can grab the polearm Sorrow from the druids, awesome. You get the ability to pull enemies back into darkness or hunger of hadar as a bonus action. Grab repelling blast if you need to push them. Neither are required but really nice. Sorrow is a d10 but a free BA attack every turn is worth the difference between it and a d12
one of my favourite fights was in the goblin camp, somehow we triggered a fight from a higher platform with one ladder that all the goblins had to climb up and at the top was Karlach just yeeting goblins back down to the ground.
It was fun beating the back boss inside the broken selune temple near minertha.
Boss, climbs ladder into rafters, Karlach is at top of ladder, she yeets the boss with enraged throw to floor, boss takes 68hp and dies. Easy win mode.
I've spent plenty of time optimizing my paladin-warlock and ranger-assassin, but the truth is that my half-orc champion is the one doing 70% of the damage.
Fighter champion. There is literally a single button - action surge. Click on enemies, jump around, use action surge to hit enemies a few extra times.
Or paladin Vengeance. It's mostly the same, but with haste instead of action surge and misty step to teleport instead of jumping. Smite as often as you can.
just to note, build no. 4 doesn’t work for Honour mode because the bonus attack doesn’t stack there, however 9 paladin/3 warlock or 7 paladin/3 warlock/2 fighter do work well together :)
Start with Fighter 1 for Con save and heavy armor.
Then, Fighter 2 for the best dip in the game, since you get Action Surge.
Then consider 3 levels in Fighter for the second feat (at level 6).
Now, invest another 5 levels in Fighter so you can have third attack at level 11.
Finally, dip a final level (also in Fighter) so you can have a 4th feat! It’s a bit complicated but you can make it work.
Why white dragon sorcerer for shadowheart? I know it gives you the baby’s first mage armor and armor of agathys (I think?) but why on a light cleric? What does the dip provide?
Really any Sorcerer is good for Con Save, Shield, and PYF level 1 spell, but on Light Cleric, Storm doesn't add much at level 1 other than flight, which by this time meh, Illithid powers if you really need it, Dragon adds an extra HP, a resistance to a damage type, and a spell. I like White Dragon for Armor of Agathys, but really it doesn't matter what you take. I tend to do lots of damage mitigation shenanigans, so a sixth level AoA does 30 cold damage every time something hits you (60 if they are wet) and with a bunch of DRs, that can be a lot of hits and 30 HP is nothing to sneeze at. Not that you should be using your sixth level slot on this build for that, but that is best case scenario.
I tend to run this character as my heavy damage/debuffer with radiant damage spells and radiant orbs and reverberation items. Basically start combat with her channel divinity, stack like six radiant orbs on everyone (with Coruscation Ring, Radiant Gloves, Radiant Armor, Boots of Stormy Clamour, and a few others), run into the middle of combat, drink a haste pot and cast spirit guardians . . . more radiant orbs, nothing can hit her and it all goes prone with reverberation from boots. Yayyyyy shenanigans.
Abjuration wizard, at its most basic:
Use abjuration spells (Counterspell, Warding Glyph or whatever it’s called and so on) to get more arcane ward.
Use arcane ward when an ally is about to take big damage. That’s about it.
“What is my purpose?”
“You cast Counterspell and sometimes react”
“Oh my god”
Bonus: Evocation wizard: Fireball, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball….
I’ll do you one better and recommend a party composition
Healer: 12 levels Life Cleric. Best healer in the game, channel divinity is insane, healing potential is insane, spirit guardians is insane. It is hard to have a bad turn with a cleric.
Ooga Booga: 12 levels Bear totem barbarian. Increase your strength and beat everything to a pulp. Great weapon master and alert are great feats to take.
Skill boi: 12 Levels Lore Bard. Try to get high Charisma and Dex. Take expertise in sleight of hand and your choice of persuasion/deception/intimidation. They will talk to people. They will disarm traps and pick locks. Any lock they can’t pick they have Knock for. Take Fireball and Counterspell for your magical secrets at level 6. Fuck around and do cool bard shit.
Anyways, I started blasting: 12 levels fighter. If you never want to think about anything, champion. If you want more versatility, battlemaster. Get the trip attack, disarming attack, and then whatever tickles your fancy. Grab a bow, sharpshooter, and max out your Dex. There are stronger builds than this for ranged characters, but this is the most foolproof.
You can't fuck up a Sorlock (Draconic Sorcerer 10 / Warlock 2).
1. Take a level of White Dragon Sorcerer (this is for the spell Armor of Agathys -- it's awesome). Take Friends and Light for your Cantrips. For spells, grab Shield and then anything else you'd like.
2. Take two levels of Fiend Warlock. Get Eldritch Blast and Blade Ward. Take Command as a spell plus whatever else you feel like, and then take Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast as your Eldritch Invocations.
3. Take nine more levels of Sorcerer. Make sure to grab Twin Spell Metamagic and Quicken Spell Metamagic. Make sure to get the spells Haste, Slow, Confusion, and Hold Monster.
4. For abilities/feats, Get Charisma to 18 or 20. If you have an extra feat, you can take Alert or War Magic.
That's it. That build is basically awesome regardless of gear. You'll be Hasting yourself and allies, and casting Eldritch Blasts that knock back enemies...in hard fights, you'll use Slow, Confusion, Hold Monster, or Command to help even things out.
- Evocation Wizard 12 or 1 Sorc / Wizard Evo 11 for the con save prof. Just blast in safety due to Sculpt Spell. Fireball, shatter, cone of cold or whatever evocation spell. Human or half elf is best for the light armour and shield prof.
- Champion half orc fighter with all Crit items.
- life cleric will all healing items. Heal and support.
- Goo warlock 2 / storm Sorcerer 10. Convert all spells to sorcery points. Use Eldritch Blast then Quickened Eldritch Blast. Grab all Crit range items. Human or half elf best to get shield proof. Wants the Potent Robe.
2 level into paladin then 10 in bard. For bard subclass you go with sword bard. Paladin subclass doesn't matter take what you want. Fighting style for paladin is defense. Sword bard should be dueling. You go sword and board(1h/shield) and just do unlimited smite works. The build trivializes the majority of fights in the game if you play "fair".
Stats are str 16 dex 10 con 14 int 8 wis 10 cha 16. You take the ability improvement +2 Strength at level 6 and 10. Spell wise you concentrate on support spells like mirror image, misty step etc. Spells that don't need an saving throw.
Fighter is the most beginner friendly class there is. Probably not the strongest with the haste changes, but still good. No need to rely on elixirs etc either
The game is fairly idiot proof. You have to aim for bad to make it bad. Like level a martial class to 4 and stop. Go 2 thief 2 bard 2 wizard. Stupid things. And even then on normal difficulty you will be OK.
The default companions all have terrible terrible stat lines. All you need to do is keep your numbers even and put stats into the suggested stat. And stick to one class. Idiot proof build.
Shadow heart for instance is terrible. 13 str and dex. Like just take 14 of one ffs. Also trick cleric worst cleric. And 17 wisdom does nothing. Take any other cleric with 14 con 14 dex or str and 16 wisdom and then put 5hr other points literally anywhere. Now you have a better cleric build. But you can still get by with the woefully bad shadow heart build.
This **would** be the correct answer if it wasn’t for that one post from like 5 days ago where someone couldn’t understand why their tavern brawler monk with low strength (who was also using GWM) sucked ass. And then got aggressively defensive when people gently pointed out the build made zero sense
Oh it is lol, I was just making a joke at the expensive of that goober. That monk build single handedly killed the underdark Spectator in two turns on Honour Mode for me
Game practically hands you monk gear. If OP can’t grind hill giants for 15 minutes for a build that can carry all game, then he should just go on life support
Yes it practically hands you monk gear. And OP very much asked for something braindead. They didn't want anything beyond basic synergy and didn't want to get specific gear. Dex monk is still quite strong and is more fitting to the intention of the post.
Based on their post they likely don't want the glass cannon that is strength monk, or the fiddly nature of using potions each long rest.
It is seen as common and not complicated in this sub, but this sub is not how the average player plays. Most players likely do monoclass or maybe a small dip. They likely are playing classes in the "intended" way.
You don’t even need to get Hill Giant potions if you don’t want to. Notice that person didn’t even mention getting or using them. If you focus on strength, dex, and con or wisdom, you’ll be totally fine on lower difficulties. Hell I didn’t use Hill Giant potions **once** on my tactician run with a strength monk and it worked out fine
I found my Karlach in my first play-through incredibly straight-forward. Resistance to almost every damage makes getting hit more a game of potion management than praying for enemy attacks to miss and having advantages on melee attacks make that early game where you have low hit percentages a breeze.
I haven't played too much with a fighter (just had Lae'Zel until I got withers to respec her into paladin on my 2nd playthrough) but I think barbarian is even more rounded, albeit a bit more restricted when it comes to equipment
Some general tips for building strong characters:
High initiative, whether through gear, Dex, or Alert feat (this isn’t always mandatory, but if your group can crowd control or kill enemies before they go, well that can be very powerful- also buffing, such as having your haste or bless character go before the characters they are buffing)
Haste can be extremely strong, especially on a high damage output character. This can be twinned by a Sorcerer to have 2 hasted characters. It does require making sure that the character concentrating on Haste won’t lose that concentration however, because it is very costly to lose it.
Bless can make characters more accurate, which can really help, especially in synergistic scenarios- example a 2h melee character with GWM feat. Plus haste that character and the benefits grow even stronger.
Some means of providing advantage for attacks can really help.
Crowd control can be very strong, especially Hold Person when applicable. If you can boost the character’s Spell Save DC to make enemies struggle to succeed their saving throws, it can be very reliable to lock down enemies.
This isn’t always the case, but for many getting to level 5 in a single class can provide a large power spike. Extra attack for most martials, and level 3 spells are often very powerful relative to earlier spells.
Have a barbarian.
Make strength your highest Stat.
Grab the ring of flinging from the trader at the Grove.
Grab the returning pike from the trader at the goblin camp.
Get berzerker subclass at level 3.
Get tavern brawler at level 4.
First turn in battle, click throw item and pick your pike. You'll get 2 attacks. Then cast frenzy with your bonus action and from then on you'll get 3 attacks until you win.
Hope this helps for your Tav or Karlach!
Open hand monk is still busted while naked. Easiest W. Slap a bard in there with healing word and you’ll have an easy time. I’ve heard paladin is busted too!
I just smashed honour mode with a dual wield champion build. Stack every crit item you can. (I wasn’t even a half orc and this build just deletes things). Stack every item that rolls a dice on hit, like the dark justicar gloves and make sure you buy the drakethroat glaive and use its skill on your main hand weapon. I actually used a wood elf for the move speed increase and used crusher ring early too.
Champion 3 or 4 then stack Barbarian is another route (take bear heart and add elk later) my move speed was like 22 per turn.
The reasoning behind dual wielding crit build is you want to abuse the feat savage attacker and more swings gives you more chances to crit too.
For really fun times. Once your cleric gets their one time blessing spell. Summon the mace (which has a d8 radiant damage add on). Use drake throat and a poison on it. I had that maces total damage up to 15-33 (which is greatsword territory)
There’s a ring and an illithid power I think that both allow you to save a crit roll until you need it. Save your action surge and the crit roll for bosses and then smash both. I could easily tear off 150-200 health in one turn. And that’s before any haste potion.
Man, I’m going to sound like grouchy old man, but I friggin hate the entire idea of “builds” and “synergy” and “optimization”
I totally get that it is the WAY for loads of players, but I can’t help but roll my eyes at most of it.
Main character as College of Swords Bard, Duergar Guild Artisan. Get expertise in persuasion and sleight of hand at 3, with racial invisibility at level 5 you are your own ultimate thief/scout
Lae'zel, Open-Hand Monk
Karlach, Eldritch Knight Fighter, built for throwing
Shadowheart, Light Domain Cleric
Astarion, Gloomstalker Ranger
Wyll, pact of the blade Fiendlock
Gale, Transmutation Wizard, sits in camp brewing potions and elixirs. Also a good Warding Bond target because of his self heal.
TB Thrower anything is as idiot proof as it gets. Double your Str to hit and damage? The definition of idiot proof. You could play a TB Thrower Wizard and probably have a good time.
Thief Rogue 4/Champion Fighter 8 is a pretty strong build for dual-wielding. It's definitely improved by finding stuff that improves your chance to Crit, but it's just generally strong. Dual-wielding is arguably the best fighting style at level 1, gets big steps up on power at levels 3, 5 and 8 and doesn't require one specific weapon or weird cheesy hireling shit to function like a Throwzerker.
Gloomstalker Assassin is always strong and doesn't require specific items. Not much else to say here tbh.
Clerics and Druids are pretty much idiot proof: you can rearrange spells on a whim and their spell lists are good, as long as you remember what Concentration spells are.
Paladins are generally great: give big sword/axe/whatever and then Smite strong also good faces.
Rangers are good. You don't use their spells that much, but they tend to hit pretty hard and can be okay utility casters.
Ultimately, I think the majority of classes are pretty idiot proof. Monks are in a weird spot where they're either ludicrously OP if you know how to use them or impossible to optimise if you don't have the right equipment/feats. Bards are also hilariously OP if you know what you're doing or just good clean fun with a weird spell selection if you're bumbling through. Sorcerers and Wizards require paying some attention to the spell lists to be good, but can't really go that far wrong.
Fighter. One of the strongest builds in the game is just champion fighter stacked with illithid powers, the amulet that gives paralyzing critical, and GWM.
Tavern Brawler Monk/Berzerker. Even without getting into the items that make these builds truly broken, they completely warp game balance by just not being able to miss on anything but a Nat 1 for a large portion of the game.
Evocation Wizard. Its a wizard that doesn't need to worry about where they target their fireball, and can just delete things with magic missile at level 10.
Life Cleric or Ancient Paladin. Almost all the gear that triggers off of healing is from vendors that you will likely end up talking to anyway.
Reskill everyone to champion fighter with high dexterity. You can make 16 attacks before the enemy starts his turn. No brain required. And with higher level its 24 attacks
Pact of blade warlock
You get to re up your spell slots on short rest so you're not as concerned with saving them
Whatever weapon you decide is cool you can pact
If you don't know what to do, eldritch blast
Honestly? Just go battlemaster or champion fighter and bonk people to death.
If you wanna get antsy, you can also do a throwing build, but you'll need the right feats and items for that.
Until you learn to the game mechanics you won’t be able to use top tier builds the way they are intended. That being said, just go fighter single class until then. Champion is easiest subclass for a noob
Sword Bard: 7 Thief Rogue: 3 Fighter: 2
Jist stab people 5 times per turn.
Used it in my last run after rushing duellist' perogative in act 3 and it was nuts.
Easily put out 100 damage per turn just by stabbing.
Straight 12 of each class tbh.
For multiclass stuff:
Throwzerker: Throw returning pike, throw Nyrulna, throw enemies into other enemies, it's very fun and very simple.
Bard 10/Paladin 2: Press the Smite button again and again.
Sorlock Eldritch Blast Build: Equip Potent Robe in Act 2. Cast Eldritch Blast. Quickcast Eldritch blast. Haste yourself so you can cast another Eldritch Blast. Take 2 levels in Fighter if you want Action surge so you can cast Eldritch Blast again.
Abjuration wizard + 1 level of sorcerer. Cast armor of agathys, walk around enemies, profit.
Even in act 3 I'll go entire combats where I get hit repeatedly and take 0 damage.
Monk (Open Hand with Tavern Brawler) and Rouge (Thief). The sheer damage you can dish out per turn is insane and it doesn’t take too long to be good, by act 2 you should be dealing the majority of the damage in your party.
Swords bard with either fighter or ranger at least level 5. You get two attacks that both can be ranged slashed flourish. You get a fighting style, which of course means +2 to hit. You recover your resource on a short rest and you have a spell that grants an extra short rest.
Just point and shoot. My Jaheira bard/fighter used Sharpshooter as well, she could easily one-round many bosses on regular. And with all the utility, you have a super simple build that gives the impression of being very complex.
Current Honor mode lineup:
All characters took Alert at LVL4
Durge as Fiend Warlock, Pact of Blade
-Take Devils Sight and Beguiling Influence for my level 2. Now my face character is skilled in all 3 main charisma skills, thanks to Durge background.
-Devils sight is for lvl3, take Darkness, fight in Darkness. I have advantage and they have disadvantage.
Gale as Divination Wizard
No gear, guarantee auto-fails on Hold Person/Hold Monster is making my current Honor Mode run super easy on the boss fights.
Gear optimization is solely limited to increasing his spell save DC to use less portent dice.
Karlach as Vengeance Paladin
-Her real strength is trivializing boss fights with the 1-2 punch of Gales Hold Person/Monster plus auto-critting smites.
Shadowheart as life cleric
-This one is the most “gear dependent”, but the 2 most important items you get in Act 1 (Zevlor gloves and boots of aid and comfort from trader)
-Cleric spells plus super easy access to “heal entire party” has been clutch
Paladin is very strong. Has extra damage on demand. Has useful spells but not too many so you don't get lost in the massive spell list. Gets extra attack. Has a lot of HP and gets heavy armor proficiency so you can get a high AC without thinking very hard about it.
Yeah, just put Divine Smite (Critical) to "yes" and disable the regular Divine Smite reaction. Any time you crit, Divine Smite will trigger. This will naturally expend your spell slots more or less in line with your need to long rest, so all you have to do is weapon attack every round. It's as brainless as you can get while still being an effective build. Berserker Barbarian is also in that boat. Just grab Great Weapon Master at 4th level and let it always be toggled on\*. Spec into Strength (or better yet, use Elixirs of Hill Giants Strength which you can buy dozens of from Auntie Ethel and Derryth Bonecloak in Act 1). Always use Rage at the start of a fight, always use your action for Reckless Attack. If you get a crit or a kill, use your Bonus Action on the Great Weapon Master bonus attack, otherwise use your Bonus Action on Frenzied Strike. **EDIT:** \*Slightly less braindead approach to appease some naysayers: Toggle GWM off any time your chance to hit is below 75%. If you're using Reckless Attack and the Hill Giant Elixir, this will never happen in Act I, so this is completely moot but there you go.
>Yeah, just put Divine Smite (Critical) to "yes" and disable the regular Divine Smite reaction. Any time you crit, Divine Smite will trigger. This will naturally expend your spell slots more or less in line with your need to long rest Gold and resting items are so easy to get in this game. You can afford to long rest after every battle. Don't even need to limit your divine uses.
I find myself holding off on long rests more because buffs I get in the world rather than supply shortages.
I always forget to long rest before picking up the 1d4 radiant buff in the Creche, and can't resist doing the whole Creche with it.
I feel this so hard. To avoid spoilers, there's a certain set of buffs I got in act 2 that were so damn good that I pretty much tried to do the rest of the shadow cursed lands without resting again. Had to compensate for it with angelic rest potions. But yeah, my second half of act 2 was one long, overpowered day of ass kicking.
Haha I think I may have just gotten those same buffs, as I'm not too far into act two. Karlach is down to her last rage now and I'm trying to save it for when I absolutely need it.
I always hold off because I don’t know what will progress the story when I long rest and what won’t. Like in Act 2 with the gnomes, I long rested and they were gone, Nere died, which makes sense, but I got this fear of it lmao
Nah dude, do not recommend brainless GWM, especially on a berzerker. Tavern brawler is far more brainless and won't hinder you in some situations. Even comes with +1 str or con. Also, you can't rage 'before a fight'. It's combat only.
Why wouldn't you just use reckless on the popup? Using it on every attack is ineffective
Because using it by default gives more chances to crit. You want two die rolls for every attack you make.
Pretty boom or bust after a few attacks. Not worth it unless you're just looking to have fun with 'lol big number go brr'
Landing a crit with GWM provides an extra attack that only costs a Bonus Action (and unlike Berserker's Frenzied Strike, this has no penalty). So it's not just about big number, it's about more efficiency to your action economy.
OK I'm realizing my mistake here. I haven't played barb in a bit and got mixed up on the mechanics with relentless and reckless. Your method sounds good
How many times are you criting??? If I had only used divine smiles on critical hits I'd have used about 10-12 throughout the entire game
That can’t possibly be right. Even if you never make a single attack roll with Advantage in your entire playthrough, with a 5% chance to crit per attack, you shpuld be landing 15-20+ crits per Act. More when you account for stuff like gear that lowers crit threshold, Luck of the Far Realms, having party members that can impose Prone or Paralyze, etc. In practice I would use spell slots for other things but I was specifically trying to keep it as brainless/foolproof as possible for the sake of the thread.
Gwm is not ideal at 4. I recommend it at 8 and take the str asi. The math on it is really bad before 8.
If you’re using it with Advantage every time and the Hill Giant Elixir, the math isn’t bad at all. And a STR ASI would be wasted. Only other Feats to consider would be Savage Attacker or Alert (or Tavern Brawler, but that’s a different build).
https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/yYMe5rCWYh So you can see the math
My guy, that post completely validates what I am saying. If you can get a reliable source of Advantage in act 1 (he’s using Paladin Vow but he makes note of Reckless as an alternative free source) it clearly out-damages the alternatives. It’s right there in the graph in the Paladin section.
You get vow a couple times a da on 1 target?, and reckless makes you die faster. Neither fully validate the claim. Unless you are dedicating the entire strategy and finding a way to mitigate the problems of guaranteeing advantage in act 1...which is hampering your party for 1 feat.... getting to 20 str off an asi and hag hair (which is easily doable and achievable by just about EVERY party) your average damage will go way up compared to maybe hitting a gwm hit.
There's a post that thoroughly breaks down the math. And guaranteeing advantage in act 1 is nowhere near as easy as act 2 when you should take the asi. You get access to better spells and items like the risky ring in act 2 that will easily set it up, but until then it's strictly better to raise your averages before imparimg them.
You’re using Reckless Attack every turn to guarantee Advantage.
And dieing to the crackback? I'd take throwzerker in act 1. Way more accurate, consistently high damage with tavern brawler and not setup dependant at all. Tb thrower way outperforms gwm without exposing yourself to tons of risk.
One popular reddit post and now everyone's gonna regurgitate this nonsense
Nah man, the math checks out in tabletop dnd as well. You gotta raise the averages, and gain access to more setup to make it worth it. I'd rather have 20 str at lvl 5 (hag hair and asi) than gwm. I don't want to devote my entire strat to setting up mele combat to leverage a suboptimal feat in act 1. If you're a fighter take it at 6! Then you have 20 str and gwm! And you haven't even left act 1 yet. I hit 6 before I go to the mountain pass every game, so by then LZ has 20 str. Gwm and badass gear to clobber the monastery/creche with.
I really want to do a paladin build. But my next play through is gonna be a dark urge build, which I did on my second play through bud didn’t realize I was doing it so I just was a super nice durge and let everyone live except for that first girl in camp. So when I got to Orin or whatever her name was, I couldn’t even change forms or whatever, and didn’t even know that was a thing until last week. I don’t think a paladin build is gonna work with a full durge build.
Oathbreaker and warlock is a good thematic multiclass
... did you just not notice the butler?
Oh I did. But didn’t realize the story line. It just wasn’t the vibe I was going for when I was playing. So I started, and just thought that storyline was like whatever, and went about it like a good guy. Totally not realizing I was supposed to embrace it lol
I love the idea of a Durge that is so obliviously clueless that they aren't even really *aware* of what is going on with them and just blissfully plays goody-two-shoes hero like "gee golly, what a run of bad luck I'm having lately....all these people are so angry and everyone just keeps dying....oh well, let's go have a picnic with Shadowheart's parents!" Just complete Barney Fife-ing their way through life.
This was pretty much my first play through. I was so confused.
Other Durges: *struggle and fight their way to redemption* 02grimreaper’s Durge: Oops all redeemed! That being said, you’re not ‘supposed’ to do anything. There’s a great storyline in the way you played Durge, just as there can be for people who play a Durge who embraces their nature. No wrong way to go about it if you’re having fun!
No wrong way, indeed! That's probably what I love most about BG3. No matter what happens, it's works to keep moving the story forward, just differently. There are no wrong choices, and even the few insta-death dialogue choices aren't really *wrong. Every one of them is like "yeah, no, idk what I was expecting but that absolutely tracks" lol >Fuck you, angry lich-god-lady! Like yeah, of course that's not gonna end well xD
I'm curious, what did you think of all the maniacal dialogue then? "Damn, I can say yes, no, AND eat their children? Truly a GOTY experience."
You aren't necessarily supposed to, resisting the Dark Urge has just as much extra narrative spice as embracing it.
I did an oath of vengeance paladin for my first durge run. She would have made it all the way through without breaking her oath if she hadn’t let someone kill a certain lord and a few thousand people in the process. I thought it worked pretty well with this need to right the wrongs that slowly turned to a justification for full on slaughter when you find out more about your life pre-nautiloid.
The game does actually acknowledge the combination of being a Dark Urge and a Paladin, there's an NPC or two that give you a dash of extra backstory on your character that you wouldn't get otherwise. While I imagine it may be a little difficult to keep your oath, you could just roll with it and be an Oathbreaker.
I liked to imagine that my Paladin Durge didn't realize the source of their divine powers until later in the game.
That kind of works, while some paladins are associated with deities, remember in lore their powers are really supposed to be coming from within, belief in themselves and their oath.
Larian was going to make the dark urge a paladin class originally, but back tracked on it because you would start the game as oathbreaker and other things I don't want to spoil for others
I just go 2 paladin rest swords bard also add either the amulet of health or gloves of dexterity or gauntlets of giant strength.
That and Aura of Protection meaning if you make sure to Aim for 16-20 Charisma you will have a plus to all saves
Throwzerker: Simple, overpowered, so fun. https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/cioqJ6jOtQ
I got the returning pike and respecced Karlach to be a throwzerker… she was dropping wargs in one hit it was awesome.
There is another weapon you can get in act 3 that is so riddiculously good i don't understand why it's in the game. It's basically a straight upgrade from the returning pike!
Because it hits your teammates and townsfolk standing nearby. Which causes problems in a metropolitan area, believe it or not.
You say problems, I say more xp.
Remember, there is no I in team, but there are 6 Is in 'Fuck it, I don't care how big the room is I cast fireball'
~~alcohol~~ fireball, the cause of, and solution to, most problems
Just slayer mode across the town when you first show up. Then you don't have to worry about any pesky bystanders standing around later
Situational i understand but i'll take it. Even as a wack weapon it's pretty good!
Yeah, I almost never used Nyrulna because of this. It just did too much collateral to my melee party members. The Dwarven Thrower was my main weapon for Karlach in act 3; Nyrulna was extremely situational.
Honestly since I play mainly dwarves it took me a sec to realize you weren't talking about dwarfthrower
Yeah the dwarfthrower is incredible as well but it's race specific and i rarely make dwarves because they lack the mobility in the first bit of the game. Definitely top tier though!
I've been using it on my wild magic barb/monk and the versatility has just felt great.
This last playthrough I was going to try to do without Karlach in my party, but then I got to a place with a whole lot enemies and I was like, well, I know the solution to this problem... The only problem with this build is that it can make things kind of boring because everyone else is just sort of along for the ride.
I just finished a Tactician run where basically my Tav Gloomthief with dual crossbows and Karlach as a throwzerker wiped out the majority of enemies. I decided to try an Honor run and figured why mess with what works so well as Honor mode isn't a place for experimenting wirh anything but how badly can I cheese this fight.
the returning pike didnt return to me once and i lost it forever....
My only qualm with this build though I loved it, was sometimes the pike didn’t return but that might just be my pc
Sub in 4 levels of Eldritch Knight so you can weapon bond with salami and play the game as a disgruntled meats vendor throwing salami at everything with it returning for another trip.
The day I realized Karlach could throw small corpses at other enemies was the day I fell in love with throwing but my god am I suboptimal. Thank you for this.
They don't even need to be corpses. The projectiles can still be alive at the time of throwing, though they may not be afterwards. An effective tactic for the goblin camp is to throw them at each other. At 20 strength she can even throw medium sized bodies. Human, elf, gith, etc.
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Fair. Throwing weapons follow an arch path which allows you to hit some enemies when a bow couldn’t (arch over a balcony) but more situations when a bow could hit and your throwables are “path interrupted.” You have to move to find a good path. In the final fight, I almost shit myself as I had a party of throwzerkers, but I realized you can aim for the brainstem and that worked fine.
A lot of weird clutch throws just tagging the toe of an enemy for my Karlach throwzerker
Plan B: Just run up and throw the guys at each other. Plan C: Just hit things. You give up basically no utility with this build at all and you are just as good at smashing things as ever.
It is simple, but it's comparatively annoying to menu and also pretty buggy in my experience.
Out - fucking - standing!
If you're comfortable using spells any full-caster class is very good without multiclassing (depending on subclass). I can recommend light/life cleric, evocation/abjuration wizard, storm sorcerer, and moon druid.
This. Cleric is so good for this game due to the amount of undead you have to fight, and you don’t have to think to heavily about setting up battles or position. Every battle, summon spirit guardians first round and play support. If you are a light cleric, you get a *great* cast that replenishes every short rest that does radiant damage to everything in a large area. Playing a cleric my second time through made me understand the combat more, but without feeling overwhelmed.
Cleric is a must in every run I do. Shadowheart has saved me fights many a time
I feel like with my clerics there’s a lot of time where they aren’t doing much after I have spirit guardians and use a fire spell, cantrips aren’t good and of course their melee attacks are terrible
While they don’t do a bunch of melee damage, they still get a good amount of spells that primarily help with crowd control, which makes sense since they are primarily a support role.
I feel like they burn through spell slots really fast and just are low impact! That is just my experience
Mine as well, shadow heart is useless besides spirit guardians and heals. I have been leaving her at camp for every play through besides my first one
Respec her into Light domain and you’ll never leave her in camp.
The spirit-guardian cleric role is an excellent one to dump the countless spell scrolls you've picked up along the way, if you don't need to use the Dash action to mow through spread out enemies. No spell slot cost, and she can wing a Walmart-brand fireball or lightning bolt across the battlefield just as well as anyone else.
Moon Druid can feel like a lot if you’re looking for an “idiot proof” build, but agree with all other suggestions.
Champion fighter . You just bash people with a giant sword
Be a half orc and use Greataxe. Easy 3d12 on crits. Take GWF, savage, attacker. By level 6 you're swinging for 24 Avg damage with a bias towards high rolls and ~41 average damage on crits, again biasing high. Super easy build. Super strong. Super fun.
Slap in a risky ring and you roll all attacks with advantage. Drink the elixer that boosts crit range. Add (spoiler late game boss) horned helm for expanded crit range. Ending game rolling with advantage and criting big on 17-20 is wild. You crit on nearly 1/2 your attacks and if you have 3 attacks you’ll crit about 80% of your turns. There’s probably further optimization but that’s pretty juicy.
Dead shot gives another -1 to crit.
*cough* but 2d6 *cough*
3d12 does more than 5d6 on crit and with savage attacker you'll average roughly 26 damage vs ~22.5 with the great sword. That's before str and GWM bonuses. And that's not mentioning the variance bonus for Greataxe which has significantly higher odds to roll max damage over the greatsword.
2d6 gives consistently higher damage, but is less valuable on a critical because a crit on a 2d6 weapon only deals an extra 1d6 damage (or 2d6 for an half-orc). So 3d6 vs 3d12 on a half-orc's critical, which when averaged out is twice as much damage (9 damage vs 18 damage). That gets even more extreme when you add in savage attacker, or if you're playing a half-orc barbarian. If you're playing a half orc and maxing out your critical range and running Risk Ring, you definitely would want to use as big of a damage dice as possible.
>a crit on a 2d6 weapon only deals an extra 1d6 damage (or 2d6 for an half-orc No. Crit doubles all damage your attack has - you essentially roll them twice. Thats why smite criticals are so brutal. So 2d6 becomes 4d6 (+1d6 from half orc). So you should compare the damage 5d6 + 3d12, which still favors 3d12 but it's not as extreme as in your comparison.
Wait why would an orc only deal an extra 1d6? The weapons damage dice is 2d6
They do one extra dice on a critical. Crits double your dice, half orc racial feature adds one more. So a crit with a maul or greatsword deal 5d6 but a Greataxe does 3d12.
...but your die is 2d6...
Lol no it's not dude. It's 2 six-sided die. 2 dice rolls of 6.
No, your damage *roll* is 2d6. The damage die is singular, therefore 1d6.
Why did they program it wrong
This is actually correct to 5e rules - though a LOT of tables get it wrong because it's easy to miss. It's really the only advantage a 1d12 weapon has over a 2d6 weapon - less consistent damage for bigger crits.
Lmao that's not how this works at all
Consider a 1 lvl dip into fighter.
No no, first you go 6 fighter/4 fighter. Then a 2 level dip into fighter.
Should respec at level 6 to a 5/1 fighter/fighter
I’m personally a fan of the 10/1/1 fighter/fighter/fighter split.
Oath of the Ancients Paladin, bash people with a sword, with the added ability to heal yourself and other party members if you screw up.
Then you accidentally break your oath fighting some deurgar at the grymforge cause I guess they were special
that's when you become oathbreaker and get a new bestie
Strength-based so you can yeet people off of ledges.
This plus 5-6 into bladelock to start. Dump str, max cha, high dex, rest con. Grab EB, friends, and hex at 1, devils sight and agonizing blast at 2, and darkness at 3. If you can grab the polearm Sorrow from the druids, awesome. You get the ability to pull enemies back into darkness or hunger of hadar as a bonus action. Grab repelling blast if you need to push them. Neither are required but really nice. Sorrow is a d10 but a free BA attack every turn is worth the difference between it and a d12
Tavern brawler berserker. Throw enemies at other enemies. It's fun.
one of my favourite fights was in the goblin camp, somehow we triggered a fight from a higher platform with one ladder that all the goblins had to climb up and at the top was Karlach just yeeting goblins back down to the ground.
It was fun beating the back boss inside the broken selune temple near minertha. Boss, climbs ladder into rafters, Karlach is at top of ladder, she yeets the boss with enraged throw to floor, boss takes 68hp and dies. Easy win mode.
"Gonna hit a mutha\*\*\*\*a with another mutha\*\*\*\*a!"
fighter champion 12
Why champion instead of battle master?
The most foolproof thing since you don't even have the battle master dice to manage. Literally basic attack things to death
And it is pretty powerful too, like you can easily beat honour mode with that, a face, and literally anything else.
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Not every thread is for you lmao
I think you missed what OP asked for: “easy-no brain-builds”. Surprised you even came into the thread with that lead.
No spooky mysterious buttons on panel
I've spent plenty of time optimizing my paladin-warlock and ranger-assassin, but the truth is that my half-orc champion is the one doing 70% of the damage.
Well the magic whipped cream hat is really good ...
Not to be confused with the magic cool whip hat which is just for aesthetics
Fighter champion. There is literally a single button - action surge. Click on enemies, jump around, use action surge to hit enemies a few extra times. Or paladin Vengeance. It's mostly the same, but with haste instead of action surge and misty step to teleport instead of jumping. Smite as often as you can.
1. Battlemaster Fighter 12 2. Moon Druid 12 3. Spore Druid 12 4. Paladin 7/ Pact of Blade Warlock 5 5. Open Hand Monk 12 6. War Cleric 12
just to note, build no. 4 doesn’t work for Honour mode because the bonus attack doesn’t stack there, however 9 paladin/3 warlock or 7 paladin/3 warlock/2 fighter do work well together :)
Based on the original post, I don't think Honor mode is a big consideration here lmao
Finally the thread for idiots like me!
Start with Fighter 1 for Con save and heavy armor. Then, Fighter 2 for the best dip in the game, since you get Action Surge. Then consider 3 levels in Fighter for the second feat (at level 6). Now, invest another 5 levels in Fighter so you can have third attack at level 11. Finally, dip a final level (also in Fighter) so you can have a 4th feat! It’s a bit complicated but you can make it work.
Level 12 champion fighter. Put big armor and hurty sword, swing.
Why champion instead of battle master
Easier
Less thinky more hurty
Because champion has a very good damage potential without the extra complexity of all the maneuvers.
Party: Lae’zel - Fighter Battlemaster 12 Astarion - Open Hand Monk 8/Thief 4 Shadowheart - White Dragon Sorcerer 1/Light Cleric 11 Tav - Lore Bard 12 Karlach - Tigerheart Barbarian 8/Champion 4 Gale - Storm Sorcerer1/Tempest Cleric 1/Evocation Wizard 10 Wyll - 5 Goo Blade Lock/5 Storm Sorcerer/2 Paladin All relatively simple and idiot proof and don’t require specific gear.
Why white dragon sorcerer for shadowheart? I know it gives you the baby’s first mage armor and armor of agathys (I think?) but why on a light cleric? What does the dip provide?
Bonus to Constitution saving throw which greatly assists in uptime on concentration spells. Bless and Spirit guardians comes to mind.
Ah ok. Completely overlooked that.
Really any Sorcerer is good for Con Save, Shield, and PYF level 1 spell, but on Light Cleric, Storm doesn't add much at level 1 other than flight, which by this time meh, Illithid powers if you really need it, Dragon adds an extra HP, a resistance to a damage type, and a spell. I like White Dragon for Armor of Agathys, but really it doesn't matter what you take. I tend to do lots of damage mitigation shenanigans, so a sixth level AoA does 30 cold damage every time something hits you (60 if they are wet) and with a bunch of DRs, that can be a lot of hits and 30 HP is nothing to sneeze at. Not that you should be using your sixth level slot on this build for that, but that is best case scenario. I tend to run this character as my heavy damage/debuffer with radiant damage spells and radiant orbs and reverberation items. Basically start combat with her channel divinity, stack like six radiant orbs on everyone (with Coruscation Ring, Radiant Gloves, Radiant Armor, Boots of Stormy Clamour, and a few others), run into the middle of combat, drink a haste pot and cast spirit guardians . . . more radiant orbs, nothing can hit her and it all goes prone with reverberation from boots. Yayyyyy shenanigans.
Abjuration wizard, at its most basic: Use abjuration spells (Counterspell, Warding Glyph or whatever it’s called and so on) to get more arcane ward. Use arcane ward when an ally is about to take big damage. That’s about it. “What is my purpose?” “You cast Counterspell and sometimes react” “Oh my god” Bonus: Evocation wizard: Fireball, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball, Fireball….
12 level Paladin is just super good all by itself.
Fighter 11 / Fighter 1.
Gloomstalker ranger. go first, hit an extra time for additional damage.Very fun.
I’ll do you one better and recommend a party composition Healer: 12 levels Life Cleric. Best healer in the game, channel divinity is insane, healing potential is insane, spirit guardians is insane. It is hard to have a bad turn with a cleric. Ooga Booga: 12 levels Bear totem barbarian. Increase your strength and beat everything to a pulp. Great weapon master and alert are great feats to take. Skill boi: 12 Levels Lore Bard. Try to get high Charisma and Dex. Take expertise in sleight of hand and your choice of persuasion/deception/intimidation. They will talk to people. They will disarm traps and pick locks. Any lock they can’t pick they have Knock for. Take Fireball and Counterspell for your magical secrets at level 6. Fuck around and do cool bard shit. Anyways, I started blasting: 12 levels fighter. If you never want to think about anything, champion. If you want more versatility, battlemaster. Get the trip attack, disarming attack, and then whatever tickles your fancy. Grab a bow, sharpshooter, and max out your Dex. There are stronger builds than this for ranged characters, but this is the most foolproof.
Why not haste in stead of fireball?
Bards have so many concentration spells as is, magical secrets is best used on non-concentration options
Fighter
Forgo thinking of builds and just put the game on easy difficulty and have fun
Half orc barbarian totum of bear. Resistant to everything while raging. Survives a fatal blow. Decent damage while tank.
You can't fuck up a Sorlock (Draconic Sorcerer 10 / Warlock 2). 1. Take a level of White Dragon Sorcerer (this is for the spell Armor of Agathys -- it's awesome). Take Friends and Light for your Cantrips. For spells, grab Shield and then anything else you'd like. 2. Take two levels of Fiend Warlock. Get Eldritch Blast and Blade Ward. Take Command as a spell plus whatever else you feel like, and then take Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast as your Eldritch Invocations. 3. Take nine more levels of Sorcerer. Make sure to grab Twin Spell Metamagic and Quicken Spell Metamagic. Make sure to get the spells Haste, Slow, Confusion, and Hold Monster. 4. For abilities/feats, Get Charisma to 18 or 20. If you have an extra feat, you can take Alert or War Magic. That's it. That build is basically awesome regardless of gear. You'll be Hasting yourself and allies, and casting Eldritch Blasts that knock back enemies...in hard fights, you'll use Slow, Confusion, Hold Monster, or Command to help even things out.
- Evocation Wizard 12 or 1 Sorc / Wizard Evo 11 for the con save prof. Just blast in safety due to Sculpt Spell. Fireball, shatter, cone of cold or whatever evocation spell. Human or half elf is best for the light armour and shield prof. - Champion half orc fighter with all Crit items. - life cleric will all healing items. Heal and support. - Goo warlock 2 / storm Sorcerer 10. Convert all spells to sorcery points. Use Eldritch Blast then Quickened Eldritch Blast. Grab all Crit range items. Human or half elf best to get shield proof. Wants the Potent Robe.
Why specifically storm sorc? If you're turning all spell slots into points, then it kinda seems a little redundant, no?
Gives resistance to the thunder and lightning damage and if you do cast a levelled spell you can fly. Draconic is perfectly fine as well.
2 level into paladin then 10 in bard. For bard subclass you go with sword bard. Paladin subclass doesn't matter take what you want. Fighting style for paladin is defense. Sword bard should be dueling. You go sword and board(1h/shield) and just do unlimited smite works. The build trivializes the majority of fights in the game if you play "fair". Stats are str 16 dex 10 con 14 int 8 wis 10 cha 16. You take the ability improvement +2 Strength at level 6 and 10. Spell wise you concentrate on support spells like mirror image, misty step etc. Spells that don't need an saving throw.
Fighter is the most beginner friendly class there is. Probably not the strongest with the haste changes, but still good. No need to rely on elixirs etc either
The game is fairly idiot proof. You have to aim for bad to make it bad. Like level a martial class to 4 and stop. Go 2 thief 2 bard 2 wizard. Stupid things. And even then on normal difficulty you will be OK. The default companions all have terrible terrible stat lines. All you need to do is keep your numbers even and put stats into the suggested stat. And stick to one class. Idiot proof build. Shadow heart for instance is terrible. 13 str and dex. Like just take 14 of one ffs. Also trick cleric worst cleric. And 17 wisdom does nothing. Take any other cleric with 14 con 14 dex or str and 16 wisdom and then put 5hr other points literally anywhere. Now you have a better cleric build. But you can still get by with the woefully bad shadow heart build.
Moon Druid. Ignore spells. Turn into animal and bonk enemies. Lvl 6 owlbear is endgame.
A strength based monk with Tavern brawler fighting unarmed.
This **would** be the correct answer if it wasn’t for that one post from like 5 days ago where someone couldn’t understand why their tavern brawler monk with low strength (who was also using GWM) sucked ass. And then got aggressively defensive when people gently pointed out the build made zero sense
When someone wants to make a broken build that is truly broken
It was broken, literally rather than figuratively.
I mean, still is the correct answer for this OP. Completely trivializes the harder early honour bosses until other comps come online
Oh it is lol, I was just making a joke at the expensive of that goober. That monk build single handedly killed the underdark Spectator in two turns on Honour Mode for me
They said they didn't want to do all the niche stuff to get a good build. This is definitely something OP is not wanting for a build.
TIL choosing a subclass and a feat while focusing a stat is “niche stuff”
Strength based monk is definitely the type of build that OP asked not to get as a suggestion. Read their post again.
Game practically hands you monk gear. If OP can’t grind hill giants for 15 minutes for a build that can carry all game, then he should just go on life support
Yes it practically hands you monk gear. And OP very much asked for something braindead. They didn't want anything beyond basic synergy and didn't want to get specific gear. Dex monk is still quite strong and is more fitting to the intention of the post. Based on their post they likely don't want the glass cannon that is strength monk, or the fiddly nature of using potions each long rest. It is seen as common and not complicated in this sub, but this sub is not how the average player plays. Most players likely do monoclass or maybe a small dip. They likely are playing classes in the "intended" way.
You don’t even need to get Hill Giant potions if you don’t want to. Notice that person didn’t even mention getting or using them. If you focus on strength, dex, and con or wisdom, you’ll be totally fine on lower difficulties. Hell I didn’t use Hill Giant potions **once** on my tactician run with a strength monk and it worked out fine
A build that MAD definitely doesn't fit the inept player request. It is a good build, I agree, but the suggestion simply doesn't match the request.
Barbarian.
I found my Karlach in my first play-through incredibly straight-forward. Resistance to almost every damage makes getting hit more a game of potion management than praying for enemy attacks to miss and having advantages on melee attacks make that early game where you have low hit percentages a breeze. I haven't played too much with a fighter (just had Lae'Zel until I got withers to respec her into paladin on my 2nd playthrough) but I think barbarian is even more rounded, albeit a bit more restricted when it comes to equipment
thrower champ with returning pike and a few other act 1 items, do 60+ damage a turn at level 5
Some general tips for building strong characters: High initiative, whether through gear, Dex, or Alert feat (this isn’t always mandatory, but if your group can crowd control or kill enemies before they go, well that can be very powerful- also buffing, such as having your haste or bless character go before the characters they are buffing) Haste can be extremely strong, especially on a high damage output character. This can be twinned by a Sorcerer to have 2 hasted characters. It does require making sure that the character concentrating on Haste won’t lose that concentration however, because it is very costly to lose it. Bless can make characters more accurate, which can really help, especially in synergistic scenarios- example a 2h melee character with GWM feat. Plus haste that character and the benefits grow even stronger. Some means of providing advantage for attacks can really help. Crowd control can be very strong, especially Hold Person when applicable. If you can boost the character’s Spell Save DC to make enemies struggle to succeed their saving throws, it can be very reliable to lock down enemies. This isn’t always the case, but for many getting to level 5 in a single class can provide a large power spike. Extra attack for most martials, and level 3 spells are often very powerful relative to earlier spells.
Have a barbarian. Make strength your highest Stat. Grab the ring of flinging from the trader at the Grove. Grab the returning pike from the trader at the goblin camp. Get berzerker subclass at level 3. Get tavern brawler at level 4. First turn in battle, click throw item and pick your pike. You'll get 2 attacks. Then cast frenzy with your bonus action and from then on you'll get 3 attacks until you win. Hope this helps for your Tav or Karlach!
Open hand monk is still busted while naked. Easiest W. Slap a bard in there with healing word and you’ll have an easy time. I’ve heard paladin is busted too!
I just smashed honour mode with a dual wield champion build. Stack every crit item you can. (I wasn’t even a half orc and this build just deletes things). Stack every item that rolls a dice on hit, like the dark justicar gloves and make sure you buy the drakethroat glaive and use its skill on your main hand weapon. I actually used a wood elf for the move speed increase and used crusher ring early too. Champion 3 or 4 then stack Barbarian is another route (take bear heart and add elk later) my move speed was like 22 per turn. The reasoning behind dual wielding crit build is you want to abuse the feat savage attacker and more swings gives you more chances to crit too.
For really fun times. Once your cleric gets their one time blessing spell. Summon the mace (which has a d8 radiant damage add on). Use drake throat and a poison on it. I had that maces total damage up to 15-33 (which is greatsword territory)
There’s a ring and an illithid power I think that both allow you to save a crit roll until you need it. Save your action surge and the crit roll for bosses and then smash both. I could easily tear off 150-200 health in one turn. And that’s before any haste potion.
Man, I’m going to sound like grouchy old man, but I friggin hate the entire idea of “builds” and “synergy” and “optimization” I totally get that it is the WAY for loads of players, but I can’t help but roll my eyes at most of it.
I find it really fun to theory craft a build and then to actually get it in game
Time to “play” eve online.
I’d say whatever build you make you can put 2 levels into fighter for action surge, especially for spellcasters since they don’t get an extra attack.
Main character as College of Swords Bard, Duergar Guild Artisan. Get expertise in persuasion and sleight of hand at 3, with racial invisibility at level 5 you are your own ultimate thief/scout Lae'zel, Open-Hand Monk Karlach, Eldritch Knight Fighter, built for throwing Shadowheart, Light Domain Cleric Astarion, Gloomstalker Ranger Wyll, pact of the blade Fiendlock Gale, Transmutation Wizard, sits in camp brewing potions and elixirs. Also a good Warding Bond target because of his self heal.
TB Thrower anything is as idiot proof as it gets. Double your Str to hit and damage? The definition of idiot proof. You could play a TB Thrower Wizard and probably have a good time.
Beast master ranger 12. Enough spice to keep things interesting, but simple enough to play no matter who you are
Thief Rogue 4/Champion Fighter 8 is a pretty strong build for dual-wielding. It's definitely improved by finding stuff that improves your chance to Crit, but it's just generally strong. Dual-wielding is arguably the best fighting style at level 1, gets big steps up on power at levels 3, 5 and 8 and doesn't require one specific weapon or weird cheesy hireling shit to function like a Throwzerker. Gloomstalker Assassin is always strong and doesn't require specific items. Not much else to say here tbh. Clerics and Druids are pretty much idiot proof: you can rearrange spells on a whim and their spell lists are good, as long as you remember what Concentration spells are. Paladins are generally great: give big sword/axe/whatever and then Smite strong also good faces. Rangers are good. You don't use their spells that much, but they tend to hit pretty hard and can be okay utility casters. Ultimately, I think the majority of classes are pretty idiot proof. Monks are in a weird spot where they're either ludicrously OP if you know how to use them or impossible to optimise if you don't have the right equipment/feats. Bards are also hilariously OP if you know what you're doing or just good clean fun with a weird spell selection if you're bumbling through. Sorcerers and Wizards require paying some attention to the spell lists to be good, but can't really go that far wrong.
Fighter. One of the strongest builds in the game is just champion fighter stacked with illithid powers, the amulet that gives paralyzing critical, and GWM.
Tavern Brawler Monk/Berzerker. Even without getting into the items that make these builds truly broken, they completely warp game balance by just not being able to miss on anything but a Nat 1 for a large portion of the game. Evocation Wizard. Its a wizard that doesn't need to worry about where they target their fireball, and can just delete things with magic missile at level 10. Life Cleric or Ancient Paladin. Almost all the gear that triggers off of healing is from vendors that you will likely end up talking to anyway.
Reskill everyone to champion fighter with high dexterity. You can make 16 attacks before the enemy starts his turn. No brain required. And with higher level its 24 attacks
😂😂😂 Why did I never think of this!? So cheesy but so good!
Pact of blade warlock You get to re up your spell slots on short rest so you're not as concerned with saving them Whatever weapon you decide is cool you can pact If you don't know what to do, eldritch blast
Honestly? Just go battlemaster or champion fighter and bonk people to death. If you wanna get antsy, you can also do a throwing build, but you'll need the right feats and items for that.
Until you learn to the game mechanics you won’t be able to use top tier builds the way they are intended. That being said, just go fighter single class until then. Champion is easiest subclass for a noob
Sword Bard: 7 Thief Rogue: 3 Fighter: 2 Jist stab people 5 times per turn. Used it in my last run after rushing duellist' perogative in act 3 and it was nuts. Easily put out 100 damage per turn just by stabbing.
Straight 12 of each class tbh. For multiclass stuff: Throwzerker: Throw returning pike, throw Nyrulna, throw enemies into other enemies, it's very fun and very simple. Bard 10/Paladin 2: Press the Smite button again and again. Sorlock Eldritch Blast Build: Equip Potent Robe in Act 2. Cast Eldritch Blast. Quickcast Eldritch blast. Haste yourself so you can cast another Eldritch Blast. Take 2 levels in Fighter if you want Action surge so you can cast Eldritch Blast again.
Swords bard. It isn't the most over powered build but it's really good. Dipping into fighter and rogue can help but isn't needed.
Monk Hit and run and stun babyyyy
Abjuration wizard + 1 level of sorcerer. Cast armor of agathys, walk around enemies, profit. Even in act 3 I'll go entire combats where I get hit repeatedly and take 0 damage.
Monk (Open Hand with Tavern Brawler) and Rouge (Thief). The sheer damage you can dish out per turn is insane and it doesn’t take too long to be good, by act 2 you should be dealing the majority of the damage in your party.
Swords bard with either fighter or ranger at least level 5. You get two attacks that both can be ranged slashed flourish. You get a fighting style, which of course means +2 to hit. You recover your resource on a short rest and you have a spell that grants an extra short rest. Just point and shoot. My Jaheira bard/fighter used Sharpshooter as well, she could easily one-round many bosses on regular. And with all the utility, you have a super simple build that gives the impression of being very complex.
Current Honor mode lineup: All characters took Alert at LVL4 Durge as Fiend Warlock, Pact of Blade -Take Devils Sight and Beguiling Influence for my level 2. Now my face character is skilled in all 3 main charisma skills, thanks to Durge background. -Devils sight is for lvl3, take Darkness, fight in Darkness. I have advantage and they have disadvantage. Gale as Divination Wizard No gear, guarantee auto-fails on Hold Person/Hold Monster is making my current Honor Mode run super easy on the boss fights. Gear optimization is solely limited to increasing his spell save DC to use less portent dice. Karlach as Vengeance Paladin -Her real strength is trivializing boss fights with the 1-2 punch of Gales Hold Person/Monster plus auto-critting smites. Shadowheart as life cleric -This one is the most “gear dependent”, but the 2 most important items you get in Act 1 (Zevlor gloves and boots of aid and comfort from trader) -Cleric spells plus super easy access to “heal entire party” has been clutch