Surprise works in this way. if you attack from stealth, the game makes a mostly secret roll of your stealth score against every enemy's perception roll. If you and every nearby ally succeed, you should get each enemy that does not have "Perfect Sentinel" the surprised condition. (Currently, I don't know if one enemy having perfect sentinel prevents ALL enemies from getting surprise, because you can have surprised allies when you yourself have the Alert feat.) It seems to be more reliable to gain surprise by letting only one character approach, and having everyone else hang back. Then, when turn based combat begins, your allies can move in. If the enemy has the surprised condition on their turn they simply PASS the turn, but they appear to RETAIN the surprised condition until the start of the new round. At this time I do not know if Alert is necessary for assassins, because the Surprised condition does linger, even if the enemy has taken their turn. This MAY be a bug.
by my experience, you just need to none of your allies to be detected by any of the enemies when you start combat, and be hidding, or far enought they are out of the combat i don't think my team would get as much surprise round as much with a 12 dex in heavy armor, if there was roll involved they only roll perception when you step in the red area, that indicates their cone of vision
The weird thing is if you are not in the initial initiative roll on an attempted surprise round it can get really wonky. You can select the other characters and wont be in turn based combat and you can move around an unlimited amount in between turns. If you do engage it acts like a readied action where you get one attack only and you now roll initiative. When your turn comes up which can be in the next round you can only get a bonus action and move which can really work against you. For example, combat starts, round one your off character moves into position and attacks on initiative turn 5 and rolls a 6 on initiative. Your characters action is over the enemy on initiative 4 moves in and attacks you twice, round 2 your turn 6 comes up and you only have a bonus action, enemy on 4 gets two more attacks on you. Round 3 you can finally fully act. If you got surprise off its not quite as bad as the enemy lost round one at least. But I've had plenty of times where getting a ambush off hurt me more than it helped me.
I think it's actually the other way around. If the enemy doesn't detect you when you attack them, you don't enter combat at all. If they do detect you, you enter combat and get a surprise round. This can have interesting interactions when you attack from stealth while in real time mode, succeed the stealth check, and then the enemy starts looking for you and then finds you. You won't get a surprise round in this case because the game doesn't consider you to have attacked from stealth to start combat.
i think your pc's don't get in combat if after the enemy turning around after taking the hit, the enemy don't find the pc, a lot of the times one or 2 of my pc's don't get into iniative util they are either detected or attack
Githyanki patrol in my playthrough: relentless death squad that demolishes my entire party in a single turn, using their abilities to the fullest to disable then dismantle my team. Githyanki patrol in this playthrough: *dash action surge dash*
Protip: switching between weapon sets is free, doesn't require any of your actions. So always switch to your melee weapons before ending your turn, so that you have the option for Opportunity Attacks. You can switch back to your ranged weapons next turn no problem, and switch back again at the end of that turn.
@@angelpotatogirl2218 That's not true and literally shows that in the video at 4:35. What you are probably seeing in your game is someone holding their weapon and casting a spell because BG3 doesn't have spell casting foci, and thus the caster is able to keep a melee weapon in their hand and benefit from opportunity attacks. My double hand crossbow wielding thief Astarian does not get opportunity attacks on enemies unless he switches to his melee weapon. Believe me, enemies try to run past your units all the time.
@@The_Yukki There's a reason that's not the case in regular D&D and is one of the few things I'm surprised passed through the 3 year alpha-stage of the game
You can hit invisible targets with point attacks. To note bodies block attacks and the larger they are the easier they are to hit by attacking the ground and ensuring the path of the attack is going at an angle that causes the path to be blocked by the person. This works with about any ranged attack and any spell that results in you being able to target the ground. Scorching ray included and eldritch blast, which makes for some multiattack shenanigans, being when they get hit by more than one attack they have a higher chance of losing concentration.
The irony is that EK is ridiculously strong in BG3 due to the changes in Tavern Brawler and Bound Weapon. It results in a thrown weapon build that has about as much damage output as a Sharpshooter build without the penalty to attack.
@@MayHugger Larian changed Tavern Brawler to add "When you make an unarmed attack, use an improvised weapon, or throw something, your strength modifier is added twice to the damage and attack rolls", and Bound Weapon "this weapon cannot be disarmed and magically returns to the wielder's hand if thrown". This means if you started with 17Str then at lvl 4 any bound weapon deals 1d4+8 dmg, gets an additional +4 to attack rolls, and has the returning property. The Ring of Flinging and Gloves of Uninhibited Kushigo both add 1d4 to damage. And this scales with weight or stacks with the thrown property. With the equipment above, The Extra Heavy Greataxe(4d4+8) and Returning Pike(1d10+2d4+9) are the MVP weapons of Act 1. I wrote a build guide on Lemmy that I used for Lae'zel on my first run. lemm.ee/post/3812933
@@CompletelyNewguy i somewhat get why they did that with the karmic dice stuff in the game. I just wish it would've been like a d10 AND have a toggle option. Thankfully there's already a few mods out to change the die to whatever you want
The trick for surprise round extra attacks is starting combat in turn based mode. The first attacks come from outside of combat rounds. That means when combat starts you have full actions inside combat rounds. But if you aren't turn based then it uses your in combat action economy.
that is not true entirely, assasin has an extra feat that refreshes action and bonus action on combat start, its just wonky at the moment if youre getting your action back or not, but its not reliable, atleast from experience and info i could gather
@Josephkerr101 No, he's right. If you attack from Stealth and aren't an Assassin Rogue, you enter initiative without your action the first round because you already spent it attacking.
I write this before having watched the video: My initial multiplayer build was fighter battlemaster / GOOlock pact of the blade, dumped STR first chance available for full CHA Also had urchin background with a decent dex, which also gave me decent ranged options with dual hand xbows I was the Face, the Disarmer/Lockpicker, the op ranged/melee damage, AND the support role /Area Denial caster I'd unintentionally created the best all arounder build. After seeing what I was doing with it, instead of complaining about not being able to see, my cohorts respecced for 2 levels of Lock to get devils sight We trivialized the rest of the content just using darkness. I won initiative during the Balthazaar fight and killed him round 1, before he got a chance to do anything (to the exasperated surprise of the rest of my party, who'd had issues with him during their solo play) I Disarmed , and then 2 shot Myrkul... pretty sad his Scythe dropped into the chasm below him... Pity....was looking forward to using that with an 'Enlarge' buff My wife got to Balthazaar on her solo slower paced playthrough and thought it was impossible, then I sat down with her on her 15th attempt and told her to have Gale drop Darkness and then have everyone run into it. What was a tear-filled rage-inducing impossiblity turned into that lame ass moment where the Birthday Magician shows you how they did the trick... and you're like "Oh..." Some of my recent playthroughs use darkness and dont even bother with getting devil's sight... I have Gale drop it and everyone hides inside - popping out on their turn to damage then run back into the inky black shield I cackle madly when the AI mobs drop darkness on me... "Thanks!" At best, all ranged AI just stands there, thumbs up their asses while I pop out and chip away at them from range at worst, things come into the black with me and it's a straight up fight with no advantage on either side. Darkness is completely OP Larian needs to add "Held Actions" to both Player and AI toolsets Now I'll watch the video
When you say you killed Balthazar round 1 do you mean with the damage of your entire party or your character alone? I remember he had over 100 hp, which is possible with some setup and cheese builds, but I'm not sure how a warlock/fighter can do that much damage especially if you need to burn an action to use darkness first.
Plays a warlock multiclass, uses hand crossbows when eldritch blast is right fucking there. Unless you went sharpshooter, hand crossbows are just worse. Also Paladin/Warlock does literally all of those roles better.
@@Ansalion No, I , on my first round of actions, killed him before he got to do anything (Hasted before we went into battle, action surge, luck of the far realms autocrit and some items that just add 1d6 of various types of damage) my imitative is high enough that I get to set the tone for the fight
@@louiesatterwhite3885 I didn't intend to be a caster and I preferred using invocations for devils sight /darkness cheese and beguiling presence for the faceman role... Also, you can't disarm people with eldritch blast.. but you can with a battlemaster and a hand crossbow.... but by all means tell me more of how i should play my character. go play your pally and take your shitty attitude with ya.
The crazy thing about enemies using invisibility is that you can ping their portraits and it will ping the exact location of where they're at if you forget or they were invisible prior to entering combat
I dont know how much work goes into these videos, but as far as quality goes I'd be willing to watch a lot of them before I were to bore of them. Please keep making them past act 1!!
Hey Pack Tactics im not sure if you are aware of this or if you care but if you open your abilities and spells page (hotkey K) you can drag actions onto your hotbar which also includes the passive toggle for Sharpshooter. You may like this better than having to click on the Passives tab all the time. Thanks for the video and please do more of these.
Another thing about surprise rounds in bg3 is that if you initiate combat from turnbased mode, you get to keep your full action. So you hide, start turn based mode, crawl up to just before enemy sight line and attack. This way you deal damage, and you can attack again before the enemy gets to take their turn.
The fact that the AI decided that Sarth should double dash instead of misty step is wild. Especially considering that, if she gets close and has actions, she does the next best thing to manifesting your character sheet irl, rolling a blunt and smoking it.
in that fight at start, you can use comand or disarming strike, to make the dragon rider drop his weapon, that is super strong, a +3 great sword with 1d6 extra psy damage, and special attack that can stun the target ( some of those effects only work when wielded by Gith)
The fight inside goblin camp is funnier when you position your team high up above the main chamber. All of those 9hp goblins will try yo climb up to you, and you get to pick them up one by one and throw them back at their friends. Also bonus action push.
Right besides your portret there are 2 swords, if click that you don't make use of dual wielding when clicking an enemy to attack. So you can attack separately without having to interact with the UI
Darkness inflicts the Blind condition, it makes the items that prevent blindness really good with darkness because then you can do more while inside it.
Basic melee weapon attacks can't target invisible enemies, but area weapon attacks can. If you have access to cleave you can hit an invisible enemy. All ranged weapon attacks can hit invisible enemies as well. So long as the trajectory marker goes through where the enemy is it will count as a hit.
natures snare is found in a goblin hideout under grove you can find the entrance throught the prison hidden behind parkor or next to exit towerds the rest of map away from starting area watch out super death statues in there
Using action surge so you can double dash and run into melee is generally a bad idea, especially if you use your bonus action too and have a better option to get somewhere via other means, but I will say going turn-based mode and stealing the Idol of Sylvanus with thief Astarion then triple dashing with cunning action out to the harpy area before the druids even talk to you is pretty dang satisfying, would recommend for sure with any thief character ^w^ (Btw Nature's Snare is in that trapped chest in the tunnel between the Tiefling jail for that one goblin, the inner grove, and a doorway back out to the road leading to Blighted Village)
In regards to invisibility in BG3 : Someone did a mythbuster episode on Invisibility and you can hit enemies out of it with ranged attacks, even when you are aiming past them, assuming the arc hits the invisible person first. You can even hit invisible people with fucking MAGIC MISSILE assuming the trajectory goes through the invisible person (but it seems once they are revealed, the missiles immediately change trajectory)
I've been Darkness abusing with Shadow Monk ever since level 3 with a very ranged heavy party otherwise so I've learned a decent amount about how the AI reacts to it and a few other quirks I've noticed is that if you hide the hide automatically will succeed and the AI gets very lost typically when you try to do that with your entire party to the point that they just don't do anything some turns. The AI also tries to blast around the corners with aoe spells around the edge if a character is known to be there. So for anyone who wants to try this here are some scattered notes and observations. I've had enemies also shoot special arrows around or in the cloud without directly targeting my characters to try hit or knock me out of it. For example in the Githyanki fight in this video I used Darkness on that hill you all were fighting on, but for me one archer shot a knock back arrow just inside it which sent someone off the cliff. I believe I was about 5-10ft (3/5 meters in BG3) in it and they managed to aim it just right to almost shove two people off in one shot. I've also had explosives and thrown weapons hurled at me because the AI tries to aim the trajectory and/or aoe range in such a way that I get hit even if they can't target my character specifically. The AI will try to hit you if it has the means to, but for basic arrow shots and attack roll cantrips/spell like fire bolt for example yeah Darkness owns those completely. I tend to just hide with any casters concentrating on things because of this just in case, because you might as well be invincible from most direct attacks at that point. I've also noticed that if I hide and walk out of the darkness just an inch or two to shoot a bow before walking back in, I still get advantage. So Rogues and Shadow Monks for example can abuse this. To just attack, then walk back in and hide, then move around a little so the AI wastes their time trying to hit where you were. I've also had the AI try to shoot under me while I was on high ground which obviously didn't work. If you have Devil Sight the Darkness doesn't do anything to you anymore, it's pretty much just a field that exists for decoration at that point which means you can just EB while in it all day long iME. Finally as a bonus note, Spiritual Weapon is immune to the blinded condition so it can just camp in your cloud as an extra minion and swing freely with advantage forever if for any reason melee enemies get close to you. Spiritual Weapon is a minion summon in this game and only costs one bonus action to summon then you never need to spend anything on it ever again.
Darkness is absolutely OP in the game, I'm playing a Drow Sorclock and have a Druid in my party with Spike Growth, you can also get two items that give you immunity to blinded in the game (a ring and a spear, any more hints would be spoilers for at least one of those items) and let me tell you: OH BOY does the AI not know what to do against me, especially when I repelling blast them right back into the spike growth when they eventually make it to me :D
Huddling up works for haste potions too, haste us broken in this game btw. You can also heal infinitely in combat by moving healing potions into a damaging surface right next to your characters.
Regarding the 'battleships' with invisibility (whether directly or via darkness), the rules as written do support this. Unfortunately though, like many things in 5e, they don't support it very well. Let me explain. The rules are that a Perception check lets you 'spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of' creatures, including their location. That is to say, if you CAN see, hear, or use some other applicable sense, then the Perception skill comes into play - if you succeed you detect them (and their location). This is further reinforced in the Invisibility condition which says the location CAN be detected by hearing them - not WILL. That is to say, there is a check involved - its not automatic. Right, so what are the DCs for Perception against a creature that has not used the Hide action to force their Stealth roll to be contested against? Well, this is where 5e falls flat; it doesn't say. That baker who makes the best rolls in Lovesbreadsville half way around the world? Hasn't used the Hide action, but you don't know where they are. You can't see, hear, or otherwise detect them - because they are half way around the world. Whatever that DC actually IS, your not meeting it. Buts it high. Very high. Likewise, a jester prancing about 30ft in front of you in bright daylight on an empty road will be a DC so low that it would be very difficult to fail. Like DC 2 (not DC 0 - some very low Wis creatures that are Poisoned or something might be able to fail). What about a creature who is invisible 50ft away? Yeah, don't know. 5e leaves that for the DM to decide on a DC for. Literally zero help here. Rushing waterfall nearby? Probably not hearing them unless they shout or something. Maybe if you have Keen Hearing, which certain creatures do have (Owls, for example). But if no waterfall? Maybe like a DC 12 or something? If they are 100ft away the DC should increase - how much? Don't know. At our table we use a rough rule of 1 DC for every 5ft away, +5 for a noisy environment. That would be DC 15 here, which is about right I feel. Now, I haven't played BG3 yet (had it since early access, just not got around to it). Does it allow you via a passive Perception check to detect something invisible (again, could be via darkness) if you get close enough? Does it increase the distance if you have Keen Hearing (Advantage adds +5 to the check)? Does it change based on the environment? Can you take an action to roll the dice for the check (with Advantage if Keen Hearing)? If so, then they are playing by the rules as I see it, just they are having to make up the DCs which are not written. So, kind of RAW?
The most reliable way I've found to trigger surprise is to have only 1 character in stealth do an attack, but have the others unstealthed nearby (but not in combat yet obviously). The attack-from-stealth hits and causes a surprise round on the enemy, allowing all your guys to have a turn.
also volo can replace one of your eyes for permenant see invis 9m Roah moonglow is a vendor and sells more good stuff in act 2 if you let her live (a glaive that give a free elemental weapon cast)
Invisibilty can be broken by any means except for a melee attack targeting the exact spot, any other effect reveals invisible oponent, for example even create water.. it goes so far that targeting magic missiles at someone that stands behind an invisible target will cause the magic missile to miss the target and instead hit the invisible object/creature.
When you're high up like at the beginning with still low hit chances with bows, just throw stuff at people. Even if you miss they'll still take damage. Doesn't have to be explosive/aoe stuff either, hammers or boots or whatever.
This is why Half-Drow, alongside gith, is the best race in the game. Free Faerie Fire and Charm resist is decent, but free darkness and armor prof is incredible, with glaive prof being notable if you’re playing a swords bard ig
NPCs hate it too. They’ll follow it and break certain things if you bring it into an area where they’re friendly to you. That’s why I prefer gloom stalker.
I’ve taken to using darkness to get away with picking every door in the game. Npc’s can’t see through it and they do not care if you cast it in the middle of their homes.
Surprise Tip: Use a scout or Nova damage to open combat with 1 character in the "*Encounter Zone*" // I assume you attempt some prebattle prep but preparation like barrels and stuff// Once combat for the Scout has triggered combat--> initiative will roll, but only with that unit. DON'T END YOUR SCOUTS TURN!!! You then prepare / move and get the other 3 into position. As they move in or attack then they will have a chance to attack. As each attacks or enemies spot you then you will lose the ability to act if you ever end your turn. (Also have someone drop a torch then click-&-drag it into a good spot for easy ranged dipping. The damage is helpful at early level and is BEST with dual hand crossbows:) 💘 💘 🔥🔥 P.S. Thanks for taking time to reading.
I haven't watched this yet, but Daniel and I are running the same thing! (We also have the same name lol) but before I watch. I went full ice build (obtainable truly in act 2) because I have a barb 3/ monk x (tavern brawler) who just throws things like water bottles to soak enemies, then I do the freeze on them. Level 10 has been fun!
adding to the insanity of darkness: Devil's Sight. If your warlock has Devil's Sight you are not blinded in darkness. This means you get the benefits without the downsides. You can just cast it on yourself to get a personal bubble that no one can target into while you sling eldritch blasts out without even having to move. Alternatively you could go Pact of the Blade (which is massively buffed and amazing with paladin) and put down darkness in melee to blind your enemies. You could even web the area to keep them in longer. Couple this with terrain or creative use of other spells from party members and you have forced all melee into your great-weapon master Pact of the Blade divine smite murder cloud.
@@admiraltonydawning3847 By 12 you want 7 oathbreaker pally / 5 blade warlock. Sneak attack would be 1d6 once per round IF you are using a finesse weapon, but level 7 oathbreaker gets aura of hate. That adds your cha modifier to each melee attack (stacking with pact of blade), so 20 base cha + 2 cha from an act 3 vendor hat is 6 damage per hit with any melee weapon for an extra 18 dpr instead of 1d6 dpr with a weapon restriction. Dont get me wrong there are some good finesse weapons like the one that reduces what you need for a crit (better smites), or the Wyll specific one that gives summon cambion, but part of what i love with the build is you arent restricted to any weapon type (you can replace GWF with savage attacker for a more general build). The subclass of lock doesnt matter too much, fiend gives extra health while the GOO aoe fear on crits is good since you would have advantage for more crits and the fear keeps people in darkness. The main important thing is lv5 blade for the cha mod on weapons and the stacking extra attack
RIGHT? I played a Gloomstalker ranger, and Im much more familiar with pathfinder, so when I discovered the Darkness and Fog Cloud spells I was like "No. No way this is this simply OP. There has to be a catch". But not only there is not a catch, they give you a spear in act 3 that can cast this spell AT WILL
this might not be intentional, and if it's not it might have been fixed, but for invisible targets if you have a projectile you can search for them with your trajectory line and it will actually break the line if you find the right spot, so you can pretty reliably hit them with non AOE if you don't mind being cheesy about it
There are two sets of boots that let you walk on webs without being slowed or enwebbed. Would be worth you guys tracking them down. One is very easy to get.
We're missing one of them. We're absolutely getting it. We have a little list of magic items we want to get but I have no idea where they are. There's a sword that does a bless effect and a staff that boosts bless to 2d4. You can stack it with the sword and get 3d4 bless.
@@PackTactics is it the drow finesse longsword you're after? *mild spoilers ahead* It's in the underdark. Go to the spider caves under the Blighted village. Clear out the spiders. There is a massive pit with green light shining out of it. Cast featherfall and jump down it. You'll end up in the underdark. Go south until you get to the fort and then go west. Its on a little pedestal sword in the stone style. Go north from there to get to the myconid colony. There are two great vendors there that sell great stuff. Including a ring that means anytime you heal someone they get bless for I think 2 turns. Great in combination with healing word. Also has a necklace that gives you an extra projectile on magic missile which is nice.
@@benry007 The finesse longsword is just awesome, throw that baby on a character with two weapon fighting and just *chefs kiss*. The magic missile necklace is also just bonkers, I love that thing. It's a free upcasting of a spell that automatically hits, also gives a bonus casting of it. Amazing for a sorc.
Even before BG3, I figured a Bard/Warlock with Devils Sight and Darkness could dominate in a battle. It may not be as broken in tabletop, but having advantage while everyone else is disadvantaged is still very good.
Melee version of it is warlock/thief rogue/monk. Because they're Blinded, you get advantage. Because you can see in the magic darkness, you don't get disadvantage. Because of these two, you always have sneak attack available.
This is such bullying of the A.I. I kinda love it. And you guys didn't even resort to the broken explosive bag of holding tricks you can do in the game.
What you're probably experiencing is that they rolled higher initiative then you so they already skipped their turn, for example if you sneak attack them and they all roll higher then you then it will just start your turn automatically skipping all of their turns. So when you end your turn it starts a new round and thus they are no longer surprised and can act which makes it look like you didn't get your surprise round. This is why it's important before you do anything in your surprise round that all of your characters are in combat so they get a turn
Just wait until they find out thay haste gives you an ENTIRE EXTRA ACTION equivalent to an action surge (except you can also cast full spells with it) Haste is action surge for 10 turns.
I'm pretty sure surprised is just if you attack WHILE HIDING then they don't get an action. There's a few exceptions like the one big act 1 boss that summons adds and duplicates (being vague for spoilers) but it seems pretty consistent
Pretty sure if you get a success stealth check when attacking from hiding the combat won’t start(no surprise encounter). The enemy will then run at your direction and start a normal combat when they find you.
Something I notice is apparently you know the encounters beforehand? That does make the game a lot easier as opposed to - say - talking to the enemy and them turning hostile because you didn't expect it. That said holy shit this game is so easy lmao. I built a pure melee group for fun and even they can absolutely roll the encounters in this game. Difficult terrain doesn't exist with the ridiculous jump distances you get, plus the magic items you can get are ridiculous. (There is for example a quarterstaff that gives you +2 to all saves)
In regards to surprise there is a small and inconsistent issue. Upon making the initial attack the game attempts to figure out who is in combat and assigns the enemies who are surprised, but for whatever reason those enemies have sort of a ghost aggro range (likely for when they want to run off to alert guards type mechanic) and on occasion just for entering combat those surprised enemies can trigger others to join combat at the same time, those enemies that join from being alerted by another **will not be surprised**.
if I can recommend two builds I recommend: 5 lv rogue assassin, 5 lv ranger gloomstalker and 2 fighter as a race I recommend the half-orc, the second build: 1 lv cleric war , 5 lv warlock pact of the blade , 6 lv fighter battlemaster
Darknes is my go too. But i am running with mods so i can cast on item so its mobile plus i installed eldritch inniate feat meaning i can take that and get devils sight. Think all my characters have this feat. What i also like to do is creep up close to a target and use one of the whip spells and yank it back into the darkness enter turn-based mode and kill it. Usually once the target dies all other targets that went red return back to yellow. With mods I have added blade singer and hex blade warlock plus mod that let's you got to 20 but you have to multiclass so as not to have more than 12 lvls in a class. Also added mod that allows two weapon attacks if dual wielding so you can attack twice and if you want use bonus action for third.
So, although almost Nobody runs it right, in 5e, surprise is a condition that applies to beings if they fail the save(although there is not often a save) or on nat1 on initiative, a being that is surprised does not get to move, action, or bonus action until the beginning of their Next turn. (Reactions and free actions can happen though once alerted) in this game i think they use a close approximation with this, but they always have a chance to save, but its even more restrictive
I did the goblin camp in the exact same way basically lmao, killed Gut in her room, camped it out and killed all the goblins from inside, then went up that ladder in the corner and camped the high ground vs Minthara and Dror, problem is that Dror has a pretty easy path up to the high ground and his fucking aoe push spell is absolute bullshit. However, if you can lure him back to the catwalk near the ladder in the corner, he can't actually reach that position from the high ground near his room, idk what it is, he just can't jump that gap, so you can easily kill him from there. Same for Minthara if she uses misty step up there--she can't jump the gap either for whatever reason. They might've fixed that since tho.
Do you think that the Caster/Martial divide is any better in this game than in 5e? I have seen quite a lot of success using monks with Tavern Brawler and 18 strength to just punch everything to death extremely fast. +10 to hit and dealing 1d6+8 damage is very strong, especially with Flurry of Blows.
Casters are stronger the harder/more complex combat is + the default kill potential. The latter is still there in bg3 but since you can just... kill most encounters in a round the ideal control condition is ||dead||.
Darkness is extremely useful in scenarios where you exit a cutscene as a clustered group surrounded by enemies and if there are npcs you want to defend
Hmm. I haven't tried it yet but since i gave wyll the ability to see in magical darkness + pact of the blade, he could just act as an invincible turret. Darkness isn't the smale as cloud cover.
Surprised is weird in this game. As far as I can tell, your party enters in stealth and the individual character that triggers combat gets their attack off, then the remaining party members can continue to act out of order until they engage in the fight. When you get your turn in the first round, you will have already spent the resources for the effect that you used to start the combat. I'm still in act 1, but it seems like this game assumes most of the enemies are quite ready for battle, so maybe it changes later on.
Darkness didn't used to be so good in the beta. They have "fixed" it since then to be a lot more like how it works in D&D. No one is supposed to be able to see into it or out of it unless they have the ability to see through magical darkness, which very few creatures/people do or if they don't have traditional sight and see through something like tremor sense. It becomes REALLY good for either warlocks with devil's sight or any character who has the ring that prevents blindness because then no one can shoot into it but you can shoot out of it. The only downside is that if a melee class character gets into it and gets close enough to you, I think within 10ft, then they can still attack you in melee, just with disadvantage because they are blinded, and any AoE lighting surface effects like fire can break up the darkness so that people can still see you.
So if you attack first normally you get surprise there is a caveat though i suspect if they have the Alert feat they cannot be surprised. Seeing as they're fighters im guessing alert was one of there feats but its just a hunch
Been wondering when someone would cover the darkness spell. It is OP as hell. Was thinking of making a Drow rouge/fighter/warlock for some backstabbing fun and spamming eldritch blasts. Btw, lvl2 warlock can see through darkness.
They can't see through darkness. Darkness inflicts the Blind condition in BG3, it works different than tabletop. But you can get gear that prevents blindness and that works.
Surprise works in this way.
if you attack from stealth, the game makes a mostly secret roll of your stealth score against every enemy's perception roll. If you and every nearby ally succeed, you should get each enemy that does not have "Perfect Sentinel" the surprised condition. (Currently, I don't know if one enemy having perfect sentinel prevents ALL enemies from getting surprise, because you can have surprised allies when you yourself have the Alert feat.)
It seems to be more reliable to gain surprise by letting only one character approach, and having everyone else hang back. Then, when turn based combat begins, your allies can move in.
If the enemy has the surprised condition on their turn they simply PASS the turn, but they appear to RETAIN the surprised condition until the start of the new round. At this time I do not know if Alert is necessary for assassins, because the Surprised condition does linger, even if the enemy has taken their turn. This MAY be a bug.
by my experience, you just need to none of your allies to be detected by any of the enemies when you start combat, and be hidding, or far enought they are out of the combat
i don't think my team would get as much surprise round as much with a 12 dex in heavy armor, if there was roll involved
they only roll perception when you step in the red area, that indicates their cone of vision
The weird thing is if you are not in the initial initiative roll on an attempted surprise round it can get really wonky. You can select the other characters and wont be in turn based combat and you can move around an unlimited amount in between turns. If you do engage it acts like a readied action where you get one attack only and you now roll initiative. When your turn comes up which can be in the next round you can only get a bonus action and move which can really work against you. For example, combat starts, round one your off character moves into position and attacks on initiative turn 5 and rolls a 6 on initiative. Your characters action is over the enemy on initiative 4 moves in and attacks you twice, round 2 your turn 6 comes up and you only have a bonus action, enemy on 4 gets two more attacks on you. Round 3 you can finally fully act. If you got surprise off its not quite as bad as the enemy lost round one at least. But I've had plenty of times where getting a ambush off hurt me more than it helped me.
I think it's actually the other way around. If the enemy doesn't detect you when you attack them, you don't enter combat at all. If they do detect you, you enter combat and get a surprise round. This can have interesting interactions when you attack from stealth while in real time mode, succeed the stealth check, and then the enemy starts looking for you and then finds you. You won't get a surprise round in this case because the game doesn't consider you to have attacked from stealth to start combat.
@@Ansalion it works better if you attack using turn based mode, because then you retain your full action come your turn.
i think your pc's don't get in combat if after the enemy turning around after taking the hit, the enemy don't find the pc, a lot of the times one or 2 of my pc's don't get into iniative util they are either detected or attack
Githyanki patrol in my playthrough: relentless death squad that demolishes my entire party in a single turn, using their abilities to the fullest to disable then dismantle my team.
Githyanki patrol in this playthrough: *dash action surge dash*
And this is why positioning and ranged combat are important. The githyanki had to waste their turns getting into melee
They destroyed me twice so I prepped the next time (fed karlach a coin, etc) and ended up nat 20ing the persuasion check and skipping their combat 😂
Well, they didn't initiate dialogue, just opened from extreme high ground. With the same amount of prep, your battle would go as smoothly.
@@kylecarey4189 Right just cheese every fight from high ground. Who cares about dialogue anyway
@@FlyingFistOfJudaif you’re not playing the game as a Murder Hobo, are you even playing D&D?
Protip: switching between weapon sets is free, doesn't require any of your actions. So always switch to your melee weapons before ending your turn, so that you have the option for Opportunity Attacks. You can switch back to your ranged weapons next turn no problem, and switch back again at the end of that turn.
This isn't needed. The game does it for you
You also benefit from any shield you have equipped without having to switch
@@angelpotatogirl2218being able to benefit from shields is such a dumb buff to ranged characters.
@@angelpotatogirl2218 That's not true and literally shows that in the video at 4:35. What you are probably seeing in your game is someone holding their weapon and casting a spell because BG3 doesn't have spell casting foci, and thus the caster is able to keep a melee weapon in their hand and benefit from opportunity attacks. My double hand crossbow wielding thief Astarian does not get opportunity attacks on enemies unless he switches to his melee weapon. Believe me, enemies try to run past your units all the time.
Also, you get the +2 ac if your sword and boarding
@@The_Yukki There's a reason that's not the case in regular D&D and is one of the few things I'm surprised passed through the 3 year alpha-stage of the game
You can hit invisible targets with point attacks. To note bodies block attacks and the larger they are the easier they are to hit by attacking the ground and ensuring the path of the attack is going at an angle that causes the path to be blocked by the person. This works with about any ranged attack and any spell that results in you being able to target the ground. Scorching ray included and eldritch blast, which makes for some multiattack shenanigans, being when they get hit by more than one attack they have a higher chance of losing concentration.
"After casting a spell or cantrip they can make a weapon attack as a bonus action. Cool, it's like Bladesinger."
Eldritch Knights are in tears
ikr
Tbf, I often forget Eldritch Knight is a thing.
The irony is that EK is ridiculously strong in BG3 due to the changes in Tavern Brawler and Bound Weapon. It results in a thrown weapon build that has about as much damage output as a Sharpshooter build without the penalty to attack.
@@pyrflie Could you elaborate a little more? That sounds fun.
@@MayHugger Larian changed Tavern Brawler to add "When you make an unarmed attack, use an improvised weapon, or throw something, your strength modifier is added twice to the damage and attack rolls", and Bound Weapon "this weapon cannot be disarmed and magically returns to the wielder's hand if thrown". This means if you started with 17Str then at lvl 4 any bound weapon deals 1d4+8 dmg, gets an additional +4 to attack rolls, and has the returning property. The Ring of Flinging and Gloves of Uninhibited Kushigo both add 1d4 to damage. And this scales with weight or stacks with the thrown property. With the equipment above, The Extra Heavy Greataxe(4d4+8) and Returning Pike(1d10+2d4+9) are the MVP weapons of Act 1.
I wrote a build guide on Lemmy that I used for Lae'zel on my first run. lemm.ee/post/3812933
If you didnt get the knockback on the female gith, she easily 1 shots lvl 5 party members shes kinda wild
I managed to beat that group at lvl 4 without gravity, but it took so much lol
Not sure if it's been mentioned but a very important thing is that initiative is not a d20 roll in this game it's a d4 roll.
Yea and alert didn't get changed as well
Getting 125% of the maximum initiative roll for just a feat is crazy.
@@The_Yukki i forgot gloomstalker has that lmao that's crazy
@@The_YukkiPlaying Gloomstalker is so nice. I love my deep gnome gloomstalker
that would explain why everyone's numbers are so low all the time when they roll initiative.
@@CompletelyNewguy i somewhat get why they did that with the karmic dice stuff in the game. I just wish it would've been like a d10 AND have a toggle option. Thankfully there's already a few mods out to change the die to whatever you want
The trick for surprise round extra attacks is starting combat in turn based mode. The first attacks come from outside of combat rounds. That means when combat starts you have full actions inside combat rounds. But if you aren't turn based then it uses your in combat action economy.
that is not true entirely, assasin has an extra feat that refreshes action and bonus action on combat start, its just wonky at the moment if youre getting your action back or not, but its not reliable, atleast from experience and info i could gather
@@Darksoulsfail nope did it with every class. It's even crazier with gloom stalker.
@@Darksoulsfail maybe you weren't stealthed?
I'll triple check it but I've been having that kind of result all the time.
@Josephkerr101 No, he's right. If you attack from Stealth and aren't an Assassin Rogue, you enter initiative without your action the first round because you already spent it attacking.
Wake up honey, pack tactics is uploading a new BG3 video
😅 guilty
Darkness is really fun in BG3. I've used it to my advantage several times to just cheese fights.
darkness is really fun unless it's literally everywhere.
I've used Darkness to rob vendors of their entire stock and ended up having more gold than the entire commonwealth of Baldur's Gate.
I write this before having watched the video:
My initial multiplayer build was fighter battlemaster / GOOlock pact of the blade, dumped STR first chance available for full CHA
Also had urchin background with a decent dex, which also gave me decent ranged options with dual hand xbows
I was the Face, the Disarmer/Lockpicker, the op ranged/melee damage, AND the support role /Area Denial caster
I'd unintentionally created the best all arounder build.
After seeing what I was doing with it, instead of complaining about not being able to see, my cohorts respecced for 2 levels of Lock to get devils sight
We trivialized the rest of the content just using darkness.
I won initiative during the Balthazaar fight and killed him round 1, before he got a chance to do anything (to the exasperated surprise of the rest of my party, who'd had issues with him during their solo play)
I Disarmed , and then 2 shot Myrkul... pretty sad his Scythe dropped into the chasm below him... Pity....was looking forward to using that with an 'Enlarge' buff
My wife got to Balthazaar on her solo slower paced playthrough and thought it was impossible, then I sat down with her on her 15th attempt and told her to have Gale drop Darkness and then have everyone run into it.
What was a tear-filled rage-inducing impossiblity turned into that lame ass moment where the Birthday Magician shows you how they did the trick... and you're like "Oh..."
Some of my recent playthroughs use darkness and dont even bother with getting devil's sight... I have Gale drop it and everyone hides inside - popping out on their turn to damage then run back into the inky black shield
I cackle madly when the AI mobs drop darkness on me... "Thanks!"
At best, all ranged AI just stands there, thumbs up their asses while I pop out and chip away at them from range
at worst, things come into the black with me and it's a straight up fight with no advantage on either side.
Darkness is completely OP
Larian needs to add "Held Actions" to both Player and AI toolsets
Now I'll watch the video
When you say you killed Balthazar round 1 do you mean with the damage of your entire party or your character alone? I remember he had over 100 hp, which is possible with some setup and cheese builds, but I'm not sure how a warlock/fighter can do that much damage especially if you need to burn an action to use darkness first.
Plays a warlock multiclass, uses hand crossbows when eldritch blast is right fucking there. Unless you went sharpshooter, hand crossbows are just worse. Also Paladin/Warlock does literally all of those roles better.
@@Ansalion No, I , on my first round of actions, killed him before he got to do anything
(Hasted before we went into battle, action surge, luck of the far realms autocrit and some items that just add 1d6 of various types of damage)
my imitative is high enough that I get to set the tone for the fight
@@louiesatterwhite3885 I didn't intend to be a caster and I preferred using invocations for devils sight /darkness cheese and beguiling presence for the faceman role... Also, you can't disarm people with eldritch blast.. but you can with a battlemaster and a hand crossbow.... but by all means tell me more of how i should play my character.
go play your pally and take your shitty attitude with ya.
The crazy thing about enemies using invisibility is that you can ping their portraits and it will ping the exact location of where they're at if you forget or they were invisible prior to entering combat
I dont know how much work goes into these videos, but as far as quality goes I'd be willing to watch a lot of them before I were to bore of them. Please keep making them past act 1!!
i agree, but i'd rather just say "i enjoy watching them" rather than "they aren't boring yet" 😂
19:00 fun fact, if you knock the goblins into the spider pit, the spiders will eat them
Hey Pack Tactics im not sure if you are aware of this or if you care but if you open your abilities and spells page (hotkey K) you can drag actions onto your hotbar which also includes the passive toggle for Sharpshooter. You may like this better than having to click on the Passives tab all the time. Thanks for the video and please do more of these.
Another thing about surprise rounds in bg3 is that if you initiate combat from turnbased mode, you get to keep your full action. So you hide, start turn based mode, crawl up to just before enemy sight line and attack. This way you deal damage, and you can attack again before the enemy gets to take their turn.
Is this a bug or intentional?
The fact that the AI decided that Sarth should double dash instead of misty step is wild. Especially considering that, if she gets close and has actions, she does the next best thing to manifesting your character sheet irl, rolling a blunt and smoking it.
To get maximum chance of surprise, enter turn base mode before engaging.
Please do more! This is great 👍 Also I'd be interested in the full session.
I'm very interested to see this past act 1. Keep it up!
in that fight at start, you can use comand or disarming strike, to make the dragon rider drop his weapon, that is super strong, a +3 great sword with 1d6 extra psy damage, and special attack that can stun the target ( some of those effects only work when wielded by Gith)
seen alot of reports about him now dropping a crossbow, think they have patched it
i didn't got any update one the game since i done it, but idk
The fight inside goblin camp is funnier when you position your team high up above the main chamber. All of those 9hp goblins will try yo climb up to you, and you get to pick them up one by one and throw them back at their friends. Also bonus action push.
Right besides your portret there are 2 swords, if click that you don't make use of dual wielding when clicking an enemy to attack. So you can attack separately without having to interact with the UI
Darkness inflicts the Blind condition, it makes the items that prevent blindness really good with darkness because then you can do more while inside it.
I think the first patch tweaked the AI behavior for Darkness. Martials have been running into the effect more reliably for me.
That goblin is a physicist, he knows there’s a non-zero chance that the Ray of Sickness will quantum tunnel through the wall 😂
Basic melee weapon attacks can't target invisible enemies, but area weapon attacks can. If you have access to cleave you can hit an invisible enemy. All ranged weapon attacks can hit invisible enemies as well. So long as the trajectory marker goes through where the enemy is it will count as a hit.
You can also use create water to remove invisibility.
natures snare is found in a goblin hideout under grove you can find the entrance throught the prison hidden behind parkor or next to exit towerds the rest of map away from starting area
watch out super death statues in there
Using action surge so you can double dash and run into melee is generally a bad idea, especially if you use your bonus action too and have a better option to get somewhere via other means, but I will say going turn-based mode and stealing the Idol of Sylvanus with thief Astarion then triple dashing with cunning action out to the harpy area before the druids even talk to you is pretty dang satisfying, would recommend for sure with any thief character ^w^
(Btw Nature's Snare is in that trapped chest in the tunnel between the Tiefling jail for that one goblin, the inner grove, and a doorway back out to the road leading to Blighted Village)
In regards to invisibility in BG3 :
Someone did a mythbuster episode on Invisibility and you can hit enemies out of it with ranged attacks, even when you are aiming past them, assuming the arc hits the invisible person first.
You can even hit invisible people with fucking MAGIC MISSILE assuming the trajectory goes through the invisible person (but it seems once they are revealed, the missiles immediately change trajectory)
I've been Darkness abusing with Shadow Monk ever since level 3 with a very ranged heavy party otherwise so I've learned a decent amount about how the AI reacts to it and a few other quirks I've noticed is that if you hide the hide automatically will succeed and the AI gets very lost typically when you try to do that with your entire party to the point that they just don't do anything some turns. The AI also tries to blast around the corners with aoe spells around the edge if a character is known to be there. So for anyone who wants to try this here are some scattered notes and observations.
I've had enemies also shoot special arrows around or in the cloud without directly targeting my characters to try hit or knock me out of it. For example in the Githyanki fight in this video I used Darkness on that hill you all were fighting on, but for me one archer shot a knock back arrow just inside it which sent someone off the cliff. I believe I was about 5-10ft (3/5 meters in BG3) in it and they managed to aim it just right to almost shove two people off in one shot.
I've also had explosives and thrown weapons hurled at me because the AI tries to aim the trajectory and/or aoe range in such a way that I get hit even if they can't target my character specifically. The AI will try to hit you if it has the means to, but for basic arrow shots and attack roll cantrips/spell like fire bolt for example yeah Darkness owns those completely. I tend to just hide with any casters concentrating on things because of this just in case, because you might as well be invincible from most direct attacks at that point.
I've also noticed that if I hide and walk out of the darkness just an inch or two to shoot a bow before walking back in, I still get advantage. So Rogues and Shadow Monks for example can abuse this. To just attack, then walk back in and hide, then move around a little so the AI wastes their time trying to hit where you were. I've also had the AI try to shoot under me while I was on high ground which obviously didn't work.
If you have Devil Sight the Darkness doesn't do anything to you anymore, it's pretty much just a field that exists for decoration at that point which means you can just EB while in it all day long iME.
Finally as a bonus note, Spiritual Weapon is immune to the blinded condition so it can just camp in your cloud as an extra minion and swing freely with advantage forever if for any reason melee enemies get close to you. Spiritual Weapon is a minion summon in this game and only costs one bonus action to summon then you never need to spend anything on it ever again.
I can't even tell how much i enjoy pro at work. Keep em coming guys.
Darkness is absolutely OP in the game, I'm playing a Drow Sorclock and have a Druid in my party with Spike Growth, you can also get two items that give you immunity to blinded in the game (a ring and a spear, any more hints would be spoilers for at least one of those items) and let me tell you: OH BOY does the AI not know what to do against me, especially when I repelling blast them right back into the spike growth when they eventually make it to me :D
Huddling up works for haste potions too, haste us broken in this game btw. You can also heal infinitely in combat by moving healing potions into a damaging surface right next to your characters.
The Nature's Snare QS is found in a cave behind the Grove's prison area
Regarding the 'battleships' with invisibility (whether directly or via darkness), the rules as written do support this. Unfortunately though, like many things in 5e, they don't support it very well. Let me explain.
The rules are that a Perception check lets you 'spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of' creatures, including their location. That is to say, if you CAN see, hear, or use some other applicable sense, then the Perception skill comes into play - if you succeed you detect them (and their location). This is further reinforced in the Invisibility condition which says the location CAN be detected by hearing them - not WILL. That is to say, there is a check involved - its not automatic.
Right, so what are the DCs for Perception against a creature that has not used the Hide action to force their Stealth roll to be contested against? Well, this is where 5e falls flat; it doesn't say. That baker who makes the best rolls in Lovesbreadsville half way around the world? Hasn't used the Hide action, but you don't know where they are. You can't see, hear, or otherwise detect them - because they are half way around the world. Whatever that DC actually IS, your not meeting it. Buts it high. Very high.
Likewise, a jester prancing about 30ft in front of you in bright daylight on an empty road will be a DC so low that it would be very difficult to fail. Like DC 2 (not DC 0 - some very low Wis creatures that are Poisoned or something might be able to fail).
What about a creature who is invisible 50ft away? Yeah, don't know. 5e leaves that for the DM to decide on a DC for. Literally zero help here. Rushing waterfall nearby? Probably not hearing them unless they shout or something. Maybe if you have Keen Hearing, which certain creatures do have (Owls, for example). But if no waterfall? Maybe like a DC 12 or something? If they are 100ft away the DC should increase - how much? Don't know. At our table we use a rough rule of 1 DC for every 5ft away, +5 for a noisy environment. That would be DC 15 here, which is about right I feel.
Now, I haven't played BG3 yet (had it since early access, just not got around to it). Does it allow you via a passive Perception check to detect something invisible (again, could be via darkness) if you get close enough? Does it increase the distance if you have Keen Hearing (Advantage adds +5 to the check)? Does it change based on the environment? Can you take an action to roll the dice for the check (with Advantage if Keen Hearing)? If so, then they are playing by the rules as I see it, just they are having to make up the DCs which are not written. So, kind of RAW?
I believe that without see invisibility you cannot roll to break their invisibility.
The most reliable way I've found to trigger surprise is to have only 1 character in stealth do an attack, but have the others unstealthed nearby (but not in combat yet obviously). The attack-from-stealth hits and causes a surprise round on the enemy, allowing all your guys to have a turn.
also volo can replace one of your eyes for permenant see invis 9m
Roah moonglow is a vendor and sells more good stuff in act 2 if you let her live (a glaive that give a free elemental weapon cast)
Oh my I can’t wait to see what broken tactics you come up with!
Invisibilty can be broken by any means except for a melee attack targeting the exact spot, any other effect reveals invisible oponent, for example even create water.. it goes so far that targeting magic missiles at someone that stands behind an invisible target will cause the magic missile to miss the target and instead hit the invisible object/creature.
When you're high up like at the beginning with still low hit chances with bows, just throw stuff at people. Even if you miss they'll still take damage. Doesn't have to be explosive/aoe stuff either, hammers or boots or whatever.
This is why Half-Drow, alongside gith, is the best race in the game. Free Faerie Fire and Charm resist is decent, but free darkness and armor prof is incredible, with glaive prof being notable if you’re playing a swords bard ig
Constantly seeing the giant spider follow you is unsettling... I know it's infinite Web (which is awesome), but for me it's just infinite nightmares
NPCs hate it too. They’ll follow it and break certain things if you bring it into an area where they’re friendly to you. That’s why I prefer gloom stalker.
The ensnaring quarter staff was from High Priestess Gut
I’ve taken to using darkness to get away with picking every door in the game. Npc’s can’t see through it and they do not care if you cast it in the middle of their homes.
Surprise Tip:
Use a scout or Nova damage to open combat with 1 character in the "*Encounter Zone*" //
I assume you attempt some prebattle prep but preparation like barrels and stuff//
Once combat for the Scout has triggered combat--> initiative will roll, but only with that unit.
DON'T END YOUR SCOUTS TURN!!!
You then prepare / move and get the other 3 into position. As they move in or attack then they will have a chance to attack. As each attacks or enemies spot you then you will lose the ability to act if you ever end your turn.
(Also have someone drop a torch then click-&-drag it into a good spot for easy ranged dipping. The damage is helpful at early level and is BEST with dual hand crossbows:) 💘 💘 🔥🔥
P.S.
Thanks for taking time to reading.
I haven't watched this yet, but Daniel and I are running the same thing! (We also have the same name lol) but before I watch. I went full ice build (obtainable truly in act 2) because I have a barb 3/ monk x (tavern brawler) who just throws things like water bottles to soak enemies, then I do the freeze on them. Level 10 has been fun!
There is a plus and minus symbol next to the end turn button, press that to expand your hot bar
adding to the insanity of darkness: Devil's Sight. If your warlock has Devil's Sight you are not blinded in darkness. This means you get the benefits without the downsides. You can just cast it on yourself to get a personal bubble that no one can target into while you sling eldritch blasts out without even having to move. Alternatively you could go Pact of the Blade (which is massively buffed and amazing with paladin) and put down darkness in melee to blind your enemies. You could even web the area to keep them in longer. Couple this with terrain or creative use of other spells from party members and you have forced all melee into your great-weapon master Pact of the Blade divine smite murder cloud.
You could add Rogue in the mix and always get sneak attacks in your melee fights.
@@admiraltonydawning3847 By 12 you want 7 oathbreaker pally / 5 blade warlock. Sneak attack would be 1d6 once per round IF you are using a finesse weapon, but level 7 oathbreaker gets aura of hate. That adds your cha modifier to each melee attack (stacking with pact of blade), so 20 base cha + 2 cha from an act 3 vendor hat is 6 damage per hit with any melee weapon for an extra 18 dpr instead of 1d6 dpr with a weapon restriction. Dont get me wrong there are some good finesse weapons like the one that reduces what you need for a crit (better smites), or the Wyll specific one that gives summon cambion, but part of what i love with the build is you arent restricted to any weapon type (you can replace GWF with savage attacker for a more general build).
The subclass of lock doesnt matter too much, fiend gives extra health while the GOO aoe fear on crits is good since you would have advantage for more crits and the fear keeps people in darkness. The main important thing is lv5 blade for the cha mod on weapons and the stacking extra attack
RIGHT? I played a Gloomstalker ranger, and Im much more familiar with pathfinder, so when I discovered the Darkness and Fog Cloud spells I was like "No. No way this is this simply OP. There has to be a catch".
But not only there is not a catch, they give you a spear in act 3 that can cast this spell AT WILL
I also started the fight from the catwalk, but repelling blasted the red dude into the chasm to start, missed his loot lol
Iirc that quarterstaff with ensnare was found in the goblin cave with the animal statues
this might not be intentional, and if it's not it might have been fixed, but for invisible targets if you have a projectile you can search for them with your trajectory line and it will actually break the line if you find the right spot, so you can pretty reliably hit them with non AOE if you don't mind being cheesy about it
very fun to follow your game!
They should turn this into a tabletop game.
I hear some people are working on some homebrew to make it work in Cyberpunk RED
There are two sets of boots that let you walk on webs without being slowed or enwebbed. Would be worth you guys tracking them down. One is very easy to get.
We're missing one of them. We're absolutely getting it. We have a little list of magic items we want to get but I have no idea where they are. There's a sword that does a bless effect and a staff that boosts bless to 2d4. You can stack it with the sword and get 3d4 bless.
@@PackTacticsthe staff is in the underdark
@@PackTactics is it the drow finesse longsword you're after? *mild spoilers ahead* It's in the underdark. Go to the spider caves under the Blighted village. Clear out the spiders. There is a massive pit with green light shining out of it. Cast featherfall and jump down it. You'll end up in the underdark. Go south until you get to the fort and then go west. Its on a little pedestal sword in the stone style. Go north from there to get to the myconid colony. There are two great vendors there that sell great stuff. Including a ring that means anytime you heal someone they get bless for I think 2 turns. Great in combination with healing word. Also has a necklace that gives you an extra projectile on magic missile which is nice.
@@benry007 The finesse longsword is just awesome, throw that baby on a character with two weapon fighting and just *chefs kiss*. The magic missile necklace is also just bonkers, I love that thing. It's a free upcasting of a spell that automatically hits, also gives a bonus casting of it. Amazing for a sorc.
Even before BG3, I figured a Bard/Warlock with Devils Sight and Darkness could dominate in a battle.
It may not be as broken in tabletop, but having advantage while everyone else is disadvantaged is still very good.
Melee version of it is warlock/thief rogue/monk. Because they're Blinded, you get advantage. Because you can see in the magic darkness, you don't get disadvantage. Because of these two, you always have sneak attack available.
loving this videos... only thing bad is that they end
This is such bullying of the A.I. I kinda love it. And you guys didn't even resort to the broken explosive bag of holding tricks you can do in the game.
Damn, fighting the gith at the mountain pass before the goblin camp is crazy to me. They would always mess me up immediately
What you're probably experiencing is that they rolled higher initiative then you so they already skipped their turn, for example if you sneak attack them and they all roll higher then you then it will just start your turn automatically skipping all of their turns. So when you end your turn it starts a new round and thus they are no longer surprised and can act which makes it look like you didn't get your surprise round. This is why it's important before you do anything in your surprise round that all of your characters are in combat so they get a turn
Just wait until they find out thay haste gives you an ENTIRE EXTRA ACTION equivalent to an action surge (except you can also cast full spells with it)
Haste is action surge for 10 turns.
This video is simply awesome!
I'm pretty sure surprised is just if you attack WHILE HIDING then they don't get an action. There's a few exceptions like the one big act 1 boss that summons adds and duplicates (being vague for spoilers) but it seems pretty consistent
Pretty sure if you get a success stealth check when attacking from hiding the combat won’t start(no surprise encounter). The enemy will then run at your direction and start a normal combat when they find you.
That boss got alert feat, can’t be surprised
Playing this video in the background while playing BG3 gets might confusing sound-wise. :D
Love the series!
enter turn based mode and attack from stealth and your action refreshes right away
Something I notice is apparently you know the encounters beforehand? That does make the game a lot easier as opposed to - say - talking to the enemy and them turning hostile because you didn't expect it.
That said holy shit this game is so easy lmao. I built a pure melee group for fun and even they can absolutely roll the encounters in this game. Difficult terrain doesn't exist with the ridiculous jump distances you get, plus the magic items you can get are ridiculous. (There is for example a quarterstaff that gives you +2 to all saves)
In regards to surprise there is a small and inconsistent issue. Upon making the initial attack the game attempts to figure out who is in combat and assigns the enemies who are surprised, but for whatever reason those enemies have sort of a ghost aggro range (likely for when they want to run off to alert guards type mechanic) and on occasion just for entering combat those surprised enemies can trigger others to join combat at the same time, those enemies that join from being alerted by another **will not be surprised**.
ye, i missed the archery gloves after.....an unfortunate string of decisions left me surrounded by corpses.
The drow actually is the leader of the goblin war band. She answers to General Thorm who put her in charge.
The dragon not rendering early was good
What it would be interesting is seeing the encounter building benchmark they are using. Did they kept most enemies mostly melee focused?
14:32 I really liked the Darkness trick; I wonder if you can do the same with Fog Cloud (since it's a lower level spell)
if I can recommend two builds I recommend: 5 lv rogue assassin, 5 lv ranger gloomstalker and 2 fighter as a race I recommend the half-orc, the second build: 1 lv cleric war , 5 lv warlock pact of the blade , 6 lv fighter battlemaster
for the first one it's better to be rogue 4, ranger 5, and fighter 3 for battlemaster.
this run is pretty interesting, and chasm is as deadly as it is.
Pro tip: your spider can use the dash action too on turns where it can't make an attack no reason not to use dash to close some more distance
Wow, can't believe you got Crit Crab to join you.
I think the crab should have been Jeremy Clawford.
Darknes is my go too. But i am running with mods so i can cast on item so its mobile plus i installed eldritch inniate feat meaning i can take that and get devils sight. Think all my characters have this feat.
What i also like to do is creep up close to a target and use one of the whip spells and yank it back into the darkness enter turn-based mode and kill it. Usually once the target dies all other targets that went red return back to yellow. With mods I have added blade singer and hex blade warlock plus mod that let's you got to 20 but you have to multiclass so as not to have more than 12 lvls in a class. Also added mod that allows two weapon attacks if dual wielding so you can attack twice and if you want use bonus action for third.
Pro Tip: Water Bottles and Carafes are a cheap way to immediately strip invisibility on targets you know the location of
So, although almost Nobody runs it right, in 5e, surprise is a condition that applies to beings if they fail the save(although there is not often a save) or on nat1 on initiative, a being that is surprised does not get to move, action, or bonus action until the beginning of their Next turn. (Reactions and free actions can happen though once alerted) in this game i think they use a close approximation with this, but they always have a chance to save, but its even more restrictive
I did the goblin camp in the exact same way basically lmao, killed Gut in her room, camped it out and killed all the goblins from inside, then went up that ladder in the corner and camped the high ground vs Minthara and Dror, problem is that Dror has a pretty easy path up to the high ground and his fucking aoe push spell is absolute bullshit. However, if you can lure him back to the catwalk near the ladder in the corner, he can't actually reach that position from the high ground near his room, idk what it is, he just can't jump that gap, so you can easily kill him from there. Same for Minthara if she uses misty step up there--she can't jump the gap either for whatever reason. They might've fixed that since tho.
Do you think that the Caster/Martial divide is any better in this game than in 5e? I have seen quite a lot of success using monks with Tavern Brawler and 18 strength to just punch everything to death extremely fast. +10 to hit and dealing 1d6+8 damage is very strong, especially with Flurry of Blows.
I'd say martials are def closer to casters in bg3
Throws just using an attack and BA shove were pretty great changes
Casters are stronger the harder/more complex combat is + the default kill potential. The latter is still there in bg3 but since you can just... kill most encounters in a round the ideal control condition is ||dead||.
Those gith were the hardest fight for me in act 1 though I started the fight after talking to them, and didn't abuse the high ground
a singular darkness arrow and a simple wall of fire cast trivialized the end of act 2 its really busted
Darkness is extremely useful in scenarios where you exit a cutscene as a clustered group surrounded by enemies and if there are npcs you want to defend
Hmm. I haven't tried it yet but since i gave wyll the ability to see in magical darkness + pact of the blade, he could just act as an invincible turret.
Darkness isn't the smale as cloud cover.
Keep doing the darkness tactic in chapter two should be funny.
Would you upload your build somehwere? I'm also playing a ranger and I like your dual hand crossbow build
Surprised is weird in this game. As far as I can tell, your party enters in stealth and the individual character that triggers combat gets their attack off, then the remaining party members can continue to act out of order until they engage in the fight. When you get your turn in the first round, you will have already spent the resources for the effect that you used to start the combat.
I'm still in act 1, but it seems like this game assumes most of the enemies are quite ready for battle, so maybe it changes later on.
I’m pretty sure you got what surprised does but there are enemies that have a trait that doesn’t let them be surprised
9 minuts of Gith npc having a stroke trying to get on melee
Darkness didn't used to be so good in the beta.
They have "fixed" it since then to be a lot more like how it works in D&D.
No one is supposed to be able to see into it or out of it unless they have the ability to see through magical darkness, which very few creatures/people do or if they don't have traditional sight and see through something like tremor sense.
It becomes REALLY good for either warlocks with devil's sight or any character who has the ring that prevents blindness because then no one can shoot into it but you can shoot out of it.
The only downside is that if a melee class character gets into it and gets close enough to you, I think within 10ft, then they can still attack you in melee, just with disadvantage because they are blinded, and any AoE lighting surface effects like fire can break up the darkness so that people can still see you.
Baldur's 🐊
If you have the alert feat you wont ever be surprised.
Hey Kobold, I know this is unrelated, but is the malleable Illusions/simulacrum combo any good?
So if you attack first normally you get surprise there is a caveat though i suspect if they have the Alert feat they cannot be surprised. Seeing as they're fighters im guessing alert was one of there feats but its just a hunch
Awesome!
Been wondering when someone would cover the darkness spell. It is OP as hell. Was thinking of making a Drow rouge/fighter/warlock for some backstabbing fun and spamming eldritch blasts. Btw, lvl2 warlock can see through darkness.
They can't see through darkness. Darkness inflicts the Blind condition in BG3, it works different than tabletop. But you can get gear that prevents blindness and that works.
@@christopherbelanger6612 Huh? You can def see in darkness if you take Devil's sight.