I essentially played something like this with an Arcane Trickster once. The permanent mage hand is quite notable because you can pickpocket the hand to give it potions and consumables (even barrels). This cuts out the tedium of dropping and dragging potions and grenades for the hand to throw and lets you split up and divide and conquer more as the mage hand has its own inventory to throw from. You can also have the mage hand consume an elixir of vigilance, so it always goes first with you, and it can consume potions of speed to throw twice. You can also have the hand consume/equip the mourning frost staff to give it the ability to cast ray of frost to create ice surfaces. Aid, warding bond, and mage armor from a camp caster and transmutation wizard keeps the mage hand quite durable for the whole game, and eventually, death ward helps too so that you'll never lose the stockpile you give it. The mage hand regains invisibility every short rest and heals every long rest (aid also heals it effectively). If you ever want to respec or something, you can pickpocket all your inventory off the mage hand and use a trident or something to disarm whatever weapon you gave the mage hand. Lots of fun tricks with the permanent mage hand throughout the entire game. Quite a lot of consumable utility from a single subclass!
I literally thought about this when I watched your tierlist, and now I have a proper build to go with my idea. Definitely trying this on my next playthrough!
Remember, you can use enhance ability on the alchemist during potion making, to give them advantage on the medicine (wisdom) check. If you do this you really don't need to be halfling because you will only fail on a double 1, so 1 in 400...
How would you do a non-combatant party face build? I had this idea for a playthrough where Tav is some kind of high noble who absolutely refuses to fight and runs away or hides in combat and sends their three bodyguards to fight for them. Instead they do everything out-of-combat. They pick locks, know about religion, history, etc. and are good at dialogue checks. For stats I thought 12 / 8 / 8 / 16 / 14 / 16 with the Gloves of Dexterity would work. For leveling: Bard 4 for skills, Jack-of-all-Trades and Alert to make sure you can run away before being attacked. Rogue 4 to be better at running away, and you can also grab Skilled or Mobile. Knowledge Cleric 2 for Knowledge of the Ages, so you can ignore one of the categories when choosing skills. Divination Wizard 2 for utility. I'm not sure about the best leveling order, though. You could also play as a Githyanki and replace Cleric with two more Rogue levels for Expertise. The bodyguards would be two melee fighters and a magic user who stays close to Tav and can Dimension Door them to safety in emergencies. Any ideas to improve this?
Love this idea. It sounds hilarious. I think for RP reasons, gith doesn't make a ton of sense. Maybe you lean into the snotty elf stereotype (high elf gets you persusion Prof and the friends cantrip) you should keep the cleric levels because knowledge of the ages is great and because thamaturgy is weaker friends but without the consequences (and it is great for all the bard specific performance dialogue checks that friends can't help with anyway)
This is what I'm currently playing on my first Tactician finishing run rn! I use Arcane Trickster for the extra infinite mage hand to lob all the potions, bombs etc as an extra throw action every round :D
I have been trying to figure out a way to put together this exact build ever since I figured out how powerful the potions and bombs in this game can be, so thank you for this! I wasn't sure if what I was imagining was viable in a coherent way, but this is pretty similar to what I thought might work. Detailing which classes to take at which level and for what reason was a huge, huge help. Many build guides out there will just tell you what your final level spread will be at 12, like "5 barb/3 rogue/2wiz/2 fighter", but not explain when it's best to take those levels. Very nice guide, thanks!
I once made a funny barbarian mixed with druid not for crazy feral shenanigans, but so to throw goodberries and blind enemies with them xD this game is just crazy
If I understood correctly the conditions in which the doubling of potions will fail, the probability of failing is a hair above half a percent. In odds its approx. 1 failed potion for each 173. The situations being a 2 on the d20 and 1s on both the extras d4, the doubling of 1 on the d20 or 2 on the rerroll of the d20 and both d4s are 1
Every run I take, I make sure to respec Gale, or lvlup a vacant partyy member into the transmutation wizard, and brew all that sexy haste potions with all of the hyena ears, you get from the gnolls fight. Usually it amounts to 18-20 haste potions. Never did this with any other craftables, but Im sure there are some worth the bother.
Can't say I agree on this one, I think this character needs to get alchemy and pickpocketing online first as a way to contribute to the party, it's not like they can solo. You start picking up ingredients as soon as you crash on the beach in wilderness so you are able to start crafting early. So level 1 in wizard, level 2 is rogue 1, level 3 is wizard 2 for experimental alchemy. On level 4 you can go into barbarian for medium armor, coincidentally level 4 is when exploration exp gives way to fighting.
On the other hand this way you're delaying extra attack until level 8 which is well into act 2. So this build should really be a pair of characters. Dex-based barb with first level in wizard doesn't sound too convincing anyway.
This is a really cool archetype. I feel the lack of bonuses to effect of alchemical concotions, not just the 2x to create them, is a huge missed opportunity when it comes to transmutation wizards. I really liked to play as an alchemist. this lack of bonus basically means in every run I take good old halfling there and make her an alchemist in camp that never sees battle.
Minor optimization some may be aware of, but you don't (in current patch, at least) need to keep the shapeshifter's boon ring equipped to keep the bonus - you only need it equipped when you become disguised/shapeshifted. This means it can be applied to as many characters as you want/need and also doesn't take up your ring slot.
I think you went way overboard with the wisdom stuff. A camp caster with Owl's Wisdom and 20 wis just does it better.. then you don't have to water down your character so much with abilities that are cheaply replaced by a camp caster. I think it makes more sense to have solid strength to carry more barrels. Still.. its a cool idea. Like having your own little Ironhand
Really this build seems like it’s only viable if you disallow camp casters in your playthrough. My go to potion brewer comes online at level 5 for 3 levels of bard for expertise and owls wisdom through enhance ability and the obviously required 2 levels of transmutation wizard
Kindda wanna get the race mod to make like a bugbear version of this, focus mostly on the barrels and name him Donkey Kong. Interesting build as always!
It's so so wild how much healing you have at your disposal in this game, I think that's the #1 difference from tabletop for me. I might do a run where I restrict potions to tabletop rules / prices
I mean you only really use it early on. Late game is more of a damage race. Kill the boss before it kills you. Heal is more to apply bless and blade ward
@@tranducquang5912 fair! But I do use a lot of healing even late game just to prolong adventure days and keep day long buffs. I only really long rest the two required times per playthrough and get to keep the spore bonus, act 2 statues bonus and rapture bonus (obviously not all at once but you know). And I know even if I end an encounter with everyone at low health I can heal it all with a couple throws!
@@joshhobbs4862 i don't like prolonging Adventuring day simply because it made no sense doing so. You need it to progress and i had problems with not triggering cannon events. I think its possible for me to completely delay wylls horn thingy till act 2 if i actively wanted to do that. Pretty sure you can make wyll not get any horns by not ever long resting but that sounds like a pain in the butt
I'd suggest making a camp caster transmutation wizard, buff with owl's wisdom and guidance. This takes care of the need for 2 wiz levels and points in WIS. You can then use a TB throwzerker build but stocked with lots of grenades. For fun, there are non-craftable throwables like heavy stones that can do small amount of direct dmg (more with TB and high STR) which are re-usable, or just pick up a good throwing weapon if grenades run short.
Change the barbarian to eldrich knight, add 3 lvs arcane trickster for the mage hand and this is the first legitimate build to thematicly use elixir of hill giant strength and tavern brawler.
Finally the transmutation wizard gets the respect they deserve! Thanks for this! One thing about Mage Hand is I have tried it with healing potions and the throwing seems very buggy. one time it threw the entire stack of potions at once, and missed. and another time i could not click on the potions at all. I wonder if anyone else has seen those issues? Maybe im just clicking wrong.
Although Thief Rogue is probably better for min-maxing this build, taking Arcane Trickster actually lets you take advantage of the subclass, which I can't think of any other build that can do that.
Finally someone made a guide on this. I love playing builds with sleight of hand to steal as many grenades, arrows and scrolls as possible and focusing on them as a gimmick. I usually stick to Duergar since I can invisible away if caught, but might try Halfling.
I’m going to try this for a Dark Urge solo run with a green skinned deep gnome who’s enamored with goblin alchemy. Being a Durge I’ll start out as a rogue and try to get the alchemy online with the wiz levels before he learns how to get better at using them (Barb levels)
If you could craft things like the shrapnel and smokepowder grenade or reliably buy them, then I would give this a try. As is, I think you're better off being a full archer and buying special arrows.
Why pair of crossbows though? You can't use special arrows with bonus action attacks. So just for a little additional damage? Wouldn't this character have a better use for a bonus action?
True, but you can dip the crossbows in fire, and it works perfectly with all the barrels\flammables. I even carry a candle to do this anywhere. Also one of the unique hand-crossbows does more dmg to burning targets, which synergises quite well.
I should definitely have gone into this more! Two hand crossbows let you light explosives with offhand attacks by dipping in fire, and let you get double use out of poisons and oils that you actually apply to weapons, as well as giving you more options for combats where you aren't raging or don't want to use grenades. Just makes the character much more flexible
Hi @Cephalopocalypse! I enjoy your videos very much. I'll watch this later, promise! In the meantime I wanted to ask whether are you going to do some slightly less meta builds like valor bard, elemental monk, champion warrior or beast master for example. I think they could be interesting
2nd characrer lvl as rogue would give your hand xbows and skills sooner, so you can start stealing stuff as soon as you get to the Grove. Barb does help with offensive and survivability. But having gear and potions seems more needed.
Also, by character lvl 3, you could have Transmutation Wizard unlocked getting the need potion making done. You won't have the number of attacks yet, but being able to craft the potions and making the skill checks sooner seems much more viable. If needed they can stay at camp until 4th character lvl, when they then multiclass into barb for the survivability and eventually the extra attacks.
I'd dip in druid and warlock for the multiple Eldritch blasts and the spore druid reaction to pop potions using the bonus action throws as the ignition of everything else. My spread would be 2 druid, 2 warlock, 3 thief, 3 barbarian, 2 transmutation wizard. Pick up the invocations one with shadows and repelling blasts so you can get some stealth and control options when you run out of rages. Also throw burning enemies at the barrels rather than the barrels at the enemies for additional damage and possibly grouping.
I essentially played something like this with an Arcane Trickster once. The permanent mage hand is quite notable because you can pickpocket the hand to give it potions and consumables (even barrels). This cuts out the tedium of dropping and dragging potions and grenades for the hand to throw and lets you split up and divide and conquer more as the mage hand has its own inventory to throw from. You can also have the mage hand consume an elixir of vigilance, so it always goes first with you, and it can consume potions of speed to throw twice. You can also have the hand consume/equip the mourning frost staff to give it the ability to cast ray of frost to create ice surfaces. Aid, warding bond, and mage armor from a camp caster and transmutation wizard keeps the mage hand quite durable for the whole game, and eventually, death ward helps too so that you'll never lose the stockpile you give it. The mage hand regains invisibility every short rest and heals every long rest (aid also heals it effectively). If you ever want to respec or something, you can pickpocket all your inventory off the mage hand and use a trident or something to disarm whatever weapon you gave the mage hand.
Lots of fun tricks with the permanent mage hand throughout the entire game. Quite a lot of consumable utility from a single subclass!
Stealing this idea
Never crossed my mind to give it BARRELS, interesting.
Is this available to do or for the MH get patched?
Scratch reveals his ability to shut down thrower builds!
You can switch to him before he grabs it to stop him.
that was so funny. "No! Scratch! No! Go away!"
I literally thought about this when I watched your tierlist, and now I have a proper build to go with my idea. Definitely trying this on my next playthrough!
Remember, you can use enhance ability on the alchemist during potion making, to give them advantage on the medicine (wisdom) check. If you do this you really don't need to be halfling because you will only fail on a double 1, so 1 in 400...
How would you do a non-combatant party face build?
I had this idea for a playthrough where Tav is some kind of high noble who absolutely refuses to fight and runs away or hides in combat and sends their three bodyguards to fight for them. Instead they do everything out-of-combat. They pick locks, know about religion, history, etc. and are good at dialogue checks.
For stats I thought 12 / 8 / 8 / 16 / 14 / 16 with the Gloves of Dexterity would work.
For leveling:
Bard 4 for skills, Jack-of-all-Trades and Alert to make sure you can run away before being attacked.
Rogue 4 to be better at running away, and you can also grab Skilled or Mobile.
Knowledge Cleric 2 for Knowledge of the Ages, so you can ignore one of the categories when choosing skills.
Divination Wizard 2 for utility.
I'm not sure about the best leveling order, though. You could also play as a Githyanki and replace Cleric with two more Rogue levels for Expertise.
The bodyguards would be two melee fighters and a magic user who stays close to Tav and can Dimension Door them to safety in emergencies.
Any ideas to improve this?
Love this idea. It sounds hilarious. I think for RP reasons, gith doesn't make a ton of sense. Maybe you lean into the snotty elf stereotype (high elf gets you persusion Prof and the friends cantrip) you should keep the cleric levels because knowledge of the ages is great and because thamaturgy is weaker friends but without the consequences (and it is great for all the bard specific performance dialogue checks that friends can't help with anyway)
This is what I'm currently playing on my first Tactician finishing run rn! I use Arcane Trickster for the extra infinite mage hand to lob all the potions, bombs etc as an extra throw action every round :D
Very interesting concept, never seen this before on BG3 UA-cam in hundreds of videos. You're doing great work!
I have been trying to figure out a way to put together this exact build ever since I figured out how powerful the potions and bombs in this game can be, so thank you for this! I wasn't sure if what I was imagining was viable in a coherent way, but this is pretty similar to what I thought might work. Detailing which classes to take at which level and for what reason was a huge, huge help. Many build guides out there will just tell you what your final level spread will be at 12, like "5 barb/3 rogue/2wiz/2 fighter", but not explain when it's best to take those levels. Very nice guide, thanks!
learning about the double potion strat was a great lesson. Glad i watched the video
Great build Ceph! If only we had Artificers in vanilla though!
I'm so dumb at installing mods and been looking for a good character to use all the items. Thank you so much!
Super cool twist on throwing build
Thanks!
I once made a funny barbarian mixed with druid not for crazy feral shenanigans, but so to throw goodberries and blind enemies with them xD this game is just crazy
If I understood correctly the conditions in which the doubling of potions will fail, the probability of failing is a hair above half a percent. In odds its approx. 1 failed potion for each 173.
The situations being a 2 on the d20 and 1s on both the extras d4, the doubling of 1 on the d20 or 2 on the rerroll of the d20 and both d4s are 1
Awesome, good to know!
You know it's a spicy build when you're going halfling for the transmutation wizard synergy, love it
Every run I take, I make sure to respec Gale, or lvlup a vacant partyy member into the transmutation wizard, and brew all that sexy haste potions with all of the hyena ears, you get from the gnolls fight. Usually it amounts to 18-20 haste potions. Never did this with any other craftables, but Im sure there are some worth the bother.
Can't say I agree on this one, I think this character needs to get alchemy and pickpocketing online first as a way to contribute to the party, it's not like they can solo. You start picking up ingredients as soon as you crash on the beach in wilderness so you are able to start crafting early. So level 1 in wizard, level 2 is rogue 1, level 3 is wizard 2 for experimental alchemy. On level 4 you can go into barbarian for medium armor, coincidentally level 4 is when exploration exp gives way to fighting.
On the other hand this way you're delaying extra attack until level 8 which is well into act 2. So this build should really be a pair of characters. Dex-based barb with first level in wizard doesn't sound too convincing anyway.
babe wake up cepha just posted a new vid!!
This is a really cool archetype. I feel the lack of bonuses to effect of alchemical concotions, not just the 2x to create them, is a huge missed opportunity when it comes to transmutation wizards. I really liked to play as an alchemist.
this lack of bonus basically means in every run I take good old halfling there and make her an alchemist in camp that never sees battle.
Cool independent build, but if you allow camp casting you could save soooooo much from not having to craft everything yourself
Minor optimization some may be aware of, but you don't (in current patch, at least) need to keep the shapeshifter's boon ring equipped to keep the bonus - you only need it equipped when you become disguised/shapeshifted. This means it can be applied to as many characters as you want/need and also doesn't take up your ring slot.
I think you went way overboard with the wisdom stuff. A camp caster with Owl's Wisdom and 20 wis just does it better.. then you don't have to water down your character so much with abilities that are cheaply replaced by a camp caster. I think it makes more sense to have solid strength to carry more barrels. Still.. its a cool idea. Like having your own little Ironhand
Really this build seems like it’s only viable if you disallow camp casters in your playthrough. My go to potion brewer comes online at level 5 for 3 levels of bard for expertise and owls wisdom through enhance ability and the obviously required 2 levels of transmutation wizard
Kindda wanna get the race mod to make like a bugbear version of this, focus mostly on the barrels and name him Donkey Kong.
Interesting build as always!
It's so so wild how much healing you have at your disposal in this game, I think that's the #1 difference from tabletop for me. I might do a run where I restrict potions to tabletop rules / prices
I mean you only really use it early on. Late game is more of a damage race. Kill the boss before it kills you. Heal is more to apply bless and blade ward
@@tranducquang5912 fair! But I do use a lot of healing even late game just to prolong adventure days and keep day long buffs. I only really long rest the two required times per playthrough and get to keep the spore bonus, act 2 statues bonus and rapture bonus (obviously not all at once but you know). And I know even if I end an encounter with everyone at low health I can heal it all with a couple throws!
@@joshhobbs4862 i don't like prolonging Adventuring day simply because it made no sense doing so. You need it to progress and i had problems with not triggering cannon events. I think its possible for me to completely delay wylls horn thingy till act 2 if i actively wanted to do that. Pretty sure you can make wyll not get any horns by not ever long resting but that sounds like a pain in the butt
I'd suggest making a camp caster transmutation wizard, buff with owl's wisdom and guidance. This takes care of the need for 2 wiz levels and points in WIS. You can then use a TB throwzerker build but stocked with lots of grenades. For fun, there are non-craftable throwables like heavy stones that can do small amount of direct dmg (more with TB and high STR) which are re-usable, or just pick up a good throwing weapon if grenades run short.
Id also recommend the Speedy lightfeet and callous glow ring to increase the damage of your grenades if you wanna head in that direction.
Change the barbarian to eldrich knight, add 3 lvs arcane trickster for the mage hand and this is the first legitimate build to thematicly use elixir of hill giant strength and tavern brawler.
Finally the transmutation wizard gets the respect they deserve! Thanks for this!
One thing about Mage Hand is I have tried it with healing potions and the throwing seems very buggy. one time it threw the entire stack of potions at once, and missed. and another time i could not click on the potions at all. I wonder if anyone else has seen those issues? Maybe im just clicking wrong.
Although Thief Rogue is probably better for min-maxing this build, taking Arcane Trickster actually lets you take advantage of the subclass, which I can't think of any other build that can do that.
Terrible thrusday just got better!!! Love this so much omg the utilitiyyyy
Finally someone made a guide on this. I love playing builds with sleight of hand to steal as many grenades, arrows and scrolls as possible and focusing on them as a gimmick. I usually stick to Duergar since I can invisible away if caught, but might try Halfling.
I’m going to try this for a Dark Urge solo run with a green skinned deep gnome who’s enamored with goblin alchemy. Being a Durge I’ll start out as a rogue and try to get the alchemy online with the wiz levels before he learns how to get better at using them (Barb levels)
If you could craft things like the shrapnel and smokepowder grenade or reliably buy them, then I would give this a try. As is, I think you're better off being a full archer and buying special arrows.
Why pair of crossbows though? You can't use special arrows with bonus action attacks. So just for a little additional damage? Wouldn't this character have a better use for a bonus action?
I would assume it's for the flexibility to be able to fire an arrow with either an action or a bonus action
True, but you can dip the crossbows in fire, and it works perfectly with all the barrels\flammables. I even carry a candle to do this anywhere.
Also one of the unique hand-crossbows does more dmg to burning targets, which synergises quite well.
I should definitely have gone into this more! Two hand crossbows let you light explosives with offhand attacks by dipping in fire, and let you get double use out of poisons and oils that you actually apply to weapons, as well as giving you more options for combats where you aren't raging or don't want to use grenades. Just makes the character much more flexible
@@Cephalopocalypse I see, thanks!
I need a video talking about where to farm these alchemy components to stockpile large amounts
How to make an artificer alchemist without mods. Love it. Add true strike and it’s perfect.
Love your builds, but do you ever plan on uploading a full playthrough of yours?
Hi @Cephalopocalypse! I enjoy your videos very much. I'll watch this later, promise! In the meantime I wanted to ask whether are you going to do some slightly less meta builds like valor bard, elemental monk, champion warrior or beast master for example. I think they could be interesting
Thanks! I've covered a few of those already - you can find 4E monk under "The rarest character" and beast master under "the ultimate beastmaster"
@@Cephalopocalypse oh did not notice! Thanks!
2nd characrer lvl as rogue would give your hand xbows and skills sooner, so you can start stealing stuff as soon as you get to the Grove. Barb does help with offensive and survivability. But having gear and potions seems more needed.
Also, by character lvl 3, you could have Transmutation Wizard unlocked getting the need potion making done. You won't have the number of attacks yet, but being able to craft the potions and making the skill checks sooner seems much more viable. If needed they can stay at camp until 4th character lvl, when they then multiclass into barb for the survivability and eventually the extra attacks.
Cool build idea.
Been following your guides, am I missing something but you haven't made an illithid powers video?
Scratch is the goodest boy :3
so cool
Any thoughts on Spore Druid dip instead to use our reactions to break open potions and the like?
I'd dip in druid and warlock for the multiple Eldritch blasts and the spore druid reaction to pop potions using the bonus action throws as the ignition of everything else. My spread would be 2 druid, 2 warlock, 3 thief, 3 barbarian, 2 transmutation wizard. Pick up the invocations one with shadows and repelling blasts so you can get some stealth and control options when you run out of rages. Also throw burning enemies at the barrels rather than the barrels at the enemies for additional damage and possibly grouping.
AI Bot here....Paid algorithm Bot. Thanks for the great video
Thanks friendly robot!
It' pretty weird that rogue can't get medicine proficiency. It would fit really well.
Yeah - I really miss all the poison-related abilities they got access to in older editions!
i love you ❤️
Can u do a 4 man shadow build