Aestus Guides - Memoirs of a CRPG Sage

Draw Steel Censor Class Guide: In-Depth Tactical Analysis

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Draw Steel Censor Class Guide: In-Depth Tactical Analysis

Introduction

Hey folks, Aestus here. This article is the first in a series covering each of the nine base classes in Draw Steel’s Heroes book with an in-depth tactical analysis. If you’re more of a fan of my video game CRPG content, Draw Steel is a tactical tabletop RPG that is fantastic. I am obsessed with it. If you enjoy my CRPG content, you’d probably love playing this game, and there’s really no better time to get into it than right now at the beginning of this series.

A note on what this series is and isn’t. It is not a tier list. I won’t be ranking each class against the others. Rather, I’ll be looking at each class individually, analyzing its abilities, and giving my opinions on how it plays tactically and how you can build it to get the most out of the role you want. It’s also not exactly a build guide, although you’ll definitely get build advice. My main goal is to make learning these classes more digestible. If you’re like me, I get a lot of value and have a lot more fun in tactical games when I have real system mastery. But actually learning the classes can be a slog, especially in a game where learning mostly means reading rules. So the plan is to read through all of the abilities and explain them to you in a more fun and digestible way.

That said, I’m not aiming this at a beginner audience. I’ll be referencing terms like the slowed condition, heroic resource, and triggered actions, and I expect you to understand the basics. If you don’t, you can always look them up in the Draw Steel rules compendium, and I’ll be linking helpful beginner guide videos made by other creators in the video description.

Summary Opinion

Today we’re covering the Censor, Draw Steel’s holy warrior class. It’s a lot like Draw Steel’s version of a D&D paladin: a holy warrior trained in arms and armor so they can smite the enemies of their church or creed.

From a tactical perspective, I consider the Censor to be a frontline alternative to the Conduit, offering necessary reactive healing and cleansing while actively locking down and grinding down single-target priority enemies. In general, it’s hard for the Censor to compete with the Conduit, which I consider one of the most powerful classes in the game (we’ll talk about that more in the next article), but the Censor fills the healing and cleansing role well enough for most compositions and in a sufficiently different way to be tactically interesting.

Build-wise, the most exploitable strategy I’ve found centers around the class’s starting five-cost ability, Purifying Fire, combined with holy damage proccing on Judgment. Team compositions can also build around this by stacking fire damage. You get as many instances of fire damage as possible, and the result gives both the Censor individually and the Censor’s team a very strong damage strategy for killing bosses and solos.

At Echelon 3 and 4, Censors do get more tantalizing and exploitable options, but these occur late enough that I can’t consider them primary draws of the class.

In terms of subclasses, the Censor offers three sufficiently unique options. That said, I greatly prefer the Oracle. It’s the most tactically interesting of the three, with the Paragon being a close second and the Exorcist a distant third. We’ll talk about that in more detail as we go through the class.

Starting Stats and Wrath

Censors are a Might and Presence based class, so these stats will progress to maximum as you level for free. I find these to be pretty good defensive attributes to max out, especially Might. In my experience, a lot of monsters — both in the official monsters book and the kind a Director would homebrew — tend to have a lot of Might-targeting abilities. There’s really no way to avoid it. So, good defensive starting attributes.

The Censor also has great starting Stamina: 21 base Stamina + 9 per level. This is a standard Stamina progression for tanky classes (the Fury, for example, also starts with 21 and gains 9 per level). But what sets the Censor apart is their 12 starting recoveries. The Fury and other tanky classes usually start with 10. The Censor is the only class to get 12, and this is incredible. Recoveries are exceptionally valuable on this class for reasons we’ll discuss shortly, but just in general, this makes the Censor a tankier base class than anything else in the game except maybe the Tactician depending on kit choices.

Wrath as a Heroic Resource

Wrath is the Censor’s heroic resource. Like all heroic resources, you have a base generation of roughly 2 per round. There are Law heroic resource classes and Chaos heroic resource classes. Law classes like the Censor get a flat +2 each turn. Chaos classes roll a 1d3 at the beginning of their turns. A 1d3 averages 2, so in theory these are equivalent — but one has a chance to spike while also having a chance for a drought.

To be frank, I consider the flat +2 for Law classes to just be tactically better. Predictability is a tactical value on its own. It’s always better to have something predictably happen than to chaotically and unpredictably happen. So I’m already liking Wrath for the fact that it’s a Law flat +2.

Wrath Riders

Every class has two “riders,” which are additional ways to generate heroic resource each round. You want riders that are reliable and within your control. This allows you to control the rate at which you build your heroic resource, which is good from a tactical perspective but also just from a fun perspective — the game is more enjoyable when you have more choices and more currency to buy awesome abilities.

The Censor’s two riders are:

The first time each combat round that a creature judged by you deals damage to you, you gain 1 Wrath.
The first time each combat round that you deal damage to a creature judged by you, you gain 1 Wrath.

Notice that the second rider is completely within your control. You attack your judged target on your turn, you get +1 Wrath. Simple. However, the first rider is not within your control — it depends on the enemy (or your Director) choosing to attack you. The monster could choose to run away and attack a different creature, and then you don’t get that +1 Wrath per round that you’re counting on.

All of this is to say that Wrath is slightly subpar as heroic resources go. It’s mostly in your control, but there’s this one element that’s technically outside it. Now, some of you might be thinking: practically speaking, it kind of is in your control because the whole point of this class is locking down enemies so they can’t move away, and if they can’t move away, they’re forced to attack you. That’s true, but you also have to spend Wrath to lock targets down that way. You’re spending Wrath to get Wrath. Overall, it’s a net disadvantage compared to other heroic resources in the game.

Judgment

Since both Wrath riders involve judged creatures, let’s talk about Judgment, the Censor’s class maneuver.

In summary, you use a maneuver to mark a target with Judgment. While the target is marked, every time it uses a main action within your line of effect, you can use a free triggered action to deal holy damage equal to twice your Presence score (so 4 damage at Echelon 1). Effectively, you’re putting an uncleansable damage-over-time effect on a single enemy. Over a long fight, you will grind them down. It’s also holy damage, which is critical for synergy with Purifying Fire.

When a creature judged by you is reduced to 0 Stamina, you can use a free triggered action to transfer Judgment to a new target. So you use one maneuver at the beginning of a fight, and as long as you’re focusing targets down one at a time (which is usually what you want to do), you only ever spend that one maneuver.

Judgment Bonus Effects (1 Wrath Each)

There are four additional effects you can unlock by spending 1 Wrath:

Lockdown: When an adjacent creature judged by you starts to shift (a special movement that normally avoids attacks of opportunity), you make a melee free strike and their speed becomes 0. This is one of the few ways to get positional lockdown in Draw Steel, a game where you don’t get that capability by default. I value this extremely highly for 1 Wrath.
Bane: You can apply a bane to a judged creature’s roll. Not worth the cost unless it’s the second bane on the target. Banes are strong when you have two on a target, not so much with just one. Situational.
Potency Reduction: A creature judged by you within 10 squares that uses an ability with a potency — you can reduce the potency by 1. This is reactive, but when it triggers, it’s potentially fight-saving. You can turn a crippling effect into a whiff.
Taunt: If you damage a creature judged by you with a melee ability, the creature is taunted by you until the end of your next turn. I consider this worth 1 Wrath. Combined with the lockdown effect, you can lock a target down, force them to attack you, and get your Wrath back through your rider. That’s how this class plays.

Judgment Order Effects (Subclass Bonuses)

Each subclass adds an additional free effect to Judgment whenever you cast it — no Wrath cost required.

Exorcist: Teleport a number of squares equal to twice your Presence score (4 at Echelon 1, scaling up to 10). This is primarily a gap-closer — you need to get on the target to lock them down. There’s also a hidden benefit: teleport movement cleanses certain conditions like prone and restrained. Very good.

Oracle: Deal holy damage equal to twice your Presence score to the judged creature. This effectively applies an initial tick of the damage-over-time whenever you cast the ability. It might seem the weakest of the three, but it becomes the strongest if you run a Purifying Fire build, because every instance of holy damage feeds that engine.

Paragon: Vertically pull the judged creature a number of squares equal to twice your Presence score. This works as a gap-closer (you’re pulling them to you), displacement, and a source of fall damage since it’s a vertical pull. You can angle them upward as you pull, guaranteeing they fall 4+ squares for extra damage. This might seem like the best of both worlds — displacement, gap-closing, and damage — but because the damage isn’t holy, it’s not as exploitable with Purifying Fire.

The key takeaway: all three are excellent uses of a maneuver. You can legitimately spam Judgment every round just for these free effects, and that’s awesome.

Kits

I won’t discuss kits for every class in this series, but I want to highlight the valuable options for the Censor.

Shining Armor might seem like the default: a shield, heavy armor, sword-and-board knight. Kits give you stats and a signature ability. The signature for Shining Armor is a taunt, which is something you can kind of do anyway through Judgment. The real draw is the +12 Stamina bonus. Stamina is very good on Censors because more Stamina increases your recovery value, and as we’ll see, recovery value is critically important for this class.

However, I really feel Warrior Priest is the standout choice — probably the kit you want 95% of the time. It gives +9 Stamina (less than 12, but still a lot for a kit), plus a fantastic signature ability that deals holy damage (synergizing with Purifying Fire) and marks the target with a damage weakness, which is a team-wide damage buff when you focus the target. Notice how even the damage weakness from the kit synergizes with Judgment’s damage-over-time. All around, a very powerful kit.

You could also consider a ranged kit (Rapid Fire, Ranger, Sniper, etc.) since Censors don’t get many ranged options and having at least one ranged attack is important. But Warrior Priest is my strong default recommendation.

My Life for Yours

My Life for Yours is the Censor’s triggered action, and it’s really interesting. It’s a ranged trigger for yourself or one ally. It procs whenever the target starts their turn or takes damage. The effect: you, the Censor, spend a recovery, and the target regains Stamina equal to your recovery value. Then you can spend 1 Wrath to also cleanse an effect on the target.

Your recovery value is likely higher than your allies’ and you have more recoveries than they do, so this is a strong situational heal. There’s also a meta-tactical value: over the course of an adventuring day, it’s common for some party members to take heavy damage and burn through recoveries while others have six left. The teammate with six recoveries has to take a Respite to keep the group safe, but it feels like those recoveries were wasted. You are never in that situation as a Censor. Every recovery you have, every Respite, will be put to use. Recoveries are just worth more on you.

This also means your teammates can make riskier builds. A Fury, for example, can build around taking a lot of damage to deal a lot of damage — a strategy normally gated by recovery limits. Having a Censor jailbreaks that hard gate. It’s a big reason to pick this class.

The Spammability Problem

While My Life for Yours is very strong, it has one weakness: it’s not spammable. You want a triggered action that’s likely to trigger every round and always provides value. If you don’t use your triggered action in a round, that’s a whole action slot wasted. My Life for Yours isn’t spammable because (1) there might be rounds where nobody needs healing, and (2) you can run out of recoveries, at which point you have no triggered action at all.

For this reason, it’s good to build alternative triggered action options through your ancestry:

Devil (Glowing Eyes): A spammable triggered action. Whenever you take damage from a creature (something you want to happen for Wrath generation anyway), you deal 1d10 + your level in psychic damage. Great for 1 ancestry point.
High Elf (Glamour of Terror): Whenever you take damage from a creature, that creature is frightened until the end of their next turn. More situational, but particularly strong on an Exorcist Censor, which has abilities that stack effects on top of the frightened condition.
Human (Staying Power): Two additional recoveries. Incredibly powerful because Censors use every recovery they have and are already incentivized to maximize recovery value.
Hakaan: Also makes a great Censor. There are so many strong ancestry choices here that I’m honestly not sure which is optimal.

You can also pick up triggered action heroic abilities as you level, which I’ll highlight as we continue.

Domain Features

Domains function like a secondary subclass element, representing your church or creed. They give you features at multiple levels. I have a separate detailed spreadsheet ranking all of the domain features (linked in the video description), since these features are shared with the Conduit class and we’ll reference them in that analysis as well.

The best option for the Censor is the Life domain. It gives healing boosts that increase your recovery value, which is exactly what this class wants for all the reasons we’ve discussed. If you really want to optimize, Life is my recommendation, but it’s not so critical that you can’t pick whatever domain appeals to you from a roleplay perspective.

Other strong options:

War — quite strong, especially in the early game, though a bit boring in practice
Storm — really fun and interesting, offering flight (which is very hard to get and extremely strong)
Sun — can be quite good
Trickery — really good late game

1st Level Abilities

Signature Abilities

You get two signatures: one from your class and one from your kit. The point of a signature is that it’s the most efficient way to spend your main action without spending heroic resource. Sometimes you have no Wrath to spend, or you’re saving it for an ultimate ability. That means you want your signatures to be broadly useful.

My method for selecting signatures: pick one that’s spammable (useful in 80-90% of turns), then use your second slot for a more niche but situationally powerful option.

If you picked Warrior Priest, you already have Weakening Brand as your kit signature. It deals holy damage (synergizing with Purifying Fire), marks a damage weakness (buffing your whole team’s damage on the focused target), and even synergizes with Judgment’s damage-over-time since that damage also benefits from the weakness. This is your spammable bread-and-butter.

That frees you up to pick something niche, and for that I recommend Every Step Death. It’s a ranged ability (I like having at least one ranged signature), deals decent psychic damage for type variety, and applies a condition where the next time the target willingly moves, they take 1 psychic damage per square moved. If you force-move or teleport a target to a position where they have to walk back, that could be 10 damage on a signature. You won’t hit that situation every time, but you don’t need to — just use it at those key moments and spam Weakening Brand the rest of the time.

If you want a more spammable second option instead, both Back Blasphemer and Your Allies Cannot Save You are solid choices. Both deal holy damage and push targets in an AoE. Back Blasphemer is probably the more optimal pick, but it’s a minimal difference.

Heroic Abilities: 3-Wrath Options

The standout at this cost is Repent. It’s a single-target, range 10 ability dealing holy damage with an Intuition-targeting dazed condition. Dazed is probably the best base condition in the game. Being able to apply it to Intuition-weak enemies for 3 Wrath is an extremely efficient use of resources. It’s situational, but the situation comes up in most combats. The Censor doesn’t have many strong crowd control abilities, so picking one this good at 3 Wrath is an important choice.

If that’s not what you want, Driving Assault is also strong — it deals damage, pushes a target, and gives you more movement to close distance and lock down a position. Very solid for 3 Wrath.

Heroic Abilities: 5-Wrath Options

This is where we get to the ability I’ve been building toward this entire analysis.

Purifying Fire is the most exploitable ability on the Censor at early levels. I rank it S tier. It’s the kind of ability that should shape your entire build.

For 5 Wrath, it’s a melee 1 or ranged 5 ability targeting one creature. You deal holy damage and then, Might-targeting, apply a condition that grants the target fire weakness scaling at 3, 5, or 7 depending on the tier you land. Furthermore, while the target has this fire weakness, you can choose to have your abilities deal fire damage to the target instead of holy damage.

This is why I’ve been highlighting holy damage throughout this analysis. Every time in the Censor’s kit that you deal holy damage — if you’re dealing it to a target with the Purifying Fire debuff — you swap it to fire and increase the damage by that weakness value.

Let’s walk through how this plays out:

You hit Purifying Fire on a target, applying fire weakness (let’s say tier 3: +7).
You use Judgment as a maneuver to mark them. Now every time they use a main action, they take 4 base holy damage + 7 fire weakness = 11 damage for free on their turn.
If you’re an Oracle, you deal an initial burst of holy damage when casting Judgment, getting another tick.
On subsequent rounds, Weakening Brand deals holy damage — another proc.
Repent deals holy damage — another proc.
If your teammates have abilities that deal fire damage, they capitalize on that weakness too.

Altogether, this gives you and your team a damage strategy against leaders and solos that is incredibly powerful. It becomes your central method of dealing damage, and it’s what you should build your character and your team composition around.

The caveat: Purifying Fire targets Might, which is a commonly high attribute, especially on bosses, solos, and leaders. Landing it can be difficult. If you’re building around this, encourage your teammates to build ways to give you surges so you can boost the potency.

If you don’t want to build around Purifying Fire, or your team doesn’t have buy-in to the concept, a good backup is Censored. For 5 Wrath, it deals some damage, and if the target is not a leader or solo and is made winded (reduced to half health), they are killed outright. Against elite-style enemies, this is extremely high value and very evocative of what the Censor is supposed to be.

2nd Level

Second level is heavily subclass-dependent. You get two order features (one combat, one out-of-combat) and a choice between two 5-Wrath abilities based on your subclass.

Order Features

Oracle — It Was Foretold: At the start of an encounter, you can take one main action before any other creatures and before your first turn. This is the standout feature at this level, and it’s where your build choices really pay off.

If you took Every Step Death as a signature, you’re locked and loaded. Since you’re only getting a main action (no movement, no Wrath generation), you want a ranged signature. Every Step Death delivers — it deals damage at range, and then when the enemy moves toward you on their turn, they take even more damage. Fantastic synergy.

Even without a ranged signature, you can always downgrade a main action into a maneuver (to cast Judgment), or downgrade it into a move action to close distance. There’s always something useful to do with It Was Foretold, but if you specifically build around it, you get exceptionally efficient opening actions. It’s a straight injection into your action economy, and that is always incredible.

Exorcist — Saint’s Vigilance: Any creature judged by you can’t use the hide maneuver. Against creatures that exploit hiding (like Wels), this is very good, but most fights won’t feature those enemies. Powerful when relevant, but very situational.

Paragon — Lead by Example: While you’re adjacent to a creature, your allies gain the benefits of flanking against that creature. This is nice, but getting into standard flank position isn’t that difficult on a team with decent mobility. You’ll get value every fight, but it’s pretty low value.

Hopefully you can see why I strongly prefer It Was Foretold here.

Order Abilities (5-Wrath, Subclass-Specific)

Exorcist — It Is Justice You Fear: Single-target magic ability dealing damage with a Presence-targeting frighten. If the target is already frightened, you instead deal additional psychic damage equal to twice your Presence score. This is the ability that stacks with Glamour of Terror from the High Elf ancestry — frighten them with your triggered action, then follow up with this for real damage. I’m probably overselling the damage somewhat (there are better damage strategies in the game), but it’s a cool way to build your Exorcist if that’s the direction you want.

Oracle — Prescient Grace: A triggered action (which is inherently valuable on Censors who lack a spammable one). Triggers when an enemy within 10 squares starts their turn. You get the full healing value of My Life for Yours, plus you or an ally take your turn immediately before the triggering enemy. Several features in the game allow acting outside standard initiative order (Tacticians get This Is What We Planned For, Shadows get Hesitation Is Weakness), and all of them are powerful. This is one of the weaker versions at 5 Wrath for just one person, but in the right circumstance, moving out of turn order can decide a fight. If you already have a Tactician or Shadow on your team, this might be redundant — take With My Blessing instead.

Oracle — With My Blessing: Targets yourself or one ally within range 10. That target can use a free triggered action to use a signature or heroic strike ability with a double edge. If they use a heroic ability, you reduce its cost by 3. So in the math, you spend 5 to give them 3, which might sound like a net loss. But they’re also getting a double edge, and handing an ally enough heroic resource to use an ability before they normally could is extremely valuable in the right moments. Some abilities in this game are essential to fire off as early as possible, and With My Blessing lets you jailbreak the timing.

The caveat for both Oracle abilities: because they’re expensive, you can definitely use them at the wrong moment and get negative value. If you’re not confident in your ability to judge the right tactical moment, Oracle might not be the best subclass choice.

Paragon — Sentenced: Melee ability that potentially applies the restrained condition, but with the ability to still force-move the restrained target. If you have other ways to move a target on your maneuver (like knockback), you can restrain the target, push them away, and if they’re melee-only, they’ve potentially wasted multiple turns. Lots of creative potential here.

3rd Level

The last level of Echelon 1 is a big one for Censors.

Look On My Work And Despair

All Censors get this regardless of subclass — it buffs Judgment. Now you can spend 1 Wrath and if the target has Presence average, they are frightened of you (save ends). Additionally, whenever a judged creature is reduced to 0 Stamina and you transfer Judgment to a new target, if the new target has Presence less than strong, they are frightened of you (save ends).

If the target is already frightened of you, they instead take holy damage equal to twice your Presence score. You can see a meta forming here: applying frighten and then stacking “take holy damage while frightened” effects from It Is Justice You Fear and now this. Combined with Purifying Fire, that holy damage converts to fire with bonus weakness damage.

Frightened is a strong condition. Being able to apply it for 1 Wrath at Presence average is very good. A solid A-tier ability.

7-Wrath Edicts

You choose one 7-Wrath ability, and all of them are excellent. Edicts function like auras, all with a 2-aura radius, dealing holy damage over time based on various trigger conditions. You can’t really go wrong — just pick whichever one your team composition is most likely to trigger.

I do want to flag Edict of Stillness because of a potentially broken interaction. The effect: whenever a target moves or is force-moved out of the 2-aura, they take holy damage equal to twice your Presence score. If the target is judged by you and moves willingly, they take an extra 2d6 holy damage.

Under normal circumstances, this might be the weakest edict because you have the least control over it. However, if you have a high-value slide (and Censors can get up to a 15-square slide on a maneuver at level 10), you can slide a target out of the aura, back in, out again, back in — potentially proccing the forced-movement damage multiple times per slide. Your allies can do this too, since the aura persists until the end of the encounter. If your team builds around Edict of Stillness, the math suggests truly broken damage output.

However, I think most Directors would consider this an exploit. I would. I wouldn’t allow it at my table — I’d rule only one proc per instance of forced movement. I haven’t actually tested this in play; I just started crunching numbers and the math gets out of hand, especially by late game. If your Director rules the way I would, Edict of Stillness probably isn’t your best option.

Edict of Perfect Order is really good as an alternative. You put it on a judged creature, and each time they use Malice, they take holy damage equal to three times your Presence score, plus an additional 2d6 if judged by you. Against a solo monster (who is guaranteed to be spending Malice), this plus Judgment will deal massive holy damage. Definitely worth the 7 Wrath.

4th-6th Level (Echelon 2)

4th Level

The beginning of Echelon 2 brings the typical Echelon increases: your Might and Presence go up, you get a perk and more skills. The key features here:

Wrath Beyond Wrath: The first time each combat round that you deal damage to a creature judged by you, you gain 2 Wrath instead of 1. This doubles the value of your second rider — the one you actually control. Overall, very good.

Blessing of Life (Life Domain): Whenever an ally within the range of My Life for Yours regains Stamina, they regain additional Stamina equal to your Presence score. This boosts the value of My Life for Yours and all heals within range 10. Extremely strong. It stacks with all your other bonuses, making you one of the best burst healers in the game. If you want to know what I think about the other domain features at this level, check my domain feature spreadsheet.

5th Level

You get subclass order features and a choice of 9-Wrath abilities.

Oracle — Prophecy: If you’ve played D&D 5e or Baldur’s Gate 3, this is a lot like the Divination Wizard. Each time you earn victories, you roll a number of 2d10 equal to the victories earned and record each result. Then, whenever a creature within 10 squares makes a power roll, you can use a free triggered action to replace that roll with one of your recorded results. No potency check — it just works. You can guarantee tier 3 results on yourself, guarantee tier 1 results on enemies, and bank crits to deploy at the perfect moment. One of the most powerful features in the game.

Exorcist — Evil Revealed: Automatically see through disguises and illusions from creatures at or below your level, plus an edge on tests against more powerful creatures’ illusions. Mostly out-of-combat and quite situational in combat.

Paragon — Stand Fast: At the start of each turn, spend 1d6 Stamina to end one save-ends or end-of-turn effect on yourself (or an ally). Good cleansing that you’ll use often, but not even close to the value of Prophecy.

9-Wrath Abilities

Righteous Judgment: For 9 Wrath, a melee strike dealing solid damage. Until the end of the encounter, whenever an ally deals damage to a target judged by you, that ally gains 1 surge. Strong surge generation — surges add damage, but more importantly, they boost potencies. Note that it’s when an ally deals damage, not you, so you can’t benefit from these surges yourself. You’ll need to get surges for your own Purifying Fire another way.

Shield of the Righteous: Melee 1, deals damage, and you and each ally adjacent to you gain 10, 15, or 20 temporary Stamina depending on tier. If you cluster together and guarantee a tier 3 result (perhaps through Prophecy), this provides an enormous durability boost. Unlikely to ever be redundant, unlike surge generation which other sources might cover.

6th Level

Implement of Wrath: Each time you finish a Respite, choose one hero’s weapon (including your own) to become an implement of your deity’s wrath. The weapon becomes magic and gains all of the following until your next Respite:

Strikes deal extra holy damage equal to the wielder’s highest characteristic score (+3 at this level). Holy damage, so it stacks with Purifying Fire.
Any creature struck who has holy weakness or has Presence less than strong is frightened and weakened (save ends).
Any minion targeted by a strike dies, and that minion’s Stamina is removed from the squad pool before damage applies. You become a minion-killing machine.
The weapon’s wielder can’t be made frightened.

What makes this an incredible feature: it costs no action economy, no heroic resource, and no opportunity cost. You don’t pick this instead of something else — every Censor gets it for free. It’s pure upside. Technically even better on a teammate. This could be S-tier except that none of these benefits are individually worth building around. Still, 10 out of 10 for me.

6th Level Order Abilities (9-Wrath, Subclass-Specific)

Exorcist gets two strong options:

Be Gone: 3-burst AoE dealing psychic damage and sliding all targets. AoE damage + slide is a strong, broadly useful combination.
Pain of Your Own Making: A free triggered action. Whenever you or an ally gains a condition or save-ends effect, that effect ends on the target and is applied to the creature who imposed it. Plus the creature takes damage equal to three times your Presence score. This turns a monster’s most debilitating abilities against them. I haven’t done a full audit of the monsters book with this in mind, but I know there are some devastating effects out there. This is the kind of ability where you can get creative, especially with homebrew monsters. I’d take this every time.

Oracle gets two powerful but hard-to-evaluate options:

Burden of Evil: Range 10, targets up to three enemies. Slide them, plus Intuition-targeting dazed. AoE dazed + slide is excellent crowd control. Note it overlaps somewhat with Repent (our 3-Wrath pick from level 1), as an AoE version of that ability.
Edict of Peace: Another edict with a 3-aura radius. Until the end of the encounter, whenever any target takes a triggered action or free triggered action within the aura, that action is negated and the target takes holy damage equal to your Presence score. I rate this S-tier, and a lot of people I consulted disagreed with me. Their argument: the monsters in the official book don’t tend to have powerful triggered actions. If that’s your experience, Edict of Peace is overcosted at 9 Wrath. However, in principle, this negates an entire piece of enemy action economy for the rest of the encounter with no potency check — it just always happens. If your Director designs monsters that use a lot of free triggered actions (as I do), this is insane value. For most games using official monsters, take Burden of Evil. But I have my reasons.

Paragon — Congregation: Melee 1 strike dealing damage, then allies within 10 squares of the target can use signature strike abilities against the target as free triggered actions. At tier 3, two allies can each make a signature strike with an edge, and each ally can shift up to 2 squares and gain 2 surges before striking. Good surge generation and a lot of single-target damage, especially if you’ve applied a damage weakness first. Strong but lacks the ceiling of some of the other options at this level.

7th-9th Level (Echelon 3)

7th Level

The beginning of Echelon 3. Characteristic scores increase, and you get:

Focused Wrath: You gain 3 Wrath at the start of each turn instead of 2. A straight +1 Wrath consistently, always. Nice.

Font of Grace (Life Domain): Each time you use My Life for Yours, you gain 1 Wrath that must be spent that same turn (or it’s lost). Additionally, the target of My Life for Yours gains 10 temporary Stamina. This is another massive increase to the healing output of your triggered action and effectively another Wrath rider. An injection of +1 Wrath each time you use My Life for Yours is excellent.

8th Level

I’ll be honest: this is a weak level. Each order gets an order feature, but they’re all out-of-combat features with nothing tactical to discuss. And the 11-Wrath ability options are lackluster.

Pillar of Holy Fire deals damage and applies a single-target Intuition-weak dazed, but you probably already have this covered elsewhere in your build for less than 11 Wrath. The supposed standout effect — at the end of each of your turns, the dazed target deals holy damage to enemies within 2 squares — is just hard to control since it happens at the start of your turns, not the enemy’s.

Your Allies Turn On You applies Intuition-targeting slowed (a worse condition than dazed), and while slowed, surrounding enemies must make free strikes against the target. You can control this better by pushing enemies into range, but for 11 Wrath and how fiddly it is to extract value, I just can’t see myself using this often.

This is the best the level offers, and it’s simply not the strongest level. Moving on.

9th Level

All Censors get Improved Implement of Wrath, boosting the earlier feature: allies adjacent to the weapon’s wielder get +2 to saving throws, the wielder can give allies extra saving throws, and the wielder gains corruption immunity 10. All nice, but none of it is reliable enough to feel impactful at this stage of the game (+2 to a save doesn’t guarantee anything). Still, it’s all free upside with zero cost, so we won’t say no.

The 11-Wrath subclass abilities are where the real interest lies:

Exorcist — Banish: Single-target melee, dealing damage and potentially banishing the creature. A banished creature disappears from the map until they make a saving throw — it’s effectively a hard stun that cancels potentially multiple turns. While banished, the target takes 10 holy damage each time they make a saving throw. The ability also gains an edge against demons, devils, undead, and extraplanar creatures (double edge if you know their true name). Very powerful for 11 Wrath against a priority target. It competes with Terror Manifest (range 10, psychic damage, Presence-targeting frighten, kills non-leaders/solos outright when winded, deals 25 extra psychic damage to winded leaders/solos). Both are excellent. I lean toward Banish, but it’s genuinely close.

Oracle: Both options are, sadly, pretty bad. A Blessing and a Curse is a triggered action that gives an ally a tier 3 and an enemy a tier 1 for 11 Wrath — good in effect, but far too expensive. Fulfill Your Destiny lets an ally act out of initiative order with a double edge and full cleanse, but again, a Shadow gets essentially this same ability at level 1 for 1 heroic resource. For 11 Wrath, it’s just too expensive. This, combined with the weak 8th level, means Oracle players hit a rough patch at late game. But the preceding levels were so strong that Oracle is still my recommendation overall.

Paragon — Apostate: This is incredible. Melee 1 strike dealing a lot of holy damage, and then until the end of the encounter (or until you’re dying), the target has damage weakness 10. All instances of damage against the target — not just holy, everything — deal an additional 10 damage. No saving throw. No potency check. It just always goes through. They cannot cleanse it. This will melt bosses. One of the strongest abilities in the game. It makes me want to go Paragon instead of Oracle just to get this at 9th level. But it comes so late that it’s hard to call it a primary draw of the class.

10th Level

You’ve made it to max level. 10th level counts as its own Echelon in Draw Steel, and there are features in every class that let you keep playing past level 10. Some really cool things here.

Templar

Whenever you use your Judgment ability, you can use a free triggered action to use a Conduit domain prayer effect associated with your chosen domain (or a domain you access with Virtue). If the effect uses an Intuition score, you use your Presence score instead. If it uses a Conduit level, you use your Censor level instead.

To see how powerful this is, you have to look at the Conduit’s domain prayer effects. Remember, you get one of these on a maneuver, for free, every round:

Life Prayer: Choose yourself or one ally within 10 squares. That creature can spend a recovery, end a save-ends effect, or stand up from prone. Alternatively, you or an ally gains temporary Stamina equal to 2x your score (10 temporary Stamina at level 10). Pretty good, but not the most exciting.
Trickery Prayer: Slide one creature within 10 squares up to 5 + your level squares. That’s a 15-square slide on a maneuver. Think about how hard it is to build 15 push on a knockback. This is 15 slide, which is even better, and you get it for free as part of your Judgment maneuver. Absolutely insane.
War Prayer: Choose up to three allies within 10 squares (or yourself instead of one ally). Each gains 2 surges. At this level, each surge is worth 5 extra damage, so 2 surges = 10 damage across 3 allies = 30 extra damage on a maneuver with zero Wrath cost. And spending surges on damage isn’t even their most valuable use — you could funnel surges to yourself for Purifying Fire potency boosts.

Browse through all of these prayer effects and let your imagination run. Getting one of these every round, Wrath-free, on a maneuver is extraordinary.

Virtue

At level 10, you’re max level, so XP is replaced by Virtue. When you’d normally convert victories into XP, you get Virtue instead. You can spend Virtue as bonus Wrath, or spend 3 Virtue to access one of your deity’s domains that you don’t normally have.

This is how you bypass the fact that you picked Life domain (for its excellent recovery bonuses) but want access to Trickery or War prayer effects for your Templar feature. Spend 3 Virtue to grab Trickery. Spend 6 for a third domain. You’re not gated to one choice.

My recommendation: Trickery and War are two of the strongest secondary domain picks. Storm and Sun are also very good. Read through the list and pick whatever excites you.

Wrath of the Gods

When you gain Wrath at the start of each turn, you gain 4 instead of 3. Combined with your controlled rider (which gives +2 thanks to Wrath Beyond Wrath), that’s a guaranteed 6 Wrath per turn. If you trigger the uncontrolled rider too, you max out at 7 Wrath per turn. At that rate, you can fire off major abilities almost every round. 10th level for Censors is extremely rewarding.

Closing Thoughts

That’s the Censor in full. A frontline holy warrior that grinds down priority targets with Judgment, supports allies with reactive healing through My Life for Yours, and — if built around correctly — weaponizes the Purifying Fire engine to give your entire team a devastating damage strategy against bosses and solos.

The class has a clear power curve: strong foundational tools in Echelon 1, a meaningful Wrath generation spike at Echelon 2, a rough patch at levels 8-9 (especially for Oracle), and then an extraordinary payoff at level 10 with Templar, Virtue, and Wrath of the Gods turning the Censor into a truly terrifying force.

My recommendation: Oracle subclass, Warrior Priest kit, Life domain. Build around Purifying Fire. Encourage your team to bring fire damage. And if you make it to level 10, pick up Trickery or War as your Virtue domain and enjoy the 15-square slides.

The next class in this series will be the Conduit. Stay tuned.

Draw Steel Conduit Class Guide: In-Depth Tactical Analysis

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Draw Steel Conduit Class Guide: In-Depth Tactical Analysis

Introduction

Hey folks, Aestus here, back with another Draw Steel class breakdown. In this article, we’ll be talking about the Conduit, which is Draw Steel’s version of the cleric or priest archetype – a holy caster class, a representative of their saint or god that channels divine destruction or blessing from the heavens to the earth.

This is the second article in a series covering each of the nine base classes in Draw Steel’s Heroes book with an in-depth tactical analysis. If you haven’t checked it out yet, see my Censor article, the first in the series. It has a longer introduction that talks about the series as a whole and what I hope to accomplish. In this article, we’re going to keep the intro short.

If you want my opinions without all of the blather, I’ve linked a spreadsheet in the video description which ranks every tactical class feature the Conduit gets. You can just check that out and skip the rest. However, if you keep reading, I’ll be going into detail on my reasoning for each of those rankings.

Summary Opinion

My overall thoughts on the Conduit class are this: the Conduit is one of the elite classes in the game due to its unmatched healing, cleansing, and support capabilities. With a single maneuver, Healing Grace, it can carry 80% of your composition’s healing or cleansing needs, which leaves its main action open to use its wide range of solid control and buff spells. It enables potency-dependent builds through its abundance of edge, surge, and general variance-controlling mechanics.

To put it simply, it’s just an incredible class. Honestly, it might be too strong in my opinion. It’s on my short list of classes that need a nerf, but we’ll discuss that as we go.

Starting Stats and Piety

Starting Characteristics

The Conduit’s starting characteristics give them a 2 in Intuition and then a wider range of arrays to put into their other stats. This is one of the two ways that classes can gain characteristics (or attributes, as I like to call them). Compare it to the Censor, for example: Censors get Might and Presence automatically maxed as they level, and then they get a smaller array. The Conduit’s approach is equivalent to having one automatically maxed attribute and getting a wider range of arrays that effectively allow you to pick what your second max stat is going to be. I like being able to pick my secondary stats because it gives me more freedom in my build.

My recommendation: choose a stat that your team composition is weak in when it comes to skill checks. If your team is lacking a face, maybe max Presence. If they’re lacking a brainiac, maybe max Reason. If you’re not sure or nothing is lacking, Might is always a solid pick, especially if you’re going any build that uses wings, grabbing, pushing, or anything like that.

Stamina

Starting Stamina of 18, you get 6 per level, and you have 8 recoveries. This is the weak Stamina progression, which is usually on casters like the Elementalist or the Talent. It’s just a little bit behind what some of the more frontline classes are going to get when it comes to durability, but that’s okay for the Conduit because you will get class features which make up for the weak starting durability.

Piety as a Heroic Resource

Piety is a chaos heroic resource. That means you’re rolling a 1d3, which is a minor disadvantage compared to a Law HR. For example, the Censor’s Wrath gives a flat +2 per round, whereas the Conduit is rolling 1d3. I greatly prefer the flat +2 because it averages to the same and you can predict it every round. The 1d3 has this variability to it – you could roll a lot of threes in a row, in which case you’re having an HR feast, or you can roll a lot of ones in a row and you’re having an HR famine. To me, variability is a tactical weakness, not a strength.

It doesn’t really matter that much for the Conduit, though, because the riders that Conduits get for Piety are so valuable that they almost always have enough of their heroic resource to do the cool things they want to do.

Piety Riders

The Conduit’s riders are a little different than a standard class. They’re kind of getting three riders, but two of them are half-riders that depend on your subclass – those are the domain Piety effects. We’ll look at those in a bit.

Your primary HR rider is called Prayer. At the beginning of each of your turns, you can choose to pray (no action required). When you pray, you roll a 1d3:

Roll a 1: You gain 1 additional Piety, but you also take a little bit of psychic damage.
Roll a 2: You gain 1 additional Piety without taking the damage.
Roll a 3: You gain 2 additional Piety and can activate a domain effect of your choice.

The domain effects are tied to your domain and some of them are really cool and interesting. But the fact that you cannot control when they proc matters. Mathematically, this effectively averages to around one proc of a domain effect per encounter, but you can’t choose when it will proc. It could proc on round one and be very valuable, or it could proc on round three or four when the fight’s already kind of decided. So from a tactics perspective, you can’t depend on this. It’s a cool flavor ability – I love the feeling of receiving a special blessing from your god – but for tactical planning, treat it as a bonus.

Overall, Prayer is a really good rider. You’re always getting at least 1 Piety just for using it, and the only detriment is taking a little bit of damage, which at level 1 can be a real choice. But by the time you reach mid-to-late Echelon 1 or Echelon 2 and above, you have enough defensive options that this damage is negligible and you should pretty much always be praying at the beginning of every turn. On top of being very consistent (a guaranteed proc for no action), you get the chance of rolling 2 Piety. So you can think of this not as a 1-Piety rider but as a 1.33-Piety rider, since there’s a 1/3 chance of getting an extra. Excellent.

Domains and Subclass Construction

How Domains Work

The other rider that Conduits get for heroic resource is tied to their domains. Unlike other classes with fixed subclasses, Conduits have expanded choice where you get to construct your own subclass. There are all of these domains (mostly identical to the ones we looked at with the Censor). Unlike the Censor, though, the Conduit gets to select two of these, and they come with extra benefits. Your choice of these two together become your subclass.

Each domain gives you a bespoke way to gain 2 Piety once per encounter. For example, the Creation domain gives you 2 Piety the first time in an encounter that a creature within 10 squares uses an area ability. The Fate domain gives you 2 Piety the first time in an encounter that an ally within 10 squares obtains a tier 3 outcome on a power roll, or an enemy within 10 squares obtains a tier 1 outcome. You get the idea. All of these give you 2 Piety whenever you meet a condition, but the ways they trigger are not well-balanced against each other.

Piety Rider Rankings

I have a ranking system for these domain riders that I want to explain, because the difference in power between the tiers is drastic.

S-tier rider: You can control it yourself at a low action cost, usually a maneuver. These are things you can guarantee to proc by doing something yourself on your turn, so you don’t depend on teammates. And because you trigger the rider on a maneuver, you still have your action left over to spend the HR you just earned. S-tier riders are very powerful.

A-tier rider: You can control it yourself, but not at a low action cost. Typically these cost your main action, or you have to build specifically to trigger them on a maneuver.

B-tier rider: You can control it, but not yourself. These are ones your teammates have to do on their turns. This is more restrictive because it binds you when it comes to turn order – if you want to get the most out of your HR on round 1, your teammates might have to go before you.

C-tier rider: Proccing it is completely outside of your control. Usually these depend on dice rolls (like the Fate one), or on something the Director does (like a monster deciding to use an ability with Malice). The power difference between C-tier and S-tier riders is very drastic, such that I’m very hesitant to pick C-tier ones unless they have really good other abilities to compensate.

Recommended Domains: Love + Trickery

For the Conduit, I really recommend the Love domain. It has a fantastic Piety rider (one of the best in the game), a solid prayer effect, and pretty much across-the-board good abilities – definitely frontloaded good abilities, which I value highly because an ability you get at level 1 or 2 you’re going to use over an entire campaign.

Trickery is another fantastic choice, mostly because of its rider. It also gets a really good prayer effect that scales well with levels. Its weakness tends to be in its heroic ability options, but you actually end up getting choices between your two domains. If you notice, Trickery matches up really well with Love domain: Love has strong 5 and 9 costs but a weak 11, whereas Trickery has weak 5 and 9 costs but a strong 11 cost. Picking these together creates a really good overlap.

A note: in the base vanilla game, if you’re using the setting gods of the Draw Steel Orden setting, there is not a god that has both Love and Trickery as the same domain options. The book does include a rule where you can petition your Director to allow you to construct your own portfolio of domains representing your own god or saint creation. So it’s not outside the rules to mix Love and Trickery, but it is a Director request.

Love + Trickery Piety Riders

For the Love domain, you gain 2 Piety the first time in an encounter that you or an ally within 10 squares uses the Aid Attack maneuver or an ability that targets an ally. Both of these are things you can do yourself at the cost of a maneuver. Aid Attack is a maneuver (not the greatest in the game, but not useless). An ability that targets an ally – Healing Grace covers this. So on your turn, if you’re the first person to act, you can do either of these and get +2 Piety on round 1. That’s very strong.

For the Trickery domain, you gain 2 Piety the first time in an encounter that you or a creature within 10 squares takes the Aid Attack or hide maneuver. Again, this triggers on your turn on a maneuver without fail.

And here’s where it gets interesting: there’s overlap. Aid Attack triggers both of them. If you pick Love and Trickery like I recommend, on your turn you take the Aid Attack maneuver and you will trigger both of your riders and gain +4 Piety on round 1. It’s extremely strong. In fact, I consider it so strong it may even need a nerf.

Prayer Effects

For the Trickery domain prayer effect, you can slide one creature within 10 squares of you up to a number of squares equal to 5 + your Conduit level. This is a very high-value slide that scales really well. By level 10, this is +15. And you’re getting this for free as a free action. There’s a lot of tactical things you can do with this – you can slide targets out of position so that your teammates can more easily kill them. I love Trickery domain. This is almost always useful.

The Love domain prayer effect is: each ally within 10 squares of you gains temporary Stamina equal to 2x your Intuition score. Temporary Stamina is very good because it’s effectively proactive healing that does not take recoveries. Spamming temporary Stamina when you can get it really allows you to get more out of your Respites and snowball into more difficult fights.

Both solid prayer effects. But remember, because you can’t control when these trigger, they aren’t the main reason to pick your domain. The big reasons are for the Piety and for your heroic abilities.

Heroic Resource Tempo: Why It Matters

I want to show you how picking S-tier Piety riders can really set the Conduit drastically ahead of heroic resource generation tempo, and why that’s such an extreme advantage. It’s one of two things that really sets the Conduit apart for me and makes it one of the strongest classes in the game.

Comparing Censor vs. Conduit: Round 1

To understand why it’s good, you have to compare to something more baseline. Let’s use the Censor, which we covered in the last article. Imagine we’re at level 1, no victories, the heroes won initiative, and we allow our Censor to go first.

The Censor’s round 1: At the beginning of the round, the Censor gets +2 Wrath. Not enough to do anything powerful. To get more, he has to use his maneuver to judge a creature. Now he’s spent his maneuver but hasn’t actually gotten more HR yet. To do that, he still has to walk forward and hit his target with a damage-dealing ability. He deals 7 damage, triggers his rider, gains +1. He’s now at 3. He’s used his movement, maneuver, and action – turn over. Then on the monster’s turn, it attacks the Censor back, dealing 16 damage. Because a judged creature just dealt damage to the Censor, that triggers his second rider for another +1. Good round: both riders triggered, he’s at 4 Wrath. At the beginning of round 2, he gets +2, reaching 6 Wrath. Now he can start using heroic abilities like Repent or Purifying Fire.

The Conduit’s round 1: Beginning of level 1, round 1. First, roll for Piety – sadly, I low-rolled a 1. That’s a risk of being a chaos HR class. However, we still have Prayer: rolled a 3 on Prayer, which gives +2 Piety. So it evens out. We have 3 heroic resource and we haven’t technically done anything yet. We still have our movement, maneuver, and action. Because we’re a Love and Trickery domain Conduit, I move adjacent to a creature and use Aid Attack. It costs a maneuver, and because of that, I trigger both of my riders for +4 Piety. Now I’m at 7 heroic resource and I still have my action left.

I can cast Corruption’s Curse or Call the Thunder or whatever else I have for my heroic abilities. I’m doing it an entire round earlier than the Censor did. The Censor couldn’t do it till round 2. The Conduit does it round 1.

Why Acting Early Matters

One very important tactical principle: doing the same action early in a fight is better than doing it later. There’s a lot of volatility on round 1 – more enemies exist that can take actions and deal damage. If you use a buff spell on round 1, you get more value because there are more rounds to use it and more enemies to use those buffs against. If you use a control spell, there are more enemies on the map to hit. If you use an AoE nuke, you can potentially kill targets and stop them from taking their turn.

Almost everything proactive is better used early. In a game where most fights are decided in around 3 to 4 rounds, getting one round early is huge. It’s the principle of spending resources early to snowball.

The Balance Problem

In principle, getting all of this Piety up front is supposed to be balanced by the fact that it only triggers once per encounter. So over many turns, someone like the Censor will get more heroic resource total. But to me, that’s a very poor way to balance it because doing things early has its own advantages. And this is a game where fights tend not to last that long, so stalling out so other classes get more HR doesn’t really make up for the huge boost in HR tempo that the Conduit gets.

Piety is really the best heroic resource in the game, as far as I can tell. In my experience as a player and as a Director, this is a real problem. In all of my games, there is a Conduit player. In the game I’m running right now that’s been going for months and months, the Conduit player consistently has more heroic resource than everyone else. And he didn’t even pick riders that are that good.

A Design Critique

I think the logic here relates to the class’s designer. James Introcaso designed this class, and while I don’t know James well, he is someone that I know a little bit. I’ve done some interviews with him – we have three interviews together that are over an hour long where we talked about design and his career. I’ve really studied James as a designer.

If I had to guess his reasoning: he wanted to give the Conduit more Piety than other classes because of what he thinks of as the healing tax. The Conduit gets Healing Grace, which is like Healing Word in D&D 5e – it’s going to heal your allies and you can spend Piety to make it stronger. It’s one of the best abilities in the game, but it’s also kind of uninteractive. Every team composition feels like they need a healer, and you want to avoid the situation where one player gets pressured into playing a Conduit when they don’t want to. I think his way of solving this was to give the Conduit more heroic resource so they can pay their healing tax and still have more left over to do cool and fun things.

To me, this is the wrong way to solve the problem. Obviously James is a much better designer than me, and he had an entire team and lots of playtesters. But the question I’d ask is: why is healing with Healing Grace so unfun that you need to compensate for it? I would try to make healing more fun. That would be the design problem I’d try to solve.

Regardless, as a tactical player and someone who runs for a very tactical team, the fact that the Conduit gets so much Piety is a problem. It’s hard for other players not to resent the fact that the Conduit can always do their cool stuff while other players are waiting rounds and using their abilities at less impactful times.

Domain Features

Domain features are mostly identical to the ones you get on the Censor, which we talked about in the last article. These are mostly non-combat abilities, and if they do affect combat, only a little bit. Because the Conduit has two domains, at this level you choose one domain and get the feature from that domain. I have a separate spreadsheet ranking all the features, which is the same as the Censor’s with a few exceptions (for example, the Storm domain gives the Conduit Thunderstruck at 7th level instead of Ride the Lightning). There are also some wording differences – the Life domain features affect Healing Grace rather than My Life for Yours, but they amount to pretty much the same thing.

I don’t want to spend too much time on features because Conduits have so many abilities to cover. Check the spreadsheet for the rankings.

Healing Grace

Healing Grace is the Conduit’s class maneuver, and it is an S-tier ability. It’s probably one of the best abilities in the entire game when you factor in that you get this at level 1. It’s the second reason (beyond the HR generation) that I think MCDM should consider giving Conduits a nerf.

Healing Grace is a ranged maneuver heal. You target yourself or an ally, and that target can spend a recovery with no HR cost. However, you can spend your HR to tack on additional effects:

Target one additional ally within distance, healing more than one target on your maneuver.
Cleanse conditions that end with a saving throw.
Cleanse being prone.
A target can spend one additional recovery.

Cleansing while reactive is very important. There are conditions in this game that are absolutely debilitating, and getting them off your allies before they start their turn is a critical part of the game.

Here’s how this ends up working from my experience as a Director: I design these very nasty monsters, put them into really cool maps and scenarios, take my turns on round 1, and deal as much damage as I can. Then the Conduit takes their turn and undoes all of it. They use one maneuver, dump 5 Piety into it (which they can do because of their insane Piety generation), and completely erase an entire round of damage. And I hate that. As a player, it’s super fun and extremely powerful. If healing is your fantasy, Healing Grace dominates this game. Play a Conduit.

Why is it so strong? One thing you can just see: it’s a maneuver. You’re paying a Piety cost for all of these benefits, but the actual action cost is so low for what you get. You can erase an entire round’s worth of damage and still have your action left to do something else. It also feels like it’s very efficient for the Piety you spend – where other abilities that give multiple recoveries to multiple targets usually cost lots of heroic resource, this one is just 1 for each effect.

Healing Grace functionally does 80-90% of all the healing your team will need, and it does it on a maneuver. If you have just one other slightly dedicated support or healer (like a Tactician or Censor) plus one Conduit with Healing Grace, you’ve covered your healing needs. You shouldn’t pick other healing abilities because Healing Grace is good enough. This actually affects your build choices, since a lot of your domain abilities give you more healing that you don’t need.

Triggered Actions: Word of Guidance and Word of Judgment

You have a choice between two triggered actions: Word of Guidance and Word of Judgment. These are effectively the same except one is a buffing variant and the other is a debuffing variant.

Word of Guidance

This is a range 10 triggered action affecting one ally. It triggers whenever that ally makes an ability roll for a damage-dealing ability. You can use this to give that ability an edge. Notice it says “makes an ability roll,” so you actually get to see the result of the roll before triggering this ability. This allows you to recognize that if you give this a +2, it will bump up a tier – and that’s when you use Word of Guidance.

Alternatively, if you spend 1 Piety, you can force it up a tier by giving a double edge. Sometimes this is really important, especially for abilities with a potency check. Getting a high result can be the difference between an ability working as intended or barely working at all.

Overall, I like Word of Guidance. I think it’s a great tactical ability. I love what it does in the game, forcing players to work together. Fantastic design.

Word of Judgment

Same as Word of Guidance but for debuffing. You’re targeting an ally who’s about to take damage from an enemy ability, and you impose a bane on that ability to reduce it by one tier. You can impose a double bane for 1 Piety.

Both are good, but I think Word of Guidance is more flexible. You already have ways to cleanse crowd control effects through Healing Grace, which is the main thing you’d be avoiding by imposing banes. Boosting ally abilities is more within your control and your team’s control. Pick whichever you like for flavor or tactics.

Prayers and Wards

These are features that replace your kit. Because you’re a caster class, you don’t train with arms and armor. Prayers and wards are the alternative, and you can change them as a Respite activity.

Prayers

All of these are relatively small statistical bonuses:

Destruction: +1 damage
Distance: +1 distance to ranged abilities
Soldier Skill: A little bit of Stamina; allows you to use light armor or light weapon treasures (you switch into this whenever you get the treasures you want)
Speed: Bonus movement
Prayer of Steel: Increases to Stamina and stability, giving you a lot of durability

Prayer of Steel is by far the best choice in my opinion. The durability it provides is actually important for this class, as we’ll see. But all the bonuses are minor, so if you don’t go Prayer of Steel, it’s not that sub-optimal.

Wards

Defensive magical effects:

Bastion Ward: +1 to saving throws. Nice.
Quickness Ward: Shift whenever an adjacent creature deals damage to you. Hard to get a lot of use from this.
Sanctuary Ward: Whenever a creature damages you, that creature cannot target you with a strike until you harm them, an ally harms them, or the end of their next turn. Forces enemies to spread damage across your team, which is what you want. Also prevents enemies from bursting you down effectively. Great for you because you have lots of healing over rounds.
Spirit Ward: When an adjacent creature deals damage to you, they take corruption damage equal to your Intuition score. Retaliation damage is always nice – it’s low, but action-economy-free damage adds up over a fight.

My recommendation is between Sanctuary Ward and Spirit Ward, but again, they’re all pretty minor.

1st Level Abilities

Signature Abilities

Conduits don’t get a kit, so you get to choose two class signatures. My philosophy: pick one “spammable” or “bread-and-butter” signature that’s broadly useful in most scenarios (typically doing damage or force movement or both), and then use the second slot for a more niche signature that’s situationally powerful.

Bread-and-Butter Choices

Blessed Light is my recommendation. It’s the most flexible choice and an overall really solid signature. It’s a ranged attack, single target, dealing holy damage. One ally within distance gains a number of surges equal to the tier outcome of your power roll.

On a tier 3 result at Echelon 1, you’re dealing 10 holy damage (8 + your Intuition). You’re generating 3 surges for your allies. If they spend those surges on damage, each surge deals 2, totaling 6 additional damage – 16 total damage on a signature. That’s a lot. And remember, dealing damage with surges isn’t even the most efficient use. Probably the best use is to boost the potency of abilities to get devastating crowd control effects. So Blessed Light also gives you a consistent way to generate surges for potency boosting. You cannot go wrong picking it.

Holy Lash is another good choice: a ranged attack dealing equal holy damage, but instead of generating surges, it adds a vertical pull. Let me explain how vertical pulls work in more detail than I did in the Censor article.

A pull has to move the target one square closer to you each time. A vertical pull unlocks the Z-axis. You can pull an enemy down and forward (dealing forced-move damage, calculated as forced move minus stability, plus 2), or you can pull them up diagonally toward you and let them fall. Fall damage is calculated as: (fall distance - target’s Agility) x 2.

For example, at 10 squares range with a tier 3 vertical pull of 4: if you pull them diagonally up, they reach about 4 squares high. A fall from that height against a target with 0 Agility deals 8 extra damage. The key insight: the closer you are to the target when you cast, the less high you can pull them. The formula for max height is roughly half the initial distance on your cast. So if you’re 10 squares away, max height is 5 squares. If you’re 2 squares away, max height is 1.

Both signatures are pretty equal at Echelon 1, but Blessed Light scales much better because surges become more valuable at higher levels. That’s why I prefer it, but you really can’t go wrong with either.

Niche Choices

Lightfall is a 2-burst AoE dealing holy damage with a great effect: you can teleport yourself and each ally in the area to an unoccupied space. Since teleports cleanse conditions like prone or restrained, Lightfall is effectively giving you an AoE multi-target cleanse. Not broadly useful, but in those circumstances where you can get multiple allies with this, it’s extremely valuable for a signature.

3-Piety Heroic Abilities

Font of Wrath (S-Tier)

I’m obsessed with Font of Wrath. For 3 Piety, at range 10, you summon a spirit of size 2 that cannot be harmed, appearing in an unoccupied space within distance. The spirit lasts until the end of your next turn. You and your allies can move through the spirit’s space, but your enemies can’t. An enemy who moves within 2 squares of the spirit for the first time in a combat round or starts their turn there takes holy damage equal to your Intuition score.

The holy damage is low, but what I really like about Font of Wrath is the tactical things you can do with it. You’re effectively creating a terrain object. Imagine you want to prevent a werewolf from getting close: you cast Font of Wrath and summon the spirit in a chokepoint, blocking the alleyway. The enemy has to move around, potentially wasting their main action converting it to movement.

You can also summon it behind a target so an ally with a lot of force movement (like Brutal Slam) can push enemies back into it. Because it takes no damage and enemies cannot move into it, it functions like pushing into a wall. Those are two uses I like, and I’m sure there are many more. The ceiling for this ability depends on how creatively you can use it.

Violence Will Not Aid Thee (A-Tier)

If creative positioning isn’t your thing, Violence Will Not Aid Thee is an extremely spammable, consistently good ability. It’s a ranged attack dealing lightning damage with this effect: the first time on a turn that the target deals damage to another creature (which they’re almost guaranteed to do), they take an additional 1d10 lightning damage (averaging 5.5). And it has a save-ends effect, so you could get even more procs out of it. Ultimately, this is adding a lot of consistent damage for not much cost. 3 Piety isn’t that much.

What I like about this: it’s multiple instances of damage. There’s the initial damage and then another trigger, which you can exploit with abilities like Corruption’s Curse.

5-Piety Heroic Abilities

Corruption’s Curse (S-Tier)

Corruption’s Curse is very similar to Purifying Fire that we looked at with the Censor. It deals initial damage, targets Might, and if it goes through, imposes damage weakness 5 (save ends) – and it’s 5 at every level. Whenever you have a damage weakness on a target, multi-proc damage instances get more value because on your initial hit you deal 5 bonus damage, and on every subsequent damage instance they take 5 more. With Violence Will Not Aid Thee’s multiple damage instances, this gets especially potent.

Now, I need to talk about the downsides of Might-targeting abilities. I’ve made a spreadsheet tracking the stats for all leaders and solos in the vanilla monsters book, ranked by echelon. The color coding shows which stats are reliably hittable:

Red: You cannot reliably hit them at this echelon.
Green: You can reliably hit them.
Yellow: You can hit them, but it’s a coin flip.

The math: almost 70% of leaders and solos will resist Might potencies at their echelon. So an ability like Corruption’s Curse, using the vanilla book monsters, has roughly a 30% chance of making it stick. Compare that to Reason-targeting, which is almost the reverse – about 65% chance to stick.

Personally, I don’t mind the Might-targeting because damage weakness 5 is so powerful. I like having this in my kit for the fights where I run up against a leader or solo I can burst down. Your heroic abilities don’t need to be universally good in every scenario – as you level, you’ll have enough options. I still count this as S-tier.

Faith Is Our Armor (S-Tier)

If you want to avoid the Might-targeting issue, Faith Is Our Armor is incredibly hard not to choose. For 5 Piety, range 10, affecting 4 allies (which in a typical team of 4 is your entire team, and you count as well):

Tier 1 result: Each gains 5 temporary Stamina. That’s 5 x 4 = 20 total Stamina for your team. Not bad. And remember, this is Stamina that isn’t costing recoveries, so it’s breaking the recovery economy.
Tier 2 result: 10 per person. 40 total Stamina for 5 Piety.
Tier 3 result: 15 per person. 60 total Stamina for 5 Piety.

How many recoveries is 60 Stamina? On good targets at levels 2-3, that could be as high as 6 recoveries’ worth, except you don’t even have to spend the recoveries to get it. This feels overloaded to me. And remember, this is on a Conduit that can reliably get 6+ Piety on their turn and still have their action left to cast Faith Is Our Armor before anyone else on the map takes a turn.

I technically gave this an A in my original ranking, but I’m upgrading it to S. It’s the kind of ability that’s outsized-efficient for the cost without even needing to build around it. S-tier now means either an ability you want to build around (like Corruption’s Curse) or an ability that’s so efficient it doesn’t need you to build around it (like Faith Is Our Armor).

2nd Level

Lists of Heaven

Your deity is aware of your growing influence, making it easier to draw their attention and power you when you heal your allies. Whenever you allow another creature to spend a recovery, you can also spend a recovery. This is good – it’s another feature that gives the Conduit a lot of sneaky durability. Even though their Stamina is low, they can generate recoveries for themselves at a very low action cost just by using Healing Grace, which you want to be using anyway.

Domain Heroic Abilities (5-Piety)

At this level, you pick your first domain-specific heroic ability. Let’s look at the main recommendations.

Love Domain: Our Hearts, Your Strength (S-Tier)

This is a ranged buff affecting both yourself and one ally until the end of the encounter or until the target is dying. At the start of each of the target’s turns, they gain a bonus to speed and a bonus to roll damage equal to the number of allies within 10 squares of them. The bonus lasts until the start of their next turn.

Increased roll damage is interesting. There are some interactions with particular abilities where this can get pretty busted – I’ve heard there’s a Fury ability it’s really good on. I also suspect there could be interesting interactions with the Summoner (a new class that summons lots of allies), though I haven’t investigated this in detail. If you know how that works, let me know.

Even assuming a team of 4, that’s a +3 to roll damage, which can add up over a few turns if you build around it right. It could also be underwhelming if you don’t have the right composition. Still a pretty solid ability for 5 Piety.

Trickery Domain: Divine Comedy

For 5 Piety, this is an AoE ability (5-burst, self and each ally in the area). Each target can choose another creature in the area, then swap places with that creature. Under typical circumstances, this isn’t likely worth 5 Piety, but there are some creative tactics you can pull off.

For example, if you and your allies can fly, you all fly to a certain area, cast Divine Comedy, swap places with enemies, and move them 5 squares off the ground for fall damage. If multiple allies line up vertically above enemies, you can create a cascade of falling and landing-on-top-of-each-other damage. It’s such a niche circumstance that I can’t call it tactically reliable, but it’s so fun and funny. My friends and I would love using this.

Death Domain: Reap (S-Tier)

This is a buff (range 10, each ally) lasting until the start of your next turn. Each time a target kills an enemy, they regain Stamina equal to 5 + your Intuition score. This is healing without using recoveries. In Draw Steel, there can sometimes be a lot of enemies on the map, especially minions, and it doesn’t specify they can’t be minions. In certain maps, this can give you a massive amount of free healing. I sometimes look at Death just to get this ability.

Fate Domain: Blessing of Fate and Destiny (S-Tier)

Range 10, targets 3 creatures (you can target yourself instead). Notice it says creatures, not allies, because you choose 3 creatures (ally or enemy), and they get one of the following effects: either whenever they make a power roll they roll three dice and choose which two to use (advantage), or they roll three dice and use the lowest (disadvantage). You can apply advantage to allies or disadvantage to enemies, and you can cast this multiple times – buff your team first, then debuff enemies later.

How valuable is advantage and disadvantage in Draw Steel? I’ve done the math. With standard rolls at +2: 36% chance of T1, 43% T2, 21% T3, and 3% crit.

With advantage: 15% T1 (halved), 42% T2, 42% T3 (doubled), and roughly 8% crit. That’s massive.

With disadvantage: 62% T1, and only about 7% T3. Crippling for enemies.

For an effect that lasts until the end of the encounter, this adds up to a lot of extra damage, better potency rolls, and variance mitigation. I like to be able to predict my turns in a tactical game. A 36% chance of rolling a tier 1 is too high for me. Blessing of Fate and Destiny at 5 Piety is beautiful.

3rd Level

The last level of Echelon 1 is a big one for Conduits.

Minor Miracle

This allows you, as a Respite activity, to restore a dead creature to life. As long as your Conduit survives a fight and you’re willing to chain a few Respites, you can raise your entire team back to life.

How valuable is this? Extremely. Think of it mathematically: at the very least, this allows you to fight one extra encounter per Respite. Normally, you fight battles that chip away at your recovery resources until someone hits zero recoveries and becomes scared to enter another fight – that’s when you’d take a Respite. But once you have Minor Miracle, it’s not that much of a risk. You might as well push, because if you die, you get raised. If you don’t die, you’ve gotten another victory and can push further.

More battles per Respite means more victories. More victories means more power. Eventually, if you play right, you can get so many victories that you can spam all your abilities on round 1 and snowball the fight from there. I cannot say enough good things about Minor Miracle.

7-Piety Heroic Abilities

Fear the Gods (S-Tier)

This feels just better than the other choices at this level. It’s a 5-cube ranged AoE dealing psychic damage (not out of this world, but solid considering the area). The big effect: it’s an Intuition-targeting frightened condition in a massive AoE. Frightened targets cannot move closer to the person frightening them. You can pass the source of the frightened to one of your allies, maybe a frontline ally, to better control where enemies can move.

This can straight-up shut down multiple melee enemies. On a Conduit that can cast this on round 1, it can win a fight right at the beginning of an encounter. Incredible ability – it’s hard not to pick this.

Saint’s Raiment (A-Tier)

If you don’t like the theme of Fear the Gods, Saint’s Raiment is a good backup. It’s a single-ally buff giving 20 temporary Stamina and 3 surges for 7 Piety. A lot of stats for the cost, and we’ve covered why both temporary Stamina and surges are valuable. It’s a solid choice, but Fear the Gods is just better in most situations.

4th Level (Echelon 2)

At the beginning of Echelon 2, you get your typical echelon increases.

Blessed Domain

This is the Conduit’s Echelon 2 HR boost. Whenever you gain Piety from a domain effect, you gain 1 additional Piety. So now that +2 you get from Trickery and Love domains on a maneuver becomes +3 from that source at Echelon 2. Instead of 4 HR on a maneuver, it’s 6 HR on a maneuver. This just makes the Piety imbalance worse, in my opinion. But setting that aside, Blessed Domain is incredible – one of the best Echelon 2 HR bonuses I can think of.

You also get your characteristic increases (standard) and a 4th-level domain feature. I’ve ranked all of those in the domain spreadsheet – too many to go over individually. If you have questions, leave them in the comments.

5th Level

At 5th level, you gain another domain feature (because you have two domains, you picked one at 4th level and get the other here – it’s just a one-level delay). The big thing at this level is your 9-Piety abilities.

Vessel of Retribution (A-Tier)

I think this is the best choice at this level. It’s a range 10 buff on a maneuver, self or one ally. The first time the target is dying or winded before the end of the encounter, each enemy within 5 squares of them takes 15 holy damage. Cast this on a Fury who wants to drop to zero anyway, and you end up dealing 30 guaranteed holy damage in a 5-square AoE. They can position themselves around the enemy, and whenever they take damage, an enemy is probably adjacent. For 9 Piety, you can’t exactly control when it triggers, but it’s one of the better options at this level.

Sanctuary (A-Tier)

Range 10, maneuver, self or one ally. The target is removed from the encounter map until the start of their next turn and can spend any number of recoveries. Being able to spend any number of recoveries is nice, but you’re probably not using this as a healing ability since Healing Grace has that covered. What you’re really doing is: if a target is badly out of position or has zero recoveries left and you want to shift aggro, taking them off the encounter map forces enemies to spread damage around. Again, for 9 Piety it’s not a great spend, but these are the two I recommend for this level.

6th Level

Burgeoning Saint

This is a passive with four bonuses:

Edge on Presence tests made to interact with other creatures. Good out-of-combat bonus.
Whenever you deal damage to an enemy, you can spend a recovery. As long as you’re using a damage-dealing ability, you’re getting at least one recovery per round if you want. Combined with Lists of Heaven (which lets you spend a recovery whenever an ally does), you always have enough recoveries to spend. At this level, you’re really not in a position as a Conduit where you’re lacking recovery opportunities, giving you a lot of innate durability.
Corruption immunity 10 or holy immunity 10 (your choice). The correct choice is corruption immunity 10. Holy damage from monsters and enemies is really rare in the vanilla monster book, and also rare in homebrew design – try to imagine a monster that heroes would be fighting that deals holy damage. Corruption damage, by contrast, is a very common damage type. So having immunity 10 to that is excellent.
A flavor-text appearance change with no tactical impact.

Burgeoning Saint is a pretty good durability passive. It’s important for you to survive fights due to Minor Miracle’s resurrection ability.

6th Level Domain Abilities (9-Piety)

Love Domain: Lauded by God

Maneuver, range 10, affects two allies. Each target gains 3 of their heroic resource. So you’re spending 9 Piety to give out 6 HR split between two targets. Your net loss is 3. But 3 Piety for a Conduit isn’t that much – it’s very easy to be in a situation where you’ve been rolling high on prayers and your 1d3 rolls and you just have extra Piety that is better spent by your allies.

This also tempo-breaks ally classes. We talked about HR tempo earlier: some classes are hard-locked into a standard progression curve, and being able to break out of it and do abilities one turn earlier can be very important. I’m thinking specifically of the Elementalist (which we’ll talk about in the next article) – they are hard-locked into their tempo and really incentivized to break out of it. Lauded by God is quite efficient when used on classes like that.

Trickery Domain: Invocation of Mystery

4-burst, affects self and each ally, maneuver. Each target is invisible until the start of your next turn. Invisibility isn’t that great in Draw Steel – mostly, it gives you an edge on your rolls and a bane on enemy rolls against you. Is that worth 9 Piety just until the start of your next turn? Kind of not. This might be better if your Director interprets it as enabling the hide maneuver, which we’ll discuss more when we get to the 11-cost Trickery ability.

7th Level (Echelon 3)

Starting Echelon 3, you get your normal echelon increases.

Faithful’s Reward

This gives you +1 Piety on your initial 1d3 roll. I like that it takes away a lot of variability on the 1d3 – you’re always getting at least a guaranteed 2 now. I’m glad they didn’t increase the dice size and instead just added a +1. Not much to say: it’s an additional +1, just like every other class would get.

7th Level Domain Features

The 7th-level domain features are really powerful, just like they were for the Censor. Love domain, unfortunately, is kind of weak at this level. Trickery is strong here, which is nice.

Nature domain is worth highlighting: Nature’s Bounty. Whenever you finish a Respite, you can create a magic meal. Choose two benefits for creatures who consume the meal: 20 temporary Stamina, bonuses to speed and saving throws, or immunity to damage. This is really powerful for this level. You could pick Nature if you’re planning on getting this high in the game.

8th Level

You get another domain feature (same as level 7, check the spreadsheet) and your 11-Piety abilities.

Blessing of Steel (S-Tier)

11 Piety, 5-aura, maneuver to cast, affects self and each ally until the end of the encounter. Any ability roll made against a target takes a bane, and each target has damage immunity 5. This lasts until the end of the encounter, and it really adds up. It’s effectively giving you healing without spending recoveries – avoiding damage is the same as getting healing. Absolutely worth casting for 11 Piety in typical fights at this echelon.

Blessing of the Blade (A-Tier)

Effectively the same concept but offensive instead of defensive. At the end of each of your turns until the end of the encounter, each target gains 3 surges. At Echelon 3, a surge is worth 4 damage, so 3 surges = 12 damage per ally per turn in a 5-aura. That adds up to a lot.

Both are great. I find that damage immunity is harder to get while surge generation is easier to come by on this class, so I lean toward Blessing of Steel, but it’s up to you.

9th Level

Passives

Faith Sword: You pick an ally on a Respite, and that ally gets the benefits of Burgeoning Saint. Tactically, this gives them recoveries when they deal damage and corruption immunity – the recovery part is really good on a character like a Fury that wants to take a lot of damage. Additionally, you can spend Piety as a free maneuver to give the hero 1 of their heroic resource for every 2 Piety spent. This 2:1 conversion is pretty expensive, and I doubt I would use it in most circumstances. There might be particular moments where it’s worth doing, but even if you’re overloaded with HR, you can probably spend it more efficiently. Be wary of the conversion part, but the Burgeoning Saint part is excellent.

Ordained: Your characteristic scores are treated as one higher for the purpose of resisting potencies. This feels like you’re getting +5 to your attributes and you’re thinking “Yes!” – except at this echelon, many of your attributes will be too low for a +1 to function well. But even a +1 to your main stats is really good. I value Ordained pretty highly.

9th Level Domain Abilities (11-Piety)

Protection Domain: Blessing of the Fortress (S-Tier)

This is the only S-tier at this level. You cast this on yourself, and until the end of the encounter, you have a 5-square aura where enemies cannot move into that space. They’re hard-blocked: they can’t move willingly, and they can’t be forced-moved unless you choose to force-move them. This is 100% the kind of ability you can build a team composition around. If you build a lot of ranged damage on your team, everyone can cluster around you and you can kite enemies, preventing them from getting within melee distance and shutting down an entire vector of attack. Very strong.

Love Domain: Alacrity of the Heart (A-Tier)

This is like a haste ability. Range 10, maneuver, one ally. The target gets an additional main action on their next turn and gains 3 of their heroic resource. At 3 HR for 11 cost, extremely expensive. Does handing them a main action make up for it? It’s tough. You’re technically generating a main action, but you’re spending your maneuver to do it. Not bad, just steep for 11 Piety. Be careful about when you use this.

Trickery Domain: Nightfall (A-Tier)

Similar to the Darkness spell in Baldur’s Gate 3 or D&D 5e. It’s a 5-cube AoE lasting until the end of the encounter. The area is filled with magical darkness that enemies cannot see through, but you and your allies can.

Here’s where it gets interpretive: line of sight is not a thing in Draw Steel (it operates on line of effect). When I looked through the rules about what “being able to see someone” actually does, I could only find the rules around hiding and concealment. Every character can hide as a maneuver when an enemy cannot see them. While hidden, enemies cannot target you with single-target abilities – only area abilities.

So the play is: summon the darkness, you and your allies go into it to hide, and enemies can’t target you with single-target abilities. Phenomenal, and it lasts until end of encounter. This could borderline be S-tier, but the entire value hinges on a specific interpretation. Your Director might decide that Nightfall’s darkness counts as “the general area” and won’t allow you to hide in it. If they don’t allow hiding, this ability is terrible for 11 Piety. Talk to your Director before selecting the Trickery domain at this level.

10th Level

Tenth level is always very cool in Draw Steel because it counts as its own echelon. You get a characteristic increase and Most Pious, which boosts your Piety generation to 1d3 + 2.

Avatar

The first thing Avatar does is let you benefit from up to three Prayers at once (the Respite-based passive stat bonuses). That’s nice, but for 10th level it’s not a huge boost. The big change: you can now use a maneuver to activate one of your domain prayer effects.

This is the same thing Censors got at their highest level. For example, if you pick the Trickery domain, the prayer effect at 10th level lets you slide a target 15 squares – and you can now do that at will by spending a maneuver. There are tons of domains with really powerful effects that become incredible when you can use them on a maneuver for no HR. This is the big upgrade at 10th level.

Divine Power

At level 10 you’re max level, so XP is replaced. Whenever you take a Respite, you exchange your victories for Divine Power. Divine Power is a resource you can use to replace Piety. But there’s a unique use for the Conduit: you can spend Divine Power as if it were Piety to use any Conduit abilities that you don’t have.

All of the abilities that exist for the Conduit that you did not select – even other domain abilities – you can cast them as long as you’re using Divine Power as the resource. Yes, you can open up the book and cast any of their abilities. But remember, you’re gated by the amount of victories you got. If you got 5 victories on your last Respite, you have 5 Divine Power. You could cast one 5-cost ability, and by the time you’re level 10, 5-cost abilities aren’t the most powerful thing in your arsenal. It’s one 5-cost per Respite, roughly.

I haven’t hit level 10 with my players yet, so I’m speculating more than I am for other features. My feeling is that it’s maybe a little too limited. But there’s also a tension: if you buff it, it feels like it invalidates your build choices. You’ve picked specific abilities and mutually exclusively locked yourself out of others, but that’s what a build is. Divine Power kind of negates those choices. I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s cool, but there’s a design tension there.

Domain Selection Strategy

One of the cool things about the Conduit is that it gets to create its own subclass by mixing and matching domains, and there are so many factors that go into this decision. It’s easy to be overwhelmed. So let me offer some strategies.

Love as Your Anchor

I’ve talked about Love as a really solid first choice that flattens the rest of your choices. Love gets a great Piety rider, a solid prayer effect, and good (definitely usable) heroic abilities. Its big weakness is its domain features, which are pretty much across the board weak.

Pairing Options

Love + Trickery: My top recommendation. Great rider overlap, complementary heroic ability coverage (Love has strong 5 and 9 costs, Trickery has a strong 11 cost). Requires a Director petition for the vanilla setting.
Love + Life: Life gets really good features where Love is weak. Life’s weakness is its heroic abilities, so they synergize well.
Love + War: A decent choice, and legal if you’re a Cavall Conduit using the vanilla gods and saints.
Storm and Sun: Both have slightly better Piety riders than even the A ranking gives them – they’re borderline S-tier. They also get powerful domain abilities and not-as-weak features. These always make good secondary choices.
Death: Tends to be weak overall, but has the really good 5-cost Reap at level 2 that you can build a team composition around. Pick Death and then find a domain to compensate for its weaknesses (one with better Piety and good 9 and 11 costs).
Fate: Not the strongest, but has abilities I enjoy. Blessing of Fate and Destiny is excellent.
Creation: Getting the Creation prayer effect where you make a wall feels more fun than it probably should.

General Principles

If you pick a C-tier rider domain, compensate by pairing it with an S-tier or A-tier rider. Two C-tier riders together can be tough. Look at each domain’s strengths and weaknesses across Piety riders, prayer effects, heroic abilities, and domain features, then mix and match to cover the gaps.

Closing Thoughts

That’s the Conduit in full. A holy caster that carries your team’s healing and cleansing needs almost singlehandedly through Healing Grace, generates heroic resource at an unmatched pace through its domain rider system and Prayer, and uses its remaining action economy to drop devastating control spells, team-wide buffs, and variance-controlling effects.

The class has two standout strengths that, in my opinion, push it beyond what’s balanced: the HR generation tempo (especially with S-tier domain riders like Love + Trickery) and the sheer efficiency of Healing Grace as a maneuver. These are the two reasons I’ve been saying MCDM should consider giving the Conduit a nerf.

But don’t let my balance concerns kill your enjoyment. This is a blast to play. There are tons of cool things this class can do, from creative Font of Wrath positioning to devastating round-1 Fear the Gods openers to the satisfying feeling of completely erasing a Director’s best-laid plans with a single Healing Grace dump.

My recommendation: Love + Trickery domains. Take Blessed Light as your bread-and-butter signature and Lightfall as your niche pick. Start with Font of Wrath or Violence Will Not Aid Thee at 3 Piety, and Corruption’s Curse or Faith Is Our Armor at 5. Build around your S-tier riders, cast early, and snowball. If you make it to level 10, enjoy the 15-square slides.

The next class in this series will be the Elementalist. Stay tuned.

Serafen Companion Build: Pure Cipher (Wild Mind)

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Serafen Companion Build: Pure Cipher (Wild Mind)

Hey folks, Aestus here. I’ve got another Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire companion build for you. Over a year ago, I made a series of companion builds for Eder, Xoti, and Aloth. Those builds were meant to be powerful but also simple and easy to execute, especially for newer players who want effective companions so they can focus their attention on their main character. A lot of people asked me to make builds for all the companions, and I’m going to start doing that now.

Today, we’re building Serafen as a pure single-class Cipher.

Build Overview

This is a pure full-class Cipher build for Serafen. I think it fits him best thematically, and it’s also the strongest way to build him from a power perspective. The build is designed for real-time with pause mode on Path of the Damned difficulty, but it will be powerful at any difficulty level. It should also function well in turn-based mode, though some choices differ slightly – I’ll note those as we go.

What makes this build sing is the way its pieces interlock. By late game, Serafen becomes one of your best controllers, one of your best buffers, and one of your best damage dealers – all in one package. The key is a crit-focused equipment setup combined with the Cipher’s already excellent spell list, creating a character who ramps up through an encounter and then dominates it.

One important note: the build is also designed from a role-playing perspective to match Serafen as a character. He’s this pirate-prince figure, and many of the equipment choices come from the Principi quest line and Serafen’s personal quest. The build uses those items and happens to be top tier. That’s the sweet spot.

The Wild Mind Question

Serafen is locked into the Wild Mind subclass of Cipher, which is unique to him. Wild Mind functions like Wild Magic from the original Baldur’s Gate games – every time you cast a spell, there’s a chance something random happens. It can be good, it can be bad, and it’s entirely outside your control. There’s no way to weight the outcomes in your favor.

For this reason, Wild Mind is an overall disadvantage. Serafen would be stronger as a vanilla Cipher. That said, people exaggerate how detrimental it is. The random effects don’t fire often enough to ruin your experience, and the build is powerful enough to absorb the occasional bad roll. Don’t let Wild Mind scare you away from using Serafen.

Skills

I’ll cover skills up front so we can focus on abilities for the rest of the guide.

Active Skill: Serafen makes a great Mechanics user. If you haven’t already invested Mechanics on another companion (I put it on Aloth in my Aloth build), go Mechanics here. If you are using my other companion builds, I recommend putting one early point into Mechanics for party assist, then alternating between Athletics and Stealth for the rest of the build. Party assist in Deadfire means that if several party members invest a little into Mechanics, you can spike the skill early enough to always unlock locks and disarm traps for bonus experience.
Passive Skill: Everything into Insight. This is a role-playing choice – Serafen is a Cipher, meaning he can read minds, and the dialogue options for high Insight give exactly that flavor of reading people’s emotions and intentions.

Levels 1–5

Level 1: Starting Abilities

Serafen starts with Tenuous Grasp, which you cannot change. It’s actually a decent single-target debuff for the early game. It applies both Shaken (-5 Resolve, which means -10 Will) and Confused (-5 Intellect, another -10 Will), for a total of -20 Will. That’s significant. In the early game, you can combo this with a Will-targeting ability: hit a target with Tenuous Grasp first to shred their Will defense, then follow up with a charm or domination effect. By mid to late game, you’ll stop casting Tenuous Grasp, but it pulls its weight early.

Level 2: Whispers of Treason

We take Whispers of Treason here – a Will-targeting Charm effect and one of the best Power Level 1 abilities in the entire game. Charming an enemy is always good: it scales naturally because as enemies get more powerful, converting one to your side becomes correspondingly more valuable. This is a Power Level 1 ability that you will use well into the late game.

It also pairs beautifully with Tenuous Grasp for that early-game combo: debuff their Will with Tenuous Grasp, then immediately land Whispers of Treason for a much more reliable Charm.

Level 3: Mental Binding + Draining Whip

Here we unlock Power Level 2 abilities. We take Mental Binding, which is Deadfire’s version of Hold Person. It paralyzes a single target and immobilizes targets in a small AoE around them. Paralysis is excellent not just because it prevents the target from acting, but because 25% of incoming hits against a paralyzed target are converted to crits. So if your party focuses down a paralyzed target, you deal significantly more damage.

We also take Draining Whip. This is an automatic pick on every single Cipher in the game. Draining Whip increases your focus gain to 100% of the damage you deal with weapons. It’s mutually exclusive with Biting Whip, which only increases Soul Whip’s bonus damage from 20% to 30% – a 10% damage increase that is strictly worse than the focus generation of Draining Whip. Biting Whip is a trap choice, in my opinion. Always take Draining Whip.

Level 4: Psychovampiric Shield + Pistol Proficiency

Psychovampiric Shield is a very powerful single-target debuff. It costs only 20 focus, targets a single enemy, and debuffs their Resolve by 10. While the debuff is active, you receive a corresponding Steadfast buff (+5 Resolve). The Steadfast buff is nice but not the point.

Here’s why this ability matters: -10 Resolve is -20 to an enemy’s Will defense. And many of our most powerful spells target Will. That’s effectively +20 accuracy on all our Will-targeting spells. But it’s even better than that, because Resolve in Deadfire also affects the duration of incoming debuffs. With -10 Resolve, you increase the duration of negative effects on that target by roughly 30%. A 30% increase to the duration of your debuffs is incredible, and for 20 focus – especially by mid game – that’s nothing.

Hitting a target with Psychovampiric Shield before following up with other spells becomes a core part of your default rotation.

For your weapon proficiency at this level, take Pistol. The Pistol modal (Rushed Reload) is very strong in real-time with pause, and we’ll be using Scordeo’s Trophy as our primary weapon for the entire early and mid game. More on that in the equipment section.

Level 5: Soul Ignition + Hammering Thoughts

We unlock Power Level 3 abilities and take Soul Ignition, a solid burn damage-over-time ability that targets Fortitude. This gives us early and mid-game damage output. It becomes obsolete once we unlock Disintegration at level 11, but I like having a damage option on my Ciphers early.

An alternative here is Puppet Master, an improved version of Whispers of Treason that grants the Dominated condition instead of Charmed. Dominated lets the target use active abilities, whereas Charmed forces auto-attacks only. However, the difference isn’t worth the additional 30 focus cost in my opinion. Whispers of Treason is two Power Levels lower, which means it benefits from extra Power Level scaling for increased duration and accuracy. I prefer the cheaper, better-scaling version, but Puppet Master is a perfectly valid choice.

We also take Hammering Thoughts, one of the best passives in the game: a flat +1 Penetration with weapons. Straightforwardly excellent.

Levels 6–10

Level 6: Psychic Backlash

Psychic Backlash is a passive that triggers once per encounter when you’re targeted by a Will-targeting ability: you stun the attacker for a short duration. It’s an action-economy-free stun. You don’t get to choose the target, but that doesn’t matter – free disruption in an encounter is always valuable.

Level 7: Pain Block + Greater Focus

We unlock Power Level 4 abilities. Honestly, Power Level 4 spells on the Deadfire Cipher are underwhelming compared to their Pillars of Eternity 1 counterparts. But Pain Block is worth taking – it’s a single-target defensive buff that grants the Robust condition, which increases Constitution, Armor Rating, and heals the target over time. It also removes Weakened, Sickened, and Enfeebled conditions. Having Pain Block available when you need it in a pinch is always worthwhile.

We also take Greater Focus, which increases both maximum and starting focus. A strong start snowballs into a stronger build overall, because once Ciphers ramp up, they create a virtuous cycle of generating and spending focus.

Level 8: One-Handed Style + Weapon Proficiency

This is a flexible level. I recommend One-Handed Style for our single-pistol setup, which we’ll use through the mid game. One-Handed Style grants hit-to-crit conversion when wielding a single one-handed weapon, which pairs perfectly with our crit-focused equipment.

For your weapon proficiency, take Saber or Sword (whichever you prefer – you’ll take the other one later).

Level 9: Borrowed Instinct + Keen Mind

This is a huge level. We unlock Power Level 5 abilities and get Borrowed Instinct, one of the best buffs in the game.

Like Psychovampiric Shield, it’s a combined debuff-and-buff: you debuff a target’s Intellect and Perception by 8 each, while gaining +20 Accuracy and +20 to all defenses for the duration. The offensive value of +20 Accuracy is enormous in Deadfire. The defensive value of +20 to all defenses is equally strong.

The debuff side is also excellent. -8 Intellect translates to -16 Will. And it stacks with Psychovampiric Shield’s -10 Resolve (-20 Will). Combined, that’s -36 to the target’s Will defense plus +20 to your Accuracy – a net swing of +56 effective accuracy on your Will-targeting spells.

This creates what I call the 80 Focus Combo:

Psychovampiric Shield (20 focus) – debuff their Resolve, boosting your accuracy and extending your debuff durations
Borrowed Instinct (40 focus) – you now land this more reliably and for longer, thanks to the Resolve debuff from step 1. You get +20 Accuracy and +20 all defenses
Whispers of Treason (20 focus) – with their Will shredded by -36, this Charm lands easily and lasts a long time

You want the target Charmed rather than dead, because the Borrowed Instinct buff disappears when the debuffed target dies. So convert them to your side, enjoy the massive buff, and let your party focus other enemies. By the mid game, my rotation is usually: save up to 80 focus, execute this combo, save up to 80 again, repeat.

We also take Keen Mind for another +10 starting focus, for the same reasons Greater Focus is good.

Level 10: Rapid Casting

Rapid Casting gives +10% action speed with spells. You want to stack your buffs and debuffs as quickly as possible, so faster casting is exactly what we need. If you’re playing turn-based mode, you can skip this and pick something else.

Levels 11–15

Level 11: Disintegration + The Empty Soul

This is where the build’s damage output goes through the roof. We unlock Power Level 6 abilities and take Disintegration, one of the best spells in the game.

Disintegration targets Fortitude and deals an overloaded amount of raw damage over time. Raw damage bypasses Armor Rating entirely, which matters enormously because many bosses in Deadfire have very high AR that your weapons can’t penetrate. Disintegration becomes your primary way to kill tough targets for the rest of the game.

The spell scales extremely well with duration. Higher Intellect means more total damage. Lowering the target’s Resolve (which increases the duration of incoming effects on them) also means more total damage. This is why our 80 Focus Combo is so important – the Resolve and Intellect debuffs from Psychovampiric Shield and Borrowed Instinct directly amplify Disintegration’s damage.

We also take The Empty Soul, which gives +10 Accuracy for Will-targeting spells. This directly benefits Psychovampiric Shield, Borrowed Instinct, and Whispers of Treason – the core of our rotation.

Level 12: Improved Critical + Weapon Proficiency

Improved Critical is essential for our crit-focused build. You’ll see why when we get to the equipment section – nearly every piece of gear amplifies critical hits.

For your weapon proficiency, take whichever of Saber or Sword you didn’t take at level 8.

Level 13: Ancestor’s Memory + Echoing Horror

This is the most impactful level for pure single-class Ciphers, and one of the main reasons we go single class. We unlock Power Level 7 abilities and get two of the best tools in the game.

Ancestor’s Memory grants a single allied target the Brilliant inspiration. Brilliant increases Intellect, increases Power Levels, and – here’s the big one – regenerates class resources over time (every 6 seconds in real-time with pause, or every round in turn-based). Returning class resources is absurdly powerful. Cast a high-level spell on a Wizard, then give them Brilliant, and every 6 seconds they get that spell back. You can just spam your party’s best abilities. This is one of the two major reasons to go pure Cipher.

Echoing Horror is one of the best passives in the game. Whenever you kill a target, it makes an Accuracy vs. Will check to Frighten all enemies in an AoE around the corpse. Frightened is an outstanding debuff:

-5 Resolve (-10 Will, -5 Deflection)
Roughly +15% to the duration of incoming debuffs on frightened targets
-3 Power Levels (significantly weakens casters and monk-type enemies)
Prevents the use of hostile abilities (casters are forced to auto-attack)

And you get all of this for free – no action economy cost, just for killing a target, which is what you were doing anyway. With Disintegration killing targets regularly, Echoing Horror provides constant free crowd control and debuffing. The synergy is beautiful.

Level 14: Two Weapon Style

This is a flexible level. I recommend Two Weapon Style because it’s around this point that we transition from our single-pistol setup to dual-wielding melee weapons. We’ll discuss the specific weapons in the equipment section.

Level 15: Uncanny Luck

Another flexible level. Uncanny Luck gives us a bit more crit chance, which is always welcome in a crit build.

Levels 16–20

Level 16: Time Parasite + Soul’s Echo + Dagger Proficiency

We unlock Power Level 8 abilities. For real-time with pause, take Time Parasite – a massive action speed debuff on targets (targeting Will) with a corresponding action speed buff to yourself. This is what lets you truly ramp up and act at blistering speed. If you’re playing turn-based mode, take Reaping Knives instead.

We also take Soul’s Echo, which grants 15% hit-to-crit conversion for Cipher spells that target Will. Since our best spells all target Will, this is a significant boost to our crit output.

For weapon proficiency, take Dagger (for Pukestabber, which we’ll cover shortly).

Level 17: Reaping Knives

If you already took Reaping Knives at level 16 (turn-based players), this is a flexible level – pick whatever you like. For real-time with pause players, take Reaping Knives here.

Reaping Knives isn’t your bread and butter, but it’s invaluable in certain boss fights. It summons a set of fast-attacking daggers on an ally that deal raw damage (bypassing AR) and generate roughly 5 focus per hit for you. If you hit a boss whose Armor Rating is so high that your weapons can’t penetrate, you stop generating focus and become useless. Reaping Knives on an ally ensures you’re never locked out – they generate focus for you through raw damage while you continue casting spells.

Level 18: Accurate Empower

Somewhat of a dead level. I recommend Accurate Empower because when I empower an ability on Serafen, it’s almost always Disintegration, and increased accuracy on Disintegration is very important.

Level 19: Driving Echoes + Prestige

We unlock Power Level 9 abilities, and this is the second major reason we go pure single-class Cipher.

Driving Echoes gives a single allied target +8 Penetration for four rounds. +8 Penetration basically means the buffed character can penetrate any target in the game. When you encounter those bosses with absurdly high Armor Rating – the ones that your party normally bounces off of – Driving Echoes just solves the problem. The combination of Driving Echoes plus Ancestor’s Memory is what makes pure Ciphers some of the best support buffers in the game. These two buffs are among the strongest in Deadfire, and you can only get them on a single-class Cipher.

We also take Prestige for +1 to all Power Levels. Straightforward power increase, instant pick.

Level 20: Protective Soul

The last level offers several strong options:

Haunting Chains – single-target Will; applies Hobbled and Terrified, effectively a long-duration stun
Death of a Thousand Cuts – more raw damage that increases as you attack the target; a strong boss-killer

However, I recommend Protective Soul. You already have plenty of raw damage from Disintegration and your weapon setup. Protective Soul gives you extra survivability when you get crit, which matters because by late game you’re a melee attacker who hasn’t invested heavily in defenses. This shores up the build’s one real vulnerability.

For your final weapon proficiency, it doesn’t matter much. I take Rapier.

Equipment

The equipment is where this build really comes together. Nearly every item amplifies critical hits, creating interlocking synergies that multiply each other’s effectiveness.

Accessories

Fair Favor (Helmet) – Serafen gives you this hat as a gift when you max your reputation with him. It’s the only way to get it, and it’s outstanding: +10% hit-to-crit conversion and +10% crit damage with daggers, rapiers, sabers, stilettos, and swords. Notice that we took proficiencies in several of these weapon types during leveling. This item is what incentivizes the switch to melee weapons in the late game. Fair Favor is missable – if you make too many choices that Serafen dislikes, you won’t get it.

Precognition (Necklace) – Perfect for Serafen both mechanically and narratively (a Cipher who can see slightly into the future). It provides two once-per-encounter passives:

Heads I Win: The first two times you’re crit in an encounter, damage is reduced by 75%. Excellent for a melee Cipher who isn’t the main tank – you’ll catch stray attacks occasionally, and this absorbs the worst of them.
Tails You Lose: Your first two crits in an encounter deal +25% increased crit damage. In a crit-focused build, this is a significant damage spike.

Drunkard’s Regret (Ring) – Grants immunity to hangover effects from alcohol. This seems minor until you combine it with Pukestabber (see weapons below). It also just makes sense that Serafen is a drinker. Note: this ring is missable and requires certain dialogue skills (Diplomacy or Intimidate) to obtain. Check the wiki for specifics.

Ring of Prosperity’s Fortune (Ring) – Purchasable from the Deck of Many Things shop. Grants increased hit-to-crit conversion that scales with your current gold. By late game, if you’re selling gear as you go, you’ll have plenty of gold and this ring provides substantial crit conversion.

For boots, belt, gloves, and cloak, the choices are less build-defining. I have specific recommendations in the spreadsheet version of this guide linked in the video description.

Armor

Nomad’s Brigandine with the Tactical Withdrawal upgrade, which grants immunity to disengagement attacks. This enables the skirmishing melee playstyle you want by late game: run into melee, attack a target, run out without provoking.

You might be thinking: “Heavy armor slows down attack speed, and that’s terrible on a Cipher.” You’re right in general, but this build has so many sources of action speed – Time Parasite, Opening Barrage (from Scordeo’s Trophy), Mad Drunk (from Pukestabber) – that you can easily reach maximum attack speed even in heavy armor.

If you prefer lighter armor, Flesh Mender is a good alternative.

Weapons: Early/Mid Game – Scordeo’s Trophy (Pistol)

Scordeo’s Trophy is your primary weapon for the early and mid game, and one of the best Cipher weapons in the game. You can actually steal it fairly early.

How to steal Scordeo’s Trophy: Head to Uto’s Gunsmithy in the Brass Citadel district of Neketaka. You’ll need roughly 11 Stealth (including party assist) on one character and the Bounding Boots (found in the command area of Fort Deadlight after completing the Blow the Man Down quest, which you can resolve without combat very early). Pre-unlock the chest containing the pistol, enter stealth with your party, then use the Bounding Boots’ leap ability to jump behind Uto and as close to the chest as possible. Pause the instant you land, click the chest, and grab the pistol before Uto notices you.

Why is this pistol so good? Several reasons working together:

Opening Barrage (enchantment): Grants +5% bonus action speed per attack, stacking up to 5 times for -25% recovery time. This applies to everything – attacks and spells. For a Cipher, this is perfect: a hybrid weapon-and-spell item.
Obliterating Crits (enchantment): +25% crit damage, which offsets the normal -15% crit damage penalty on firearms, making this a strong crit weapon.
Rushed Reload (Pistol modal): Massively increases attack speed at the cost of accuracy. But if you wield a single one-handed weapon, you get +12 Accuracy, which offsets the modal’s accuracy penalty. Combined with Opening Barrage and Time Parasite, you hit maximum attack speed quickly. This is one of the few cases where one-handed style genuinely outperforms dual-wielding.

Use Scordeo’s Trophy as a single pistol with Rushed Reload toggled on. Auto-attack to build Opening Barrage stacks and generate focus, then spend focus on your rotation. This attack loop is one of the best in the game for mid-game Ciphers.

Weapons: Late Game – Scordeo’s Edge + Pukestabber

Once you acquire Fair Favor and your build has enough survivability to handle melee, it’s time to switch to dual-wielding Scordeo’s Edge (saber, main hand) and Pukestabber (dagger, off hand).

Scordeo’s Edge is a saber obtained deep in the Principi quest line (near the end). It may be missable or mutually exclusive with other faction quests – check the wiki to be safe. It’s one of the best weapons in the game:

Adaptive (enchantment): Increases accuracy of all weapon attacks for a duration, stacking up to 10 times for +20 weapon accuracy. More accuracy means more crits, which is exactly what this build wants.
Blade Cascade (enchantment upgrade): 5% chance on hit to clear all recovery time as a buff. This clears weapon attack recovery and spell casting recovery. In real-time with pause, when Blade Cascade procs, you act at essentially infinite speed. Have your Priest cast Salvation of Time to extend the duration, and even 10–20 seconds of Blade Cascade is enough to end any encounter. You buff yourself, cast Disintegration on every enemy, generate focus instantly through rapid attacks, and just obliterate everything on the map.

Once you get Scordeo’s Edge, your melee rotation is: run into melee, auto-attack to build Adaptive stacks and generate focus, and fish for that 5% Blade Cascade proc. When it fires, the fight is over.

Pukestabber is a dagger available in the late mid game. Daggers inherently provide bonus accuracy (more crits), and Pukestabber has two excellent enchantments that synergize with alcohol consumption:

Mad Drunk: While under the effects of alcohol, gain +20% action speed and +20% melee damage. This is a lot of extra damage and speed.
Debauchery: On a critical hit against Kith or Wilder targets, the target starts puking – effectively a stun. More crit-driven crowd control on top of everything else.

Combine Pukestabber with Drunkard’s Regret (immunity to hangover effects) so you can drink alcohol before resting without penalty. For your alcohol of choice:

Forgetful Night: Roughly -25% damage taken (after Deadfire’s inversion math), +10% damage, -3 Dexterity. The Dexterity penalty barely matters because we have so much action speed from other sources.
Rakhi Aura: +25% crit damage, less Dexterity penalty. You’ll likely get more total damage from Forgetful Night’s flat +10%, but +25% crit damage is never bad in a crit build.

Alternative Main Hand: Aldris Blade of Captain Crow – If you miss Scordeo’s Edge (wrong faction quest, etc.), this saber is an unmissable reward from the main quest at the end of Act 2. It’s stylish and mechanically strong:

Storm Blade: +10 flat shock damage on critical hit – significant bonus damage in a crit build
+10% shock lash on all hits
Corvid’s Bounty: Heal on crit for extra survivability
Blood Honed (enchantment upgrade): Even more hit-to-crit conversion

Between this weapon, Fair Favor, Ring of Prosperity’s Fortune, Uncanny Luck, and your other crit sources, your hit-to-crit conversion becomes astronomical.

Tactics and Rotation

Now that you’ve seen both the abilities and equipment, here’s how it all comes together in practice.

Early to Mid Game (Scordeo’s Trophy Phase)

Toggle on Rushed Reload on Scordeo’s Trophy
Auto-attack to build Opening Barrage stacks and generate focus
Once you have 80 focus, execute the 80 Focus Combo: Psychovampiric Shield -> Borrowed Instinct -> Whispers of Treason on the debuffed target
Save up to 80 focus again and repeat
Use Mental Binding or Pain Block when you need emergency CC or healing
Use Soul Ignition (later Disintegration) for damage on priority targets

Late Game (Scordeo’s Edge + Pukestabber Phase)

Drink alcohol before resting (Forgetful Night or Rakhi Aura) for Mad Drunk bonuses
Open the encounter with your pistol if you prefer, or go straight into melee
Execute the 80 Focus Combo as before to buff yourself and debuff a key target
Switch to melee weapons and auto-attack to build Adaptive stacks, generate focus, and fish for Blade Cascade
Cast Ancestor’s Memory on your most resource-hungry ally
Cast Driving Echoes on whoever needs to penetrate a tough target
When Blade Cascade procs, have your Priest cast Salvation of Time to extend it, then cast Disintegration on everything you can see
Use Time Parasite for even more action speed when stacking with Blade Cascade

Against Bosses

Serafen excels in long fights against high-AR bosses:

Ancestor’s Memory returns enormous value over a long fight, keeping your party’s resources flowing
Driving Echoes lets your damage dealers penetrate targets they otherwise couldn’t
Disintegration deals raw damage, bypassing the boss’s high Armor Rating entirely
Reaping Knives ensures you’re never locked out of focus generation even when your weapons can’t penetrate
High accuracy from Borrowed Instinct and Adaptive stacks means your abilities land consistently

When things ramp up, Serafen becomes a one-man force multiplier. He controls enemies, buffs allies, and kills priority targets – all while generating the focus to keep doing it.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Class Tier List – full class rankings and analysis
Pillars of Eternity Companion Tier List – companion rankings from a tactical perspective

James Introcaso on Becoming a Professional Designer | Insight Check Episode 5

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article is a transcript of a video interview. Watch the full conversation below or skip to a topic using the episode timestamps.

Introduction

“Hey folks, I got a very special Insight check for you guys. Some friends and I recently formed a Draw Steel Creators Collective called the Manifold. It’s just a loose Collective of folks working together to make the best Draw Steel products that we can. This interview was made with the Manifold in mind as a gift for the group. James agreed to discuss his early career with me and how he broke into the industry. I think the discussion led to a lot of helpful insights for people who also want to make a career out of TTRPG design. I know I certainly learned a lot.

Speaking of the Manifold Creator Collective, regular viewers may have noticed the new look to these interviews and thumbnails. These templates were made by someone I met through the MCC, Mr. Matt Dollar. Matt does graphic design and professional layout. I’ve linked some of their work in the description. Check it out if it interests you. I’m sure I will be working with them a lot in the future.

Before jumping into the interview, I also want to apologize and give a quick disclaimer. I had some audio quality issues in this one that I’ve never really encountered before at this level. Of course, I tried my best to fix them, but I am still learning this stuff, and the result is audio quality when James is speaking that is definitely below the standard that I want or I’m proud of. I almost didn’t release this video at all, but James said so many insightful things in the interview, I ultimately decided it wouldn’t be fair to him if I didn’t. So I’m sorry, I hope you’ll be patient with me. My audio is usually better than this.”

Interview Start

“We are joined now by James Introcaso. James is a senior designer at MCDM and the current lead on Draw Steel. In this interview we will be talking about his career working in the tabletop RPG space. So if I say anything else in the introduction, I’ll be spoiling it. But of course, James has been on this podcast many times. I do recommend you check out those other interviews that we’ve done, including our conversation with Dael Kingsmill. James, welcome back.”

“Hey, thank you so much for having me, Aus. I love being here and love chatting with you, so this is going to be a fun time.”

“I’m really excited for this one. So just to let the audience know the plan for this interview, I reached out to James a while back because me and some friends had just started a community of people that are looking to make third-party products for Draw Steel when it finally releases. And when you’re doing any kind of creative work, I think it is really tough to do it solo, and we kind of wanted to band together. And so there was a lot of energy, all of us talking about making Draw Steel products. And there’s always the hope—I know speaking for myself and I’m sure many others—that you know, this go somewhere and potentially roll this into a career for us, making products for tabletop games. And of course, you can never expect because it’s a very niche field, but it just occurred to me: James, you were someone who, you know, you were like us at one time. You wanted to break into the field of tabletop RPG design, and you did it when D&D Fifth Edition was just releasing, just like we’re trying to do it now when Draw Steel is releasing. And I thought it would be really cool to talk to you about how you got your break, how your career started, and that might have some insights for all of us about how we could maybe do the same thing for Draw Steel.”

“Absolutely. I’m so excited to talk about this. A big thing for me, right, is that I want Draw Steel to be something that third-party creators enjoy making stuff for, enjoy being part of a community for, because that was a big part of me getting my start—was finding friends and working with a great community of 5e creators. Right? We don’t have the audience that 5e has, but we have the power to empower creators and foster those folks in ways that a big company like Hasbro may not. And so one thing that we want to do is make sure we’re telling you as much as we can, we’re as much as we can, and we’re giving you the tools to create really cool stuff for Draw Steel.

So yeah, and part of that is also having this conversation, right, and talking about it. My hat is off to the fact that there is already a community of creators for a game that hasn’t actually officially released yet, and that is amazing to me. Because that’s how I started. I started making stuff for 5e before the actual official release of 5e because there were public play tests and stuff.”

“Yeah, I’m really excited to talk to you about that. It’s such an interesting time in history for me as well.”

The Epoch Change of D&D 5e

“5e has obviously become such a landmark edition in Dungeons and Dragons history, but you know, in the buildup to its release, I mean, at that time, it seemed like Wizards of the Coast and Dungeons and Dragons was still losing a lot of customers to Pathfinder. And you know, we just had no idea of knowing that the Fifth Edition would become what it became. And so going back and studying your career, it’s really fascinating just from a historical point of view to see you right in the middle of that kind of epoch-changing moment, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, yeah, it was. I mean, 5e, for a lot of different reasons, has really grown the hobby in a huge and wonderful way. You know, and it’s made things more accessible for creators. Right? Like, there isn’t—there probably is not an MCDM without the number of people who wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons because of the boom of 5e leading them to come to YouTube to search ‘how do I become a dungeon master,’ leading them to find Matt Colville.

Right? And part of that is the slower release strategy that accompanied 5e. Part of that is Stranger Things, right, something outside that nobody really understood was going to have an impact on D&D the way it did. Critical Role, all this kind of stuff. Right? And like, the rise of Critical Role can sort of directly be traced to the Witch Hunter movie, which no one ever talks about.”

“Which is like—I’m a big Vin Diesel fan, so yeah, I was there for that.”

“Right, and one thing that made Critical Role more popular, right, was that like, it was already kind of popular, and then they put out this D&D Diesel promotional video where it was like, ‘Hey, who was that Dungeon Master, and who were those people playing with Vin Diesel? Oh, you can see them play more D&D over…,’ you know? And it like, that helped things.

So like, there’s all of these different things, this confluence of events. And largely, like, also the rise of internet video allowing people to just see how a game that was hard to explain to people who had never experienced an RPG before. Now you could just say, ‘Here, watch this clip. That’s what D&D is.’ And people would be like, ‘Oh, I… oh, okay, yes. Yeah, that thing they played at the beginning of Stranger Things. All right, I know what D&D is.’ Right? And they can go from there. The landscape really has changed a lot and happened in the 5e era and maybe a little bit because of 5e.”

“The transition from 4e to 5e was something I kind of missed because at that time in my life, I was playing tabletop games, but I wasn’t playing D&D. And it wasn’t because I didn’t want to, but I was in college and I was so broke. I could not afford anything, and I wanted to play D&D, but I went to the bookstore and I was looking at the Fourth Edition books, and they were too expensive for me. And there were so many—I remember being really intimidated by that.

And I didn’t have my old books because me and all my brothers shared books growing up, and I just didn’t get them. You know, one of my other brothers had all of the books. And I started making my own game is what I did. I decided, ‘I want to run tabletop fantasy games, I can’t afford books, so I’ll just make my own books.’ And I made my own, and I ran it for my friends, and we played it a lot. But because of that, I was not plugged into D&D.

And going back to that time period where I was thinking about all of these kind of high-minded design questions at the same time you were talking about all the same questions in connection to the release of this new addition. And yeah, it’s been really fun for me to go back to that time period. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I forgot to thank you on behalf of me and all the people at the Manifold Creator Collective. Thank you and MCDM for taking the time to talk to us about all of these things. We really appreciate it.”

“Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me on, honestly. Thank you for having me. So I appreciate it.”

Three Stages of James’ Career

“So here’s what I did. I went through and I studied your career, mostly focused on the very early parts of it. So I tried as best as I could to read and listen to everything that you created that I could get my hands on from 2014 till about mid-2016.”

“Oh, great.”

“And doing all of that, I got a perception of your career where I guess I kind of think of it as going in three phases. And maybe you don’t think of it this way, but I think of there as being the kind of podcast phase where you were primarily blogging on your personal blog, the World Builder Blog, and you were releasing podcasts, which were primarily the Round Table Podcast on the D&D Show, but you had many others.”

“Yes.”

“And then that kind of led to a freelance design career where you were mostly—you were making your own products, which you sold on the DM’s Guild, but also working as a freelancer for Wizards of the Coast. And you got to work with a lot of what are now, I think of as, you know, kind of defining products in Fifth Edition and also defining personalities of that era. I mean, of course, you now work with Matt Colville, but you also worked with Matt Mercer on products. You worked with Chris Perkins. I believe, is that right?”

“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Worked with Chris on a couple products. Yeah. The first WotC official hardcover I worked with Chris was Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.”

“Right, okay. Yeah. And so that was your freelance career. And then, of course, you got hired full-time as a line developer for MCDM. So that’s what I consider the third part is your kind of full-time, no longer freelance design work for MCDM.

It would be really fun to cover all of these periods of your career, but the one I’m really interested in this interview is kind of that early podcast portion and sort of the early part of your freelance work as well. Because I guess that’s the one that overlaps with the Manifold Creator Collective and me—we’re all in that portion of our careers if we ever end up having careers as well. And then it’s also the beginning of 5e, just like we’re in the beginning of this Draw Steel era. So yeah, those are mostly the parts that I’ll be asking questions about.”

Resources

James Introcaso’s Twitch: twitch.tv/jamesintrocaso
Mr Matt Dollar’s Portfolio: mrmattdollar.itch.io

Episode Timestamps

00:00:00 - Introduction
00:01:30 - Interview start
00:04:30 - The epoch change of D&D 5e
00:08:42 - Three stages of James’ career
00:11:12 - How did you get into TTRPGs?
00:17:29 - Did you NEED to become a designer?
00:22:33 - First steps into content creation
00:32:18 - How hard did you have to work?
00:36:45 - Gaining confidence in your own opinions
00:42:56 - A message from past James to future James
00:44:34 - James’ specialty changed over time
00:50:00 - James Haeck, design prodigy
00:54:03 - Learning by talking to nerds
00:58:31 - First products on the DM’s Guild
01:04:07 - Wanting to give up every day
01:09:16 - What are the fundamentals of TTRPG design?
01:13:01 - The x-factor is friendship
01:16:30 - The Manifold Q&A
01:26:26 - Outro

Interview with Dael Kingsmill — mythology, Draw Steel, and cultural storytelling in TTRPGs

Interview with Dael Kingsmill: Mythology, Draw Steel, and Cultural Storytelling

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Interview with Dael Kingsmill of Monarch’s Factory

This article is a transcript of a video interview. Watch the full conversation below.

Introduction

Hey folks! I’m back with another Draw Steel interview for you guys. This one is a fun conversation I had with Dael Kingsmill of the Monarch’s Factory. We talked about mythology and her experience playing in Dusk. We got into how her style of roleplaying can sometimes conflict with Matt Colville’s philosophy and now probably the philosophy behind Draw Steel.

Before we roll the interview though, I want to thank everyone who expressed their support for this interview series. I’m excited to make many more this year. I’ve decided to name the series “Insight Check” - it’ll be my avenue for having interesting discussions on tabletop RPGs.

The Interview

Aestus: We are joined now by our guest Dael Kingsmill. Dael is a popular YouTuber; her channel is Monarch Factory. She got her start over 10 years ago when she was selected for Geek and Sundry’s Vlog Channel. There she produced a bi-weekly segment on mythology, and her insightful, digestible videos on mythology continued on her own channel for years before she also started making Dungeons & Dragons content, which of course also became quite popular.

Besides those things on YouTube, she was a writer, actor, director, and producer on the web series Wolf Gang. She’s also been a generous collaborator, contributing to really too many projects and in too many roles for me to neatly summarize - although I do have to at least mention her ongoing work as co-host of the Eldrich Lorecast, one of the top D&D podcasts that isn’t an actual play. Of course, actual plays tend to dominate for views, but she’s no stranger to actual plays either since she was a regular on MCDM’s D&D Fourth Edition actual play broadcast Dusk. Since Dusk, Dael has produced and appeared in many MCDM videos, in particular hosting the monthly Patreon Q&A videos on Draw Steel.

Dael: My goodness, you’ve done your research! Well, certainly a long resume at this point. It’s an interesting thing being sort of a YouTube free agent for this long.

Aestus: Honestly, the research was really fun to do. I particularly enjoyed Wolf Gang - in fact, I was just finishing an episode before I called you.

Dael: I love to hear it! Wolf Gang is one of those things that it’s like - I look at it and I see all of its imperfections and I see all of the ways in which it’s kind of crumby because it was basically just me and a couple of friends. Like, we had no crew, it was all just us and a camera. But even with all of those imperfections, I’m very proud of it. I’m very proud of putting it together and getting it done.

Aestus: It’s definitely a step up from you know, the things that YouTubers are typically doing. I can’t imagine all of the hats you had to wear to get a production like that completed.

On Dusk and Draw Steel

Aestus: My plan for the interview - and I say my plan because who knows where we’ll go - but I would like to talk about mythology and Draw Steel and your experiences in Dusk. Because just speaking for myself, I really want to explore an evocative mythological style of writing and design in my own products I make using Draw Steel system, and I’m certain that I could learn a lot from your insight into mythology but also your experience kind of playing in Matt Colville’s games - you’re kind of experiencing the Proto-Draw Steel setting if you know what I mean.

Dael: Yeah, yeah. Man, I miss Dusk. I want to play more Dusk. We have to like kidnap Justice and make everyone play again. That’d be awesome. Come on, I want more! I want more!

[The conversation continues through discussions of Australian childhood experiences, mythology, law vs. chaos in gaming, and the connection between mythology and place…]

On Mythology and Place

Aestus: How much mythology is connected to things that are more geographical or environmental? Because that was another thing I really liked about Lillus and your game. I mean, you were a wood elf and you were kind of a disciple of nature, but I was impressed when I watched Dusk that it seemed like you had a kind of intuitive natural type of thinking which I don’t have, but which reminded me of growing up in Papua New Guinea. These were the kind of stories that people would tell - they always seem to be a little more aware of geography.

Dael: I do understand what you’re getting at, and there is something that is… I don’t even know how to describe it. I wonder how much of that is just the disconnect of being, you know, a white person from the British colonies, where there is such a disconnect from place in a big way compared to any number of indigenous cultures around the world.

One of the first things that comes to my mind is songlines in Australia. We talk about songlines - different Aboriginal groups would have songs and stories that were so deeply tied to place that it enabled long-distance travel. It’s this incredible sort of deep-set cultural thing. And when I say indigenous cultures around the world, I’m including, you know, like Welsh - it is so significant and so much in mythology as well.

Any mythology you go to the early stages and it is describing how the land was formed, how did these shapes happen. Whether it’s the Rainbow Serpent, whether it’s the Giant’s Way, they’re telling you this is how those mountains came to be. And I think that there is this deeply human kind of connection that the further we get into sort of an industrial cultural global mindset, the further we get from this part of humanity that is just learning to work with the place you’re in.

On Growing Up in Australia and PNG

Aestus: I was thinking we could take a minute or two to self-indulgently talk about our childhoods. This might surprise you given the way I speak, but I’m pretty sure from my research you and I grew up at roughly the same time and at roughly the same place, only I left Australia in 2007.

I always tell people I lived in Australia because they don’t know where I actually lived. I’ve never said this publicly, but I grew up - I moved in the early 2000s to the former Australian Colony Papua New Guinea, and that’s where I spent most of my childhood. So I didn’t actually grow up in Australia, but I went to an Australian curriculum school, I had Australian teachers, watched a lot of Australian television.

Dael: Were you getting like ABC?

Aestus: I can’t remember the channel, although some of the commercials are branded into my memory like old commercials for Home and Away and McLeod’s Daughters.

Dael: Closer each day…

Aestus: Exactly! I haven’t heard that in so long.

On Deltora Quest

Aestus: You used to do an old segment called Memory Lane where you would let prompts from your audience inspire stories about your childhood, so I wonder if I could give you one prompt about something from my childhood that might spark something for you? Here we go: Diamond, Emerald, Lapis Lazuli, Topaz…

Dael: Deltora Quest! Oh boy did I read those! I loved those books! Because Deltora Quest but not only that, lest we forget that she had a little duo of books “Finders Keepers” that I reference all the time and a Rowan series.

Aestus: I did read Rowan of Rin, I didn’t read Finders Keepers.

Dael: Rowan of Rin was again in the sort of fantasy - for folks who don’t know, for the folks who don’t know, Deltora Quest is like such good intro to fantasy for kids. And I mean, I think of that and I know that when I was reading the second book I was so scared at one point early in the book that I put the book down and I didn’t read it again for a year.

On Mythology and Storytelling

Aestus: When I read the Epic of Gilgamesh, I don’t think of him as a very three-dimensional character. I think he’s supposed to represent something in us, the readers, which is a kind of drive for immortality. So if you’re playing a game of Draw Steel or Dungeons & Dragons or whatever game you prefer, and you want to kind of tap into this vague and evocative mythological type of storytelling, how do you make a character like Gawain or like Gilgamesh which is maybe not three-dimensional? Is that something worth doing in your opinion, or am I just misunderstanding what these characters are?

Dael: It’s difficult. I mean, they - at least with Greek mythology - they often become slightly more complex towards the end of their stories, these heroes, just because a lot of the sources that we have for classical Greek and Roman mythology come from specifically competitions to write plays. We get some comedies but a lot of what we get are the tragedies, which were often submitted as three parts, and so you want to have that really dramatic sort of catharsis-evoking big finish for your character.

On Law vs. Chaos in Gaming

Aestus: To take you back, you were telling me about this decision that you made when you were playing Lillus in Dusk about why she was offended with the humans’ burials, and it’s because it reminded her of farming, of agriculture, right?

Dael: Yeah, well it signals that arrogance. It signals that thing that she views as deeply human, that idea of “you know better than the world, you know better than nature.” You enforce your will over nature instead of bending with it. She thinks it’s inelegant, she thinks it’s arrogant.

Aestus: To me, it sounds like you’ve built this character to engage pretty directly with the Matt Colville themes of a game, which is Law and Chaos, right? And for him, if I’m understanding it right - you will understand it much better I’m sure - law roughly represents civilization and Chaos roughly represents the wild. Am I getting that right?

Dael: Yeah, well that’s my impression as well. To be fair, when we went to play this initial, you know, two or three session sort of tester thing, I originally was going to play a human. Then Matt was like - I was going to play… on the table was human and also on the table was rogue, and he was like “you’ve been a rogue before, you’ve been a human before, you’re going to be an elf invoker.” I was like “all right, I’ll be an elf invoker.”

On Fantasy and Mythology

Aestus: Lord Dunsany was an Irish writer who first published in 1904, something like that. He’s in the generation of Tolkien and Lewis but slightly predates them as far as publishing goes, and is, my understanding is, considered one of the first modern fantasy writers. But his first work “Gods of Pegana” is just straight up a fictional mythology. The starting lines - oh, it still sticks with me - “Fate and Chance cast lots to see whose the game would be, and the winner strides to MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI and says ‘I’ve won the game.’”

Dael: That’s so fun! I got little goosebumps on my arms.

Aestus: I know! It’s kind of like a fictional version of the Book of Genesis and it’s written in a very King James Version Bible style, which a lot of people find difficult to read, but I absolutely love.

On System Design and Themes

Dael: The medium is the message, right? I always struggle to find like a good example of what I - at least what I… I can’t speak for Marshall McLuhan, but what I’m saying when I say the medium is the message, I’m talking about like a lecture hall says something. If there’s a space for someone to stand at a lectern at the front and then all these chairs that are tiered like an amphitheater looking down at that one person, that says something. It sends a message.

I think it’s very difficult to escape the inherent meaning in any structure, in anything that we do. A building will tell you something about its purpose just by the architecture, and I think that the game system in a similar way - it may be less obvious and I can’t give you concrete examples necessarily, but I think a game system inherently is going to tell you something about itself just because it will be designed, if it’s been designed with any finesse, to encourage certain styles of play and discourage other certain styles of play.

Aestus: Yeah, that makes sense to me because if we take 5e as an example, so it’s a class-based system, right? That’s obviously a system choice, but it seems like a class, especially one that’s well-designed, has a kind of narrative thematic package to it. That’s something I’ve always thought - like clerics or warlocks or paladins, these are classes which when you pick them, you kind of know something about the themes of your character.

Dael: If you look at the way that 5e approaches spellcasters versus the way Draw Steel approaches spellcasters and what they should feel like and what playing them should evoke - because it’s vague and evocative - you know, it’s drastically different from one another. There is a different intention behind those designs, and I think that you can feel that when you play them.

On Geographic and Cultural Connection

And I think that there is this deeply human kind of connection that the further we get into sort of an industrial cultural global mindset, the further we get from this part of humanity that is just learning to work with the place you’re in.

Aestus: Yeah, that same connection to place showed up in the stories I heard growing up. In Papua New Guinea, at least in my area, there are these phenomena called skull caves. Someday National Geographic’s going to find out about it and it’s going to be all over the Discovery Channel or whatever, but for now I think they’re mostly unstudied.

I got to visit lots of them just because we knew folks there, but they’re caves in mountains that are stacked - massive stacks of human skulls. And they’re ancient skulls, no one knows how old they are. According to the locals - this is a vague memory, this is my understanding - but the old burial practice used to be that you would bury your dead standing up, like vertically in the ground up to their neck, and then you would cover the head of the corpse with a clay pot and you would leave it for a while. Eventually the body would decay, and then you would take off the clay pot and the skull would be there, and you would take the skull and you would stack it in the cave with all the other skulls. It was a place for your ancestors, I guess.

Dael: That’s so interesting! That actually makes me think of a point during Dusk where - I don’t know how we got onto the subject but Matt just asked “I don’t know, what do elves do with their dead?” And I remember pondering on it for ages, and I don’t know what Matt’s opinion is because he probably has slightly more of an opinion now that they’ve started actually writing and working on Draw Steel.

But at the time, I remember thinking about it a lot and coming back and saying, you know, I think they probably find hollow trees and put the bodies of elves inside the hollow tree. And I think it would be cool if wood elves at least, instead of rotting, petrify like wood - like they just slowly harden and become basically rock. But this idea that they put them in hollow trees and let them become part of nature.

I think it’s fascinating that what is honorable is so different across different cultures. There’s a great zombie TV show called Kingdom - it’s South Korean and set during the Joseon period. They need to burn the zombies to stop them from coming back to life, but no one wants to burn the bodies because that is culturally abhorrent. That’s not how we should be getting rid of our dead.

It’s one of the questions that I think of first when I’m doing worldbuilding stuff and I’m setting up a city or something - I think “how do they dispose of their dead? Where are they putting their dead people?” Is it catacombs, is it a cemetery, is it on the side of the hill facing the sunrise? What do they believe about death? I think it becomes a very key way to understand even fictional cultures.

This interview was conducted as part of the Insight Check series, featuring discussions about tabletop RPGs and game design.

James Introcaso on Becoming a Professional Designer — another Insight Check interview on TTRPG design careers
The Priory Vault — 10 Homebrewed Artifacts for 5e — custom D&D 5e artifacts with progression systems

Pillars of Eternity Companion Tier List Analysis

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Pillars of Eternity Companion Tier List Analysis

Hey folks, Aestus here with another tier list video. Today I’ll be ranking all of the companions from Pillars of Eternity 1 on a tier list. This continues my series covering the Pillars of Eternity series - I actually started with Deadfire and now I’m on Pillars 1, all in anticipation of the forthcoming release of Avowed.

A companion tier list is something people often request, but I don’t believe I’ve done one since I started my YouTube channel. I think I did have a companion tier list in written format before I was ever a YouTuber - it’s been that long. The reason I don’t do them is because I find them, especially in the games I cover, to be somewhat redundant. I always do class tier lists - I always rank classes, and in pretty much all of these games, what a companion offers is like 95% determined by their class.

If you just watch my class tier list, you can have a pretty good idea of what my companion tier list is going to be like. Honestly, Pillars of Eternity is not that different. Take Durance for example - Durance is a priest. If you go to my class tier list, you’ll see I have ranked priest in the S tier. Correspondingly, Durance is an S tier companion strictly speaking, if we’re just talking about what he brings to a party. Because he’s still a priest, and you need a priest in your party, you might as well have Durance there. It’s that simple.

Mercenaries and Ranking Methodology

That said, I’ve decided to do this one a little differently because of the inclusion of mercenaries in this game. In Pillars of Eternity, you can hire mercenaries which are custom-made units that you make just like your main character. The only real downside of hiring a mercenary is there are two costs:

A gold cost - an initial sum determined by the level of mercenary you hire
An experience cost - you can only hire a mercenary up to one level below your main character

Both of these costs are mitigated if you just hire your mercenaries very early in the game. If you hire them as soon as possible (right when you get to the Blackhound), you should be around level three and can hire a level two mercenary. The cost for that is quite low, and the experience cost is quite low because the difference between a level three character and a level two character in terms of flat experience value is not very much.

So how am I going to be ranking these companions? I’ll be asking the question: How likely am I to replace this companion with a mercenary from strictly a tactics perspective? The tiers break down as follows:

S Tier: A companion that is pretty much just as good as a mercenary of the same class, maybe even better in some ways due to unique features
A Tier: Just as good as a mercenary, maybe without unique features that make them better
B Tier: Companions I sometimes replace with mercenaries
C Tier: Companions I’m very likely to replace with mercenaries

Individual Companion Analysis

Aloth

Wood Elf Wizard
Attributes: Might 12, Constitution 10, Dexterity 15, Perception 12, Intellect 16, Resolve 13
No unique features compared to mercenary wizards
Wood Elf racial bonus good but not optimal for typical wizard builds
Ranking: B Tier - Sometimes replaced with mercenary wizards

Eder

Human Fighter
Attributes: Might 16, Constitution 16, Dexterity 11, Perception 12, Intellect 10, Resolve 13
Decent fighter stats but human racial feature not very useful
Ranking: B Tier - Can be replaced but solid fighter overall

Durance

Human Priest
Attributes: Might 14, Constitution 13, Dexterity 9, Perception 9, Intellect 15, Resolve 18
Stats poorly optimized for priest role despite narrative fit
Ranking: C Tier - Often replaced with mercenary priests

Kana

Island Aumaua Chanter
Attributes: Might 16, Constitution 12, Dexterity 9, Perception 14, Intellect 17, Resolve 10
Good attribute spread for chanter role
Ranking: A Tier - Rarely needs replacement

Sagani

Boreal Dwarf Ranger
Has unique companion Itumaak (fox)
Strong perception and might stats
Ranking: S Tier - Best ranger option available

Hiravias

Hearth Orlan Druid
Well-balanced stats with good intellect
Unique spirit shift form
Ranking: S Tier - Excellent druid implementation

Pallegina

Avian Godlike Paladin
Unique Paladin subclass (Brotherhood of the Five Suns)
Good balanced stats
Ranking: S Tier - Unique features make her irreplaceable

Grieving Mother

Human Cipher
Good intellect and dexterity stats
Solid cipher but can be improved upon
Ranking: B Tier - Sometimes replaced for optimization

Devil of Caroc

Construct Rogue
Unique features from construct nature
Gets some interesting immunities
Ranking: C Tier - Often replaced due to limitations

Maneha

Coastal Aumaua Barbarian
Strong might and constitution
Good stats for repost barbarian build
Ranking: A Tier - Very capable barbarian

Zahua

Human Monk
Excellent might and constitution stats
Nearly optimal monk build
Ranking: A Tier - One of the best monk options

Narrative Rankings

While tactical value is one thing, the narrative design of these companions deserves special mention. Here are some standouts:

S Tier Narrative Companions

Durance - Possibly the best companion in CRPG history, written by Chris Avellone
Eder - Written by Eric Fenstermacher, perfectly embodies the game’s themes
Sagani - Written by Carrie Patel, excellent character arc with powerful emotional moments

Notable Mentions

Aloth (B Tier) - Good introduction to game themes but lacks strong emotional payoff
Pallegina (B Tier) - Strong worldbuilding but less dramatic impact
Devil of Caroc (A Tier) - Compelling revenge narrative
Grieving Mother (B Tier) - Complex backstory though sometimes difficult to engage with

The writing quality of these companions, even at their worst, maintains a high standard. The best among them are some of the finest examples of character writing in the genre.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Class Tier List — full class rankings for the Deadfire sequel

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Class Tier List

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Class Tier List

Introduction

Hey folks, Aestus here. This video is a tier list of all of the base classes in Pillars of Eternity 2 Deadfire. If you didn’t know, Pillers Deadfire is definitely one of my favorite CRPGs and just one of my favorite games of all time, and because I like it so much, I like to make content on it from time to time.

I’m focusing on it more now though because the next game in the IP, Avowed, is due to release sometime this year and I am hyped. Now, there’s going to be people in the comments telling you that I shouldn’t be hyped and you shouldn’t be hyped because they think the trailers don’t look good. I’m just going to put it out here now - I completely disagree. I think the trailers look great and I am optimistic for the game. I want it to do well, so I’m covering this series leading up to its release.

However, even if Avowed is terrible, the Pillars of Eternity series are still going to be some of the greatest games of all time and I want more people to play them. So that’s my motivation for covering a game which is not exactly new these days.

This video has two parts:

The tier list proper where I rank all of these classes and tell you my thoughts on them (I actually recorded that part weeks ago)
A discussion with one of the top five experts in Pillars of Eternity Deadfire - Thelee

The second part of the video is a discussion that him and I had on the finer details of the rankings. Please check out that part - I think the discussion was awesome and I’ve been a fan of Thelee’s for most of a decade so it was super cool to get to pick his brain on this subject.

Fundamental Assumptions

These rankings and this list is for Real Time with pause, full party Path of the Damned Plus trial of iron difficulty, and that’s the core. So it’s not factoring in:

Solo play
Any of Magran’s fires
By extension, it’s not factoring in Ultimate runs

So don’t go linking ultimate runs to argue with me in the description. I do not consider those relevant to these rankings. The Ultimate is very cool, it is the peak achievement in the CRPG landscape, but the Ultimate is not the base game. They are so different because of the extra rules that are applied to the Ultimate run that they’re really just not relevant to each other.

Also, as usual, I’m not factoring in gamebreaking bugs like Strand of Favor plus Blade Cascade - anything in that realm of cheesiness which is also a bug, I am factoring out. Now there are some things which I consider cheesy which are definitely not bugs that I’m including in this video, which is a little different than how I do it in Baldur’s Gate 3, but we’ll talk about that when we get to it.

Moving on now, I just want to get it on the record that I consider this a low resolution tier list - low resolution in that it only ranks the 11 base classes, which is not the level of detail I would like in a comprehensive class tier list. Right, because a true high-resolution tier list would not just rank the 11 single class classes but every multiclass combo in the game, and that would be I believe 66 unique classes total, which is a lot.

I hope to do that video or that series of videos someday where I rank every single one of the 66 available classes in this game on a tier list, but it’s just not feasible for now. So for now I’m just going to rank these 11 base classes. However, I will be factoring in both their single class and what they offer in a multiclass as well.

What the Tiers Mean

Long-time channel viewers will notice I’ve replaced my typical five tier system with this custom made four tier system. Hopefully the names of the tiers are self-explanatory, but in case they’re not:

Gamebreaking Tier

For classes which offer legitimately gamebreaking strategies that are so powerful they require special ranking. I consider something game breaking when it’s so good you no longer have to interact with the tactics of the game. So of course these are the things I was talking about earlier when I said I ban them from my runs, but I’m including them in this video.

Overloaded Tier

This is for classes which just offer so much that they stand head above their competitors. Typically these classes are the linchpins of what I consider some of the strongest builds or composition strategies in the game.

Bread and Butter Tier

This is for classes which are solid - they offer enough that they are attractive as a class and so you’re likely to include one to three of these at some level in your composition, but they’re definitely not the linchpin of the best strategies the way overloaded classes are.

Niche Tier

This is for classes which tend to be underpowered except in a few niche builds or strategies. We’ll discuss those more as we get into those classes.

Now I also want to say that this is a very well balanced game - that’s one of the reasons why it’s so good. I found this ranking very difficult to make and I had to consult many people who have many more hours in the game than I do, and we don’t all agree. So you can definitely make top tier builds with any of these classes in the game. If there’s a class you really like that’s in niche tier and you think I’m underrating it, you know, you could be right because this is not an easy thing.

Ultimately what I’m offering you here is just my perspective. I think it’s an informed perspective and at the very least if I’m wrong you will still learn something.

So alright, enough of the disclaimers - let’s actually dive into the ranking.

Barbarian

I guess we’re just going to do this in alphabetical order starting with Barbarian. Barbarian is going to go into Niche tier. Let’s look at the class.

Here is the Barbarian leveling tree. Basically, the niche for barbarians is that they are fairly durable weapon strikers that are focused on life steal tanking and dealing lots of AOE damage to mobs. That’s their niche as far as I see it.

Signature Abilities

Carnage

The signature ability of Barbarians in Pillars of Eternity is Carnage. This basically turns your weapon attacks into area of effect attacks - it applies 33% of your base weapon damage in an area. And I do believe you roll attack rolls to make sure that this damage hits, but yeah that’s the basics of Carnage.

I must say that Carnage is significantly nerfed compared to how it worked in Pillars of Eternity 1. In Pillars of Eternity 1, Carnage was so cool - it just, I haven’t got into the math of it, but it just felt like it did more damage. But the most important thing is that you could apply on-hit effects from your weapons in the Carnage attacks as well.

For example, if you equipped your Barbarian with say, Tall Grass Pike or St. Omble’s Hour - these are weapons which would apply the prone condition on a crit - and then you could stack intelligence, like max out intelligence on your Barbarian. So now your Carnage AOE is huge, and also the duration of the prone on your crit is huge, and then you would crit on every swing. You’re likely to crit at least a few people in that Carnage radius, right? So you were not only dealing tons of AOE damage, you were just proning targets and it was super super cool.

All of that has been nerfed in Deadfire. Carnage is no longer the thing to build around. And just as a little rant, I find it kind of frustrating because I do not believe that Carnage was overpowered in the original Pillars of Eternity. My perception is that they nerfed Carnage not because it was overpowered but because a lot of people complained that they felt it was dumb that you would ever want to build intelligence and perception on your Barbarian. Which is really frustrating to me because it’s not like the classic Constitution/Strength barbarian was bad in Pillars of Eternity - it was still probably the optimal way to build Barbarian. It’s just you had this cool alternative route where you had like a wizard intellect Barbarian that was knocking everyone prone with their super cool attacks, and that had to be nerfed because a lot of people complained about it. At least that’s my very anecdotal perception.

Frenzy

Back to the Barbarian in Pillars of Eternity Deadfire - the other major thing that barbarians do is of course Rage or Frenzy. It adds:

+25 to your action speed
Gives you the Strong and Fit inspiration
At the price of -10 to deflection

A very good trade-off. This is a solid DPS buff especially in the early game and it develops in two interesting routes:

Blood Frenzy Route:
- Deals raw bleeding damage on targets when you crit them
- When you kill targets it will increase the duration of the frenzy
Spirit Frenzy Route:
- Applies CC debuffs in an aura around you while raging
- Most important is the tier 7 ability which causes the Terrify affliction

The Terrify affliction is very very important in this game - we’re going to be talking about it a lot. When a target is terrified they will do nothing on their turn except for do a quick burst where they run in a random direction. This does two things:

Classic crowd control - targets aren’t attacking you or casting spells
They might run away from you, which can proc attacks of opportunity (or as they’re called in this game, disengagement attacks)

Disengagement Attacks

Procing disengagement attacks is a really really good strategy to build around because it’s a straight up injection into your action economy. Those attacks trigger without taking from what you’re normally spending your time doing. In fact, they don’t even have an attack animation - it just triggers the attack in an instant.

That’s really really strong just from an action economy perspective. If you have a guy that’s building to make lots of attacks and deal lots of damage on those attacks, getting terrified on targets that he’s engaged with is just going to give him a half dozen free attacks in any particular encounter, maybe even more depending on how long the fight goes and how many targets there are.

However, it’s an even better strategy in Pillars of Eternity than it is in most games because disengagement attacks are significantly boosted in this game. It’s hard to find the exact numbers (because I believe the wiki misreports it), but my understanding is that an unboosted disengagement attack - just a standard disengagement attack that any character can get - will be a normal attack plus:

+20 to your accuracy
+100% to your damage (effectively double damage)

That’s really really strong - by comparison that’s much better than a crit, much better than what you get from a crit. But the +20 accuracy is actually going to make it more likely that you crit, so it even stacks with crit bonuses. It’s just really really good. I am telling you, disengagement attacks in this game slap.

And then you can actually build to make them even more powerful. So they’re:

Action economy breaking
Extremely boosted
Really really strong as a strategy

Key Passives

Blood Thirst

The big one here is definitely Blood Thirst. With the Blood Thirst passive, whenever you kill a target it will immediately refund the recovery of your action. How this works in game is if you make an attack, at the termination of that attack if it kills a target, it will immediately start the animation for your next attack or action that you have queued up.

What’s really cool about this is it’s kind of a way to get a high attack speed and a lot of actions in combat without actually building dexterity and action speed in your kit. It completely bypasses all of that. Technically if you dump dexterity you’re getting more value out of this because the recovery that you’re refunding is higher.

That’s another niche I forgot to mention - barbarians kind of have this weird action speed bypassing niche for builds that really no other class offers. Blood Thirst is very big and that’s coming in at tier seven, so again that will work for multiclassing.

Blood Lust

There’s a lesser version of it you can get in the early game - Blood Lust. That will give you 20% action speed on a kill. That definitely adds up in the early game.

Barbaric Retaliation

Finally there is Barbaric Retaliation. You can only get this on a full class Barbarian and this is very interesting ability. With this, whenever a target crits you, you get to make a full attack back at them. This is weird until you start combining this with life steal effects - any kind of effect in the game which will heal you by a percentage of the damage you deal. There’s a few of them, we’re going to talk about them in a bit. In fact, the Barbarian gets one which we’ll see in a second.

This creates the kind of major loop for the full class Barbarian where you actually want to:

Just wear the heaviest armor you can
Dump dexterity
Invest everything into dealing damage with your attacks
Attack slowly and just count on Barbaric Retaliation and Blood Thirst to get your attacks in
Plus all of the bonus attacks (disengagement attacks) you’ll get from your Terrify affliction

If you’re dealing enough damage with all of those, you can imagine it creates like a little loop where:

A target crits you and you attack back at them and kill them
Which is going to proc Blood Thirst
Which allows you to attack again
Then a target runs away from you from Frenzy
Which gives you another attack
And then maybe the Carnage from that attack kills another target
Which does Blood Thirst
Which allows you to kill the target that just disengaged from you

You stack up enough sources of this damage and there’s enough targets in the area, you just deal enough damage that you’re reliably killing targets, procing Blood Thirst and counting that as your action economy, not the standard dexterity.

The Yell Ability Line

That is when the yells come in because at the final tier of yell you actually get damage on it, and it’s damage that scales deceptively well because technically this is a PL1 ability so you’re getting 8 PLs by the time you reach max level to scale this with. So the damage scales up quite a bit. It also has one rage cost even at max level, so you can really really spam this.

So now you’re:

Spamming it for tons of AOE damage
Which makes you more likely to proc Blood Thirst
Which makes you more likely to do more Driving Roar
Then you’ve got Terrify and Retaliation
And if you’re life stealing through all of that damage you can actually just tank all of the hits from retaliation and out heal them with your life steal effects

That’s kind of the core loop for Barbarian, that’s the core niche that I see Barbarian in.

Barbarian Subclasses

There’s four subclasses (most classes have four). I’m probably only going to be able to talk about two subclasses per class for the sake of time. For the Barbarian this is a very simple choice because they kind of have two meme classes which are Corpse Eater and Mage Slayer. What these offer aren’t really good enough to compete with the other options. They can be cool for roleplaying perspectives - I especially like Corpse Eater, I love being able to play like a Hannibal Lecter style cannibal in my games (more games should allow me to do this). Mechanically speaking though, your choices are really between Berserker and Fury Shaper.

Berserker

Here’s what you get from it - basically it buffs your Frenzy from the very beginning of the game where instead of getting the Strong and Fit inspiration you will gain:

The upgraded Tenacious inspiration
Hearty inspiration

Tenacious is going to give you on top of your +5 strength, it’ll give you +2 to your penetration. Hardy is going to give you +2 to your armor. So you’re effectively getting +2 penetration, +2 armor and that’s very very strong especially in the early game.

It comes with drawbacks though:

You cannot see your health while you’re frenzied (pretty meh if you have enough healing)
You’ll take continuous raw damage (again very easy to offset this if you have enough healing)
The big penalty is that you are confused while you’re frenzied

What Confused does is:

Lowers your intellect (big bummer because you want that intellect to broaden the AOE of all of your AOE abilities and the duration of your frenzy)
Most importantly, it makes it so all of your AOE attacks become both Friend or Foe targeting
Your Carnage for example or your yell at late game will not only hit your enemies, they will hit your allies and even hit yourself

That is a very very severe drawback. So what you want to do for this class is just build around it to get the awesome penetration and armor bonuses and offset this confused. There’s a few ways to do it:

With a seafood dish that you can start making pretty much in the mid game which will make you immune to intellect afflictions (and Confused is one of those things)
Equip Modwyr which is a soulbound sword which will give you immunity to intellect afflictions as well

Both are good options.

Fury Shaper

This is the one you pretty much want to go all of the time. The Fury Shaper adds certain summons - they’re like totems that you place on the map that are going to give AOE boosts in the radius of the totem.

There are three altogether:

Frenzy Ward:
- Everyone in the area of effect will get their action speed boosted
- I believe it’s by 25% (maybe it’s 20%)
- Incredible when you realize that’s applying to every member of your party in the AOE
- Really really adds up for damage
- Big injection to your action speed
- You’re getting that right at the early game
Fear Ward (at tier 4):
- Will terrify enemies in a pulse out
- Really good for all the reasons we already talked about with terrify
- Actually consider this a stronger version of terrify than the one you get from Spirit Tornado
- You get it early in the game so when you go Fury Shaper you can actually go the blood frenzy route and then get the ward for terrify
Blood Ward (single class Fury Shaper only):
- Will grant a life steal effect to all allies and yourself in the area of effect
- I believe it’s a 15% conversion
- 15% of the damage you deal will be converted to health
- Pretty nice - that’s to all members of your party
- This stacks with other sources which we’re going to talk about in a bit
- Really putting the Barbarian in this niche of life stealing compositions

Berserker Final Thoughts

So if we return to our tier list now - yeah, this is the niche for Barbarian. They are a tanky frontline damage dealer that’s focused on:

Clearing mobs
Bypassing action speed
Life steal tanking

The reason I put them in Niche is that they are the kind of brawler archetype melee martial weapon strikers on the front line that are both durable and high damage. And in that archetype they compete with two other classes in this game, namely Fighter and Monk. And as we’ll see when we get to them, both Fighter and Monk are very strong classes. And of the three of them, Barbarian ends up kind of being like the annoying kid brother just tagging along. If you’re trying to pick that brawler archetype you’re going to want to go Fighter or Monk, not Barbarian.

So that’s why it’s in Niche tier.

Chanter

Moving on now to Chanter, one of my favorite classes in all RPGs everywhere. Chanter is going into overloaded tier. I’m excited to talk about this class.

Overview

Chanter is Pillars of Eternity’s version of the Bard, and it is a much better design and cooler version than any Bard I’ve ever seen in any other game. It’s like a Bard in that they do spells through poetry and history and stories and stuff like that. How it’s different is that there’s a natural rhythm to the class and you get to create your own poems that you’re chanting in combat. It’s so cool.

Why Pick Chanter

The big reason to pick a Chanter in Deadfire, in my opinion, is for the chants because it’s easy to overlook how good chants are. You’ve heard me already talk a lot about action economy breaking or action economy income, and having a chant is just a whole other dimension. It’s like a whole another vector of action economy you can tack onto your unit.

You can be like the Barbarian where you completely dump your action economy to make yourself tanking and that won’t affect how fast you chant - your chants are always going to be going independent of that. Alternatively, you could say dual class a Chanter with a Wizard and spend all of your actual actions casting wizard spells and you’d still be benefiting from the Chanter class because while all that’s happening your chants are still going. So it’s a whole other vector.

When I first started playing this game I asked the question - I think it’s a legitimate question to ask - why shouldn’t every member of your party be a multiclass Chanter? Because if you don’t have a Chanter tacked onto your unit, you’re missing out on a whole new vector of action economy, and that is very potent.

Powerful Chants

Healing Chants

Soft Winds of Death will heal allies in the area
Ancient Memory will heal allies in the area

Offensive Buffs

Sure-handed Ila: reduces recovery time and reload time for ranged attackers (very good)
Myth Fire: adds +15% burn lash on all weapon attacks for allies in radius
- Actually more than +15% because it scales with power level
- By late game it’ll go higher, usually into the 20s
- If you have a team composition that deals a lot of weapon damage, this becomes very potent
- Even if you go full tank on your Chanter, the damage they deal just by buffing other targets’ weapons can be quite high

Old Sieke

Probably my favorite chant in the entire game:

Another life steal effect, like the Blood Ward from Barbarian
In the radius, for as long as this chant is going, you and all allies get 12% damage dealt returned as healing
Think of this as like a healing lash, just like there’s a fire lash
Applies to all sources of damage, not just weapon damage
Works even better with spellcasters in my experience (spells tend to do more damage than weapons)
Can build glass cannon with your spellcasters and still get durability from healing effects

You can combine that with Mercy and Kindness which:

Buffs healing even more
Will buff healing for Old Sieke and Ancient Memory
Works with Cleric healing or Druid healing
All around really good buff in any healing-oriented composition

Passive healing is very strong in this game because healing can go on infinitely in theory. It’s kind of one of these bottlenecks where if you always out-heal their damage, you just never die - there’s no other way to kill you unless they drop your health to zero.

Many Lives Passed By

One of the strongest chants in the game:

Summoning chant
Each phrase summons a skeleton who fights for you
Skeletons don’t count towards your summoning totals
Could theoretically summon an infinite amount
Ways to chant this so quickly that you summon more skeletons than enemies can kill
Becomes a tanking strategy
Don’t deal much damage but absorb aggro
Especially good for boss fights with single target attacks
A skeleton is just as good at tanking one big hit as your main tank

Invocations

The other niche for Chanters is they are the best Summoners. Their best invocations in my opinion are their summoning invocations.

Summon Options

Dragon summon
- Does alright damage
- Mostly just a massive sack of meat
- Very difficult for enemies to get through
Ogre summons
- Get two ogres
- Lot of hit points
- Can tank for you if skeletons aren’t doing it
Ancient Instruments of Death
- One of the highest damage summons
- Summons three animated weapons
- Deal fair amount of damage
- Even better with penetration
- Can buff them with Myth Fire

Every summon you put on the field is another target that can benefit from your passive buffs.

Crowd Control and Debuffs

At the Sound of His Voice: paralyzes targets
The Shield Cracks
- Very important offensive invocation
- Lowers armor rating by two
- As target takes damage, increases duration
- In boss fights, basically permanent -2 for entire fight
- Think of it as +2 penetration for your entire party
- Really strong because you can’t ignore armor rating and penetration

Chanter Final Thoughts

If we return to our list now, Chanter is just in overloaded tier because of how much it offers, especially in the healing and summoning angle of things. You almost always want at least one Chanter somewhere in your party. Chanters work both as a multiclass and as a single class - it doesn’t super matter. I usually multiclass my Chanters but it’s up to you.

Cipher

Next up on list is Cipher. Cipher is the first class going into gamebreaking tier. I’ve already talked a little bit about Cipher if you watch my beginning intro video, so I’m going to be a little brief because I’ve talked about this before and you can go back to a previous video to see. But yes, Ciphers really do belong in gamebreaking tier. I kind of think they’re the best class in the game, although it’s hard to see that in your first playthrough. The what makes them so powerful is kind of subtle, very easy to miss.

What Makes Cipher Gamebreaking

The really gamebreaking thing about Ciphers is that they are an infinite resource hack. Let’s take a look at it.

Focus Generation

Ciphers are a natural Gish class. They have all of these spells, and to cast them it’s going to take a resource called Focus. Focus is generated through your Soul Whip ability, where it will:

Increase the damage you deal
Take a percentage of the damage you deal with weapons and convert it into Focus
Can upgrade with Draining Whip to eventually get 100% Focus gain
Example: If I deal 50 damage with my weapon attack, I gain 50 Focus to cast spells

As long as the combat is still going, that means there are enemies you can be attacking and dealing damage to, which means you can be generating Focus. That makes Cipher spells technically infinite, and other classes don’t really get this. Other classes have a set amount of resources and when they burn through them, they’re done - not the Cipher.

Ancestor’s Memory

They get this tier 7 ability which will put the Brilliant condition on an ally:

Gives +1 to intellect
+1 to all power levels
Most importantly: gives +1 to class resource per 6 seconds

This means that all of your classes now have infinite class resources, because if you have an infinite source of class resources that can return class resources to other classes, now all classes are technically infinite. The game was not built for this - it’s balanced around you being limited, and Ciphers make you unlimited. Especially in long, grind-them-out fights, Ciphers are just invaluable, and some of the toughest fights in this game are long grind-them-out boss fights.

Basic Class Features

Weapon Striking

As a weapon striker it’s kind of meh unless you’re going Soul Blade. You get:

+20% damage from Draining Whip (scales with power level)
Hammering Thoughts gives +1 penetration with weapons
Good but not enough to overcome what other classes offer
Weapon striking is really just about generating Focus

Spells

The powerful things you can do with this class are in its spells, and its most powerful spells are all single target, both crowd control and damage.

Damage Spells

Disintegrate is standout:

Deals absurd amount of raw damage
Scales well with intelligence
Raw damage cannot be mitigated by armor
In theory, nothing can stop a Cipher if they can land Disintegrate
Main interaction becomes stacking accuracy
Can be reduced by high resolve (reduces hostile effect duration)

Example of interaction: There’s a boss called Dorudugan who has very high armor, so your instinct is to use Disintegrate to bypass it. But he also has absurdly high resolve, so the spell only lasts about 1 second, severely reducing its damage.

Crowd Control

They have excellent single-target CC:

Puppet Master (dominate effect)
- Takes an enemy and makes them your ally
- Like getting two summons at once (removing one from them, adding one to you)
- More powerful enemy = more powerful effect
- Stays relevant entire game
Whispers of Treason
- Early game version
- Still relevant due to PL scaling for duration
- Only costs 10 Focus

Cipher Subclasses

All subclasses are good in their own way, but Ascendant and Scion are probably the best. Let’s look at Ascendant and Soul Blade:

Ascendant

Creates an interesting loop:

Debuff on spells while not at max Focus
Once at max Focus, get Ascended buff:
- All spells are free to cast
- Massive buff to spell power (+3 power level to Cipher spells)
Creates a rhythm: attack to get Ascended, then cast as many spells as possible

Soul Blade

The multiclass weapon striker version and one of my personal favorites:

Gets Soul Annihilation ability
Makes melee attack that expends all Focus
Deals raw damage: 10 base + percentage of Focus expended
Base percentage is 25% (100 Focus = 35 raw damage)
Percentage increases with power level and weapon damage bonuses
Can stack to double or quadruple the conversion rate
Works great with Assassin due to backstab damage bonuses
Can deal upwards of 700 raw damage late game
Probably not optimal compared to Disintegrate, but very fun martial version

Note: I wrote an entire article for my Patreons making a unique optimized Soul Blade build for every single faction in the game - it’s just that fun to mess around with.

Druid

Druid is going into bread and butter tier. Druids are really the Jack of all trades class in this game. By the way, I just want to mention while I have tested all of these classes extensively, Druid and Barbarian are definitely my weakest, so I just want to let you guys know that as a disclaimer.

Class Overview

Druids are very good all-around spellcasters. They get:

Good buffs
Great healing (probably the best healers in the game)
Amazing offensive spells

They’re just kind of like a wizard - they do a lot of wizard-like things.

Spirit Shift

They also get this Spirit Shift ability:

Once per encounter ability
Turn into a were-animal
Options include:
- Were-bear
- Were-boar
- Were-wolf
- Were-cat
- Were-stag
Each has unique bonuses

Spirit Shift Forms

Cat is probably the best offensive one for damage
Bear is probably best for tankiness while casting spells
Boar is also fine for tankiness
(Note: Haven’t tested extensively between bear and boar)

Historical Context

In Pillars of Eternity 1:

Druids were probably my favorite class
One of the best classes (second only to Priest)
Were amazing spellcasters on par with wizard
Spirit shift could achieve weapon DPS comparable to optimized Rogue
Had powerful Elemental lashes on attacks
Math for Lashes allowed for very exploitable damage
Spirit shifts got high percentage lashes on strong and quick attacks

In Pillars Deadfire:

Spirit shift has been significantly nerfed
Haven’t found way to make it deal strong damage
Now use Spirit shift mainly for tankiness while casting
Druids are now solidly just a spellcasting class

Spellcasting Abilities

Healing Spells

Some of the best healing spells in game:

Nature’s Vigor
Moonwell
- Creates healing over time effect on ground
- Gives water-keyworded buff
- Water keyword defensive buff counteracts fire keyword offensive attacks
- Can negate dragon breath attacks
Garden of Life
- Possibly most exploitable heal in game
- Very powerful according to community

Druid Damage Spells

Strong focus on lightning spells in mid-game:

Returning Storm
Relentless Storm
- Deal lightning damage in radius
- Can stun targets
- Passive AoE effect is valuable

Insect Line

Insect Swarm
- Deals raw damage
- Cancels enemy concentration
- Good for interrupt-locking bosses
Plague of Insects
- High raw damage
- Can melt backline quickly

Elite Spells

Great Maelstrom:

Big AoE
Massive damage
Nearly unavoidable (deals four types of damage)
Has all the keywords
Extremely powerful

Druid Subclasses

Ancient

One of my personal favorites:

Not super strong but enjoyable
Gets unique Spirig summon ability
Later gets Wild Grove buff
- Can buff Spirigs
- Works on any Beast or Primordial summon
Spirigs are powerful and adorable

Lifegiver

Greatly improves Rejuvenation spells
Boosts all the amazing healing spells mentioned

Druid Final Thoughts

If we return to the tier list, Druid just does everything you want pretty well, but they have no particular niche where they shine except for healing. But to me, healing is one of those things where you don’t really need to overdo it - you just need enough of it.

A single class Druid is welcome in pretty much every party - it’ll always plug in very well. You cannot go wrong with it, so just have fun with the class.

Fighter

Fighter is going into overloaded tier and is probably my favorite class in this game. It’s definitely going to be my most controversial ranking. I believe I’m going to have a very special guest and maybe we’ll debate this fighter ranking.

To be honest, I’m putting Fighter in overloaded tier but I think it is borderline gamebreaking tier. I don’t think it’s quite as gamebreaking as Cipher or the other class I’m going to be putting up there, but it’s close. It’s close.

Game-Breaking Features

Unbending

The first is Unbending - a self-healing ability which will convert a percentage of the damage that you take into healing. It doesn’t sound that good when you just read it here, but once you dive into the actual math of this ability, you realize that under very achievable conditions you can build to make Unbending an invincibility button.

How Unbending Works

Upgrades to Unbending Trunk (recommended version)
Scales extremely well with intelligence
Higher intelligence means:
- Greater healing numbers
- Longer duration of healing buff
Each new instance of damage procs all current healing buffs

Example of mechanics:

Take 100 damage:
- Generate healing condition with value per proc and duration
- Initial proc of 10 damage
- Duration for 5 procs
- Total healing: 60 damage (60%)
Take another 10 damage:
- Converts to 1 initial proc + 5 more
- BUT also triggers the previous 10 healing
- Result: Heal 11 damage from a 10 damage hit

With enough Intelligence on Unbending, you become functionally invincible.

Tactician Subclass

The other borderline gamebreaking feature is the Tactician subclass:

Restores discipline when interrupting enemy actions
Brilliant Tactician power:
- Activates when all enemies are flanked and no allies are flanked
- Grants brilliant inspiration
- Lasts as long as condition is true
Drawback: Tactical Dilemma
- While flanked, get shaken and confused afflictions (prepotent)

This is especially powerful in boss fights or against few enemies where it’s easy to maintain the flanking condition.

Combat Abilities

Mob Stance

One of three stances (mob, conqueror, guardian):

On kill, proc instant new attack on separate target
When upgraded: -5 stacking recovery per threatened target
Synergizes with items like Reckless Burgundy
Works well with engagement-based weapons

Discipline Strikes

One discipline cost ability providing:

Intuitive buff (+5 perception)
- +5 accuracy
- +10 reflex
50% graze to hit conversion
25% hit to crit
Makes you reliable striker for both spells and weapons

Single Class vs Multiclass

Single Class Benefits

Sundering Blow
- Cheap discipline cost
- Bonus penetration
- Lowers enemy armor rating by 4 for 15 seconds
- Duration extends with intelligence
Clear the Path/Clean Sweep line
- Strong AOE potential
- Well-documented on forums
Take the Hit
- Reduces ally damage by 15%
- Redirects as raw damage to caster
- Potentially strong with Unbending

Multiclass Options

Three standout combinations:

Brute (Fighter/Barbarian)
- Synergistic overlap
- Incredible mob killing potential
- Strong disengagement attack synergy
- Maintains boss-fighting capability
Brawler (Fighter/Monk)
- Excellent combination
- More details coming in Monk section
Swashbuckler (Fighter/Rogue)

Personal favorite
Details coming in Rogue section

Fighter Subclasses

Tactician

Should always pick unless bored of it
Best overall subclass option
Excellent resource management
Strong boss-fighting potential

Devoted

Second best subclass:

Pick one weapon proficiency
Get +2 penetration
+25% crit damage
Apparent drawback of single weapon type isn’t severe:
- Many weapons have variable damage types
- Example: Spears with Moaratanga
- Can always fall back on unarmed strikes with Monastic Unarmed Training
Has completed full playthroughs with 6-7 different weapon types successfully

Fighter Final Thoughts

Fighter is an incredibly strong class that:

Is virtually unkillable
Deals high damage
Has no real weak scenarios
Provides excellent utility through brilliant inspiration
Works well both single and multiclassed

Monk

Monk is another class going into overloaded tier. Monk is so well-designed in this game - the things you can do with this class, it just feels so elegant. If you aren’t convinced that this is one of the best tactical games, play a monk because then you will see.

Core Abilities

Monk Fists

The first awesome thing monks get is definitely Monk Fists:

Transcendent Suffering ability
Adds damage, accuracy, and penetration to unarmed attacks
Scales extremely well with power level
With good power level builds, becomes one of best weapons in game

Swift Strikes

Provides the Quick condition:

+5 to dexterity
+15 to action speed
Combined +30 to action speed
Only costs one mortification
Comparable to mob stance requiring 5 target engagement

Swift Strikes Upgrades

Shock damage variant:
- Adds shock damage as lash
- Decent but not optimal
Swift Flurry (superior option):
- 33% chance to trigger automatic strike on crit
- Synergizes with Heartbeat Drumming passive (+25% chance)
- Combined ~40% chance for instant attack on crit
- Can chain crits for massive damage
- All abilities available by power level 7 (multiclass viable)

Resource System

Dual Resources

Monks have two class resources:

Mortification
- Standard resource like discipline/rage
- Start battle with set amount
- Spend on abilities like Swift Flurry
Wounds
- Usually generated by taking damage
- Varies by subclass
- Easy to gather regardless of build

Duality of Mortal Presence

Bonus to intellect or constitution equal to wounds
At max (10 wounds):
- +10 to either stat
- Intellect most exploitable bonus
Can be upgraded to:
- Iron Wheel: Armor bonus scaling with wounds
- Turning Wheel: Burn damage scaling with wounds (superior choice)
  - Up to +20 burn damage lash on attacks
  - Synergizes with weapon striking kit

Multiclass Potential

Stat Bonuses

Particularly good for casters:

+10 intellect (strongest attribute in Deadfire)
Benefits all classes:
- Fighters: Enhances Unbending
- Spellcasters: Improves spell impact and duration
- Universally useful

Build Directions

Weapon Striker
- Excellent weapon (monk fists)
- Swift Flurry
- Heartbeat Drumming
- Turning Wheel for fire lash
Caster Monk
- Stay back with Enduring Dance
- +15 accuracy
- +10 intelligence
- Strong spell support

Monk Single Class Benefits

Gets powerful tier 8-9 abilities:

Razor’s Edge
- Accuracy per wound
- Stacks with other accuracy bonuses
- +25 accuracy total at 10 wounds with Enduring Dance
Power Level Benefits
- Two more power levels than multiclass
- Can take Prestige for +3 power level
- Significantly buffs fist damage
Whispers of the Wind
- Jumping invisible attack
- Hits all targets in AoE
- Synergizes with:
  - AoE weapons
  - Bouncing weapons
  - Blunderbusses
  - Adate hunting cloak for stuns
Resonant Touch
- Applies resonance stacks on damage
- Consume stacks for 15 raw damage each
- Excellent boss killer

Subclasses

Hell Walker

+1 might per wound
Can reach +10 might
Stacks with other buffs like Thunderous Blows
Can achieve reliable +15 might and +10 intelligence

Forbidden Fist

Favorite subclass that changes wound generation:

Gain wounds when hostile effects expire
Get Forbidden Fist ability:
- Standard melee attack
- Spreads enfeebled condition
- Enfeebled is top-tier debuff:
  - Cancels enemy healing
  - Increases hostile effect duration by 50%
  - Essential for debuff strategies
- Earliest and most spammable enfeebled source
- Can deal serious damage but hurts self
- Can get wounds from Enduring Dance or spamming Forbidden Fist

Monk Final Thoughts

Monks are the definition of overloaded - they give you so much and can excel in nearly any role. Whether single-classed or multiclassed, they bring powerful abilities and valuable stat bonuses to any build.

Paladin

Paladin is going into Niche tier, which is a shame because I really really love this class from a roleplay perspective. I think it’s one of the most fun in the game, and it’s really the class that got me into Deadfire. I’d say my first 3 hours in this game was just spent trying to perfect the Paladin.

Core Role

The Paladin is primarily a tank which also offers some pretty good support abilities.

Key Abilities

Aura Effects

Toggleable auras that grant:

+5 accuracy
~15% stride
+1 to endurance
+1 armor rating

Upgrades:

Defensive: +1 armor rating and +3 health restored
Exalted Focus: +5 accuracy and +5% hit to crit

These add up well - they’re low buffs but always active.

Healing Abilities

Lay on Hands

Active heal through touch
Greater Lay on Hands upgrade:
- Strong initial burst (scales with power level and might)
- Grants robust condition
- Increases armor rating
- Additional healing over time

Exhortations

Reactive abilities:

Revive: Brings back fallen allies
Liberating Exhortation: Suspends hostile effects for 20 seconds

Design Philosophy Issues

Problems with reactive abilities:

Action Economy
- Better to deal damage than heal
- Killing targets mitigates future damage
- Prefer passive healing over active
Revive Problems
- Debuffs until next long rest
- Forces long rests, losing valuable buffs
- Better to use scrolls for revival

Damage Capabilities

Fire Damage Focus

Flames of Devotion
- +20-30 burn damage lash
- Scales with power level
- Costs one Zeal (spammable)
Sacred Immolation (pulsing fire aura)
Brand Enemy (persistent fire damage)
Scion of Flame (+1 penetration to fire attacks)

Fire Damage Synergies

Can build around fire damage:

Arcana scrolls for Firebrand Greatsword
Benefits from fire keyword items
Stacking fire lashes

Problems:

All fire damage
Many enemies immune to fire
Lack of damage variety

Defensive Strengths

Passive Defense Bonuses

Strong defensive passives:

Faith and Conviction: +8 to all defenses
- Increases with relevant reputations
- Enhanced by Deep Faith
Inspired Defense: +1 armor when taking damage
Stoic Steel: Increased armor when stationary
Inspiring Triumph: Defense bonuses on kills

These stack well but become less optimal compared to:

Unbending
Chanter summons
Priest strategies

Paladin Subclasses

Kind Wayfarer

Flames of Devotion heals allies
Good passive healing while dealing damage

Shield Bearer of St. Elcga

Enhanced Lay on Hands
Prevents death effect
Can make party invincible with enough resources
Gets outclassed by Priest’s similar abilities

Steel Garot

Life steal ability
Works against afflicted targets
Excellent with Rogue multiclass
Strong in riposte builds

Paladin Final Thoughts

While Paladin has strong defensive capabilities and some interesting subclass options, it often gets outclassed in its primary roles by other classes. However, it maintains a niche in specific builds, especially when paired with Rogue for defense-based strategies.

Priest

Priests are going into the gamebreaking tier, as I’ve already alluded to. Let’s look at their class.

Gamebreaking Mechanics

Barring Death’s Door

Creates “cannot die” effect on target
Lasts 8 seconds (scales with intellect)
Target becomes literally invincible
Only counter is direct wound damage (extremely rare)

Salvation of Time

Increases beneficial effect duration by 10 seconds
Scales with intelligence
Can combine with Barring Death’s Door
Works exceptionally well with Death Godlike’s Pale Justice (+3 power level near death)

The Gamebreaking Combo

Cast Barring Death’s Door on multiple targets
Use Salvation of Time to extend duration
With Cipher’s resource return, can maintain indefinitely
Makes party effectively immortal
Removes need for tactics once achieved
Functions as intended (not a bug)

Support Abilities

Key Buff Spells

Litany for the Spirit
- 60 seconds base duration
- +5 intellect (Acute inspiration)
- +1 power level
- Nearly permanent with scaling
Triumph of the Crusaders
- 60 second AoE
- Strong condition (+5 might)
- Heal on kills (80+ health, scales with power level)
- Excellent for mob fights
Devotions of the Faithful
- Increases party accuracy
- Decreases enemy accuracy
- +20 total accuracy swing
Dire Blessing
- 30 seconds base duration
- Party-wide buff
- +5 perception
- 50% grazes to hit
- Excellent opening buff

Reactive Abilities

Suppress Affliction (counters charm)
Withdraw (preemptive resurrection)
- Avoids death debuffs
- Better long-term strategy than resurrection

Offensive Capabilities

Priest Damage Spells

Cleansing Flame
- High burn damage over time
- Like lesser Disintegration
Shining Beacon
- Decent burn damage
- Lowers enemy defenses
- Targets Will (reliable defense to target)

God Symbols

Vary by subclass
Example: Berath symbol
- 35-50 corrosive damage every 6 seconds
- Effective against mobs

Priest Subclasses (Gods)

Rymrgand (Sidekick Only)

Adds cold damage spells
Complements fire damage
Makes cleric better offensive caster

Skaen

Adds Rogue abilities
Shadowing Beyond (exploitable)
Finishing Blow for boss damage

Wael

Adds Wizard illusion magic
Strong defensive spells
+50 deflection (Mirrored Image)

Woedica

Gets special Rits
Can disable enemy abilities
Special Spiritual Weapon:
- Summons monk fists
- Raw damage lash
- Scales extremely well
- Potentially best DPS weapon in game

Priest Final Thoughts

Even without the gamebreaking combinations, Priest offers exceptional support capabilities and interesting offensive options through subclasses. The class provides both powerful baseline abilities and unique build opportunities through god selection.

Ranger

Ranger is going into Niche tier and I have kind of been persuaded that it’s probably the worst class in the game even though I like it a lot and its niche is actually quite valuable.

Core Features

Animal Companion

Like a summon
Fight in tandem for bonuses
Primary focus on accuracy boosts

Accuracy Bonuses

Stalker Link: +10 accuracy when attacking same target as companion
Survival of the Fittest: +10 to targets below 50% health
Marksman: +5 to ranged weapon attacks
Marked Prey: +10 against marked targets (stacks uniquely)
Can reach +50-60 accuracy on single target with combinations

Class Synergies

Cipher Ranger (Seer)

Cipher gets +20 accuracy from Borrowed Instinct
Combined accuracy makes Disintegration extremely reliable
Excellent for damage and CC

Monk Ranger

High accuracy enables more crits
Synergizes with Swift Flurry and Heartbeat Drumming
Works well with Enduring Dance

Additional Abilities

Driving Flight

Makes ranged attacks bounce
Action economy hack
Good for spread damage

Concussive Tranquilizer

Cleanses enemy beneficial effects
Critical for certain boss fights

Ranger Single Class Benefits

Heartseeker (good source of Enfeebled)
Base 20 Enfeebled scales to 30 with buffs

Takedown Combo

Animal companion knocks target prone
Next attack gets +100% damage
Can exploit with damage over time effects
Works well with Disintegration
Limited by companion accuracy

Ranger Subclasses

Stalker

+1 armor rating near companion
+5 deflection
Bonded Grief drawback when separated

Ghost Heart

Immune to Bonded Grief
Requires companion summoning
Solid option

Arcane Archer

Can be exploited
Implementation issues
Needs community patch for balance

Ranger Final Thoughts

While considered the weakest class, Ranger has valuable niches in accuracy stacking and specific combinations, particularly with Cipher and Monk multiclasses.

Rogue

Rogue is going into bread and butter tier. Rogue is another one of my favorite classes in this game - it’s powerful and just so fun. It does what you want Rogues to do, which fundamentally is about being a high damage skirmishing striker class.

Rogue Core Abilities

Sneak Attack

Scaling flat damage bonus
Triggers on flanked or afflicted targets
Can be doubled with Death Blows at 2+ conditions
Very reliable to trigger late game

Escape Abilities

Two main paths:

Shadow Step Line
- Attack paralyzes target
- Then hobbles
- Offense-oriented
Shadowing Beyond
- Increased duration
- Grants invisibility
- Adds Swift condition
- Better for backstab combos

Tanking Capabilities

Riposte

20% chance to counter when missed
Free action economy attack
Weaponizes defensive stats
Excellent with Paladin/Wizard multiclass

Persistent Distraction

One of the best passives in game:

+1 engagement limit
Applies distracted to engaged enemies
Distracted provides:
- -5 perception (reduces accuracy)
- Procs sneak attack
- Counts as flanked
- -10 reflex defense
- -1 armor rating
Applies automatically on engagement

Rogue Subclasses

Assassin

Assassinate ability
Takes more damage but gains:
- Massive accuracy bonus
- Increased penetration
- Higher crit damage from stealth
Excellent with Soul Blade

Street Fighter

When bloodied/flanked:

50% reduced recovery (even more with inversion math)
Extremely fast attack speed
Huge weapon crit damage when both conditions met
Works well with Barring Death’s Door

Trickster

Gains illusion spells using guile
Mirror Image for deflection
Great for Riposte builds
Gets Ryngrim’s Repulsive Visage (terrify aura)
Worth reduced sneak attack damage

Rogue Final Thoughts

Rogue excels at both damage dealing and surprisingly at tanking. All subclasses are well-designed and offer distinct playstyles, making it a versatile class that fits multiple roles.

Wizard

Wizard is going into overloaded tier. Wizards are so strong at this game, probably in the top five best classes. It would have been nice to cover wizard first because they really are the lynchpin of several amazing strategies.

Core Strategies

Will Attacking

Built around Miasma of Dull-Mindedness (level 2 spell):

20 second duration (scales)
Applies:
- -10 perception
- -10 intellect
- -10 resolve

Effects breakdown:

Perception reduction:
- -10 accuracy
- -20 reflex defense
Intellect reduction:
- Reduces buff durations
- Reduces ability AOE
- -20 will defense
Resolve reduction:
- -20 will defense
- Reduces hostile effect resistance

Total impact:

-40 to will defense
Stacks with Enfeebled for 80% increased duration
AOE effect
Enables will-targeting strategies

Defensive Abilities

Strong defensive buff spells:

Arcane Veil: +50 deflection (limited)
Wizard’s Double: +40 while unhit
Llengrath’s Safeguard:
- +20 all defenses
- +5 armor rating
- +5 all armor
Arcane Reflection

Summon Strategies

Essential/Substantial Phantom

Creates duplicate of caster
Copies all items and effects
Essential Phantom advantages:
- Duplicates item proc effects
- Works with summoned weapons
- Example: Káte bald’s Black Bow strategy
  - Deals corrode damage
  - Jumps between targets
  - Can terrify on will save
  - Phantom doubles effectiveness

Buff Management

Cleansing

Arcane Cleanse
- -1000 seconds buff duration
- Effectively removes all enemy buffs
- Crucial against enemy wizards

Buff Enhancement

Wall of Draining
- Steals enemy buff duration
- Adds to your buffs
- Can be made nearly permanent
- Better than Salvation of Time

Wizard Crowd Control

Resonating Terror (targets will)
Arduous Delay of Motion (33%+ action speed reduction)
Early game Chill Fog (blinds)
Gaze of the Adragan (petrify)

Wizard Damage Capabilities

Strong damage spells:

Minoletta’s Missile Salvo
Wilting Wind (raw damage + weakens)
Ninagauth’s Freezing Pillar
- Large AOE
- Triggers every 3 seconds
- Scales well
Secrets of Rime synergy
- Bonus penetration
- Works with Freezing Pillar and Chill Fog

Wizard Subclasses

Specialist Wizards

Throwback to original Baldur’s Gate
Trade two schools of magic for power
Evoker can be strong with power level focus

Blood Mage

Dominant subclass choice:

Blood Sacrifice ability:
- Self raw damage
- +1 wizard power level
- Returns spell resource
Strategy:
- Combine with Kanahloog’s Corrosive Siphon
- Heal back sacrifice damage
- Spam powerful spells
Drawback:
- -5 to all defenses
- Manageable with life steal tank build

Wizard Final Thoughts

Wizard excels in virtually every aspect:

Strong multiclass and single class options
Diverse strategic options
Powerful control and damage
Blood Mage subclass particularly strong
Complex but rewarding to master

Final Tier Distribution

Gamebreaking Classes

Cipher
Priest

Overloaded Classes

Fighter
Wizard
Monk
Chanter

Bread and Butter Classes

Rogue
Druid

Niche Classes

Barbarian
Paladin
Ranger

Final Thoughts

I’m not super happy with this distribution. I would love to adjust it, but there’s a kind of problem where in my opinion there is a gulf between Fighter/Wizard and Monk/Chanter.

Initially, I thought about moving some classes around because while Monk really does belong in overloaded tier (I feel pretty strongly about that definition of an overloaded class), it doesn’t offer as many gamebreaking things as Fighter and Wizard. But I take that back - you can’t take Monk out of overloaded tier.

Chanter is flexible - you can test them and decide for yourselves. But yeah, here’s my finished list. I’m happy with this as a low-resolution tier list.

Interview Note

The remainder of the video features an in-depth discussion with Thelee, one of the top experts on this game. The interview portion is conducted podcast-style with minimal visual content.

Pillars of Eternity Companion Tier List — companion rankings for the original Pillars of Eternity

My Next Build: The Way of Fury

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

My Next Build: The Way of Fury

Hey folks, I am in the testing and footage part of my next build and thought y’all might enjoy a sneak peek! I’m also scripting a companions tier list for the entire BG series, I will be posting an early look at that for y’all soon as well!

The Way of Fury – Barbarian 6/Monk 6

This build combines Barbarian and Monk to get make an unstoppable brawling juggernaut.

Here is the gist. Late game Monks are very potent damage dealers that lack durability. Late game Barbarians have raid boss durability, but lack damage. Combining them synergizes into a build that is both insanely durable and has high damage.

Durability: Why This Build Is Nearly Impossible to Kill

So, what are the core features which synergize? The first is Bearheart + Aspect of Stallion + Step of the Wind: Dash. I discussed this before with my Queenguard Karlach build. Wildheart Barbarians can get Aspect of the Stallion, which adds double their Barbarian level as temporary hit-points every time they dash. Bearheart gives resistance to all damage types except psychic while raging, which practically doubles the value of the temp HP from stallion. It’s a beautiful combo, but Barbarians on their own don’t have a way to dash on a bonus action besides Eagleheart, which is mutually exclusive to Bearheart. This is where Step of the Wind: Dash enters. At level 2, Monks can spend a kit point to Dash on a bonus action, unlocking the Bearheart + Aspect of Stallion combo!

Late game, we can also get the Bonespike Garb, which adds flat damage reduction and retaliation damage that scales with our constitution score. As I’ve said before, flat damage reduction synergizes beautifully with resistances stacking from Bearheart, since the percentage reduction is applied before the flat reduction, giving us even more value from the temporary HP! The retaliation damage is also great for us since we want to be building max constitution anyways.

Damage Output: Stacking Attacks and Bonus Damage

But what about damage? There are three core factors to building great melee damage in BG3. They are:

Making lots of attacks
Hitting every attack
Dealing lots of damage on every hit

This build excels at all three!

Making Attacks

First, making attacks. We get extra attack, so that is two attacks on our action. We’ll also Martial Arts and Flurry of Blows, which gives us an attack on our bonus action every round OR two attacks on our bonus action if we spend a ki point. So, we’ve got 3-4 attacks per round; this is a good start.

The next step is to get more bonus actions. We don’t have the levels to pick up Fast Hands from a Rogue dip, so lets put that option aside. We can still get more bonus actions with the Helm of Grit in act 3. This will proc as long as we are below half HP, which is doable for us, because even at half HP we are extremely durable for the reasons we discussed in the section above. If we choose the Way of the Open Hand as our Monk subclass, we can also get Wholeness of Body, which will give us another bonus action per turn for three turns as well as return ki points. Its once per long rest, so save it for boss fights.

Add all these up we have a baseline of 4 attacks per round (5 if hasted) but can go as high 8 attacks per round (9 if hasted) if we spend the resources. This is a lot of attacks!

Hit Accuracy

So, we are making a lot of attacks, but can we hit them? Yes! Monk and Barbarian combine for the highest consistent accuracy in the game that I know of. Barbarians give Reckless Attack for advantage every round. Monks + Tavern Brawler doubles our strength bonus. We’ll miss one in every 400 attacks, roughly — about as close to guaranteed accuracy as this game allows.

Damage Calculation

Now all we have to do is stack as much damage on our attacks as possible. We’re taking Tavern Brawler + Strength Elixirs, so that’s a +10-14 bonus to damage there. Late game, we’ll also be utilizing the overloaded Gloves of Soul Catching, which will give us an extra 1d10 force damage per hit (5.5 extra damage per hit on average). From our classes, we get +2 damage while raging and + 1d6 psychic damage from Manifestation of Mind. We can get another 1d4 psychic damage from Psionic Overload tadpole power (once per short rest). Naturally, we can then double all that psychic damage with the Resonance Stone, for a total of +12 psychic damage per hit on average. Callous Glow Ring can get us an additional +2, and finally, since we’ll be dashing every now and then to refresh our temp HP, we can grab linebreaker boots for the occasional bonus to damage from wrath.

Here is what our bonus damage will look like late game:

Base Damage: 3.5
Tavern Brawler: 14
Rage: 2
Manifestation of Mind: 3.5
Psionic Overload: 2.5
Resonance Stone: 6
Gloves of Soul Catching: 5.5
Callous Glow Ring: 2
Total: 39

This is not factoring in Linebreaker boots or crits. Multiply this by our number of attacks and we are averaging hundreds of damage per round against even the highest AC targets in the game!

Additional Notes

This build is also highly mobile, because it gets movement speed boosts both from Monk and Barbarian and can dash on a bonus action. Here is a spreadsheet guide to the build.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Race Tier List — choose the best race for your melee striker
Baldur’s Gate 3 Weapons Tier List — weapon rankings and weapon action analysis
Fundamental Math in D&D 5e and BG3 — the DPR and accuracy formulas behind build optimization

The Priory Vault - 10 Homebrewed Artifacts for 5e

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Priory Vault - 10 Homebrewed Artifacts for 5e

Below is an inventory of artifacts collected by the Ordo Prioratus Aequatoris, called the Knights of the Priory. These are items I designed for my tabletop 5e D&D adventure In the Bleak Midwinter. If you’re interested in the math behind 5e combat design, check out my Fundamental Math in D&D 5e and BG3 article.

Pungent Mutagen This vile potion awakens an ungodly beast within the player. Grants a variety of boosts which culminate in the ability to shapeshift into a deadly monster. Its especially good for barbarians and druids

Thrasymacheus A dragon pet which fights in tandem with your character and grows in size and power as you progress. Especially good for rangers and warlocks.

The Spear Tyranny A spear that can progress in two different ways depending on whether you decide to master tyranny or embrace it. Both scale with charisma. If you choose to master it you will get a variety of effects centered around buffing yourself and your allies, especially good for bards and paladins. If you choose to embrace it you will get a variety of effects centered around killing units that are charmed or frightened by you, especially good for sorcerers and warlocks.

The Shield of Welleran A heroic shield that gives a powerful mix of offensive and defensive maneuvers. Especially good on any strength-based character with shield training.

Wode Plate A suit of plate armor (either full or half) which will lash out to grapple enemies. It has two routes to progress. Both center around applying potent debuffs on enemies near you, one with an added emphasis on team support. Both are great on any character that wants to be surrounded by enemies.

Exacritas – Sword of Sorrows A finesse greatsword that focuses on controlling enemies and buffing yourself in an area of effect. Great for fighters, rogues, and barbarians.

Prophetic Spirit A mystical spirit opens your eyes to eternity granting you a series of action economy bending buffs. Some abilities are modified by wisdom. Especially good for monks, clerics, druids, and rangers.

The Heart of Ebnon A dagger that you can throw into targets to gain offensive, defensive, and control benefits. Good for rogues and any caster.

Book of Three Evils A vile grimoire that instructs you on dark rituals and magic. Good for any caster and useless on practically everyone else.

Arbalest Mechanicus A clockwork wind-up crossbow that deals a lot of damage and can poison enemies. Good on Rogues and Rangers.

Pungent Mutagen

Drinking this mutagen folds your gut. In an instant fever overtakes you and a sickly sweat pours from your skin. The fever lasts 10 minutes, during which time you lose all sense of where you are, lost to hallucinations of a ravenous morphing beast. Gain one point of exhaustion.

You gain a permanent +4 bonus to constitution. Your maximum for constitution is also increased by 4.

Tier 1

Conditions: Drink the mutagen

You gain the Corrosive Bile ability

Corrosive Bile:
As an action you may spit the bile on an enemy within 5m. The target must make a dexterity saving throw against a DC equal to 8 + your constitution bonus + your proficiency bonus. On a failed save the target takes 1d12 + your constitution bonus + your character level in acid damage and have their armor class reduced by 2 for the remainder of the encounter. You may use this ability multiple times on the same target in an encounter, but their armor class is never reduced more than 2. On a successful save they take half that much damage. You may use this ability an amount of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, you may choose for this ability to replace one of them.

Tier 2

Conditions: be at least level 5 and quaff a drought of broth from cappi vine boiled in fetid water.

Slough:
Once per encounter, whenever you are affected by a status condition which a saving throw will remove, as a reaction you slough off a coat of skin, instantly removing the condition.

Tier 3

Conditions: be at least level 8 and kill an enemy with a bite attack.

Ungodly Mutation:
Once per long rest you can temporarily transform into an Unholy Abomination. Alternatively, Druids may transform by expending a Wild Shape charge. Transforming into an Unholy Abomination functions exactly like the Druid ability Wild Shape, except that you will transform back into your normal form if you go a turn without either attacking or taking damage from an enemy. The Unholy Abomination state is in the appendix below.

Thrasymacheaus – The Last Scion of Samarskhand

You see a large egg with metalic flecks. Attached to the egg with an intricate wax seal is a narrow scroll which details a long lineage of names written in proto-Draconic. (If someone speaks Draconic and passes a DC10 history check they can read it) It is the linage “Samarskhand, God-King of Faalvahzahhofzil.” Every name on the list bears an extravagant title, most referencing events or places now lost to history. It ends with the name “Thrasymacheaus.” Beside the name there is a blank space where a title should be.

The moment the warmth of your hand touches the egg it quivers. The quivering swells to a squirm, then a violent pound from inside which cracks the shell. A reptilian snout pokes through, and you feel its labored breath. You peel away the shell to reveal an infant dragon with shimmering metallic scales. It meets your gaze and coos.

Thrasymacheaus will imprint on whomever carries her the most in the first hour of her hatching. Her imprinted parent must enter a skill contest against her to determine her attitude toward them. Both roll an intimidation check. If the player wins, Thrasymacheaus will generally be obedient. If Thrasymacheaus wins, she will be occasionally defiant and unruly, though never outright disloyal. The player to whom Thrasymacheaus imprints must choose what kind of dragon she is. Consult the list in the appendix below.

In combat, Thrasymacheus is an ally under the control of player to whom she imprints and takes her turn on the same initiative. If Thrasymacheus’s hit point are reduced to zero she rolls death saves in the same way a player character would.

Tier 1

Conditions: attune to Thrasymacheaus

Thrasymacheaus now adds your proficiency bonus to their AC, attack roles, damage roles, and spell DC. She also gets an extra 5 HP for each level your character gains after 1st and has 1d6 hit die per character level. Thrasymacheaus’s attacks count as your attacks for on-hit spell or ability effects like Hex, or Hunter’s Mark. Vice versa, your attacks also count as identical to hers for the same purposes.

Tier 2

Conditions: be at least level 5 and perform an act that earns Thrasymacheus’s loyalty through either love or fear.

Thrasymacheus has grown and is now small instead of tiny. She also gains the Dragon’s Mark ability

Dragon’s Mark:
As a bonus action you mark a target with your rage. You deal an extra 1d6 damage to the target whenever you hit it with an attack. The mark lasts for one hour or until you lose concentration.

If the target drops to 0 hit points before this spell ends. You can use a bonus action on a subsequent turn of yours to mark a new creature.

Tier 3

Condition: be at least level 8 and complete the guardian training with Thrasymachaeus

Thrasymacheaus has grown and is now a medium creature instead of small. She also gains a feat depending on the focus of your training. Choose one of the following:

Fury:
Thrasymacheaus gains an additional +2 hit points per level of your character and her hit die are now 1d10s instead of 1d6s (11 hp base and +7 per level).

Whenever you or Thrasymacheus takes damage from an enemy, Thrasymacheus gains a stack of fury up to a max of 10 fury. Her cone breath weapon is no longer once per encounter, but instead can be cast by expending your fury. The DC of the attack is now 10 + 1 per fury expended to cast + your proficiency bonus. The damage of the attack is now 1d10 per fury expended. Thrasymacheus’s breath weapons ignore damage reduction from resistances.

Guile:
On its turn, Thrasymacheaus can take the following actions as a bonus action: Dash, Disengage, Help, and Hide.

Thrasymacheaus also gains the Sneak Attack ability. This is identical to the Rogue class feature Sneak Attack, except you roll extra 1d6s equal to your proficiency bonus for damage.

Bond:
While within 10 ft of each other, you and Thrasymacheaus may add your proficiency bonus to all Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma saving throws. Thrasymacheaus also gains the Takedown Combo ability

Takedown Combo: (once per encounter) as a bonus action, Thrasymacheaus may attempt a melee attack against an enemy. This attack role has advantage if you are within 10ft of her when she attempts it. If the attack hits, the target is knocked prone and until the beginning of your next turn all attacks made by your character that hit that target count as critical hits.

The Spear Tyranny of the Nine of Kib

The spear he fashioned from a compound of tooth and pale wood, tipped with the point of the serpent’s fang. Bequeathing it unto Yoharneth-Lahai he said “I give thee this spear called Tyranny. Thou wilt lead the Nine, but thou must train to master Tyranny as one among them. If thou master Tyranny thou willst lead as one among them. Woe unto the Kib if thou dost not master Tyranny!”

The Spear Tyranny is a +1 Spear. To wield it, the user must attune to its accompanying Red Shell Necklace. The Necklace grants its wearer a +2 to charisma. While you are wearing the necklace and are attuned to it, your maximum charisma is also increased by 2.

The spear will advance differently depending on whether its wielder labors to master tyranny or embraces it. Upon attuning the spear, the player must declare whether they will master tyranny or embrace it. If they master it, follow the Virtue Route. If they embrace it, follow the Vice Route.

Vice Route

Tier 1

Conditions: attune to the Red Shell Necklace.

When you hit with an attack against targets that are charmed or frightened by you, add your charisma modifier to the damage of the attack.

You gain the Dominating Strike ability

Dominating Strike:
Once per long rest, after hitting an attack with the spear Tyranny, you can attempt to charm the target hit. The target must make a wisdom saving throw against a DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your charisma modifier. If the target fails their saving throw, they are charmed for 1 minute.

Tier 2

Conditions: be at least level 5 and exploit someone under your command.

While wielding the spear Tyranny (you must be proficient in spears), you gain the Absolute Domination feat

Absolute Domination:
Targets that you charm are now completely under your control. While charmed they count as your ally, you decide their actions on their turn instead of the DM, and they have disadvantage on all saving throws and skill checks made against your DC.

Tier 3

Conditions: be at least level 8 and kill a prisoner who had surrendered to you.

Tyranny is now a +2 Spear. While wielding the spear Tyranny (you must be proficient in spears), you gain the Tyrannical Execution ability

Tyrannical Execution:
You may choose to try to execute a target that is under your control. When attacking a target that is either charmed or frightened by you, before rolling any attack rolls, declare that you are trying to execute them. After declaring, all hits against that target are treated as critical hits for calculating damage. At the end of your turn if the target is still alive they are no longer charmed or frightened by you, and are completely immune to being charmed or frightened by you until the end of the encounter.

Virtue Route

Tier 1

Conditions:gain a level while attuned to the Red Shell Necklace.

While wielding the spear Tyranny (you must be proficient in spears), you gain the Lead as One Among Them feat

Lead from Among Them:
Once per long rest, as a bonus action, you may lead your allies as one among them. For the next minute, when you make an attack roll against a target they are marked until the beginning of your next turn. All hits against a marked target (including your own) may add your Charisma modifier to the damage of the attack.

Tier 2

Conditions: be at least level 5 or higher and show mercy to an enemy.

While wielding the spear Tyranny (you must be proficient in spears), you gain the Convert ability

Convert:
Whenever an enemy hits you with an attack, you may use their reaction to speak to them. Upon hearing your words, they must make a wisdom saving throw against a DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your charisma modifier or switch their allegiance to you. After switching allegiance, they count as your ally, and will be hostile towards your enemies. If the target fails their saving throw you cannot use this ability again until the next time you role initiative.

This is not a magical effect. It does not require concentration and will not wear off. After the encounter, the target whose allegiance is switched will leave your party but will remain loyal to you if you encounter them again. The DM may decide that some enemies would never switch allegiance (perhaps important story antagonists) and can overrule this ability at their own discretion.

Tier 3

Conditions:Be at least level 8 and risk your life to save an ally.

Tyranny is now a +2 spear

While wielding Tyranny you gain the Triumph of the Crusaders feat

Triumph of the Crusaders:
This feat modifies the Lead as One Among Them feat. In addition, whenever you or an ally that can see you kills an enemy, they will gain 25 temporary hit points that lasts until the end of the encounter.

The Shield of Welleran

Finally a better plan was made, and it was decided that two men who had by chance been condemned to death should be given a pardon if they went down into the plain at night and discovered whether or not Merimna’s heroes lived. At first the two prisoner’s dared not go, but after a while one of them, Seejar, said to his companion, Sajar-Ho: “See now, when the King’s axemen smites a man upon the neck that man dies.”

And the other said that this was so. Then said Seejar: “And even though Welleran smite a man with his sword no more befalleth him than death.”

Then Sajar-Ho thought for a while. Presently he said: “Yet the eye of King’s axemen might err at the moment of his stroke or his arm fail him, and the eye of Welleran hath never erred nor his arm failed. It were better to abide here.”

- The Sword of Welleran by Lord Dunsany

The Shield of Welleran is a +1 shield.

Tier 1

Condition: gain a level while attuned to The Shield of Welleran

While wielding The Shield of Welleran you gain the Shield Throw ability

Shield Throw:
Once per long rest you may throw your shield at your enemies. As an action make an attack as if your shield was a weapon with the thrown property with a normal range of 30 feet and a long range of 60 feet. Add your proficiency bonus to the attack role if you are proficient in shields plus the enchantment bonus of the shield (for example, a +1 shield would add +1 to your attack role). The weapon damage of the shield is equal to 1d4 per AC bonus the shield gives you (for example, a +1 shield gives +3 to AC, so its weapon damage would be 3d4). The shield magically returns to the thrower and grants them temporary hit points equal to the damage it dealt on the throw.

Tier 2

Condition: be at least level 5 and study The Six Knights of Merimna.

You gain the Bouncing Shield feat

Bouncing Shield:
This feat modifies the Shield Throw ability. Now when you throw your shield it can bounce to hit multiple targets. After hitting a target, if there is another enemy target within 10 feet the shield bounces to them, making another attack. The shield can strike a number of times equal to your strength or dexterity modifier but will only bounce if its attack hits. If at any point it misses, it terminates the bouncing chain and returns to the thrower. If there are multiple targets the shield could bounce to, the thrower decides between them. It may bounce to the same target twice (though never twice in a row). After resolving all attacks, the shield returns to the thrower and grants them temporary hit points equal to the damage it dealt on all its attacks.

Tier 3

Condition: be at least level 8 and slay at least 5 enemies in a single encounter

The Shield of Welleran is now a +2 shield. Furthermore, while wielding it you gain the Billow of Glory ability

Billow of Glory:
As an action, you strike with all the glory of your heroism. Select a target within 5 feet. That target must make a charisma saving throw against a DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + your strength or dexterity modifier. If they fail, they take radiant damage equal to your current amount of temporary hit points. On a successful save they take half as much damage. You lose temporary hit points equal to the damage you dealt with this attack.

Wode Plate

Heaped in the corner of the vault is a suit of plate armor, unpolished, dented, and overgrown with vibrant moss and thin, braided vines.

The Wode Plate can be either full plate or half-plate at the discretion of the first player who attunes to it. Shortly after it is donned, the character will notice that the armor is growing; its moss and vines rooting into their flesh. If they continue wearing it, it will fully take root and cannot be removed without divine intervention, or a ritual of removal performed by an agent of the Aether Wode. The player is now counted as attuned to the plate and is proficient in the Wode Plate’s armor type for as long as it is rooted to them.

Any spell, ability, or effect which would permanently damage the armor will instead last for a maximum of one minute, the time it takes for the armor to regrow itself.

The Wode Plate has a +1 enchantment.

Tier 1

Conditions: The Wode Plate must be rooted to you.

You gain the Raveled Vines ability

Raveled Vines:
Vines twist out from your armor and entwine an enemy. Once per turn, whenever you hit with an attack on a target within 5 feet of you, you may take another attack for free which you can only use to grapple the target hit. When you grapple with Raveled Vines you may ignore the requirement of having at least one hand free. Creatures that are smaller than you have disadvantage on their escape check.

After Tier 1, the player attuned to the Wode Plate must decide whether the armor flourishes or rots. Their decision will determine its Tier 2 and 3 improvements.

Rot Route

Tier 2

Conditions: be at least level 5 and be revived from death while wearing the Wode Plate.

The vines which wind through your armor are now sticky with an acrid, numbing sap. Clusters of slimy fungus sprout from the gaps between plates.

You receive the Leeching Vines ability

Leeching Vines:
Enemies who start their turn grappled by you receive a -2 penalty to strength and dexterity until the beginning of their next turn. You are simultaneously healed 1d6 hit points each time leeching vines.

Tier 3

Conditions: be at least level 8 and sacrifice a living being on a stone altar in the heart of a wode.

The Wode Plate now has a +2 enchantment instead of +1. You receive the Overwhelming Leech feat.

Overwhelming Leech:
This feat modifies the Leeching Vines ability. Leeching Vines can now stack. Enemies who start their turn grappled by you receive a stack of Overwhelming Leech up to a maximum of 5 stacks. The stacks last for as long as they remain grappled. If a creature begins their turn and are not grappled by you all stacks are immediately removed. Each stack imposes -2 penalty to strength and dexterity and heals you for 1d6 hit points at the beginning of their turn.

Blossom Route

Tier 2

Conditions: be at least level 5 and earnestly swear the Oath of the Green

A colony of extramundane bees have built a hive inside your armor and busily fly in and out of the mossy gaps between plates. After finishing a long rest, you and your allies who rested with you may sup on golden honeycomb plucked from the plate. When a player eats the honey, it grants a +2 bonus to an attribute (strength, constitution, intelligence, etc) of their choice which lasts until the end of their next long rest. These +2 bonuses can exceed the typical maximum of that attribute. Only player characters may receive this bonus.

Furthermore, you gain the Swarm ability:

Swarm:
Enemies that hit you with an attack or begin their turn grappled by you are swarmed by bees. They remain swarmed for as long as they are within 10 feet of you; as soon as they move more than 10 feet away from you the swarm will return to your armor. A swarmed creature receives a -1 penalty to attack rolls and saving throws and takes 1 point of poison damage at the end of each turn that they are swarmed. Only one target can be swarmed at a time. If one target is swarmed, and another target becomes eligible to swarm, you may decide as a free action whether the swarm remains on its current target or switches to the new target.

Some creatures, like undead, can be immune to swarm. Which creatures are is up to your DMs discretion.

Tier 3

Conditions: be at least level 8 and nourish a wode with your own blood.

The Wode Plate now has a +2 enchantment instead of +1. You gain the Overwhelming Swarm ability

Overwhelming Swarm:
This ability modifies the Swarm ability. Swarm can now stack. Targets receive a stack of swarm whenever they hit you with an attack or begin their turn grappled by you, up to a maximum of 5 stacks. Each stack imposes a -1 penalty to attack rolls and saving throws and deals 1 point of poison damage to the target at the end of their turn. A target who begins their turn with 5 stacks of swarm must make a wisdom saving throw against a DC of 8 + your proficiency bonus + your wisdom modifier or become incapacitated as they drop to the ground, flailing at the overwhelming swarm of stinging bees. They may reroll the wisdom saving throw to resist whenever they take damage that is not from Overwhelming Swarm or at the start of their next turn

Exacritas - Sword of Sorrows

In the priory vault, this oversized greatsword hangs on the wall like a cross, framed by a fading tapestry. It’s 6ft long blade is narrow and ends in a keen point like an estoc. It bears an intricate and long cross hilt with second guard 8 inches up the blade. The space between the hilt and the second guard is wrapped in a wispy cloth. When you hoist the blade you are surprised at its lightness, it is as if it is half-phantom half-steel.

The embroidered tapestry identifies it as Exactritas, the Sword of Sorrows, the dreaded brand of Petrus the Corsair Knight, a fanatical pirate crusader who fought in the War of Gods. It is said that Petrus drowned but returned to life in a dark deal with the Depths, a pact sealed with this very sword. For 200 years he haunted the supply routes of the Saints Sea with his ship – The Hope – and, of course, Exacritas, Sword of Sorrows.

Exacritas is a +1 Greatsword with the Finesse and Reach properties.

Tier 1

Conditions: attune to Exacritas

While wielding Exacritas you gain the Phantom Haze ability

Phantom Haze:
With a point of your sword, a thick, clammy fog rolls up from the ground. Those poor souls who move through it find themselves wading in two feet of brackish water which does not spill out beyond the borders of the cursed cloud.

Once per long rest, as a bonus action, you summon a 20-foot-radius sphere of fog centered on a point within 120 feet. The sphere spreads around corners and its area is both heavily obscuring and difficult terrain. It lasts for up to one hour or until you dismiss it as a free action. So long as you wield Exacritas you can see and move through the cloud without impediment, ignoring both the heavy obscurement and difficult terrain.

Tier2

Conditions: be at least level 5 and kill an enemy by drowning them.

You gain The Depth’s Fickle Favor feat

The Depth’s Fickle Favor:
When you take the attack action while standing in at least two feet of ocean water (your Phantom Haze counts) you can make an extra attack.

Tier 3

Conditions: be at least level 8 and be revived from drowning.

Exacritas is now a +2 Greatsword.

You are now the Champion of the Depths! You gain the Champion of the Depths feat and the Grasp of the Drowned ability.

Champion of the Depths:
You may now use Phantom Haze once per short rest instead of once per long rest.

Grasp of the Drowned:
Whenever a creature attempts to move out of your Phantom Haze a mass of hands reach from the water and pull them down. They must make a Strength saving throw against a DC equal to 8 + your proficiency bonus + either your strength or dexterity modifier (whichever is higher) or their movement is reduced to 0 and they are knocked prone. At the beginning of their next turn, they may reroll the saving throw to remove the effects. Creatures who move out of the Phantom Haze by flying, climbing, or teleporting are not affected by this ability.

Prophetic Spirit

You are visited by the voice of a mystical spirit who opens your eyes to eternity.

When you attune to the Prophetic Spirit you gain +2 to your wisdom. Your maximum for wisdom is also increased by 2.

To gain further benefits from the prophetic spirit you must foster a correspondence with it. This correspondence costs the player one of their attunement slots and can only be maintained through regular mystical practice of a Ritual and Rule (see below).

First, the character must determine what the nature of their prophetic spirit is. It could be the spirit of an ancestor, a spirit of nature, a saint, a demon, an angel, a star, a forgotten god, themselves from the future, or anything else that the character prefers.

Once the nature of their character is determined, the player must also select a Ritual and Rule through which they maintain and develop their connection to the spirit.

Ritual:
A ritual is an act that you must perform regularly which connects you to the prophetic spirit. Some possible options are prayer, meditation, fasting, hallucinogens, or animal sacrifice. Regardless of what you select, this ritual is performed as part of your long rest.

If you ever take a long rest without practicing your ritual you will lose your connection to the prophetic spirit and thus lose all its benefits, regaining the attunement that you spent on it. If you neglected your ritual voluntarily the spirit will leave you permanently. If you didn’t practice it because circumstances involuntarily prevented you from being able to, you will regain all benefits the next time you perform the ritual.

Rule:
A rule is something you must sacrifice that increases your mystical connection to the realm of the spirit. For example: you might never cut your hair, or drink alcohol, or speak out loud (only sign language), etc.

If you ever break your rule you will lose your connection to the prophetic spirit and thus lose all its benefits, regaining the attunement that you spent on it. If you break your rule voluntarily the spirit will leave you permanently. If you break your rule involuntarily you will regain all benefits the next time you perform your ritual.

Tier 1

Conditions: attune to the Prophetic Spirit

You gain the following benefits:

Unarmored Defense:
While you are wearing no armor your AC equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Wisdom modifier.

Visions of your Near Future:
You are now immune to being surprised in combat and may add your wisdom modifier as well as your dexterity modifier to ability checks made to determine initiative.

Furthermore, once per long rest, you may enter a prophetic trance in combat. For the next minute, all attacks against you have disadvantage and you may add your wisdom modifier to your attack roles.

Tier 2

Conditions: be at least level 5 and complete a task chosen by your spirit

You gain the Six Seconds Before ability:

Six Seconds Before:
Once per long rest, you can take two turns on the first round of combat. Whenever initiative is rolled, you will role initiative but will also take a bonus turn before any other combatant acts. After taking that turn, resume working through initiative as normal.

Tier 3

Condition: be at least level 8 and learn your spirit’s true name

Now, whenever you are in your prophetic trance, as a reaction you may take a special action as if you had readied it on your turn. Each time you use this reaction you may do one of the following:

Make a single attack
Cast a spell or cantrip
Move up to half your movement
Hide
Or interact with an object

When you do this you must declare what condition you had readied according to the ready action rules in the Players Handbook.

The Heart of Ebnon

A crystalline dagger of amaranthine hue. Gripping its intricate gold handle you can feel a light but steady pulse. In the heat of combat, that pulse syncs with that of your own heart.

The Heart of Ebnon is a +1 dagger with a normal throw range of 30 feet and a long range of 90 feet. The dagger returns to the wielder’s hand after being thrown.

Tier 1

Conditions: attune to The Heart of Ebnon

You gain the embed ability.

Embed
Whenever you hit an attack with The Heart of Ebnon the blade will embed into its target and can only be removed by you or by a powerful healer performing a 1-hour ritual. You may will the dagger back to your hand as a free action.

While the dagger is embedded into a creature, you may target that creature from any range as if they are adjacent to you. The first attack, ability, or spell that you use against them in this way is called an embedded action. If your embedded action is an attack you will have advantage on the attack role. If your embedded action is a spell or ability that requires a saving throw they will have disadvantage on the save. The Heart of Ebnon returns to your hand immediately after resolving the embedded action.

Tier 2

Conditions: be at least level 5 and aid a Tiefling without demanding reward or repayment

Select one of the following abilities:

Sync
Whenever The Heart of Ebnon is embedded you may impose one of the following effects as a bonus action:

Equalize your ACs, either by replacing your armor class with theirs or theirs with yours.
Equalize a condition or spell effect (again, you may equalize either by taking one from them or giving them one of yours).

Only one of these effects can be imposed at a time. This effect lasts until The Heart of Ebnon is no longer embedded or you choose to replace one effect with another by using another bonus action.

Wrath of a Mad God:
Once per long rest you may make the target vulnerable to all damage you deal with your embedded action.

Tier 3

Conditions: be at least level 8 and speak with Helbah about Ebnon

The Heart of Ebnon is now a +2 dagger. You gain the remaining ability from Tier 2.

Liber Trium Malarum - Book of Three Evils

A dusty grimoire made of a weird, soft vellum. It is not calkskin. Perhaps, lamb? Its postscript warns that it was translated from the skulls of the Sish Rua and that its translator, the man penning these very words, would take his own life for the vile greatness of it. A splash of blood on the margins suggests it was no vain threat.

The Book of Three Evils is a +1 spell focus. While holding it, you gain a +1 bonus to your Spell DC and Spell Attack Bonus.

Tier 1

Conditions: attune to the Book of Three Evils

You gain the Black Sacrament feat.

Black Sacrament:
The player can now gain temporary bonuses from eating the flesh or drinking the blood of other humanoid creatures. On a long rest the player can perform The Black Sacrament. They add +1 to their proficiency bonus until the end of their next long rest.

Tier 2

Conditions: be at least level 5 and study the two remaining forbidden grimoires.

While attuned to the Book of Three Evils you gain the Vitalis Magica ability

Vitalis Magica:
Once per long rest, as a bonus action feast on the flesh of the living. Select a humanoid creature within 5m of you whose current hit points are above zero. You bite a piece off of them, consuming a portion of their vital essence. They take 1d4 piercing damage and for the next minute all spells that you cast are cast as if they are one spell level higher.

Tier 3

Conditions: be at least level 8 and take the life of someone pure of heart

While attuned to the Book of Three Evils you gain the Havest feat.

Harvest:
Whenever you kill a target with a Necromancy Spell its spell slot cost is refunded.

Arbalest Mechanicus

Leaning against the dias is this masterwork mechanical marvel, a double-grooved, double-limbed crossbow with a clockwork wind-up key like might be found on a dwarven pocket-watch. A few simple twists of the key wind up some obscure energy storage device which will automatically re-draw the bow after it is fired.

Arbalest Mechanicus is a +1 crossbow (either light or heavy). It has all the same properties of a standard crossbow of its kind except that it does NOT have the loading property.

Tier 1

Conditions: attune to the Arbalest Mechanicus

Arbalest Mechanicus now gains the Double-Bowed and Alchemical Transubstantiation properties.

Double-Bowed:
Hits with this weapon do not add your ability modifier to damage, but instead roll double the damage dice.

Alchemical Transubstantiation:
Hit with this weapon deal an additional 1d6 acid damage (2d6 with Double-Bowed).

Tier 2

Conditions: be at least level 5 and synthesize either a Purple Worm or Wyvern Poison.

You gain the Wind-Up Alchemy ability

Wind-Up Alchemy:
Once per long rest, as a bonus action you may enhance your Alchemical Transubstantiation ability. On your next hit, Alchemical Transubstantiation will deal 2d12 acid damage instead of 1d6. The target must also make a DC15 Constitution save or be Paralyzed for 2 turns. If they succeed on the saving throw they are instead Poisoned for 2 turns.

Tier 3

Conditions: be at least level 8 and take the life of someone pure of heart

Arbalest Mechanicus is now a +2 crossbow. While wielding Arbalest Mechanicus, you gain the Overclock Ability.

Overclock:
Once per long rest, you may use the Action Surge ability. This is identical to the Fighter class ability Action Surge.

Appendix

Thrasymacheaus
Tiny dragon

Armor Class: 13
Hit Points: 7
Speed: 15 ft., fly 60 ft.

STR: 6 (-2)

DEX: 15 (+2)

CON: 13 (+1)

INT: 10 (+0)

WIS: 12 (+1)

CHA: 10 (+0)

Skills: Perception +3, Stealth +4
Senses: Blindsight 10 Ft., Darkvision 60 Ft., passive Perception 13
Languages: Understands Common And Draconic But Can’t Speak

Draconic Ancestry: Choose the type of dragon from the Draconic Ancestor table. Your choice affects your Breath Weapon and Damage Resistance traits.

Black - Acid

Blue - Lightning

Brass - Fire

Bronze - Lightning

Copper - Acid

Gold - Fire

Green - Poison

Red - Fire

Silver - Cold

White - Cold

Keen Senses: Thrasymachaeus has advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight, hearing, or smell.

Damage Resistance: Thrasymacheus has resistance to the damage type corresponding to its ancestry.

Limited Telepathy: The pseudodragon can magically communicate simple ideas, emotions, and images telepathically with the creature to whom it is imprinted within 100 ft. of it.

Actions

Bite: Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1d4 + 2 piercing damage.

Breath Weapons:
The damage type of all breath weapons is determined by Thrasymacheus’s Draconic Ancestry.

Shoot: Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, range 30/100, one target. Hit: 1d10

Cone: (Once per Encounter) Thrasymacheaus breaths their element in a 15ft cone. Enemies in the cone must make a saving throw against DC 11 (+ your character’s proficiency bonus) or take 1d10 damage

Unholy Abomination
Medium Abomination

Armor Class: 16
Hit Points: 86
Speed: 50 ft.

STR: 20 (+5)

DEX: 14 (+2)

CON: 17 (+3)

INT: 10 (0)

WIS: 10 (0)

CHA: 4 (-3)

Skills: Athletics +8, Perception +3,
Senses: Darkvision 60 Ft., passive Perception 13

Warp Spasm: The Unholy Abomination is the very embodiment of chaotic rage. They are perpetually under the effects of a 1st level Barbarian Rage. A Barbarian who magically transforms into an Unholy Abomination may gain the full effects of their own Rage instead of that of a 1st level Barbarian.

Additionally, while below half of its total Hit Points, the Unholy Abomination will heal an amount of HP equal to their Rage Damage Bonus each time they hit an attack.

Warp Spasm does not prevent the Unholy Abomination from concentrating on spells.

Extra Attacks: When the Unholy Abomination uses their action to make either a Bite or Claw attack, they may make two additional Bite or Claw attacks.

Actions

Bite: Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 5 ft, one target. Hit: 1d8 +5 (+ Rage) piercing damage

Claw: Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, reach 5 ft, one target. Hit: 1d8 +5 (+ Rage) slashing damage.

Ram: Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, range 5 ft, one target. Hit: 1d10 +5 (+ Rage) bludgeoning damage, push target 10ft backwards if they are large or smaller.

Tail Sting: Melee Weapon Attack: +9 to hit, range 5 ft, one target. Hit: 1d10 +5 (+ Rage) piercing damage, the target is inflicted with Contagion identical to the spell Contagion and will contract the Flesh Rot disease if they accumulate three failed Constitution Saves against DC 14.

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Baldur's Gate 3 Race Tier List Guide

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Baldur’s Gate 3 Race Tier List Guide

Here is my Baldur’s Gate 3 Race Tier List! If you’ve watched my Youtube video on this subject, this article is the reference sheet for that. Any changes in my opinions will be reflected in this article, which is to say it represents my up to date opinion on race rankings. I hope you enjoy it.

The basic principle for evaluating races is this: look for impactful features that you can’t easily get from other parts of a build. Take Darkvision for example. It is an useful feature, for sure, but its also so easy to get regardless of your race. You can check that box with the Light cantrip, the Darkvision spell, through Radiating Orb, or just through cheap consumables. By contrast Superior Darkvision is a different story! As far as I know, you can get it with the Devils Sight invocation and as a level 3 feature for Gloomstalkers only, so there are many builds that will want Superior Darkvision from their race selection.

Besides that, the other big thing to note is that attribute bonuses have now been standardized between all the race choices. Now all races will get a +2 to one attribute of their choice and a +1 to a different attribute of their choice. This is a big change compared to early access! Now, what makes a race good is their actual racial features, rather then their attribute bonuses.

With those things in mind, lets dive into the tier list!

Dwarf

Gold Dwarf - B Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 7.5m
Darkvision.
Dwarven Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned, and you have resistance against poison damage.
Dwarven Combat Training. You have proficiency with the battleaxe, handaxe, light hammer, and warhammer.
Dwarven Toughness. Your hit point maximum increases by 1, and it increases by 1 every time you gain a level.

Dwarven Resilience isn’t as impactful as you would expect it to be. In short, there are better, cheaper ways to get damage resistances, so the damage resistance part of the ability isn’t as attractive as it used to be. The advantage to the poison condition is useful, but not highly impactful on most runs. Dwarven Toughness, Combat Training, and Darkvision are all useful abilities that are also short of being highly impactful for any build. Altogether, its useful but not highly impactful on every class, which is the very definition of B-Tier for me.

Shield Dwarf - B Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 7.5m
Darkvision.
Dwarven Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned, and you have resistance against poison damage.
Dwarven Combat Training. You have proficiency with the battleaxe, handaxe, light hammer, and warhammer.
Dwarven Armor Training. You have proficiency with light and medium armor.

Shield Dwarf trades the +1 hit point per level – a bonus that is equally useful for all classes – for light and medium armor proficiency, a bonus that is better suited for caster classes. This makes Shield Dwarves the caster dwarf option and Gold Dwarf the martial dwarf option. While better for different classes, they both sit solidly in B-Tier for me.

Duergar - S Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 7.5m
Darkvision.
Dwarven Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage.
Dwarven Combat Training. You have proficiency with the battleaxe, handaxe, light hammer, and warhammer.
Duergar Resilience.You have advantage on saving throws against illusions as well as against being charmed or paralyzed.
Duergar Magic. Starting at 3rd level, as an actio you can cast the Enlarge spell on yourself once per long rest.Starting at 5th level, you can also cast the Invisibility on yourself as an action once per battle. Outside of battle it is an infinite cast spell.

Kind of like a better version of Hill Dwarf in that what it gives is useful for literally every class. Duergar Resilience is amazing because of advantage against Paralyze saving throws, probably the most crippling status effect in the game. Both of its spell are consistently useful, too. The unique, once per battle casts version of invisibility is something I’ve explored quite a bit and here are some thoughts. Invisibility is a very useful spell for solving out of combat puzzles, like pickpocketing, avoiding difficult encounters, etc. In combat, its a way to drop aggro, get into an advantageous position, and reliably begin combats with surprise. Perfect for Assassin and/or Gloomstalker based builds but useful for practically every run. You just can’t go wrong picking this race.

Dragonborn - C Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 9m.
Draconic Ancestry. You are distantly related to a particular kind of dragon. Choose a type of dragon from the below list; this determines the damage and area of your breath weapon, and the type of resistance you gain.
Black = Acid
Blue = Lightning
Green = Poison
Red = Fire
White = Cold
Brass = Fire
Bronze = Lightning
Copper = Acid
Gold = Fire
Silver = Cold
Breath Weapon. When you use your breath weapon, all creatures in the area (probably 5m cone, maybe 1m by 9m line) must make a saving throw, the type of which is determined by your ancestry. The DC of this saving throw is 8 + your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus. After using your breath weapon, you cannot use it again until you complete a short rest. The damage increases b 1d6 at level 6 then again at level 11.
Damage Resistance. You have resistance to the damage type associated with your ancestry.

The damage on the breath weapon is so low that its practically never worth the action to use it. What we are left with then as far as desirable features go is just a damage resistance, but its so easy to get damage resistances in this game. Still, its something, so not RP Tier, but close.

Drow - A Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 9m.
Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can’t put you to sleep.
Keen Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.
Superior Darkvision.
Drow Magic. You know the Dancing Lights cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the Faerie Fire spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the Darkness spell once and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.
Drow Weapon Training. You have proficiency with rapiers, shortswords, and hand crossbows.

Fey Ancestry is very good on any concentration class, especially early levels, since Sleep is the most reliable way enemies can break your concentration. Superior Darkvision is great for ranged attackers. The spell portfolio isn’t useless, but its not really good either. Keen Senses is just nice to have both in and out of combat. Put it altogether and Drow have a kit that is great for casters and ranged striker builds. Lots of useful things with this race.

Elf

High Elf - B Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 9m
Darkvision.
Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can’t put you to sleep.
Keen Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.
Cantrip. You know one cantrip of your choice from the Wizard spell list. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for it.
Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.

The unique thing that it gets compared to other elves is the intelligence cantrip which isn’t good enough for us to pick them in most cases. The cantrip is most useful on Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster builds, because they are intelligence based classes that don’t already have enough cantrips. Still, having Fey Ancestry and Keen Senses, and Elf Weapon Training is enough to keep them out of C-Tier.

Wood Elf - A Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 10.5m (Fleet of Foot)
Darkvision.
Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can’t put you to sleep.
Keen Senses. You have proficiency in the Perception skill.
Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow.
Fleet of Foot. Your base walking speed increases to 10.5m
Mask of the Wild. You have proficiency in the Stealth skill.

Just gets a lot of useful features that work for every class, including Fey Ancestry, Keen Senses, darkvision, and bonus movement for either closing distance or kiting. You can’t go wrong with wood elf. Both Stealth and Perception are useful skill proficiencies. Just a lot of minor useful things that add up to a versatile race.

Githyanki - A Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 9m
Astral Knowledge: Gain proficiency in all skills corresponding to a chosen ability until your next long rest.
Martial Prodigy. You are proficient with light and medium armor and with shortswords, longswords, and greatswords.
Githyanki Psionics. You know the Mage Hand cantrip, and the hand is invisible when you cast the cantrip with this trait. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the Jump spell once with this trait, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the Misty Step spell once with this trait, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for these spells. When you cast them with this trait, they don’t require components.

One feature that stands out is its weapon proficiencies, which include Greatswords, allowing you to go for a Great Weapon Master striker build on classes that don’t get martial weapon proficiency. Is that really worth doing? Not so much after level 5 when striker builds start needing more than just GWM but Extra Attack also, and every class that gets Extra Attack also gets martial weapon proficiency. I want to experiment more with it, but at this point I am doubtful there’s a high performing build that uses this strategy.

Besides that, the spell portfolio is one of the best of any race. Medium armor proficiency is clutch for caster classes. Astral Knowledge is very fun and useful and adaptable in multiplayer games. Githyanki also get far and away the most unique items in the game. A very strong race overall!

Gnome

Forest Gnome - RP Tier

Size. Small
Speed. 7.5
Darkvision.
Gnome Cunning. You have advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saves against magic.
Speak with Animals. Forest Gnomes can cast Speak with Animals once per long rest.

Both Forest Gnome and Rock Gnome get their most valuable feature just for being a Gnome. Their unique subrace features are extremely lackluster.

Gnome Cunning is incredible resilience that is useful for every build. Besides that Forest Gnomes just get darkvision to compensate for a -1 movement. Speak with Animals, so far, is an invaluable role play ability, since it opens up dozens of NPCs to interact with. However, you can talk to all the animals you want just by using Speak with Animal potions. Forest Gnome is the worst Gnome; there isn’t really a reason to pick it over the other Gnomes.

Rock Gnome - B Tier

Size. Small
Speed. 7.5m
Darkvision.
Gnome Cunning. You have advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saves against magic.
Artificers Lore. Add twice your proficiency bonus to History checks.

The same as Forest Gnome, but trades expertise in history checks for Speak with Animals. History checks don’t offer much in terms of combat utility, either direct or indirect, but as a historian myself, I love the concept as a role play feature. These guys are one of my personal favorites.

Deep Gnome - S Tier

Size. Small
Speed. 7.5m
Gnome Cunning. You have advantage on all Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saves against magic.
Superior Darkvision
Stone Camouflage. You have advantage on stealth checks.

In BG1 and 2, Gnomes were a power gamer’s dream, and my favorite race due to their tricksy, stealthy illusionist playstyle. Deep Gnome translates something like that into 5e, mixing superior darkvision and advantage on stealth checks to the already invaluable Gnome Cunning feature to cook up a surprisingly stacked kit. Stealth is the most valuable skill in the game in my opinion, and the Deep Gnome is the one of two races that get a feature that augments it beyond a simple proficiency. As we’ve discussed above, Superior Darkvision is good on everybody, but particularly good on ranged strikers/casters. This competes with Duergar as the GOAT for sneak and ranged striking builds.

Half-Elf

High Half-Elf - B Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 9m
Civil Militia: You gain proficiency in all polearms, shields, and light armor
Darkvision.
Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can’t put you to sleep.
Cantrip. You know one cantrip of your choice from the Wizard spell list. Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for it.

The big change here is civil militia – all Half-Elves get it – so let’s start with that. Shield and Light Armor proficiencies are excellent for caster classes, offering a big AC boost and an early game spike to concentration saves (through Spidersilk Armor + Safeguard Shield). Shields are really strong in BG3, so getting them on casters without needing to multi-class is valuable. The Polearm Proficiencies enable the Polearm Master fear for caster classes that otherwise are locked out from it. Is that worth doing on a caster? I’m not sure! It could be giving a front line caster something reliable to do with their bonus action and reaction. Then again, front line casters want their reaction for the Shield spell. Anyways, its interesting!

On top of that, the Half-Elf chassis gets darkvision and fey ancestry, decent features, but nothing special.

The High Half-Elf offers an intelligence-based wizard cantrip of your choice, which is both niche and negligible. See above in the High Elf entry.

Drow Half-Elf - B Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 9m
Civil Militia: You gain proficiency in all polearms, shields, and light armor.
Darkvision.
Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can’t put you to sleep.
Drow Magic. You know the Dancing Lights cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast Faerie Fire once, and it recharges after a long rest. When you reach 5th level, you can cast Darkness once, and it recharges after a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

A Half-Elf chassis with added Drow Magic. Drow Magic is decent, but not great. While this race is slightly more versatile than the High Half-Elf, its not enough to bump it up a whole tier.

Wood Half-Elf - A Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 10.5m (Fleet of Foot)
Civil Militia: You gain proficiency in all polearms, shields, and light armor.
Darkvision.
Fey Ancestry. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed, and magic can’t put you to sleep.
Fleet of Foot. your base speed is increased to 10.5m
Mask of the Wild. You gain proficiency in stealth.

Adds +1 movement and a stealth proficiency to the Half-Elf foundation. As we’ve already discussed, those are useful features on practically every class, making Wood Half-Elf the variant of choice.

Half Orc - S Tier

Speed. 9m
Darkvision.
Menacing. You gain proficiency in the Intimidation skill.
Relentless Endurance. When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.
Savage Attacks. When you score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack, you can roll one of the weapon’s damage dice one additional time and add it to the extra damage of the critical hit.

This race gets two very unique and powerful abilities that make it both versatile and the premier class for melee strikers.

To start off with less good stuff, Darkvision is Darkvision, and proficiency in Intimidate is great out of combat utility. The social skills (Persuasion, Deception, and Intimidate) are always high value in terms of out-of-combat solutions to encounters, which can translate into genuine in-combat advantages that are hard to quantify.

Now to the real good stuff! Relentless Endurace is like an automatic, free cast of Healing Word that can proc once per long rest. That is great on anybody but superb on melee characters who are most likely to go down at least once between rests.

Savage Attacks is more damage on crits. Its not a lot of extra damage, but it’s the only race feature that actually directly buffs your damage, probably because damage is just so important, getting it as a racial feature rockets that race to the top of the list.

Altogether Half-Orc is like the best mix of specialized race car with good-ole reliable Toyota sedan. It’s a high-performance pick for any and all strikers, but still offers useful features for everyone else too!

Halfling

Lightfoot Halfling - S Tier

Size. Small
Speed. 7.5m
Lucky. When you roll a 1 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can reroll the die. You must use the new result, even if it is a 1.
Brave. You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.
Naturally Stealthy. You gain advantage in Stealth checks.

We need to start by talking about Lucky. If you average it out across all possible outcomes Lucky translates to something like a +1 bonus, which is small, but even a small bonus that applies to all d20 rolls has a big impact since d20 rolls are the most common and the most impactful rolls in BG3. However, thinking of it just quantitatively misses a lot of what makes it so good. Qualitatively speaking, Lucky is a unique feature for mitigating RNG and offers a peace of mind that you just can’t get from anything else. With Lucky and a consistent source of advantage that pesky “1s always miss”rule dissolves into irrelevance and you can finally depend on ALWAYS hitting that attack or ALWAYs making that concentration save. Its hard to compare a feature like that to anything else. Judging Halflings is extremely hard for that reason and I find myself thinking about the choice between Halfling and other races as one of those genuine expressions of playstyle rather than a solvable, mathematical choice about optimization. I value it extremely highly.

Of the two variations of Halfling though, Lightfoot is the lesser. It gives you advantage on stealth checks (see the entry for Deep Gnome above), which naturally inclines it towards stealth builds, but probably melee stealth builds, since it doesn’t get Superior Darkvision.

Strongheart Halfling - S Tier

Size. Small
Speed. 7.5m
Lucky. When you roll a 1 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can reroll the die. You must use the new result, even if it is a 1.
Brave. You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.
Strongheart Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned and resistance to poison damage.

Strongheart Halflings add Dwarven Resilience (renamed “Strongheart Resilience” but its mechanically the same) to the Halfling chassis. So, now you have a race that gives you advantage to saving throws against two very common status effects, resistance to one of the most common damage types, and Lucky (read Lightfoot Halfling entry above to understand how brilliant this feature is). Halflings are the master race!

Human - RP Tier

Size. Medium
Speed. 9m
Civil Militia: You gain proficiency in all polearms, shields, and light armor
Human Versatility: You gain proficiency in a skill of your choosing and your carrying capacity is increased by a quarter.

The big selling point here is Civil Militia, see the entry for High Half-Elf above for my discussion of it.

Human Versatility is kind of a meme, but increased carrying capacity is honestly such a good quality of life buff for me that I kind of like it. Technically, it has no combat utility, and the proficiency is nifty, but very unlikely to outweigh what, say, a High Wood-Elf offers. From an optimization perspective, you should always pick High Half-Elf over human, so RP-Tier.

Tiefling

Asmodeus Tiefling - C Tier

Size. Medium.
Speed. 9m
Darkvision.
Resistance to Fire Damage
Infernal Legacy. You know the Thaumaturgy cantrip. Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast the Hellish Rebuke spell once as a 2nd-level spell. Once you reach 5th level, you can also cast the Darkness spell once. You must finish a long rest to cast these spells again with this trait. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

All Tieflings give you Darkvision, resistance to fire damage, and an portfolio of spells. The spells vary by subrace. For A. Tieflings you get Thaumaturgy, Hellish Rebuke, and Darkness.

Fire damage is a very common damage type, but its also a very common resistance. There are lots of other ways to get it, including the 2nd level Cleric spell Warding Bond, which you want to be casting anyways.

That leaves of with the spells. The A.Tiefling’s selection are all useful, but not unique enough to carve out a genuine niche for it as a choice.

Mephistopheles Tiefling - C Tier

Size. Medium.
Speed. 9m
Resistance to Fire Damage.
Darkvision.
Legacy of Cania. You know the Mage Hand cantrip. Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast the Burning Hands spell once as a 2nd-level spell. Once you reach 5th level, you can also cast the Flame Blade spell once as a 3rd-level spell. You must finish a long rest to cast these spells again with this trait. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Mephistopheles Tiefling’s can cast Flame Blade after level 5, and that used to give them a niche. However, changes on full release have really put a dent in the Flame Blade strategy. Its no longer a concentration spell, but it only lasts 10 turns and its summoned to your main hand. More importantly, it no longer procs Circlet of Fire (now called Pyroquickness Hat). Still better than Asmodeus Tiefling.

Zariel Tiefling - C Tier

Size. Medium.
Speed. 9m.
Resistance to Fire Damage.
Darkvision.
Legacy of Avernus. You know the Thaumaturgy cantrip. Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast the Searing Smite spell once as a 2nd-level spell. Once you reach 5th level, you can also cast the Branding Smite spell once as a 3rd-level spell. You must finish a long rest to cast these spells again with this trait. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.

Zariel Tiefling’s spells augment your weapon attacks, so its intended to be for weapon based strikers, but for that person it is completely out muscled by Half-Orc. However, Branding Smite can be a encounter deciding spell, making this the best of the Tieflings in my opinion. It right on the edge of C and B Tier to me.

Summary

Video

Baldur’s Gate 3 Weapons Tier List — comprehensive rankings of unique weapons and weapon actions
Fundamental Math in D&D 5e and BG3 — the formulas behind build calculations and power scaling
How Valuable is Initiative? — a game design analysis of turn order and durability

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RPG Veteran, Pathfinder Beginner: Journal #3

Sat, 04 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

RPG Veteran, Pathfinder Beginner: Journal #3

Hello again! Damn… Pathfinder is a complex system. Hands down the hardest to learn in the CRPG cannon. We are lucky to have these games! In a lot of ways they are slog, but I’m honestly loving the challenge!

If this is your first time reading one of my articles, I am a CRPG and tabletop RPG veteran with 20 years of experience in D&D and D&D CRPG’s, particularly the Baldur’s Gate series, who is trying to learn the Pathfinder system by playing Wrath of the Righteous. I am journaling my progress because its useful for me and, I hope, interesting to read. If you are new to the game like me, you might find this series helpful. If you are an experienced player it may be funny to see me stumble my way through!

In my first entry I outlined the specific kinds of build that I am interested in exploring: wisdom attribute builds. Basically, these are builds that focus on getting the most out of the wisdom attribute, then stack it as high as possible! I argue that wisdom stacking builds are actually stronger, or at least as strong, as the ever-popular charisma stack builds (Scaled Fist/Paladin/Oracle angel path, you know the ones…). You can read it here. I’ve put another 50 hours of play and probably another 50 in analysis since I wrote the first entry, but I honestly think it holds up!

In my second entry I explored sources of what I call “overwhelming damage.” Basically, overwhelming damage is the term I coined for when you are doing so much damage its practically redundant to add more. As an extreme example, if you are doing 10,000 damage per round, what use it to add 1,000 more? You are better off building for other things at that point because your DPR is already secured. I listed five possible routes for achieving overwhelming damage. You can read it here.

In this article I have three topics I want to discuss:

The Instinctual Warrior class as a wisdom stack build.
The best weapon in the game (in my opinion).
My first steps in Unfair difficulty.

It’s a lot, so it may be a bit longer than my previous entries.

The Instinctual Warrior

After Christmas I tabled my Zen Archer/Cleric build which I outlined in the first entry. Not because I think it doesn’t work – I’m still convinced it’s a top tier build – but just because I botched some stuff in the crusade mode part of the game, and it was making it a real grind. I also was excited to try out the Instinctual Warrior build anyways, so I went for it. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Someone in the thread for my first article linked me this list of builds. I browsed it and noticed that they ranked the Instinctual Warrior class as the best class overall and had a main character build for it. I was intrigued, but then a little disappointed when they didn’t go into much detail on what made it so good or why they made the choices they made in the build. I’ve been testing it, and the run isn’t done, but I think I’ve learned enough to shed some light on how the class functions, particularly in the early-mid game.

Let’s start with damage. Its very simple to find damage for a barbarian due to their Rage Powers. The Lethal Stance line offers some accuracy and the very valuable increase to our critical multiplier, perfect for the Trickster Crit route for overwhelming damage that I mentioned in Journal #2. Instinctual Barbarians also get the valuable Blind Fighting line of feats for free, further increasing their accuracy. On top of that, you can and should go with the Beast Totem line of Rage Powers as well, which is a prerequisite for the Charge route for overwhelming damage. So, any Barbarian with Trickster path will have their damage secured by around Mythic Level 5 or so (depending on how quickly you want to rush it). Before then we’ll need to rely on a nifty weapon I’ll discuss below.

But the Instinctual Warrior isn’t the only class that can easily achieve overwhelming damage. What makes it stand out so much that some people consider it the best class in the game? Well, if you’ve secured overwhelming damage on any build you then need to invest in other things, things like durability and initiative and that is where the Instinctual Warrior excels.

Instinctual Warriors get the same AC progression as Monks: they get to add their Wisdom modifier to their dodge bonus and they get a +1 to their dodge bonus every four levels (starting at +1 at level 4 and going up to +5 at level 20). Anytime you add two attribute modifiers to your dodge bonus you can get ahead of the curve early, because you have two stats that you can buff instead of one (Instinctual Warriors get a free buff to their Wisdom when they rage). That is, you can cast both Owl’s Wisdom and Cat’s Grace, giving you +4 to your AC instead of the typical +2. Also because spread your stats out more in character creation (it costs more to invest in one stat) or just pick a race that gets bonuses to your two AC attributes. Then you get the further ahead of the curve with the extra 4 AC per four levels, a whole new boost not available to most classes.

Then there is the durability offered through the typical Barbarian class features. Through the Beast Totem line, which we need anyways, you get a further +1 AC (this time natural armor bonus) every four Barbarian levels (up to +6 at level 20). Normal Barbs take a -2 penalty to AC when they Rage, but Instinctual Warriors don’t. When you rage you also get temporary hit points equal to two times your hit die. All of these things add up.

You should of course invest in Dodge and Crane Style early as well for even more dodge AC.

As a proof of concept, I was able to get a 41 AC on my Instinctual Barbarian by level 5

I chose level 5 just to demonstrate that it’s AC gets ahead of the curve early. You can further grow in into the late game by taking Archmage Armor Mythic ability, through the natural progression of the class, and stronger buffs.

Now, I actually think the build that I linked above can be improved on, with… you guessed it, stacking wisdom! Their build recommends investing primarily in strength. I’m not sure why. Strength offers more damage, which we don’t need on this build. I recommend starting with 16 strength and 19 wisdom and investing everything in wisdom (24 wisdom base by the end). Why? Well wisdom is our best defensive stat, and like I mentioned, we have enough damage in this build, so its better to invest in defense. Moreover, Instinctual Warriors also add their wisdom to their initiative roles, which is extremely valuable and easy to overlook.

If that hasn’t sold you, consider this: through the Trickster path we get access to two Cleric domains. I recommend you pick Community and Madness. With these domains we get two potent auras that scale off our Wisdom. So investing in wisdom will gets us:

+ 3 AC
+ 3 Initiative
+ 3 Will save
+ 3 to attack roles and saving throws (through Guarded Hearth)
+ 3 to the DC on the confusion effect (from Aura of Madness)

By contrast, if you follow the other guide and invest in strength you will get a +3 to attack and +4.5 damage roles. Its not a good trade.

In conclusion, the Instinctual Warrior may be the best pound-for-pound melee martial class in the game, and its even better if you stack wisdom on it. Is it the best class in the game like folks say? I don’t think so. I don’t think any class that doesn’t have spells or a pet can be considered the best in the game. However, its definitely an S-tier class. If you’re keeping score, wisdom attribute builds now have one of the best all-around builds (my Zen Archer/Cleric) and one of the best martial builds (Instinctual Warrior).

The Best Weapon in the Game

Now let’s talk about the best weapon in the game. It’s the falchion Jinx, which you can buy at the very start of Act II. I haven’t heard anyone talking about how OP this item is; there should be way more hype. Here is what it’s in game description says:

“Whenever this +2 Cold Iron falchion lands a hit on a creature that is under a Hex effect, it deals addition weapon damage.”

Perhaps because I am still unfamiliar with Pathfinder’s language, it wasn’t clear to me what this meant. “How much additional weapon damage?” I thought. Is it like a +2 damage? Then it occurred to me that “weapon damage” must be a technical term in the rules for the damage dice attached to the type of weapon you use, in the case of a falchion, 2d4. That would be an average of +5 bonus damage on hit, 7 total when you include the +2 enchantment. That’s decent damage for an early game weapon, and I use Hexes a lot anyways, so I bought it.

Then I started hitting hexed targets with it, and it was doing waaaay more than +7 damage. It was doing double. Like, a hit with Jinx against a hexed target was worth two hits against a non-hexed one. I started to look at the math a little closer and I discovered that it is functioning almost identically to the feat Manyshot. Here is its description:

“When making a full attack with a bow, your first attack fires two arrows. If the attack hits, both arrows hit. Apply precision-based damage (such as sneak attack) and critical hit damage only once for this attack. Damage bonuses from using a composite bow with a high Strength bonus apply to each arrow, as do other damage bonuses, such as a ranger’s favored enemy bonus. Damage reduction and resistances apply separately to each arrow.”

Using Jinx against a hexed target is like Manyshot, but on every single attack, not just the first. Depending on where your damage is coming from, that is close to doubling your damage, and this is an effect from weapon you can buy at level 6. Talk about getting ahead of the curve. This also doubles the damage from Vital Strikes, adding a x2 multiplier to a damage route that already abuses multipliers.

If you’re thinking “A +2 weapon isn’t going to compete with +5 weapons in the late game” don’t forget about the Greater Magic Weapon spell. For the cost of a level 3 spell slot Jinx stays relevant the entire game.

In my Instinctual Warrior run Jinx keeps my damage decent while almost completely investing in defense. However, once I discovered how strong Jinx was, I really wanted to test how hard the damage spikes if you build around it for Vital Strike, and that brings me to the last section of this entry.

First Steps on Unfair Difficulty

So far the reaction to these articles has been mostly good, but of course there are some people who are mad that I would dare share my analysis of the game without having completed a run. The thing is, I know that when I complete a run they’re still going to write me off until I complete a run on unfair difficulty. That’s fine, I like doing runs on the highest difficulties, so I have already put 10-15 hours testing a few builds in the Shield Maze. I’ve learned that you can clear the Shield Maze on unfair with practically any build once you know a few tricks, though some builds really struggle against the Water Elemental. Here are some of the tricks.

Level 1: This is the section of tunnels leading to Neathholm. The trick here is make sure you initiate every fight with Anevia so that she procs aggro. This does two things. First, Anevia is an important character, so the game won’t let her die permanently. Second, with good initiative roles you can position in between her and the enemy before they charge, procing attacks of opportunity. Anevia trails behind your group, so the only way to have her initiate the fight is to turn your backs to enemy right before you get to them. Anevia, trying to follow behind, will walk toward the enemy and initiate the fight. With this trick and halfway decent luck you can get to Neathholm without any reloads.

The Shield Maze: Of course, the real challenge is the Shield Maze. This is going to require some patience no matter what you do, but here are the most important things you can do to make it as painless as possible.

First, and most importantly, side with Wenduag over Lann. I cannot stress this enough. If you pick Lann get ready to reload the Hosilla fight a hundred times. When you have Wenduag in your party she will execute Hosilla after you drop her to 40% health or so, when she summons the quasits. This is so important because normally Hosilla will reset aggro after the cut scene, which is disastrous, because there isn’t a way to consistently clear this fight without procing her aggro on your tank. If she kills a target she frightens your team, and there isn’t a reliable way to recover from that.

Second, when you level to two, make sure you take the Protective Luck Hex for Camellia and make Wenduag (or Lann, if you want to go hard mode) a Hunter. Hunter’s get a pet; pick leopard. Now you’ve got your tank. Leopards can get a 30+ AC with Mage Armor, Shield of Faith, and Fighting Defensively. Make sure to draw aggro with the leopard, have Camellia spam Protective Luck on it, and you can get through most fights without taking any damage. My thanks to the youtuber cRPG Bro for bringing this to my attention.

The last trick is having your strongest melee character read the tome in library (the second room you can encounter) and use a masterwork glaive. Spam charge in fights. You still won’t hit the difficult enemies reliably, but this is the best way to deal damage.

Other than that, make sure you are using the potions and scrolls you pick up. Buy every useful consumable from the shop at Neathholm. Mage Armor and Shield of Faith are essential. You can find a potion of Barkskin in the summoning room, right before Hosilla. If you decide to take on the Water Elemental, its best to use it there. You can find some nifty loot in the optional room with the monitor lizards too.

For your main character, I find that arcane casters are the most valuable, because they bring more casts of Mage Armor, Grease, and allow you to use some of the valuable arcane scrolls that you can find/buy. Getting a scroll of Blur but not being able to cast it is painful. However, as I said above, with these tricks you can get through the Shield Maze with practically any character. I’ve done it with three separate builds now.

If you enjoyed this article, I hope you will consider checking out some of the others I have on my website. I want to make top tier educational and analytical CRPG content centered around BG3 and Wrath of the Righteous in particular, and I would really like to do it full time. If you want to support me, I just launched a Patreon where I offer exclusive content to subscribers. If you’re interested but aren’t sure about me and/or whether you will get your money’s worth out of a Patreon sub, you can also talk to me directly and I’ll convince you. Contact me through reddit or my email: aestusguides@gmail.com

If you want to discuss this article with me or others, you can do so here.

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How Valuable is Initiative? A Game Design Analysis

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

How Valuable is Initiative? A Game Design Analysis

Definitions

“Initiative” is the system for determining turn order in turn based tactical games.

Answer

Winning initiative is worth one turn. Conversely, losing initiative is like giving your enemy a turn. The value of a turn varies from system to system. Fundamentally, it is affected by durability of the characters. Durability mitigates the potency of a single turn, and thus mitigates the value of initiative.

Analysis

In the context of a typical fight there are a lot of factors which make initiative difficult to understand, so let’s begin by looking at a very simple fight. First, we remove multiple opponents, and look only at a 1v1 fight. So, you “P” are fighting a single enemy “N.” Then let’s remove any variation between P and N and say that both have an equal chance of winning the encounter, let’s say a 50% chance to hit, and an 100% chance to kill on a hit. How does initiative impact this very simple fight?

If X wins the initiative they, of course, have a 50% chance of winning, because a single hit will win the encounter, and they have a 50% chance of hitting. But what if they lose initiative? If they lose they (1) hit an attack (as before), and (2) Y has to miss an attack. Both have a 50% chance of occurring, so overall they have 25% chance of winning the encounter if they lost. In summary

1 hit to kill:

Win initiative: 50% of P winning
Lose initiative: 25% of P winning

There is a problem though; this doesn’t add up to 100%, and it must, since both combatants are equally powerful. The reason it doesn’t is because what it really calculates is the odds of winning an encounter as soon as possible, without wasting any turns by missing. You’ll notice though that missing an attack is the same in our model as losing initiative; you can model it as restarting the fight, but now the enemy attacks first. For that reason, we will just focus on the odds of winning as quickly as possible.

Now let’s gradually increase the complexity and see if we can notice any patterns. We’ll start by making the encounter require 2 hits to kill on both sides, with the same chance to hit. In a 2 hit to kill fight, if we win initiative the fight will look like this:

P1(hit) – 50%

N1 – it doesn’t matter if they miss or hit, because we survive either way. So the outcome of this is irrelevant.

P2(hit) – 50% and we win.

0.5*0.5 = 0.25 or 25% chance of victory. But if N loses initiative in the 2 hit to kill fight the chance of survival is the following:

N1 – just put this turn aside for now.

P1(hit) – 50%

N2(miss’) – I am using miss’ to designate all outcomes where N misses a least one attack between N1 and N2.

P2(hit) – 50%

In simplified terms, it’s the chance of two hits (25%) multiplied by the chance of N(miss’). The odds of miss’ prime are:

1 – 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.75 = 75%

Therefore:

0.75 * 0.25 = 0.1875 = 18.75%

Which completes our 2 hit to kill calculations:

2 hit to kill:

Win initiative: 25% of P winning
Lose initiative: 18.75% of P winning

3 hit to kill will be:

3 hit to kill:

Win initiative: 0.53 = 0.125 = 12.5%
Lose initiative: 0.125 * (1 – 0.125) = 0.1093 = 10.93%

And hopefully now we can see the pattern in the math.

x to kill = chance-for-P-to-hitx*(1 - chance-for-N-to-hitx)

Cool! So with that, let’s complicate it a little more and see what happens if we win initiative but miss on one of our turns. This is for a 2 hit to kill fight:

P1 – this is where we miss

N1 –

P2(hit)– 50%

N2 (miss’)– 75%

P3(hit)– 50%

Seem familiar? It’s the exact same as if we lost initiative on a 2 hit to kill. This means that missing an attack, i.e. losing a turn, is the same outcome as losing initiative.

But what about if we miss on a 2 hit to kill fight when we lost initiative?

N1 –

P1 – This is where we miss

N2 –

P2(hit)– 50%

N3(miss’’) – I am using miss’’ to designate all outcomes where N misses a least two attacks between N1 and N3. This is kind of complicated math, and I’m not sure how to express it simply. Its (1 – chance-to-hit^2 – chance-to-miss^2) * chance-to-miss + chance-to-miss^2. Which in this case = 50%

P3(hit) – 50%

It’s the same, except you are giving P one more shot at hitting you. In effect, you give them +1 turn by losing initiative and +1 turn from missing. See the pattern? Winning initiative is always equal to losing 1 turn. In a 1v1 scenario, losing a turn is the same as giving your enemy a turn.

This stays the same regardless of what your % chance to hit is. Why? Because chance to hit, like hits to kill, is effectively defining the value of your turn. So, as we saw in the math, winning initiative is worth more when your turn is worth more, because winning initiative = 1 turn. Its also worth more when your enemy’s turn is worth more, because losing initiative is like giving them an extra turn.

Finally, let’s reintroduce one more level of complexity: multiple opponents. Imagine P is now fighting two enemies, N and M. In regards to initiative order, there are four possible outcomes:

P moves before both N and M
P moves after N but before M
P moves after M but before N
P moves after both N and M

We don’t need to go through all the math to understand how each outcome will affect the overall chance of success. All we need to do is remember that losing initiative is like giving your enemy a turn, then think of each outcome in turns of losing initiative rather than winning it. In outcome (1), we didn’t give them any extra turns, in outcome (2) and (3) we are giving only one enemy a turn, and in outcome (4) we gave both a turn.

The same goes for all the varied combinations of enemies and allies. It gets screwy, but it helps me model it if I compare an outcome to the best possible outcome. The best possible is that all of your guys move before all of their guys. Each enemy that gets to move before one of your units is stealing a little bit of turn back for themselves.

Conclusion

What all of this means is that initiative will be extremely important in systems where turns are very volatile. For a perhaps familiar example, think of the Pokémon system. In Pokémon, its not uncommon to one-shot your enemies, so it’s no surprise that the speed stat (which determines initiative order) is so crucial. On the other extreme, picture chess, where a single encounter can last 50 turns or more. Even in chess it’s an advantage to move first, but not nearly as significant an advantage as in Pokémon.

Of course, likely no one who is reading this cares about the importance of initiative in Pokémon or chess. My audience is interested in BG3 and D&D 5e more generally, so let’s finish this article by looking at those specifically.

In BG3 and 5e, the value of a turn will vary by your build and what kind of enemy you face. A minotaur’s turn is more valuable than a goblin’s turn. Likewise, an optimized level 4 build has more valuable turns than an unoptimized level 1 character. But a relatively easy way to estimate its value is to ask “how many turns will it take to kill my enemies?” and “how many turns will it take my enemies to kill me?” The simplest way to estimate that is to compare your average damage per round (DPR) to their hit point totals. It follows then that initiative will be less valuable in battles against more durable enemies or in more durable team builds.

Another really important question is what can we do in a system to ensure that we consistently win initiative? In BG3 and 5e, initiative is determined through a dexterity skill check, i.e. a 1d20 roll + your dexterity modifier. There aren’t many consistent ways to boost initiative beyond this. The fact that it’s a 1d20 roll means that each +1 bonus we add is equivalent to a 5 %point boost. The highest possible dexterity modifier is a +5 (which comes at a high opportunity cost), and nets us a 25 %point increase in winning initiative. That is NOT very consistent at all, not for its opportunity cost.

This means that in BG3 and 5e more durability is more important compared to other tactical RPG systems. Initiative order is going to be unpredictable, there is no way around it, so the best way to make fights predictable is to minimize turn volatility, which means build tankier party compositions.

However, there are other features of BG3 and 5e which do favor turn volatility, for example, the possibility of surprise. With investment in stealth, you can reliably surprise your enemies, which gives your whole party a free turn at the start of combat. In BG3 you are overwhelmingly more likely to surprise your enemies then they are to surprise you. In tabletop 5e, that will depend on your DM. So keep that in mind.

Fundamental Math in D&D 5e and BG3 — the core formulas for DPR, accuracy, and advantage
Baldur’s Gate 3 Race Tier List — how racial features affect build durability and turn value

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Fundamental Math in D&D 5e and Baldur's Gate 3

Sat, 09 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Fundamental Math in D&D 5e and Baldur’s Gate 3

This is a resource outlining what I consider the most important math for understanding D&D 5e and BG3. In it I detail important formulas you can use to calculate the power of your own builds, but I also explain as clearly as I can how we arrive at those formulas so that you can understand how it works, not just that it works. At the end I explore the math of power scaling – the so-called “flattened math” of 5e – with concrete examples and discuss how all of it should impact how we evaluate the relative strength of build choices.

My plan is to eventually write a similar one of these for Pathfinder, Pillars of Eternity, and the original Baldur’s Gate games as well so we can compare the fundamental math between all of the systems and see how they change what is strong in each system. They will be part of my “niche articles for hardcore fans” series for my patrons. If you like this article, consider subscribing to my Patreon for more! I already have one article in the series that mathematically models the value of winning initiative.

Check-Bonus Math

The core method of arbitrating success in D&D 5e and BG3 is the D20 roll. All the really important D20 roles follow the same pattern, which I call the “Check-Bonus” pattern. The “check” is the threshold that a creature has to roll above on their D20. The “bonus” is everything that is added to the roll to try and get over that threshold.

The most common example of this pattern is the basic attack role. In attack roles, the check is called Armor Class (AC) and your bonus is appropriately called your Attack Bonus (which will be the sum of several individual bonuses, proficiency bonus, attribute modifier, weapon enchantment, etc). But note that the same Check-Bonus pattern applies to spell saving throws, where the check is called DC, and the bonus is your appropriate saving throw bonuses. Same goes for skill checks too.

For the Check-Bonus pattern we must first determine what number we have to roll above on the D20, then from there we need to express that as probability.

Hopefully the process of figuring out what number you need to roll above on the D20 is intuitive to you. Nevertheless, it will be useful for us to formalize it. I always refer to this value as “n,” where:

n = (Check – Bonus)

Let’s try a quick example. Suppose Niles the rogue has a +5 Attack Bonus and is rolling to hit against an orc with a 16 AC, then “n = 16 – 5” or “n = 11” which just means that Niles must roll an 11 or above to hit the attack.

That is all well and good, but “11” isn’t a value that expresses a probability. In probability, values are expressed in percent (i.e. 15% chance to hit), which is more fundamentally expressed as a decimal (i.e. 0.15). Probability is always the number of desired outcomes divided by the number of total outcomes. We can find the number of desired outcomes by subtracting n from 20, then we divide that by 20 (which is the number of possible outcomes on a 20 sided dice). This new number (n expressed as a probability) I call “p”, thus:

p = (20 – n)/20

But there is actually a problem with this, which we will see if we try out the formula. Let’s return to the example of Niles attacking the orc and see how it works. In that scenario n = 11, so p = 9/20, or 0.45 (45%). This cannot be correct, because we know intuitively that rolling an 11 or above on a D20 should be a 50% chance of success (11 through 20 actually represents 10 possible outcomes out of 20, not 9. Try counting them out on your fingers and you will see). Where did the missing 0.05 go?

Remember that if n = 11 then a roll equal to or above 11 is what we need to succeed. It’s the “equal to” that we didn’t calculate in our formula. To account for this I just cheat and add 0.05 on at the end. So the corrected formula expressing n as probability is:

p = (20 – n)/20 + 0.05

In the majority of situations p is all we will need to determine our chance to hit. The minority of situations where p does not equal our chance to hit is in situations where there is advantage or disadvantage, so we will turn to calculating those next.

Advantage and Disadvantage

In 5e, attacking with advantage means you roll your D20 twice and take the highest result. Conversely, disadvantage means you roll twice and take the lowest result. The math behind this seems daunting, at least it did for me, until I discovered this helpful way to think about it and model it. We’ll start with attack roles. First, some basic principles:

When you are attacking with advantage, you must miss twice in a row to actually miss.
When you are attacking with disadvantage, you must HIT twice in a row to actually hit.

We can model this with a very simple graph:

Each box represents a possible outcome and we can easily picture what our hit percentage will be by shading in the outcomes which will translate to a hit (since what we want is our percentage chance to hit). Note, all four boxes together will equal the value “1” because they represent all possible outcomes.

It’s easiest to start with disadvantage. When attacking with disadvantage we need to find the probability of the “Hit-Hit” outcome (see point 2 above), so we graph that by shading it in:

This is actually very easy to calculate because we already know how to calculate our base chance to hit. To determine the chance of two outcomes you must multiply those outcomes together, in our case its two hits, so, “hit% x hit%” or “p x p” or “p2”. Let’s make a note of that for our list of formulas:

Formula for disadvantage: p^2

Now what about when we are attacking with advantage? This is much more complicated to solve, but once we model it on our graph we can see what we need to do. Remember, when attacking with advantage you must miss twice to actually miss, so:

The easiest way to zero in on those three boxes is to find the value of the “Miss-Miss” box than subtract that number from 1. Why? Because, as we noted above, all four boxes together equal the value of 1 (or 100% chance, because when calculating odds 100%, expressed as 1, is the upper bound). If we find the exact value of the “Miss-Miss” box and subtract that from 1 we will have the value of the three shaded boxes.

So what is the value of the “Miss-Miss’’ box? Well, it will be miss% squared (just like the “Hit-Hit box was hit% squared). The difficulty is we haven’t calculated for the miss equivalent of “p.” But it’s really not much of a difficulty, because we can just subtract p from 1 to get miss% (because if you aren’t hitting you are missing, there is no middle term). Thus,

Miss% = 1 – p

Then we need to square that to isolate the value of the “Miss-Miss” box:

Miss-Miss Box = (1 – p)^2

Then we need to subtract that from 1 to isolate the value of the three shaded boxes:

1 – (1 – p)^2

And that is our formula for calculating our chance to hit when attacking with advantage!

Formula for Advantage: 1 – (1 – p)^2

Just for the sake of being thorough, what would the formula be in a “double-advantage” scenario, where you roll three dice and take the highest? This is possible in 5e with the Elven Accuracy feat. In these cases, nothing changes about the math except now you need three hits and three misses, so the formula stays the same except that everytime something is squared, we change it to the power of three, so:

Formula for Double Advantage: 1 – (1 – p)^3

Attack Roles (DPR)

That is all the basics covered. Now we can apply it. One of these easiest and most useful things to calculate in any tactical combat game is damage per round (DPR) on attack roles. 5e uses a standard 3-outcome system for attack roles – Hit, Miss, and Crit. Misses, of course, do no damage at all, so to calculate DPR we need to focus on hitting and critting. The core of the calculation is to multiply your chance for an outcome with the average damage on that outcome, then add that number for all outcomes together. When we do this we get the following formula:

DPR = (Hit% - Crit%) x dmg/hit + Crit% x dmg/crit

Here our Hit% will be equal to p (modified accordingly for advantage and disadvantage). The reason we subtract Crit% from it at the beginning is because when we were calculating p above we did not differentiate hitting from critting, so p actually includes both probabilities together until we subtract Crit% out of it.

Still, there is something missing from this formula, and it is number of attacks in a round. What the above formula really represents is damage per attack, so we can just multiply the whole thing by attacks per round (APR) to get to a full DPR formula:

DPR = ((Hit% - Crit%) x dmg/hit + Crit% x dmg/crit) APR

And, of course, if your build makes separate attacks on a bonus action, you will need to run the same formula for bonus actions and add that to the whole.

As a final note to finish this section off, I want to discuss the mathematics of critting. First off, what does a crit actually do? In D&D 5e a critical hit allows you to double all your damage dice when you roll damage. It does not double any flat bonuses that you have, for example, from your strength attribute or barbarian rage or even the Great Weapon Master (GWM) feat. That means your dmg/crit value will be a little less than double your dmg/hit, depending on your build and how much of your damage is coming from dice rolls. For a typical level 4 GWM fighter a crit will hover around a 35% boost to damage, for a typical level 4 rogue a crit will be around a 73% increase to damage, and for a level 4 wizard casting Chromatic Orb a crit will actually double your damage (100% increase).

It’s also important to remember that advantage/disadvantage modifies your crit percent as well. If you are rolling twice and taking the highest you will be critting more often as well as hitting more often! The contrary is true if you are attacking with disadvantage. Run the same formula on your base odds to crit to get your modified Crit% when attacking with advantage/disadvantage.

Spell Saves (DPTr)

Enough about attacks, what about spells? Spells by and large have many potent effects that are hard to mathematically model, so we won’t try to do that here. All you can really calculate on a spell like Hold Person is how likely you will be to land the spell on a target and how much it boosts the DPR of an ally to attack a paralyzed target. How valuable it is to lock down a target in a fight is more nebulous. Nonetheless, there are some spells that are just damage spells and understanding and comparing these is very straightforward.

In 5e, most damage spells will fit into two kinds, which I call attack spells and save spells. An attack spell is just like attacking with a weapon, so the math is identical to what we outlined above. We won’t say anything more about them.

Save spells are different. In a save spell you don’t roll to hit, instead, you impose your check (DC) against your target who rolls against it to avoid the effect. Because of this, it would feel contrived for save spells to crit (do you crit if they roll as 1? Its weird…). To compensate for not being able to crit, save spells do half damage on a miss.

As in the case of calculating attack roles, the formula will be multiplying your chance for an outcome with the average damage on that outcome, then add those numbers for all outcomes together. In this case we have two possible outcomes: hit and miss. Thus, our base formula will be:

Save Spell Damage = Hit% x dmg/hit + Miss% x dmg/miss

That is the damage it will do to a single target though. Many spells, like Fireball for example, can hit more than one target. Thus:

Save Spell Damage = (Hit% x dmg/hit + Miss% x dmg/miss) Targets

The thing is, its impossible to predict what the average targets hit will be. It will vary drastically by your group strategy and the amount of combatants you face in an encounter. For this reason, I prefer to compare damage spells by their damage per target stat (DPTr) and make a note of how effective their targeting method is. This is as far as out very simple calculations will get us, the rest is up to your own best judgement, and that is the really fun part!

Progression and Flattened Math

The last area of math that is fundamental to understanding 5e and BG3 has to do with character progression. That is, how much stronger does a character get from level 1 to level 20? To model this, let’s look at the very basic stats of Elanna the Fighter. At level 1 Elanna has 16 strength and constitution, is wearing chainmail armor, and wields a longsword and shield with the Dueling Fighting Style. Here are her basic combat stats:

Elanna (Lvl 1)

Attack Bonus: +5
Damage: 9.5, 14 on a crit
APR: 1
AC: 18
HP: 13

Fast forward 20 levels, and now Elanna has a 20 strength and constitution. In her adventures she acquired +3 plate armor, and a +3 longsword and shield (the highest level of enchantment). Here are the same stats at max level:

Elanna (Lvl 20)

Attack Bonus: +14
Damage: 14.5, 19 on a crit
APR: 4
AC: 26
HP: 224

You can probably already see that the gains to attack bonus, damage, and armor class are not very high. The more important and impactful progression is in hit points and attacks per round. But let’s make the point clearer by comparing them to an enemy. Here are the basic stats of a Pit Fiend, an enemy Elanna might face at level 20:

Pit Fiend (CR 20)

Attack Bonus: +14
Damage: 19.5, 31 on a crit
APR: 4
AC: 19
HP: 300

Level 20 Elanna has an 80% chance to hit the Pit Fiend with an attack. But if Elanna fought the Pit Fiend at level 1, she would still have a 35% chance to hit it! 35% chance is not high, but it’s much higher than the 5% chance that we would expect from a level 1 character fighting a CR 20 monster.

Still though, it would take Lvl 20 Elanna 7 rounds on average to kill the Pit Fiend, whereas it would take Lvl 1 Elanna 85 rounds on average, a big difference! But what is the cause of it? Let’s try and isolate the variables. What if Lvl 20 Elanna only had 1 APR, in this situation it would take her 26 rounds on average to kill the Pit Fiend. However, Lvl 1 Elanna with 4 APR would kill it in 22. So, we can see that APR is BY FAR the most important factor in Elanna’s offensive progression.

What about her defensive progression? The Pit Fiend would kill Lvl 20 Elanna in 6 rounds on average and would kill Lvl 1 Elanna in 1. If level 1 Elanna had her level 20 armor and shield (26 AC) she would still die in 1 round. However, if she kept her 18 AC and instead had her level 20 HP she would survive 4 rounds on average. Tanking hits with HP is thus a more important part of Elanna’s defensive progression than avoiding them through AC. This is very different from other RPG systems like Pathfinder or 3e D&D where avoiding attacks is more potent.

The takeaway is this: that the potency of your attacks has a very stunted progression in 5e. Most progression comes from (1) making more attacks and (2) being able to tank more attacks. Elanna achieves this through stacking APR and HP, but a similar effect can be achieved by overwhelming enemies with sheer numbers. An army of goblins in 5e is a formidable encounter. Sure their attacks are weak, but they have so many of them, and that is what matters in 5e. This is why even weak summons are strong in 5e. The same principle is why it’s practically always better to find consistent uses for underused action types than it is to boost your standard action. Finding ways to make attacks with your bonus action and reaction every round is similar to boosting your APR.

Progression for spell casters is an entirely different story, that I don’t have the time to go into yet. The principles for it are not so different from what is standard in RPG’s, that progression is primarily found in the potency of the spells found at higher levels. Accuracy on your spells is very difficult to improve in 5e.

List of Formulas

n = (Check – Bonus)

\[this is the number you have to roll at or above on D20\]

p = (n – 20)/20 + 0.05

\[this expresses n as a probability\]

Formula for disadvantage: p^2

Formula for Advantage: 1 – (1 – p)^2

Formula for Double Advantage: 1 – (1 – p)^3

DPR = ((Hit% - Crit%) x dmg/hit + Crit% x dmg/crit) APR

DPTr = (Hit% x dmg/hit + Miss% x dmg/miss) Targets

Baldur’s Gate 3 Race Tier List — see these formulas applied to evaluating racial features
Baldur’s Gate 3 Weapons Tier List — DPR analysis applied to weapon rankings
How Valuable is Initiative? — a mathematical model for turn order value

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Fallen Light - An Eagleheart Barbarian Build for BG3

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Fallen Light - An Eagleheart Barbarian Build for BG3

“If thou beest she; But O how fall’n! how chang’d
From her, who in the happy Realms of Light
Cloth’d with transcendent brightness didst out-shine
Myriads though bright.

From what highth fall’n, so much the stronger prov’d
She with her lightning: and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? yet not for those,
Nor what the potent victor in her rage can else inflict on her foes.”

A new patch deserves a new build! Honestly, I’ve been testing out several new builds for the Barbarian, but this is the first one that just clicked. This build uses the new Eagleheart subclass in combination with a curated set out of items to rain lightning down from on high! And if there isn’t somewhere high to reign from, we can make our own throne.

If this is the first build of mine you are reading, I always write a unique character with a connection to the original Baldur’s Gate series, or Forgotten Realms lore in general, to fit all of my builds. Each character has their own themes and open questions that I leave for you to decide on your own runs. If you are interested in the build I hope you will check out the character as well!

The Build

Overview

Typically, what gets me interested in a build is a set of interesting mechanical interactions which might be hard for most players to notice. This build isn’t quite like that. Its central mechanics are less hidden, but do involve several new class features and items so for many players I am sure the combinations will be new.

Long time followers of my work will know how valuable lightning and frost damage are in BG3, thanks to Larian’s interpretation of the spell Create/Destroy Water. The wet condition from Create Water inflicts vulnerability to these two damage types and vulnerability, it turns out, is a very potent debuff. Last patch I released a build centered around maximizing retaliation frost damage from Armor of Agathys in combination with Create Water. This build, similarly, maximizes the Lightning damage on wet targets in combination with highly accurate great weapon attacks for very high DPR.

Primarily, our lightning damage for this build will be coming from the interaction between a new enchanted set of boots – The Speedy Lightfeet – and the low-cost dashes we get from the Eagleheart barbarian subclass.

The Speedy Lightfeet are part of a set of items that use a unique resource called “lightning charges.” While your character holds a charge, they get +1 to hit on their attack roles and deal +1 lightning damage on hits. Moreover, if they hit an attack while holding 5 charges or more, they will deal an additional 1d8 (4.5 average) lightning damage, consuming all of their charges. There are several ways to build lightning charges that correspond to the different items. The Speedy Lightfeet give you 3 charges whenever you dash, and that’s where the Eagleheart subclass enters the picture.

Eagleheart barbarians gain the ability to dash as a bonus action while they are raging. They also impose disadvantage on all opportunity attacks against them while they are raging. Their niche is blitzing past the front line of combat into melee range of priority backline targets. Besides all of that, we want this subclass so we can spam dashes for lightning charges to empower our attacks. If you use dash every round, you can be dealing, on average, 6.5 lightning damage every two rounds, or 3.25 per round. This is just the start!

We can add another 3.5 lightning damage per hit by wielding Light of Creation! This is a weapon a lot of folks seem to overlook. I don’t blame them; I overlooked it for a long time too, because if you just read the description it seems like it’s bad when in fact its quite good! It’s a +1 Halberd that does an additional 1d6 lightning damage each hit, however, there is also a chance (around 20%) that the wielder will be stunned when they hit a target. Losing a turn is not worth all the damage this weapon deals, or at least it wouldn’t be IF you lost a turn. The thing is you don’t. There is no way to know this without testing, but the stun condition ends as soon as you start your next turn. And remember, it triggers after you hit an attack, so the only action you risk losing from the stun is, possibly, your bonus action. Of course, until you next turn enemies do have advantage on attacks against you, but that doesn’t matter to our barbarian who spams Reckless Attack. Enemies have advantage to attack us anyways, and advantage never stacks!

So, adding it all up, we’ll deal around 7 extra lightning damage every hit. Attacking wet targets makes that 14! Add the +2 from Rage, +3 from strength, and base weapon damage and we average 25.5 damage per hit, attacking with advantage on every strike, and without any lost accuracy from Great Weapon Master. We’re going to combine this with an overload of Mobility for a blitzkrieg assault. We will run in, dish out our 25 damage, then retreat out of range of any attacks, and we can do this every round.

Level 1

Race: Barbarians want as many physical attribute boosts as they can grab, with a priority on strength, then constitution, and lastly dexterity. Resistances are also very valuable for barbarians, because resistances are a multiplier on health, and barbs have a lot of health. These conditions narrow down our list to a few top options:

Shield Dwarf, gets the best possible physical attribute boosts for the barbarian. They also get poison resistance, which is probably the best resistance outside of the physical damage types, which barbarians have anyways. Shield Dwarf is the optimal choice for every barbarian build, and likely will remain that way.

However, there are other racial choices which are almost as good. Humans are great for barbarians because of the 16 in all three physical stats. Strongheart Halflings are great too, also getting the poison resistance and a +3 total bonuses to physical stats. Finally, Zariel Tieflings make great barbarians with their +1 strength and fire resistance.

Nevertheless, I chose to go with Wood Half-Elf for this build. Half-elves can get a 16 in strength and constitution, keep them on curve with those stats, but they also get bonus movement speed, which are always great on strikers, and gets doubled on this build from the dash spam. It’s not the optimal choice, but it was still strong.

Attributes:

Str: 16
Dex: 14
Con: 16
Int: 8
Wis: 8
Cha: 10

Class: Barbarian

Background and Skills: The only mandatory skill is Atheletics. Intimidate is also good for barbarians, they will get a lot of opportunities to use it. You can get both from soldier background. I went Outlander. If you want to solo with this build, take Charlatan.

Level 2

There aren’t any decisions to make at this level. Just collect your Reckless Attack and Danger Sense.

Level 3

Here is where we choose our subclass, and, of course, we will be taking Eagleheart. This is also the level where we can get our first key item – The Speedy Lightfeet – which can be found under the windmill in the Blighted Village.

There is another item worth mentioning just a stone’s throw away from the village, and that is Reason’s Grasp, a new pair of gauntlets exclusive to the Barbarian. These gauntlets give you 15 temporary hit points whenever you choose to end your Rage and ending it automatically after a fight counts! In my runs, I never have fights go long enough for my Rage to actually time out, so this is a practically guaranteed 15 temporary hit points per rage, or 45 extra hit points total. That is doubling our hit points! I hope you weren’t wanting to die at all because it won’t happen now.

Level 4

The big decision at this level is what feat we want to choose. We’re going to take a rare feat option: Mobile. This feat adds 3m to our movement speed, makes us immune to difficult terrain when we dash, and makes us immune to opportunity attacks on rounds where we move after we attack. Congrats, you are the flash now! With this feat and a few other buffs we can reach 39m of movement per round while raging. Yes, you read that right, that’s 39m, not 39ft. With this amount of movement we can run in, attack, then run out while still being far enough away that the average dashing enemy can’t reach us.

If you would prefer not to go Mobile, Great Weapon Master and a +2 strength ASI are also good choices.

Now that we are at max level we can collect all of our key items. The easiest to grab is the Ring of Crusher, which we can get off of Crusher’s corpse in the goblin village. This ring increases our movement by 3m.

The Light of Creation can be found in the Mage Tower in the underdark. You’ll have to take it from Bernard, which can be a tough fight. There is a trick to make it much easier, but I won’t spoil the fun for you. While we are at the tower, we can pick up Sparkswall, a nifty ring that does synergize a ton with this build, but fits with it thematically.

Finally, there is the question of our helmet slot. The Helm of Grit is the go to for martials, and with it we can double dash in a round, adding even more lightning damage! However, there are a lot of builds that want the Helm of Grit, and the combination of our overloaded mobility and durability makes it so we are seldom below 50%. For those reasons, I’m going to recommend you take Lifebringer (which can be bought from Blurg in the Myconid Colony). This is another item that works off of Lightning Charges, giving us 3 temporary hit points every time we gain charges, which for us is every turn. These temp hit points stack with the ones we get from Reason’s Grasp, and actually “heal” up the overall pool for some reason, so you can think of it as a 3 hit point regeneration effect, which is awesome!

Those are the key items.

Tactics

This is a textbook hit-and-run build. Take out targets that have ranged attacks or crowd control first. Always run away and end your turn far enough from the melee enemies that they have to dash to reach you. With good positioning, they will waste a lot of their actions just dashing around the fight.

Don’t forget, you are also extremely tanky, so if enemies do attack you, it’s not the end of the world. Sometimes it is worthwhile to let them reach you in order to split their position. Splitting enemy position is when you lead one group of enemies more than their standard movement in distance away from the rest of their group. After doing this, you can leave them to attack the other enemies. The distance you can cover with one movement might take them three of four, so they will waste their turns just moving while you attack their allies. These are the kind of opportunities you should look for.

Here is a little trick. I am not sure where to put it, so I will just put it here. You can use Diving Strike without needing the elevation if you carry a few boxes along with you at all times. Just stack them up, make steps to the top if you need. It’s like a portable perch! You can use it to get an extra 9m of movement on your turn if, for some ungodly reason, the 39m you have wasn’t enough. I believe the prone condition automatically breaks concentration, so you can use it for that as well.

I did make this build with a team in mind. For example, to reach the 39m move per turn, you’ll need Gale to cast Longstrider, and you will need Shadowheart to cast Create Water. Try to build your team composition with mobility in mind as well. Basically, make sure the other three members of your party are good ranged attacks. I still recommend Lae’zel, but don’t rush her in right away. It’s okay to stay hidden to force aggro on Tav for a round or two. Doing this will give them no option but to chase Tav all over, making it easier to split them.

Performance

As is tradition, let’s see how this build compares to my builds in the past:

In this graph you can see two curves, one for how it does when attacking normally and another for how it does when attacking wet targets. Its damage curve just gets better the higher AC the enemies get. In this regard its like The Brand build, only it performs better.

As I noted in the build overview the Knight of Faith build also got a significant boost to DPR from casts of Create Water, so let’s look at how Fallen Light compares to Knight of Faith specifically:

So…. The Knight of Faith did a lot of damage with Armor of Agathys. Fallen Light has an advantage in its target selection and consistency, but is it enough of an advantage to outweigh the sheer volume of damage the Knight of Faith puts out? Probably not. It’s honestly hard to judge because of how these builds function so differently. The Knight of Faith was a Juggernaut of tankiness and damage, whereas Fallen Light is all about fast attacks and gaining positional advantages through movement.

My judgement right now is that Fallen Light is somewhere between The Brand and The Knight of Faith in power. In a lot of ways, it’s a better version of The Brand as far as its tactical niche goes. I think it’s possible that this build could be an S-tier, but until I have more experience with its unusual tactics I will be ranking it an “A.” It is a better A-tier build than The Brand though.

The Character - Seshtali

From Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal epilogue:

“Aerie and Charname would prove inseparable, their adventuring careers becoming secondary to the raising of their son, and eventually a daughter as well. Their later years would hold one last great trek, however, as Aerie still suffered a sadness from her time enslaved and the loss of her wings. Together she and Charname sought the avariel of Faenya-Dail, the winged elves she was stolen from so long ago. They discovered not only her people, but loving parents that had spent years searching for their lost child. With no more mystery or confusion to cloud their lives, it was there, among the clouds, that Aerie and Charname would finally be married. Their union, it is said, was blessed by visions of Aerdrie Faenya and Baervan Wildwanderer both.”

These heroes fought through the depths of hell to the heights of the heavens. Yet hell stains even the virtuous. Can it be that the son of Bhaal carries not the seed of murder whither he goes? Thus he foretold, “which way I fly is hell, myself am hell; and in even the glorified heights the lowest deep still threatens to devour me: that the hell I suffer seems a heaven…”

And thus he departed the marble palaces of Faenya-Dail; with his right shoulder to the rising sun and his back to his family he descended. So it was that bitterness entered the heart of Seshtali, the seed of Bhaal on Toril, just as bitterness is the seed of wrath.

The peaks of Faenya-Dail embraced the highest clouds of the heavens. There the avariel erected empyrean palaces of a hundred pilastered arches. At its center, nestled in a cleft of the marble cliffs, an arcadian colonnade served as the community’s public square. There the pastoral avarial traded their works of art amongst each other. Food was neither scarce nor abundant, for the marble cliffs, while glorious, were barren. Nevertheless, the avariel needed little for food, and their winged hunters labored well, and much time remained for the enjoyment of art, and song, and sport.

The young Seshtali longed to hunt, but she could not, for she had no wings. Her time was spent in study, which she detested, tutored by her mother in the hallowed halls of the Vaunted Basilica, which perched on the highest peak of the mountain. In the evenings, she would climb the cliffs, looking for prey until the sun set. There the young avariel would tease her, and Seshtali felt wrath welling up within her. Wrath, yes, and hate, and… desire. Visions disrupted her sleep; nightmares of bone and blood. Or were they dreams?

She was still an adolescent when she fell. It began with a storm, rolling in from the south as she climbed. She hastily made for home, a group of boys watched on, mocking her. Their jeers made her lose focus, and she slipped, falling gracelessly and landing hard on her back. She tried to gasp, but her breath had left her, so she sputtered and choked for air while the boys laughed and flew away. She was lying there crying when rain began to fall.

The climb back was dangerous in the wet, but Seshtali’s grip did not slip. It could not slip. Her rage drove her, strengthening her arm and sharpening her focus. She gloried in it. And just as she scaled the final face, she spied her tormentors alight on the steps of the basilica. They go to pray to Aerdrie for protection, she thought. It was customary for the young boys to pray for safety for their fathers who were hunting during a storm. Seshtali grinned, laying hold of a loose rock, and stalked them into the temple. The rage rushed up to her again, and the hate, and the desire. Brutally she slew them, and she reveled in it, the blood and bone. It felt to her at that moment that she was born for blood as the avariel were born to fly.

“Sesh! What have you done…”

She turned. It was Quayle, her brother. “What are you doing here?” She asked.

“I came to pray for father.”

“He is not out hunting. He left us,” she responded bitterly. Quayle did not approach her, he looked to the bloodied rock in her hand.

“Did you do this? You killed them…” She could see fear and confusion in his eyes at first, then there was something else there, something she had not seen in him before. After a moment, it dawned on her: disgust. She gripped the rock tighter. Rain poured onto the vaulted dome above. Quayle tensed, turning to flee, when a clap of lightning struck nearby, startling him. In a flash, Seshtali launched the bloody missile and with a snap it struck his skull. He crumpled to the marble floor and she knew that he was dead.

Seshtali fled Faenya-Dail that day, under the cover of the storm no one could track her. She lived in the wild, instinct her tutor and wrath her terrible weapon. Thus did she wander, with her right shoulder to the rising sun.

Role Playing Notes for Seshtali

I of course wrote Seshtali to be a direct continuation of the story of the original Baldur’s Gate series. Similarly, she directly continues the themes of both Aerie and the main character from those games. Aerie was fallen in the literal sense, a winged elf who had lost her wings and had to come to terms with the ugliness of earth. She was fragile, like a bird, and had to become strong. The player character from Baldur’s Gate was fallen in a metaphorical sense. Or, at least, he struggles not to fall, depending on the choices you make. The point is the ever present allure of violence and power; you decide whether you fight it or succumb. Its not meaningless that the entire series began with this quote from Nietzsche: “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

Seshtali has the same blood of Bhaal, and thus suffers the same allure, something the game writers themselves bring up when Quayle is born in Throne of Bhaal. For Seshtali in BG3, there are a lot of ways this allure can play out concretely.

First, through the mechanics of the barbarian class. Barbarians are all about violence and rage, and for Seshtali we can view this as tapping into her birthright of murder, like the Slayer form in BG2.

Second, in our reaction to the Cult of the Absolute. It is clear that the resurrected Bhaal is tied to this new cult. How will the granddaughter of Bhaal react to that? Does she hate Bhaal? Is she loyal to him? Perhaps she wants to replace him.

Third, in our interaction with the tadpole powers. How will Seshtali react to the seductive powers the tadpole offer us? Its a mirror, in a way, to the seductive powers of her bloodline.

All of these questions bring us to the driving question of the entire character: why did Seshtali run? Or, the same question another way, how does Seshtali feel about murdering her brother? Clearly there is a part of her - the Bhaal part of her - that savors it, like (her uncle) Sarevok. Did she embrace murder and flee her home to be free of their repressive constraints? Or is murdering her own brother the moment that snapped her out of her bloodlust and she fled because of her guilt and shame? I leave that for you to decide!

Conclusion

If you want to discuss this build or the character with me and others you can do so here.

If you are interested in more content like this, please check out my Patreon.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Race Tier List — full rankings for every race in BG3
Baldur’s Gate 3 Weapons Tier List — weapon rankings including Light of Creation and other key weapons
Fundamental Math in D&D 5e and BG3 — the DPR formulas behind damage calculations

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Baldur's Gate 3 Weapons Tier List - Patch 7

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Baldur’s Gate 3 Weapons Tier List

Patch 7 is live! I am releasing this tier list while my game is updating, so all of this information is already outdated. Nevertheless, I want you all to have it for your Patch 7 runs! I will be updating it to include any new weapons that have been added as quickly as I can, so check in again in a few days!

This article is actually two tier lists in one. I rank all the unique weapons in the game, but I also rank Larian’s added weapon actions. Both are important to understanding what you will get from your weapon choices.

If you are thinking “I can probably figure out the relative usefulness of these weapons by reading their wiki entries. I don’t need Aestus to tell me which weapons are good.” You are both right and wrong. You are right that you don’t need me to tell you what is good (although I hope you find my opinions interesting at least!). Where you are wrong is that you cannot really know much just by reading wiki descriptions. Many of these weapons do not do what they say they do, including some of your favorites, like the Staff of Arcane Blessing. I painstakingly tested these weapons to find out what they actually do. So even if you understand what makes a weapon good in BG3, you can probably still learn a lot from this article. Even after all my testing, I am sure I missed some things or made some mistakes. If you catch something I missed, let me know and I will update the article.

Weapon Actions

If you are new to BG3 you may be wondering what weapon actions are. Weapon Actions are simple activatable abilities that you can use once per short rest and are tied to the weapon you use. They were added to BG3 by Larian, so you won’t find them in other 5th edition games.

Because they were added so recently, there is a lot of confusion surrounding these actions. The tooltips do not clear anything up; most weapon actions work very differently than what their tooltip says. I have tested all of them and tried my best to write a clearer description than what is offered in the game. Read them over, some of them may surprise you! I also rank them in a tier system because that’s just what I do!

Tiers

Here is what the tiers mean:

S Tier: Consistently amazing weapon actions. These are game changing actions that are perhaps in need of a nerf. Use these often.

A Tier: Consistently good weapon actions. These aren’t game changing but they are useful in most fights and are nice to have.

B Tier: Consistently average weapon actions. B-tier weapon actions are underwhelming, but still technically useful in most situations.

C Tier: Weapon actions that can be useful in niche circumstances but are usually not worth the resource you expend to use them. These could be removed from the game and no one should really notice.

RP Tier: For a weapon action that is actually useless. You don’t get any advantage from using this ability. Larian needs to rework this into something that actually does something.

Many weapon actions require a target to make a saving throw, and thus have a DC. With one exception (Backbreaker) Weapon Action DC = 10 + Proficiency Bonus + Strength/Dexterity Modifier.

Here is a reference sheet for which weapons get which actions:

Ok, let’s get to the list!

Backbreaker - B Tier

The character makes a single standard attack as an action. If the attack hits it deals damage as normal but as if your weapon has 1d4 base damage. Moreover, the target must make a strength saving throw or be knocked prone for two turns. A prone target has disadvantage on strength and dexterity saving throws and all attacks against the target made within 3m have advantage. A target may stand up at the cost of half of its movement.

Note: For some reason Backbreaker has a lower DC than all of the other weapon actions. Instead of 10 + Proficiency Bonus + Strength/Dexterity Modifier it has 8 + Proficiency Bonus + Strength/Dexterity Modifier, a -2 penalty.

With this ability you lose a bit of damage and get a (slim) chance of knocking the target prone (slim because this is a double-hit ability; you have to hit the attack and the saving throw to gain full effect). Prone is an average status condition. The best thing you get from it is advantage on attacks, but on their next turn they will just stand up again, so only use this if you have an ally who can attack before they stand back up.

Brace - C Tier

You spend 7.5m of movement and for the rest of your turn you roll damage twice and use the highest result.

This ability seems good until you do the math on what rolling damage twice actually does. It adds, on average, 1.65 damage per hit (1.31 for the Longbow). Being able to spend movement (which you often don’t need) to but damage is great, but the damage is just so underwhelming.

Cleave - B Tier

You attack in a cone that can hit up to 3 targets in front of you. For every attack that hits you deal half of your normal attack damage.

When I released this article I had this ranked C-tier. I’ve realized now I completely missed the mark with that ranking. The error in my earlier analysis was that I didn’t realize it doesn’t half flat damage bonuses from sources like Great Weapon Master or Rage. From what I can tell, it halves all damage dice (whether the base damage of the weapon or extra sources like dipped weapons) and it halves your ability modifier (the bonus damage from strength). Everything else is not halved. So it actually does do more damage than a normal hit if you can hit at least two targets.

If you have Great Weapon Master, this is an A-tier action. For everyone else its a B.

Concussive Smash - S Tier

The character makes a standard attack as an action. If the attack hits the target must make a constitution saving throw or receive the dazed condition for two turns. A dazed creature has disadvantage on wisdom saving throws, cannot take reactions, and loses their dexterity bonus to armor class.

Dazed is an overpowered status condition. Wisdom save spells are the most potent (Tasha’s, Hold Person, etc), so imposing disadvantage on wisdom saves is already enough to make this good. Add on that the target also loses their dexterity bonus to AC and we are in OP territory now. This makes a perfect set-up for Menacing Strike (with an action surge), which is already one of the best control features in the game. Even with all of that, this is still the weakest S-tier weapon action. Keep reading!

Crippling Strike - B Tier

The character makes a single standard attack as an action. If the attack hits it deals damage as normal but as if your weapon has 1d4 base damage. Moreover, the target must make a constitution saving throw or receive the crippled condition for two turns. A crippled target’s movement is reduced to 0 and they have disadvantage on dexterity saving throws.

A slightly better version of Backbreaker. Not good enough to move it into A-tier.

Flourish - B Tier

Flourish is like a melee range control spell that takes a bonus action to cast. The target must make a dexterity saving throw or receive the condition off-balance for two turns. A creature that is off-balance has disadvantage on strength saving throws and the next attack against them is made with advantage.

Off-balance is a mediocre condition but being able to apply it on a bonus action is great! Use this to set up a sneak attack or another, stronger weapon action.

Hamstring Shot - B Tier

Make a standard attack. If the attack hits you deal damage as normal, but the target must also roll a constitution saving throw. If they fail, they acquire the hamstrung condition. A hamstrung target has their movement reduced by 50%.

Reducing movement by half… Who cares? Technically its useful for kiting, buts it’s a single target once per short rest, and kiting is something you need to do more frequently than that. Still, there is no reduced damage on this ability, so there is no drawback to using it. Its just a standard attack with a mediocre added effect.

Heartstopper - S Tier

The character makes a single standard attack as an action. If the attack hits it deals damage as normal but as if your weapon has 1d4 base damage. Moreover, the target must make a constitution saving throw or receive the chest trauma condition for two turns. A target with chest trauma has disadvantage on constitution saving throws and loses their standard action.

Not enough people are talking about how overpowered Heartstopper is. The enemy loses their action for two turns… TWO TURNS OF NO ACTION. If that doesn’t sound amazing to you, I won’t be able to explain it. Keep a morning-star on every martial character to use this on boss fights or big monsters.

Lacerate - B Tier

This is made as a part of a standard attack. If the attack hits the target takes damage as normal but also must make a constitution saving throw to acquire the bleeding condition for two rounds. A bleeding creature takes two slashing damage at the beginning of their turn and has disadvantage on constitution saving throws.

This is one of the stronger B-tier abilities. The extra damage is meh. Constitution save disadvantage is real reason to use this. Constitution save spells (Thunderwave, Ray of Enfeeblement, Shatter, Moonbeam, etc) are not as powerful as wisdom save spells, but they can still swing a fight.

Mobile Shot - RP Tier

When you use your dash action you may make a standard attack as a bonus action.

This is another one that sounds good until you think it over. Its exclusive to hand crossbows, whose niche is being the dual-wield ranged weapon. Dual wielding already allows you make an attack with your bonus action. If you aren’t going to dual wield your hand crossbow then why use a hand crossbow? That is its only advantage over other crossbows. There is absolutely no use for this weapon action.

Piercing Strike/Shot - A Tier

The character makes a single standard attack as an action. If the attack hits the target must make a constitution saving throw or receive the gaping wounds condition for two turns. A target with gaping wounds takes an additional two piercing damage when hit by an attack. Gaping wounds is removed if the target is healed.

This is my favorite weapon action. Not because it’s the best, but because it’s the most fun to play around with. Gaping wounds deals more damage the more hits you can get against a target. So how many hits can you get in a single turn? Here are the current standings:

Circlet of Fire sorcerer, triple cast of Scorching Ray – 9 hits (18 bonus damage)
Circlet of Fire Thief, dual wielding + Scorching Ray Scroll – 6 hits (12 bonus damage)
Circlet of Fire Warlock, dual wielding + Scorching Ray – 5 hits (10 bonus damage)

The first two are really niche circumstances, but the third is actually practical. I’ve had 5 attack rounds often with a warlock. One of the most reliable ways of dealing high single target damage is with Scorching Ray because it benefits from Mystra’s Blessing, high ground bonus, the easy stealth advantage, and Circlet of Fire. With dual hand crossbows, you can set up on a target with Piercing Shot and Hex, then, next turn, blast them with Scorching Ray and two off-hand shots, each procing the bonus damage from Hex and gaping wounds, for an average of 5.5 bonus damage per hit (the full combo will average 61.5 damage assuming all attacks hit and a 16-17 dexterity).

Prepare - A Tier

You spend 7.5m of movement to add your strength modifier in slashing damage with your weapon till the end of your turn (i.e. it effectively doubles your strength modifier for damage).

Like Piercing Strike, this ability is fun because of how you can multiply it. You multiply your strength by two, then multiply it again by the number of hits in your turn. On a Great Weapon Master build you can attack at max twice in a turn, meaning every +1 bonus to your strength modifier will do a possible +4 damage with Prepare. Its possible to have a 22 strength (18 base + 4 from potions), which is a +6 modifier, or +24 damage just from strength alone. Of course, only half of that is coming from Prepare, but you get the idea.

Pommel Strike - S Tier

Pommel Strike makes an attack role as a bonus action. If the attack hits the target takes you strength modifier in damage and must also make a constitution saving throw or become dazed for 2 rounds.

This is like a low damage Concussive Smash, but you can use it on a bonus action. That means you can inflict daze and make a Menacing Strike on the same turn without using action surge. If you do use action surge, you can Menacing Strike twice (if the first one misses). If you are in the same initiative as your wizard, you can Pommel Strike to set up his Tasha’s, and then attack for a free crit. This ability is so good you should never take a short rest before using it.

Rush Attack - A Tier

As an action you can charge 9m forward in a straight line and attack a target. If the attack hits it deals damage as normal but as if your weapon has 1d4 base damage. On a hit the target must also make a strength save or be knocked off-balance for two rounds. A creature that is off-balance has disadvantage on strength saving throws and the next attack against them is made with advantage.

We discussed off-balance above when we were analyzing Flourish. Its not a great status effect, but its not bad either. The really impactful part of Rush Attack is that you get to move 9m on your action, likely doubling your movement, allowing you to close onto that pesky spell caster on their back lines. This ability does what Mobile Shot was trying to do.

Tenacity - C Tier

If you miss an attack, you may spend your reaction to deal your strength modifier in damage anyways.

The damage is low and it costs your reaction. At its best its 5 or so extra damage per short rest. Underwhelming, but technically not useless.

Topple - B Tier

The target makes a dexterity saving throw. If they fail they are knocked prone for two rounds. A prone target has disadvantage on strength and dexterity saving throws and all attacks against the target made within 3m have advantage. A target may stand up at the cost of half of its movement.

Since this is unique to staffs, its functions as an escape for your squishy caster. That is nice to have. It doesn’t require an attack role either, which really helps. This weapon action does its job.

Weakening Strike - B Tier

The character makes a single standard attack as an action. If the attack hits it deals damage as normal but as if your weapon has 1d4 base damage. Moreover, the target must make a strength saving throw or receive the weak grip condition for two turns. A target with weak grip has disadvantage on attack roles and strength saving throws.

I’m not impressed with weak grip as a condition. Strength saving throws are rare (Entangle, Ensnaring Strike, Backbreaker). Disadvantage on attack roles is good, but not fight changing, and it takes to hits to get that effect. Not useless, but not great either.

Weapon Actions Final Rankings

S Tier:

Concussive Smash, Heartstopper, Pommel Strike

A Tier:

Flourish, Piercing Strike/Shot, Prepare, Rush Attack

B Tier:

Backbreaker, Crippling Strike, Hamstring Shot, Lacerate, Topple, Weakening Strike

C Tier:

Brace, Cleave, Tenacity

RP Tier:

Mobile Shot

List of Conditions

Bleeding: A bleeding creature takes two slashing damage at the beginning of their turn and has disadvantage on constitution saving throws.

Chest Trauma: A target with chest trauma has disadvantage on constitution saving throws and loses their standard action.

Crippled: A crippled target’s movement is reduced to 0 and they have disadvantage on dexterity saving throws.

Dazed: A dazed creature has disadvantage on wisdom saving throws, cannot take reactions, and loses their dexterity bonus to armor class.

Gaping Wounds: A target with gaping wounds takes an additional two piercing damage when hit by an attack. Gaping wounds is removed if the target is healed.

Hamstrung: A hamstrung target has their movement reduced by 50%.

Off-Balance: A creature that is off-balance has disadvantage on strength and saving throws and the next attack against them is made with advantage.

Prone: A prone target has disadvantage on strength and dexterity saving throws and all attacks against the target made within 3m have advantage. A target may stand up at the cost of half of its movement.

Weak Grip: A target with weak grip has disadvantage on attack roles and saving throws.

Unique Weapons Tier List

Now let’s turn our attention to the unique weapons in the game. As is customary, I’ll begin with some important disclaimers.

By “unique weapons’’ I mean weapons (and shields) that have a unique enchantment. The focus of this article is testing and ranking unique mechanics on weapons. There are some non-magical items that have a unique look or name – like the scrap sword or whipping cane – these are not included. Similarly, there are enchanted weapons that are not unique, like a simple +1 dagger, or any generic +1 weapon, these aren’t included. I do not include Phalar Aluve, because even though it has a unique look and name, mechanically it’s just a generic +1 longsword. Conversely, I do include the +1 Light Hammer that you can get at the forge outside the magic tower because even though it has a generic name, it does have a unique, mechanical enchantment.

I’ve left out info on how to get these items to avoid spoilers. If you don’t care about that being spoiled, this redditer has already compiled a full list of unique items and where to acquire them.

I will say it again in case you skipped the intro, if you are thinking “I can probably figure out the relative usefulness of these weapons by reading their wiki entries. I don’t need Aestus to tell me which weapons are good.” I will remind you, many of these weapons do not do what they say they do, including some of your favorites, like the Staff of Arcane Blessing. I painstakingly tested these weapons to find out what they actually do.Even after all my testing, I am sure I missed some things or made some mistakes. If you catch something I missed, let me know and I will update the article.

Tiers

S Tier: Consistently amazing weapons; sometimes weapons worth building your character/party around, or ones that offer something important to already optimal strategies. Basically, they offer something potent that you can’t duplicate in another way. I try to get these weapons as soon as possible on my runs

A Tier: Consistently good or situationally amazing weapons. These are powerful weapons, still good enough to use as your main weapon. Some of them are good as side-arms that you swap into for certain situations. They are great, but not as game-changing as S-tier.

B Tier: Just average weapons. As a general rule, B-tier weapons are close in power to a generic +1 weapon of the same type.

C Tier: These weapons are underwhelming. Barely better than a non-magical item. You can sell them without a second thought.

RP Tier: For those special weapons that just don’t work. Don’t use these weapons for any purpose other than role-playing.

Absolute’s Warboard - B Tier

Weapon Type: Shield

The Word of the Absolute: This is an activatable ability that refreshes on a short rest. All unbranded targets in the area of effect receive the Bane condition for two turns. There is no saving throw to resist and this ability.

Patch 7 nerfed this item into oblivion. Before this patch I was saying it was the strongest item in the game, and now I struggle to get any value out of it at all. I am provisionally ranking it as a B-tier until I can better test the Word of the Absolute, because it isn’t functioning the way it used to.

Adamantine Longsword - B Tier

Weapon Type: Longsword

Versatile Hitter: Hits with this weapon send the target reeling for one turn if it is used with one hand and two turns if it is used with two.

Note: there is no saving throw to resist the reeling condition. A reeling target has a -1 penalty to attack roles.

All of the Adamantine weapons are identical in effect, so I will use the same review for all of them. Reeling is fine. It’s just fine. You can count on this weapon, I just prefer my weapons to do damage.

Adamantine Mace - B Tier

Weapon Type: Mace

Swift Hitter: Hits with this weapon send the target reeling for one turn.

Note: there is no saving throw to resist the reeling condition. A reeling target has a -1 penalty to attack roles.

All of the Adamantine weapons are identical in effect, so I will use the same review for all of them. Reeling is fine. Its just fine. You can count on this weapon, I just prefer my weapons to do damage.

Adamantine Scimitar - B Tier

Weapon Type: Scimitar

Shift Hitter: Hits with this weapon send the target reeling for one turn.

Note: there is no saving throw to resist the reeling condition. A reeling target has a -1 penalty to attack roles.

Blooded Greataxe - B Tier

Weapon Type: Greataxe

Relentless Revenge: When the wielder has 50% hit points or less, they deal an additional 1d6 slashing damage.

This effect is honestly pretty good, since martials are incentivized by other items to flirt with the 50% HP line anyways. Greataxe’s also get the very fun Prepare weapon action. Its big issue is that heavy, two-handed weapons that do slashing damage are a stacked category, so this axe ends up way down the list.

Club of Hill Giant Strength - B Tier

Weapon Type: Club

Splinter’s of a Giant’s Might: While wielding this weapon, the user’s strength is set to 15.

Its not good enough to be A-tier, but I use it on a lot of my runs. Its good to give to Wyll, since he only has a +1 modifier in both strength and dexterity. Mostly I just love the convenience of the carry weight boost on a weak party member!

Corellon’s Grace - A Tier

Weapon Type: Staff

Unhampered Resistance: If the user of this staff takes damage while they are not wearing armor (robes are ok), they gain a 1d4 bonus to saving throws for two turns.

Note: The tooltip says “if they get attack while not wearing armor…” but this is incorrect. Right now, as I say above, the effect procs whenever they take damage while not wearing armor. That means it will proc when they get hit by an attack. It also means it will proc if they take damage from something that isn’t an attack, for example, a spell, or a ground effect.

This is for your backline magic user to hold. The effect stacks with Bless, giving you, on average, a +5 to your saving throws. That is obviously amazing, but you have to risk losing your saving throw to get it. I prefer to just hide and not risk getting hit while I am concentrating and use a weapon that gives me a more proactive ability. Nevertheless, I can’t deny that this weapon is good.

Deep Delver - B Tier

Weapon Type: Warpick

Dig Deep: Inflicts a condition on hit which lasts for three rounds, no save. Hits with the Deep Delver against targets with the condition deal an additional 1d4 piercing damage

This is a very underwhelming item by the time you get it. It gives a little more damage on consecutive hits. Just pass. If you want to use a warpick, go for a generic +1 version.

Doom Axe - C Tier

Weapon Type: Greataxe

Edge of Terror: Hits inflict a status condition that prevent the target from regaining hit points for two turns. Undead targets also have disadvantage on their attacks for the duration.

It is offering an effect you can already get from a cantrip. Pass.

Dragon’s Grasp - C Tier

Weapon Type: Handaxe

Burned Alive: Deals an additional 1d4 slashing damage to burning targets.

Its low damage and very situational, so not worth more words than this.

Everburn Blade - A Tier

Weapon Type: Greatsword

Ever-Burning: An arcane flame that cannot be quenched; deals an extra 1d4 fire damage on hit.

It’s a consistent and high damage heavy weapon that you can get early. Unlike others I’ve met on BG3 forums, I don’t consider it the best two-handed weapon in the game, or even the third best. Its still good though.

Exterminator’s Axe - B Tier

Weapon Type: Greataxe

Scourge of Pests: Deals an additional 1d6 fire damage to plants, insects, and small creatures.

A situational version of Blooded Greataxe. Not much to say here, its worth it if you are fighting the creatures its good against, otherwise its just a greataxe. I typically just sell this.

Faithbreaker - S Tier

Weapon Type: Warhammer

+1 Enchantment

Absolute Power: You make a special attack which deals an additional 1d6 force damage and pushes the target back 5m on a hit. You can use this attack once per short rest.

Note: Unlike the Battlemaster Maneuver Pushing Attack, there is no saving throw to resist the pushing effect on Absolute Power. You can also use this ability to push targets that otherwise couldn’t be pushed with shove, because they are too heavy.

Pushing targets can easily add guaranteed double digit damage in BG3, either from fall damage or from pushing into Cloud of Daggers. Faithbreaker offers the best push in the game. Not only can it push heavy creatures, it does it without a saving throw, all you need to do is hit the attack. This is the best one-handed weapon in the game in my opinion.

Firestoker - C Tier

Weapon Type: Hand Crossbow

Burned Alive: Deals an additional 1d4 slashing damage to burning targets.

It’s the crossbow version of Dragon’s Grasp that you get much later on your runs. Completely underwhelming.

Giantbreaker - B Tier

Weapon Type: Heavy Crossbow

Heavy Hitter: Hits with this weapon send the target reeling for two turns.

Note: there is no saving throw to resist the reeling condition. A reeling target has a -1 penalty to attack roles.

Reeling is fine. Its just fine. You can count on this weapon. It’s one of the better ranged weapons probably. I just prefer my weapons to do damage.

Githyanki Crossbow - B Tier

Weapon Type: Heavy Crossbow

Psychic Vengeance: When the user is below 50% health, hits with this weapon deal an extra 1d4 psychic damage.

Some people report that, despite what the tooltip says, some Gith weapons do more damage than others. In all my tests, every Gith weapon functions the same. So I copy and past this review for each.

It’s a small boost to damage that is situational. However, psychic damage is seldom resisted, and dropping below 50% is fairly common, since other items also incentivize it.

Githyanki Greatsword - B Tier

Weapon Type: Greatsword

Psychic Vengeance: When the user is below 50% health, hits with this weapon deal an extra 1d4 psychic damage.

Some people report that, despite what the tooltip says, some Gith weapons do more damage than others. In all my tests, every Gith weapon functions the same. So I copy and past this review for each.

It’s a small boost to damage that is situational. However, psychic damage is seldom resisted, and dropping below 50% is fairly common, since other items also incentivize it.

Githyanki Longsword - B Tier

Weapon Type: Longsword

Psychic Vengeance: When the user is below 50% health, hits with this weapon deal an extra 1d4 psychic damage.

Some people report that, despite what the tooltip says, some Gith weapons do more damage than others. In all my tests, every Gith weapon functions the same. So I copy and past this review for each.

It’s a small boost to damage that is situational. However, psychic damage is seldom resisted, and dropping below 50% is fairly common, since other items also incentivize it.

Githyanki Shortsword - B Tier

Weapon Type: Shortsword

Psychic Vengeance: When the user is below 50% health, hits with this weapon deal an extra 1d4 psychic damage.

Some people report that, despite what the tooltip says, some Gith weapons do more damage than others. In all my tests, every Gith weapon functions the same. So I copy and past this review for each.

It’s a small boost to damage that is situational. However, psychic damage is seldom resisted, and dropping below 50% is fairly common, since other items also incentivize it.

Glowing Shield - B Tier

Weapon Type: Shield

Loving Protection: Once per short rest, if you are below 50% Hit Points and take damage, you gain 8 temporary hit points.

It’s 8 temporary hit points per short rest, which adds up to 24 per long rest if you maximize it. It is boring, but not insignificant.

Intransigent Warhammer - A Tier

Weapon Type: Warhammer

Impulse Blast: Knocks nearby enemies prone after killing a target or getting a critical hit

Note: I missed this item on my last run, so I haven’t tested it this patch. I’m going off memory here, but I believe it knocks targets back as well as down.

Knock back effects are often useful. You can force the proc with any auto crit mechanic, meaning you can control when you want to get this effect to some extent.

Jagged Spear - A Tier

Weapon Type: Spear

Torturer’s Edge: Hits with this weapon impose the tortured status condition. A tortured target has disadvantage on constitution saving throws.

Note: the status condition procs on 100% of hits, there is no saving throw.

This is an enabling weapon, not a DPR weapon. There are some good spells that target constitution (ex: Thunderwave, Ray of Enfeeblement, Shatter, Moonbeam, etc). The fact that there is no save to resist the disadvantage really puts it over into A-tier. Put this on a character who is tanky but isn’t a striker (like Shadowheart, for example).

Light of Creation - A Tier

Weapon Type: Halberd

+1 Enchantment

Unnamed: Deals an additional 1d6 lightening damage on hit but has a chance to stun the wielder for one turn if they are not a construct.

Note: This weapon stuns the wielder on about 20% of hits. However, what many people seem not to know is that you don’t actually lose a full turn from the stun. It prevents you from taking any more actions on your current turn, but the stun ends on the beginning of your next turn, allowing you to act normally. So, you lose whatever actions you had remaining on the turn you get stunned, and enemies have advantage on melee attacks against you until your next turn.

I love this weapon! It just does so much damage. It’s the highest, unconditional DPR weapon in the game so far, and that isn’t even factoring in that it does lightning damage, which you can double with Create Water. Assuming a base 75% chance to hit and a 16 strength, this weapon will average 13.83 damage per attack against a wet target, or 21.13 with Great Weapon Master!

Loviatar’s Scourge - C Tier

Weapon Type: Mace

Willing Whip: Grants resistance to necrotic damage. Deals an additional 1d6 necrotic damage to nearby targets, including the wielder.

Note: This item is currently bugged, so that it does not deal the additional necrotic damage as the tooltip says.

Because its bugged, this only give you resistance to necrotic damage, which isn’t very common, so C-tier.

Nature’s Snare - B Tier

Weapon Type: Staff

Fly Trap: There is a chance to ensnare the target. Plant and beast creatures are immune.

Note: I’m not sure exactly how often the target is ensnared, but my experience is about 20% of attacks. Notice that I said “attacks” not “hits.” Fly Trap will proc even if your attack misses. When it procs the target is automatically ensnared without a saving throw. On subsequent turns, they will make a strength saving throw to break free. The DC is 10 + Int Mod or 10 + Spell Attribute Mod if you are a caster class (you should be if you use this weapon). The ensnared condition procs damage on the first turn they are ensnared as well as on every subsequent turn before they roll their saving throw (so there are at least 2 guaranteed procs).

Assuming I am right about the 20% proc rate, this feature adds around 1 damage per attack, which isn’t shabby as a feature, but on a quarterstaff its not going to add up to good DPR. You also can’t rely on the entangle procing when you need it.

Paleoak - B Tier

Weapon Type: Staff

Faithwarden’s Vines: Allows you to cast Entangle as a lvl 1 spell once per long rest.

Faithwarden’t Stride: The wielder of this weapon is immune to all effects of the Entangle spell.

This is situationally good on Druid, basically allowing you to make attacks with advantage. It may deserve A-tier, but I am just not a fan of Entangle. If you like Entangle and use it often, then consider this A-tier.

Raindancer - A Tier

Weapon Type: Staff

Create Water: May cast Create Water as a lvl 1 spell once per short rest.

Unlike Entangle, Create Water is an S-tier spell, and with this item it refreshes on a short rest! Fantastic way to guarantee Create Water casts on solo Wizard runs. Just a fantastic staff in general. I prefer to get this over Corellon’s Grace in the early game, although I do eventually swap it out for the Staff of Arcane Blessing later. Even after swapping it out, I keep this around as a side arm.

Ritual Axe - B Tier

Weapon Type: Handaxe

The Scourge Mistress’ Bane: If you deal damage with this weapon, your target receives a 1d4 penalty to attack roles and saving throws for two turns.

Note: This does not stack with the Bane spell. There is no saving throw to resist.

Bane is a potent debuff, as we have discussed. However, there are already several ways to proc Bane, even on hit (Absolute’s Warboard, Gloves of Power). Because of that, I find I that I rarely use Ritual Axe. If you aren’t using any other Bane item, Ritual Axe could be considered A-tier.

Ritual Dagger - B Tier

Weapon Type: Dagger

Blood Sacrifice: As a bonus action, you can deal 1d4 slashing damage to yourself in order to gain a 1d4 bonus to attack roles and saving throws for one round.

The Pain Maiden’s Blessing: If you deal damage with this weapon you receive a 1d4 bonus to attack roles and saving throws for one round.

Note: the effects do not stack with Bless. However, they also do not require concentration.

Similar to Ritual Axe, there are already better ways of getting Bless than to expend a valuable weapon slot.

Shattered Flail - A Tier

Weapon Type: Mace

+2 Enchantment

Yeenoghu’s Gift: Dealing damage with this weapon heals the user 1d6 hp and instills them with an insatiable hunger – they can go mad if they do not deal damage each turn.

Note: In all the times I’ve used Shattered Flail I have never had a character go mad.

This is another one of my favorite weapons! It’s the only +2 weapon in the game and it heals on hit as well. If you add up its healing with its damage it averages 5.5 damage swing per hit, which is a lot. For this reason, I like to use it in builds that make lots of attacks.

Shortsword of First Blood - A Tier

Weapon Type: Shortsword

Break the Unbroken: Deals an additional 1d8 damage if the target is full health.

The value of this really depends on your play style I suppose. It could be either B or A, depending on how you spread out your damage. There isn’t much to explain, it does a lot of damage on first hits. I find that it is good as a main hand weapon for Rogues.

Sickle of Booal - RP Tier

Weapon Type: Sickle

Booal’s Benediction: Give the wielder advantage when attacking bleeding targets.

Note: Everyone says it gives you advantage when attacking bleeding victims, but haven’t been able to replicate that.

This weapon is bugged right now, making it useless. I expect it would be B-tier,

Skybreaker - B Tier

Weapon Type: Light Hammer

+1 Enchantment

Searing Smite: Allows you to use the spell Searing Smite (at 1st level) once per long rest.

Searing Smite is a C-tier spell at best, and that’s practically all this item offers. The +1 enchantment is enough to keep it out of C-tier itself though.

Spellthief - S Tier

Weapon Type: Longbow

Arcane Vehemence: Once per Short Rest, you regain a 1st level Spell Slot when you land a critical hit with the Spellthief.

Note: If you crit with a spell or cantrip while wielding Spellthief you still get a spell slot returned.

Spells are incredible, and this bow gives you an extra one per short rest (three per long rest). Its easy to guarantee crits in BG3 with Sleep, Tasha’s, Hold Person, etc. If you plan carefully, you can swap this item around to all your spellcasters, making sure each of them get the bonus spells. You don’t need to be proficient in Longbows to use it.

Sorrow - B Tier

Weapon Type: Glaive

+1 Enchantment

Ensnaring Strike: Allows you to use Ensnaring Strike as a level 1 spell once per short rest.

Regret: The user takes 1 psychic damage whenever they deal damage with this weapon.

This weapon needs a buff in my opinion. The look and the way you get it are so cool, but then it just sucks as a weapon. Its not even the 1 psychic damage that ruins it, its Ensnaring Strike. Its just not a good spell… I’m not sure how to fix it, may make it +2? I also wish basic enchantments would effect the DC of weapon action and spells, that might help.

Staff of Arcane Blessing - S Tier

Weapon Type: Staff

Bless: Allows you to cast Bless as a level 1 spell once per long rest.

Mystra’s Blessing: When you cast Bless while wielding this staff you gain an additional 1d4 bonus to attack roles and saving throws. This bonus increases to an additional 2d4 for spell attacks.

Note: This spell does not do what it says it does. The only effect it gives is a +1d4 (2d4 total) to spell attacks. You do not get any bonuses to normal attack roles and saving throws.

Even though it is only a fraction as good as the tooltip says it should be, its still soooo good. This turns spells like Flame Blade and Scorching Ray into killers. You should be spamming Bless anyways, so any boost to Bless is going to add up to a big bonus just from the frequency of the cast.

Staff of Crones - RP Tier

Weapon Type: Staff

Ray of Sickness: While wielding this staff, you can cast Ray of Sickness without expending a spell slot. When you do this you simultaneously target yourself with the same spell.

If Ray of Sickness didn’t hit you as well as your enemy this would be A-tier, effectively giving you a boosted cantrip. As it is right now, its just not worth using. Feed it to Gale.

Sussur Dagger - A Tier

Weapon Type: Dagger

+1 Enchantment

Silence the Enemy: Silences the target for one turn on hit. There is no save, and it procs on every hit.

All of the Sussur weapons are identical in effect, so I will use the same review for all of them. A single target silence that sticks to an enemy is actually better than the AoE Silence spell, because they can’t walk out of a status condition. As I have already said, spell are powerful, so stopping spells from being cast is very valuable.

Sussur Greatsword - A Tier

Weapon Type: Greatsword

+1 Enchantment

Silence the Enemy: Silences the target on hit. There is no save, and it procs on every hit.

Sussur Sickle - A Tier

Weapon Type: Sickle

+1 Enchantment

Silence the Enemy: Silences the target on hit. There is no save, and it procs on every hit.

Sword of Justice - S Tier

Weapon Type: Greatsword

+1 Enchantment

Tyr’s Protection: Allows you to cast Shield of Faith on yourself as a bonus action.

I couldn’t find a png image for this one, so I used a generic greatsword instead. I consider this to be the best two-handed weapon in the game. It allows for an efficient use of you concentration slot, which many two-handed weapon users don’t have. The extra AC also helps proc Ripostes for Battlemasters. All around an awesome weapon that you can get very early in the game.

Sword of Screams - A Tier

Weapon Type: Rapier

Screams: Deals an additional 1d4 psychic damage on hit.

It’s a rapier that will deal an additional 2.5 damage on hit. Like the finesse weapon version of Everburn, only you get it much, much later. Technically it’s the highest, one-handed pure damage per hit in the game with no asterisk. I’ve rated it an A-tier, but I think it is still worse than the mainstays of one-handed weapons: Shattered Flail and Faithbreaker.

The Watcher’s Guide - B Tier

Weapon Type: Spear

Death’s Promise: When the spear misses its target, the wielder’s next attack against that target is made with advantage.

What’s there to say about this? Its helps you hit more often. There aren’t any tricks for it that I know of. You used to be able to get Death’s Promise on your cantrips by holding The Watcher’s Guide while casting them, but it hasn’t worked for me for a while (it was fixed on Patch 5, my thanks to reddit user Certain_Childhood849 for bringing this to my attention). It could be used to help proc Sneak Attacks, except that it isn’t a finesse weapon, so it can’t. Its just a mediocre weapon, no tricks.

Vision of the Absolute - B Tier

Weapon Type: Spear

Absolute Night: There is a chance that you will blind your target for two rounds on hit. Deals an additional 2d6 piercing damage to certain targets that sport multiple eyes.

Note: In my tests, I proc blind on around 40% of hits, not attacks. You need to hit to proc the blind. When it procs, there is no saving throw and lasts for two rounds with no saving throw. It does extra damage to spiders and spectators (my thanks to reddit user TrustKind for the correction on spiders).

This is one of the better B-tiers in my opinion, and you can get it early. Keep it around for fights against spectators or spiders.

Worgfang - C Tier

Weapon Type: Dagger

Goblin’s Undoing: Goblins had disadvantage on attacks against the wielder of this weapon.

Its decent for clearing the goblin camp, if you prioritize getting it before then. I usually don’t, because I just don’t care about it enough.

Xyanyde - B Tier

Weapon Type: Mace

Xyanyde’s Fire: Chance to encase its target in a sinister Faerie Fire, granting advantage on Attack Rolls against the target.

Note: Faerie Fire procs on about 20% of attacks. It can proc on misses.

How do you pronounce this name? Is is “Zy-un-ide,” like the word cyanide? That sounds wrong… Maybe “Zy-un-eye-day?” also sounds dumb. I prefer to just change the pronunciation of the second “y’ and pronounce it “Zy-an-ee-day.” Whichever way you prefer, this weapon just isn’t that good. For a debuffing weapon, its better to go with the Jagged Spear.

Unique Weapons Final Rankings

S Tier:

Faithbreaker, Spellthief, Staff of Arcane Blessing, Sword of Justice

A Tier:

Corellon’s Grace, Everburn, Intransigent Warhammer, Jagged Spear, Light of Creation, Rain Dancer, Shattered Flail, Short Sword of First Blood, Sussur Weapons, Sword of Screams.

B Tier:

Absolute’s Warboard, Adamantine Weapons, Blooded Greataxe, Club of Hill Giant Strength, Deep Delver, Exterminator’s Axe, Giantbreaker, Gith Weapons, Glowing Shield, Light Hammer +1, Nature’s Snare, Pale Oak, Ritual Axe, Ritual Dagger, Sorrow, The Watcher’s Guide, Visions of the Absolute, Xyanyde

C Tier:

Doom Axe, Dragon’s Grasp, Firestoker, Loviatar’s Scourge, Worgfang,

RP Tier:

Sickle of Booal, Staff of Crones

Here is a helpful spreadsheet I made for myself that charts relative damage per attack of the weapons you would pick for their damage.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading!

If you want to discuss this article with me or others, you can do so here

This article has actually been available for early access for over two weeks on my brand new Patreon! I put a lot of time into these articles, and I have plans to write many more. If you want to enable that please consider supporting me through Patreon. There are several tiers which will give you access to loads of exclusive and early access content! You can find my page here.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Race Tier List — rankings and analysis of the best races in BG3
Fundamental Math in D&D 5e and BG3 — the formulas behind DPR calculations and power scaling

Return home

Miniature Giants– A Meme Build for Playing Minsc in BG3 EA

Fri, 14 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Miniature Giants– A Meme Build for Playing Minsc in BG3 EA

Are you tired of the same old runs on Patch 6? When you are looking through classes in character creation, does it feel like you’ve played them all; that none of them inspire you anymore? This is a build for you! Like my previous builds, this one centers around a collection of strange mechanical interactions that I think many people haven’t realized are in the game. This set of interactions isn’t as powerful as my others, but I think it is still interesting and fun. I hope you will agree!

Who is Minsc?

Unlike my other builds, I won’t be attaching a unique character to it for you to draw inspiration from, because the character that inspired this build is Minsc from the original Baldur’s Gate series. Minsc was a well-muscled ranger with a head injury that disrupted his sanity. In mechanical terms this meant he was more min-maxed then most companions, with low mental stats and high physical stats (especially strength). As a character he was like a comic relief version of Don Quixote. Minsc’s head trauma left him seemingly fearless and single-minded in his aim of kicking evil squarely in the pantaloons. It also manifested in a strange break from reality when it came to his pet hamster Boo. In every empirical way Boo was a typical hamster, but Minsc believed – insisted – that Boo was, despite appearances, a miniature giant space hamster that possessed cosmic knowledge and who wisely counseled Minsc on matters both tremendous and trivial.

Hailing from Rashemen, it was customary for young warriors like Minsc to journey to distant lands to understand more about the world. Minsc did so as bodyguard for the witch Dynaheir. It was his vow to protect Dynaheir, a vow which he tragically failed. If you want to know more, you should play the games! I will have a build/guide for beginner coming out soon!

In Baldur’s Gate 1, I typically ran Minsc as my single melee attacker in a one-forward-five-back party composition. I equipped him with the greatsword Spider’s Bane and used Dynaheir and others to spam Web spells (to which he was immune) on top of him. He would have a hay day cutting the webbed targets down. The rest of my party would fire arrows and bullets safely from outside.

By Baldur’s Gate 2, Minsc’s build had to change. Dual-wielding was ascendent in this game, and having a high HP progression was no longer enough to effectively absorb damage so I, and I believe many others, would adapt by equipping Minsc with the Flail of Ages. This flail was one of the stronger DPR weapons and also had a powerful slowing effect on hit. Slowing an enemy crippled their damage towards you, giving you some semblance of durability in the late game. If you had access to it, you could also give him a second flail – The Defender of Easthaven – in his offhand. This flail granted damage reduction which you could stack with Armor of Faith in the late game for better durability. So, while Minsc is iconically portrayed as wielding a large sword, I often imagine him as dual-wielding with at least one flail.

The Build

Overview

Like the Knight of Faith, this build will center around three interlocking synergies. This time its between the Hunter Ranger’s Giant Killer feature, the Beast Tamer Find Familiar ability, and the Enlarge/Reduce Person spell.

First let’s discuss Giant Killer. This is an often-overlooked feature available to the Hunter subclass of ranger. Giant Killer gives you a reaction ability that procs whenever you are attacked by a creature that is large sized or bigger. When it procs, you may spend your reaction to make a retaliation attack against the creature. Now, folks who have been following my work already know how strong reaction attacks are in this game. Optimizing in 5e is partly about finding efficient things to do with the four primary action slots: action, bonus action, reaction, and concentration. Of these four, reaction is the most difficult to consistently utilize. Using it to make an attack – something that typically costs a standard action – is extremely efficient. We’ll see exactly how much it boosts our DPR below, but for now just take my word for it.

Now you may be thinking, “if Giant Killer is so good, why don’t people use it and talk about it more?” People don’t because it isn’t actually a good feature. Its pretty bad. The reason its bad is because, while impactful, it is much too situational to proc. First off, many encounters do not have large or bigger creatures, and in them this feature is dead weight. Second, even if there is a large creature in an encounter, it can be difficult to force that creature to target your ranger. When it procs, Giant Killer is good, but its so situational that it gets completely outcompeted by Colossus Slayer, which is “always on.”

So, if we are going to do a build around Giant Killer, we have two problems to solve:

Somehow we need to increase the amount of fights that include large enemies.
We need to find a way to force those large enemies to attack our ranger.

This is where we need to discuss the spell Enlarge/Reduce Person, and you can probably already see where I am going with this!

Enlarge/Reduce Person is a 2nd level spell that has a buff and debuff function. Enlarge Person buffs an ally, making them a size larger, granting them bonus damage on attacks, etc. Reduce Person shrinks an enemy, giving them a penalty to damage on attacks, etc. This is how the spell is intended to be used that is. But have you every wondered, could I enlarge an enemy instead of shrinking them? Yes, you can! Enlarging a medium sized creature makes them into a large one and they now proc our ranger’s Giant Killer ability, increasing the amount of fights that include large enemies! Sadly, even though the enemy gets no debuffs from Enlarge, they still get a constitution saving throw to resist the spell. Landing any save spell is inconsistent, and constitution saving throws can be particularly difficult in my experience, so if we really want this synergy to work well, we should look for a way to make Enlarge Person more accurate.

Pop quiz, what is the most potent constitution saving throw debuff in the game? If you answer “it’s a tie between all the features which inflict a disadvantage on constitution saving throws” you are wrong. You are so wrong that its funny! Seriously, I am laughing at you, we are all laughing at you, that answer is embarrassingly incorrect. The most potent constitution saving throw debuff in the game is Boo the miniature giant space hamster. I’ll explain.

There is another spell called Find Familiar which allows you to summon adorable animal companions so you can RP as a Disney princess. In BG3, rangers can cast this spell at will outside of combat if they choose Beast Tamer as their Natural Explorer option. There are six options for floofy friends we can choose from. One of them is a hamster (Larian mistakenly calls it a rat in the tooltip, that is a type-o that will likely get fixed on full release). A hamster’s fearsome bite inflicts a debuff that gives the target disadvantage on constitution saving throws and lowers the target’s constitution attribute by 1 point. That means a target with an even constitution will not only have disadvantage on constitution saving throws when they get bit, they will also have a -1 penalty to those saves. This is the most potent saving throw debuff in the game.

Now we can see the full scope of the interlocking synergies. Boo bites a villain, infecting them. That allows our trusty magic user (Dynaheir probably) to reliably Enlarge them. Once they are large, they foolishly attack Minsc who introduces their ass to his righteous boot! Yet again villainy is thwarted by Minsc’s stubborn belief that normal sized creatures are really miniature giants!

Now let’s look out how to build this in more detail:

Level 1

Race: Minsc is a Human.

Attributes: This one is tough. In the classic games, Minsc’s attributes were:

Str: 18/93
Dex: 16
Con: 16
Int: 8
Wis: 6
Cha: 9

Obviously this exact stat distribution is not possible for a human in BG3. The closest we can get is:

Str: 16
Dex: 16
Con: 16
Int: 9
Wis: 9
Cha: 9

However, I didn’t do this on my run. I went with:

Str: 16
Dex: 14
Con: 16
Int: 9
Wis: 12
Cha: 10

This stat line isn’t as true to Minsc’s character as the one above, but it’s a stronger build. I explained it as Minsc ageing. He’s not a young man anymore, so I think it’s fair to assume he has gotten wiser. To me, the most important thing for playing a character that feels like Minsc is that his strength be as high as possible and that his intelligence be as low as possible. You can choose whichever stat line you prefer.

Class: Obviously we are selecting ranger for class. For Favored Enemy, Ranger Knight is closest to Minsc in my opinion (A proficiency in history makes sense for someone so intimately tied to the Bhaalspawn sage). For Natural Explorer select Beast Tamer for Boo.

Background and Skills: Folk Hero is the only real option for our background. We’ll get to choose three more Ranger skills. You can choose whatever you like. I think athletics, perception, and stealth fit best.

Level 2

Fighting Style: I went with Two-Weapon Fighting, because, like I explained above, I picture Minsc dual-wielding as easily as I picture him with a big sword. If you really want that iconic greatsword wielding Minsc you should pick Defense.

Spells: These are completely up to you. Hunter’s Mark is, of course, a good choice. I went with Longstrider so that I wouldn’t have to think about it. It also fits with the reckless berserker combat style Minsc is known for.

Level 3

Here is where we select our subclass. Choose hunter, then pick Giant Killer as your Hunter’s Prey. For your spell, choose whatever you like.

Level 4

The final major choice for this build is what feat we should take. I recommend taking Dual Wielder. Dual Wielder is an infamously mediocre feat choice, so why am I selecting it here? Because I want to dual wield Shattered Flail, and this feat is the only way to do that. Shattered Flail is a good weapon, and is especially potent when used in the off-hand in combination with the Helmet of Grit, so you can proc its on hit effects twice in a round. Also, I like to imagine that it’s Minsc’s iconic Flail of Ages was once again shattered (I know it doesn’t look like that, but its close enough).

Another good feat option for Minsc is getting that 18 strength with an ASI. Minsc Should have at least an 18 strength. It’s a shame that there’s no way to get both the ASI and Dual Wielder yet.

Notes on Tactics

The Recall that that there are two obstacles for efficiently utilizing Giant Killer:

Increase the amount of fights that include large enemies.
Find a way to force those large enemies to attack our ranger.

We addressed the first with Enlarge Person, but we have not addressed the second. Let’s do that now.

Followers of my builds know we have faced this problem before with the Knight of Faith build, and the solution is the same. Run Minsc in a one-forward-three-back composition. That means using Minsc as your only melee attack, keeping the rest back and, preferable, hidden. This will leave Minsc as the only option for your enemies to attack. For this composition you can use any companion whose name isn’t Lae’zel; all of the others can be built into effective ranged attackers.

The obvious difficulty with this is that you are simultaneously forcing the AI to focus fire. I expect most players understand the value of focus fire. Its probably the most basic tactical rule. AI’s seldom focus fire well, but with a one-forward comp they will, and unlike the Knight of Faith, Minsc doesn’t have resistance to physical damage and a refreshable pool of 20+ temporary hit points to make him durable. This is also why I recommend taking dual-wielder to use the Shattered Flail with Helmet of Grit. When you drop below 50% HP (which is often), you will get two attacks with that off-hand flail, healing 7 damage on average if you hit both. That kind of healing helps a lot.

IMPORTANT NOTE: there is an easy to miss toggle option in the user interface that is actually really important for this build. Its in the lowest part of the attacking section that looks like this:

See the toggle which says “Dual wield?” That is the important one. Make sure it is set to dual wield, not “One handed.” It should be set to dual by default, but accidentally hitting its hotkey – “R” – can switch it without you noticing. When it is set to dual you will retaliate with both weapons, main hand and off-hand, with Giant Killer instead of just your off-hand. Just setting this toggle correctly will double the potency of your Giant Killer procs.

Performance

In the title I called this a meme build. It’s meant to be funny and interesting, not powerful. Nevertheless, let’s see how it matches up in DPR to our previous builds!

First, here is how it compares if we don’t factor in Giant Killer:

Terrible, right? But procing Giant Killer actually doubles our DPR for that round. So here is how that would look:

The problem is, unlike the Knight of Faith, procing the retaliation damage is difficult and comes at a high action economy price. So, its really not as good as this graph makes it seem.

Overall, I would rate this build a “C.” Its just too situational. It is an S-tier for fun though!

Conclusion and Announcement

If you want to discuss this build with me or others you can comment here.

If you liked it you might like my other builds! You can find the Vlaakith’s Arcane Knight of Faith, Fallen Light, and Way of Fury builds on this site. For race selection advice, see my Race Tier List.

I want to sign off of this one with an announcement. If you enjoy my articles and have a minute to spare, I would appreciate your attention. I have had a blast writing all of these tier lists and guides! There is a ton more I want to write, however, the time it takes me to make these is not sustainable or healthy for me as a volunteer service, so I am forced to find a way to monetize this or drastically cut back on my output. I hope you understand. In the next month or so I will be exploring ways to make this project sustainable. I am looking into Patreon, a Youtube channel, and, maybe, putting ads on the website. I would really like Patreon to be an alternative to putting ugly ads on the site. Of course, I will be offering exclusive content to my patrons, but what exactly that will be I am still exploring.

If you are interested in the Patreon please let me know! Also, if you want to learn about/weigh in on what exclusive content might be offered you can do that here. If you just want to talk to me directly, please feel free to DM me on reddit, you can find my personal subreddit here. If you aren’t a reddit person, you can contact me through my business e-mail: aestusguides@gmail.com

Thank you for your time!

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Vlaakith's Arcane Knight of Faith – A Great Weapon Master Wizard Build

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Vlaakith’s Arcane Knight of Faith – A Great Weapon Master Wizard Build

“Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith. The moment the Knight executes the act of resignation she is convinced of the impossibility. The Knight of Faith realizes this just as clearly: she can be saved only by the absurd. Consequently, she acknowledges the impossibility of her desire, and in the very same moment she believes the absurd and knows, through the paradox, she will find fullfillment.”

This is a build that uses innate Githyanki weapon proficiencies to get the Great Weapon Master Feat on an abjuration wizard, combining the Sword of Justice Shield of Faith with Arcane Ward and a synergy of defensive spells to create an unstoppable juggernaut. This build can put a target to sleep, crit them for 30+ damage its turn, and still do 20+ damage on enemy turns at nearly zero opportunity cost, all the while being the tankiest member of your party. If this seems impossible to you, keep reading!

The Build

Overview

Soren Kierkegaard understood faith as the act of giving up what you desire and, paradoxically, believing you will receive it in the very act of giving it up. He called the person who does this the Knight of Faith (“knight” here is referencing a literary trope of his time, where a knight represented someone of ultimate devotion) I call this build a Knight of Faith because they give up a crucial attribute for their class – intelligence – and paradoxically believes they will receive it back (which they will!). This is my way of justifying an int-dump wizard and shoehorning Kierkegaard into a BG3 build.

This build has three interlocking mechanical synergies. The first is Githyanki racial proficiencies with the Wizard class. A typical Wizard cannot wear armor or get proficiency in a heavy weapon without investing a feat. However, a Githyanki wizard can, because Githyanki have innate proficiencies in medium armor and greatswords, among other things. The medium armor is nice, but the greatsword proficiency is the only way in early access that you can take the Great Weapon Master (GWM) feat on a wizard. If you don’t know what GWM does, the short version is it does super high damage at the cost of accuracy. Wizard spells like Sleep, Tasha’s, and Hold Person guarantee crits though, so the accuracy loss can easily be mitigated and what you are left with is just insane damage with almost no drawbacks.

That’s just the first synergy! The second is combining the Sword of Justice item with the abjuration wizard subclass ability: Arcane Ward. Arcane Ward gives you a pool of temporary hit points, called a ward, when you first cast an abjuration spell. You can then “heal” the ward with subsequent casts of abjuration spells. The problem with this feature is that there aren’t very many flexible abjuration spells in the game currently, so it is not often that casting an abjuration spell feels worth the spell slot. The Sword of Justice fixes this issue by allowing you to cast the abjuration spell Shield of Faith as bonus action without expending any spell slots. Shield of Faith is also a strong defensive buff. With Githyanki Half Plate armor, Shield of Faith, and all three Mirror Images you will have 28 AC and 11 temp HP. Remember, this is on a class with GWM and 18 strength if you eat the hag’s hair.

There is still one more synergy left to discuss, and it’s probably the most broken of them all, but you may not get it on every run. It’s the synergy between Arcane Ward and Armor of Agathys if you can acquire a scroll for it. Right now the game allows you to stack the temp HP from Arcane Ward and Armor of Agathys, and it counts it all as one pool of health that triggers the retaliation damage. That means a single upcast of Armor of Agathys will give you 21 temp HP and do 10 retaliation damage for as long as you have it. You can cast Armor of Agathys before combat starts (it lasts until your next long rest), so all that health and damage is coming at almost no opportunity cost as far as actions go. You can absolutely combine this with Create Water – your retaliation damage doubles against targets with the wet condition. It’s also worth casting Blade Ward in these situations. Casting Blade Ward every other turn will turn that 21 temp HP into 41 against slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage.

I honestly cannot think of a stronger solo build. Its only problem is that there are too many super-efficient actions to take in a turn!

Level 1

Race: this build works best if you go Githyanki, because that grants us both a medium armor proficiency and the greatsword proficiency that we need to eventually use the Sword of Justice to proc our Arcane Ward feature and get the GWM feat. However, there is at least one other good racial option in Shield Dwarf.

Shield Dwarf amounts to a tankier but less offensive option compared to Githyanki. You won’t be able to go GWM, so your auto-attack DPR will be significantly lower. However, you can still get good DPR out of this build if manage to find a Flame Sword scroll. Then you will become like a wizard version of the Brand. If you like this idea better, be sure to take something like option B for attributes (I will outline that below) so you can use the Circlet of Fire. I don’t prefer this build because of the anti-synergy between Create Water à Armor of Agathys and Flame Blade as your source of damage. The wet condition from Create Water will half your Flame Blade damage. For that reason I will be assuming we chose Githyanki for the rest of the guide.

Attributes: there are two ways that we can allocate our attribute points depending on whether you want to commit to using the Headband of Intellect or not. They are:

Option A

Str: 17
Dex:14
Con: 15
Int: 9
Wis: 10
Cha: 8

Or,

Option B

Str: 17
Dex:13
Con: 12
Int: 16
Wis: 8
Cha: 8

The tradeoff is slightly better physical stats for option A at the cost of your helmet slot. Is that a good trade? To be honest, no. There are really good helmets in BG3, like the Circlet of Fire (which can be very powerful), the Helmet of Grit, or even just a standard, non-magical helmet (which gives immunity to critical hits). In my opinion, from a strictly power perspective it is better to go with option B. However, I like option A for my character concept, so I will use option A.

As a note, in both options I am assuming you will use both hag’s hairs to boost your odd number attributes. For option A it is strength and constitution; for option B it is strength and dexterity.

**Class:**Wizard!

Spells and Cantrips: a big part of the fun of playing a Wizard is creative spell selection/use that changes from run to run due to the variability of scroll drops. I don’t want to spoil that fun by demanding you take a specific spell list, and I also cannot predict which scrolls you will get on your run. Instead, I will just list the spells that I mentioned in the build overview above as crucial to the build and leave the rest up to your imagination. If you want to know my opinions on the strength of spells, I have written a review of every spell available in early access so far, which you can find on this site. The crucial spells for this build are:

Blade Ward
Armor of Agathys (scroll)
Create Water (scroll)
Sleep
Tasha’s Hideous Laughter.

At character creation you can pick up Blade Ward, Sleep, and Tasha’s. I will also recommend that you pick Light as one of your cantrips, because Githyanki do not have darkvision. DO NOT PICK FIREBOLT OR MAGE HAND. Firebolt is available as a guaranteed drop on the nautiloid (in the Us room, on the corpse of one of the imps, when your Tav says “Devilkin? Am I in the hells?”). Mage Hand you will get for free just for being a githyanki.

Background and Skills: skill selection isn’t that important in terms of optimization, so here is our chance to go hog wild on roleplay. Our highest attributes are strength and intelligence, so it’s a generally good idea to focus on those skills. Strength only has one skill – athletics – which you can pick as your racial bonus skill. That leaves us a few options for background. You could go Sage, then put your two class skills into two other intelligence skills for a total of four. For role play reasons I want my Tav to be an Acolyte, so I picked that background and then arcana and investigation as my class skills.

If you want to solo with this build, pick the urchin background.

Level 2

No big choices here except that you need to pick the Abjuration School as your subclass. We need this subclass to synergize its Arcane Ward feature with Armor of Agathys and the Sword of Justice.

Level 3

Now we get access to 2nd level spells. I will say again that these choices are up to you. There aren’t any second level spells that we need to make this build work. I highly recommend picking Cloud of Daggers, however. It’s a new spell, so there aren’t any scrolls of it in the game, and it’s the best consistent use of the concentration slot this build has access to.

At this level you should be strong enough to take on the ogres in the Blighted Village and the paladin party on the Risen Road. These fights will get you the Headband of Intellect and the Sword of Justice respectively.

Level 4

The big choice here is our feat, and, of course, we will select GWM. If you prefer to focus your character on being a controller rather than a striker then take the ASI to bump your intelligence to 18 assuming you went option B. If you went option A, but still don’t want GWM, then you can take the ASI to bump strength to 20.

In this level you are definitely strong enough to take on the Hag to snag those two hairs we discussed above under character creation attributes.

Notes on Tactics

This section can either be to long or to short. If I discussed all the ways we can use our spells tactically it would be to long, but I have already discussed most of that in my Spell Tier List article, so please give that a browse if it interests you.

Without analyzing the spells in depth, I am left with some very short general advice: think very carefully about what role you play and how to synergize with your party composition while playing this build. It is a build that wants to do a lot of things: absorb hits, attack, and enable through control spells and it can be really easy to forget which of these is the right action in a certain turn or party composition. As cool as it is to crit for insane damage, or deal 20 cold damage as retaliation, you still need to have a wizard casting control spells on your team. It is just too valuable a class and role to pass on.

So here are the guidelines that helped me. If you want to enable this build to be a striker/tank be sure to also have Gale in your party. Use Gale to cast the valuable control spells and focus on striking with Tav. If this is your strategy, consider running a “one-forward-three-back” formation with Tav being the one forward. This will force the most melee aggro possible onto your Tav for that sweet retaliation damage. Gale, Shadowheart, and Wyll/Astarion, all built for ranged damage is my recommendation.

If you are the kind of person who hates bringing two of the same class in your party, then the best way to run this Tav is as a controller first and striker second. It helps me to think of them as like Gale but more durable and with more efficient auto attacks for after you’ve locked down the fight. When I play Gale I find that he will typically have one or two fight changing rounds where he lands his spells, and for the rest of a combat he’s just spamming inefficient Firebolts. This Tav should play the same way, but instead of inefficient Firebolts he’s packing a massive frig’n greatsword.

Performance

Let’s begin by analyzing how this build performs in DPR. Here is how it compares to other builds we’ve discussed:

If you were confused about why we should play as a controller first and a striker second, this is why. Just getting GWM is not enough for making a high performing striker. What makes GWM so strong is enabling it through control spells like Sleep, Tasha’s, and Hold Person, or adding attacks on your reaction with Battle Master Riposte and Menacing Strike. In this build, we enable ourselves, which is good, but it means less rounds attacking.

Keep in mind also that while we don’t have consistent ways of weaponizing our reaction, we do have a way to deal retaliation damage through our frosty armor. If we assume that we can proc a 20 damage retaliation once every two turns (which is a modest assumption I think) here is how our DPR would look:

Now we are talking! This still isn’t the full picture though. If you are refreshing your armor in a fight, that is a turn where you are not attacking. Retaliation damage can look great as raw numbers, but you cannot control to whom that damage is applied. It can definitely be more valuable to do less damage to the right target then just doing tons of damage wholesale.

Overall, I would rate this build an “S” for effectiveness, but its very dependent on using it right. Its an S primarily because it’s a wizard and wizards are just phenomenal. It’s probably the best wizard build I know of. However, if you don’t play into a wizard’s strengths, which is controlling the battlefield, it won’t perform at an S level.

The Character – So’kier

A Page from So’kier’s Journal. It is written in flawless Githyanki script.

“Ancient prophecies foretell that when things look bleakest for the Githyanki people, Gith will return to save her people from despair.”

Am I Gith returned?

Our people are temporal beings who have found the eternal. I will say it again, we are finite beings who have found the infinite. Know that what IS found is what WAS sought. Do you see the tension in our existence? It is the tension of tense; the seeking to no longer seek. To seek is eo ipso to be within the temporal. I will tell you of my seeking because it may become a record of cosmic importance, but I will not waste words like one of the mawkish races. A Gith at least has the courage to transcribe her thoughts plainly, without cloying adornment. Vanity is valuable so long as it does not steal time from the seeking.

I will start at the eternal. To seek one must believe; in what is sought and in one’s strength to find it. Within the infinite, belief is paradigmatically, though not essentially, immediate, that is, via an un-mediated encounter of the senses. But in seeking the belief is essentially mediated because its object is something that is not yet acquired. If it was immediate it would already be acquired and there would be no seeking. A belief is mediated through a communication. To believe mediated through communication is called trust, and unlike in unmediated belief, to trust is a choice. One who begins to seek through trust leaps from the temporal toward the eternal, for in seeking their life integrates teleologically – toward what is sought – and insofar as this end exceeds other desires, and this is the kind of end of which I speak, they become a single integrated thing. But note, the eternal is NOT an infinite sequence, but is the infinite, thus this is a leaping toward the eternal, not the eternal fully realized. When one receives the communication, when one chooses to leap in trust toward the eternal, let us call that The Moment.

Now we start at the beginning. In the shamed creche K’ren I was hatched and raised. I was strong, swift, and stupid. Then came The Moment. In my sleep I saw a vision of myself as Gith reborn. In this vision I wielded a Silver Sword and lethal magic against the ghaik. My thoughts moved beyond my mind and struck with the force of a titan. Crowning my brow was a bronze band with a sapphire gem. I was the hate and vengeance of my people and our enemies, helpless, they begged, but were slaughtered for the glory of our queen. When I awoke from this dream a portentous symbol appeared on my forehead where the sapphire had been. That was The Moment. The rest is the leap. From The Moment onwards I accepted no training that was not in magic or the teachings of Vlaakith and Gith. I learned neither well, but I gleaned the principle of them both: to hate. This I mastered.

Gith was the hate and vengeance against the ghaik. We are the githyanki. I am Gith returned.

So’kier refused to be trained as a soldier and instead floundered in arcane instruction. For this she was mercilessly beaten and ridiculed by her instructors. However, they dared not execute her because of the mark on her brow. On the eve of her graduation, she had another dream, which led her to travel north to the sword coast. It was here that she was abducted by the nautiloid.

Roleplay Notes for So’kier

I really wanted to lean into the alien aspects of So’kier, which is why I chose to write a backstory primarily in her own voice. I think she has several really interesting role-playing opportunities.

First, So’kier is a religious/nationalistic fanatic. I try to begin her run with an unquestioning, naive adherence to githyanki dogma, but that evolves into a sophisticated, curious faith after she gets the Headband of Intellect. You can choose to portray this (or not) however you like, but some interesting opportunities are her relationships with Lae’zel and Shadowheart and her approach to her mindflayer psionic powers. An evolved So’kier will find the tadpole powers fascinating rather than revolting like Lae’zel does. Aren’t the innate psionic gifts Githyanki have the result of their centuries of captivity? How are the tadpole powers materially different? Gith used psionic magic of the ghaik to fight the ghaik and free her people. So’kier, similarly, will be tempted to embrace the tadpole powers to use against the mind flayers. Afterall, in her vision she wielded potent psionic magic, perhaps these new gifts are the fulfillment of that prophecy. For So’kier anything which fulfills her vision is justified.

That brings us to the second role-play opportunity, which is that So’kier earnestly believes she is Gith reborn. For those who don’t know, Gith was the warrior queen who united her enslaved people in revolt against their Illithid captors. The term “Githyanki” means “the followers of Gith.” Gith disappeared on a diplomatic mission to the Nine Hells, a mission which still secured a pact with Tiamat. Since her disappearance the githyanki have been ruled by the Vlaakith dynasty. Prophocies fortell her return. Perhaps So’kier is their fulfillment, or perhaps she is just another deluded fanatic. I leave that to you to decide!

The third and final roleplay opportunity lurks behind the previous two, and it is the central theme of hate. I envision the difference between the Githyanki and the Githzerai as similar to the difference between Sith and Jedi in the Star Wars universe. The Gith, like the Sith, see hatred as a virtue. The Githyanki split from the Githzerai because they wanted to hunt and kill every remaining Illithid rather than secure their own growth and flourishing. They hate the Illithids, but they hate the Githzerai too for abandoning them. And they hate everything else to some lesser extent. For an intellectual like So’kier, I imagine this hate manifesting in a drive to study her enemies. If you understand your enemies you can more easily defeat them. But to what degree is understanding mutually exclusive with hate? The more she studies and learns to occupy the point of view of her enemies the more tempted So’kier will be away from the hate that drives her.

If you want to discuss this build with me or others you can do so here!

Baldur’s Gate 3 Race Tier List — why Githyanki is the key race for this build
Baldur’s Gate 3 Weapons Tier List — weapon rankings and the Sword of Justice
Fundamental Math in D&D 5e and BG3 — the math behind GWM damage and accuracy trade-offs

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RPG Veteran, Pathfinder Beginner: Journal #2

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

RPG Veteran, Pathfinder Beginner: Journal #2

Sources of Overwhelming Damage

Hello again! If this is your first time reading one of my articles, I am a CRPG and tabletop RPG veteran with 20 years of experience in D&D and D&D CRPG’s, particularly the Baldur’s Gate series, who is trying to learn the Pathfinder system by playing Wrath of the Righteous. I am journaling my progress because its useful for me and, I hope, interesting to read. You can find my first journal entry here. If you are new to the game like me, you might find this series helpful. If you are an experienced player it may be funny to see me stumble my way through!

In this entry I want to primarily discuss efficient sources for dealing damage, both in general and for my wisdom build specifically. I also include some corrections to my first journal entry.

What I Am Focusing On in these Journals

I need to note at the outset that I am only really discussing what I call the tactical system design of Wrath of the Righteous. Basically this means combat and character building. I am of course interested in other aspects of RPGs, but this is the aspect I typically start with when I am learning games.

Corrections to Journal entry #1

Thanks to the helpful discussion I got from my first entry (you can read the discussion here), I learned that there were a few important details that I missed when I evaluated what I call charisma attribute builds. I won’t include everything that I missed, but I do want to discuss a few big ones.

First, I forgot to account for the Smite Evil feature that you get from Paladin. This feature adds your charisma bonus to AC and attack roles against a single target. It has limited casts per day which scale with your paladin levels. It also adds you Paladin level to the damage of your attacks. At Paladin 11 you can extend two casts to grant these bonuses to allies to.

And second, the cha to AC conversion from the Scaled Fist monk feature and Nature’s Whisper actually stack! This is because Nature’s Whisper allows you to replace dex with cha on your AC, while the monk feature adds cha to dex while you aren’t wearing armor.

My thanks to reddit users u/Ephemeral_Being and u/TheGoodyShop for drawing these to my attention!

I also learned from playing more that I was wrong about what level the wisdom builds animal companion will be. It will be full level (20) by the end of the game. And since we have to add a level of Scaled Fist to our charisma build, its animal companion will be one level lower (17). This means the wisdom builds has a three level stronger animal companion, and I suspect that will make a significant difference.

Now if we update our comparison chart to account for these changes we get this:

As before, the check with the asterisk denotes the once per day boost granted by Guarded Hearth. The check with prime denotes the limited used bonuses granted by Smite Evil. How limited those uses are will depend on how many levels of Paladin you have. In my build its only one.

Have these changes altered my opinion about wisdom being the strongest attribute build? Kind of. I would say now that these builds are roughly equal in power, but with different strengths. The charisma build is a stronger tank while the wisdom build is a stronger support (with Guarded Hearth). Note though that there are still a heap of factors I haven’t tested, so in journal #3 my evaluation will likely change again.

Now let’s turn to those Os on the chart: attribute modifier to damage conversion. Is it important to our damage output that we add high multipliers to the damage on our attacks? At the prompting of u/TheGoodyShop I decided to look into this, and that is what we will discuss in the rest of this entry.

Sources of Damage

Shortly after I posted my last journal, I completed Act 1 and unlocked my first round of Mythic Abilities, which, of course, sparked many hours of research and math. What I found is that there several ways to put out overwhelming DPR that has nothing to do with traditional methods of building damage like adding attribute modifiers to your rolls (although some of them do). I want to make an initial, likely incomplete list of some of those methods here. I will update it as I discover more about the game.

When I say “overwhelming damage” I actually want it to mean something specific. Overwhelming damage is what I call it when you are doing so much damage its practically redundant to add more. As an extreme example, if you are doing 10,000 damage per round, what use it to add 1,000 more? You are better off building for other things at that point because your DPR is already secured. Where the exact threshold is for overwhelming damage, I’m not sure. However, I am comfortable saying that some of these strategies below achieve it.

Elemental Barrage: Every time you deal energy damage to a creature, you apply an elemental mark to it. If during the next three rounds you deal energy damage to a marked target with a different type of energy, the target is dealt additional Divine damage. The damage is 1d6 per mythic rank of your character.

This is the best of several similar abilities that do 1d6 divine damage per mythic rank. Your mythic ranks will climb up to 10 by the end of the game, granting you up to 10d6 per proc. I’ve been informed that divine damage is not resisted either. But what really makes your damage balloon with this ability is that you can proc it by stacking multiple elemental damage boosts on your weapon attacks. There are several ways to do this, but the easiest is to use 4 casts of the 5th level spell Geniekind, which will proc Elemental Barrage. Even though it goes against what is said in the ability description, I’ve been assured that this proc on every hit. So, with 4 casts of Geniekind and level 10 mythic rank you will do a bonus 30d6 divine damage PER HIT… that is on top of your normal damage. I haven’t reached this level yet, but I have to believe this is overwhelming damage.

If that is not enough for you, you can combine this with the Expose Vulnerabilites Mythic Ability. It makes it so every third hit with a ranged weapon against the same enemy deals additional 1d6 per two mythic ranks divine damage. Adding even more divine damage per hit.

Charge: This is the one I have done the least research/testing on, but it seems that you could get insane damage from a combination of three features.

The first is Pounce, which you can get from the Greater Beast Totem Rage Power. This allows you to make a full attack at the end of a charge.

The second is Mythic Charge, which is another divine damage scaling Mythic. It adds 1d6 divine damage per mythic level to attacks made on a charge, which, with pounce, is a full attack amount of attacks.

The last is Spirited Charge, a feat that requires you to have the Order of the Sword pledge from the Cavalier class. This feat doubles all damage done on a charge. I haven’t tested whether this doubles the damage from Mythic Charge yet. Either way, these three together on a decent martial build will do overwhelming damage.

Vital Strike: the Vital Strike line of feats with the Mythic Vital Strike feat allows you to multiply flat bonuses to your vital strike several times. The math on this build chain is extremely interesting, but I can’t go into now due to matters of space. Suffice to say, with enough flat damage boosts, you will do overwhelming damage with Vital Strike.

The youtuber BolshyPlays was how I learned about this option. Check out this video for a more in-depth explanation.

Cave Fangs: The 5th level spell Cave Fangs is broken… They really should have fixed this back in Kingmaker, but they just made it worse with the new Enduring Spell mythic ability. Here is how it works:

When you cast this spell you get the ability create a magical trap in an area. The magical trap is triggered whenever an enemy creature is in the area. You can place these traps anywhere within close range as free action the duration of the spell (10 min/level); the trap’s radius is 5 feet. Each time you place a trap, the spell’s duration is reduced by 10 minutes.

Because it is a free action you can spam all of your traps on a target in a single turn. Normally you would get basically 1 trap per spell level, but now with the Enduring Spell Mythic Ability you get, if my math is right, 144 on a fresh cast. Each trap does 3d8 damage (half on a save), ignoring magic resistance. Apparently, this damage is affected by a Paladin’s Mark of Justice, so that it adds Paladin level AND bypasses any DR the enemy has.

If we assume that our opponent makes every single save against the spell and our Paladin is the minimum possible level to get Mark of Justice (11) you will still do on average 2556 damage in a single turn and with a single cast of the spell.

The youtuber cRPG Bro was how I learned about this option. Check out this video for a more in depth explanation and a demonstration of how it works in both RTwP and Turn based modes.

As a final note, I’ve been told by u/TheGoodyShop that a crit + Trickster path build would also be good enough to make this list, but since I don’t know anything about the Trickster path yet, and I don’t want to spoil it, I’m leaving it off the list until later.

Damage Source for our Wisdom Build

Let’s finish this entry by answering the question we asked earlier: is it important to our wisdom build’s damage output that we add high multipliers to the damage on our attacks? Absolutely not! The wisdom build will get access to Geniekind, meaning they can easily proc Elemental Barrage on every attack. They also get a lot of attacks! With Flurry of Blows, Divine Power, and Ki Point Attacks they are adding three full BAB attacks per round to what they normally get from standard BAB progression (I believe its 7 attacks total). They should be hitting most, if not all, of these attacks when fully buffed and with Guarded Hearth. That means with both Expose Vulnerability and Elemental Barrage they can expect to proc the divine damage around 23.333 times per round. That is overwhelming damage!

If you want to discuss or argue this with me and others you can do so on my subreddit. The link is here.

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RPG Veteran, Pathfinder Beginner: Journal #1

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

RPG Veteran, Pathfinder Beginner: Journal #1

Hello Pathfinder community! I am a CRPG and tabletop RPG veteran with 20 years of experience in D&D and D&D CRPG’s, particularly the Baldur’s Gate Series. If you play BG3 you may know me from the popular tier lists I have on this website. I think us CRPG enthusiasts are building an awesome community around a unique artform, and I want to contribute to it! Towards that end, I have been trying to push myself to broaden as well as deepen my engagement with CRPGs, and the beginning of that for me is to leave the familiar comforts of D&D games into the daunting Pathfinder system, starting with Wrath of the Righteous. I am having a blast! I thought it would be interesting if I journaled my thoughts about Wrath of the Righteous while I am learning it. If you are new to the game like me, you might find this series helpful. If you are an experienced player it may be funny to see me stumble my way through!

However, while I am new to Wrath of the Righteous, I am not new to CRPGs. I try hard to push my analysis of all CRPGs as deep as I can, and I find that I tend approach optimization in games in a unique way that will at least be interesting, even if it is mistaken. I predict that even the readers who have mastered the Pathfinder system will learn something from this series, even if its just a new way to think about the game. That’s my goal!

I should also note that I am not a true beginner in Pathfinder. I have hundreds of hours in the Neverwinter Nights series and tabletop 3 and 3.5 editions which are, I’m sure you know, precursors to the Pathfinder system. Also, as of the time of writing this, I have 40ish hours in both Wrath of the Righteous and Kingmaker. Most of those hours have been reading tool tips, testing mechanics, and restarting Act 1. I have not played a character past level 5 in either game. I think that qualifies me as a beginner, but I have put enough time into it to (hopefully) have something interesting to say.

In this journal entry I want to discuss the kind of build that I will be exploring.

What I Am Focusing On in these Journals

Part of what makes CRPGs so interesting and unique as an artform is how they harmonize so many different crafts. In this series I will be focusing primarily on only one of those crafts, and I want to let you guys know that at the outset. Just like the RPG experience, I see three pillars of CRPG design:

Tactical System Design: this usually includes a three-dimensional tactical combat system and adjacent mechanics for building/progressing your units in that system
Story Craft: this is the narrative overlay overtop of the tactical combat game. It has all the same elements of storytelling in literature but usually with an emphasis on co-operation between the creator and the consumer. That is, the creators write a story with variable outcomes, and we, the consumers, select which of those variables to actualize in our runs. Importantly, the variables we select are assumed to be *expressive of our character.*This makes CRPGs unique because the consumer is expected to be part actor and part author. They author a character then act out that character, both in dialogue and, interestingly, through the tactical system. Successful CRPG story craft must create an interesting setting and plot for us to put those characters in. It also has to allow for many different characters to be made. And, finally, it has to reward each of those possible characters with a satisfying story arc.
Game Craft: this is what I call the important aesthetic design elements of CRPGs. It’s the art direction, but its also user interface/experience. It is the are I know the least about.

Of course, all of these pillars will mix together and play off of each other. My interests in general are on 1 and 2. For this series I will be focusing almost entirely on 1, because that is just how I get into new games. Lets get to it!

Attribute Builds

At the beginning my analysis of the Wrath of the Righteous has been focused on learning the basics; reading class, spell, feat descriptions and the like. That is all boring and not fun to read about. But through all of that I have managed to pick out an avenue of builds that I want to begin exploring, and those are what I call “wisdom builds,” a subset of attribute builds in general. An attribute build is a simple and effective strategy for high performance builds that has existed since the 3rd edition days. It has two steps: (1) you stack one attribute as high as you can and (2) you combine as many class features as you can which scale with that attribute.

Now, I try not to research to much what other content creators are doing just because I don’t want it to influence my own way of thinking. However, with a game as complex as Wrath of the Righteous its hard to avoid looking at other people’s work just as a learning shortcut. So, while I don’t know much about the state of optimization in Wrath of the Righteous, Youtube did recommend to me a few builds for the Oracle, that, from what I gather, use the attribute build philosophy. I want to sketch an Oracle build like this and use it as a foil to explain the builds that I want to explore.

The Oracle build that I have in mind is all about charisma. You know the type: Scaled Fist 1/ Paladin 2/ Oracle 17, or Eldritch Scion 3/ Paladin 2/ Oracle 15. With the later build you can apply your charisma modifier to:

AC (Nature’s Whisper)
Saving Throws (Divine Grace)
Spell DC (Oracle Spellcasting)
Attack roles (Magus Arcana: Arcane Accuracy)

All of this while benefiting from 14 levels of a full caster (with merged spell book I believe. I haven’t gotten that far yet), 16 BAB at level 20, and an animal companion to boot. Charisma is now a super stat, and you can stack heaps of it for insane scaling.

Notice this is the same pattern of build for some simple martial builds. For example, a strength build might put 20 levels in Two-handed Specialist to apply strength to:

Atk roles
Dmg x2

Which gives very one dimensional but delightfully multiplicative scaling.

A dexterity attribute build can apply a dex mod to:

AC
Attack roles (Weapon Finesse)
Damage (Finesse Training or Fencing Grace)
Attacks of Opportunity per round (Combat Reflexes)
Reflex Saves

Hopefully you see the pattern: these are what I call attribute builds.

Once we notice this pattern, we can create a shopping list of things to look for in an attribute build:

(1) Attribute Modifier (Att Mod) to AC conversion

(2) Att Mod to saving throw conversion

(3) Att Mod to attack roles

(4) Att mod to damage roles

(5) Att mod to spell DC

And then we can add to this some secondary scaling factors which connect to these, i.e.:

(6) A high number of attacks per round (APR)

(7) A high level of spell slots

Finally, we should add:

(8) An animal companion (the higher level the better)

Just because every build is improved by an animal companion from what I can tell.

These 8 items are not exhaustive. There are other areas we can stack an attribute score to, for example:

(m1) Att Mod to skill checks

(m2) Att Mod to initiative

(m3) Att Mod to CMD or CMB

While these are useful, they are not as important as 1-8, so I may mention them when I outline builds, but as something like a footnote.

Wisdom vs. Charisma

It seems to me as a beginner that wisdom builds are the strongest and most versatile of the attribute builds in Wrath of the Righteous, so I have decided I will begin my exploration of the system by exploring optimization of wisdom builds. To outline my reasoning for thinking this I will compare a possible wisdom build to the oracle build outlined above. I am assuming that the charisma stacking oracle build with a few dips is considered a strong build. It seems strong to me, but I am new to this game.

Before getting into the builds, I want to point out an asymmetry between wisdom and charisma when taken in abstraction from class specific mechanics. Setting aside class bonuses, your wisdom modifier improves your will save and three skills (perception, nature, and religion). Charisma only modifies two skills (persuasion and use magic device). There is a background (acolyte) that allows us to use our wisdom instead of charisma for persuasion checks, so a wisdom build can dump cha at the cost of losing effectiveness in one skill, whereas if a charisma build dumps wisdom they sacrifice effectiveness in 3 skills and their will save, meaning wisdom has an advantage in this regard. Now let’s look at the builds.

We noted above that a Paladin 2/ Eldritch Scion 3/ Oracle 15 build checks off many of the items on our shopping list. In fact, of the eight items it satisfies seven of them. Those seven are:

Concerning (6), this builds just squeaks by the 16 BAB, which unlocks the 4th attack. They also have access to Oracle spells like Divine Power which boost APR. Concerning 8, with 14 levels in Oracle your animal companion will not max out in levels. I believe it will be level 19 on the completed build, which is one level under max, still good.

Now let’s look at the Wisdom build to see how it compares. The core class tree for Wisdom stacking is the Cleric of Erastil, community and nature domains. Nature domain grants an animal companion. At level 8 the community domain grants a once per day ability (Guarded Hearth) that adds your wisdom modifier to saving throws and attack roles to yourself and allies in the AoE. Of course, Clerics are full casters and add wisdom to their spell DC as well. This class alone checks the following items off:

I gave (2) and (3) asterisks to note that it is only once per day but also buffs, potentially, the entire party. I leave it to you whether that is a positive or a negative. I think it is positive.

From the Cleric base class there are two directions we can build depending on whether we want to use ranged or melee weapons. For ranged you could dip into Zen Archer and for melee Instinctual Barbarian. I will explore both eventually, but for now let’s focus on the Zen Archer build, because that is the one I am currently playing through the game with.

A three-level dip into Zen Archer will check off (1) through the Monk AC feature, and (3) through the Zen Archery feature. As an aside, it will also get us some very valuable feats. That leaves our wisdom build – Zen Archer 3/ Cleric 17 – with the following:

Side by side with the charisma build our wisdom build checks off the same 7 items that the charisma build does, only they can add their wisdom modifiers to attack roles *twice.*Moreover, when we examine and compare each item we will see the wisdom build gets a little more value out of most of these checks.

For AC, the charisma build substitutes charisma for dexterity when determining your dodge bonus. The wisdom build does something different; it adds your wisdom modifier to your dexterity modifier so long as you are not wearing armor. There are several subtle differences between these. For one, the charisma build could theoretically dump dexterity now that they do not need it for AC. Is that a good idea? I’m not sure. Dexterity is still useful for reflex saves, initiative roles, and extra attacks of opportunity from combat reflexes, so I am wary of dumping it. In the wisdom build you are forced out of wearing armor. I am not sure if that is a big issue, because I don’t know what loot is in the game. If there are equally good robes as there are armors, then I would say the wisdom build is getting a better feature.

For saving throws the charisma build is getting an “always on” feature whereas the wisdom build gets theirs once per day. We already discussed above how, while being once per day, the wisdom character can add their modifier to their allies as well, which is huge. Notice also that wisdom already applies to one save – will – so the wisdom build is still getting 1/3 of the boost to saves as an always on feature. Then when they use Guarded Hearth they are technically adding their wisdom modifier to their will save twice! I think the wisdom build wins out here.

On attack roles the situation is reversed, where it’s the wisdom build that gets this as an always on feature. The charisma build will be able to add their modifier to attack roles for a number of turns equal to 1 + their charisma mod, which should be a lot, but likely won’t cover every turn of attacks. I can’t be certain on this until I’ve had more experience in the game (if you know please tell me on reddit, I have a link below). Either way, the wisdom build is just superior here.

Concerning spell DC, my understanding is that Oracles and Clerics have similar, if not the same, spell lists. Our wisdom build is getting two more levels in their caster class, but I think with merged spell books this will be a wash, so no advantages on either side here. The same goes for (7). I believe on all matter related to spells these builds will function the same.

How about number of attacks? Here also the wisdom build is superior. The charisma build gets one more attack through BAB and potentially another if you select the Wolf-Scarred Face curse. The wisdom build makes up for this through Flurry of Blows from our Monk levels. Note, the extra attack from Flurry of Blows is made at highest BAB, and if that’s not enough for you, we can add another full BAB attack on top of that by expending a Ki point (we get 1 + wisdom mod per day).

The only area where the charisma build wins out that I can see is with their animal companion, which will be level 19 compared to the wisdom build’s level 17 animal companion. I expect two levels is a fairly significant difference. Fair play there to charisma.

Altogether, by focusing on wisdom as your primary attribute you can multiply it in more ways and in more potent ways then if you focused on charisma. Assuming that an oracle charisma build is a potent one (it seems like it is to me), then this wisdom build should be even better.

Conclusion

Making this comparison is what got me interested in wisdom-based attribute builds, so I am planning on spending the next few weeks exploring them. Right now, I am level 5 – Zen Archer 3/ Cleric 2 – playing on core difficulty. Once I have completed this play through I’ll write up another journal entry to outline the build in detail. After that I want to explore an Instinctual Barbarian build, then some of the other wisdom-based classes (Druid, Inquisitor, and War priest). Hopefully once I have mastered the wisdom classes, I’ll be able to construct a better wisdom attribute build, which I will use it as a reference point for future builds.

I expect I will look back on this entry and smirk once I’ve learned more. You may be smirking right now! If you are a Pathfinder veteran and want to tell me how wrong I am you can comment on this article here.

Thanks for reading! Till next time!

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About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Sage Behind the Guides

I’m Aestus, and I’ve been playing computer RPGs for over twenty years. What started with the Baldur’s Gate series in the late ’90s turned into a lifelong obsession with the systems that make these games tick — the math behind the magic, the builds behind the victories, the design decisions that separate a great RPG from a good one.

Aestus Guides is where I put that experience to work. Every guide on this site comes from hundreds of hours of play, testing, and analysis. When I write a tier list, I explain my methodology first. When I recommend a build, I show you exactly how to construct it. I don’t do clickbait and I don’t do shallow — if you’re here, you’re the kind of player who wants to understand why something works, not just that it does.

What You’ll Find Here

Tier Lists & Guides — Deep analytical breakdowns of classes, companions, weapons, and builds across games like Baldur’s Gate 3, Pillars of Eternity, and Pathfinder. These aren’t quick rankings — they’re full analyses with reasoning, build outlines, and honest acknowledgment of subjectivity.

System Analysis — Articles exploring the fundamental math and design principles behind CRPG combat systems. How initiative actually works. Why some multiclass combinations are mathematically superior. The hidden numbers that shape every encounter.

Interviews — Conversations with game designers and creators in the CRPG and tabletop RPG space, exploring the craft behind the games we love.

Pathfinder Journals — A veteran RPG player’s honest account of diving into a new system for the first time, documenting the learning curve, the surprises, and the builds along the way.

The Name

Aestus is Latin for heat, passion, fervor. It felt right for a site driven by genuine enthusiasm for these games — not obligation, not content farming, but the kind of deep engagement that comes from truly loving a genre.

Memoirs of a CRPG Sage — because after twenty-plus years in these worlds, you accumulate a lot of stories, a lot of knowledge, and a lot of opinions worth sharing.

Connect

You can find me on YouTube where I discuss builds and game analysis in video form, or support the site on Patreon.

All content on this site is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — you’re free to share and adapt it for non-commercial purposes with attribution.

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Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Sage's Library

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A curated collection of resources I find myself returning to again and again. These are the databases, communities, and creators that have informed my own analysis and guides.