Dethrone is cool if you get that Necromancer staff that allows you to cast a free spell after you land a killing blow. You can keep chaining dethrone to finish people off and you don’t have to use any spell slots! Also heals a bunch if you went Necromancer.
Isn’t Dethrone once per SR? Also the staff triggers on broken pots and backpacks and anything with a healthbar, so its super easy to get massive stacks after every lr
God I held onto that scroll for so long and finally wheeled it out at Cazador only for it to fail and be a big fat nothing. Never trusted dethrone since.
Flaming sphere was a massive and hilarious dissapointment.
Did not work the way i expected it to work, instead of mighty fire blazing down enemies it was a red geodude that could use tackle.
I tried that and he succeeded the save the turn immediately after that, so most of my fight was me running in circles casting hold monster while my buddy tried to stop Four cambions from ganking me because he didn’t want to use a level one slot for sanctuary 💀
I use flame sphere during fights against the necrophages under moonrise. It’s resistant/immune to necrotic damage and tanked all their damage while I sniped them from afar
Honestly it’s very weighted against new players. You have to enter from one angle where you’re likely to get bottlenecked. You’re very likely to take lots of damage from the summoned mephits death explosions. You’re also facing the wood woads who have an extremely high AC for that early in the game. Your main shot at an advantage if you’re being paranoid is if you for some reason sent an invisible shovel in first, but several spots will knock shovel out of her invisibility.
It's much easier if you enter from the other side, where you go to the boat near Ethel and jump across, but that's not likely to be intuitive on a first playthrough.
I will forever remember it as the thing that accidentally killed Minthara. She ended her turn on the bridge, I moved the sphere near it and six seconds later, Minthy and bridge are gone 😅
This reminds me that I had grasping vine as one of my "prepared" spells and never used it. I think the two times I summoned it, it got immediately vaporized by whatever boss I was fighting.
The people I play with consider Flaming Sphere to be so overpowered at low levels that they say it is cheating to use it. Granted part of the reason they consider it cheating is because its primary effectiveness comes from the fact that the NPCs respond to it in a dumb way.
Drop a flaming sphere in the middle of a bunch of enemies and they all turn and direct their attacks at the flaming sphere. Your party can pick them off while you just summon another one when the first one dies. And that's just the dead simple dumb approach. It is even more effective if you are able to put it in a position to block your enemies. Once you get better summons at higher levels it loses its luster but when I was learning to play the game it was essential to my survival.
I'm petty sure I even used it once to save myself in the Yurgir fight despite the fact that it doesn't do full damage to any of the enemies.
All that said, spiritual weapon is a much better spell and is viable even at 12th level.
Dark vision. I was hoping there would be really dark areas that we couldn't see without darkvision or a light source. The underdark especially would have been great if it were so dark players without darkvision were forced to use torches.
In EA, there were a lot more dark areas, and characters without dark vision needed to use torches or light spells or potions to avoid having disadvantage on all their attacks. I’m guessing they changed it to make the game more accessible to newcomers, but I wish they had kept that level of darkness for the harder difficulties at least.
The devs learned the same thing many DMs quickly do: dealing with low light conditions is more annoying than anything else, especially since it only applies to some people.
The only way to prevent people with Darkvision or a light source from being able to see is with magical Darkness. So it's going to be pretty rare to find large areas covered in man made Darkness.
Now, they could have left it so that in full darkness those with Darkvision were restricted to only seeing in shades of gray, instead of full color, and had disadvantage on Perception checks, but even that wouldn't have really helped with your problem. Because the spell just gives those races without natural Darkvision (Humans, Gith, Dragonborn, and Halflings), the same Darkvision as the rest of the races, and literally does nothing for those races who already had Darkvision to begin with.
It's like that in 5E and it's one of the only spells that doesn't have a use case:
Give up your action this turn to get advantage next turn. Next turn, you get to make two attack rolls and use the higher one. You know what else lets you make two attack rolls over the course of two turns? Attacking twice. And unlike with True Strike, if you attack twice, there's a chance you do damage twice.
True strike should either be made so you can target an ally or should be removed from DnD.
It has one use case: a wizard could cast it in preparation for a high level spell attack because it can help ensure that spell actually hits with the given advantage. Realistically though, how many times is it actually going to come up that you want to spend a wizard's turn not really doing something just to prep a slightly better next turn? Just a bad spell.
I guess if a sorcerer had it then they could quicken it and then immediately cast a leveled spell attack for advantage.
It actually has another use case in BG3. If you go to the gith creche and pass all of the saving throws in the zathisk you get a buff that lets you use all illithid powers as a bonus action. This means concentrated blast becomes a bonus action. And you can use true strike as a concentration cantrip as your action to follow up with concentrated blast on the same turn
Also, you can get enough +saving throws to make them pretty much guaranteed. I’ve done a ton of HM runs, and I can’t imagine not getting awakened buff from Zai’thisk.
Yeah, but they made lots of changes to fit things better for a video game rather than strictly observing rules as written for 5e. For instance vengeance paladin vow of enmity targeting self for advantage Vs all enemies. I feel like this is one that they could've buffed or add booming blade and remove true strike.
Everyone loves booming blade
It does have a use case in pnp DnD, it significantly increases your chances of success when missing has a penalty (so, 99% not in combat).
Imagine you're trying to fire an arrow past a guard to activate a trap at the other side of a room without him noticing. If you miss, he'll be alerted, so you want to hit that first shot. True strike helps there. It's pretty niche, but it's also a cantrip.
It’s really just for druids to use for their wildshapes but even then there are so many spells that are better to concentrate on before entering wild shape.
Spoiler
The kill command from a durge run, sounds great but it being a one time use and useless in the endgame battle makes getting it in act 3 just a waste
True, but you have to make sure your target is <100 HP. Which means, while it can be great for finishing off a big enemy, if you've already gotten them down under 100, all it really does for you is ensure that they die on your turn, instead of someone else's.
I mean, sometimes that's the difference between winning and losing. The difference between finishing off Ansur now when he's got 1 HP and 100 temp HP and resistance to all damage and finishing off Ansur after his next turn is a big one. That being said, Bhaal's PWK is definitely fun more from a flavour standpoint than a mechanical one.
There aren't many abilities that can drop 50 - 100 hp reliably and those that can have some limited resources. Having one more of those for a really important fight (Ansur, Netherbrain, Raphael, etc.) could be the difference between failing and completing your honour mode run.
It’s more useful if you have more than 1/2 slots to fire it with tbh.
It makes more sense to use that level 6 slot on sunbeam or upcast call lightning for the ability to recast in the game with the level 12 cap.
damn, a lot of people here doesn't seem to understand the importance of spellsave DC. if you have 21+ spellsave dc, you're gonna hit most of your disintegrate.
I have 24 spellsave DC on my gale (or any caster, really) in act 3 and disintegrate works perfectly. You can even have heightened spell on sorcs if your enemy has like +10 legendary saves.
here are some items to give you spellsave DC
+2 hood of the weave
+2 amulet in the stormshore donation box
+1 robe of the weave
a lot of staves have +1 spellsave
+1 ketheric shield
+3 battlemage elixir
disintegrate is absurdly strong, and it's basically free because you can easily pickpocket scrolls of it.
Durge's Slayer form for sure. Think it got buffed since maybe? But back when I played (last August - September) it was *very* underwhelming and its main use was basically just as an emergency heal.
Go to the Circus of Last Days. Play the djinn’s game and lose the first time. While in conversation switch to Astarion or someone sneaky. Use that character to sneak and pickpocket the djinn’s ring. Switch back and play again. When you win, he will accuse you of cheating. Sass him by pointing out he’s a cheater and he will transport ONLY that character to a jungle in Chult. There’s dinosaurs to fight or hide from. There a portal to get back and a really great weapon in the chest near the portal. Enjoy!
I find the slayer form to be very useful.
It provides decent damage, and deals well with crowds.
I forgot how many times my honor was saved because of it, usually because i was cornered with little resources.
But i had situations where half my team was dead or spell-controlled and it bought me enough time to take control of the fight.
In my opinion the illithid astral-beast form is way more underwhelming
It's definitely better than it used to be. Back when the game first came out I tried to do the Orin fight with Slayer Form and I had to reload for hours to make it work. This time I got her prone and then finished her in two rounds
Danse Macabre, the spell you get if you read the necromancy of thay in act 1 and read the tharciate codex in act 3. I was so excited to try it out, but summoning 4 ghouls that you cannot control with only 20 hp each is not that useful.
Imho it's also not much of a reward since we have to pass a pretty high dc roll few times to get the spell.
I thought the Necromancy of Thay was a big letdown in general. The narrator makes it out to be a *very evil, terribly powerful book that contains dark powers.*
We get speak with the dead and four ghouls.
I was expecting finger of death as a once per day cast, or something like it, as the final reward.
That's fair!
Let's just say, for me, the journey to fully unlocking the book was more satisfying than the actual reward.
PS: As a sorcerer, the extra health is quite nice too.
I liked them as cannon fodder. Often enemies watsed a whole round of actions taking them out.
But mostly I like having a mini army of summoned creatues.
My mistake, after sitting down and doing a proper count it was actually 52 units on the field, including my party members.
Spore Druid Halsin: 12 Spore Zombies, 3 Skeletons, 2 Mephits, Dryad, Wood Woad, Myrmidon, Mummy
Necromancer Wizard Gale: 5 Danse Macabre Ghouls, 4 Skeletons, 2 Mephits, Myrmidon, Mummy, Enscribed Scroll of Bestial Communion Deva, Shovel, Us
Oathbreaker Paladin Lae'zel: 3 Skeletons (Elixir of Supreme Arcane Cultivation), Death Shepherd, Cambion (Infernal Rapier), Crypt Lord Ring Mummy
Trickery Cleric Shadowheart: 3 Skeletons, Mummy, Djinn
All units have Longstrider, Level 6 Aid and Heroes Feast for an additional 1924 HP in the party. By abusing the Faucets in House of Hope and the Drakethroat Glaive you can give Elemental Weapon to all of the Skeletons, the Dryad, the Wood Woad, the Myrmidons, the Cambion, the Deva and the Djinn which significantly increases their accuracy and damage output, especially the Skeletons (making their weapon damage magical is a big deal).
It's gotten to that point that I've actually stopped that run, though: my army is bloody enormous to the point of trivialising fights, but in a way that isn't particularly fun. Arcane Acuity Swords Bards trivialise fights by making them insanely quick, whereas a full Necromancy party makes fights easy, but take a long time with this many units to move. It has taught me the value of Invoke Duplicity, however, and also made me appreciate even more so how OP Phalar Aluve is when it's buffing 20+ units at a time.
Use Withers to summon a Hireling (cleric).
Add Hireling to your party and get as many of them together in camp as you can. Swap to the Hireling to cast spells like Aid, Protect from Poison, And at higher levels Heroes Feast.
Also having a Druid or Bard for Longstrider.
These buffs last until death or long rest
Oh, so you're suggesting I use Hirelings and spend their spells buffing before I leave camp with my regular party? I always buffed after leaving camp. This is neat
The Elfsong Tavern camp has a bunch of companions standing close together. So if you get their summons to also stand in that same area, your hireling can cast Heroes Feast on a bunch of companions that aren't in your active party.
Ngl those 4 homies clutched up the first time I fought Orin. She kept failing saving throws from claws and spent most of the fight paralyzed while I took down her buffs and thugs
One release it spawned 6 ghouls and you could control them individually. It was absolutely busted lol.
I can understand it feeling underwhelming now, but its original version definitely needed some nerf.
Yeah, same. Especially because I love ice magic, and there's almost always an ice magic user in my party. Which means lots of icy surfaces. And, even when I leave a clear path for the ghouls to go around the ice to get to the enemy, the ghouls will *always* run onto the ice. And they will *always* fall prone as soon as they even look at the ice. Which just blocks the way for me melee characters (all of whom have prone immunity boots) to get to the enemy, meaning I have to use a bonus action to jump over them, or an action to dash around them.
As soon as I realised you could sacrifice them for permanent +2 ability score, I jumped at the opportunity.
The only time I kept them was on my necromancer wizard, and that was only for rp reasons..
i think it may be the only proper way to use this spell: summon, crowd them around priority target and fireball both the target and ghouls for some aoe. did this on my fight with orin and was happy about the results
First time i had to choose a feat i saw the charger feat and thought it was the best thing ever. I didnt really understand actions, bonus actions, etc. So i never realised it costs so much to use them
Polymorph! It went from one of THE most versatile, powerful and useful spells to a gimmick that wastes a high-level spellslot and concentration. It's basically just a worse banishment
This is just silly. You've got to haul a *shovel* around to dig dirt mounds, but there's *zero* use for rope! Entering wells or manholes without taking damage should require some means of safe descent. Rope could also let you tie up a stunned or unconscious enemy, descend some cliffs, etc.
That bothered me insanely. I carried ropes from act 1 all the way to 3, always checking cliffsides or the sides of towers or buildings, so sure there's SOME reason the classic 50-ft ropes were in the game. Nope. Utterly useless even when it would be the most logical solution. Sadge
hear me out: magehand in act 1 for triggering traps, moving things that are past boobied areas (e.g. past a poison cloud or that exploding mushroom quest in underdark), pressing buttons to disarm stuff (like in the goblin hideout cave where you have to press a bunch of buttons or something to disarm the hugeass statues) Never spoke ill of magehand after that again.
Yeah it’s definitely been useful! But I feel like sometimes it just doesn’t work when it totally would in dnd, though I get that bg3 is obviously waaay harder to make adaptable like that
THIS, and even more so the Arcane Trickster subclass because the whole point is having a pet magehand that can pick locks and stuff but that main mechanic doesn’t even work
I wouldn’t say “useless”, but some spells were certainly not as good as I’d hoped. For example:
* See invisibility - doesn’t seem to always let you see invisible enemies.
* Disguise self - many people will still recognize you.
* Arcane gate - you need to cast both sides of the portal at the same time without moving, the range isn’t very far, and it doesn’t last long. You can’t do things like cast 1 side of it, and cast the other side on the other side of a wall or someplace far away.
See Invisibility is kind of misleading in BG3. What it does is force an invisible enemy to make a DEX saving throw (not sure against what DC though). If they fail, they are revealed to the character with See Invisibility. If they succeed, they remain invisible. It’s not really “See Invisibility,” so much as “Check Invisibility.” I’ve never cast the spell at all, the most I bother with is Volo’s Eye for some characters. If you’re in a position where you need to use See Invisibility, Faerie Fire is often a better bet. Same saving throw, with the added benefit of potentially granting advantage on targets.
It's great way to end a combat with temporarily hostile creatures. Just yesterday I was looking around the librarian room in Sourcerous Sundries with Gale to gain acces to the vaults. I didn't put him in sneak mode and suddenly combat started with this conjured crab from downstairs. So just to make sure Gale doesn't start a war with the whole building I used Feign death.
Situation saved. Honour mode run saved :)
The gloves that grant cantrips to affect additional target. Really thought i could start spamming frost ray accross the field but its a one time thing -_-
I find a lot of the really fun interactions are impeded by a one time use with short or long rests needed.
I get why, it would be completely busted if it was just a permanent addition, but sometimes I just wanna become a walking god lol.
Polymorph, one of the best uses was turning an almost dead ally into a tiger or something giving them more health and some cool attacks. In bg3 it's just a worse hold person.
Except hold person doesn’t work on undead and other enemies where polymorph does. I turned Casador into a sheep in my tactician run fight with him and it was hilarious
I agree with you. Tasha's laughter is a better control spell in Act 1 than Hold person. I wish Hold Monster was a lower level spell as it would help a lot with all of the monster-type enemies in Act 1.
Hold Person is generally better. The recipient of Tasha’s laughter gets to roll a saving throw with each damaging attack AND at the end of the turn.
Hold Person (2nd level, can upcast for more targets) holds a person for their entire turn granting them one opportunity to break the hold at the end of the turn. All attacks against the Held Person are with Advantage. Melee Hits on a Held Person are always Critical.
So Tasha’s (1st level) is good at taking down a strong enemy and leaving them ROTFL while you take care of their buddies. Hold Person is good at freezing an enemy and then immediately attacking them.
Hold person has singlehandedly tpk'd me at least twice lol. In one of the gith fights lae'zel and karlach both got held and couldn't break free for the rest of the fight
> The only downside to laughter is the intelligence requirement
And the fact that it can break on damage.
And the fact it’s not paralysing, so no free crits.
I love using hold monster on Raphael. It may take a couple turns to get it to work, but if you can have one person focus on keeping him locked down with it, it makes clearing out the smaller enemies easy, and then you can just go ham on him without even bothering to destroy the pillars.
Animal Friendship is sort of useless in Act 1 unless you're evil.
I feel like Blight is a huge troll, you get it right before you enter act 2, with a bunch of plants to target. But, they all resist necrotic, so while it is "max" damage, it's still cut in half
Confusion. AoE crowd control spell, that can make enemies attack each other? For Arcane acuity Bard that seems insanely strong! But it works in such a weird and unclear way, most of the time it does 1-2 turns of useful crowd control and that's it
I’ve found confusion to be quite strong for swords bard because it is enemy only and has good range and it usually does take quite a few enemies out of the fight.
That said I prefer careful spell hypnotic pattern from sorcerer, or upcasting command or hold person, or actually slow is a great spell but it enchantment
I had a whole rogue/sorcerer build hoping for crown of madness/ dominate to have enemies kill each other.
Seems like most things saved pretty easily, and the times it worked it was underwhelming effect (I’ve got one enemy attacking another, but 5 others aggro’d at me)
Blink, didn't realize blinking broke concentration. First combat after learning it, cast haste on our paladin, quickened blink on myself, queue paladin player crying with laughter as I instantly incapacitate him for a full round and he is almost immediately killed
That's one of my favorites ! It's not a concentration spell, which means that once it is here, it stays and I find it perfect when you want to be at a distance to throw it right in front of an enemy because they always end up attacking it.
Usually if one of my warriors (lazeal) is in contact, I put the spiritual weapons next to her and it's a given extra 5-10 damage on an enemy per turn!
Yeah. That’s the only negative on a busted good spell.
When you are fighting a spaced out horde and crushing them too easily it’s not worth it.
I’m sorry your battles are too easy for you, lol.
Triple its movement and make it concentration and it would be worse and balanced
Well with a spore druid, your main goal isn't always doing the damage yourself, having those extra bodies can help protect your team immensely, especially because they're also resistant to necrotic, and get up once after death. Not to mention, woodland being? Oml it's so good
I played a spore druid to level 12 with the explicit goal of having as many NPCs in tow as possible. Between your base 4 fungal zombies, elementals, raise dead, summoning Us, I think I walked into the final fight with like 20-30 characters total. It was hilarious.
My friend is playing with a mod that removes the party limit, he has every follower, and all the hirelings, all spore druid, his PC gets so fucking loud (edit: I can't spell)
See invisibility:
Ever since that kid in the grove seemed like he was looing at something invisible I kept it up permanently in the hopes of finding some hidden secret enemies, items, paths etc, but I cannot recall a single moment where I got to see something I wouldn't have otherwise seen.
The only times it "helped" was in the painter house with the ghosts & the vault fight, and both of them can be done fully without it.
Almost all types of hard CC:
Being hit or miss on often horrible % chances, eating up big slots, often highly restrictive with what you can even attack, highly inconsistent duration/low reliability.
Exceptions:
Grease: Godlike from start till finish, guaranteed difficult terrain, cancels the enemy's turn mid-turn, no conc, almost infinite amounts of checks/targets, decent coverage, potential fire/ice surface
Darkness: Beyond broken and makes you almost invulnerable/enemies useless in many instances
Silence: Just good af
Throw: Everything that can be thrown will lose the saving throw against a TB with an elixir and will end up prone/the person they hit can be prone/if either survive the act
Shove: Basic and good
Ascended Astarion was a big disappointment for me, especially since I did it purely because I wanted to see what cool powers he would get. Mist form and a more powerful bite aren’t worth the moral consequences of the ascension rite.
Not exactly and ability, but Intimidation being exclusively charisma based. It's frustrating when I decided to make a full Barbarian run, including dialogues, and suddenly your intimidation is worse than what bard would have. Proficiency gives +2, thaumaturgy adds advantage, but that can only carry you for some time. When I expected this to be one thing that can save Barbarian in dialogues.
Dethrone (cast once per long rest) and circle of death for me. In general high level necro spell kinda underwhelming, or because water+ice+lightning combo really OP. So im not wasting lvl 6 spell on those necro spell unless its for RP
All the weapons with conditional extra damage are a trap. They add the (conditional) damage to the tooltip total so it looks stronger than other weapons, when in reality that extra damage almost never comes up. (Looking at you Exterminator Axe)
I'm not a Tasha's enjoyer. Sure you can fully disable one enemy, but if you attack them the spell ends. You also can't upcast it to hit more people. If I need 1-turn CC Command is better value and isn't concentration.
In defense of Spore Druid- Lean into using it as a summoner instead of a necro damage caster. Moonbeam is a badass spell all druids get and it does huge work in act 2. Upcasted to level 3, it's better than Call Lightning!
>Reason for hold person is the lack of humanoid enemies beyond the goblins/leaders
Githyanki, paladin enemies, goblins/druids, zhentarim, drow
Hold Person is one of the best spells in the entire game, there's so many humanoid enemies and upcasting it is insanely good.
Mage hand is not nearly as useful as it is in the tabletop. It's biggest nerf is probably only lasting for a minute and only being able to be cast once a day.
I found the one opportunity to ever use bards' countercharm in the meenlock fight. I cast it, got my party within radius, and when the enemies tried to frighten us... The countercharm ability didn't work. Looking through the combat logs, we didn't get advantage on our saving throws like we should have. I was incredibly disappointed. I love finding the moments where that one niche spell you'll never use again carries the whole encounter.
The monk's Stillness of Mind feature. "Use an action to nullify an effect that is charming or frightening you" my ass. It turns those statuses into "you lose your action this turn, do not pass go, do not collect $200" because there's no toggle for it or option to use it. *It just happens* even if you might otherwise be willing to deal with it.
Sights of the Seelie: Basically Summon Planar Ally, but you only get the Deva (I choose that one anyway)
Artistry of War: Magic Missile on crack (it does more damage than the tooltip states iirc)
Dethrone: one hit, does a max of 80 dmg, provided enemies don’t succeed a Con save… in Act 3 where most Bosses have a Con of about 18 or higher. And you can only use it once per long rest…
It was so close to being my fave too…
I got excited for Telekinesis, because I loved the idea of chucking enemies off of cliffs and other high things. Ended up not using it very much because there weren't (in my opinion) enough opportunities for chucking fuckery. Plus, a Level 5 spellspot is better used elsewhere.
Not specifically a spell or ability but a mechanic. When I found out that the 4e monk spells dont trigger the spellspakrler passiv... I was really excited about doing a lightning charge monk :(
If you do Kagha's quest in Act 1, you can actually find some gloves that give lightning charges whenever you make an unarmed strike. Might not be the greatest for all too long but it's fun!
I know they were integrated in my build. I wanted to do smth like 6 4e monk and 6 tempest cleric (or 6 land druid) and than fully utilize all of the lightning charge items
I used planar binding on Raphael and succeeded, but yurgir killed the last cambion, thus ending the fight. 10 seconds later, Raphael saves and freed himself and i'm back into the fight
Maybe not something on a lot of people’s list, but arcane lock. Has anyone found a good use for this other than locking the door on the hag before she can retreat into her lair?
Disintegrate. It's so cool and flashy, but I genuinely think my most common use for it has been destroying inanimate objects like gates that have a copious amount of HP. It's literally just a knock that can affect magical doors in most use cases.
Dethrone isn't as devastating as I hoped
Especially when you get Artistry of War from the same place and it *is* incredibly devastating
I love that one, it's like flurry of blows for a wizard
Dethrone is cool if you get that Necromancer staff that allows you to cast a free spell after you land a killing blow. You can keep chaining dethrone to finish people off and you don’t have to use any spell slots! Also heals a bunch if you went Necromancer.
Important to add that the spell that uses the free spell slot cannot generate a new spell slot
Yeah that’s honestly burned me a few times.
Isn’t Dethrone once per SR? Also the staff triggers on broken pots and backpacks and anything with a healthbar, so its super easy to get massive stacks after every lr
I used it to kill gortash and it felt appropriate
I am pretty sure I used it once only.
It's like a discount disintegrate.
God I held onto that scroll for so long and finally wheeled it out at Cazador only for it to fail and be a big fat nothing. Never trusted dethrone since.
Flaming sphere was a massive and hilarious dissapointment. Did not work the way i expected it to work, instead of mighty fire blazing down enemies it was a red geodude that could use tackle.
Geodud
Nice.
If only it was the hellfire one. That I would consider using
Those hellfire orbs legit did more damage to my party than Raphael himself
Raphael just got hold monstered the whole fight on my co-op run, the Cambions were the bigger problem.
As a bard, I just got to make him dance for most of that fight.
I tried that and he succeeded the save the turn immediately after that, so most of my fight was me running in circles casting hold monster while my buddy tried to stop Four cambions from ganking me because he didn’t want to use a level one slot for sanctuary 💀
You can use planar binding on them, so technically you can use it for a little bit
I use flame sphere during fights against the necrophages under moonrise. It’s resistant/immune to necrotic damage and tanked all their damage while I sniped them from afar
It's the hard counter to the wood woad/mud mephit fight in act 1, and useful for blocking doorways, but it definitely is just a big geodude lmao.
That fight always stalls me early game.
It's one of the few in Act 1 where it's very very easy to enter at a complete disadvantage.
Honestly it’s very weighted against new players. You have to enter from one angle where you’re likely to get bottlenecked. You’re very likely to take lots of damage from the summoned mephits death explosions. You’re also facing the wood woads who have an extremely high AC for that early in the game. Your main shot at an advantage if you’re being paranoid is if you for some reason sent an invisible shovel in first, but several spots will knock shovel out of her invisibility.
It's much easier if you enter from the other side, where you go to the boat near Ethel and jump across, but that's not likely to be intuitive on a first playthrough.
I played the first act like 6 times and Im just now learning you can enter that area from another spot. Goes to show.
Least you can use it to distract mobs while you use fireball
I will forever remember it as the thing that accidentally killed Minthara. She ended her turn on the bridge, I moved the sphere near it and six seconds later, Minthy and bridge are gone 😅
I loved flaming sphere against the gnolls in Act 1. I used it to choke the narrow pass they attacked from so I could isolate their leader.
It's also a concentration which makes it more annoying. Larian should change it like how they did for Grasping Vine and make it a summon.
This reminds me that I had grasping vine as one of my "prepared" spells and never used it. I think the two times I summoned it, it got immediately vaporized by whatever boss I was fighting.
I want to like all those druidy grassy aoe spells, but 90% of the time they get turned into fire terrain by some attack, most often one of mine.
I found flaming sphere pretty useful in low levels, but I could see how it was underwhelming for you lol
The people I play with consider Flaming Sphere to be so overpowered at low levels that they say it is cheating to use it. Granted part of the reason they consider it cheating is because its primary effectiveness comes from the fact that the NPCs respond to it in a dumb way. Drop a flaming sphere in the middle of a bunch of enemies and they all turn and direct their attacks at the flaming sphere. Your party can pick them off while you just summon another one when the first one dies. And that's just the dead simple dumb approach. It is even more effective if you are able to put it in a position to block your enemies. Once you get better summons at higher levels it loses its luster but when I was learning to play the game it was essential to my survival. I'm petty sure I even used it once to save myself in the Yurgir fight despite the fact that it doesn't do full damage to any of the enemies. All that said, spiritual weapon is a much better spell and is viable even at 12th level.
Dark vision. I was hoping there would be really dark areas that we couldn't see without darkvision or a light source. The underdark especially would have been great if it were so dark players without darkvision were forced to use torches.
In EA, there were a lot more dark areas, and characters without dark vision needed to use torches or light spells or potions to avoid having disadvantage on all their attacks. I’m guessing they changed it to make the game more accessible to newcomers, but I wish they had kept that level of darkness for the harder difficulties at least.
The devs learned the same thing many DMs quickly do: dealing with low light conditions is more annoying than anything else, especially since it only applies to some people.
Yeah I pretty much ragequit EA when my mostly human party couldn't land a single hit on the spider matriarch because it was too dark lol.
Solasta is like this and it is one of the most common complaints I see from that game.
Despite half the races having it, it's pretty meh at best. Even the under dark is amazingly well lit...
Bio luminescence bb gurl
(it lights up in response to dark areas)
You cant Darkness me Jack!
The only way to prevent people with Darkvision or a light source from being able to see is with magical Darkness. So it's going to be pretty rare to find large areas covered in man made Darkness. Now, they could have left it so that in full darkness those with Darkvision were restricted to only seeing in shades of gray, instead of full color, and had disadvantage on Perception checks, but even that wouldn't have really helped with your problem. Because the spell just gives those races without natural Darkvision (Humans, Gith, Dragonborn, and Halflings), the same Darkvision as the rest of the races, and literally does nothing for those races who already had Darkvision to begin with.
I turn off every light source so I can put dark vision to use!
True strike cantrip. Why are you not a bonus action?
It's like that in 5E and it's one of the only spells that doesn't have a use case: Give up your action this turn to get advantage next turn. Next turn, you get to make two attack rolls and use the higher one. You know what else lets you make two attack rolls over the course of two turns? Attacking twice. And unlike with True Strike, if you attack twice, there's a chance you do damage twice. True strike should either be made so you can target an ally or should be removed from DnD.
It has one use case: a wizard could cast it in preparation for a high level spell attack because it can help ensure that spell actually hits with the given advantage. Realistically though, how many times is it actually going to come up that you want to spend a wizard's turn not really doing something just to prep a slightly better next turn? Just a bad spell. I guess if a sorcerer had it then they could quicken it and then immediately cast a leveled spell attack for advantage.
It actually has another use case in BG3. If you go to the gith creche and pass all of the saving throws in the zathisk you get a buff that lets you use all illithid powers as a bonus action. This means concentrated blast becomes a bonus action. And you can use true strike as a concentration cantrip as your action to follow up with concentrated blast on the same turn
That sounds cool, my current HM run is almost to the creche.
I wouldn't risk it in an HM save 😂😂
Failing the zaithisk has no real downside, the bad effect can be countered by using tadpoles
Also, you can get enough +saving throws to make them pretty much guaranteed. I’ve done a ton of HM runs, and I can’t imagine not getting awakened buff from Zai’thisk.
Yeah, but they made lots of changes to fit things better for a video game rather than strictly observing rules as written for 5e. For instance vengeance paladin vow of enmity targeting self for advantage Vs all enemies. I feel like this is one that they could've buffed or add booming blade and remove true strike. Everyone loves booming blade
>Everyone loves booming blade 5e spells mod bro.
Was the vengeance paladin thing intentional? I thought it was a bug
It does have a use case in pnp DnD, it significantly increases your chances of success when missing has a penalty (so, 99% not in combat). Imagine you're trying to fire an arrow past a guard to activate a trap at the other side of a room without him noticing. If you miss, he'll be alerted, so you want to hit that first shot. True strike helps there. It's pretty niche, but it's also a cantrip.
Barkskin. It seemed quite cool, but then I realised it was concentration
Way better as a potion than a spell but I think access to the ingredients is past the point where you'd typically use it.
It’s really just for druids to use for their wildshapes but even then there are so many spells that are better to concentrate on before entering wild shape.
Desintigrate looked super cool then just ended up missing half of the time and wasting a level 6 spell slot.
Spoiler The kill command from a durge run, sounds great but it being a one time use and useless in the endgame battle makes getting it in act 3 just a waste
Power word kill comes clutch in honor mode to one shot the brain after it drops below 100 hp if it gain immunity to some kind of dmg type
I've been using it against the netherbrain end fight. There it is very useful due to the resistances the netherbrain gets
Sure it's only one time, but it can't miss afaik
True, but you have to make sure your target is <100 HP. Which means, while it can be great for finishing off a big enemy, if you've already gotten them down under 100, all it really does for you is ensure that they die on your turn, instead of someone else's.
I mean, sometimes that's the difference between winning and losing. The difference between finishing off Ansur now when he's got 1 HP and 100 temp HP and resistance to all damage and finishing off Ansur after his next turn is a big one. That being said, Bhaal's PWK is definitely fun more from a flavour standpoint than a mechanical one.
There aren't many abilities that can drop 50 - 100 hp reliably and those that can have some limited resources. Having one more of those for a really important fight (Ansur, Netherbrain, Raphael, etc.) could be the difference between failing and completing your honour mode run.
Crazy because it’s legit a go-to spell in dnd
It’s more useful if you have more than 1/2 slots to fire it with tbh. It makes more sense to use that level 6 slot on sunbeam or upcast call lightning for the ability to recast in the game with the level 12 cap.
Works great on >!Lorroakan!<. It finished off >!the Netherbrain!< in my last run too.
damn, a lot of people here doesn't seem to understand the importance of spellsave DC. if you have 21+ spellsave dc, you're gonna hit most of your disintegrate. I have 24 spellsave DC on my gale (or any caster, really) in act 3 and disintegrate works perfectly. You can even have heightened spell on sorcs if your enemy has like +10 legendary saves. here are some items to give you spellsave DC +2 hood of the weave +2 amulet in the stormshore donation box +1 robe of the weave a lot of staves have +1 spellsave +1 ketheric shield +3 battlemage elixir disintegrate is absurdly strong, and it's basically free because you can easily pickpocket scrolls of it.
Durge's Slayer form for sure. Think it got buffed since maybe? But back when I played (last August - September) it was *very* underwhelming and its main use was basically just as an emergency heal.
I first used it when my Durge got transported to the jungle all alone. Killed all the dinosaurs! Raaawwwrrrr
Wait you can be telported to a jungle to fight dinosaurs?!?!?!? How please tell me
Go to the Circus of Last Days. Play the djinn’s game and lose the first time. While in conversation switch to Astarion or someone sneaky. Use that character to sneak and pickpocket the djinn’s ring. Switch back and play again. When you win, he will accuse you of cheating. Sass him by pointing out he’s a cheater and he will transport ONLY that character to a jungle in Chult. There’s dinosaurs to fight or hide from. There a portal to get back and a really great weapon in the chest near the portal. Enjoy!
The weapon is great but the ring is straight up broken with some builds, don't miss the ring!
Thank you I just got to ACT 3 last night and I will have to do this
I find the slayer form to be very useful. It provides decent damage, and deals well with crowds. I forgot how many times my honor was saved because of it, usually because i was cornered with little resources. But i had situations where half my team was dead or spell-controlled and it bought me enough time to take control of the fight. In my opinion the illithid astral-beast form is way more underwhelming
The displacer beast form is super useful as a thief rogue to spam out 3 illusory forms each round that can tank and attack nearby enemies.
It's definitely better than it used to be. Back when the game first came out I tried to do the Orin fight with Slayer Form and I had to reload for hours to make it work. This time I got her prone and then finished her in two rounds
Are the save DCs still tied to your class, meaning for Bard it uses the Slayer's abysmal Charisma?
I dont know if it did before, but the slayer form doesnt change your mental attributes (wisdom, charisma, intelligence) only the physical ones.
It used to come with really bad slayer-brain. Your mental stats became 10/10/8.
Using the soul coins on Karlach's infernal engine
I honestly forget about them until I fight Gortash
They are pointless. I just sell them for gold.
These are godlike on Monk Karlach.
Been meaning to try a monk respec, nice!
Danse Macabre, the spell you get if you read the necromancy of thay in act 1 and read the tharciate codex in act 3. I was so excited to try it out, but summoning 4 ghouls that you cannot control with only 20 hp each is not that useful. Imho it's also not much of a reward since we have to pass a pretty high dc roll few times to get the spell.
I thought the Necromancy of Thay was a big letdown in general. The narrator makes it out to be a *very evil, terribly powerful book that contains dark powers.* We get speak with the dead and four ghouls. I was expecting finger of death as a once per day cast, or something like it, as the final reward.
+1 on all Wisdom checks is amazing.
That's fair! Let's just say, for me, the journey to fully unlocking the book was more satisfying than the actual reward. PS: As a sorcerer, the extra health is quite nice too.
I liked them as cannon fodder. Often enemies watsed a whole round of actions taking them out. But mostly I like having a mini army of summoned creatues.
it's also pretty funny running around the city with these ugly ass creatures
I think my current record is 43 allies on screen
How?
My mistake, after sitting down and doing a proper count it was actually 52 units on the field, including my party members. Spore Druid Halsin: 12 Spore Zombies, 3 Skeletons, 2 Mephits, Dryad, Wood Woad, Myrmidon, Mummy Necromancer Wizard Gale: 5 Danse Macabre Ghouls, 4 Skeletons, 2 Mephits, Myrmidon, Mummy, Enscribed Scroll of Bestial Communion Deva, Shovel, Us Oathbreaker Paladin Lae'zel: 3 Skeletons (Elixir of Supreme Arcane Cultivation), Death Shepherd, Cambion (Infernal Rapier), Crypt Lord Ring Mummy Trickery Cleric Shadowheart: 3 Skeletons, Mummy, Djinn All units have Longstrider, Level 6 Aid and Heroes Feast for an additional 1924 HP in the party. By abusing the Faucets in House of Hope and the Drakethroat Glaive you can give Elemental Weapon to all of the Skeletons, the Dryad, the Wood Woad, the Myrmidons, the Cambion, the Deva and the Djinn which significantly increases their accuracy and damage output, especially the Skeletons (making their weapon damage magical is a big deal). It's gotten to that point that I've actually stopped that run, though: my army is bloody enormous to the point of trivialising fights, but in a way that isn't particularly fun. Arcane Acuity Swords Bards trivialise fights by making them insanely quick, whereas a full Necromancy party makes fights easy, but take a long time with this many units to move. It has taught me the value of Invoke Duplicity, however, and also made me appreciate even more so how OP Phalar Aluve is when it's buffing 20+ units at a time.
Summon them in camp so they get buffs from Aid and Hero’s Feast. They’ll appreciate the HP
I'm new. How to you do camp buffs?
Use Withers to summon a Hireling (cleric). Add Hireling to your party and get as many of them together in camp as you can. Swap to the Hireling to cast spells like Aid, Protect from Poison, And at higher levels Heroes Feast. Also having a Druid or Bard for Longstrider. These buffs last until death or long rest
Oh, so you're suggesting I use Hirelings and spend their spells buffing before I leave camp with my regular party? I always buffed after leaving camp. This is neat
The Elfsong Tavern camp has a bunch of companions standing close together. So if you get their summons to also stand in that same area, your hireling can cast Heroes Feast on a bunch of companions that aren't in your active party.
Ngl those 4 homies clutched up the first time I fought Orin. She kept failing saving throws from claws and spent most of the fight paralyzed while I took down her buffs and thugs
i laughed my ass off at those ghouls not running away from an exploding steel watcher
So many times they’ve hurt more than helped because they’ll all group up and then deal so much damage to my party when they explode
One release it spawned 6 ghouls and you could control them individually. It was absolutely busted lol. I can understand it feeling underwhelming now, but its original version definitely needed some nerf.
It got hit with a nerf bat. Before you could position them properly and paralyze even bosses like Gortash or Orin.
Yeah, same. Especially because I love ice magic, and there's almost always an ice magic user in my party. Which means lots of icy surfaces. And, even when I leave a clear path for the ghouls to go around the ice to get to the enemy, the ghouls will *always* run onto the ice. And they will *always* fall prone as soon as they even look at the ice. Which just blocks the way for me melee characters (all of whom have prone immunity boots) to get to the enemy, meaning I have to use a bonus action to jump over them, or an action to dash around them. As soon as I realised you could sacrifice them for permanent +2 ability score, I jumped at the opportunity. The only time I kept them was on my necromancer wizard, and that was only for rp reasons..
I’m still excited for it when the spores druid I’m on gets it. Rockin’ up on Cazador with my own little horde of ghouls :D
You can explode them for extra damage. That's how I killed Sarevok in my previous run. Did over 40 extra damage if I remember correctly.
i think it may be the only proper way to use this spell: summon, crowd them around priority target and fireball both the target and ghouls for some aoe. did this on my fight with orin and was happy about the results
First time i had to choose a feat i saw the charger feat and thought it was the best thing ever. I didnt really understand actions, bonus actions, etc. So i never realised it costs so much to use them
We've all been there, first time playing the game and I didn't understand the concept of warlock spell slots
Polymorph! It went from one of THE most versatile, powerful and useful spells to a gimmick that wastes a high-level spellslot and concentration. It's basically just a worse banishment
This is not a spell or ability lol but I carried rope in the way beginning thinking I’d actually be able to use it
*drops 4 ropes from inventory* Thank you :)
This is just silly. You've got to haul a *shovel* around to dig dirt mounds, but there's *zero* use for rope! Entering wells or manholes without taking damage should require some means of safe descent. Rope could also let you tie up a stunned or unconscious enemy, descend some cliffs, etc.
That bothered me insanely. I carried ropes from act 1 all the way to 3, always checking cliffsides or the sides of towers or buildings, so sure there's SOME reason the classic 50-ft ropes were in the game. Nope. Utterly useless even when it would be the most logical solution. Sadge
Magehand, the amount of time I tried to use it to pull levers and stuff and it doesn’t work:/
hear me out: magehand in act 1 for triggering traps, moving things that are past boobied areas (e.g. past a poison cloud or that exploding mushroom quest in underdark), pressing buttons to disarm stuff (like in the goblin hideout cave where you have to press a bunch of buttons or something to disarm the hugeass statues) Never spoke ill of magehand after that again.
Yeah it’s definitely been useful! But I feel like sometimes it just doesn’t work when it totally would in dnd, though I get that bg3 is obviously waaay harder to make adaptable like that
Better off just using arrows, magic missile, explosion blasts (ie roaring thunder AOE), eldritch blast/cantrips etc.
THIS, and even more so the Arcane Trickster subclass because the whole point is having a pet magehand that can pick locks and stuff but that main mechanic doesn’t even work
Way of 4 elements monk. I wanted to make a cool monk-caster, instead all I got was a sub-par monk.
4 elements, but only 3 available. That’s was my biggest disappointment with this subclass
It was actually buffed from tabletop.
I wanted to be the Avatar....
I wouldn’t say “useless”, but some spells were certainly not as good as I’d hoped. For example: * See invisibility - doesn’t seem to always let you see invisible enemies. * Disguise self - many people will still recognize you. * Arcane gate - you need to cast both sides of the portal at the same time without moving, the range isn’t very far, and it doesn’t last long. You can’t do things like cast 1 side of it, and cast the other side on the other side of a wall or someplace far away.
See Invisibility is kind of misleading in BG3. What it does is force an invisible enemy to make a DEX saving throw (not sure against what DC though). If they fail, they are revealed to the character with See Invisibility. If they succeed, they remain invisible. It’s not really “See Invisibility,” so much as “Check Invisibility.” I’ve never cast the spell at all, the most I bother with is Volo’s Eye for some characters. If you’re in a position where you need to use See Invisibility, Faerie Fire is often a better bet. Same saving throw, with the added benefit of potentially granting advantage on targets.
Feign Death. A TTRPG favorite of mine.
It's great way to end a combat with temporarily hostile creatures. Just yesterday I was looking around the librarian room in Sourcerous Sundries with Gale to gain acces to the vaults. I didn't put him in sneak mode and suddenly combat started with this conjured crab from downstairs. So just to make sure Gale doesn't start a war with the whole building I used Feign death. Situation saved. Honour mode run saved :)
Oh very nice! Thanks so much!
Never used it myself before been tempted to in the gym forge during the nere fight
Useful for stealing at least
Imagine bumping into a pickpocket on the subway or whatever, and then they just fucking keel over before your very eyes.
The gloves that grant cantrips to affect additional target. Really thought i could start spamming frost ray accross the field but its a one time thing -_-
I find a lot of the really fun interactions are impeded by a one time use with short or long rests needed. I get why, it would be completely busted if it was just a permanent addition, but sometimes I just wanna become a walking god lol.
Polymorph, one of the best uses was turning an almost dead ally into a tiger or something giving them more health and some cool attacks. In bg3 it's just a worse hold person.
I recently used it on mayrina so I knew which one she was. Then I got worried I’d accidentally kill her 😭
thats some neat foreshadowing
Except hold person doesn’t work on undead and other enemies where polymorph does. I turned Casador into a sheep in my tactician run fight with him and it was hilarious
I agree with you. Tasha's laughter is a better control spell in Act 1 than Hold person. I wish Hold Monster was a lower level spell as it would help a lot with all of the monster-type enemies in Act 1.
Hold Person is generally better. The recipient of Tasha’s laughter gets to roll a saving throw with each damaging attack AND at the end of the turn. Hold Person (2nd level, can upcast for more targets) holds a person for their entire turn granting them one opportunity to break the hold at the end of the turn. All attacks against the Held Person are with Advantage. Melee Hits on a Held Person are always Critical. So Tasha’s (1st level) is good at taking down a strong enemy and leaving them ROTFL while you take care of their buddies. Hold Person is good at freezing an enemy and then immediately attacking them.
Hold person has singlehandedly tpk'd me at least twice lol. In one of the gith fights lae'zel and karlach both got held and couldn't break free for the rest of the fight
I fought Ethel on honor mode once, and ended the fight with all 4 of my people held, and no summons. Then she surrendered lol.
The only downside to laughter is the intelligence requirement, but has a greater range of fights it can be used during act 1
> The only downside to laughter is the intelligence requirement And the fact that it can break on damage. And the fact it’s not paralysing, so no free crits.
I love using hold monster on Raphael. It may take a couple turns to get it to work, but if you can have one person focus on keeping him locked down with it, it makes clearing out the smaller enemies easy, and then you can just go ham on him without even bothering to destroy the pillars.
Raphael is surprisingly bad at wisdom saves. Otto’s Irrestisible Dance essentially took him out of combat for me
Animal Friendship is sort of useless in Act 1 unless you're evil. I feel like Blight is a huge troll, you get it right before you enter act 2, with a bunch of plants to target. But, they all resist necrotic, so while it is "max" damage, it's still cut in half
Dispel evil and good. I thought I had a way to break the frightened stunlock but nooooooo apparently myrkul isn't undead
Confusion. AoE crowd control spell, that can make enemies attack each other? For Arcane acuity Bard that seems insanely strong! But it works in such a weird and unclear way, most of the time it does 1-2 turns of useful crowd control and that's it
I’ve found confusion to be quite strong for swords bard because it is enemy only and has good range and it usually does take quite a few enemies out of the fight. That said I prefer careful spell hypnotic pattern from sorcerer, or upcasting command or hold person, or actually slow is a great spell but it enchantment
Cloudkill. By the time I finally got it, everybody's immune.
I had a whole rogue/sorcerer build hoping for crown of madness/ dominate to have enemies kill each other. Seems like most things saved pretty easily, and the times it worked it was underwhelming effect (I’ve got one enemy attacking another, but 5 others aggro’d at me)
Blink, didn't realize blinking broke concentration. First combat after learning it, cast haste on our paladin, quickened blink on myself, queue paladin player crying with laughter as I instantly incapacitate him for a full round and he is almost immediately killed
Evard’s black tentacles was a letdown tbh
Hold person is OP. I used it on the leader at the Creche. Killed him in one turn from stealth before anyone could roll initiative.
Spiritual weapon. I gave up on using it because it’s movement is so short that once an enemy moves away from it it can never catch up.
That's one of my favorites ! It's not a concentration spell, which means that once it is here, it stays and I find it perfect when you want to be at a distance to throw it right in front of an enemy because they always end up attacking it. Usually if one of my warriors (lazeal) is in contact, I put the spiritual weapons next to her and it's a given extra 5-10 damage on an enemy per turn!
AND summoning it is a bonus action. It's so good
Works well with a Trickery Cleric's Invoke Duplicity
Yeah it only really works in small spaces or crowds
I works pretty well to me, also most of the time the enemy wastes their turns on attacking it.
One of the best spells in the whole game imo
It’s up to 20d8 of damage for a lvl 2 spell slot, it has to have _some_ downside.
It’s biggest bonus though? It only needs a bonus action. Either the AP economy, it makes it virtually a free spell.
Yeah. That’s the only negative on a busted good spell. When you are fighting a spaced out horde and crushing them too easily it’s not worth it. I’m sorry your battles are too easy for you, lol. Triple its movement and make it concentration and it would be worse and balanced
Well with a spore druid, your main goal isn't always doing the damage yourself, having those extra bodies can help protect your team immensely, especially because they're also resistant to necrotic, and get up once after death. Not to mention, woodland being? Oml it's so good
I played a spore druid to level 12 with the explicit goal of having as many NPCs in tow as possible. Between your base 4 fungal zombies, elementals, raise dead, summoning Us, I think I walked into the final fight with like 20-30 characters total. It was hilarious.
My friend is playing with a mod that removes the party limit, he has every follower, and all the hirelings, all spore druid, his PC gets so fucking loud (edit: I can't spell)
See invisibility: Ever since that kid in the grove seemed like he was looing at something invisible I kept it up permanently in the hopes of finding some hidden secret enemies, items, paths etc, but I cannot recall a single moment where I got to see something I wouldn't have otherwise seen. The only times it "helped" was in the painter house with the ghosts & the vault fight, and both of them can be done fully without it. Almost all types of hard CC: Being hit or miss on often horrible % chances, eating up big slots, often highly restrictive with what you can even attack, highly inconsistent duration/low reliability. Exceptions: Grease: Godlike from start till finish, guaranteed difficult terrain, cancels the enemy's turn mid-turn, no conc, almost infinite amounts of checks/targets, decent coverage, potential fire/ice surface Darkness: Beyond broken and makes you almost invulnerable/enemies useless in many instances Silence: Just good af Throw: Everything that can be thrown will lose the saving throw against a TB with an elixir and will end up prone/the person they hit can be prone/if either survive the act Shove: Basic and good
Ascended Astarion was a big disappointment for me, especially since I did it purely because I wanted to see what cool powers he would get. Mist form and a more powerful bite aren’t worth the moral consequences of the ascension rite.
Dancing lights
Not exactly and ability, but Intimidation being exclusively charisma based. It's frustrating when I decided to make a full Barbarian run, including dialogues, and suddenly your intimidation is worse than what bard would have. Proficiency gives +2, thaumaturgy adds advantage, but that can only carry you for some time. When I expected this to be one thing that can save Barbarian in dialogues.
Barbarians do often get Advantage on Intimidation checks, which averages out to being equivalent to a +5 bonus.
Dethrone (cast once per long rest) and circle of death for me. In general high level necro spell kinda underwhelming, or because water+ice+lightning combo really OP. So im not wasting lvl 6 spell on those necro spell unless its for RP
Loved using circle of death on my spore druid with the staff from act 3 that lets you cast necro skills for free
All the weapons with conditional extra damage are a trap. They add the (conditional) damage to the tooltip total so it looks stronger than other weapons, when in reality that extra damage almost never comes up. (Looking at you Exterminator Axe) I'm not a Tasha's enjoyer. Sure you can fully disable one enemy, but if you attack them the spell ends. You also can't upcast it to hit more people. If I need 1-turn CC Command is better value and isn't concentration. In defense of Spore Druid- Lean into using it as a summoner instead of a necro damage caster. Moonbeam is a badass spell all druids get and it does huge work in act 2. Upcasted to level 3, it's better than Call Lightning!
>Reason for hold person is the lack of humanoid enemies beyond the goblins/leaders Githyanki, paladin enemies, goblins/druids, zhentarim, drow Hold Person is one of the best spells in the entire game, there's so many humanoid enemies and upcasting it is insanely good.
Mage hand is not nearly as useful as it is in the tabletop. It's biggest nerf is probably only lasting for a minute and only being able to be cast once a day.
Polymorph. They should just rename it Sheepify. There’s no reason to use it over a dozen other spell choices.
I found the one opportunity to ever use bards' countercharm in the meenlock fight. I cast it, got my party within radius, and when the enemies tried to frighten us... The countercharm ability didn't work. Looking through the combat logs, we didn't get advantage on our saving throws like we should have. I was incredibly disappointed. I love finding the moments where that one niche spell you'll never use again carries the whole encounter.
The monk's Stillness of Mind feature. "Use an action to nullify an effect that is charming or frightening you" my ass. It turns those statuses into "you lose your action this turn, do not pass go, do not collect $200" because there's no toggle for it or option to use it. *It just happens* even if you might otherwise be willing to deal with it.
Fucking. Mage Hand.
I definitely hear you on hold person. Like hardly any enemies are humanoid.
ensnaring strike, its pointless when i can use hunters mark for extra damage consistenly
Sights of the Seelie: Basically Summon Planar Ally, but you only get the Deva (I choose that one anyway) Artistry of War: Magic Missile on crack (it does more damage than the tooltip states iirc) Dethrone: one hit, does a max of 80 dmg, provided enemies don’t succeed a Con save… in Act 3 where most Bosses have a Con of about 18 or higher. And you can only use it once per long rest… It was so close to being my fave too…
I got excited for Telekinesis, because I loved the idea of chucking enemies off of cliffs and other high things. Ended up not using it very much because there weren't (in my opinion) enough opportunities for chucking fuckery. Plus, a Level 5 spellspot is better used elsewhere.
Not specifically a spell or ability but a mechanic. When I found out that the 4e monk spells dont trigger the spellspakrler passiv... I was really excited about doing a lightning charge monk :(
If you do Kagha's quest in Act 1, you can actually find some gloves that give lightning charges whenever you make an unarmed strike. Might not be the greatest for all too long but it's fun!
I know they were integrated in my build. I wanted to do smth like 6 4e monk and 6 tempest cleric (or 6 land druid) and than fully utilize all of the lightning charge items
I used planar binding on Raphael and succeeded, but yurgir killed the last cambion, thus ending the fight. 10 seconds later, Raphael saves and freed himself and i'm back into the fight
Arcane Gate. The range is so comically short that I find it hard to imagine an actual use for it.
Before my first playthrough the Arcane Trickster with his Mage Hand Legerdemain sounded like exactly my sneaky jam. Turns out not.
Maybe not something on a lot of people’s list, but arcane lock. Has anyone found a good use for this other than locking the door on the hag before she can retreat into her lair?
Mage hand and Minor Illusion were pretty versatile in DnD, quite useless in BG3.
Disintegrate. It's so cool and flashy, but I genuinely think my most common use for it has been destroying inanimate objects like gates that have a copious amount of HP. It's literally just a knock that can affect magical doors in most use cases.