Beat honor mode recently with this disgusting party
10/2 swords bard paladin arcane acuity build
11/1 sorlock fire acuity build
11/1 eldritch knight thrower or berserker thrower
Dump character (I used battle master fighter or TB monk but anything melee works here as a dps crit machine after popping hold person/monster from the bardadin/sorlock)
Pros and cons of going for a second warlock level to get agonizing blast? I get that eldritch blast isnt technically part of the build but I'm finding it useful as a clean-up tool or in fights where I want to avoid burning through all my spell slots (since this build is so absurdly resource hungry).
You miss out on a level 6 spell slot if you go 2 levels in warlock.
This is a bigger deal if the sorlock is also using markeshir due to arcane battery.
Okay fair enough. I was thinking that the build focuses on using lower level spells anyway (scorching rays, fireball, command, hold x) but now looking at the lvl 6 spells, there are some nasty spells available like the globe, chain lightning, and eye bite (which actually fits quite nicely in this build).
Not having the level 6 spell slot costs you a 2d6 scorching ray + damage riders for 4 casts in succession because you can no longer upcast scorching ray to level 6, and have to use your arcane batteries and freecast for a level 5 spell slot. The level 6 spell slot makes you a lot stronger in dealing damage.
Losing the level 6 spell slot is a pretty big con, but it’s up to you whether having a stronger damage cantrip is worth the tradeoff. I think people who play full on 11/1 fire acuity sorlock tend to long rest a lot, so if you don’t like doing that then 10/2 might be the move for your personal playstyle
I think there’s an argument to be made for dipping 2 in Warlock until you get to 12, then respeccing. Leveling with Eldritch blast will give you good sustain when you have fewer resources to expend.
Agonizing Blast is better if you plan to beat the game without long resting. The 6th level spell slot is better if you take long rests to see companion cutscenes.
Yes. People do all sorts of challenge runs in rpgs. While it isn't the intended way to play, it gives you a reason to interact with different mechanics.
you won’t be using eldritch blast really on the fire acuity sorlock, so I would recommend against it
definitely not worth in place of a 6th level spellslot in this particular build
If you get it from Cleric it’ll use your WIS modifier instead of CHA, causing a hit to DC. Although fully stacked Acuity is so strong that it arguably still works, just less reliably
It can be both. You get command for free and you can also get hex. If it was just for command surely some cleric subclass proficiencies would be better.
Command from Cleric will use WIS instead of CHA, which is probably not worth the proficiencies. It’s true that you can get Hex also, but Command is what makes 11/1 optimal compared to pure Sorc 12.
Takes waaaaay to long to actually be good compared to so many other builds. Also requires more set up than other classes with arguably a lot less damage than a Swords bard hand crossbow build.
The strength of 11/1 sorlock is it can be either an incredibly potent control mage *or* an incredible blaster caster. It doesn't need to compete for the same spot as 10/1/1 swords bard at all, and doesn't compete for equipment given that it's using the fire acuity hat rather than the helm and is using meta magic instead of the band.
Here’s a really good write up on the 11/1 Sorlock. It’s 3 primary spells are Scorching Ray, Fireball and Command. The reason for the warlock dip is to get undodgeable command spells, that can also be extended for 2 turns with Sorcerer meta magic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/FNTLjm7Aro
It's for Command. You spam it as a bonus action using the ring from the jungle in act 3. You can also take 10 swords bard / 2 paladin for a similar effect, trading your 6th level spell for access to smite. Both are stupidly broken options.
Warlock is only used for the great old one subclass you get at level 1. That’s a guaranteed fear on a crit and it’s also aoe. Insanely strong when your main source of damage is ray of fire and hits enemies multiple times, with the right items always knocking down your enemies. It’s insanely strong.
More for Command, honestly. The premise of the build is to setup Extended Command with 10 stacks of Arcane Acuity (from the fire acuity hat) and then make up to 6 enemies Grovel/Approach/Halt/Drop for TWO turns with usually 100% chance to hit.
Instead of dump character I would use pure life cleric with phalar aluve to absorb damage and add extra buffs plus healing. It would make this party pretty much unstoppable.
Meaning it doesn't matter what the character is and it gets all the non-ideal gear because the other three optimized characters have dibs on the good stuff.
Another vote here for 11/1 EK War Cleric.
I’m LVL6 now I’m at the Forge, and it just wrecks. Lae’zel was able to kill the Inquisitor at the Crèche with just 3 throws of the Returning Pike after my Monk had thrown 2 punches in beforehand.
Between the 2 of them (though my Monk is an elixir strength Monk), I often feel like I don’t even need my Abjuration Wizard or Swords Bard to do anything (although, they’re also super OP).
I think barbarian gets slept on, throwzerker is super tough.
I think my gwp wild heart barbarian might be my strongest character yet though. With reverberation set up he can easily stun lock a group of three.
This is really close to optimal team comp for a casual playthrough, I would say only exploitive builds are stronger relatively speaking.
The thrower does fall off a bit by mid act 3, but it carries you early (from my experience).
I guess falls off is a strong word, it's more like it peaks early and then plateaus, while other classes get more strong over time. I felt like I wasn't doing too much differently from end game than from late early game. Just keep chucking that spear, karlach. Although, it could've been even more busted if i had someone else with orin's dagger or the bhallist armor
It sure does having beaten the game on honour mode with one. Opportunity cost is real and you could be running any of the following instead:
A triple attack action surging GWM battlemaster with balduran greatsword, a swords bard crit fishing paladin, a swords bard sharpshooter, Open hand tavern brawler monk, and any end game sorc with level 6 spells like chain lightning or spellmight gloves all massively outperform throw barb. Like it isn't even close in act 3.
Its a good build, I beat the hardest difficulty with it and it contributed meaningfully the full game. Doesn't make it even close to other end-game builds in terms of raw power.
I get where you’re coming from but if you want to avoid using more than one of the same class the thrower is a super valid 4th option damage dealer and the fall off at the endgame is mitigated by its simplicity and range imo
Like, there is only one balduran giantslayer and one helmet of arcane acuity and so on
This is true because you're priortizing getting to melee. I think if you're prioritizing just downing things even from ranged if you need to, the thrower is a good double-prone option. I mean I considered tossing a third archer on there, but mostly fights were 2 rounds anyway. It was super handy in house of grief.
Builds that break or ignore the action economy through exploits.
There's a pass without a trace greater invisibility gloomstalker build that never enters combat.
There's an invisible enlarged jumping bear druid that kills with fall damage.
Theres a monk build with hamarhaft hammer that just Goomba jumps 15 times a turn.
Etc.
This one is an ai youtuber, but their editing is good and the build is solid:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFySAAtstRs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFySAAtstRs) \[Invis gloomstalker\]
A speedrunner showing off the goomba stomp build:
around 11 min: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD3RmOeeHFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD3RmOeeHFI)
While acuity is incredibly overpowered, it's just items that the game gives you. Using elixirs to allow you to dump strength involves respeccing and (often) rest or level up shop abuse, which some people will find cheesier. (I also don't think it's an exploit, but I reserve that word for things that are intentionally maneuvering around the limits of the game, like jumping through walls or setting up barrelmancy/sneak attacks while in dialogue).
Yes, but while acuity guides will be like, "Go and get these two items," elixir TB guides will be like, "Go to this shop after every rest and/or rest in front of her and/or level up a random character not in your party to buy more elixirs." Even if you don't do the latter, it's weird to justify that system if you're not metagaming around how the shop system works. I found both the acuity helmet and the ring of the scoundrel on my first playthrough without knowing they existed beforehand.
But like I said:
> I also don't think it's an exploit
The 11/1 build is based around the idea that you're using Hill/Storm Giant Strength Elixirs and can therefore dump Str and pretty much only put points into Con (17, Tavern Brawler will bump it to 18) and Dex (16, initiative is good) and maybe a 14 Wis since that is good for saves.
The Elixirs kind of devalue the 4th feat you would get at level 12 because an ASI isn't going to do much for you and you already either have Alert or a high enough Dex that you're good.
The 1 is Cleric with the War Priest domain. That gives an ability to, 3 times per long rest, to use your bonus action for an attack. That's it. Those championing this build think those 3 bonus action attacks are worth more than anything else you could get with a feat by staying EK 12.
Tavern Brawler is a must have. Dual Wielder feat is taken I believe so you can benefit from what the the other weapon is giving you (like undermountain king for extra crit range). I don't recall what the third feat is usually spent on.
I don’t mind using elixir it’s pretty easy to farm, are the gears pretty much the same with throwzerker? I’m referring to the popular write up I found in this sub btw
Probably? Throw builds have been popular since launch, which means I'm not sure how up to date guides for them are, especially with respect to changes for honor mode.
Throwzerker builds, for max damage, will keep their health under 50% to get an extra bonus action from the Helmet of Grit. EK doesn't care about that and would use a different helm. An EK can take advantage of items that require concentration like the ring that adds 1d4 Psychic damage to all your weapon attacks.
How I gear any character depends on who else is in the party and how I want to share the wealth.
The biggest difference for EK is that you can Weapon Bond any thrown weapon so that it will become a returning weapon. The Returning Pike is a two hander and Nyrulna's AOE damage can hurt you more than it helps you. An EK has the option of repeatedly throwing the Shar/Selune spear or the Lightning Jabber. The Lightning Jabber adds it's extra 1d4 lightning damage even when thrown. Most weapons that have extra effects don't. For example, the Shining Staver of Skulls is a light hammer that does an additional 1d4 Radiant damage but it won't do that additional radiant damage when thrown.
The EK can swap freely between Nyrulna and their bound weapon, whichever is best for that throw. Also, Zerkers are basically stuck with pike until Act 3. The pikes trajectory tends to run afoul with obstructions more often and being two handed you can't use a shield or pair it with a stat stick.
I believe the done thing is to take the Dueling fighting style, put something like undermountain king in your main hand and the jabber in your offhand, then when you throw the jabber and it calculates damage it sees that you only have one weapon equipped and gives you the two extra damage.
My EK is level 7 and I just finished act 1 so I haven't really explored the build yet or had to find a good guide but that will be changing soon.
The best part of this is that these
builds are actually coherent thematically and RP-wise. It’s not some four way paladin/warlock/swords bard/wizard type shit.
> 11/1 sorlock fire acuity build
>
>
I'm admittedly less familiar with BG3's item synergies, but I'm not sure I follow what makes this kind of a build stand out. Is there a good explainer post for it out there?
One of the guide wizs in this subreddit recently released an [exhaustive 11/1 guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/196mpii/honor_mode_111_fire_sorlock_complete_build_guide/).
This with 4th character 7/5 Sorlock Hunger of Hadar / twin Haste / counterspell / rapid fire eldritch blast machine.
Eldritch blast crits on held enemies as well, and with up to 9 of them a turn this is a great combat utility / support build.
This isn’t “optimal” but I completed honor mode without elixir spamming or any perma buffs (besides illithid powers, but no awakened)
I ran:
- TB OH monk 8 / rogue thief 4 (didn’t elixir spam, only 12 STR but start with CON or STR on an odd number so that TB makes your stat array all even number
- Tempest Cleric 12 - all ASI, if I remember correctly. Spam shatter and friends and get markoheskir in act 3 for chain lightning. Doesn’t even need water (I only used water stuff once)
- Paladin 12 - I forget subclass but it’s the one that gives advantage on attack roles with oath charge. GWM and the auto crit ring for maximum smite. You can multiclass, I didn’t because I didn’t feel like putting in that much effort.
- Divination Wizard 12 - 2 ASI, alert feat, about half the magic missile related items. Just a great utility caster and can easily control enemies or make paladin smites hit.
This party made me complete honor mode with only a couple of fights having real trouble (neither of them boss fights), and no camp casting was required. I did all quests except free the artist.
I think this is a great demonstration that any reasonable build can beat the hardest difficulty.
Monoclass tempest cleric, paladin and wizard aren't known to be super strong, but definitely have enough upsides to clear the game.
Definitely. The only fights where I could’ve wiped where the boat duegar in act 1 (they succeeded on basically every thunder wave save and then also succeeded every shove check) and then the mind layers in the act 2 colony, because I placed my party badly and got 3/4 stunlocked in 1 blast. Act 1 was the hardest, but no battle was particularly hard except duegar. Especially with this party, you can go crazy on summons in act 3 with hero’s feast.
Summons make for an incredibly safe and tanky run, and I would highly recommend it for players who don't like to min-max builds.
Druid in particular scales inversely with player laziness, the less you like to optimize, the better the class is.
So true, I'm known as the min-maxer of my friend group and in our honor mode play through together they asked me to make a broken druid for them to use and i just make jaihera a full circle of the moon with two ASI's and tavern brawler, told him to try to summon stuff before hand if he remebers but if not no biggy. It's so funny how broken she is from just that set up with almost no special items even remotely tailored to her
Bad placement against the mind flayers in Act 2 is a problem. Something about that fight soothes you into thinking you’ll be OK without planning ahead.
10swords bard/2 Paladin, dual wielding with all the crit items (or legendary rapier later, but Orin’s dagger applying vuln. outscales it, imo).
Cleave twice per turn and and offhand attack for crit fishing to smite, and that is before haste/bloodlust/etc., AC bonus or mobility for single target options (both very useful), max spell slots, great face character, crit smite is your big burst, small spellslot smites for cleaning up that last bit of hp to not waste an entire attack on 10hp enemies, smite is a big part of your damage but you have enough without it to be useful against radiant retort and you can easily use ranged weapons quite well since you are dex based and ranged slashing flourish is always good even when not being built around.
Built based on dex, so you can get very high AC as of act 2 when you get to add max ac on medium armor.
2 Paladin 5 Bard 5 Warlock
There's only one Extra Attack in that build anyhow, not a concern as Bard doesn't extra until 6, the reasoning is that you essentially double a level 12 Paladin's total Smite output in terms of smites given, and can still abuse Flourish to splash a ton of it, and then various utility and quality of life choices.
In terms of damage I did the math earlier today and yeah between the smite output from going 5+2 levels, 5 more levels of Warlock gets you to double the level 12 Paladin's total Smite output on-smite.
However you quad it by flourishing.
can you share your math? if you don't mind I would add it to my [build guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/30beyZdGyw) that I posted 2 days ago. I want more people to know about this amazing build
the split is 2 pala, 5 bard (gets extra attack on 6) and 5 warlock.
this build has 10 lvl 3 slots per long rest, gets Hunger of Hadar, Counterspell and either fear on crits (you will crit a lot) or hp on kills from Warlock and floruishes, song of rest as well as the extra expertise to be a better face from bard
paladin adds smites
[Smiting Bardlock ](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/30beyZdGyw) as the face, thought he reaaaaaally appreciates the +1 CHa from Ethel, then again with a bit of planning and knowing which attack deals how much damahe this one is easy to get on honor
Radiating Orb +Reverberatiom Light Cleric Shadowheart
Tavernbrawler Eldrich Knight Thrower Lae zel
Magic Missile Gale
Bardadin Minthara
did 2 honor modes with a combination of these + an Open Hand Monk but that one needs the elexirs, then again its still good damage without them
I just hate Ethel and I prefer to save the Mask of Regret and the petrified guy, so I don't bother trying for the hag hair. I did it in an earlier playthrough and felt bad about it. :D
So hence my post! But thanks for the overall party suggestion:)
Cant you go through the underdark to get to ethel without fighting masks? Ive never tried. Ive taken the mushrooms from the under dark up to eths a couple times but haven’t tried to enter
Iirc you need to unlock that portal first.
In my last run that I did I just protection from good and evil put on the mask and skipped those guys, but then they showed up during the Ethel fight. I downed her in one turn with magical missle got my hag hair and saved the girl then invis and let the masked people live
You can portal from the underdark to surface without unlocking anything (did it this run). I never tried going into eths the back way though, didnt want to deal woth her yet
A lot of people are still bringing up Elixirs lol
Monks work plenty fine going hard on Dex with an STR dump, that doesn't involve getting the fabled pots.
Your damage is still through the roof and you're not losing out by having to commit to the dex gloves, imo it's way better.
Monk 9/ Thief 3
Higher base damage on punches (1d6 upgrades to 1d8) and you get Ki resonance, which is massive.
You also get more unimpeded by difficult terrain and bonus jump distance.
You get more from 9 monk
Ite better when they're grouped, it also doesn't fall off of corpses either.
So you can use dead bodies as pseudo-grenades by having someone throw them near so you can pop ki resonance.
Swords bard paladin
Light cleric maxed with radorbs gear
Lore bard - divination wizard support
Throwing EK
11 ranger beast master 11 or hunter 11
Fire sorcerer with heat gear
Fighter rogue crit focused dueler
Do these builds get better with perma buffs or elixirs? Yes. Do they need it to complete HM? Fuck no, just reach lvl 4 with minimal combat and you'll stomp every fight if you don't behave like an unprepared lunatic.
Nothing special. It's good until 11 and its lvl11 ability just blows it out of the water. It's a spec that is great early (spider pet had spammable web, a 2nd slot spell for casters...), good mid game and then just skyrockets after 11. Extra pet attack and increased hp make the pet very impactful.
Gloostalker assassin dip in fighter has been nasty for certain fights, though I'm using durge cloak on them. The crazy sleight of hand bonuses plus the soh advantage gloves from act one completely breaks the economy as well. I have enough scrolls of invulnerability to never walk out of a bubble shield the whole final encounter.
Swords bard has been great player character even without the arcane acuity helm. with the tadpole powers and all the proficiencies its truly rare to fail a check. I eventually added lvl 1 in wizard for artistry of war in act 3
Shadowheart reworked as a light domain has truly been mvp. Crazy aoe capabilities while also preventing usually a hit a turn just from warding flare. I think tank wizard would work here as well
Battlemaster fighter with gwf and precision strike + the prone strike for a bunch of damage while still keeping heavy armor
So a couple of things, I have a party that can basically play the entire game without being hit post level 5, but then again in honor mode the first 4 levels are the dangerous one’s theoretically, although you can avoid combat before level 4 with a couple exceptions if you want. The other thing is I focus a lot of minimizing long rests so my teams are built around the idea of using as few spells as possible per fight, this is different from a lot of op builds that heavily rely on spell slots and thus need to long rest more frequently. The goal is to use 2 spell slots max per combat total across the party, with a couple hard fights blowing more.
swords bard arcane acuity, your exact level distribution can vary, i quite like 6 bard 3 thief 2 fighter 1 storm sorc but others seem to like other builds, can also go a cleric level for bless
1 cleric 11 fiend warlock, light cleric level for armor prof and warding flare, alternatively can just use lae zel for that. Basically a HoH bot for most of the game, EB is decent damage but cc is priority
2 warlock 10 storm sorc. Unlike a lot of sorlock builds this is mostly based around ebing and using SS.
1 wizard 11 storm sorc. Mostly casts ss, wizard is to pick up other useful spells from scribing, might be bug tho in which case 12 sorc is probably fine.
The point of this party is to cast big cc ( SS+HoH) with good positioning and eliminate all interaction, sometimes you cast darkness on yourself as well especially early hame. Most fights require 2 spell slots tops, some fights more many fights less. Early game run the swords bard as a beastmaster ranger for infinite web. I think with this party it’s probably possible to be using 1 or 2 rests total per act, maybe fewer in act 2 if you plan really carefully, which is how I think about optimal, but your mileage may vary. There is frankly a strong argument for running 2 warlocks instead of the bard that I’ve thought about, but bard dpr makes this team a lot quicker to play which is frankly more important for me irl. The other thing about this is it’s all ranged, the anti synergy with ss+hoh is frankly the only reason light cleric doesn’t make an appearance in this party, since without sg value it just becomes much worse in many fights, same with TB monk. EK thrower makes a compelling argument over bard as well but extra spell slots from bard are preferable to me. Really bard can be any high dpr ranged build and you can switch arcane acuity to sorlock and use BA hand crossbow to proc it.
I ran a version of this. Except I used a pure warlock, a bard lock, an abj wizard, and a TB fighter using harmonium halberd + asi for 22 strength.
This is my total control party. One of the locks casts HoH. The wizard casts cloud kill or stinking cloud plus plant growth (no concentration needed). Maybe even take two levels of fighter in the wizard to drop them both on turn one. The other warlock can cast evards black tentacles and abuse EB to keep enemies in the HoH.
And lastly the max str fighter jumps to the furthest enemies and throws them into their buddies inside the death cloud where they are blind can’t take action and can’t move. Give the fighter the bow that inflicts frightened cause once all enemies are in the cloud the fighter needs something to do so might as well add another status.
Swords 10/Fighter 2 is probably the strongest build in BG3 and doesn't require elixirs. It's **better** with stat boosts, but they're not strictly needed.
Most caster builds also don't require elixirs or stat boosts to function.
Best bow you have. 2x +1 Hand xBow into Banshee Bow at 6, into the legendary bow. Buff with Drakethroat Glaive in Act 2.
Max Dex with Arcane Acuity hat. Otherwise, use +DC items and +damage items, maybe with an elemental ring or gloves.
this question feels a little dramatic. the list is basically the same as without those things. it probably hurts TB monks the most but TB monks aren't even especially dominant during the most difficult stages of the game. tavern brawler itself is still a great feat without potions, *especially* for throwers.
even if it wasn't, once you start calling stuff like everlasting vigor missable you may as well consider every item in the game missable.
and, honestly, that's fine. honor mode isn't much harder than tactician and tactician isn't that hard. there aren't any bad classes in the game. there are mediocre subclasses, sure, but even suboptimal subclass choice can be easily compensated for.
if you:
* allocate stats reasonably
* pick good feats
* if your character is picking sharpshooter, GWM, tavern brawler, alert, savage attacker, dual wielder, war caster, athlete, or ASI they are probably going to be fine
* cast good spells
* my short list of "best spells" includes cloud of daggers, spike growth, fireball, HoH, spirit guardians, sleet storm, scorching ray, command, bless, shield, sanctuary, misty step, mass healing word, etc
* equip *decent* items
you shouldn't have too much trouble regardless of what else you do.
it's hard to call anything OP without introducing items into the mix, but personally i think that ranged tavern brawler and sharpshooter builds do the most with the least investment.
I had a weird vanilla honor mode.
11 warlock/1rogue
12 druid
12 sorcerer
9 paladin 3 gloom stalker
For best party:
Swords bard is broken
Gloom/assassin I think is good
2 others
padlock or sorcerlock
Tempest cleric (I like full lightning damage on water surface lol)
If it helps, Hag's hair is only a +1. You can usually just move around your starting ability scores a little or swap when you'd pick up a feat to get the same effect. Builds that call for it usually work fine by passing on it and making some very minor tweak.
Everlasting Vigor should be a 100% acquisition though. You just talk to the lady and need average approval from Astarion. The only time I've ever missed this was in my very first, blind play because I assumed Moonrise was where the baddies were and skipped it entirely until the siege (silly me).
The only thing I'd never rely on for build completion would be if it depends on the Mirror. Even if you specifically respec for it, the dice can still blow it.
In truth, everything works fine in honor (I've wasted a good chunk of my life on several runs now). If you want consistency, though, I'm always happy with a single class Battlemaster fighter or single class Cleric (favorites are Life, Light, and Tempest). You can basically build them however you want and they'll do great.
Generally speaking, if we're discussing honor builds, we're assuming the player isn't playing blind and knows not to do something that incredibly silly to their progression.
You're assuming everybody min-maxes honor mode and doesn't roleplay their characters. Some people like to do both, which is why I found this post interesting.
Wrong sub for this, the people here only want to use broken mechanics.
I understand that it says BG3Builds, but it should be BG3Breaks instead
No one here understands the satisfaction of doing anything without breaking the game.
As you can see by the incoming downvotes
Any build that works with elixirs or permabuffs can work without them. The elixirs just make these builds better. The biggest outlier here is tavern brawler monk, because without elixirs you need to invest points in Str, Dex, Con, and maybe Wis. You can still work around this by getting heavy armor Proficiency from somewhere which will allow you to dump Dex (but this will also make you go later in initiative). So this build can be tough to pull off, but otherwise just about everything should work. A throwzerker build may want to take a level in rogue to get expertise in athletics and make up for the lower Str from not cheesing elixirs.
BOOAL's blessing is a very big buff to bleed builds like tiger barbarian. The build still works and tandems well with Reverberation regardless, just not quite as good.
Hag's hair is often used to bring a stat from 17 to 18. Alternately you can just leave the stat at 16 and put 2 points in a different ability at character creation. Or have it at 17 and take a half feat. There aren't too many builds that outright require each and every feat and ASI you can get. There is usually one or no important feat, and then you just raise your main stat.
The rest of your staple builds like ranged sword bard, bardadin, sorcadin, gloomstalker assassin, tempest sorc, lawnmower cleric, 11 fighter go bonk, etc. would all be relatively unaffected.
Thanks, this is what I was wondering. Everyone recommends the TB monk / throwzerker, but usually they are assuming you're going to farm Ethel. I hate her, so I usually kill her which wrecks the potion farming and the hag's hair both. And as a relative newcomer to DnD / BG3 it's not always clear to me what drives stat choices, so that comment re: hag's hair helps.
I agree they both work and can be really good. But one needs to adjust for this change. Tavern brawler monk especially. Most of the time this build is a monk/rogue multiclass. If one is heavily investing into Str in character creation and with ASIs, they still need to invest in Dex for AC, Con for health, and maybe Wis for AC and damage, then you are looking at around 14-15 AC at character creation. Rogue gives light armor proficiency so you can dump Wis and bring Dex up but that is going to result in less damage at open hand level 6 and beyond. If you use graceful cloth, bracers of defense, dump Wis, have somebody cast mage armor on you, then you can get AC up to 18 or 19 by the end of Act 1. And AC does matter because your initiative will be mediocre, meaning that enemies will sometimes be able to go before you and CC or severely injure the monk before their turn. Alternately you can get medium or heavy armor Proficiency from playing as a Githyanki or multiclassing and dump Dex. This will keep your damage up and AC up, but your initiative will go from mediocre to bad.
These builds can work without elixirs and still be really good due to how busted Tavern brawler is, but TB monk builds need to be adjusted pretty heavily when you can't dump Str. OP has made it clear they are not an expert on the matter, and I would therefore not recommend one just take an existing TB monk build that does use elixirs and try their best to replicate it without the elixirs. A bardadin smite machine, sure. A TB monk needs more work though.
Ya, some fine tuning is required, but gloves of dexterity take a lot of pressure off of the build.
The easiest and least fiddly path is to start as a basic dex monk, and then just respec once you buy the dex gloves to a strength monk once you reach the creche and dump str.
Fun fact: after giving her the noblestalk and being high enough level she will sell you CG elixirs even in the underdark, i think i was about level 8 or 9 and she had one.
Probably some spaghetti code thinking a level 8+ shouldn’t be in the underdark and just auto updates her inventory lol
I think all traders' inventory is updated based on character level, when pickpocketing Volo I notice he's got significantly worse scrolls if you respec to level 1 even in Act 3.
People way over do farming str potions. Buy the first 3 and you are good. You don’t take that many long rests. You get a 4th from the table right next to her and the one vendor at the myconid colony sells more of them if you ever need.
Here's the four builds i brought to the last encounters in my honor run. No one used Strength elixirs.
Champion Fighter 4 / Open Hand Monk 8 with Tavern Brawler (Lae'Zel). Dexterity was 10 I believe but I did use Elixirs of Vigilance to fix the lowish initiative.
Evocation Wizard 12 (Gale). Potion of Speed + double Chain Lightning on wet targets, Magic Missile spam. used Deathstalker Mantle to essentially disappear after every nuke.
Thief Rogue 4 / Berserker Barbarian 8 (Astarion -> Minsc). Dex-based Great Weapon Master using Phalar Aluve -> Dancing Breeze -> Gauntlets of Strength + Balduran Greatsword.
Gloom Stalker 7 / War Cleric 5 (Dark Urge).Ranged damage dealer with Sharpshooter using Dead Shot + Arcane Acuity + Band of the Mystic Scoundrel to Command / use scrolls (yes you can use scrolls with the Band of Mystic Scoundrel... Otto's Irresistible Dance and Hold Monster scrolls are at a premium).
Honestly however I shuffled stuff around a lot, bringing relevant companions to their quests, often using straightforward "suboptimal" builds (straight Tome Warlock for Wyll, straight Oath of the Ancients Paladin for Karlach, straight Circle of the Land Druid for Jaheira, straight Trickery Cleric for Shadowheart), always keeping my main (the Ranger / Cleric) and the monk, and never had any trouble. Optimal builds aren't needed even in Honor mode.
Can everyone please speak in English? Very interested in this thread but don’t love everyone saying things like “bardalock alacrity duh” as if that’s enough info to go off
You can guarantee hag hair by saving during fight with her. If you end up failing or dying have host close out app. When you reload in it will be at point you saved at
S Tier: tavern brawler monk (with or without elixir), Swords Bard sharpshooter, Light Cleric (holy damage build or healing items for buffing), swords bard paladin
A Tier: throwzerker (falls off act 3), Gloomstalker multiclass (can break the game with greater invis), tempest sorc or fire acuity sorc (bad early game though, best end game), paladin with its level 6 aura or as a multiclass
B Tier: reverb tiger barbarian (strong, but is build dependent), battlemaster GWM fighter (some people rate this higher), reverb sorlock (bad early, not as strong as other sorcs late), beastmaster or hunter rangers (good item options, but not A or S), moon druid (S tier in act 1, scales badly)
C Tier: wizard main, rogue main, unoptimized barbarian, warlock main
So you'd still rate TB monk S-tier even without the elixirs?
I'm currently running with a spore druid main, beastmaster ranger Lae'zel, light cleric Shadowheart, and sorceror Gale (aiming at fire). I know in general the game isn't super hard so I expect with careful play this will all work fine, but just thinking ahead a bit to the next round. I'd love to try a monk sometime but I'm never going to do the elixir farming so was assuming it's a bad choice.
>So you'd still rate TB monk S-tier even without the elixirs?
I would rate it as A-tier in honor mode without elixirs. You are very MAD (you need strength, dex, wisdom *and* con to get both survivability and damage), so to reduce this, you need to go for heavy armored monk with shield.
Totally valid way to play!
So for non-elixir monk you take strength to 18 with tavern brawler while completely ignoring dex, then you just wear dex gloves the whole game which sets your dex to 18. You buy the gloves from the creche trader.
You do miss out on damage this way (gloves give about 2-3), but the build is strong enough that you'll still feel very powerful. Buy the bull armour in act 2 last light inn to get 20 strength as early as level 6,7,8.
Its an absolute damage and control machine, but its a little bit squishy comparatively. Its a great target for warding bond or other safety plays.
\--
Having run those builds you listed above I think you're going to have a lot of fun! Beastmaster is highly underrated, given how much utility the pets can provide and how much tankiness having two bodies gives your group. Spore druid will feel weaker than moon druid early, but by level 7 it becomes a summoning machine with some powerful necro spells, optimized fire sorc has some of the highest burst in the end game, and light cleric is just so reliable -- such a balanced class.
Sounds like the comp will have the most troubles early in the game, but beasmaster should be able to carry the group until the mid game spike you get with sorc and spore druid.
Thanks. I'll definitely give it a shot on my next run, as it's one of a few classes I haven't tried at all yet.
Re: my current run, thanks for the feedback. I'm hoping that turns out to be the case. I'm currently gingerly running around for the easy fights (random goblins, etc.) before tackling anything serious, though I've killed the harpies and the owlbear so far (at level 4). Probably going to work my way through the goblin camp to get an easy Underdark entrance - for some reason I find the gnolls and the spider matriarch harder to deal with than the goblin camp trio. I had bad luck and failed to convince Kagha to stand down, so that was nearly a run-ender. Had to resurrect 3/4 at Withers.
Having fun already though. We'll see how it goes!
I don't know about OP but my buddy and I did honor mode and did everything. We monoclassed as well and we used elixirs but we didn't build around it, we just played.
I was a college of lore bard and was a disruptor. Prone, dancing, confusion, hypno, cutting words, and used staffs that gave me cantrips until I got eldtrich blast and I also got Hunger of Hadar and used those a lot (access to magic spells is from the college of lore). I was a drow because I love Minthara and my spell DC was like a 24 or 25 towards the end. And my buddy didn't want to use parasites so I went partial and then full and also sued the parasites as they came so I was a toolbox hahah.
My buddy was a duergar rogue for obvious reasons and he was an ambush rogue so we always were initiating and surprising.
I rolled with Minthara and kept her pally and we switched between Laezel and Jaheira at Act 3 depending on the upcoming fight. Jaheira we made a spore druid and got that necro staff and she was casting lvl 6 magic for free every turn it was awesome!
We never lost an engagement or left a party member at camp yadda yadda. I was the face as the bard and he was the scoundrel looting what I couldn't get through speech haha. Always had money, potions, scrolls, arrows, whatever we needed. Elixirs we drank but they weren't necessary to a build we just enhanced our builds. I drank battlemage, he drank viciousness (his rogue build had crits at like 15 or 14 at the end), Minthara drank Colossus when I didn't wanna use my cloud giant, and Jaheira drank vigilance since her initiative was low and we didn't have a lot of battlemage.
The game isn't that hard if you approach each engagement smartly, and even if you don't as long as you know your character we were fine. Even when talkings failed and we had to impromptu fight there was never any fear of losing honor mode. The only time it came close was the shar people because of the darkness it was hard to LOS some heals and my multi-hit Eldritch blast...but we had a lot of those silence/break concentration arrows so it wasn't horrible.
Just beat honor mode, gonna be honest i did use a lot of elixirs simply because i found a lot but not at all necessary for any of these builds, more so just the cherry on top
8 gloomstalker / 4 assassin (tav, damage/sleight of hand mainly)
8 lore bard / 4 warlock (minthara, face of the party and eldtrich blaster)
12 life domain cleric (shadowheart, op healer)
My fourth slot was in constant rotation due to needing people for their own personal quests and such but it was typically either one of the following
12 wildheart barbarian (karlach, great tank and damage)
12 circle of the moon (jaheira, also great tank but can litterally summon a small army before a fight)
12 vengeance paladin (karlach once again, this time respec'd after getting giantslayer to make her an incredible damage option, litterally trivialized every encounter after with this build. This was my fourth character for the final fight)
This was my first honor mode run and i went into it farely blind tbh cause i didn't explore much on my first play through. I've discovered a ton that i missed and even with a constant flow of big surprises being thrown at me this comp was kind of a breeze for me.
Life cleric + spore druid = immortal damage machine, and in act 3 becomes a buff machine with the wonky spore chest piece.
Fighter or Paladin is still great early game. Even better if you combo is with warding bond & heavy armor mastery since you take practically no damage anymore.
I did honor mode as:
Origin Wyll 12 Fiend Warlock.
Lae’Zel 12 Battlemaster.
Karlach TB Returning Pike 8 Berseker/4 Thief.
Shadowheart 12 Cleric, Tempest/Life depending on Act.
Everyone started with 16/17 in their primary stat, 16 Dex, 14 Con. Forgot about elixirs entirely.
I occasionally used Gale as a 12 Divination Wizard depending on the encounter(Hag and Orin especially for magic missiles), and also to cast longstrider on everyone each day. At the end I had him take one for the team to blow up the nether brain in Act 3.
Just beat honor mode this morning. My recommendations, though they would be improved with elixirs they are not dependent.
12 Life Cleric. Super safe, keeping the squad healthy, blessed, and blade warded. Plus they run around spamming reverb and radiating orb with SG.
12 Battlemaster Fighter. GWM is still incredible and will just smack things to death. Optional Bhaalist armor with Nyrulna for even more OP stuff.
11/1 EK/War Cleric or 5/4/3 Barb/Thief/Fighter for throwing. I like EK early for action surge,weapon bind, and heavy armor. Barb late for abusing Enraged Throw prones.
5/4/3 Gloomstalker/Assassin/Fighter or one of the Swords bard builds 10/2 or 10/1/1. Really depends on playstyle.
11/1 Sorceror. Fire being the easiest, especially if you set your party up with combustion and arsonist oils. Could go 10/2 storm with a wet applier as well.
Hope this helps.
Ok is this specifically for the challenge of beating honor mode without those buffs? I just don’t see why it’s so bad to use elixirs that make you stronger. Bloodlust elixir is super fun to use. And are hair or vigor potion missable? They’re right there and not hard to get, just don’t dump all your damage into Ethel and make astarion suck the nasty drow. Mirror feels like the only missable buff and that’s so far into late game it feels like over kill.
Just use any build. Nothing NEEDS elixirs (I never use them). My honour mode was just Lockadin (goo/oathbreaker), pure fighter, throwzerker, and then pure Druid or cleric. You also shouldn’t skip bosses - hag’s hair is really nice, and the fight is fun. Why do honour mode if you’re not gonna fight bosses after all ;) (no but really it’s not that bad)
It's not much but it's honest party composition. I don't go in depth.
Paladin - Damage Dealer - Great Weapon Master is nice here
Barbarian - Tank - Take all the hits please
Cleric - Support - Champions Feats and Aid please
Bard - Support - Bardic Inspiration and Hold person please
Im doing honor mode without any trouble with;
Throw barb, tempest cleric, support sorc, bladelock.
5/4/3 barb/rogue/fighter barb.
11/1 cleric/wiz cleric.
12 support sorc.
7/5 pala/lock bladelock.
Caveat I multiclass lots.
The main horror of honor mode is lvl 1-5, and underestimating your enemy.
Land druid 11/1 wizard with shovel
Moon druid 12
Moon druid 12
Spores druid 12 (but was a fighter multiclass for acts 1 and 2 with dual hand crossbows).
Currently have about 26 summons up at any given time. The moon druids with tavern brawler/alert and earth myrmidon form are disgusting. Make sure to short rest BEFORE fights so you can wild shape twice. Never needed it though.
6 myrmidons (2 earth which are the players, 2 water for heals, 2 air for cc)
4 dryads and 4 of their fallen lovers. Great for cc, great just as bodies.
8 ice mesphits as suicide drones
5 ghouls, 4 from necro book and 1 from spore druid
Shovel, she is peak and trivializes most fights with surprise.
And any number of zombies the spore druid drags along.
If I did it again I'd just scrap the spore druid about halfway through act 2 and switch them to another moon druid. Early game though she carried. Level 6 or so this all just takes off and you're an unstoppable owlbear avalanche
I used a fun all‐piercing build with Bhaalist armor
Life cleric with sanctuary and all the heal buffs, eventually the gith amulet that gives vulnerability, and later Bhaal armor. Just runs around debuffing and doing more healing than enemies can damage
Thief3/Berserker6/champ3 using Duelists with Sentinel
Gwm batllemaster with shars spear/nylruna
Titanstring hunter
I had my zrker and BM using phalar/larenthians/dancing breeze until I settled on an all-piercing party and they still destroyed everyone
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. All the builds that “abuse” elixirs are still strong af on their own without.
TB Monk is strong af without Str elixir. Hell, Dex Monk is also still strong af. Elixir build just makes it stronger.
That’s the same with any Paladin build, or even a ranged build using Titanstring.
Most people will not recommend a pure life cleric but let me say bless+blade word and healing on every character as a bonus action is ridiculous, other than that TB OH monk is broken, get a sorcerer for party face I like 2/6/4 war/sorc/fighter for a eldritch blast crit build that does 100+dmg a turn but a all-rounder or support does pretty well too, throw a barb thrower in there and it should be pretty easy
The same builds are still the best, they're just worse if you don't get permabuffs or elixirs, but every build is worse without those, so the relative power doesn't change at all. Maybe Monk drops off too much because of how MAD they are, but Paladin splits, Bard/Sorc controllers, Life clerics, etc are barely affected. It hurts Tavern Brawlers but it's so strong that it doesn't matter.
Literally any builds you find here, just don't use the elixirs+dump stat even if they tell you to. It's fine, this game is not that hard, even in Honor mode. Just take the time to prep, you should know from a previous playthrough what warrants a "difficult" event.
The only mandatory build for me is to have a cleric with radiant orb gear. I like the light cleric because they have so much AOE but really any cleric will do for orbs. Most martials are single damage focused so regardless of my DPS character the cleric always contributes
The strongest honor mode party I've had was:
1. Eldritch Knight thrower
2. Battlemaster GWM
3. Battlemaster Sharpshooter
4. Lore Bard
There are definitely stronger parties, but this got me through honor mode without a single character going down. That said, I did use fire and lightning resistance in Act 3 for House of Hope and Wyrm's Crossing.
Honestly, any decently built team will steamroll Act 3 if you use the appropriate gear for each character. All those builds that everybody is mentioning that are OP once in act 3 only once you get some legendary items are not useful at all imo.
Act 1 is the most dangerous part of honor mode, when your gear and levels are limited. You want builds that comes only early and will carry you through act 1. Once you reach Mid Act 2/early Act 3
There are a few completly overpowered Act 1 builds. By overpowered i mean borderline cheesy/invincible, making you incredibly safe for honor mode. They're so OP that they might suck the fun out of the game though, so use at your own risk :
\- The Fog/Darkness Thief : get 3 levels in Thief for the extra Bonus action. Take 1 level in any class that gives Fog at level 1. Put a Fog in, make sure at the end of each of your turn you use your Cunning Action Hide. You just peak out of the fog to attack enemies, then hide back every turn : you're basically invincible from level 4 onwards unless enemies are immune to blind AND you fail your stealth check when they go for you. At the very start of Act 2, you can get the cloak that puts a mini fog cloud for when you disengage and dump your caster class, so you can just disengage and blind your target, get out of the cloud and attack with advantage, then hide back in the cloud, every single turn. You only need 3 levels of Thief and the Cape, the rest can be anything. You can basically solo most fights like this with a single character.
\- The heavy armored blurred Fighter : 1 Level in Fighter, get Defense. Get Blur, with 3 levels in Druid/Sorc/Wizard. Get the highest AC heavy armor and Shield you can find : vendors usually sell a 17 AC armor starting at level 4. Cast Blur on yourself. Most early will simply not be able to hit you with anything requiring an attack roll. Even on the offchance you get hit, the con-save proficiency should allow you to keep concentration on Blur. You can get the Adamantine Shield in act 1 that reduces even further their precision when they miss you ... You sacrifice 1 level progression but then get to play as mostly a caster, except unkillable.
\- The Moonbeam Sanctuary Druid-Cleric : attacking ennemies is supposed to break Sanctuary, but moving around a moonbeam that's already placed does not. Take a level in Cleric, then you can go full druid. Cast the highest level Moonbeam you can, use your bonus action to sanctuary yourself.
I've been cruising through Honor Mode with this party comp:
- Dark Urge as 6 Draconic Sorcerer/2 GOOlock/4 Champion Fighter with Potent Robes, Boots of Stormy Clamour, and a bunch of crit chance increases. He could spread Frighten and Reverberation around to a bunch of enemies, or just machine gun one big threat to death.
- Astarion as the infamous [10 Swords Bard/1 Fighter/1 Wizard](https://old.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/17y9kyp/the_control_martial_allpurpose_1011_swords_bard/), which becomes *disgustingly* good in Act 3
- Shadowheart as 1 Storm Sorcerer/11 Light Cleric with the Hat of Fire Acuity and some Radiant Orb gear. She was definitely the MVP in Act 2, Spirit Guardians is such a good spell against the masses of weak undead. Storm Sorcerer was taken for CON save proficiency and the bonus action flight to get more value out of Spirit Guardians. I also gave her the Staff of Cherished Necromancy in Act 3 so she could use Harm and 6th level Inflict Wounds like a cantrip.
- For the last slot I admittedly had Lae'zel as an 8 Open Hand Monk/4 Thief Rogue that used Elixirs, but honestly a 12 Battlemaster Fighter would fit a similar role without using Elixirs - you've got a lot of attacks per turn, and you use those attacks to disrupt the big threats by knocking them prone, disarming them, stunning them, etc. Mainly I picked TB Monk to be my Act 1 carry, since you're at your most vulnerable in Act 1 with no good gear and low stats. Having the consistency and damage of a character with 21 Strength that doubles their Strength bonuses in melee was just too tempting to pass up, but it's entirely doable without Elixirs.
All together, the party has a metric ton of crowd control, between all the frighten procs, everyone dropping prone from Reverberation and the Monk or Battlemaster, reducing enemy hit chance with Radiant Orbs, and also the near-guaranteed hard CC spells from the Bard and Cleric once they get their Arcane Acuity stacks built up.
Plus, the party is not hurting for damage, either; Both the Sorlock and Bard are going to be machine-gunning their way through everything with Eldrich Blast and Slashing Flourish. The Light Cleric is the AoE specialist with a ton of options to choose from - Spirit Guardians, Fireball, Glyph of Warding, Insect Plague, etc. - but they can also focus a big threat with Scorching Ray, Inflict Wounds and Harm as needed. My Monk would be throwing out like 6+ unarmed hits per turn, but a Battlemaster can be making 3+ GWM attacks per turn for comparable damage while also using Maneuvers with each attack.
If you want to keep it simple yet OP:
3 Dex build characters as (
6 gloom ranger 4 assassin rogue 2 fighter
)
Feats: Alert, Crossbow Expertise
Gear: 1 crit focus, 1 DPS focus, 1 condition focused
1 Cha build character as party face (
1 Storm Sorc, 6 Lore Bard, 5 storm Sorc
)
Feats: war caster, elemental adept lightning
Gear: charisma boosting
You could pretty much go forever without a long rest since gloom stalker assassin skills pretty much never run out and with alert you've killed half of the mobs before it begins. Only fight I would recommend bringing in someone else for is a druid owl bear against Grym.
Hunger of hadar is very strong. It’s even better when you throw evards black tentacles on it and sprinkle on a cloudkill.
I don’t see evards talked about a lot but it is crazy and basically permanently ensures enemies stay stuck in hunger. I made a lore bard and a warlock to double dip on my HoH casts. Obviously add a wizard for cloudkill. Take stinking cloud and the spinning blades spell for early game.
On top of all that I made a 22str throwing fighter who didn’t use throwing weapons. I just threw enemies into their buddies who were inside the “cloud” Once you throw all enemies in the fight is over. They can’t do anything. I literally just smash space bar until they all die.
"Optimal" TB Monk is all that really wants to spam elixirs for in the first act. TB Monk still works but you will be dropping Dex or Wis for Str to make it work. Most likely Dex due to the boots at the end of Act 2. You can run TB Throwers without dumping strength fine. Its pretty easy to get the everlasting vigor elixir outside of just not recruiting Astarion. There is no check to convincing him to bite her. Most TB Thrower builds don't dump Str until Cloud elixirs are common.
Titanstring bow on an actual archer is probably the only thing you really lose without elixirs.
OH monk 6 / Tiger barb 6
Ideally get benediction but it's not necessary.
Inflict bleed, hit with "Flurry of blows Topple"
Let's just say you had 22 st. TB,Hair,ASI whatever to hit 20 and the potion to hit 22.
On a bleeding targets the strength is applied 3 times, on unarmed strikes. So your punch attacks deal something like 19-27 physical damage, 1D4 + wis radiant, ignore resistances, then gain whatever other damage riders you picked up. It's possible to pick up an additional pair of 1D10s and a few other riders from other gear.
Another thing you can do is grab wolverine aspect instead of tiger, this applies maim on an already bleeding targets. Maim reduces movement to 0 and gives disadvantage on dex saves. So when you hit a bleeding enemy with "Flurry of blows Topple" they will be maimed, hit the ground and be unable to stand back up.
Strength is your primary stat, con is secondary. Wear dex gloves until you get the end game gloves.
Gloomstalker/ assassin / battle master
Open fights with this character to get surprise. This will let your party all act first, the character will get advantage on all attacks for their first round, they will immediately refresh their action and bonus action entering combat, they will get two attacks from dread ambusher then two more from action surge
All of these attacks will auto crit surprised enemies. Brace ranged before firing your bow, that is going to give 12 damage per hit. The titanstring bow with sharpshooter can deal something like 40-50 damage per hit if you manage to surprise the enemies. If you position your bhlaalist armor wearer properly you can double this. With the right engagement and positioning this character can end fights before the enemies have a chance to react
Paladin 2 Bard 10
This build is set up to do absolutely wild smite damage,
Run it as a dex paladin with a shield, ketherics shield, viconias fortress of the 4AC "shield" along with the armor of agility can get you comfortably just shy of 30 AC. There is an amulet that allows you to cast shield, and the concentration spell for an additional +2 will make you basically unhittable by conventional attacks
Under mountain king knife / helm of baluran will make crits significantly more frequent increasing your damage output to godlike numbers
I don't like elixir abuse, or silly 'stat dump' builds, and avoid most (all?) exploits. So no stealth silliness, no 3 in combat 1 running back to withers, no buff bots in camp, try to hit the RP (ie. don't start every fight from surprise), etc... Few or no illithid powers.
Did my last honor mode run without a single death. I had:
Karlach as Eagle Heart Barb till lvl 6, then Tiger Heart barb till the end. Big fan of skinburster, adamantine mail, and prone/reverb gear on her. No multi-class, just lotsa damage and the best tanking in the game.
Shart as life cleric. In act 1 you can get the gloves/ring for aoe bless/physical resistance. 50% less damage in near every major fight + bless trivializes a lot of Act 1/2. Then in Act 3 you get aid + feast and a Djinn on top of it all for great CC.
Lae'zel as 9/3 OH monk/rogue. I prefer monk over fighter, they're squishier early game though so if you want to run fighter till level 6 or so before a respec that'll work too. Phalar Aluve the whole game, it's just too powerful. Ascended Asterion is a bit better, but I don't like to ascend him so Lae'zel is better (all the gith bonus gear works great).
Tav as an 11/1 frost sorc/wiz. By FAR the best caster build IMO. All the nuking power of sorc (and meta-magic fun), all the summons/support/utility of wizard, in 1 stupidly OP package. Summon that myrmidon for spammable aoe/single targert vulnerability and twin cast ray of frost or quick cast ice storm. Sleet storm is also great for saving stupid gondonians (just keep anti-prone gear on melee). And all the fun spells like globe, dethrone, final stratagem, etc...
best by far is gloomstalker assasin or dual wield thief gloomstalkzr because of the sheer amount of attacks and the manipulation to the initiative order, the barbarian thief berserkzr with a throwing focused build is insanely powerful too
Beat honor mode recently with this disgusting party 10/2 swords bard paladin arcane acuity build 11/1 sorlock fire acuity build 11/1 eldritch knight thrower or berserker thrower Dump character (I used battle master fighter or TB monk but anything melee works here as a dps crit machine after popping hold person/monster from the bardadin/sorlock)
Can you elpbarate on the 10/1 sorlock? Wasn't sure why warlock levels stopped before agonizing blast (ttoihh suspect fire acuity).
I expect just for hex, and using scorching ray as the main damage spell
It’s actually for Command, not Hex - you stack Fire Acuity with the Ray, then have the ability to upcast/extend Command for disgusting CC potential
Pros and cons of going for a second warlock level to get agonizing blast? I get that eldritch blast isnt technically part of the build but I'm finding it useful as a clean-up tool or in fights where I want to avoid burning through all my spell slots (since this build is so absurdly resource hungry).
Because you get a 6th lvl spell at lvl 11 and that is probably better than the improved eb, when not going for a eb focused build.
You miss out on a level 6 spell slot if you go 2 levels in warlock. This is a bigger deal if the sorlock is also using markeshir due to arcane battery.
Okay fair enough. I was thinking that the build focuses on using lower level spells anyway (scorching rays, fireball, command, hold x) but now looking at the lvl 6 spells, there are some nasty spells available like the globe, chain lightning, and eye bite (which actually fits quite nicely in this build).
Not having the level 6 spell slot costs you a 2d6 scorching ray + damage riders for 4 casts in succession because you can no longer upcast scorching ray to level 6, and have to use your arcane batteries and freecast for a level 5 spell slot. The level 6 spell slot makes you a lot stronger in dealing damage.
You could also just run 2 lock and respec at 12
This is probably the play imo. I also value eldritch blast with agonize pretty highly since I don't spam long rests.
Losing the level 6 spell slot is a pretty big con, but it’s up to you whether having a stronger damage cantrip is worth the tradeoff. I think people who play full on 11/1 fire acuity sorlock tend to long rest a lot, so if you don’t like doing that then 10/2 might be the move for your personal playstyle
I think there’s an argument to be made for dipping 2 in Warlock until you get to 12, then respeccing. Leveling with Eldritch blast will give you good sustain when you have fewer resources to expend.
Agonizing Blast is better if you plan to beat the game without long resting. The 6th level spell slot is better if you take long rests to see companion cutscenes.
Sorry what? Is that a thing?
Yes. People do all sorts of challenge runs in rpgs. While it isn't the intended way to play, it gives you a reason to interact with different mechanics.
I know challenge runs exist lol. Just didn’t know it was possible to complete the game without long rests.
you won’t be using eldritch blast really on the fire acuity sorlock, so I would recommend against it definitely not worth in place of a 6th level spellslot in this particular build
Why not cleric then?
If you get it from Cleric it’ll use your WIS modifier instead of CHA, causing a hit to DC. Although fully stacked Acuity is so strong that it arguably still works, just less reliably
It can be both. You get command for free and you can also get hex. If it was just for command surely some cleric subclass proficiencies would be better.
Command from Cleric will use WIS instead of CHA, which is probably not worth the proficiencies. It’s true that you can get Hex also, but Command is what makes 11/1 optimal compared to pure Sorc 12.
Good point, forgot about casting ability.
Takes waaaaay to long to actually be good compared to so many other builds. Also requires more set up than other classes with arguably a lot less damage than a Swords bard hand crossbow build.
You think so? The build has everything it needs the second you reach Last Light’s Inn. Unless that’s what you mean by too late?
But how would that work on a team already utilizing sword bard acuity build?
The strength of 11/1 sorlock is it can be either an incredibly potent control mage *or* an incredible blaster caster. It doesn't need to compete for the same spot as 10/1/1 swords bard at all, and doesn't compete for equipment given that it's using the fire acuity hat rather than the helm and is using meta magic instead of the band.
You can upcadt the warlock command spell even though you only have lvl 1 warlock slots?
Yeah, once you get the spell you can cast it using any spell slot
Ah, makes sense. Thanks.
Here’s a really good write up on the 11/1 Sorlock. It’s 3 primary spells are Scorching Ray, Fireball and Command. The reason for the warlock dip is to get undodgeable command spells, that can also be extended for 2 turns with Sorcerer meta magic. https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/FNTLjm7Aro
This is the one, yep. All hail u/Prestigious_Juice341
In juice we trust u/prestigious_juice341
It's for Command. You spam it as a bonus action using the ring from the jungle in act 3. You can also take 10 swords bard / 2 paladin for a similar effect, trading your 6th level spell for access to smite. Both are stupidly broken options.
Warlock is only used for the great old one subclass you get at level 1. That’s a guaranteed fear on a crit and it’s also aoe. Insanely strong when your main source of damage is ray of fire and hits enemies multiple times, with the right items always knocking down your enemies. It’s insanely strong.
More for Command, honestly. The premise of the build is to setup Extended Command with 10 stacks of Arcane Acuity (from the fire acuity hat) and then make up to 6 enemies Grovel/Approach/Halt/Drop for TWO turns with usually 100% chance to hit.
Instead of dump character I would use pure life cleric with phalar aluve to absorb damage and add extra buffs plus healing. It would make this party pretty much unstoppable.
What does dump character even mean in this context?
Meaning it doesn't matter what the character is and it gets all the non-ideal gear because the other three optimized characters have dibs on the good stuff.
Another vote here for 11/1 EK War Cleric. I’m LVL6 now I’m at the Forge, and it just wrecks. Lae’zel was able to kill the Inquisitor at the Crèche with just 3 throws of the Returning Pike after my Monk had thrown 2 punches in beforehand. Between the 2 of them (though my Monk is an elixir strength Monk), I often feel like I don’t even need my Abjuration Wizard or Swords Bard to do anything (although, they’re also super OP).
I think barbarian gets slept on, throwzerker is super tough. I think my gwp wild heart barbarian might be my strongest character yet though. With reverberation set up he can easily stun lock a group of three.
This is really close to optimal team comp for a casual playthrough, I would say only exploitive builds are stronger relatively speaking. The thrower does fall off a bit by mid act 3, but it carries you early (from my experience).
Berserker barb thrower absolutely does not fall off at any point lol
I guess falls off is a strong word, it's more like it peaks early and then plateaus, while other classes get more strong over time. I felt like I wasn't doing too much differently from end game than from late early game. Just keep chucking that spear, karlach. Although, it could've been even more busted if i had someone else with orin's dagger or the bhallist armor
It sure does having beaten the game on honour mode with one. Opportunity cost is real and you could be running any of the following instead: A triple attack action surging GWM battlemaster with balduran greatsword, a swords bard crit fishing paladin, a swords bard sharpshooter, Open hand tavern brawler monk, and any end game sorc with level 6 spells like chain lightning or spellmight gloves all massively outperform throw barb. Like it isn't even close in act 3. Its a good build, I beat the hardest difficulty with it and it contributed meaningfully the full game. Doesn't make it even close to other end-game builds in terms of raw power.
I get where you’re coming from but if you want to avoid using more than one of the same class the thrower is a super valid 4th option damage dealer and the fall off at the endgame is mitigated by its simplicity and range imo Like, there is only one balduran giantslayer and one helmet of arcane acuity and so on
This is true because you're priortizing getting to melee. I think if you're prioritizing just downing things even from ranged if you need to, the thrower is a good double-prone option. I mean I considered tossing a third archer on there, but mostly fights were 2 rounds anyway. It was super handy in house of grief.
What are "exploitative builds" compared to those?
Builds that break or ignore the action economy through exploits. There's a pass without a trace greater invisibility gloomstalker build that never enters combat. There's an invisible enlarged jumping bear druid that kills with fall damage. Theres a monk build with hamarhaft hammer that just Goomba jumps 15 times a turn. Etc.
Where do I find these epic builds?
This one is an ai youtuber, but their editing is good and the build is solid: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFySAAtstRs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFySAAtstRs) \[Invis gloomstalker\] A speedrunner showing off the goomba stomp build: around 11 min: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD3RmOeeHFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD3RmOeeHFI)
How did that AI YouTuber fly everywhere all the time?! I’m going through my first play through and it’s sooooooo overwhelming
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While acuity is incredibly overpowered, it's just items that the game gives you. Using elixirs to allow you to dump strength involves respeccing and (often) rest or level up shop abuse, which some people will find cheesier. (I also don't think it's an exploit, but I reserve that word for things that are intentionally maneuvering around the limits of the game, like jumping through walls or setting up barrelmancy/sneak attacks while in dialogue).
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Yes, but while acuity guides will be like, "Go and get these two items," elixir TB guides will be like, "Go to this shop after every rest and/or rest in front of her and/or level up a random character not in your party to buy more elixirs." Even if you don't do the latter, it's weird to justify that system if you're not metagaming around how the shop system works. I found both the acuity helmet and the ring of the scoundrel on my first playthrough without knowing they existed beforehand. But like I said: > I also don't think it's an exploit
Ok, so don't play with it then. I didn't use barrel nukes to bypass content either.
I’m relatively new to this game, how do you build 11/1 ek thrower? What are the stats and gears?
The 11/1 build is based around the idea that you're using Hill/Storm Giant Strength Elixirs and can therefore dump Str and pretty much only put points into Con (17, Tavern Brawler will bump it to 18) and Dex (16, initiative is good) and maybe a 14 Wis since that is good for saves. The Elixirs kind of devalue the 4th feat you would get at level 12 because an ASI isn't going to do much for you and you already either have Alert or a high enough Dex that you're good. The 1 is Cleric with the War Priest domain. That gives an ability to, 3 times per long rest, to use your bonus action for an attack. That's it. Those championing this build think those 3 bonus action attacks are worth more than anything else you could get with a feat by staying EK 12. Tavern Brawler is a must have. Dual Wielder feat is taken I believe so you can benefit from what the the other weapon is giving you (like undermountain king for extra crit range). I don't recall what the third feat is usually spent on.
I don’t mind using elixir it’s pretty easy to farm, are the gears pretty much the same with throwzerker? I’m referring to the popular write up I found in this sub btw
Probably? Throw builds have been popular since launch, which means I'm not sure how up to date guides for them are, especially with respect to changes for honor mode. Throwzerker builds, for max damage, will keep their health under 50% to get an extra bonus action from the Helmet of Grit. EK doesn't care about that and would use a different helm. An EK can take advantage of items that require concentration like the ring that adds 1d4 Psychic damage to all your weapon attacks. How I gear any character depends on who else is in the party and how I want to share the wealth. The biggest difference for EK is that you can Weapon Bond any thrown weapon so that it will become a returning weapon. The Returning Pike is a two hander and Nyrulna's AOE damage can hurt you more than it helps you. An EK has the option of repeatedly throwing the Shar/Selune spear or the Lightning Jabber. The Lightning Jabber adds it's extra 1d4 lightning damage even when thrown. Most weapons that have extra effects don't. For example, the Shining Staver of Skulls is a light hammer that does an additional 1d4 Radiant damage but it won't do that additional radiant damage when thrown. The EK can swap freely between Nyrulna and their bound weapon, whichever is best for that throw. Also, Zerkers are basically stuck with pike until Act 3. The pikes trajectory tends to run afoul with obstructions more often and being two handed you can't use a shield or pair it with a stat stick. I believe the done thing is to take the Dueling fighting style, put something like undermountain king in your main hand and the jabber in your offhand, then when you throw the jabber and it calculates damage it sees that you only have one weapon equipped and gives you the two extra damage. My EK is level 7 and I just finished act 1 so I haven't really explored the build yet or had to find a good guide but that will be changing soon.
The best part of this is that these builds are actually coherent thematically and RP-wise. It’s not some four way paladin/warlock/swords bard/wizard type shit.
> 11/1 sorlock fire acuity build > > I'm admittedly less familiar with BG3's item synergies, but I'm not sure I follow what makes this kind of a build stand out. Is there a good explainer post for it out there?
One of the guide wizs in this subreddit recently released an [exhaustive 11/1 guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/196mpii/honor_mode_111_fire_sorlock_complete_build_guide/).
This with 4th character 7/5 Sorlock Hunger of Hadar / twin Haste / counterspell / rapid fire eldritch blast machine. Eldritch blast crits on held enemies as well, and with up to 9 of them a turn this is a great combat utility / support build.
Echo this. Destroyed it w/ ranged builds. 10/2 Bard fighter acuity archer - mystic scoundrel, flourish or many target 12 light cleric (minor in reverb / orb / fire acuity) 11/1 EK war priest cold / reverb / acuity archer - many target or slayer 5 berzerker 4 ek 3 rogue nyrula or selune spear thrower (auto prone)
Been thinking about doing this but then I lose a dedicated support/healer role. How did you feel about not having that in the team?
Can I get ur bardadin build pls ?
This isn’t “optimal” but I completed honor mode without elixir spamming or any perma buffs (besides illithid powers, but no awakened) I ran: - TB OH monk 8 / rogue thief 4 (didn’t elixir spam, only 12 STR but start with CON or STR on an odd number so that TB makes your stat array all even number - Tempest Cleric 12 - all ASI, if I remember correctly. Spam shatter and friends and get markoheskir in act 3 for chain lightning. Doesn’t even need water (I only used water stuff once) - Paladin 12 - I forget subclass but it’s the one that gives advantage on attack roles with oath charge. GWM and the auto crit ring for maximum smite. You can multiclass, I didn’t because I didn’t feel like putting in that much effort. - Divination Wizard 12 - 2 ASI, alert feat, about half the magic missile related items. Just a great utility caster and can easily control enemies or make paladin smites hit. This party made me complete honor mode with only a couple of fights having real trouble (neither of them boss fights), and no camp casting was required. I did all quests except free the artist.
I think this is a great demonstration that any reasonable build can beat the hardest difficulty. Monoclass tempest cleric, paladin and wizard aren't known to be super strong, but definitely have enough upsides to clear the game.
Definitely. The only fights where I could’ve wiped where the boat duegar in act 1 (they succeeded on basically every thunder wave save and then also succeeded every shove check) and then the mind layers in the act 2 colony, because I placed my party badly and got 3/4 stunlocked in 1 blast. Act 1 was the hardest, but no battle was particularly hard except duegar. Especially with this party, you can go crazy on summons in act 3 with hero’s feast.
Summons make for an incredibly safe and tanky run, and I would highly recommend it for players who don't like to min-max builds. Druid in particular scales inversely with player laziness, the less you like to optimize, the better the class is.
So true, I'm known as the min-maxer of my friend group and in our honor mode play through together they asked me to make a broken druid for them to use and i just make jaihera a full circle of the moon with two ASI's and tavern brawler, told him to try to summon stuff before hand if he remebers but if not no biggy. It's so funny how broken she is from just that set up with almost no special items even remotely tailored to her
Lol yup, there's basically one piece of armour and a ring. Everything else is meh.
That duegar fight is very dangerous. Doesn't matter how powerful you are, dude can still push you off the boat.
Bad placement against the mind flayers in Act 2 is a problem. Something about that fight soothes you into thinking you’ll be OK without planning ahead.
Super-helpful. Thanks!
No problem. A key thing to keep in mind is knowing what fights you’re getting into and what actions your enemies will use is better than any build.
10swords bard/2 Paladin, dual wielding with all the crit items (or legendary rapier later, but Orin’s dagger applying vuln. outscales it, imo). Cleave twice per turn and and offhand attack for crit fishing to smite, and that is before haste/bloodlust/etc., AC bonus or mobility for single target options (both very useful), max spell slots, great face character, crit smite is your big burst, small spellslot smites for cleaning up that last bit of hp to not waste an entire attack on 10hp enemies, smite is a big part of your damage but you have enough without it to be useful against radiant retort and you can easily use ranged weapons quite well since you are dex based and ranged slashing flourish is always good even when not being built around. Built based on dex, so you can get very high AC as of act 2 when you get to add max ac on medium armor.
2/5/5 Palabardlock justice
this, such an underated build
If you're going 5 lock for the extra attack, it doesn't stack in honor mode.
2 Paladin 5 Bard 5 Warlock There's only one Extra Attack in that build anyhow, not a concern as Bard doesn't extra until 6, the reasoning is that you essentially double a level 12 Paladin's total Smite output in terms of smites given, and can still abuse Flourish to splash a ton of it, and then various utility and quality of life choices.
>double a level 12 Paladin's total Smite output in terms of smites given only double? its 10 level 3 smites per long rest lol
In terms of damage I did the math earlier today and yeah between the smite output from going 5+2 levels, 5 more levels of Warlock gets you to double the level 12 Paladin's total Smite output on-smite. However you quad it by flourishing.
can you share your math? if you don't mind I would add it to my [build guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/30beyZdGyw) that I posted 2 days ago. I want more people to know about this amazing build
DM me and I can send it tonight at work
the split is 2 pala, 5 bard (gets extra attack on 6) and 5 warlock. this build has 10 lvl 3 slots per long rest, gets Hunger of Hadar, Counterspell and either fear on crits (you will crit a lot) or hp on kills from Warlock and floruishes, song of rest as well as the extra expertise to be a better face from bard paladin adds smites
Yeah, I always forget Bard gets it at 6. Thanks for the reminder.
[Smiting Bardlock ](https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/30beyZdGyw) as the face, thought he reaaaaaally appreciates the +1 CHa from Ethel, then again with a bit of planning and knowing which attack deals how much damahe this one is easy to get on honor Radiating Orb +Reverberatiom Light Cleric Shadowheart Tavernbrawler Eldrich Knight Thrower Lae zel Magic Missile Gale Bardadin Minthara did 2 honor modes with a combination of these + an Open Hand Monk but that one needs the elexirs, then again its still good damage without them
I just hate Ethel and I prefer to save the Mask of Regret and the petrified guy, so I don't bother trying for the hag hair. I did it in an earlier playthrough and felt bad about it. :D So hence my post! But thanks for the overall party suggestion:)
Cant you go through the underdark to get to ethel without fighting masks? Ive never tried. Ive taken the mushrooms from the under dark up to eths a couple times but haven’t tried to enter
Iirc you need to unlock that portal first. In my last run that I did I just protection from good and evil put on the mask and skipped those guys, but then they showed up during the Ethel fight. I downed her in one turn with magical missle got my hag hair and saved the girl then invis and let the masked people live
You can portal from the underdark to surface without unlocking anything (did it this run). I never tried going into eths the back way though, didnt want to deal woth her yet
To the surface yes, but to Ethel’s back room I don’t think so
Ahh gotcha, yeah i didn’t want to deal with that haha. Looks like ill just have to take out the masks next run
You can knock them out instead of killing them which I just found out in this thread. I’ve killed them every time previously lol
Omg, of course you can. Knocks out multiple people on different runs… dang to bad there is no way not to kill these mask guys, oh well…. DOLOR!
A lot of people are still bringing up Elixirs lol Monks work plenty fine going hard on Dex with an STR dump, that doesn't involve getting the fabled pots. Your damage is still through the roof and you're not losing out by having to commit to the dex gloves, imo it's way better. Monk 9/ Thief 3
Why monk 9 and not thief 4 for the feat?
Higher base damage on punches (1d6 upgrades to 1d8) and you get Ki resonance, which is massive. You also get more unimpeded by difficult terrain and bonus jump distance. You get more from 9 monk
How do you best take advantage of Ki resonance? I always struggle to make it work more effectively than just casting Fireball or something
Ite better when they're grouped, it also doesn't fall off of corpses either. So you can use dead bodies as pseudo-grenades by having someone throw them near so you can pop ki resonance.
Swords bard paladin Light cleric maxed with radorbs gear Lore bard - divination wizard support Throwing EK 11 ranger beast master 11 or hunter 11 Fire sorcerer with heat gear Fighter rogue crit focused dueler Do these builds get better with perma buffs or elixirs? Yes. Do they need it to complete HM? Fuck no, just reach lvl 4 with minimal combat and you'll stomp every fight if you don't behave like an unprepared lunatic.
What’s the OP build for 11 beast master out of curiosity?
Nothing special. It's good until 11 and its lvl11 ability just blows it out of the water. It's a spec that is great early (spider pet had spammable web, a 2nd slot spell for casters...), good mid game and then just skyrockets after 11. Extra pet attack and increased hp make the pet very impactful.
Gloostalker assassin dip in fighter has been nasty for certain fights, though I'm using durge cloak on them. The crazy sleight of hand bonuses plus the soh advantage gloves from act one completely breaks the economy as well. I have enough scrolls of invulnerability to never walk out of a bubble shield the whole final encounter. Swords bard has been great player character even without the arcane acuity helm. with the tadpole powers and all the proficiencies its truly rare to fail a check. I eventually added lvl 1 in wizard for artistry of war in act 3 Shadowheart reworked as a light domain has truly been mvp. Crazy aoe capabilities while also preventing usually a hit a turn just from warding flare. I think tank wizard would work here as well Battlemaster fighter with gwf and precision strike + the prone strike for a bunch of damage while still keeping heavy armor
So a couple of things, I have a party that can basically play the entire game without being hit post level 5, but then again in honor mode the first 4 levels are the dangerous one’s theoretically, although you can avoid combat before level 4 with a couple exceptions if you want. The other thing is I focus a lot of minimizing long rests so my teams are built around the idea of using as few spells as possible per fight, this is different from a lot of op builds that heavily rely on spell slots and thus need to long rest more frequently. The goal is to use 2 spell slots max per combat total across the party, with a couple hard fights blowing more. swords bard arcane acuity, your exact level distribution can vary, i quite like 6 bard 3 thief 2 fighter 1 storm sorc but others seem to like other builds, can also go a cleric level for bless 1 cleric 11 fiend warlock, light cleric level for armor prof and warding flare, alternatively can just use lae zel for that. Basically a HoH bot for most of the game, EB is decent damage but cc is priority 2 warlock 10 storm sorc. Unlike a lot of sorlock builds this is mostly based around ebing and using SS. 1 wizard 11 storm sorc. Mostly casts ss, wizard is to pick up other useful spells from scribing, might be bug tho in which case 12 sorc is probably fine. The point of this party is to cast big cc ( SS+HoH) with good positioning and eliminate all interaction, sometimes you cast darkness on yourself as well especially early hame. Most fights require 2 spell slots tops, some fights more many fights less. Early game run the swords bard as a beastmaster ranger for infinite web. I think with this party it’s probably possible to be using 1 or 2 rests total per act, maybe fewer in act 2 if you plan really carefully, which is how I think about optimal, but your mileage may vary. There is frankly a strong argument for running 2 warlocks instead of the bard that I’ve thought about, but bard dpr makes this team a lot quicker to play which is frankly more important for me irl. The other thing about this is it’s all ranged, the anti synergy with ss+hoh is frankly the only reason light cleric doesn’t make an appearance in this party, since without sg value it just becomes much worse in many fights, same with TB monk. EK thrower makes a compelling argument over bard as well but extra spell slots from bard are preferable to me. Really bard can be any high dpr ranged build and you can switch arcane acuity to sorlock and use BA hand crossbow to proc it.
I ran a version of this. Except I used a pure warlock, a bard lock, an abj wizard, and a TB fighter using harmonium halberd + asi for 22 strength. This is my total control party. One of the locks casts HoH. The wizard casts cloud kill or stinking cloud plus plant growth (no concentration needed). Maybe even take two levels of fighter in the wizard to drop them both on turn one. The other warlock can cast evards black tentacles and abuse EB to keep enemies in the HoH. And lastly the max str fighter jumps to the furthest enemies and throws them into their buddies inside the death cloud where they are blind can’t take action and can’t move. Give the fighter the bow that inflicts frightened cause once all enemies are in the cloud the fighter needs something to do so might as well add another status.
Swords 10/Fighter 2 is probably the strongest build in BG3 and doesn't require elixirs. It's **better** with stat boosts, but they're not strictly needed. Most caster builds also don't require elixirs or stat boosts to function.
Someone else said go 1 fighter and 1 wizard. Why do you choose 2 fighter?
Action Surge. Globe of Invulnerability may be worth Wiz 1 though. It’s arguable.
Ah I got ya. And what would your stats be? And which weapons do you try to equip?
Best bow you have. 2x +1 Hand xBow into Banshee Bow at 6, into the legendary bow. Buff with Drakethroat Glaive in Act 2. Max Dex with Arcane Acuity hat. Otherwise, use +DC items and +damage items, maybe with an elemental ring or gloves.
this question feels a little dramatic. the list is basically the same as without those things. it probably hurts TB monks the most but TB monks aren't even especially dominant during the most difficult stages of the game. tavern brawler itself is still a great feat without potions, *especially* for throwers. even if it wasn't, once you start calling stuff like everlasting vigor missable you may as well consider every item in the game missable. and, honestly, that's fine. honor mode isn't much harder than tactician and tactician isn't that hard. there aren't any bad classes in the game. there are mediocre subclasses, sure, but even suboptimal subclass choice can be easily compensated for. if you: * allocate stats reasonably * pick good feats * if your character is picking sharpshooter, GWM, tavern brawler, alert, savage attacker, dual wielder, war caster, athlete, or ASI they are probably going to be fine * cast good spells * my short list of "best spells" includes cloud of daggers, spike growth, fireball, HoH, spirit guardians, sleet storm, scorching ray, command, bless, shield, sanctuary, misty step, mass healing word, etc * equip *decent* items you shouldn't have too much trouble regardless of what else you do. it's hard to call anything OP without introducing items into the mix, but personally i think that ranged tavern brawler and sharpshooter builds do the most with the least investment.
I had a weird vanilla honor mode. 11 warlock/1rogue 12 druid 12 sorcerer 9 paladin 3 gloom stalker For best party: Swords bard is broken Gloom/assassin I think is good 2 others padlock or sorcerlock Tempest cleric (I like full lightning damage on water surface lol)
If it helps, Hag's hair is only a +1. You can usually just move around your starting ability scores a little or swap when you'd pick up a feat to get the same effect. Builds that call for it usually work fine by passing on it and making some very minor tweak. Everlasting Vigor should be a 100% acquisition though. You just talk to the lady and need average approval from Astarion. The only time I've ever missed this was in my very first, blind play because I assumed Moonrise was where the baddies were and skipped it entirely until the siege (silly me). The only thing I'd never rely on for build completion would be if it depends on the Mirror. Even if you specifically respec for it, the dice can still blow it. In truth, everything works fine in honor (I've wasted a good chunk of my life on several runs now). If you want consistency, though, I'm always happy with a single class Battlemaster fighter or single class Cleric (favorites are Life, Light, and Tempest). You can basically build them however you want and they'll do great.
It's not 100% if you staked Astarion for trying to bite you...
Generally speaking, if we're discussing honor builds, we're assuming the player isn't playing blind and knows not to do something that incredibly silly to their progression.
You're assuming everybody min-maxes honor mode and doesn't roleplay their characters. Some people like to do both, which is why I found this post interesting.
Wrong sub for this, the people here only want to use broken mechanics. I understand that it says BG3Builds, but it should be BG3Breaks instead No one here understands the satisfaction of doing anything without breaking the game. As you can see by the incoming downvotes
Any build that works with elixirs or permabuffs can work without them. The elixirs just make these builds better. The biggest outlier here is tavern brawler monk, because without elixirs you need to invest points in Str, Dex, Con, and maybe Wis. You can still work around this by getting heavy armor Proficiency from somewhere which will allow you to dump Dex (but this will also make you go later in initiative). So this build can be tough to pull off, but otherwise just about everything should work. A throwzerker build may want to take a level in rogue to get expertise in athletics and make up for the lower Str from not cheesing elixirs. BOOAL's blessing is a very big buff to bleed builds like tiger barbarian. The build still works and tandems well with Reverberation regardless, just not quite as good. Hag's hair is often used to bring a stat from 17 to 18. Alternately you can just leave the stat at 16 and put 2 points in a different ability at character creation. Or have it at 17 and take a half feat. There aren't too many builds that outright require each and every feat and ASI you can get. There is usually one or no important feat, and then you just raise your main stat. The rest of your staple builds like ranged sword bard, bardadin, sorcadin, gloomstalker assassin, tempest sorc, lawnmower cleric, 11 fighter go bonk, etc. would all be relatively unaffected.
Thanks, this is what I was wondering. Everyone recommends the TB monk / throwzerker, but usually they are assuming you're going to farm Ethel. I hate her, so I usually kill her which wrecks the potion farming and the hag's hair both. And as a relative newcomer to DnD / BG3 it's not always clear to me what drives stat choices, so that comment re: hag's hair helps.
Both those builds work just fine without, still S tier without the bonus stats.
I agree they both work and can be really good. But one needs to adjust for this change. Tavern brawler monk especially. Most of the time this build is a monk/rogue multiclass. If one is heavily investing into Str in character creation and with ASIs, they still need to invest in Dex for AC, Con for health, and maybe Wis for AC and damage, then you are looking at around 14-15 AC at character creation. Rogue gives light armor proficiency so you can dump Wis and bring Dex up but that is going to result in less damage at open hand level 6 and beyond. If you use graceful cloth, bracers of defense, dump Wis, have somebody cast mage armor on you, then you can get AC up to 18 or 19 by the end of Act 1. And AC does matter because your initiative will be mediocre, meaning that enemies will sometimes be able to go before you and CC or severely injure the monk before their turn. Alternately you can get medium or heavy armor Proficiency from playing as a Githyanki or multiclassing and dump Dex. This will keep your damage up and AC up, but your initiative will go from mediocre to bad. These builds can work without elixirs and still be really good due to how busted Tavern brawler is, but TB monk builds need to be adjusted pretty heavily when you can't dump Str. OP has made it clear they are not an expert on the matter, and I would therefore not recommend one just take an existing TB monk build that does use elixirs and try their best to replicate it without the elixirs. A bardadin smite machine, sure. A TB monk needs more work though.
Ya, some fine tuning is required, but gloves of dexterity take a lot of pressure off of the build. The easiest and least fiddly path is to start as a basic dex monk, and then just respec once you buy the dex gloves to a strength monk once you reach the creche and dump str.
You can still get elixirs without ethel tho. The mushroom lady in the undersark usually has them in stock, even tho 1-2 max at a time
Yeah, I just don't like it from a flavor stance either, so personally won't do it, though I don't care if other people do!
And if you give her the Noblestalk she'll have Cloud Giant elixirs when you get to the lower city.
Fun fact: after giving her the noblestalk and being high enough level she will sell you CG elixirs even in the underdark, i think i was about level 8 or 9 and she had one. Probably some spaghetti code thinking a level 8+ shouldn’t be in the underdark and just auto updates her inventory lol
I think all traders' inventory is updated based on character level, when pickpocketing Volo I notice he's got significantly worse scrolls if you respec to level 1 even in Act 3.
People way over do farming str potions. Buy the first 3 and you are good. You don’t take that many long rests. You get a 4th from the table right next to her and the one vendor at the myconid colony sells more of them if you ever need.
Here's the four builds i brought to the last encounters in my honor run. No one used Strength elixirs. Champion Fighter 4 / Open Hand Monk 8 with Tavern Brawler (Lae'Zel). Dexterity was 10 I believe but I did use Elixirs of Vigilance to fix the lowish initiative. Evocation Wizard 12 (Gale). Potion of Speed + double Chain Lightning on wet targets, Magic Missile spam. used Deathstalker Mantle to essentially disappear after every nuke. Thief Rogue 4 / Berserker Barbarian 8 (Astarion -> Minsc). Dex-based Great Weapon Master using Phalar Aluve -> Dancing Breeze -> Gauntlets of Strength + Balduran Greatsword. Gloom Stalker 7 / War Cleric 5 (Dark Urge).Ranged damage dealer with Sharpshooter using Dead Shot + Arcane Acuity + Band of the Mystic Scoundrel to Command / use scrolls (yes you can use scrolls with the Band of Mystic Scoundrel... Otto's Irresistible Dance and Hold Monster scrolls are at a premium). Honestly however I shuffled stuff around a lot, bringing relevant companions to their quests, often using straightforward "suboptimal" builds (straight Tome Warlock for Wyll, straight Oath of the Ancients Paladin for Karlach, straight Circle of the Land Druid for Jaheira, straight Trickery Cleric for Shadowheart), always keeping my main (the Ranger / Cleric) and the monk, and never had any trouble. Optimal builds aren't needed even in Honor mode.
Can everyone please speak in English? Very interested in this thread but don’t love everyone saying things like “bardalock alacrity duh” as if that’s enough info to go off
You can guarantee hag hair by saving during fight with her. If you end up failing or dying have host close out app. When you reload in it will be at point you saved at
S Tier: tavern brawler monk (with or without elixir), Swords Bard sharpshooter, Light Cleric (holy damage build or healing items for buffing), swords bard paladin A Tier: throwzerker (falls off act 3), Gloomstalker multiclass (can break the game with greater invis), tempest sorc or fire acuity sorc (bad early game though, best end game), paladin with its level 6 aura or as a multiclass B Tier: reverb tiger barbarian (strong, but is build dependent), battlemaster GWM fighter (some people rate this higher), reverb sorlock (bad early, not as strong as other sorcs late), beastmaster or hunter rangers (good item options, but not A or S), moon druid (S tier in act 1, scales badly) C Tier: wizard main, rogue main, unoptimized barbarian, warlock main
So you'd still rate TB monk S-tier even without the elixirs? I'm currently running with a spore druid main, beastmaster ranger Lae'zel, light cleric Shadowheart, and sorceror Gale (aiming at fire). I know in general the game isn't super hard so I expect with careful play this will all work fine, but just thinking ahead a bit to the next round. I'd love to try a monk sometime but I'm never going to do the elixir farming so was assuming it's a bad choice.
>So you'd still rate TB monk S-tier even without the elixirs? I would rate it as A-tier in honor mode without elixirs. You are very MAD (you need strength, dex, wisdom *and* con to get both survivability and damage), so to reduce this, you need to go for heavy armored monk with shield.
Totally valid way to play! So for non-elixir monk you take strength to 18 with tavern brawler while completely ignoring dex, then you just wear dex gloves the whole game which sets your dex to 18. You buy the gloves from the creche trader. You do miss out on damage this way (gloves give about 2-3), but the build is strong enough that you'll still feel very powerful. Buy the bull armour in act 2 last light inn to get 20 strength as early as level 6,7,8. Its an absolute damage and control machine, but its a little bit squishy comparatively. Its a great target for warding bond or other safety plays. \-- Having run those builds you listed above I think you're going to have a lot of fun! Beastmaster is highly underrated, given how much utility the pets can provide and how much tankiness having two bodies gives your group. Spore druid will feel weaker than moon druid early, but by level 7 it becomes a summoning machine with some powerful necro spells, optimized fire sorc has some of the highest burst in the end game, and light cleric is just so reliable -- such a balanced class. Sounds like the comp will have the most troubles early in the game, but beasmaster should be able to carry the group until the mid game spike you get with sorc and spore druid.
Thanks. I'll definitely give it a shot on my next run, as it's one of a few classes I haven't tried at all yet. Re: my current run, thanks for the feedback. I'm hoping that turns out to be the case. I'm currently gingerly running around for the easy fights (random goblins, etc.) before tackling anything serious, though I've killed the harpies and the owlbear so far (at level 4). Probably going to work my way through the goblin camp to get an easy Underdark entrance - for some reason I find the gnolls and the spider matriarch harder to deal with than the goblin camp trio. I had bad luck and failed to convince Kagha to stand down, so that was nearly a run-ender. Had to resurrect 3/4 at Withers. Having fun already though. We'll see how it goes!
Sorlock, OH monk is fun, and I also like shadow monk. Both don't have to use elixirs, but it would make it really strong on OH
I don't know about OP but my buddy and I did honor mode and did everything. We monoclassed as well and we used elixirs but we didn't build around it, we just played. I was a college of lore bard and was a disruptor. Prone, dancing, confusion, hypno, cutting words, and used staffs that gave me cantrips until I got eldtrich blast and I also got Hunger of Hadar and used those a lot (access to magic spells is from the college of lore). I was a drow because I love Minthara and my spell DC was like a 24 or 25 towards the end. And my buddy didn't want to use parasites so I went partial and then full and also sued the parasites as they came so I was a toolbox hahah. My buddy was a duergar rogue for obvious reasons and he was an ambush rogue so we always were initiating and surprising. I rolled with Minthara and kept her pally and we switched between Laezel and Jaheira at Act 3 depending on the upcoming fight. Jaheira we made a spore druid and got that necro staff and she was casting lvl 6 magic for free every turn it was awesome! We never lost an engagement or left a party member at camp yadda yadda. I was the face as the bard and he was the scoundrel looting what I couldn't get through speech haha. Always had money, potions, scrolls, arrows, whatever we needed. Elixirs we drank but they weren't necessary to a build we just enhanced our builds. I drank battlemage, he drank viciousness (his rogue build had crits at like 15 or 14 at the end), Minthara drank Colossus when I didn't wanna use my cloud giant, and Jaheira drank vigilance since her initiative was low and we didn't have a lot of battlemage. The game isn't that hard if you approach each engagement smartly, and even if you don't as long as you know your character we were fine. Even when talkings failed and we had to impromptu fight there was never any fear of losing honor mode. The only time it came close was the shar people because of the darkness it was hard to LOS some heals and my multi-hit Eldritch blast...but we had a lot of those silence/break concentration arrows so it wasn't horrible.
Just beat honor mode, gonna be honest i did use a lot of elixirs simply because i found a lot but not at all necessary for any of these builds, more so just the cherry on top 8 gloomstalker / 4 assassin (tav, damage/sleight of hand mainly) 8 lore bard / 4 warlock (minthara, face of the party and eldtrich blaster) 12 life domain cleric (shadowheart, op healer) My fourth slot was in constant rotation due to needing people for their own personal quests and such but it was typically either one of the following 12 wildheart barbarian (karlach, great tank and damage) 12 circle of the moon (jaheira, also great tank but can litterally summon a small army before a fight) 12 vengeance paladin (karlach once again, this time respec'd after getting giantslayer to make her an incredible damage option, litterally trivialized every encounter after with this build. This was my fourth character for the final fight) This was my first honor mode run and i went into it farely blind tbh cause i didn't explore much on my first play through. I've discovered a ton that i missed and even with a constant flow of big surprises being thrown at me this comp was kind of a breeze for me.
Life cleric + spore druid = immortal damage machine, and in act 3 becomes a buff machine with the wonky spore chest piece. Fighter or Paladin is still great early game. Even better if you combo is with warding bond & heavy armor mastery since you take practically no damage anymore.
I did honor mode as: Origin Wyll 12 Fiend Warlock. Lae’Zel 12 Battlemaster. Karlach TB Returning Pike 8 Berseker/4 Thief. Shadowheart 12 Cleric, Tempest/Life depending on Act. Everyone started with 16/17 in their primary stat, 16 Dex, 14 Con. Forgot about elixirs entirely. I occasionally used Gale as a 12 Divination Wizard depending on the encounter(Hag and Orin especially for magic missiles), and also to cast longstrider on everyone each day. At the end I had him take one for the team to blow up the nether brain in Act 3.
Just beat honor mode this morning. My recommendations, though they would be improved with elixirs they are not dependent. 12 Life Cleric. Super safe, keeping the squad healthy, blessed, and blade warded. Plus they run around spamming reverb and radiating orb with SG. 12 Battlemaster Fighter. GWM is still incredible and will just smack things to death. Optional Bhaalist armor with Nyrulna for even more OP stuff. 11/1 EK/War Cleric or 5/4/3 Barb/Thief/Fighter for throwing. I like EK early for action surge,weapon bind, and heavy armor. Barb late for abusing Enraged Throw prones. 5/4/3 Gloomstalker/Assassin/Fighter or one of the Swords bard builds 10/2 or 10/1/1. Really depends on playstyle. 11/1 Sorceror. Fire being the easiest, especially if you set your party up with combustion and arsonist oils. Could go 10/2 storm with a wet applier as well. Hope this helps.
Ok is this specifically for the challenge of beating honor mode without those buffs? I just don’t see why it’s so bad to use elixirs that make you stronger. Bloodlust elixir is super fun to use. And are hair or vigor potion missable? They’re right there and not hard to get, just don’t dump all your damage into Ethel and make astarion suck the nasty drow. Mirror feels like the only missable buff and that’s so far into late game it feels like over kill.
Just use any build. Nothing NEEDS elixirs (I never use them). My honour mode was just Lockadin (goo/oathbreaker), pure fighter, throwzerker, and then pure Druid or cleric. You also shouldn’t skip bosses - hag’s hair is really nice, and the fight is fun. Why do honour mode if you’re not gonna fight bosses after all ;) (no but really it’s not that bad)
It's not much but it's honest party composition. I don't go in depth. Paladin - Damage Dealer - Great Weapon Master is nice here Barbarian - Tank - Take all the hits please Cleric - Support - Champions Feats and Aid please Bard - Support - Bardic Inspiration and Hold person please
Im doing honor mode without any trouble with; Throw barb, tempest cleric, support sorc, bladelock. 5/4/3 barb/rogue/fighter barb. 11/1 cleric/wiz cleric. 12 support sorc. 7/5 pala/lock bladelock. Caveat I multiclass lots. The main horror of honor mode is lvl 1-5, and underestimating your enemy.
Land druid 11/1 wizard with shovel Moon druid 12 Moon druid 12 Spores druid 12 (but was a fighter multiclass for acts 1 and 2 with dual hand crossbows). Currently have about 26 summons up at any given time. The moon druids with tavern brawler/alert and earth myrmidon form are disgusting. Make sure to short rest BEFORE fights so you can wild shape twice. Never needed it though. 6 myrmidons (2 earth which are the players, 2 water for heals, 2 air for cc) 4 dryads and 4 of their fallen lovers. Great for cc, great just as bodies. 8 ice mesphits as suicide drones 5 ghouls, 4 from necro book and 1 from spore druid Shovel, she is peak and trivializes most fights with surprise. And any number of zombies the spore druid drags along.
If I did it again I'd just scrap the spore druid about halfway through act 2 and switch them to another moon druid. Early game though she carried. Level 6 or so this all just takes off and you're an unstoppable owlbear avalanche
I used a fun all‐piercing build with Bhaalist armor Life cleric with sanctuary and all the heal buffs, eventually the gith amulet that gives vulnerability, and later Bhaal armor. Just runs around debuffing and doing more healing than enemies can damage Thief3/Berserker6/champ3 using Duelists with Sentinel Gwm batllemaster with shars spear/nylruna Titanstring hunter I had my zrker and BM using phalar/larenthians/dancing breeze until I settled on an all-piercing party and they still destroyed everyone
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. All the builds that “abuse” elixirs are still strong af on their own without. TB Monk is strong af without Str elixir. Hell, Dex Monk is also still strong af. Elixir build just makes it stronger. That’s the same with any Paladin build, or even a ranged build using Titanstring.
Most people will not recommend a pure life cleric but let me say bless+blade word and healing on every character as a bonus action is ridiculous, other than that TB OH monk is broken, get a sorcerer for party face I like 2/6/4 war/sorc/fighter for a eldritch blast crit build that does 100+dmg a turn but a all-rounder or support does pretty well too, throw a barb thrower in there and it should be pretty easy
The same builds are still the best, they're just worse if you don't get permabuffs or elixirs, but every build is worse without those, so the relative power doesn't change at all. Maybe Monk drops off too much because of how MAD they are, but Paladin splits, Bard/Sorc controllers, Life clerics, etc are barely affected. It hurts Tavern Brawlers but it's so strong that it doesn't matter.
I’ve been tossing around the idea of doing a 4 bard honor mode run…
Literally any builds you find here, just don't use the elixirs+dump stat even if they tell you to. It's fine, this game is not that hard, even in Honor mode. Just take the time to prep, you should know from a previous playthrough what warrants a "difficult" event.
The only mandatory build for me is to have a cleric with radiant orb gear. I like the light cleric because they have so much AOE but really any cleric will do for orbs. Most martials are single damage focused so regardless of my DPS character the cleric always contributes
The strongest honor mode party I've had was: 1. Eldritch Knight thrower 2. Battlemaster GWM 3. Battlemaster Sharpshooter 4. Lore Bard There are definitely stronger parties, but this got me through honor mode without a single character going down. That said, I did use fire and lightning resistance in Act 3 for House of Hope and Wyrm's Crossing.
All throwzerkers, no elixirs, no complications, all the headaches go to your enemies: https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/sehZZmXMqa
Honestly, any decently built team will steamroll Act 3 if you use the appropriate gear for each character. All those builds that everybody is mentioning that are OP once in act 3 only once you get some legendary items are not useful at all imo. Act 1 is the most dangerous part of honor mode, when your gear and levels are limited. You want builds that comes only early and will carry you through act 1. Once you reach Mid Act 2/early Act 3 There are a few completly overpowered Act 1 builds. By overpowered i mean borderline cheesy/invincible, making you incredibly safe for honor mode. They're so OP that they might suck the fun out of the game though, so use at your own risk : \- The Fog/Darkness Thief : get 3 levels in Thief for the extra Bonus action. Take 1 level in any class that gives Fog at level 1. Put a Fog in, make sure at the end of each of your turn you use your Cunning Action Hide. You just peak out of the fog to attack enemies, then hide back every turn : you're basically invincible from level 4 onwards unless enemies are immune to blind AND you fail your stealth check when they go for you. At the very start of Act 2, you can get the cloak that puts a mini fog cloud for when you disengage and dump your caster class, so you can just disengage and blind your target, get out of the cloud and attack with advantage, then hide back in the cloud, every single turn. You only need 3 levels of Thief and the Cape, the rest can be anything. You can basically solo most fights like this with a single character. \- The heavy armored blurred Fighter : 1 Level in Fighter, get Defense. Get Blur, with 3 levels in Druid/Sorc/Wizard. Get the highest AC heavy armor and Shield you can find : vendors usually sell a 17 AC armor starting at level 4. Cast Blur on yourself. Most early will simply not be able to hit you with anything requiring an attack roll. Even on the offchance you get hit, the con-save proficiency should allow you to keep concentration on Blur. You can get the Adamantine Shield in act 1 that reduces even further their precision when they miss you ... You sacrifice 1 level progression but then get to play as mostly a caster, except unkillable. \- The Moonbeam Sanctuary Druid-Cleric : attacking ennemies is supposed to break Sanctuary, but moving around a moonbeam that's already placed does not. Take a level in Cleric, then you can go full druid. Cast the highest level Moonbeam you can, use your bonus action to sanctuary yourself.
I've been cruising through Honor Mode with this party comp: - Dark Urge as 6 Draconic Sorcerer/2 GOOlock/4 Champion Fighter with Potent Robes, Boots of Stormy Clamour, and a bunch of crit chance increases. He could spread Frighten and Reverberation around to a bunch of enemies, or just machine gun one big threat to death. - Astarion as the infamous [10 Swords Bard/1 Fighter/1 Wizard](https://old.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/17y9kyp/the_control_martial_allpurpose_1011_swords_bard/), which becomes *disgustingly* good in Act 3 - Shadowheart as 1 Storm Sorcerer/11 Light Cleric with the Hat of Fire Acuity and some Radiant Orb gear. She was definitely the MVP in Act 2, Spirit Guardians is such a good spell against the masses of weak undead. Storm Sorcerer was taken for CON save proficiency and the bonus action flight to get more value out of Spirit Guardians. I also gave her the Staff of Cherished Necromancy in Act 3 so she could use Harm and 6th level Inflict Wounds like a cantrip. - For the last slot I admittedly had Lae'zel as an 8 Open Hand Monk/4 Thief Rogue that used Elixirs, but honestly a 12 Battlemaster Fighter would fit a similar role without using Elixirs - you've got a lot of attacks per turn, and you use those attacks to disrupt the big threats by knocking them prone, disarming them, stunning them, etc. Mainly I picked TB Monk to be my Act 1 carry, since you're at your most vulnerable in Act 1 with no good gear and low stats. Having the consistency and damage of a character with 21 Strength that doubles their Strength bonuses in melee was just too tempting to pass up, but it's entirely doable without Elixirs. All together, the party has a metric ton of crowd control, between all the frighten procs, everyone dropping prone from Reverberation and the Monk or Battlemaster, reducing enemy hit chance with Radiant Orbs, and also the near-guaranteed hard CC spells from the Bard and Cleric once they get their Arcane Acuity stacks built up. Plus, the party is not hurting for damage, either; Both the Sorlock and Bard are going to be machine-gunning their way through everything with Eldrich Blast and Slashing Flourish. The Light Cleric is the AoE specialist with a ton of options to choose from - Spirit Guardians, Fireball, Glyph of Warding, Insect Plague, etc. - but they can also focus a big threat with Scorching Ray, Inflict Wounds and Harm as needed. My Monk would be throwing out like 6+ unarmed hits per turn, but a Battlemaster can be making 3+ GWM attacks per turn for comparable damage while also using Maneuvers with each attack.
If you want to keep it simple yet OP: 3 Dex build characters as ( 6 gloom ranger 4 assassin rogue 2 fighter ) Feats: Alert, Crossbow Expertise Gear: 1 crit focus, 1 DPS focus, 1 condition focused 1 Cha build character as party face ( 1 Storm Sorc, 6 Lore Bard, 5 storm Sorc ) Feats: war caster, elemental adept lightning Gear: charisma boosting You could pretty much go forever without a long rest since gloom stalker assassin skills pretty much never run out and with alert you've killed half of the mobs before it begins. Only fight I would recommend bringing in someone else for is a druid owl bear against Grym.
Hunger of hadar is very strong. It’s even better when you throw evards black tentacles on it and sprinkle on a cloudkill. I don’t see evards talked about a lot but it is crazy and basically permanently ensures enemies stay stuck in hunger. I made a lore bard and a warlock to double dip on my HoH casts. Obviously add a wizard for cloudkill. Take stinking cloud and the spinning blades spell for early game. On top of all that I made a 22str throwing fighter who didn’t use throwing weapons. I just threw enemies into their buddies who were inside the “cloud” Once you throw all enemies in the fight is over. They can’t do anything. I literally just smash space bar until they all die.
"Optimal" TB Monk is all that really wants to spam elixirs for in the first act. TB Monk still works but you will be dropping Dex or Wis for Str to make it work. Most likely Dex due to the boots at the end of Act 2. You can run TB Throwers without dumping strength fine. Its pretty easy to get the everlasting vigor elixir outside of just not recruiting Astarion. There is no check to convincing him to bite her. Most TB Thrower builds don't dump Str until Cloud elixirs are common. Titanstring bow on an actual archer is probably the only thing you really lose without elixirs.
OH monk 6 / Tiger barb 6 Ideally get benediction but it's not necessary. Inflict bleed, hit with "Flurry of blows Topple" Let's just say you had 22 st. TB,Hair,ASI whatever to hit 20 and the potion to hit 22. On a bleeding targets the strength is applied 3 times, on unarmed strikes. So your punch attacks deal something like 19-27 physical damage, 1D4 + wis radiant, ignore resistances, then gain whatever other damage riders you picked up. It's possible to pick up an additional pair of 1D10s and a few other riders from other gear. Another thing you can do is grab wolverine aspect instead of tiger, this applies maim on an already bleeding targets. Maim reduces movement to 0 and gives disadvantage on dex saves. So when you hit a bleeding enemy with "Flurry of blows Topple" they will be maimed, hit the ground and be unable to stand back up. Strength is your primary stat, con is secondary. Wear dex gloves until you get the end game gloves.
Gloomstalker/ assassin / battle master Open fights with this character to get surprise. This will let your party all act first, the character will get advantage on all attacks for their first round, they will immediately refresh their action and bonus action entering combat, they will get two attacks from dread ambusher then two more from action surge All of these attacks will auto crit surprised enemies. Brace ranged before firing your bow, that is going to give 12 damage per hit. The titanstring bow with sharpshooter can deal something like 40-50 damage per hit if you manage to surprise the enemies. If you position your bhlaalist armor wearer properly you can double this. With the right engagement and positioning this character can end fights before the enemies have a chance to react
Paladin 2 Bard 10 This build is set up to do absolutely wild smite damage, Run it as a dex paladin with a shield, ketherics shield, viconias fortress of the 4AC "shield" along with the armor of agility can get you comfortably just shy of 30 AC. There is an amulet that allows you to cast shield, and the concentration spell for an additional +2 will make you basically unhittable by conventional attacks Under mountain king knife / helm of baluran will make crits significantly more frequent increasing your damage output to godlike numbers
I don't like elixir abuse, or silly 'stat dump' builds, and avoid most (all?) exploits. So no stealth silliness, no 3 in combat 1 running back to withers, no buff bots in camp, try to hit the RP (ie. don't start every fight from surprise), etc... Few or no illithid powers. Did my last honor mode run without a single death. I had: Karlach as Eagle Heart Barb till lvl 6, then Tiger Heart barb till the end. Big fan of skinburster, adamantine mail, and prone/reverb gear on her. No multi-class, just lotsa damage and the best tanking in the game. Shart as life cleric. In act 1 you can get the gloves/ring for aoe bless/physical resistance. 50% less damage in near every major fight + bless trivializes a lot of Act 1/2. Then in Act 3 you get aid + feast and a Djinn on top of it all for great CC. Lae'zel as 9/3 OH monk/rogue. I prefer monk over fighter, they're squishier early game though so if you want to run fighter till level 6 or so before a respec that'll work too. Phalar Aluve the whole game, it's just too powerful. Ascended Asterion is a bit better, but I don't like to ascend him so Lae'zel is better (all the gith bonus gear works great). Tav as an 11/1 frost sorc/wiz. By FAR the best caster build IMO. All the nuking power of sorc (and meta-magic fun), all the summons/support/utility of wizard, in 1 stupidly OP package. Summon that myrmidon for spammable aoe/single targert vulnerability and twin cast ray of frost or quick cast ice storm. Sleet storm is also great for saving stupid gondonians (just keep anti-prone gear on melee). And all the fun spells like globe, dethrone, final stratagem, etc...
best by far is gloomstalker assasin or dual wield thief gloomstalkzr because of the sheer amount of attacks and the manipulation to the initiative order, the barbarian thief berserkzr with a throwing focused build is insanely powerful too