The Storm Sorcery Sorcerer is a subclass in Dungeons and Dragons that embodies the influence of storms such as hurricanes, typhoons, and monsoons. Playing a Storm Sorcerer is difficult and risky, forcing players to put themselves in harm’s way. The class encourages offensive spells that deal heavy damage, such as lightning and thunder.
The Wind Speaker (Level 1) allows the player to learn a maximum of 15 spells during their adventuring career, with only 6 at level 5, which is a paltry number for a full caster. Misty Step is not a spell the Storm Sorcerer desperately needs, but is a good option for emergencies and problem-solving. The 1st level spell is extremely powerful, ranging from extremely aggressive.
When choosing spells, pick up magic that goes well with the Storm Sorcerer’s natural abilities. Cantrips like Gust, Thunderclap, Shocking Grasp, and Shape Water all work hand-in-hand with the very first level. The best spell choices for a Storm Sorcerer include OneWitch Bolt, Chromatic Orb, Magic Missile, TwoShatter, Misty Step, Invisibility, ThreeLightning Bolt, Counterspell, Haste, FourIce Storm, and Dimension Door.
The Storm Sorcerer’s best spell without considering Transmute Spell is Chain Lightning, which deals decent damage and gets four targets. Other useful higher-level damaging spells include Lightning Bolt, Thunder Step, and Chain Lightning. Wall of Water is also both thematically and physically beneficial.
📹 Baldur’s Gate 3 Guide – Best Early Game Spells (Most players Don’t Know How Good These Are)
In this Baldur’s Gate 3 Guide, we’ll take a look at 11 Early Game Spells that you should absolutely have in your repertoire, …
What is the most powerful Sorcerer class in D&D?
The Divine Soul Sorcerer is a top-tier D and D 5e Sorcerer subclass with exceptional potential. It excels in areas like battlefield control and utility spells like Dissonant Whispers, Hunger of Hadar, Sending, and Telekinesis. The Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, a key component of the D and D 5e Sorcerer, is a formidable opponent. Its strength is matched only by its ability to ramp up spells, as demonstrated by Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. This makes it a formidable choice for players seeking to excel in their chosen areas.
Is Storm Sorcerer better than Draconic Sorcerer?
The best and worst damage is subjective, with Storm Sorcerer and Draconic being the most common. Both require more combat hoops and wasted feats, but both end up with the same damage (+6). These features are primarily for early game use, and party flying potions are not available until mid-game. Spamming potions and accessing Infinite items is trivial, so it’s not a significant consideration.
Spellcasters face issues with enemies closing in on them, as running away can result in an opportunity atk, and casting spells at close range puts them at a disadvantage. The atk boost from Draconic bloodlines is minimal, but it’s a small advantage for Sorcerers early to mid-game.
Enemies closing in on spellcasters can be a disadvantage, as they can be tagged by an opportunity atk and cast spells at close range. The atk boost from Draconic bloodlines is only a small +4-5, making it a small advantage for Sorcerers.
What is the most important attribute for a sorcerer?
Sorcerer ability scores are crucial for spellcasting, as they are based on charisma, which is the highest priority stat. A full 20 is needed to ensure the sorcerer is at their best. Dexterity is another important stat for sorcerers, as it affects saving throws, armor class, initiative, and other skills. Constitution is also moderately important for sorcerers, as it helps them get more hit points and make concentration saves.
Wisdom and intelligence rank lower in importance than dexterity and constitution, but they offer useful perks if they don’t become a dump stat. A decent wisdom score can pay off for wisdom saving throws, while a good intelligence score can be useful for the Arcana skill, which some players might want.
In conclusion, sorcerer ability scores are based on charisma, dexterity, constitution, wisdom, and intelligence. Players should prioritize each stat based on their desired character type and the benefits they want. A high score in these stats can lead to better spellcasting abilities and a more enjoyable roleplay experience.
What is the most powerful sorcerer?
Satoru Gojo, a powerful Sorcerer with two rare innate techniques, Limitless and Six Eyes, and a massive pool of cursed energy, is considered the strongest in the series. His unique eyes grant him enhanced vision and perfect control over his cursed energy. Sukuna, a unique case in Jujutsu Kaisen, is often mistaken for a Cursed Spirit. However, he was the most powerful Sorcerer to ever live and sealed himself inside 20 cursed fingers, which can empower Cursed Spirits. Despite his abilities, Sukuna is not a Cursed Spirit himself.
What is the best race for storm sorcery?
The High Half-Elf race is a suitable choice for the Storm Sorcerer build in Baldur’s Gate 3, offering extra Cantrip, Fey Ancestry, Darkvision, and Shield Proficiency. The Human race offers increased carrying capacity, skill proficiency, and shield proficiency. Charlatan is the ideal background for a High Half-Elf Sorcerer due to its proficiency in Deception and Sleight of Hand, with high Charisma and Dexterity scores being key attributes in this build.
What is the best Metamagic for the storm sorcerer?
The Storm Sorcery subclass is a versatile and flavorful option for Sorcerers, particularly those who enjoy force lightning. Its bonus action allows for manipulation of wind, and it is best to use spells that work well with Sorcerer metamagics. Twinned Spell and Heightened Spell are the best metamagic options, as they unlock a level of spellcasting unattainable by other spellcasting classes. Although slightly underpowered, the Storm Sorcery subclass excels in campaigns with a consistent theme of sea travel and is a great choice for those who enjoy force lightning. Witch Bolt is a popular choice for those who enjoy this subclass.
Can storm sorcerers fly?
At 1st level, you can use a bonus action to create whirling gusts of elemental air, allowing you to fly up to 10 feet without provoking opportunity attacks. At 6th level, you gain resistance to lightning and thunder damage, and when you cast a spell of 1st level or higher, stormy magic erupts from you, causing creatures within 10 feet of you to take lightning or thunder damage equal to half your sorcerer level. At 6th level, you can subtly control the weather around you.
What is the most powerful sorcerer class in D&D?
The Divine Soul Sorcerer is a top-tier D and D 5e Sorcerer subclass with exceptional potential. It excels in areas like battlefield control and utility spells like Dissonant Whispers, Hunger of Hadar, Sending, and Telekinesis. The Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, a key component of the D and D 5e Sorcerer, is a formidable opponent. Its strength is matched only by its ability to ramp up spells, as demonstrated by Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. This makes it a formidable choice for players seeking to excel in their chosen areas.
What is the best background for a storm sorcerer?
Storm Sorcerers are skilled sailors due to their association with air. They have proficiency in Athletics and Perception, which can be beneficial for those with low Strength scores. They also have knowledge of navigator’s tools and water vehicles, making them ideal for quick getaways. When choosing a feat, focus on ones that not only provide unique abilities but also a minor stat boost. For instance, Lightly Armored grants protection and boosts DEX by +1.
Charisma-boosting feats like Telekinetic, Telepathic, Gift of the Gem Dragon, Fey Touched, and Shadow Touched grant access to unique spells. When choosing spells, choose magic that complements the Sorcerer’s natural abilities. Cantrips like Gust, Thunderclap, Shocking Grasp, and Shape Water work with the storms they control, while Gaseous Form, Sleet Storm, Thunder Step, Tidal Wave, and Freedom of the Waves utilize the storm energy when wind meets water.
Is Storm Sorcerer worth it?
The Storm Sorcerer is best suited as the Dark Urge, with Medicine scaling with Wisdom for Cleric and Intimidation levels. This build offers two proficiencies that are beneficial in various contexts: Acolyte (Insight and Religion), Criminal (Deception and Stealth), Guild Artisan (Insight and Persuasion), and Noble (History and Persuasion). It is strongly recommended that the Dark Urge be selected due to the benefit of the cloak it grants.
Is Storm sorcerer worth it?
The Storm Sorcerer is best suited as the Dark Urge, with Medicine scaling with Wisdom for Cleric and Intimidation levels. This build offers two proficiencies that are beneficial in various contexts: Acolyte (Insight and Religion), Criminal (Deception and Stealth), Guild Artisan (Insight and Persuasion), and Noble (History and Persuasion). It is strongly recommended that the Dark Urge be selected due to the benefit of the cloak it grants.
📹 Baldur’s Gate 3: Storm Sorcery Sorcerer – All Spells And Abilities (Full Release)
In this Baldur’s Gate 3 subclass guide I show you all the spells and abilities you will unlock for the Storm Sorcery subclass of the …
I know this article was specifically about early game spells, but magic missile actually gets really strong late game, too, if you’re using it on an evocation wizard. They gain the ability to add their int modifiers to the damage of evocation spells, and that applies to every hit of a magic missile spell. So even using a level 1 spell slot to cast, you’re adding a total of 15 damage to your damage rolls for that spell.
The downside to sleep in BG3 compared to 5e is that shoving is only a bonus action (compared to needing a full action to wake a sleeping creature in 5e) and the AI loves to shove its allies awake, and still have the capability to run up to you and attack in the same turn. It’s still fantastic when targeting creatures that don’t have awake allies nearby.
Healing word: The real magic happens when you have gear that buffs healing spells. It’s even more pronounced on a life cleric that gets additional buffs to healing. 1D8 Vs 1D4 is a pretty big jump. An average of 4.5 Vs an average of 2.5. 2 health may not seem like a ton, but it’s 80% of that 2.5 heal. BUT … you don’t just get 1D8 or 1D4. You also get your wisdom modifier added in. That’s another 3 at low level. So, now it’s 7.5 Vs 5.5. Now it’s a 36% increase. That’s a lot less. But what if you got the boots from the goblin camp that add 3 temp hit points? Now it’s 10.5 Vs 8.5. That’s 23% more healing. What if you’re a life cleric and get an extra +3 to your low level healing spells? 13.5 Vs 11.5. 17% extra healing. What about when your wisdom is 18 and you have the ring that increases healing by 2? 16.5 Vs 14.5. 13% additional healing. An action is a really big deal. Having to run all around the battle can ALSO be a really big deal. Healing with a bonus action instead is amazing! Healing at a distance and only needing to use a bonus action is HUGE! The more modifiers you get the less of a difference the dice make in your output. (There are more modifiers to your healing you can get than this) LASTLY – Don’t wait until people are unconscious to heal them. If they go unconscious definitely heal them. But, keep them from getting knocked out. That character loses an action when they’re revived that way. You SHOULD NOT try to use healing to keep everyone full at all times Though, life domain cleric and a bard are the secret to doing this (2 massive AOE website divinity per short rest and 3 short rests per long rest).
Darkness – I think most people put it off because it blinds everyone, including their party. However, the disadvantage of your blindness and the advantage of their blindness cancel each other out. What this really does is prevent all ranged attacks from entering or exiting the space, meaning enemies are forced to get into melee range, even those pesky archers. Very useful for combat control.
I found Aid to be very helpful in the early levels (and still remains strong when upcasted in mid-late game) when your squad is fairly squishy, you can easily use one spell slot to give everyone a permanent 5 or even 10 HP boost until long rest, when it results in a 20-30% HP increase early game to mid-game, what’s not to love?
You forgot one very important spell – Command! This spell in Shadowheart arsenal allows you to force opponents to skip their next turn, or drop their weapons, or just move towards you for an entire turn. It could be upcast to target more targets. This thing alone could win you a lot of fights… except with undead.
I would also say the lvl 2 spike field stuff (im not a dnd player) from the druid spells is super useful. It creates a large area where enemies take damage for walking through it. So if you use it in a doorway and stand in the other room, most melee enemies die on the way to you. I cleared the whole goblin camp with like 2 uses of this spell. Inside and outside.
Note that there is an amulet with Guidance on a skeleton located on a hill southwest of the druid grove gate, handy if you don’t plan on having any Cleric or Druid in your party. There’s another amulet with Speak With the Dead in a fairly obvious place in the eastern crypt, so you don’t really need to take this spell. Speak With Animals is a handy spell to have, but note that it’s only cast on self so you want it on your main conversation character. All the Ritual spells are handy to have among your party. Someone in the party should have Enhance Leap and Featherfall, though it can be a prepared caster that swaps them in as needed. Someone should have Longstrider. Finally, and this is a very powergamey move, you can abuse Hirelings to cast Longstrider and all the non-Ritual ‘Until Long Rest’ buff spells like Mage Armor, Protection from Poison, Darkvision and so on without wasting any spell slots on your main party.
Color spray: I find I would always rather use thunderwave or burning hands. If you have multiple targets under 33hp those damaging first level spells do a pretty good job of weakening them enough to be finished with a single hit. The blindness only lasts a single turn. That’s not much. I’ve experimented this with the low level ring that gives color spray on characters that don’t typically have spells or AOE options.
I want to give a shout out to the spell Friends. It’s an absolute game changer for dialogue options as you get to roll an additional dice, and it takes the higher of the two. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this, and one of them would’ve been a critical failure, but instead, I get to pass the check. It’s made my paladin and bard classes OP in all dialogue checks
4:58 Healing Word also stacks really well with the “Hellrider’s Gauntlets”, a reward from Zevlor. The gauntlets grant your healing target “Blade Ward” along with whatever damage you manage to heal. This basically cuts all melee and ranged (but not spell) damage for the target in half for two rounds. It’s a great buff for your main tank when they’re getting low on hit points, and you need to temporarily improve their durability.
Faerie fire: One of the best first level spell slots in the game. Scales until the end of the game fine. If your party generally uses attack roles (melee, or bows, or ranged cantrips that use attack rolls) it’s hard to beat advantage to attack for your WHOLE party for the fight. In this game it doesn’t counter invisibility… but, even just for party wide advantage it’s huge.
I gave Astarion a few spell levels and Shield has saved him dozens of times! Bless is a spell I use throughout the game and Magic Missle is awesome to take out multiple weaker characters or killing that guy with 1 HP left so you’re not wasting a DPS characters attack- seems to happen far too many times. I didn’t know Disguise Self was so amazing! Thank you.
7:15 – The most powerful part of Magic Missile is that each dart that hits a caster focusing on a concentration spell must make a constitution saving throw to maintain concentration for each individual dart. Even if they have a high chance of succeeding, you’re adding more chances that they’ll roll low, or even a Natural 1 (Critical Fail). Be wary, though, as if the targeted spellcaster has Shield and a reaction that turn, they will block each dart from Magic Missile. But this is really the most powerful use of Magic Missile. Bless and Bane are interchangeable; Bless adds 1d4 to each blessed party member, while Bane can deduct 1d4 from enemy rolls. At level 4, pick up the War Caster feat and gain advantage on concentration saving throws to make this de/buff spell even more powerful. Honorable mention; Silence. Silence spell blocks ALL SOUNDS. Cast Silence on an NPC you want to murder; as long as nobody can see them, nobody will ever know. If you have a high enough strength character, you can even pick up the body to dispose of somewhere else. Nobody will ever know what happened. Water bottle/carafe or Create Water spell also washes away the blood, though NPC’s didn’t seem to notice that part anyway. There’s a certain prison break scenario everyone might be familiar with where I used this tactic to clear out all the guards. It was grossly effective. The chasm where I dumped the bodies was less effective since there’s an invisible floor. womp womp. Speaking of Create Water, up-casting it increases the radius.
Magic missile: A big deal for this spell, more so at higher levels, is that the target has to do a concentration save vs damage for EACH time they’re hit. Magic missile is fantastic for targeting spell casters who are concentrating on big spells. Scorching Ray does this too. And, so does eldritch blast as you get more levels. Even if a target is unlikely to fail a concentration save … they’re going to roll that 1-5 eventually. You just have to keep hitting them. A bunch of missiles is a great way to farm for that low number while also doing some damage (casters tend to have low health to begin with). This is why shield negates magic missile, but not all casters get access to shield.
Fog cloud: A single first level spell slot and it can negate ranged attackers. In fights where you have a LOT of enemies and several archers or casters this is a battlefield manipulation spell that forces them to move, may cost them a turn (like color spray) and also usually brings them closer to you while bunching them up together. This makes them ripe for cloud of daggers or shatter or thunderwave or any other fun AOE spell, or thrown bottle or elemental arrow. The next time you murder your way out of that goblin stronghold think about how many arrows are hitting you each round and how much better it would be if that stopped for a moment and if they grouped together to come at you from either side of that fire pit ….. Plenty of other uses. But that’s what you look for. Large enemy groups of archers and spell casters. Vs 1 or 2 it may not feel like a spell slot well spent. Vs 4 or 5 you’re going to feel GREAT about that spell slot.
Command: If you make a melee boss drop their weapon the fight is over and it’s hilarious. You can beat them down with their own weapon. This works on MAJOR bosses. Though, the best way to do this is with the battlemaster disarm combat maneuver. It’s a very good usage of a 1st level spell slot. I try to use it from close and also pick up the weapon before their turn. No idea if the AI will pick up a dropped weapon and I’m not curious enough to do a fight and test it.
If you want the buff that last until long rest but dont want to take the spell slots on your main team you can respec a person who stays at camp and have that person take the utility spells, have them cast it on everyone while in camp and swap them back out the group, all the utility spells without taking spells slots for your main squad
To me Hypnotize has been a godsend spell for early and mid game. So many times has Gale changed the tide of battle by casting Hypnotize on group (it has huge AoE) and letting me heal everyone on our turn. Sleep is amazing yes and later if you use Wyll or yourself I find Huger of Hadar to be the #1 CC in the game for chokepoints, if you couple it with plant growth or spike growth most enemies will just kill themselves.
It’s so fun perusal the article game community realize the absurd power of the god-wizard! It took the 5e community a while to recognize that Fireball is not the optimal choice, and that Hypnotic Cube is almost always better. I’m sure the article game community will actually come to the realization faster, since you have more power gamers, can test things more easily, and have the experience of the 5e community to draw from. Still, I love articles like this just because they’re almost the exact same message as articles I watched years ago for the tabletop game.
Tashas hideous laughter. It knocks someone out of the fight until you lose concentration, or they can attempt a saving throw after they take dmg (and since it is not sleep your enemies.dont.know that they should help their allies). There was a late game boss with 666hp that I took out of the fight for 3 entire rounds while I wiped out every other enemy. And his laugh echoing through the music was honestly incredible to listen to lol Also if you ever see a trap in the form of torch on ground and gas vents ready to go, you can use.mage hand to toss the torch to your character to pick up. You can also cast it through bars to throw loot out, or to pull levers on the other side
Nice article. I’m still struggling with having about a thousand Hours in Pathfinder, which has many of the same spells, but they work differently. Sleep for instance is pretty much garbage in Pathfinder, so i completely skipped over it here. Didnt know about it not having a saving throw, and working off of current target HP… or that you get advantage and a guaranteed crit on sleeping targets. Same with Colour Spray.
There are even more stuff with disguise self. However I want to mention another lowlevel damage concentrarion spell. Cloud of daggers. Would you consider 20 ish dmg ok for a low level spell slot? How about 100? It procs when enemies walk into it, and on the start of their turn, and when you first cast it. I killed nearly every darn goblin early game with one cast of these, on tactician. Place it just in front of a doorway or other narrow chokepoint, then slow/block of their progress past it. Like spiritual weapon in the doorframe (just outside the aoe). This way you can keep your entire team los, and only walk up on your turn to shoot trough the doorway. Just have one melee to clean up the few who are able to get inside. Bam, ez gobbo camp. Let em bang those drums.
Magic missile helped a lot with the Hag’s illusions, the things hit harder than the real Boss. 2 rays of sickness just obliterate any party member and hit even in fog and darkness, while the Hag only throws acid or fire potions to me for no damage most of the time. Killing the illusions is more consistent than going all in just to roll 3 rounds turns with all missed attacks just to be killed with OP poison ray.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is an excellent game for new players, but understanding how spells work can be overwhelming. Even after playing for 50 hours, I’m still confused about combat. While I do understand small things like high ground versus low ground, specific effects found on armor and weapons remain unclear. I’m wondering if the higher the number, the better the gear is. However, I learned that the effect is more important than the actual number you see. For example, in Diablo 4, when you get into the 80s and 90s, you start to look for stats that benefit your build. So, sometimes seeing green doesn’t mean better.
If I am not mistaken, Disguise Self is the simplest answer to the question: “Which starting race can provide the most reactivity in the game? ” – By: “Why not simply all of them?!” A Human Bard, e.g., can get way more mileage thanks to this spell than any Drow, Dragonborn, or Githyanki without it. And: At least by the looks of it, Minor Illusion as Cantrip feels just about completely broken in its possible applications.
Bit late but wanted to add one more reason to use magic missile: every missile you cast counts towards generating lightning charges if you picked up the blue staff as a reward after rescuing the councellor from the burning house. Every missile generates 2 charges and at 5 you get a 1-8 lightning damage bonus, meaning a lvl1 magic missile will always proc this and leave you with 1 lightning charge. If you upcast magic missile you can proc that even more often. In similar fashion if you use piercing shot for example and inflict gaping wounds (the target will suffer an extra 2 piercing damage on attack), upon using magic missile every single missile will count as a separate attack, meaning 3×2 extra piercing damage on top.
Great list, but i find that Sleep is a bit overrated. It’s useful at level 1, but enemies wake each other up, so unless they can’t reach the sleeping dude or hes they only one left, they get woken up. Grease can be better in some cases. Longstrider, bless, healing word, magic missle, disguise self, minor illusion are all MVP worthy.
another nice thing with disguise self is that if youre a medium size race you can disguise self into a small size race to get into small size holes. all the ritual spells are really good in one way or another since you can cast them as much as you want. ive started taking a level in storm sorcerer on almost all builds since having access to 2 ritual spells are so useful. and yes, storm sorcerer because ritual spells trigger tempestuous magic.
Bless, Hex, Spiritual Weapon, Shield Healing word are all great for the cleric and warlock. For wizard it gets messy you can not just hoard all the utility spells in you, your prepared spells are limited each situation might require another spell and camp,back to field preapre another spell can get tedious. In early game most of the spells are weak anyways, you’d rather act tactically rather than boil your brain on first level spells. Ambushing the enemy or taking advantage of dialogue options seems way better anyways.
Idk about Color Spray and Magic Missile. Definitely pretty handy in the lower levels, but I feel like 1 round of blind doesn’t really mean that much later on as the amount of HP you can affect with the spell does not go up as much as HPs of monsters increase. Magic Missile is still useful in certain circumstances. Line of sight is a big one, and finishing off some very low HP enemies, but even the latter isn’t a guarantee. It’s a guaranteed hit, but the reality is that the example where you shot 1 at the ogre and the others at another target, there’s still a 50/50 chance that ogre survives as you’re only doing 1d4+1 or 2-5 damage per missile. Disguise Self has not worked for me yet. They seem to still recognize me for some reason, but I haven’t used it a lot. Definitely a spell with potential if it works in other situations. I think Thunderwave is pretty great because you can push enemies really far, often off ledges for massive fall damage.
Recruit a hireling (any one is fine, really but Bard specifically is great)– reroll them and spec them entirely as a utility Bard character. You now have access to Longstrider, Daylight, Remove Curse, Lesser Restoration and a slew of other utility spells (AND AN ADDITIONAL SHORT REST– at least for 3 characters) all on a character that isn’t going to impact the rest of your build– just remember to take them along and apply longstrider to everyone you’re going to use after your long rest). Oh, and pickpocket your gold back from Withers. He doesn’t mind, just keep trying until you get it.
Started playing a character with my wife who is a cleric but swears to do no harm, at all. Spells like Healing Word, Sanctuary, Guidance and Bless have been immensely useful. Since my character won’t attack, I don’t have to worry about losing Sanctuary (unless you shove or throw a portion) and i can keeping buffing and healing my team. I can say for certain that these spells are very effective when used right. Often i would start our turn (I have Alert) by blessing my team then cast Sanctuary, making myself almost invincible and getting our whole team ready before an enemy could even do anything.
If you want to be a spellcaster with a lot of spell slots but you also want Eldritch Blast (which is super useful), my personal favourite is 8 levels in any full spellcaster and 4 in Warlock. I chose Sorcerer since both scale with CHR, and you can use one of Warlock’s passives to boost your Blast to crazy levels.
Warlocks are unironically the best users of the Sleep spell in the game (Archfey only). As their spells are always up-cast to their highest spell level. And guaranteed incapacitated enemies with the bonus “death knell-like” benefit it grants you when you do decide to end them is so juicy! Minor Illusion has the added benefit of being able to be cast while in stealth AND invisibility. That last part isn’t stated in the spell. This means you can pop an invisible spell, trickery domain stealth bonus, use stealth, and pop this spell to redirect people. And get past just about any enemy setup that isn’t a scripted combat. Color Spray, Sleep, and Magic Missile are your absolute best friends as an Eldritch Knight/Abjuration Wizard (aka uber mitigation tank). As they’re offensively-minded spells that don’t require a high casting ability score to utilize. Bless and other beneficial buffs can be cast on anyone that isn’t an enemy (in red). So you can buff the Illithid fighting the commander in the tutorial. As it will help him hit more often for a better chance at killing the commander for the xp and armor it drops (weapon can be attained using Command: Drop spell). If, for whatever reason, your caster (with Shield spell) gets caught in a pinch and is surrounded and going to be whacked hard next turn. And you would like for the enemy to focus onto someone else. You can cast Magic Missile on them from another character and react to it with Shield. The higher base AC will some times cause enemies to move away and try attacking another enemy with lower AC that turn.
The article missed one of the most important Magic Missile uses: Breaking enemy concentration. You have to roll the save each time you take damage, and there is a minimum DC of 10. Yes, this is an way DC but the odds of failing are much higher if you have to roll 3 or more of them in a row. An upcast magic missile can all but guarantee that you break some pesky are of effect that the enemy caster put up, even if you can’t outright kill the caster yet. Spells like Scorching Ray and Eldritch Blast are also excellent for this, but Magic Missile shines here because you are guaranteed to at least hit and force the save to be rolled, while other spells need you to roll your attack first.
Super situational, ive been playing tactics and ive never utilized sleep. As you have said, a non attacking enemy is better, so an enemy who has lower than 10 hp is killed with 1 hit. Id rather use it for magic missile or at least just cast cantrip. Thunderwave is also much much better than using sleep
what’s really cool is how bad early game spells become great late game spells. or how well some spells scale because they aren’t used for their damage. Cantrips are always useful, but they quickly invalidate the damage of low level spell slots, so you become much more incentivized to use low level spells for utility at higher levels. a lot of these “suck then rock” spells are “save or suck” where they have no effect on a failed save. Later on, your DC is much higher and it’s more devastating even if the effect only lasts for a turn; think of effects like Command or tasha’s laughter. Then there are spells like Protection from Good and Evil or resistance which can help you a lot once you start facing non-flesh and blood enemies. At level 2, spells like hold person or ray of enfeeblement can be much better as well due to the nature of targeting saves or AC to decommission a bigger unit.
Grease was a favorite with Gale in my party. It slowed or even blocked movement sometimes causing bad guys to fall prone. Get enough of the enemy on a grease patch and fire in a Fire Bolt and it acts like a low level fireball. I still use it mid way through Act 2 even though Gale has a real Fireball now.
I have no problems playing cc or support characters, and I use most of the spells listed in the article. However, so far, I find cc spells somewhat disappointing compared to Pathfinder. Pit-spells family in Pathfinder can be really devastating to the enemy – maybe even too much. Other spells can be quite decent too, however (like the web, or the famous stinking cloud). In BD3, CC spells seem to be working for the one round mostly. This is simply because they jump out from the AoE of the spell on the first occasion. Granted, if you can disable enemy for one round it is still good, but when you consider it costs you a spell slot… then… well… I’m not sure if this is solely because of differences between Pathfinder 1E and D&D 5E rule sets, or if it comes from the way Larian implemented 5E rules in the BD3. I played Solasta a little bit before, so this might be slightly caused by 5E alone. Still, I have the impression Larian made this even more pronounced because of the effectiveness of the jump action, and how strong dex and wis saves enemies have (at least on the low levels).
Its great being a D&D player; already had tve background knowledge on every spell in the game, and their importance. I keep forgetting Sleep though, but that’s because I’m so used to my DM and Party jacking HP up to obserd levels, and then my companions partically one-shotting them anyway. So its like: “What’s the point? They’re dead next round anyway.” 😂
Funny thing about Longstrider is that you don’t even have to use a prepared spell slot for it if you have it on a character you don’t plan on using in your party. Funny thing about Longstrider is that you don’t even have to use a prepared spell slot for it if you have it on a character you don’t plan on using in your party. For example I didn’t plan on using Lae’zel later on, and since she can learn it if you pick the magic version of the fighter class when leveling, I simply swapped out a random party member for her, cast Longstrider on everyone in the camp, and removed her from the party. That way you can have a free movement boost for everyone at pretty much no cost.
When a person or group of people are in conversation they are oblivious to the rest of the party. You can start a conversation with a group of guards, and easily sneak by them, steal their loot, or even kill them with a push or Stealthy strike. The best way to do combat is to never enter it. It’s actually surprising what spells you can cast on people without drawing aggro. Darkness and Blind you’d think would make some people suspicious, including those you cast it on, but it doesn’t. You can cast Darkness on a target, walk up, murder them, and leave without entering a battle. You can cast blind on someone, rob their house and they’ll just let it happen. There’s probably more. I’ve poisoned a goblin before and they just took the damage, healed, and walked on
Id say almost all of the ritual spells are gold. You can cast ones like detect thought or speak to animals and combine them witj illithid power concentrated blast. Your whole party can be prepped before a fight to deal 3d6 at minimum up to 6d36 on a concentrating enemy along with healing from it. Its a free and powerful opener.
The biggest game change on my second playthrough, that i completely ignored the first time were haste, Sanctuary & hungar of hadar. I got my butt whooped on my first playthrough by the enemy using sanctuary all the time. I just couldn’t hit them. Then they started using hungar and i realized how devastating my limited movement was. I’m almost done with my second playthrough and i want to experiment with all the other debilitating spells.
The sleep one to be honest is meh, the sheer lack of enemies that are under the requirement hp to use it is very apparent. I feel you’re never able to use it on what you would want to, I think you understated that a bit. I’m almost always better served by using an aoe lightning attack, fireball to kill or using push spells.
Almost all of the level 1 spells seem so useless but they’re actually really good. One you forgot to include was Command. Command has SO many uses. It makes you give an order to your target and unless they pass a saving throw, they have to obey. You can give them 1 out of 5 different orders. The first one, makes them walk towards you, which can easily set them up to be massacred by your melee. The second one orders them to move away from you which wastes their movement points and keeps your ranged characters safe. The third one forces them to waste a turn doing nothing, fourth one forces them to go prone which sets them up for attacks by your melee, but the best one, the piece da resistance, is the last one, which is to DROP THEIR WEAPON. You would not believe how many boss battles are rendered a joke when you order the boss to drop their weapons. Specially if you already have a character there ready to pick them up. Forcing the boss to engage you with their bare fists, which almost no boss is proficient at. Using the Command: Drop Weapon will trivialize some of the most hair pulling boss fights in the game.
For me i like to use greese, void bombs, web and cloud of daggers; these let me kill the lvl 9 tree thing in the nightcurse place Also i took evocation because of magic missiles and have never played 5e before but thought maybe IGMS was in the game as LVL 6 spells. Was kinda disappointed to find out it isn’t especially if you played Neverwinter nights and know how powerful it can be. Still overall magic missiles is a very useful spell especially if you took school of evocation.
What really messes me when deciding what to pick up is: is that a spell that can be used one time per day, one time per short rest, one time per battle or is it a reaction spell and if so, are these reactions limited or unlimited? I often find that this info is not so well conveyed most times, or at least in the console port of the game where the interface seems at a surface level to be simplified. I have a soft spot for support and strategic spells. Would totally build my characters in such a way, but also like to have these tools at my disposal for multiple encounters, specially considering how this game is so RNG based even when you come up with the most brilliant strategies.
Luck/randomness is way too big a factor in BG3/D&D. Without constantly fudging the numbers in tabletop, or savescumming in the article game, no party could ever survive more than an hour. So the fact that some of these spells have no saving throw is a huge factor and something I totally overlooked. Will definitely try some of them on my second run.
at lvl 10, evocation wizards make magic missle gets REALLY crazy. they add their proficiancy to all damage rolls, and magic missle rolls damage for each missle. So that’s about 9 damage per missle. Combine that with the necklace that adds 1 missle when you cast magic missle, for an insane amount of damage.
Sleep is good before you hit level 3. At that point, enemies simply have too many HP and upcasting it isn’t strong enough. I much prefer -) Tasha’s Hideous Laughter. Instead of taking out 3 garbage enemies with sleep, you instead focus on one dangerous enemy. -) Friends. Cantrip and advantage on many speech checks. Especially in the early game, where the d20 plays a larger role in your roll (low bonuses), advantage is very strong. -) Mage Hand. Cast it next to an enemy. Rogue now can sneak attack them. -) Detect Thoughts. Cheat code for many conversations.
A level 6 magic missle can do you to about 100 dmg and i hits all the time no matter res istances. Used it a lot as a lvl 12 Gale. Also, hold monster. Used it against Raphael in hell after killing the mobs and destroyed the pillars, just stod there from 666 hp to death, round after round with all attacks being critical hits also, lol.
Magic missile is one of the best spells to cast at level 1 power. But it is only 1d4+1 per level power up (1d4 literally lowest roll of a dice) where as something like chromatic orb is a 1d8 per level. Also a larger hit is more likely to break concentration than three small ones (anything over 22 damage is higher DC).
Knowing that you can revive an ally with the ANY healing wouldve saved me about 100 resets. I am struggling a LOT. Ive had to avoid a lot of combat to get to killing the goblen leaders. Is level 3 under leveld at this point? I feel felt severly underpowered since the first combat. Maybe a drow swordbard just sucks.
I wonder if Lae’zel reacts to meeting someone who was disguised as gith then finding out it was just a disguise. I guess because our entire camp is omniscient and are aware of everyone we meet while in game that wouldn’t be possible. Even if she wasn’t in the party she’d still know their disguise is fake.
I wonder if there’s a article to erase hours of inventory management. Probably one of the most gross features of these games; so much time sorting, selling, scanning etc., I basically gave up searching every bookcase, closest, skeleton and other random things and just go for the locked chests. It sucks the fun right out the game when I open my inventory screen lol. I often wonder how bad it is on Ps5, oh boy!
1. Disguise Self has been shown in other YT articles to not work. You disguise yourself as something else and you’re still seen as your character. 2. You will need the cantrip Mage Hand if you end up in the Underdark forge area (not using the real name, but you’ll know). I made the mistake of removing Mage Hand from all my spellcasters… MISTAKE
It should be noted that sleep loses some value on Tactician difficulty. Enemies have something like 30% bonus HP, so a target you might have been able to put to sleep will be out of range until damaged. Still great for low hp mobs like goblins, though. Same thing with colour spray. You’ll need to weaken some enemies before the spell can take effect.
While I agree Bless is a powerful spell, using it in BG3 is awkward. Since it only works for 10 turns it’s best cast before combat because in combat that turn would be better spent for damage or damage mitigation . But if you know you’re about to go into combat you will also be positioning your characters and odds are you want them spread out. So they need to start bunched up for the buff then use some of its limited duration to get into position. Sure these can all be worked around it’s just a bit awkward.
I’m confused on sleep does the target have to have taken 24 damage for it to work or can take 24 dmg so it works new to dnd and everything lol I picked cleric not knowing u get one right from the start lol any suggestions ? I’m new so something simple to get behind but also a little learning along the way I was going to use a few of those spell but the reading is confusing Bec I didn’t know a lot abt 1dsum or rituals
One way I love using sleep, in early game, is for more nefarious activities. Want to pick pocket someone? Enter turn based mode, cast sleep on target, have your way with them. Yes it may mean, in early game, and depending on your personal build, using say Gale to cast and Astarion to do the pickpocketing, but it works. **SPOILER** After what Nettie tried to pull off, I felt it only fair to rob her of all her stuff. Shut the stone door, so she’s the only NPC in the room, enter turned based mode, cast sleep then pickpocket. Move away from her, exit turn based mode, and she’s none the wiser.
as others have said, command is very strong. but what i didnt see mentioned is that if you take 2 levels of sorc and a class that can get command (or take magic initate cleric to get it on a sorc) you can make it land more often by using heightened spell to make them have disadvantage on the wis save.
So many missed spells like others have said, Command should 100% be here. Then there’s Thamaturgy and Friends amazing for you party face. And so many more early spells at level 2 like hold person and stuff which is only level 3! And of course that’s also skipping over the best cantrip in the game, Eldritch Blast.
Is it me or are build goudes only good for tactician? Game is so easy on normal that, well you could make any combination of anything and have an easy time. Not a negative thing, game still the best thing ever but when you can replace pretty much any class or race ability with items, scrolls and potions, a “better” build is just not needed – on normal.
Almost everything said about disguise self is wrong. At least in the current patch. It does not prevent you from being targeted for crimes, nor allow you to speak to those you kill you otherwise can not. Also the most important factor of the spell is not even mentioned – you can use race specific weapons to their full potential while disguised. E.g. gith weapons to deal psionic extra damage each hit if you disguise as a gith.
I wish there was a custom origin like the Dark Urge but basically you make your lvl 12 build, start out the game at lvl 1 and then when you level up you can choose to stay on your chosen path or walk a new one. Could be interesting for RP and allow people to have it all mapped out before hand. And it’s not really game breaking. Or a Legendary Mode where everything and everyone in the game is level 12 from Act 1 to Act 2
How does 6 levels of tempest domain work with 6 levels of storm sorceror? Tempest makes it so whenever you do lightning damage you can knock people back, and storm makes it so you do aoe damage to every enemy when you cast a spell. So if you cast one spell, you should damage and also knockback every enemy nearby. Any chance you can test if that interaction works?
I was disappointed at first to see how little movement storm sorcerers flight gave at first. The other two subclasses seemed to get some really great stuff at level one, but a small amount of flight? Why not just misty step instead? But having access to six amazing spells totally makes up for their somewhat rocky start. Completely negates one of the major weaknesses of sorcerers being their lack of spell capacity.
I am planning to create Cleric 2, Sorcerer 4, Bard 6, which is purely a healer + buffer + crowd control char, with some massive lightning damage. Does extend spell help for example Cleric Bless to last 20 turns, or does it only apply to sorcerer spells? Also, is it possible to cast bless for 20 turns, and then cast sanctuary to yourself also 20 turns, using extend spell twice?