Baldurs Gate 3

[Gaidax]

Normally I'm a paladin in RPG's (love me some tanky, healy front lining even if I don't do dick for damage to non-undead) but in D&D games I tend to shy away from that archetype because of the alignment requirements often being boring/frustrating.

Alignment is removed in D&D 5E, so it's not a thing in BG3.

Paladins are pretty OP here. You do still, uniquely have to deal with Oath, as a paladin.

So if you take an oath to protect the weak, you can't go murderhobo or then you become Oathbreaker and get evil powers instead of usual. Oaths is like specs, you can choose one that will match your play, so it will generally be more relaxed than typical older D&D Lawful Good or suck thing.

Rest of the classes - do whatever, no alignment. Of course if you are murderhobo don't be surprised it will catch up to you in the end. But in a more realistic way, as in you don't do a favor for someone, don't be surprised you don't get that favor repaid in later act when you may need it to.progress more easily. Or if you kill or not rescue someone, obviously that path will be closed later.

[Edge-]

Alignment is removed in D&D 5E, so it's not a thing in BG3.

Paladins are pretty OP here. You do still, uniquely have to deal with Oath, as a paladin.

So if you take an oath to protect the weak, you can't go murderhobo or then you become Oathbreaker and get evil powers instead of usual. Oaths is like specs, you can choose one that will match your play, so it will generally be more relaxed than typical older D&D Lawful Good or suck thing.

Rest of the classes - do whatever, no alignment. Of course if you are murderhobo don't be surprised it will catch up to you in the end. But in a more realistic way, as in you don't do a favor for someone, don't be surprised you don't get that favor repaid in later act when you may need it to.progress more easily. Or if you kill or not rescue someone, obviously that path will be closed later.

Ah nice, I'm a 5E noob and only have experience with some 4E I think, and even that's minimal. Looking up subclasses, Ancients seems like it'd be very flexible overall, though Oathbreaker doesn't look too bad either heh.

Thankfully I am generally a pretty "goody two-shoes" player as a rule, but do find that there are times where you go all Samual L. Jackson and YES THE DESERVE TO DIE AND I HOPE THEY BURN IN HELL.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Normally I'm a paladin in RPG's (love me some tanky, healy front lining even if I don't do dick for damage to non-undead) but in D&D games I tend to shy away from that archetype because of the alignment requirements often being boring/frustrating.

Similarly I tend to play more charisma/dialogue focused builds in some games like Fallout since you can often just brute force/skill/cheese your way through a lot of the combat and don't need a lot of those perks/buffs, but I know that's not gonna fly as much in a game like this. I'm going in basically blind so mostly just looking for the obvious bait/trap warnings more than anything else.

I'll have to look into the starting classes a bit more, but currently leaning towards cleric at the moment. I like healing things and it seems like they've got some good offensive utility/summons to boot.

War cleric is a pretty prefect middle ground if you wanted to go pally but have heals summons and what not as you can use every weapon and armour get extra attacks and a great spell line up like spectral weapons.

You also get things like the guidance can grip that gives you a bonus on any speech check so if you want to talk your way out of stuff it’s super nice.

[Edge-]

You also get things like the guidance can grip that gives you a bonus on any speech check so if you want to talk your way out of stuff it’s super nice.

Hrm...do paladins get access to that? I do like me some speechcraft and all so that might actually be a determining factor between paladin/cleric for me.

[tikcol]

If this doesn't win goty the award loses all meaning, in my opinion, of course.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Hrm...do paladins get access to that? I do like me some speechcraft and all so that might actually be a determining factor between paladin/cleric for me.

My only experience with a paladin was starting one getting it to lvl2 then rerolling cleric so I couldn’t tell you but Id guess no.

Clerics also might be able to stack other roll advantages as other spells also say they give bonuses to stuff like threatening but I haven’t taken both spells at the same time to know.

[Makabreska]

Community Update #23: Here's To You.

[RobertoCarlos]

Cleric I find is one of those classes where prepared spell list is way more important than other classes. They have so many good spells and so many shit ones. Where as a lot of the damage classes you can't go wrong really

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Also I really enjoyed the underdark segment. Getting shoved off a boat into the water during a fight was a highlight. And taking on a massive fight because why not to help out the sad lil gnomes/the forge stuff

[Jtbrig7390]

Anyone playing on Steam Deck and if so how is it?

I currently have it downloading but I won't get to play it for like 2hrs lol.

[Crissi]

Cleric I find is one of those classes where prepared spell list is way more important than other classes. They have so many good spells and so many shit ones. Where as a lot of the damage classes you can't go wrong really

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Also I really enjoyed the underdark segment. Getting shoved off a boat into the water during a fight was a highlight. And taking on a massive fight because why not to help out the sad lil gnomes/the forge stuff

I convinced a few of the dwarves to join me so that massive fight was actually easier since i had an additional 4 NPCs to help. Bribery ftw.

[Makabreska]

Okay game, I see what you are doing here:

[Mehrunes]

Paladins share the same pool of spells as clerics, so they should be able to. Haven't played one though so I don't wanna say it's definite.

Fextralife's site doesn't show it as a spell available to pallies, so maybe they don't.

Paladins don't get any cantrips so they don't get Guidance. There is a necklace that does provide guidance for free though, and since Guidance is a cantrip it has unlimited uses despite being given to you by an item.

[Edge-]

Paladins don't get any cantrips so they don't get Guidance. There is a necklace that does provide guidance for free though, and since Guidance is a cantrip it has unlimited uses despite being given to you by an item.

This is excellent information. Is the necklace difficult to get or does it come late? I really like Guidance and it seems like it'll be very helpful for talking my way through things so I'm leaning towards starting with whatever has or can easily get it for my first playthrough. I like talking through things sometimes, not every problem requires a mace to the face. But...many problems still require a mace to the face.

[Inoculate]

Okay game, I see what you are doing here:

Care to share? At a loss lol.

[Makabreska]

Care to share? At a loss lol.

Elminster, straight outta BG1!

[Gaidax]

Hrm...do paladins get access to that? I do like me some speechcraft and all so that might actually be a determining factor between paladin/cleric for me.

You do get a Cleric companion right off the bat, I'd take that into account.

In-between Paladin and Cleric as MC, I'd say Paladin wipes the floor with Cleric. Cleric is really mostly a support/cc/utility class, I don't think it's the best match for MC type where you'd rather be the one dishing out divine justice, rather than buffing the ones doing it.

[Nymrohd]

End? Or avoid?

End as in get them to kill themselves.

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Paladin is better than Cleric in most regards tbh. Cleric is great for the Early game.

Haven't gotten there yet but I assume Shadowheart will eventually turn to Selune and I am thinking I might respec her to an Oath of the Ancients/Cleric Multiclass

[Makabreska]

Darn, the unfortunate result of easy re-spec is me wanting to check different class every few hours.

[Gaidax]

Darn, the unfortunate result of easy re-spec is me wanting to check different class every few hours.

Your game your rules.

I'll probably sink a few hundred hours into this, my current playthrough is at 71st hour and I am at what feels like first quarter of Act 3 only. This is simply because I literally comb every millimeter of the game.

My MC is practically proficient in everything you can imagine, so I exhaust all dialogues, stealth around in every place and do just about everything I can, it takes a lot of time.

[Jtbrig7390]

So I tried the game on the Steam Deck, I 100% do not recommend and it should not be labeled as verified.

I don't expect it to run maxed out 60fps on it but even on its lowest settings (and 30fps) it struggled more than cyberpunk. Hope for it to improve in the future and I'm sure it will. But as it stands right now I personally don't recommend it.