Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Spiritual Weapon "Fly" is useless

It's only 6m of movement, so you can't even drift down from the rafters to join the fight below, for example.

Flight in general doesn't seem useful, since you can't hover.

Also, just lending my voice to those that thing Greater Invisibility needs to get a second look, it's fairly useless unless you are spec'd to hide in which case you hardly need it.

It was never meant to be a particularly good spell.
What more would you expect from a second level spell that can't be upcast.

The weapon lasts 10 rounds, has decent durability, does a reasonable amount of damage, and has a non-negligible chance to hit.
Additionally, you can cast the spell using a bonus action, and the cleric usually doesn't have many opportunities to use his bonus action.

It's not an insanely OP spell, but I daresay it more than justifies its existence for a second-level spell and definitely serves its purpose.
Maybe poor mobility is one of the ways this spell is balanced. And I won't even argue with you about that.
Flying is useless and overall mobility is terrible too.

It can be upcast - it gains an extra 1d8 of damage for every 2 levels (so 2d8+WIS at lvl 4, and 3d8+WIS at lvl 6).

The flight is weirdly useful, when it gets stuck somewhere it cant reach enemies, it lets it climb a bit, or drop a bit, or go over allies....

The fact that its too slow and therefor sometimes loses attack turns is a an intentional drawback that balances it to not always be the best spell to cast.

My bad. Upcast is after weapon selection and I don't use this spell very often so it slipped my mind.
Anyway, upcast this spell isn't very beneficial since it's not guaranteed dmg and mobility is bad.
You have much better choices for level 3+ spells.

But it's still useful, since the priest has no other basic level 2 attack spells, and spirit weapon can be used to harass enemy mages and marksmen, or kill severely weakened enemies.

The flight is okay; what bothers me more is that it can be attacked (in 5e a spiritual weapon is invulnerable) plus enemies get attacks of opportunity against it. This greatly reduces its usefulness when it only gets one attack anyway (so can miss entirely), as it will rarely survive long in a fight. While the fact it can be attacked means you can occasionally use it as a distraction, as an actual weapon it's a lot less good than it should be.

It's only a level 2 spell slot, it uses a bonus action which clerics struggle to find use for, it creates a whole new entity on the field so every swing from that point forth is not using any of your clerics resources, great for action economy, it does force damage which is a largely unresisted damage type, it does decent damage and has a decent chance to hit. So it has low movement and low hp? So what? It is a great spell overall. Not all spells can be the best spell to use in all circumstances. Choose how to use it. Cast it on top of a slow-moving enemy, or better yet a static structure (think soul pillars in Raphael fight) put it on the same enemy as your rogue and the weapon triggers the rogue sneak attack, use it to kill off the last 4 hp of an enemy, rather than waste the 30 damage swing of your barbarian.

The biggest problem is that flight in BG3 uses the same pathing as walking to calculate distance, rather than just straight line distance.

Fix that and I'd say it's working as intended.