Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Best builds for Honour Mode?

Hi folks, so what do you think are the best builds for Honour Mode? Meaning, what are some of the best builds to ensure that you get decent rolls and the whole party isn’t annihilated at some point?

I think there's a case to be made for builds that have access to early summons. This makes priests more compelling here than in the other modes maybe.

Having a Druid at camp is something I wish I'd thought of early on so I could have saved a bit more cash. Goodberry will take long resting out of the supply economy, though it's somewhat tedious to cast. Totally came in handy in a pinch for me, but that's cause I got way behind on loot and a little under-leveled heading into the second Act since I skipped most of the Forge and fair bit of the Underdark and the Creche hehe. Woodland being is the best early summon in the game for me, and the Owlbear is probably the best tank hehe.

The Cleric spell Revivify will make it so there's no serious cost for bringing a Party member back from the brink, but that is more mid-game. Like first you got hit that big jump up in power with the lvl3 spells. Skeletons are pretty reliable. Spiritual weapon is handy early on, but it's movement distance is pretty tight. Still it can draw agro, which is situationally very useful.

Otherwise I feel like Stealth-y and high initiative builds would also work pretty well. I think it probably depends a bit on how much you like to brute force with the heavy hitters, or trying to play it safe more with numbers things, so the turn order chaos doesn't sting you in the fights with hordes of enemies. Classes with animal companions or familiars that can scout or trick enemies into wasting turns searching around for invisible opponents, same deal there.

The standard: Monk, bard, tempest/sorc and gloom/ assasin or paladin/ warlock or pure fighter .

Had zero issues with honor even soloed some end game bosses .

Just do your best to survive til lvl 5 then it’s easy mode

Can't go wrong with some of the powerhouse builds for your high damage:

8 Open Hand Monk/4 Thief
12 Eldritch Knight Tosser
2 Warlock/10 Sorcerer Eldritch Blaster
8 Berserker/4 Thief Tosser
5 Warlock/7 Paladin

For your supports:

12 Spore Druid (Though, less potent because of Haste Spores being less good in Honour Mode)
6 Lore Bard/6 Diviner Wizard (Cutting Words/Inspiration AND Portent Dice on short rest pog)
12 Light Cleric

Of course, you can also use the cheese of having a stay-at-home Cleric with:
Heavy Armour Mastery
Adamantine Splint Armour (Later Armour of Persistence)
Loviatar's Scourge
Absolute's Protector (Have the character get branded)
Varsh Ko'kuu's Boots
The Sparkswall
Ring of Poison Resistance
Transmutation Stone of Thunder
Elixir of Psychic Resistance

To run around slapping Warding Bond on your party (Later you can also add Freedom of Movement and/or Death Ward). Which they'll be free to do with resistance to everything bar Radiant and Force damage and flat damage reduction on top (So damage they take has to go through double resistance and their damage reduction. Even better if your party also has Heavy Armour Mastery for their own damage reductions on top). So your party can have constant +1 AC, +1 Saves and Resistance to all damage.

I am a person who firmly believes there is no such things as "best builds" for BG games. What truly matters is just one thing: do you like the characters that you have been playing for potentially dozens or even 100s of hours?

My all-time most favorite class is Sorcerer. As a result, no matter what others say about how powerful Paladin, Monk, etc. are, to me, Sorcerer is always the best and almost every build that enables a Sorcerer to stay on the front line of combat works for me.

My suggestions?

- Don't force yourself into a build that you don't like the most but that others claim is the best.
- Always pick a build that you personally enjoy the most. If necessary, adapt it and make it work for the new Honour Mode.



No single build can "ensure" you always get a decent dice roll.
You always have a chance to fail, no matter how small it is. And you can't have a best dice roll in every type of checks.
Sometimes you may actually wish to have a "bad" dice roll. For example, I always prefer to provoke others to fight me (so that I appear to be a "good" defender, rather than an "evil" aggressor). But my end-game Dark Urge has as much as +25 bonus + "advantage" to all her Persuasion/Intimidation checks. What can I do? I typically have to pick "Attack" or equivalent, which makes me feel bad. In such cases, no more persuasions/intimidations, as they almost always succeed.

My suggestions?

- For skill checks, rely on a full party to have decent skill points that spread over INT, WIS and CHR.
- Always collect items and prepare spells that improve on skill/saving throw checks.
- Your main character/party face/party leader/tank should always have decent saving throws.
- Every caster who relies on Concentration for spells like Haste should be decent on CON checks.



No build can ensure that. This is not a question about how you build a character. It's about how you play the characters you have. Even the "best" of the "best" characters/builds can be killed or wiped out, if they are not played properly.

By my experiences, as long as you pay enough attention to tactics and treat this game like a chess board, the chance of your whole party getting wiped out is practically non-existent. This game is meant to be played by everyone for entertainment. It's not meant to be played mainly by competitive players for eSports purposes. Even this new Honor Mode is really just for ordinary players to have fun, though it may also serve very well a few players who may like to earn a right to brag.


My suggestions?

- Play the game however you like the most.
- Just remember this: don't ever die!
- That's all.

Okay, so, durability? Here goes.

For your fighter:

Eldritch KNight 6 / Abjurer 6.
Focus on Abjuration spells only, and keep those wards up. Congratulations, you are now unkillable.

For your Cleric:
BattleMaster 4 / Life Cleric 8
Stack items that have 'on heal' abilities, most notably Zevlor's Gauntlets; providing Blade Ward at no concentration when you heal something. There's also an amulet that gives poison or acid damage to weapons when someone is healed. Obviously give that to either thief or fighter.

For your thief:
Gloom 3 / Assassin 3 / Battlemaster 6
This character isn't THAT tanky, but among the best archer builds, sruvives via stealth. Good caster for longstrider, too - giving your party some extra mobility.

For your Wizard:
Technically another Abjurer, that's the tankiest. I rather have control/damage on my caster. Just give him Mirror Image for survivability.

But, Arcane casters are stupidly easy to build in BG3. Tempest 2 / Storm Sorc does insane damage and fly away at no spell cost.
Pure bards control the whole battlefield, but are a little tricky in Act 2.
Evokers can nuke everything without ever harming your own guys; let those fireballs fly!

Just for clarity: Storm Sorc actually DOES have to spent a spell slot to fly.

Cantrips do not allow them to fly.

If you're trying to beat it for the first time to get the achievement/dice and are prioritizing safety, LIFE CLERIC. Best healer in the game, and Preserve Life is the best mass healing effect you can get. You won't have to use it often, but when you do, it carries.

At L12 Shadowheart was mass healing the party for 40+ health each.

Life Clerics also get a lot of the best spells already prepared (Bless, Guardian of Faith, Greater Restoration, Revivify) so you don't have to use spell preparation slots on them.

Having the right equipment matters a lot, arguably more than your build in Act III. If you're playing Honour Mode I assume you're decent at builds, many things are viable, doesn't have to be min-maxed, just capable.

But if we're talking about safety and not losing a run, yeah, Life Cleric with
For damage, honestly the MVP of my run was Karlach with a basic Berzerker Barbarian/Fighter 2 build. Once you get on her, it's a wrap. She shredded
Even with the haste nerf, I'd still recommend using haste for attack-focused builds. Even the one extra attack makes a big difference.

If there's one dip I'd recommend, it's two levels of Fighter because Action Surge is the only thing that still gives you two extra attacks. My Tav was Blade Pact Warlock 5/Assassin Rogue 5/Fighter 2.

my current is halfling Tempest Cleric 2 / Dragon Sorc X Durge run
he gets resist poison for being halfling and also fits into small holes
he gets resist Lightning for being a Dragon blood Sorc and i helpped this warlock kill a tief-ling for a nice outfit which gives me fire resist

i hope to bed Shadowheart this run and avoid 'changing'... so far so good

I'm currently doing Honour mode run with 5/5/2 Paladin/Warlock/Warrior. I went with 1h weapon + shield build, so he's primarily tank/support/face character but can do decent damage as well with smites and eldricht blast thanks to 20 charisma. Rest of my party is Lae'zel as pure Battlemaster Fighter, Gale as pure Evocation Wizard and Astarion as 5/5/2 Assasin/Gloom Stalker/Fighter. I'm in Act 3 now and so far it has worked really well.

Not having Cleric in the team is maybe bit risky, but I have camp cleric cast highest level Aid spell every morning for that sweet extra HP boost.

If you are trying to trick the game, there are some builds, for example which are used for solo runs. If you are playing normally, it does not matter that much. Having healing abilities and one or more minions does surely help. You could also try to get good initiative. In my opinion it is more important for survival to go first than to have a group of uber-chars, at least if you play normally without tricking with meta knowledge (by which I mean for example attacking the Gith patrol without dialog from the high ground; I wonder why someone plays honour mode and then uses cheesy tactics). I almost wiped in two fights so far because all the enemies rolled first, so I'm considering to use other feats than maybe I normally would.

Imho, there is no such thing as best builds for Honor Mode, sure there are some things you can do and build around to make it easier on yourself, but it still comes down to luck. The other day on HM I've had my SH converted into open hand monk roll 7 critical 1s in a row while attacking. I thought it was impossible to get screwed by the dice rolls so badly, until I saw it happen.

And look, if you don't enjoy certain classes (for example I will never let any of my MCs be a fighter, barbarian or paladin, cause I simply enjoy flinging spells more) then no amount of super optimized builds is gonna save you.

Currently in my HM I am at lvl 6, but so far my plans are:

MC - Durge - full cleric, no dips, light domain. Abusing the Luminous Armor to neutralize some of the more dangerous enemies.
Astarion - 6 lvls of bard (swords), 4 lvls of rogue (thief), 2 lvls of fighter. Ranged flourishes are love.
SH - 9 lvls of monk (open hand) and 3 lvls of rogue (thief). And yes, she's missing a feat from the uneven lvls, idc about that, there are enough OP items in the game to make up for the loss of a feat.
And for the last companion I mostly swap them out depending on what I need, but for now Lae gets the most use, she's an eldritch knight fighter with 1 lvl dip into a war domain cleric, and well, I thought that berserker barbarian was the strongest throwing build in the game... well, I was wrong.

I finished honour mode with:

Tavish McThunder
Tempest 8 Stom Sorc 4
I think for a next run, I'll take the Tempest all the way to level 12. He was fun though - Phalar Aluve + upcasted Spirit Guardians and just knock everyone over, stacking Reverbation while doing it. They can't get near him, ever - they just get knocked back.

Minsc
Boo Heart / Hamster Aspect Barbie 8 / Champion 4 with the Sword of Balduran. And Boo.
Hands down the hardest hitting, absolute tankiest warmachine I ever had in this game. I had such a loop of gear on him - He was jsut perpetually healed, with all round damage resist and doing all manner of damage types everyone else didn't do, fire, acid, poison..Resist one thing, eat the other. He couldn't go down and he hit like an absolute truck averaging 40 per hit. I sent him to attack Orin and tank her legendary reaction - and he took it like an absolute champ, multiple times in a row. I was really impressed with him. He never said that we needed bigger swords, and he was right. It was enough. I even let him do the final speech and it was goooood.

Minsc was the weakest companion in the originals, at least until Rasaad [and that vampire chick] was introduced, but THIS Minsc? This Minsc proved that he's truly the pride of Rashemen.

Gale
Abjurer 12
Frost Staff + Marko Polo staff + Armor of Agathys [from Warlock Feat] + Fireshield Chill = Absolute Cold Blasting and Tanking, whilst putting all manner of debuffs on everyone while they're trying to hit him because he has haste up.

Jaheira
Life Cleric 4 / Ancients Paladin 8
Just for healing and support melee/magic; just how I used her in BG1 and 2. Dual Morningstars, the Lathander in the Offhand and the one from the StormShore Temple in the main hand, healing and putting Radiating Orb on everything.

Palock/ Sorlock.
the rest is just to complete the Gaps in the Party.
(go with the strongest ones yu can make..)

Bardlock, Thief/Bard sword of School, Fighter Battlemaster/Hunter for Leazel its great..
Get the Bow that scales with Str in zentharin and gave her all gear that give buff for Gith.. she will broke the game in act 3.
Full Cleric, Mage is good too..
the rest always Mix.
Jaheira in my runs i always do Druid/Fighter
Misc Hunter/Barbarian/Fighter
i actually stop trying to Play in Honour Mode becouse i run into Game Blockers 3 times..
so i gave up..
if i get to act 3 and this stuff happen again i will never want to play this game again..
i Hate be locked becouse of Bugs not becouse i made some shit and screw evrything.

I just go with the classes, I know best, which are warlock and bard. So my little gnome is a feylock ( blade) / sword bard.