Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Outside PHB sub-classes, please

There are plenty of options of building melee spellcasters in PHB. Even if one wouldn't count half-casters like Paladins, Arcane Tricksters and Eldricht Knights, there are full-caster options - Valor Bards, War Domain Clerics, Pact of The Blade Warlocks. Not to mention plethora of ways you can have a melee spellcaster with multiclassing. If Blade Singer or Hexblade were added, all those classes suddenly lose most of their attractiveness, in fact making the game build options poorer rather than richer.

As for Wyll, my suspicion is that Larian is still undecided on how Pact of the Blade will work in the game. I personally would just make Pact Weapon grant additional +1 to weapon enchantment alongside usual benefits. Then it would make more sense to build Wyll around melee (even with his current stats).

Hexblade is everyone's favorite, who has tried it.

It has one main stat to worry about, and Charisma is a great "face of the party" RP stat.


Now when you say "our current DnD campaign", I take it you mean a table top or online session (Don't know of any multi-class mods in BG3).


I have posted this in the past, but for those who don't know, there is great mod support for the classes we all wish that Larian had time to include.

Improved Pact Weapon invocation from Xan's Guide. Pair it with the Thirsting Blade invocation from the PHB and you'll be having a great old time, even without Hexblade.

But first they actually need to implement pact of the blade. I've seen a lot of conversations about other classes and their missing class features, Warlocks are missing a lot, including all their pact boons except chain, which seems to be attached to Fiend patron only for some reason.

I'd also love to see Artificer, but I'm not sure about larian's ability to implement it.
We have unusual subclasses, such as Armourer, which makes it's own magical Iron Man suit that you upgrade as you level (and you can stuff it full of infusions).
We don't have attunement, which just opens up a whole world of imbalance regarding the Replicate Magic Item infusion.
And we only seem to be able to have 1 summon at the moment, which is a problem for Artillerist, especially if it doesn't get fixed after we get access to all our levels, otherwise you'll be limited to only ONE turret. Which is just not good.

Problem is that in BG3 everyone can have magic weapons +1 very early, rendering the invocation nearly useless. And thirsting blade is level 12, which is very late or even might not be in the game.

Why on earth would you bother using a regular +1 weapon if you could have an improved pact weapon? It's the normal +1 weapon that is rendered useless by improved pact weapon, not the other way around.

also

Thirsting Blade is a level 5 invocation... I don't know where you're getting level 12 from.

Because one has build cost associated with it, the other does not? It's +1 Magic Weapon + diffrent Eldricht Invocation or +1 Pact Weapon. One is clearly better than the other. Not to mention that weapons with higher bonuses exist.


My mind swapped Thirsting Blade with Lifedrinker.

IMO Mizora would be better as a mid ranked succubus. They tend to be in all planes in one way or another. She could still grant Wyll the powers of a hexblade. She seems to be a bit possessive of Wyll’s affections unlike a cambion. This could also help explain how a being able to grant warlock knowledge and still get captured. She was busy trying to recruit *ahem* a strong humanoid but ended up being bound by the absolute somehow.

And I want to play an Oath Breaker Paladin… And, I want to see those oath breakers of helm in the full unholy might

Paladins, arcane tricksters and eldritch knights are not melee spellcasters , they are warriors(rogues) with spells. Valor bard and war domain cleric can't be full fronliner and pact of the blade warlock makes you very MAD(multiple attributes dependent), so you have to pick additional feats, increase dexterity, rather than charisma, and in result it makes your blade an addition to your eldritch blast, rather than a full focus

And I didn't understand your logic about providing more options = less variable builds, it's strange

I don't understand a distinction between melee spell caster and a warrior with spells. To me it sounds like the same thing, but maybe I'm missing some key difference.

If Valor Bard and War Domain Cleric can't be frontliners, how come Hexblade can be one? Same HD, access to shield, medium armor or heavy (War Cleric). While Hexblade has Shield and Blur, which both of the others lack, Pact Magic limits their uses. War Cleric should be a lot more reliable frontliner than Hexblade.

In PHB you can't have a cake and eat the cake, so yeah, if you want to be doing both melee and casting something needs to be sacrificed. You can focus fully on being melee character with Pact of the Blade, but you won't be as good of the blaster if you invested solely in Charisma. That's fine.


Just look at your list of most popular subclasses, almost all of them are either the most powerful subclasses or the most powerful dips. People will only consider options if they feel that they don't make themselves weaker in the process. Instead of trying to build a paladin around either Strength or Charisma and having two distinct playstyles, most people would dip 1 or 3 levels in Hexblade. Why would you ever try making abjuration frontline wizard when you can just be a bladesinger. Why gimp yourself by picking any subclass other than Gloomstalker when Ranger is already "the worst class in 5e".

And while some will say that they don't powergame on the table, because it ruins fun for other people, in crpgs things look differently.

2 questions:

1) Why not?
2) So what?

Is there some force that forbid you building an abjuratuon frontline wizard and makes you pick bladesinger instead? People can do what they want. More options is always better

Because warlock has devil sight and darkness combo for instance. It is far more powerful than having medium armor + shield proficiency

And at the 13-14 lvl(possible lvl cap in BG3) you become just a little bit of everything but good at nothing

1) I wasn't making a judgement in this particular post, so your "Why not?" seems to me to be an attempt at some sort of childish sophism.
2) So adding most popular subclasses doesn't necessarily lead to increased build variety.


Just pointing out that more options don't lead to actual increased build variety. Building character to some extent will always have to consider it's comparative power to other options. At every step of building a character you make a judgment based on what works better.

Why it is a bad thing, i don't understand

I hope you won't perceive this as rude or targetting you, because it's not, but I observe this "mentality" in a lot of games, for example in channels discussing Dos2. Imo this is a player issue, rather than a systems issue. I consider this a mild form of minmaxing, which is just always bad in a non-competitive game imo. When I make my characters for tabletop, there are only two considerations I make; What kind of table is it (roleplay heavy or combat heavy), and second part (in that order) is what I'm in the mood for, what sounds fun. It doesn't have to be the strongest because there is no competitiveness, no leaderboards or first place to gain.

I forget where the quote is from, but "Players will optimize the fun out of games" stands true. There's a healthy side of that though, and it's not inherently wrong to pick what seems stronger than something else, that's natural to do. But as soon as a player starts looking up external knowledge or look for what's "factually stronger", I think it's steering into a detrimental path that reduces the fun a player has, because in their mind, it removes large portions of the game for them to enjoy. For example, you could look up the strongest weapons in Elden Ring, but at that point, you're only aiming to obtain that, and as a player it's only the weapon you have and the weapon you're trying to get is what matters. You've removed/reduced the enjoyment of exploration and getting new stuff that is slightly better than what you already have, because it's not the strong weapon you know you should have.

Which is why I generally never recommend people to look up builds for a game unless it's a competitive one, such as team based MOBAs, mythic raiding in WoW or in that general direction. To me, spoiling oneself of a story, or a character build, is essentially the same thing. To me, half the point of most games is to apply my own mind and judgement and see how well I fare, consequences be damned.

But medium armor and shield proficiency is the only benefit of Hexblade over usual Warlock in this case, since Darkness doesn't care about Charisma. And unless your DM is very lax about Darkness squares, your other party members must have a lot of fun.

And Cleric and Valor Bard also get to play their classes strengths too.


If they put level 13 and 14 I would be surprised. You can get to +4 and +5 modifiers at level 5 in two stats at 12, MAD is less of an issue there for non-Hexblades. And it's not like Hexblades gets better subclass features than other Patrons from 6 onwards, quite the opposite.

*snort* Please go and make a Wizard with 2 levels multiclass into Warlock to get Devils Sight and tell me if you feel like a frontline fighter against the next dragon you meet.

Or even against the next Animated Sword you face, cause those CR 1 trashmobs have Blindsight and laugh at you Darkness + Devils Sight combo.

That is true, I was talking of one of the two pen & paper campaigns, I'm currently playing in.

My idea of it is that providing with more options leads to more variety anyway. Just because people are different, some of them will minmax, some will roleplay with crazy fun ideas, but everyone will have an opportunity to do something. That's why I started this thread basically