Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The Circlet of Fire

You're a sorcerer. For your 4th level feat you took Magic Initiate: Warlock along with the first level spell Hex.

You took a potion of speed last turn, and you are wearing the Circlet of Fire.

It's your turn.

You do the following:

1. Cast Hex as a bonus action.
2. Cast Scorching Ray as an action. It makes three attacks, each doing 3d6 points of damage.
3. Cast Scorching Ray as your second action. It makes three attacks, each doing 3d6 points of damage.
4. You have a bonus action because of the fire spell. You use Quicken Spell to cast yet another Scorching Ray, making three more attacks, each again at 3d6 points of damage.

In total, you have cast three Scorching Ray spells in one turn. It's unlikely all of them hit, but assuming they did, you would have done 27d6 points worth of damage.

Now add in the Ring of Fire, adding a point of damage to each individual attack. Add in the Gloves of Flint and Steel.

Of course you're wielding the lightning charges staff, getting the damage bonus from that.

And if you really want to go nuts, put on the currently broken Poisoner Robes.

I don't think there's much in the game that can withstand that.

You're a sorcerer. You are 6th level and thus have three 3rd level spell slots, and you know Fireball.

You took a potion of speed last turn, and you are wearing the Circlet of Fire.

You:
1.) Quicken Fireball as a bonus action. It deals 8d6 damage to enemies within a 20-ft radius, Dex ST for half damage.
2.) Cast Fireball as an action.
3.) Cast Fireball as your second action.
4.) You have a bonus action because of the fire spell. Idk if BG3 lets you cast a 2nd Quickened Spell; we'll be pessimistic and say "no" and so you "cast" Shove or Hide.

In total you have cast three Fireball spells in one turn. It's unlikely that all the enemies failed their saving throws, but assuming they did and you (pessimistically) hit 4 enemies with each fireball, you would have done 96d6 points worth of damage. 24d6 to each enemy if you hit the same enemies each time.

More realistically, we'll assume that enemies save 50% of the time (so 72d6 total damage). Each enemy, assuming you hit them with each fireball, will on average take 18d6 points worth of damage (Scorching Ray, at a 70% hit chance, on average deals 19d6 damage).

Add in the Gloves of Flint and Steel. Idk if lightning charges affect ST spells, but add them too. Also you have Red Draconic Ancestry; so "at 6th level, spells that deal Fire damage are more powerful." And after the fight, you long rest to restore all your spell slots and sorcery points.

I don't think there will be many encounters in the game that can withstand that.

LOl I'm definitely going to try this.

This attack is deserving of it's own name ...there are many on here much more imaginative than me...I'd love to hear some suggestions.

I'll give it a go as best I can

Jandk's scorching apocalypse.

9 tailed firefox?

AestusRPG already talked about it in one of his in depth videos about classes. Go check his channel, he is the best content creator about BG3 I know of!

Yeah, the two builds/combos described at the beginning are devastating and in fact completely OP.

Which raises a natural question : is the existence of these OP combos a good thing ?

And the immediate follow up if the first answer is no : what went wrong ?


I don't think the existence of these OP combos are that good. Then, the question for me would be : is it rather "not good but, honestly, I don't care too much" or is it more "not good and, really, Larian should try to address that" ?

I think I tend to lean more toward the latter : it's not good, and Larian should look into that.

The key thing that makes me lean more toward this answer is the fact that Baldur's Gate 3 can be played in Multi-Player mode.
(In fact, there is a case to be made for the description of BG3 as a game that "you can also play Single-Player, although really, Larian is designing under the assumption that there will be 2-4 human players, each controlling a single character, and that this is how they are doing 100% of their internal testing". But that's another story. At any rate, BG3 is clearly advertised as Multi-Player. It's not something that you can merely "also do".)

It's common advice for tabletop groups that all of the players, or none of the players, should have an optimised characters. And that's something that should be discussed during session 0.

You don't want a mix, because DnD is a cooperative game, and everyone should get to have their moment where they shine and make a difference. If one player has an optimised character and constantly outperforms the rest of the group, it's probably less fun for said rest of the group.

If a player plays BG3 with their partner, they can probably do the session 0 discussion. I mean, this applies to any close, regular, tightly-knight group of players. But in a more casual group of 3-4 friends, who are all video gamers but with one who is also BG3 expert/rules-savvy, and the group isn't aware of the tabletop/coop game common wisdom about optimisation and relative balance, there is easy potential for mismatch to happen.

I'm not saying OP builds should not exist. It's fine, to some reasonable extent. And in DnD 5E, there is room for somewhat OP combos. But I think that Larian's ruleset only exacerbates the difference of impact between an OP built character and a more normal one (i.e. the difference between floor and ceiling is greater in BG3 than in 5E).



Which brings me to the second questions : what is the cause of this ?

One obvious one : the Circlet Of Fire. And particularly the fact that it's an item that grants additional Bonus Actions.

There's a paragraph in the DMG, p263, that reads
I know that Larian is public and proud about not caring for balance. But they are making a more-than-just-optionally-multiplayer game, and relative balance between players is something they should probably care about.

Another obvious cause : unrestricted Long Rests and the availability of spells slots.

I don't think I have a strong opinion about the forbidding casting of multiple levelled spells in the same turn, whether it should be a general rule, a Quicken-specific rule, or not a rule at all (as it is in BG3). I suppose I don't mind casters going nova one turn. So long as they have to think about the spending of their resources (namely, spell slots).

But since BG3 allows Long Rest at will, everyone (and notably spell casters) can start all combats with full resources. So the above Sorcerers and Sorlocks (or pseudo-Sorlocks) can unleash their most OP combo and/or rotation like there's no tomorrow (I mean ... the game has no satisfying notion of time, so in a sense, yes, there's no tomorrow).

Well this is rather easy to summarize. Use the actual DnD rules. Stop with the OP or ignorant homebrew.

One leveled spell per turn is a rule for a reason.

Messing with the Action economy and giving extra actions from items or subclasses will obviously lead to stupid unbalanced or broken things.

The fact that this developer seems to like broken gameplay is a huge red flag for me. Broken is broken even if some minority or casual gamers find it fun.

This is such a critical point that lays bare a lot of the issues I have with the current game as a Baldur's Gate sequel. I mean I can understand why it would be so, and especially why the Wizards would want it that way, but I do feel like it ignores a particular sort of D&D player who's entry point into D&D is not the MP TT session, but rather the SP CRPG 'session.' It's not that there isn't overlap or can't be overlap here, but these are such different avenues into the basic D&D experience (and with rather different end goals in mind for what a really solid playthrough should feel like or what can be accomplished in general terms) that it's really hard to satisfy both with the same game/setup. For a very long time, there was an invisible wall separating the SP CRPG campaign experience from the more authentic Co-Op type TT experience on a computer, where the latter was sort of impossible to achieve and the ultimate of the former was essentially the old gold boxes/BG1. Now the situation is sort of reversed I guess, and some of that old SP CRPG territory has been ceded to games like Pillars or Pathfinder, where the more official D&D computer games are seeking what is essentially a digital emulator of the TT experience (so Solasta, BG3, what they're trying to do with Beyond/One etc).

D&D has always been in an oddball position, because you basically need 3 or more players for the TT game to actually be fun - a Dungeon master + 2 or more PCs. Sure you can do a DM +1, but that's a lot of commitment/pressure on both the DM and the PC, and it just doesn't work nearly as well as a DM+2 or more. There are a ton of classic board games that are like this, Risk and Monopoly spring immediately to mind, as relatively simple boardgames which are pretty rough/boring if you only have 2 players, but potentially a lot of fun if you have 3 or more. And of course there are virtually no classic board games that are designed as a purely SP thing, since that's just rarely the point of a board game. But D&D is not just a boardgame or a TT game.

Because of the long shadow of CRPGs and just the general fascination with Dungeons & Dragons as a kind of cultural or artistic fantasy phenomenon, it also has really strong appeal to people who we might generously describe as the D&D loners. I mean here kids who grew up with it a bit more like I did. For me, a lot of times when I play a game like this or evaluate it critically, I try to recall what it was like for me when I first came into D&D. Sure I know too much about it now to fully recapture that first impression vibe, but like the skeleton in the Last Unicorn "I can remember" and so I try to do that lol. I didn't have siblings or cousins my age or a consistent playgroup, but I still loved D&D all the same. I bought the sourcebooks for the art and for the lore and story material contained in those tomes, collected miniatures and all the rest, but my actual in was the CRPG. The authenticity of that as a true D&D experience might have been debatable, but it was nevertheless a very strong intro and threw the Gate wide open to bring me in, and perhaps many more people than might otherwise have been possible if there is no such thing as SP D&D, if that makes sense hehe.

Something like a Circlet of Fire, which would probably have been great fun as an SP experience type cookie for me, becomes a bit of an OP game breaker when the goal is a balanced MP Co-op experience. Having the MC totally outshine all their 'companions' probably doesn't matter much to the SP experience, but it definitely does when it's a group play dynamic. I just think it's a different beast, such that you'd almost wish for two version of the base Campaign, or two types of launch settings- one designed explicitly for a single player to make that as engaging as possible, and another for MP/Co-Op. Some of the things which might make for a more fluid Co-Op campaign and control scheme, actually work against the SP campaign, and vice versa. In this case it's the loot at issue, but even down to stuff like how many "companions" the game is meant to accommodate, it is ever present. So for example, I think a party of 4 is probably pretty ideal if MP is the jam, but not so much for the Godmode full party control game which was the hallmark of CRPG and BG1/2. It's a real bind for the Devs I'd have to imagine, and doubtless the source of much grumbling, depending on what your preferences are or expectations are for a BG3.

I don’t have strong feelings about the Circlet of Fire. Leaving it as is or changing it is fine with me.😊🔥

For multiplayer it wouldn’t cause any problems for me. I play with other people I know who are causal players. For random people playing multiplayer together I think having people who are experts playing with casual players would potentially have similar issues with or without the circlet.

I love being able to cast more than one spell per a turn, so I definitely wouldn’t want that cut! It makes combat much more fun for me to be able to use my spells!

I also think the item is great for the single player story mode. But recently someone suggested a PVP mode (Multiplayer). Then good night, if such items were allowed for it...

Casting two (or more) full action spells in a single turn is on a whole different power level than casting one action plus one bonus action spell of any level in the same turn, which is itself on a whole different level than casting an action and a bonus action spell but one of them is restricted to a cantrip (this last one is 5e RAW**).

If Potions of Speed didn't let you cast a full-action spell with your extra action and Quicken didn't allow you to cast two normally-full-action spells in a turn, then the massive exploits mentioned above would be fixed AND you, Icelyn, would still be able cast an action and a bonus action spell every turn. Is that not enough? At some point, the game has to put in restrictions on what you can do in a turn; otherwise it loses all challenge and essentially becomes an interactive movie. (The dedicated "Story" mode difficulty should be present if you want this experience.)

**The one valid way to cast multiple spells in a turn is to take 2 levels of Fighter (or just be a pure Eldritch Knight) for Action Surge. RAW, this additional action allows you to cast another full-level spell with it, but at the cost of being 2 levels behind in spellcasting progression compared to full casters. An appropriate tradeoff.

I also see no problem with this being possible ...
The only thing i fear is that higher level enemies will be prepared for such kind of damage. :-/

So speaking purely for myself ... as usualy ... as long as the game will be beatable without using such "tactics" (for lack of better therm) ... as it is now, in EA ... fine by me.
I bet that Sorcerer player will feel incredibly clever first time he uses it.

If I had to pick the strongest item in the game right now, I think I'd point to the invisibility potion.

It is better than RAW but still not great to me. Having Quicken be a sorcerer mechanic that can’t be used for full-action spells does not seem good to me. I wouldn’t mind if a few spells, such as fireball, were excluded from Quicken but having all spells excluded is too much for me. I like how BG3 does it much better!

It is almost true, but for now we have bugged poisoner's robe which is OP-OP

Essentially this. Either encounters will be balanced assuming players use these OP strategies, in which case non-caster (particularly non-sorcerer) players will feel ineffective and underpowered. Or encounters aren't balanced for these strategies, in which case these strategies trivialize combat (and again, make non-caster players feel ineffective and underpowered).

A key point is that BG3 is a multi-player game, so balance between players and classes are important to game-feel. One class/player dominating combat can detract from other players' enjoyment.

It wouldn't make sense to arbitrarily restrict a select number of spells from being able to be Quickened, and would likely frustrate and confuse a lot of players. It takes the same amount of effort/time/magical energy to cast fireball as it does any action-cost 3rd level spell.

IF Quicken in BG3 is going to remain as it is, then its sorcery point cost needs to scale with spell level. A constant cost makes sense in 5e RAW because, essentially, Quicken only allows you to cast an extra cantrip or take basic non-magic actions (Dash, Hide, Dodge, etc) no matter what level of spell you quicken -> you're essentially quickening those actions. But in BG3, your turn becomes significantly more powerful with the higher level of spell you Quicken. E.g., quickened magic missile + fireball vs quickened fireball + fireball. Thus it should cost more sorcery points.

Edit: To tie this to Circlet of Fire - the extra bonus action given by it is much less powerful if you can't exploit Quicken this way.

Quicken really is the only situation (barring a couple of very specific spell/circumstance scenarios) for which the bonus action casting limitation of 5e is justified. Which is to say, it's actually not justified or worthwhile, as applied to every other spellcaster in the game needlessly, and I'm in favour of it being redacted entirely, as long as quicken retains the restriction, specifically.... and such a revision should not lock out your ability to use reactions on the same turn either (as the current RAW does, and shouldn't).

Generally speaking, however, it should be said that, playing with the BA casting restriction in place... using quicken to cast an additional cantrip is generally a poor use of the meta-magic an a poor use of your sorcery points, in most cases. Rather, the real value in quicken is in freeing up your action for other utility that a sorceress may need; dodge, dash, disengage, hide, stabilising a friend or feeding them a potion, using another item or object in the environment, etc... and still being able to cast a levelled spell at the same time. That is where Quicken's value lies.

There are those of us who - and this is a shocker, I know - want the company using the Dungeons & Dragons IP to pimp their name to use the rules as written...not their FrankenRules.

It's just a trip, cause any of the Named items mentioned in the first couple posts would likely be a session/adventure defining acquisition in TT. You know, where like the whole Campaign is probably called "The Circlet of Fire" just cause it's such a badass piece of equipment hehe.

The Book of Artifacts (1993) was probably my favorite sourcebook (I think it was the first AD&D 2e book I ever bought, before the PHB even) and a lot of items in BG3 just feel way more like artifacts to me. The sorts of things that'd have like a full page spread with an illustration and a 2,000 word legendary description attached to them. But then when you pick up something like at lvl 4 and are using in combination with a couple other similar items on a single character, and then each PC in the party has that sort of thing going on, it tips the scales quite a bit.

The thing is though, that I love some of these things. The gear is fun, and if used more in isolation I think they're quite clever in how they can make the tactics of a given encounter really start to hum. An actual DM would be able to scale these drops on the fly, or tamp down the frequency, or create situations where the players have to sell or give up some of their stuff after being handed a killer new boon like that, but the computer can't I guess, and a lot of this stuff is in fixed locations too. The encounters and drops aren't dynamic in that way, so they become campaign exploits and encounter busters more readily than they would if this was pen and paper. It's kind of a curious thing, because we know how challenge and difficulty is often handled so differently in CRPG than in TT and probably will be here as well. In CRPG (BG tradition anyway) it's not the substantive loot or specific encounter that changes, but rather things like general enemy AI improvements or special enemy bonuses vs PC nerfs handicaps as a way to keep it even, which is a very different approach. Meaning in TT, they'd probably just remove like half of this enchanted loot, but do that in a difficulty setting for BG3 and I think players would be annoyed by that. Or like if they teased it with one hand EA and then just instantly took it away with the other hand when the thing drops in full. I think they kinda have to assume that players will be using all the stuff they hand out, and not self restricting by ignoring high value loot. I mean who does that? Some might impose limits on themselves, but I think most won't, and so yeah, it becomes an issue pretty quickly probably.

It's a bit like playing BG1 and avoiding the Paws of the Cheetah because it makes kiting too easy, or just never casting the spell Haste because it distorts so much. Very hard to resist those sorts of temptations and the game design shouldn't expect us to, cause that's the DMs job to determine what's just right and what's too much. BG2 scaled somewhat better with stuff like that, but in BG1 there were quite a few story mode type items of that sort. It's a bit of a cautionary tale there about what happens when you go that route. Like having to build out a whole new "Masochist" level difficulty setting, that makes the Enemies beyond nuts - to accommodate a Wand of Paralysis that you handed out way too early, rather than just removing the Wand. Or pushing it out further into the campaign to fix the real issue there. I guess it comes down to what meta they're after here. But yeah, in TT, you'd probably have a whole adventure where the potion alone would be a session defining item use and the thing we talk about round the campfire after lol.

ps. just to keep with the BG1 examples, there are instances where I think they can do this stuff but also have it work out much smoother. The Ring of Holiness (Honorary Ring of Sune) was one of these I think, where they more or less realized that their implementation of the rules and the encounters they designed needed the player to get a big boost, so they gave that to the divine caster. Basically an extra spell slot at each spell lvl 1-4, and then the whole rest of the game is themed around Priests that are significantly better than a more by the book implementation. Once you get that item (which was major plot point 1) the game assumes the party has it and is using it for everything, every encounter, for the duration. Same deal with the Paws of the Cheetah or that first Haste scroll (which had no serious downside like draining years off your life lol). From then on out the game assumes the player is just using it constantly, and all the encounters now have to play off it as part of the dynamic. So in that sense, it's like yes if hand out an item that gives a big bonus early that bonus needs to carry the through line and stitch it in till the end of the campaign, or until its arbitrarily taken away (annoying) or something better/more entertaining conflicts with it (preferable to the DM stealing their cool gift back from the PCs, but still tricky to execute well). Not sure what they should do. Once you tease it you gotta keep it right?

Cantrips scale with level in 5e, so casting a leveled spell + a cantrip can be quite powerful (though obviously not as powerful as to full spells). For instance, at level 6 a dragon sorcerer adds charisma bonus to damage of type that matches their origin. So a red dragon sorcerer casting firebolt will do 1d10+cha damage. Even better, starting at level 5 the firebolt cantrip generates TWO bolts, so the damage is really 2d10+2*cha (assuming you hit with both). This is not a negligible amount of extra damage! With 20 charisma each bolt is doing on average 10.5 damage (and you get even more bolts at higher level).

Wizards changed this from the 3e and 3.5e version which DID allow an extra full spell to be cast in order to allow non-casters to participate in combat at high level. Ending every encounter on turn one via a burst attack from mage is boring for everybody else.

With that said, I think you can often find better use of the sorcery points than casting an extra cantrip. That's fine... it shouldn't be the only reasonable option by virtue of being the strongest option bar none...