Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Reworked GW fighting style slaps

GWFS in patch 9 is surprisingly good.

It seems like this passive rerolls not only the initial weapon's damage rolls but also additional damage rolls attached to the weapon.
Considering the fact that most of the additional rolls are 1d4, it makes any of those rolls constantly reroll 1 and 2 outcomes, resulting in 3 or more damage almost every time.
It also seems to reroll the Divine Smite rolls!
Combine it with a gith greatsword which has an additional 1d4 roll to it and you get some pretty heavy slaps!

Here is an example (lvl4):



I am not 100% sure it was an intended change but I think it is the buff GWFS needed. It was one of the worst options alongside Protection fighting style before.

It's definitely a powerful buff to GWS, which it admittedly does need. Not sure how out of hands this can get in a game like this though, because stack enough dmg dice and it will likely get pretty absurd.

I hate to say it, but this is undeniably a bug, don't get too attached to it.

Yep, seems like a bug to me, having looked at the official description of GWF again

Sage advice:

Q:

If you use Great Weapon Fighting with a feature like Divine Smite or a spell like hex, do you get to reroll any 1 or 2 you roll for the extra damage?

A:

The Great Weapon Fighting feature—which is shared by fighters and paladins—is meant to benefit only the damage roll of the weapon used with the feature. For example, if you use a greatsword with the feature, you can reroll any 1 or 2 you roll on the weapon’s 2d6. If you’re a paladin and use Divine Smite with the greatsword, Great Weapon Fighting doesn’t let you reroll a 1 or 2 that you roll for the damage of Divine Smite.

It is definitely a bug when compared to the 5e ruleset, but I wouldn't mind for it to stay that way. It is pretty hard to stack all those buffs on top of each other, the screenshot just shows the ideal situation. I've managed to pull off the full combo only 3 times by now.

I'm not going to opine on whether its a bug that needs to be fixed... but I did do a calculation of the expectation values for the dice, and its not really THAT big a deal...

Average for d6 goes from 3.5 to 4.1666 (or 4 and 1/6)
Average for d4 goes from 2.5 to 3

This changes the average damage for the everburn blade from 9.5 + str to 11.333 +str.

The gith blade would change from 14.5 + str to 17.333 +str (but this requires hit points below 50% and use of poison and spell resourced)

I'm not really convinced that this is OP. Its NICE, that's for sure, but I think that without this change its really weak. Previously, I would not even consider taking this over the +1 AC (since armor is scarce!). Now... I have to think about it, but I still think the +1 AC is probably better.

(To be clear, my argument above means that I lean towards NOT fixing it, if it is a bug).

I was actually using Everburn Blade + Divine Favor before!
I switched to the gith blade to test whether it works for conditional effects as well.

if you get to re-roll 1/2's on extra die, beyond the physical weapon damage roll, where do you stop?

What if you have 4 effects on top of your 2d6 greatsword? Unless there's a rule that says only one effect can hold, that may be posisble, esp. later in the game.

So in this hypothetical case, potentially + 1d4 + 1d4 + 1d4 + 1d4 ....it is very likely (50%) you will roll a 1/2 on any given 4-sided die, and thus get to re-roll (it could go down, but if you have a 1 already, you lose nothing) . So you may get 4 oppurtunities to come close to max damage for these non-weapon dice, on top of re-rolls for each 1d6 of the physical damage. If the extra effects shift to 1d6's - your chance to turn a 1 into a better number, is much higher.

Allowing the 1/2 re-roll rule to apply to weapon effects too could become pretty overpowered in my view, so I suppoprt just applying the RAW (as I do in pretty much all things).

The raw is bad. Sticking with a bad design so the passive is never used or always feels worse to use than other? No, spare me...

As I once again say, it is very hard to aquire 3 effects simultaneously. 2 can be achieved by spending a spell slot as a paladin and that's it, or otherwise through spending 2 turns. Original design is not synonymous with good design, folks who admire DnD rulesets can sometimes forget that.

On a d4 the average roll goes from 2.5 to 3 when you reroll 1 and 2 (once).

Calculation: 0.5 X (3+4)/2 + 0.5 X (1+2+3+4)/4 = 3

On a d6 the average roll goes from 3.5 to 4.1666 (similar calculation).

This is of course better than nothing. But the opportunity cost is +1 AC whenever you wear armor, in a game where AC is hard to come by. GWM by raw is not worth it (IMO). The larian version (bugged or not) might be, but I don't think even then that its a no brainer. +1 AC is pretty strong.

If you consider percentage increases, then (the current bugged version of) GWFS becomes more appealing.

With the Everburn Blade, you get a (15.33/13.5) = 14% damage increase due to GWFS. (I'm calculating assuming Str Mod of +4 and the bugged version). Without the additional d4 reroll, it's a 10% damage increase.

Assuming you'd be hit by an enemy attack 50% of the time (roughly corresponding to AC 15-16 at low-ish levels), having 1 additional AC means you'd only be hit 45% of the time. Thus, you'll be hit 10% less often with +1 AC.

These are comparable, although I haven't numerically estimated the value of being less likely to lose concentration.

It is somewhat difficult to quantify the +1 AC in an easy to summarize way, because the percentage reduction depends on how easy it is for the enemy to hit. In the extreme case where an enemy hits you only on a 19 or 20 without the +1, then +1 AC would actually reduce incoming damage by 50%! The value of that +1 also changes depending upon the gear you wear, and whether or not you wield a shield.

For this reason, I am not really confident when I say that the +1 AC is better than the "bugged" version of GWF, but I do lean in that direction. Damage buffs seem like they are easier to come by than AC buffs in this game. It wouldn't be all that difficult to change my mind though.

RAW, it's undoubtedly weak. However, this particular "fix" throws of the balance with the other abilities, being disproportionately better on a paladin (and rogue multiclass - I'm sure someone will find a way to patch that in eventually).

RAW, the main benefit is it is multiplied on critical hits, unlike Dueling. This makes it useful for crit fishing builds, such as the Champion, should it ever make it in. Of course, the champion is also rubbish by RAW, so your mileage may vary...

The Fighting Styles are not balanced for a reason, they function to buff how a character fights within the context of the entire system. They should not assessed within a vacuum.

buff dual wielding !! at least give us weapon skills from both weapons!!!!

That's a good idea, and something similar could be applied to the other styles too: e.g. unlimited use of two handed weapon skills with GWFS and unlimited use of one handed skills with duelling.

This works on any type of coating, flames and poison damage too.


How does Great Weapon Fighting need a buff in your mind? It's already benefitted by the most powerful weapons, made stronger by the most powerful weapon feat (Great Weapon Master), made even stronger by Larian giving it the best/most Weapon Actions and the best magic enchantments. It needs serious nerfs more than most.

BG3 isn't D&D as much as a Larian meme at this point, and you don't do character building around 5e nearly as much as you make builds around their broken implementations and overpowered items.

Such a familiar tone. But Larian bla bla bla.

How is it made stronger by the GWM? It rerolls the DAMAGE die not the ATTACK one. How are they even connected??? Lol. What items are you referring to? What weapon actions? Battle master maneuvers? You are almost always better taking +1 AC and equiping a shield for riposte action milking. Dueling adds straight +2 on the damage die, while GWFS adds less than average one DMG on anything but greatsword and mauls. Two weapon fighting style adds your modifier as damage which is +3 and more STRAIGHT damage. Sorry for using all caps but you said something extremely vague and ridiculous at the same time.

Greatsword + GWFS gives you + 1.533 damage per attack over duelling style with longsword and board for +2 AC.

As pointed out, it doesn't stack with GWM. It kind of stacks with Champion, since the damage increase benefits from crits, whereas duelling does not.


But all the fighting style are fairly weak-source. I think it would be a useful boost to chronically underpowered fighters to gate all Larian's special attacks behind an appropriate fighting style, making them unlimited use.