Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Newbie Questions as I plan my release gameplan

2.5 EA play throughs, no DND experience. Loving them game.

1.) I am absolutely loving the Bard which is odd for me. Nice nukes, and I hate missing attacks so that Bard song is clutch to toss on heavy hitters. And a ton of out of combat utility with Persuasion and lockpicking. Looks like with release changes I can even go Woodland Elf and get Stealth. But I also love shooting bows, and was thinking of going Bard/Ranger. Maybe get Bard to 6 for it's extra attack (I read a DnD guide, are we sure it will get that?), go 3 levels into Ranger. I can go lore Bard, and I will still get medium armor. And it looks like by lv3 I will have +2 to my attack roll and an extra D8 dmg. And then finish it off going the rest of way as Bard. But that should give me the last part of the game (9-12) as a pretty nice bow shooting supporting bard. Anything I am not aware of that would make that a bad idea?

2.)I like both LaeZel and Shadowheart but I read because they dont like each other they shouldn't be in the same party. Is it really that bad?

3.) just noticed at lv5 the Cantrip damage spells go up! As best I can tell that makes them stronger than most lv 1 damage spells so does it make more sense to keep utility type spells in the 1 hole as much as possible?

4.)Any way to kill that Druid witch and get the + 1 stat? I was able to get it and keep the girl alive while letting her go but I want her dead. But not at the cost of a stat gain!

5.)Based on rewards, is their an ideal outcome for resolving the druid/Tiefling/Goblin thing?

6.) notice the weapons aren't just stat sticks they come with usable skills. Are there any really good skills I should look out for? Worried I sell an item thinking its good not realizing it contains some super awesome ability to use that's pretty rare.

All bets will be off come 3 August, as many changes are being made to the EA build and we don't know what they are. We will all have to wait and see!

(I'll let others more familiar with D&D at higher level comment on your build question, though again as we don't know exactly how classes will be implemented there is a level of guesswork right now.)

If I were to build a "bow shooting bard" based on DnD rules, I wouldn't pick a ranger for multiclassing. A fighter or rogue would work better in my opinion. Combining classes that have good concentration spells is always tricky since you can only have one of those spells active at a time. So since bards already have good buff spells (and certainly have better healing spells than rangers) I don't see much reason to not pick fighter or rogue instead.
However based on the rumors (or partially confirmed changes?) regarding how multiclassing works different in BG3 than in DnD a bard + ranger might be quite good. So sadly you'll have to be patient and have to wait with us untill we know exactly how the multiclassing rules will work.

1 yes Bard is a good class... Bard \ Ranger not so much but its doable
2 bullshit i mean yes they don't agree much but they do not come to blows over it... at least not in EA
3 there is no correct way to play a Bard... they are by design a little bit of everything so how ever you want to use them is fine (personally mine tend to be more hack and slash by level 5)
4 no
5 yes its possible to get the rewards apart from helping any of the groups or even killing all of them and you already figured out a Bard makes a great thief but the only way to get Minthara into bed [kind of a reward] is to kill all the druids for her... of course you can kill her after sex and in all honestly will prob have to anyway

2. There's an argument to be made that you'll get the most out of a companion's story if you include their natural antagonist/counterpart in the party. Shadowheart and Lae'zel bounce off of each other in a bunch of interesting ways; sounds like a compelling run!

6. The game will tell you the rarity of items, so I woundn't worry about accidentally selling some super useful ability you didn't know would be hard to find again. "Really good skills", by the way, is context dependent. I haven't seen any universally broken abilities in the common weapons, although I would avoid selling Hand Crossbows. Those let you dual wield ranged weapons (which is both conceptually neat and actually powerful in the right builds). Since you need two Hand Crossbows to dual wield, I'd hang on to the first one you find until you find a second.

Edit : there's another reason to hang on to some weapons for your melee combatants. Some enemies will resist certain damage types, which makes it useful to have backup weapons. For example (semi-made up): you attack a skeleton with a morningstar. Morningstars deal piercing damage, but trying to pierce bones isn't very effective so the skeleton only takes half damage. Next turn you switch up for a hammer, which deals bludgeoning damage. Turns out skeletons are vulnerable to bludgeoning damage, so it takes double damage from the hammer. Yay!

That may be more info than you asked for; the takeaway is this : Almost any decision can be justified in BG3, even the bad ones. Selling the wrong item might lead to stealing it back, getting caught and breaking out of jail. That sounds like a pretty good time to me ^^

3. 1st level damage spells will start to lag if you don't "upcast" them - cast them using higher level slots. Since cantrips do not use slots they are auto-upcasted at level 5 and 11.

1. Sword and Valour bards get extra attack, Lore bards do not. whilst you could multiclass to ranger, do not assume "ranger" is synonym for "archer". Not all rangers are archers, and other classes make just as good archers. You might find a single level of fighter, or even a single classed valour bard, is a perfectly good archer.

Valour bard on it's own is proficent with longbows an gets extra attack.

An archer might also like:

1) Archery style - fighter 1 or ranger 2

2) Hunters Mark spell - ranger 2

3) Sneak attack - rogue 1

4) Action Surge - fighter 2

5) Hex spell - warlock 1

6) limited use bonus action extra shots - war domain cleric 1

can we multi into other sub classes? i would assume taking say a lore Bard means you can't then add a level of sword Bard
but yes Fighter is just as good or even better archer than Ranger and it unlocks more gear options if you don't want a pet wolf

Pretty sure you can't multi-class into a different subclass! You can respec though. But there wouldn't be any advantage anyway, Swords is melee focused. In PnP I could easily retool it into "College of Bows" to meet the OP's request, so maybe once people start making mods?

Yeah I missed that Lore Bard didn't get a 2nd attack, so I'd have to choose on the of the two types. Colossus Slayer was really what had me thinking Ranger, There seem to be lot's of ways to get a 2nd attack, and lot's of ways to get the +2 Archery. But the additional 1D8 extra passive damage each hit just seemed pretty big compared to anything else I could find.

Appreciate the feedback everyone.

Auntie Ethel needs to die - every time plus one stat be damned!