Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Wizard Class Implementation: Discussion & Feedback

To agree with this, I have tested it. Its not anymore powerful than just having 12 levels of sorcerer and 3 feats.

Multiclass builds also actually aren't relevant to this topic, or doesn't matter if you multiclass or not, a 12 level wizard remains exceptionally weak compared to a 12 level Sorcerer. Twinned Quicken and Heighten.

You actually get them all and one other by level 10, but if you only take 10 levels of Sorc you cannot pick any level 6 spells that scale with Charisma. Its a pointless build, because the most pointless part of being a Wizard isnt even the lack of metamagics, its needing INT instead of CHA, and needing to go INT based for a 10 levels of Sorc is just crap.

Also I have noticed some obviously dishonest posts all over the place that say '2 Tempest Cleric / 10 storm sorcery sorc using chain lightning'.

You cant even take Chain Lightning or any level 6 spell with just 10 levels in Sprc. You get a level 6 spell slot yes, but you can only pick level 6 spells with 11 levels in sorc at least.

Multiclassing a Sorc, or memorising all spells from scrolls on a sorc is completely irrelevant, because compared to a pure sorc its not better. Its just better than a pure Wizard the same was a pure Sorc is.

The ultimate power trip sorcs get is twinned freecast level 6 spells, and so far I have 3 freecast clickies plus the purple slot restore amulet, that 5x level 6 slots per long rest, or even infinite if you go to a certain restoration point in Act 3 instead of long resting at camp.



Who needs long rest? Sorcs don't need long rest. This is infinitely more broken than multiclassing.

I wouldn't count exploiting a bug to get infinite Sorcery Points as a valid argument to be honest.

After my 2nd playthrough I'd say that there are circumstances where a Wizard is relatively close to a Sorcerer, but the explanation is a bit spoilery.


I believe Heightened and Twinned Spell still makes the Sorcerer better (especially Heightened, which is also not correctly implemented). But it narrows the gap a bit.

Regarding multi-class combos involving wizard, are scrolls for key spells, such as lightning bolt and chain lightning, even in game?

Yes, how else would Wizards get them all?

Most vendors sell all the level 6 spells, oddly though I haven't found any longstrider scrolls.

New spell loadout I'm trying, I swapped Blink to Slow because while nice, it ends concentration when you phase :x


Now why does freecast have to be bugged since the update

Yes, and the bad part is any class can use them, including martial classes, which makes casters pretty weak as you can just bring Shadowheart with a couple of martial classes that do immensely more single target damage and still have Fireball/Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning/Cloudkill they can cast for aoe.

The game tries to balance by making scrolls very expensive, but stealing is so easy in the game that you don't even need gold.

Martial classes are just busted in this game. The worst classes are ranger and druid since they don't even have more than a single dedicated very rare/legendary armor that works with their class mechanic and they're just hybrid garbage that doesn't work well in a party combat game where specialized roles excel. Bard follows them but at least Otto's Irresistible Dance is a super broken CC spell that works on most bosses and stunlocks them to death. Bad news is, there are also scrolls for Otto.

The game also basically is a fighter/monk/barb gear pinata fest while casters get like 2-3 robes and a single legendary staff, and druids get no legendary weapon and no legendary armor, and ONE SINGLE CHEST armor that works with wildshape and a helm that gives an extra wildshape charge while no other armor and item effects work with druid. Ranger gets a couple of nice bows but zero armorand accessories that boost the animal companion.

Baldur's helm and especially the greatsword are super busted. Lazael is doing 50+ damage per melee swing with the Balduran greatsword bonus, and she gets 3 attacks plus action surge. Add a speed potion and that's like 6 attacks for 50 damage or 300 damage in one round without being reliant on spell slots.

The game was also praised by Fextralife and other reviewers for itemization claiming racial gear bonuses. What they mean is like 95% githyanki exclusive gear bonuses and like one or two drow bonuses, gnomes and halflings get some gloves that boost stealing/dexterity in Act 3, while none of the other races get anything.

No, that has nothing to do with the skills checks to get it - the difference is that the Wizard has their bonus action free to use those powers. For Sorcerer the powers have to compete with Quickened Spells. Or stated differently, the Wizard benefits because without the powers he often has nothing very impactful he can do with his bonus action.

But as an aside, it is crazy that something as powerful as the awakened buff is hidden behind a series of difficult rolls when there was a lot of talk about the game having your back when failing rolls. That buff is absolutely massive, and you get *nothing* when you fail those checks. You might even get permanent stat penalties instead.

Ohhhhhh yea, you can't use quicken and an illithid power, with the upgrade, but then you don't use quicken every round so its still a bonus to have in my second playthrough.

But lawd, please fix freecast already so I can spam 4 twinned chain lightnings / disintegrates in one combat - even without the exploit all my level 1&2 spell slots are just sorcery point fodder now.

And with glorious haste spores so I don't have to waste a turn casting haste.

So you’re suggesting taking dual wielder feat allows one to use two staves simultaneously, assuredly getting the bonuses of both?

Suggesting:? I and others have done it.

+2 Spell DC with 2 staves and 2x Arcane Battery without having to swap.

Unpopular opinion, but multiclassing giving access to powerful main class passives should not be a thing (so learning spells from scrolls and sub spec perks like spell sculpting should remain off limits to multiclassing; the extra attack passives should not transfer over either), and spell scrolls should be restricted to use by caster classes, and paralyze should not grant autocrit, melee classes can apply paralysis too trivially and consumables like oils/venoms and potion of speed already are toxic to game balance. Similarly, Otto's Irresistible Dance and Hold type spells should have an effect limit on bosses. Keeping Raphael stunlocked through Ottos is ruining the intended flow and strategy of the encounter, which is managing the adds with Hope's intervention skills and getting the pillars down to decrease Raphael's threat until his transformation.

When bosses are melting in 1-2 turns, even on tactician, the game has a power creep problem, and that problem is consumables abuse, busted multiclass passive stacking, and overtuned magic items (especially for monk and martial, but the clown gloves also completely break magic missiles and make caster play very monotonous, as magic missile is always the answer as most enemies are not force damage resistant and magic missiles is a 100% hit).

It literally doesn't matter the slightest bit.

If you make a companion or hireling with 8-10 sorc / 2 wiz / optional 2 cleric, you only get 2 feats.

You cannot have 20 caster stat and elemental adept which you can with 3 feats on a pure sorc hireling / companion.

And I still can't find any lightning bolt scrolls in Act 3, all the vendors only sell level 5-6 scrolls now so I can't try it out.

Even if I tried it on my MC - 1 feat for +2 CHA, 1 feat for Elemental Adept: lightning, no more dual wield staffs because no third feat.

+2 stat from Shar's mirror of loss, +1 stat from Volo, there's a +2 charisma helm in Act 3, I got it from Ramazith vendor. And I was sitting on 3 chain lightning scrolls when I got to Raphael in House of Hope, and I wasn't even actively buying scrolls. Make sure you discover all the vendors and keep checking on them as you hit a new level.

The lack of +2 to a mainstant isn't even that significant when the most powerful spells against a boss are magic missiles with Dribbles clown gloves and it has a 100% hit chance, and Shadowheart with Bless and the Arcane Tower +Bless staff gives like 3d4 bonus to spell attack rolls anyways. But having extra actions through thief passive or denying Wizard uniqueness by letting other classes learn scrolls at lv1 and subspec passives at lv2 is a problem.

Martials are also supposed to be limited by mobility, but this game made jump OP and gave everyone Misty Step through gear like candy. Lazael gets Misty Step on top of Fly from the Githyanki racial boots. Power creep through gear bonuses is massive.

Whow !!! Great post, thanks !

(Its on page 3, on the top, if anyone wants to find the post I am answering to. Why cant this forum do links to postings in quotes ? Thats weird)



I mostly agree with your points. Overall D&D5 feels like a substantial improvement to me over previous D&D versions.

The class balance is so much better, its not even funny.

For example I hated Bards in AD&D with a vengeance. They had some largely irrelevant gimmicks plus they've frankly just been heavily nerfed Fighter/Mages. Clearly whoever designed AD&D thought very, very little of Bards. While I started BG with a Bard, after a while I got wiser and stayed away from them ever since.

So in D&D3, like for example NWN2, I ignored them. Sure they've been much better that before. With healing spells. Wearing armor still hampered them, even if it now was "only" spell failure chance now. But they still have been clearly a second tier class and didnt actually served any purpose.

While in D&D5 and BG3 they are suddenly so uber, uber fun !!! Maybe my most favorite class now. They arent disadvantaged spellcasters anymore, especially if you go the Lore route; instead they are on par with other spellcasters. And if you take either of the other two Bard Colleges that aint Lore you'll be a very competent warrior with excellent magic.

Sure they are still Jack of all Trades and Master of none, but the distance to the specialists is no longer so big anymore and they actually feel very useful.

For example Bards are the other skill specialist aside Rogue, and they still arent as good as Rogues at skills. That uber skill to get at least 10 on any skill roll that Rogue gets, oh boy, so powerful. But they are very useful in this regard, too, even with features that Rogue doent get, like Jack of all Trades. And as Lore they even get more proficiencies at Skills than Rogue.

The last remaining thing that still annoys me - why the hell cant Bards inspire THEMSELVES ? You actually have to have two bards in party, just so you can have inspirations on a bard. What ? Is there any other class feature where the person cannot do it on themselves, too ? Like, Paladins do Lay on Hands on themselves just fine, for example. The only example I can think of is this buff spell of Clerics that shares hitpoints between the Cleric and the ally, but there its obvious why such a spell needs two parties involved.

There are many other improvements in D&D5, which you already explained.

Spellcasters arent so unbalanced anymore.



Others here in this thread might have a point and Larian should hopefully finetune the item balance better than it is now. I am basically new to the game and I cant say much about that yet.

But D&D5 feels to me like a clear improvement over previous D&D versions. Many of the core design failures of AD&D and D&D3 are now gone.

Like for example in AD&D and D&D3, on high levels, armor just didnt matter anymore. No matter how high your armor class got buffed, enemies would hit you anyway all the time. The only defense was to have a Priest with Regeneration and hopefully some defense that reduces the damage received. The new Proficiency system (+2 level 1-4, +3 level 5-8, +4 level 9-12, +5 level 13-16, +6 level 17-20) means this is no longer the case.

You didn't read anything I wrote did you?

1) I said lightning bolt not chain lightning.

2) I said companion not MC. You arent using volos eye on a companion, and I missed the mirror of loss anyway.

3) The CHA hat only goes up to 22 max CHA. But yet all this explanation of how the multiclass works and people still refuse to understand you CAN'T USE CHA ON A MULTICLASS SORC BECAUSE MEMORISED SCROLLS ALWAYS USE INT - YOU CANNOT LEARN CHA BASED LEVEL 6 SPELLS WITHOUT A MINIMUM OF 11 SORCERER LEVELS.

4) Only 2 feats is shit. Nothing in multiclassing compensates for it.

Pointless theory crafting from multitudes of people who haven't even tried to play the build they think is so broken.

Wizards are weak. But each and every one of these multiclasses is also still weaker than a pure 12 level sorcerer. Being able to memorize scrolls is a pointless and over rated gimmick that only sounds good in theory crafting, and not when actually playing the game.

Also the most powerful spells against bosses is magic missiles? What????

I remember getting a lightning bolt scroll in Act 1 btw. It's definitely not that rare.

But I agree that Sorcerer multiclassed into Wizard isn't really that great, unless you really want to try out more spells. But that has nothing to do with effectiveness.

On the other hand, there are definitely multiclass combinations relying on the Wizard spell scribing that are worth losing one feat for, e.g. Tempest Cleric.

Its actually super rare if you never bought one in act 1 because vendor loot scales with your character level.

In Act 3 and at level 12, no vendor sells scrolls below level 5. So yes lower level scrolls are the rarest in the game.

I've never come across either a lightning bolt or longstrider scroll at any vendor by the point I realized I wanted to add those spells.

I've looted every pile of books / scroll stack / everything that can be looted. I had 5 chain lightning scrolls and 0 lightning bolt and longstrider scrolls.

As it does turn out, relying on memorizing scrolls necessitates planning to buy all the spell scrolls from the start of the game. If you didn't do that, before act 3 you will no longer have access to purchasing level 1-4 scrolls from vendors.


That is exactly the build that people are mentioning, and it works even better with 8 sorc levels too, so long as you remembered to buy a lightning bolt scroll in act 1 because after that you will never find one again.

I'd suggest people load up a level 12 act 3 save and try to make their 2 level wizard multiclass there, and feel free to tell me exactly where you manage to find all the scrolls you need.

So I finally found a lightning bolt scroll, and only then noticed that with 2 wizard levels you can only prepare 6 spells anyway:



So say memorizing scrolls of levels above your wizard level wasn't allowed, what exactly would the build be able to do?

You can't get level 6 spells from sorcerer levels without 11 sorcerer levels, and you wouldn't be able to memorize them if you took 10 or less sorc levels.

I'm currently running a 4 Wizard/6 Cleric multiclass that's doing extremely well. If she has haste support and someone throwing water (mage hand if I don't want to waste a characters action) she does 2x 120 damage save for half damage in a line turn one. If sorcerers can do better does it even matter? That's normally enough to just level most of the battlefield. I also loaded up an old save at level 12 and Sorcerer's Sundries had Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Haste and Animate Dead so I wouldn't have had a problem switching to this build, even if I didn't have most of the scrolls already.

Also last game I was a Lore Bard 9 sorcerer 3 who just absolutely wrecked everything with crowd control, and that was before I knew you were allowed to stack spell DC buffs from multiple sources. There were a very few fights that just flat out didn't allow you to use crowd control at all but she'd steamroll everything else, it was absolutely busted.

A Wizard can only prepare Wizard level + Intelligence Modifier, but at least 1, spells per day.

So if you have a Level 1 Wizard and have Intelligence 16 or 17, you can prepare 4 spells.

You can change this selection out of combat whenever you like, but you can at no point have more than 4 wizard spells prepared, unless of course you get higher Intelligence or higer Wizard level.