Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Sacred flame, huh

Why exactly does it do *no damage* on a saving throw? It just seems worse than other damage dealing cantrips in every way. What's the logic here?

All cantrips deal no damage on a miss or a successful save - it's a feature of cantrips in general, as the lowest tier of infinite cast spells.

Some classes can get class features that cause cantrips to act more like levelled spells (wizard, mainly), that will let them deal half damage on a save/miss, but that's a specific subclass feature.

Yep, the math is pretty dreadful from the get-go.

DC13 Sacred flame vs Dex12 goblin equates to 55% hit chance for 4.5 damage, which can't crit. BG3 doesn't implement cover, so that part of the spell is irrelevant. I suppose spells like Web that impose Dex disadvantage help the spell.

At 10th level+ it can get good if you're DC hits around 20 and you get a heap of riders. Then again, so do all the other cantrips.

Yeah. Technically the advantage (or better said, the versatility) of sacred flame is that it use enemy saving thrown instead of an attack roll like other cantrips.

But as pointed above, as BD3 do not have a cover system the situations where it's better than other cantrips are very niche

Basically, still useful when you have ranged penalties, but the numbers of times that happens is reduced compared to D&D where it directly comes (cover is, by far the most common ranged penalty)

That's theoretically true, but it being a dex save, it seems to never hit?

I've done extensive testing with only 1 successful attempt. Any other old wizard cantrip hits at least 60-75% of the time. And/or does more damage. I've looked it up by now and some people say they also can't get it to even hit. It's one redeeming feature is that you theoretically don't need to see enemies to cast it. However, that's also inconsistent! If it's possible, a PC will waste all movement to cast sacred flame. I don't get a say so, despite it not being necessary. Then you're stuck with them on a terrible spot on the battlefield and no movement.

There is literally no benefit to it in Bg3. It's better to do nothing at all than to cast sacred flame at low levels. Only a couple hours in, you already have better spells. It's ridiculous.

While I don't going to said that it's a good cantrip, it isn't. You also seen to be missunderstanding the rules here

It always hit. But if the enemy success in a dex saving thrown it does no damage (damage spells that force a dex saving thrown, for example an old fashion fireball, do half damage on a succefull save but that applied to spells, not cantrips). This is in line with other cantrips. The difference is that enemies usually have good dexterety, sometimens even a class that gives dex saving throwns proficiency while other cantrips hit or not based on your magical attacks rolls alone. At game start your chances to hit are relatively good compared with your modifiers to saving throws.


It needs vision, nothing in the cantrip rules said otherwise. It's just ignore cover (at it isn't a proyectile) wych isn't a rule in BG3 as mentioned before

Edit: There's also an issue with every ranged non proyectile attack in the game (not related to sacred flame) where when you try to do it without vision, it usually moves you to the worts posible place taking all the movement. This is a general issue with ranged non proyectile, not related to sacred flame. And the only solution , as far as I'm aware, is move manually to a place with vision.

It's better to do other things, do nothing at all can't posible be better as a cantrip don't take any resources. Usually any ranged attacks or attack roll cantrip would be better, but that is just a question of look at the % of success

No, I understand how it works. What I mean is that the enemy seemingly about always passes their dex save, so it therefore doesn't land. I assume it's made to be a dex save because enemies have opportunity to dodge in a round about way. Instead of you rolling to hit, they roll to dodge. It's not that different. Either way, the end result is that the spell doesn't hit them for damage.

Also, I really believe it's better at low level with measly few hit points to do literally nothing over casting sacred flame, because:
1. The suspiciously low chance to hit is maybe worth 1 damage on average
2. Being automatically moved into a bad spot, where SH will then be ganged up upon by all enemies sucks
= net result: lots of damage eaten for probably none dealt.

It's always better to just shot with a bow than use sacred flame. Sacred flame is only good if foregoing cover works, but as I said, it doesn't actually consistently ignore cover. It might or it might not. It's not worth the risk. At higher levels, why cast it anyway? Someone behind cover, on their last few hp, with abysmal dex? Yeah, thanks, game...

In my opinion, DnD is a bit of a mess. Some spells and abilities are great, some are complete crap. I've looked at some of the tier list of abilities that folks have put out, and it leaves me wondering just what the DnD developers were thinking.

Again, just my opinion, but someone should really go through a lot of what's in DnD and redo quite a bit of it.

I've had it deal damage successfully at about the expected ratio - a lot of enemies, especially in Act 1, have high Dex saves, and some of those are higher even than they should be thanks to Larian's stat inflation... so yes, that hit ratio is lower than many other things.. especially when many hostiles have lower AC values than they should have as well. There isn't a problem with the spell, there's a problem with Larian's design and implementation, which goes well beyond this single spell.

The targeting and movement issue is a big one that has been that way since day one of EA and which Larian consider a core part of their game engine and seem to have no intention of changing or improving People have asked for something as simple as a "don't auto move character when targeting effects" toggle, but to no avail.

In the case of this spell, its rider effect does not exist in Larina's game; there is no such thing as cover (neither half nor three-quarters) for it to ignore... but they did not give the spell any other new or different rider, or a boost in damage, to account for it. There was no reason why they shouldn't, except for their favouring of attack rolls spells, which in several cases they gave extra features to, even when there was no reason to do so.

Sacred flame is good to use when your target has disadvantage or negated Dex saves. Because of the way Larian implemented Prone (it causes unconscious as part of it in BG3... which means that falling over automatically breaks concentration with no saving throw... a fact which is exploited by enemies with abilities that automatically knock down with no saving throw, further penalising CC and other concentration effects into increasing difficulty of use... I could go on), this does mean that your sacred flame will always hit successfully on a prone target, as opposed to attack rolls which can still miss (especially if the prone gives them disadvantage to hit at range). High Dex creatures are often lacking in strength, so coupling it up with strength save against prone effects can work very effectively.

@Niara - wow, just to confirm, (I somehow didn't notice this): prone is treated as unconscious for spell concentration? That's completely broken - and probably explains why I lost concentration so many times (but hard to disentangle with surfaces so common).

I never used sacred flame (except in dire need) after the 1st few levels - as as radiant damage its useful in some situations, but fortunately there are many other sources of radiant damage so I just learned to live without it.

On a related note: is there a place that documents all spells mis-implementations/bugs? I see circle of death doesn't behave like it should in 5e - forcing you to pick a target creature as a centre for the effect, when it should be positionable, like a fireball. Really kills spell utility, unless everyone is immune to necrotic damage (which is not true for my party - I can only get resistance).

Yes, prone carries unconscious with it as a sub-effect - so literally anything that knocks a character prone will automatically end their concentration without a save, including effects which knock prone without themselves offering a save.

In the feedback section, pinned at the top, there is my thread on spells; it covers a lot of those issues in passing. It's out of date, since I haven't had the time or willpower to update it, but many of the issues it brushes on or details have been present since early EA and are still present now, despite heavy reporting.

I have another thread that focuses specifically on conditions (this one did not get a sticky at any point, so it gets lost) - it's here: Focused Feedback: Status Conditions. It, too, is out of date now, and doesn't cover the majority of Larian's homebrew conditions - it focuses mainly on the D&D 5e conditions and their implementation. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the problems highlighted there in early EA have also continued on without being improved or corrected.

Thanks Niara - I'll have a look. Yeah, as someone who place a lot of stock on balanced, sensible and conformant rules, these issues (and seeming indifference to resolving them) are a constant nagging source of frustration and really detract from my enjoyment.