Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Throwing Barbarian lacking in Act 3?

Hey there, me and my partner are in the middle of a multiplayer run on tactician with legendary actions active.

We decided to try OP builds and optimize our gameplay and I choose to play a Throwing Barbarian (Barb Berserker 7, Rouge Thief 3, Fighter 2) since it's a popular build for higher difficulties. I went for a Duergar Dwarf in hopes to use both the Dwarven Thrower and Nyrulna on act 3. Everything went great in Act 1 and okay in Act 2 but once we beat we began to notice the Barbarian was hitting way less than everyone in the party (minus the cleric).

Our party comp is: A dragonborn Sorlock, Astarion as a Swords Bard archer (Ascended so now he's hitting like a truck), Shadowheart as a Life Domain Cleric for heals and a duergar dwarf (former Throwing Barbarian).

I got all of the recommended items for the first 2 act: Ring of Flinging, Kushigo Gloves, Returning Pike, Strength elixirs among others. And even with Nyrulna I'm doing the less damage in the group. We had to share some items like the Killer Sweetheart ring since the Sorlock needed to focus on critical hits.

Am I doing something wrong or is this build supposed to be like this? I'd like to hear from your experience if you managed to beat the game with this build, I'm sure I must be missing something.

You have Tavern Brawler the feat right?

Yep, first feat I got.

I would not call a thrower build op, it's a decent build. As many of the theoretically fantastic builds it has some problems in the "real world", mainly hit chances and damage resistances. I'm currently in a Tactician Custom run with Honour mode features added by a mod and Combat Extender mod which makes enemies stronger, f.e. + to armor and saving throws, and I feel the difficulties already in Act 1. My main is currently a thrower Barb (i'm wildly experimenting with many builds) and hit chances are ok-ish but not great. I had the same experiences in Act 3 in my Honour mode run with Karlach.

You need to set up for higher chances with the help by other chars or get advantage somehow. I'm also using a randomized loot mod, so I cannot plan with op items so easily, but for you the Risky Ring may be a solution? Possibly it is used on a different char, I gave it at least to my crit build Sorlock. If you like to rely on potions (I hate that), constant slurping of a strength potion can also help (maybe already in use). I'm slowly thinking that a melee Barbarian might be the better way.

BTW if you give Shadowheart the Staff of Cherished Necromancy, she also has good damage, and if you are using Radiating Orb items, she is an even bigger asset to the group, only paired by a Paladin, Wizard 12 or Sorcerer 12. one weaker char in the party then is no problem.

It definitely is an OP build, as all Tavern Brawler builds (monk...).
You miss 1 feat... Barbarian 7 is useless, Barbarian 5/rogue 4/fighter 3 is the best way to go.

It allow you to have 20 to 22 strength (with the act 2 potion).
Even with 20 strength + tavern brawler your bonus to attack rolls is a lot better than any other classes bonus to attack rolls so your %to hit is always higher... You cannot hit less often.

I just did a build video about it and I got 85-90% to hit against most act 3 ennemies. Make sure you have weapon proficiency !

(Level 1 should be barbarian or fighter, if you respect at some point and took rogue first you miss the proficiency bonus to your attack roll with the dwarf hammer).

Yeah I don't really see how the barbarian with Tavern Brawler could be hitting less than everyone in the party. You are obtaining and using Strength Elixirs right? That's the entire reason TB is so busted, the ability to have 27 Str from the Myconid Colony on, and thus +8 Str. This means you should have a floor of +20 to hit (+23 with Nyaulna) and advantage on all hits after the 1st thanks to prone (if standing at the appropriate distance) if there's another build rocking a 99% hit chance vs AC 26 on every hit I'd love to see it. In terms of damage, you're at +24 from Str and should easily be hitting 40ish damage without vulnerability, around 70 with vulnerability, and thus 200+ damage per round should be a normal fight. What are you seeing, and if that's low for you, what is the rest of the party dealing and how?

https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/18eguld/honor_mode_tb_throw_complete_build_guide/

A good, detailed breakdown, will hopefully help identify your gaps, but honestly with elixirs and TB you can have quite a few gaps and should still be hitting like a truck.

It's not an op build. Ok, Tavern Brawler is a borderline feat. But the only thing what is really op is the strength potion available in overabundance. Even in my playthroughs (I always kill Ethel) I got enough of the nonsense-stuff. Also "nice" with the Titan bow. Such a stupid game design is remarkable in itself, but that's an old topic. In my current playthrough I decided to avoid such violation to decency, it's hard to explain to ban Haste from use to casters or remove vulnerability from Wet but slurp strength potions. With the potion gone, hit chance problems arise, something you have to deal with. I thought we are playing such games to get problems to deal with.

Yeah regardless of what I’m doing with Ethel I’ll have 12-18 hill giant strength potions before she leaves the grove. After all there’s the easiest vendor to steal from you’ve ever seen near the entrance, and leveling up resets vendor inventories which means recruiting and respeccing does as well, potentially multiple times. That’ll normally last me until the myconid colony.

Just saying, there’s a difference between game imposed challenges and self imposed challenges. ‘I think long rests are op so I don’t use a lot of them, that makes classes which don’t rely on them strong’; ‘I think strength options are OP and that makes classes which don’t rely on them strong’; these are real things I’ve seen said but you may as well say I think weapons are OP so I don’t use them and that makes Monk the best martial character in the game. Given that constraint entirely of my making, sure. Could also say you think spells are OP and not use them, you can add any challenge layers to the game you like. But strength potions are indeed widely available in the base game and are very synergistic with Tavern Brawler and Barb thrower builds.

You are right, it's in the game so it is a feature. I think however that there is a difference between f.e. a long rest, Monks, spells and a mere potion. I did not understand Larian's design of this potion stuff from the first time I read about in in EA. I'm not against effective or even op stuff. But such a potion seems to nullify the whole attribute system for me. I never used it and never will while I'm not against for example using the Globe of Invulnerabilty, quite an op spell indeed, but at least a lvl 6 spell, or the Alert feat, which are not able to break the whole DnD system (only make a huge dent perhaps).

I certainly agree to an extent, and it’s weird that not only is strength the attribute which goes way out of bounds vs normal values but also the optimal strength score for a strength based character is 8.

That being said it’s hardly the only thing which is absolutely breaking the small numbers of 5e in half, Arcane Acuity providing +10 to save DCs is absolutely nuts in the context of 5e, Reverb providing a no save -5 or more to the enemy saves, Bloodthirst providing a no save vulnerability to piercing damage on hit, the spell might gloves in general and especially with magic missile, the list goes on. I agree that damage is at times overrated and the conditions and using them makes for a variety of absurdly powerful builds with limited opportunities for the enemy to act.

Personally the single thing that most breaks D&D’s balance to me (aside from Withers) is the nearly limitless, perfectly safe and consequence free long resting. If you were always, outside of a paid for inn, at risk for a random encounter; if you had relative timers set all over the place and the world changed and adapted depending on your pace as a matter of course rather than in isolated circumstances, and if vendors inventories were not able to be pick pocketed, it would be a very different game and you couldn’t count on always having all your long rest resources for every fight. The reason D&D has the concept of 5-7 encounters per long rest is because otherwise classes with significant long rest resources are much more powerful than those built on short rest or at will abilities. Or maybe the cause and effect there are reversed. Either way, in BG3 absolutely nothing stops me from clearing 4 of those 5 encounters then long resting before taking on the boss at full strength. I have freed prisoners, killed guards, and then rested on their doorstep with no one caring or reacting. To me that’s a far bigger issue than the strength elixirs.

But hey, the game is what it is, nothing wrong with adding whatever constraints you want to make it harder / more “realistic”, but myself I’ll shamelessly use and abuse conditions, long rests, magic pocket chicanery, and of course strength potions.

Thanks everyone for your responses, you bring up some interesting points. Sadly I got gateway timeout for 3 days straight so I couldn't reply earlier.

About my build, I followed that reddit guide and for Act 1 and most of Act 2 with elixirs and the Tavern Brawler feat it went great, 90+ chances in every target. However by act 3 even with Nyrulna, Cloud Giant elixirs and about the same hitting chances the Barbarian got surpassed by the other damage dealers. I ended up going for a full Battlemaster build with the Bhaalist armor and Nyrulna setting up piercing vulnerability for the archer Swords Bard. It went great, we finished our run today! Our Astarion was shooting arrows like a sniper lol

Let me be clear, I don't think it's a bad build by any means! I just think it can fall short in the end game and ends up being overshadowed by other builds. I may give it a chance again, see what other items I can make work.

About the elixirs... I don't really ~like~ that there's an item that can just take your abilities to that high of a number until long rest, it's just weird that a martial melee character has to set their strength to 8 on purpose to use those. At the same and like in all games, if there's an op thing there why don't use it? There's that feeling there that you're crippling yourself on purpose if you don't take that simple solution. If instead of just setting the value on 21 it could just give you a temporary +2 or +4 I could see how it can be more balanced.

On the long rest issue, I remember when I found out that I could long rest just before entering the area of the final boss in Act 2 it did not make any sense if the same would happened in a tabletop setting... But let's face it, it's near impossible for a videogame to ever replicate all the possible permutations of scenarios a tabletop rpg can have. Also probably many of these game design decisions come from testing and trying to accommodate for a more flexible and flashy experience.

Again, thanks everyone for your kind responses. The discussion about game difficulties and how to balance op or not op mechanics is one I always enjoy reading. I'll definitely try the build again in another playthrough, perhaps with a different party comp.

@ GiantOctopodes: I see it the same way as you. I try to prolong long rest time as much as possible by using cantrips and such. I did not use potions (except healing), scrolls, Arcane Acuity or Reverberation (because I didn't understand their potential ...), Haste, Shove or a lot of stealth in my first Tactician playthrough, maybe it was not too easy and not too hard for these reasons (I abused Wet, I have to confess).

@ Revmir_Nav: You can long rest before the final battle with Ketheric in the hive? How so? I could not, in my Honour mode run (Patch 5), or at least I was too dumb for it. Difficulty aside, I am of the firm opinion that you should be able to enter boss fights fully loaded up and rested, otherwise it's unfair. I was a bit annoyed that I had to face Ketheric a little bit depleted.

I meant at the roof after the first encounter before entering the colony zone. Either way there's the restoration pod before the elevator and in Honor mode it has only 1 use. To be fair the first time I thought it was only a 2 phase fight and the colony zone had no fights, silly me.

@Geala

"BTW if you give Shadowheart the Staff of Cherished Necromancy, she also has good damage,"

Why?

Or to be more precise, what makes this staff better than other options for Shadowheart?

That depends of course in what role you use a Cleric and what is "good damage" to you. For me the biggest problem of a Cleric is spell slot economy. In my Honour mode run I used the Tempest domain, Wet condition and Call Lightning for decent damage while spending few spell slots. In my current run vulnerability to Wet is removed and enemies (who are buffed by mods) are more difficult to hit than in Honour mode. Shadowheart is now a Life domain Cleric, like in the group the OP described. Her main task is to debuff enemies, the damage of Shadowheart therefore is much lower than that of my other chars.

The idea of the Staff of Cherished Necromancy is that you can cast Necromancy spells without using spell slots if you have Life Essence. Luckily the bug which allowed to use it endlessly is removed by Patch 6, it is a lot weaker and fairer now, so you can use the staff without bad feelings. As my Shadowheart is usually near the enemies anyway, she hopefully can greatly upgrade her damage with upcast Inflict Wounds while sparing high level spell slots.

The Mace of Lathander (my usual weapon for Shadowheart) loses a bit in Act 3. The two magic staves with Arcane Battery might be better under some circumstances (did not try it out yet) but one is usually for Gale, and the other is awkward to get.

What is the barbarian's bonus to hit versus the other characters' bonus to hit? It's just numbers. Compare them.

Sounds like a bad run of random dice rolls more than a build issue.