My first Tav was an ice sorcerer, even though he accidentally started as a warlock while I was still playing in German (“Hexenmeister” meant sorcerer in 3.5 but means warlock in 5E). Lore-wise, he was always supposed to be a silver dragon’s offspring, so that’s what I turned him into. I’m now playing him again, as a sorcerer from the start, with Adjustable Party Limit and Tactician Enhanced mods.
The problem I notice, the more I understand the meta of BG3:
Why would I ever play anything else but ice sorcerer? This game was literally made for them:
The secret main character, the Dark Urge, is a white Dragonborn sorcerer. There are no recruitable sorcerers — you can mod in Alfira as a bard, and Orpheus is a monk, but you can’t recruit the Dark Urge. I’d rather re-spec Gale into sorcerer than summon the sorcerer hireling, since sorcerers and wizards are often redundant to each other.
I could still try and build sorcerers around other themes — especially draconic bloodline incentivises this — but everything else seems objectively weaker:
- Lightning is usually included in most ice builds, since it also synergises with Wet; however, Shocking Grasp cannot be twincast, due to being melee, and twincasting a Witch Bolt is worse than twincasting Ray of Frost, since Witch Bolt takes a level 1 spell slot.
- Fire synergises with oil and grease, but those are nowhere near as easy to create as water surfaces. And barrelmancy defeats the purpose of having spellcasters to begin with, since any half-elf or high elf with a Firebolt can blow up barrels.
- Poison and acid don’t have enough support, and for poison specifically, many enemies are resistant to it. I built a hireling necromancer around these damage types, but in synergy with the group, the best thing for him to do is often still to cast Chromatic Orb with cold damage.
Looking at other classes, wizards are usually outmatched by sorcerers when it comes to raw damage dealing. My question was originally, “Why play anything other than Evocation wizard?”, but that only applies to wizards in particular, and what to do with Gale. If I don’t raise the party limit, he usually stays at camp, so he could become a Transmutation potion maker, but I usually use a hireling for that.
For martials, all of these are present among your companions, even if Minthara requires jumping through a few hoops. Monk is the exception (Orpheus is only present for the finale). I do have a Tactician run with a monk going, but Open-Hand Monk is kind of one-note to me. I enjoy taking Sina’zith along for support, but a Monk Tag gets only a handful of unique dialogue options, and can otherwise hardly afford investing points into Charisma, since Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom are so important.
And for Bards, Alfira is mainly just shooting her two hand crossbows and using Slashing Flourish, with the occasional Glyph of Warding for ice or lightning when enemies are wet. Playing a Bard Tav would feel more like playing a charismatic Rogue to me.
The only thing that would be really different to my current playstyle is Gloomstalker Assassin. I started a Tactician run for that, but it’s not my top priority, as Thief: Deadly Shadows quickly showed me I’m not into stealth games. Running away like in Mirror’s Edge, sure (guess who my monk is
) — but not hiding in constant tension, fearing you’ll be dead as soon as you’re discovered.
Of course, I could play a less optimised build, like Fire sorcerer. But who would ever do that intentionally on higher difficulties? Unless they’re doing it as a challenge for YouTube, of course. ^^
Was I just somewhat unlucky perhaps that I tried one of the strongest archetypes on my very first run (even though nowhere near optimised back then)?
