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#675762 24/09/20 11:53 AM
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How could this be worse?

I would like to make my first party as poorly optimized as possible. If you can think of a few tweaks to make this group even less likely to survive, please let me know!

The philosophy is to have no character which could well perform any of the Tank, Medic, DPS, Skill-Monkey roles. There won't be anybody to stand there at the front and take all the hits. There will be nobody around able to heal you if you are damaged. The group will have almost no ability to dish out damage at all or even sweet talk their way around encounters.

The classes of the characters should be the weakest tier options. The race/class combinations chosen should offer as few benefits as possible. Any sub-class selection ought to be decided by how poor the perks are in that catergory. The ability scores chosen for these characters ought to be all in the "wrong place".

Hopefully, this will turn out to be a hilarious party and very memorable and full of flavour.

So please go ahead and ruin this party's prospects by suggesting particularly useless spell choices, and so forth. It will be very good fun to see how they make their way in the world of Baldur's Gate III !

* Monk
* Rogue
* Sorcerer
* Druid
* Wizard


Monk

Somebody will have to do the fighting, so this will be the Monk. He will be a highly Intelligent, Charismatic Monk, since this won't help him in combat at all! I think a Tiefling Monk might be the most useless, though a Dragonborn might contend here. Skills and Background? Arcana, Deception, Intimidation, Performance. Sage would be pretty useless for a Monk, relatively speaking. Ultimately, it is to be hoped that this Monk gains the following: Level 5 Stunning Fist, Level 15 Timeless Body! He will follow the Way of the Four Elements, for the joy of using Gong of the Summit at Level 6, and casting shatter!

Rogue

The poor old Monk is bound to need help in combat, and since the other two characters aren't going to be laying the boot in, a Rogue will have to do. To try and make this character less useful half the time, I think an Assassin Sub-Class would be best/worst. (You can't really assassinate a Green Slime or Water Elemental, can you?

Start as a Rogue instead of Fighter to avoid the useful proficiency in Constitution saves. Also, this will be a highly intelligent Assassin, which for some reason (let me know why!) makes for a poor choice. To really go for it, I might make this Assassin a Gnome! Does anybody with knowledge of the Assassin have suggestions about which skill path to follow, beyond Skulker?


Sorcerer

Wild Subclass is meant to help prevent optimization, due to randomization. However, I might "get lucky", so this is a potential weakness to the entire party! It reminds me of the brilliant "Wand of Wonder", which would cast a Badger at an opponent, or a flock of butterflys! By having huge Strength (and quite a fine Intelligence) this Sorcerer will hopefully not have such great magic available. A Half-Orc ought to be handy here. (Possibly a Dwarf, depending on other choices.)

There are plenty of spells which have little value unless particular circumstances arise, so picking some of those ought to be fum, as with Cantrips. By standing in the background, away from the fighting, having great ability with Armour might be an excellent choice, but taking a Clerical path would have to be balanced against the possibility of usefully being able to heal people.



Wizard
By all accounts, a stupid Wizard would be the best, so I would like an especially dim-witted pointy hat. This will offset the rest of the party who will be intellectual giants, if I can help it. Half-Orc used to have an intelligence minus, but that seems to have disappeared. Halflings had -1 Wisdom... I think this chap ought to be a plain old Human. The Bladeslinging Arcane school might be a good choice, as having a scantily clad, low intelligence Wizard charging into melee ought to be fun. I would choose Feats instead of ability improvements, but I believe there are no Feats in Early Access. Surely, he will choose to increase his Strength! No ranged weapons for this guy, no no! He will be at the back holding his stick! Tons of Strength and unfortunately, a bit of Charisma, since it has to go somewhere. I suppose he will be the Face of the game, chatting up NPCs.

Druid
Thanks to a suggestion, a Circle of the Land Druid, specializing in Wild Shape will be the fourth character, replacing the earlier choice of Sorcerer.

What do you think?



Last edited by Languid Lizard; 26/09/20 09:13 PM.
Languid Lizard #676050 26/09/20 04:19 PM
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I think that as long as you go the opposite direction of what's typically intended for a class that you're going to have a high chance of failing. Have you considered going with a Druid, and going the complete opposite direction of their subclass? A Circle of the Land Druid trying their best to focus on Wild Shape could be funny. From a roleplay perspective, I think it'd be great if it were one of those situations where their parents pressured them into that direction, like a family full of doctors expecting you to be a doctor. So you go to college and actually work through your degrees and successfully complete them, but your true passion is, I don't know, let's say cooking. In this case, the Druid comes from a long line of Land spellcasters, but he's always envied the Moon primalists and has a lot of conflict and turmoil trying to embrace that, but is relatively ineffective.


I don't want to fall to bits 'cos of excess existential thought.

Tzelanit #676054 26/09/20 04:28 PM
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Originally Posted by Tzelanit
I think that as long as you go the opposite direction of what's typically intended for a class that you're going to have a high chance of failing. Have you considered going with a Druid, and going the complete opposite direction of their subclass? A Circle of the Land Druid trying their best to focus on Wild Shape could be funny. From a roleplay perspective, I think it'd be great if it were one of those situations where their parents pressured them into that direction, like a family full of doctors expecting you to be a doctor. So you go to college and actually work through your degrees and successfully complete them, but your true passion is, I don't know, let's say cooking. In this case, the Druid comes from a long line of Land spellcasters, but he's always envied the Moon primalists and has a lot of conflict and turmoil trying to embrace that, but is relatively ineffective.


Thanks, Tzelanit. This is a lovely idea. It will be fun for the role-play to try and establish what happened in life to have them as they are.

I will have to investigate the possibility of Cirlce of the Land Druid trying to be a Wild Shaper, but a) which other character would they replace? and b) wouldn't a Druid be too useful in the Party?

Languid Lizard #676060 26/09/20 05:18 PM
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Originally Posted by Languid Lizard
Originally Posted by Tzelanit
I think that as long as you go the opposite direction of what's typically intended for a class that you're going to have a high chance of failing. Have you considered going with a Druid, and going the complete opposite direction of their subclass? A Circle of the Land Druid trying their best to focus on Wild Shape could be funny. From a roleplay perspective, I think it'd be great if it were one of those situations where their parents pressured them into that direction, like a family full of doctors expecting you to be a doctor. So you go to college and actually work through your degrees and successfully complete them, but your true passion is, I don't know, let's say cooking. In this case, the Druid comes from a long line of Land spellcasters, but he's always envied the Moon primalists and has a lot of conflict and turmoil trying to embrace that, but is relatively ineffective.


Thanks, Tzelanit. This is a lovely idea. It will be fun for the role-play to try and establish what happened in life to have them as they are.

I will have to investigate the possibility of Cirlce of the Land Druid trying to be a Wild Shaper, but a) which other character would they replace? and b) wouldn't a Druid be too useful in the Party?


I think that replacing the Sorcerer in this instance would be the best bet. As you mentioned, there's a chance for a favorable outcome with Wild Magic. A Druid could be too useful in a party, if you wanted them to be. But if you're a Circle of the Land Druid and spend most, if not all of your time in Wild Shape, you're going to be cut off from a lot of what would make you effective. The only beneficial spellcasting effects that would carry over into Wild Shape would be Channeled spells, so as long as you don't channel anything beforehand and stay in Wild Shape as long as possible, you probably wouldn't be very effective, and you would avoid any potential great success that you may get with a Sorcerer.


I don't want to fall to bits 'cos of excess existential thought.

Languid Lizard #676064 26/09/20 07:12 PM
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I mean...it's hard to say because if you want to actually be able to play through the game...you're gonna need to kill stuff. So a useless character would be like a ranger that is all ranged but only uses a dagger...basically useless in combat. or a fighter that is STR out of his mind with all melee abilities/features but then only uses throwing stars or something useless like that...but could you actually get far enough in the game so terribly optimized? who knows. so it really depends on how terrible you want your characters while still being able to actcually play the game. and since it's point buy, at least in EA, don't give the character the stats their class needs? a fighter with 8 str and 10 con isn't going to be effective and probably won't make it far in the game...

Tzelanit #676076 26/09/20 09:06 PM
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Originally Posted by Tzelanit
Originally Posted by Languid Lizard
Originally Posted by Tzelanit
I think that as long as you go the opposite direction of what's typically intended for a class that you're going to have a high chance of failing. Have you considered going with a Druid, and going the complete opposite direction of their subclass? A Circle of the Land Druid trying their best to focus on Wild Shape could be funny. From a roleplay perspective, I think it'd be great if it were one of those situations where their parents pressured them into that direction, like a family full of doctors expecting you to be a doctor. So you go to college and actually work through your degrees and successfully complete them, but your true passion is, I don't know, let's say cooking. In this case, the Druid comes from a long line of Land spellcasters, but he's always envied the Moon primalists and has a lot of conflict and turmoil trying to embrace that, but is relatively ineffective.


Thanks, Tzelanit. This is a lovely idea. It will be fun for the role-play to try and establish what happened in life to have them as they are.

I will have to investigate the possibility of Cirlce of the Land Druid trying to be a Wild Shaper, but a) which other character would they replace? and b) wouldn't a Druid be too useful in the Party?


I think that replacing the Sorcerer in this instance would be the best bet. As you mentioned, there's a chance for a favorable outcome with Wild Magic. A Druid could be too useful in a party, if you wanted them to be. But if you're a Circle of the Land Druid and spend most, if not all of your time in Wild Shape, you're going to be cut off from a lot of what would make you effective. The only beneficial spellcasting effects that would carry over into Wild Shape would be Channeled spells, so as long as you don't channel anything beforehand and stay in Wild Shape as long as possible, you probably wouldn't be very effective, and you would avoid any potential great success that you may get with a Sorcerer.


Thanks, I think I will adjust the party accordingly. Out with the Sorcerer, in with the Druid! Can you recommend a Race for this Druid? I was actually hoping to have a sort of "mushroom" Druid, that was always totally out of it. I don't know how this would be possible.

Last edited by Languid Lizard; 26/09/20 09:09 PM.
deathidge #676077 26/09/20 09:08 PM
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Originally Posted by deathidge
I mean...it's hard to say because if you want to actually be able to play through the game...you're gonna need to kill stuff. So a useless character would be like a ranger that is all ranged but only uses a dagger...basically useless in combat. or a fighter that is STR out of his mind with all melee abilities/features but then only uses throwing stars or something useless like that...but could you actually get far enough in the game so terribly optimized? who knows. so it really depends on how terrible you want your characters while still being able to actcually play the game. and since it's point buy, at least in EA, don't give the character the stats their class needs? a fighter with 8 str and 10 con isn't going to be effective and probably won't make it far in the game...


This is a brilliant idea! So, not only would the characters have the worst Classes, but also use the worst weaponry! It will be fun to work out why he always uses a dagger instead of a sword.

Languid Lizard #676078 26/09/20 09:19 PM
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Poorly optimized? Well, try 4 bards. You will be a good time.

Nyanko #676088 27/09/20 01:44 AM
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Originally Posted by Nyanko
Poorly optimized? Well, try 4 bards. You will be a good time.


That would be effective, however, I have ruled out that option. No redundancy.


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