Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks True Strike = Waste of Effort (or...how does one use it well?)

Working on my ranger and thought the True Strike cantrip from High Elf would be worthwhile; after all, what's not to love about increasing your hit chance, right?

I feel like it's doing just the opposite: taking an action to apply/re-apply actually makes you miss an attack opportunity with your main hand, reducing your hit chance to...effectively...zero.

What would you change to make it worthwhile? Perhaps allow it to be re-applied without an action cost as long as you're maintaining concentration? Make it a self-buff perhaps, with it applying to your attack roll as long as concentration isn't broken? Move it to a bonus action?

Thoughts?

~War~

True Strike is usually considered trap choice (for in-combat use, ie 99% of the time it should be useful) in pnp, as far as I know, for pretty much the reason you said -- it doesn't really do you any good. Even for weapon-focused builds like Eldritch Knight or your Ranger it's pretty much a self-countering choice. In fact I think it's mathematically negative (but please do not quote me on this I hate math and probabilitology makes my treeskull hurt) because I think you are trading two attacks (two possible hits) for getting two chances on one attack (can only result in one hit), meaning that the chance of one attack hitting is the same in either case, but if you don't cast True Strike you still have the possibility of both attacks hitting and thus doubling your damage potential.

I often see suggestion to deal with this and give it a bit more of an actual impact, like (I want to add that I have no actual experience playing with any of these supposed fixes myself), iirc, either having it last (with concentration) for two turns or two attacks after you cast it, or just straight having it last (still with Concentration of course) last until the next time you hit.

Sometimes I see people saying it should be a Bonus Action to cast it but in my mind that makes it too powerful to be a cantrip for everyone who's any decent at attacks (your stereotypical wizard would be less broken with that because they mostly suck at non-spell combat anyway ).

It is a bit of a wash if you are at range - you trade off two attacks for one at a better chance. But if you are in melee and dual-wielding:

Turn 1: True Strike (action). Off-hand attack (bonus action).
Turn 2: Main hand attack (action). Off-hand attack (bonus action). True Strike wears off.

So there you trade off one attack for Advantage on three attacks.

So your 3 attacks with advantage on the hit are better than 4 attacks? No saving through or wisdom roll required on the True Strike cantrip from Elf racial or Mage Breaker?

Does true strike add to crit chance? That would be a bonus...

But...if your first strike after casting kills the target, you're back to using/wasting a main hand attack or bow shot to re-apply to another target. So if you're ranged primary or 2-handed or shield + weapon, there's basically a whole turn wasted before you can do damage. Or again, if someone else in the party kills what you've cast on...it's wasted.

~War~

True Strike is 100% apply chance... so far. I haven't seen anything stop that.

Advantage almost doubles crit chance, from 1/20 = 5% to 39/400 = 9.75%. The base chance is still 5%, but Advantage gives you two tries at it for each attack.

And yes, using that sequence on an 8 HP goblin is just asking to make part of the sequence useless. Only use it on high-HP enemies.

+1 True Strike is usually a trap-choice (or for those familiar with MtG a "win-more" strat). It seems empowering but is usually out-performed by other abilities the party can use. Also with all the low-cost ways to get advantage in Baldur's Gate 3, it's hard to justify ever using True Strike.

I was surprised True Strike was put in the game, I thought it would have been omitted to prevent players from choosing it.

I could never be bothered with True Strike because the interface is such a faff, but isn't the point you cast it outside combat? Getting advantage on your first attack whenever you aren't attacked by surprise should be pretty valuable, though it's significantly nerfed by just how easy it is to get advantage by other means.

True Strike.

"I can spend an action casting True Strike and have double the chance of hitting once."
- or -
"I can attack twice, having double the chance of hitting once, and a small chance of damaging twice."

Being able to maintain it for an extra 6 seconds means you can use it to some benefit in a surprise attack but that's about it.

Found some math on True Strike.

Reddit: True Strike Math

There is no such thing as super-advantage in the game (yet). And that table doesn't take into account the bonus attacks you could make with True Strike. So the short form is still: True Strike is not worth trading off two attacks for one attack plus True Strike. It is worth it if you can do extra attacks during that time.

I can only think of 3 major use-cases off the top of my head

1) If you're opening up combat with a surprise attack (likely ranged), you can cast true strike the turn before combat to make sure you hit.

2) If we're talking about using it in combat, it can be useful for a Sorcerer that can quicken it as a bonus action. Maybe sometimes a Rogue will want to True Strike if it's the only way they can get sneak attack, and their sneak attack bonus is big enough to justify losing 1x attack.

3) You simply don't have line of sight this turn and don't want to use your action to dash (maybe you're camping a defensible location and waiting for enemy to approach), I guess then it lets your current turn action do something.

Ah...I assumed that one would have to have line of sight in order to cast true strike. Guess you could use it in that case rather than a bow shot or direct damage spell...

~War~

I am pretty sure True Strike is considered an attack and will initiate combat.


That would be a good use. I want to see Sorcerer implemented.


Line of sight is required for True Strike.

No. Currently, it won't aggro non-hostile creatures (so there's a couple of fights you can use for it, including the goblin leaders if they haven't been alerted).

Just tested it on the Gith Patrol:





Maybe "Line of Sight" is the wrong phrase to use here - maybe "line of cast"? Line of fire? Essentially, you can targets someone with Truesight even when your "line of fire" is blocked. Easier to explain with image than words.

Notice my wizard needs to move to get a proper "line of fire" on this unsuspecting fellow:


But I can still land true strike on him from the same position. Try it out. So in case you end your turn at a spot where your line of cast is blocked (and for some reason don't want to dash), instead of doing nothing you can land True Strike on them.

Thanks for the corrections. That does make it a bit more powerful. But really, what other targetted spell in the game doesn't require LOS? That has to be deliberate.

I think in general, single target spells that don't fire a ray don't require a "line of cast" in BG3 (which isn't exactly correct in PnP).

So you're looking at things like Hex, Blindness, Sacred Flame, etc.

Magic missile by PnP rules would've fit in this territory, but Larian decided to implement it as a ray spell with a weird curve.

The term you're looking for is 'Line of Effect'.

Anyway... this video sums up True Strike pretty well.

True Strike is a cantrip, so in other words it shouldn't supposed to be useful throughout the game..When you are a Lvl 1-2 char with low AB instead of missing twice in a row you use true strike so u can actually hit once at least.. Ofcouse you can find other situations later on tho like everything else in D&D..all your characters arent get into combat before detected so when some of your chars are in combat andif your wizard is hiding behind a corner or smth.. you can cast true strike, choose the actual spell you want to hit the enemy with and let him get into combat while walking to cast it..

If you have disadvantage because of smth..enermy being higher ground, you being blind, poisoned, you have bane spell on you etc. you can make use of it

Assuming TCoE cantrips don't make it in, True Strike could be useful for Eldritch Knights after they get War Magic. Outside of that, don't take it

If the DM recognizes that True Strike *only* has a subtle non-verbal component, then it can be good just before a battle begins, like when you are about to ambush ...

If not, the cantrip is an utter waste of cantrip. It is a long-time complaint from 5e players.

So, for BG3, if it can be used without triggering combat or automatically give that character the "surprise round", it can be good.
Nb : I think they made it 60 feet in BG3 to help a bit.