Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Is there a reason to use Chain Shirt +1 ...

As opposed Scale Mail Armour +1?

Chain Shirt weighs 10 kg less, so it does not require 10 Strength to use, has 1 less AC, and does not give Disadvantage on Stealth.

So does anyone use the Chain Shirt at all? After all, stealth in this game is simply not that useful, the weight difference is negligible considering we can carry so much weight, and +1 AC is just safer.

Stealth in this game is very useful to the right character, such as a Dex-based Ranger, or a Thief that wants to take Moderately Armoured feat for added protection. Is it ideal? No. But a more pertinent question would be "Is there a readon to use Scale Mail Armour +1" given that you can take the best medium armour in the EA from your companion in the tutorial level...

Perhaps I should have qualified my question by saying that I'd like to roleplay as much as possible and Lae'zel isn't going to part with her armour. In all my playthroughs, I've never stripped her of her armour. I find it too cheesy. She openly shows contempt for the player character and joins up with the PC solely as a mutually beneficial arrangement. She would never willingly remove her own armour to wear an inferior one.

Roleplaying aside, If I want Lae'zel in my team, she needs her armour to have the highest AC possible since she doesn't use a shield, so she'll need her Gith armour.

Yeah, in character, I can't imagine Lae'zel giving up her armor. I noticed this mentioned in a bunch of 'build' videos, and it strikes me as hilarious gameplay. Not that there's anything wrong with playing like that, mind you.

....What? Stealth is not that useful? Stealth surprise attacks literally grant you 4 separate free surprise turns on each character before you even start the fight, what are you even on?

Yeah, it's funny how in a roleplaying game, to actually role play puts you in the minority.

These are merely surprise attacks. You can sneak up to them by avoiding their vision cones, even in the heaviest armour. No stealth abilities needed beyond clicking the hide button. You don't need Pass Without a Trace, you don't need Blessings of the Trickster. You don't need invisibility most of the time. Just surprise them from behind.

Stealth is not useful in this game in the sense that enemies that you have stealthed past will just join in the fight later on, such as the four masked people in the Hag's lair, making it more efficient to simply kill them on your way to the Hag. You are actually punished for stealthing past them because you would then have to fight them AND the Hag at the same time.

Or, you stealth surprise the hag in her own home and kill her in 1 turn like I did.

Stealth is not useless. It makes pickpocketing much easier, especially Ethel early in the camp as well as the blacksmith, and especially the Zhentarim. Pickpocketing early scale armor+1 is a huge defensive boon to your party.
Besides, you've done a half assed alpha state early access and with no full content availability and think stealth is easy just because the 4-5 bosses in the game are mostly isolated with wide open terrain? Granted, this also means individual surprise attacks may be gone by the end of this alpha, but stealth and stealth checks are two separate matters, and it's certainly more useful at least than the 90% of the garbage concentration spells you can't use because the concentration mechanic makes sure you can use nothing but Bless, Hex, Moonbeam, and Armor of Faith throughout your party.

There's a lot less useful crap in this alpha than stealth. I certainly noticed the difference in annoyance when poisoning the Goblin cauldron at the camp if I used Guidance or not, if I used Blessing of the Trickster, or if I tried stealing boots of speed at the myconid colony.

Now staves, that's what I call useless. How rewarding for a caster to feel compelled to take medium armor proficiency to wear a shield, or a druid just wielding a club and shield instead of his Faithwarden staff because they couldn't be bothered to justify Staves in terms of combat boons to a caster.

There's a lot to discuss in your reply, but I'd like to limit the scope to just the viability of the Chain Shirt +1, so I'll be brief. I might discuss your points at length in a separate thread.

So, by and large, I agree with you on the non-viability of the majority of Concentration spells. I'd add Flaming Sphere to the list of useful ones. And my druid uses shield and club, as there's no combat reason to use a staff at all, since Shillelagh turns the club into a D8 weapon.

As for stealing from merchants, it's something that I just don't do with my characters for role play reasons. They might steal from that goblin merchant, though.

That's fair. People also look at chain armor but at least there's one you would use, the one that Bulette drops which gives disengage to allies when you heal them, pretty good on shadowheart. Slap that with blade ward from gloves and it makes Lazael traverse the battlefield unmolested.

I don't remember it dropping anything the last time I killed it, but it was months ago. Still, if I do use it, it would be because of the Disengage on Heal, and not on its properties of being a Chain Shirt. Shadowheart would lose 2 AC wearing it if it's not also +1 AC.

Hi there,

So I won't debate if stealth is useful or not, I have my own opinion (but it's totally is useful),

If a rogue take the feat moderately armoured: https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Moderately+Armoured :

1- You will be able to go stealth, still use any rogue abilities, without restriction when wearing a medium armour;

2- Slippery chain shirt - medium armor, (drop from bulatte) provide: Aura of Protection: When the wearer heals a creature, it automatically disengages and won't trigger opportunity attacks.
2a - this goes hand to hand with "the whispering promise" ring, has both provides bonus on heal, just eat a potato ..

Here's a pic from my Rogue with the med armour - it's a cool design too:

Hi

Yeah it's got a nice look, and it's part of the reason why I'm looking for a reason to use this instead of the Scale Mail Armour +1.

Stealth rolls should be important, but somehow I could stealth-murder all of the temple undead and Blighted Village goblins without ever having to even roll for Stealth. Playing on a Fighter in Scale Mail.

Many enemies are too static, they never investigate an attack, or move towards your last known location, or even turn. Their "visibility cones" can be totally abused. Sound is not even a factor. It doesn't matter if you're in heavy armor or carrying a barrel, they hear nothing unless you step in their "visibility cone".

The windmill goblins even just got a lower approval rating when I murdered a few of their friends from Stealth and they stayed neutral.

Should have to roll for Stealth a lot more, the visibility cones should be longer and wider, and sound when sneaking up on someone should also trigger Stealth vs Perception checks. And enemies should go investigate a ranged attack...

Stealth rolls only occur if you fall into an enemy's red line-of-sight cone while trying to hide. Larian could fix this a couple of ways:

A) put in an invisible hearing radius around enemies that allows them to check for stealth and trigger a roll

B) remove the red area showing line-of-sight so that the player doesn't know until the stealth roll occurs that they might possible be seen/heard.

As it stands there's not any reason to pay attention to the disadvantage heavier armor imparts on stealth rolls, since still can be easily abused to the point that the rolls never actually occur.

YES, I use it a lot. I usually give Wyll the Moderately Armored feat, but Scale Mail is not an option for him (9 strength). Plus, the Chain Shirt +1 looks fetching on him.

Unfortunately, none of those items work on yourself from healing yourself (at least when I tried healing spells, don't know if potions or food do trigger it). The way it works is only allies receive the benefit for healing THEM, not yourself. If you want to receive the benefit, you have to slap it on Shadowheart.

Hi @Zenith,

Ouuff .. I didn't want to argue with you without the following pic, but now I'm ready for the debate.

So here, in the log window (bottom right), I am eating a potato and getting Bless(from ring) + disengage(from armor). Also I am getting poison (the bow flashing green) because of broodmother's revenge.




The disengage is quite useful because you don't need to spend a bonus action for disengaging. As a wood elf rogue, wearer of crushing's ring aka covering long distance, you get to use all your actions (/bonus) to backstab some vilains around.

Edit: And you also getting heals, for what potato can give, just so you know.

Programming AI is really hard because only IBM employees are smart enough to have the credentials to do it. And you’re asking if a chain mail shirt has any reason? There’s no point in using a dagger, either.

That's why I said I didn't know whether food worked different, as it works as an external heal.

Now try this on your druid or cleric, wasting a spell slot on healing word on yourself, and you'll see it won't work.

Food/consumables are OP in this game.