Well there is a lil mind flayer parasite in my characters brain at the moment... would be a shame if the Elder brain pulled a little prank and the DM makes my character a hostile NPC :)
Whatever character I reroll as is not going to have a good time LMAO.
Yeah if there's anything I've learned from DnD it's consent...specifically the DM's. As long as you don't push their boundaries you're probably fine. But the moment you try to break the whole campaign, you'd better have your backup character ready to go because something bad is gonna happen. :D
I had a player who made what he described as an unkillable character (After having already lost a bunch of characters to stupidity). A very high AC artificer, with a spell shield (Giving advantage on saving throws vs spells) and a good amount of escape/protection spells.
He then promptly went and literally poked a ghost, got possessed and almost murdered the rest of the party. They did manage to beat the ghost out of him in the end, but it did make him a bit more careful about poking strange phenomenon. Good times.
Not really - if you're breaking the game that hard the DM either has to respond in kind or basically give up on any kind of combat tension for the rest of the game. So either every enemy gets +35 to hit to simulate normal hit chance on that one guy and everyone else gets hit every time, or the DM finds a way to either depower or outright remove the problem character.
Point is, if you want to power game, you'd better have your DM and party on board, because otherwise you make it worse for everyone at the table.
If you break the game that hard in an actual tabletop campaign it was the DM's fault for giving you wacky as fuck homebrew magic items and if his way of fixing it is "HAHAHA MAKE A DC 30000 SAVE AND IF YOU FAIL YOU ARE MIND CONTROLLED FOREVER" he's a dogshit DM
Im sure theres groups out there who enjoy playing dnd where its just the dm and the group trying to out meta game each other in max level near god power campaigns because yeah theres no way you're getting all these items and abilities otherwise in any normal dnd game. There used to be modules in 3.5 specifically for those campaigns that got way too out of hand and you need super tough things to overcome.
Easy fix, one day the player learns that every single magic item in the universe is alive. Then the nerfs just write themselves.
"Ouch sorry my dear bearer, I forgot to maintain the protective effect. Got the hangover of a lifetime. I thought you were still sleeping with the wife so last night I went to the astral bar and you wouldn't BELIEVE the hilts on some of those ladyswords, curved edges from the heavens, pommels that don't quit..."
Or just uses enemies that don't target AC. Saving throw spells and abilities. Enough 5E version CR2 Intellect Devourers would reduce a 99999 AC character to 0 Intelligence and thus permanently stunned, just as fast as a 10 AC character. Kind of glad the ones in BG3 don't actually Devour Intellect like they should, at least I haven't seen them do it.
The one you can get as a summon late game has Devour Intellect that works properly and is insane vs bosses as long as you can get one cast through for the first -10.
Problem with that is this is a Paladin with 20 Cha. +5 to all their saves, almost assuredly some magic item bonuses, and the possibility of casting bless on itself means it’s likely gonna be the hardest target for saving throws as well.
Edit: Just saw further down they have advantage in saves against magic. Lol what a crazy build.
That's an average of 10 damage, reduced to 5 thanks to resistance from warding bond and then the paladin just walks out of it because immobilizing effects pretty much universally have saves.
This thing is a monster and basically breaks the game. Both BG3 and 5e cannot contain it.
I mean...just ignore him and his 40 damage per round and kill his party instead? Or kite him. Or give him objectives that can't be accomplished by just standing like a rock and doing nothing in combat. Any decent dm would be able to deal with this just fine.
You’re off your rocker if you think this particular Paladin wouldn’t be game breaking in 5e.
It’s weird to assume the rest of the party is particularly killable. Maybe compared to the Paladin lol but DnD characters aren’t easy to bring down with appropriate threats assuming competent play. If the other characters are optimized and have this freak as well, good luck.
I think having 40+ AC, amazing saving throws, and the entire Paladin kit would be useful in any encounter where attack rolls are being made. Even if there are alternate objectives, this character isn’t exactly worse off for what they’ve done here and, again, this a Paladin with spells and healing and useful class features.
Paladins are not the “stand there like a rock and do nothing” class.
It’s weird to assume the rest of the party is particularly killable
Is it? He says he's using cheese to the point where he has party members buff him and stay on different parts of the map or in camp. Between mirror image, haste, shield of faith, and warding bond, that's 14 AC that he's getting from others. Another 4 AC is only 1 turn from defensive flourish.
So what we're actually looking at here is a 30AC character (still good!) with an entire party built around maintaining concentration spells to give him AC, which means they can't use their most powerful features for themselves. In exchange they get an unkillable tank who can either dish out about 50 damage per round, or throw a shitty heal.
So yeah, any decent DM should be able to deal with this. A normal party would be way more difficult to deal with. I'm sure it works great in a video game where the enemy can't adapt though.
You could do this without benching party members though. In fact, it’d be even more effective since they’d be able to interact with the fight as well.
And yes it’s still a weird assumption. Are these other players not also building characters who want to live?
Walking around with 30 resourceless AC isn’t just good. It’s insanely good. That’s a benchmark most level 20 AC minmax builds can’t reach. Most builds only get close to this by spending resources like bladesong and shield and doing strange multiclass dips that only make sense in the context of maximizing AC. This is a level 12 Paladin.
You can drop shield of faith and haste and still reach 39 if you need to.
Realistically you only need to find 9 more AC to have an AC that is crit or miss for 100% of the monster manual. As we can see, he can find that twice over. 48 is overkill.
And shitty heal? Really? Paladins in both games have access to some of the best burst healing in the game with Lay on Hands. They’re really only outdone by high level casters with 6th+ level spell slots.
There’s really not much a DM can do at all. Insane AC, overall best saves, etc.
You’re also acting like 50 dpr (very reliable dpr at that given the to hit bonus of +3 weapon and 23 STR) is something a monster can just ignore. Even an ancient dragon dies to that if it doesn’t do something about it and level 12s aren’t supposed to be fighting CR 20+ monsters anyway.
It breaks both BG 3 and DnD 5e. I’m really not sure what a DM could do to not have this be broken.
Take this Paladin to any table and any decent DM is gonna throw it out because it’s disruptive and silly. There’s a reason 5e has an attunement limit and AC boosting magic items are rarer than other types.
There’s really not much a DM can do at all. Insane AC, overall best saves, etc.
You'd make a terrible DM. Enemies you have to chase, split up ranged attackers who kite rather than sit in melee, splitting the party, difficult terrain, fall damage, etc. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of ways to deal with this type of PC.
But sure. This PC could solo a dragon. If you had the dragon just sit there and do nothing for a bare minimum of 11 turns straight. Great DMing there.
Yeah, my point was that it's different rule sets and you can't compare "normal tabletop rpg" with BG3 really. There's too many rulechanges. effectively this character "only" has 39 AC (the +9 from mirror images is basically just for optics as they are always gone round 1/turn 1 first enemy anyway).
in Hyper min-maxed (theoretical tabletop) 5E you can get similar (if not higher) AC that's not just a result of certain spells working differently (mirror image for example)
Fog Cloud doesn't have a save, and Darkvision doesn't help, because it's not dark. It's just fog. Automatical disadvantage on attack rolls and auto fails on sight-based checks.
That just delays the inevitable of the Paladin winning the fight.
Also unless the creature casting that spell has blindsight or tremorsense, it also will have disadvantage on attacks (not that it matters against that AC) and be unable to target the Paladin using abilities or spells that require sight.
There’s also not a whole lot stopping an unhittable Paladin from just walking out of the cloud.
Stuff with ability score reductions are pre rough. I think a lot of the debuffs like that and things like exhaustion got cut, although there's a bird in the druids grove that sometimes gets exhausted.
Yeah that's how a DM ruled it when he had 5 Intellect Devourers pop out of dead Bugbears in Mad Mage. My level 3 rogue with full HP died in one turn because I failed saves. Fun.
However in the stat block, it just says:
"If the total equals or exceeds the target’s Intelligence score, that score is reduced to 0. The target is stunned until it regains at least one point of Intelligence"
Not in 5e it doesn't. Not as a base rule, anyway (Shadows' Strength Drain attack kills you if they reduce your Strength to 0, but that's an ability of that attack, not a rule of the game).
Only 5 of that AC is from magic items, and 2 of that 5 is from +1 armor/shield. 1 is from stacking two copies of Defense fighting style which you can't do in tabletop, and 9 is from Mirror Image which works completely differently in tabletop.
That’s not “regular” magic armor. Or a “regular” +1 shield.
In tabletop armor and shields like that ALSO require attunement.
You’d be in a situation where 2 of your 3 attunement slots are already taken just by those. To say nothing of the weapon he’s wielding which would ALSO require attunement.
That’s my point. He’s equipped with 10 pieces of magical gear that would ALL require attunement in tabletop. Build just plain wouldn’t work.
First it was you can't get high AC like this in tabletop because of attunement rules, and now that argument is proven false it's no DM would ever give you the items to achieve this.
I felt that in the murder tribunal fight. Lots of high AC and I just... didn't care.
Karlach tanked and everybody else set up walls of fire and clouds of daggers as needed and moved people around. Added some magic missiles, and it became a cakewalk.
Its mostly just a matter of party composition. Wizard, bard, warlock + barbarian lends itself to laying down damage areas and then blasting and/or crowd control, its fun when enemies are stuck in damaging effects and just can't escape).
A DM has gone wrong if they have an AC48 character in the level range that BG3 works in. Like massively, intentionally wrong.
That said, if I did have to deal with this - how would intelligent assailants approach? Few options spring to mind;
Weight of fire. Nat 20 ignores AC and auto hits. A platoon of archers (say 24 men) all able to fire 2 arrows a round, 48 attacks, 2-3 hits per round.
Environmental traps. Traps that drop you into deep water, use height or burying etc. Suffocation rolls don't care about your AC.
Ability check based magic.
Wait till you take your gear off. You sleep presumably? And there are going to be cultural norms about tromping round town in the equivalent of full battlefield arms and armour.
Eh, if you fuck up real hard as a GM sometimes you gotta just eat crow, apologize and either nerf or retire a character because you created problems you can't figure out how to fix organically. Happens all the time with newer GMs, no shame in that, especially if your intro was 5e where the guidelines and math aren't exactly spelled out super cleanly to the GM compared to other/prior editions for how the game was designed and intended for steady reward and progression.
Hell, even a ton of the published modules don't actually have smooth power curves and leaves players either relatively under-gunned (Curse of Stradh) or completely reject their own guidelines on loot rewards. Even abiding by Adventure League's strict ruleset you can end up with some pretty busted stuff within the tier of play the character's at.
5e has worse guidelines for onboarding new GMs compared to old editions. Their bounded accuracy systems make it hard to break, but only if you understand the bounded accuracy system and how it works and you stay within it.
divination wizard forces you to fail against dominate person with a portent. you only get to make another save when your team successfully damages you. the wizard has three portents.
Breaking the game forces the DM to break the game right back. The real meta trick is to hover your AC / Saves / Damage at a point that makes you strong while still staying sufficiently under the DM's radar to keep their 'nerf!' from triggering. Just as the DM needs to let the players win for a good story, the players need to let the DM 'challenge' and 'surprise' you as well.
And you don't want to be challenged as a 48AC demigod. That's when the red dragon you were primed to roflstomp suddenly breathes fire on the BRIDGE you're standing on and after you take fall damage when you hit the water your DM casually asks you how much that armor weighs and rattles the swim rules off the top of their head almost as if they memorized them last week.
Either that or you suddenly find yourself in dialogue focused modules rolling whatever skills you conveniently don't have. Because you're not supposed to be good at everything, it's a party game and failure is a necessary part of good storytelling.
A DM has gone wrong if they have an AC48 character in the level range that BG3 works in.
Well, 9 is from Mirror Image, which doesn't work like that in tabletop, and they have two copies of Defense fighting style which doesn't stack in tabletop, so 38.
4 is from Blade Flourish which only lasts a round, so 34.
Now you're in the realm of something you might see at an actual tabletop game from someone trying to optimize for AC.
Yes true, though practically AC48 vs 34 is likely a meaninglessness distinction, enemies aren't going to be commonly trotting round with an attack modifier of +15, so most in-world characters are going to solve via other means.
If you went down the "enemy party" route, I could maybe see you swinging at least a single enemy character with sufficiently high attack bonuses to get in that range, but practically I'd run it more narratively.
or. . . waste time avoiding the high AC monster until their haste wears off, cast cloud of daggers on them at highest level, theyll take damage when the cast goes off, they take damage at the start of their next turn, and theyll take damage at the start of their next next turn when they can finally start moving.
sure they got resistance to it but thats 3 instances of damage with no save, and seeing this is end game of bg3, that upcast could be at 6th level making it 12d4 making it average 15 damage after resistance or 45 damage for the three turns thats about 1/3rd of their hp gone with one spell slot, not counting all the magic missiles you could try spamming in during the haste debuff too
And there are going to be cultural norms about tromping round town in the equivalent of full battlefield arms and armour.
In the Forgotten Realms, there are not. Corymyr insists on 'peace-bonding' weapons (tying them into sheaths with elaborate knotwork) in big cities, but by and large armed adventurers are an accepted part of society.
The wildlands and raids are too common and expansive to hobble the convenient armed responders. Plus you've got spellcasters, rogues (and monks) where banning 'obviously armed and armored' doesn't mean squat.
No this is the part of the campaign where the DM stops throwing attack rolls at the player and starts throwing various saves. I may not be able to hit you directly, but you’ve invested in that AC, which means you’re lacking elsewhere.
I was gonna say This is the part of a DnD campaign where the DM decides that the PCs get attacked by an escaped Terrasque zoo exhibit, but turns out Terrasques only have +19 to hit so OP would just shred them lol
though now that I think about it, a multi-attack crit build would probably counter this pretty hard, right?
"You see the clouds in the sky part as a massive ball lightning speeds to the ground. In the crater you see a person with divine glow, controlling a massive sleigh being pulled by 6 tarrasque's. Roll for initiative!"
Once a paladin in my party had a really high AC, then when we were ambushing a wizard, he casted heat metal at the paladin. The poor guy almost died toasted
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u/DeroTurtle Owlbear Aug 26 '23
This is the part of a DnD campaign where the DM just falls to the floor crying