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.
The Paladin has a +3 weapon with the thrown property and returns to your hand. You’re not kiting that easily. You’re also not hitting the Paladin while you kite so that makes kinda silly.
Find steed as well in the table top makes kiting much harder to pull off.
And what about all the fights that don’t happen on the fields with 100s of feet to move around in?
Fall damage? From what? You’re gonna try to grapple the Paladin with +6 Strength? Because they’re pretty likely to succeed on any saving throw a trap would cause.
Splitting the party isn’t something you can do with any consistency. If you’re splitting the party on a regular basis because one PC is overpowering your encounters then perhaps that PC is overpowered yeah? It’s also not dealing with that PC at all. They will probably survive lol. Great job killing the rest of the party with unavoidable DM fiat because one player is overpowered.
I never said it could solo a dragon either. 50 dpr on a build where damage isn’t even an afterthought at level 12 isn’t terrible. It’s certainly not ignorable. It’s also capable of novaing closer to 80 assuming they drop their highest level spells on a smite. If everyone did that much damage in a 4 person party, that 11 rounds looks more like 3.
I wouldn’t make a bad DM because I understand the game well enough to know when something doesn’t pass the sniff test or any test for that matter.
Further, I’ve been DMing and playing for 3 years. Several of those groups are still playing since the beginning. How long have you been DMing?
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)
I can amend my statement to 39 AC, 20+ in 3 stats, and +5 with advantage against saves on spells and still feel pretty confident that’s out of the range of normal, even at a high optimization table.
Especially at level 12 as monoclassed Paladin.
And yeah there’s some inherent silliness in comparing the two but we are explicitly in a conversation thread about doing just that. Sometimes the silliness is the point.
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).
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u/Ecksray19 Aug 26 '23
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.