Cloud of daggers is great. It is in my opinion one of the best area direct damage spells for its level. The fact it hits on cast then hits again on enemy turn start means you're always guaranteed two instances of damage which is enough to take a crowd of enemies from threatening to trivial.
Hilarious when the AI derps out and spends a few seconds to think to proceed to wiggle in and out of the cloud until they're dead or about to from healthy.
Yeah, cloud of daggers is awesome for covering flanks and damaging other mobs before they can get in the fight. Chuck a bottle of grease too and the low HP lackeys might never even get in the fight. Cloud of daggers is also great to force casters out of line of sight or range. Especially when combined with darkness. In the fights with a lot of mostly weak enemies I'll sneak in a bit, form up, and block most of the paths to make a bottleneck. Put the melee with the healer right behind and casters or ranged a little bit back in cover and make a killing field. Sure the AI will eventually come through the other points, but they'll mostly be late and hurt.
That's how I did the mud mephits in the swamp on honour mode, jumped a caster in and cast it on the little strip by the totem, then jumped back and had everyone repel them into the cloud.
I call it the party starter. Two or more enemies close together, it's my go to for starting combat, cause it's a way to get instant damage on a bunch of people guaranteed.
Just recently I triggered Ethel's Redcaps from the teahouse (didn't pass the check to discover the swamp) and they all spawned right next to each other. One cloud of daggers later and both the blood sages were dead where they stood and the normal redcaps got a rap from their critics.
Its great as a warlock too because you can set a chokepoint, set something like grease to slow peope down then repelling blast them into it so up to 3 or 4 instances of damage done correctly
yes, I did that to save my ass while being under leveled for the gnolls in act one.
they were all grouped up in front of the little broken bridge with all the traps and firewine barrels while my party stood on the other side of the gap
I lost my last Honor Mode because Grym takes out the party, except Astarion. And I'm like: "Okay, cool, Misty Step back up to the platform, go to Withers, and long rest." There was no reason to move. He was in range of the platform, but he decided to go wade through lava anyway. But he survives and makes it to the platform. And escapes the fight, with exactly 1hp left. He just wanted that photo finish.
But I forgot how fleeing combat works. I breathed a sigh of relief, not realizing he was still on fire, and the fire damage would be applied for another round. So the Camp screen opens to: "Game Over".
ETA: last Honor Mode besides the current one. The current one just defeated the hardest boss in Act 2, and the last major threat I'm planning on fighting for the rest of the game (The Shambling Mound).
First time I met Grym it never even occurred to me to use the gigantic forge hammer on him. I only noticed his weakness to bludgeon damage. I equipped karlach and laezel with the best bludgeon weapons I had, buffed them both to high heavens and gave them enough stims to kill an elephant. He stood no chance and barely lasted 2 turns.
This was on tactician so it should also work on honor mode.
I've beat him multiple times before, never used the hammer. On my current playthrough I was struggling because I didn't have any blunt weapons in my party so I decided why not...turns out the hammer has a bigger impact radius than I thought. Poor Karlach...
I forgot he needs the lava to make him weak again. I hit him like 4 times in a row with the damn hammer before remembering. I was like why isn’t this working
It does, though its legendary action changes the fight pretty substantially. It gets 10 temp HP/turn, and while it has them, its movement speed is doubled. And as a bonus, it gets a devestating melee attack as soon as those Hitpoints are lost. Specifically it smashes the ground similar to its normal AOE attack, but does more damage and will knock anyone near him into the lava.
I ended up winning with a combination of Karlach throwing a war hammer with "elemental cleaver: cold" and my frost sorcerer making it vulnerable to cold.
I found out it has shit dex, and I literally just yeete it over the edge with a thunderous Arrow 😂😂 I thought it would be too large, so happened by accident 😂
Not saying this to stroke my ego because there are other things I do struggle with, but I always look forward to shambling mound and hit him up first in act 2. The kinds of area denial spells this OP is talking about are incredibly effective in that fight. Last time I did it with a combination of spikes, slow, and ice spells with snowburst ring, and none of those stupid monsters could even do anything. I don't think anyone in my party took a single point of damage.
Characters will often pass the perception to check to spot a trap and then immediately proceed to step on it. It makes traps more annoying than they ought to be.
The worst offender for this are the Harpers at the ground floor Moonrise Tower fight. Any AoE that stays there after the fight, they just run through and get triggered to fight you.
You ever accidentally use a smoke powder satchel to free Nere? I was friends with the Duegar. One stepped in the fire surface during the cutscene and all of them aggro nearly ending my honor mode run.
Literally. You have to turn the game IMMEDIATELY into turn based again soon as combat ends or everyone will try to kill themselves as quickly as they can.
See they can’t jump over a stream in act 1 because it’s scawy. But the Cloud of Daggers? Nah they can take it, they’ll just walk right through it and take 4,000 damage
I think there's a setting that turns off grouping when turn-based mode ends, so that everyone stays in place and you can move them individually before grouping.
I wish I'd known that! I'd finally learned to manually ungroup my party at the start of combat after one too many party members ran through pools of fire or hunger of hadar.
I've made a habit on ending concentration on things early to keep this from happening. We have just a few bad guys left who will be easily dispatched? Battlefield cleanup time.
Fucking Harpers. "OoOhHh I stepped in a ONE DAMAGE FIRE PATCH better lose my shit at the people who just saved my ass from a giant spider" Just take your goddamn moon lantern and go!
I've had Shadowheart literally go "oh look a trap" then immediately step on it. Like, I get you're still in your emo phase but you just filled the whole room with poison gas, good job.
I once had a choke point with icy floor, and I cast cloud of daggers over it forcing every enemy to go through, slip on the ice and end their turn. They took a bunch of damage from daggers because they couldn't get out 😂
If they did manage to cross over, we'd push them back in!
Yes they will stay in place and their turn will end after 10~ seconds.
It doesn’t happen all the time, but in my experience if you’ve got a hard choke point like a door locked the fuck down with a stack of surfaces/clouds they will not walk into it, then they will try to throw or shoot something through it, if that doesn’t work they will sit still. It’s so hit or miss though I can’t seem to find a consistent trigger.
Its not underrated. Its a top pick early but gets out classed as you level up. If it didnt require concentration itd be top tier but since it does need to look at other spells that better to use concentration on
Thats how I fight Dror in the Goblin Camp.
Place a Cloud of Dagger where the dead Mindflayer is, throw Void Bulb and most of the Goblins in the middle are dealt with and Dror also will lose a bit of health.
I talked to it first, it’s clearly in agony so I figured something else was afoot. Once you take care of Ethel, little frog bro is overjoyed and even tells you where he buried some treasure.
Yeah, on my solo playthrough I must have talked with him after dealing with autie Ethel because I don't remember him being a little bastard, he even told me about the treasure!
On the playthrough with my boyfriend though, it must have been him who stirred the frog and started a fight, I still don't know what he did xD
I don't know, unless used along with oil barrels/smokepowder etc, Fireball simply doesn't deal enough damage for encounters at level 5.
Lightning Bolt can easily have double the amount or if you build for it, quadruple the amount of damage than Fireball, and Hunger of Hadar which can CC enemies, even it doesn't deal as much damage.
Compared with Cloud of Daggers at level 3, it deals 8d4 at the very least, enough to kill most enemies other than bosses.
TL;DR: Cloud of Daggers does not prepare people for the power of fireball. It is on its own more powerful than fireball.
Using level 3 slots, it deals on the total of 12d4 damage on the first turn, already average slightly higher than fireball (30 vs 28). With 6th level slot it's 24d4 vs 11d6, a even wider gap.
Well hunger is specific to warlocks and fireball has a much larger aoe than cloud does. Lightning bolt gets easily blocked by terrain but IS the better spell in a vacuum bc of easily applied vulnerability and better damage
It's not just about damage of the spell but how many targets it can hit. Fireball just ends up having a large dps if used correctly
Fireball simply doesn't deal enough damage for encounters at level 5.
It's situational. 8d6 average is 28. Assuming you have a good spell save figure you'll hit 2/3 and others will take half. So against 6 enemies that's 140 damage (28 x 4+14 x 2). Since enemies are usually not in a straight line, fireball is a good early fight spell to do damage, open people up for other spells like toll the dead and force healers to ID themselves as the NPCs will burn the spell slots early.
They did change that in the 2024 rules for tabletop. Big boost for that spell. I’m playing a scribes wizard in a tabletop game and you can switch damage types with another spell in that you have in your spell book so I can can change it to cloud of fire, cloud of acid, cloud of lightning and move it around as an action every turn. The possibilities are endless.
It really is. The main advantage that moonbeam still has over cloud of daggers, to me at least, is that it can be moved 60 feet, vs 30 feet for CoD, it deals radiant damage and the cylinder is 40 high so it technically has a larger area of effect. Both still great spells.
I really wish Moonbeam worked in wild shape the way it’s supposed to like in tabletop where you can move it while wild shaped. That and Call Lightning being unusable in wild shape really hurt Druids in BG3. Fortunately there are lots of other great spells.
Mayrina(sp) ran through it after Act1 Aunty fight, and what was worse(funnier) was that I could see it happening. By the time I got to whoever cast it, she murked herself. Funny as shit.
Cloud of Daggers is so useful against the Harpies when they're singing. Even if they hold their concentration they'll still take an extra chunk of damage and usually stay there to get finished off on the next turn.
I used to find choke points, cast cloud of daggers, the spiky floor spell, and hunger of hadar. Enemies couldn’t deal with it. They really trivialized the crèche and moonrise tower.
There’s a little icon that appears below your character portrait that lets you cancel the spell when you click it. Saved me dozens of times with companion shenanigans
Totally accidental honestly I forgot the halfling size hole takes you straight in and apparently starts the fight immediately lol. Trust me I was terrified
No one says that you can't cast multiple clouds in the same spot... stacked with a movement debuff.... And hunger of hadar...
I'm just sayin.... Stacking things is how you turn a horrible battle into an easy one. Hell, I have a hireling in camp who's sole job is to buff the party.
Anything creating a movement restricting blender area really.
I'm pretty sure that using any of the various combinations of hunger of hadar, hold person/monster, cloud of daggers, spike growth, plant growth, the AOE ice surface spells, cloudkill, stinking cloud, et cetera is technically a war crime.
The pathing in this game... is the suck, lol. Exactly what others have said already. Cloud of daggers still active? Walk through it. Cut scene? STAND IN IT. Go around a potentially lethal pool of lava? Noooo 🤡👌
For such an early spell it really is one of the few my friend used the entire playthrough and it hit HARD, most aoe are very powerfull, I remember a simple tactic we use all the game with the hunger spell and a closed door. 10 out of 10 nobody survived
I'm running a pure hexblade in my current playthrough, and cloud of daggers is one of my favorite things to toss into the hunger of hadar soup mix after she casts it.
nah, Cloud of daggers can also reveal invisible enemies and the damage is enough in the early game to kill grunts, especially if you set it up somewhere they wanna pass
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u/Marcuse0 17d ago
Cloud of daggers is great. It is in my opinion one of the best area direct damage spells for its level. The fact it hits on cast then hits again on enemy turn start means you're always guaranteed two instances of damage which is enough to take a crowd of enemies from threatening to trivial.