Bard/paladin is a natural combination, just take 3 levels of paladin and you’ll be good to go
Multiclassing is really not a major part of 5e anymore, so you get the most mileage of dipping 1 level or 3 levels in the class of your choice. It might be different in bg3 though because they have changed the action economy that might make certain new builds more viable
edit: ah it looks like paladins get oaths at level 1, so you only need 2 levels in paladin to be viable. don’t go for oath of the ancients, the others seem fine
Turns out the release on steam on still early access for Mac until September but the PC build is the full game. Time to download the entire game again but on my PC that may not run it properly.
shadowheart’s a trickery cleric so 1-3 levels of rogue should help out
lae’zel can be multiclassed with just about anything, fighter is such a basic class that you can go wild with your options. Maybe a fighter/hexblade warlock? Just switch classes after 3 levels of fighter and stay in warlock the rest of the way
Wizard is pretty limited for what makes sense since their spellcasting is such a big feature, maybe a 1 or 3 level dip in artificer?
I wound up just giving shadowheart a fighter level because even though she’s not supposed to be the smitey tank kind of cleric, I kept wanting her to have better AC and weapon proficiency in practice. it’s weird because she might have been my best character to begin with, but her uselessness when approached was weirdly conspicuous
its annoying that i theoretically like d&d character building but its so obnoxious and you have to keep all this information straight in your head to be able to figure it out…im playing neverwinter nights so this is outdated right but its still a lot
i decided to be a rogue who uses a longbow and isnt useless in combat, so i have to like take two levels of rogue, then two levels of fighter, then start alternating leveling rogue and fighter until i get weapon spec longbow and then level rogue for 11 more levels getting the pre reqs for epic dodge until i have some time to take fighter 5 and 6. and then i can finally take a level of shadowdancer for hide in plain sight, and from there it’s mostly rogue with fighter mixed in for shit like BAB so i end up with 27 rogue levels, 12 fighter and 1 shadowdancer. like what the fuck
i guess if i wanted to make a less powerful character (she ends up with like 370 HP, 31 AC with no armor, 26 BAB and can sneak attack you for 15d6 damage lol) it wouldnt matter as much but idk i spent a lot of time in nwn as a kid playing suboptimal characters and it sucked dick
on the other hand its easier to make nwn characters now than ever for me because im older and so when the game asks me how old my character is i have an easy answer, when youre a child you start panicking and sweating because you dont know what a normal age for a person is
Fair warning: I haven’t touched BG3 so I can’t tell you how the rules changes affect this advice
Your most common dips–
Fighter 2: action surge for burst damage or big round-one setups with 2 spells
Hexblade Warlock 1: to use Cha for attack and damage rolls, very good for paladins or melee bards like yours
Paladin 6 + Cha caster (usually Sorc but Bard can also work): for more spell slots for smite. 6 is where you get aura of protection, probably the best defensive feature in the game
Cleric 1: to get heavy armor and shield prof on a squishy caster without interrupting spell slot progression, since cleric is a full caster. Usually preferable to a fighter dip, although starting fighter gets you Con save prof, which is very good for concentration saves, so it’s a bit of a tossup
Artificer 3: to use Int for attack + damage rolls, can be useful for off-center builds (int-based builds are probably the rarest) like bladesinger wizard, psi warrior or arcane trickster rogue
Rogue 1: most of the skill-based stuff that makes rogues roguey is right at level one, so you can make a very good “party rogue” by simply starting with one rogue level and then transitioning to a dex-based martial like ranged fighter, ranger, or monk
Barbarian 2: free advantage on demand is good for any martial
For any primary martial, you usually want to wait until 5 to multiclass out, as extra attack is a huge boost.
Barbarians and monks are heavily frontloaded and scale poorly, there is almost no reason to stay with them after 5.
This seems like the kind of thing that would be most likely to get changed in BG3, but: your starting class is really important, as you do not get all of a class’ standard proficiencies by multiclassing into them later. Examples: fighter only gives heavy armor prof if you start with it. Rogue only gives the 4 skill profs (the most of any class) if you start with it. Etc.
Beware redundant features. The most common is extra attack. There is usually no reason to have two martials at 5+, because you will have a dead level.
Martial damage is heavily reliant on the Big Three feats: great weapon master, polearm master, and sharpshooter. Consider getting at least one as early as possible.
dnd seems kinda wack tho. I got like a wizard in my party, right? he’s got LEVEL 2 FIRE SPELL wow it’s gonna slap!! no, actually, it just misses literally every time and then that’s it I can’t use it again, now I’m just a guy in a robe who dies in two hits to a rat, see you next fight. if I wasn’t barbarian lady I don’t think I’d beat a single fight, everyone else is just cannon fodder
have already had some extremely great combat experiences with this one… accidentally aggroed the whole goblin fort while beating the second of the three bosses there and it was going to be harder to rest and come back at that point so I managed to barely beat the third guy with a combination of sneaking, cantrips, and dumping him into a spider pit
game is excellent, I’m almost level 5 and it’s striking a much better balance between divinity and D&D than I felt in early access
continuing to feel that tactician is not so bad btw, I think it’s a good baseline difficulty if you liked original sin 1&2
honestly, fine! they clearly wanted a melange of bioware romances and Witcher NPCs and divinity silliness and D&D lore and they pretty much smoked it
I LOVE how the underdark is a) technically optional, b) heavily hinted at, c) accessible in many different ways, d) a fairly early area that helps delineate the first two acts, and e) genuinely weird when you get there
I found the underdark entirely by accident while exploring a series of caves connected to the basement of a random building and decided to drink a potion of slowfall and jump down a mysterious pit, tenouttaten game moment for me. Reloaded an earlier save though because I was underleveled for it
Turns out my PC can run this game. Played for about three hours with my drow bard and I am really enjoying it so far. I haven’t played an RPG like this in years, not since cheating/scumming my way through Fallout 2 at the turn of the century.
i’ll have you know I looked that shit up cause I was pretty sure cleric doesn’t get heavy armor proficiency and I WAS RIGHT. anyway I already got shadowheart and she sucks too, but she came in clutch against very large spider by somehow dodging 4 consecutive attacks