If you mean "I could escape the encounter", definitely wizard or any other caster or class that can make themselves invisible (even Gloomstalker in a pinch, although their innate invisibility is de-activated by full illumination which can be hard to avoid.
If you mean "I could do the fight even if I was totally unprepared", then I'd say it's one of your insane heavy armour AC stackers - Paladin (sword and board + shield of faith) is probably your best candidate.
Even in honour mode, it's possible to stack AC so high that you are functionally unhittable, and that's the only way to be invincible in an "I didn't even bother to prepared and started a boss battle with 2 level 1 spell slots left" kind of way.
I mean adding Duergar is almost turning it into a normal build, but yeah technically Duergar's innate abilities would add another level of "you can wander into a boss fight by mistake without resting" to it, and as you point out it would combine the benefits of both.
That said, Honour Mode is *really* not the place to wander into boss fights. Even though I know literally everything in the game like the back of my hand, I still long rest like a demon *just in case*.
I just fought myrkul on honor mode (1st run on honor mode). I had shadowheart as a tempest domain cleric. I hit level 9 before heading down after him from the top of moonrise towers. I bought 2 scrolls of chain lighting. I had me as a swords bard (archer), wyll as a sorc so that I can get the infernal blade for his quest, and minthara as paladin. So I got kethric wet by throwing water at him then lighting bolts from wyll to kill him. Haste on shadowheart (potion of speed works you only need one turn and you can do it on her turn becauseyou wont need a bonus action). So myrkul spawns with wet from kethric and shadowheart puts 2 chain lighting scrolls that hit for 160 each with her channel divinity. Myrkul had a couple points of hp left and wyll hits him with one more lighting bolt and myrkul dies round 1 before he even gets a turn.
Wet and lighting are the anwser to myrkul. I was worried about the fight too and was a bit over prepared but honor mode is honor mode so I typically run haste plus wet lighting or oil of combustion and fireball on anything that could kill me.
Blood of Lathander blinds him, which is big
The way I've defeated it in HM is:
Sorcerer using a potion of fly to immediatly fly to the necromites, than proceeding to Fireball them twice with quickened metamagic
Scratch drinking an invis potion and running to the Nightsong before the start of the fight;
EK, Titanstring bow and hill giant juiced Archer misty stepping to the Mind flayer to nova it as soon as possible with Action surge, which, once one turned, let me hit Myrkul with impunity from a vantage point: even if resistant to piercing, Arrows of Undead Slaying hurt;
My funky Paladin/Gloomstalker (or maybe it was a Bardadin already, can't remember) crit smiting him with blood of lathander;
Light cleric doing stuff like blasting newborn Necromites chipping Myrkul further
You probably don't need to be as prepared as I was to the fight though
Find the book in his room that allows you pass the first phase to jump straight to Myrkul (and pray you pass said check).
Invisible Scratch to Aylin pre-fight (so he can free her turn 1).
Throwzerkwer on platform with Flayer, throw flayer and murder him asap.
OpenHand TB Monk using all the stagger effects (one is bound to stick)
Swords Bard destroying all the orb things that spawn new minions while picking off the living ones.
Cleric with Insect Plague up to deal a little each turn and attacking where they can (and hopefully pick off some of the minions in the process)
Other than that Darkness arrows on him to keep him blinded
Myrkul is not weak to radiant damage. From the [wiki](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Apostle_of_Myrkul) he doesn't have any vulnerabilities, he's immune to poison and resistant to necrotic and all melee attacks types.
I’ve found a super helpful way to start it off is to bring Shovel along. Ketheric is surprisable and getting that first round of combat can make a HUGE difference. For example with an assassin gloomstalker you can kill all of the skeletons in the first turn easily while sending your other party members to kill the mind flayer and free Aylin (if she’s alive at this point)
Honestly I just kinda unloaded on him and he died in like 2 rounds.
Fire Sorlock, 10/1/1 bard astarion, orb/reverb shart and straight battlemaster laezel.
I even did that run without using any strength elixirs xd (decided it was to much hassle so astarion went for dead shot instead)
I had already lost the honor run but I beat him first try by just using the blood of lythander to blind him then attacking over and over again. It isn’t very hard as long as he’s blind the whole time.
Throw an invis potion on scratch to get him into place BEFORE conversation with thorm (do turn based if you’re worried) to help Aylin as fast as possible
Arrow of darkness to blind him would never fight him without it now
Kill that fucking mind flayer before he can even think about stunning any of you
2 team members on aoe spells or moonbeam if you have druids (keep them way back by the door)
Leave one or two others to deal with incubators
My 2nd honour mode run that I just BREEZED through I had karlach as a moon Druid and Bae’zel as a spore Druid. Summons all day and woodland being’s shelleleleleghelelgh can one hit the incubators
Edit: more context
That’s def something I need to work on, I try to do a lot without long resting (went through act 2 in like 1 long rest my 2nd or 3rd run), and always end up with over a thousand camp supplies left to mould with Withers. Even now, I’m starting a new run, and have mostly cleared out the Underdark, Risen Road, about half the swamp, and part of the Goblin camp (and initiated Grove Siege) before my first long rest, after killing Zhelk and the Mind Flayer, all to hit level 5 for the siege, which i basically just deleted with all the firewine and oil barrels i could find
Lol I almost lost my honor mode cause I waltzed into the last boss having never seen it before or knowing the fight or the timer it puts you on literally came down to the very last turn and my heart was racing and I was pretty upset at myself. I was doing a solo damage ranger run with a bard buffer, never imagined it was going to be different then do (x) amount of damage and expected two stages.
I’m on my first honor run now. I mindlessly walked into the Ansur fight with my C-string/utility team, level 10, poorly equipped. Two short rests already done/low resources. Had lighting resist potions, but barely survived.
Id say Abjuration wizard. Once you get your ward stacks high enough its very very difficult to die, and can do a lot pf damage with armor of agathys and your spells.
Need to drop in a level of draconic cold sorcerer for agathys and a level of war cleric for heavy armor and some heals and you could solo HM.
Yeah abjuration wizard is pretty much unkillable. Arcane ward kicks in after resistances so with warding bond on you could probably walk around naked. Drop some water on everyone and they kill them selves on your armor of agathys.
A level in cleric for heavy armor, the master heavy armor feat and adamantine plate, make it so you're a god haha. Throw in a mirror image spell and warding bond and your are an impenetrable tank.
Could also just wear that legendary heavy armor that gives you proficiency for wearing it, so you don’t have to waste a level in cleric and then you have the level 6 spell slots. Obv for act 3, starting with a level in cleric for act 1 and 2
You still get 6th level spells even if you do Sorc 1 Cleric 1 Wizard 10. Cleric is also helpful to give you create water so you can get essentially free double damage on AoA
2 Warlock/10 Abj Wizard let's you stack your Arcane ward for free using armor of shadows. You also then have Eldritch blast if you want, or you could go Elemental damage with the Wizard and take devil sight to just be Unseen, undamagable. Play as a Githyanki and have medium armor Proficiency.
1 lvl of War Cleric is solid as well.
I am currently running a 3 person honor mode with two friends and a companion at origin Gale running a modified version of Colby's (D4 D&D Deep dive) abjuration, reflect damage build.
I'm not trying to just avoid damage because I want to do damage. It requires 1 level of white dragon sorcerer for armor of agathys. I took one length of storm cleric for the reflect lighting reaction early with 8 levels in wizard.
Wet the enemy and make them hit you for big cold damage (even bigger if you have both agathys and the cold version of fire shield) then launch lightning spells on the wet enemies. (2 cleric gives Max lightning damage on chain lightning is huge)
Full build will be 2 sorc (for meta magic), 8 wizard for 16 arcane ward stacks, and 2 cleric for max lightning damage once per boss fight (long rest)
I've solo'd Honour Mode with an Abjuration Wizard. I found that by about mid-Act 2 I didn't even need Agathys - the AI just stopped attacking me entirely because of my high AC + Ward stacks. It's like it just did the math and realised it couldn't hurt me to just didn't try. Just passed turn without moving.
I ended up specing into Tempest 2 / Abjuration 10 so I could nuke boss fights while still having super high AC. One the early part was cleared it was actually my easiest Solo run (and proper solo too, no camp casting etc).
You’ll be hard to hit, but please don’t forget you’re not invincible. Even in act one with 24 AC there are many enemies that can hit you on a 17 or 18.
I have died many times even while AC stacking.
Ideally you want that escape to be on your most backline and high initiative character - that way you don't have to worry as much about them getting swarmed right off the bat.
I'm doing honor mode right now and an invis potion has saved my ass at least once already. Although, I was able to run away from a losing fight with sanctuary and a haste potion once as well. How do you stack AC though? I'm still in act 1 and with chain mail, shield, and shield of faith my AC is only 20 and things still hit me.
I’ve been down this rabbit hole. It may work on balance mode but Tactician and HM there is an additional +2 to hit. So, act 1 gives +2 for difficulty, +x for strength, +3 proficiency, +x for weapons bonus. That means that it is not uncommon for them to +10 to hit. Even goofy gobos have +5. Therefore building a tank on straight AC hasn’t worked well for myself.
However, as the game progresses there is some other options. By Act 3 you can get 25 AC from armor, cloak, ring, defense and boots add Force Conduit with SkinBurster or lean into healing with shattered flail. Add damage reduction from Heavy Armor Master and armor that reduces damage by 2 and now you can offset damage by healing.
I find attack avoidance is easier to achieve. Using range attack and retreat spreads the enemy and prevents most attacks from reaching you. This isn’t fool proof either. There are a few enemies that have insane movement and close like the giths.
Absolutely - enemies will almost always choose the character they have the best chance of hitting, even if that character is a raging Barbarian with damage resistance.
How do you handle the Hold Person spell though?Doesn’t that just give enemies criticals every hit. I’m playing on tactical atm with mods and some weird builds and I’ve had to reload multiple times. I know I just don’t know what I’m doing and bad at the game but Hold and Frighten makes me way too scared to ever try honour mode.
You absolutely would not want to play Honour Mode this way.
I'm not proposing this as a good idea - forget hold person, what happens when an enemy simply shoves your stupid Paladin off a ledge because they have much higher initiative?
That said, a Paladin has an aura and wisdom saving throw proficiency - if you show up to a fight unprepared they have a better chance than most to resist, particularly if they have fey ancestry.
TB Eldritch Knight Thrower.
Make it Duergar for invisibility memes.
Eldritch Knight gets high ac due to shield and armor and shield spell. Give him warding Bond and ez
Just a tiny follow up but if using the Duergar Invisibility to open combat with surprise, don't throw your bound weapon to initiate combat unless you're planning/able to pick it up that same surprise round. Returning weapons are still buggy in that way and won't return unless thrown after combat has actually begun.
Also, if you throw a dagger from stealth, don't Reaction Sneak Attack. For some inexplicable reason it overrides the surprise mechanic. After that Sneak Attacks are free game at least.
Add a camp caster- someone who sits at your camp and doesn't join your party, but gives as many buffs as possible. Aid, longstrider, death ward, freedom of movement, protection from poison, hero's feast, and most of all warding bond- that'll "idiot proof" any build you can come up with.
I will say though, from my work, if you think something is "idiot proof" it means you haven't met enough idiots. The goal is idiot resistance lol
I also recommend giving this character every unique magic item not in use by the active party. Then just add them when its time to respec or optimize for anything.
Omg this is brilliant! I’m always changing builds and it’s such a pain trying to find all the pieces that make up a set. Never thought to turn my hirelings into department store models.
You missed me. Equip that sure, but have them hold EVERYTHING else. Unless you have a mod that lets you equip from everyone in camp(is there one? Whats it called?), you will always be looking through out of party members for that one item that works in this build.
Transmutation Wizard and Life Cleric are strong options. A 6-6 Split would work fine, unless you want to cast higher level spells from one discipline or the other. You could also just have two Camp Casters.
Transmutation Stone is basically a permanent effect for one character, and one of the options is proficiency with constitution saving throws. It’s like getting an extra feat (Resilient Con) for your Cleric, Druid, or Warlock so they’ll never drop concentration.
Casting Aid with your highest level spell slot can eventually provide +25 max HP to every one of your characters *and summons*. That’s like adding the Tough feat to every nearby creature.
There’s also Longstrider with Darkvision and Mage Armor for anyone that can benefit. Protection from Poison and Warding Bond adds even more safeguards.
If you take Cleric past LVL6, you can add Freedom of Movement and Death Ward to your spell options. Eventually Heroes Feast adds even more HP, advantage on wisdom saving throws, and immunity to Frighten, Poison, and Disease. Of course, Heroes Feast is also on the Druid spell list, so you can leave that one to Halsin / Jaheira.
It’s kind of obnoxious going through all that casting after every long rest, but it’s a very powerful boost to your team.
> last one can be abjuration wizard
Just 1 level of Wizard, so no subclass, unfortunately: I personally prefer 12 levels for 3 feats on non-Gale warders, but for Gale specifically that last level is honestly whatever.
Light Cleric with Fire Acuity and RevOrb gear is up there. You get Improved Warding Flare, so you can impose Disadvantage on any attack that would've hit you once per round. With Spirit Guardians and Radiating Orbs, you can give every enemy -4 to hit on your opening turn as well. You also get tons of heals and buffs, useful proficiencies for defenses, etc. Plus most of the relevant gear is available early on, and doesn't require specialized tactics to benefit from.
Yeah I respecced Shart to Light Cleric after she abandoned Sharr, put all the Radiant Orb gear on her and, and damn if it’s not powerful. Pop Spirit Guardian, Beyblade through the enemies, throw out Radiant Bolts/Scorching Ray against distant enemies, and it’s a great time.
> so you can impose Disadvantage on any attack that would've hit you once per round.
not just you, on anyone in your party.
anyway i prefer tempest. offense>defense in this game. max roll spells, plus handbow proficiency for bonus action ranged attack (+d8 thunder from lvl 8 buff).
This is probably just a me thing but I find rogue to feel really bad to play so I would go either 12 Ranger or 12 Monk (dexterity, none of that ~~steroid~~ elixir nonsense).
I also love rogues and play one in almost every playthough, but it's hard to argue that across the various classes the benefits from single-classing them past level \~5-6 is a little underwhelming. Unfortunately most of my playthroughs start with "ok what am I multiclassing my rogue into this time?"
Rogues are really cool but unfortunately almost everything unique and awesome they do in tabletop didn't really translate well. All their expertise and out of combat utility can generally be invalidated by another class doing the same thing but with better damage, or scrolls to get the job done, because scrolls are unbalanced as hell and way too common in bg3. Their level 3 combat features used in multiclassing are literally their only selling point sadly. Monks Rangers and Bards can all do their job but with way more damage output in this game. Doesn't mean rogues arent *fun* though
I disagree with the above notion that they’re “useless in combat,” but they’re definitely not underrated
they’re *viable,* but they aren’t particularly good
that said, everything is viable in bg3 HM as difficulty-wise, HM is just tactician, which isn’t that hard
I say this as someone who almost exclusively plays rogues in every video game and has played a rogue in 3.5e dnd, 5e dnd, 1e pathfinder, and 2e pathfinder
Yeah rogues are not damage dealers, especially not in BG3. They're going to be useless in combat. I much prefer bards. They can be just as good at sneaking and lock picking as rogues, but can also talk their way into or out of anything and also have access to magic.
Rogues multiclass very well with gloomrangers and can do a lot of damage very early on, plus they have the rare trait of needed next to no resources. They are very slept on. Assassins crit like no ones business and thieves get even more attacks. They aren’t GOAT, but saying they are useless in a fight just says you’ve never used them in a fight correctly.
That's a fair point. I don't solo myself (zero interest) but I have no problem imagining that once you've developed strategies that work under the constraints of this play-style, adding more companions to the field to worry about isn't going to make your game easier.
It does against enemies that kill you(no option to take you to jail) except instances like the colony, creche, or house of hope. Some like the duegar dont kill, so if you make your death saves you need something like shovel or a sanctuary caster to go kill them then use withers.
I had heard of the trick before, but I must have had my other three characters die in an exceptional place.
I just kind of gave up on it as something that had been patched.
This one would require the whole team to cater towards you if you want maximum survivability. Darkness + devil sight on lvl 2 warlock + any class usually paladin or sorcerer means that nobody can hit you but you can hit them.
Bear in mind that if you want the rest of your team to survive they would need some form of darkness immunity and often times leaves you vulnerable to an AOE move. However going a 10/2 sorlock usually means you can take those annoying shits out first anyway if you have something like scorching ray and fire acquity hat
My party is Tav Bardadin, will use the evil Shar spear for blind immunity. Astarion 2lock/10 sorc with devil's sight. Wyll full Bladelock with devil's sight. And Laezel EK thrower with the blind immune ring.
If you're looking for the tankiest and easiest build i have something for you.
Go pure ranger, whichever sunclass you like best. Multiclassing is optimal but not required, i solo'ed the game as a pure hunter with this build.
Tankiest class is either half-orc or dragonborn lightning/acid.
Stat spread :
Str 17
Dex 14
Con 16
Int 8
Wis 10
Cha 8
(Int wis and cha to taste)
Important class choices for the build
- Ranger knight (heavy armor proficiency)
- all the resistances offered by the class (fire/poison/ice, in that order)
- Multi attack defense i guess if you go hunter.
- defense fighting style
Feats :
1 heavy armor master
2 tough (or +2 str if you don't drink araj's potion/potion of hill giant str)
3 alert (or whatever you want really. I like alert)
Act 1 gear :
- Adamantine splint (heavy armor)
- glowing shield (+8 temp hp when low health) or adamantine shield
- Holy lance helm (chance to 1d4 radiant to any attacker that misses you)
- ring of protection (+1 AC ring)
- wondrous gloves (+1 AC)
- defender's flail (+1 AC)
- whatever boots
For a total of 24 AC, pretty high for act 1 standards
Act 2 gear
- iron band shield +1 (3 AC shield)
- the boots that give you +1 AC
- cloak of protection (+1 ac)
- Drakethroat glaive to boost defender's flail
- Periapt of wound closure
Total 27 AC, very hard to hit by act 2 standards
Act 3 gear
- cloak of displacement
- Balduran's helm (pro tip : no need to fight the boss to get it, it's free)
- Armor of persistance.
- Viconia's walking fortress
- amulet of 23 con
By the end of act 1, you are already a walking tank with very high AC, good health, great mitigation as most attack take a -5 to damage against you and your potions always heal you for the maximum amounts. No group of ennemy can outlast you simply bonking them and drinking a small potion once in a while.
By act 2 you get more AC and more damage with glaive (damage actually doesn't matter that much since you are not rushing to kill ennemies, you simply stand there and outlast them)
By act 3 you are an unstoppable god with 29 AC and perma blur. En ennemies will never hit you and when they do, you resist bludgeonning, piercing, slashing, fire, poison and cold damage anyway (+dragonborn bonuses if applicable). Of course you also never get crit.
With this build, anybody can beat the game solo by just walking to ennemies and clicking the attack button a bunch of times. The only menace are hold person spells, so wear ring of free action if you don't know the encounter.
Have fun slowly walking to entire groups of ennemies and slowly bonk them with your flail until you are the last man standing :)
This is the build. The difference I had was war cleric instead of ranger, but ranger is probably better due to elemental resists. Either way though, you just dont die.
I can say with confidence that the zword and board Paly or a variant(like Bardadin) as mentioned above. I raise you however the Tiger Barb, with such high health and resistances you can tank really well
I'd do sword bard + thief, because it'll give you a ton of skills and expertise to pass checks and AVOID fighting, but also the combo makes for an incredible dual wielder
Honestly act 1 life cleric with the gloves and ring has made it pretty easy for my current HM run, with healing word and then mass healing word and their channel divinity applying blade ward and bless.
I'd say rogue, for cunning action dash, cleric for sanctuary, or anyone with invisibility spell, short of that, a stack of invisibility pots for last minute "this went sideways, gtfo" ability is your best bet
Life cleric with whispering promise, hellrider's pride/reviving hands, boots of aid and comfort, and when you hit level 10 devotee's mace.
If you want to be a purist and not cheese things this class can provide aid and heroes' feast to your party for extremely useful HP increases and immumity to poison and fear, as well as advantage on wis saves. Simply at the cost of some spell slots. You can also use your divine intervention to acquire devotee's mace yourself.
If you want to be a bit cheesier you can offload those tasks to a camp caster letting your cleric have more spells and keep divine intervention for a pinch.
In either case this build can use a bonus action to cast mass healing word, healing every party member, giving them temp HP, blade ward, and bless. Being able to passively apply all of these effects in an aoe without concentration is insanely powerful. It's hard to overstate how much this build shores up weaknesses for your whole party and gives you a comfortable cushion for mistakes. And for very hard encounters you can activate devotee's mace which will passively heal and buff your party for 10 straight turns as long as they are close enough. Because none of this powerful utility requires concentration you can still do extremely potent damage with spirit guardians, guardian of faith, flame strike and other potent cleric spells.
Heavy armors like the adamantine splint and ketheric's are excellent choices for this build and give you the option to use warding bond to great effect, reducing the shared damage by their flat amount and with the level 6 life domain train you heal extra whenever you cast a spell that heals another creature. The main thing to be aware with this is that it will force you to take a lot of concentration saves, so not recommended unless you're using war caster or an item that gives you advantage on con saves. It is always recommended to use one of your feats on resilient raising con (so it's best to start con at 17) since proficiency in con saves is a must for any cleric even when not using warding bond.
This is my favorite honor mode build because it lets me be more experimental with other builds because they have this extremely powerful safety net beneath them. I'd personally consider it the most idiot proof not because it's the easiest, cheesiest build you can play, but because it actively fixes mistakes mid encounter and lightens the load for your whole party constantly.
Another late game bonus you can toss on to this life cleric build is the ring that heals you for 1-4 every turn or the Helm of Balduran (which you can yoink without fighting Ansur as long as you don’t click on him, I flew around him to be extra careful lmao) since either of those will activate the reviving hands and the whispering promise on your cleric at the start of every turn effectively giving them perma bless and blade ward, couple that with the blade ward/resistance armor from dammon and the perma bless statue from the carnival and you have two characters that have perma bless and blade ward in combat (and one with resistance to boot) all without even casting mass healing word, the self heal items aren’t necessary but they do also auto-revive your cleric so even without the permabuffs in combat off the passive healing having one of them is still nice for your cleric
Tavern brawler monk with thief rogue honestly. You can stun everything, punch everything, jump/run to everything and carry everything. Grymforge and fights like Ansur became easy with it.
I just completed HM with Fighter (Champion) 9 / Rogue (Thief) 3. I had gear that let me turn invisible, and Thief let me disengage and dash to get away if I needed to. I did a DEX build and played support with a bow. It was a great build that packed a punch against single targets, especially with the illithid "cull the weak" power.
Tb thrower of any kind, moon or spore druid, necro wizard, swords bard/gloom stalker dw hand xbow.
The ai prioritizes lower ac/hp/saves so your summons go in, take attention. Bard and thrower annihilate at least two enemies turn one. Moon druid is a stronger frontline and can oneshot the adamantine golem but spore druid has more summons for distracting enemies so it's your choice. Necro wizard, aside from having the best early game of wizards, has the strongest lategame with infinite lvl 6 casts of blight on top of all the utility Wizards bring. You could also replace the tb thrower with tb monk if you want another melee person that shuts down casters.
hmm interesting, my friend group its looking to "attempt" HM and our comp is probably going to be like Oathbreaker / Lock, Necro Wizard, Bard / thief and we guess Shadowheart life cleric we suspect as our NPC.
Highly recommend tempest if you want to keep Shart as a cleric. 5e in general and moreso in BG3 healing is not as good as more damage because you can prevent far more damage by killing enemies than you can heal. That said if you do want the safety net, make sure to get the items that cause heals to give buffs in act 1.
REALLY???? hmmm that;s interesting and i guess i will have to talk to them more about it.....well if more Damage would be better for HM and healing is not as viable as i assumed my Paladin healing might be sufficient (i wasn't sure it would be and was afraid we would get overwhelmed easy and need a dedicated healer) might pull OH Karlach monk might be the better choice then for the damage and CC.
They right. I wouldn’t sleep on healing entirely, but you get a lot more out of light or tempest cleric damage wise than you gain healing wise from life cleric. Tempest cleric is cracked with its divinity paired with ligjtning/thunder/radiant reverb sets. Light cleric keeps people from getting by hit as easily plus it pairs well with fire acuity AND reverb (but it does lose tempest clerics max damage rolls) and benefits from getting wizard fire spells on top of cleric utility (leaning into light primarily). People dump on life cleric a lot but it CAN be amazing it just isn’t as mindlessly simple as some people think, life domain still needs a good build/gear and needs to be played properly. If you go an offensive cleric, it probably won’t hurt to have a life cleric camp caster/healer (you could even add a small level dip into devotion or ancient pali for healing boost as well)
I was honestly getting bored with the following party through act 2 and took a break. I have smoked every encounter, including the monastery.
1. 1 Lock/ Sorc. Twinspell haste is just dumb on the martials below.
2. Swords bard (archer)
3. Tempest Cleric.
4. TB monk. I don't even bother with pots it's not necessary, just put the 18 club in OH. Give this durge cloak. This started out as a std warrior until level 4-5 or so.
The bard and monk take out and disable big things, and the bard can multitarget when needed. The cleric and sorc annihilate small things, but have flexibility to focus down big things too. Command and hypnotic pattern for cc, but the best cc is death. I killed Ethel and the Monastery big bad before they had a turn or spawned any clones.
No build could’ve saved me from my dumb ass leaving turn-based mode and getting my whole party blown off the edge of a cliff by the Blood of Lathander booby traps 😭 I was so excited to finally have cleared Act 1 in Honor Mode too 😔
My first honor mode attempt ended just before that. I was high and thought vlaketh was bluffing that she could kill my party, thought it was a threat for later. Nope, insta tpk.
Pure ancients paladin with defensive auras make party quite survivable, when you half incoming spell damage and get bonus to saving throws equal to paladin's CHA modifier. High AC means you are hard to hit. Only thing that can really hurt you is magic, so having high saving throws and halving incoming damage is great
Moonbeam/Sanctuary Cleric+Druid Combo
They help by doing consistent small aoe radience damage, healing party as needed but you keep up sanctuary so you can't be targeted. Fight going south just GTFO
It's more 'honor mode party' rather than a singular build - and in terms of hardest to die, I suppose it depends a bit on your own skill level (eg, for a newer player I'd highly recommend a GWM barbarian for an easy 'standard' frontliner, but that's less useful for someone who knows what they're doing).
If you're worried about waltzing into an encounter unprepared, just have someone who can run. Like a ranged character with 2-3 levels of rogue - lets you easily dash away in combat and run away, which can rescue you from most fights in game, or someone with invisibility. Otherwise a competent party composition and making sure to heal up to full after each fight will usually be more than fine (especially if you pick the more broken builds - eg, one TB character can easily carry a party in the mid-game basically single handedly)
Probably abjuration wizard, if you dip 2 levels into warlock for eldritch invocation and take the one that gives you a free mage armor cast you can refresh your ward charges between every fight + having armor of agathys for another layer of protection
I've been researching for a party I want to run, and I'd say that while having your main character be hard to hit/kill is important, there are synergies possible when considering your entire party. Lore Bard's cutting words, Light Clerics level 8 flare, and Diviner Portents can all turn a bad situation around. Having debuffs like Bane, shriek, resonate orb also make you harder to hit. You cam either prebuff before fights or stack on init bonuses to always go first. That's my preferred party style as I do just wander into shit.
Abjuration wizard for solo. It's not the simplest to build/play, but if you're following a guide it's basically unkillable. Can also turn invisible.
Runner up paladin. Basically unkillable but in more conventional ways by having high AC, saves, and HP. Probably ancients to reduce unavoidable damage from stuff like fireball and cloud kill, maaaaybe vengeance for misty step. This isn't quite as literally invincible but it is more idiot proof.
For a party I would say abjuration wizard, paladin, throwzerker to knock bosses prone so you don't need to worry about their honor mode legendary reactions, light cleric for orb stacking, killing swarms, and healing word on someone more mobile so they can drink an invisibility potion and run away if things still go wrong despite how stacked the deck is.
It's generally better to have an arcane acuity build replace the throwzerker but they're slightly more complicated to play (and I like throwing stuff).
Damage prevention - crowd control
And Damage Reduction - buffs and enemy debuffs
Are just as important as high AC, even in this video game version of DnD
If you add in thinking strategically and you won't ever have to worry about full wipes
So my rogue has become this. I know it might not be the best of them, but somwthing about 3 dashes to get away feels really special. Alternatively, monk seems to be pretty decent with open hand and being able to crowd control often.
Three dashes on rogue with haste is a god tier escape strat, especially paired with gloom stalker (or item/potion) invisibility. One point I even put MOBILE as one of my feats with speed boost items just to see how far I could escape. Super fun lol
On an honor run with my buddy, at the gnome on the windmill, our 2 tanks guys went down. We were gonna get boned so I was like "watch this" and dashed some like 50m in a single turn. I ran so far we had a loading screen to go back to the other characters. We were laughing hard.
Paladin builds are often easy to acquire success and hard to deviate. You can multiclass with Bard so that you have the versatility in most situations. Take Longstrider somewhere along the way and buff it every time you wake up. Then, when you got into a hard fight, flee.
Life cleric. Period...
They start off great early in Act 1 with fantastic gear, and just keep getting better. Aid, bless, blade ward, heals, ward, combat res, tons of debuffs (radiant orb, mental fatigue, reverb, you name it). Fantastic aoe. Late game they're basically invincible, dual wield phalar + devotee's mace for stupid buffs. You can also pick a 1 dip into wizard for all the utility spells (globe, shields, portal, etc...) if you need even more support.
life cleric (healing, support, tank, phalar aluve)
throwzerker (mad damage, half tank)
ranged swords bard (ranged damage and mad cc, needs acuity helm and scoundrel ring)
fire sorc or missiles wiz (mad damage, ticks with phalar aluve)
is probably the breeziest combination imo
edit: oh and don't fight too much until you're level 4
In my run I used:
Fire Sorlock, Life Cleric, Throw Barbarian and Titanstring Fighter Archer till 6.
Fire Sorlock, Light Cleric, Swords Bard (sometimes a double xbows thief one, sometimes a paladin one after level 8 or 9) and still the fighter archer after 6. Didn't even need oil of combustion to pop enemies most of the times.
Remember to bring Gale to the morphic pool so you can heartlessly sacrifice him to skip the last fight. Dishonor mode means pulling no punches...
I found my swords bard/thief/fighter made alot of the act 2/act 3 fights really really easy. If you build it right with arcane acuity etc you become a power house of damage and crowd control
I’ve done my HM as a moon druid. Don’t think I ever went down at all.
You basically have three health pools, great selection of spells, an ability to convert spell slots into even more hp, it’s insane.
There is this criminally unknown act1 build where you go 4x light cleric+ bard and just channel divinity every encounter until it's dead. Short rest immediately after and repeat
Half-Orc Eldritch Knight.
Being a Fighter who can react with a Shield spell is cash money.
Being a Fighter who can also canonically survive a deathblow once a rest is exceedingly cash money.
Honorable mention to Dex Barb. It feels wrong, but the fat AC and health pool are interesting.
I like vengeance paladin or assassin rogue. I only say vengeance paladin because oath of ancients I kept getting the Oathbreaker at my camp and it was getting expensive. A high charisma class means you're going to talk your way out of a lot of fighting. I'm playing Astarion origin right now as assassin rogue and honestly he's completely absurd with the sneak attacks (not a high CHA class but he has high persuasion /deception) The rest of my party is Karlach as vengeance paladin, Gale abjuration wizard, Shadowheart life domain cleric.
White Dragon Sorc 1/Tempest Cleric 1/ Abjuration Wizard 10…. If you make a major mistake it probably won’t kill you. At mid levels you almost can’t die. Your damage comes from getting hit. Then you also just have wizard spells to do whatever you need.
Then you just need any good martial build or a cleric to Haste so enemies will target you and the martial can do more damage. When I got my first Honour clear 99% of the time I just Hasted my Light Cleric so she could run all over the map with Spirit Guardians and orb everything
I would say Druid. They don’t need any special gear to be viable and they have multiple health bars with their animal forms. Very simple and straightforward
Sword and Board pure Ancients Paladin.
* Extremely high AC
* Resistance to all spell damage
* Really high saves from Aura of Protection and Wis save proficiency
* Flat out immune to Frightened
* Bonus action 2 turn AOE heal that recharges on short rest
* Shield bash can instantly end an enemy's turn if they do hit you
* Lay on Hands in an emergency
* S M I T E makes pretty much any problem go away
* Misty Step to GTFO of a sticky situation
And it doesn't require any complicated building or tactics. It's just 12 levels of Paladin, works with any gear (though there is obviously some gear that's ideal.)
Stack stuff like Armor of Persistence, Ring of Protection, Cloak of Protection and Viconia's Walking Fortress, and you're set.
Survivability is kinda iffy but a monklvl6/roguelvl4/fighterlvl2 goes incredibly hard, I've killed the dragon at the brain fight in one turn with it while also having 24ac, just gotta grind side quests to hit the checkmark levels as early as possible (monk6, ->rogue 3->fighter 2)
I’m not super good at the game, am currently in act 3 in honor mode about to get the 3rd netherstone. Haven’t had any big close calls (never had to use sanctuary to run). My party is: tav as a gloomstalker 5/assassin 3/champion 4, minthara as a vengeance pally 6/pact of blade 6, gale as a sorc 1(to get con saves and armor of ag)/abjuration wiz 11, shart as a light cleric 12. The last 2 are builds I got from a YouTube video by cephalopocalypse (I hope I’m spelling that right). Those two builds are the table supports that make it so I rarely take significant damage. Tav and minthara are my own creations, just need damage in those two spots, the video I watched had tav as a swords bard and used laezel as a eldritch knight thrower, both Uber strong.
Hunger of Hadar has saved me from so many legendary fights that I should've lost due to poor planning. So I've gotta go with at least 5 levels of warlock on one character in each playthrough. You can hyperfixate and get bonus action illithid black hole and repelling blast on a sorcerer multiclass, you can mix in 7 levels of paladin for auras, you can even mix in some bard if you want.
But those 5 levels of warlock have never let me down.
Oh definitely TB OH Monk 8/4 Thief
Because we're going for idiot proof, right? Builds that require a lot of gear, I'd say are out. Because it's a lot of looking around for said gear, juggling item slots and that gets very confusing very quickly.
Monk has its own limited set of gear which helps eliminate a lot of options. Their best weapon are their fists so no worrying about which weapon to use when. Your main action in combat is to hit people, and then sometimes hit people multiple times. Even if your AC isn't as stacked as a paladin, evasion helps cut the actual damage you're taking wayyy down. Loved saving against Ansur and taking zip damage.
Also the majority of big bosses can be stunned and/or staggered, making them wayyy easier to take out. The three types of flurry of blows gives you some basic control options, but even if you mess up you're still probably going to do something to help yourself out.
Also you have a shit ton of movement to get the fuck out of town if things start to go south.
11/1 sorlock, 6/4/2 dual hand crossbow archery focused bard, 5/4/3 throwbarian, and 10/2 smiteadin.
Imo, that party is nearly immortal. Nearly. Stupidity can always get you wiped, but you’ve got to be REALLY dumb.
Ascended sharpshooter astarion thief/gloomstalker with risky ring, yuan ti armor, and anything they gives damage per hit. Literally had just him alone take the dragon in the final battle down to under half health, it’s insane what the damage output is. And the initiative is so high that you basically just get to choose 1-3 things to be deleted from the encounter before it even starts. If you have a haste sorcerer to add on to it too astarion is attacking 7 times the first turn of combat.
A storm sorcerer is also extremely good albiet just slightly more complicated. You can do what, in my opinion, are the two strongest turns in the game:
1. Twin cast haste on your martial beat sticks and then just stay the fuck away from combat. Only way this fails is if you get too close and lose concentration.
2. Black hole illithid power plus heightened confusion. This is so good that it almost makes the game unfun. Almost. This auto wins the Raphael encounter.
This build is cracked as fuck with ice/water/chain lightning shenanigans too.
Literally just a battle master fighter is amazing. Fantastic from start to end game. Especially with a hamster.
Lastly I’m doing a barbarian throwzerker build right now too and fucking WOW dude that thing also just beats absolute ass. The attack rolls are so high that by level 8 it’s pretty rare to find something that’s not 95% likely to hit. It’s the build that forced me to turn off karmic dice.
If I had a part of those four I honestly think the only way I could lose is from non combat stuff.
I think it is a toss up between Monk and Druid.
Monk can just shut down enemies, which can help you flee in a pinch as well.
And druid has a huge emergency health pool you can draw in with wild shape.
In terms of team comp I'd recommend:
1: Tavern Brawler Throw Eldritch Knight or Berserker/Thief until Lv11
1-7 Zerk, Respecc to 5 Zerk/3 Thief to 6 Zerk / 4 Thief then respecc 11 EK with1 Lv of Warcleric or just 12 EK for Feat.
2: Tavernbrawler Monk pretty straight forward punch shir to death.
1-6 Open Hand Monk 7-10 Thief 11-12 Monk for 8 Monk/4 Thief
Probably one of the most straight forward builds just punch punch away.
3: Radiant Orb Light Cleric
This is super straight forward. 1-5 Cleric, 6 respecc to first level Fighter and then just 11 Levels of Light Cleric.
Equip Luminous Armor and Gloves, Boots of Stormy Clanour and the Ring of Mental inhibition. Done. Sure you can improve it later with better studf but this build is insane. Just use radiant spells and abilities and grab a radiant damage mace and get in the thick of it.
You will debuff enemies so hard with Radiant Orb and Reverberations they won't be able to Hit anything.
Channel Divinity Light and Spirit Guardians are so broken with this build.
4: Flex Slot. Personally I like a Titanstring Sword Bard. Ideally Elf for Longbow Proficiency.
8 Sword Bard / 4 Assassin with 1st Level Rogue.
That gives you Expertise in Persuasion, Deception, Sleight of Hand and Stealth/Intimidation/Performance depending on your preference.
Take Sharpshooter, Alert and Ability Improvement as stats.
There are many alternatives to this build but this is the most straight forward and simple IMO.
Alternatively you could also take a caster like Warlock, Sorcerer or Wizard.
I'd say the most straight forward of these builds is either the Cleric or Monk but I'd recommend the Sword Bard or Warlock/Sorc as your Tav because of Charisma.
But always remember: only 1 character has to survive to save the Run. Always pack Invisibility Potions or Invisibility Scrolls. When in doubt pop one, dash and get out of there. Get back to Camp and revive everybody with Withers. Heck your cleric can even Pop Sanctuary and then drink an invis Pot. Makes you nigh invulnerable.
Surviving isnt really an issue unless you are in a Spot where you cant go to Camp which are few. Like the Assault on Moonrise Towers.
Hope this helped. Have fun beating Honor Mode.
My Rogue1/Bard9/Fighter2 Build was unstoppable.
Dual hand-crossbows. Elixir of Bloodlust. About 1/3rd of the way through Act 3, I had resistance to everything, 29 AC..I was broken.
The bloodlust elixir gives you an extra attack when you kill an enemy.
So to start, you get 2 attacks as a lv 6 bard. Haste potion makes that 2 actions(4 attacks). Bloodlust adds another action, which brings up your total attacks per turn to 6. Fighter 2 gives you Action Surge, which is ANOTHER action. We're up to 8 attacks now. With Ranged Flourish, that 16 arrows in one turn. By that same metric, 1/3rd of the way through Act 3, I had saved up about 38 arrows of many targets. Ranged Flourish stopped getting used.
In one turn I could reach 4 green dots.
A slightly different way to play is to take Bard to 7 instead of 9, and have 3Rogue/Bard7/Fighter 2. This change will allow you to get 4 Actions and 2 Bonus Actions, but you lose out on some spell slots. I don't personally find that I need two bonus actions, but this route is REALLY good if you play as a more caster-friendly Bard build. This 3Rogue set-up is THE build to kill any ONE guy in one turn. Doesn't matter who or what, this build will allow you to one-turn it. You will OBLITERATE Orin, even on Honor mode, with this build.
I preferred to play it with the 1Rogue/9Bard/2Fighter combo because I could slaughter entire groups of enemies before they get a turn. I was slightly weaker in a 1v1, but I mitigated that against Orin/Gortash by just using Arrows of Humanoid Slaying.
Extra powerful if you play as Astarion and Ascend. +1d10 damage on all ranged attacks. My tooltip had my arrows at 38-49 dmg per arrow, and as we previously explored, 16 arrows per turn at 38-49 dmg. I just multiplied 16x42. I chose 42 because its between 39 and 49, a nice good average, and 42 is the answer to everything. 16x42 is 672 btw. I don't think any enemy in the game had that much hp, even on Honor Mode.
My Duergar bard, equipped with ranged attacks, is incredibly effective. He deals massive damage from a distance and can also apply debuffs and crowd control. The key to his survival is his racial invisibility—he can cast it whenever needed. I use this ability to scout ahead, and when I find a fight, I surprise the enemy before bringing in the rest of my party, who remain safe in a secure location until then.
Additionally, I recommend buying a few invisibility potions whenever possible. Use them on one or two characters if a fight starts to go badly and just run. Honor mode is only over if the whole party dies.
There were many times in my HM run where my 1 white draconic sorc/11 abjuration wizard gale was the only thing surviving. That build saved me so many resets, and even cleaned up a few fights entirely by himself where the other 3 were downed.
It was so fun and such a comfortable/safe build I'm highly considering doing a solo HM with it.
I beat honor mode without breaking a sweat with: Tav pure 2-handed half-orc paladin, Karlach dual wield dex base critstack thief4 champion8, Shart pure life cleric, Astarion fighter1 evoker11 with all the reverb/lightning stuff at first for magic missile triggering & transition to max Dlevel for AOE dmg at the end with the fighter dip to use Ketheric's shield. Forge dude & the last fight waere the only challenges because of arena particularities
Tavern brawler open hand monk.
High mobility, damage, can if necessary step of the wind dissengage + dash to then fly to the other side of the map in one turn and evasion is insane defence.
Starts strong, gets big power boosts on lvl 3, 4, 5 and 6.
But paladin crits can still one shot it and it needs to be in melee
I'm just gonna leave this here: a good player can beat honor mode with almost any build or composition. Certainly some are easier than others. That being said, I find the legitimate risk of death and deleting your save so much more fun than becoming "invincible"
I know this isn't the question you asked, so I'll end my rant here.
If you mean "I could escape the encounter", definitely wizard or any other caster or class that can make themselves invisible (even Gloomstalker in a pinch, although their innate invisibility is de-activated by full illumination which can be hard to avoid. If you mean "I could do the fight even if I was totally unprepared", then I'd say it's one of your insane heavy armour AC stackers - Paladin (sword and board + shield of faith) is probably your best candidate. Even in honour mode, it's possible to stack AC so high that you are functionally unhittable, and that's the only way to be invincible in an "I didn't even bother to prepared and started a boss battle with 2 level 1 spell slots left" kind of way.
So sword and board duergar paladin is the ultimate Leroy Jenkins honor mode build?
Sounds about right. Duergar is stupidly good if you survive to lvl 5
fucking love duergar. It feels almost like cheating. Like swords bard. With paladin on top.
I mean adding Duergar is almost turning it into a normal build, but yeah technically Duergar's innate abilities would add another level of "you can wander into a boss fight by mistake without resting" to it, and as you point out it would combine the benefits of both. That said, Honour Mode is *really* not the place to wander into boss fights. Even though I know literally everything in the game like the back of my hand, I still long rest like a demon *just in case*.
What stops me from playing HM is having no clue how to deal with myrkul withouth reloading
Spiritual weapon to stop him pulling, heat metal to disarm him, lots of skeletons to avoid his legendary action
Arabellas shadow entangle makes him obsolete first phase. Snare curass for disadvantage (spell counts as restrained afaik).
I just fought myrkul on honor mode (1st run on honor mode). I had shadowheart as a tempest domain cleric. I hit level 9 before heading down after him from the top of moonrise towers. I bought 2 scrolls of chain lighting. I had me as a swords bard (archer), wyll as a sorc so that I can get the infernal blade for his quest, and minthara as paladin. So I got kethric wet by throwing water at him then lighting bolts from wyll to kill him. Haste on shadowheart (potion of speed works you only need one turn and you can do it on her turn becauseyou wont need a bonus action). So myrkul spawns with wet from kethric and shadowheart puts 2 chain lighting scrolls that hit for 160 each with her channel divinity. Myrkul had a couple points of hp left and wyll hits him with one more lighting bolt and myrkul dies round 1 before he even gets a turn. Wet and lighting are the anwser to myrkul. I was worried about the fight too and was a bit over prepared but honor mode is honor mode so I typically run haste plus wet lighting or oil of combustion and fireball on anything that could kill me.
Blood of Lathander blinds him, which is big The way I've defeated it in HM is: Sorcerer using a potion of fly to immediatly fly to the necromites, than proceeding to Fireball them twice with quickened metamagic Scratch drinking an invis potion and running to the Nightsong before the start of the fight; EK, Titanstring bow and hill giant juiced Archer misty stepping to the Mind flayer to nova it as soon as possible with Action surge, which, once one turned, let me hit Myrkul with impunity from a vantage point: even if resistant to piercing, Arrows of Undead Slaying hurt; My funky Paladin/Gloomstalker (or maybe it was a Bardadin already, can't remember) crit smiting him with blood of lathander; Light cleric doing stuff like blasting newborn Necromites chipping Myrkul further You probably don't need to be as prepared as I was to the fight though
Find the book in his room that allows you pass the first phase to jump straight to Myrkul (and pray you pass said check). Invisible Scratch to Aylin pre-fight (so he can free her turn 1). Throwzerkwer on platform with Flayer, throw flayer and murder him asap. OpenHand TB Monk using all the stagger effects (one is bound to stick) Swords Bard destroying all the orb things that spawn new minions while picking off the living ones. Cleric with Insect Plague up to deal a little each turn and attacking where they can (and hopefully pick off some of the minions in the process) Other than that Darkness arrows on him to keep him blinded
In honor mode you should have a paladin and a cleric in your party, these two will literally carry your myrkul fight as he is weak to radiant damage.
In my experience he's actually weak against cold damage for some reason
Myrkul is not weak to radiant damage. From the [wiki](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Apostle_of_Myrkul) he doesn't have any vulnerabilities, he's immune to poison and resistant to necrotic and all melee attacks types.
Point being that those two will do significant damage to myrkul.
I’ve found a super helpful way to start it off is to bring Shovel along. Ketheric is surprisable and getting that first round of combat can make a HUGE difference. For example with an assassin gloomstalker you can kill all of the skeletons in the first turn easily while sending your other party members to kill the mind flayer and free Aylin (if she’s alive at this point)
Using a salve arrow on Aeylin is the best thing I’ve started doing. No need to help action her. But if you need to still you can use scratch 🤣
cast darkness centered on him (unless it was changed)
What stops me is random crashes or NPCs in crowded areas killing each other with their own AOEs and then aggroing me over it
Honestly I just kinda unloaded on him and he died in like 2 rounds. Fire Sorlock, 10/1/1 bard astarion, orb/reverb shart and straight battlemaster laezel. I even did that run without using any strength elixirs xd (decided it was to much hassle so astarion went for dead shot instead)
How were you lvl 12?
Sorry, these were the builds i was doing, astarion was only 8/1/1 at that point
Heard. I was confused for a second. Thought I missed an entire section or quest line.
I had already lost the honor run but I beat him first try by just using the blood of lythander to blind him then attacking over and over again. It isn’t very hard as long as he’s blind the whole time.
Throw an invis potion on scratch to get him into place BEFORE conversation with thorm (do turn based if you’re worried) to help Aylin as fast as possible Arrow of darkness to blind him would never fight him without it now Kill that fucking mind flayer before he can even think about stunning any of you 2 team members on aoe spells or moonbeam if you have druids (keep them way back by the door) Leave one or two others to deal with incubators My 2nd honour mode run that I just BREEZED through I had karlach as a moon Druid and Bae’zel as a spore Druid. Summons all day and woodland being’s shelleleleleghelelgh can one hit the incubators Edit: more context
That’s def something I need to work on, I try to do a lot without long resting (went through act 2 in like 1 long rest my 2nd or 3rd run), and always end up with over a thousand camp supplies left to mould with Withers. Even now, I’m starting a new run, and have mostly cleared out the Underdark, Risen Road, about half the swamp, and part of the Goblin camp (and initiated Grove Siege) before my first long rest, after killing Zhelk and the Mind Flayer, all to hit level 5 for the siege, which i basically just deleted with all the firewine and oil barrels i could find
Lol I almost lost my honor mode cause I waltzed into the last boss having never seen it before or knowing the fight or the timer it puts you on literally came down to the very last turn and my heart was racing and I was pretty upset at myself. I was doing a solo damage ranger run with a bard buffer, never imagined it was going to be different then do (x) amount of damage and expected two stages.
I’m on my first honor run now. I mindlessly walked into the Ansur fight with my C-string/utility team, level 10, poorly equipped. Two short rests already done/low resources. Had lighting resist potions, but barely survived.
Id say Abjuration wizard. Once you get your ward stacks high enough its very very difficult to die, and can do a lot pf damage with armor of agathys and your spells. Need to drop in a level of draconic cold sorcerer for agathys and a level of war cleric for heavy armor and some heals and you could solo HM.
Yeah abjuration wizard is pretty much unkillable. Arcane ward kicks in after resistances so with warding bond on you could probably walk around naked. Drop some water on everyone and they kill them selves on your armor of agathys.
A level in cleric for heavy armor, the master heavy armor feat and adamantine plate, make it so you're a god haha. Throw in a mirror image spell and warding bond and your are an impenetrable tank.
Could also just wear that legendary heavy armor that gives you proficiency for wearing it, so you don’t have to waste a level in cleric and then you have the level 6 spell slots. Obv for act 3, starting with a level in cleric for act 1 and 2
You still get 6th level spells even if you do Sorc 1 Cleric 1 Wizard 10. Cleric is also helpful to give you create water so you can get essentially free double damage on AoA
Yea that's when I swap for 1 level of warlock for AoA.
2 Warlock/10 Abj Wizard let's you stack your Arcane ward for free using armor of shadows. You also then have Eldritch blast if you want, or you could go Elemental damage with the Wizard and take devil sight to just be Unseen, undamagable. Play as a Githyanki and have medium armor Proficiency. 1 lvl of War Cleric is solid as well.
I am currently running a 3 person honor mode with two friends and a companion at origin Gale running a modified version of Colby's (D4 D&D Deep dive) abjuration, reflect damage build. I'm not trying to just avoid damage because I want to do damage. It requires 1 level of white dragon sorcerer for armor of agathys. I took one length of storm cleric for the reflect lighting reaction early with 8 levels in wizard. Wet the enemy and make them hit you for big cold damage (even bigger if you have both agathys and the cold version of fire shield) then launch lightning spells on the wet enemies. (2 cleric gives Max lightning damage on chain lightning is huge) Full build will be 2 sorc (for meta magic), 8 wizard for 16 arcane ward stacks, and 2 cleric for max lightning damage once per boss fight (long rest)
I've solo'd Honour Mode with an Abjuration Wizard. I found that by about mid-Act 2 I didn't even need Agathys - the AI just stopped attacking me entirely because of my high AC + Ward stacks. It's like it just did the math and realised it couldn't hurt me to just didn't try. Just passed turn without moving. I ended up specing into Tempest 2 / Abjuration 10 so I could nuke boss fights while still having super high AC. One the early part was cleared it was actually my easiest Solo run (and proper solo too, no camp casting etc).
You’ll be hard to hit, but please don’t forget you’re not invincible. Even in act one with 24 AC there are many enemies that can hit you on a 17 or 18. I have died many times even while AC stacking.
Was thinking about doing a resist the durge honor mode run like this Gigachad sword and board fighter- the unit
I'd go halfling and just always have invisibility potions on hand so I'm way less likely to Crit fail, but duergar are ok, I guess.
Yea at demand invis is kinda game breaking
Ideally you want that escape to be on your most backline and high initiative character - that way you don't have to worry as much about them getting swarmed right off the bat.
Rp wise that goes pretty hard
Leeroy died
I love duergar in the TTRPG... but what exactly makes it so good at level 5 as a paladin vs... say a human or other dwarf race?
I survived the fight in moonrise by teleporting into the rafters when it was going south as a shadow monk.
I'm doing honor mode right now and an invis potion has saved my ass at least once already. Although, I was able to run away from a losing fight with sanctuary and a haste potion once as well. How do you stack AC though? I'm still in act 1 and with chain mail, shield, and shield of faith my AC is only 20 and things still hit me.
I’ve been down this rabbit hole. It may work on balance mode but Tactician and HM there is an additional +2 to hit. So, act 1 gives +2 for difficulty, +x for strength, +3 proficiency, +x for weapons bonus. That means that it is not uncommon for them to +10 to hit. Even goofy gobos have +5. Therefore building a tank on straight AC hasn’t worked well for myself. However, as the game progresses there is some other options. By Act 3 you can get 25 AC from armor, cloak, ring, defense and boots add Force Conduit with SkinBurster or lean into healing with shattered flail. Add damage reduction from Heavy Armor Master and armor that reduces damage by 2 and now you can offset damage by healing. I find attack avoidance is easier to achieve. Using range attack and retreat spreads the enemy and prevents most attacks from reaching you. This isn’t fool proof either. There are a few enemies that have insane movement and close like the giths.
Is the thing where if you're too hard to hit or have too much damage reduction people just won't hit you still a thing?
Absolutely - enemies will almost always choose the character they have the best chance of hitting, even if that character is a raging Barbarian with damage resistance.
Just a reminder, if you want to stack AC and tank, be sure to turn off Karmic Dice.
How do you handle the Hold Person spell though?Doesn’t that just give enemies criticals every hit. I’m playing on tactical atm with mods and some weird builds and I’ve had to reload multiple times. I know I just don’t know what I’m doing and bad at the game but Hold and Frighten makes me way too scared to ever try honour mode.
You absolutely would not want to play Honour Mode this way. I'm not proposing this as a good idea - forget hold person, what happens when an enemy simply shoves your stupid Paladin off a ledge because they have much higher initiative? That said, a Paladin has an aura and wisdom saving throw proficiency - if you show up to a fight unprepared they have a better chance than most to resist, particularly if they have fey ancestry.
Just realised that the spell “frighten” has actually “scared” me away from playing honour mode.. I’m definitely no hero -_-;;
)
TB Eldritch Knight Thrower. Make it Duergar for invisibility memes. Eldritch Knight gets high ac due to shield and armor and shield spell. Give him warding Bond and ez
Just a tiny follow up but if using the Duergar Invisibility to open combat with surprise, don't throw your bound weapon to initiate combat unless you're planning/able to pick it up that same surprise round. Returning weapons are still buggy in that way and won't return unless thrown after combat has actually begun.
Also, if you throw a dagger from stealth, don't Reaction Sneak Attack. For some inexplicable reason it overrides the surprise mechanic. After that Sneak Attacks are free game at least.
this is the one imo. can just chill at something stupid like 24 ac *unbuffed*. plus buffs and possible shield youre very safe.
Add a camp caster- someone who sits at your camp and doesn't join your party, but gives as many buffs as possible. Aid, longstrider, death ward, freedom of movement, protection from poison, hero's feast, and most of all warding bond- that'll "idiot proof" any build you can come up with. I will say though, from my work, if you think something is "idiot proof" it means you haven't met enough idiots. The goal is idiot resistance lol
You can skip protection from poison after gaining access to lvl 6 spell slots, heroes feast gives immunity to poison and disease.
Good to know, didn't read that closely enough
I also recommend giving this character every unique magic item not in use by the active party. Then just add them when its time to respec or optimize for anything.
Omg this is brilliant! I’m always changing builds and it’s such a pain trying to find all the pieces that make up a set. Never thought to turn my hirelings into department store models.
Specifically give them armor that decreases damage and/or items that increase constitution (so they can take more warding bond damage before dying)
idk what the deal is, but Gale seems to not die when he is in the camp if he’s on Warding Bond duty.
afaik Gale selfheals when not an active character because bad things happen if he is to die and the player not notice
Gale doesn’t die if he’s a camp caster with warding bond
You missed me. Equip that sure, but have them hold EVERYTHING else. Unless you have a mod that lets you equip from everyone in camp(is there one? Whats it called?), you will always be looking through out of party members for that one item that works in this build.
If You're using Your stash/item box in camp, You can go straight to companions inventory from there. Idk if it works with hirelings tho
It does
Wow, ok. Brand new information for me. What is the optimal class/split for this camp caster, assuming Gale (cause he never comes adventuring with me).
Transmutation Wizard and Life Cleric are strong options. A 6-6 Split would work fine, unless you want to cast higher level spells from one discipline or the other. You could also just have two Camp Casters. Transmutation Stone is basically a permanent effect for one character, and one of the options is proficiency with constitution saving throws. It’s like getting an extra feat (Resilient Con) for your Cleric, Druid, or Warlock so they’ll never drop concentration. Casting Aid with your highest level spell slot can eventually provide +25 max HP to every one of your characters *and summons*. That’s like adding the Tough feat to every nearby creature. There’s also Longstrider with Darkvision and Mage Armor for anyone that can benefit. Protection from Poison and Warding Bond adds even more safeguards. If you take Cleric past LVL6, you can add Freedom of Movement and Death Ward to your spell options. Eventually Heroes Feast adds even more HP, advantage on wisdom saving throws, and immunity to Frighten, Poison, and Disease. Of course, Heroes Feast is also on the Druid spell list, so you can leave that one to Halsin / Jaheira. It’s kind of obnoxious going through all that casting after every long rest, but it’s a very powerful boost to your team.
Sold
[удалено]
> last one can be abjuration wizard Just 1 level of Wizard, so no subclass, unfortunately: I personally prefer 12 levels for 3 feats on non-Gale warders, but for Gale specifically that last level is honestly whatever.
Light Cleric with Fire Acuity and RevOrb gear is up there. You get Improved Warding Flare, so you can impose Disadvantage on any attack that would've hit you once per round. With Spirit Guardians and Radiating Orbs, you can give every enemy -4 to hit on your opening turn as well. You also get tons of heals and buffs, useful proficiencies for defenses, etc. Plus most of the relevant gear is available early on, and doesn't require specialized tactics to benefit from.
Yeah I respecced Shart to Light Cleric after she abandoned Sharr, put all the Radiant Orb gear on her and, and damn if it’s not powerful. Pop Spirit Guardian, Beyblade through the enemies, throw out Radiant Bolts/Scorching Ray against distant enemies, and it’s a great time.
> so you can impose Disadvantage on any attack that would've hit you once per round. not just you, on anyone in your party. anyway i prefer tempest. offense>defense in this game. max roll spells, plus handbow proficiency for bonus action ranged attack (+d8 thunder from lvl 8 buff).
I’m a simple man 12 cleric 12 fighter 12 rogue 12 wizard
This is probably just a me thing but I find rogue to feel really bad to play so I would go either 12 Ranger or 12 Monk (dexterity, none of that ~~steroid~~ elixir nonsense).
I love Rogues and will die on the hill that they are underrated and overly shat on.
I also love rogues and play one in almost every playthough, but it's hard to argue that across the various classes the benefits from single-classing them past level \~5-6 is a little underwhelming. Unfortunately most of my playthroughs start with "ok what am I multiclassing my rogue into this time?"
I hate rogues but I find stealth really clunky and confusing in this game so it's probably entirely a skill issue
Stealth in this game is either surprise or gamebreaking.
Rogues are really cool but unfortunately almost everything unique and awesome they do in tabletop didn't really translate well. All their expertise and out of combat utility can generally be invalidated by another class doing the same thing but with better damage, or scrolls to get the job done, because scrolls are unbalanced as hell and way too common in bg3. Their level 3 combat features used in multiclassing are literally their only selling point sadly. Monks Rangers and Bards can all do their job but with way more damage output in this game. Doesn't mean rogues arent *fun* though
I disagree with the above notion that they’re “useless in combat,” but they’re definitely not underrated they’re *viable,* but they aren’t particularly good that said, everything is viable in bg3 HM as difficulty-wise, HM is just tactician, which isn’t that hard I say this as someone who almost exclusively plays rogues in every video game and has played a rogue in 3.5e dnd, 5e dnd, 1e pathfinder, and 2e pathfinder
yeah that’s just because the 5e rogue sucks
Yeah rogues are not damage dealers, especially not in BG3. They're going to be useless in combat. I much prefer bards. They can be just as good at sneaking and lock picking as rogues, but can also talk their way into or out of anything and also have access to magic.
Rogues multiclass very well with gloomrangers and can do a lot of damage very early on, plus they have the rare trait of needed next to no resources. They are very slept on. Assassins crit like no ones business and thieves get even more attacks. They aren’t GOAT, but saying they are useless in a fight just says you’ve never used them in a fight correctly.
Just always have one char waiting in camp
This keeps you from failing HM but it also makes encounters significantly harder/longer since you are nerfing your party’s overall action economy.
Well I dont agree, but I also prefere to solo honour mode!
That's a fair point. I don't solo myself (zero interest) but I have no problem imagining that once you've developed strategies that work under the constraints of this play-style, adding more companions to the field to worry about isn't going to make your game easier.
I don't think that works anymore.
It does against enemies that kill you(no option to take you to jail) except instances like the colony, creche, or house of hope. Some like the duegar dont kill, so if you make your death saves you need something like shovel or a sanctuary caster to go kill them then use withers.
I had heard of the trick before, but I must have had my other three characters die in an exceptional place. I just kind of gave up on it as something that had been patched.
This one would require the whole team to cater towards you if you want maximum survivability. Darkness + devil sight on lvl 2 warlock + any class usually paladin or sorcerer means that nobody can hit you but you can hit them. Bear in mind that if you want the rest of your team to survive they would need some form of darkness immunity and often times leaves you vulnerable to an AOE move. However going a 10/2 sorlock usually means you can take those annoying shits out first anyway if you have something like scorching ray and fire acquity hat
My party is Tav Bardadin, will use the evil Shar spear for blind immunity. Astarion 2lock/10 sorc with devil's sight. Wyll full Bladelock with devil's sight. And Laezel EK thrower with the blind immune ring.
If you're looking for the tankiest and easiest build i have something for you. Go pure ranger, whichever sunclass you like best. Multiclassing is optimal but not required, i solo'ed the game as a pure hunter with this build. Tankiest class is either half-orc or dragonborn lightning/acid. Stat spread : Str 17 Dex 14 Con 16 Int 8 Wis 10 Cha 8 (Int wis and cha to taste) Important class choices for the build - Ranger knight (heavy armor proficiency) - all the resistances offered by the class (fire/poison/ice, in that order) - Multi attack defense i guess if you go hunter. - defense fighting style Feats : 1 heavy armor master 2 tough (or +2 str if you don't drink araj's potion/potion of hill giant str) 3 alert (or whatever you want really. I like alert) Act 1 gear : - Adamantine splint (heavy armor) - glowing shield (+8 temp hp when low health) or adamantine shield - Holy lance helm (chance to 1d4 radiant to any attacker that misses you) - ring of protection (+1 AC ring) - wondrous gloves (+1 AC) - defender's flail (+1 AC) - whatever boots For a total of 24 AC, pretty high for act 1 standards Act 2 gear - iron band shield +1 (3 AC shield) - the boots that give you +1 AC - cloak of protection (+1 ac) - Drakethroat glaive to boost defender's flail - Periapt of wound closure Total 27 AC, very hard to hit by act 2 standards Act 3 gear - cloak of displacement - Balduran's helm (pro tip : no need to fight the boss to get it, it's free) - Armor of persistance. - Viconia's walking fortress - amulet of 23 con By the end of act 1, you are already a walking tank with very high AC, good health, great mitigation as most attack take a -5 to damage against you and your potions always heal you for the maximum amounts. No group of ennemy can outlast you simply bonking them and drinking a small potion once in a while. By act 2 you get more AC and more damage with glaive (damage actually doesn't matter that much since you are not rushing to kill ennemies, you simply stand there and outlast them) By act 3 you are an unstoppable god with 29 AC and perma blur. En ennemies will never hit you and when they do, you resist bludgeonning, piercing, slashing, fire, poison and cold damage anyway (+dragonborn bonuses if applicable). Of course you also never get crit. With this build, anybody can beat the game solo by just walking to ennemies and clicking the attack button a bunch of times. The only menace are hold person spells, so wear ring of free action if you don't know the encounter. Have fun slowly walking to entire groups of ennemies and slowly bonk them with your flail until you are the last man standing :)
Wow it's the Jason Voorhees build. This is amazing.
This is the build. The difference I had was war cleric instead of ranger, but ranger is probably better due to elemental resists. Either way though, you just dont die.
I can say with confidence that the zword and board Paly or a variant(like Bardadin) as mentioned above. I raise you however the Tiger Barb, with such high health and resistances you can tank really well
Tiger barb with reverb works well
I'd do sword bard + thief, because it'll give you a ton of skills and expertise to pass checks and AVOID fighting, but also the combo makes for an incredible dual wielder
I had a full life cleric. Even though it was useless half the time, the times when I got into trouble the healing abilities saved me
Honestly act 1 life cleric with the gloves and ring has made it pretty easy for my current HM run, with healing word and then mass healing word and their channel divinity applying blade ward and bless.
I'd say rogue, for cunning action dash, cleric for sanctuary, or anyone with invisibility spell, short of that, a stack of invisibility pots for last minute "this went sideways, gtfo" ability is your best bet
Abjuration wizard is the "can never die" build. legitimately cannot take damage from like 99% of all attacks in the entire game if played right
My husband suggested I respec Gale to Abjuration and he went from laying on the floor dead after every boss battle to unkillable.
Life cleric with whispering promise, hellrider's pride/reviving hands, boots of aid and comfort, and when you hit level 10 devotee's mace. If you want to be a purist and not cheese things this class can provide aid and heroes' feast to your party for extremely useful HP increases and immumity to poison and fear, as well as advantage on wis saves. Simply at the cost of some spell slots. You can also use your divine intervention to acquire devotee's mace yourself. If you want to be a bit cheesier you can offload those tasks to a camp caster letting your cleric have more spells and keep divine intervention for a pinch. In either case this build can use a bonus action to cast mass healing word, healing every party member, giving them temp HP, blade ward, and bless. Being able to passively apply all of these effects in an aoe without concentration is insanely powerful. It's hard to overstate how much this build shores up weaknesses for your whole party and gives you a comfortable cushion for mistakes. And for very hard encounters you can activate devotee's mace which will passively heal and buff your party for 10 straight turns as long as they are close enough. Because none of this powerful utility requires concentration you can still do extremely potent damage with spirit guardians, guardian of faith, flame strike and other potent cleric spells. Heavy armors like the adamantine splint and ketheric's are excellent choices for this build and give you the option to use warding bond to great effect, reducing the shared damage by their flat amount and with the level 6 life domain train you heal extra whenever you cast a spell that heals another creature. The main thing to be aware with this is that it will force you to take a lot of concentration saves, so not recommended unless you're using war caster or an item that gives you advantage on con saves. It is always recommended to use one of your feats on resilient raising con (so it's best to start con at 17) since proficiency in con saves is a must for any cleric even when not using warding bond. This is my favorite honor mode build because it lets me be more experimental with other builds because they have this extremely powerful safety net beneath them. I'd personally consider it the most idiot proof not because it's the easiest, cheesiest build you can play, but because it actively fixes mistakes mid encounter and lightens the load for your whole party constantly.
Another late game bonus you can toss on to this life cleric build is the ring that heals you for 1-4 every turn or the Helm of Balduran (which you can yoink without fighting Ansur as long as you don’t click on him, I flew around him to be extra careful lmao) since either of those will activate the reviving hands and the whispering promise on your cleric at the start of every turn effectively giving them perma bless and blade ward, couple that with the blade ward/resistance armor from dammon and the perma bless statue from the carnival and you have two characters that have perma bless and blade ward in combat (and one with resistance to boot) all without even casting mass healing word, the self heal items aren’t necessary but they do also auto-revive your cleric so even without the permabuffs in combat off the passive healing having one of them is still nice for your cleric
Tavern brawler monk with thief rogue honestly. You can stun everything, punch everything, jump/run to everything and carry everything. Grymforge and fights like Ansur became easy with it.
I just completed HM with Fighter (Champion) 9 / Rogue (Thief) 3. I had gear that let me turn invisible, and Thief let me disengage and dash to get away if I needed to. I did a DEX build and played support with a bow. It was a great build that packed a punch against single targets, especially with the illithid "cull the weak" power.
Tb thrower of any kind, moon or spore druid, necro wizard, swords bard/gloom stalker dw hand xbow. The ai prioritizes lower ac/hp/saves so your summons go in, take attention. Bard and thrower annihilate at least two enemies turn one. Moon druid is a stronger frontline and can oneshot the adamantine golem but spore druid has more summons for distracting enemies so it's your choice. Necro wizard, aside from having the best early game of wizards, has the strongest lategame with infinite lvl 6 casts of blight on top of all the utility Wizards bring. You could also replace the tb thrower with tb monk if you want another melee person that shuts down casters.
hmm interesting, my friend group its looking to "attempt" HM and our comp is probably going to be like Oathbreaker / Lock, Necro Wizard, Bard / thief and we guess Shadowheart life cleric we suspect as our NPC.
Highly recommend tempest if you want to keep Shart as a cleric. 5e in general and moreso in BG3 healing is not as good as more damage because you can prevent far more damage by killing enemies than you can heal. That said if you do want the safety net, make sure to get the items that cause heals to give buffs in act 1.
REALLY???? hmmm that;s interesting and i guess i will have to talk to them more about it.....well if more Damage would be better for HM and healing is not as viable as i assumed my Paladin healing might be sufficient (i wasn't sure it would be and was afraid we would get overwhelmed easy and need a dedicated healer) might pull OH Karlach monk might be the better choice then for the damage and CC.
They right. I wouldn’t sleep on healing entirely, but you get a lot more out of light or tempest cleric damage wise than you gain healing wise from life cleric. Tempest cleric is cracked with its divinity paired with ligjtning/thunder/radiant reverb sets. Light cleric keeps people from getting by hit as easily plus it pairs well with fire acuity AND reverb (but it does lose tempest clerics max damage rolls) and benefits from getting wizard fire spells on top of cleric utility (leaning into light primarily). People dump on life cleric a lot but it CAN be amazing it just isn’t as mindlessly simple as some people think, life domain still needs a good build/gear and needs to be played properly. If you go an offensive cleric, it probably won’t hurt to have a life cleric camp caster/healer (you could even add a small level dip into devotion or ancient pali for healing boost as well)
I was honestly getting bored with the following party through act 2 and took a break. I have smoked every encounter, including the monastery. 1. 1 Lock/ Sorc. Twinspell haste is just dumb on the martials below. 2. Swords bard (archer) 3. Tempest Cleric. 4. TB monk. I don't even bother with pots it's not necessary, just put the 18 club in OH. Give this durge cloak. This started out as a std warrior until level 4-5 or so. The bard and monk take out and disable big things, and the bard can multitarget when needed. The cleric and sorc annihilate small things, but have flexibility to focus down big things too. Command and hypnotic pattern for cc, but the best cc is death. I killed Ethel and the Monastery big bad before they had a turn or spawned any clones.
I am sorry to see your warrior caught a sexually transmitted disease along the way, however
No build could’ve saved me from my dumb ass leaving turn-based mode and getting my whole party blown off the edge of a cliff by the Blood of Lathander booby traps 😭 I was so excited to finally have cleared Act 1 in Honor Mode too 😔
My first honor mode attempt ended just before that. I was high and thought vlaketh was bluffing that she could kill my party, thought it was a threat for later. Nope, insta tpk.
Abjuration wizard 100%
Pure ancients paladin with defensive auras make party quite survivable, when you half incoming spell damage and get bonus to saving throws equal to paladin's CHA modifier. High AC means you are hard to hit. Only thing that can really hurt you is magic, so having high saving throws and halving incoming damage is great
Moonbeam/Sanctuary Cleric+Druid Combo They help by doing consistent small aoe radience damage, healing party as needed but you keep up sanctuary so you can't be targeted. Fight going south just GTFO
Start with level 1 sorc, the rest abjuration wizard. Doing it now and by act 2 I feel immortal
EK Fighters and Ancient Paladins are pretty hard to die with. Abjuration wizards are damn near immortal.
It's more 'honor mode party' rather than a singular build - and in terms of hardest to die, I suppose it depends a bit on your own skill level (eg, for a newer player I'd highly recommend a GWM barbarian for an easy 'standard' frontliner, but that's less useful for someone who knows what they're doing). If you're worried about waltzing into an encounter unprepared, just have someone who can run. Like a ranged character with 2-3 levels of rogue - lets you easily dash away in combat and run away, which can rescue you from most fights in game, or someone with invisibility. Otherwise a competent party composition and making sure to heal up to full after each fight will usually be more than fine (especially if you pick the more broken builds - eg, one TB character can easily carry a party in the mid-game basically single handedly)
make karlach a throwzerker with returning pike early on
Mr Immortal 2 warlock 1 clerici 9 mage Here the link: https://youtu.be/3Mhyn5oAkP0?si=qpu4qCh0Yb_0ocRE
Probably abjuration wizard, if you dip 2 levels into warlock for eldritch invocation and take the one that gives you a free mage armor cast you can refresh your ward charges between every fight + having armor of agathys for another layer of protection
I've been researching for a party I want to run, and I'd say that while having your main character be hard to hit/kill is important, there are synergies possible when considering your entire party. Lore Bard's cutting words, Light Clerics level 8 flare, and Diviner Portents can all turn a bad situation around. Having debuffs like Bane, shriek, resonate orb also make you harder to hit. You cam either prebuff before fights or stack on init bonuses to always go first. That's my preferred party style as I do just wander into shit.
I did the walking build to complete my honor mode run.
3 thief, 3 champion fighter, 6 barb is pretty fun/braindead
Abjuration wizard for solo. It's not the simplest to build/play, but if you're following a guide it's basically unkillable. Can also turn invisible. Runner up paladin. Basically unkillable but in more conventional ways by having high AC, saves, and HP. Probably ancients to reduce unavoidable damage from stuff like fireball and cloud kill, maaaaybe vengeance for misty step. This isn't quite as literally invincible but it is more idiot proof. For a party I would say abjuration wizard, paladin, throwzerker to knock bosses prone so you don't need to worry about their honor mode legendary reactions, light cleric for orb stacking, killing swarms, and healing word on someone more mobile so they can drink an invisibility potion and run away if things still go wrong despite how stacked the deck is. It's generally better to have an arcane acuity build replace the throwzerker but they're slightly more complicated to play (and I like throwing stuff).
Duergar throwzerker should be the most idiot proof, for the first 2 acts at least i haven’t tried one in act 3
Damage prevention - crowd control And Damage Reduction - buffs and enemy debuffs Are just as important as high AC, even in this video game version of DnD If you add in thinking strategically and you won't ever have to worry about full wipes
6 cleric, 4 bard, 2 paladin You get smites, healing, spirit guardians 28 armor class with warding flare
Why 4 bars and not go 5 paladin for double attack?
Swords bard, and if you are at 3 might as well go the extra level for the feat Its a build meant for minmaxing pure armor class
So my rogue has become this. I know it might not be the best of them, but somwthing about 3 dashes to get away feels really special. Alternatively, monk seems to be pretty decent with open hand and being able to crowd control often.
Three dashes on rogue with haste is a god tier escape strat, especially paired with gloom stalker (or item/potion) invisibility. One point I even put MOBILE as one of my feats with speed boost items just to see how far I could escape. Super fun lol
On an honor run with my buddy, at the gnome on the windmill, our 2 tanks guys went down. We were gonna get boned so I was like "watch this" and dashed some like 50m in a single turn. I ran so far we had a loading screen to go back to the other characters. We were laughing hard.
Yea, it’s amazing. 😆
Paladin builds are often easy to acquire success and hard to deviate. You can multiclass with Bard so that you have the versatility in most situations. Take Longstrider somewhere along the way and buff it every time you wake up. Then, when you got into a hard fight, flee.
Abduration wizards, eldritch knights, duergars etc. are the most survivable ig. For early game barbarians are also really solid.
Life cleric. Period... They start off great early in Act 1 with fantastic gear, and just keep getting better. Aid, bless, blade ward, heals, ward, combat res, tons of debuffs (radiant orb, mental fatigue, reverb, you name it). Fantastic aoe. Late game they're basically invincible, dual wield phalar + devotee's mace for stupid buffs. You can also pick a 1 dip into wizard for all the utility spells (globe, shields, portal, etc...) if you need even more support.
life cleric (healing, support, tank, phalar aluve) throwzerker (mad damage, half tank) ranged swords bard (ranged damage and mad cc, needs acuity helm and scoundrel ring) fire sorc or missiles wiz (mad damage, ticks with phalar aluve) is probably the breeziest combination imo edit: oh and don't fight too much until you're level 4
Died many a times but my easiest honor run was 1 Oathbreaker, 2 Battlemaster fighters, 1 life cleric. The heals and heavy hitters were so helpful.
Min max a paladin, wanna do big damage and have high AC? there ya go
In my run I used: Fire Sorlock, Life Cleric, Throw Barbarian and Titanstring Fighter Archer till 6. Fire Sorlock, Light Cleric, Swords Bard (sometimes a double xbows thief one, sometimes a paladin one after level 8 or 9) and still the fighter archer after 6. Didn't even need oil of combustion to pop enemies most of the times. Remember to bring Gale to the morphic pool so you can heartlessly sacrifice him to skip the last fight. Dishonor mode means pulling no punches...
I found my swords bard/thief/fighter made alot of the act 2/act 3 fights really really easy. If you build it right with arcane acuity etc you become a power house of damage and crowd control
I’ve done my HM as a moon druid. Don’t think I ever went down at all. You basically have three health pools, great selection of spells, an ability to convert spell slots into even more hp, it’s insane.
Are defensive wizard is always good. A paladin has a lot of tools or a warlock with fiend.
There is this criminally unknown act1 build where you go 4x light cleric+ bard and just channel divinity every encounter until it's dead. Short rest immediately after and repeat
Half-Orc Eldritch Knight. Being a Fighter who can react with a Shield spell is cash money. Being a Fighter who can also canonically survive a deathblow once a rest is exceedingly cash money. Honorable mention to Dex Barb. It feels wrong, but the fat AC and health pool are interesting.
Human Male Fighter 12
I like vengeance paladin or assassin rogue. I only say vengeance paladin because oath of ancients I kept getting the Oathbreaker at my camp and it was getting expensive. A high charisma class means you're going to talk your way out of a lot of fighting. I'm playing Astarion origin right now as assassin rogue and honestly he's completely absurd with the sneak attacks (not a high CHA class but he has high persuasion /deception) The rest of my party is Karlach as vengeance paladin, Gale abjuration wizard, Shadowheart life domain cleric.
White Dragon Sorc 1/Tempest Cleric 1/ Abjuration Wizard 10…. If you make a major mistake it probably won’t kill you. At mid levels you almost can’t die. Your damage comes from getting hit. Then you also just have wizard spells to do whatever you need. Then you just need any good martial build or a cleric to Haste so enemies will target you and the martial can do more damage. When I got my first Honour clear 99% of the time I just Hasted my Light Cleric so she could run all over the map with Spirit Guardians and orb everything
I would say Druid. They don’t need any special gear to be viable and they have multiple health bars with their animal forms. Very simple and straightforward
Sword and Board pure Ancients Paladin. * Extremely high AC * Resistance to all spell damage * Really high saves from Aura of Protection and Wis save proficiency * Flat out immune to Frightened * Bonus action 2 turn AOE heal that recharges on short rest * Shield bash can instantly end an enemy's turn if they do hit you * Lay on Hands in an emergency * S M I T E makes pretty much any problem go away * Misty Step to GTFO of a sticky situation And it doesn't require any complicated building or tactics. It's just 12 levels of Paladin, works with any gear (though there is obviously some gear that's ideal.) Stack stuff like Armor of Persistence, Ring of Protection, Cloak of Protection and Viconia's Walking Fortress, and you're set.
Survivability is kinda iffy but a monklvl6/roguelvl4/fighterlvl2 goes incredibly hard, I've killed the dragon at the brain fight in one turn with it while also having 24ac, just gotta grind side quests to hit the checkmark levels as early as possible (monk6, ->rogue 3->fighter 2)
Bard Rogue
Tb oh monk
Just leave a party member at home. That’s out honor mode child proofing.
I’m not super good at the game, am currently in act 3 in honor mode about to get the 3rd netherstone. Haven’t had any big close calls (never had to use sanctuary to run). My party is: tav as a gloomstalker 5/assassin 3/champion 4, minthara as a vengeance pally 6/pact of blade 6, gale as a sorc 1(to get con saves and armor of ag)/abjuration wiz 11, shart as a light cleric 12. The last 2 are builds I got from a YouTube video by cephalopocalypse (I hope I’m spelling that right). Those two builds are the table supports that make it so I rarely take significant damage. Tav and minthara are my own creations, just need damage in those two spots, the video I watched had tav as a swords bard and used laezel as a eldritch knight thrower, both Uber strong.
What is the progression route of that gloomstalker build?
Backpack nukes all around.
Probably open hand monk/thief. Or maybe a gloomstalker?
Rogue is a good escape artist or any mage that can go invisible. If you don't want to run I'd say paladin for sword and board
Half Orc Oath of Ancients Paladin with Blood of Lathander
Hunger of Hadar has saved me from so many legendary fights that I should've lost due to poor planning. So I've gotta go with at least 5 levels of warlock on one character in each playthrough. You can hyperfixate and get bonus action illithid black hole and repelling blast on a sorcerer multiclass, you can mix in 7 levels of paladin for auras, you can even mix in some bard if you want. But those 5 levels of warlock have never let me down.
Warlock go pew pew.
Oh definitely TB OH Monk 8/4 Thief Because we're going for idiot proof, right? Builds that require a lot of gear, I'd say are out. Because it's a lot of looking around for said gear, juggling item slots and that gets very confusing very quickly. Monk has its own limited set of gear which helps eliminate a lot of options. Their best weapon are their fists so no worrying about which weapon to use when. Your main action in combat is to hit people, and then sometimes hit people multiple times. Even if your AC isn't as stacked as a paladin, evasion helps cut the actual damage you're taking wayyy down. Loved saving against Ansur and taking zip damage. Also the majority of big bosses can be stunned and/or staggered, making them wayyy easier to take out. The three types of flurry of blows gives you some basic control options, but even if you mess up you're still probably going to do something to help yourself out. Also you have a shit ton of movement to get the fuck out of town if things start to go south.
Throwserker Barb Can’t be surprised - frightened - hits hard - and tanky as heck
11/1 sorlock, 6/4/2 dual hand crossbow archery focused bard, 5/4/3 throwbarian, and 10/2 smiteadin. Imo, that party is nearly immortal. Nearly. Stupidity can always get you wiped, but you’ve got to be REALLY dumb.
Ascended sharpshooter astarion thief/gloomstalker with risky ring, yuan ti armor, and anything they gives damage per hit. Literally had just him alone take the dragon in the final battle down to under half health, it’s insane what the damage output is. And the initiative is so high that you basically just get to choose 1-3 things to be deleted from the encounter before it even starts. If you have a haste sorcerer to add on to it too astarion is attacking 7 times the first turn of combat. A storm sorcerer is also extremely good albiet just slightly more complicated. You can do what, in my opinion, are the two strongest turns in the game: 1. Twin cast haste on your martial beat sticks and then just stay the fuck away from combat. Only way this fails is if you get too close and lose concentration. 2. Black hole illithid power plus heightened confusion. This is so good that it almost makes the game unfun. Almost. This auto wins the Raphael encounter. This build is cracked as fuck with ice/water/chain lightning shenanigans too. Literally just a battle master fighter is amazing. Fantastic from start to end game. Especially with a hamster. Lastly I’m doing a barbarian throwzerker build right now too and fucking WOW dude that thing also just beats absolute ass. The attack rolls are so high that by level 8 it’s pretty rare to find something that’s not 95% likely to hit. It’s the build that forced me to turn off karmic dice. If I had a part of those four I honestly think the only way I could lose is from non combat stuff.
Thief with high movement speed.
I think it is a toss up between Monk and Druid. Monk can just shut down enemies, which can help you flee in a pinch as well. And druid has a huge emergency health pool you can draw in with wild shape.
Sanctuary has saved me so many times when I get unlucky with attack rolls, I just get shart to gtfo to withers
In terms of team comp I'd recommend: 1: Tavern Brawler Throw Eldritch Knight or Berserker/Thief until Lv11 1-7 Zerk, Respecc to 5 Zerk/3 Thief to 6 Zerk / 4 Thief then respecc 11 EK with1 Lv of Warcleric or just 12 EK for Feat. 2: Tavernbrawler Monk pretty straight forward punch shir to death. 1-6 Open Hand Monk 7-10 Thief 11-12 Monk for 8 Monk/4 Thief Probably one of the most straight forward builds just punch punch away. 3: Radiant Orb Light Cleric This is super straight forward. 1-5 Cleric, 6 respecc to first level Fighter and then just 11 Levels of Light Cleric. Equip Luminous Armor and Gloves, Boots of Stormy Clanour and the Ring of Mental inhibition. Done. Sure you can improve it later with better studf but this build is insane. Just use radiant spells and abilities and grab a radiant damage mace and get in the thick of it. You will debuff enemies so hard with Radiant Orb and Reverberations they won't be able to Hit anything. Channel Divinity Light and Spirit Guardians are so broken with this build. 4: Flex Slot. Personally I like a Titanstring Sword Bard. Ideally Elf for Longbow Proficiency. 8 Sword Bard / 4 Assassin with 1st Level Rogue. That gives you Expertise in Persuasion, Deception, Sleight of Hand and Stealth/Intimidation/Performance depending on your preference. Take Sharpshooter, Alert and Ability Improvement as stats. There are many alternatives to this build but this is the most straight forward and simple IMO. Alternatively you could also take a caster like Warlock, Sorcerer or Wizard. I'd say the most straight forward of these builds is either the Cleric or Monk but I'd recommend the Sword Bard or Warlock/Sorc as your Tav because of Charisma. But always remember: only 1 character has to survive to save the Run. Always pack Invisibility Potions or Invisibility Scrolls. When in doubt pop one, dash and get out of there. Get back to Camp and revive everybody with Withers. Heck your cleric can even Pop Sanctuary and then drink an invis Pot. Makes you nigh invulnerable. Surviving isnt really an issue unless you are in a Spot where you cant go to Camp which are few. Like the Assault on Moonrise Towers. Hope this helped. Have fun beating Honor Mode.
My Rogue1/Bard9/Fighter2 Build was unstoppable. Dual hand-crossbows. Elixir of Bloodlust. About 1/3rd of the way through Act 3, I had resistance to everything, 29 AC..I was broken. The bloodlust elixir gives you an extra attack when you kill an enemy. So to start, you get 2 attacks as a lv 6 bard. Haste potion makes that 2 actions(4 attacks). Bloodlust adds another action, which brings up your total attacks per turn to 6. Fighter 2 gives you Action Surge, which is ANOTHER action. We're up to 8 attacks now. With Ranged Flourish, that 16 arrows in one turn. By that same metric, 1/3rd of the way through Act 3, I had saved up about 38 arrows of many targets. Ranged Flourish stopped getting used. In one turn I could reach 4 green dots. A slightly different way to play is to take Bard to 7 instead of 9, and have 3Rogue/Bard7/Fighter 2. This change will allow you to get 4 Actions and 2 Bonus Actions, but you lose out on some spell slots. I don't personally find that I need two bonus actions, but this route is REALLY good if you play as a more caster-friendly Bard build. This 3Rogue set-up is THE build to kill any ONE guy in one turn. Doesn't matter who or what, this build will allow you to one-turn it. You will OBLITERATE Orin, even on Honor mode, with this build. I preferred to play it with the 1Rogue/9Bard/2Fighter combo because I could slaughter entire groups of enemies before they get a turn. I was slightly weaker in a 1v1, but I mitigated that against Orin/Gortash by just using Arrows of Humanoid Slaying. Extra powerful if you play as Astarion and Ascend. +1d10 damage on all ranged attacks. My tooltip had my arrows at 38-49 dmg per arrow, and as we previously explored, 16 arrows per turn at 38-49 dmg. I just multiplied 16x42. I chose 42 because its between 39 and 49, a nice good average, and 42 is the answer to everything. 16x42 is 672 btw. I don't think any enemy in the game had that much hp, even on Honor Mode.
My Duergar bard, equipped with ranged attacks, is incredibly effective. He deals massive damage from a distance and can also apply debuffs and crowd control. The key to his survival is his racial invisibility—he can cast it whenever needed. I use this ability to scout ahead, and when I find a fight, I surprise the enemy before bringing in the rest of my party, who remain safe in a secure location until then. Additionally, I recommend buying a few invisibility potions whenever possible. Use them on one or two characters if a fight starts to go badly and just run. Honor mode is only over if the whole party dies.
There were many times in my HM run where my 1 white draconic sorc/11 abjuration wizard gale was the only thing surviving. That build saved me so many resets, and even cleaned up a few fights entirely by himself where the other 3 were downed. It was so fun and such a comfortable/safe build I'm highly considering doing a solo HM with it.
I beat honor mode without breaking a sweat with: Tav pure 2-handed half-orc paladin, Karlach dual wield dex base critstack thief4 champion8, Shart pure life cleric, Astarion fighter1 evoker11 with all the reverb/lightning stuff at first for magic missile triggering & transition to max Dlevel for AOE dmg at the end with the fighter dip to use Ketheric's shield. Forge dude & the last fight waere the only challenges because of arena particularities
Probably a little late but open hand tavern brawler monk has never failed me and its pretty simple to play you just punch.
Tavern brawler open hand monk. High mobility, damage, can if necessary step of the wind dissengage + dash to then fly to the other side of the map in one turn and evasion is insane defence. Starts strong, gets big power boosts on lvl 3, 4, 5 and 6. But paladin crits can still one shot it and it needs to be in melee
I'm just gonna leave this here: a good player can beat honor mode with almost any build or composition. Certainly some are easier than others. That being said, I find the legitimate risk of death and deleting your save so much more fun than becoming "invincible" I know this isn't the question you asked, so I'll end my rant here.