Certain spells feel very bad

[Wolviller111]

I love the game so far, but certain spells just feel bad.

Tasha's Hideous Laughter: The target can repeat the saving throw at the start of their turn. Does it say that in the spell description? Nope, because reasons.

Phantasmal Force: Execuse me, wtf is that spell. 1d6 dmg/turn on CONCENTRATION and they get to make a save every turn (which the description also doesn't specify). This is just horrible. What an absolute waste.

In general i really feel like i am just using the same ♥♥♥♥ over and over again as Bard, because most other spells are just ass or the enemy immediately passes their save.

Thoughts, opinion, experiences?

[HozzMidnight]

Tasha's is great it's a level 1 spell. But yeah there are way too many spells and clear winners and losers but there are a lot of spells that are great situationally and the way you can change prepared spells anytime outside of combat makes wizards pretty powerful in a way they usually are not over Sorcerers in CRPGs.

[Nivelhein]

Yea, most spells are very awkward to use. Especialy concentration buffs. I don't know what most recent DND spells/spell books look like right now but BG3's remembering system feels weird and uncomfortable compared to NWNs/BGs1-2. And it's beyond laughable when I could legit clear fights with a single caster in these games with clever strategy and careful spell management (and sometimes funny bugs like infinite timestop in NWN), but here it feels like non spell oriented characters just trample pure casters. And I mean it, Lae'zel just decimates 2-3 normal enemies or 1 strong enemy a turn while Gale is only good for clearing packs of 4+ and when he runs out of slots he's close to being useless.

Feats are even worse though. About 40% of them is just +1 stat and a passive/proficiency that's not useful about 20% are just useless passives because they would be good for some specific class like getting a medium armor profficiency on wizard. But that's a very specific case. Why can I even see this feat on Barb/Cleric?

[Wolviller111]

Originally posted by HozzMidnight:

Tasha's is great it's a level 1 spell. But yeah there are way too many spells and clear winners and losers but there are a lot of spells that are great situationally and the way you can change prepared spells anytime outside of combat makes wizards pretty powerful in a way they usually are not over Sorcerers in CRPGs.

Yeah, i really feel like Wizard is the way to go if you wanna be a spellcaster. Eventually you'll have a huge arsenal of spells to choose from and you can change them on the fly.

I love my Bardic Inspiration as Bard right now, but my spells.. eh. I honestly feel like i am more useful shooting my crossbow than casting stuff

[Midnight]

Bard gets the ultimate early damage spell which is Cloud of Daggers so I'm not complaining. And you still get a bunch of very nice utility and buff spells.

That said I'm playing a college of swords bard so I get pretty high AC, extra attacks and a bunch of extra special attacks to fill my actions with. Not much of a point in a caster Bard build I feel.

I also find that my spells land as long as I choose my targets well. Targeting CON saves on wizard types and WIS/INT saves on brute melee types works quite often.

[Bouncer]

I think it's a side effect of being based on 5e. In the books spells and feats are anywhere between comically broken and literally useless.