Using Gale

[Haru]

I've decided to just drop using him entirely. It does not seem to matter how much set up I do or how much prep' I do before a fight. He is guaranteed to be targeted and killed repeatedly. I even use him as a buffer now, or to set things on the ground before a fight starts, but he's either picked off by snipers, jumped over to and murdered by NPCs, etc.

Yes, I do try and get him out of range, and I use things like mage armor and mirror image.

Oh and he misses attacks CONSTANTLY.

He feels like a wasted character slot.

[Cur]

Gale is nothing more than a hand in my inventory. Durge life.

[Haru]

Originally posted by Recjawjind:

Originally posted by Haru:

Cheers, I will give that a go.

Small correction, bracers of defense does not work when using a shield. So instead put on the bard gloves from grymforge that give +1 ac, and there are also boots somewhere that give +1 ac.

Edit: Gloves are in last light, not achievable in act 1.

S'all working great! Cheers.

[Recjawjind]

Originally posted by Haru:

S'all working great! Cheers. :deathgrunty:

No worries, apologies for being snarky at first :>
Lots of people are struggling but dont actually want help, and disregard everything one says.

Glad it's going better for you now! <3

[Chroniver]

Personally went pure Wizard till level 7 with him then respecced 1 wizard with headband of intellect 6 draconic sorc.

Wizard level means he can still learn all the spells from scrolls and with headband he just has extra spells. Plus like to keep the companion classes at least a bit in line with their initial background.

Now he's 9 sorc 1 wizard. Best caster in my party.

Pure Wizard would be good too tbh but I like the flexibility with sorc.

[Haru]

Originally posted by Recjawjind:

Originally posted by Haru:

S'all working great! Cheers.

No worries, apologies for being snarky at first :>
Lots of people are struggling but dont actually want help, and disregard everything one says.

Glad it's going better for you now! <3

Oh I feel you. I'm having that a LOT on the ACVI forums at the moment.

Thanks again!

[Recjawjind]

Originally posted by Haru:

Originally posted by Recjawjind:

No worries, apologies for being snarky at first :>
Lots of people are struggling but dont actually want help, and disregard everything one says.

Glad it's going better for you now! <3

Oh I feel you. I'm having that a LOT on the ACVI forums at the moment.

Thanks again!

No worries! <3 Enjoy your funny invincible wizard when you reach level 10 :3

[Carynara]

Originally posted by Recjawjind:

Originally posted by Haru:

I mean, feel free to enlighten me. That's what I'm here for.

Respec him to bump him to 16 dex
Cast mage armor
put on bracers of defense
equip a shield


Congrats, your gale now has the highest AC in the party in act 1 and won't be targeted (13 mage armor base + 3 from dex + 2 from bracers of defense + 2 from a shield = a casual 20, if something DOES sneak trough, just cast shield for 25 ac. If you want you can also put shield of faith on him for 22/27 with shield spell up)


In act 2 is when he can truly hit invincibility. Make him an abju wizard, level 10 preferable, cast warding bond on him
Congrants, you're now untouchable.
Eversince he hit level 10 he genuinely hasn't taken a SINGLE point of damage, I kept track.

Edit: Tactician, ofcourse.

WTF omg :D This has never occurred to me, him being a wizard and all, why put a shield on him...

Even without all of the above (which I'm gonna try first thing next time I log in, ofc :D), I feel he's super useful, in fact my main char is also a wizard. I just position them out of sight during fights, so enemies can't target them easily. I also spent a precious Feat on Alert, giving them a better chance to dish out CC early in the fight.

[Recjawjind]

Originally posted by Carynara:

WTF omg :D This has never occurred to me, him being a wizard and all, why put a shield on him...

Even without all of the above (which I'm gonna try first thing next time I log in, ofc :D), I feel he's super useful, in fact my main char is also a wizard. I just position them out of sight during fights, so enemies can't target them easily. I also spent a precious Feat on Alert, giving them a better chance to dish out CC early in the fight.

Just don't use bracers of defense with a shield, they dont work together, i had forgotten that. The rest absolutely does work though, and gets CRAZY with higher levels and better items. This is just a "get stupid tanky earlygame" build.

Also keep in mind, you can only put shields on half elf or human wizards (so gale works)

[White Rider]

warding bond isn't great either btw. You're still taking the full damage. It's just being split between 2 characters. It's even buffed in BG3 compared to tabletop and it's still not good. You can kinda cheese it to get some use out of it by casting it on someone and then leaving the caster in camp as there's no range limit here, but that runs the risk of accidentally killing the caster back at camp.

Sure you can revive them, but those revivify scrolls are gonna start getting costly if you're doing that all the time

[Recjawjind]

Originally posted by White Rider:

warding bond isn't great either btw. You're still taking the full damage. It's just being split between 2 characters. It's even buffed in BG3 compared to tabletop and it's still not good. You can kinda cheese it to get some use out of it by casting it on someone and then leaving the caster in camp as there's no range limit here, but that runs the risk of accidentally killing the caster back at camp.

Sure you can revive them, but those revivify scrolls are gonna start getting costly if you're doing that all the time

You haven't actually put warding bond on an abju wizard and it shows.

It's beyond busted broken because of how it interacts with arcane ward.
It halves all damage, meaning your ward is twice as effective, which reduces the damage of any hit below 48 (at level 12) to 0, meaning 0 damage is transferred to the other character.

Edit: Since you take 0 damage from everything, that also means you never make concentration saves.
Use glyph of warding, shield and counterspell to keep your arcane ward at/near max.

[victorvnv]

Originally posted by Haru:

I've decided to just drop using him entirely. It does not seem to matter how much set up I do or how much prep' I do before a fight. He is guaranteed to be targeted and killed repeatedly. I even use him as a buffer now, or to set things on the ground before a fight starts, but he's either picked off by snipers, jumped over to and murdered by NPCs, etc.

Yes, I do try and get him out of range, and I use things like mage armor and mirror image.

Oh and he misses attacks CONSTANTLY.

He feels like a wasted character slot.

Honestly you kinda have to multi class everyone but Karlach and Laezel if you want them to be any useful end game.

-Astarion is best as the assassin/ gloomstalker as if he goes pure rogue or his default pure rogue trickster he is useless

- Shadowheart is best as Tempest cleric/ sorcerer as pure cleric makes her useless

- Gale is best as wizard/ fighter with 2 levels fighter for extra action and heavy armor prdicency

- Wyll is best as warlock/ paladin for the smite

You want to make Gale good, give him 1-2 levels of fighter put heavy armor and watch him destroy stuff

[Recjawjind]

Originally posted by victorvnv:

Honestly you kinda have to multi class everyone but Karlach and Laezel if you want them to be any useful end game.

-Astarion is best as the assassin/ gloomstalker as if he goes pure rogue or his default pure rogue trickster he is useless

- Shadowheart is best as Tempest cleric/ sorcerer as pure cleric makes her useless

- Gale is best as wizard/ fighter with 2 levels fighter for extra action and heavy armor prdicency

- Wyll is best as warlock/ paladin for the smite

You want to make Gale good, give him 1-2 levels of fighter put heavy armor and watch him destroy stuff

And miss out on 6th level slots? I don't think so.
And besides, he can easily get heavy armor levels of AC without needing to wear heavy armor, while also increasing his spellsave DC from a chest that boosts it.

My gale, abju wizard 12, is literally invincible. He hasn't taken a single point of damage since hitting level 10.
He has AC in the 20s, and literally thousands of effective HP, with a spell save DC in the high 20s to 30.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by Recjawjind:

Originally posted by White Rider:

warding bond isn't great either btw. You're still taking the full damage. It's just being split between 2 characters. It's even buffed in BG3 compared to tabletop and it's still not good. You can kinda cheese it to get some use out of it by casting it on someone and then leaving the caster in camp as there's no range limit here, but that runs the risk of accidentally killing the caster back at camp.

Sure you can revive them, but those revivify scrolls are gonna start getting costly if you're doing that all the time

You haven't actually put warding bond on an abju wizard and it shows.

It's beyond busted broken because of how it interacts with arcane ward.
It halves all damage, meaning your ward is twice as effective, which reduces the damage of any hit below 48 (at level 12) to 0, meaning 0 damage is transferred to the other character.

Edit: Since you take 0 damage from everything, that also means you never make concentration saves.
Use glyph of warding, shield and counterspell to keep your arcane ward at/near max.

Yeah the interaction feels wrong - like it shouldn't halve and then reduce and then share damage in that exact order for sure.

Basically any other order wouldn't be quite so broken

[Recjawjind]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Yeah the interaction feels wrong - like it shouldn't halve and then reduce and then share damage in that exact order for sure.

Basically any other order wouldn't be quite so broken

It does make sense that things are halved first before going trough your ward. It's simply larians change to ward that makes this broken, normal 5e abju wizard doesn't have this.

I was on a VC with a friend who was also playing (and is also a long-time dnd player), and the SECOND i met gale and read that feature while levelling, I told her "i have a feeling this is gonna be BROKEN later", and I was right on the money.

It feels pretty bad till you can reach double digit values in ward around level 5, but then it just scales exponentially.

[Slashaar]

Still in Act 1, after you clear the grove quests you can buy a +1 Robe from the shop keep to give him a "non-armor" AC bump as well. Unlimited Dex bonus on that. Combined with the bulwark gloves and he doesn't need a shield.

Though I don't think he contributes enough in combat so he's sidelined. Compared to my oathbreaker paladin + Shadowheart + Wyll + Astarion with a stock of good scrolls, various throwables, and arrows it's much more enjoyable. Since all characters can switch to ranged on the fly I can pull up things like teleportation arrows, drop my tank (my pally) into combat instantly, then drop sneak attack from Astarion constantly since the enemy will be threatened while he is not. He gets boxed in? Scroll of misty step, now he's not. Then you run Wyll with Elixir of bloodlust to literally pick off every low hp enemy very quickly.
But 1000s of play styles, pick what suits you best.