What is the hardest fight in the game?

[KalkiKrosah]

Probably was asked before but figured I would bring it up again. What fights stand out?

[[TG] zac]

Originally posted by PJ:

Originally posted by Slav Mcgopnik:

You also can’t shove people or otherwise push them around in tabletop 5e, which makes getting some out from under the globe much harder.

Can't I just say to the DM that I want to shove someone?

You can as the guy above me pointed out.

Problem is in 5e unless your doing it against some scrawny caster you likely won't be successful since a lot of the monsters have a high save.

In the older systems and those spawned off them instead of "advantage" and just rolling twice no matter how many things you stacked many of those systems had different types of bonuses or penalties (circumstance, magic, item sometimes more) with each giving a solid + to your roll or a solid - to the enemies save.

This meant with the proper team work to help/buff yourself & debuff the enemy you could end up with a very solid swing in your favor numbers wise instead of just rolling twice.

Many of those systems like pathfinder 1-2e also allow you to crit on more then just a nat 20 and will have either a variable number based on the weapon (older d20 systems and 3.5 D&D usually did so on a 18 or up) or by how much you exceed the check (pathfinder 2e does it if you exceed a check by 10 or more or on a nat 20) and will allow characters to do additional things on a crit.

For instance a lot of weapons like staves, whips etc... will have the "trip" property on them (or push, shove, knockdown etc...).

So on a crit you can make that check for free..... or if you crit on doing that check you can throw in some damage...

And unlike 5e most creatures won't have an insanely high save for it so it is more likely to work.

Most of those other systems also have feats broken up into different categories (Class, general, Racial etc...) and you get feats more often but they will be limited to a type.

One of the best general feats in the pathfinder 2e if you are trained in athletics is called "Titan Wrestler".
It lets you grapple against things 2 sizes beyond what you would normally be able to.

Its hilarious to see a gnome, halfling etc... trip up a giant......

[Suiho]

The battle with Commander Zhalk as Shadowheart (MC) if your goal is kill him. Because you have Shadowheart+Lae'Zel+Us only. And you have crap equipment, not many skills and crap character's parameters. The difficulty of other battles is reduced by equipment which you can buy or loot, three companions and many skills or features which every character have.

[attiladafun]

Originally posted by .Shiifuu:

VICONIA, FAR THE MOST HARDEST. ( So much enemies asf), hard in any difficult

Regardless of the difficulty, so many enemies cannot support 4 little people, no matter how they are armed, built, there are an absurd number of clouds of blindness per turn. And even more difficult if you take Shadowheart (although I think after the romance scene in act 3 on the beach he stops being afraid of wolves)

They were super easy. Lay down a wall of fire, an ice storm, then some lightning attacks. I took 3 casters and Shart with me. It was the easiest fight in Act 3 for me.

[Namdoolb]

For me there's a couple of fights that stand out as being memorably difficult the first time I encountered them.
That's the metric I'd prefer to judge by..... purely because any fight gets so much easier when you've been there a couple of times & know what to do.

So, my top 3, in no particular order
- the goblin encampment (specifically the outside area, when you come back out after killing the goblin leaders). The sheer number of enemies you face in that area can be overwhelming. Given the level you're likely to be at that time (3-4) it's very easy for that fight to spiral into an unwinnable scenario.

-the attack on moonrise towers. If you go through the front door you're in a chokepoint vs a well balanced spread of ranged, melee, and casters... many of them in superior positions.
For most players, this will probably be the first time in their playthrough that they experience having proper nasty crowd control effects used against them. The fight gets even tougher if you are intent on keeping jaheira alive.

-third is probably the steel watch foundry (there's a lot of contenders for the third spot). Your party is very high level at this point, so can deal with a lot of stuff very well, but still, there's some very challenging opponents in that area.

[Gob]

One of the toughest and, for me, funnest fights is to kill Gortash the first time you meet him i.e. no destroying the foundry first.

This is my favourite fight because you can tackle it in so many ways, unlike many of the other fights, like Orin, that have pretty much just one approach.

In my last play-through, I killed Gortash quickly and then escaped with flight, drawing the enemies to the back of the castle. Then I snuck in with my thief and looted his body for the netherstone.

[Morvana]

Originally posted by KalkiKrosah:

Probably was asked before but figured I would bring it up again. What fights stand out?

For any fight in the game there is some tools and spells making them quite easy, it's part of the fun to find them.

If you begin to abuse the AI nothing is hard, just tedious.

[Grozm]

I would say Ansur, but only in HM.

[ChaoticDragox]

For me, the hardest fight is Kethric 2nd phase of 2nd fight. No matter how prepared I am and how strong my builds are, the fight takes ages to beat and he can easily take down entire party.

Luckily there are ways to prevent some of his attacks, but still... my least Favourite fight in the game.

[Nightlistic]

I would say the Dice. They hate me. I fail more times than succeed with them.

[Lightseeker]

Since nobody mentions it id add the orin fight

[FunkyMonkey]

Battle against Restartitis.

[Popsicles]

Many of the fights are difficult if you do not use cheese, barrels, min/max-optimization-one trick pony BS.

In Act 1 the Cave fight saving the Zhents can be quite tough to pull off, especially if you are tying to save the two Zhents.

Act 2 - Thorm, Gyth Ambush and the Moonrise Tower battle took me multiple attempts.

I really haven't found much of Act 3 to be difficult. Once you hit levels 11 and 12 and have a good amount of magic items, most encounters are not that challenging. I would vote the Cazador fight being a bit more difficult than others. Being level 12 made the Steel Watch, Gortash, et al. pretty easy in my opinion.

I'm surprised people consider Raphael as one of the hardest fights. He can't walk on ice. I blasted him with Otiluke's Freezing Sphere and he spent the whole fight falling down as he tried to navigate the Ice.

As someone stated, the hardest enemy in Act 3 is the frame rate and number of glitches and bugs.

[Exarch_Alpha]

Act 3 fights had to be done as puzzles, since you reach the last level pretty fast. So instead of caring about deeper stuff like resistances you just have to find out how to pump maximal damage output.

[Schared]

Originally posted by KalkiKrosah:

Probably was asked before but figured I would bring it up again. What fights stand out?

As the others have commented "it depends". Class, Race, Partysize, Difficulty and Gamestate are factors.
Looking at the people that have attempted solo honour runs id say any super squishy setup like Wizard in one of the earlier Act 1 fights. You are robbed of the mayority of your toolkit and are hoping for good rolls on attacks and dodges.
Personally most of my honour mode runs end Act 1 in any of the multi-enemy fights.
You can skip a vast majority of encounters, but personally I would chose Flind on Level 3 solo or Auntie Ethels recaps.
The first just deals insane damage and is tanky enough to not be easily beaten by normal means - I usually use the Ogre warhorn and hide, hope they dont all get paralysed and maddened. And the Redcaps are a gamble because if you dont have the means to sleep them or discover that the sunlit wetlands are a swamp you always start surprised and 2 of them cast "hold person" which is pretty much a death sentence.

Any multi-enemy fight with excessive hp or cc is a quick way back to character creation.

[Asiorak777]

Originally posted by Namdoolb:

For me there's a couple of fights that stand out as being memorably difficult the first time I encountered them.
That's the metric I'd prefer to judge by..... purely because any fight gets so much easier when you've been there a couple of times & know what to do.

So, my top 3, in no particular order
- the goblin encampment (specifically the outside area, when you come back out after killing the goblin leaders). The sheer number of enemies you face in that area can be overwhelming. Given the level you're likely to be at that time (3-4) it's very easy for that fight to spiral into an unwinnable scenario.

-the attack on moonrise towers. If you go through the front door you're in a chokepoint vs a well balanced spread of ranged, melee, and casters... many of them in superior positions.
For most players, this will probably be the first time in their playthrough that they experience having proper nasty crowd control effects used against them. The fight gets even tougher if you are intent on keeping jaheira alive.

-third is probably the steel watch foundry (there's a lot of contenders for the third spot). Your party is very high level at this point, so can deal with a lot of stuff very well, but still, there's some very challenging opponents in that area.

For goblin fight you can poison the bathtub they're drinking from by using a stealthy character and then convince them that it wasnt you. My astarion was perfect for that. Some goblins will survive but you can make a quick work of them with Gale's fireball.

For moonrise towers you can easily kill most cultists involved in the siege while exploring moonrise before the ♥♥♥♥ goes down. Just stealth kill them, shove etc etc. The result is that basically almost no one shows up to the party. I mean hey, at this point you're kinda an infiltrator/saboteur so its not even out of character if you think about it.

For steelwatch foundry I dont know how to cheese it yet. Will try to figure something out during honour mode but for now im at the end of act 2.

Originally posted by Exarch_Alpha:

Act 3 fights had to be done as puzzles, since you reach the last level pretty fast. So instead of caring about deeper stuff like resistances you just have to find out how to pump maximal damage output.

Pretty much this. But this is also the reason why I dont understand people wanting Larian to "fix" the so called "exploits". When you look at it, BG3 is an immersive sim so by patching those cheese elements out you kinda take away the game's charm in my opinion. "Survival is all that matters" and you have the right tools to deal with anything (including nuking Raphael ) so dirty tactics seem alright in my book. I hope they'll lean harder towards this approach with their next game.

Enjoy the freedom that was given by the devs!