So what is the purpose of casters?

[NONAME]

I'm ~50 hours in and level 6 Sorcerer on Balanced difficulty.

Lae'zel hits for 15-20 damage with standard attacks, which she can do up to 4 per round + pommel. She seemingly dodges half of the attacks and has a truckload of health + high armor class for when she doesn't
She can destroy most strong enemies in 2 rounds by herself.

My character's strongest level 3 spell (Lighting Bolt) is 8-48 damage and consistently hits for also about 20-25 damage, can be used only 3 times per long rest and is very situational, because 9 times out of 10 it will hit one of my companions with its area of effect.

So aside from expanded dialog options due to high Charisma, what's the point of playing this gimp?

[Sciophyte]

Ever try to move an office chair on anything with deeper pile than a berber carpet? That'll teach you the purpose of casters real quick.

[Stiven]

Hmm, im only 20+ hours in, but i just cant find uses for any melee. All my fighting is done with sneak-sniping+summons from wizard and cleric. The fighter, mostly just afk whole fight, since if she run in the fight she only waste healing pots. In fact on tactic even 20 AC cleric being shreded so easily. It seems like the only way to play is to use summon and range attacks?

[Pancakeparty]

Spell management is confusing. It took me a bit to understand not to blow my whole spell slots on trash mobs.

[Kamiyama]

Originally posted by Trapmaker:

Originally posted by Kamiyama:

Don't use mages. Use melee fighters with mage slayer.

https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Mage+Slayer

You get a saving throw bonus and bonus attacks on them as a reaction. Mages = dead

The fact that:

1. Mages don't get their highest level spells due to level cap
2. Fighters get two bonus attacks
3. Mage slayer feat exists

Means that mages are at a huge disadvantage.

Then you add the fact that eldritch knights exist and can use spells AND get three attacks AND get mage slayer

All you need is eldritch knights and clerics to heal them

Except eldritch knights are terrible, If you're going to suggest people just run gishes instead at least tell them run something half decent like a trio of paladins.

Cantrip and attack each round isn't terrible.

Pallys are good sure but the "entire party of paladins" is an old meme from tabletop D&D. I like mage knights or "dark knights" they have style.

[Trapmaker]

Originally posted by Kamiyama:

Originally posted by Trapmaker:

Except eldritch knights are terrible, If you're going to suggest people just run gishes instead at least tell them run something half decent like a trio of paladins.

Cantrip and attack each round isn't terrible.

Pallys are good sure but the "entire party of paladins" is an old meme from tabletop D&D. I like mage knights or "dark knights" they have style.

> Cantrip and attack each round
> Good
Okay, So you just can't tell what's good and what's a trap option, Alright buddy.

[Gwynhara]

Originally posted by NONAME:

Some people have mentioned utility here, but it seems that if you explore Act 1 well, you can find rings and amulets for just about anything, from infinite Speak with the dead to Blink and Featherfall.

Yeah, in part it's true. In DnD, direct damage aspects of mages scale such that they become powerhouses late, but early they are mostly utility, control, buff/debuff characters. They're extremely useful for pushing fights, but you have to play them a very different way than most gamers are used to playing video game mages, because in the lower levels in DnD they are not primarily a DD class due to how spells work. This game is designed to focus players on low and mid-level character play, and in those levels the casters are more about controlling and pushing the fight, with select tide turning spells subject to the spell slot limit and so on, while in the later tabletop levels they really snowball into massive DD nightmare characters.

You can try to replicate some of the utility with items as you suggest, but it is nothing like the spellbook that a wizard has -- it's the ultimate toolkit, but you're not going to care about that if you're only interested in comparing DD to DD.

[Noctoculus]

Originally posted by Trapmaker:

Originally posted by Kamiyama:

Cantrip and attack each round isn't terrible.

Pallys are good sure but the "entire party of paladins" is an old meme from tabletop D&D. I like mage knights or "dark knights" they have style.

> Cantrip and attack each round
> Good
Okay, So you just can't tell what's good and what's a trap option, Alright buddy.

Witch Bolt and run away for 10 turns is the new meta.

[Trapmaker]

Originally posted by Noctoculus:

Originally posted by Trapmaker:

> Cantrip and attack each round
> Good
Okay, So you just can't tell what's good and what's a trap option, Alright buddy.

Witch Bolt and run away for 10 turns is the new meta.

I dont know about that but cantrip and single attack is an awful gimmick, First of all its hands down beat by breaking with fighter at 6 and picking up sorcerer for quick casting, Secondly none of the stuff built to support it like greenflame blade is in the game at the moment, Thirdly post level 10 (11 in bg3) it's straight up a trap option since you can just attack three times for more damage anyway, as for the 'utility' of having a ranged option, Bows and crossbows exist, and you're better off just building your party with someone can actually work at range anyway. I mean if people are playing EK because its cool and they like fantasy of being a wizard knight fine that's cool, But you shouldn't tell people it's a strong subclass because it's really not.

[Archon]

D&D is the most flawed and worthless system, there's a reason why modern RPGs are based LOOSELY on it. Such a trash ruleset, same for any edition of D&D really.

[JustSmile]

It's like ya never played any form of DND. Sure, BG3 is cut down 5e - and 5e is simplified to hell and back already - but some things don't change. One of those things is martial classes do a lot of consistent single target damage while casters shine in control and support. Also in creativity, but that never works in crpg.

[wombat93]

Originally posted by DaiReith:

Lae is there to murder things. A wizard is there to make her murder things better. Haste, counterspell, control....there is a reason a classic party (warrior, rogue, cleric, wizard) is so effective!

Early on I felt my spellcasters were pretty weak, but it's slowly getting better. Fireball and better spell levels help. There's the other spells to spice things up in terms of gimmicks, too.

Still early on, I preferred a balanced party: Paladin (main character), Shadowheart (cleric), Asterioin (rogue duties), Gale (yerr a wizard).
I like that balanced layout because of a variety of capabilities.

I'd like to experiment later on with more non-traditional party comps and builds, but I'm going vanilla for my first run.

[Aphex]

yeah casters are complete trash since they only have one action and they either miss or enemy resists every single time. increasing abilities doesn't do anything either. dnd is just trash. if there was no resist/hitchance maybe they would be decent in some parts but as it is they are garbage.

shadowheart for example can't hit the broadside of a barn, all spells and cc misses or get's resisted at 18 wisdom against 10wis/10cha npcs. i did some fights with her being utterly useless where she missed every single cast/hit, then i respecced her into fighter and everything was easy mode. gale is on permanent camp duty.

all of this is nothing vs thief though, he soloed the entire goblin camp with stealth quick action and later picked up gloomstalker for ultimate overkill.

[Pozhinateli]

Originally posted by NONAME:

I'm ~50 hours in and level 6 Sorcerer on Balanced difficulty.

Lae'zel hits for 15-20 damage with standard attacks, which she can do up to 4 per round + pommel. She seemingly dodges half of the attacks and has a truckload of health + high armor class for when she doesn't
She can destroy most strong enemies in 2 rounds by herself.

My character's strongest level 3 spell (Lighting Bolt) is 8-48 damage and consistently hits for also about 20-25 damage, can be used only 3 times per long rest and is very situational, because 9 times out of 10 it will hit one of my companions with its area of effect.

So aside from expanded dialog options due to high Charisma, what's the point of playing this gimp?

DnD is balanced for 20 lvl cap. This game have 12 lvl cap and that create problem since caster getting powerful at higher lvls.

In this there is no point of any caster in exception of cleric for resurrection/heal/other utilities.

[cl656]

i came to the conclusion during Act 2 that Paladin is the best melee fighter. While Cleric is the best caster.

[Menagerie]

Originally posted by General Vuxensaft:

Lae'zel can hit one target. You can hit many. Also, Lae'zel has 0 utility. You can featherfall/dimension door/knock/disguise/minor illusion/confused large groups of enemies/paralyze large groups of enemies. I could go on. You are never going to beat her on one target, she is never going to beat you on many. Its how the game works.

/thread

Laez'el can hit 3 targets by attack and however many you can hit with a thrown bottle.
You get so many scrolls that utility is covered. My party is a bard doing dual weilding, a barbarian, a rogue, and a fighter... and I don't feel like I'm missing any tools.