Force Conduit Battlemage Build

[daveyfunk]

I've always liked Abjuration Wizard but it can be a bit limiting on causing damage on your turn. Force conduit, particularly with Skinburster, seems to offer a more proactive approach and more flexibility in being a melee based magic user.

I'm theory crafting and before jumping in I'm wondering thoughts on this build...I've seen the Warlock/Barb builds and I'm not big on Barb as this reduces your magic potential. Build as follows;

6 Swords Bard for extra attack
4 Sorc for AoA, metamagic, con save
1 War Cleric for War Priest, heavy armour, weapon prof and utility spells
1 Wizard for haste and other supporting spells like minions, mirror image, fire shield (choosing cold) etc...you could bump Sorc to 5 if wanted

This offers 3 attacks per turn - 4 with the limited war priest charges and could add another with the terms granted by GWM as a feat. High AC with heavy armour and supporting spells such as mirror image. Stacks of DR from force conduit and could be increased by heavy armour master feat and certain armours. Retal damage from AoA and fire shield (if choosing 1 level wizard). Spell damage with Bard and Sorc and choosing charisma as main magic stat

This offers a really flexible build

[wtiger27]

Try it and see. I enjoy doing play runs with a party made up of 4 chars with the same class. And while wizards can be strong. They need other class types early on esp. to survive. I found a party of all wizards...suck. But I only play now on Honor Mode Rule set for Bosses.

So I don't think you will have issues with the wizard no matter what class combination you pick. As long as you have other strong char classes n your party.

The main goal should be, do I enjoy playing that char?

And nothing wrong with trying out a class. You can always reclass ones you don't enjoy playing. The cost is super cheap.

[CBonduMiel2]

would be great if skinburster damage wasn't so bad tbh.

also check force conduit on the bg3 wiki. it quite a bad status for what it does.

case in point :

Damage TypesBludgeoning, Damage TypesPiercing, and Damage TypesSlashing damage against the affected entity is reduced by 1 per turn remaining.
If the entity takes damage while it has 5 or more turns remaining, it deals 1d4Damage TypesForce damage in a 6 m / 20 ft radius.
Force Conduit has a maximum Duration: 7 turns.

and in notes :

The 1d4Damage TypesForce damage is apparently only triggered after a direct melee Damage TypesBludgeoning, Damage TypesPiercing, or Damage TypesSlashing damage high enough to surpass your damage reduction and resistances.
Force Conduit reduces physical damage received even via Warding Bond, but it won't trigger Force retribution damage as it requires a direct melee hit.
Like Lightning Charges, all the charges are consumed when the Force area damage is triggered.

so the heavier armor you have the harder it is to trigger the force damage and force condition would only reduce damage by 7 at most and the hit to trigger the additionnal 1d4 would need to exceed your resistances and damage reduction, and since skinburster is a low damage weapon for both act 2 and act 3, it's unlikely you'll get much from it.

Tbh, you're best to use abjuration wizard in melee with melee spell if you want to do that or wait until patch 8 so we can finally get bladesinger as a wizard sub-class.

Bladesinger is like the dps version of abjuration wizard. abjuration wizard being the tanky wizard class that can fight in both melee and at range. in honor mode, i would personnally prefer being tankier than dealing more damage tbh.

[daveyfunk]

Originally posted by CBonduMiel2:

would be great if skinburster damage wasn't so bad tbh.

also check force conduit on the bg3 wiki. it quite a bad status for what it does.

case in point :

Damage TypesBludgeoning, Damage TypesPiercing, and Damage TypesSlashing damage against the affected entity is reduced by 1 per turn remaining.
If the entity takes damage while it has 5 or more turns remaining, it deals 1d4Damage TypesForce damage in a 6 m / 20 ft radius.
Force Conduit has a maximum Duration: 7 turns.

and in notes :

The 1d4Damage TypesForce damage is apparently only triggered after a direct melee Damage TypesBludgeoning, Damage TypesPiercing, or Damage TypesSlashing damage high enough to surpass your damage reduction and resistances.
Force Conduit reduces physical damage received even via Warding Bond, but it won't trigger Force retribution damage as it requires a direct melee hit.
Like Lightning Charges, all the charges are consumed when the Force area damage is triggered.

so the heavier armor you have the harder it is to trigger the force damage and force condition would only reduce damage by 7 at most and the hit to trigger the additionnal 1d4 would need to exceed your resistances and damage reduction, and since skinburster is a low damage weapon for both act 2 and act 3, it's unlikely you'll get much from it.

Tbh, you're best to use abjuration wizard in melee with melee spell if you want to do that or wait until patch 8 so we can finally get bladesinger as a wizard sub-class.

Bladesinger is like the dps version of abjuration wizard. abjuration wizard being the tanky wizard class that can fight in both melee and at range. in honor mode, i would personnally prefer being tankier than dealing more damage tbh.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, the Force Conduit wouldn't be for damage and it's simply to stack DR where FC also stacks with other sources of DR, similar to arcane ward in that respect. From what I understand, the retal damage from FC doesn't trigger if you use something like blade ward/warding bond, which I will

Essentially, Warding Bond halves the damage before any DR applies and you can build 7 DR from Skinburster pretty easily if you can attack multiple times. On top of that, AoA also gives temp life pool and so the Warding Bond halves damage, the DR applies and then the hit would affect the temp health pool before your actual healthpool, which makes a character pretty tanky.

The difference between this and Abjuration is you still have melee power in multiple attacks and you still have AoA at full level as you're full caster with highest spell slots and also fire shield. So you have the same retal damage as Abjuration Wizard but slightly less
DR from Arcane Ward. That said, Arcane Ward is far too OP later levels and you don't need all that DR.

At full Arcane Ward, considering if you take 1 level Sorc for AOA and possibly 1 level Cleric, you'd have 20 stacks of Arcane Ward and so 20 DR. With Force Conduit and heavy armor master and any armor that further offers DR you'd have around 12 DR. It's not far off Arcane Ward but much more flexible as you have metamagic, multiple attacks with melee etc. Abjuration Wizard basically becomes a character where you get one attack and then you're running about to proc retal damage from opportunity attacks. The FC build I outline above is still full caster but has SO much more you can do on your turn and also all the retal damage of Abjuration Wizard but just a bit less DR

[Raz]

You'd need to learn a Spell to make enemies have disadvantage on attacking anyone but you because if the enemies cannot damage you, they won't bother trying to damage you which is the downside of running Abjuration + Force Conduit.

You'd have to sit in a sweet spot where they can still potentially hurt you if they roll high enough, but not needing to roll a Nat20. If not, they will completely ignore the character to attack someone else. If lacking any options due to distance or just not in combat, they will just sit there and do nothing because the AI isn't smart enough to think that if they hit you, they can cause a stack of Arcane Ward to disappear which allows them to do damage eventually assuming you just do not cast another Abjuration spell.

[daveyfunk]

Originally posted by Raz:

You'd need to learn a Spell to make enemies have disadvantage on attacking anyone but you because if the enemies cannot damage you, they won't bother trying to damage you which is the downside of running Abjuration + Force Conduit.

You'd have to sit in a sweet spot where they can still potentially hurt you if they roll high enough, but not needing to roll a Nat20. If not, they will completely ignore the character to attack someone else. If lacking any options due to distance or just not in combat, they will just sit there and do nothing because the AI isn't smart enough to think that if they hit you, they can cause a stack of Arcane Ward to disappear which allows them to do damage eventually assuming you just do not cast another Abjuration spell.

Either way, you're the last character standing. The difference is that you're still a direct threat on your turn and much more than Abjuration Wizard which is limited in what they can do on their turn. Casting haste or some other concentration spell should attract some attention, but I agree with you about the AI. Essentially though, it has pretty much the tankyness of Abjuration Wizard but SO much more on it's turn. You could easily add CC into the mix and so it could have high end minions/summons, AC, retal damage on enemy attack, multiple melee attacks and spell potency

[CBonduMiel2]

i wouldn't say it has the tankyness of abjuration wizard tbh. 7 hit point worth of reduction is not worth the 25 that abjuration wizard get. also the advantage of being a wizard is that you can also just use aoe spell should the need arise to damage more than 1 enemy at once and there is plenty of melee range spell, which you can use with daredevil glove to make them not have disavantage on their attack roll should they have one. You're just making a sub-par abjuration wizard at that point. it's not as good nor will it ever be. If you want something like an abjuration wizard but that has more damage just wait for patch 8 and make a bladesinger wizard it's essentially the same thing as what you are trying to do. Plus if you don't want to wait there is plenty of bladesinger wizard mods in the in-game mod manager store menu for you to choose from based on dnd 5e. You could always tried those. There is even a mod that transform baldur's gate 3 into dnd 5e in the game mod manager menu. it doesn't take that much effort to look for it.

personally i'll just wait for the bladesinger subclass whenever patch 8 comes out to have something more toward the offensive side. But what you are trying to do is not as good as either of what i've just said. Not on paper and not in practise.