Bests builds never leave home without true strike.

Tried SMG and slingshot but somehow I cleared this with turrets and harvesting. Ended up with high speed, armour from 12 structures and high regen from Fairy and regen potion. With a few boxing gloves, just running like a rat in circles, visiting my medical turret from time to time. barely killing anything.

Get that bitch a stick, bitches can apparently kill everything in the world with enough stick.

"There is no hole in your party that you cannot fill with a bard" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

My favorite colour is water

Thank you!

Broke menthara’s oath of devotion by stabbing he who was after bringing him the ledger. No scratch killing needed

I gotta give a special shout to crossbow on Renegade. Not even because the crossbow itself is good, but it makes Shurikens show up in the shop and those things rock with him!

Bard 10 vs fighter 3? Bard gets magical secrets but fighter gets champion and when paired with the deadshot bow and that Act 1 sword thats a crit on a 17. That math might outweigh level 10 bard.

This was my first character and I had no idea how powerful it would be for a while. 12 lvs of bard though. I kept charisma at 16 and went full dual crossbow early on. I used some kind of construct gloves for a long time to get advantage with sharpshooter. I had 24 dex in the end. Using the mirror of what was it again, I’ve forgotten? And also being a deep gnome there was a pair of gloves that boosted dex +2 only for gnomes. I got lucky on my race choice. Advantage on stealth worked great with greater invisibility, though I probably should have taken proficiency in it and I didn’t. 2 Ranged flourish, arcane acuity, hold person/monster/confuse etc as a bonus action with 100% accuracy or close! You know I went first with 24 dex. No shield as gnome but that’s a 7 AC dex boost on medium armor of agility.

Important to note that not only is gale the best origin companion for this build because of the aforementioned reasons, he can also get a permanent advantage on concentration checks buff early in act 2 fairly easily. This coupled rebuilding him to start as a sorcerer (con save prof.) makes him a great choice to avoid dropping those costly concentration casts.

hell yeah

I started an astarian honor mode playthrough after watching this

I started my first honour mode run yesterday and happened to be doing swords bard archer. So this timing couldn't be better! Your videos have been immensely helpful in helping me (someone new to DnD) learn about the mechanics and systems in the game. There is SO much to know! Your videos condense down the information into a concise and witty format! Keep up the excellent work and I look forward to learning more!

Weapons and equipment tier list next. It's the last tier list i can imagine lol

I have completed this game many times and even one honour mode run and a couple of tactician and I have never used minor illusion.

Great video

The answer to "what does best even mean" is simple: the best build is the build that will cause you to uninstall when you get to the doppelganger fight in the gauntlet 😂

Great. Jeep It on

The problem for me was action economy. Mu ranged character couldn't use these for sneak attack or ambush iirc. I also don't believe they could be used for off hand attacks with a hand crossbow. Most of the time, a character should have a better option for their action on their turn. I think these are best as utility items in a pinch.

Beer make me play good 🍺🍻🍺🍻

Welp, started out, spent 40 minutes in char gen, got crit by imps repeatedly, and died on nautiloid. Good start.

Your videos are so good but they are so dangerous. They make me want to start over 😭

Globe is so op it’s silly. If the enemy ai simply shoved the party out of it would be far more balanced. Too many explosive barrels + globe = unscathed party and dead Raphael. Only time I used it on honor mode, I did not want a party wipe that late.

Hey cephalopocalypse, can I ask you to look more into Subtle spell metamagic ? It's much better than the wiki or game suggest. In addition to being able to cast spells while silenced, it also make spells silent, and thus enable you to throw fireballs and eldritch blasts out of sight without triggering combat. Out of sight is important here as obviously attacking a character while in their red field of view even with a subtle spell will trigger combat, but out of sight, it won't. I do recommend testing each spell, most work, some don't. I HIGHLY recommend it, yeah quickened is obviously better, but subtle spell is fun and cheap!

Thanks you for video

Light domain shadowhart? Heretic

Flesh to stone deserves its own tier for how damn bad it is

Seriously. Fuck this game.

Taking a momment to leave a comment.

Although not 100% optimal, I'd also like to give a shoutout to 2 levels of paladin instead of fighter. The bonus action heal is awesome (with Oath of the Ancients), being able to smite if you get into combat is awesome, and also it makes dual wielding more fun because it's more chances to smite. I did that instead of fighter for my first run through, and it was extremely fun! Also it's another way to get command for the band of the mystic scoundrel.

Lore bard video next 👀???

Imagine ranking confusion and ice storm so low.

Wait here you say 10 bard and two fighter but in your sword bard video it’s like a split between rogue fighter and bard so which is it?

Ceph, what is "Astarion's unique ability" that you mentioned? His bite? Can you explain how that helps this build and when would you use it?

Great vid as always! One thing to not sleep on is just because you have slashing flourishes doesn't mean its not worth picking up a few Arrows of Many Targets. They can be situationally better than flourishes for weaker enemies but also help make your bard charges go further into a fight.

Is it cheating that my favorite class/build is the strongest 😅. I loved the more in-depth breakdown of gear at the end.

does angelic slumber work with Sanctuary?

Ranged slashing flourish should get -5 to attack roll to compensate it damage early.

The open hand monk is actually weaker than it’s maximized potential. The actual best version of the open hand monk is four into rogue two into fighter and six into monk You want the two into fighter so that way you can gain access to both heavy armor and shields, as well as action surge, and having the rogue ability up level increases the sneak damage you can do. See you can get incredibly high AC way higher than anything you can get with a wisdom built monk Especially if you get the legendary resistance armor from the teefling Smith, whose name I forget. And by not having to worry about wisdom that opens you up to being able to put into more strength, constitution and dexterity personally, I put constitution up to 15 getting to 16 with Tavern brawler. And then I put strength up to 17 getting it to 18 with auntie Ethel’s hair. Then getting up to 20 using the magic mirror. And then 22 using the permanent strength vitality potion. And if I temporarily need to go higher, I can just use elixir of hill giant strength to get it up to 23 or 27. Temporarily. And I also put 14 into dexterity so I had at least some decent initiative and I think I still wisdom up to 12 so I had some resistance to crowd control. By the end of the game, I was so tank and putting out so much damage. Basically nothing could touch me. And thanks to action surge it’s also capable of at least one per short, rest quick burst damage especially if you drink a potion of speed or have haste cast upon you by a local support in the party. I was able to kill the undead dragon in literally the first turn in one of my runs because I literally went essentially three times in a single turn plus all my bonus actions. It is hands-down, one of the most overpowered classes in the game, only rivaled by one other And that is a necromancer build six into necromancer six into spore druid with the duel wield feat. aside from the bonuses you can get from two different staffs with shillelagh from the Druid combined with the necrotic damage. It adds to your attacks. It’s actually quite a competent male character. if necessary in the event you somehow run out of your slots but that’s just the ultimate fallback but still having it is great and still worth mentioning because you’re still good even in the worst case scenario Obviously, as a necromancer, you get the necromancer of Faye all of the pets in the game as well as your own fungal, zombie summons and normal zombie summons by the end of the game I had over 20 summons at a time I was literally a one man army. But it doesn’t stop there with that character specifically you also spec into fully the illithid tree. You also put on some pieces of equipment that give reverberation on damage instance and then you combine that with magic missile and that with culling the weak and if you do the right math you can clear out entire rooms in a single cast or two never mind the additional damage that your summons both deal and soak up. With the right equipment the magic missile alone focused on a single target could do well over 100 damage per cast and if the NPC has 130 health the week you could do over 130 effective damage. And again that’s just from the missile never mind all the summons. I had a campaign where I ran both of these two characters together The caster in back in the Monk in front and we absolutely obliterated honor mode and never even got remotely close to ever losing.

I've been playing this build for my honor mode run and it really does trivialize most combats as well as give all the awesome conversation skills. Awesome build, thanks for sharing it again!

Thank you!

is the war caster feat worth getting? I had the impression it would be good when casting a concentration spell and maintaining that concentration while fighting in wild shape form.

I just lost my honor mode run to the lift of the gauntlet of shar not working properly. Starting up a new save and wanted to try something different than monk or fighter. This video was timed perfectly!

"as a general rule if your hit chance is less than 30% don't try it".....unless it's Shadowheart. She could still miss on a 110% chance to hit.

I don’t think any item or temporary boost from non spell should be included in a build,because they all require some work to search for and not inherently built in the classes that u can always play with

Definitely thought darkness would be D and roaring thunder would be S+… wack

Why would you get alert on gloomstalker/assasin? I never do and Astarion pretty much always wins initiative. I also don't like limiting my dex on that build to just 18. Ethel's hair is great for PC but without it, I just increase my dex score with my second feat and I use graceful cloth (with mage armor for better survivability) to boost it to 20 until I get the mirror bonus in act 3. Then it's Armor of Agility turn.

Hello! I have an idea. Maybe you will test some kind of multiclass with wild magic sorcerer? For example with rogue?

Wait...what is the final boss bug for the thrower classes?