THE best cantrip in the game, hands down, is guidance. Eldritch blast is just a damage spell... it's fine, its good, it's really good. But there are sooooooo many things outside of combat here and guidance helps on all of them. I know everyone loves Shadowheart, but her purpose in life isn't to be drooled over, it is to cast guidance.
@@jankodes197 Which is one reason that amulet is so nice. Enhance takes a spell slot too though, so I don't use it nearly as often. Only if it's a very difficult check. Also worth noting that more companions than just Shadowheart can learn guidance.
Jahira can also cast Guidance, the only issue is that she comes into party kinda late (act 3), and she's nowhere near efficient healer as Shadowheart (cleric).
I mentioned Guidance is my Warlock vid the other day and upcoming cleric video. I forgot to include it here and thats definitely on me. It is incredible.
something to note about magic missile, it's amazing against other spellcasters because it can break concentration because each dart is considered to be it's own separate source of damage they have to roll a con save for their concentration spells for each dart
They also great if the enemy is not in line of sight, or there are obstacles blocking the path of normal projectiles. The magic missiles will always find their target
Magic Missile was always one of the best spells even in early BG\IW games, where fighting spellcasters was lot more common. It had quick attack so you could use it to interrupt enemy spellcasters because some endgame spells took like 2-3 turns to cast. In BG3 I found melee fighters to be lot more effective, but in BG2 and IW1-2, mages were insanely powerful because you had Power Words, Time Stop, Wail of Banshee, etc. If you ever fought (Demi)Lich(es) in BG2 you know exactly what I am talking about.
Glyph. Of. Warding. For all the reasons Chromatic Orb, Fireball, Ice Storm, Vicious Mockery, and Command are good; this spell can also all do with a single memorization. It offers various damage types, has big AoE, can sleep enemies without relying on hit die (all are dex save vs effect), and can be placed on the ground as a trap to be set off when an enemy crosses, or used as a direct instant AoE. I love Glyph of Warding in tabletop, loved it in the first two Baldur's Gate games, and love it in this one.
Slow is definitely worth mentioning. Lowering their AC while also limiting them to one action per turn is pretty huge, and affect 6 enemies with one cast.
That's nothing compared to what a twin Hasted Karlach + storm cleric Shadowheart can do over the course of 10 turns. Storm cleric Shadowheart gets to use call lightning twice per turn if she's Hasted. Give her the proper items too and she'll be stacking up lightning charges for even more damage. @@samlambert4770
Ray of frost is super helpful out of combat if you’re in an area where the ground is smoldering. You can cast it on the ground and pass through the area freely since it’ll put out the smaller flames. Used it a ton while saving folks in the goblin ravaged inn. Had Gale following me around so I wouldn’t take constant fire damage.
My favorite spell is enlarge/reduce. Im playing a tavern brawler berserker barb and with that spell active on my barb i can pick up and throw lots of a different enemies. Ton of fun.
Hey, thank you! I kinda stumbled into a tavern brawler barbarian when trying out Karlach, and I'm having a blast, very OP. But didn't think of using enlarge and what effect that would have on her throwing ability. Very excited to try it out tonight!
Ice knife is castable when silenced, so it's great for when enemies spam silence on your casters. You can only see that it works when silenced if you hit T, so even the wikis have missed it
For me, I really like guidance, friendship, and eldritch blast. Guidance is good all around for skill checks, friendship is good unless you are on higher difficulties, and eldritch blast is eldritch blast. For spells, bless is such a strong buff imo. It puts in work.
I've found myself using the following spells with overwhelming frequency at level 4: chromatic orb, magic missle, guiding bolt, bless and of course friends/guidance for non-combat. I like the idea of control spells and bane but I feel like fights so far benefit more from just bursting down key targets.
A few things to add regarding "Aid". The fact that it adds to your health point maximum, makes it unique. It is not a concentration spell, and it lasts until a long rest. So, overall, an absolutely MUST HAVE spell to put into your daily buff cycle, where possible. Just fire it off once, at the start of the day as soon as you leave camp, and bam. Everybody, including your summons/pets/companions etc has more health for the entire day.
Please, how do you summon Shovel, outside of the Blighted village? Just how? Got them, and then they just disappeared after a while, didn't even notice, and now can't seem to get them back?
There is a way to make it a permanent ability. You can google it to see the dialogue options you need to pick. You also need at least 1 level of wizard.
Animate dead on a necromancer wizard for skeletons. Have them in the backline with your backliner holding the phalar aluve (song) or a frontliner using the (shriek) function to increase damage output. and ofc buff them with bless and have them around when you cast aid at the highest possible lvl as well for the juicy durability. If you wanna be really fancy have one pick up the everburn blade and send it to the frontline lol. If it dies you lose the sword forever tho, and there are limited specific weapons your undead can pick up to wield. (Yes undead can pick up _certain_ weapons, unequipping is trickier, go to your own inventory [ singular, not party inventory] and simply select your thrall on the left in the party hud, drg the weapon on the floor and voila)
one benefit of chromatic orb is you can spec around it and make it do CRAZY damage.. like 100dmg a hit. storm sorc/tempest cleric both buff lightning dmg and you can use sorc or another class to create water to do more dmg. then upcast it with sorc and use a meta magic ability, then buff it with overcasting, it's stupid fun... pair it with tempest cleric lightning as mentioned below
You can get the Everburn Blade (2D6 + 1D4 fire) from Commander Zhalk on the ship by using command drop at lvl 1. Just swap in Command on Shadowhearts spell list so you don't even need to know it yourself.
Longstrider is being slept on. It's a ritual with unlimited casting, only taking a prep slot to give allies +10ft for all allies movement speed. Bless is another consistently great spell to use, granting +1d4 to attack rolls & saves. Can be upgraded with a certain item to +2d4. Web/spike growth is also a great spell especially with ways to force movement into the danger zone. Spirit guardians just wins some encounters in the 2nd act, no spoilers, it's a great spell regardless of the circumstances.
And with agonizing blast (and in act 2 a robe that soubles that) you have guaranteed damage (if tou hit) per blast, so at lvl10 with 20 charisma you have 15 (or 30) bonus damage per cast.
@@dominikgose2609 With 20 charisma you have 5 from agonizing blast and another 5 from the robe (from saving tieflings from Moonrise prison), so with 3 blasts it is 30 bonus damage (if all blasts hit).
Magic missile together with necklace “Psychic Spark” Shoot an additional dart whenever you cast Magic Missile. Then also Phalar Aluve longsword and activate by someone in the party, all enemies in 6m are -1d4 on Saves (as above) and take extra 1-4 Thunder damage when hit.
Cloud of daggers has made some of the harder fights way easier than they have any business to be. Easiest spot to use it in the goblin camp bridge. However, there are a lot more good places for it. Weak enemies run to die to it, strong enemies won't step on it, and therefore, can't participate in the fight.
Animate dead, the zombie will infect targets with a debuff for a round that will turn them into zombies if they die with it. It's very easy to create an army of zombies to swarm the enemy. The initial zombie can stick around for a while too.
Op spells u missed. Guidance, bless (way better than bane as no save), thunder wave. (thunder waves knock back is busted). Ice knife, the frozen ground is great, castable while silenced. Shield- Nuff said. Haste my favourite spell to twin cast. These are all actual must haves on a wizard / sorc
Reading the comments I do find it interesting seeing everyones "best spells" list. It shows how truly great this game is. So many builds. So many combinations. I consider myself a veteran D&D player and its entertaining to read newer players opinions.
My favorite spell is boring old Aid. I never leave camp without it. Get a cleric hireling, get them to cast it at the highest spell slot available. Don’t forget to have all your summons and pets out. It applies to everyone. Absolutely awesome. By the end game, combine this with Heroes Feast and you will have a tone of HP
I can't believe you didn't mention Thorns. I have won so many hard fights by just laying it down and letting enemies walk to me. Then you can push them back in. It usually clears out all the mobs and leaves only the boss standing. Best spell in the game.
Chain lightning is probably my favorite spell, does so much damage and the range of it is insane. Tempest cleric call lightning is also very good, can cast it has a lvl6 spell for like 10-60 damage and then keep recasting it every turn for free without expanding a spell slot as long as you keep your concentration up
Love listening to this just to get an overview, for a noobie it's a bit difficult at first how to get big impact from spells which have no damage numbers and most of all which ones to pick. I got 9 or 10 slots on my lvl 5 Gale Wizard and ideally I'd like to have like 15 to be combat and roaming ready 😊
Tbh spirit guardians is alsp really good. Especially once you start fighting undead and fiends more reguarly its very very good. Especially considering Shadowheart can have some decent AC at that point aswell.
I’m so sad polymorph works like it does. I get maybe not allowing turning the party barb into a T rex but not even allowing like a couple options. It’s such a good spell for creative solutions making it the sheep maker spell is kinda too bad.
im already trying to imagine a Larian DnD game that goes to lvl 20 and/or maybe even better imho if Larian would make a game set in Pathfinder , ala WOTR style ; basically combine the creative/artistic/design skills of Owlcat and Larian to make the uber/super CRPG game XD ; ofc the biggest problem with higher lvl spells are their pnp effects are bonkers/world-changing , so without some sort of massive paradigm leap in technological ability and procedural design this would be a creative challenge to implement ingame [even with tools like Unreal5 , it would still take an enormous amount of work 'under the hood']
Command is one of the most usefull skills in combat . You can always trigger free opportunity attacks with it. grab an advantage passive and voila easy kills
Mage Hand is good for stealing shit and activating some levers. Web can actually soften your fall\jump, you won't get HP damage from jumping off very high ground if you cast web and jump on web. Also I forgot the exact name of the spell, but it's that druid lvl1 spell, the thorn whip thing, you can actually use it to pull enemies that are standing on rafts, balcony, etc. Very useful for dealing with those pestering goblin archers in AC1 (Goblin camp)
No love for Chain Lightning and Disintegrate? I love chain lightning to take out a group of enemies and Disintegrate to damage singular high HP targets. They have amazing destructive potential with the right characters.
I BECOME SHEEP, also speak with animals is my favorite spell in ANY game BY FAR bro I can TALK with my puppy and my baby owlbear I could do that for hours
Shillelagh doesn't give additional damage, it makes your staff or club deal 1d8+wisdom mod magical bludgeoning damage instead of it's normal damage, which is the same as a 2 handed quarterstaff damage but allows you to use a shield. Very good for druids because their AC is generally low in the game proper. I'm playing a spores druid and I'm using shillelagh a lot because I'm in melee a lot.
@@PurgeThunder OK, I was afraid of that. Unfortunately, your spellcaster is almost always going to be surrounded by allies, right? Most spellcasters are too squishy to leave them on their own. So how often can you really use Thunderwave? Thanks for the info, but that seems to make the spell _very_ situational, doesn't it?
@@Bill_Garthright I took my 1st level in Nature Cleric (heavy armor & martial weapons) and the rest in Divination Wizard. I have a chain shirt +1 & shield for an 18 AC (+ Shield spell and Portent). That allows a great deal of courage for spellcasting in the enemy's face.
@@PurgeThunder Yes, I'll bet. Speaking of which, Thunderwave is an evocation spell, isn't it? I've since learned that, if you take an evocation specialty, evocation spells won't harm friendlies. So that would make it much safer to use, I'd think.
Yeah, that's how I played the warlock in Neverwinter Nights. I concluded that he was a minor zap zapper, contributing bonus damage from the edge. They don't fear melee though, so they don't have a problem getting in there.
@@keungwan5901 I don't know it is king of the damaging cantrips because it has one of the least resisted damages and hits multiple times on a single casting. Which opens up multiple bonus damage dipping opportunities. Obviously warlock lets you front load that at 2nd level but all the equipment out there that lets you add extra damage it gets pretty crazy.
@@user-wo9jj6ii6t it gives +1-4 for all dialogue checks, pickpockets, disarm traps, etc. I use the necklace constantly since anyone can use it and I maybe don't want to lose shadowhearts concentration since she probably is concentrating on something more battle specific. Less save scumming or using inspiration points for rerolling. Less breaking of thieves tools.
Yeah it's basically twice the size, actually usable in BG3 when its pretty garbage jn 5e. Quite good for choke points etc. In open ground I prefer moonbeam, spike growth or flaming sphere but it's a situational choice.
Can you actually make that githyanki drop his legendary sword? Would you do a guide on that? Like a step by step and perhaps include other weapons you can get the same way?
While your main character is talking to somebody there’s a button in the bottom left to switch to other members of your team, and they can do stuff while everyone else is busy talking.make sure shadheart has command memorized and switch to her while the giths are talking
Yeah you can, took me well into early mid.....I found that using pommel type blunt attacks to make stunned helped when casting Command Drop....dont even need to fight him really, Just get out before the winged support arrives
You can use create water spell or just throw bottles\barrels at or near enemies then zap them with lightning spell and it will deal extra damage because enemies will be electrocuted. I usually have my mage\bard\sorc\backrow character throw shit like bombs and grease so I save up their spell slots.
Hi. I'm on ps5 and can't figure out how to use mass cure wounds. I select it and it says "targets 1/6" and I try clicking on my party members and click x but nothing happens. Halppp
You should mention that this is only relevant at the start of the game. At level 12 I think the only spell on your list I was still using occasionally was fireball, the rest aren't even close to being the best spells in the game.
I was using Magic Missile until the end on 2 playthroughs. It is so powerful because it's 100% going to hit and with that Level 10, it adds INT to the modifier. There's also gear that adds more missiles, and gear that increases each missile's damage by 1D8 each.
I love polymorph, change the most dangerous enemy into a sheep for a few turns and kill all the trash. Then have my party unload on them when all the trash is dead.
The best offensive combo I have found is Create Water + Misty Step + Lightning Bolt or Cone of Cold (other lightning and cold spells work too) Create Water to give targets a Wet debuff (2x damage from lightning and cold), misty step to get into a good firing position as a bonus action, and then Lightning Bolt or Cone of Cold for AoE 2x damage (exact spell depending on the shape in which enemies are arranged)
I recently hit level 4 and picked fireball as one of my spells for Gale. But it’s now not in my spells for combat . Can’t find it anywhere. So annoying !!
Serious question: I your party build had to pick between Eldritch Blast and Guidance, and there was no way possible to get both, which would you prefer to have?
I'm sorry for repeating this but I can't believe you didn't put Guidance that's one of the best spells in the game man. I literally haven't gone into an encounter without guidance.
I dislike that they gave Fireball a projectile. From my understanding, there is no projectile in Fireball - you simply make an explosion happen at the spot you want the spell to be cast.
Any BG3 video with the title of "Best Spells and Cantrips" that does not even mention Guidance is from a creator who simply does not understand the game. There is also a massive under-estimation of crowd-control effects, which is at the end of the day typically what makes casters stronger than melees at mid-high levels in 5E. New players: there is a ton of better quality BG3 content out there; treat the suggestions from here with a whole fistful of salt.
Man I need whatever caffeine you are using. Edit: Does anyone actually use defensive spells and abilities in combat? I can never seem to make that work.
Healing word and shield are the most useful ones because they don't use your action. Healing word is really only worth it if someone is down. Aid is worth casting if an ally is down and you want a buff too, otherwise pre-casting before combat is better.
I appreciate the minimal effort you put into the video. Man trying to tell me to use Fireball, Eldridge Blast and, Counterspell. Talk about cloudkill, or haste, or enlarge shrink…
You can only get it if you pick the school of illusion subclass for Wizard but the Improved Minor Illusion spell is pretty great. You can cast minor illusion as a bonus action as many times as you want. If its near an enemy and they fail the check they automatically get the threatened status, some enemies will even waste attacks on the illusion. Best of all though, every enemy always turns to face the illusion, making it incredibly easy to have a rogue do sneak attacks and get backstab damage.
mockery is pretty rubbish tbh it does 1 to 4 damage and fails alot and is an action so you gimp your damage output for the hope that you get disadvantage suppose ok if save scum i prefer bless to bane dead folk cant hit you spiritual weapon is good and is a bonus action and you can select your melee damage type
oh good, they appear to be following the Arcane Laws. Buffs are more efficacious than debuffs, due to the saves. Spend an action hitting the enemy is better than two actions debuffing then hitting the enemy.
Blur and Shield. Tanking with an EK with a high con, proficiency in con, war caster for advantage on concentration, and eventually indomitable it is almost impossible to lose concentration.
