BG3 2nd Level Spells Tier List 

I would say that you definitely keep some bias towards the Crown of Madness, as I myself at first didn't really like much what I could get from the spell. However, once you start kicking in some good amount of spell DC, you can very very consistently land Crown of Madness on enemies, and when you do so, there is really nothing buggy, it really just makes enemies waste a TONS of their turns while literally killing the one you targeted with the spell. And you just have to use it with the slightest of care for the mad enemy to never really target any of your own allies. Bonus is, if coupled with sorcerer with twinned metamagic, because it allows you to cast and keep TWO enemies mad for the cost of a single Lv2 spell slot, and merely 2 sorcery points. In many fights this can literally win the fight by itself for you, like for example the Shar cultists, where there are exactly two humanoids there much more powerful than the others and easily susceptible to madness, and if you crown them with it, they will literally slaughter all the others enemies while these enemies will be focusing mainly on them. In late game? I would say this is a S tier for me, because it really changes the entire fight and has tremendous impact. Overall? I would put it as a low A because in the early game it's quite unreliable, and while a Lv2 slot is nothing later on, in the early game it's quite costy to use like this.

Been sitting at my computer for nine days straight, unmoving and unwavering, as I eagerly awaited this next installment in the spell tier list

These tier lists are so helpful as someone who is not that well versed in DnD and was completely overwhelmed by all the spell and feat choices this game has.

You are the best at what you do and have taught me SO much about BG3. Thanks for all the hard work. It is appreciated

59:42 - about Silence. The Sussur weapons only silence on a saving throw. Silence also shuts down some magical reactions from casters like Lorroakan, Ethel (even her legendary actions in honor mode), prevents Priestress Gut from calling for help, makes you immune to Gryms legendary action, cancels the effects of the Harpy Song and casting it on npc's does not trigger a fight/negative reaction which means that in some cases you can prep it out of combat and make it action economy free.

I think darkness definitely deserves its spot even though fog cloud exists. The devil's sight invocation makes it so good, free advantage and basically immunity. I could see a double warlock comp using it as its main tactic, just gotta remember it wont work against devils!

been really enjoying your rankings and tierlists lately, thanks for another one :), your defo my fav bg3 youtuber right now :)

It might have been patched, but if you cast crown of madness outside of combat to non aggressive enemies turn hostile to their ally and they will attack them.Even if you fail it doesn't start combat. It's a little cheesy but it was a major reason I was able to do the gith camp and moonrise as a solo wizard.

Only watched a few of your videos on BG3. I'm already at the point of hitting like right as I start the video playing. Good job.

Another problem with Arcane Lock is that most doors are easliy destroyed so in most situations it makes one enemy use one action to destroy the door.

Lot of people putting out similar BG3 content to you, but you're my fave. Good work dude.

One thing that Darkness has over Fog Cloud is that ranged attacks can't be made through it. Even normally auto-hit ones like magic missile will just get completely blocked by it. This can make it an excellent defensive option when fighting a lot of ranged attackers. A good example is the battle with Yurgir and his army of snipers. I had my party hide in darkness while the enemies were just getting chipped away by hunger of hadar and moonbeam.They couldn't even touch me.

I’ve really enjoyed this series. As someone who likes to test things out and just better understand what I’m doing - and this being such a complex game - these videos are very helpful. Yeah sure some folks might disagree on some of the rankings, but I have agreed for the majority of them. I love playing Druid, and I’ve been pleased to see that there are a good number of Druid spells that are higher ranking on your lists. I love that several of the damaging spells are concentration spells, which allows me to not just blow through spell slots and then spam long rests. I find I’m having to long rest way more often with Wizard and Sorcerer. That said, I am not just real experienced playing those two classes so I might be doing something wrong

Out of combat, Arcane Lock can be used in situations where you want to control the patrol region / foot traffic of neutral NPCs, mostly for thievery. There are always like 10 different ways to steal without getting caught, but in certain areas (usually densely populated ones with lots of patrols), Arcane Lock can be situationally "not useless." There are some buildings (mostly act 3) where the NPCs seem to have E.S.P. about missing items.

Ive been enjoying your videos a lot. Thanks bruh.

Bard with enhance abilitiy and expertise in sleight of hand. Now you don't need a rogue in the party

Crown of madness is indeed pretty inconsistent but oh man when it works it's insane. I Crowned the goblin boss in front of the windmill with the gnome tied to it and he tossed his smoke powder bomb into his own crowd, killed a random goblin, then walked through 3 attacks of opportunity and died. Ending the encounter with a single 2nd spell slot. While other times i've cast it they just walked up to an ally and attacked them.

One thing you missed about acid arrow is that it also leaves acid surface. So when you cast it even if it does not hit it can still be a -2 AC on the enemy for at least a turn.

I like how much effort you put into these. Other creators tend to just ramble/use gut-feeling to create a tier list, but not you.

I love Spike growth. I just used it for the first time in the fight in the hatchery in act 2 and it made a fight against a lot of enemies a cake walk

Enthrall doesn't do what you think it does. What enthrall does is force an NPC to look at the caster OUTSIDE OF COMBAT, and narrows their vision cone to a very thin line. Casting it is not a hostile action and cannot be "caught" in tactician mode the way Charm spells can. It's mostly a useless spell, only technically good for pick-pocketing or other thieving, but Fog Cloud or Darkness usually do that job much better and easier.

Love these videos

Enhance Ability is very good during Conversation (when cast on Charisma), and very good during Stealing (when cast on Dexterity - because it allows you to replace equipment granting that advantage with +1 or +2 equipment). Sure, that doesn't matter during combat, but it is very impactful or your run.

crown of madness on the final shar sounds pretty insane

As a new player in A1, Moonbeam is absolutely carrying my combat lol. With the double dip proc anytime you move it, makes it a 4d10 on any creature you target. I understand using shoving enemies around for stuff like spike growth, cloud of daggers etc but, so much easier to just toss my beam on top of an enemy or new chokepoint if stuff changed. Also, I doubt I could play without ritual longstrider since discovering it.

aid upcasted is really op. S tier imo

Calm Emotion removing charm is also useful for ending an enemy mind control on NPC targets, including sometimes during dialogue to bypass combat altogether.

For Arcane Lock, the Counting house entry doors are a perfect place to use, both front and dock doors. 👍🏼

Entangle works once when you cast it. The persistent effect is the difficult terrain. Web, however, procs every round

I agree with Shatter being B tier, however I would like to point out one use - you can use Tempest Cleric’s Destructive Wrath to maximize the damage on this spell, making it guaranteed 24 AoE damage (12 if the succeed the saving throw). But on level 5 you can just use it on Call Lightning and guarantee 60/30/15 dmg instead (depending on Wet/saving throw)

Laying down a couple AOE spells and arcane-locking the door handed me a no-effort win against the steel watch boss

Early on as a Thunder domain cleric shatter can be pretty hard hitting to weaker enemies since you can use destructive wrath on it dealing at least 12 damage in an aoe, later on it definitely drops off but until you unlock 3rd lvl slots it hits pretty good for its level

just started playing the game and clicked on this list just to see where you placed Spike Growth. I am not disappointed! That spell is fing broken! Then I got my druid to summon a dyrad and she can do that sht as a free action. I thought my little brain was gonna explode!

I had cloud of daggers on my telekinesis themed warlock, and putting it on the final phase of the final boss with the 10d4 (10-40) damage was amazing

Shatter synergizes with tempest cleric well and can shove targets at distance, kind of situationally good when your shadow heart is not in close distance to use thunder wave.

blur is absolutely insane on eldritch knight I was able to beat yurgir only because of that lmao.

Gust of wind is a bit a fun one. I use it on my sorc as a 'rp' but also situational thunderwave. The main difference is that thunderwave has a close, square AOE where gust of wind has an aoe similar to lightning bolt, long and narrow. It also clears cloud/fog effects. I remember using it to walk across the room Nere was trapped in without disarming or covering the gas vents. Just blew a straight carpet of clean air through the room. It does miss out on the damage so for most combats it loses to thunderwave for damage purposes.

The cloud of daggers entangle wombo combo is insane, plus if you have someone else to bane them. Insane power out of such easy spells to maintain

On tactician and probably honor mode aid is A or S tier, casting it as a 6 level spell (once you get to act 3 and cheese the bodouir in house of hope where you get infinite long resrs whilst retaining your buffs). HP is always good

Crown of madness in RP is wild! As if patch 6, and even in 5, can’t say for before that, but it works on non humanoids. Used it on goblins and knolls. It’s pretty great tbh.

I aggro’d the entire goblin camp near one of the side areas and had a tiny little opening in the stone wall to funnel them through. Cloud of Daggers literally killed 10+ goblins because they kept running into it to get to me.

Besides crown of madness, which is already pinned, I would bump misty step to S tier. It’s an everything spell to me. Offensive? Throw your fighter right into the spellcasters. Defensive? Dual cast haste and MS around a corner to stay out of range. Need high ground for ranged attacks? That perfectly angled lightning bolt, or the thunder wave into chasm that would have otherwise been impossible? I find myself putting this on every character, not in every party, but literally every single character in that party. The items that grant this are some of my most prized and go right to classes that don’t otherwise get access to this. I can’t personally consider it anything less then S tier.

I haven't tested it, butvI believe gust of wind also removes cloudkill and poison fog type spells. Which can make it really good in certain situations

Calm Emotions makes absolute fools out of harpies with its Immune to Charm effect and it totally negates Fear. It's a concentration spell, sure, but it's a party-wide buff with a decent radius. It's kind of a no investment spell either because it comes with the cleric spell list, but it's also available to most other spell-casters too. Its ability to negate Fear and Charm stays relevant through the whole game as well. Focusing on it's ability to prevent barbarian rage does it a huge disservice - personally I've only seen this happen to my own party member, but it was worth the sacrifice to see that last harpy singing away as my full party surrounded it.

misty step is S tier for me

I use Enhance Ability: Wisdom on my transmuter Wizard to make sure they succeed the Medicine check when crafting a potion or elixir!

Moonbeam does’t proc gear effects but it also doesn’t effect other conditions aswell. You can use moonbeam in sanc without it breaking and enemies with radiant retort don’t reflect damage. With moonbeam do damage twice with high spell DC and upcast you can do 100 plus damage cleave while being un killable. Plus orbital laser from the sky looks pretty sick.

I am little surprised on the C rank on Web Not only does it Potentially restrain enemies, but it creates difficult terrain which cuts their movement While I don't think Web is as good in BG3 as it is in Tabletop with how surfaces work, but at the very least that is situationally good and should be at least B A ranged team comp that casts Web early can deal damage to the enemy while safely mitigating damage or reducing it to 0 (many enemies ranged attacks are weakers than their melee attacks if they have them at all). Really liked the tip about Scorching Ray and the Hat of Fire Acuity, may have to try that out on a build with Red/Gold Draconic Sorcerer! Really enjoying these Spell ranking videos!

Enthrall can be used like a weaker version of the Bard’s Perform (takes a spell slot and only affects 1 person) and allows others to steal/position/etc.

I think Aid in s tier would be fair even considering the reasoning behind longstrider. I have never been in a situation where longstrider was the reason I won or lost a fight, but there have been numerous times where the extra hit points from aid is the reason I survived huge boss attacks and closed it out the following round, but those situations could also be avoided if I played better.

Hey Guga, you should try making a fry bread dog, which is a staple at pow wows. You basically wrap a hot dog in fry bread and then fry it! Very tasty

Misty step is an easy S tier, every class than can use it should take it, its only negative is that you can find the spell on items too

Overall comment on spell rankings: When someone, like Aestus takes part of their 168 hours per week to support a game they appreciate and want to share their thoughts, I find myself listening to what they have to say about - in this case, leveled spells - and then add in my insight and experience to make a decision to use a spell. For instance, Cloud of Daggers. An S-Tier spell that I put to use with the Phase Spiders. In my first run, I did not have an understanding of 5e and then BG3 mechanics. Aestus and Fextralife have both given me insight. For Cloud of Daggers, I use that on the mother Phase Spider on the web - she fell doing an insane amout of damage. My bard character and Gale have Cloud of Daggers. So when Mama went to get her babies and then phased to the web near us. I had Wyll (Eldritch Knight) case Magic Missle for some damage. Finally it got back to my character and the Cloud of Daggers finished after we used Firebolt on the web to drop her a second time. So by using an AOE movement control spell and Cloud of Daggers, you can inflict a lot of damage quickly and then use Firebolt, Guiding Bolt, Magic Missile, Scorching Ray to finish off most difficult of builds. Shatter also has a purpose here as well - all my characters have Shatter, and when all four (Shadowheart being Tempus Cleric for insane damage), use it to crowd control who is left is usually insignificant. My Bard, Wyll (Eldritch Knight), Shadowheart are all melee and range effective.

If there would be a tier below RP tier, I would put Detect Thoughts into it because it needs concentration and the potion version does not, so I would never ever use the spell version. Enhance Ability is S tier for me as getting advantage is so good - at least in early game. Its amazing for hard skill checks and pickpocketing, but I assume that does not match your tier system criteria. Later on there are so many items that give advantage on rolls, so its usefulness drops quite a bit. I only had to use Knock on the chests in Wyrm's Rock Fortress barracks in Act 3 as these could not be lockpicked. Although this was fixed with patch 4, so I probably don't need Knock ever again. Especially as I learned (after finishing the game) that bashing chests actually does not destroy any of its content unless the chest is trapped ... so just bashing everything is usually the easiest way to get your loot. In my game I always regretted casting Spiritual Weapon. It's movement is so slow, that its hard to get a use out of it and it's almost useless in endgame as it dies too quickly. Sure it may soak up a few hits, but all I remember about it is that it slows down the combat.

Worth to note that Crown of Madness makes the mad enemy hostile to others around it so they will also attack them sometimes and provoke opportunity attacks. So it's better than hold person when you can also deal damage with it and not only treat it as CC

There's a lot of doors in game that can't be opened with lockipicks but can be with with knock. You can just skip a lot of puzzles with, like the vault in Sorceres Sundries

Darkness saves my ass on my all paladin playthrough in halsin's portal fight

Longstrider is great, assuming you remeber to cast it. I find myself forgetting about it more than i use it, and i still get by just fine.

Fun fact: the land's stride feature for ranger and land druid makes you immune to the damage and difficult terrain of spike growth

55:30 don't forget that you can stack Heat with Scorching Ray as well. With Sorcerer, you can use Scorching Ray to build up Heat and then use Quickening Spell+Bonus Action to cast Fireball with Heat stack. And since it's an attack spell, you can also cast it while sneaking around to gain maximum advantage.

calm emotions works on the owlbear

Repositioning Moonbeam is an action, can confirm.

1:10:00 Don't sleep on Web, it's probably one of the strongest crowd control spells there is. A-tier. If you're up against melee combatants, put this between you and them ... they'll never reach you. Ah, the boots you're talking about that give immunity to Enwebbed condition are Spiderstep Boots. Wiki Spoiler for BG3 location in the Read More: Can be found at Whispering Depths in Act 1 (X:-510 Y:-400) in a cave chamber on a skeleton.

There are apparently niche uses for calm emotions, if you fight the harpy’s you can avoid there call if you have the charm immunity. Also I would imagine you could use it against the wooden mask people when fighting the hag ? Not supper good but technically situational.

Hi Aestus! What about a feat tier list? I'd like to know your opinion on each of the feats

I've only cast arcane lock twice once in the Githyanki Creche last fight I lobbed the iron flask in there and locked the door :') the second was the sheepthara glitch

Shatter is actually really solid on a tempest cleric but yes other than that it gets overshadowed

There are a pair of wedding rings you can get for Warding Bond in Act II. Found near these are diaries with a short but *very* interesting Sharrian romance story. What will you do with these rings, to whom will you give them?

My first attempted use of Arcane Lock was in the fight in Auntie Ethel’s hut. I locked the doors to keep the Redcaps out as I took on Ethel. The very first turn, a Redcap broke the door down. All it did was cancel one enemy’s action for one turn. Was not worth it, IMO.

What makes Darkness better than Fog Cloud, is that you can't make ranged attacks into it from the outside, or out of it. Though this seems to be a little bugged, since some enemies will still throw weapons into the cloud occasionally (haven't checked this since patch 5)

Interesting thing to note is spells like moonbeam or hunger of hadar don't proc any damage effects like radiating orb or elemental infusion is because the AOE effect is actually considered as an NPC by the game's code and not a source attributed to your Player character which makes me think its not a bug and probably will never be "fixed" sadly. Edit: but another cool thing about Moonbeam is that it never procs Radiant Retort/ Removes sanctuary so that technically does put it into S tier.

I would argue that Enhance Ability is a required spell if you are going to enter conversation or undergo some sort of interaction where ability checks are concerned. Enhance Ability can easily help you make those checks with advantage (double dice instead of a single one). In a fight, the improvement is too little but out of combat, its as useful as guidance.

Arcane Lock - you can lock a door that has a Medium to Strong Toughness. It would take burst damage to destroy. It's an RP spell because there are other more valuable option. What you could use it for is a storage area where you can put items in a room and lock it. Even then you have storage in camp. If this was an online PvP then Arcane Lock would have value. Thoughts?

i forgot why you considered scorching ray S tier until i used it out of curiosity with the hat of fire acuity, then i said “oh”

Crown of madness is amazing imo. From what I've noticed they only target non party members even if they're the closest. Granted ive only tested it a few times so I could be mistaken.

I use calm emotion every time I meet the harpies in the beginning. It applies on the whole groupe and prevent charms which makes the fight very easy. I've wiped in honor mode against them in having 3 of my char get charm on the first round.

I use enthrall regularly to pickpocket merchants because it makes pickpocket DC lower and cancels out the scene that makes them look for the thief

Barkskin is a level 2 spell. If you are playing a druid, the best wild shape available at the point where you get level 2 spells is the bear. The bear has 10 AC. I would say going from 10 to 16 is pretty good. Not amazing since you're still more likely to get hit than missed but it's definitely a decent upgrade.

Just wanted to throw out there that the Pyroquickness Hat does still work with Flame Blade. I tried very hard to make a build centered around it and it's quite involved but can be pretty powerful. As of now it's just average since Arsonist's Oil doesn't work at all, but when they fix it I can imagine it being the best melee dual wielding build.

i get why you have knock ranked where it is, but i find it useful for a party that doesnt have a good lockpicker since im too lazy to dismiss someone to get astarion out just to pick a lock. Have played campaigns where my best lock picker was +3 and any lock past 15 DC would be very difficult to pick.

I know im super late to the game commenting here but if you give a character moonbeam AND sanctuary you can move your moonbeam to deal high damage which wont break your sanctuary because the game registers moonbeam as an entity not an offensive spell. You can do that without taking damage and while also buffing allies, makes for a ridiculous high damage and unkillable build

You actually consider knock to be one of the strongest non combat spells, you can open any locked door and they help with any 30 roll lock when sometimes it seems impossible to open

Interesting take on playing the game... I prefer to use some of the less desirable spells for a challenge than limit my long rests (especially since there are so many content driven story triggers related)

Thanks for the help! Now let me help you...1:04:26 click with the middle mouse button to open in a new tab. 😊

You have omitted see darkvision and see invisibility. I predict that you would place darkvision in low B tier. You want characters to be able to see, and the spell lasts until long rest, so you can cast it on a character who doesn't have natural darkvision at the start of the day and not worry about it, but there are other ways to get darkvision which don't cost a level 2 spell slot. You can also use the cantrip light, but this has the disadvantage that enemies can also see your character. It's only really an issue in act 2. See invisibility is interesting, because you might have acquired a magical eye which renders this spell pointless. If you haven't, then it would be somewhat useful to have this spell memorised. It's similar to lesser restoration, in that you won't need it often but you'll be pleased you have it when you do. So I would say B tier if you don't have the eye, but RP tier if you do.

Longstrider is absolute S-tier. I play a Ranger and the spell is extremely good. You can use it all the time for no spellsllot and it makes outmanouvering your enemys so much easier. In a turnbased system it's insanely powerful.

On the Moonbeam/Radiating Orb thing: perhaps the damage is technically coming from the beam and not the caster? I've heard Cloudkill behaves the same way.

Calm emotions is an aoe and tbh it’s like pretty useful in about 2 fights in the game, the meenlocks in act 2 and I think there’s another one I can’t remember… maybe? Also I never tried but does the immune to charmed work for tadpole charm? Coz it is pretty annoying getting charmed by a mind flayer on an extra attack character on like your first attack, then you gotta go attack someone else and maybe everyone else is out of range, then you gotta like resort to throwing something in its general direction… anyway does it??

LETS GOOO

Arcane lock was so useful to me for iron throne. The constant sahuagin spawn corridor got completely blocked. I think I could have used mage hand to pull the lever on the other side or somehow activate the heat sensors (tried and failed) but ultimately I just used the scroll I had instead of having it memorized

There are alot of high dc locks in the game (30) and some important locls that can't be locked picked

38:33 - about Knock. There's actually one door that is high DC (30) that essentially wins an important combat encounter for you. If you go to Balthasar in the Gauntlet of Shar and open the door to his room while Dark Justiciar fight is still going on right before it - it a) wins the dark justiciar fight for you and b) makes Balthasar and his minions (there won't be many left of them anyway) so weak that you can kill him before the fight ends. Also the door right next to it is also 30 DC and contains the Callous Glow Ring which is one of the best items in the game. Still a B tier spell though

I love the idea of silence as a spell, but very rarely use it. I want there to be a boss that casts massive damage thunder spells so I can sit in my silence and not laugh cause I'm silenced but like do the motion. Also I wish upcasting some of these spells would increase area so it was harder for enemies to escape, cause most often if I just use silence a spellcaster will just walk out of it and cast their spell unless the room and positionings are just right.

I use aid with two necromancers and one other summoner and a paladin as a striker and also using the tadpole power to give plus 10 to everyone by moving back and forth between areas of the game lmfao, it gets insane, the only time the necromancy build failed me was when there was simply way to many npcs on screen at moonrise where nobody could move because everyone was stuck in the doorway and then the warlock cast hunger of hadar, completely wrecked my shit 😹

For non-Warlock characters, could you case Darkness on a group of enemies, then use light on a tank player and be able to see in the darkness or would it defeat the purpose by being lit?

I have Shatter on three of my four characters. One of those characters is a Tempest Cleric. Casting Shatter after Cloud of Daggers causes most 5 member or more opponent parties to reduce to 2 to 3. Casting Shatter three times with the Wrath of Destruction eliminate a group of Githyanki quite easily with the few that are left being subjected to Create water and Call of Lightning. Whatever tier it fits into - which I agree with your assessment - it has been very useful for my runs. Then again I've never reached Act 3 yet and I've been playing for 577 hours only reaching the Astral Plane twice (yes, I'm one of those let's start over types. Honor Mode is my goal from Balanced so I'm learning everything I can about these spells in real time. Thanks for the very solid effort in the explanation of spells in relation to action economy - something that I will have to learn in Honor Mode.

Can't argue much, but I can. I think you should consider who gets the spells in your ranking, and rank for the classes. You're not ranking what a class could use better vs. some spells. Crown of Madness is a fine CC spell. I don't CC, but I was watching a bard playthrough where the player really didn't have a lot of DnD background, picked it cause it seemed cool, and once he figured it out, he used it very effectively. Solid B tier, situationally good. Prayer of Healing is not a combat spell. RP. Enlarge/shrink is almost RP. For those that can cast it, why would you take a resistible spell and burn a spell slot, when you have damaging spells, that even if resisted do half damage. It's fantastic for Duergar once per long rest. Useful in exploration. Not a good spell to burn a level 2 slot for in combat. Speaking of Duergar, invisibilty is not a cantrip, it's a once/battle spell. Pretty strong, but not a cantrip. Ray of Enfeeblement is not worth slotting. No business in B tier. There may be situations with foreknowledge where you would slot and use that spell, but it's just not worth preparing for the average fight. Unsure why arcane lock is in B tier. Again, situationally slotted, but you wouldn't have it even prepared for most days, let alone encounters. Phantasmal Force is rp. Only theorycrafters on RU-vid think it belongs in a build. There are too many other spells to use a level 2 slot on that do better. Web is a solid B tier for those that use it, maybe C because it burns. The player just needs to know how to use it. There are just better uses for spell slots than cc, imo, but as a cc spell at this level, it belongs with the others.You correctly put spike growth in S, but it's because it's huge, more than it's good, and it doesn't burn. It does get overwrittten by other surfaces, I believe, but yeah, you can do a cheese grater comp.

Arcane Lock to kill Auntie Ethel early by locking her out of her hidey hole, Arcane Lock during the Raphael fight to split his forces if you haven't managed to get the big guy on your side (or to lock Hope outside so she doesn't die)

Crown of madness is A if not S tier. One person becomes hostile to everyone and usually they will either go all out against your enemies or everyone will try to instantly kill them. It is a spell that can take an enemy out of the fight. It should also be noted that if you enter an area where you need to clear out a place(goblin camp and duergar mine) you can make the npcs mad and kill each other without getting caught because the person is made hostile and it is fine to attack hostiles.

darkness is the goat, specially the shadowheart path where she can cast it with no spell slot cost every turn makes it stupidly broken as CC