#baldur's gate character building

[julls]

Bhaalist: Hey Bhaal whats up Bhaal: Hey Bhaalist, did you give my Bhaalspawn more muscle like i asked? Bhaalist: ....what Bhaal: I told you to make them meatier

[crezz-star]

C'elen was shooketh

C'elen in bg3 story is a daughter of country side ex-noble family. so she's been pretty sheltered and taught how to be a lady. but when her parents went bankrupt, her father offed himself and her mother died of depression, she was left to fend for herself and lived alone for a while, learning how to use the axe to protect herself from wild animals or monsters. She lived beside a river and pretty much a tiny simple home, it was the only home left from her parent's riches.

So she haven't really met that much people nor mingle much and just bases off her knowledge from the romance novel books she read when she was younger, as well as her concept or romance and s-x from more adult oriented novels she read in secret and what her teachers taught her that such things was only to be done to the person you have been betrothed with.

[syn0vial]

everyone's acting shocked that shadowheart is the top romance option and not astarion, but as your impossibly stereotypical lesbian-with-mostly-straight-dude-friends, lemme tell you, there is nothing shocking to me about a shadowheart sweep OR the fact that astarion fans are so much louder comparatively

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Baldur's Gate 3 characters love to walk into the Cloud of Daggers the moment the fight ends. It's part of their culture.

[chocodile]

Unsurprisingly, my Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough is looking a little... evil.

(He starts wearing tinted glasses after drilling a few too many worm holes in his brain. Brain damage-induced light sensitivity is a small price to pay for power!)

[csphire]

Updated Dammon Build Guide!

Sad because you need more Dammon? Here is an updated guide on how to make him into your player character or dream guardian.

First, let's discuss the mods you'll need if you want to get your player character as close as possible to Dammon's long-lost twin or evil clone. Are you on a console or don't want to mod? No worries, alternative suggestions will be provided in this guide too.

Clothing:

This is only needed if you wish for him to wear the same outfit and for it to be the right color. If you want to keep the number of mods on the low side, you can use Basket Full of Equipment instead. It does have a blacksmith outfit, scarf and his boots too. (The boots are called: Black Leather Footwear D, just dye them brown. The scarf dye Swamp Green.)

Just know as of posting this, there is no dye in the game to match Dammon's existing choice of colors on his blacksmithing outfit perfectly. I would recommend when using Basket Full of Equipment to go with the scarf-free version and dye it Faewild Green and Dun Dye. Then you'll find his scarf in the cloak bag and dye that Swamp Green. If you can't get your hands on that rare dye Swamp Green works great too.

Eyes (and a jump start with the dream guardian):

What do I mean by jumpstart? Well... the modder here made a great start of what Dammon looks like. But I suspect the way the mod and/or game functions, some of Dammon's coloring is a little off. His horns are nearly white, and his eyes are brown, that is if you're trying to make the dream guardian look like him. This might be corrected in the future.

What's important about this mod is that it unlocks Dammon's unique eye color for not only the Guardian but also the Player Character. It's the only one I've found so far that does this. If there are other mods that come along that just unlock his eyes, I'll be happy to include them here too.

Don't want to install mods or can't? Try the Blue 3 or Sapphire 4 eyes. Or if you want them to glow more then have central heterochromia Elf Blue 1 and 2 are nice options as well.

Fun fact: Dammon's eyes are blue with central heterochromia.

Oh, and there is also the option to go with his Early-Access eye color Elf-Gold 3 if you're feeling particularly nostalgic.

The Quick and Easy Way: Use: Transform into companions and NPCs - Ring of Metamorph (Last I checked Born to be Anyone is not compatible with Patch 7 still ;_;)

Want to make the player character and every companion in your party look like Dammon? Well, this is the mod for you. There is however a caveat. He's stuck in that blacksmith outfit. As in not even for love scenes will he get naked. Alas, the real Dammon model doesn't have a nude character model option-at least not yet. Any who...

Onwards to the rest of character creation!

But first, a few quick side-by-side final comparisons to confirm the appearance you should get when following this guide.

Head, Skintone, and Horn Color:

Head 4

Blush Tone 5

Malbolge Spires with Dusty 6 for both base and tip color.

Hair:

Style - Arabel Ribbon Hair Color - Blonde 3 Highlight - Red 6 Intensity 80.

Makeup (optional):

Eye Makeup - Butterscotch (Intensity 40, Metallic Tint 10, and Glossy 10) Limp Tint - Red 1 (Intensity 10, Metallic Tint 10, and Glossy 10) For makeup, I'm unsure if Dammon wears any but in all the images here I did add a subtle amount to try to make his eyes stand out a little. This might be helpful if you're stuck using Blue 3 or Sapphire 4. I thought to also add a tiny bit of gloss to his lips since he's not hanging out by his forge so much. This is just a personal preference.

In fact, Makeup 12 comes in handy for guys or gals in general at a 10 to 50 tint level to make their eyes look a little deeper set, tired even and um... more broody? Play around with this and other make-ups and have fun.

Scar (optional):

Dammon does have a scar over the bridge of his nose, under his right eye, and on his lower left lip. But on him, as seen below, it's faded. Scar 3 comes sorta close but it's rather distracting. Until we can get a scar depth or age slidder from Larian (or a mod) I would skip it entirely for now.

Class, Race, Voice, and Stats (optional):

According to the Wiki Dammon is an Asmodeus Tiefling but you could subrace him into Mephistopheles or Zariel as head 4 is available to all subraces. Changing his subrace might prove advantageous depending upon what class you wish to play.

For voice, nothing can replace Frazer Blaxland's, but... I found Voice 3, out of all of them, is similar in depth and warmth.

If playing as Dammon and you want to get as close to his abilities, and fighting style as possible, it's all an educated guess. This is only mine on one class example: Druid.

To start, I made sure that all his stats were at least 10 in everything just like his original. For the extra points left over, I put them into upping his Dexterity as it helps with dodging damage. After all, you don't need a lot of hp if you can dodge damage. I also put a few extra points into the main stat for his class and a bit in Charisma just to make conversation rolls easier. For background, I went with Guild Artisan to further help him with persuasion, give him some insight, and for roleplaying purposes since he was a blacksmith. For cantrips, I would highly recommend picking Guidance if available to further aid all conversation rolls.

I went with Druid because it lets him wield a scimitar right at the start. On the Nautolid you can usually find two of these weapons. "Who uses wooden tools!" Dammon shouts as he throws that ugly staff overboard into the fires of Avernus. The second reason is perhaps while he was in the grove he learned a thing or two. He did after all pick up a few skills while in Avernus, why not at the Druid Grove too? It's just one level and you could multi-class him into anything later on.

The third reason I went with Druid for class is your doppelganger gets a discount from Arron, the other merchant to be found there.

But of course, you can make him any other class you wish or multi-class him. I did so myself by adding dragon sorcerer and bard to him later on. This is just an idea, but one could use his playthrough to try and get the Jack-of-all-Trades achievement.

If I had to go with an official class for him, my money would be on Artificer with a subclass of a Battle Smith, to be precise. The video down below explains what they are, and as early as Act II Dammon can literally craft us some bombs and free armor if you bring him the right things. He would be the perfect Artificer companion if we in the future get that class in a DLC. (And romance option-yes while keeping most of his mystery too, Frazer. This will explain just one example of how it's possible.)

Sadly, no official Artificer class yet but there are a few mods you can try out by just searching the term Artificer on the Nexus. But this mod looks so far the most polished and fleshed out called:

Hope all this info helps you have some fun. Please feel free to tag and share with me your Dammon creations! Need any help feel free to reach out, I'd be happy to help. Looking for my old guide? It's here.

*Full Disclosure: In the previous versions of my guide, I was mistaken about his skin tone being Blush 4. After a near-unhealthy amount of scrutiny of Dammon's model, I apologize for this mistake. It's Blush 5, and the majority of the screenshots, ones that focus on his appearance, have been corrected accordingly. I apologize for this mistake and any inconvenience it has caused.

[amothersvow]

>>I love everyone's BG3 Tavs and Durges so much....... I'm giving them all forehead smooches....... they're all so beautiful....... ily all so much........

[astarion-appreciation-station]

So I've played D&D in some form for 20 years. Started in college, met my husband over it, still play it today. I've seen a lot of tips and tricks over the years.

One trick I like while playing a necromancer is Summon Undead.

This is different than the usual animate dead because you can choose a specific type of undead to summon. So here's what you can do!

1) Summon a Putrid Undead. Among the other usual undead traits it has this:

Okay great, it poisons enemies that's good

*BUT WAIT THERES MORE!*

2) Poison an enemy round one. On the undead's turn attack with this:

3) So now you have a chance to paralyze a target and keep it paralysed as long as it fails saves. Combine this with ways to lower the chance of a failure (I personally used this with an eloquence bard / Unsettling Words - basically a use of Bardic Inspiration that subtracts the roll from a creatures next save) and you have an almost permenantly stunned enemy.

That's great!

...

So how does this relate to BG3?

Well, imagine my surprise when I first played to see that Cazador had Putrid Zombies with a poison aura that paralyzed on hit. I almost wiped because of that.

But you know what? I wasn't even mad, because I recognized the same trick I had used in a past game!

... Reluctantly, I had to give Caz mad props for that. He still died horribly for hurting my vampire boyfriend but for a moment, I respected his game.

From one necromancer to another.

[leomonae]

Yeah, sure! My Astarion is a little murder machine who takes bosses down to nearly nothing in a single round, so I am happy to help!

So with a rogue, you are looking for two main things - stacking damage sources, and increasing how many attacks they get each round. You also need to be keeping in mind ways they can get advantage over enemies, because that's what lets them get their extra sneak attack damage (though that's only once per round, but it can be huge). Something else you can look at too is increasing their crit range - lowering the number they need to roll on an attack for it to count as a critical hit.

What I did for the first two acts was focus solely on those extra damage sources, because when your rogue is getting potentially six attacks (including off-turn reaction attacks in response to enemy actions) in a round, those really start to add up. There's a ring that gives you a nice, easy +2 acid damage on each attack, another ring that gives you 1d4 extra base type damage if your target is obscured, one that gives you 2 extra damage if they're illuminated, etc. And one that gives 1-4 extra psychic damage if you're concentrating on a spell, which is the one I typically had in alongside the acid damage ring because most enemies do not have resistance to psychic damage.

While getting a pure rogue without any multiclassing, or feats that give spells, to be concentrating constantly can seem like a challenge, it's not actually that hard - there's a lovely little bow that lets the wielder cast Hunter's Mark, which, oh, hey, look at that, gives them another 1d6 damage on every single attack against the target. And even if they don't currently have it applied to a target, as long as they've cast it and haven't had their concentration broken by anything, they will still be getting their concentration bonuses.

For weapons, I had the Knife of the Undermountain King as my primary offhand - lovely little weapon, gives you increased crit range and automatic advantage if the target is obscured, this really was an invaluable part of my build for most of the game after I got it - with that blade that gives an extra 1-4 poison damage when concentrating as my main weapon, up until my concentration broke and I'd swap over to another finesse weapon. Sword of Screams is a nice choice, though the Sussur dagger and the Ritual Dagger of Shar were both in rotation for a nice long time. I also played around with offhanding the Club of Hill Giant Strength for awhile, not least because it was nice to be able to jump more than, like, three feet away.

We are going with the stronger weapon as our offhand because of the Fast Hands passive feature we get as a Thief rogue, incidentally; two offhand attacks each round as compared to one main hand. You can eventually get the Gloves of the Balanced Hands which let you add your ability modifier - so dexterity for finesse weapons - to your offhand attack damage; before then, you might want to play around with different weapon arrangements to see what works out best for you.

For helmet, I mostly used the Circlet of Hunting for a higher chance to hit against my Hunter's Mark targets, but there are options like a hood that increases your crit range when you're obscured, or a helmet that adds some extra necrotic damage to each attack under certain circumstances.

Later in act 3, I am getting critical hits almost constantly, incidentally; I get increases to my crit range from my helmet, my cloak, my bow, and my dagger. He's actually wearing a ring of regen just now because honestly he doesn't really need any more damage to murder everything in the first few rounds of most fights.

I gave Astarion medium armour proficiency as one of his feats, both for the extra defense - there are at least two really nice medium armours you can pick up that let you add your entire Dex modifier to your armour class, rather than capping it at +2 - and also because there are some very useful medium helmets, gloves, and boots; I'm most of the way through act 3, and my Astarion is wearing medium armour pieces in all four slots right now.

For other feats, I took Dual Wielder for more weapon options, Savage Attacker for increased damage, and Mobile because positioning can be so crucial for a rogue, especially one who spent most of the game getting his advantage on attacks by having another party member next to the same enemy.

Other extra damage sources you can stack: the psionic overload illithid power, applying poison to your weapon, and other characters' buffs! Currently my cleric has a nice little cloak which gives her a power that adds 1-4 radiant damage to all allies' attacks within 20 feet of her, for example. In general, Astarion pairs really well with a properly set up cleric; their warding bond ability helps him maintain his concentration, they have various ways to buff his attack and damage, and you can do some fun things with a build that's centred on radiant damage and reverberation and dazing and illuminating orbs, especially if you give Astarion that ring of extra damage against illuminated enemies alongside.

You also have two options for easier advantage against enemies - Gloves of the Growling Underdog, for when you have 2+ enemies close enough to you (I didn't use these much because there were other gloves I wanted in more, including some that give you an extra 1-4 necrotic, or 1-4 fire, damage on every attack), and the Risky Ring, which gives you permanent advantage, on all your attacks, but at the cost of disadvantage on saving throws. It's an amazing little ring, but it is indeed very risky to try and run with that; just down to individual preference, really. I mostly didn't use it because it didn't mesh well with a build that was still largely reliant on keeping concentration going.

You can also look at giving especially tough enemies piercing vulnerability, which just straight up doubles that damage type. It's not the easiest thing to get, but there's the Amulet of Branding that lets you apply it to one enemy for a single attack if you like. Currently my main hand weapon applies piercing vulnerability automatically; if you find yourself reliant upon your rogue, go kill Orin early in act 3! Her weapons are absolutely amazing.

Other than that, there's what I said about increasing attacks per round - that extra bonus action comes automatically at level 3, but there are two other sources I had up just about constantly.

One: elixir of bloodlust. Free action once per round when you kill something on your turn. I've only stopped using these every day because I'm running out of them, but the elixir of viciousness for yet more crit range is quite good as a backup. You just need to watch that you're making sure Astarion is the one getting the killing blow, with the former.

Two: haste. Extra action every round. You can get this by someone else casting it on him, or by him casting it from a scroll so he gets the concentrating effect, but I don't like the fact that the haste can be lost unexpectedly like this, leaving him with lethargy and a wasted turn (even though the ten round duration is nice). Mostly I just used potions of speed in any boss or other fights where I felt like I needed the extra boost and wasn't too worried about it taking much more than three rounds to finish up.

Sarevok dies in two rounds, with the first round being used for setup - getting into position, drinking potions, activating bonus damage abilities like psionic overload and crusader's mantle, etc:

(that's the sword of screams and knife of the undermountain king he's using, as this was prior to killing orin and even though I had hunter's mark up, I wasn't taking a weapon that did bonus poison damage into a fight with, like, six undead who are typically going to be resistant or immune to poison and necrotic damage. which did admittedly kind of neuter jaheira in that particular fight when I've built her to be all about the poisoning, but I figured she'd probably be happiest focusing on beating up sarevok anyway)

real talk, i suck at bg3 and play on the easy difficulty.. if any of you guys have some pointers how to build up Astarion (and others) i’d love to hear your tips!

[thisaccountisagainstmywill]

One of my few disappointments with BG3 is the lack of world grounding for a Tav. They're labeled to be from Baldur's Gate, but no one recognizes them.

Obviously for a game like this you need to be careful you don't over write the players ability to make their own story. But I wish there was the option with a few NPCs to go "Hey don't I know you?" and have a short conversation where you can imply things about why and how you know them.

Or even have one city NPC be able to recognize you based on the background setting you picked.

Are you a Sage? You've probably been to one of the cities bookstores.

Are you a Soldier? A flaming fist or guard probably knows you.

Are you an Urchin? A fellow urchin probably remembers you.

[baldursgaylll]

my throwserker dark urge run is going well. this is the moment that got me the “two birds, one gnome” achievement lmaoooo

this might be the most unhinged thing i’ve done in BG3 so far

[jawstarion]

I've been working on making an OC for Baldur's Gate 3. Whilst doing so I've been looking at a LOT of lists with character development questions. I decided to make a document where I compiled and categorized them.

The questions can work for other Original Characters as well! DnD is something that comes to mind :D

You can also just use it as a base for your regular OCs and ignore the more BG3/DnD oriented questions!! Hope this is helpful to anyone :]

[leomonae]

If you think Astarion is not very good in combat, please consider that this may be something where you will feel differently after changing around his build/equipment some!

[owlart18]

“Maybe we could’ve stayed together…” “…In another life”

Fanart of my Tav (December) from Bg3 and their sibling, August, for a possible future playthrough + the versions of themselves for my original story!

(Commission info here | MapleStickerShop)

Text free versions:

[sappho333]

nobody usually cares abt my builds but i was suddenly compelled to make a Joan of Arc playthrough 😭😭

don’t ask me why but she’s a paladin and i went off very vague descriptions of her

[mokeonn]

Why don't you wanna play your other games cuz you can't turn them honor? What part of honor mode has enchanted you so?

I do enjoy my other games but I am having a TON of fun with honor mode, mainly coming down to the following reasons:

- No reloading.

This has been my blessing and my curse. On the one hand, it makes battles WAY more fun because if they go south, I can't just press the magic undo key. It's changed my battle strategy when I lose from "just reload to before the battle" to "have someone escape and prepare to pickpocket Withers at camp," which is a lot more fun imo. It's also why I had so many problems with the phase spider matriarch and why Poetry is technically continuing with dishonor because I kept running away and leaving camp right back to the fight. (Which was my fault, I forgot you can use waypoints in camp)

It also means I don't have to worry about saving often anymore. No more backtracking more than expected because I forgot to save before or after an event, because I simply can't backtrack!

However this also causes a nightmare, if you fuck up and end up wiping out an entire town or giving a character a bad end on accident, you're stuck with that. I have figured out how to turn the tide in my favor for a lot of events, but for others, I am simply out of luck if I mess it up. Like triggering the Isobel kidnapping scene and not winning the fight, or if something happens to a future companion in a battle where they're an ally. You're just stuck with the consequences, which sucks SO much.

- the difficulty is kinda fun and adds new features to fights that freshens it up

I normally go through the game in balanced mode, because that feels just right for me, but I can't help but admit that the new attacks and enemy features of honor mode freshen up the game a lot more. Take the intellect devourer fight at the very beginning of the game when you pick up Shadowheart, I've done that fight so many times it's more of a chore that gets you to level up than anything else. In tactician mode, it's the same fight, but they hit harder. In honor mode??? Those fuckers got laser beams! That's new! That adds something that freshens up an old experience! I like that a lot!

Many fights are like that where an old fight I've already done at least 5 times feels new. Getting the owlbear fight out of the way? Now there's 2 owlbears, bitch. Does the hag have new attacks? I wouldn't know! I just cheese the fight by arcane locking the stairs to the lair when she first reveals herself.

It really adds a breath of fresh air, and it gets me to think a lot more about equipment, spells, battle strategies, classes, feats, and so on. Rather than simply brute forcing my way through and reloading until I win.

-food system

I understand this is just a general tactician mode change, but instead of 40 camp supplies, you need 80.

I tend to pick up any edible substance I can see anyways, leading to me having over 1,000 camp supplies sometimes. I have to constantly distribute supplies to other party members lest my player character have 70% of their inventory and ability to carry things be taken up by food. I am constantly juggling to make sure I don't become encumbered.

So, having that set to 80 instantly helps me cut down on food and has even caused a little challenge. Due to the difficulty of honor mode, I have to long rest more, which means I now ACTUALLY have to worry about camp supplies. There will be times were the party needs to rest but I don't have enough supplies so I need to either find something, or buy something.

I find the food management aspect really fun actually and it's very interesting to want to long rest only to realize you only have 18 supplies and need to scramble to get 62 more.

-gettin' funky with it

I think the biggest part I like about honor mode as well is that there are areas where you can't simply run away to camp if things go south. So the game constantly requires me to think outside of the box and get funky with it.

Things like using enemies as weapons against other enemies, making a healing circle in combat and throwing a potion down in the middle of it, getting rid of an entire boss fight early by simply getting other enemies to fight them, blocking off doorways with boxes or arcane lock, finding out that darkness is your friend it is SUCH a good spell.

It's REALLY fun to figure out wild solutions to get things done without risking the run ending. A dumb example was in grymforge! I wanted to get all the duegar out of the way before fighting Nere, so I did this by going to the upper platform hanging above the entrance of the main room, and using a berserker Karlach to start throwing things down. Most of the duegar were melee fighters so they would end up dashing around and missing turns, and those that could hit far were taken out first. I had potions lined up the wazoo and made shadowheart throw them on karlach when she got low on health, Astarion was sneak attacking, and Poetry (my durge bardlock) was inspiring Karlach and eldrich blasting.

It got even better because some enemies had javelins they would throw up, which meant that Karlach now had more Javelins to throw down.

It was a dumb battle that ended with a solid 8 turns of everyone wailing on the scrying eye hoping to damage it, because we ran out of thunder spells that could hurt it and most of our damage was negated most turns. It cried for help every time, but no help came.

But I had a ton of fun with it! It was a memorable fight! It wasn't like my first fight in my first playthrough where I had to keep reloading, I just got to win by standing up really high and making Karlach throw every Javelin I had found and gave her throughout the game and then some.

-it justifies my bad habits that make gamers cry

To the joy of all my friends, I have stopped using my inventory system I made up. I used to pick up every backpack and pouch I could find and sort everything into 4 bags in the order of: spell scrolls, drinkables, throwables, and coatables.

This kept everything nice and clean as most things outside of these bags either got a special bag (i.e story items or dye bottles) or just got to be sold. It was a little tedious to grab things during battle, but I used the custom page to make things easier. So it was only really a pain getting things out of someone else's inventory.

I have since found out that an auto sort by type button exists, and I can just use that instead. And that a search bar exists. It took until a friend pointed it out for me to realize this. So I stopped doing the bag system since I could simply throw the story items you can't sell into a backpack and just auto sort everything else.

Plus I used to have a treasure pouch I would sell, which is not necessary! That's what the 'add to wares' button is for! Whoopsie!

So, thankfully, for everyone, I stopped doing the backpack system...

However

I had also developed another habit around the same time I developed the backpack system. I was doing a challenge run where I dared myself to use every object I picked up no matter how useless, and it caused me to develop a habit that makes everyone who plays with me cry:

I press take all no matter what.

That's just how I close containers.

There's nothing that makes a friend playing with you cry more than an inventory full of useless garbage, and you keep picking up more garbage off the ground to mess with them.

In honor mode, the shop prices are HIGH. A 80 gp ring of flinging in balanced mode is over 200gp in honor mode. The gloves of missile snaring that are about 200 gp normally? Over 600gp. If you aren't planning on pickpocketting (which admittedly I am clearly under utilizing and I need to plan on pickpocketting more), you need a LOT of money to buy items you need.

You know what gets you a lot of money? Selling a metric fuckton of armor, weapons, rotten food, bones, and whatever other garbage you pick up!

Hell, if you even give some of these to shop keepers for free, they'll like you more and lower the prices!

So next time your friend yells at you for picking up all of the severed body parts you see in on the risen road, consider that each of those parts net you about 3 gold, and you need that bottle of light blue dye Dammon is selling.

- I want the achievement and the gold dice

I've been getting into achievement hunting and I really like how all of bg3 achievements are achievable through story beats or small fun actions, so I want the achievement. I'm already working on the second hardest one which is busking 100 gold, so I need the hardest one. Boost my ego. Plus I wanna see if it gets the tactician achievement out of the way as well.

Also yeah I want those gold dice lmao

So that's why I have only been playing honor mode lately. I still love those regular balanced games, and I will need to revisit my main game soon since I haven't beaten the game yet and have no idea what act 3 encounters there are, but I am having the time of my life with honor mode. The furthest I have gotten so far is right before the Nightsong and the assault on Moonrise Towers. I would be able to tell you how well that went if I didn't proceed to let my hubris get the better of me and mess up the last light Inn.

Anyways, I highly recommend trying honor mode! It really forces you to get into out of the box thinking and try some spells, classes, and methods you might not have used. Whether that's disguising yourself as a drow to get past the goblin camps conflict free, pickpocketting every shopkeeper you can to save money, or saving every smokepowder barrel you can find; there's a lot of fun to be had in honor mode.

Of course, if you normally do explorer and never balanced or tactician, maybe reconsider idk. Also I am weird and absolutely have been trying new classes I never played before in this mode, I highly recommend playing a class you have played before if you're worried about the difficulty. For me? I got act 1 figured out, so by act 2 I'll be used to the class I picked it's no biggie :)

So far the only honor mode game going REALLY well for me is the one I'm doing with my friend, since he was unsure about honor mode and normally plays explorer. That one he is a druid half-wood elf (which is a fantastic pick as the wild shapes are grand for not dying and half-wood elves get an extra 3 meters to their speed) and I am a war cleric of Selune romancing Lae'zel (war clerics RULE for hitting hard, and I wanted to piss off Shadowheart as much as possible with my build.) So if you have a friend who likes playing tactician or honor mode, you can totally mooch off them. Having another player to control half of the team honestly helps a lot imo.