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bettsfic · 11 months ago

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bg3 build: beast priest (shadowheart respec)

i'm playing around with some new builds! after scrounging the internet for good build guides, i didn't find any that i thought were interesting. in my current playthrough, i'm trying to respec all the companions to be the classes they would have chosen without their various traumas.

the beast priest is my respec for shadowheart. if you haven't noticed, shadowheart's basic build isn't great. when you find her, she's already level 1, which means the game chooses her subclass for you: trickery domain. and that doesn't make sense at all, narratively or for the stats she's been assigned. so to make her a good trickery domain cleric, you would want to respec her anyway just to fix level 1.

but i don't want her to be a trickery domain cleric. i don't even want her to be a healer. i want her to be an emo bird girl. the Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way of bg3, emphasis on raven. by endgame, we learn that shadowheart loves animals and nature, and she's a bit of a rebel (my graffiti queen). without having been kidnapped by the mother superior, i can see her either noping off into the woods or staying in the city to be the type of person who accidentally acquires really a lot of cats. so my goal is for her to have lots of animals, do a fuckton of damage, and fight off the darkness with lots and lots of light.

you can find the full build on eip. more detail and a level by level breakdown under the cut.

the beast priest build involves taking 6-7 levels of beast master ranger and 5-6 levels of war priest cleric. you start off as a ranger, because rangers have great early game damage and are also imo the easiest class for beginners. you stand in one spot and you shoot stuff. you can also get Harold (crossbow) pretty early on and it can be your main weapon through most of the game. it does insane damage and casts Bane.

i'm not familiar enough with armor and weapons to include recommendations in this guide (beyond Harold. get Harold). that is too much for me to keep track of, and i swap things out a lot. use whatever you find most helpful and/or looks the coolest. you probably can't use this build for lone wolf tactician or anything, but i do think it's very fun for an explorer or balanced playthrough, and it fixes a lot of the problems in shadowheart's base build.

this build does a few things:

uses war priest weapon buffs to increase ranged damage

minimizes concentration spells to prioritize ensnared strike and hunter's mark

backup heals (unfortunately this means either respeccing another companion to take on main healing duties or building a main heals tav. i'm working on a bardadin build for this very purpose. there is also always halsin, but he takes a while to acquire)

it's very beneficial to astarion that the bird can blind enemies near him so he can gain advantage to sneak attack (i'll share my build for him too eventually; he is also part ranger)

toolkit against undead (guardian spirits is a must)

important team utilities like guidance

what this build can't do:

be the "face" of your team, by which i mean initiate dialogue. we have no charisma or proficiency in anything related to talking to people. we are a gloomy emo girl sequestered to the back of the group and we shoot stuff and hang out with our bird

steal shit, disarm traps, lockpick. i mean, you can, but you'll probably have another character better equipped for it. we'll be wearing medium armor or heavy armor (optional), so we'll have a disadvantage on stealth anyway

here's how i've broken down each level:

initial build

if you're respeccing shadowheart, you won't be able to change her race or background, which means she'll remain an acolyte and have proficiency in insight and religion.

if you're making your tav a beast priest, you should choose whatever background and race makes sense for your character's narrative. the caveat being, as stated above, stealth and sleight of hand are kind of useless here, as well as dialogue proficiencies like persuasion, intimidation, deception, performance, etc.

what *is* helpful is having proficiency in the things you walk up to and go "oh shit, what's that?" so survival and perception are pretty important. folk hero and outlander are therefore both good background choices, but again, what's important to me in a build is that the story makes sense.

note you will not need investigation because we'll be taking bounty hunter as a favored enemy.

level 1: ranger (1)

proficiencies: survival, nature, animal handling (see above for more explanation; really just take whatever you think will be useful)

favored enemy: bounty hunter

bounty hunter gives disadvantage to enemies hit by ensnaring strike. very helpful for astarion and your companion. however, it's sometimes difficult to choose when to use hunter's mark versus ensnaring strike.

natural explorer: beast tamer

all of these are kind of useless, tbh. but i chose this one because early game, your companion dies very easily and this way you'll be able to bring it back without using a spell slot.

from my understanding, in EA you could either have your summon pet OR your companion out, not both, but in full release you can now have both summons out at once.

level 2: ranger (2)

fighting style: archery

we are going to be very far away from our enemies and Harold is going to be very dear to us.

spells: hunter's mark, ensnaring strike (ranged)

both spells require concentration so you can only pick one. ensnaring strike gives disadvantage to an enemy but hunter's mark does more damage, and your companion does more advantage to it as well. for cc situations, i'd choose ensnaring strike; for taking down one big dude at a time, hunter's mark. hunter's mark can be recast as long as you maintain concentration.

level 3: cleric (1)

deity: any (if you're respeccing shadowheart, your deity will remain shar)

domain: war domain

cantrips: guidance, sacred flame, light

the only one that's important here is guidance. the other two can be whatever your party needs most. the reason we're taking one level of cleric early and the others later is because guidance is a must. if someone else on your team has it, or if you have a bard, you can stay as a ranger until 5.

level 4: ranger (3)

subclass: beast master

spell: cure wounds OR speak with animals

for shadowheart's respec, i would say cure wounds so that she can start subhealing. however, if you don't have anyone in your party who can speak to animals yet, that's pretty important. the strange ox you meet in the grove provides a lot of endgame help, and it's fun talking to the owlbear and scratch.

level 5: ranger (4)

feat: resilient (wisdom)

taking resilience in wisdom gives us a proficiency in wisdom saving throws, which we'll need for both cleric and ranger spells.

level 6: ranger (5)

spells: anything that would be most helpful to your team.

you probably already have somebody who can cast longstrider as a ritual spell. enhance leap is helpful although this is pretty late in the game to be getting that. i try to avoid concentration spells because of hunter's mark and aoe spells because astarion and karlach are always in the thick of it and i don't want to hurt them.

what's important this level is that your companion's AC and damage increases, and it gets an extra attack.

level 7: cleric (2)

you get turn undead and guided strike this level. both are very useful, particularly guided strike. nothing to choose though.

level 8: cleric (3)

new spells! these can be prepared based on what you think you'll need for a given scenario. lesser restoration is a must if you're letting astarion bite you every night. but if that's the case you probably already have it.

level 9: cleric (4)

cantrip: whatever's most helpful at this point

feat: ability improvement (1 in wisdom, 1 in dexterity)

if you have auntie ethel's hair, then you might want 2 in one or the other.

level 10: cleric (5)

here's where you get guardian spirits, which is the single most important mid-game spell you can have (although in this build you get it pretty late). make sure when you cast it, you have as many movement speed spells and potions you can get. you're going to cast it and run around like mad killing everything.

level 11 & 12: ranger OR cleric (6 & 7)

here's where you have a difficult choice to make. your last two levels can be ranger 6 and 7, which will give your companion a huge buff. or you can choose cleric 6 and 7, which will give you war god's blessing, which gives you a +10 attack roll to give to someone else on your team.

you an also do cleric 6 and ranger 6, which will grant you war god's blessing AND allow you to take ranger knight as a favored enemy, which gives you the ability to wear heavy armor (if you want that). you can also gain resistance to cold, fire, or poison, but since you encounter all of those things in pretty equal measure, i never know which to choose.

i think it'll depend on what sounds more fun to you. personally, i think seeing my animal companion destroy everything is very fun. but if you enjoy reactions and buffing your teammates, i can also see wanting to stick with cleric through the end.

unlock to level 20

you might be thinking it's not worth it to only take two half classes instead of one whole one and lose out on late game spells and abilities. and i agree with you completely. my favorite part of beast master is when your companion gets two special abilities at 11. if you're playing completely vanilla, this is the major sacrifice of multiclassing. you're prioritizing creativity and cool combos over fancy spells and abilities.

but if you install a mod that lets you level to 20 (no class can go beyond 12, but you can multiclass to 20), you can take 11 levels of ranger and 9 levels of cleric. level 11 of ranger maxes out your animal; level 8 of cleric gives you divine strike, and level 9 gives you flame strike.

i didn't find anything from 10-12 in cleric very helpful. there's divine intervention which you can only use once in the game, ever, and i used it at a very integral time and it didn't do enough. heroes' feast is helpful but halsin has that too. heal, which should be the best healing spell in the game, is currently bugged and i don't know when they'll fix it.

you could also do level 12 of ranger for the extra feat if you don't have both wisdom and dexterity to 20, and stay at 8 for cleric.

if you do unlock to level 20, i would download the double xp mod (although i haven't gotten mine to work yet) so you can get to 20 at about the same pace you get to 12 in vanilla. this obvs is extremely unbalanced and makes you very very OP but that makes the game more fun for me. and anyway, if it gets too easy you can always play tactician or honor mode.

i hope you found this helpful! i'll probably be tweaking and updating it as i go. i'm working on respecs for astarion, karlach, halsin, jaheira, and wyll right now. gale, lae'zel, and minsc i'll be able to look at once i play around with them more. i haven't used them much yet in my teams.

if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to send me an ask!

#bg3 #bg3 build #shadowheart #shadowheart respec #cleric #ranger #multiclass #multiclass build

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peantbutter-honeycombs · 2 years ago

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The Eradith Siblings

Born in the elven city of Syngorn to the Herald of the New Age, Kesstryn Eradith, the Eradith children were putatively raised amongst the cream of elven society. As a young child Talric was always trying to make a good impression on his mother, but they hardly acknowledged his interests and/or achievements due to a general disinterest in him. Regardless, he persisted hoping to gain his mother’s attention.

When he was five, his mother, reoriented his genes, fundamentally refitting his genetics to further her own “studies.” Thusly, his agreeable nature was stripped and replaced with an insecure, opportunistic, and distrustful disposition. Alas, on his sister, Fia’s, second birthday, their mother reformed her body, irrevocably marring Fia’s drafted path in life. In one fell breach of kinship, Fia’s childhood was poached, replaced with endless days of ridicule and exclusion.

In the days following her transfiguration, her brother, Talric implemented a plot that delivered them from the abuses of their mother. On account of this, the two spent the ensuing years, growing up in isolation. After a year or so foraging, they were taken under the wings of half-elven twins, Vax’ildan and Vex’halia Vessar.

Talric Eradith

Talric is a pragmatic and efficacious interbred elven child. He approaches almost all matters with a rigid survivalist attitude that distinctly belies his age. A rather guarded individual, he presents a tendency towards extremely inconsistent social behavior and has a hard time trusting others. Talric has admitted that as much as he craves a meaningful relationship with other humanoids they feel they cannot rely on others to meet their physical or emotional needs. They have trouble believing that any individual, primarily adults, will love and support them as they are. Thus, he’s adopted the isolating defensive mechanism that is social withdrawal. Pushing people away has become his default. Intriguingly, the little boy exhibits an unparalleled self-possessed peace of mind when performing duties in open air environments, especially those involving the exercise of tree climbing.

Considering the mannerisms of other children, Talric is comparatively cautious and calculating, reserving his warmer, gentler moments for his beloved younger sister, Fía. Given that his mother, someone he trusted to unequivocally love and accept him, didn't, his apprehension in social settings is understandable. Vulnerability, more often than not, has rewarded him with nothing but pain. Still, it is unclear to what extent his asocial personality and behavior are genuine. Much of his detached behavior is viewed as a façade for his desperate yet haunting desire for affection; at least from those in his party. He has shown he can be fairly loving and understanding. However, these moments are far and few between and the few performed for anyone other than his sister are even less common.

Deviating from his reclusive bearing, Talric is quite clever and astute; or a “scheming little shit” as numerous individuals throughout the campaign have called him. Aided by an amazingly calculative mind, Talric has shown himself on multiple occasions to be capable of developing and managing intricate traps to injure and incapacitate adversaries. This is perhaps best illustrated in "Best Laid Plans..."(1x50) as he was able to use the variables from the information gathered by his investigation to predict paths that would lead to certain outcomes. This insight allowed him to devise a whole array of booby traps that effectively removed two-fifths of the members of the Herd of Storms from combat. Though he predominantly crafts his traps to be nonlethal, this rather merciful control can be overturned.

Fiannim Eradith

Fiannim is a sentimental, fairly quiet, rapt individual, who like many others her age is also curious minded and venturesome. Nevertheless, having grown up in nearly complete isolation, she is exceptionally wary in unfamiliar settings. Curiously, even with everything she’s highly cognizant of other individuals’ emotional states, good and bad: tied with her innate benevolence, she has an intense desire to help those in need (even to her detriment). Still, as a relatively passive individual she has a tendency to depend on others, namely her older brother, to take the lead in overwhelming social settings. On the whole Fia is a generally sweet, innocent, and diffident little girl. Moreover, according to her older brother, she’s also the most compassionate and merciful person you’ll ever meet.

She is played as a mainly silent character, choosing to use physical language such as pointing and nodding instead of traditional speech. Considering the nature of her childhood, her mousy, subdued behaviors are quite understandable, especially and specifically in unfamiliar social settings. She is shown to be extremely anxious in social situations, which often lead her to “shut down.” While it has been confirmed she can verbally communicate, she is somatically unable to speak around certain people or in certain settings. Her vocalizations are instead expressed in the form of noises reminiscent of bird calls. For all that, there are a select few who she feels comfortable verbally communicating with; namely her brother, the twins, Scanlan and Keyleth.

Despite her insecurities, Fiannim attempts to make sure that others have the things they need to feel safe, secure, and loved regardless of their alignment. Quite the opposite of her brother, she is well known for her warm and disarming presence. On several occasions throughout the campaign she’s seen putting the emotional contentment of others well before her own. Given the fact that she spent the better part of her childhood with few opportunities to interact with others, her inclination to approach both allies and adversaries alike, in a genuinely respectful manner is quite remarkable. Her non-discriminatory mindset and capacity for empathy has graciously equipped her with a demeanor that prompts friendship and trust from most of the individuals she meets, noticeably in the cases of Lady Allura and J’mon Sa Ord.

Art by @oliviajoytaylor

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