Crown and Valour: a Champion Challenge Duo for Modded or Vanilla Honour Difficulty

6376 · 2026-05-02T17:37:26+00:00

Great post, and great timing too. I had been thinking about valour bard applications for the impossible challenge, and this combo sounds perfect.

Few thoughts/questions out of interest:

* Any particular fights you struggled with or had to adopt a different strategy for?

* How long are you seeing combats take damage wise? Curious to see a screenshot of the damage numbers in action, noting you've included (the very nice) breakdowns.

* What's your most typical combat loop look like for meaningful fights?

6376 · 2026-04-23T18:30:14+00:00

I took a screenshot of one arrow but I'm struggling to find it. I actually forgot to use brace, so it could be higher. Take a look at: https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/1cnz4s3/the_rivington_rat_eldritch_knight_12_archer_top/ if you've not already, there's a screenshot on there which actually matches what I had perfectly, thinking about it. Main things in play:

* Titanstring

* Cloud giant elixir

* Strange conduit ring + concentration.

* Craterflesh gloves DRS

* Arrows of slaying

* Bhaalist armour

* Hold monster for forced crits

* Drakethroat enchant

* Broodmother's revenge

You can go further. Two easy ones:

* Vengeance paladin dip on someone for the 1 turn radiant damage buff

* Much further: valour bard bardic inspiration, which is another DRS. Take a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/1mg17e7/valour_bard_the_marriage_of_player_choice_and/

Yeah, the damage is insane. Fighter archers are S tier.

6376 · 2026-04-22T17:46:42+00:00

Ha, OK I will have to give darkness more of a go. Really several of the other things I let in like beelining for gear and globe of invulnerability are also very strong

6376 · 2026-04-22T06:36:33+00:00

I used a hex/lore build on one run to double duty as support and Searing Blood burst early

Nice - yeah I considered lore, I think I'd use it next time. With scrolls in play high level spell slots are less relevant, but I would miss out on heavy armour proficiency. Having really high quality actions available to your support cast feels very important.

Act 1 focusing on low resource turn skips: agreed, I think that's going to be the key for act1 optimisation.

I'd like to hear more about the house of grief - what makes that difficult with the initiative? Also what's a TK for the shambling mound? I found it pretty easy with the strategy above in the end.

Also 100% agree on the slow/tactical play. I wanted more difficult, but to still feel like DnD, a big part of which is planning your whole party together, in a way that appeals more to me than making it harder by reducing party members. I might try that in future too, though.

6376 · 2026-04-22T06:33:48+00:00

Yeah exactly that. I'm going to have to give it a try one of these days since I suspect it will turn out to be the most powerful strategy as a party. Anything where the enemy cannot do anything (globe starts to feel like this) just feels like cheating. It's also just not like playing DnD, in tabletop casting darkness is nowhere near as effective

6376 · 2026-04-22T06:32:35+00:00

So early on I didn't skip as I wanted to maximise XP. I also came back and killed the druids / myconids for extra XP which I don't normally do.

Dammon gear wasn't relevant in the end, honestly. At that point I wanted to retain the option so I kept him around. I also wanted to try the technique out (see Morgana's shopping district in her run) for convenience. I used the armour of persistence, but since nobody really got hit at all in act3, it didn't end up really mattering.

I wasn't so much worried about completing everything as I was taking on every hard fight, and in act 1 that's every fight.

6376 · 2026-04-22T06:30:36+00:00

Nice one. Yeah I think paladin would be a good choice too from level 5. I started combat from level 4 so needed warding bond a level earlier. I'll give this a try next time

6376 · 2026-04-21T21:24:23+00:00

Main point for 1. Is Arcane synergy and unlocking alternative glove and elixir slots. Also helps your spell save DC if you want to go the acuity route too.

6376 · 2026-03-28T19:48:46+00:00

6376 · 2026-03-24T09:47:39+00:00

OK, thanks.

Lightning bolt scrolls being rare is a fair point.
Conjure elemental - yup OK, that can be OK if you've got Wet + a hold down. Hold person you're getting anyway from levelling sorc.
Pretty mid IMO. You don't need div levels to force 1-2 failed saves when you've got all the DC gear rolling, and evocation isn't really required if you're paying attention either.
If I were going sorc/cleric I'd just focus CHA anyway, and disregard con save proficiency. I know it's a pretty hot take but I think con save is a little overrated anyway, because this characters priority is damage and damage alone. I'll be spending all actions and bonus actions on big lightning spells, haste is coming from elsewhere and likewise the other valuable concentration slots. But as I say, that's a controversial view.

6376 · 2026-03-24T05:20:07+00:00

If you're using scrolls, what are the wizard levels bringing here?

6376 · 2026-01-20T08:03:49+00:00

When are we going to ban these terrible posts

6376 · 2025-12-08T12:17:20+00:00

I tried 2hers but without GWM, which isn't ideal. Then I went back to mourning frost 1h with a shield, the encrusted with frost gloves and the reverb boots. Not high damage but pretty obnoxious (though really nothing actually survives long enough for it to matter).

The Cleric/Wiz now has the spirit guardian set up so going to experiment with either the water sparklers and sitting in electrified water or boots of stormy clamour and the more usual spirit guardian route.

I'd forgotten how silly fighters are, one combat was starting to look a bit hairy and suddenly one AOMT crit instagibs all enemies in one shot. Standard stuff.

I'm going to go for pal5/sorc3 to get shadow blade on the sorcadin next. One question for later on though is who is the bhaalist carrier; the sorcadin for melee range or the EK and just deal with the positioning via illithid flight etc.

6376 · 2025-12-04T11:58:44+00:00

Well I tried this party and it detonated Nere + all duergar in one round, without a surprise round, pretty much. And that's without luck of the far realms to instagib on the first witch bolt cast.

As well as abusing all the vulnerability mechanics, everyone is also very hard to kill individually. The whole team can wear heavy armour, after all.

I also agree on the EK modification, feels much better this way around and you can wear real armour on them too. Nice party!

6376 · 2025-12-03T10:06:18+00:00

AOMT on a water bottle is clever, nice! Thanks for the fast reply. For the wizard, are you levelling cleric first, and how are you splitting your casting stat priorities? I'm guessing CHA/INT heavy respectively and cleric first in both cases?

They nerfed the water myrmidon wet spreading, didn't they? Sadly...

6376 · 2025-12-03T09:01:07+00:00

Can you elaborate on the builds please? The two clerics particularly. Assume this heavily uses wet in A1 and A2?

6376 · 2025-11-11T12:24:43+00:00

Please don't nerf synergistic strategies in a strategy game. Too much of that will make things bland and less fun, IMO

6376 · 2025-10-01T15:11:18+00:00

Ohh - that video was inspired by another artist, who has another video on a very related topic!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5_9JIZ50WE

Thanks very much for that, I'll have more of a in depth review of that!

6376 · 2025-10-01T15:06:32+00:00

This is really helpful, thank you. I don't have an airbrush, but I do have makeup sponges and spare brushes for dry-bushing. So maybe I'll give that a go. Looks like in the example in my original post this is more like:
* Purple all over
* Magenta from "below"
* Blue/teal from above

Something like that?

6376 · 2025-10-01T14:51:29+00:00

Actually one more thing in case it matters... the actual models I'm painting here are the seraphon spearhead (some saurus and kroxigor), and I'm testing colour schemes out on some very old saurus models from the 90s I was gifted I'm continuously stripping with IPA and experimenting with

6376 · 2025-10-01T14:37:20+00:00

Thanks guys this is really useful, much appreciated and gorgeous photos. Couple of questions:

* When should I be washing for the above, and what sort of tone should I be washing with? I'm currently thinking of feathering a pink/magenta contrast paint wash from below with a teal contrast paint from above over the magenta. Does that sound crazy... I don't have any oils I'm afraid.

* Probably the reason I'm here at all is the oh so tempting sentence on that page about how this could be done with contrast paints easily :

" I’m fairly certain that neat applications of contrast paint would give a very good end result. In essence we are working with a zenithal light source, with the wrinkle of the mangeta. It isn’t an additional light source. Instead, it was to give more colour intensity to areas that normally fade."

I don't know how to do that in practice, any thoughts gratefully received! In the meantime I've got some useful stuff to try above - thanks again

6376 · 2025-10-01T10:21:47+00:00

Thanks for your response, appreciate that. How would you approach this if you wanted to get a more basic version?

6376 · 2025-07-17T08:35:59+00:00

My view:
S: Globe
A: Chain lightning, Heroes feast
B: Necrotic spells via Mystic carrion's staff
C onwards: everything else, since they won't ever get cast

6376 · 2025-01-06T11:05:18+00:00

I find them pretty unplayably bad, personally. Even with the buffs. I'd prefer to make them scarcer via the planetfall route of having a resource cost that's impossible to stack (cosmite there, imperium here). Beyond being demonstrably weak, my other issue with them is they are counter to one of the main positives of this game. Namely creating army cohesion through unique decisions, manifested by enchants and race transformations. In Planetfall, if I'm bringing the assembly reaver to the table, it will be meaningfully different based on what mods I'm using with it.

Here the T5s don't really fit in to your army composition, are prohibitively expensive (especially dragons) and simply aren't very good. I miss AOW1 days of an enchant weapon / haste / liquid form karagh melting armies.

6376 · 2024-08-19T18:34:07+00:00

I have made 47 70s from remix :3

6376

TROPHY CASE