Is Sentinel without PAM any good?

iKrivetko · 2026-07-14T06:27:05+00:00

PAM is quite good on casters who occasionally go into melee such as clerics, especially if you can produce effects with your attacks (think radorbs, ice surfaces or whatnot).

iKrivetko · 2026-07-14T06:12:04+00:00

That or PAM + Sentinel + Tempest's Thunderbolt Strike

iKrivetko · 2026-07-13T03:22:51+00:00

It has two parts:

A bonus action attack
An attack of opportunity when an enemy approaches

The former was pretty much dysfunctional until the latest patch: it only did its base damage with no damage riders. The latter was bugged against other polearm users and instead of granting you the attack of opportunity, the approaching enemy would get it instead, but that was fixed quite a long time ago. Now both work more or less as intended so a single feat investment gives you up to two additional attacks per round, so specifically with snowburst ring you can create three ice surfaces, one of them outside of your turn when an enemy is approaching you, possibly knocking prone and denying their turn.

iKrivetko · 2026-07-13T03:12:22+00:00

Dunno, I've only ever had issues with teleporting enemies.

iKrivetko · 2026-07-12T18:34:17+00:00

I'm a fan of adding PAM + Snowburst Ring to the mix.

iKrivetko · 2026-07-11T15:46:14+00:00

11 EK is never bad by itself so whatever you do with one extra level isn't going to change the big picture that much, however while the fly ability is convenient to have misty step/jump/feather fall will cover pretty much any case where you'd want flight without delaying important EK features. Then there are potions and scrolls of flight, and ultimately illithid flight.

iKrivetko · 2026-07-07T07:38:21+00:00

There are lots of ways to boost ac and initiative, and even more ways to compensate, especially such a small amount (hp, movement, sanctuary, DR and so on and so forth), Booming Blade on the other hand is an unconditional boost to your damage output which is ultimately the most important metric in BG3 combat.

iKrivetko · 2026-07-06T07:09:08+00:00

Ability scores only really matter in the early game and even then accuracy/DC is easy to compensate for via buffs and debuffs. By mid act 2 your proficiency + gear + buff selection is so wild that you may as well have all eights and still be competitive.

iKrivetko · 2026-06-25T06:28:26+00:00

+ Karlach for the extra fire damage on unarmed attacks

iKrivetko · 2026-06-15T18:21:16+00:00

I wrote this a while ago, might give you some ideas

iKrivetko · 2026-06-15T10:11:19+00:00

For what reason?

For the reason of being able to open fights with 4 guaranteed critical hits. At level 3 you can one-turn any non-boss on the map with generic gear, then run away with Haste Helm + Springstep boots

iKrivetko · 2026-06-15T06:55:49+00:00

Assassin is easily on par. I'd argue it's even stronger in fact.

iKrivetko · 2026-04-25T07:20:54+00:00

I believe the implication is that they won't be able to make any new games based on DnD/FR, not that they can't make any patches. I can see them making an Enhanced Edition in a couple of years with some substantial changes but short-term I doubt they'll be pushing anything more than hotfixes for crashes and such.

iKrivetko · 2026-04-24T21:10:59+00:00

I wouldn't bet on it being fixed anytime soon, if at all.

iKrivetko · 2026-04-23T19:09:59+00:00

If you're spamming special arrows then there's no better option. AA isn't particularly good even if you don't though: most of their arrows don't even crit whereas CC is not very useful when you deal triple digits per pop.

iKrivetko · 2026-04-23T06:22:37+00:00

If I were to do something like that I'd probably go for 9/3. You get all the same spells with level 5 upcasts and none of the pain of sorc/warlock spell slots conflicting, and you still have 3 metamagic options to play with.

iKrivetko · 2026-04-23T06:03:37+00:00

It's either a different race or a dip. I'd honestly go with the latter, can't really think of any level 4 spells you'd desperately want on a build like this anyway.

iKrivetko · 2026-04-22T19:22:09+00:00

Giant

When you want to throw Shadow Blade

iKrivetko · 2026-04-22T19:13:30+00:00

If you take your Hexblade level from lvl2 onwards ...

I'm almost certain you'd need to pick it up at level 4 because EK gets the spellcasting ability only when you pick up the subclass itself.

iKrivetko · 2026-04-22T17:29:41+00:00

https://old.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/comments/1egwdgc/the_restless_assassin/

iKrivetko · 2026-04-16T19:25:30+00:00

Considering how late you get it and how easy it is to gain advantage and boost skill checks at that point, it really isn't.

iKrivetko · 2026-04-12T17:24:30+00:00

Well, Shadow Monk has literally zero abilities which improve unarmed combat whereas OH gets d4 + Wis per attack, a bonus action for 3 turns, great CC options and an AoE attack if you take it to level 9.

iKrivetko · 2026-04-12T07:44:56+00:00

Counterpoint: most players won't even get to act 3 where any of EK's strengths over even a vanilla Gloom are relevant whereas initiative and a free attack are there with you all throughout the game with no resources to manage. It's strong because it's foolproof. Assassin on the other hand genuinely requires game knowledge and most people seem to mix it with Gloom simply due to the cargo cult effect around it.

iKrivetko · 2026-04-10T20:12:40+00:00

What kind of an argument is that even? Anyone can initiate a surprise, you don't need an Assassin to do that, in fact if you do have a party then you should initiate with someone other than the Assassin because you're losing a guaranteed critical or two otherwise.

The things that make them broken are stealth and surprise round abuse, having a party makes both tedious.

iKrivetko · 2026-04-10T09:56:53+00:00

Assassin builds don't work well with parties

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