Baldur's Gate 3

The Ray of Frost machinegunner.

Draconic bloodline sorcerer. Take a cold option. Get the Morning Frost staff in the Underdark and the Winters Clutches gloves from the lady in mountain pass who wants gith egg. After killing gith boss, there's a necklace of elemental something or other in the room to the right. In Last Light there's a room in the back on the bottom floor with a floorboard that has a snowburst ring hidden in it. Also get the super awesome Potent robes from the Bard tiefling by going to Moonrise and saving everyone. While you're there, stop in the necromancers room for the coldbrim hat. Also have someone nearby with create water. Make sure to take haste.

Congrats. You're now pumping out a minimum of an extra 10-15 damage per hit from ray of frost without them being wet and a huge attack roll bonus. The ray will also stack something called encrusted with frost which can outright freeze them solid and make them skip their turn and chilled as well which gives them cold vulnerability. Patches of frost will also immediately appear under them, forcing them to make a save or fall probe. Everytime you hit them they also have to make saves. Burn every spell slot for metamagic and twin/quicken to your hearts content. Hasten yourself and you're harder to hit and blast more.

So much fun. I can write a better guide if people want. I'm on toilet and half asleep at moment.

Edit: I did write a better guide.

I recently discovered the Radiating Orb build, that thing is busted! Together with the Cloak of Displacement you're basically untouchable! Everything around you will have around 8 Orb stacks permanently, and every stack reduces their attack rolls by one, on any target! It also does a nice bit of passive radiant damage, but that's honestly just a bonus.

I'd say the bread and butter of this are the helm and the chest armor:

• Holy Lance Helm: Cause radiant damage to enemies who miss attacks against you
• Luminous Armor: Whenever you deal radiant damage, trigger a shockwave that applies Radiating Orb in an area

Other items then synergize with this setup and make it even stronger:

• Luminous Gloves: Radiant damage applies Radiating Orb
• Callous Glow Ring: Cause 2 extra radiant damage when illuminated
• Coruscation Ring: Any spell damage applies Radiating Orb when illuminated
• Cloak of Displacement: Enemies have disadvantage until first hit every turn
• ... anything that does radiant damage or reduces enemy hit change

So enemies miss their attack, everyone gets damage and Orb stacks, and that causes even more misses, damage and stacks.

Thief Rogue 4/Swords Bard 6/Fighter 2

It's a skill monkey, sniper DPR, and buff bot rolled into one with action economy for days. Even with the Double Hand Xbow nerf this is still ridiculously powerful. I legitimately had issues playing anything else after the run that used this, because while there are builds that can match it for damage, nothing else is going to compare for skill checks.

The build is the definition of Main Character Syndrome.

I'm playing a Dark Urge No Companions run. I have nearly completed Act 1 with zero party members beyond the Dirge.

Right now I'm Rogue (Thief) 3 and Ranger 2

I've discovered that if you are sneaking (so you can see the vision cone), you can sneak attack, and re-hide, and as long as you don't step into any vision cones during the process the enemy will spend its turn activating dash and staying in one place. They don't attempt to find you 90% of the time.

Does the Pact of the Blade extra attack still stack with the Paladin? I thought they nerfed that this most recent patch.

Damn, some super fun stuff! I feel OP just by being a pally and having some understanding of dnd on regular, but I'm planning on tactician next along with the harder mode after that. Just need cross platform so I can play with some of my PC friends (and an auto organization of items for the wheels on controller, it's madness to try and organize it by conventional means).

Create water + Tempest Cleric's channel divinity = Profit

I am just going classic open hand monk with three levels of thief. A Sorlock for pew pew, Tiger Barbarian as front line and a lore bard as control and heal. That's the plan for my honor mode run I have started yesterday.

I did 5 rogue/7 fighter. Heavy on crit, combined with a particular weapon that causes vulnerability... I think I had like 30% crit chance. Astarion was very deadly.

Eldritch Knight bound weapons seem better for throwing. Can combine with berserker and thief for extra throws.

The best build I've played is my Bard in this playthrough. Swords bard, dex based sharpshooter, 2 hand crossbows, 2 hand fighting style, and 2 levels in paladin oath of the Ancients. You're a skill monkey with dex and charisma, so you can do almost anything in the game as good as any other character, you have sleight of hand and persuasion expertise so you can disable traps, pick locks, and persuade conversations. You get medium armor proficiency, or heavy if you take pally first, so you have high AC and high dodge, so you can front line. You have smite and a ton of spells slots. You can one-shot big bads. With the ranged slashing flourish you can attack 5 times in a single turn for high damage. And to top it all off you have heals, crowd control, and a pretty great spell arsenal. There's literally nothing this build can't do. Not only can it do everything, it can do most things better than dedicated classes. The only two things I've found done better by other classes are mass healing from a cleric, or lots of AOE damage from a wizard. Anyways, I absolutely LOVE this build.

I have a few different ones going on, but so far I have to say that my favourite has been a Ranger 2 / Thief Rogue 10 build that has really come into its own thanks to items.

Ranger 2 for medium armor proficiency (not relevant until Act II), fighting style, and Hunter's Mark.

Thief Rogue 10 for extra bonus action, sneak attack dice, evasion, uncanny dodge, and feats.

This turned into a crit fishing build, and so we must turn off automatic sneak attacks. Change it so the game asks every time, and then only apply it on a critical hit, or the last attack of the turn if no crits happened.

Notable equipment includes:

• Covert Cowl to increase crit chance
• Armor of Agility to get his AC to 22
• Knife of the Mountain King for increased crit chance and Advantage against targets in the dark
• The Dead Shot for increased crit chance (and its other effect works amazingly well with Sharpshooter)
• Surgeon's Subjugation Amulet for an auto-paralyze on a crit
• And finally, for your second melee weapon, anything Light with Finesse will do but if you want to destroy spellcasters I highly recommend Sussur Dagger.
• Elixir of Viciousness for big battles, to increase crit chance.

The crux of this build is to have as many possible chances to hit/crit as possible, and to attempt to get an extra Sneak Attack each round thanks to your Reaction. I took the Mage Slayer feat to give myself an extra chance, but Sentinel will also do. I was just building specifically to fuck up Cazador.

With one of those two feats, if you are in melee you should be able to trigger a reaction attack each round. Now, these reaction attacks are programmed poorly, and you seem to get both a main-hand and an off-hand attack on them, doubling our chances to get a hit/crit. You also get Sneak Attack on this if you have an adjacent ally or Advantage on the attack.

Additionally, a hit with the Sussur Dagger silences the target for two rounds, making casters unable to do much of anything except bonk you with a stick.

With this build you should be critting on a 17, getting Sneak Attack twice per round and hopefully applying it on a critical hit, be extremely hard to hit (add Cloak of Displacement to make it even harder,) shut down mages from casting with ease, and just generally a menace.

For the sniper, why are you multiclassing to fighter?