BG3 – You can be Arctic Druid Angela too Two

This post is a follow-up to my previous post on recreating the character of Arctic Druid Angela.

No, Guard Wulf. It’s not. When it comes to egregores, it may never truly be over.

If you’re like Guard Wulf and are bored by system stuff, skip ahead to my next post, in which I tell a story using pictures.

Originally I wrote this essay and the pictorial as a single post. It got a bit long, so I decided make this a two-part presentation. However, the story takes place in the context of testing various builds for Druid Angela. You may way to skim this post anyway.

It’s reasonable to ask, “What’s the point?” Apart from sharing my thoughts on conforming a roleplaying conception to the confines of a game system, this essay may give you some insight into the design issues that come up when creating any kind of character build in Baldur’s Gate 3 or similar games.

A viable alternative

After I wrote the previous Arctic Druid Angela post, I remembered that I’d embedded a video about an Arctic Druid build in the original post that introduced the character. The video was created by by Jay Dunna on an Arctic Druid build. He takes a somewhat different approach from mine:

Many of Dunna’s videos seem to focus on the end-game, and that one is no exception. However, he has an interesting approach and I decided to consider it. Here’s a blend of what he said in the video and my initial merge of his ideas and mine.

He doesn’t go for the “two-staff” setup, so his Feats are two uses of +2 Wisdom. Druid Angela likes to use both her staffs, and will stick with Dual Wielder.

For level 12, take a level of Barbarian. Reasons:
- Barbarians get Proficiency in Constitution Saving Throws, the same as that one level of Sorcery I mentioned above.
- Druid Angela could use the Barbarian Rage ability as a Bonus Action, then go into one of her Wild Shapes as an Action, all in a single round. (A Druid of the Moon can’t easily do this, since Wild Shape is a Bonus Action for them.) This can be a useful defensive maneuver.
- Barbarians get Unarmored Defense which adds the Constitution Bonus to Druid Angela’s Armor Class if she’s not wearing Armor.
- If she respecs to taking her first level in Barbarian, she’ll be able to use most weapons, including bows. This is a marginal benefit for her: She generally prefers magic staffs, and she’d use Ray of Frost over an arrow anyway. Still, any additional option in combat is a good thing.
- Of course, this means no Armor of Agathys, unless she settles for 10 levels of Druid (and therefore gives up sixth-level Druid spells).
  To get Armor of Agathys, Druid Angela needs to respec with one level of White Draconic Ancestor Sorcery. The tooltip describes the Level 1 spell. If cast as a Level 6 spell, it would provide 30 temporary hit points and deal 30 Cold damage to attackers.

Instead of using Armor of Landfall for the Advantage on Constitution Saving Throws, use Wavemother’s Robe and Amulet of Greater Health instead.
- The Wavemother’s Robe provides a free cast of Create Water, which gets the enemies Wet and makes them Vulnerable to Cold damage.
  Create Water is a spell that most casters can acquire. If you cast the spell at higher levels, it creates a Wet surface over a larger radius. Wavemother’s Robe casts the spell at 4th level, creating a huge area suitable for lovely, lovely ice surfaces.
- The Amulet of Greater Health sets Constitution to 23. If Druid Angela wears no armor, and with the Barbarian’s Unarmored Defense, that adds +6 to her Armor Class. It also gives Advantage on Constitution Saving Throws. That is a big bonus to maintaining Concentration.
- However, it gives up the Necklace of Elemental Augmentation, which means her Ray of Frost will do less damage.
- With this new approach, the Robe of the Weave might be a better alternative again, since it adds +2 to Armor Class (Wavemother’s Robe only adds +1) and the Robe adds +1 to Spell Attack rolls, which slightly compensates for the damage loss by wearing the Amulet instead of the Necklace.

These sorts of trade-offs are part of Baldur’s Gate 3.

What’s the goal?

I’m trying to come up with a build for Druid Angela that fits my role-playing conception of the character, and can also potentially be effective enough in higher difficulty levels. An Arctic Druid build is not really suited for soloing the game, but let’s see what we can do.

For inspiration, let’s turn to Garsen, another creator of BG3-related YouTube videos. He likes to demonstrate his builds by repeating a particular combat in the game.

I’m no Garsen, but I tried his approach. There was a particular save I had from playthrough 8’/2.5 that seemed suited for similar tests. Druid Angela was at level 12, and the party had gathered all the gear in the game that I wanted to use for testing.

There was an exception. Both Real Angela and I have observed that sometimes the game seems to “eat” an item; you know you acquired it, but later you can’t find it in anyone’s inventory or camp chests. In this case, it’s the Wavemother’s Robe. Here’s photographic evidence: Druid Angela looks nice in the Wavemother’s Robe, and I know I had it during this playthrough, but it disappeared. I could not include it in these comparisons.

The tests

The game location for my test combat is pretty close to the location Garsen uses. There’s one big difference: Due to how I approached the game’s story, the guard patrols are hostile to me. If I move Druid Angela to within their field of view, they’ll attack immediately.

The test battle is located in the area between Nortale’s Hostel and the offices of the Baldur’s Mouth Gazette. In the upper left, you can see Druid Angela, Karma, and Wings assessing the situation from a distance.

This means that it’s harder for me to go through the combat preparations that I described in my previous post. If I’m too close, the enemies attack. If I’m too far away, the time-limited effects tick away as I move closer.

The enemies in these test fighters are a group of Flaming Fist mercenaries accompanied by a Steel Watcher. The Watchers are fast, tough, and deadly. They’re the ones who make the fights difficult.

The Steel Watcher in Tactician mode. In lower difficulty levels, these constructs are Vulnerable to Lightning, but not so here. While they’re resistant to physical damage, they have no special resistance to Cold. That’s Arctic Druid Angela’s specialty.

Since I chose playthrough 8 for these tests, most of them were made in Balanced difficulty. I did a couple of tests in Tactician difficulty, using the same gear combination as I did in my final Balanced test, and was successful in that as well. The second Tactician test turned into an epic battle, which I’ll describe in the story.

This looks similar to an image above, but the picture was taken in Tactician mode. Notice how the Steel Watcher has more Hit Points.

The key to dealing with Tactician mode (write this down; it will be on the test) is to be tactical. Here Druid Angela has rushed in, struck the Steel Watcher with augmented Mourning Frost, and run away. The point of running was to force the Steel Watcher to use up its Opportunity Attack on her. Since she’s protected by her Displacement Cloak, it isn’t likely to hit her. But…

…because the Steel Watcher’s Opportunity Attack is used up, it can’t use it again when other other minions rush up, hit it, and move back again. A given minion may not do much damage, but it adds up. This image was taken during the Water Elemental’s turn; it was Maimed in the first turn of combat, but it can teleport to the Watcher and hit it anyway. Note the negative status indicators under the Watcher’s Hit Points; these make the Watcher slow and vulnerable to Cold attacks, like those from the Water Elemental.

Results

I won’t go into the details of each of the test combats, though I will tell a story based on them in my next post. Instead I’ll share my conclusions:

If Druid Angela is going to use Haste, maintaining Concentration is key. Martial classes like Fighter get multiple attacks in a single combat round, but Druids don’t (when they’re not using Wild Shape). Haste allows her to cast both Create Water and Ice Storm in the first combat round (a strong combo), and Ray of Frost twice in subsequent rounds.

She could get the same effect by using Speed Potions, but that has to be renewed every three combat rounds. That uses up one Bonus Action out of every three, which means she can’t make her off-hand attack in that combat round. When properly set up, her off-hand attack can roughly do the same amount of damage as her Ray of Frost. So using the Potions gives up some damage.

Besides, she doesn’t have any other spells that she’d typically Concentrate on during these combats.

The key steps in maintaining Concentration are:
- Don’t get hit. Every time she takes damage, there’s a check to see if she maintains Concentration.
- Have a high Constitution Saving Throw.

To avoid getting hit, the Cloak of Displacement accompanied by Mirror Image is definitely her best bet.

The multiple images from the Mirror Image spell definitely confuses the Steel Watcher. The shimmer around the central Druid Angela is due to the Cloak of Displacement.

As I mentioned, in many of the test fights she didn’t have a chance to cast Mirror Image before the battle. She would still win, if she had the Amulet of Greater Health, as I discuss below.

Even without Mirror Image, her Armor Class in combat was a respectable 25; there are melee fighters who don’t have an AC that high. As you look over her Conditions, you can see the buffs applied to her by Karma and Wings.

With Mirror Image, her AC is 34. No one’s going to be hitting her. However, one image will go away each time an attack on her fails. Her AC won’t be this high through the entire combat.

One thing is absolutely key: Druid Angela has to cast Create Water before or in the first turn of combat. It makes the enemies Vulnerable (take double damage) from Cold spells. It also doubles the damage from Lightning; remember in the previous paost when I suggested using the Drakethroat Glaive to cast Elemental Lightning on her staff?

Create Water also leaves water on surfaces. These surfaces can be turned into ice or become electrified in response to effects from her spells, or if she hits a Wet enemy with her Lightning-charged staff.

From a Balanced-mode test. You can see the large areas of ice on the ground, caused by a previous turn’s Create Water and Ice Storm. This is no problem for Arctic Druid Angela, but a substantial problem for Fist Glenova. Fortunately, it won’t be her problem for much longer. Again, note the number of ice-based conditions inflicted on Glenova due to Druid Angela’s Ray of Frost as augmented by her gear.

I mentioned before the Create Water + Ice Storm combo. The first creates a large area in which all the enemies now have the Wet condition. The second slams with enemies with double Cold damage due to being Wet, and creates a large Ice surface to slow the enemies’ walking speed and might cause them to fall Prone. (For these test fights, a problem is that Steel Watchers can’t fall down; at least the ice still slows them if they try to walk across it.)

I used to think Create Water was optional in her fights. I know now it’s not an option, but a necessity. Ideally, she has a chance to cast Create Water, or drop water bottles on the battlefield for her minions to smash, before combat starts. But if that’s not possible, spend the round in set-up instead of doing direct damage.

One question I didn’t answer to my satisfaction is whether she should weave Hood of the Weave for +2 to her Spell Attacks, or the Coldbrim Hat which makes it more likely that an enemy will slip on ice and fall Prone.

For now, I’d tend to go with the Hood. But I might change my mind later.

In my previous post, I talked up the Armor of Landfall, because it gave Advantage on Constitution Saving Throws.

What I found is that the Armor of Landfall is decent if she didn’t have any other way to get Advantage on Constitution Saving Throws. I didn’t explicitly test this, but using the Elixir of Peerless Focus or the War Caster Feat along with Adamantine Scale Mail might be better until she gets the Amulet of Greater Health.

The problem with the Landfall Armor is that its Armor Class is not that high, around 18-19 with her other gear and protections. It was not hard for the enemy to hit her, and for her to fail the CON Saving Throw even when made with Advantage.

As I alluded to above, what made the big difference is the Amulet of Greater Heath, along with one level of Barbarian for Unarmored Defense.

The combination of +6 to CON-related bonuses, Advantage on CON Saving Throws, bonus Armor Class when not not wearing armor made for effective protection. She didn’t get hit; if she was, she was likely to keep up her Concentration.

If one is following the game’s story, typically one picks up the Amulet of Greater Health later in the game. With what I’ve learned from my tests is that, in more difficult playthroughs, Druid Angela should make a beeline for the Amulet. It’s not difficult to get if you’re familiar with the story, and there aren’t any mandatory combats along the way.

As for my notion of getting a level of White Draconic Sorcerer for Armor of Agathys: In my test combats, she wasn’t getting hit, so the spell never went off. The level went to waste.

She’s better off getting 11 levels of Druid of the Land so she can gain access to a 6th-level spell.

Once she has the Amulet of Greater Health, the Robe of the Weave, and Markoheshkir, her feats should be +2 WIS and Dual Wielder.

That leaves one problem for her: Initiative. If an enemy goes first, they might “break from the pack” and separate far enough that they’ll be outside the range of Create Water and/or Ice Storm.

My natural inclination is to have spellcasters drink the Elixir of Battlemage’s Power. For Druid Angela, since she’s never going ot have the Alert Feat, the Elixir of Vigilance might be a better choice.

I didn’t do this for my initial tests, but in later tests I gave her the Hellrider Longbow, which adds +3 to Initiative. That gave her a high enough Initiative that I could go back to the Battlemage’s Elixir.

For the Tactician-mode test, I gave her the Hellrider Longbow and the Battlemage’s Elixir. This gave her a better Initiative than anyone else in the combat except for the Steel Watcher.

I found this video with a Druid of the Land build suggestion that is quite similar to Druid Angela’s, though without the emphasis on Cold Spells and getting in close for melee attacks:

In terms of combat stats, the one that Druid Angela lacks in comparison is Spell Save DC. In giving up the Elixir of Battlemage’s Power, and holding Mourning Frost instead of another staff that boosts Spell Save DC, she loses Arcane Acuity.

In my tests, that didn’t make much difference. She hit often enough with Ray of Frost on Wet targets that her damage output was respectable. At higher difficulty levels, though, it may be a problem.

For my first tests, I pictured Druid Angela doing a solo run and had her cast any buffs spells by herself. Result: She lost the first few fights

I finally gave up my pride. Even I were going to do a “solo” Tactician run with Druid Angela (or an Honor run if I’m feeling extremely ambitious), I’d make use of buff spells that were cast by my Protectors.

After Druid Angela allowed herself to be protected by her friends, she never lost a combat.

Whether or not you think this is cheating is up to you. For my part, I see many YouTube videos in which the player engages in tactics that I find dubious (e.g., stacks of crates a hundred feet high). I don’t think allowing assistance from those who are not actually on the battlefield is any less of an issue.