If the above exchange was completely cryptic to you, you probably haven’t read any of my previous posts on an Arctic Druid build. If so, I suggest you at least skim them (enjoy the fanfic pictures!) starting from the first one.
Frost
If you read the fifth essay in this series, you’re probably not surprised there’s a sixth one. There was one outstanding question I had: Could the Frozen condition be usefully incorporated into Arctic Druid Angela’s strategy?
Reminder: To make a target Frozen, first make it Chilled, then make it Wet, in that order. A Frozen creature is Incapacitated and can’t move or react. It becomes Vulnerable (take double damage) to Bludgeoning. This effect is short-lived; it ends when the target takes Bludgeoning damage or at the start of its next turn, whichever comes first.
In part, this test was inspired by a video on the Build-a-Barbarian Workshop YouTube channel. In the following video, I’ve set the time stamp to be the start of the creator’s discussion of the effects of Frozen (though he doesn’t actually mention the name of the condition). He’s demonstrating a Tavern Brawler Wizard in Honor mode, using a “momentum build” that I find to be unique. The segment relevant for this essay is only a couple of minutes long:
Let me acknowledge:
The build he’s demonstrating is far superior to anything that Arctic Druid Angela could do. Again, my goal is not to make the “best build ever” in Baldur’s Gate 3, but one that will work for this character I’m role-playing and writing fanfic for.
He mentions using the Cold Snap dagger as an effective means of applying Chilled. Does this mean there’ll be a seventh essay in which I give that a try? Maybe. I honestly don’t know yet.
The goal of this test is, whenever possible, to make the enemies have the Frozen condition. Follow that up with a Bludgeoning attack.
I set up my standard test, except that I verify that Druid Angela has several bottles of water in her inventory. After the initial cast of Create Water, the idea is to make it easy to keep the enemies wet.
The key is to strategically drop water bottles. The “Place in World” operation does not use up an Action or Bonus Action. Breaking a water bottle does, but Druid Angela can have one of her minions do that.
Plan: Drop or move a bottle next to a Chilled enemy, break it to make them Wet, then hit them with Bludgeoning damage. The bottle can be moved and broken by any minion. The ones who can inflict Bludgeoning are:
Aegean the Water Elemental
Creak the Wood Woad
Daphne the Dryad
Druid Angela herself if necessary
Gear for this test:
I used the same buffs and prep procedure as for the previous test:
I missed a couple of things, due to simple forgetfulness:
After making a big fuss about it in my previous essay, I didn’t give an Elixir of Cloud Giant Strength to either Aegean the Water Elemental or Creak the Wood Woad. This meant their damage was less than it could have been.
I don’t think either of these two omissions made a big difference in my conclusions. You can judge for yourself as I go through the test’s details.
So what happened?
For a strategy like this, I’m going to do a “play-by-play” analysis of what I did, especially during the first and last rounds of combat.
This may seem like it’s too much detail. But it’s the kind of analysis you have to do in the higher difficulties of BG3. For that matter, it’s what you may have to do when you play D&D.
The perspective here is a bit misleading. Druid Angela is actually quite some distance from the Steel Water. She’s placed a water bottle near her, in case the battle opens with the Watcher going before her in the turn order, and jumping to her location.As usual, Druid Angela opens with Create Water to get the enemies Wet and Vulnerable to Cold; you can see the wet ground. She follows up with an Ice Storm. It turns out that she went before the Steel Watcher in the Initiative order; that hasn’t always been true in previous tests.The opening moves did an adequate amount of damage to the Steel Watcher. Look at the Watcher’s statuses, under its hit points; in particular, note that it’s Wet, but not Chilled.What is an “adequate amount”? This combat log tells the story; remember that the combat log on a console has to be read from the bottom to the top. The Steel Watcher Saved against the Ice Storm. But that means that it took half the damage, which in turn is doubled due being Vulnerable to Cold. The two effects cancel, and the Watcher takes the standard damage from the spell. Fist Glenova and Fist Jerbold, both Wet from Create Water, did not make their Saving Throws, and took double damage.There’s an immediate complication, which is not unusual for these tests. Out of nowhere a Flaming First team shows up. If a citizen witnesses a crime, they may run off and summon a patrol. That happens in about half of these tests.Druid Angela flies over to go toe-to-toe with the Steel Watcher. Look at the top of this picture, which shows the order of the participants in this combat. This going to matter in just a bit.A close-up view as Druid Angela lands in front of the Steel Watcher. She looks blurry with multiple images. That’s a consequence of her Cloak of Displacement and the spell Mirror Image. I mention this now so you know why she’ll look blurry in the subsequent combat images in this essay.
After landing, Druid Angela gives the Steel Watcher a “bonk” with her off-hand staff.The combat log shows that Druid Angela hit the Watcher. She didn’t do much damage, even with with the bonuses I describe in this essay and the previous one. I’ll have more to say about these low damage numbers later.Druid Angela places a water bottle at the feet of the Steel Watcher. Was this a timing mistake? If she had dropped the bottle first, she could have hit it with her staff, and made the Steel Watcher wet. Wasn’t this the whole idea of testing the Frozen strategy?
Not in this case. Go back up four pictures and look at the Watcher’s statuses, and confirm that it was not Chilled. Recall that to get Frozen, the enemy has to be Chilled and then has to get Wet. If Druid Angela had broken the bottle now, it would have done nothing: The Steel Watcher was already Wet; if you look at the combat log above, you’ll see that it took double the Cold damage from Druid Angela’s staff.
But even if the Watcher were Chilled, this would have been the wrong time to make it Frozen. Look at the combat order four pictures above. After Druid Angela finishes her turn, one of the guards gets a turn, then the Steel Watcher. Remember that Frozen goes away at the start of an enemy’s turn. The Watcher would have been Frozen, then almost immediately unfrozen, without any of Druid Angela’s allies getting a chance to do anything about it. The right time to freeze the Steel Watcher is when someone on her team can follow up on the condition.It’s a couple of steps later in the round. Fist Jerbold moved up to Druid Angela, swung at her, and missed. The Steel Watcher moved away from Druid Angela (and she got to make an Opportunity Attack; yay!). The Steel Watcher then swung at her, and missed. Then I moved Aegean to be next to the Watcher.Was this the right time for Aegean to break a water bottle onto the Watcher? No. The Watcher still wasn’t Chilled. The move I chose was for Aegean to use a Slam attack, which applies Chilled. This sets up the Frozen strategy for someone else.Aegean thinks ahead, and moves a nearby water bottle to be closer to the Steel Watcher. Any minion can move small items like water bottles; moving an object does not use up an Action.
After that, Aegean moves away. This causes the Steel Watcher to use its Opportunity Attack. Aegean is hit, but that was the goal: since the Steel Watcher no longer had a Reaction left this combat round, any of the other minions could rush up to the Watcher, do something, then rush away again. Also, Aegean is now closer to that Flaming Fist patrol; they’ll hopefully be more inclined to attack the Water Elemental than anyone else.Us the Kitty comes up and moves the water bottle closer to the Steel Watcher, just in case. Us uses a Claw attack on the water bottle and…… the Steel Watcher is Frozen! So far, so good.It’s time to put Frozen to the test. Creak the Wood Woad moves forward to hit the Steel Watcher with a Bludgeoning attack…… and he slips on the Ice surface. Thud! Before we assume there’s nothing to be done, look carefully at the combat order at the top of the picture. There are triangles underneath some of the portraits. That means that all those participants have the same Initiative. So I’m going to do use a tactic that, if I may say so, is rather clever.Creak’s turn is cancelled for the moment, but it’s Scratch’s turn. Scratch is unique among Druid Angela’s minions in that he can Help another character. He moves up and, with a few tender licks, helps Creak back up. Then Scratch moves away again.
Remember when I had Aegean use up the Watcher’s Opportunity Attack? This is why: If the Steel Watcher had not been Frozen, Scratch would not have been attacked as he moved away.Creak is back up! He hasn’t used his Action yet this turn. He takes a swing at the Steel Watcher. A 60% chance to hit, and…Creak hits, but the results are disappointing. A total of 26 points of Bludgeoning damage isn’t bad, but I was hoping for something dramatic.It took me a few minutes to figure out what happened. When I examine the Steel Watcher, I see that it’s Resistant to all forms of physical damage, including Bludgeoning.
Frozen had made the Steel Watcher Vulnerable to Bludgeoning, but the Watcher was normally Resistant to Bludgeoning. The two effects cancel. Creak had done his normal amount of damage. Considering that Creak is 6th level, that’s a respectable hit; if it had been doubled, it would have been a hit worthy of battling a 11th-level enemy in Tactician difficulty.
As it stood, it was a lot of effort to produce a sub-par result.That’s not all. Look at the list of the Steel Watcher’s statuses after the Frozen condition was removed by Creak’s strike. It was no longer Wet or Chilled. This removed its Vulnerability to Cold, the key to Druid Angela’s most damaging attacks.Meanwhile, something had to be done about that Flaming Fist patrol. Daphne moved forward…… and cast a Spike Growth on the patrol to slow them down. You may recall that her Spike Growth had a substantial effect on an earlier test.Nope! The Flaming Fist Wizard cast a Counterspell as a Reaction. Daphne’s effort was wasted.That changed things. As nasty as the Steel Watcher was, that Flaming Fist patrol was now the greater hazard. Druid Angela prepared to cast another Create Water, in preparation for making them all Wet… and the Wizard Counterspelled that too.
Counterspell is a Reaction, and no creature has more than one Reaction in a whole combat round. I’ve skipped over a round between Daphne’s attempt at Spike Growth and Druid Angela’s attempt at Create Water.So Druid Angela cast Create Water again. This worked, but it meant there was an entire combat round in which Druid Angela could not unleash her most damaging spells. That pesky Wizard had to go.Druid Angela flies over to the Flaming Fist Wizard to offer some personal attention. She takes a swing at the Wizard with her off-hand weapon…… and misses. If you look at the details, she rolled a “2” on her Attack die.Druid Angela places a water bottle nicely between the Flaming Fist Wizard and a nearby Flaming Fist Archer, because you never know when it could be useful.
Spoiler: It wasn’t. But it cost her nothing, so why not?Elsewhere on the battlefield, Aegean engaged with the Steel Watcher again. The watcher was already Wet, and Aegean’s Slam applied Chilled again.These two images show the results of a Multiattack by the Water Elemental in the next round. As the name implies, a Multiattack consists of two attacks. Aegean missed one, and connected with the other. The attack does both Bludgeoning damage and Cold damage. You can see in the details, the Steel Watcher was indeed back to being Resistant to Bludgeoning and (due to Chilled and Wet) Vulnerable to Cold.
Meanwhile, the Flaming Fist Wizard had conjured a Fire Elemental. This was too much. It was past time to focus all attacks on that Wizard.This combat log overlaps the previous one. You can see that Us tried to hit the Wizard with a Synaptic Discharge, but failed. One of Druid Angela’s Ice Mephits hit with a Chromatic Orb, though, which seriously put a crimp in the Wizard’s lifestyle.The combat situation grew more complicated. Creak could not get to the Wizard, so he moved over to one of the Flaming Fist Archers. Let’s check…No, the Flaming Fist Archer is not Resistant to Bludgeoning damage. Creak isn’t wasting his time.
The Archer is Resistant to Fire because they are Wet, the same reason they’re Vulnerable to Cold and Lightning.The reason why Creak attacked that particular Archer is that I thought she’d previously cast Ensnaring Strike on Us. She wasn’t. I paid more attention later in the combat.
This was not too dangerous a position for Us, as Us was Resistant to the physical damage of the Steel Watcher. But Us was not close enough to hit the Watcher with Claws, attacks that do Psychic damage have no effect on the Watcher, and Us was Threatened by being so close to the Watcher. This put a Disadvantage in their ranged Synaptic Discharge attack; recall how Us missed the Wizard earlier.
Scratch tried to Help Us, only to learn that Ensnaring Strike was not one of the things his licks could cure. The Flaming Fist Wizard had also cast Slow on members of Druid Angela’s team, including Scratch and Druid Angela herself.Enough is enough. Druid Angela prepared to cast Ray of Frost on the Wizard.Of course, the Flaming Fist Wizard cast Counterspell again. But Druid Angela had a second Ray of Frost…
With the death of the Wizard, the Fire Elemental disappeared. The Slow spell also went away, since the dead Wizard couldn’t Concentrate on it anymore. The battlefield situation became much easier.
That top line, “Us failed a Saving Throw against Flaming Fist Wizard” is spurious and had no effect on combat.With the passing of the Wizard, Druid Angela could turn her attention to other enemies on the battlefield. Fist Jerbold had survived her initial Ice Storm attack (it’s in the first combat log in this essay). Even with only two hit points left, none of Druid Angela’s team had been able to spare any time on him.
A 65% chance to hit? Druid Angela will take those odds.It’s moments like this that Druid Angela felt completely justified in her effort to allocate her gear and skills to be able to strike with an off-hand weapon. Fist Jerbold lay at her feet, frosted over by the Cold damage from Mourning Frost.Creak abandons that Flaming Fist Archer. He decides to assist Druid Angela instead. He jumps over the ice…… and misses.Aegean the Water Elemental uses Warp to stand next to the Flaming Fist Guisarmier. A Slam makes the Guisarmier Wet.These images show a micro-management task that Druid Angela sometimes has to do. In the upper image, she’s got a 90% chance to hit with her Ray of Frost. But the attack is at Disadvantage, because the”Target is too close.”Druid Angela is wearing Daredevil Gloves, which are supposed to allow her to use her ranged spell attacks even when she’s close to a target. But for some reason the gloves’ effect turned itself off. I have to manually turn Daredevil Proximity on again.Now the success change is 95%, and is no longer at Disadvantage.It’s time for another Ray of Frost!But the Flaming Fist Guisarmier is not quite down yet. Just a bit left to go…She winds up for another off-hand strike…… and connects! It’s final strikes like this that established her reputation in the first place. She no longer has to wonder what a “Guisarmier” is.She still has one more Ray of Frost remaining in this turn. The Steel Watcher is still a threat……and now it isn’t. It enters self-destruct mode. Yet again, Druid Angela strikes the final blow against overwhelming odds! Unfortunately, Us is still entangled, and is in the blast radius. There’s nothing for Druid Angela’s team to do but to try and take down the Archer who is Concentrating on the Ensnared Strike that’s holding Us.There are two Archers left. Which one is holding Us down?Druid Angela examines the situation (meaning I remember to actually look at the statuses). It’s the tall Archer who’s holding Us in place.Given the turn order, and that she’s used up both her Actions and Bonus Action, there’s no much she can do. She picks up a water bottle she dropped earlier.With few other options, she flies over to the more wounded archer.Druid Angela drops the water bottle she picked up before. It’s not clear if it will be of use to her or her suviving minions, but it might as well be there.Creak jumps to the healthier Archer. For a wonder, he doesn’t trip on the ice this time! Creak swings at him.This combat log shows a couple of things: (1) Us survived the Watcher’s self-destruct blast, and hit the Archer with a Synaptic Discharge. (2) Creak also hit the Archer, but with miserly damage. Druid Angela begins to understand something that we’ll discuss below.Aegean the Water Element warps over to the Archer and hits him with a Slam. This means the Archer is Chilled, and ripe for a future attack from Druid Angela.
Notice that the Water Elemental is still Maimed from an earlier attack by the Steel Watcher. So is Us, but Us can’t warp across the battlefield the way an Elemental can.It was time to finish things. The tall Archer was Chilled. Druid Angela finished him off with a Ray of Frost.Druid Angela decides to experiment. She targets the water bottle, not the Archer, with an Ice Knife. Ice Knife has two effects: a direct blast on the target, and a secondary blast on its surroundings. She’s hoping that the initial blast will spray water on the Archer, making the Archer Vulnerable to the Cold damage of the secondary blast.No such luck. The combat log does not show that a Wet condition was applied to the Archer. Also, the Archer saved against the secondary blast. Ice Knife is not like Ice Storm: If the target saves against it, they take no damage at all.
Druid Angela realized her mistake: She used a spell with a DexteritySaving Throw against a target with very high Dexterity. If you scroll up quite a bit, you’ll see a list of that Archer’s stats; her Dexterity is 21.
It was a wasted experiment. Well, live and learn.For some reason, the Dwarf Archer turned her back on Druid Angela. She didn’t complain, but simply struck with her off-hand staff again.It became clear why the Archer had turn her back on Druid Angela: her plan was to retreat to a better position. Druid Angela made an Opportunity Attack, but missed.It was up to Aegean to strike the final blow.
Post-battle analysis
Along with Arctic Druid Angela, I learned a lot from this test. Some of my newly-gleaned knowledge is in the play-by-play above:
Pay attention. I slipped up a few times because I didn’t examine the status and abilities of my targets.
In Explorer and Balanced Difficulty, I could get away with this. If I truly plan to solo as Arctic Druid Angela in Tactician mode, or eventually to tackle Honor mode with a party, I can’t keep making that mistake.
In the same vein, be aware of the limitations of the abilities I use.
The mistake I made with Ice Knife galls me. It didn’t cause me to lose the combat, but it was a wasted Action and a wasted Spell Slot.
If the opportunity arises to make an enemy Frozen, I can take it. However, it should not be the goal of my strategy.
The main problem with Frozen is that it removes the other conditions, Chilled and Wet, which are the cornerstone of Druid Angela’s Cold-based attacks. So not only does Frozen take extra steps to apply, it takes extra steps to put back the conditions it replaces.
It would be different if I were in a party with someone who could hit with a lot of Bludgeoning damage, like an Open Hand Monk. That would definitely set up “one punch, one kill” even in Honor mode.
It might also be different if the enemy had a painful Reaction (like Counterspell or Opportunity Attack) that it’s worth the effort to prevent.
Wood Woads and Water Elementals don’t do a game-changing amount of Bludgeoning damage. Potentially doubling that damage using Frozen is nice, but again I would only do it situationally
The Dryad does more damage with her Bludgeoning attack, but she’s squishy. She’s a bit like Scratch, in that I’d rather she’d be alive to Concentrate on Spike Growth than putting herself at risk to randomly bonk an enemy’s head.
Again, this is situational. If an enemy is Frozen, by all means let the Dryad use her Strengthened Shillelagh for a serious Bludgeoning attack. But do some planning so that the enemy doesn’t use an Opportunity Attack on her as she moves away afterwards.
What would change that previous point is if I’d had the Water Elemental and the Wood Woad each drink an Elixir of Cloud Giant Strength. That would have added another +4 damage to each of their Bludgeoning attacks. To some degree, that would change decision of whether using Frozen was worth it.
The only issue here is that Cloud Giant Elixirs are harder to come by in the game than the Elixir of Hill Giant Strength. Both the Wood Woad and the Water Elemental tend to survive in the tests, so perhaps one elixir each would last an entire day’s worth of combat. But two Cloud Giant Elixirs a day may be more than I can buy or make, and a Hill Giant Elixir doesn’t do as much.
Here’s the math:
Both the Water Elemental and the Wood Woad have a Strength of 18.
An Elixir of Hill Giant Strength would change that to 21. That would add +1 to their Attack and Damage rolls over what they normally do.
An Elixir of Cloud Giant Strength would change that to 27. That would add +4 to their Attack and Damage rolls over what they normally do.
When a Wood Woad makes its normal Bludgeoning attack, and when a Water Elemental makes its Multiattack, they do two Bludgeoning attacks in a single turn. So double those Damage bonuses for both of them.
I suppose the Hill Giant Strength bonus is better than nothing. But save the Cloud Giant bonus for the critical combats.
The Dryad does not use Strength for her attacks, so giving her a Strength Elixir wouldn’t accomplish much. It would make it more difficult to shove her off a cliff, but that doesn’t come up often. It’s more likely the enemy would try to shove Druid Angela off a cliff!
On a positive note, I discovered the joy of dropping water bottles all over the place.
It sounds a bit silly. I wrote an entire essay on placing and using consumables. Somehow I never put it into practice until now.
Drop a water bottle next to an enemy; that costs no action. Use a minion like Us or Scratch, who otherwise can’t do much damage, to break the bottle and make the enemy Wet. Then the Cold-based attacks of the Ice Mephits, the Water Elemental, and Druid Angela herself will do double damage on that enemy for its next three turns.
Again, watch out for Opportunity Attacks as the minion retreats.
