Keegen

So does Fireball and yet that one does no friendly fire damage. Either Ice Storm is bugged or it’s as the other commenter pointed out, Guardian of Faith detected a hostile action and triggered an attack on all nearby hostiles (your party), which dealt enough damage to it to kill it.

My favourite “good guy” ending was during my 2nd playthrough as a half-orc berserker with Lae’zel, Shadowheart and Wyll in my party. I severed Wyll’s contract and saved his father so he became Blade of Avernus, turned Shadowheart from Shar and made Lae’zel abandon Vlaakith for Orpheus. I of course proceeded to murderize our favourite charming cambion and acquire his hammer, freed Orpheus after telling Emperor to fuck off, like I have been for the entire game, and turned myself into a mind flayer. I killed the Netherbrain and at the end, after Orpheus gave me his heartfelt thanks and flew off with Lae’zel to free their people, me, Wyll and Karlach went to Avernus to kick ass together.
The respect both Orpheus and Voss shows you for sacrificing yourself to give their people a chance for freedom really makes the choice worth it, and going to Avernus with Karlach gives you plenty of guilt-free brains to eat and even if you do ultimately loose yourself to your new form, at least you are trapped in the Hells and away from Faerun.

If you save Hope, this fight becomes so much easier because of her ability to permanently banish a demon from the fight (yes, this includes Yurgir, gone with one spell!)

I always respec Shadowheart into anything but Trickery domain, usually Light or Life. I also generally respec all companions just to fix their ability scores, some of them are terrible by default.

It’s funny that the shield only has Rare rarity, that thing should be Legendary for how insanely powerful it is! If your attacker misses their first hit, it’s a +4 AC shield that also protects you from crits. That and the adamantine medium armor are always my picks, they are both so much better than anything else you can make.

As Arcane Tricker you absolutely want to dual wield, that off hand bonus action attack will be your best friend. Sleep + bonus action sneak attack is pretty much a guaranteed kill. Pick crowd control and defensive spells, Shield is an amazing insurance if you really do not want to be hit by a certain attack, Magic Missile is your go-to ranged finisher, Hold Person and Blur are both great offensive and defensive options, Misty Step for incredible mobility. And let’s not forget Invisibility! Arcane Tricksters are also great enablers for other melee characters, let your wizard concentrate on Haste or other powerful spell while you handle Hold Person so your Fighter/Barbarian/Paladin can kill that unfortunate guy who failed his save in a single turn with guaranteed crits!

Cleric has a domain for basically everything in it, you can run a whole party of them and not suffer from the lack of any role.

Oh, we’re thinking of completely different book then! I was cryptic as to not spoil anything (Kbin still doesn’t have spoiler tags) but I meant the wannabe Necronomicon in the apothecary’s basement.

I just threw it on the ground, it never took damage for me (I did it yesterday in fact on my new character and it worked fine). I do throw it only so far as to not be in the trap’s range, so it might be that you are chucking it too far?

I used it a whole 2 times in my entire playthrough. Once to get a certain book from it’s trapped pressure plate by throwing it, another to help a certain dwarf from his predicament. The biggest thing that stops me from experimenting more with it is it’s limitation to once per short rest and only being present for 10 turns. I get that it’s for combat balancing purposes but it does make me just never bother summoning it. Wish they removed that limitation, gave it more utility uses and just completely disabled it’s combat abilities instead.

Karlach is a simple gal, Duergar are bad slavers, Nere is bad Absolutist and also a slaver. Why side with either when you can chop both into pieces and kill two slaver birds with one greataxe!

Nah, I don’t want anything fucking with my dice rolls, especially in combat. If I stack AC, I should be an unhittable tank. If they only worked for skill checks, I would probably leave them on to help with unlucky streaks but even those I can just save scum.

This spell is amazing. My PC ranger single-handedly shut down some encounters just by using this spell, defending the portal in Act 2 was a breeze when most of the enemies killed themselves on the spikes before they even reached it. Well worth dropping concentration from Hunter’s Mark if the terrain works well with it.

Yeah, I don’t know why they didn’t bring the Day/Night cycle and Fatigue mechanics from the previous games, it made resting feel much more natural. You even had inns that gave you more healing depending on the quality of room you choose. I know that the companions say they are exhausted, but they like to do so while I barely done anything and still have most of my resources available. In BG1/2 when I heard my companions complain, you bet I’m looking for a safe spot to rest, Fatigue debuffs were no joke!

If you don’t care about the lives of the slaves trapped in with him then sure, you can consider it a win.

Yeah, this is just plainly untrue. All it takes is getting their approval anywhere beyond medium (for some even that’s not required) and doing their specific personal quest objectives and they are down to fuck IMMEDIATELY. Ironically in my playthrough, despite not once giving them any signals I’m down, the only companion who didn’t try to bone down with me was Karlach, the most openly horny one.

I don’t know why our poor shorty races are so under-represented, Larian did a fantastic job on their models! Compared to male elves and tieflings, the dwarf and gnome selection is vastly superior. And gnome racials are absolutely crazy, who wouldn’t want advantage on all the most debilitating saves!?

If by rolling I loose characters I’m invested in and my only options are 3 Charisma rolls on my 10 Charisma character, each with a 15 skillcheck? You bet I’m save scumming the fuck out of that! Otherwise I’ll use Inspiration and only save scum if I have both proficiency and a high ability score and the dice decide they don’t feel like rolling above 3 today.

All of them combined, my total never went above 3GB with them limited to 10 each. The save files did get smaller in later game as inaccessible areas from previous acts get purged.

You can change it at any point, but if you don’t care about your saves getting into the 10+GB in size then leave it.