Is this secretly the BEST spell in Baldur's Gate 3? | BGB #2: Warding Bond

foreign hey everyone welcome back to the Baldur's Gate breakdown the series where we dive deep into glitches exploits and other cool stuff you can do in Baldur's Gate 3. my name is Diz and in this episode I'll be covering the spell warding Bond explaining how it works and everything you need to know in order to maximize your use of it to start let's go over how to obtain warding Bond wording bond is a second level AB duration spell as far as I know only clerics have access to it meaning the only way to obtain it is to have someone take three levels in cleric to get access to second level spell slots now I'll admit that I'm not the most knowledgeable in all the different subclasses and customization options in Baldur's Gate 3. so there could be something I'm missing so let me know if there's another way to obtain it now let's go over what warding Bond actually does warding Bond costs an action to cast and can Target any Allied creature within touch range for the rest of the video I'll refer to the character that cast warding Bond as the caster and the character that was targeted with warding Bond as the target when cast warding Bond applies a status effect to the Target that gives them resistance to all damage types which effectively means they take 50 less damage from all sources additionally whenever damage is dealt to the Target of warding bond the Caster will take that much damage as well basically what warding bond does is make it so whenever the target would take damage instead half of the damage is dealt to the Target and half the damage is dealt to the Caster warding Bond also gives the target plus one to AC and all saving throws now it's important to note that warding Bond applies to all forms of damage not just damage from attacks this includes fall damage damage from surfaces basically any kind of damage you can think of on the face of it warding bond is useful for helping to spread damage around your party and protecting your squishier party members to ensure they don't get one tapped by powerful attacks but in my opinion warding bond is honestly just not that good if you're using it that way the main issue is that in addition to taking half the damage dealt to the Target the Caster aborting Bond still takes full damage if they get hit making them very vulnerable to being bursted down also it doesn't really reduce the total incoming damage to your party so you still generally end up having to spend the same amount of healing resources the final nail in the coffin is that the resistance is granted by warding Bond don't stack with other effects that Grant resistance such as blade board this means that if you already have some way of giving a character resistance to a damage type then casting warding Bond on them can actually be bad for you because it won't reduce the damage of that type the target takes but it will cause the Caster to take damage whenever the target gets hit so overall I'd say that using warding Bond quote unquote fairly is not really worth it especially because it costs a level 2 spell slot but there are a few things you can do to greatly enhance the mileage you get out of this spell there are three properties that warding bond has that contribute to it being broken I'm now going to go over these properties why they matter and what they allow you to do number one the status effect applied by warding Bond doesn't require concentration to maintain and lasts until long rest on the surface what this means is all you have to do is cast wording Bond once and it will be in effect for the rest of the day and you'll be able to cast other concentration spells while maintaining warding Bond but what this also means is that even if the Caster of warding bond leaves your party the warding bond will still be in effect you see if you have a character leave your party they'll always lose concentration on any spells they're maintaining but any status effects they've applied that do not require concentration such as the one applied by warding Bond will stay in effect this means you can have a character benefit from warding Bond even when the Caster is not in the party number two the effect has unlimited range no matter how far the caster and Target are from each other the target will always get plus one to AC and all saves and half of the damage dealt to the Target will always be redirected to the Caster what this means is that not only does warding Bond work even if the caster and Target are on completely opposite sides of the map but it also works if the Caster is in Camp and the Target is out adventuring and doing fights just as a side note this is not how warding bound Works in tabletop 5e DND according to the 5e player's handbook warding Bond only works if the caster and Target are within 60 feet of each other anyway you can probably see how these two things combined can make wording Bond pretty busted what you can do is have a character cast warding Bond then leave your party and wait in Camp and fill your empty party slot with another character you'll then have a full party of four but one of your characters will have plus one to AC and all saves and resistance to everything without you having to worry about one of your other active party members taking damage for them now the Caster of warding bond will still take damage back in Camp and it is possible for them to die to redirected damage and when they die warding Bond will go away but in my opinion that's better than having the Caster be in your active party because it reduces the total damage coming into your active party members and makes it a lot harder for the enemies to burst down any one of your characters and as long as you make sure to return to Camp every so often to heal the Caster they should be fine if you want to go even further with this what you can do is respect four characters that you don't want to use as clerics then have each of of them cast warding Bond on one of the characters you actually do want to use if you do that your entire party will have resistance to all damage and plus one to AC and saves as long as you make sure to keep your characters in Camp alive this strategy is also pretty nice because clerics have access to lots of healing spells so if your non-active characters are all specked and to cleric then you can swap them into your main party whenever you need some healing then swap them back out now in case you've forgotten I'm still in the process of listing three properties that make warding bond busted so the third and final thing that makes warding Bond busted is this a single Caster can maintain warding Bond on any number of targets simultaneously now you might be wondering why you would even want to do that wouldn't it be better to spread the damage around as much as possible by having four different characters each cast warding Bond on a separate Target well let me introduce you to my good friend Gail Prodigy of waterdeep who is the single best character in this game at being awarding Bond tank you see Gail has a bit of a unique gameplay Quirk if Gail is not in your party and waiting in Camp then whenever he receives damage he will after a short delay heal himself using an ability that's simply called regain hit points most NPCs have this ability which allows them to heal up when they're not in combat but for some reason Gail also has this ability even though he's a playable character but he can only use it when he's not in the active party and for whatever reason Gail seems to be the only playable character that has this ability now if we hit Gail to make him use the Ability then check the combat log afterwards we see that says that the ability heals 1d8 plus three points of damage and can be used a number of times per day equal to Gale's level This Is A bold-faced Lie Gail can use this ability on unlimited number of times per day and it will always fully restore his hit points no matter how low he is you've probably guessed where this is going right now but if Gail receives damage due to warding boundary directing damage to him then it will trigger him to use the heel so what you can do is respect Gail as a cleric for warding Bond then have him cast it on all four party members you want to use then have him wait in Camp if you do that your entire party will get the full benefit of warding bond same as if you'd had four separate characters casted on each of your party members individually but you won't need to worry about healing up your warding bond casters between fights because Gail can just do it himself automatically this lets you give your entire party resistance to all damage types plus one AC and plus one to all saves with pretty much zero downside or opportunity cost and that will make your party extremely difficult to kill now if your characters take too much damage too quickly it is still possible for Gail to Die the this is because whenever he takes damage due to warding bond he enters a stagger animation which prevents him from using the heel as he can only use the heel once he's returned to his idle stance and has been in his idols dance for about two seconds so if you're in combat and the enemies get a lot of turns back to back where they repeatedly hit your characters Gail might not get a chance to heal and be killed which will make warding bond disappear from all of your party members but as long as you're making sure not to take too much damage too quickly and limiting the number of back-to-back turns that enemies get then Gale should be able to keep himself alive also if you're committing to having Gail be your ward bot then you can build him to have lots of Max HP by having him put levels into Barbarian put points into Constitution and having him take Feats like tough also if Gail himself has resistances to certain damage types then they will be applied to the redirected damage from warding Bond so you can just slap all the equipment consumables and spells that Grant resistances onto Gale because they'd be redundant on any of the wording Bond targets anyway alright so in the process of recording footage for this video I discovered that in addition to fully restoring his hit points Gail's self-hel also restores all his spell slots this is obviously pretty busted in many ways if you're having Gale cast warding Bond then it allows Gail to cast warding Bond any number of times per day even if he only has three levels in cleric also it basically gives you an infinite supply of healing between fights it also turns Gail into a really powerful combat unit because he can burn all his spells in every single fight then get them back right afterward so yeah I guess the main takeaway from this video is less that warding bond is broken and more so that Gale is broken alright I think that covers all there is to know about warding Bond and how to use it did you learn anything new from this video if so let me know down in the comments also let me know if there's anything else you want me to cover on the Baldur's Gate breakdown or in other videos also make sure to hit all the buttons that make my numbers go up like the like And subscribe I've been dismissed the penitent and I will continue to be in the foreseeable future and I'll see all of you in the next one [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: DismasThePenitent

Views: 61,812

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Id: YgTfNbdwe_E

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 21 2023