The HULKING HURLER - BG3 Honour Mode Thrower Build Guide - Barbarian / Karlach

hello my friends and welcome back to another balers Gate 3 build guide hope you're all doing well as I promised in my previous video about a fighter based Throne weapon build we are covering the Barbarian based version of a throwing weapon character which we're calling the hulking hurler the name is actually a nod to a Prestige class from Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons which I enjoy because it was one of the first truly optimized builds in Third Edition D and D one of the first to like really break the game so much so that it not only broke the game but also broke physics because its primary weapon was the moon we're going to be following in the footsteps of that character by throwing huge objects at our opponents for massive damage doing some of the most consistent and Powerful damage in the game I had avoided doing a build for throwing weapon characters up until now because up until Baler uh larryan released honor mode in patch five throwing weapon characters were broken and by broken I mean I mean bugged specifically if you're interested in that bug you can Google damage Rider source to learn more about it that's the bug that people were abusing but effectively in tactician or below currently and up until the release of Honor mode you could build these throwing builds to do hundreds or even thousands of damage more than they should be obviously that sort of ruins the game if you're one-shotting every enemy so uh I had avoided creating a throwing build because the the only optimal way to build throwing builds was to abuse the bugs to stack enormous amount of damage since most of those bugs have been resolved on honor mode we now can actually play the character the way it's intended to be played which is really fun and this is still one of the most powerful and best damage dealing archetypes in the game one of the most powerful sources of damage I even without the bugs I think this is still in the top five or so builds in the game definitely in the top 10 um and is going to be in incredible addition to any honor mode party so it's really exciting to me that we can actually build it the way it's intended to be played all right we are going to jump right in and build a gigantic damaging throwing Barbarian right away we have to start by fixing our stats of course so let's take a look at the ability scores that we're going to need carlex starting ability scores and I'm using carlac as the example character of course because she's a barbarian but if you're building this as a main character the best race to choose is actually dwarf um or of course The Usual Suspects you can use any of the the normal top tier races like wood elf halfling or gnome um but dwarf and specifically dwar because they're the strongest are going to be your best characters overall because of one specific weapon although there's a workaround for that which I'll talk about when we talk about gear later for carlac in particular she doesn't get a lot from being a zaral fling that's useful for this character but you do get the benefit of the Soul coins which are extremely powerful later on so that's still very useful for our stat spread we are going to go with a pretty typical Tavern brawler build cuz obviously this is a throwing build so we're going to be using Tavern brawler and take 17 strength 14 dexterity and 16 Constitution this is going to be the best way to give yourself lots of hit points decent initiative and armor class of course we're going to be wearing medium armor since we're a barbarian who wants to rage and so having at least a plus two dexterity bonus makes sure that we have some AC this build is also a good candidate for the gloves of dexterity later on and again I'll talk about that when we talk about gear one of the good things about being the Barbarian version of this build is that even though you only take 10 wisdom and thus have a fairly low wisdom save we're going to get the frenzied rage giving us immunity to a number of wisdom targeting effects which lets us actually skimp a little on wisdom saves slightly more safely than other Marshall builds can all right we've got Athletics as our only mandatory skill that's very important the others don't really matter although if you are a race um that can get access to stealth then there's some cool things you can do with stealth mainly making your throws with Advantage is still very useful um but Athletics is going to be the mandatory for pretty much every strength character in this game being able to push and shove en is extremely valuable that's our level one build let's get right into it at level two there's no decisions that we need to make but we do get access to Reckless attack and one thing to keep in mind of course is that until you hit um level three you probably are mostly or level three or four you're probably mostly going to be making normal melee attacks and playing like a normal Barbarian because level three is when you get access to Frenzy throw and level four is when you get access to Tavern brawler that really push this build in the direction of throwing weapons um Reckless attack is very valuable for that Reckless attack also does work when you throw a weapon but only if you make a melee Reckless attack before you then throw the weapons cuz it won't allow you to activate it on a throne weapon attack but if you have previously activated it uh in the round any subsequent throwing weapon attacks you make after using Reckless attack will have the advantage so that's something to keep in mind that is particularly uh useful in some circumstances if there's enemies that you really need advantage against because you have a low hit chance against them you can Reckless attack something uh in order to activate the advantage on your subsequent Throne attacks and since we'll be getting so many attacks per round the loss of one attack for Advantage can sometimes be worth it that said this is a Tavern brawler build and I'll talk about this a little bit more as we uh pick up the feet so it's very rarely going to be missing at level three we get to choose our Barbarian subass and that one is of course going to be Berserker because they have the ability that has throw right in the name enraged throw so Berserkers get access to fren frenzied strike which is useful but more particularly enraged throw which is what we're here for in this um in this build and enraged throw has a a couple really interesting interactions that make it extremely powerful so let's talk a little bit about what those are so first off you pick up an item or creature and throw it at a Target just like you would with a normal throw but this one you can do as a bonus action instead of as an attack giving you effectively two attacks in a round if you hit the target they are knocked prone and this does not allow a saving throw and that's incredibly powerful being able to knock an enemy prone without a saving throw this can often cost them turns if you under under certain circumstances as well because prone enemies can't act it prevents them from making attacks of opportunity it also gives advantage to your other melee characters and is extremely powerful in and of itself and you deal additional damage based on your strength so when you use enraged throw you add your strength bonus to throne weapons twice this is extremely powerful because this also works with Tavern brawler to let you add your strength bonus three times so with your normal throw action you're going to add your strength once when throwing a throne weapon but with the enraged throw action you're going to add it twice and then next level when we pick up Tavern brawler you're going to be adding it three times increase so every point of strength you do you gain is worth three points of damage on every attack that's obviously an incredibly powerful effect um anytime that you can triple or you know increase the effectiveness of a stat that you have it's in extremely strong it lets you break all the rules of the game and that's why this build is so powerful and so good at dealing damage the other cool thing about enraged throw is that um you can throw just lots of stuff that isn't weapons and it still adds your strength to it which normally it it doesn't always and so that is extremely powerful as well you can throw some pretty heavy items for lots of damage especially with a height Advantage letting you do massive damage early on in the game at level four we get the reason that we are in this build in the first place and that of course is Tavern brawler it has throw right in the description of course but it allows you to add your strength modifier firstly it gives us a point of strength letting us go to 18 so we're at the same strength as a as a character would be who just took an ASI because we started with 17 and got one point from Tavern brawler meaning that that we're not actually behind in our strength progression and also get the tavern brawler bonuses and it lets you add your strength modifier twice to the damage of Throne weapons and also add your add your strength modifier twice to the attack roles of Throne weapons I talked about this a little bit in my eldrich tonight uh video as well but D adding your strength bonus twice to attack roles breaks a fundamental rule of fifth edition D andd design which is called bounded accuracy that's the concept that you should never have to roll less than a six or more than a 14 roughly speaking um in order to land and attack in order to keep drama in the game well when you add four points to all of your attacks you completely violate that design principle which is why you'll see lat game Barbarians even with disadvantage on their attacks have 90% or 95% chances to hit uh making you one of the most consistent and also highest damage dealers in the game Tavern brawler for that reason as it's implemented in Boulders Gate 3 because it breaks so many rules lets us do massive damage much more accurately than just about every other character which is why this build sign shines so heavily at Barbarian Level five we get fast movement which is very good because movement speed is always great very important and you are a ranged character so while it's less important for this character to stay out of melee than other characters because the throne one thing about The Throne weapon builds is that they also work just fine as the melee versions of their character you can just sit in melee and attack um with these characters so you don't have to kite as much but movement speed is still very valuable you can Target specific enemies you can kite enemies backwards if you don't want to close to melee with them but the real bonus here is extra attack giving you a free additional attack um every time you make an attack thrown weapons use the attack action so that allows us to throw three times in one turn this means that in a typical combat starting at level five right in our first round of combat we're going to use our bonus action to rage and then we get two throws both of which apply hit with uh both of which are very likely to hit because they add twice our strength to our to hit Moder fire and deal plus eight damage because of our high strength and in fact Plus 10 damage because you also get to add the rage damage bonus the plus two damage you get for Raging to every attack on our second round of combat we're going to make three of these two with double your strength bonus and one with triple your strength bonus because it's your enrage throw and that one will also knock the enemy prone in every subsequent round of combat you can continue to do this and one thing I I forgot to mention about enrage throw actually actually is that unlike the bonus action attack from frenzied rage the bonus action throw does not apply frenzied strain meaning you will not be taking the stacking penalties that a normal Berserker Barbarian Build would just adding insult to injury compared to melee barbarians with the throwing build it doesn't even take the normal the the penalties that are sort of the balancing factor for frenzy barbarians extremely powerful and extremely versatile build uh in terms of being able to fight both in melee and at range and do massive damage as you're doing it however we can do even better at this level we're going to deviate from Barbarian and we are going to jump into Rogue and the reason for this of course is that Thief Rogue gives you access to a second bonus action what does our bonus action do well it throws for the most possible damage in the game uh on a single attack pretty much other than Paladin smites and so on so adding an additional bonus action lets us do that more often it also accelerates our combat significantly because I mentioned that at level six we get only two attacks in our first round of combat and neither of them are the enraged throw once we hit Thief Rogue level three and get access to a second bonus action then in our first round of combat we do get to make an enraged throw because we use one bonus action on rage and one bonus action on throwing plus two more throw attacks making our patter attack pattern three 4 4 4 four every round of combat which is more attacks than most characters are going to get by a lot and each of these attacks are more accurate and do more damage than just about any other character for our skill selection here you can actually make this character your slight of hand guy um it's not bad to do that because you'll have decent dexterity so if you don't want to bring a sight of hand person expertise in athletics is always good because when you want to shove an enemy you really want to succeed and stealth expertise actually gives you some fun options as well I wouldn't go with intimidation expertise I would probably take Athletics and stealth just cuz it's the most powerful no decisions to make at Rogue level two but the bonus action hide Dash and disengage are still very useful typically your bonus actions are going to be used for entering Rage or throwing a weapon but in the circumstances where you need these they're very good and they can also be used to leave combat which is important on honor mode because uh if you need to run away from a combat that's going against you you really want the ability to move a little faster because of a dash or hide as a bonus action to exit combat and get and come back later when you are feeling stronger finally at Rogue level three we get to take the thief subass getting our second bonus action which is great for all the reasons that I talked about it being great and then we go to Rogue level four just because it's the fastest way to get another feat and we want to max out our strength since we're applying our strength twice to every attack roll and two or three times to every damage roll every point of strength we get on this character is massively valuable so you really want to focus on pushing strength high as soon as you can at this point though we actually have a choice um as to which direction we're going to take the build from here you can either continue down the path of Barbarian for your remaining three levels which get you a couple really important goodies one it gets you mindless Rage which let makes you much less um vulnerable to wisdom saving throw targeting effects and our wisdom saves are not great because we only took 10 wisdom we don't have wisdom proficiency so mindless rage can be very valuable uh preventing you from being Charmed or frightened removes a lot of wisdom targeting effects from the game you also at Barbarian Level Seven get access to feral instinct which increases your initiative by three and makes it impossible for you to be surprised which is basically three fifths of alert the the best feat in the game um winning initiative is incredibly valuable although I will say because this character takes one turn of setup to enter rage winning initiative is less important on this character than it is on every other character in the game pretty much still extremely important don't get me wrong but this character is one of the characters that can afford to lose initiative more often and then of course at Barbarian level eight you get another feat which you can use for all kinds of things many of which are very powerful however I'm going to suggest that we actually go a different direction and the class that we take is going to be Fighter the reason for this is basically that action surge is a broken ability especially for this character for our fighting style we're going to take defense although because we now have Shield proficiency we we can use shields in one-handed weapons um protection fighting style actually has a lot of utility on the throne weapon character because it's going to be standing back next to your other backline characters protection fighting style can give you a reaction allowing you to to help protect them that being said this character is often going to be the target of enemy attacks because you're AC will be fairly low um since so you may not always want to use protection fighting style because uh it's just going to be this character getting hit so as a as a default option defense is going to be the the best option overall something also to keep in mind is that you can technically apply dueling to throne weapons if you have two one-handed weapons equipped then uh when because a throne weapon counts as being wielded in one hand regardless of whether you are wielding it in one hand or two for some reason just the way they coded it um if you have a a second one-handed weapon equipped in your off hand and throw a weapon then at the time that your weapon hits the enemy the game sees you having one one-handed weapon in in your hand and sees that the weapon you threw could have proed the dueling bonus and allows you to do two damage I don't think this is worth it but it's worth pointing that out just as a funny interaction overall I think you're going to be better off with defense at fighter level two you get action surge which lets you make more attacks in your opening round of combat so with action surge your opening round of combat is going to be a bonus action enter to enter rage a bonus action to throw a weapon for more damage and prone two attacks with your main action to throw a weapon so that's three attacks already and then an action surge for for two more attacks letting you get five attacks in your opening round of combat and then four attacks every subsequent round of combat um from then on if you compare this to my previous eldrich Knight build which uh you can watch the video for a more detailed breakdown of of course the eldrich Knight gets seven attacks in its opening round of combat and then three attacks every uh subsequent round unless it's using the war cleric bonus actions so while the eldrich Knight gets more burst damage from the start the Barbarian gets more attacks over really long combats so if you find your combat going long the Barbarian is going to be making more attacks the Barbarian version of this build also has more damage on each of its attacks because you get to add the rage bonus and extra strength to your bonus action attacks so each attack is more valuable for the Barbarian than it is for the alrich Knight that being said you know why compromise because when we go to fighter level three we can just become an elder KN the reason for this is that you get weapon bond which allows any weapon to be to have the returning property so you can throw any weapon with the throne weapon tag this is super useful because there's a couple really powerful endgame items um most notably salun Spears that you get at the end of act two that have the throwing but not returning weapon tag so being able to use those is extremely powerful for this character normally you wouldn't be able to because because only a returning weapon comes back to you after you throw it and so this this build is actually quite gear constrained in terms of what weapons it has available um for the early game in fact the returning Pike is the only weapon that you should be considering using for this character for most of the game until you get access to nyola which you can see pictured here and the Dwarven thrower in the end game for our can trip selection with eldrich Knight we're going to pick up blade Ward blade Ward combos really well with just the high HP of this character and then I recommend minor illusion you can group enemies for like the AOE damage from nyona our spell selection you just want to avoid spells that have save DCS but bear in mind that you can't cast or concentrate on a spell while raging so this build will really never use these spells you might as well pick up something like protection from evil and good and shield just for before you rage but you will not be able to use these when raging so they are mostly useless to you however long Strider is still very good cuz you can cast this as a ritual taking no resources at the beginning of the day and just give you 10 bonus feet of movement speed for the whole day in fact your entire party gets that another thing to keep in mind is that at level 12 it can be beneficial it is beneficial to you to throw in a Respec and go from Barbarian 5 Rogue 4 Fighter 3 to swap one level of Rogue into fighter that gets you one more HP at the cost of nothing um so it's it's correct to do that if you're using a reec uh just cuz fighter has a little bit more HP and level four Rogue neither level four Rogue nor level four fighter give you anything but the feat so you might as well get the HP from being a level four fighter all right so let's talk about gear because gear is actually pretty important to this character when you are a throwing weapon build you need a weap you usually are going to need a weapon that has the throne weapon tag you also because we aren't an eldrich Knight want to be on the lookout for weapons with the returning weapon uh property so nyona here returns to you when thrown um alongside other weapons like the returning Pike and the Dwarven thrower the Dwarven thrower is best in slot for a thrown weapon for a big chunk of the game as as well so you want to be a dwarf although you can use the Dwarven thrower if you are disguised as a dwarf using disguise self the easiest way to do this is with potions or Scrolls although actually the best way to do this is somewhat pay to win because it's the Hat of Disguise you get for buying the enhanced Edition of the game that gets you disguised self that you can just cast at will so you can just become a dwarf for every combat using that um and then use your the dwarfen thrower to your heart's content late game you're probably going to want to use nirola just cuz it's such an incredible weapon and also gives you some AOE damage which is very powerful a typical uh another thing to mention of course is that because you want strength so badly this character benefits more than many characters from using the elixir of cloud giant strength or Hill giant strength for most of the game if you want you can build this character with eight starting strength take 17 Constitution and put the tavern brawler Point into Constitution and 16 dexterity and use Elixir to have high strength for most of the game and in the extreme late game you're going to want to switch to the cloud giant strength elixers regardless of whether you've built strength or not these are going to be the best thing for you because adding three times your strength to every attack is ludicrously powerful so it gives you a massive boost which is worth more than the one extra attack that you get from an elixir of blood lust uh in my opinion on lower difficulty settings you're going to want an elixir of blood lust because that will give you two extra attacks but on honor mode it only gives you one so it's much less valuable and the cloud giant strength Elixir is going to be better there's a lot of other funny interactions with gear and on lower difficulty settings you may see your Tavern brawler bonus being applied multiple times if you have the ring of flinging you may see the Ring of flinging bonus being applied multiple times because the lower difficulty settings are still bugged and you are going to end up doing doing some more damage than you should um I wouldn't worry about that too much unless you really want to optimize for it most players are not going to encounter out of scale damage any more than this build already gets by default and so you're not going to have to worry about that too much even if you want to avoid abusing the bugs let's also just take a quick look at how much damage we do in one round of combat in order to actually make this work I do need to start a combat so we're going to just quickly start a a combat here pigs a f and then so in in combat you are going to enter a frenzied rage using your first bonus action we've already used one of our attacks but that's okay um we're going to just take this attack of opportunity and then you can use enraged throw on your weapon here which is going to have a 95% chance to hit you can see the chances to hit are incredibly High because we are adding our Tavern brawler bonus and then the amount of damage we do is ridiculous with every attack so you can see we are adding our strength modifier twice and our rage damage as well as the base damage of the weapon um and then additionally of course any other damage that we have from things like these gloves the flawed hell dusk gloves any additional damage that we add um from other weapon tags like the gloves or like carlax Soul coins give you an enormous amount of additional bonus damage then we add our Tavern brawler damage again then we add um why is this doing only two damage that's funny oh cuz it's doing it it's seems like there is still a small bug here where it's adding the rage damage twice because it's adding the rage damage on top of the tavern brawler damage um so they haven't fixed every damage Rider issue with this uh with this build but that's okay um and then of course you get the the bonus damage from nma's actual weapon effects so you can see here that we threw our weapon and we can do this multiple times per turn at least uh two times um at least four times per turn we can do this or five times in the first turn and then four times in every subsequent turn of combat for an average damage somewhere around 40 per throw dealing roughly speaking 200 damage round with this character at a very very consistent rate because you'll almost always hit and that's before any additional Buffs like the cloud giant Elixir like um Soul coins like any other damage you might get from an ally or so on all right my friends I hope that you have enjoyed this look at the hulking hurler Tavern brawler thrower build again one of my picks for top five builds or so in the game for Honor mode so if you are looking for a smooth fun character to play that will really carry your party through honor mode uh then this is the way to go if you've enjoyed the video of course do feel free to leave a comment rate the video um hit the like button and of course you can subscribe to my channel for more of this and other strategy game content I should also mention I I'm so bad about remembering to mention this but I should mention that if you do enjoy these videos you do have the option to support me financially through super thanks or becoming a channel member and of course I really appreciate it when people do that so thank you so much to those who have chosen to do so um and I will catch you all next time cheers my friends GG

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 50,197

Keywords: Etarran, Cephalopocalypse, Baldur's Gate 3, Larian, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Build, Guide, Strategy, Tactics, Tutorial

Id: _cobSHR8hqY

Length: 28min 41sec (1721 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 22 2023