I've hit the final act on my second playthroughs of Remnant II and BG3 where the priorities have hidden archetypes (R2) and reclassing (BG3). Mild spoilers throughout.


It'll be a little while before we can finish off Remnant II due to logistics, but the final boss is in mine and J's sights. Having gotten the Dreamcatcher melee weapon, we found our way to Bane to get the Invader archetype.

It's a bit of a shame to have picked up a bunch of new classes just before we probably put the game down, but I don't imagine a second campaign re-roll provides as much variety as the first.

Warning: blood.

The charisma build is going well; I can convince just about anyone of anything, like Ketheric to skip to phase two or his brother to get an everything-ectomy. On the other hand, 18-ish charisma cantrips do pitiful amounts of damage.


Apostle of Myrkul was quite a bit harder than on normal difficulty, though perhaps this was from my lack of ranged damage this time through. I couldn't do much damage to AoM and Dame Aylin (who must be freed to make AoM vulnerable) kept getting herself killed. My main could handle the melee heat but wasn't doing enough damage to make a strong case for soloing. On the plus side, Owlbear Jaheira and a pair of elementals (air, especially) were great at popping the zombie pods.

The tides turned when I read that blinding AoM was a viable tactic. Minthara was suddenly surviving. Aylin was suddenly surviving. We burned him down pretty quickly.


As it turns out, I had used this tactic on the Shadowfell portal, but that was to keep archers from wrecking my interdimensional hole. Then, much later, Sarevok for whatever reason simply would not enter my smoke cloud. This was very nice for a blind-immune Lae'zel.


Last time through I missed the Iron Throne area because I nuked the Steelwatch Foundry before pursuing the various questlines that go that way. The underwater prison's turn-limited scenario isn't easy, but it made for a good tactical challenge. I don't know about this lore though - a fantasy game with submarines and Zoom calls and neural robot datalinks? Why not, uh, just make D&D a sci-fi game?

Anyway, the submarining netted me one or two Gondian survivors and a robe that seemed perfect for all my lightning equipment - it heals the wearer when standing in water. This Wavemother's Robe would ordinarily be very situational or require consumables (spells, water flasks) if not for the Trident of the Waves that creates water on a melee attack (which is rather non-situational).

My blue (lightning) dragon main seemed like a candidate for this equipment, but I didn't want to mess with his very useful off-tank build. In fact, none of my characters seemed right for the build, in no small part because the robes provide a dexterity-based armor class and the trident is a strength weapon.

I hadn't actually tried reclassing before. I was aware of the mechanic but didn't look into it in my first playtrhough then sort of forgot about it in this one (I don't talk to Withers all that much). With a little reading, I found that aside from certain permanent buffs, there's no downside to reclassing other than the small cost.

Minthara: fighter, wavemother

The right number of paladins is zero and my squad had two, so Minthara got the nod for the rebuild. The highlights:

• I solved the strength/dexterity issue by maxing dex, ignoring str, and giving her Club of Hill Giant Strength to set her strength to 19.
• Holding a trident and club meant Minthara would need two-weapon fighting and dual wielder. I settled on reclassing to fighter for this and triple attack.
• And there's a bunch of other stuff (gloves, boots, rings) that provide shock damage and resistance.

It has worked out quite well, considering the risk of having a melee character not wearing armor. Minthara walks around, stabbing and shocking people, healing most damage by standing in the sparky puddles. What's more, she can fight side-by-side with my main because he's also lightning-resistant. She can go the full day since healing isn't a problem and as a physical damage build she doesn't rely on rationed spell slots.

Reclass everything

Since that experiment worked out, I did some more reclassing, mostly to shape my party to the best equipment I had.

• There are a bunch of poison-buffing items and it wasn't until Act III that I got the clubs that passively do poison damage. And so Halsin was reborn as a dual-wielding poison club smashy-guy.
• Since he's canonically charismatic and dramatic, I made Wyll a bard with high dexterity to take advantage of his rapier proficiency.
• Jaheira is now a sorceror which doesn't feel all that different from the other magic classes but I hadn't used it before.
• Having also never used unarmed combat items, I gave Karlach open hand monk duty.

It's great to have the ability to optimize team comp and finally make use of some of the gear that's gathered dust at the bottom of my warchest, but the reclass mechanic feels a bit too unrestricted. Anyone can reclass to anything. Shart (the delightful community nickname for Shadowheart) can have 20 strength, Gale can be made dumb as rocks while remaining hopelessly bookish in cutscenes.

Perhaps each character should have individual base stats for the sake of continuity and to gently nudge their rebuild options? Relatedly, part of the fun of FE:Fates was to develop builds around innate (and inherited) skills that had a traditional use and a few nontraditional ones. BG3 characters have immutable skills but they're largely not relevant to classing/combat (except the ones that push you toward the default class e.g. Halsin and Karlach).

I'm not sure how restrictive the D&D framework is, but imho classing would be best if it occurred once at recruitment and wasn't just a blank slate.

Ahhh spandex.

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