History GameBreaker / BaldursGate

* The Blood of Lathander. Legendary weapons are intentionally overpowered, but most aren't found until late Act 2 or Act 3, but the Blood of Lathander [[DiscOneNuke is found in Act 1]], and while you have to do some leg work to get it, it is well worth it. Not only is it a +3 mace, but it also has the chance to [[BlindedByTheLight blind undead and fiends]] if they stand within the holy light that it sheds, restores the party's hit points when they are reduced to zero HP, and allows them to cast Sunbeam, a powerful 6th-level spell. All of that is already good, but because Act 2 is filled with undead enemies, the blind effect becomes a potentially always active effect during battle. Combine it with a cleric's Spiritual Guardians, and you can make a blender of death that the AI doesn't know how to handle besides ranged attacks. Even in Act 3 where you fight less undead, you can find just enough undead and fiends there (e.g. the boss battles against Cazador and Raphael) to make it useful still.

* Stealth in particular is incredibly busted, due to one simple factor: if you start a battle by attacking an enemy while hidden, all enemies in the area get hit with Surprise, a stun that prevents them from taking a turn. Combined with haste, stun and classes with an obscene amount of actions per turn like Fighter, Barbarian and Monk, you can finish off many encounters in the game ''without the enemy even being able to act once'', even on higher difficulties. And even if they do manage to survive your initial onslaught, they will be so low on health that they don't pose much of a threat for long. As a result, the only fights that are a challenge if you use stealth (even on characters that aren't built with it in mind, since it doesn't have any sort of skill requirement so long as you stay out of cones of vision, which is very easy in turn-based mode) are fights that you ''can't'' initiate with stealth, such as boss fights and other encounters with enemies that spawn the instant battle starts.

** But wait, there's more! Perilous Stakes is an illithid power you can get after just 2 tadpoles that makes the target roll an intelligence save. If it fails, it gains 2d8 healing on all attacks but it also becomes vulnerable to all damage for 3 turns. If you can get it off, even on higher difficulties, any of the Chosen can be made into an absolute joke as a single monk absolutely '''ruins''' their health bar.

* The Potent Robe, which you can obtain as a reward from Alfira after rescuing the imprisoned tiefling refugees within Moonrise Towers, is pretty much the perfect attire for a Sorcerer or a Warlock. It's a robe, so its base AC is only 10 and doesn't count as armour and it can be combined with benefit from being unarmoured (such as casting Mage Armor or using magic items such as Bracers of Defense), but it still adds a +1 to your AC separately. At the start of your turn, you gain a sudden boost of temporary hit points equal to your Charisma modifier, allowing you to last quite longer in most fights. But the real kicker comes from its Gregarious Caster feature, which adds your Charisma modifier to your cantrips’ damage rolls.

** ButWaitTheresMore Have the Warlock be a Great Old One which makes enemies frightened at you on critical hits, equip as many weapons and armor that increase the crit range, and the ring that gives out advantages on attack rolls (and disadvantage on saving throws but that's irrelevant at this point) and utterly annihilate everything in your path.
* Gloves of Dexterity, at least for characters who aren't already built for dex. It sets your Dexterity score to 18, so long as you're not already at 18 or higher, which in itself is generally useful for finesse weapon attacks or general dex checks, but the main benefit is that dexterity is what affects your AC, meaning that no matter your build, you're getting a guaranteed +4 to your AC from these gloves, while not actually counting as armour. Combined with casting Mage Armor (a level 1 spell available to almost every caster class, while Warlocks are able to cast it without using a spell slot once a day), or any additional non-armour gear items that give AC bonuses such as certain boots or capes, you can make your AC score rival the heaviest plate armour even while remaining unarmoured.

* The Blood of Lathander. Legendary weapons are intentionally overpowered, but most aren't found till late Act 2 or Act 3, but the Blood of Lathander is found in Act 1, and while you have to do some leg work to get it, it is well worth it. Not only is it a +3 mace, but it has the chance to blind undead and fiends, restores the users HP when they are knocked to zero, and allows them to cast Sunbeam, a sixth level spell that is really strong for when you get. All of that already is good, but because Act 2 is filled with undead enemies, the blind effect becomes a potentially always active effect during battle. Combine it with a cleric's Spiritual Guardians, and you make a blender of death that the AI doesn't know how to handle besides ranged attacks. Even in Act 3 where you fight less undead, you fight just enough undead and fiends to still make it really powerful.

* Alert is another feat that is pretty great for breaking the game's combat. It's a pretty straight forward feat, it adds a +5 to your initiative roll and prevents you from being surprised, which in practice tends to guarantee that you end up going first in combat unless an enemy rolls extremely high. Combined with a character that is built to do a lot of damage quickly, you can set it so combat is very much in your favour right from the start.

** Second, the game has an usually high amount of items and feats dedicated to throwing. The Returning Pike is a weapon found for cheap in Act 1 at the Goblin Camp, which is a spear that allows the user to throw it and automatically return it to their hand if it strikes an enemy. This single weapon, if used on a Strength character, is so viable that it can be used throughout the rest of Act 1 and 2. It is then replaced in Act 3 by Nylruna, a legendary spear that does the same thing but comes with a ton of unique upgrades. The spear does 1d8+1d6 damage on every hit, detonates in a 3-12 thunder damage AOE if it hits a target while being thrown, passively increases jump and sprinting distance, and comes with two unique spells- Zephyr Flash and Zephry Break. The former is a charge attack that does 6d8 thunder damage in an AOE around the target and inflicts bleed, while the later is a 6d6 cone of thunder damage that pushes enemies back. Combined, this weapon is ''the'' go-to weapon for anyone interested in throwing as a combat stat, and the best part is that it can be picked up in Rivington at the Circus of the Last Days, aka ''the very start of Act 3.''

* Better editions of the game offers the Shield of Balduran. It reflects beholder rays, turning these DemonicSpiders into XP-dispensers. It breaks even the quest of the Unseeing Eye, making both an EasyLevelTrick and a SequenceBreaker.

** For a warlock, the Gregarious Caster feature can stack with the Agonizing Blast eldritch invocation to double the bonus damage for the ''eldritch blast'' cantrip. Combine this with the Birthright headwear (increases your Charisma score by 2), the Bard’s Memory bonus feature (also increases your charisma by 2), the Spellmight Gloves (adds a 1d8 bonus damage to cantrips at the cost of a -5 penalty to spell attack rolls), and a maxed out Charisma score of 20, your ''eldritch blast'' would be able to deal up to a maximum of '''96 force damage per turn''' by a Level 11+ warlock.

* The Potent Robe is pretty much the perfect attire for a Bard or Warlock. It's a robe, so its base AC is only 10 and doesn't count as armour, so it can be combined with benefit from being unarmoured (such as casting Mage Armor), but it still adds a +1 to your AC separately. At the start of your turn, you gain a sudden boost of temporary hit points equal to your charisma modifier. But the real bonus comes from its main bonus, which adds your charisma modifier to your cantrip's damage output. As such, Eldritch Blast (already quite a game breaker) can gain even more bonus damage to each beam, setting the player up for a ''60'' points of damage output per turn with a ''cantrip''.

* Three words: '''Twin-Spell Haste.''' Normally, Haste is a very powerful spell that gives an ally the effects of a potion of speed for nine turns. This is strong on it's own, but the spell can be Metamagiced into a Twin-Spell ''without'' breaking concentration, allowing you to give the Haste ability to two party members at once. This is, to put it bluntly, ''exceptionally'' overpowered, allowing two melee units to work in tandem and absolutely devastate any boss or powerful enemy. In particular, Rogues working together with a Monk, Fighter, Druid or Barbarian can absolutely eviscerate any boss encounter because of the sheer damage output they become capable of dishing out. A Monk that knocks an enemy prone and sets up their Rogue for two Sneak Attacks in a row can kill basically anything that moves. The only downside of this strategy is that if the caster is knocked out of concentration or the spell ends, the Hasted targets are stunned for one turn- however, War Caster is a feat that gives Advantage on maintaining concentration, making it difficult for your Haste-caster to be interrupted. Combine this with things like Counterspell, Psionic Dominance and Lucky, and it can be incredibly hard for your Haste-caster to be stopped.

** The strongest illithid ability of all is easily '''Mind Sanctuary'''. A passive AOE spell, Mind Sanctuary creates a small bubble where actions and bonus actions can be taken interchangeably. While the ability for actions to be used as bonus actions is decent, the ability for bonus actions to be used as actions is straight up broken. Have you ever wanted to cast two fireballs in one turn? What about your Level 10 fighter getting four attacks in a single turn? What about your Cleric casting huge AOE heals, and then following up with Spirit Guardians and other passive buffs to increase parties' defensive abilities? The possibilities are endless with this power, making it easily the most desirable ability in the game.

* While the Illithid Powers are PurposelyOverpowered, some of the selections you can get can make the game an [[JustForPun "Absolute"]] breeze.

** First off, throwing is a simple "roll to hit" like in the tabletop. However, Improvised Weapon Attack is ''also'' a roll to hit, but pointedly lacks the ability for enemies to contest this. In the tabletop this would count as a grapple and thus allow enemies to contest with their own strength, but this feature is lacking here. This means that you often have a pretty good chance of picking up enemies and throwing them if your Strength is high enough. This effectively allows you to skip the Shove saving throw that normally happens when moving an enemy and instead throw enemies wherever you like. This is exactly as broken as it sounds, since you can chuck enemies into pits, move enemies into clusters for another party member to follow up on, or simply deal damage to two enemies at once by using one enemy as an Improvised Weapon.

** If you decide to take the [[spoiler: Astral-Touched Tadpole and become half-illithid]], you passively gain six Illithid Powers for free, which includes Fly, Favorable Beginnings, and Concentrated Blast. As well, any tadpoles you put into these abilities are ''refunded'', effectively giving you up to six free tadpoles on use. This is a huge power boost for any character.

* Storm Sorcerers are extremely strong, and easily the strongest of the different Sorcerer subclasses. All of their abilities are based around maximizing thunder damage, as well as flying after every thunder or lightning spell action. While their focus on thunder and lightning damage can make them somewhat limited, it turns out that few things are resistant to thunder or lightning damage at the same time, allowing them to focus on one damage type if the other is resisted. Even still, they can always take Elemental Adept to immediately remove all Resitances to Thunder or Lightning, allowing them to deal absurd damage without worrying about optimization. This allows them to be a versatile, evasive, and highly daming sorcerer type that easily trumps both Wild Magic and Draconic Bloodline in effectiveness, making them the go-to for Sorcerers.

** If you decide to take the [[spoiler: Astral-Touched Tadpole and become half-illithid]], you passively gain six IllithidPowers for free, which includes Fly, Favorable Beginnings, and Concentrated Blast. As well, any tadpoles you put into these abilities are ''refunded'', effectively giving you up to six free tadpoles on use. This is a huge power boost for any character.

** The strongest illithid ability of all is easily '''Mind Sanctuary'''. A passive AOE spell, Mind Sanctuary creates a small bubble where actions and bonus actions can be taken interchangeably. While the ability for actions to be used as bonus actions is decent, the ability for bonus actions to be used as actions is straight up broken. Have you ever wanted to cast two fireballs in one turn? What about your Level 10 fighter getting four attacks in a single turn? What about your Cleric casting huge AOE heals, and then following up with Spirit Guardians and other passive buffs to increase parties' defensive abilities? The possibilities are endless with this power, making it easily the most desirable ability in the game.

* The seemingly mundane "Jump" action allows characters to vastly exceed their movement restrictions or reach area they very likely shouldn't such as jumping several feet up to high vantage points. This allows characters to gain Advantage or initiate melee attacks that wouldn't otherwise be possible. [[GoodBadBug Many players feel these advantages may be unintentional.]]

* The "Tavern Brawler" Feat is considered by fans as the go-to feat for characters who want to punch or throw things. While it was a so-so feat in the tabletop version, this game buffed it to insane levels. For its homebrewed version, what it does is that when the character makes an unarmed attack, use an improvised weapon, or throw something, the strength modifier is added twice to the damage and attack rolls. This meant classes like monks can easily annihilate almost every enemy just by either punching them or Frenzied Barbarians who can just chuck weapons using the Frenzied Throw ability like the Returning Pike, the combination itself being a DiscOneNuke as the Returning Pike is sold at the Goblin Camp. Even better, dump strength and put it somewhere else like Dexterity (for faster initiatives and Armor Class), pop an Elixir of Hill Giant Strength (raise the user's strength stat to 21 until long rest) or the better version, Elixir of Cloud Giant Strength (raise the user's strength stat to 27 until long rest) that lasts all day as long as the user doesn't chug a different elixir (or, in Act 3, equip the Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, giving you a set 23 in Strength) by accident and everything will die. The feat also benefits [[{{Animorphism}} Circle of the Moon Druids]]. While Wildshaped Druids with Tavern Brawler still only apply their strength modifier to their damage roll once, they apply it to their attack roll ''twice''. An owlbear with a ninety-five percent chance to hit is as intimidating as it sounds. And as of Patch 5, the damage bonus applies correctly to all applicable wildshapes.

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* The "Tavern Brawler" Feat is considered by fans as the go-to feat for characters who want to punch or throw things. While it was a so-so feat in the tabletop version, this game buffed it to insane levels. For its homebrewed version, what it does is that when the character makes an unarmed attack, use an improvised weapon, or throw something, the strength modifier is added twice to the damage and attack rolls. This meant classes like monks can easily annihilate almost every enemy just by either punching them or Frenzied Barbarians who can just chuck weapons using the Frenzied Throw ability like the Returning Pike, the combination itself being a DiscOneNuke as the Returning Pike is sold at the Goblin Camp. Even better, dump strength and put it somewhere else like Dexterity (for faster initiatives and Armor Class), pop an Elixir of Hill Giant Strength (raise the user's strength stat to 21 until long rest) or the better version, Elixir of Cloud Giant Strength (raise the user's strength stat to 27 until long rest) that lasts all day as long as the user doesn't chug a different elixir (or, in Act 3, equip the Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, giving you a set 23 in Strength) by accident and everything will die. The feat also benefits [[{{Animorphism}} Circle of the Moon Druids]]. While Wildshaped Druids with Tavern Brawler still only apply their strength modifier to their damage roll once, they apply it to their attack roll ''twice''. An owlbear with a ninety-five percent chance to hit is as intimidating as it sounds.

* Items and equipment in general in ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'' allow players to build their characters to insane heights as opposed to their tabletop counterparts where they're only allowed to attune three items and they must expend an entire hour to attune with said equipment. Insane Spell DC checks that almost no enemy can save at? Check. Absurd crit chances that can go as low as a ''17 or less'' to hit on attack rolls? Check. Mini Bless and Blade Ward just by using a basic Healing Word or the [=AoE=] Mass Healing Word ''without needing to concentrate on said Bless''? Check. Forcing enemies to roll extremely high to natural [=20s=] just to hit your character that makes the Bane spell obsolete with ''no way of saving against''? Check. Magic Missile destroying ''bosses'', a spell that only should do [=1d4=] that only fires three times for its first level? Check. And those are just the ''basic'' MinMaxing builds.

* The various "kill undead instantly unless they save" weapons, which allow you to instantly kill any undead boss in a single round, since there is no effective defense against it whatsoever and you could easily get up to 8-10 attacks per combat round even in medium levels. It even turns nasty BonusBoss Kangaxx, considered the strongest opponent in ''Shadows of Amn'', into an AnticlimaxBoss. Despite the fact that, normally, the Mace of Disruption wouldn't be able to harm him, as it maxes as a +2 weapon (though as per it's pen and paper incarnation, it can hit as if +5); demi-liches can't normally be hurt by anything less than a +4 weapon, of which there's only a very small number in Shadows of Amn (a dagger, two halberds, two staves, and two two-handed swords, one only Paladins can wield and the other only Evil characters can wield).

** The traps of epic level Thieves, which are so nasty strong they can, among other things, instakill the ''Throne of Bhaal'' BonusBoss Demogorgon ''after'' you've installed a mod to specifically make him much tougher. Specifically, an unintended effect is being able to lace traps beforehand at the location where Demogorgon — or Irenicus in Suldenessellar, for that matter — will spawn when attacking, instantly scoring as many automatic hits as you like. You can send any enemy careening into a series of traps by leading them there with a Ring of the Ram.

* The combination of the 9th level spell Chain Contingency and three Abi Dhalzim's Horrid Wiltings, set to cast at the nearest enemy on sight. This is capable of doing 250 damage to the target, which will easily kill any non-boss enemy, and works horrifyingly well against some of the most powerful bosses in the game, including [[ThatOneBoss Draconis]] and [[BonusBoss Demogorgon]].

* Haste is a very powerful buff that can easily more than double a character's damage output. It's offset by being a Concentration spell, which you can only use one of at a time, and giving a turn-skipping debuff if your Concentration breaks, making it not hyper viable on its own for everyone to use. However, this can be largely worked around with the Sorcerer's Twin spell ability, which allows them to use Haste on two characters at once. Not only does this greatly reduce the risk turn of skipping debuffs, but it frees up room for your other party to focus on their own unique Concentration spells without losing out on Haste.

* Stealth in particular is incredibly busted, due to one simple factor: if you attack any enemy while hidden, all enemies in the area get hit with Surprise, a stun that prevents them from taking a turn. Combined with haste, stun and classes with an obscene amount of actions per turn like Fighter, Barbarian and Monk, you can finish off many encounters in the game ''without the enemy even being able to act once'', even on higher difficulties. And even if they do manage to survive your initial onslaught, they will be so low on health that they don't pose much of a threat for long. As a result, the only fights that are a challenge if you use stealth (even on characters that aren't built with it in mind, since it doesn't have any sort of skill requirement so long as you stay out of cones of vision, which is very easy in turn-based mode) are fights that you ''can't'' initiate with stealth, such as boss fights and other encounters with enemies that spawn the instant battle starts.

* The Potent Robe is pretty much the perfect attire for a Bard or Warlock. It's a robe, so its base AC is only 10 and doesn't count as armour, so it can be combined with benefit from being unarmoured (such as casting Mage Armor), but it still adds a +1 to your AC separately. At the start of your turn, you gain a sudden boost of temporary hit points equal to your charisma modifier. But the real bonus comes from it's main bonus, which adds your charisma modifier to your cantrip's damage output. As such, Eldritch Blast (already quite a game breaker) can gain even more bonus damage to each beam, setting the player up for a ''60'' points of damage output per turn with a ''cantrip''.

* Items and equipment in general in ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'' allow players to build their characters to insane heights as opposed to their tabletop counterparts where they're only allowed to attune three items and they must expend an entire hour to attune with said equipment. Insane Spell DC checks that almost no enemy can save at? Check. Absurd crit chances that can go as low as a ''17 or less'' hit on attack rolls? Check. Mini Bless and Blade Ward just by using a basic Healing Word or the [=AoE=] Mass Healing Word ''without needing to concentrate on said Bless''? Check. Forcing enemies to roll extremely high to natural [=20s=] just to hit your character that makes the Bane spell obsolete with ''no way of saving against''? Check. Magic Missile destroying ''bosses'', a spell that only should do [=1d4=] that only fires three times for its first level? Check. And those are just the ''basic'' MinMaxing builds.