Game Breaker / Baldur's Gate

The Baldur's Gate series has featured many game breakers throughout its various installments.

General

• The "talk-fight" bug made it possible to attack an NPC who normally talks to you, talk to them when they turn red, and repeat the process until they died without landing a hit on your party. This could be done with most creatures in the series, including bosses and dragons.
• An inventory item duplication glitch in both games could turn one gemstone into 65535 gems that you can then sell to the nearest merchant for an enormous pile of money. You could be financially set for the whole game while still level 1. The Enhanced Editions sadly patched these bugs out.

Baldur's Gate

• Kagain is a useful tank already, but equip him with the best armour and shield you can find, as well as the Gauntlets of Dexterity (which gives him a massive boost to his Dexterity stat, enough to increase his AC) he's practically untouchable to enemies except for bosses and high-level mooks.
• Is the Sirine Queen giving you a hard time because of her army, dire charms and poison arrows? Never fear, it's charmed squirrels to the rescue! She can't even land a single a hit on them and while she's busy, the PC and his pals can effortlessly shower her with tons of spells and arrows. Who would have thought squirrels were so tanky?
• The Wyvern's Cave in the fourth Cloakwood area has a 90% chance to spawn a wyvern whenever you rest in it, allowing you to farm 1400 XP and 200 golds for every kill. Wyverns are not particularly strong creatures even for a solo fighter, meaning that you can reach (the BG 1) level cap within a few hours in the cave.
• The Enhanced Edition introduced kits from the sequel. Since the original game was not balanced around these, they can sometimes become truly overpowered. Cavaliers, for example, with their innate immunity to fear and charm, made many difficult encounters totally trivial. Bounty hunters could abuse their traps right from level 1. Berserkers have basically no penalties and a ridiculously powerful status buff.
• Before the Enhanced Edition nerfed it, Algernon's Cloak - which you can get in chapter 1 by pickpocketing or killing a very weak NPC - could be used to charm almost every creature in the game. Without breaking stealth or invisibility. An infinite number of times per day. And charm spells used to last for an absurdly long time. The player could easily charm the entire map, then have the charmed creatures kill each other until only one was left. Or at least charm themselves a dangerous front line that could be instantly replaced.

Baldur's Gate II

• As mentioned in the Broken Base entry for Siege of Dragonspear, going through the main Baldur's Gate and both expansions before importing your Charname into II will severely unbalance the game. The extent of which is debated, with some saying about halfway through this game and others claiming all the way to Throne of Bhaal.
• 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 Kangaxx, considered the strongest opponent in Shadows of Amn, into an Anticlimax Boss. 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 Staff Of The Magi. Upon equipping it, it makes the character using it go invisible. You can walk up to someone, hit them (thus breaking your invisibility), and then immediately go into your inventory and just by clicking on the staff, re-equip it, including reactivating the invisibility. Rinse and repeat, and very very few enemies can do a thing about it. Before an Obvious Rule Patch fixed it, it was also possible to use it for backstabbing.
• Several minibosses/dragons were vulnerable to the instant kill spell Finger of Death, such as the Shadow Dragon - A creature that the game assumes most lower level characters would want to quietly sneak past. Most bosses /minibosses in the game were immune to instant kill though. Finger of Death is still effective in the Enhanced Edition. Have fun Cherry Tapping all those dragons!
  • Winning any boss battle with Finger of Death (or any other One-Hit Kill spell) is mostly a Luck-Based Mission; the spell will slay any living creature who fails a save vs. death at -2 (it rolls lower than its save vs. death stat on a twenty-sided die, with 2 subtracted from the dice roll). For reference, the Shadow Dragon has a save vs. death of 3 and 60% Magic Resistance, meaning there's only a 15% chance Finger of Death will work on it (40% chance to penetrate magic resistance and then 25% chace of failing a save). Of course, canny players could simply Save Scum until that lucky event took place. Less gamey players could use the spells Lower Magic Resistance and Greater Malison to up the chance as high as 45%, but at that point you've already had at least three rounds of the dragon buffing itself and/or wailing on you before you potentially get to end the battle with a coin flip.
• The Drow armor and weapons that are found in the Underdark (including the Drow Full Plate +5, the best suit of armor in the game) cannot normally be removed from said area without disintegrating into dust as soon as sunlight touches it. That is, unless (when you're in the Underdark) you give all the equipment you want to keep to one of your party members, reform your group and remove said character, and ask him/her to meet you at the Copper Coronet. You can rendezvous with them as soon as you exit and get all of the armor back, making things significantly easier for the rest of the game.
• Traps, in all their forms:
  • The traps of epic level Thieves, which are so nasty strong they can, among other things, instakill the Throne of Bhaal boss 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.
  • Bards could also get epic-level traps... and, since they had no "set traps" skill, they succeeded automatically. This for traps that could freeze time.
  • If you play a bounty hunter, you get special traps that not only did more damage, but could be thrown. Since traps had a pretty big area of effect, this meant that the thief could throw a trap, hide, throw another, hide again, etc. Even more absurd, you only had to do this once at level 21+ because these traps mazed enemies, which meant you could now send in the rest of your party to slaughter them one by one as they popped out of the maze one at a time. Then there were spells like Death Fog, which did damage over time and had such ridiculous areas of effect that you could engulf enemies from outside their visual range.
• The seller inside the Shadow Thieves' base will buy stolen objects (unlike any other shop in the game). This means that, for a Thief with a high pick-pocketing skill, you could sell-steal-sell again-steal again-and so on some expensive object and become ludicrously rich in a heartbeat.
• Several absurdly-broken spells destroyed any notion of difficulty in the game:
  • The combination of the Robe of Vecna and Amulet of Power (lower casting time) with the high-level spell "Improved Alacrity" (cast spells immediately one after the other, instead of a one spell per round limit), which allows a mage to pull off the magical version of Beam Spam. You could combine it with Time Stop (everything except the caster freezes in place for six rounds) to have your enormous Spell Spam assault hit the enemy with dozens of spells before he can do anything. If your enemies are still alive after that, just cast Wish to replenish your spells and do the entire thing over again. To increase effectiveness, you could turn on autopause and set it to "when casting ends". This way you will maximize number of castings during Improved Alacrity. Alternately, you could cast Simulacrum beforehand, which lets you do all of the aforementioned twice. This combination is even more effective (if that's even possible) when you're a high-level sorcerer, when you can easily cast 9 of the most effective attack spells of every level, instead of only those of you memorised spells were atttack spells.
  • Projected Image, a spell that created an illusory copy of the caster, including all of his spells. Meaning that the Image could do everything already mentioned above, whilst leaving the actual wizard in complete safety. If, by some miracle, the Image was killed, then the wizard could just cast it again. Projected Image is also capable of doing some things your regular mage can't. For example, there's an "epic level" spell that lets you summon a planetar, a powerful fighter/mage/cleric hybrid that can contend with most monsters in the game. Downside? You're limited to one, but the projected image can make as many as six. Another great thing about Simulacrum and Projected Image is that they copy the items in your quick slots as well. Buy some powerful scrolls, put those scrolls in your quickslots, create a copy of yourself, and let them use those spell scrolls without using up the original scrolls.
  • Summon a Nishruu and be attacked while possessing a weapon with a finite number of used charges, and the Nishruu warps the item to have near-infinite charges and allowing those weapons to be sold for millions of Gold. Especially useful with items like the Staff of Power, which are not once-per-day (which wipes the excess charges).
  • Equip Vhailor's Helm and Mislead scrolls on quick item slots, cast Simulacrum from Vhailor's Helm, cast Mislead scrolls from the Simulacrum image. When all sing bard songs together, the effects stack. Using this method, Enhanced Bard Song and Skald song are capable of granting 4 x the number of singers bonus to THAC0 and damage per hit for the entire party. (eg. 24 bonus if the number of singers is 6). This exploit no longer works in Enhanced Editions.
  • Cloudkill and similar Area of Effect-spells. You can often cast them close to powerful creatures or a group of them, as they won't see you and probably won't move a spot. They also stacks. You can easly kill Firkraag the Dragon with this trick. Unfortunately this has been patched out in the Enhanced Edition.
• Before Cloak of Reflection was nerfed by the developers, it reflected all spell damage back onto the caster - which meant that if you protected yourself against nasty non-damage spells, you could get Irenicus to kill himself with Cone of Cold in the first part of the final battle (before you go down to hell). Even after the nerf, it made you immune to spell damage (it just didn't reflect it). You could, fairly easily, make yourself completely immune to damage or any negative effect whatsoever (especially as a fighter/mage).
• In a game full of potentially-overpowered companions, Keldorn stands alone. You can immediately acquire him in Chapter 2 by accepting a mission in the Temple District and finding him in the Athkatla sewers. He comes equipped with a unique set of Full Plate Mail +1 armor (with several bonuses, including Free Action), the best Paladin kit in the game, the Dispel Magic and True Sight abilities (which makes magic-wielding enemy encounters a breeze) and, once you get him Carsomyr from Firkraag's dungeon and the Gauntlets of Dexterity, he becomes a juggernaut. It says something when, in a game where most bosses' HP top out at just over 200, Keldorn with Carsomyr can dole out 30-35 damage per successful swing. He can solo Irenicus in his second form via spamming True Sight, and he even makes Insanity playthroughs insultingly easy. In addition, the Dispel Magic innate ability his class kit gets has special rules which allow it to be cast instantly (speed factor 1), and at double his class level. This makes it almost the most broken spell in the entire game, as it means Keldorn can dispel any level-appropriate mage encounter with a nearly 100% success rate, then slaughter him inside two rounds. His True Sight innate ability also makes a lot of enemies which rely on abusing Improved Invisibility (cannot be targeted by spells) trivially easy to lock down and obliterate.
• The Animate Dead spell once its caster reaches level 15. The large skeleton summoned at this level is very powerful, has a ton of hit points and is immune to almost any sort of magic cast at it. Additionally, it will willingly auto-navigate through fog of war to seek out and kill enemies you can't see and can take out packs of beholders on its own without putting your own neck out.
• Also, Mordekainen's sword. The duration isn't as long as for Animate Dead, but the blade's immunities are a long list.
• Inexperienced players sometimes underrate Aerie as a mage because she doesn't gain access to the most powerful arcane spells, but the ability to use divine as well as arcane spells with power-amplifying setups like Sequencers and Contingencies more than makes up for it if you know what you're doing. Although, being a multi-class, she won't actually level up enough to get Sequencers until very late in the game. More horrifyingly (in a good way), being a mage gives her access to the robe of Vecna, which decreases ''all' casting times. Including her cleric spells. Stack on the Amulet of Power and Heal spells become a viable method of in-combat instant healing.
• 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 Draconis and Demogorgon.
• A high enough Turn Undead ability can kill nearly every undead, even vampires.
• It's only possible if you're playing the second game or the Updated Re Release, but: human dual-classed Kensai/Mage. All of the hitpoints and combat prowess of the Fighter, the Mage's ability to cast devastating arcane spells (as mentioned above), with the added abilities of higher THAC0, damage and attack speed in melee, as well as the ability to use a "Kai" that causes hits to deal maximum damage while it lasts. All this at the cost of giving up armor, which a Fighter/Mage can't use anyway until they find the rare Elven Chainmails at the end of Shadows of Amn.
  • The Kensai/Mage is almost the exact definition of Magikarp Power if you try to take it through the entire trilogy. In the first game, your AC is horrible and the lack of proper ranged weapons (unless you specialise in axes or daggers) crippling. In the second game, depending on when you decide to dual-class, you either have to go through most of the quests in chapter 2 or spend the entire spellhold-underdark-chapter 6 sequence as a sub-par mage catching up to the rest of your part. Once you hit Throne of Bhaal, however, you are a terror. (At which point some would argue multiclass fighter/mages probably out-gish you anyway since they get fighter High Level Abilities and dual-classes don't).
  • The Berserker/Mage has almost all the advantages of the kensai/mage, but trades lower melee damage output and accuracy for a berserker mode that stops almost every status effect in the game, including mazing and imprisonment, and the ability to wear armour and bracers. Furthermore, berserkers are much less of a Glass Cannon than a Kensai and are much more worthwhile in Baldur's Gate.
• Similar to the Kensai/Mage example above is the Wild Mage, normally only available in Throne of Bhaal, but which can be modded to be playable in the first game. The class exemplifies Magikarp Power, especially through use of a glitch where piling Chaos Shields in a Minor Sequenecer, and later a Spell Sequencer, led to the shield bonus stacking. The result was about an 80% defense from wild surges, meaning you could use Nahal's Reckless Dweomer with impunity. For those who don't know, Nahal's Reckless Dweomer is basically a spell that lets you cast any spell in your spellbook. It doesn't matter if you don't have it memorized or if you aren't high level enough to cast it—with that Dweomer, you can start flinging around Disintegrates and Horrid Wiltings as low as level nine. That's not the end of it, though—the spell Limited Wish, with high enough Wisdom, allows you to restore all low level spells. Nahal's Reckless Dweomer is one of those spells. Since Limited Wish can also be used to restore your health, this effectively eliminates the need for the Wild Mage to rest—s/he can just keep fighting for the entire game without once going to sleep, cycling through Nahal's Reckless Dweomers and Limited Wishes to restore health and spells as needed.
• Newer editions of the game offer the Shield of Balduran. It reflects beholder rays, turning these Demonic Spiders into XP-dispensers. It breaks even the quest of the Unseeing Eye, making it both an Easy Level Trick and Sequence Breaking.
• Umber Hulks are nasty, but they're deathly allergic to death spells like Cloud Kill. Just cast it near a pack and the lot will almost guaranteed die.
• For the mage: Black Blade of Disaster + Timestop. These are both level 9 spells. Combined with Improved Haste the character will simply cut any boss to ribbons before time starts again.
• Know that a very tough ambush is about to spawn? Know exactly where it is going to spawn? Have your mages memorize nothing but Skull Trap and Delayed Blast Fireball and toss them at the spawn points. Then rest and repeat. Can't rest in the area? Well, with high enough Wisdom and a bit of luck (and possibly Save Scumming), a Wish spell can have exactly the same effect as resting (which will also refresh the Wish spell). Thieves can drop traps on the spot also, for some added fun. Even boss-type creatures with decent magic resistance won't shrug off all of the detonations (though it can slow your system to a crawl when they all go off at once).
• The Harm spell can also make some serious boss fights into jokes. It's a "touch" spell, meaning that the caster must make an attempt to hit, but this can be improved with buffs that improve Strength or to-hit bonuses. It also can be resisted through magic resistance (but Lower Resistance can reduce this problem) but there is no saving throw. When it hits, the target is dropped to a single hitpoint. The resurrected Yaga-Shura during the final fight in the Ascension mod is normally a pain to take out because he starts out with a resistance that reduces all damage, physical or magical, to just a single hit point. Cast Harm on him and the next hit that lands on him will be his end. Its only real weakness is that it is coded as a +2 weapon, so spells that create immunity to magic weapons negate it (because they technically won't hit), though counterspells exist to strip off these buffs.

Dark Alliance

• Borador, the dwarf rogue from Dark Alliance was perhaps the easiest character to solo the entire game with. One of his first skills was a multishot that produced an additional shot from a crossbow at the cost of a little mana. However, the game contained an item enchanting system that allowed you to put up to two special abilities on your weapon, one of which gave you back a fraction of your mana pool on a successful hit. Enchanting a crossbow with this effect, some other enchantment for more damage, and then sinking all other points and money into multishot, armor skills, and hit points netted you the ability to run up into an enemy's face and hold the multishot button and pour crossbow bolts into their carapace until they resembled a dead bloody hedgehog. This held true from everything from two-headed giants to slime creatures to the game's Final Boss; the only creatures it did not work against were those with resistances to piercing damage and trolls; then the answer was either dual-wielding morningstars, or a pinch of fire or acid, respectively.
  • The save system used in both Dark Alliance games was another Game-Breaker: It was very simple and easy to abuse the "import character" options to essentially get unlimited funds and experience in just a few minutes.

Baldur's Gate III

• 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 a Sorcerer can use Metamagic's Twin-Spell to cast it on two targets 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.
• Arcane Acuity. This condition raises a character's spell save DC, which is the number enemies need to hit on the dice to save against your spells, as well as their spell attack rolls, by +1 by each turn remaining. Built up high enough, even bosses with Legendary Resistance will struggle to save against your spells. There are two items in particular which make it very easy to build up: the Helmet of Arcane Acuity and the Hat of Fire Acuity, both obtainable in Act 2. They raise your Arcane Acuity by 2 whenever you deal weapon and fire damage, respectively. A sorcerer can completely break the game as soon as they get access to the fire acuity hat by casting a quickened Scorching Ray using their bonus action to instantly build up Arcane Acuity to max, and using their main action to fire off an insanely powerful control spell. Fire Draconic sorcerers in particular can lean into making their fire spells even more powerful, making them some of the best damage dealers and controllers in the game.
  • Swords bards need a little more time to get 100% online, but as soon as you hit Act 3 you can get a ring at the circus that allows you to cast Enchantment and Illusion spells as a bonus action if you deal weapon damage on the same turn. This allows a Swords bard to build up acuity with their main action and cast an insanely powerful control spell on the same turn.
• AOE spells like Wall of Fire and Cloudkill can be utterly devastating to the enemy because the AI is absolutely awful at avoiding them, and will gleefully charge (or even end movement) in a fire wall's effect. Add that shove is a bonus action and throwing enemies who have just charged through a fire wall back to the other side for them to do it again is incredibly effective. If you have multiple casters in a party, these can even be combined to great effect, such as having Spike Growth (which is only a level 2 spell, and has the added bonus of reducing movement and causing damage for every 1.5 metres of movement) over an area that then has Wall of Fire put through the centre, burning enemies while limiting their ability to escape.
• Combined with the above and the number of instant death pits, the Warlock's repelling blast makes Eldritch Blast a force to be reckoned with that can one shot enemies (including some bosses) from across the map. Though winning in this fashion of course means you lose out on any treasure they were carrying when they fell.
• Storm Sorcerers are extremely strong and versatile, as well as very easy to play. Their abilities are based around thunder or lightning damage, and they get the ability to fly without triggering opportunity attacks when they use any spell except for a cantrip. 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. They also get Create Water once they hit level 6, allowing them to use it to either remove enemy lightning resistance or make them vulnerable to lightning, all in the same turn due to sorcerers' access to Quickened Spell (cast a spell using your bonus action instead of your action). While there are potentially more powerful damage casters in the game, the easy access to lightning vulnerability, as well as their lack of gear dependency, makes Storm Sorcerers a very plug and play and self sufficient class that you can add to basically any party. They can also make great use of all of the Lightning Charge equipment the player finds throughout Act 1.
• 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. There are tons of ways to increase your jump abilities, from gear that increases your jump range, to spells like Enhance Leap. Several tough encounters can be solved by taking your melee character and literally jumping them next to the squishiest enemies, effectively ignoring every enemy in their way. This allows characters to gain Advantage or initiate melee attacks that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Many players feel these advantages may be unintentional.
  • This is taken up to eleven with the Monk, which has the 'Step of the Wind' class actions, which uses a bonus action and a Ki point to give you dash/disengage and removes the bonus action requirement of jump. This makes the only cost of jump 3m of movement. A high strength monk with Enhance Jump, Haste, and a high base movement speed can jump over large swathes of the battlefield for the low cost of 1 bonus action and 1 Ki point, with the dash option increasing the amount of jumps and the disengage option allowing you to ignore potential attacks of opportunity.
• Summons in general are a great help in the game. Unlike in 5E, every summon in the game has its own initiative and can attack (in the tabletop itself, Mage Hand and Familiars can't attack at all, unless the latter is a Warlock Pact of the Chain summon, which both they and Ranger Companions require using the character's action to attack), and starting from the mid-level you can get surprisingly tanky summons. Even though most only get one attack, they can help split attack damage away from your main party and help chip away at bosses.
• 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 the Surprised condition, which 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 humble action of Throwing is often considered one of your strongest offensive options as a Strength-focused character. The reasons for this are multiplicative and there are many ways to abuse it.
  • First off, throwing is a simple "roll to hit" like in the tabletop. However, throwing an enemy 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.
  • 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 Nyrulna, a legendary trident that does the same thing but comes with a ton of unique upgrades. The trident 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.
  • While all of the above is rather strong, what really kicks it over the edge is the "Tavern Brawler" Feat. While it was a so-so feat in the tabletop version, this game buffed it to insane levels. When a character with Tavern Brawler makes an unarmed attack, uses an improvised weapon, or throws 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 to death, while Frenzied Barbarians (who specialize in improvised weapons and throwing weapons) can stack their absurd bonuses to chuck things wherever they want. Even better, dump Strength and put it somewhere else like Dexterity (for faster initiatives and Armor Class), pop an Elixir of Hill Giant Strength or Elixir of Cloud Giant Strength to fix your strength stat at 20 and above until you long rest, and behold as your extremely tanky melee fighter cleans house. The feat also benefits 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, except for Honor Mode, where it is still bugged to only apply to attack rolls.
  • And it gets even better! 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.
• 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 (as the game uses a roll of 1d4 for determining base initiative instead of the 1d20 in D&D proper). 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.
• 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 armor and it can be combined with benefit from being unarmored (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.
  • 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), Duke Ravengard’s Longsword (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, a Level 11+ warlock’s eldritch blast would be able to deal up to a maximum of 102 force damage (or 156 on a Critical Hit) per turn! For a mere cantrip (which in itself is already powerful), this deadly combo can even kill most late game bosses (including Raphael and the Netherbrain-controlled adult red dragon) in less than ten turns, if not five turns.
  • But Wait, There's More! Have the Warlock with a Great Old One patron which makes your enemies frightened at you upon rolling a critical hit, equip as many weapons and items that increase the crit range and/or spell save DC as you can, and get the Risky Ring that gives out advantage on attack rolls (at the cost of disadvantage on saving throws, but that's irrelevant at this point) and utterly annihilate everything in your path while your enemies are too scared to fight back.
• Gloves of Dexterity, at least for characters who aren't already built for Dexterity. 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 armor. Combined with casting Mage Armor (a level 1 spell available to almost every caster class, while Warlocks are able to cast it with the Armor of Shadows invocation), or any additional non-armor gear items that give AC bonuses such as certain boots or capes, you can make your AC score rival the heaviest plate armor even while remaining unarmored.
• Bard's College of Swords comes with three flourishes using Bardic Inspirations. Defensive Flourish and Slashing Flourish are both generally useful (letting you boost your defensive or attack multiple enemies with one attack, respectively) but Mobile Flourish is where things get game breaking; It allows you to push one enemy that you hit with your attack 20 feet backwards and then teleport to the target. Doesn't sound too powerful...except One, you can use it with either your sword or your ranged weapon, so it's good for teleporting to a target who is separated by far jumps, Two, pushing someone 20 feet is pretty powerful so it can be easily used to help with positioning or push enemies (of any size) off cliffs or into pits, Three, like Defensive Flourish the Bardic Inspiration is only spent if you hit so you don't have to worry about blowing precious resources on long shots or losing them on a bad roll, and Four, by level 5 Bardic Inspirations are reset on a Short Rest (and as a Bard you'll have an extra Short Rest). It's a very simple ability but it can easily turn into a game breaker if you know how to use it right.
  • Ranged Slashing Flourish is one of the most overpowered attacks in the whole game. Like the melee version, it allows you to hit two enemies with one attack while adding your bardic inspiration to the damage, but what the game doesn't tell you is that you can actually just hit the same enemy twice, all using a single attack, which means you can basically do the equivalent of four attacks in a single turn, since swords bards get extra attack at level 6. This makes it a very potent tool for nuking bosses and building up conditions like Arcane Acuity, which makes swords bard an insanely powerful class that can also fire off close to unresistible control spells if geared properly.
• While the Illithid Powers are Purposely Overpowered, some of the selections you can get can make the game an "Absolute" breeze.
  • If you decide to take the 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, with Fly alone breaking the vast majority of combat in Act 3.
  • Characters who specialize in AOE damage can easily abuse Black Hole. Upon casting this action, every enemy in a huge cone of effect is pulled towards a center point and potentially slowed. Note the wording here- enemies are pulled towards the center point, leaving allies and neutral parties alone. This allows you to yoink away enemies from attacking allied targets, making several Act 3 encounters much easier to deal with. While this effect does no damage on it's own, it is an absolutely devastating combo ability for setting up further damage. Casting Black Hole and then immediately following up with a Fireball, Call Storm or Sunbeam is a surefire way to devastate a huge group of enemies coming your way.
  • Cull the Weak is the definition of Magikarp Power allowing a character to immediately execute any enemy they damage if that damage would put their health below their number of currently evolved Illithid powers and cause a small psionic explosion into the bargain. Considering there are a total of 26 Illithid powers a character who is going all-out on consuming tadpoles can effectively add up to 26 damage to an attack if that would make the attack fatal. This also applies to area-of-effect damage, including the psionic explosion and can cause chain reactions that annihilate entire crowds of weak enemies.
  • 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 11 fighter getting six 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.
  • Any active Illithid ability can be made even better with the Awakened buff, which you get by entering the Githyanki Zaith'isk in Act One and passing all of the saves. This allows every Illithid ability that would require an Action to be used as a Bonus Action. This allows you to use abilities like Shatter Psyche to lower AC, Perilous Stakes (which, by the way, can be cast on enemies) to inflict vulnerability to all damage, or even the aforementioned Black Hole, in the same round as an attack.
• Stack enough Sleight of Hand and Dexterity bonuses and it becomes trivially easy to use the Pickpocket skill to rob any merchant in the game blind (literally if you cast something like Fog Cloud or Darkness to hide your illicit activities), giving you access to expensive equipment and/or large amounts of single use items that you might not otherwise be able to afford.
• 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 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 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. The ability to cast a 6th-level AOE spell for free every long rest can also turn the tide of most fights.
• Explosives. Things like Smokepowder Bomb and Alchemist Fire can be purchased at just about any merchant and can be lobbed at an enemy to do some decent damage. Crucially, they can also be detonated if exposed to fire. So you can set them down on the ground like a trap and shoot them with a fire arrow or something and boom. Now imagine what would happen if you put a whole bunch of them together in a breakable container, like a Backpack, plopped it down next to a powerful enemy, and lobbed a Fireball at it...for extra oomph, throw in the Firewine, Oil and Smokepower Barrels that are lying around all over the place.
• Bhaalist Armour. A lot of people never use this since you can only get it from a vendor after making a more evil decision. However, when you realise how good it is, it’s unlikely Valeria will live to see in any subsequent playthroughs. It’s incredibly strong since not only does it give +2 to Initiative, but it applies Aura of Murder to all nearby enemies, making them vulnerable to Piercing attacks. That means your Sneak Attack will be dealing double damage which can stack with Critical Hits. Put this on a Rogue with strong Piercing weapons like Duelist’s Prerogative or Crimson Mischief, maybe multiclassed with Fighter or Ranger for the bonus to duel wielding or one handing, and the extra attack, and with Risky Ring so every attack can be a Sneak Attack, and you can output absolutely obscene damage to enemies and end fights before they even begin.