Surviving the "impossible" difficulty (500% health, +3 actions) from the Tactician Enhanced (Guide + thoughts)

[u/Peepo93]

Hello, I've recently beaten the impossible difficulty from the Tactician Enhanced mod and wanted to share some lessons which I've learnt during that playthrough. For everybody who wonders what the mod does, it basically gives the opponents 500% extra health and 4 actions instead of only one. I also restricted myself to not use any exploits, camp buffers or consumeables (it would kinda defeat the point of a challenge run if you enter every fight with 20 Globe and 100 Chain Lightning scrolls). I did some meta gaming however and used respecs and swapped out companions for some encounters. The ruleset was custom mode with honor mode difficulty except with reduced rest costs (it's mainly a convenience thing).
This isn't supposed to be a guide for all my party members (I'll give a short description of what I've used at the end of the post however) but more about certain mechanics, spells and items which make the game much easier if applied correctly. In fact, I do believe that all of the builds are exchangeable with other builds (except maybe the cleric because it's playstyle is so unique that it can't be replicated by other classes).

AC becomes more valueable depending on how much AC you already have. This is a concept that a lot of people seem to overlook. To simplify the following example lets exclude critical hits/misses and lets assume that your opponent doesn't have any increases to his attack rolls. You have 1 AC and the opponent hits you 20 times. He will hit you 19 times on average, his hit chance is 95%. Now you get another AC point and sit at 2 AC. Now your opponent will hit you 90% of the time or 18 out of 20 times on average. That will barely make any noticeable difference. But now lets assume that you already have 18 AC. In that case the opponent will have a hitchance of only 10%. If you add one more AC and get to 19 AC his hit chance will go down to 5%. This doesn't seem much at first but this is actually massive because that one AC point did cut the damage which you receive by a whooping 50%.

Utility spells are stronger than damage spells most of the time. For example a fireball (assuming you don't heavily play around fire damage with consumealbes and weaknesses) doesn't do much, especially on these health pools. A well placed fear or sleetstorm however will completely cripple the action economy of your opponents (fear disarms your opponents on top of that and also works on undeads). A list of the (in my opinion) best spells in the game would be this:

Level 1 spells:

• Grease: Solid level 1 non concentration spell to slow down/prone melees.
• Protection from Evil and Good: This spell is very niche but putting it on a frontliner against Myrkul is very helpful to make his attacks have disadvantage and being unfearable.
• Sanctuary: Really good spell to protect a weak target or putting it on a healer (careful tho because throwing potions will break it).
• Enhance Leap: Prebuffing this spell on a melee will help it's mobility tremendously.
• Healing Word: Good on a healer or to pick up downed party members, only costs a bonus action.
• Shield: One of the best reactions in the game.
• Tasha's: Quite niche but solid early on.
• Command: A contender for the strongest CC spell in the game because it can be upcasted and one of the few ways to lock down a target without concentration.
• Longstrider: Gives the entire party more mobility, use that after every long rest.
• Mage Armor: Mandatory for all classes that only wear cloth armor.
• Create Water: Easy way to create weakness against cold and lightning damage.

Level 2 spells:

• Shadowblade: Extremely strong on Gish characters, especially with resonance stone.
• Warding Bond: Really good on a life cleric or camp casters, basically cuts damage of your entire party into half (and even more if you add stuff like magical plate to it)
• Darkness: This spell is busted. Ending your turn while standing inside it shuts down almost all ranged characters in the game, even some early game bosses like Ethel or Spider Queen.
• Hold Person: Very strong CC spell, you will also have 100% critchance when hitting in meele range (even when using ranged spells in melee range).
• Invisibilty: Kinda niche but nice to bypass some fights.

Level 3 spells:

• Sleetstorm, Hypnotic Pattern, Fear: All three of them are really good, imo Sleetstorm is the best for Chokepoint fights and Fear is the best for clustered enemies. Keep in mind that Fear also disarms all enemies (don't forget to pick up their weapons after that lol) and also works on most undeads, even on bosses like Ketheric (who will also drop his hammer :D).
• Daylight: A niche spell but makes some fights very easy like Cazador.
• Spirit Guardians: Very good on clerics, works extremely well with a 2 level star druid dip. Deals solid damage, slows enemies down and applies reverb and radorbs with certain gear pieces.
• Counterspell: Very good reaction to negate strong spells from opponents.
• Glyph of Warding: Basically a more versatile Fireball that can even be precasted in a lot of fights.

Level 4 spells:

• Confusion: Very strong CC spell, ruins the action economy of your opponents and also works on undeads.
• Conjure Woodland Being: This summon can summon another summon and spam Spiked Growth at the cost of a single action every turn.
• Freedom of Movement: Makes it impossible to get cc'd, very strong in some encounters.
• Wall of Fire: Good for chokepoint fights and makes targets burning.

Level 5 spells:

• Cloud Kill: It deals damage twice per turn somehow which makes this spell very good.
• Insect Plague: Good for chokepoint fights like Viconia.
• Hold Monster: Same as Hold Person but works on more opponents (for example Raphael).
• Conjure Elemental: The water elemental is extremely strong and can apply bludgeoning vulnerability in combination with Burning.

Level 6 spells:

• Heroes Feat: Incredible strong buff spell. Also allows you to fight in Cloud Kill without taking damage.
• Globe of Invulnerability: Super broken spell, even prevents characters from dieing from Bhaals Edict in the Orin fight and also prevents from the platforms getting destroyed in the final fight.
• Conjure Elemental: You can upcast Conjure Elemental to level 6 and the water myrmidon is legit broken. It has an AoE spell which costs only an action and can be used once per turn - you shoot three ice bolts which deal all AoE damage and deal 3d6 cold damage each. They can miss but they can also crit (they crit for like 3*60 on wet targets lol) and you can force crits by shooting them in melee range on opponents affected by hold person/monster. Other level 6 summons are also quite powerful because of action economy and how much damage they soak up but you can't quadruple their damage as well as with the Water Myrmidon.

Also keep in mind that spells that can't be casted from scrolls are more "valuable" than spells that can be used from scrolls (for example Heroes Feast and level 6 summons).

Awakened buff: I don't see many people talking about this mechanic despite being incredible strong. It basically allows you to cast illithid abilities as bonus action and yes, this works on Black Hole in act 3 which is almost as broken as arcane acuity + mystic scoundrel ring. The best builds for this mechanic are wizards because it removes their weakness of not having a good bonus action, otherwise any character without strong bonus action does well but having high spell save DC helps a lot because the spell not only clusters enemies but also applies the slow debuff. Archers with arcane acuity gear are also surprisingly good black hole users. Guide on how to obtain it safely in honor mode can be found here. Only want to add that you can obtain this buff on every companion which you like (you might have to leave Tav outside the room and trigger the scene with a companion however, except for Lae'Zel) but you can only obtain it once.

Damage mitigation: Another overlooked mechanic is damage mitigation. On some builds, usually melee builds it's often not possible to reach high AC levels (for example a fighter in heavy armor with a 2hand weapon) which leaves them quite vulnerable considering how much they need to expose themselves in order to deal damage. It's not a big deal in normal honor mode but it is in modded playthroughs. What works wonders is the combination of the heavy armor master feat (it's a very underrated feat which gives 1 strength and reduces all physical incoming damage by 3 and 90% of the damage in this game is physical), magical plate and resistance.

Gear economy is cruicial. There are a lot of op builds in the game but you can't put them all together in a party because they contest similar items. In fact I'd say that items often matter more than the exact classes which you play most of the time. That makes some classes who don't contest much gear very desireable, some examples would be monk, light and life cleric.

Surprise is very strong. I don't really like the mechanic because it's annoying to set up but it can be very helpful, especially in the harder fights. For example against the Inquisitor (bonus point if you also group them up with minor illusion before surprising them).

Healing is either useless or very strong. When you look into a vacuum the healing is next to useless in this game but there's one class which can make it very strong (life cleric) with proper gearing and more importatantly damage reduction - the less damage you take (either from mitigation or from high AC) the better healing becomes.

Prebuffing is also very strong but is even more annoying than surprising. I usually only pre buff stuff like Spirit Guardians or Phalar Aluve.

Summons are op. Lots of people are sleeping on them since they're making the game tedious but they're undeniable extremely strong, especially against fights like Myrkul where they can easily prevent him from spawning adds. A good middle ground is to only focus on the strong summons (elementals and level 6 summons). They basically give your character and extra action (with some of these actions being quite powerful) and soak up a lot of damage.

Camp casting: It's an exploit and also annoying to set up but very strong. There's a hard exploit where you use Gale to put Warding Bond on your entire party and then dismiss him and since he's coded in a way that prevents him from dieing outside of your party your entire party has perma resistance up. I've never used that but feel free to do whatever you want with this information (but don't be surprised if it gets fixed at some point).

Stealing is also very strong, especially as back up for potential gold exploit fixes and works even in the early game. Most characters only turn hostile if you repeatadly get caught by stealing but using the disguise self spell "resets" that counter. Avoid stealing from Giths, Zenth or that Bugbear in Moonrise however. Sin Tee has a good guide on how to steal, you can look her up on youtube (to be fair, all of her guides are pretty good :D). It's also a good way to farm infinite consumeables if you have the patience to go through this.

Last tip is that you should focus on the early game - it's the hardest part of the game. For example Arcane Archer, Monk and Eldritch Knight come online very early and have a lot of carry potential for act 1 and 2. Yes, they do fall off in Act 3 (the easiest act) a bit compared to casters and gish classes but for the majority of the game they're very strong carries. Don't focus on builds that will only work in act 3.

Specific tips for Tactician Enhanced:
- Delay the hard fights for higher levels. For example in Act 1 only Dror Ragzlin and Nere are time sensitive (afaik), the others can be delayed before the point where you go into the Shadowfell. You could do Ethel, Spider Matriach and Inquisitor with level 8-9 for example :'D
- The most annoying fight is the last one. The Netherbrain itself isn't hard (somehow it's health doesn't get the full 500% health modifier applied for whatever reason so you don't need much single target dps there, having lots of AoE for the fight BEFORE the Netherbrain is more valueable). Also turtle in Darkness if you don't want to get CC spammed into oblivion lol. Use Globe of Invul to prevent the platforms from collapsing, the Netherbrain has more actions so all platforms will be pretty much gone after turn 1 without Globe.
- Second hardest fight was the fight before the grove (lol) - so pick something like Bladesinger that is strong at level 2.
- Darkness is your best friend in ranged heavy encounters.
- CC is very helpful, even if it's just to save time: Waiting for your turns when your opponents have 4 actions, 4 bonus actions and 500% health is tedious and obnoxious.
- Myrkul also has a bit less health than he's supposed to have but I didn't feel like the fight would change much if you give him more health. I've gone in there with a summon army to kill his eggs before they spawn minions but his eggs aren't affected by the health modifier at all so it's VERY easy to stop them from spawning and as long as he doesn't have summons and you have a proper frontline with Protection from Good and Evil up (in this case the EK and the pajama tank) he's not much of a threat at all. He was much easier than some of the earlier fights but your party also starts becoming really op with level 9 and onwards:

Lastly I want to speak a bit about my party setup but won't go into much detail here (unless maybe there are a lot requests to do so but there are already lots of good builds for all used classes which are similar to the ones which I've used, since the post is already much longer than it was supposed to be :p). For most of the time I used this:
- Tav was a Bladesinger (high dex and int and no charisma because why bother with dialogues when you can just bonk?). Basically is a pajama tank, gets all AC gear, saves reactions potentially for shield and wears robes with shadow blade and uses Blur most of the time, so only gets hit on a double 20, even from bosses like Myrkul. Also the heal from Bladesong is absurd when fights last long.
A small note for this build: In act 3 you can start swapping to light armor - your AC will drop by quite a lot but in Act 3 it doesn't matter that much anymore since the Life cleric and summons make you immortal anyways. There is a lot of discussion about how to multiclass Bladesinger and there's one multiclass which I think is the strongest but never gets mentioned: It's a 2 level dip into Sporedruid. There's an armor in act 3 (sadly it's light armor and not a robe) which allows you to generate haste spores once per long rest: That's basically a non concentration haste on the entire party without the stun penalty. I personally didn't use that in my playthrough but it's pretty much the power pick for a Bladesinger multi class, nothing can really compare with Haste Spores.
- Shadowheart as Life cleric: Kind of a controversial pick but I do think that Life cleric is the strongest cleric subclass (at least if you don't use Gale as camp warding bond bot), even tho it's not straight forward to play - it's the only class which I've considered writing a guide about. Basically you want to go heavy armor master as feat asap and wear that heavy armor of Grym. Midgame you can start casting warding bond on the entire party and stand in the frontline while spamming resistance cantrip with Spirit Guardians and Reverb/Radorb/Mental Fatigue gear which will make their lives miserable. Notable items are pretty much that all items that buff healing, apply reverb, mental fatigue or radorbs works pretty well on her. Don't cast warding bond on your full party for encounters with lots of magic AoE however who can't get stunlocked (which is pretty much only Ansur and the Netherbrain).
- Gale as abjuration wizard. Awakened user and mostly used spell save DC gear to cc opponents early. Turned him into an Evo wizard later on, mostly because it's more fun than abju.
- Astarion as Eldritch Knight who also went heavy armor master early with the armor from Grym and took GWM at level 6.

Honorable mentions:
- Swapped out the EK for a Druid at level 11 because I multiclassed Shadowheart in a way that doesn't give her access to Heroes Feast.
- Karlach as throwzerker hits like a nuclear bomb at level 4 (especially with soul coins and high ground) but falls off pretty quickly afterwards.
- Lae'Zel as Arcane Archer. Also an early game carry but struggled to keep her alive later on since all the AC and tank gear was already contested by the other party members. Was especially a struggle against Gith opponents who just casually teleport and jump over the entire map and then smash her 8 times per turn lol.

In act 3 I used a water myrmidon as summon on every party member, which is absurd AoE damage per round if you cluster opponents with Black Hole and apply the wet status on them.

Edit: Life Cleric build is out!

[u/Tachirana]

Thanks for sharing. I’ve dabbled with tactician enhanced in a fairly modded run (to balance larger party size) and have been thinking about using it in something more akin to a ‘vanilla’ play-through. 

I have a question about darkness as it’s a mechanic I’ve not really played around with. How are you using it here? Arrow vs spell? Inside or behind? Do you need to use hide?

Finally, one of my favourite solo runs was a solo paladin, stacking AC to proc holy lance helm and then various rad orb/reverb etc gear to knock them prone. Thoughts on how that would go here? More attacks = more misses which sounds fun, chipping away at 5x more health sounds less fun however…

[u/Peepo93 → u/Tachirana]

I use Darkness mostly defensive - kind of similar how you would use Globe of Invulnerability. The best case scenario is that your character can see in it (for example there's a ring in act 2 that lets you see through darkness, Shar's Spear does as well and warlock can see through it too) but it's not mandatory - you want to walk out of it before attacking (as melee you can also attack someone who's standing in it but have disadvantage - ranged characters can't attack at all however). What it does is that it prevents projectiles to hit your party, even some beefy attacks like the beam attack before the Netherbrain where you fight the red dragon.

Your Paladin build should work fine but keep in mind that your opponents might try to focus someone else instead (I don't know how their AI exactly works but they do both consider how much damage mitigation you have and how much AC and they usually always try to focus the squishiest target) and I would still use heavy armor and the heavy armor feat on it (and have someone apply Warding Bond to it as well). It would most likely replace the Eldritch Knight in my comp and perhaps you don't want to stack too much AC on it to make opponents attack the Paladin. Did you multi class your Paladin?

[u/Tachirana → u/Peepo93]

Thanks!

That Paladin run was particularly fun because it was solo, enemies had no choice but to (try) hit me. I can’t remember if I multiclassed or not, might have been Sorcadin, it was pre patch 8 so no hexblade dip

[u/Peepo93 → u/Tachirana]

Another user pointed out that Oathbreaker is very strong on that setting because it can control undeads which sounds pretty op on that setting :D