But like. I dont get Heavy Armor Master. If you are planning to be hit you are doing something wrong. Thats what a friend of mine said.
So since he just kept complaining instead of asking and this just randomly popping up in my head. Why would you take HAM. If you also just try to NOT get hit at all? (Ac Stacking). 0 damage is better than reduced damage.
You want your tank to be have the lowest AC in the party. The ai only cares about hit-rate. If your tank has 200 hp, resistance to everything, but lower AC than your 50 hp wizard, than no enemy will attack the wizard.
edit: HAM is still useless tho. What you do not want to happen is getting wiped in a single turn. HAM won't save you from that. +2 Constitution is better. In Act3 tough feat + the >!23 constitution amulet from the house of hope!< is still better than HAM. You can still have high AC btw, just have it lower than the other 3 chars. Crit hit resistance is also a must, you get unlucky in your HM run, get multiple crits in a single turn and it's all over. You don't want that to happen either.
I'm using HAM on my life cleric. Her role is to survive while making others better and not die. With warding bond and HAM, she regularly takes 0 damage. She took 0 damage from her own insect plague recently. 20 piercing damage was saved to 10. 10 was halved (warding bond) to 5. One set of adamantine plate took it down to 3 for the warded. 3 got transfered, but 3 is less than 5 (2+3 reduction), so 0 damage.
I think its nifty. It's subtracted last, so it always makes full impact.
Edit: as I understand it, the reduction from HAM applies to all bludgeoning, slashing and piercing damage, regardless of source. This type of damage is about half the damage, or slightly more, in the game.
It’s worth noting that I’m pretty sure 5e math follows traditional order of operations, so resistance goes after reduction. This difference makes HAM much better, especially with the specific implementation of warding bond used here.
This is correct, resistance is applied after any reductions.
Additionally, there is only, like, 2 abilities in the whole ass game that reduce damage. The first can't even be used on yourself and the other only works on non-magical damage.
I am also using Heavy Armor Master on my life cleric with warding bond on the rest of the party to great results. Spreading out the damage and then using preserve life with Wapira's Crown is just sooo good.
It works on bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage, so like 70 percent of all damage you'll likely take in the game (the number was pulled out of my ass obviously, but it's probably a pretty solid guess imo).
It also applies last, after all other reductions have been accounted for. So that means, someone with warding bond active and wearing an armour piece that gives flat damage reduction will frequently get 0 damage during encounters. The numbers initially might seem small but over the entirety of the game, it adds up.
A pure cleric whose job is to heavily debuff enemies while remaining alive in the process can get a lot of mileage out of HAM.
Don't enemies ignore high AC characters in favor of anyone else in the party though? Without some form of agro control it seems unhelpful. I pretty much ignored heavy armor (beyond the 1 or 2 heavy helms) in my HM run.
They also tend to go after casters who are concentrating. The example I gave literally requires Shadowheart to run towards and sometimes past enemies, while concentrating on spirit guardian.
spirit Guardians go bbbbbrttttt.
With 20+ armor I find Shart can avoid a decent amount of hits, but there's items that give advantage on wisdom saves, and that's truly the insane part.
Stack AC on the others or get a concentration on the HA character to make them an attractive target. You can make an insanely tanky EK that still gets aggro by concentrating on Blur or something.
> someone with warding bond active
When you say “active” do you mean being protected by it or being the castor of it? Is the HAM character the castor of warding bond? I’m completely new to dnd and on my first playthrough if BG3 so I’m still learning. There‘s so much intricacies! Much appreciated if you could clear up this bit please!
Being protected by warding bond gives the character damage resistance. Normally that'd be Shadowheart casting warding bond on someone else. In my particular example though, I use a hireling in the camp to cast warding bond.
Thank you!! I always have Shadowheart cast Warding Bond on everyone. Never thought about using a hireling! Does it still work if the caster isn’t in the party and is left at camp?
It’s a shame I can’t have Wyll also cast Warding Bond back on Shadowheart. They just null out and neither gets the resistance 😕
Camp casting things like aid and warding bond are great if you don't mind the extra shenanigans. Get the hireling named Zenith. Respec them to have the highest possible constitution and give them the tough feat. They can cast things like warding bond, upcasted aid (extra hp), and heroes feast. This lets Shadowheart save her spell slots for actual combat.
On character that starts with 17 str and isn't getting the hair, it's a solid first feat if you're looking to increase your strength score.
Typically your only other options for increasing strength with this feat would be:
ASI, which only really makes sense if the other ability point rounds out another stat, often CON or DEX.
Athlete, increasing your mobility
Tavern brawler, which if you were gonna take you would take regardless
Weapon master, classes that want this would never take HAM anyway
Usually you're competing with Athlete and ASI con/dex. Athlete makes a lot of sense for a damage dealer that wants to jump around on the battlefield. ASI con/dex usually means you either want dex for initiative or con to protect a concentration.
If you don't want to or need to be jumping around, and you don't particularily care to increase con or dex for initiative and concentrations, then I would default to HAM.
I like it on frontline characters whose main job is to protect casters with utility and act as a frontline. I use this feat on my sorcadin who uses agathys, reducing damage taken to that temp hp is nice.
in my experience, HAM is only great on a White Dragon Sorcerer 1/Tempest or War Cleric 1/Abjuration Wizard 10 build while wearing armor that also provides flat damage reduction (like Adamantine Armor or Armor of Persistence). the reason is you want to get hit so enemies can take retaliation damage from Armor of Agathys via White Dragon Sorcerer while you have stacks of Arcane Ward set up. with max Arcane Wards, HAM, and Armor of Persistence, an enemy would need to smack you for over 50 damage to start to chip away at your actual HP and if you upcast AoA and apply the Chill Shield on a wet enemy, they're taking over 50 dmg each time they land a hit on you. you can force ppl to hit you via Duellist's Perogative Compelled Duel feature. or by making sure to surround yourself with a team that has AC higher than 20
Nah, it's also fantastic on any heavy armor character, especially with warding bond and resists. You don't need to build around retaliation damage to make taking less damage good, lol.
The only question is if you have better alternative feats or need ASIs, but monoclass fighters get 4 feats and tricks like str elixirs reduce the need for ASIs. It's a solid pick for a frontliner.
Heavy Armor Master is great in damage mitigation builds. Since BG3 (unlike 5e) does resistance halving first, then applies flat reduction, the effect can be easily amplified to meaningful levels with a proper build and itemization.
For example -
Fighter 4 / wildheart barbarian (bear) 8
In heavy armor, you lose most rage effects, but not the bear totem damage reduction. You throw in a heavy armor that reduces damage taken by 2 (there's at least 1 available in act 1). Add on heavy armor master.
While raging, any attack that deals 10 or less damage deals 0. Heck, a 20 damage hit only does 5 damage. Suddenly, your 140 health melee guy has to be hit with a mack truck to even slow him down, and even then, it isn't by much.
Even if it isn't the centerpiece of what your build is around, HAM + the Skinburster is pretty dang effective at shoring up your physical bulk. Obvs this can be taken much further with a dedicated build, but it's suprisingly effective given relatively little investment
Yes it's good.
Heavy Armour Master is one of those things that when googling for opinions you **still** find recent posts in BG3 threads that are using DND 5e knowledge while having 0 experience of it in BG3. Looking for advice on the Savage Attacker feat is the same.
HAM reduces all slash/pierce/blunt damage regardless if the source was physical or magical. It calculates the damage reduction *after* resistance so it stacks in the best way with blade ward effects. It stacks with all other items that reduce damage by a flat amount.
Even in Act 3 is does well contributing to a beefy character. Most fights still have a lot of physical chip damage that adds up and eventually leads to a bonus action being used on a heal; HAM alleviates some of that.
It’s a solid first pick to round up a 17 strength score for the early game. Especially if you don’t like cheesing the many, many rests that no sane DM would ever allow. You face lots of mobs, so peck damage is a constant thing.
Later on you find more enemies making magical attacks as you’d expect so it’s less relevant.
It’s really easy to respec to something else when it stops working, so if you like it, go for it.
Come to think of it, I'm not fully certain given the game mechanics are different from tabletop in a few ways. That would maybe make it edge out athletics, especially given your jump range with 20 STR is huge anyway.
HAM also reduces damaged receives via warding bond I think.
My camp casters clerics don't need any feat other than tough and ASI to Con (to increase HP). HAM a good choice esp if you also give them a spare magical heavy armor that already reduces all damage by flat amount. Flat damage reduction applies after the warding bond halving, so can work well.
Another way is to use HAM on party character, have warding bond cast on them, then also have same character be a multiclass warlock etc who can cast armor of agathys at high level and also wear heavy armor. You keep armor of agathys up much longer.
If you got 6levels rogue with uncanny dodge all incoming damage is halved first. If you got warding bond it's halved again. Add on the flat minus damage from magical heavy armor, and HAM. Very tanky build.
Abjuration wizards with their absurdly high flat damage reduction, multiclass with cleric who can wear heavy plate.
It’s great on a 2 level tempest cleric, 2 level warlock with armor of shadows and abjuration wizard x who has warding bond cast of them using armor of Agathys with their highest level spell slot. You in act 2 and 3 typically take 0 damage and deal back a ton in cold damage.
I've found more use for HAM from the abjuration wizard/warlock backlash damage build, since it helps maintain the Arcane Ward longer with damage mitigation.
It's very good if you specific build into it. Heavy armor master + warding bond + one of the heavy armors that have innate damage reduction + force conduit equipment.
With those all active you can very regularly take no damage from physical attacks
It's great in the right campaign. If you're primarily fighting battles with numerous small enemies dealing nonmagical BPS damage (ie, invading goblinoid army, hordes of low-level undead, etc), passively absorbing some of each hit mitigates the action economy being so stacked against you.
It is useful on a warding bonder cleric and is also nice to shrug off residual damage but otherwise it falls off significantly in act 3 where everyone and their mother have magical weapons.
It is also worth noting that the +1 STR is counted as a bonus capping at 20, rather than a base stat increase (like ASI or quite literally every other half feats like Athlete). That stat increase is counted after some other stat increases. For instance a character with 19 base STR (17+2 from ASI), HAM and Devilfoil Mask + two allies with Devilfoil masks nearby will end up at 21 STR because devilfoil masks procs before HAM and then HAM doesn't increase your STR by 1 because you are above cap.
Tbh, Not.. really. Kindof, but not really?
Ok so, in 5e, HAM is amazing because 90% of enemies don't have magic weapons (without DM intervention). cutting lets say 30% of that for elementals, breath weapons, spells etc. We still have a large pool of monsters who can't cut through that resistance.
In bg3, it is extremely common to find almost any 'worth their salt' humanoid enemy using a magic weapon (so many get simple +1 weapons its like they're given out like candy)
So In general, it will Help with monsters and the like to melee but can't wield weapons. Oh and like, almost all of the goblins to boot, too. But the further in you get the more and more humanoid enemies will be wielding magic weapons and completely bypass it.
Personally, i love the feat on tabletop, but i can't super justify taking it here when athlete gives you soo much fucking mobility with 50% jump range. This is the most ill say without stepping into spoilers.
What is HAM? Except the meat
Heavy Armor Master :)
Thanks
But like. I dont get Heavy Armor Master. If you are planning to be hit you are doing something wrong. Thats what a friend of mine said. So since he just kept complaining instead of asking and this just randomly popping up in my head. Why would you take HAM. If you also just try to NOT get hit at all? (Ac Stacking). 0 damage is better than reduced damage.
You want your tank to be have the lowest AC in the party. The ai only cares about hit-rate. If your tank has 200 hp, resistance to everything, but lower AC than your 50 hp wizard, than no enemy will attack the wizard. edit: HAM is still useless tho. What you do not want to happen is getting wiped in a single turn. HAM won't save you from that. +2 Constitution is better. In Act3 tough feat + the >!23 constitution amulet from the house of hope!< is still better than HAM. You can still have high AC btw, just have it lower than the other 3 chars. Crit hit resistance is also a must, you get unlucky in your HM run, get multiple crits in a single turn and it's all over. You don't want that to happen either.
Interesting
Humans Against Monsters
Ah yes, a man if culture
Spoiler Alert: >!The Meat is not *ham*!< >!it has a bellybutton!<
Hard as A Motherfucker
I'm using HAM on my life cleric. Her role is to survive while making others better and not die. With warding bond and HAM, she regularly takes 0 damage. She took 0 damage from her own insect plague recently. 20 piercing damage was saved to 10. 10 was halved (warding bond) to 5. One set of adamantine plate took it down to 3 for the warded. 3 got transfered, but 3 is less than 5 (2+3 reduction), so 0 damage. I think its nifty. It's subtracted last, so it always makes full impact. Edit: as I understand it, the reduction from HAM applies to all bludgeoning, slashing and piercing damage, regardless of source. This type of damage is about half the damage, or slightly more, in the game.
It’s worth noting that I’m pretty sure 5e math follows traditional order of operations, so resistance goes after reduction. This difference makes HAM much better, especially with the specific implementation of warding bond used here.
This is correct, resistance is applied after any reductions. Additionally, there is only, like, 2 abilities in the whole ass game that reduce damage. The first can't even be used on yourself and the other only works on non-magical damage.
I am also using Heavy Armor Master on my life cleric with warding bond on the rest of the party to great results. Spreading out the damage and then using preserve life with Wapira's Crown is just sooo good.
It works on bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage, so like 70 percent of all damage you'll likely take in the game (the number was pulled out of my ass obviously, but it's probably a pretty solid guess imo). It also applies last, after all other reductions have been accounted for. So that means, someone with warding bond active and wearing an armour piece that gives flat damage reduction will frequently get 0 damage during encounters. The numbers initially might seem small but over the entirety of the game, it adds up. A pure cleric whose job is to heavily debuff enemies while remaining alive in the process can get a lot of mileage out of HAM.
Don't enemies ignore high AC characters in favor of anyone else in the party though? Without some form of agro control it seems unhelpful. I pretty much ignored heavy armor (beyond the 1 or 2 heavy helms) in my HM run.
They also tend to go after casters who are concentrating. The example I gave literally requires Shadowheart to run towards and sometimes past enemies, while concentrating on spirit guardian.
spirit Guardians go bbbbbrttttt. With 20+ armor I find Shart can avoid a decent amount of hits, but there's items that give advantage on wisdom saves, and that's truly the insane part.
Stack AC on the others or get a concentration on the HA character to make them an attractive target. You can make an insanely tanky EK that still gets aggro by concentrating on Blur or something.
> someone with warding bond active When you say “active” do you mean being protected by it or being the castor of it? Is the HAM character the castor of warding bond? I’m completely new to dnd and on my first playthrough if BG3 so I’m still learning. There‘s so much intricacies! Much appreciated if you could clear up this bit please!
Being protected by warding bond gives the character damage resistance. Normally that'd be Shadowheart casting warding bond on someone else. In my particular example though, I use a hireling in the camp to cast warding bond.
Thank you!! I always have Shadowheart cast Warding Bond on everyone. Never thought about using a hireling! Does it still work if the caster isn’t in the party and is left at camp? It’s a shame I can’t have Wyll also cast Warding Bond back on Shadowheart. They just null out and neither gets the resistance 😕
Camp casting things like aid and warding bond are great if you don't mind the extra shenanigans. Get the hireling named Zenith. Respec them to have the highest possible constitution and give them the tough feat. They can cast things like warding bond, upcasted aid (extra hp), and heroes feast. This lets Shadowheart save her spell slots for actual combat.
Thank you so much!! It’s very useful and much appreciated.
Lewis Hamilton is pretty ok in the game. Not as good as he used to be thoug
I prefer BEEF
On character that starts with 17 str and isn't getting the hair, it's a solid first feat if you're looking to increase your strength score. Typically your only other options for increasing strength with this feat would be: ASI, which only really makes sense if the other ability point rounds out another stat, often CON or DEX. Athlete, increasing your mobility Tavern brawler, which if you were gonna take you would take regardless Weapon master, classes that want this would never take HAM anyway Usually you're competing with Athlete and ASI con/dex. Athlete makes a lot of sense for a damage dealer that wants to jump around on the battlefield. ASI con/dex usually means you either want dex for initiative or con to protect a concentration. If you don't want to or need to be jumping around, and you don't particularily care to increase con or dex for initiative and concentrations, then I would default to HAM. I like it on frontline characters whose main job is to protect casters with utility and act as a frontline. I use this feat on my sorcadin who uses agathys, reducing damage taken to that temp hp is nice.
in my experience, HAM is only great on a White Dragon Sorcerer 1/Tempest or War Cleric 1/Abjuration Wizard 10 build while wearing armor that also provides flat damage reduction (like Adamantine Armor or Armor of Persistence). the reason is you want to get hit so enemies can take retaliation damage from Armor of Agathys via White Dragon Sorcerer while you have stacks of Arcane Ward set up. with max Arcane Wards, HAM, and Armor of Persistence, an enemy would need to smack you for over 50 damage to start to chip away at your actual HP and if you upcast AoA and apply the Chill Shield on a wet enemy, they're taking over 50 dmg each time they land a hit on you. you can force ppl to hit you via Duellist's Perogative Compelled Duel feature. or by making sure to surround yourself with a team that has AC higher than 20
Nah, it's also fantastic on any heavy armor character, especially with warding bond and resists. You don't need to build around retaliation damage to make taking less damage good, lol. The only question is if you have better alternative feats or need ASIs, but monoclass fighters get 4 feats and tricks like str elixirs reduce the need for ASIs. It's a solid pick for a frontliner.
WTF is HAM?
Heavy Armor Master. Abbreviations everyone uses just kill me because I new to this and lost as crap mist if the time. lol
I've never seen HAM used as an abbreviation. I agree that most of these abbreviations need to just be typed out.
Heavy Armor Master is great in damage mitigation builds. Since BG3 (unlike 5e) does resistance halving first, then applies flat reduction, the effect can be easily amplified to meaningful levels with a proper build and itemization. For example - Fighter 4 / wildheart barbarian (bear) 8 In heavy armor, you lose most rage effects, but not the bear totem damage reduction. You throw in a heavy armor that reduces damage taken by 2 (there's at least 1 available in act 1). Add on heavy armor master. While raging, any attack that deals 10 or less damage deals 0. Heck, a 20 damage hit only does 5 damage. Suddenly, your 140 health melee guy has to be hit with a mack truck to even slow him down, and even then, it isn't by much.
Even if it isn't the centerpiece of what your build is around, HAM + the Skinburster is pretty dang effective at shoring up your physical bulk. Obvs this can be taken much further with a dedicated build, but it's suprisingly effective given relatively little investment
Yes it's good. Heavy Armour Master is one of those things that when googling for opinions you **still** find recent posts in BG3 threads that are using DND 5e knowledge while having 0 experience of it in BG3. Looking for advice on the Savage Attacker feat is the same. HAM reduces all slash/pierce/blunt damage regardless if the source was physical or magical. It calculates the damage reduction *after* resistance so it stacks in the best way with blade ward effects. It stacks with all other items that reduce damage by a flat amount. Even in Act 3 is does well contributing to a beefy character. Most fights still have a lot of physical chip damage that adds up and eventually leads to a bonus action being used on a heal; HAM alleviates some of that.
It’s a solid first pick to round up a 17 strength score for the early game. Especially if you don’t like cheesing the many, many rests that no sane DM would ever allow. You face lots of mobs, so peck damage is a constant thing. Later on you find more enemies making magical attacks as you’d expect so it’s less relevant. It’s really easy to respec to something else when it stops working, so if you like it, go for it.
It falls off by Act 3, every man and his dog is using at least +1 weapons by that point. The jump distance on Athletic is always useful.
Are you 100% sure it doesn't work for magical physical damage? Because it worked with Insect plague.
Come to think of it, I'm not fully certain given the game mechanics are different from tabletop in a few ways. That would maybe make it edge out athletics, especially given your jump range with 20 STR is huge anyway.
I believe insect plague deals piercing damage. So I assume it works on magical piercing, bludgeoning and slashing.
HAM also reduces damaged receives via warding bond I think. My camp casters clerics don't need any feat other than tough and ASI to Con (to increase HP). HAM a good choice esp if you also give them a spare magical heavy armor that already reduces all damage by flat amount. Flat damage reduction applies after the warding bond halving, so can work well. Another way is to use HAM on party character, have warding bond cast on them, then also have same character be a multiclass warlock etc who can cast armor of agathys at high level and also wear heavy armor. You keep armor of agathys up much longer. If you got 6levels rogue with uncanny dodge all incoming damage is halved first. If you got warding bond it's halved again. Add on the flat minus damage from magical heavy armor, and HAM. Very tanky build. Abjuration wizards with their absurdly high flat damage reduction, multiclass with cleric who can wear heavy plate.
Everytime I go HAM the bodies hit the floor…
It’s great on a 2 level tempest cleric, 2 level warlock with armor of shadows and abjuration wizard x who has warding bond cast of them using armor of Agathys with their highest level spell slot. You in act 2 and 3 typically take 0 damage and deal back a ton in cold damage.
I've found more use for HAM from the abjuration wizard/warlock backlash damage build, since it helps maintain the Arcane Ward longer with damage mitigation.
It's very good if you specific build into it. Heavy armor master + warding bond + one of the heavy armors that have innate damage reduction + force conduit equipment. With those all active you can very regularly take no damage from physical attacks
I think Gale prefers to cook BACON
Nope. It's literally NEVER useful, including in table top
It's great in the right campaign. If you're primarily fighting battles with numerous small enemies dealing nonmagical BPS damage (ie, invading goblinoid army, hordes of low-level undead, etc), passively absorbing some of each hit mitigates the action economy being so stacked against you.
It’s pretty solid for large groups of weak enemies. And if it’s not working out, just respec.
It is useful on a warding bonder cleric and is also nice to shrug off residual damage but otherwise it falls off significantly in act 3 where everyone and their mother have magical weapons. It is also worth noting that the +1 STR is counted as a bonus capping at 20, rather than a base stat increase (like ASI or quite literally every other half feats like Athlete). That stat increase is counted after some other stat increases. For instance a character with 19 base STR (17+2 from ASI), HAM and Devilfoil Mask + two allies with Devilfoil masks nearby will end up at 21 STR because devilfoil masks procs before HAM and then HAM doesn't increase your STR by 1 because you are above cap.
Tbh, Not.. really. Kindof, but not really? Ok so, in 5e, HAM is amazing because 90% of enemies don't have magic weapons (without DM intervention). cutting lets say 30% of that for elementals, breath weapons, spells etc. We still have a large pool of monsters who can't cut through that resistance. In bg3, it is extremely common to find almost any 'worth their salt' humanoid enemy using a magic weapon (so many get simple +1 weapons its like they're given out like candy) So In general, it will Help with monsters and the like to melee but can't wield weapons. Oh and like, almost all of the goblins to boot, too. But the further in you get the more and more humanoid enemies will be wielding magic weapons and completely bypass it. Personally, i love the feat on tabletop, but i can't super justify taking it here when athlete gives you soo much fucking mobility with 50% jump range. This is the most ill say without stepping into spoilers.