Arcane Ward | Baldurs Gate 3 Wiki

Absolutely broken with Armor of Agathys and resistance to damage.

Example: if you have resistance to slash and have 7 arcane ward charges, an enemy that deals less than 15 damage will deal zero damage. And if they attack you in melee, they take damage.

Most enemies ignore Gale as an Abjuration Wizard lmao

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Fun fact about this effect, this makes wizards a technical healer. I have used this effect through the Transfuse Health Ilithid power. Normally, it's supposed to take half your current health and give it to another. If you look in the combat log, it even says you take PURE damage, it's a typeless damage, so you can't rely on getting resistance to the self damage, HOWEVER, Arcane Ward still negates the damage of the effect, but the recipient still gets half your health. For anyone curious, I am a madman XD

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if you run a wizard/warlock combo and one of your invocation choices is armor of shadows you essentially get armor of shadows as a none concentration cantrip, which can be used to feed the shield before every fight, follow that up with stoneskin in the concentration slot, good luck taking damage anytime soon

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Found a bug. Abjuration School wizards with no stacks of Arcane ward gain stacks equal to your wizard level at the moment of equipping the ring.

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Seems like if you use Counterspell with a 4th level or higher slot, it'll still only give 3 charges to the ward ?

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I'm not sure but I think that I get ward intensity every time a cleric put me under it's concentrated Pass Without A Trace spell. I was so confused wondering why I was gaining intensity when my Eldritch Knight was only throwing spears.

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In case anybody is wondering, the intensity will still decrease by 1 if you reduce the incoming damage to 0 through other sources of flat reduction (i.e. 4 dmg - 2 dmg [adamantine splint armour] - 3 dmg (heavy armour master feat) = 0).

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Warlock gets a free Mage Armor from its pact boons that only costs an action. So you can cast this over and over to max this out each long rest if you so desire

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So I accidentally stumbled upon an absolutely gamebreaking bug or interaction... if you use Metamagic: Extended Spell by Dipping 2 levels into Sorcerer you can double your Arcane Ward since it counts as a condition with a turn duration, past the limit of 2× Wizard Level. Randomly got 36 turns of Arcane Ward trying to cast an extended Globe of Invulnerability...

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This is absolute **** compared to PHB.

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So does this work with the Armor Shadows warlock invocation like it does in D&D? (i.e. cast Mage Armor at will to fully charge the ward outside combat)

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What about a tempest cleric 1 (heavy armor) / warlock 2 (AoA+AoS) / abjuration wizard X build with the Heavily Armored feat ? I'm afraid it takes a bit too long to start with getting the starter pack at lvl 5. You still get lvl 6 spell slots but no wizard selection (relying on scrolls ?).

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Does arcane ward stack eith damage reduction from an armor or from Heavily Armored?

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Any idea if the stacks increase when casting an abjuration spell from an item? I counted 6 low rarity rings and amulets that let you cast a non-shield abjuration spell, 2 high-rarity armor items that do. I was wondering if after a long rest you could shuffle through all the equipment and cast their spells just to pump your ward up.

At that, I have another question. Can you switch to items you didn't have equipped that have spells and cast their spells, or do you need to have them equipped from the time you long rest to cast their spells? If so at the very late game and at level 12 you can potentially pump your ward up to intensity 20 at the end of a long rest. Talk about a lot of damage mitigation.

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Keep in mind, the maximum number of stacks seems to be wizard level x2

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If the ward reduces the damage to 0, do you still lose a charge?
Say you take 10 damage but the ward has 11 charges, you get 0 damage. Does the ward now have 10 charges or still 11?

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So it reduces damage by the intensity value, then decreases it only by one intensity per attack. However, I noticed that if a single attack has multiple damage types, each damage type is reduced fully by the intensity, and still only decreases by one intensity. Arcane Ward 4 against a slash with d6 slashing + d4 fire may do some slashing, does no fire, and leaves you with Arcane Ward 3. (or.. maybe i misread a few things. can anyone else confirm this?)
Each intensity tier can block as little as 1 damage, but as much as it's intensity value as damage. For a Ward of intensity x, it's effective HP is between x and (x^2 + x)/2. it is exponential, so keep it at a high tier if you can manage. Tier 2 blocks up to 3 damage, Tier 4 blocks 10, Tier 6 blocks 21, Tier 8 blocks 36, etc.

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Combine with Warding Bond (resistance to all damage) from a Cleric or the magic rings to double the amount of life this protects since resistance applies before the hit. If you have an Arcane Ward of 14 charges at Level 7 Wizard, you have to take a hit that deals more than 28 damage for any damage to actually hurt you or your bonded character. You can easily tank hundreds of damage just with this mechanic alone.

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Isn't Shield supposed to work with Arcane Ward? I tried and it did not gain a charge.

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Does resistance apply before or after this arcane ward?

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Not noted here but bg3 arcane ward does not have int scaling, the max is always wiz lvl*2. Additionally it does work with armor of shadows as of date of post, to turn off mage armor for recast just put on any armor that is incompatible with the spell.

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Warlock 2/ Abjuration Wizard X would be really good. Access to armor of agathys and armor of shadows invocation to spam mage armor and heal your arcane ward (hopefully this works in game, I haven't tested it yet). And with the Archfey patron you can charm nearby creatures whilst in the middle of combat because you are pretty tanky for a wizard.

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With this rework i do wonder how well an Eldritch Knight / Abjuration Wizard with heavy armor master would go. Since i think the ward auto gives you 3 stacks after you do a long rest, as well as the tanky nature of the multiclass with lots of Shield spells spam would keep arcane ward up. Reducing all damage from 3-6 with a possible Blade ward at Fighter lvl 7 with War Magic while still attacking. High AC, Resistance to damage, flat damage reduction. All of your spell slots will fuel your shield, protection from evil and good etc. as well as having good ritual spells like feather fall, longstrider, find familiar etc.

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The new arcane ward has up to 4 stacks for a lvl 2 wiz with 17 int. Each occurrence of damage reduce the damage for the number of stacks and remove 1 stack. ex : you have 3 stacks and suffer 4 damage > you take 1 damage and have now 2 stacks.

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Does not stack with false life anymore

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I care, thanks. It also stacks with false life now, 14 extra hp at lvl 2.

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okay for who ever cares: casting mage armor or protect vs good/evil gives me at lv4 12 hp with an int of 18 so no more 3 hp

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they are going to have to bring all of 5e in this game to make it balanced

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There is a Blade Ward cantrip you could use to get the shield.
So you end up having 50% weapon reduction damage for 2 turns +3 hp shield.

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Yup. I just experimented with it right now to confirm the low number I was seeing and it's a hard flat 3hp. It's also not even stacking with sources of Temporary HP like False Life - which it should be doing in accordance with tabletop. (Since the Ward creates a separate barrier around you that takes damage for you, rather than simply being Temporary HP added to your body.)

P.S.
Apologies for the double post, this was meant to be its own post.

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In early access this is not useful. The only abjuration spells are mage armor and protection from evil/good; mage armor you'll never recast and you shouldnt be recasting protection either. So no way to charge it. I can see the use later in game at later levels with more ways to charge

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This is a huge change to 5e arcane ward. In BG3 it has a max of 3hp, while in 5e the arcane ward is double your level plus your int modifier.

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