Warding BondLevel 2 Abjuration Spell Ward an ally. They gain Resistance to all damage, and a +1 bonus to their Armour Class and Saving Throws. Each time the target takes damage, the spellcaster takes the same amount of damage. Each time the warded creature takes damage, the spellcaster takes the same amount of damage.
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Warding Bond is a Spell in Baldur's Gate 3. Warding Bond is a Lvl 2 Spell from the Abjuration school. Spells can be used for dealing damage to Enemies, inflict Status Ailments, buff Characters or interact with the environment.
Warding Bond Information
- Description: Ward an ally. They gain Resistance to all damage, and a +1 bonus to their Armour Class and Saving Throws. Each time the target takes damage, the spellcaster takes the same amount of damage. Each time the warded creature takes damage, the spellcaster takes the same amount of damage.
- Level: Lvl 2 spell
- School: Abjuration School
- Casting Time:
Action - Range:
- Requires Concentration: No
- Saving Throw:
How to Acquire Warding Bond
- Warding Bond can be acquired by the following classes:
- Warding Bond can be cast by using the following Items:
Warding Bond Tips & Notes
- This spell can be cast by a hireling and then leave him at camp so you gain all the benefits with practically no downside. Just remember to make sure the hireling has a high enough Constitution save so he won't die too easily.
- The damage caused to the user is of the same damage type that the bond target received this means it can be resisted or otherwise mitigated for example if a tiefling cleric uses the bond on an ally who takes 20 Fire damage the resistance from the spell will half the damage to 10 then cause that same 10 Fire damage to the user who being resistent to Fire will only take 5 damage
- Notably, the above also applies to the damage reduction of Adamantine Splint Armour.
- BUG: Shapeshifted Druids can cause unintended damage to the caster of Warding Bond when engaging in cutscenes/dialogue. Most scenes cannot be done while shapeshifted, so you will either be told you can't do it, control over the dialogue will switch to another party member, or you will forcibly lose shapeshift. But in some cases, a cutscene will allow the user to lose their shapeshift, carry out the cutscene or dialogue, and then revert back to their shapeshifted form afterwards for free. However, any missing health the user has when they revert back to form will be counted as "damage" for the caster of warding bond, causing them to take damage equal to the amount of health the druid's form is missing. For example, an owlbear druid with 45/65 health will cause the caster to take 20 damage after the cutscene ends. While normally very rare, this notably includes speaking to your companions, so the best practice is to avoid conversing with them while transformed if you intend to use this combination. (September 5th 2023)
- BUG: if the spell target is wearing Callous Glow Ring then the ring effect will apply to the redirected damage. If the damage taken from redirect is greater than 0 then the ring will add 2 radiant damage. This is probably due to the game treating the redirect damage as if it is being dealt by the character that it is redirected from.
- BUG: if the spell caster has any effects which reflect damage whenever they take redirected damage this will reflect damage back to the target of the spell it was redirected from. The damage that is reflected is still treated as if it is being dealt by the character that is redirecting the damage, so if the character that is redirecting is wearing Callous Glow Ring they will do a bonus 2 radiant damage to themselves. This can then be redirected again and can loop around until damage is reduced to 0. More research needed to fully understand what is happening and why.
Anonymous
- Anonymous
whenever my shapeshifted druid with warding bond cast on them by my cleric takes damage, the damage is reflected like normal but then the cleric also takes an additional just "4 damage" for no reason, for every instance of damage i took. no damage type, and i put on resistances and flat defense and it still does the 4 damage anyway, only when i'm shapeshifted though. the damage calculation for it usually says something ridiculous like "damage: 100% of 2 = 6". bug?
- Anonymous
For some reason, Gale will heal himself if he takes damage while at camp. That means he will never die from warding bond damage. He can apply it to your whole party and live if he stays at camp!
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
For the character giving Warding Bond:
- Heavy Armor Mastery feat for -3 all damage
- Heavy Armor with DR property (Such as Adamantine Scale) for -2 all damage
- Varsh Ko'kuu's Boots for Acid Resistance
- Ring of Poison Resistance for... Poison Resistance
- The Sparkswall for Lightning Resistance
- Darkfire Shortbow for Fire and Cold Resistance
- Transmuter's Stone for Thunder Resistance
- Loviatar's Scourge for Necrotic Resistance
(Optional) - Amulet of the Unworthy for Slashing Resistance (At the cost of Bludgeoning Weakness)
(Optional) - Absolute's Protector for -1 damage from Spells
(Optional) - Defender's Flail for -1 Slashing, Piercing and Bludgeoning damage
Provides Resistance to all main elements and plenty of damage reduction. Use Elixirs to cover Psychic/Radiant/Force Resistance where necessary.
It's quite possible for many battles to be fought in Act 2 onwards with the giver of Warding Bond receiving literally 0 damage when it has to go through double resistance and then the damage reductions.
- Anonymous
I walk out of camp each day with my party Longstridered, Aided, Warding Bonded, Freedom of Movemented, Death Warded, and Heroes' Feasted. Death Ward is more effective on the Warding Bond caster than it is a party member.
- Anonymous
Am I reading this wrong or I don't think is a good spell. So 12 damage turns into 6 damage on the linked ally and 6 damage duplicates to the caster. So there is still 12 damage being done only divided by two.
- Anonymous
Can two clerics cast this to each other and be bound both ways?
- Anonymous
Haven't seen it mentioned but it's funny to have the bear barian cast it via the ring on another character. Because the recipient gets omni res and the barbarian has omni res -psych. Resulting in the barb taking half of half damage.
That coupled with the hp pool barbs have. It's basically free omni res and +1 ac without cheesing it by leaving the person at camp.
- Anonymous
One useful quirk I haven't seen mentioned much: Certain companions (I've only noticed Gale and Karlach) have special behaviour. If they take damage while not in your party, they will heal to full health like NPCs out of combat (it MIGHT also restore all spell slots, but I haven't investigated that fully). This means if you have one of them cast Warding Bond, then dismiss them, you don't have to even worry about keeping them alive. Well, technically you still do - if you take a massive enough amount of damage in one round, they won't live long enough to take the action that heals them.
Free omni-resistance for all of your party with no upkeep required, nice and cheesy.
I'm unsure whether this behaviour will actually get patched out, because I assume it's an intended safeguard. It would be rather bad for Gale to die outside of the player's control given the consequences, so I imagine the healing is to protect against that.
It appears that the way this works is the redirected damage is dealt by the character it is redirected from. I say this because I think I found a bug (or feature?) where I had the warded character had a ring that deals 2 radiant damage to enemies that are attacked if they are illuminated and this 2 damage is included in the redirection!
e.g. Deal 10 damage to warded character. 10 damage is redirected to caster AND 2 radiant damage is redirected too.
I assume this is a bug but if this is a feature I wonder if there are other methods or affecting this damage. Probably not worth jumping through the hoops for but an interesting idea I think.
- Anonymous
this should be concentrate spell , it much better than shield of faith(+1 ac plus half all damage vs just +2 ac but need concentrate).
Assuming you didn't want to cheese-- some useful information is that the caster can also reduce their portion of the damage taken with their own resistances (Through Raging or other means)
so a hit that was supposed to do 12 overall to your linked ally, would instead do 6 to the Linked Ally and 3 to the caster, solid spell one would say
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
Shart said pain is sought after by Shar devotees. I gift her the privilege of sharing my MC's pain with her.
disregard my post below, chaining bond doesnt work anymore and i'm not able to reproduce the behavior again. have no idea how i achieved that previously.
Anyway, you can do nearly the same using shield of faith (twin spell to buff main tank and warding bond hireling by group cleric, to keep concentration up) + viconia robe + dark justicar on both of them. You will get insane dmg reduction.
Absolutely broken.
Step 1:
Go to camp and hire cleric:
- Respec him to Paladin (to get heavy armor proff), max Constitution.
- lvl 4: feat Heavy Armor Master
- Multiclass to Cleric
- lvl 8: feat Tough
- Equip some epic/legendary Heavy armor with -dmg
- Buff your party with Warding Bond
- Get him out of party (no need to dismiss, just let him stay in camp)
Step 2:
Hire Paladin. Repeat all the previous steps but instead of buffing Warding Bond on to your group BUFF PREVIOUS HIRELING. Make sure to equip heavy armor with -4 dmg too.
Step 3:
- Equip Viconia's Priestess Robe on your main tank.
- Buff Shield of Faith on tank and to get Sharran Veil.
- Equip Dark Justiciar Half-Plate on tank, get second buff.
- Equip your normal armor.
Step 4:
Now your tank is absolutely immune to all damage below 25 (group <20):
- 50% res to all dmg bcoz of Waring Bond. Tank has additional -dmg from Shield of faith.
- This dmg after reduction is transfered to 1st hireling and gets reduced by second warding bond and heavy armor, effectively making him to receive 0 dmg in most of the situations.
- 2nd hireling will receive dmg if initial dmg is more than 30.
- You can heal hirelings by simply going to camp and using heal on them.
- Anonymous
This actually the most broken and cheese spell it the game.
Step one. Hire a cleric. Step 2 use warding bond on everyone.
Step 3 leave him at camp.
Warding bond will still be in effect. Resulting in basically doubling your health.
And while your at it. Cast aid at max lvl for increase Max HP.
And anyother spells that last till long rest. While youre at it.
- Anonymous
This spell is great to cast on your animal companion as a ranger. You either need to multiclass or get the shield from ACT3 though. But cleric is already a good multiclassing option for a ranger, so it all lines up nicely. I use it on a raven companion in order to make it beefier. Raven is the only companion that doesn't screw up NPC interaction in cities and settlements, but I lacks natural survivability. Warding Bond fixes that.
- Anonymous
MAJOR DRUID BUG: Tl;dr version is don't talk to your party members while shapeshifted if you have warding bond cast on you.
Normally as a druid you can't enter cutscenes/dialogue while shapeshifted - it will either prevent the scene from starting, shift the dialogue control to a party member, or revert your shapeshift. But in some rare cases, including conversing with party members, it will instead temporarily revert your form, then after the dialogue ends it will put you back in shapeshift form without expending a transformation point. However, it keeps the damage you had on you, and this counts as "taking damage" for the sake of the person who casted warding bond on you. For example, I was at 45/65 HP, and after a cutscene in the arcane tower as well as after talking to a companion, Shadowheart immediately received 20 damage.
- Anonymous
This spell is great on a tank/cleric paring with both wearing Heavy armor that has minus damage like Adamantine Armor.
Enemy attacks would often hit for 0-2 damage on tactician since damage to cleric had to go through
1) Resistance from Warding Bond
2) Damage reduction from Heavy Armor Master feat
3) Damage reduction from Tank armor
4) Damage reduction on Cleric armor
And that was even if they could hit my Tank's AC.
I don't recall ever having concentration broken by warding bond damage with a high con Cleric
I don't ever remember seeing
- Anonymous
if your cleric is also concentrating on any spells, be wary, because the damge they'll take from being bonded can break that conentration...atleast i think
- Anonymous
So, this spell is meant to be a link where half of the injuries get channeled into the other person, so that they balance that burden equally between them. This is even a significant part of the "True Love's Embrace/Caress" set of Rings. It is supposed to be an equally shared burden of hardship. It is meant to be sharing the INJURY of one party not the ATTACK they experience.
The way this spell ACTUALLY functions is that it gives a "Resistance" to the protected character, and then DUPLICATES all post-"resistance" damage done to them, and hits the bonded character with a newly targeted attack from their ward. This new attack will then get re-adjusted by the second character's resistances and makes the whole thing a total mess, which also makes ZERO sense to the design of the spell.
Example:
Currently, if the protected character gets hit by 10 Lightning damage, they take 5… but if the linked character is Wet that 5 damage turns into 10, meaning the link isn't splitting 100% of one attack between two parties in a 50/50 relationship. It is now INCREASING the total damage dealt of one attack (from 10 to 15). Because weaknesses and resistances function as double & half damage, this only gets WORSE as levels get higher. If that same initial hit dealt 30 Lightning damage, it instead deals a total of 45 total damage (15 to the protected character and 30 to the linked one).
Additionally, if the character they're protecting has items like the Gloves of Belligerent Skies, any hit of Lightning, Thunder, or Radiant damage the absorb will trigger 2 turns of Reverberation on them per instance, or Winter's Clutches any Cold damage triggers 2 turns of Encrusted with Frost — because it is treating the damage like that character's ATTACK, RATHER THAN THEIR INJURY.
What it SHOULD be doing is calculating the damage dealt to the protected character, and then having a non-elemental 50% of that damage transferring to the other character with the source being from "Warded Bond" so additional status conditions of attacks from that character don't also get applied, and resistances also don't come into play. This shouldn't be reduced by wearing mythril armor, or even their own natural elemental resistances. Again, it is sharing 50% OF THE INJURY.
The game is capable of doing this already, because the Illithid Power "Transfuse Health" has a cost of "50% of current HP" which is just taken out as raw damage, which bypasses any resistance calculation and simplifies everything when necessary. Why Warding Bond doesn't do this type of simplification makes no sense at all.
However… because Warding Bond doesn't, it wrongly assumes that its resistances have been applied, it just duplicates that damage. Ex: Shadowheart has Warding Bond on Tav who currently has 60 HP and uses Transfuse Health to heal Karlach. Karlach will heal 30 HP, then Tav will take 30 Damage, and then Shadowheart will ALSO take 30 Damage. What very obviously SHOULD happen is that Karlach heals for 30 HP and then Tav & Shadowheart each take 15 damage. Again they're sharing the INJURY.
This change would allow the protected character's own resistances to apply correctly on their own, and then cut the end total damage in half. This way it comes out as a net positive along with the +1 to AC & +1 to Saving Throws, and it isn't absolutely riddled with absurdly bugged interactions making this into a damage amplifying death trap from seemingly every single piece of armor and equipment in the entire game.
This would even fix this "chaining" issue to allow for characters to apply it to each other going both directions without ever increasing the total damage dealt. (Although, that ALSO needs to have a separate status for "Warding Bond" that doesn't get overridden, since that single status override is also what is removing all the "resistances" to the protected character if you cast it going back the other direction).
Fingers crossed that this spell gets fixed sooner rather than later, because right now it is more likely to rapidly turn into a complete nightmare of improper interactions that MASSIVELY INCREASE the damage taken by the party and the status effects and injuries dealt to your Cleric if you're using it.
- Anonymous
If the target of "Warding Bond" already has a "Warding Bond", at either side of the link, then it will not redirect damage to the original caster (Warding Bond).
Meaning, there will be 3 character with a warding bond buff but only 1 will split damage, have the +1 to Armor Class, Saving Throws and resistance to all damage.
** It will NOT "chain" the split damage through multiple party members (player 1 -> player 2 -> player 3).
** It will not "fork" (?) the split damage from one target through two other targets at the same time (player 1 -> player 2 + player 1 -> player 3)
Tip: Warding bond spells work great with defensive affixes like "All incoming damage is reduced by 2". The -2 reduction of damage applies AFTER the resistance ( x0.5) and BEFORE the split.
- Example: With the All damage reduction affix + Warding Bond, if incoming damage roll is 27 the formula would be [ 27 - 14 (Resistance) - 2 (Magical Plate)] = hit for 11 damage on BOTH the target and the caster.
-- But, if the caster of Warding bond is the only one wearing the -2 damage reduction affix and their bond target is hit with the same incoming damage then the damage split would be 13(target) and then 11(caster).
- Anonymous
The shared damage portion can be reduced further with Blade Ward, elemental resistances, and flat damage reduction items like Adamantine armor.
Characters who already have resistances, such as barbarians, are a terrible choice to cast this on since different sources of resistances do not stack. Funnily enough, you'd end up taking more damage overall if you do attempt this.
- Anonymous
Such a good spell, makes surviving Tactician mode easier if your MC is melee focused.
- Anonymous
Can be cast from Camp! Came back to see my Cleric, nearly dead, had 18/184 HP left after a particularly challenging boss fight!
- Anonymous
NOTE: The interaction with Lightning Charges is VERY BUGGED, and I'd recommend not using it at all if you use both until it's fixed. EXAMPLE: Cleric protects Tav with Warding Bond, and in combat Tav gains Lightning Charges. An Enemy shoots Tav, so the damage is split with ½ dealt to Tav & ½ dealt to the Cleric using Warding Bond. However because the game doesn't count the damage as being from the enemy, it sees the damage being directed from TAV so it applies Lightning Charges and deals +1 Lightning damage to the Cleric on every hit. If Tav has 5 Lightning Charges, it will deal the boosted +1d8 Lightning damage to your Cleric and then clear all Lightning Charges as well as any benefits they were giving to Tav (like +1 Attack, Temporary HP, etc). So this feedback loop is bad for BOTH characters.
- Anonymous
I'm really confused, my Cleric is tanking full damage before reductions on the split. So my tank is taking 5 dmg and the cleric is taking 10. Is this correct?
- Anonymous
i was today years old when i learnt the damage is split between the caster and recipiënt, my boy is off fighting some lads on his own, i'm not paying attention to the rest of my party and my support caster dies twice (noticed the first time, didn't save the second time)
- Anonymous
This spell should be in paladin devotion list instead of silence... makes much more sense to me.
Currently playing with this, kind of interesting to split your damage between your tank and support, but the ingame tooltip is horribly misleading
This spell is great. Stack your tank with adamantine splint or better helldusk. heavy armour mastery and your cleric with armour of persistence heavy armour mastery. Make sure your tank is crit immune tho. Also it ONLY applies damage to the cleric from hp damage not temp hp shields. Conversely it applies damage to temp hp shields on the cleric. So if you can proc a shield each turn on your tank and cleric the chip damages are almost completely negated and a cleric in sanctuary is fine to tag along.
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