I am running a tempest cleric/Paladin who I want to build as a tanky front line warrior. I’ve always really liked the flavor of heavy armor master but I know in most 5E campaigns it’s not very good because most enemy damage becomes magical after the early levels. Is that the case for BG3’s campaign? I have 17 strength so it would also bump up my attack.
Posted Sep 2, 2023, 8:33 PM UTC
From my experience there can be a lot of arrows and melee chip damage in this game. Most heavy hits are from magic or magic melee damage so I'd recommend it. You can always unspec out of it if you are feeling it's not having an impact.
It is definitely not bad.
5E: Depends absolutely on the DM and what items you get during the campaign even moreso in homebrew campaigns. If your DM is really stingy about giving out even mediocre items and items for tanking and damage reduction then this feat is really nice as it will likely be the only means of damage reduction. If your DM gives you some decent items throughout the campaign especially some with interesting synergies/effects/stats then this feat becomes kinda meh. In some of the official modules/campaigns this is a decent choice.
BG3: Can be good but imo because we get so many interesting and fun items this feat feels extremely weak later on. In ealry game picking it as one of the first feats it is pretty good. But by mid act2 and definitely once you get to act3 this feat becomes boring and extremely meh.
TLDR: Depends on how your DM rewards you in 5E.
Removing both the Heavy Armor STR requirements and Multiclass Ability Requirements, opens up a lot of build options that would make no sense in 5e. Also knowing that we can get guaranteed good Heavy Armor at certain points in a playthrough is a big buff versus going into an unknown campaign. And if controlling your entire party, that means no fighting with party members over who gets the good armor.
But I'd guess that beyond that, how it compares to 5e would mostly depend on your table / DM.
Does anyone know if it stacks with the magic item damage reductions?
And if it reduces Warding bond damage?
Because if it does… I know what build I wanna try.
It stacks with magic armor flat reduction, and it applies AFTER resistance rather than before, as it does in the tabletop. This means that if you can get your hands on resistance (such as with Warding Bond or Blade Ward) you can functionally double your flat reduction as well. A 10 damage hit gets halved by resistance to 5 then reduced by another (3 from HAM plus 2 from, say, Adamantine Splint) = 0 damage. Dammon's VR heavy plate available in Act 3 grants 2 flat DR and always-on Blade Ward. That plus HAM makes you essentially able to shrug off a silly amount of physical damage from a large number of enemies, even late game. Which means your hp pool is untouched and conserved for those enemies that do nonphysical damage.
People saying HAM is bad don't know what they're talking about.
I have been playing a heavy armour rate m barb and it is broken AF. yea everything gets advantage against me, but I have resistance to everything and-5 DMG per hit, it's broken AF. It's DMG isn't great, I'm still trying to optimise it but the defensive layer makes the lack of DMG worth.
Yea, combined with warding bond and some healing my war cleric shart is an absolute tank
I think it was perfect for my Laezel fighter character because fighters get that extra feat at 6 (at 4 I took strength up, at 6 I took GWM, then at 8 I took heavy armor master). It's pretty strong, although I feel like since I've taken it my Astarian ranger rogue tends to get focus fired more since they AI seems pretty intelligent.
magical plates -> 2 damage reduction from heavy armors
heavy armour master makes most normal attacks useless, the -5 to damage for normal attacks helps decently.
it is not overly strong, but it is not weak either. i can remember some fights where i took like only rather weak hits and could ignore healing.