(Image credit: Larian Studios)

Baldur’s Gate 3 has a big stonking new patch on its way, which is currently in stress testing—and it’s almost certainly doomed me to another honour mode playthrough because, well, I’ve got 12 new subclasses to tinker with and I’m a bit of a build fiend.

One thing had been concerning me, though: The scourge of Booming Blade had been looming large over its current stress test. For the uninitiated, with new subclasses comes new spells and cantrips, including the ever-yearned for ‘Blade’ cantrips from D&D 5e’s TTRPG rules. To sum it up, these spells make a lot of spellblade builds, such as the terrifying Sorcadin, possible.

As per said rules, Booming Blade lets you do a melee attack—triggering things like the Rogue’s Sneak Attack, or the Paladin’s Divine Smite—as part of casting the spell. You also get a scaling burst of thunder damage, and extra thunder damage if your enemy tries to run away from you. It’s really very good. Only, up until now, the stress test allowed it to work with Extra Attack—which basically made it free damage. A complete and utter no-brainer with zero tradeoff.

Well, that’s changed in the stress test patch notes, which read: “Limited the Booming Blade cantrip so it cannot be used more than once per turn.” Praise Mystra!

Now, if this has upset any build aficionados, I’d like to reassure you that Booming Blade really is still quite good. It’s basically free damage on Arcane Trickster Rogues, who can only really attack once per turn anyway—and, if I’m reading this right, it’ll still work with Extra Attack, you’ll just get one Booming Blade swing in your mix-up on your turn.

Though, making it work this way does have some issues. For starters, it makes Eldritch Knight’s “War Magic” feat a little busted. Essentially, this Fighter Subclass gets to make an Extra Attack, so long as it casts a cantrip with its main action. Usually this isn’t a great idea, because most cantrips’ll be weaker than just hitting your enemy with your weapon twice.

However, these patch notes read the following: “Fixed War Magic being active before Extra Attack, forcing the player to use a bonus action before getting access to other Extra Attacks.” The implication here is that it’s intended that throwing Booming Blade into your usual attack routine will unlock the War Magic bonus attack—in other words, Eldritch Knights are going to be very very strong.

Conversely, a multiclass powerbuild I thought would take off—the Sorcadin—is indirectly nerfed. The Sorcadin is a Paladin/Sorcerer multiclass that’s the scourge of D&D 5e—see, Divine Smites can be used on any spell slot, so if you take a 2-level dip in Paladin to unlock it, and get high level spell slots from another class, you’re gravy.

The trick with the Sorcadin is to quicken spell Booming Blade to cast it as a bonus action, and then hit them with it again for your main attack—pumping Divine Smites into your foe all the while. With this hard restriction, the Sorcadin just got a little less strong, though I’m probably still going to play one.

Anyway—while this nerf has dethroned Booming Blade from being basically mandatory on any character who hits anything with a melee weapon (you don’t just turn down several d8s of free damage), it’s still really rather good, because Booming Blade has always been good, and the ways it diverges from D&D 5e make it even better still. Villains should live in fear, for the spellblades are here—armed with a bunch of thunder damage and a big whackin’ stick.