How Scoring & Recommendations Work

Weapon Proficiency Gate

No proficiency = zero score. It doesn't matter how amazing the Halberd is if your Wizard can't use it without disadvantage on every attack.

Base Weapon Damage

The weapon's base damage dice and enchantment bonus form the foundation. The multiplier scales with your character's actual hits per turn — 2× for a Fighter with Extra Attack, 3× for a Berserker with Frenzy, up to 4× for a Monk with Flurry of Blows.

Ability Score Affinity

A +2 STR item scores higher on a STR-based Fighter than on a CHA-based Sorcerer. Items that override an ability to a set value (like Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength setting STR to 23) are heavily discounted if the class doesn't use that ability.

Effective Armour Class

Armour isn't just AC — the engine accounts for DEX caps (light armour uses full DEX, medium caps at +2, heavy ignores DEX entirely) when computing how much AC a piece really gives your character.

Crit Synergy

Each character has a crit chance per hit. It starts from the crit range: a natural 20, or 19–20 for a Champion (18–20 from level 15) and against a Hexblade's cursed target. Then it adds advantage, which rolls two d20s, and Assassinate's auto-crits on surprised targets. On-crit effects are priced at that chance. Crit damage is worth extra to Champions, Assassins and Sneak Attack builds, since Sneak Attack dice double on a crit.

Weapon Effects on Casters

A spellcaster without Extra Attack (Wizard, Sorcerer, Lore Bard, Druid, a Light, Knowledge or Death Cleric, or a Warlock other than Hexblade) rarely swings a weapon. Effects that only work on weapon attacks count at 20% for them, or 60% when another class in a multiclass build attacks with weapons. Unarmed-only bonuses (Helldusk Gloves' extra 1d6) count only for builds that punch.

Initiative Bonus

First-turn-kill builds like Assassin and Gloom Stalker get 1.5× value from initiative bonuses. Every other class still gets a small bonus — going first is always useful.

Use-Frequency Discounting

An effect you can trigger every attack is worth more than one you can use once per long rest. The engine applies diminishing coefficients: always-on (100%) > per-attack (95%) > per-turn (90%) > per-short-rest (75%) > per-long-rest (55%).

Level Gating

Legendary items get penalised at low levels (below 9) and Very Rare items below level 7 — matching the game's intended power curve.

Condition Stacking

Items that build the same stacking effect (Radiating Orb, Arcane Acuity, Lightning Charges, Heat, Momentum) feed one stack count when one character wears them, so the stacks build faster. Only items that actually apply the effect count; an immunity to a condition does not. The bonus grows with each source, with diminishing returns, so the fourth Orb item adds less than the second.

Critical Hit Gear

Items that widen your crit range or force crits. Crit-range reductions add up: two of them crit on 18–20. Crit immunity on armour (Adamantine, Grymskull Helm) is defence, not crit gear. Adamantine weapons auto-crit only against objects. Neither counts here.

Cross-Mechanic Combos

Curated rules for well-known BG3 interactions:

• Wet + Lightning — items that apply Wet paired with Lightning damage for vulnerability exploitation
• Darkness + Devil's Sight — Darkness casters plus items that benefit from Obscured
• Reverberation + Radiating Orb — these conditions cascade into each other, compounding debuffs
• Heat + Fire — Heat generators paired with items that deal Fire damage

Trigger & Payoff

Some items only do something after you deal a damage type, apply a condition or heal someone (the payoff). Other items make that happen (the trigger). For example, Luminous Gloves add Radiating Orb when you deal Radiant damage, and Callous Glow Ring deals Radiant damage. Only real damage counts: resisting Cold deals no Cold, and a "when you deal Cold" bonus cannot set itself off. Both halves must be on the same character. The guide only names a character who can fire the trigger: Cap of Curing needs Bardic Inspiration, Arcane Acuity needs a spellcaster. Class abilities count as triggers too, so a Paladin deals Radiant on their own.

Vulnerability Chains

Items that apply a condition paired with items that exploit that condition. Think: an item that makes enemies Wet combined with a weapon that deals bonus damage to Wet targets.

Themed Clusters

Groups of items built around one mechanic: healing, Momentum, Bardic Inspiration, Poison. They don't always trigger each other, so the guide says what each item does. The bonus has diminishing returns: a fifth Momentum item barely moves the needle.

Damage Riders treated as Damage Sources (DRS)

A damage source is anything that deals damage on its own: a weapon attack, an unarmed strike, a spell. A damage rider is bonus damage that rides along on a source, like Hex's 1d6 Necrotic or a ring's +2 Radiant. Normally each rider applies once per source.

A DRS is a rider the game calculates as a separate damage source, so the other riders apply to it again. Examples are Craterflesh Gloves' Craterous Wounds, Magic Club, Myrmidon weapon actions and the Nature Domain Divine Strike. The riders that can ride on a DRS are called DR jockeys (DRJ), such as Hex, Dolor Amarus and Spellmight Gloves. DRJ+ are universal riders that ride on almost anything, such as Callous Glow and Lightning Charges. A mini DRS (Reverberation, Lightning Burst, weapon coatings) only carries DRJ+, and a DRS+ (Valiant Damage, Rat Bat) can carry other DRS on top of it. An oddball carries no riders but fires on-hit DRS such as Craterflesh again, and a per-source DRS (Phalar Aluve's Shriek outside Honour Mode) fires once for every damage source.

The engine builds this as a tree. Each hit is the root and carries your riders. Every DRS it sets off is another damage instance with its own rider set. Craterflesh and Magic Club fire again on every DRS (Divine Strike, weapon actions, Valiant Damage). Lightning Blast and Life Stealing fire again only on DRS+ and oddballs. The value is expected extra damage per turn: each DRS counts at how often it fires. Sneak Attack and Divine Strike fire once per turn, Craterflesh on crits at your crit chance, and Divine Smite when you spend a slot on it. Each rider counts at how often it applies. The DRS panel in your report draws the tree for each character's recommended gear, with these numbers.

The rules depend on the difficulty. Explorer, Balanced and Tactician use the full DRS rules. Honour Mode has its own ruleset (Patch 5), which turns many DRS into ordinary riders: Sneak Attack, Colossus Slayer, Lifedrinker, Tavern Brawler, Life Stealing, Phalar Aluve's Shriek and many weapon passives. It also makes Divine Smite an oddball. Craterflesh, Magic Club, Lightning Blast, weapon actions and Valiant Damage are DRS in both. The engine reads the difficulty from your save and scores with that mode's game data.

Throw builds get their own tree. The engine reads each character's feats from the save, and a character with Tavern Brawler is scored for throws as well as for their weapon. Monks are the exception: they take Tavern Brawler for unarmed strikes, so they aren't scored as throwers. A throw is an oddball, so Craterflesh fires again on it. Tavern Brawler is a DRS on throws outside Honour Mode and a rider in Honour Mode, and Rage, Ring of Flinging, the Lightning Jabber and Elemental Cleaver count only on throws. Valiant Damage doesn't fire on throws. Tavern Brawler's Strength bonus on every throw is credited to a returning weapon, because only a weapon that comes back lets the build throw on every attack. If the feats can't be read, an equipped returning weapon on a Strength build marks a thrower, and the report says it was inferred.

Ordinary attacks are not DRS. Extra Attack and Eldritch Blast beams add more attacks, which the engine counts once as hits per turn. They don't make riders apply twice to the same hit. Flat weapon bonuses (WeaponDamage, e.g. Caustic Band) apply once per attack and are not jockeys. bg3.wiki: Damage mechanics

Slot-Based Optimisation

For each character, the solver picks the highest-scoring item for each equipment slot (helmet, armour, gloves, boots, amulet, cloak, two ring slots, melee weapon, ranged weapon, shield). It considers slot constraints — a two-handed weapon blocks the shield slot, and you can't wear a ring in your helmet slot.

Three Loadout Variants

You get three recommended builds per character:

• Best Overall — balanced scoring using the default class weights
• Defensive — defense weight ×2, healing ×1.8 and utility ×1.3, offense ×0.6. Best when you need to survive tough fights.
• Offensive — offense weight ×2, control ×1.5 and spellcasting ×1.3, defense ×0.5 and healing ×0.3. Maximum damage output.

What You See in the Report

Each character section shows:

• Current loadout — what you have equipped right now, with AC and estimated damage-per-round
• Recommended swaps — which items to equip in each slot, with the score delta. Items already equipped are marked so you know what to leave alone.
• Per-item synergy score — each recommended item shows how much of its total score comes from synergy with the rest of the loadout, so you can see at a glance which items are carrying their weight through combinations rather than raw stats.
• Synergy guide — named clusters showing why certain items were grouped (e.g., "Radiating Orb Stacking", "Fire damage → on-Fire effects")
• Wiki links — every recommended item links to the BG3 Wiki so you can verify the pick

Why does my Paladin get recommended a Spell Save DC ring?

Paladins have a moderate spellcasting weight (they do cast support spells and debuffs) plus their class profile provides Radiant damage. If you have other items that trigger on spellcasting or condition application, the synergy bonus may push a Spell Save DC ring above a purely offensive alternative.

Why is a "once per short rest" item scored lower than a "per turn" one?

An effect that fires every turn might trigger 4–6 times per encounter. A once-per-short-rest effect fires once per 2–3 encounters. The engine's frequency discounting models this: an always-on effect keeps full value, while a once-per-long-rest effect is valued at roughly half. This prevents the engine from overrating flashy but infrequent abilities.

Why does my Monk get a higher score for the same damage ring as my Wizard?

A ring that adds 1d4 Fire to every attack, weapon or spell, fires once on a Wizard's Firebolt but up to four times during a Monk's Flurry of Blows. The engine reads your character's level and class progression to determine actual hits per turn, then multiplies per-hit effects accordingly. The same ring scores 2× on a Fighter with Extra Attack, 3× on a Berserker with Frenzy, and 4× on a Monk — compared to a single-attack caster. Extra attacks are counted once here. They are not DRS, so they don't add any further rider bonus on top of the hit count.

What's the deal with Radiating Orb and Reverberation everywhere?

These two conditions are among the strongest in BG3 because they stack, debuff enemies persistently, and cascade into each other. The engine's condition-stacking and cross-mechanic synergy dimensions specifically recognise this. If your inventory has several Orb/Reverb items, the engine will cluster them onto one character for maximum stacking, rather than spreading them thin across the party.