Auntie Ethel Honour Mode | Strategy Guide for beating Ethel and getting reward

Walk-through for beating Ethel in Honour Mode and getting the +1 ability score item
Party:
Karlach: Lv 5 Berserker Barbarian with Tavern Brawler Feat and Returning Pike as main weapon
Lae'zel: Lv 5 Oath of Vengeance Paladin with Silver Sword of the Astral Plane as main weapon
Wyll: Lv 5 Evocation Wizard
Shadowheart: Lv 5 Rogue thief with dual +1 hand crossbows and sharpshooter feat

[@zalzeera]

Very nice fight. I wish I had recorded mine. By the way, you don't need to always look for the fey life. The real Auntie always wears a red gown, and the clones all wear blue.

[@lesvegetables5014]

your kidding. really?

[@lesvegetables5014]

oh my god she does. she has a red gown on the original. how did I not notice that.

[@zalzeera]

@@lesvegetables5014 No worries, it get's pretty intense, easy to miss.

[@Pinperful]

I LOVE you, thanks!

[@LeKekLord]

Having a mind flayer psychic backlash is better for this fight, because it does damage and instantly kills the clone that shoots you and the clone's shot never lands that way, with one reaction you kill a clone and keep yourself safe.

[@rafaelaguiar9911]

Didn't manage to make her show up buy jumping through the gap, but still managed to win the fight with your tips, thanks for the help

[@brice5877]

Glad it helped! And I had the same problem on my latest playthrough. I'm wondering if it got patched or (more likely) that it has to be the character that got Volo's Ersatz Eye to see through her invisibility. I'm probably going to test it out in my sister's campaign.

[@rafaelaguiar9911]

I guess I will try that with Volo’s eye on my next run, this run I commented I followed your video had a game breaking bug that doesn’t let me play anymore (invisible hud and characters, dark screen, can’t take actions or skip turns) unfortunately 😢. Lost my honour run after 23 hours for a bug

[@stephnicole3078]

Thanks for the tips! This was great. Would you say counterspell is necessary for this fight on honor mode? I have a team of mainly casters but they’re multiclassed so no one has access to counterspell yet. Bit nervous of this fight since I’ve never done it without counterspell before and I remember it being quite helpful in the past.

[@brice5877]

I think that anything that you can do to increase your chances is worth it. That said, the only time I used counterspell during the fight was to protect my squishy concentrating caster so it doesn't seem like counterspell should be a priority for your multiclassed team. The most important thing you can do is come into the fight with a plan that maximizes your party’s strength and hopefully minimizes its weaknesses and then stick to it. As long as you think your current party is capable of winning the fight, changing classes and strategies at this point might do more harm than good. I can give you some general tips and advice, but you’ll ultimately be the best at coming up with a plan that fits your team and playstyle. Since Ethel's main method of attack during round 1 is Ray of Sickness with a spell attack roll, two alternate strategies for you would be increasing your resistance to poison damage or raising your AC. For Multiclassed casters I'd recommend picking up the shield spell to help you beat attack rolls. Methods for dodging the Ethel's poison damage and/or condition in act 1: you can use elixirs of poison resistance (vendors), Ring of Poison Resistance (Found on a skeleton inside a sarcophagus just before the Worg Pens area of the Shattered Sanctum), protection from poison, or even the resistance cantrip if you have spare concentration among your casters. On the cheesier end of strategies, you can abuse the camp follower mechanic to hire more clerics that can cast protection from poison, warding bond, and aid on your party members. Another cheesy one is carrying Priestess Gut’s body into the underdark and using sovereign glut’s animating spores to add her to your party. She has access to a special version of shield of faith that lasts until long rest and doesn’t require concentration. If you don’t have any really bursty dps characters, you might benefit more from the conventional strategy of using magic missile or magic missile scrolls to destroy all of Ethel’s duplicates and subsequently limiting the amount of spells and damage being thrown your party’s way each turn. Hope this helps and good luck!

[@stephnicole3078]

@@brice5877 Wow, thank you so much for all your advice and taking the time to write it all out! That was hugely helpful! Took some screenshots so I can use your advice for the fight. I already have the cantrips you mentioned on my team since there’s a lot of cleric in the mix. I’m currently running these builds (only at level 4 right now but planning to be level 5 before taking on Ethel): Tav- Evoc Wizard 2/ Tempest Cleric 2/ Storm Sorc 8 Astarion: BM Fighter 8/ Thief Rogue 4 Shadowheart: Light Cleric 12 Gale: GOO Warlock 2/ Tempest Cleric 1/ Abjuration Wizard 9 Almost everyone has shield and resistance on them and I do have access to Silence as well so I was thinking that might be a good use of my concentration. Definitely will make use of poison resistance. I’m just worried about using too many spells because of Ethel’s legendary action. Had no clue about reviving Priestess Gut using Glut though. That’s an amazingly cheesy strategy that sounds like it’d be fun to attempt. Probably not a good idea for this playthrough though. My team has been holding their own surprisingly well despite most of my builds not really being online yet. Astarion’s melee ability is usually enough to fill in the gaps however, I have yet to attempt any of the more challenging fights other than the gnolls/Zhent cave, Shadowdruids, and the harpies.

[@z1kk]

did you just get super lucky with the silver sword?

[@brice5877]

I did get lucky enough to have it drop on the first try, but I had prepared 3 cleric hirelings with the command drop spell in advance to get more chances.

[@richardfitkin7155]

@@brice5877 How do you try with more than 1 character? After failing once, any character in the remote vicinity gets pulled into the cutscene.

[@brice5877]

I had them ready and waiting at camp. I'm pretty sure this will keep them from getting pulled into the cutscene, but since it worked for me on the first try, I unfortunately can't confirm. @@richardfitkin7155

[@richardfitkin7155]

@@brice5877 Ah, yeah I tried that as well. As soon as they leave camp they join the cutscene.

[@brice5877]

@richardfitkin7155 I did recently learn from a reddit friend that the best way to disarm Voss is with a Level 5 beastmaster ranger with a bear companion. Bear can learn honeyed claws which apparently disarm with no save. He also recommended blessing the bear before turning it invisible and attacking.

[@tuarenpowa]

19k gold? Where did you get that much on honor mode??

[@brice5877]

Those were different times. Bag shenanigans still worked, bodies could be turned into spoons, and you could put shadowheart's corpse into a burning box to instantly speedrun to the end of Act II (search bg3 shadow boxing). Just because I played honour mode doesn't mean I played honorably.