Safe Update Instructions: 1) Respec your Vanguard into another class and save. 2) Update to the latest mod files. 3) Load your save and respec back into Vanguard. If you have issues after following those steps, report a bug.

Latest Updates (full history always available in changelogs)
4.8.24

• Fixed issue with not having any spell slots after multiclassing into Vanguard from a non-caster class.
• Fixed issue with a case in which multiclassing Vanguard with a level in a full-casting class resulted in a missing level 1 spell slot at Vanguard 5/Other Casting Class 1.
  
  

4.7.24

• Fixed issue with Hail of Thorns being broken/unselectable on Rangers. It still works as intended on Vanguards with this fix.
  

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR PLAYING, ENJOYING, AND SHARING YOUR SUGGESTIONS FOR THIS CLASS. IT IS NOW FINALLY COMPLETE.

I'll still make bug fixes and tweak things for balance, but there are otherwise no plans for big updates in the future. Hope you guys enjoy it.


Introduction

The vanguard class is meant to plug the hole in 5e's (and BG3's) base class lineup: the martial arcane half-caster. It is heavily inspired by the Eldritch Knight and many other wonderful gish-style class & subclass mods and community homebrew classes. This class takes several ideas from the Eldritch Knight and runs with them:

• Bonded weapons are more powerful and act as triggers for other class abilities.
• Teleportation/battlefield navigation is a key feature.
• Takes the essence of War Magic - being able to attack and cast cantrips in a turn - and makes it more flexible and powerful.
  

                                                            

It also taps into other elements popular in gish class fantasies:

• Imbuing your weapons with elemental damage.
• Empowering your weapons to deal extra damage and apply debilitating status effects.
  

It has two key features. One is Symbiotic Channeling: casting leveled spells and performing limited-use weapon actions (like Cleave, Rush Attack, etc) temporarily enhance your melee attacks and cantrips while also unlocking various magical bonus actions. The other is your repertoire of Eldrtich Inspirations, limited use abilities that consume eldritch points and produce dazzling effects. Some of these features include:

• Arcane Strike: imbue your bonded weapon with a cantrip, releasing its effects on melee or thrown attacks.
  

                                                                                  

• Eldritch Mark: with this ability, you mark a target with a magical sigil. Hitting a marked target releases an AOE blast of damaging magical energy, also causing your mark to jump to another enemy. Each time your mark travels, its potential damage increases. As a vanguard, your ability set well-equips you for this very mobile, hit-n-run style of play.
  

                                                            

The Elementalist subclass utilizes each of the five elements to empower their attacks and create deadly effects.



Some of these include:

• Elemental Smite: Perform smites that apply both damage and debilitating effects after you make a successful melee attack.
  

                                                            

• Elemental Aura: surround yourself with one of five elemental auras that damage and apply status effects on enemies, including states like Wet and Chilled for damage vulnerability.
  

                                                            

Blink-Bonded vanguards have an affinity for nature and have bonded with a blink dog, gaining one as a companion.



Together, you can do a number of things:

• Your blink dog has several teleport capabilities: blink to teleport and distract enemies if you attack them. Use a reaction to blink an ally away as they are about to get hit. Use a teleporting attack to disarm an enemy. Instantly swap positions with your vanguard buddy, and if you surround your enemy, potentially Overwhelm it and open it up for critical hits.
  

                                                           

• Your dog can trigger Eldritch Mark effects. Eventually, arcane strike effects you apply to yourself get applied to you dog, increasing its attack potential tremendously. Even later, all beneficial spells you cast on yourself are shared with it.
  

                                                              

• You get a small selection of ranger/druid spells for free, including the Ranger's Hail of Thorns, Conjure Barrage and Conjure Volley. They have been extensively modified so that Arcane Strike enhancements apply to them, meaning you can do small AOE, cone attack and huge AOE attacks that will set off cantrip magical explosions on EVERY hit target.
  

                                                              
Shadow Adepts vanguards are tied to the plane of shadow and thrive in darkness. Be the scary shadow-lurking Vanguard you've always wanted to be.

• Gain power when obscured from light. Melee weapon attacks gain free necrotic damage, as do spells that deal necrotic and psychic damage. Gain a bonus to AC & attack rolls. Trigger Eldritch Mark effects for the first time at range via spells or thrown weapon attacks that deal necrotic or psychic damage.
  

• Tear open rifts into the shadow plane, draining light and color from all nearby creatures and objects. Everyone save the caster is blinded within the rift. When casting leveled spells that deal necrotic or psychic damage, roll all damage die with Advantage.
  

                                                              

• Transform your body into one wreathed with shadows. Gain damage resistance and teleport from one obscured location to another. Gain power when casting leveled spells that deal necrotic damage or involve shadow or psychic-based effects, transforming that energy into an extra melee attack.
  

                                                              

                                                              

• At high levels, gain mastery over the shadows. Open up to three shadow rifts at once and exploit them to greater effect. Teleport between them at will. Double the damage bonuses you get from being obscured. And cast your necrotic, shadow and psychic-based spells from any distance, so long as you and your targets touch the plane of shadow.
  

                                                                                                                  
                                                    

               
                                                    

                  

• Enjoy a small selection of free spells tied to aspects of the Shadow Plane: Inflict Wounds, Shadow Blade, Summon Shadowspawn, Shadow of Moil, Negative Energy Flood. Shadow Blades count as a bonded weapon for you, allowing them to be thrown and enhanced with effects like Arcane Strike.         
  

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

For full class details, read this fancy class document here or check out the same details in this entry in the Articles section.

The core version of this class uses Intelligence as its spellcasting modifier. A Charisma-based version is also included as an optional core variant that fits with the "lore." Other optional mod add-ons include:

• WIS variant
• Deity selection for INT/CHA/WIS versions of class
• Scribing scrolls for INT vanguards
• Compressed class, which grants all features (save lvl 4 and 5 spells) within levels 1-12. Not balanced at all.
• Hexblade Invocations Fix - this allows Grasp of Hadar and Lance of Lethargy to work with Arcane Strike.
• Vanguard Cantrip Fix - some folks have problems with Arcane Strike not working or causing damage to the player when imbuing your weapon with a cantrip. This helps in a bunch of those cases. Note that 4 PF2e Spells cantrips were tested to cause problems, so you'll definitely want to use this if you use that mod.
  

Required Mods

• 5e Spells - Previously a soft requirement, this mod is now required due to Arcane Strike's reliance upon the new cantrips included in it.
• Norbyte's Baldur's Gate 3 Script Extender - 5e Spells requires this. My mod doesn't use script extender, but it's still best to install this to avoid any possible errors.
• ImprovedUI ReleaseReady - Install both ImprovedUI and ImprovedUI Assets to be able to see the Vanguard class icons and action resource icons. You may not be able to select your class during character creation without doing this.
• Unlock Level Curve - This mod includes full support for levels 13-20 and needs this mod to access those levels. Recommended load order, top to bottom: 1) 5e Spells 2) Unlock Level Curve 3) Unlock Level Curve Patch 5eSpells 4) Vanguard Class. Note: not needed if you are using the optional lvl 1-12 compressed version of the class or if you are fine with progression stopping at level 12.
  

Spell Compatibility Mods
Note: Attack cantrips from other spell packs cannot be infused into your weapon via Arcane Strike. Only 5e Spells and base game spells are supported.

• PF2e Spells Compatibility Patches - Use if you'd like to use PF2e Spells with this mod.
• Homebrew Spells Compatibility Patch(s) - Use this if you'd like to use Homebrew Spells with this mod.
• Little Spell List Patches - Makes Vanguard work with Frostbite Blade, Shadowheart Cantrip - Night Piercer, Shadow Burst cantrip, and Spellfire mods.
  

Optional Mods

• Free Action Dual Wielding - This is a very simple mod I made that changes the Dual Wielder feat or Two Weapon Fighting Style to additionally allow you to make your off-hand attack as a free action rather than a bonus action. This is useful for Vanguard players because the class has lots of bonus actions and currently two-weapon fighting is not optimal as a result. Also gives an off-hand throw action and an extra bonus action attack if you have Rogue's Fast Hands.
• Feats Extra - To pair with Free Action Dual Wielding, as it allows Vanguards to gain the Two Weapon Fighting Style without multiclassing via the Fighting Initiate feat.
• Polearm Master Feat With Tridents - You may have noticed that Vanguards begin with Tridents. This is because they are the only martial weapons with the Thrown property, something very useful for your returning weapons. This mod makes it work with Polearm Master, which just makes sense to me.
• Weapon Skills While Dual Wield - Weapon skills are very important for Vanguards because they trigger one of your core features. This mod makes management of those weapon skills much smoother with this class, avoiding the need to juggle which one is in your main hand.
• More Feats Per Level - Awesome mod to dynamically set additional feats per level (many options available) for all the cheaters out there. Use this instead of my old Extra Feats Per X Levels files.
  

Installation
I recommend using the Baldur's Gate 3 Mod Manager for installation. Make sure VanguardClass is lower in the load order than 5e Spells.

• This mod makes changes to all of the default and 5e Spells cantrips to create the Arcane Strike feature. If you load any other mods that also adjust cantrip spell data, it will likely conflict and result in errors. In that case, either remove those other mods or load the Vanguard class after those mods. You can also download the optional Vanguard Cantrips Fix file.
  

Known Issues

• When multiclassing into another caster class from a lvl 1 Vanguard, you will get more spell slots than intended. Recommend multiclassing out only when at Vanguard lvl 2 or greater.
• After loading a savegame with an existing shadow rift, the rift loses its ability to obscure the terrain it sits upon.
• Throw abilities do not scale elemental blade damage past level 18. Not enough space to include it all.
• Eldrtich Mark is sometimes blocked by objects when attempting to jump to another target. If this happens, the player gains a temporary ability that allows you to reapply the mark to a target of your choice. I don't currently know of a way to make projectiles ignore blockers when summoned via SpawnExtraProjectiles() - please reach out if you do!
• Cantrip tooltips don't correctly include all damage bonuses in its stated damage range.
• After throwing a bonded weapon, you are able to use Elemental Blade and other bonded weapon-only actions on any weapon for the remainder of that turn. Won't cause any harm but is more flexible than intended.
• Arcane Strike passives may sometimes grey-out instantly after being clicked. This is a visual bug, not a gameplay one.
  

Feedback on bugs, class balance and class fantasy are all welcome.

Special Thanks:
Gycicada - for their super useful class template and excellent Magus class as reference.
DiZ91891 - their hard work on Expansion(Bladesinger)'s Extra Attack feature made it easy for me to create Martial Magic. Also, for the amazing 5e spells, which this class uses.
Kyvarin - for their work on Eldritch Knight Enhanced, which served as an early inspiration and amazing resource that let me get my feet wet in class modding.
KiderionLykon - for their incredibly useful Baldur's Gate 3 Class Icons Generator and Action Icons Generator and their code solution to various multiclassing spell slot challenges.
Djmr - plus the other folks that contribute to ImprovedUI for all their work in getting custom icons working in our mods.
xtekek - for invaluable feedback that help shape class balance and progression.
And to the many super-helpful folks on the BG3 Discord that helped share knowledge and problem solve, especially: lostsoul, Siael, Muffin, Vander Decken, Loz, LUST, Artemis, Khry, GabeCamomescro, Aristotale