The Arcane Warrior sub-spec let mages play like Warriors in terms of gear.
DA:O classes were Warriors, Rogues, and Mages. Their main stats were strength, dexterity, and magic respectively. There were other stats but they weren't as important. Class primary stats let them use gear specific to their role, so in order to use and wear the best warrior weapons and armour you needed higher STR numbers.
Unless you were a Mage that took the Arcane Warrior sub-spec, which let you do everything a Warrior could but based off your Magic stat.
literal Tankmage
I wasn't joking about this. It was a Mage in full plate, sword and board, that could still cast spells. While the most obvious examples would be things like Fireball or other very flash offensive spells the real OP picks were the buff and debuff toggles you could run making yourself even more resilient and anything near you worse.
This meant even GaxKang, the Baldur's Gate 2 Kangaxx homage, became trivial despite being classed as one of the hardest fights in DA:O.
Gaxkang (sometimes) outranks even the High Dragon under "Most Powerful Foe Slain" found in Heroic Accomplishments under Character Record.
And the Arcane Warrior literally just turns it into a boring hack and slash for however long it takes to chip away Gaxkang's hp pool because he's probably never going to manage to actually kill you.
Kensei/Mage in BG2 was a similar situation. A BG1 Fighter imported then specialised to a Kensei, or even just a fresh BG2 Kensei, who later dual classed to a mage at the right time would mean that when the Mage levels finally caught up to the Fighter/Kensei ones all the Kensei abilities which would work with a Mage would reactivate.
Considering that the Kensei was designed to fight without armour this worked extremely well with Mages who didn't wear actual armour. Robe of Vecna and other things would still be the best choices because it meant your Mage side still benefited immensely while letting you run around and stab/bludgeon things and be next to invincible while doing it.
Then you add on all the Mage spells you can still use. Mage Armour, Simulacrum, Lesser Contingency, Contingency, and more. The number of buffs you could fire off just before a fight meant your character status as a demi-god still understated how powerful you were. About the only things that could kill you would be extremely niche effects if you didn't completely plan for them since the class setup was just that OP it could easily solo the game if you wanted.
YMMV but several of the best weapons in BG2 and later ToB were the Flail of Ages, Mace of Disruption, and Crom Faeyr along with a few others. Pairing any of these with Belm or the Ninjato of the Scarlet Brotherhood on a high enough Warrior meant an absurd number of attacks per round and if you managed to get the Warrior epic Fears of Whirlwind or Greater Whirlwind you were Death Walking.
Flail of Ages was good since at +3 with its elemental bonuses you would waste various monsters which might have had immunities or needed special conditions to be killed, like Trolls. ToB could later upgrade this to +5 along with granting Free Action permanently, although I did find this a bit annoying since it meant no more Boots of Speed.
Crom Faeyr not only instant killed several monster types but set a character's STR to 25.
Mace of Disruption is +3 in BG2 and +5 in ToB and made all the vampires you fight in BG2 a cakewalk, similar to how the reflection shield made Beholders nuke themselves. While not as necessary in ToB it was still a great option for some characters/companions.
While there are many 2h options someone could go for the advantage of sword and board meant combinations such as the Mace of Disruption or the Shield of Balduran to ensure certain parts of the game wouldn't result in player death from overstacked vampire level drains or Beholder gaze spam.
I remember that arcane warrior was broken but I don't remember why. Maybe I should replay it.
Also for BG2, Sorcerers were broken once you had the robe of vecna
The Arcane Warrior sub-spec let mages play like Warriors in terms of gear.
DA:O classes were Warriors, Rogues, and Mages. Their main stats were strength, dexterity, and magic respectively. There were other stats but they weren't as important. Class primary stats let them use gear specific to their role, so in order to use and wear the best warrior weapons and armour you needed higher STR numbers.
Unless you were a Mage that took the Arcane Warrior sub-spec, which let you do everything a Warrior could but based off your Magic stat.
I wasn't joking about this. It was a Mage in full plate, sword and board, that could still cast spells. While the most obvious examples would be things like Fireball or other very flash offensive spells the real OP picks were the buff and debuff toggles you could run making yourself even more resilient and anything near you worse.
This meant even GaxKang, the Baldur's Gate 2 Kangaxx homage, became trivial despite being classed as one of the hardest fights in DA:O.
And the Arcane Warrior literally just turns it into a boring hack and slash for however long it takes to chip away Gaxkang's hp pool because he's probably never going to manage to actually kill you.
Kensei/Mage in BG2 was a similar situation. A BG1 Fighter imported then specialised to a Kensei, or even just a fresh BG2 Kensei, who later dual classed to a mage at the right time would mean that when the Mage levels finally caught up to the Fighter/Kensei ones all the Kensei abilities which would work with a Mage would reactivate.
Considering that the Kensei was designed to fight without armour this worked extremely well with Mages who didn't wear actual armour. Robe of Vecna and other things would still be the best choices because it meant your Mage side still benefited immensely while letting you run around and stab/bludgeon things and be next to invincible while doing it.
Then you add on all the Mage spells you can still use. Mage Armour, Simulacrum, Lesser Contingency, Contingency, and more. The number of buffs you could fire off just before a fight meant your character status as a demi-god still understated how powerful you were. About the only things that could kill you would be extremely niche effects if you didn't completely plan for them since the class setup was just that OP it could easily solo the game if you wanted.
YMMV but several of the best weapons in BG2 and later ToB were the Flail of Ages, Mace of Disruption, and Crom Faeyr along with a few others. Pairing any of these with Belm or the Ninjato of the Scarlet Brotherhood on a high enough Warrior meant an absurd number of attacks per round and if you managed to get the Warrior epic Fears of Whirlwind or Greater Whirlwind you were Death Walking.
Flail of Ages was good since at +3 with its elemental bonuses you would waste various monsters which might have had immunities or needed special conditions to be killed, like Trolls. ToB could later upgrade this to +5 along with granting Free Action permanently, although I did find this a bit annoying since it meant no more Boots of Speed.
Crom Faeyr not only instant killed several monster types but set a character's STR to 25.
Mace of Disruption is +3 in BG2 and +5 in ToB and made all the vampires you fight in BG2 a cakewalk, similar to how the reflection shield made Beholders nuke themselves. While not as necessary in ToB it was still a great option for some characters/companions.
While there are many 2h options someone could go for the advantage of sword and board meant combinations such as the Mace of Disruption or the Shield of Balduran to ensure certain parts of the game wouldn't result in player death from overstacked vampire level drains or Beholder gaze spam.
When built right it essentially took no damage.