Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Help with my first character

Hello everyone,

I finally have enough time off work to start my first BG3 playthrough and am looking for tips on my first character. Its been a while since I played a D&D game but I grew up on such games as the Icewind Dale series, Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate 2 which is in my opinion still the best RPG ever made. My two most memorable characters were a Red Dragon Disciple multiclassed into Fighter in Neverwinter Nights 2 and a Kensai Mage in Baldur's Gate 2 to get a feeling as to my playstyle, I like melee characters with an ability to cast protective and CC spells.

To me the most important part of an RPG is my ability to sink into character and like to play Chaotic Good misfits so this time I'm thinking of playing an intelligent or wise or charismatic Half-Orc or Tiefling. I would like the character to have many interesting dialogue options but also be able to threaten NPCs and follow through on that threat if needed.

After doing some research on Baldur's Gate 3 classes I came up with these combinations:

- Ranger 2 / Eldritch Knight 10, Half-Orc, with an Outlander or Soldier background. Something like a Half-Orc witcher, preferably in medium armor, buffing himself and going in for the kill.

- Bard 10 / Fighter 2, Tiefling, with a Folk Hero background. A Tiefling that tries is bothered by his race so he tries to help people and prove his worth in the world. Fight style again, buffing himself and going into melee. Still not sure about Bard collage and Tiefling sub-race.

- A Tempest Domain Half-Orc Cleric. Something like Thrall in WoW going in close into melee smashing faces with my hammer while at the same time crowd controlling enemies with the elements and buffing myself and allies. This is very appealing to me in theory but don't know how good Tempest Domain Cleric is in melee and how he interacts in role playing. Also, I'd really like to have Shadowheart in my party and two Clerics might be too much. Maybe multiclass for better melee and less support?

- A Bard / Paladin combination Folk Hero Half-Orc however I don't like being Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes and don't know how much Paladin will impact my role-play enjoyment.

I know my character won't be the strongest possible combination in the game and I'm ok with that long as he can hold his own as a main or secondary front line character and interacts well with NPCs opening multiple options and dialogue possibilities.

I'm hoping to get this right as I don't know when I'll have time for a second playthrough. Any tips or help for my build are greatly appreciated.

Ranger 2/Eldritch Knight 10 is solid enough. You could also consider Wizard 2 instead to really get as close to Kensai as you can, giving up the extra fighting style for access to Level 3 spells and evocation school for safe AoEs. Or Wizard 1 for the Level 3 casting itself and one level wherever you'd otherwise think is best. You already seem to know EK 10 is the best place to stop with it and have a good idea of what generally is good anyway so you can be confident with whatever you do here. The biggest pitfall here is just that it's not gonna be the most charismatic. Because the point buy is pretty strict medium armor is actually somewhat difficult to maximize the benefits of (especially if you want to boost your Charisma) unless you dig some strength out and either use finesse weapons (there's a pretty dang good finesse longsword) or rely on strength potions. If you don't want to Finesse I'd advise heavy armor and dumping dex cuz the game has some EXTREMELY strong heavy armor. Later on you'll have quite a bit more flexibility with equipment that will let you respec your stats SIGNIFICANTLY to better optimize (and that applies to any of your potential builds).

Sword Bard is probably gonna be the way to go with Fighter 2 as you'll get an extra Fighting Style and Extra Attack at level 6 to further benefit Action Surge if you want to be up in melee. It also has the Blade Flourish feature to do one of three extra things on an attack at the cost of a Bardic Inspiration use. Valor gets the extra attack as well but is more focused on supporting others with its combat inspiration feature. Lore Bard won't have much use here if your goal is melee capability.

Tempest Domain on its own isn't as much of a melee class. It's strong if you're gonna get up to shenanigans with Thunderwave and other Thunder/Lightning damage (especially with the Lightning Charge mechanic on certain equipment), but it's stronger with area control and damage than it is with sticking close and hittin' stuff or being hit. Level 8 is when it will get its big Melee attack feature and it's just a 1d8 of thunder/lightning when you melee weapon attack which isn't a lot at that point when you're on your way to huge spells competing for your action. On that note if you invest up to level 8 for that, you're just better off climbing all the way to 12 for the final feat/attribute score and to get your biggest possible spell slot. Shadowheart's sort of "default" is Trickery Domain which is different enough from Tempest that there wouldn't be much overlap unless you were particularly pressed for healing but you're free to customize her class however you like once you find a certain character. All that said, if you want a melee lightning theme, a good shout is Level 2 Tempest so you have an opportunity to max out thunder/lightning damage with your channel divinity (especially on crits), Level 6 Storm Sorcerer for a bunch of nice features it gets, and 4 in Thief Rogue (so you can get a second feat) will let you engage in unethical Shocking Grasp spam with quicken spell with an extra bonus action, and let you cause some extra AoE collateral damage any time you cast something stronger than a cantrip.

Bardadin isn't bad either, in this case you'd probably want College of Lore to diversify your spell list at level 6 rather than going Sword or Valor since Paladin will get the extra attack earlier at level 5 and they won't stack. Though the level split will end up being determined by whether you want bigger smites/slots or more Paladin stuff and that can also change which bard subclass is better. My recommend is Level 5 Paladin, 7 Bard will get you the most rounded setup with College of Lore and up to level 5 spells with an extra attack. Otherwise the split I'd run with other than that is Paladin 9/Bard 3 and I'd lean Blade Flourish again; down to spell level 4 but still lets you play around with Bard stuff while getting that sweet sweet Charisma synergy. -edit- Also I forgot, if you're worried about breaking your oath, Devotion is the goodiest of two-shoes and is quite easy to break, Ancients has a lot more room to breathe, and Vengeance is generally very hard to break unless you let some wildly evil stuff happen for no reason. If your Oath does break interesting things happen that you might still enjoy rolelplaying through so you don't gotta worry about being too strictly limited with your choices.

Can't really tell you which one is best for you though.

Personally, I'd stop EK at 8 instead of 10. This means ranger can go to 4, which gives you a subclass at ranger 3, and a feat at ranger 4. The downside overall, though, is that the ranger spells will save/target on wisdom, and the EK ones on int. I'd probably go 2-4 levels of wizzy (Abjuration wizzy, probably) over Ranger. Every 3 levels of EK gives you a caster level, and every level of wizzy adds 1. So with 4 levels of wizzy and 8 EK, you'll get 3rd level wizzy spells. Which you will be able to know, because wizzies can scribe spells up to their caster level (whereas others are limited by their class level).

War is the more "smashing faces with hammer" domain. Light is the best debuffer (due to some gear every cleric can use, but Light has their divinity charge abilities that tip the scale in its favor). Nature has the CC, thanks to various druid spells. Tempest is good at nuking things with electricity. Two clerics can definitely work, though you'll probably feel like you get a lot more out of Shadowheart if you swap her to a different domain. Just pick one with a different focus than your main cleric. So if you go War with your main, maybe go Life, Light, or Tempest with your Shadowheart.

As far as bard/paladin goes, you start with 3 goody-two-shoes choices, but if you break your oath, you can become an oathbreaker paladin. So pick the paladin oath you want, and, well, if it doesn't mesh with what you want to do, you'll wind up an oathbreaker quickly enough However, it does mean if you want to tweak your build, it'll be a bit more of a pain to respec, as I believe you'll have to redeem yourself first.

That said, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just pick one and go with it. Odds are, on your first playthrough, you'll miss enough things that you'll want a second one if you enjoy the game a reasonable amount. And you'll get a ton of character ideas, and so on. And if you didn't use it the first time, there's the Dark Urge to further differentiate a second playthrough.

Personally I just went pure classes and I'm happy with that so far.

If you can get "better" with multiclasses, more power to you.

I'm almost at the end of my Tempest Cleric run and I ran the whole of act 2 with Shadowheart in my party - she was spelled up to support/heal and I was spelled up to nuke and it didn't feel any less effective than a Shadowheart and Gale combo. The main downside to melee as a Tempest Cleric is you only get one attack which is going to be weaker than using your Thunder/Lightning spells, but with Heavy Armour proficiency and shields getting close to the enemy is fine. I wouldn't recommend multi-classing them for "more attacks" as you lose out on your level 6 spell slot and the massive Destructive Wave (which lives up to it's name - a huge AoE that hits like a truck and knocks everything in it back thanks to your Thunderbolt Strike passive.. for even more fun get all the gear that applies Reverberation on Thunder/Lightning damage) which is far more deadly. In act 3 the Legendary Nyrulna is a good weapon to help you out if you really do need to hit something (or can't move out of a silence bubble) and its Zephyr Flash ability is paticulary lethal if you can hit enough targets with it.

Thank you all for your help!

I'll start my playthrough this weekend. You sold me on a Half-Orc Eldritch Knight Wizard multiclass focusing on heavy armor and CC spells such as Thunderwave, Gust of wind etc. In theory, if I understand correctly, this would allow me to get haste?

How would you build such a character? Go for Eldritch Knight 10 and then add Wizard or add him earlier? What about stat distribution? I'd really like my character to not be a stereotypical bumbling idiot Half-Orc with 8 Intelligence but someone who possesses knowledge about the world around him and is charismatic enough to come up with some witty answers before cutting you in half with a longsword if you piss him off. I know there's that helm that sets your INT to 17 but it would bother me too much knowing that without it he's a fool.

Any good Feats I could take to deepen my interactions with NPCs?

Well, for stats, you're going to want str and a decent bit of con. You can go with 8 dex, but that hurts your dex saves, athletics rolls (so you don't get pushed around), and initiative, so that isn't ideal. You can avoid the need for int by mostly focusing on things that buff you, rather than require to hit rolls on enemies and/or them to fail saves. Wisdom saves are also important, because of spells like hold person. And to try and fit charisma on top of that... That said, what options you have in conversation will be based on things like class, background, race, and so on. The stats matter for if you succeed You could go with something like 14 str (with +2 making it 16), 10 dex, 13 con (and the +1, making it 14), 12 int, 10 wis, 10 cha, and that leaves you two points left to play with. You could use that to up dex, wis, or cha to 12, for the extra +1 on rolls, or to push str up to 15 (depending on what feats you have planned that add to str, and/or certain other in game things).

I'd probably go fighter to 5 for the extra attack. Then for the next 3 levels, 2 wiz, 1 fighter, or 1f,w2, depending on if you want to get the wizzy subclass in first or another feat. After that, maybe another level of wizzy, as that'll give you a spellcaster level of 5, meaning you get 2 casts of haste per day, if that's your goal. And then however you want to get to your final class mix.

As far as feats, there a few that would aid with conversation, like ones that gives you some more skills. Also a few that give access to some spells, but with you being a wizzy, you'll already have access to most of those spells. And for a bunch of those you don't, there are items that let you cast them available in level 1. So you'll probably be more combat focused. Like, if you intend to haste yourself, you'll probably want War Caster. And there are the various ones that provide a useful benefit plus +1 to a stat. Or maybe you'd be after Alert, to give you a +5 on initiative, to make up for your lower dex. But if you do want to portray your guy as being a bit more charming/witty, then maybe Skilled for 3 extra skill profs? Or else Actor, for +1 cha and double prof bonus for deception and performance (and will give you prof in those skills if you don't have them yet).

You can find a nice list of feats on a couple of the wikis, so just look through them. From the fighter class, you'll get feats at 4, 6, and 8 (and 12, but you're MC'ing, so that's out). And wizzy, like most classes, is 4, 8, 12. So if you plan to go 8/4, you'll have 4 feats to pick. And if you are thinking 10/2 or 9/3, you'll have 3.

First, yes you'll be able to get Haste with this setup. For stats you'll be able to respec as your gear pool widens so it's not too much of a worry. In creation I'd say start Fighter just to have a second set of medium armor in the party with no effort and set your Additional bonuses to +2 STR and +1 INT and then total I personally would run:
16 STR
10 DEX
12 CON
16 INT
10 WIS
11 CHA

But that's because I hate negative modifiers, so you can dig points out of DEX and WIS if you want (though save WIS for last to dig points out of it since Insight is a nice dialogue skill sometimes). With this spread at Fighter Level 4 or 6 you can pick up Actor for the +1 CHA and Deception/Performance benefits and/or Skilled. Fighter 8 is where I'd pick up War Caster since Level 3 spells will be opening up right after that with Fighter 9/Wizard 2. Soldier background probably helps out your approach more than Outlander so that you have the Intimidation proficiency without having to think about it, otherwise even though you didn't list it as one you want for flavor, Guild Artisan's skills are top tier for dialogue and you can check your skill proficiencies to make sure Intimidation is chosen manually in creation which then severely reduces the appeal of Skilled to bump your dialogue abilities and frees up Fighter 6 for a different feat or attribute bump if you want that.

I too recommend either starting Fighter and taking it all the way to 5 before the first Wizard level, or Wizard 1 and straight for Fighter 5 after that if you want spell utility early. Fighter 6/Wizard 2 depends on if you want your next feat/attribute bonus or your casting school benefits first and then free sailing from there.

Thank you both!

I'll probably go with Fighter 6 Wizard 2, Soldier background with Skilled and War Caster as my first two Feats. On whether to go full Fighter or add more Wizard levels and what my last Feat will be I'll decide as the game progresses.

Thank you all again for your help!

inteligent orc choose one