This thread guide is meant for players who want the companion dialogues to continue to make sense to not break immersion while still having a strong enough base to give you a relatively easy time on the hardest difficulty mode. It's not the
absolute strongest possibilities as some changes will break the character (e.g. turning Shadowheart into any other kind of cleric or changing her class breaks immersion completely because of how heavily she's written as a cleric of Shar). Thread will be in the order in which you meet the characters in most cases, so if you want to avoid spoilers stop with the most recent character. Also as I want to test them out at least partially before recommendation because of the weird stuff BG3 does to 5e rules, I won't update a character until I confirm it works.
Lae'zel - 12 Battlemaster
While it may be tempting to throw in barbarian levels to allow her to Reckless earlier on, you'll pay for it at level cap by losing the 3rd attack at level 11, not to mention there are methods that allow you to get Advantage anyway under certain conditions that are sometimes surprisingly easy to fulfill. While Eldritch Knight can also work flavourwise since she's a Gith, battlemaster is somewhat superior mechanically and also brings across the idea of training for a really, really, really long time that is her shtick. Larian's hard-on for odd stats is the smallest problem with Lae'zel because she gets one extra feat. If not respeccing the first goes to Strength and Dexterity, the second goes to Great Weapon Master, the third goes to Durable and the fourth goes to Polearm Master. If respeccing, stats are 16-14-15-10-12-8, you can get her Durable with the first, Great Weapon Master with the second, Polearm Master with the third, and the fourth can go into 18 Strength, Alert or Lucky.
Style - Great Weapon Fighting or Protection
Maneuvers - Start with Precision, Riposte and Trip: Trip is your main source of Advantage in a solo situation, then go ham with GWM, Action Surge and whack some more once you have the advantage. Because Precision is a buff rather than a Reaction for some reason, it's DPR wise in this game inferior to Trip that already adds damage from the start at full accuracy, and can make your second/third/fourth/fifth attacks (as well as melee attacks by allies) more accurate for the its price if the target actually trips - which is kind of the inverse of tabletop. Use Custom bars for her to make GWM easier to toggle on and off.
Itemization: Give her the
Boots of Speed and Crusher's Ring
so she can actually get to targets in melee.
Shadowheart - 12 Trickery Cleric
The Blessing of the Trickster is relatively useful if she goes at the same time as a couple of other characters, as it will allow all of them to get Advantage shortly before the illusion gets nuked, since for some reason it has really high aggro priority. Strangely, Spiritual Weapons can also gain advantage if they are next to it, even if Shadowheart isn't.
Recommended stats if respeccing: 8-14-17-10-16-8. Take Resilient Constitution at Level 4, Wisdom 18 at level 8 and Wisdom 20 at level 12. If not respeccing, get her Wis to 18 and Con to 15 at level 4, Resilient Constitution at level 8 and Wis 20 at level 12, giving her priority on any +1 stat items you may find for Dex - but if you don't find any, the loss of 1 AC is less of a problem than breaking concentration or the loss of 1 spell DC.
Itemization: Give her items that give buffs when healing others and
focus on ice effects with Mourning Frost like Snowburst
to combine damage and CC in cantrips.
General slot usage: Level 3s go to Spirit Guardians, Level 4s go to upcasted Spiritual Weapon and Freedom of Movement, Level 2s go to Spiritual Weapon and Prayer of Healing, and Level 1s go to Bless, Bane and Healing Word. Other spells are situational. Bless should generally go to her (to help her keep it up), any other caster concentrating on a high priority spell, and then any martial not able to easily gain Advantage, in that order. One Level 2 slot can go to Warding Bond in the specific situation that you use her together with Wyll.
General Channel Divinity usage: If there are undead use Turn/Destroy Undead, otherwise Invoke Duplicity in any battle in which she goes at the same time as two martials so they can gain Advantage.
Astarion - 5 Gloom Stalker 7 Rogue or 7 Gloom Stalker 5 Rogue
The rogue can be either Thief or Assassin, but since you only really get to Sneak Attack once per turn, Thief ends up being more damaging since it makes more attacks in general, and it can guarantee a Sneak Attack on further targets by using Cunning Dash followed by Cunning Hide in quick succession. The idea on targets you can already guarantee Sneak Attack procs on is to use a bonus action to transfer/cast Hunter's Mark, stab twice with both attacks (thrice if first turn), and then use the second bonus to stab yet again for nonsensical damage. If respeccing, you'll want his stats as 8-17-14-12-12-12 and go 5/7 Gloom Stalker straight, followed by all 7/5 Rogue levels. If not respeccing, take 3 levels in Thief first for the extra bonus action, then 5 Gloom Stalker, then the remaining Thief levels. Do not take 7 Gloom Stalker unless you start as Ranger as the Int save proficiency is wasted on a Rogue that starts with one. Feats on non-respec AND respec go to Dex and Con followed by Resilient Con, but the respec version doesn't waste two points on pointless odd stats.
Itemization: Give him items that buff when in obscuration/concealment and add damage per hit. Also get in the habit of pressing the Shift key - a half sun means dim light, an empty sun means darkness. He should always be in either half or empty if you can help it, and only be in the light if next to an ally providing the opportunity to Sneak Attack.
General slot usage: First level 1 slot goes to Longstrider, remaining level 1 slots go to Hunter's Mark, level 2 slots go into Darkvision for
useless allies or Protection from Poison.
Gale - 12 Enchantment Wizard
I mean...
is clearly in Enchantment territory, enough said. While Action Surge may be tempting for some people, it makes no lore sense for him to be anything but a pure Wizard, and Split Irresistible Dance is quite something. The first ASI goes to Int and Dex, the second goes to the Actor feat, and the third maxes his Int at 20. Gale is built well enough to not require any respeccing. For once. You can always transfer points to give him a starting odd Con score and then Resilient Con on him, but he's much less likely to be in the line of fire than the other casters if you're doing your positioning correctly, so this isn't strictly necessary.
Itemization: Give him the
gloves that raise his Dexterity to 18 and staff that allows him to cast Bless
, as well as anything that buffs spell DC or gives buffs when spellcasting.
General slot usage: One level 1 slot goes to Mage Armour, the rest are for Shield. One level 2 slot goes to upcasted Longstrider (for
useless allies) and the rest go to Flaming Sphere or Hold Person. Level 3 slots are for Fireball, Slow, Counterspell or upcasted Hold Person. Level 4 slots are for Banishment, Confusion, Dimension door, Fire Shield and upcasted Hold Person. Level 5 slots are for Dominate Person, Hold Monster and upcasted Hold Person. Level 6 slots are for Arcane Gate, Sunbeam, Irresistible Dance and upcasted Hold Person.
I think you see a general trend here.
Wyll - 7 Vengeance Paladin, 5 Fiend Warlock
Vengeance is an obvious choice flavourwise as Wyll is heavily in the 'do the lesser evil for the greater good' camp, so we're going with that. 9 Paladin 3 Warlock or 6 Paladin 6 Warlock are also possible. Level order is 3 Warlock first (since he starts with it) taking the Blade option, swap to 6 Paladin, then the remaining Warlock levels, then the remaining Paladin levels. For the Invocations, if you're respeccing you can deliberately avoid taking Deception and Persuasion so that Beguiling Influence can buff both. Agonizing Blast is compulsory, the others can go into Devil's Sight, Repelling Blast (note that Repelling Blasting stuff off into chasms may delete loot) or Fiendish Vigour, though this has low priority as he has a lot of other tHP options. Note that this build will only get Extra Attack at level 8, so from levels 5-8 you're basically using him as a Hex Eldritch Blaster - which isn't as terrible as it sounds when there's
something that allows you to EB in melee range.
Frankly, I thought he was a Paladin until the first combat started.
Recommended stats if respeccing: 8-14-17-8-10-16. Take Resilient Constitution at level 4 Paladin (that's character level 7), then Cha 18 at level 4 Warlock/level 8 Paladin and that's the furthest you can go. If not respeccing, still take Resilient Constition at level 4 Paladin, but the second set goes to Dex and Wis to make them even numbers.
Itemization: Give him items that increase weapon damage when concentrating or Arcane Synergy.
A certain item that allows ranged spell attacks to be made in melee also makes Arcane Synergy easier to apply.
General slot usage: Warlock slots go to Armour of Agathys and Cure Wounds if unused before a short rest, otherwise they go into Divine Smites when you're planning to Short Rest soon, need something dead yesterday, or when you crit. Paladin level 1 slots go into Hex and Compelled Duel or Bless if you have no Cleric, level 2 slots should go into Protection from Poison for melee frontliners since it's a long duration buff.
Channel Oath charges should all go into Vow of Enmity.
Special note that if you cast Warding Bond on Wyll, it halves the rate at which Agathys' temp HP drains, which means it effectively does double the cold damage per slot. The cost is that your Cleric will be making more concentration saves than otherwise, so again, having Bless and Resilient Constitution really helps.
Karlach - 5 Barbarian 7 Assassin
While the choice of Barbarian type is generally up to you, the 'Legacy of Avernus' labels on Wild Magic spells make it especially thematically appropriate for her, and Berserkers are especially bad mechanically. Fast Movement plus Cunning Action: Dash get her into melee extremely consistently, but you might still want a ranged weapon for those pesky enemies that happen to fly over areas you don't really want to stand. Both Assassin and Thief work relatively well, but given she was more said to be an effective killer, using ambush tactics in hell feels better. Note that to Sneak Attack you need to use a Finesse Weapon. Also, if you have no nearby ally and no source of Advantage, use Reckless Attack manually to qualify for Sneak Attack to apply - so she basically always has Sneak Attack unless she has disadvantage for some reason.
Recommended stats if respeccing: 16-14-16-8-12-8. Take Sentinel for the first feat (the Advantage on OAs means she can Sneak Attack on OAs if she hasn't used it yet on her turn, since for some odd reason it seems to be per round rather than per turn in BG3) to help her protect allies better as well as get in some damage, then Lucky or 18 Strength for the other. If not respeccing, get Strength and Dex for the first, and then Sentinel on the second.
Note that Reckless works weirdly in this game operating as a reroll with an Advantage proc on a miss, so if you want to Sneak when you don't otherwise qualify you can use the Reckless Attack option manually, but otherwise it's better to attack normally and only consider using Reckless if you miss.
Itemization: Give her the
Gloves of the Growling Underdog if you can so that she can get advantage easily without even using Reckless
, and items that give additional damage per weapon attack.
