Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Alternate classes for companions

Since githyanki are all about psychic damage, I can see her taking levels as GOOlock for those sweet psychic spells and abilities. Make her a bladelock and you can give her maybe 5 levels in lock and the rest in fighter.
If aberrant mind sorcerer were in the game, I totally would give her that class and two levels of fighter.

Otherwise monk would make sense for her, it is a martial class, but all about controlling yourself,which I think, is totally Lae'zels thing, even though,she can be pretty impulsive sometimes ( which I would say is due to her youth).

I once tried 11 fighter/ 1 GOO warlock with her, tried to capitalize on low critical threshold, used Unseen Menace, champion subclass, polearm master for a guaranteed additional attack (crit fishing, hehe). Also envisioned it in a sort of "falling under your sworn enemy's influence" way. Tadpolearm master, you know? For spell utilization though, vanilla Laezel experiences some charisma issues, 8 for starters is horrible...

Since she has half decent WIS, I wanted to lean into some WIS spellcasters, monk seems fine in this regard, but my recent PT was as a pure monk and I got tired a bit. The big idea is to justify putting at least 1/3 levels into druid or ranger (or cleric, but I already have one) so that it feels organic to the story. No Gale barbarian level of vibes, I mean.

I sometimes just switch the stats via WIthers a bit, since a lot of companions come with terrible stats. But I totally can see Lae'zel as a hunter ranger or gloomstalker, but more hunter, I guess. Give her spike growth - one of my favourite spells in the game.

If you don't mind being shackled to Headband of Intellect, then 6 Eldritch Knight/6 Wizard can work.

6 EK for the extra attack, bonus feat and a bit of spell slot progress. 6 Wizard for extra spell slots, more spells and some subclass bonuses. Abjuration School can work well for continuing the Fighter style "Front line tank" and can be seriously strong (Heavy Armour + Heavy Armour Mastery + Arcane Ward = Good luck taking damage at all, ever. Heck toss on Warding Bond and be practically invulnerable)

Though you can go something like Divination for more support via Portent too.

While all this still is thematic, given Githyanki do like to mix martial and magic combat.

This is actually interesting! I once tried a 6/6 split with the headband, went for divination and battle master, the idea was to guarantee the effects for each of the special attacks by using portent. I also tried to spice it up with stacking damage riders on a main hand weapon and a ranged weapon, you can have fire/acid/lightning/psychic/radiant/force/posion at the same time. That can guarantee you a damage based prophecy fulfillment from a single weapon attack, sometimes even two prophecies.

Right now though I've already planned for a wizard/rogue/fighter AA Astarion in the party, so I would want to diversify my party with a class that I don't yet have.

I have just one idea of going 1 fighter, 11 ranger hunter with colossus slayer, multiattack defense and defensive duelist (Laezel has exactly the minimum of 13 DEX). Go for heavy armor and finesse two-handers. Hunter feels natural for a Githyanki, I think. Have you tried defensive duelist, is it bad or OK?

If the choice of class for a companion has to be primarily based on *roleplay* purposes, as opposed to power gaming, when trying to match the choice to the unique personality + individual background + personal story of that companion, there must be a base/bottom line that we should not cross.

For example, changing Shadowheart to a cleric with another cleric domain? This is an extremely popular practice among players. Well, in my opinion, the only valid motivation behind that respec is power gaming, as opposed to roleplay. No other cleric domain fits Shadowheart's past trainings + some 30 years' dedication to a twisted type of trickery and secrecy better than the domain Trickery. Since Shar is not a deity for any cleric, whether to abandon Shar or become Shar's Chosen has nothing to do with her choice of cleric domain. Besides, even if she chooses to abandon Shar, she was a Shar's follower - in the capacity of a combat Cleric - during her entire adult life until after teaming up with either Tav or Durge.

To me, the base/bottom line for roleplaying companions is simply this: don't change their default class. In fact, solely for roleplay, I don't even want to respec any companion, unless it is absolutely required from a technical point of view (an example that an exception has to be made is when adding a secondary spellcaster class to a high-level druid: unless it's Cleric class, this secondary spellcaster class should always be had prior to having the first level in Druid).

If somebody makes Karlach a Fighter and Lae'zel a Barbarian, I would feel like the two companions must have swapped their faces/bodies. Very weird to me!

As a result, the base/bottom line looks like this:

• Shadowheart = Trickery Cleric
• Gale = Evocation Wizard
• Karlach = Barbarian (Thrower is the preferred flavor for Power Gaming reasons)
• Lae'zel = Fighter (with default weapon being a two-handed)
• Minthara = Paladin - any flavor
• Wyll = Warlock (3 levels at the minimum) - Pack of the Blade
• Halsin = Druid - any flavor (preferably, he is technically different from Jaheira)
• Jaheria = Druid - shapeshifter is her specialization to match her BG3 class to her back story being a dual-class Fighter/Druid in BG 2
• Astarion = Rouge - any flavor (Thief or Assassin is preferrable for Power Gaming reasons)

Minsc = Ranger? This is the only companion that I find is difficult to apply the base line to - for roleplay reasons as opposed to power gaming. That's because BG3 and BG2 are very different when it comes to the Ranger class. His unique frenzy ability in BG2 is not a Barbarian's Rage or Frenzy: it does not *naturally* qualify him for being either a Ranger in BG3 or a frenzy Barbarian in BG3.


With all the above said, this game can be played in numerous different ways. We all should pick a choice that fits our imagination and then go for it. Perhaps not everything works. But every choice is valid.

I like the EK/DW combo, maybe even for a main character. But it would fit Lae too, since githyanki have a lot of fighter/ magic combos.

I'm not as hardcore lore-player as some, but I do like to keep the first class of the Companions, even if makes my powergamingminmaxing heart bleed
Not always and not with all Companions, but most of the time ...
IMO I've simply been conditioned by Bg1/2 to view Companions as what-you-get-is-what-you-have, not necessarily "perfect" assets.
Reminds me of that female "Miss Anger Issues" Fighter in Bg1 with CON 9.

Do you mean Shar Teel? Yeah, she was pretty strangely specced.

I must say normally I do go with flavor and theme of the companions. I do make an exception with Honour Mode, there I'm a bit more into optimizing characters, but not too much.

As for Shadowhearts domain: I do like it, when I spec her into cleric/rogue, but I normally just like to play some of the other domains more. So it is more a fun than power thing for me, since I actually don't think, trickery is a bad domain.

I got exactly the same habit from Dragon Age Origins, where system was more rigid and your companion could be 10 talent points deep into a specific skill tree the moment you recruit them. In bg3, I always try to play the cards I am given without 'cheating' the classes/ability points etc. If I want to sculpt my own party, I'd better go with a hireling for that, because Karlach having 8 STR and Astarion having 8 DEX completely ruins the immersion for me.

I once had Gale as a Wild Magic sorcerer getting his power from the orb after being stripped of his wizard abilities by Mystra. He still referred to himself as a wizard out of pride and embarrassment.

Upon meeting Elminster I respec’d him to a Wizard as part of the enchantment invoked by Elminster.

Made for an interesting change of pace.