Hello, everybody. Welcome to a new video of Baldur’s Gate 3. In this episode, I’m gonna share my Abjuration School Wizard build and some tips for this school of magic and what kind of fun you can have in and out of combat with such a character. In the world of DnD, the Abjuration School is the magic of prevention, the ultimate ‘no’ in a mage’s arsenal. It has the most and best protecting spells. But it’s not only about protection. Its signature functions also include banishment and dispelling effects. In a sense, it’s also a kind of control, the control over the entire battlefield. By playing an Adjuration School Wizard, you can be the best tank+protector in the whole game. You can effectively reduce incoming damage. And you can extend your tankyness to your whole party. At level 2, you get the ability Arcane Ward. It reduces incoming damage by an amount that equals the ward’s intensity. At the start of each day, you get an intensity that equals your wizard level. It can be charged to twice your wizard level. And every time you cast an abjuration spell, the ward’s intensity charges by the amount of the spell’s level. Any time you take damage, the ward prevents an amount that equals its intensity and its intensity lowers by 1 after. And in the late game, you constantly have a ward intensity around 20. It’s not rare to see an enemy finally hits you with a critical hit but deals 0 damage. At level 6, you get the ability Projected Ward. With this, you can use your ward to protect 1 ally each turn as a reaction. Remember to untoggle your opportunity attack, in case you waste your reaction on that and cannot cast your protection reactions. At level 10, you get the ability Improved Abjuration. Now, every time you short rest, your ward’s intensity charges by an amount equal to your wizard level. At this point, you will be almost unkillable. So, this build I made is a mono-class spellblade tank that rushes into the enemies, attracts all the attacks, dodges nearly all of them, and dampens the occasional critical hits with Arcane Ward, many times takes no damage at all. Besides, it protects the whole party with Projected Ward and its abjuration spells. While doing all these, it coats its Dexterity weapon with poison, deals some damage and does some control as well. The best thing about this build is 2 of your 3 core spells come at level 1. So, your build is already half-complete right at the beginning of the game. Your first core spell is Mage Armour, a level-1 abjuration spell. It’s a must-have for any wizard who doesn’t wear armour. It sets your AC to 13, which is already higher than most light armours. You only need to cast it once each day. And it doesn’t require concentration. It will last until long rest or until you equip an armour or until you remove it from your prepared spells. This spell charges your Arcane Ward by 1 each day. It’s not much, but still nice to have. Your second core spell is Shield, another level-1 abjuration spell. It’s another must-have for any wizard build. This is a reaction that gives you another 5 AC when you need it. This will be the spell you use the most. As another level-1 abjuration spell, it also charges your Arcane Ward by 1, making your Arcane Ward constantly recharging. This gives you unbelievable survivability on the frontline as a mage. So, speaking of these 2 spells, let’s see how tanky this build really is. As you can see, I have a 21 AC here from Mage Armour, Dexterity, a shield and a pair of good shoes. And I have the Shield spell to give me another 5 when I need it. So, my effective AC is at least 26. And how high is that? It means any enemy with an attack bonus of less than +7 and that’s the majority of the enemies can only hit me when they roll a critical which means I have a 95% chance of dodging their attacks. +7 is already a very high attack bonus. Your attacking ability needs to reach the cap 20 to give you a +5 bonus and then you need some outside source to give you another +2. Not many people can do that. I recommend Human or Half-Elf as the race for this build, because they have the Civil Militia trait and can equip shields without getting extra feats. OK, your third core spell is the level-3 abjuration spell Counterspell. This allows you to completely negate an enemy spell as a reaction. Counterspell can negate any spell whose level is not higher than the spell slot you spent. If the spell’s level is higher, you still get a chance to negate it but you need to make an ability check. As a level-3 abjuration spell, it charges your Arcane Ward by at least 3. Outside of combat, this build can cover the Rogue jobs with its high Dexterity. Open locks, disarming traps, scouting alone in dangerous places, things like that. When originally allocating ability scores, we give the major bonus to Dexterity and bring it all to way up to 17 which is the highest possible for now. We’ll eventually get it to 20. This is to maximize our AC, our initiative rolls, our rogue abilities. and our damaging capacity through finesse weapons. Then, we give the minor bonus to either Wisdom or Constitution and bring both of them to 14. Wisdom makes you better at sensing danger and noticing hidden things, which is valuable when exploring. And it also makes you hard to control by the most powerful control spells in the game. Constitution increases your hit points, further boosting your survivability. Then we forego 2 Strength to bring Intelligence to 12 making you able to cast the highest-level spells in the game. This build is not an intelligence build like conventional Wizard builds, because we don’t need to cast offensive spells. And we leave Charisma unchanged at 10. This build can’t afford to be very good in conversations. For the cantrips, we choose 3 utility cantrips, to make us useful outside of combat. Mage Hand to manipulate things from a distance. Light to illuminate things and see the surroundings more clearly. For this build, I recommend you cast it on your own weapon, because you always run to the frontline to engage the enemies. This way, you can always illuminate the enemies and make it easier for your teammates to land their attacks. Then, Friends, this gives you an advantage in conversations, making you more likely to influence people. For the starting spells first, of course, Mage Armour and Shield, like we just talked about earlier. Then, Find Familiar. This allows you to summon a creature into your party to help with combat and exploring. Once summoned, they’ll be there until their hit points get reduced to 0. It’s a ritual spell, which means if you cast it outside of combat it doesn’t consume your spell slot. It’s free. And summon spells don’t need to stay prepared once the creature is summoned. For the other 3 vacancies, we choose 3 utility spells. Enhance Leap, Feather Fall and Disguise Self. Enhance Leap and Feather Fall combined give your party more freedom when exploring the map. They are ritual spells, too. And they are usually always used outside of combat. So, they are almost always free. Disguise Self allows you to assume a false identity. This is useful in places where a certain race has benefits. For example, pretend to be a drow to scare the goblins and get all kinds of VIP services. It’s also useful when you use the spell Speak with Dead. Usually, corpses won’t talk to those who killed them. But if you disguise yourself, you can talk to them even if it’s you who killed them. OK, now you’ve learned 6 spells to start the game. But at this point, you can only prepare 2 spells. A problem with this build is that the spells you can prepare is much less than a conventional mage. So, what I do with this is I don’t prepare pure utility spells like Enchance Leap. And when I need to use spells like this I take off some spells that are only used in combat then prepare these ones then do the jobs then prepare those combat spells back. This is what’s good about being a wizard. OK, now let’s talk about the leveling strategy. When to learn what. And what you can do in different stages of the game. At level 2, we get to choose into the Abjuration School and get our 1st special school ability: Arcane Ward. This is our core ability. And at level 2, you also get to learn another 2 spells. I recommend Protection from Evil and Good. It’s another level-1 abjuration spell, so it charges your Arcane Ward by 1. This spell gives you protection against any outsiders and undead creatures. These enemies will have disadvantages when attacking you. And they cannot charm, frighten or possess you. This spell needs concentration, but it further boost your ability to dodge attacks, so, in a sense, it protects its own concentration. Then, at level 3, you get to learn the spell See Invisibility. This is one of the best abilities of a wizard. It lasts a whole day and doesn’t need concentration. But you do need to keep it prepared. Besides this, I also recommend Knock. This spell can unlock any lock no matter how difficult it is unless the story doesn’t allow you to unlock, which is rare. Normally, this build is already very good at picking locks. So, you don’t need to use this spell often. Then, at level 4, you get to choose your 1st feat. Here we choose Weapon Master and increase our Dexterity to 18 giving us another +1 Dexterity bonus increasing our AC, initiative roll and attacks. And we can choose 4 weapon proficiencies. We take this chance to be proficient in all finesse weapons and light weapons. They are Daggers, Rapiers, Shortswords, and Scimitars. Rapiers and shortswords deal piercing damage. Scimitars deal slashing damage. Daggers deal lower piercing damage than the former 3 but have many good effects. At this level, we finally have the luxury to learn a level-1 spell Longstrider which I think is a must-have for any party. It increases the target’s moving distance for the whole day without concentration as long as the spell is still prepared. And it’s a ritual spell. So, every morning you can cast it on yourself, on your whole party, and on all the creatures you summoned. And everybody moves faster that day. Then, at level 5, we get to learn another core spell: Counterspell. Now we can start countering enemies’ spells while also significantly recharging our Arcane Ward. Then, at level 6, we get our 2nd special school ability: Projected Ward. Now, you can extend your tankyness to your teammates. At this level, we have the luxury to learn another level-1 protection spell: False Life. This spell gives you some temporary hit points. Combined with your own protection abilities, most of the time, enemies can’t even touch your real hit points. At level 7, we can learn the spell Conjure Minor Elemental to summon another unit for your party, which is recommended for any mage build. And, because the summon spell doesn’t need to stay prepared, now we have 1 more prepare slot to use. I recommend learning the spell Remove Curse so that you can better protect your allies. This is another level-3 abjuration spell. So, it charges your Arcane Ward by at least 3. Then, at level 8, we can choose our 2nd feat. Here we choose Ability Improvement to increase our Dexterity to 20 the cap maximizing everything. We also have the luxury of learning and preparing the spell Misty Step. Misty Step is useful both inside and outside of combat by teleporting for quite a distance. Then, at level 9, we can learn the spell Conjure Elemental to summon a stronger unit for our party. Again, because the summon spell doesn’t need to stay prepared, now we have 1 more prepare slot to use. I recommend learning the spell Detect Thoughts to get an upper hand in conversations. Then, at level 10, we get our final special school ability Improved Abjuration. Now, any time we take a short rest, our Arcane Ward increases by an amount equal to our wizard level. At this point, we will constantly have an Arcane Ward intensity around 20, significantly reducing the damage our party takes. Then, at level 11, we can learn the ultimate abjuration spell in the game: Globe of Invulnerability. This spell prevents anyone inside it from any damage, making them totally invulnerable. You need to maintain concentration on it, but if you stay inside it yourself, you can’t be hurt. So, normally you won’t lose concentration on it. This spell is really useful when a strong AoE is coming. At this level, we can also upcast the Conjure Elemental spell to summon the strongest unit we can summon for our party. Both this and the Globe are level-6 spells and use a level-6 slot. You only have one level-6 slot. And your recharge ability cannot recharge level-6 slot. Normally, this slot is more useful to upcast Conjure Elemental. But, if you can find something in the game that allows you to recharge the level-6 slot, you can have them both. Finally, at level 12, we can choose our final feat. I recommend Alert. This gives you a +5 bonus on initiative rolls, making you more likely to act before your enemies. And you cannot be surprised. OK, we have talked about how good this build is. Now, let’s talk about its weaknesses. The most obvious weakness of this build is you are not good at dealing damage. Though, neither can most enemies harm you and you can eventually kill them with your continual melee attacks but that takes time. So, in combats that need you to do things fast, you can’t rely on this build to kill things. And that is everything about this Abjuration School Wizard build. Hope you like it. And if you like this video, please click the like button and subscribe to my channel. Thank you for watching. I’ll see you in the next video. Bye bye.
