Hello, everybody. Welcome to a new video of Baldur’s Gate 3. In this episode, I’m gonna share my Illusion 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. Without any surprise, the Illusion School is the magic that manipulates senses. Convince, deceive, make believe. It’s a very versatile school. It has nice control spells, though not as powerful and abundant as the Enchantment School. It has nice protection spells, though not as professional as the Abjuration School. It has utility spells that help you explore and infiltrate. And it has damage spells that deals psyhic damage. So, you have many options when making a build from this school. And, as a wizard specializing in the Illusion School, you get a nice failsafe called Illusory Self. It’s a reaction that allows you to dodge an attack that was supposed to hit you. This ability comes to you when you reach level 10 of Illusion Wizard. It can be used once every short rest. At level 2, you get the ability Improved Minor Illusion. This allows you to cast the Minor Illusion spell as a bonus action rather than a standard action. This is very useful when infiltrating or stealing in turn-based mode. You can quickly distract your targets and use your action to do other things or simply to move double distance. You can use it at will for as many times as you want. At level 6, you get the spell See Invisibility as a class action. This is a spell that every wizard should learn. It’s one of the best abilities of a wizard. Once cast, it can last a whole day without concentration. And, as an illusion wizard, you don’t need to spend a spell slot to cast it. You don’t even need to prepare it. The other wizards need to prepare it and spend a level 2 slot to cast it. So, this build I made is a multi-class mage spy that excels at scouting and infiltrating and can serve as a dodge tank in combat while also dealing some decent melee weapon damage. It has 10 levels of Illusion School Wizard and 2 levels of Ranger. It’s a dual-wielding build that deals nice damage with two Dexterity weapons and has a higher-than-normal chance of inflicting negative effects. This build works really well with weapon coatings because you coat 2 weapons at once and you trigger the coating effects twice each turn. And, this build uses illusion spells to buff itself to become either very good at dodging or better at dealing damage, depending on what kind of battle you are in. If you need to be the one to engage enemies on the frontline, you can cast the level-2 illusion spell Blur on yourself and then enemies would have disadvantages when attacking you. And, if there are other units on the frontline engaging enemies, for example, your summoned creatures, then, you can cast the level-4 illusion spell Greater Invisibility on yourself to prevent enemies from targeting you and also to attack enemies with advantages. Anyway, this build is very tanky, maybe the second tankiest in the whole game only next to Abjuration Wizard. So, usually, the 1st turn in every combat what you do is to cast a buff on yourself and then use the bonus action to coat your weapons then you either run to engage enemies or relocate to hide and prepare to attack in the next turn. This is a Dexterity build. It doesn’t rely on Intelligence like normal wizards would do. As a result, we are not gonna use this build to cast offensive spells because, without a high Intelligence, you wouldn’t land many of them. But this doesn’t mean it’s a weak mage because, by building this way, you saved a lot of spell slots for you utility spells, making you much more useful when exploring. Outside of combat, it’s gonna use its high dexterity to hide out of sight and do jobs like scouting, infiltrating, stealing, and even assassinating. When it’s necessary, it can cast illusions from the shadows to distract people. It can also cast illusions to disguise itself or even the whole party to assume false identities. This build can totally cover the rogue jobs of your party though it doesn’t have any Rogue class. With its high dexterity and the proficiencies from the Ranger class, it’s very good at unlocking things and disarming traps. And it’s better than a rogue because: First, if you find some high-difficulty lock that’s almost impossible to pick you can use the Knock spell to unlock it. Second, you can use a lot of utility cantrips and spells that give you a better mobility and more functions than a rogue. With all these, this build is really good at venturing alone into dungeons or difficult places and secretly get a lot of jobs done. And even if it gets caught in a battle when doing this it can manage most of the battles alone. 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 initial rolls, our rogue abilities. and our damaging capacity through finesse weapons. Then, we give the minor bonus to either Wisdom or Intelligence 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. Intelligence is here to make you able to prepare more spells, and thus make you more versatile when exploring or infiltrating. Then we forego 2 Strength to bring Charisma to 12 giving you a tiny bonus in conversations. And we leave Constitution unchanged at 10. We are a dodge tank. We seldom take damage. So, we don’t need a very high Constitution. For the cantrips, first, we choose Friends. It gives you advantages on Charisma checks in conversations, making you more powerful at influencing people. This will be useful if you decide to steal things from someone because when someone discovers they’ve been robbed they will run around confronting people and the one who actually stole the things need to succeed a Charisma check to cover their crime. The other two, we choose 2 utility cantrips to help us with exploring. Mage Hand which allows you to manipulate things from a distance. Light which you can cast on things to illuminate the surroundings so that you can see things clearly. But remember not to cast it on your own weapon. You are a spy, you don’t want to be shiny when you infiltrate places. Then, for the starting spells first, we need Mage Armour a must-have for any wizard who doesn’t wear armour. It sets your base AC to 13 which is already higher than most of 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. Then, the second: Shield. Another must-have for any wizard build. It’s a reaction that gives you another 5 AC when you need it making you harder to hit. Remember to untoggle your opportunity attack in case you waste your reaction on that and can’t cast your protection reactions. Then, 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, which means if you cast it outside of combat it doesn’t consume your spell slot it’s free. 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. 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. And this spell has an extra function in Baldur’s Gate 3 than in classic DnD. In the classic DnD 5e rule, Disguise Self only changes people’s perception of you. It doesn’t change your actual shape, because it’s an illusion spell. But in Baldur’s Gate 3, it changes your actual shape. So, if you change from a half-elf into a gnome, your size changes from Medium to Small and you can cross places where only small creatures can cross. This makes it very valuable in exploring. But, I am a seirous DnD player. I don’t feel comfortable using this spell like this. This shouldn’t be something an illusion spell can do. This is a high-level transmutation. But if you don’t mind it, now you have a much more powerful tool. OK, now you’ve learned 6 spells to start the game. But at this point, you can only prepare 3 spells. Usually, 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 level into Ranger. And what you can do in different stages of the game. From level 1 to level 8, we are gonna stick to the Wizard class to get our core spells and the feats ASAP. At level 2, we get to choose into the Illusion School and get our 1st special school ability: Improved Minor Illusion. Now you can start doing the spy stuff. Remember to press Shift + Space to enter turn-based mode. This will make it easier for you to calculate people’s actions and decide how and where to cast your illusions. And at level 2, you also get to learn another 2 spells. I highly recommend 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. And summon spells don’t need to stay prepared once the creature is summoned. Then, at level 3, you can learn your 1st core spell: Blur. Now, you start being a full-time tank of your party. At this level, you also get to learn the spell See Invisibility. Before we get this as a class action at Illusion Wizard level 6, we’ll be using this spell every day. 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, initial 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 can also learn another 2 spells. We choose Knock and Misty Step. Knock can unlock almost any lock. But you usually don’t need it because you are already very good at picking locks. Misty Step is useful both inside and outside of combat by teleporting for quite a distance. At this point, you can’t afford to cast them yet, though, because you need to save your level-2 slots for Blur. But after you level up and have slots of higher levels, these 2 will be officially in your arsenal. Then, at level 5, we get to learn another powerful spell that every mage should learn: 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. And, we have another vacancy for a new utility spell. I recommend Enlarge/Reduce or Gust of Wind. Then, at level 6, you get your 2nd special school ability: See Invisibility. Now we can cast it as a class action rather than a spell, which saves us a spell slot and a prepare slot. Then, at level 7, we can learn our 2nd core spell Greater Invisibility We can use it in battles to attack while unseen. This makes you really deadly. But it takes several battles to master all the suttle details. For example, don’t hide to the farthest end, because the next turn you would have to use all your movement to attack the enemy and then have to stop just beside them and that will make it much easier to detect you. Instead, you should see your movement as 2 parts. Use half of it to approach the enemy and use the other half to hide away. That’s how you use Greater Invisibility in combat. And we can use it outside of combats when infiltrating or stealing things. Remember to activate the turn-based mode to make the best of the 10-turn duration. And we can also learn the spell Conjure Minor Elemental to summon another unit for your party, which is recommended for any mage build. Then, at level 8, you can choose your 2nd feat. Here we choose Ability Improvement to increase our Dexterity to 20 the cap maximizing everything. From level 9 to level 10, we level into Ranger class. At level 9, we get the Ranger class. In the Favoured Enemy section, we choose Bounty Hunter to get proficiency in Investigation and become better at gathering information. In the Natural Explorer section, we choose Urban Tracker to get proficiency in Sleight of Hand and become better at picking locks. And we can allocate another proficiency I recommend Perception which makes you better at spotting hidden things. Then, at level 10, we get to choose our Ranger fighting style we choose Two-Weapon Fighting which allows us to add our Dexterity modifier to the damage of our off-hand weapon. This is a solid 5 damage. We also get to learn 2 Ranger spells. Here, choose Speak with Animals. And now we can gather information from animals. From level 11 to level 12 we go back to Wizard class. At level 11, you can learn the spell Conjure Elemental to summon the strongest unit you can summon for your party. Finally, at level 12, you get your final special school ability Illusory Self. OK, we have talked about how good this build is. Now, let’s talk about its weakness. Though this build has a nice effective AC most of your AC come from your Dexterity and your reactions. If your enemy somehow prevents you from using them you will become vulnerable. Another thing is that you only deal physical and poison damage and many enemies have resistance or immunity to some of them. You lack the ability to deal magical damage. And you can only attack one enemy at a time. All these combined make you not that efficient at dealing damage compared to some other more conventional mages. And that is everything about this Illusion 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.
