Hello, everybody. Welcome to a new video of Baldur’s Gate 3. In this episode, I’m gonna share my transmutation 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 DnD world, and in Harry Potter and anywhere else, I think, transmutation is the magic of manipulating matters. Changing things, amplifying, reducing, shapeshifting, doing alchemy. As a wizard specializing in transmutation, you are better at alchemy than other mages, can create items out of pure magic, and can shapeshift into animals at will. And, many spells from this school are valuable utility spells. Unlike schools such as enchantment, being in the transmutation school doesn’t grant you advantages on casting transmutation spells, instead, the benefits you get are more universal and adaptable. At level 2, a transmutation wizard gets the ability of Experimental Alchemy, which allows you to produce twice end products when you do alchemy, as long as you succeed a Medicine ability check. With this, your party can almost never run out of potions, poisons, weapon coatings, and elixirs. And it’s fun to plan your strategies around this. At level 6, you get the ability to create Transmuter’s Stones which are items that grant abilities to the carrier. At level 10, you get the ability Shapechanger, which allows you to shapeshift into a bird at will without spending anything and doesn’t require rest to recast. This is very useful when exploring or infiltrating. So, this build I made is a multi-class battle alchemist that empowers the whole party by creating items, and keeps raining damage on enemies untiringly and is almost unhittable on the battleground. It has 8 levels of Transmutation School Wizard and 4 levels of Champion Fighter. It has a high critical range stacked from multiple sources and we are maximizing the chance to trigger those critical hits by blasting the enemy 6 times a turn every turn. And our default attack is force damage, which may be the best damage type in the game, both inside and outside of combat, because almost no enemy is resistant or immune to force damage and the obstacles in the maps are usually vulnerable to force damage. The core spell we’ll be relying on is Haste a level 3 transmutation spell which you can learn when you reach level 5 of Wizard. It makes you act twice a turn and become harder to hit at the same time. Besides, this build wears medium armour and has many extra ACs on top of that. And it has a very high Wisdom making it hard to control and easy to break free. So, it’s a tanky and unstoppable ranged damage machine. I think it’s the second most reliable damage dealer in the whole game only below Evocation Wizard. And it has a much better battery life, survivability and supporting ability than Evocation Wizard. Critical hit is the center of this build’s strategy in battles. So, when sourcing equipment for this build, our first priority is those items that increase your critical range. And, let me explain critical hit and critical range here for beginners. Normally, you can only trigger a critical hit when you roll 20 in your attack roll. A critical hit is a guaranteed hit no matter how high the enemy’s Armour Class is. And you roll twice as many damage dice when you land a critical hit. Then, if something increases your critical range by 1, it means you can also trigger a critical hit when you roll 19. Your critical range is now 19 - 20. There are many sources like this in the game and they can all stack. That’s what we’ll be looking for when playing this build. When originally allocating ability scores, we give the major bonus to Intelligence 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 chance to hit enemies with our spells. Then, we give the minor bonus to Wisdom and bring it to 16. This is your second most important ability. It helps with your alchemy and makes you hard to control by the most powerful control spells. Remember to also toggle Medicine when you allocate your skill proficiencies. Then we forego 2 Strength and 2 Charisma to bring Dexterity to 14 giving you some AC and initiative roll bonus. We are not making it higher than 14 because we plan to wear medium armour. Medium armours limit how much AC you can get from Dexterity and the cap is 14. We are leaving Constitution unchanged at 10. Though, we need to maintain concentration on the Haste spell and normally when you need to concentrate on things you need a high Constitution to be better at maintaining concentration when taking damage. But this build is too good at dodging. Normally you can’t be hit and don’t need to worry about taking damage. So, how good is it at dodging? Here, I have a 22 AC from a good armour a shield, my Dexterity, a pair of nice shoes and my fighting style. Even if you don’t have a good armour and the shoes normally you can manage to get 19 AC. Then, when you apply the Haste spell it gives you another 2. Then, the shield spell gives you another 5 when you need it. So, your 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 your enemies can only hit you when they roll a critical which means you 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. So, for the race of this character, I recommend human or half-elf, because they have the Civil Militia trait and can equip shields without getting extra feat. For the cantrips choose 2 ranged damage that you like. We need to reach level 4 to get our default force attack, before that we’ll use these cantrips to deal damage. Then, choose Shocking Grasp. This is a melee attack that has an advantage on enemies with metal armour. And if you land the hit, the enemy can no longer use reaction anymore and you can walk away safely without getting an opportunity attack. Then, for the starting spells first, we need Mage Armour, because we need to reach level 9 to wear medium armour. Before that, Mage Armour is our best defence. Mage Armour is 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. 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 be 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. And it’s a transmutation spell. Looks natural to this build. For the other 3 vacancies, you can choose some utility spells. I recommend Enhance Leap and Feather Fall. These 2 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. OK, now let’s talk about the leveling strategy. When to level into Fighter. 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 ASAP. At level 2, we get to choose into the Transmutation School and get our 1st special school ability: Experimental Alchemy. Now you can start producing double products when doing alchemy. You need to succeed the Medicine check to produce double products. But we can always save and load. And it will always be a success for us. So, actually, you don’t need the high Wisdom to make them all success. But that would need you to save and load too many times and thus spoil the fun of the game. The most valuable product for yourself is the Elixir of Viciousness. It increases your critical range by 1. Elixirs’ effects last a whole day. So, you only need to drink one in the morning. Remember, you can only be affected by 1 elixir at a time. If you drink another, it will replace the effect of the former. Another elixir useful for you is the Elixir of Peerless Focus. It gives you advantages on concentration saving throws and against being charmed and gives you immunity against magical sleep. When playing this build it’s a good habit to examine every corner everywhere you go, to get as many alchemy ingredients as you can. And also, buy ingredients from every trader. And at level 2, you also get to learn another 2 spells. I highly recommend Find Familiar. It 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 get a spell that every wizard should learn. And that is See Invisible. This is one of the best abilities of a wizard. It lasts a whole day and doesn’t need concentration. At level 4, you get to choose your 1st feat. Here we choose Spell Sniper and get our force damage cantrip Eldritch Blast. This will be how we deal damage throughout the game. For now, you only shoot 1 blast each time. But at character level 5, it becomes 2 blasts. And eventually, at character level 10, it becomes 3 blasts. Spell Sniper also increases your critical range by 1. Then, at level 5, we can get our core spell Haste. And now our Eldritch Blast shoots 2 beams. So, with Haste, we can attack 4 times each turn. At this level, you also 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 need to make an ability check. But since you have a high Intelligence, it’s rather easy for you to succeed in that check. Then, at level 6, you get your 2nd special school ability: Transmutor’s Stones. For now, the best idea would be to create the Constitution stone for yourself. It gives you proficiency in Constitution saving throws. At level 9, we will get this proficiency from Fighter class. Before that, we use this stone. Then, at level 7, you can 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 Resilient (Intelligence) to increase our Intelligence to 18 and thus increase your casting ability by 1. From level 9 to level 12, we level into Fighter class. At level 9, we get the Fighter class and get to choose our fighting style. We choose Defence. This gives you a +1 AC when you wear armour. And, now, because the Fighter class gives you proficiency in medium armour you can start wearing medium armour and stop casting Mage Armour. The Fighter class also gives you proficiency in Constitution saving throws. So, now, you don’t need the Constitution stone for yourself. You can create other stones or give the stone to someone else. Then, at level 10, you get the ability Action Surge, which gives you a free action. We can use this free action to cast Haste so that we can attack the maximum times from the 1st turn. Action Surge can be used every short rest. And we usually short rest after every battle. So, basically, you can use Action Surge in every battle. And at this level, you Eldritch Blast starts to shoot 3 beams each time. Then, at level 11, we get to choose our Fighter subclass. We choose Champion because it increases our critical range by 1. Finally, at level 12, we get to choose our final feat. Here, choose Ability Improvement and finally increase your Intelligence to the 20 cap maximizing your spell attacks rolls. OK, we have talked about how good this build is. Now, let’s talk about its weaknesses. Though this build is really good at dodging, but on the rare occasion that you do get hit and do break your concentration on Haste, you will become lethargic for 1 turn and cannot do anything. You are very vulnerable in that turn. The other thing is that you have a low Charisma which means you are gonna be bad in conversations. Seems like this character is an alchemist who feels too educated to talk with idiots and doesn’t want to waste time explaining the obvious. And when things go south in conversations, you blast everything and everyone. And that is everything about this transmutation wizard build. I had fun building it. I had fun doing alchemy. Hope you like it, too. 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.
