Baldur's Gate 3: Bard Build - Unholy Nightingale

[Music] what's going on everybody morom here this time bringing you my Bard build for balers Gate 3 that I in particular like to use on aaran and is what I used on him when I was playing through the game with him as my origin character for playthrough number eight this was initially done because I think the Bard dialogue suits aaryan's character a little better than most of the Rogue dialogue does and then it kind of morphed into a really fun build utilizing the College of Swords Bard and the thief Rogue now the bright side to this build and just bards in general really is that they are great sort of Jack of all trades characters they can do a little bit of everything they are full casters though most of their spell list is dedicated to support casting so we'll be able to cast ritual Buffs on our characters first thing we can utilize spells like stinking Cloud to Rob enemies of their actions we can also support our other party members via things like Bic inspiration which is of course a classic and then a little later on once we get a slightly higher level under our belt starting around level four we can start making ranged attacks via some dual crossbow action to then start pumping out over a 100 damage a turn and combined with a Bard's naturally fantastic role that being the face of your party this is a build that can do a little bit of everything with really in my opinion the only big downside to it being that it takes a little while for it to come online fully levels four and level seven are big Power jumps for us at least least in terms of damage the support is pretty much available right away and that's why whether or not you want to play this as a main character or on a party member is kind of just up to personal preference but definitely expect to play more of a support role until you start getting around level four at the earliest now with that in mind let's talk a little bit about the multiclassing and how The Bard and Rogue fit together a little bit so our primary class the College of Swords Bard is going to be utilizing the flourish ability that they get that uses their Bic inspiration to instead make an attack at level six they get an extra attack like other Marshall classes do and combined with flourish one of them allows you to attack twice when you are using a ranged weapon you can attack the same enemy twice whereas if you use the melee version you have to attack as a sort of cleave action which is why we are utilizing crossbows mostly early game it can be beneficial to use a dexterity melee weapon until you get set hand crossbows and damage wise that's how we're going to approach it but obviously Bard has more utility than that and can do things like buff our characters and even potentially crowd controlling enemies later on however as aarian is naturally a rogue we're actually going to start as a rogue provided you use him of course and at level three when we get to pick our subass we're going to pick up Thief for the extra bonus action because we are dual wielding crossbows we can use our bonus action to make an attack with our off-handed crossbow and combined with flourish and extra attack this means that our Bard starting at level seven will be able to make five attacks right away in a single turn that's without haste or action surge or anything like that just naturally be able to make five attacks in a turn at the cost of some baric inspiration which is used for flourish then once we get up to level 9 which is about when you should have the appropriate levels of Bard and Rogue you can use the extra bonus attack from being a thief Rogue to make six attacks in a turn and well that's pretty great in and of itself the little bit of sneak attack damage you get from this is also pretty nice doesn't always come up but it is helpful though the main reason we're taking this is the bonus attack so from there let's talk about character creation a little bit I played this as aaran so we'll start there and then we'll talk about if you don't want to use him if you're starting as aaran really the only things to pick are your can trip and your ability scores and your skills if you want to the can trip doesn't really matter but I do like Firebolt personally just to be able to ignite things when necessary which brings us to our ability scores personally I like the spread you see on screen here with dexterity at 17 as that's going to be our main stat Charisma is our secondary stat so we're going to want that up at 15 and then Constitution I left right around 12 that was plenty especially because we're a ranged character for most of this and we're actually going to have a really high AC as well so we're not really going to be getting hit that often so it's not incredibly important now the reason we're taking odd numbers in dexterity and Charisma is actually specifically because we're playing as aaran because staran and bards for that matter don't get Shield proficiencies naturally and while we won't actually be using a shield in combat very often we do want one equipped ideally because then we can benefit from the AC which is in effect even if you are using bows and given that there is a shield you can get at the end of act two that increases your spell save DC which is very important on a character whose primary bit of spell casting is control that's actually really helpful but because aaran doesn't get the proficiency for that ideally what we want to do here is pick up the feet for it which is going to give us plus one to either strength or decks bring decks up to 18 and pick up our Shield proficiency right at our first feat selection and then Charisma you can Round Up to 16 if you get the HS hair quest reward from act one from fighting the hag which will even both of these out nicely now I will say if you are not playing aaran I would actually recommend you play either a human or a half elf for this because they will get that Shield proficiency just because of their r which means you could do this a little bit differently I only did it this way again purely because I was playing as a staran and because we're using range none of the other racial passives really add much to this build because we don't really need a ton of movement because we're attacking at ranged anyway thanks to being able to Ritual cast things like long Strider we don't even need extra movement or things like Misty step from being a GI Yankee and the half fors Savage criticals only applies to melee weapons so it doesn't help us out Etc so while you could theoretically pick anything half elf and human are what I would recommend now in terms of your skill proficiencies honestly I think Asian's default stuff for being a rogue is fine slide of hand perception deception performance persuasion pretty much everything we're after there now let's start talking about leveling up on our very first level up we are of course going to take one level in Bard and we're going to level up as a Bard until we hit level seven so six levels of Bard right at level two this is going to give us access to our Bic inspiration allowing us to buff our allies which means basically right after the tutorial and in terms of spells it's important to remember for the first few levels we are basically a support Caster things that are going to buff your party and debuff your enemies in some way like putting them to sleep for instance or using Tasha's hideous laughter are all good options and then pick whatever instrument you want to use level two as a Bard is going to give us access to song of rest which is effectively just an extra short rest and while that's generally very useful it becomes even more useful later when we can use a short rest to replenish our Bic inspiration which is the main limiting factor of our flourish what we're going to get Next Level so for level three as a Bard or level four in general we're going to pick up College of Swords this gives us a fighting style as well as access to flourish flourish comes in three different variations slashing defensive and mobile Each of which has a ranged and melee version the main one we're going to be using is slashing because it allows you to attack two Targets and if you're using ranged it can be the same Target defensive which allows you to attack and then add four to your AC which can make you much tankier and we're actually going to have a pretty high AC as well so this plus4 can be situationally very useful and then mobile flourish is very situational it will allow you to push enemies back and then allow you to teleport to the Target so sometimes if you just want to push an enemy back this can help out but all of these cost Bic inspiration for us to use so if you are wanting to use Bic inspiration to buff your allies that's not something you're going to be able to do a lot of on top of this however later on once you get that extra bonus action from being a thief Rogue you can do both in the same turn now we also pick a fighting style at this level but we can only pick between two weapon fighting and dueling we want to pick dueling here and while you might think you want to pick two weapon fighting because we're dual wielding crossbows it's important to remember that our offhand crossbow attack is actually a ranged attack which means it gets the deck bonus anyway which is one of the reasons dual crossbows is so strong and it also means that two weapon fighting is completely redundant with this and won't actually improve anything for you so naturally we want to pick up dueling just because it will grant us a benefit even if we're not going to use it very often now at level five we pick up our first feet and again if you're playing aaran you want moderately armored this is going to allow us to even out our dexterity to 18 and give us a shield proficiency it also gives you medium armor proficiency but because our dexterity is so high you're usually better off off using light armor anyway it'll actually give you more AC at least until you get towards the end game now if you're not using aaran and just a regular sort of character like a human or a half elf who gets Shield proficiency you'd want to improve either decks or Charisma level six or level five as a Bard is a little boring but honestly still pretty important because this is where we pick up font of inspiration which allows us to recover our Bic inspiration on a short rest which again is the resource for our flourishes so being able to replenish that very often is helpful level six as a Bard we pick up a few things for starters we get the counter charm ability this allows you to give your allies within 30 ft advantage on saving throws against being Charmed or frightened which there are a few fights that's pretty useful in but the big thing at this level is extra attack this is when you can start making two attacks with the same action as a college of Swords barred and this applies to your flourishes which means if you choose to make two flourishes in a turn you actually get four attacks and and this is the level at level seven you'll start doing just a nonsense amount of damage and this is probably the single biggest power boost that you're going to get as this character it is very very strong now levels eight and nine we are going to go back to leveling up Rogue specifically so we can grab the thief subass at level 9 this is going to give us our extra bonus attack and allow us to make a total of six attacks in a turn with just our regular resources if you add haste or a speed potion that kind of thing on top of that it can be even more now levels 10 11 and 12 are a little bit boring we're mostly just wrapping up loose ends and evening things out to grab some Feats at level 10 you should probably go ahead and just take Rogue to four so you can take that second feat and increase either your dexterity to 20 if it's not already or potentially Charisma if you want and then levels 11 and 12 are going to be barred as well with level 12 bringing you to eight levels of bar which gives you another feet and that one's pretty much whatever you want to do with you should have ideally the maxed out of amount of dexterity for our attacks to be made for sure and then you can either increase Charisma if you want but I found that with items you don't really necessarily need the higher modifier there since most of what we're doing is control casting and the items were enough to raise that spell DC up to a point where I didn't feel the need to pump up Charisma anymore and if you choose not to you can instead spend that feed on something else and at that point it's pretty much dealer's choice now ultimately you can mix and match these levels however you want but honestly as long as you end up with eight levels of Bard and four levels of Rogue by the end of it you should be golden while you could theoretically cut two levels of Bard off of this and then a level of Rogue the issue is that nothing else we could multiclass into is really going to give us a big significant boost You could argue taking fighter would be useful because then you could pick up the archery fighting style and action surge as well at level two but honestly I'd rather have the Feats and it's really just way Overkill at that point but by all means you do you now when it comes to gear one of the really nice things about this build is that you should have almost everything you need by the end of act two actually and while there's a couple of things in act three that can definitely add a lot to this build you don't really need them but to kick it off for a helmet we want the diadem of Arcane Synergy that you can get in the mountain pass towards the end of act one when we inflict a condition we gain Arcane Synergy for two rounds Arcane Synergy allows us to add our spell casting ability modifier to our damage at a minimum this should be three by the time you get it and because we're making so many attacks per rounds that is a decent chunk of damage more if you choose to bump up your charisma but it's not going to make a huge difference now the reason we want this is because almost everything the bar does grants a condition and if you inflict a condition on yourself it still triggers this which makes it incredible for this build because we're hitting so often we're going to get a lot of use out of that for our Cape the cloak of protection from act two in last Light in can give us extra Armor class which is great for our armor unfortunately there's not a ton of really cool light armors in the game especially until you get really late into it so for the most part we're just going to be wearing generic light armor that gives us the best AC now for our gloves we want the gloves of archery from the goblin camp in act one this is going to add additional damage to each of our ranged attacks and because we're not picking up fighter with this and grabbing the archery fighting style that's very useful that will add a lot of damage especially in combination with our diadem now for our boots also in act two we can pick up the boots of Brilliance which will allow you to restore your Bic inspiration we're going to be burning through Bic inspiration a lot so while we won't get to restore a ton of it with this literally just one point anything's better than nothing realistically though if you didn't want to use these boots you could swap them out with something else but I found they were really great for when I just really needed an Inspiration Point and I wasn't able to Long rest or something so more of a convenience item than anything else for our amulet I like the subjugation amulet from act two it drops off the doctor in the healing house basically once per long rest when we crit something we can force it to be paralyzed for two turns when you combine this with elcid powers that guarantee a critical or another ring that can guarantee a critical this becomes very very useful because paralyzed enemies are very easy to kill and there's a lot of bosses that are not immune to that now for our rings I like the Ring of protection which is a little bit annoying to get your hands on but in act one if you steal the silver vanice Idol for the children and you complete that Quest the reward is the ring of protection which can grant you another bit of AC we have the strange conduit ring from the mountain pass as well when we concentrate on a spell our weapon attacks deal an extra bit of psychic damage there's a fair chance you might be concentrating on a spell and in some cases you might want to force yourself to be concentrating on a spell to add even more damage to our weapon attacks via all of our crossbow attacks for our melee weapon and shield it's important to remember that we're not going to be using these outside of the first few levels but we still get the bonuses for having them equipped which is important now rapers are a little scarce there's only like three in the game that are really good but they are kind of spaced out towards the end of act one you can pick up the sort of Screams that drops off of near in the Grim Forge area and then in act two if you complete Will's origin Quest you can pick up the infernal reier and take it from him and this is awesome because it gives us a plus one bonus to our spell save DC which we can really make a lot of use of we don't care at all about the spell casting modifier instead of our decks because it's not going to come up though this will also give you the ability to summon a cambian in as well now there is technically one more rape here that you can get towards the end of act three called dualist prerogative which is technically the best one but I don't like using that one because I prefer the bonus to spell save DC because we are not actually using the rap here in combat now for our Shield we like to use C Shield which drops off the last boss in Act to again this is mostly for the spell save DC but we also get the armor class even when we are not using the shield and don't have it literally equipped as you can see here if we just equip that we get the AC which is why we want that Shield it's basically just free AC now for our crossbows our main damage dealers early on in the game you're pretty much limited to just basic hand crossbows which is why in some of the early levels especially before you get those hand crossbows you're likely going to be using the Raper afterwards however in act two we can get some really good ones in the moonrise Tower we can pick up the nisser which is a hand crossbow that deals Force damage and also gives you a cast of magic Missile this is actually really good because most enemies are not resistant to force damage most things are either weak to it or they take regular Force damage very few things resist this whereas piercing damage or normal damage is more common now for our main crossbow I like to use the Hellfire hand crossbow which drops off of a boss at the end of act two as well in the Char and Temple fight the demon there and you can pick this up and we're mostly grabbing this because it is a plus two hand crossbow but if you use this while hiding or invisible which you can definitely do you might also set the Target on fire and it'll take a little more damage and while again there's a few items in act three you might consider using like the dualist prerogative rap here Etc this stuff is really all you need to make this work it's going to give you a very high AC especially once you get your X up there and that's with the defensive flourish if you want to use it bringing you up to the mid 20s and if you really wanted to go out of your way to maximize it you could easily hit like 30 situationally now from there let's talk about ithd Powers I personally didn't use a ton of them for this particular build but I do want to mention that call the weak which is an ability that allows you to bring an enemy below a certain Health threshold based on the number of ilod powers you have and then it instantly kills them which means if you put all of your ithd powers on one character call the weak will basically kill anything that you bring below like 25 Health which is a lot and in combination with this build that's hitting pretty hard and making multiple attacks per round that is to say like five or six call the week is outrageously strong with this build so if you're just looking to do pure minmax damage definitely pick that up you basically just put all the powers on one character now if you're only interested in kind of getting the most out of this without a huge investment into the towers for something like roleplay reasons then you want luck of the far Realms which is going to allow you to guarantee a critical hit once per long rest and the prerequisite to pick that up favorable Beginnings will give you a big bonus the first time you attack something which can help push some damage through so while the ilth powers are not required by any means to make this work they will make this build incredibly effective focusing on call the week is definitely the best way to go again you'll just destroy everything if you use that which naturally brings us to combat combat with this build is interesting because it changes quite a bit over the course of the game because in the early game we're not going to be dealing a ton of damage most of our strength in the early game like levels one to four or five is pretty much support casting which is why I didn't mention spell casting too much as we were leveling up because truth be told the Spells you pick for this build and the longterm don't really matter much but you do want to focus on things that buff your party or control the enemy in some way so you want to focus on picking up ritual buff spells like long Strider because ritual spells if you didn't know allow you to cast a spell outside of combat without using a spell slot so this means ritual spells like long Strider which lasts the entire day that is Until you long rest again can be cast for free if you do an out of combat which means you can buff everyone for the entire day without costing a single spell slot with this character so stuff like that is important to prioritize and the other spells you want are things that will block enemies down this can be exceptionally helpful in the early game with things like sleep and Tasha's laughter really doing a lot of heavy lifting for you and then in addition you want to be using things like Bic inspiration to inspire your allies to make sure they're doing their best but the early game you are pretty much a support character however at levels four and level seven that changes a little bit because at level four at the latest you should be picking up the flourish ability from being a Bard at which point the occasional rain flourish giving you those extra attacks can be pretty useful but our biggest boost comes at level seven of course when we get our extra attack as well this allows us to make those at least five attacks per turn potentially even six once you get to level 9 that's assuming you don't use something like bik inspiration to inspire your allies still but at level seven you should start being able to average like a 100ish damage around and even more than that if you crit which means towards the later game often times the most efficient thing to do is simply attack because you'll be dealing so much damage that things will just die at which point you don't really need to worry about supporting your team members as much because you know things are just dead but even then you'll still want to be casting your Buffs and stuff at the beginning of the day making sure everyone's squared away you'll still be a versatile caster and there will be occasions where casting the occasional spell will be useful but like level s and onwards your primary focus should be just attacking enemies outright instead of the support role you were playing previously though there will be situations where it comes up and that combined with the fact that our AC should be pretty high the fact that this character can play the role of the face the one doing all the Talking means that this build should be able to do a little bit of everything which for me made it a really fun way to play the game and I certainly hope that's what it manages to be for you as well because in a game like this Balter Gate 3 having such a huge emphasis on the role-play aspects of things playing a Bard which is a class that goes pretty heavily into that as well is a real natural fit which makes this a very fun way to play the game so I hope people enjoy this build that said let me know what you think down in the comment section below which of course means to like comment subscribe all the YouTube jazz but regardless of any of that truly just thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing [Music] day

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 65,016

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, Baldurs Gate, BG3, BG2, BG1, Baldur's Gate, baldur's gate 3 story, baldurs gate 3, bg3 story, bg3 gameplay, bg3 multiclassing, baldurs gate 3 multiclassing, bg3 classes, bg3 review, baldurs gate 3 review, baldur's gate 3 combat, baldur's gate 3 review, bg3 bard build, bg3 bard, bg3 bard builds, baldurs gate 3 bards, baldurs gate 3 bard guide, bg3 bard guide, bg3 bard build guide

Id: ZbOPzfl3cmQ

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2023