Baldur's Gate 3: Druid Build - Death & Decay

[Music] foreign what's going on everybody mortum here this time bringing you another build video for Baldur's Gate 3 this time for the Druid class that I used for my third playthrough of the game as I'm moving through it to review the game after 100 people have asked me to post the builds and things that I use along the way which naturally I'm doing though to kick this video off I want to talk a little bit of an overview about what I had in mind how this sort of came together that kind of thing but I do want to mention towards the start here that while I enjoyed playing through the game as this particular build I will say that I don't think it suits the main character super well and it probably would have been best used as a Respec option for like Hausen or Jahira and the reason for that is that the concept at play here is a really really tanky support and Summoner style of gameplay we're going to be laying down a lot of aoes setting the terrain forcing enemies to come to us through dangerous territory while also summoning up a bunch of ghouls and fungal zombies with the Spore Druid subclass but as I mentioned we will be quite tanky which is true of most Druids in general But ultimately this build plays as an almost nature-oriented Necromancer this build came about after messing around with several of the Druid subclasses because I knew I wanted to do something with the Druid now my initial thought was circle of the moon for all of the available shape-shifting but I just couldn't get some of the interactions there to work in a way that I felt was fun and then Druid of the land is really more focused on the spell casting side of things they get a lot of great spells so of course I moved on to Spore Druid to make that a little more interesting we also pulled in a couple levels of Paladin towards the end of the game which brings me to my note on multi-classing ultimately I ran this build as 10 Spore Druid and then two levels of Paladin the oath doesn't actually matter as we are picking up Paladin for the Divine smite because occasionally with this build it was useful to just be able to competently hit things in melee as our rather straightforward focus of summons and support casting can occasionally leave us with a turn where we don't have much to do so being able to work in a really strong melee hit was just a useful thing to do so while the two levels of Paladin are hardly required I felt it added a certain amount of interaction to turns where I just wasn't doing anything otherwise and the trade-off there is your sixth level Druid spells which I just don't find particularly interesting I think most of the six level Druid stuff in this game is a little bit boring with the bigger thing you're losing there being your third ability score Improvement or feat but again the Paladin part of this isn't really necessary but it did feel like it added a certain something now with that in mind let's jump into character creation a little bit now I played this as a human simply because at some point I needed to check out what the most vanilla of the race choices in this game had to offer but ultimately though the race of this build just does not matter everything we need proficiency wise Etc is actually going to come directly from our class which means the choice of what race to use is completely down to you I will say that if I was going to pick one purely from a min max perspective I would pick half work but this is actually not because of their Savage attacks ability that they normally get which gives them extra damage on criticals we're mostly going to be spell casting so that doesn't come up what is useful there though is their other class feature that prevents them from dying once per day I believe and as an already really tanky class that just adds that much more to it but beyond that your choice here just isn't really gonna matter now I started with Druid and left the Paladin levels for the end of the game but realistically you could start with the two levels in Paladin if you wanted to but for this video's sake I'm going to walk you through how I built this which included paladins towards the very end so with that in mind for our can trips we want show as well as Thorn whip sheleighly is the big one here as this allows us to use our spell casting ability for our attack roll which in this case is wisdom on the rare occasions we want to make a melee attack you're going to want to do it with sheleighly in play that way you don't have to worry about strength or dexterity for our background I like to pick up folk hero this is going to add animal handling and survival to our list of proficiencies which bizarrely a druid is not proficient in naturally and they both use our wisdom stat realistically you could pick pretty much whatever you wanted here but keep in mind your background is giving you proficiencies and skills and you would like to pick ones that are going to be using your biggest skills which for us is probably going to be Constitution or wisdom speaking of ability scores though I personally like to take Charisma all the way down to eight we don't really need it for anything take wisdom all the way up to 17 preferably intelligence can stay at 10 Constitution to 15 and dexterity to 14. we don't need any points in strength we're not going to be using it for anything dexterity is going to be used because we are using medium armor as a druid medium armor limits your dexterity to AC bonus to 2 and 14 dexterity will give us the maximum bonus to our AC via that Medium armor it also provides a boost to our initiative but beyond that we should be okay because again on the rare occasion we make a melee attack we can use shalaylee to shift the attack roll for that onto wisdom which is what all of our spell casting uses as its ability score modifier which is naturally very helpful now let's talk leveling up a little bit again I'm going to walk you through this exactly how I leveled this class up but you could start with Paladin if you wanted to especially since the first few levels of Druid get off to a bit of a slow start and having Divine Smite available in the early game could be really helpful because otherwise Druids in general don't get a lot of their really good stuff until like level five plus so if you're leveling up as a druid most of the early game is is going to be revolving around control spells trying to keep enemies where you want them at least with this particular build that said when it comes to leveling up right at level 2 we are going to pick up symbiotic spores and Halo of spores as part of our Spore Druid subclass level 2 is also when we will actually pick this subclass but symbiotic entity is a major feature that we'll be using all the time this allows us to use our wild shape charges to surround ourselves with spores these spores are going to grant us temporary hit points while also adding additional necrotic damage to our attacks the necrotic damage is helpful for when we make the occasional melee swing but the main reason we're keeping an eye on this is for the temporary hit points if I'm being honest and then we have Halo of spores which allows us to use our reaction on our turn to deal a little bit of necrotic damage which is actually also buffed by the symbiotic entity so while this deals a small amount of damage it can be buffed with the other ability I just mentioned though do keep in mind you want symbiotic entity up pretty much all the time because if you lose those temporary hit points you lose the benefit to them next up though for level three the main thing to know here is Spike growth and Moonbeam which are Druid spells that we get just for leveling up Spike growth is incredibly useful for the early game it's going to help us slow enemies down and also deal tons of damage to them this falls off a bit in the later game when things start flying and can move around it pretty easily but early on most enemies will just kill themselves running through this Moonbeam is a movable AOE spell that we get at the same level which deals radiant damage and can be useful here and there especially if you're fighting something weak to radiant damage every turn you get an opportunity to spend your Action Moving this as well which can be pretty helpful level 4 pretty much just gives us a feat we're gonna go with an ability score Improvement and round out wisdom and Constitution bringing them both up to even numbers and granting us a bonus to both level five we're pretty much just going to pick up call lightning here as a spell which is a solid very reliable damage dealing spell and if you get enemies wet or they're just wet because of how they started combat or something this will actually deal double damage and can be very effective especially in the mid game level 6 however is where things start to get really interesting because this is where we will finally pick up one of our main Spore Druid abilities fungal infestation this is going to grant us four of a new class resource called fungal infestation charges this is going to allow us to raise various enemies and things as fungal zombies to help us out and while in the tabletop version these are pretty weak in the game they are very solid actually they only have nine hit points however it is impossible to kill them in a single hit as all of them when raised will have Undead fortitude this means when they die they will automatically regain one hit point instead of dying and have to be hit again to be taken out but it doesn't end there your fungal infestation zombies will when they hit an enemy for you debuff them with an effect that causes them to raise as zombies when killed if they still have the effect on at that time the zombies raised by that secondary method are temporary and they will die shortly after combat but this is a good way to quickly overwhelm our enemies and where things kind of start getting out of control with the amount of summons we have which we're even going to augment further a little bit later level 7 is also a really good level for us but simply because of spells this is where we're going to pick up blight ice storm and Wall of fire all very good AOE spells that can take us all the way to the end of the game while dealing effective damage then for level 8 this ultimately comes down to just another feat choice or last if you are choosing to multi-class and we're going to use this to take wisdom up to 20. and then on level 9 we are going to pick up insect swarm and Cloud kill for our Druid spells which are incredibly strong AOE spells that we're going to be using all the time in combat and then last but not least for our druid levels at level 10 we pick up spreading spores while symbiotic entity is active we can create a cloud of spores that will deal in The Chronic damage to enemies in the vicinity that does not hit our allies and the nice thing about this is that this spell if you will doesn't require concentration unlike a lot of the Spells we've mentioned up to this point which means we can layer this on top of the aoes we've already laid down which can prove very effective for levels 11 and 12 I went with two levels of Paladin the first level of Paladin isn't anything special just pick whatever oath you want and enjoy being able to use lay on hands which is a free heal really because it scales off of character level and not your Paladin level and then last but not least for our second level in Paladin for level 12 we're gonna pick up a fighting style I went with defense here for the extra Armor class and then just for free we pick up Divine Smite which is really useful for the occasional melee hit now before we start talking about how some of this plays out in combat and what the goal of a lot of this is we first need to talk about gear as you're moving through the game a few important things to keep in mind here are that my goal for gear was twofold increase my AC as much as possible to make us tankier while also preferably increasing our spell save DC which is to say reduce the chance of enemies resisting all of our various AOE spells by either making their saves and halfing the damage or avoiding it entirely so we're looking for gear that does those two things but I do want to mention first the Warped headband of intellect which will increase your intelligence to 17. this is a good item you can get early early in the game however it doesn't really accomplish either of those two things I just mentioned the reason I picked this up is because of a bizarre thing with Druids and the nature skill that doesn't quite make any sense because I was playing a druid I wanted to actually pass the nature checks but if you're unaware nature is an intellect skill that is to say it scales off of intelligence Druids the nature focused class use wisdom they don't need intelligence for anything so in order to make sure I was passing nature checks because I was a druid again and I wanted to see that role play aspect of it I went ahead and used that Helm to solve that problem now from there we can pick up a cloak of protection in Act 2 that gives us a plus one to our AC just generally useful for our main armor I used the adamantine scale mail pretty much through the entire game it's medium armor which is what Druids are proficient with and while you can certainly find some medium armor that will give you more AC Than This what I really love about this is that you cannot be critically hit while you're wearing this and combined with our temporary hit points are high AC the fact that we just can't be crit with this on makes us very very Tangy for gloves we have the hell dusk gloves these are a very late game item these come from a place called The House of Hope but they are perfect for what we want they are going to give us a plus one bonus to our spell attack rolls in spellsave DC and also grant us one to six fire damage on our weapon attacks we also get a free can trip called rays of fire that is kind of like scorching Ray but better and a plus one to strength saving throws but we're not really going to be using that much very late game item but very very good for our boots I found the evasive shoes which Grant you a plus one to Armor class I forget exactly where I picked these up but it was an Act 2 I believe off of vendor if my memory serves now for jewelry I do want to mention the Amulet of Greater Health this will increase your Constitution to 23. again very late game item also available in the House of Hope I call this one out specifically because there is a useful ability that we're going to talk about here in a minute that can potentially reduce your Constitution score by like five which is painful even with all of our temporary health points and everything so the Amulet of Greater Health just completely negates all that and was very helpful and then for our rings I just picked up stuff that would grant me extra damage such as the strange conduit ring from the mountain pass area that grants you extra psychic damage for your weapon attacks while you're concentrating on spell 1000 will be concentrating on the spell all the time and then I found the caustic band which also just granted us acid damage to our weapon attacks now for our weapons we're going to be going with a quarter staff and a shield The Shield we just want for the AC in particular I liked catherx Shield which drops off a boss in Act 2 specifically because it grants as a plus one bonus to our spellsave VC and spell attack rolls now for our Quarter Staff there's two that I would recommend one you can get relatively early from a vendor in the goblin Camp called the Golden wormling staff or something like that which was really useful but towards the end of act 1 right before you step into Act 2 in the mountain pass you can find a quest Giver outside the monastery area who has the cacophony Quarter Staff which has a little bit of Thunder damage and combined with all of our other damaging effects we as you can see here have a ton of them and when combined with shalaylee to use our wisdom modifier and then Divine Smite from our Paladin side of things the cacophony Quarter Staff with all of these effects together could occasionally when we needed to hit something in melee give us really really great damage for that one hit which I found helpful in a variety of situations now before we finally move on to the combat section while not necessary for this build at all there are two illicit powers that pretty much help out everyone which are favorable beginnings and luck of the far Realms favorable Beginnings Grant you a bonus to your first roll against any Target really which makes it easier to hit them which is very helpful and then luck over the far Realms on a successful attack roll can let you guarantee a critical which works for spells as well and can be pretty handy again neither of these are required for this to work but I thought it was worth calling out now the very very last thing before we talk about combat though it is combat related is the ghoul summoning skill that you can get for completing the necromancy of phase side quest there is a side quest that starts in act 1 when you find a necromancer's book underneath the lighted Village and if you complete that Quest all the way in act 3 in Baldur's Gate when it becomes available to complete you can get a skill that raises up six ghouls that in addition to all the zombies we're going to be summoning anyway really rounds out the summoner build to be nigh Unstoppable come the last Act of the game so I wanted to give it a mention as it is very very strong and it fits this build perfectly now when it comes to combat a few things to note before combat even starts make sure that you have your symbiotic entity charges up this is going to give us our temporary hit points which gives us a few Buffs in and of itself and also just makes us harder to kill now early game this build plays a lot differently than the later game early on most of what you're going to be doing is trying to control the battlefield this is usually going to come down to spike growth or other AOE abilities that are going to slow the enemy down like you know say in tangle or something Spike growth however is very strong and is a Mainstay of those for first few levels however right around the time that Spike growth starts being less useful that is to say around level 6 is when we can start making our fungal infestation zombies but a few things to note here about how they work I would actually recommend you try to have the zombies ready before combat you can make them in combat as a bonus action but the problem with this is you have to be within pretty much melee range to do so which can be difficult in and of itself but also what you can turn into a fungal infestation zombie is kind of limited it pretty much just needs to be a standard unharmed humanoid corpse it is weirdly restrictive with what you can raise with fungal infestation so I found the best bet was to just usually do that before combat otherwise it could be a problem another thing about this is that and this is also true for the ghouls as well around towns and friendly NPCs most of them have a negative reaction to all the undead zombies it won't actually affect anything or stop you but but they will run away from you which can be kind of annoying or it can be hard to like sneak in or steal something if that's your thing if all of the NPCs are swarming and acting erratically so do keep in mind about how things behave around the zombies out of combat now right after we get our zombies in the mid game we start getting access to a really strong damaging aoes that also make it difficult for the enemy to move such as ice storm or wall of fire ice storm does a bunch of damage and also makes the ground icy so enemies will trip and fall over themselves trying to move through it wall of fire does an incredible amount of damage to anything moving through it and we can use that to control the battlefield and our zombies to swarm everything after and then towards the late game is where things start getting really fun because we get access to our incredibly strong aoes like insect swarm Cloud kill are spreading spores ability and the ability to Divine Smite later so late game this usually involves all of our zombies and ghouls on top of us layering our aoes which are going to make it difficult for enemies to move which is going to effectively lock them down where we can then swarm them with our zombies and ghouls the ghouls in particular when they die explode and deal more damage so don't worry about running them into your own aoes as if anything it can still be pretty helpful and then if your fungal infestation zombies kill anything that will also be raised back up as a zombie and both between our control spells and all of these Undead minions we are going to be just dominating the action economy here which leads to a lot of really easy wins however occasionally and the reason we might actually want to make use of that melee attack every once in a while is that a lot of times all we really need to do on our turn is move an AOE or two or cast like a single Target spell and sometimes it's just easier to hit things in melee which is why we took the two levels of Paladin because while we can do this at any point up to this using sheleighly to make sure your weapon is scaling off of your wisdom stat and then hitting something with it for all those various damage image modifiers we've stacked up on top of divine Smite can give you some really good damage but even without Divine Smite you're still doing pretty decent damage which will just give you something to do in between the turns where your zombies and various control spells are just destroying the battlefield another point to keep in mind here though is that a lot of these spells require concentration while you are able to stack spreading spores on top of other aoes most of them are sort of mutually exclusive because of the concentration requirement it's also worth mentioning that if things hit you you might lose concentration which can be a problem and if you find that something you want to mitigate you can pick up the war Caster feat instead of one of our attribute increases which will help you with your concentration checks but for the most part it just didn't seem to be an issue once I had all of my Undead minions in place and this is mostly because between our pretty high AC probably 25 26 at least towards the end of the game on the lower end it might be like 23 or something depending on exactly how you built it were pretty hard to hit anyway and then we have all those temporary hit points Etc so we're also just really hard to kill on top of everything I just mentioned and all of that together made for a really fun build for my third playthrough even if it does get off to a somewhat slow start and the slow start as well as concentration being a really big deal that you need to manage on top of just honestly all these various effects and things you need to be aware of I would say are the biggest weak points of the build as it can be a little micro managing because having all these summons in play means that the turn-based combat can get a little bogged down at times which isn't going to be everybody's cup of tea but if you are looking to play a very very tanky Summoner style build that does a ton of damage utilizing death disease Decay I think this one could be for you again as a bit of a personal note I would have in retrospect preferred to have put this on Jahira or halson because for a main character build there were times where honestly I was a little bored on my turn but other wise I had a ton of fun with it and I hope you do as well so if you enjoyed the video like comment subscribe all that YouTube jazz let me know what you think of it down below 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 day [Music]

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 122,442

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 druid, baldurs gate 3 druid, bg3 druid builds, bg3 druid build, baldurs gate 3 druid build, baldurs gate druid builds, baldurs gate 3 druid class, bg3 druid gameplay, baldurs gate 3 druid gameplay

Id: 7X8GIa3TzcI

Length: 22min 33sec (1353 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 16 2023