Baldur's Gate 3: Sorcerer Build - Ride The Lightning

[Music] foreign what's going on everybody mortum here this time bringing you a sorcerer build for balder's Gate 3 as I continue to work my way through the game doing all sorts of playthroughs mainly with the origin characters at this point and my goal with this build which I'm calling Ride the Lightning is to capitalize on a well-known mechanic so to speak and essentially Crank that all the way up to 11. that mechanic is the fact that when enemies are wet larion has home ruled it that they take double damage from lightning which makes another common multi-class especially useful in this game however I don't think people took that quite far enough which is mixing Tempest cleric which gets an ability at level 2 to potentially maximize any lightning damage they deal with a sorcerer who can already deal a great amount of Elemental damage for an obvious Synergy of occasionally maxing out damage for a huge hit but this build aims to take that a step farther and really lean into attacking multiple times per round with incredibly heavy hitting abilities that will potentially lead us to do hundreds of damage to multiple Targets in a single turn I personally did this with Lazelle because her starting class is one that we're going to be using for our multi-classing so if you're looking for a good companion respect this would work for her or someone like Gail for instance who's likely already going to be filling the Caster role for you but as you get the Yankee are sort of naturally Gish style characters that is to say characters that both spell cast and participate in martial combat this felt like a natural fit for Lazelle regardless of whether or not you respect a companion or go with a custom character let's explain what's going on here to start with the multi-classing we're ultimately going to be combining three different classes to make this work instead of the normal two we're going to be mixing fighter cleric and sorcerer typically people only mix Tempest cleric and Sorcerer And this is just to occasionally maximize the lightning damage but the problem with just that basic multi-class is that in order to take advantage of making characters wet to deal the double damage that we can do in this game we need to take an action to make that happen which is where something like a Fighter's action surge can come in handy on top of anything that can grant us haste such as a speed potion the spell haste and a few other sources such as a bloodlust Elixir for instance so while the Tempest cleric will actually Grant a sorcerer things like heavy armor and martial weapon proficiencies that a fighter would also give them what it doesn't do is give us the extra action per turn and while there's other ways to get that I think fighter makes a lot of sense here simply because fifth level spells which not taking fighter would ultimately grant us with this don't really contribute anything the normal multi-class split here would be two Tempest cleric and 10 Sorcerer And this would Grant you fifth level spells with two six level spell slots the thing is we don't actually need fifth level spells here they don't give us anything that we're going to need at that level so we're not losing any spells by taking levels in fighter we're simply losing a couple of spell slots these six level ones in particular in exchange for Action Surge and something like action search combined with a few other abilities that would give us haste is going to allow us to either apply the wet status to enemies by throwing water at them or casting create water much more easily or alternatively it just gives us another chance to cast a double damage Lightning Spell which means action Surge from Fighter the one maximized charge of lightning damage from two levels of Tempest cleric and eight levels of sorcerer is still going to give us two Feats or ability score improvements access to up to fifth level spell slots and the ability to potentially three or four times per turn if you set it up properly cast a double damage lightning bolt with one of them potentially being maximized which all around equates to potentially hundreds of damage to multiple targets so from there let's move on to some other things to get this build up and running for you starting with character creation character creation is very basic if you pick Lazelle she's pretty much got most everything we want right out of the gate the only thing we're gonna do if you pick Lazelle is adjust her ability scores a little bit and pick her fighting style for her fighting style you either want archery or great weapon fighting you could theoretically pick defense but archery or great weapon fighting are going to make the early levels a lot lot easier for us and then we have our ability scores now ultimately what we're going to want here is as much Charisma as we can get which the max bonus we're able to get from Charisma character creation is going to be from 16. you could take it up to 17 but it's not going to do us any good and with the three multi-class going on we really don't want to bother getting it 217. you could do that and then get the hagh hair quest for award for a potential plus one Charisma to round it out to 18 but it's important to remember that the early levels where we're taking fighter and cleric levels are going to be a little bit awkward in terms of our bonuses to hit until we get going so because because of that I ultimately went with 12 inch strength 14 in dexterity we mostly want dexterity for the initiative bonus we're going to be wearing heavy armor so we're not going to get any extra dexterity to our AC or anything but it will help us move faster in combat Constitution to 14 and then intelligence and wisdom at 10. mostly say we don't take a penalty you could theoretically drop intelligence and wisdom down as well if you wanted to bump up strength or something to make the early game easier but that's up to you honestly as long as you got charisma at 16 or 17 you will be golden in terms of skills not really something I was worried about for this particular build but generally I went with perception intimidation and Athletics and acrobatics this is mostly because this is what we're going to get the biggest bonuses to and because we have all that Charisma we can talk our way through quite a few situations and with the intimidation proficiency that can be pretty helpful now if you want to play this build with any other character or race Etc basically you just want to make sure you have these ability scores and then you're pretty much golden get the Yankee in general I think are probably the best race for this overall simply because they get a lot of passive bonuses that will help us out such as their free access to Misty Step at I believe it's level five and their astral knowledge proficiency for the day is also really useful and any other race isn't a bad option by any means so you could realistically play this as any race you want as long as you get your ability score sorted out there's really no wrong answer there moving on to leveling up however level two we're gonna finish finish off getting a fighter which just involves taking action surge at level two there's nothing else of note there and then for levels three and four we're going to pick up our cleric levels our cleric levels are not particularly exciting but there's a couple things I want to draw your attention to for starters make sure you pick up the Tempest domain as this build does not work with anything else if you're playing Lazelle or any Geth Yankee character you can pick blacketh as your deity which is fun but that part truth be told also doesn't really matter however for our prepared spells with our low wisdom we're only going to get to prepare one spell it's gonna default to guiding bolt however what you can do instead is pick up create water or prepare create water later to help you out it's not necessary here in the early levels but it will keep you from having to tote water bottles around everywhere but we'll talk a little more about that in the combat section level 4 of cleric is much the same we're going to get the destructive wrath passive which is what is going to allow us to maximize our lightning damage once per short rest and we'll be able to prepare one more spell now after we get those first four levels out of the way we can focus on the main thing our character is going to be doing which is of course being a sorcerer so at character level 5 we'll pick up our first sorcerer level for can trips we're gonna get four but we really only need to pick up shocking grasp which is our lightning can trip for spells you either want magic Missile and chromatic orb or witchbolt and chromatic orb it really doesn't matter if you get magic Missile or which bolt we're likely not going to be using either of them a ton chromatic orb is the big spell here and that's because chromatic orb allows us to cast it as lightning damage so it's going to become one of our biggest single Target spells from here on out for our subclass you might be tempted to go storm sorcery here however I find that the much better option is draconic and this is because at level 6 draconic bloodline Sorcerers get an ability that will increase their lightning damage by allowing them to add their Charisma modifier to it which will affect every Target we hit as opposed to the level 6 storm sorcery ability which allows us to hit one other Target with potential lightning damage which is ultimately going to be less so while storm sorcery isn't a bad option and honestly any of these would work draconic Bloodlines specifically with a blue dragon ancestor will get us some extra lightning damage in the long run however level 6 is where things start really getting interesting because this is when we're going to put all of our further levels into sorcerer which is when we can pick up our meta magic so we want to pick up twin spell and distance spell twin spell is going to allow us to Twin a chromatic orb and hit two Targets with it and then distance spell allows us to increase the range of our spells by up to 50 percent which can be a huge increase for something like lightning bolt in particular meta magic which we gain access to at level 2 of sorcerer allows us to spend our sorcery points on meta magic which Alters our spells with these abilities twin dispel is especially useful in some of the earlier levels but for the most part these are just bonuses we don't necessarily need them now at level 7 we're will get one more metamagic option I personally like to pick up quickened which occasionally allows us to cast a spell as a bonus action which just gives us more options this is pretty expensive and it costs three sorcery points but occasionally it can be really useful especially if we don't need to move on our turn beyond that the spell you pick up there doesn't really matter I personally like things like cloud of daggers but the next big level is level 8 which gives us our first feat we're going to take the ability score Improvement bring our Charisma up to 18 if it's not already 20 if it is but mostly just pump up your charisma now level nine is probably the biggest level of this build because level nine is when we are going to pick up lightning bolt a very high damage ability and one of our main damage dealers as it hits everything in a line now levels 10 and 11 are pretty boring we're mostly going to pick up extra spells we don't need things don't really start to get interesting again until Level 12. when we pick up our last feat you either want war Caster or another ability score Improvement if your charisma is already at 20 you don't really need the extra ability score Improvement here so you'll pick up War caster which lets you use shock and grasp as a reaction which can be pretty great for us and it also gives us advantage on concentration saving throws which is just generally pretty helpful but realistically won't come up a ton so now that we've got leveling out of the way let's talk about gear a little bit before we start talking about combat now the nice thing about this build probably the nicest thing about it honestly is that it is really not gear dependent at all we're going to have heavy armor proficiency and weapon proficiency and we're going to make use of those things but realistically you don't need any gear to make this work so pretty much every bit of gear for this build is purely extra nonetheless there are a few pieces in particular I want to call out such as the birthright Helm that you can get in act 3 from the Sorceress sundry shop you can just buy it it will give you a plus two to your charisma which will make our life a little bit easier and then for our actual armor and things like that basically you just want as much Armor class as you can get there's a variety of really good heavy armor pieces throughout the game in act 1 you can pick up the adamantine heavy splint male from the adamantine Forge by crafting it that'll take you pretty much to the end of the game if you want the in boss of Act 2 drops Reaper's Embrace which is great and then in Acts 3 you can get the best heavy armor in the game which drops off of a devil and a boss fight everything else is just extra and for stats however do keep in mind some equipment will help us save on spell slots which will be in short supply if we are blasting things three or four times per round there's a couple of necklaces you can get throughout acts 1 and 2 that can help you with this but then later in act 3 we have a few different options which brings me to weapons now weapons are a little interesting because in the early game we're gonna need them quite a lot like act one and a bit of Act 2 weapons are important because we're not going to have a lot of spells to cast because we haven't gotten to the sorcerer levels necessary so until like level six or seven you're going to be using that weapon which means getting things like the everburn blade from the tutorial boss before you leave can be really helpful or just using any good bow can as well but there's a few later game weapons I want to call your attention to there's the soul breaker Greatsword which we get in the mountain pass at the end of act 1 which is especially great it's great for hitting things in melee of course it has a special ability that can potentially stun a Target however probably the better thing about it is that it will give us a plus two bonus to our initiative while it is equipped and even after we stop using that weapon we still get that initiative bonus which can be really helpful because it means we get to go earlier in combat and there's not a lot of ways to buff that outside of just raising your dexterity which we don't really need now for bows for the most part you just kind of want whatever bow you happen to be using it will be helpful in the early act and then later on it's going to be useless but in act 3 there is a really good bow that can help us out because of an ability that it has which is gone term male I believe is how it's pronounced this drops off a boss in act 3 and while we won't be using this for damage at that point what we can use from this is Celestial haste which is just a haste spell that is better than regular haste though do keep in mind if you do use this you ideally want to use it before combat starts Celestial haste is better though because what it does is give you haste without any drawbacks normal haste causes you to be lethargic afterward which effectively stuns you for a turn after haste ends whereas Celestial haste doesn't do that it's just a pure haste effect with no downside so grabbing this bow in act 3 and then casting that on yourself before combat starts can be a great way to get an initial extra action right away last but not least for equipment I want to talk about a couple different staffs really all available in act 3 which come with the Arcane battery feature again there's actually more than one of these you can find one in the House of Hope and you can find one in the tower of sorceress Sundries both of them have Arcane battery which effectively allows you to cast a spell without using a spell slot once per I believe it's long rest which can help us save some spell slots and while this will require us to equip a Quarter Staff by the time we get these we won't be using our weapon anyway which makes it a viable option so something to keep in mind there now in terms of illicit Powers again we don't need any of them at all this build will work wonders without them but if you would like to pick them up you pretty much want the usual suspects favorable Beginnings luck of the far Realms psionic backlash call of the week Etc now I will say the tricky part with this particular build and the illithib powers is that we don't get a ton of use out of them because of the way we're attacking things luck of the far Realms requires you to make an attack roll to crit which we're just not going to be doing a lot of because we're doing a lot of AOE Focus damage it can be useful early game when we're using our weapons though favorable Beginnings is always useful as this just makes us more likely to hit things which can help when you're casting a spell that uses an attack roll such as chromatic orb and then every other tadpole power is basically just general use so you don't need any of them but they can certainly enhance is what you're capable of doing but now finally let's talk combat a little bit combat with this build is interesting like a lot of more Powerhouse multi-class builds it doesn't come online until about end of act 1 start of act two and even then for this build you don't get the really high-end stuff until the end of act two but for the first few levels while we are picking up our fighter and cleric levels really all you want to be doing is attacking or casting the occasional spell to the best of your ability in these early levels most everyone is about the same we're gonna have slightly lower stats with using our bow or melee weapon so we might not hit super often unless we go to some measures to make that happen but generally you should keep up with people decently okay now things start to come together for us when we hit level five and start taking our sorcerer levels though I will say as soon as you pick up your cleric levels you'll get access to a spell like Thunder Wave that's going to allow you to push enemies around which can help you knock them off of things and creative ways like that will help you until you get to level five and start picking up the rest of it so you're hardly useless until then so be sure to keep that in mind now between levels 5 and level 9 a lot of what we're going to be doing is twinning chromatic orbs at people with lightning damage which means of course trying to maximize that effect and even at these levels you can still hit multiple targets for like 50 60 damage potentially which can be really helpful however in order to do that we do need to make those targets wet which means either casting something like create water which effectively makes it rain in an area or throwing a water bottle at them you can have Lazelle do this herself such as just using her action to throw and then using like action surge or haste or a potion to give you an extra action and attack on the same turn as an alternative to that if you have any other character with you that happens to have a cleric level such as say shadow heart she can be the one to cast create water for you which will then allow you to use both of your potential actions with Lazelle or maybe even three if you set it up properly to just deal damage with like a twin Chrome automatic orb which can make your damage per round substantially higher than you might think because at that point you can hit wet targets for potentially 50 damage each multiple times in a round which of course adds up to hundreds of damage provided you set it up now level 9 and onward is where things kind of get crazy because we're going to be spamming lightning bolts for potentially double damage which is going to deal hundreds of damage per enemy if you set it up properly now on the first turn of all these attacks remember that you can activate destructive wrath for a guaranteed maximized lightning damage roll if we do this more than once obviously we won't be able to maximize every attack but we can do that guaranteed Max roll at least once and then follow it up with several double damage lightning bolts purely from them being wet so while the follow-ups won't be maximized they'll still be really great and you can reset destructive wrath in between combat simply by short resting so all that's simple enough to understand so let's talk about a few of the potential drawbacks for this obviously the build isn't invaluable and there are a couple of what I would consider weak points for starters this build is going to burn through spell slots like crazy it doesn't matter how many you have when you are casting potentially three or four times per round you're going to burn through spell slots and while I think the damage trade-off there is worth it do be mindful you're going to find yourself resting a lot now the other big weakness here is that some enemies are either resistant or immune to lightning damage this doesn't come up a lot but it does happen resistant to lightning damage enemies will still take normal damage from being wet and then attacked that can be pretty helpful for a few different zombies throughout the game who are resistant to lightning so while you won't deal as much damage to those creatures you can still deal plenty the main problem is enemies who are flat out immune to it though generally those enemies are immune to many things and not just lightning damage but as with any build that focuses on one element you do get a bit weaker when the enemy is immune to it the catch there is to remember that you are also a sorcerer period which means you can cast other spells that are not lightning based such as cloud of daggers maybe even Fireball Etc it just won't be as strong another thing to remember is that the build is very positional that is to say in order to make use of our lightning bolt things need to be lined up appropriately you obviously don't want to hit just one enemy with that lightning bolt we're going to cast it multiple times so maybe that's not a big deal to you but obviously if we can line enemies up and thus move positions this can be even better this is where being a Geth Yankee can really help us out because we get that Misty step which will allow us to use our bonus action to get into position all of that said though if you're willing to take the time and set up combat encounters get yourself in position the payoff there is dealing multiple hundreds of damage to multiple targets which even on tactician mode is pretty much just gonna melt everything the trade-off there being that like mini builds we get a bit of a slow start in act one overall though that's pretty much what this build looks like I certainly hope you enjoyed it let me know what you think about it down below if you've been used using anything similar I'd love to know about it or if you just have any questions feel free to ask them in the comments section which of course means like comment subscribe all that 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 day [Music]

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 55,586

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, baldurs gate 3 review, baldur's gate 3 combat, bg3 sorcerer build, sorcerer build, bg3 sorcerer, baldurs gate 3 sorcerer, baldurs gate 3 sorcerer build

Id: XXBxyycXu_A

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 19 2023