Baldur's Gate 3 - The Branded Soul (Minthara Build)

all right I am back with another video and now we are doing the second build in my origin not origin companion the regular companion series uh minara uh we did house already so it kind of just made sense for me to do minara next as it's she's likely to be one of the characters you'd meet around the same time and it's probably the second one you'll recruit at least before uh you know patch six or five I guess it technically was for six fixed a bunch of bugs where now you can recruit her in any playthrough so I'm kind of glad I waited to do this series because it's nice to be able to recruit Menara both on a good and evil run so you know you get one of the best companions in the game pretty easily uh yes Menara is one of my personal favorites and when me and the rest of the members of our community were building this on stream it was quite interesting I have never seen so much debate over how to build a character ever because house it was pretty cut and dry we knew he was going to be a moon Droid and jira and Minsk were pretty much done deals as well but manthara was really tricky we knew there was going to be Paladin in there somewhere as per the rules of this series I have to start with their original starting class but the rest of it man was really tricky there were some people who wanted to go for rogue some people who wanted to go for uh Ranger some people who wanted to mix him fighter because there's so many different things about Mena's character and her general you know you know battle strategies that come with her normally that it was really hard to narrow down one strategy and there was a lot of debate going back and forth and in the end I actually had to bust out a straw pole and have a general vote on what Menara should be and this is what we came up with and honestly I'm pretty happy with it it's a combination that I wasn't expecting to work but when you consider what Menara has going for her including some of her unique abilities that are exclusive to her the build that we came up with actually makes a ton of sense and I'm really happy that we picked it up uh but there are a ton of different ways you can build manthara a lot of them would make sense in fact if you're the looking for other ideas I would definitely check out of a stream where we built these guys it is a VA on the channel you just have to go to like the little live section on the channel page you can find it and I'd highly recommend going through it because again Menara is such a complex and widely diverse character but there's so many things you could do with her but this is what we landed on as a community and it's a build that I'm quite proud of because I think it is really effective while still making use of what makes Menara work so let's get into the build no surprise here as part of the rules of the series I need to use uh the original starting class so we're going to be going with Paladin Paladin is going to give us a bunch of things that we want our weapon and armor proficiencies and of course our usual Paladin kit as for our subass or our oath we are going with oath of Vengeance that's what she is by default and it makes perfect sense for her character meara's whole drive and motivation to join your party in the first place is to get revenge on the absolute and the people who wronged her namely the game's main antagonists so the O of Vengeance makes sense you could also spin oath breaker as well if you take her leaving the absolute to join your side as her breaking her oath to that organization but we kind of decided that oath of vengeance is a bit more fitting but if you like oath Breer that absolutely Works oath of vengeance is going to give us inquisitors might allowing ourselves or analyze weapons to deal an additional three radiant damage and can da enemies for one turn for two turns it's a bonus action takes our Channel OA it's okay probably not going to be using this one too much as for power ability schools are going to look a little bit strange I think for people who know manthara but hear me out we're going with dexterity as our main weapon attacking St I think a lot of people would tend to use her with two-handed weapons but we kind of decided that we liked a slightly different method that I'll get into later Constitution is at 14 I still think it's a pretty happy middle ground for the levels we'll be going for we'll have a decent chunk of HP by the end intelligence and strength are both at eight we don't need them wisdom is at 12 just for the saving throws I do think manthara can be quite wise but maybe she's maybe she's not as smart she did kind of end up with the absolute and I know that's not her fault mind control and all that I don't know why I just said that Menara is smart it's just stats ignore me and Charisma is at 16 because obviously we're a paladin it is going to be our spell casting stats as for our skill proficiencies Menara comes with I'm not actually sure what background this is but it gives us history and persuasion so that's quite neat we're also going to be able to get perception because she is a drought and I've decided to pick up intimidation and religion intimidation makes a ton of sense because she's Menara and religion I mean she is kind of a religious person you know between L and the absolute she kind of knows her way around a church the absolute don't have churches and I'm not sure L does either at least not on the surface World anyways uh religion makes sense for her but Insight can also work next up at level two we obviously get the main stuff we want from Paladin and that is divine smites allowing us to spend spell slots in order to deal a butt ton of damage uh we also get a fighting style and we're not actually going to really be needing any of these uh we're not going to be using a two-handed weapon so great weapon fighting doesn't work for us we're not going to be wielding only a weapon in one hand so that's not really going to do it for us either and then there's protection so no uh so defense kind of is our only option here I mean feel free to pick one of these other ones up if you maybe want to switch up the blaz St a little bit but for what we're going for here a nice little buff to our Armor class won't go a Miss as for our spells I mean obviously we're playing a rather offensive Paladin I want all of the Smite spells especially raffle Smite because manthara comes packed in with a lith powers and as such psychic damage is kind of her thing so getting raffle Smite makes total sense but of course I want searing Smite because this is also quite on theme for her if we consider her unique Soul branding ability which does extra fire damage I'll get more into that later and of course thunderous Smite is always nice to have as well compell duel and command would be my other two choices muara would absolutely challenge someone to fight her and she was a commander so it makes sense for her to well command overall I think this is quite a nice spread at Paladin level three we're going to be picking up some really important things for this build and one of the main reasons I wanted to go oath for vengeance namely o vow of enmity allowing us to gain advantage on attack rolls against a single enemy for 10 turns at the cost of our channnel oath this is super important for the build we're going to be wanting that Advantage we're also going to be getting some other stuff here like Bane and Hunter's Mark added to our spell list Hunter's Mark is actually kind of nice it's going to give us extra damage if we want it at the cost of our concentration which most of the time we're not really going to be using on much else so you might as well throw it up we also because we are a Dr we get fairy fire at this level which is nice and we get to prepare an extra spell uh it's entirely up to you what you like like Shield of Faith could be another good concentration option same with heroism which the game has picked for us which I'll probably go with but it's a peck your poison situation far I look this way thank you at Paladin level four we're going to be picking up our first feat and all I want to do is bump up that dexterity it is our main attacking stat less worried about the Charisma score with this build I mean 16 is usually okay for palad and stuff as you're mainly going to want to be using just regular Divine spite with this build and the other stuff is kind of utility based or I mean I guess we have spell safe DC stuff but you're mainly going to be smiting let's be real here so let's continue with our dexterity and just beef that up next up at Paladin level five we're finally going to be getting extra attack meaning now we can attack twice per turn with our action which you know I mean you know what that does but though another really important thing we're going to get here is Darkness we can only use it once per long rest but being able to Blind creatures is going to be super important for us as as it's another way of gaining Advantage as for our prepared spells we do get to pick level two Spells at this point and I definitely want branding Smite she literally has a kind of thing around branding it's kind of her theme like branding herself branding other things I mean yeah brandings might make sense here uh and as for your other spell you can pick up whatever you like again if you're not really focusing on concentrating on too much else if you're not really using these spells too much the magic weapon could just be a nice concentration spell to have just giving you a weapon a plus one bonus to attack and damage rolls I mean I usually don't recommend this because usually there's better concentration options but for this build it's actually not too bad so sure why not and now we're going to be leaving Paladin Vengeance Paladin doesn't get some of the better Aura stuff in fact it doesn't even get a secondary Aura other like the other ones uh the other Oaths it gets Relentless Avenger giving you more movement speed which is okay but I kind of want other stuff more so we're going to be heading on over to Rogue yes Rogue we are using dexterity based finesse weapons which means sneak attack attack is going to work and for those of you that don't know sneak attack and divine Smite stack you can use them in tandem which means if we go to higher levels in Rogue which we're going to want to do with this build cuz it's going to give us a nice uh utility we're going to get a lot of damage off so let's do it we're going to get so like I said we're going to get sneak attack as well as a couple uh an extra skill proficiency and a couple of expertise I absolutely want intimidation expertise 100% and I kind of like piing up acrobatics here just because I don't like being shoved around but any anything else here will work just fine but getting expertise and persuasion and intimidation is kind of nice it's entirely up to you at Rogue level two we're going to be picking up our cunning action hide Dash and disengage cunning action Dash is going to be extremely important for this build giving us some maneuverability that close- range melee Fighters like us absolutely love so I'm quite happy to have it here at uh Rogue level three somehow I blanked on the name there uh we get to choose our subass and I mean we're not doing I mean there's a couple of things we could go with there was another debate that we actually had to have between what Rogue subclass we'd already decided that we wanted Rogue but what subass were we going to pick it was between thief and assassin assassin has some properties that we quite like like for example guaranteed critical hits for something like a paladin who likes Divine Smite that's very nice as well as being able to regain our action economy as soon as combat starts so we can get a critical hit Divine Smite and then immediately go back into full combat and also gaining advantage on attack rolls against creatures I haven't taken a turn yet again another way to get Advantage is really nice but there's something else we wanted more and that's that second bonus action and again you'll see why when we get into the equipment and abilities later but that second bonus action is going to be super super useful for this whole build we'll get you'll understand trust me it makes sense I know it's kind of the meta pick but it does make sense for Menara here and people just and I know and there was some thing in the chat were like well she's not a thief it's it goes against her character and I'm like well you don't have to actually flavor it as a thief it's not her being a thief it's her being a dextrous marshall fighter that's just it not everything has to be what it says on the tin use your imagination next up at Rogue level four we get to pick up another feat and I'm going to be the most boring person on Earth and just max out our deck it again this is the stat I care most about this is going to make our sneak attacks huge our dry smite's huge it's going to make everything huge so we absolutely want to just max this thing out and have a lot of damage at Rogue level five we get to pick up uncanny Dodge when an attack uh I believe this is only once per turn I don't know this is just there one second everybody there's going to be a weird cutter cuz I I have forgotten things okay yep I was right this happens once per round but there's little bit of weirdness to it so UNC County Dodge does use your reaction but it doesn't actually appear in the reaction menu but basically once per round uh you can use your lightning Crick with reflexes to protect yourself when an attack hits you you only take half the usual damage we don't have a lot of reaction based stuff here anyway so it's not really going to matter for us so just having that extra bit of tankiness on a Frontline fighter is really nice uh yeah I don't know why I kind of had to remember if it was once per round and yes it is I don't know why I thought it was maybe like once per short rest or something but yes it is once per round sorry for that everyone I should probably do my research before I record you know I've been doing this for like 6 months now I still don't fully research things I'm really bad at this I just turn on the camera and say go anyways at Rogue level six we're going to be able to get some more skill expertise and I quite like picking up uh religion here again she is a bit of a religion person and it's up to see what else you kind of want I think acrobatics could be nice just to make you completely immovable from being pushed getting that plus 13 to it it might be slightly Overkill you might want to pick up something else but I quite like this here yeah that's all we get at this level who do and at Rogue level seven which is going to be our final level we're going to get evasion uh your whatever we a spell or effect would deal half damage on a successful saving on a successful successful dexterity saving throat there you go deals no damage if you succeed and only half if you fail basically now we have even more tankiness against a lot of spells like Fireball overall we've made ourselves pretty tanky yes our HP isn't the highest but the ability to cut damage in half and be able to maybe even not take damage from Spells at all it's actually really really nice so overall this build is quite tanky you get a lot of tanky stuff out of Rogue it's really interesting uh and the main reason we also wanted to go to Rogue level s is we've now hit a pretty decent tier of sneak attack one of the higher damage tiers you can get so it's really going to be f ourselves up so that's the end of the levels and that is the build so with this you're going to be getting a really tanky and Powerful Frontline fighter sneak attack which as I said as I said before is now a 4 D6 which is quite nice uh topped off with Divine Smite that can deal quite a bit of damage when they're stacked together and they do stack together you can deal a lot of damage we also have a lot of ways of getting Advantage between Darkness uh vow of enity all of that sort of thing we get some extra like Misty step and hold person which can make all our attacks guaranteed to be critical hits if you're against a humanoid get GES uh and also just again we just have a bunch of utility we have high movement speed thanks to our Rogue levels we have a lot of um you know weapon and armor proficiencies so you can wear heavy armor which is what we're doing here if you want to be tanky and of course Menara herself gets a an ability unique to her that being Soul branding and this is quite important for the build bestow the absolutes flames on a creature its movement speed increases by 1.5 M and the next attack deals an additional 5 to 3 to9 my apologies fire damage this condition ends upon Landing a successful attack or if you don't attack it lasts three turns so this is manara's unique Soul branding ability and it essentially allows us to for free as long as we have a bonus action buff up our attacks there's no once per turn once per short rest once per long rest limit on this as long as you have bonus actions you can keep doing it so the idea is yes we're dual wielding these two bonus actions can be used to buff up our main actions even further that of that of ourselves or our allies so we now have two attacks that are going to be dealing extra fire damage so it was a nice way to incorporate meara's basic abilities so you attack on that fire damage with Divine Smite sneak attack you're going to be having a good time but let's get into the actual equipment now we'll start off with the weapons I have gone for the justitia citar which is a plus two uh citar so a light finesse weapon which whenever we attack with Advantage which remember we're doing a lot you have a chance of blinding the target blinding the blinded targets have disadvantage on attack rolls and the range of their attacks and spells are reduced to 3 m and attack rolls against them have Advantage so you're just building up more Advantage it also comes with a unique weapon attack called Shadow soaked blow allowing you to strike an enemy adding your proficiency bonus to the damage and moreover if it hits it deals an additional 1d6 psychic damage and this attack doesn't break concealment so if you do man to get the jump on your fo it's pretty decent only useable once per short rest like all weapon skills but hey it's nice as a pretty big Nova attack if you manage to hit a critical hit on this and apply your sneak attack and your Divine spine at the same time on top of the extra damage from this and the extra damage from Soul branding oh boy you're going to that's a lot of damage right there we're also going to be adding on to this with the render of Mind and Body in the off hand since we're kind of using our bonus action more for soul branding I kind of wanted a buffing weapon in the off hand and while this weapon will still still do a good job as an attacking weapon it mainly is here for its ability when the Wilder attacks with Advantage they deal an additional 1d8 psychic damage so now we're adding even more damage to our main attacks which is just flat out insane as for our ranged weapon slot I've gone with the dead shot allowing us to reduce the number we need to roll the critical hit while attacking by one and this effect can stack with other similar effects basically this just means that now we have a higher chance to crit which means that we have a higher chance for high damage Dage sneak attacks and divine smites so that's pretty nice but this also comes with another ability since unlike my last build we can actually use this weapon the we a double set proficiency bonus when rolling rang attacks with this weapon unless they have disadvantage which we never really should and it's a plus two bow so it's going to give you a lot of options at range as well because Soul branding works also on ranged attacks so if you need to you can use it and you'll see and you will have seen in the combat footage if it got far enough in that we got to the sack steel Watcher you will see that the that the bow came in very handy in a certain situation now let's get into the actual equipment itself because there's a lot to talk about here first up we have seo's horned helmet now the idea we kind of went for with Menara is that she kind of collects trophies specifically especially against the people that uh wronged her but just general but just generally powerful enemies as well so she kind of ended up picking some pieces of gear from bosses sao's horned helmet allows her to gain extra dark vision reduces the number she needs to roll the critical hit by one again so now we critical hit on a 19 on an 18 or higher and she cannot be frightened or affected with other emotion altering conditions which is just perfect for Menara and while this and this is an act three option after a pretty hard boss fight so in the meantime you can use the dark justi your helmet you have a plus one bonus to saving throws against spells and while obscured for number you need to roll a critical hit while attacking is reduced by one basically a slightly worse version of sabo's helmet but we can obscure ourselves if you remember correctly with darkness and also another ability that we'll be picking up through the cloak of cunning broom whenever we disengage which remember we can do using one of our two bonus actions we also create a foggy cloud with within a 2 m radius of us that lasts for a turn essentially allowing us to make ourselves obscured whenever we want and also being able to disengage quite easily because we'll be we'll be making our enemy's Vision obscured as well and again this can kind of work a bit like a diet Darkness to kind of get off some of those Advantage hits basically for free so that's kind of nice but you if you don't care so much for that especially since it's a bit weird fashion wise with kind of what I've gone for here then the nymph cloak is a good replacement if you want to lean more into the athid theme this will allow you to cast dominate person once per long rest yes allowing you to basically mind control an enemy leading into the elith side of things which he absolutely does have next up taking the piece of armor from someone who from one of the people who wronged her the most Reapers Embrace cic forms armor this allows all incoming damage dealt to Menara to be reduced by two so now we're even tankier and it also comes with Reaper rigidity when activated you cannot be moved against your will by any spell or action but have disadvantage on dexterity saing throws so it's a bit of a double-edged sword if you decide you don't want to wear this one um specifically for that then then I do have another option here that I think works quite nicely but just the idea of her taking Keck Armor after the fight is so nice uh as for our gloves these ones are kind of required as we are dual wielding but not I guess not really uh I will remind everyone that this is following my origin build Series rules in which I cannot repeat equipment used on other builds so that all these builds can be used in the same playthrough so I was a little bit limited for options especially since we're so far down the line now so I kind of had to pick and choose the gloves of the balance hands allow us to get two weapon fighting without having to take a dip into fighter allowing us to make an attack of our offhand weapon and add the ability modifier to the damage of the attack like a main hand attack uh but again since we're kind of using our main bonus action more for buffing you can swap this out if you like but if you want to be able to dual wield as well and use that of hand attack when necessary then this is how you do it with full power but you if you're not sticking to my origin build rules and you don't want to use all of those so you have equipment from those other builds then I'm sure there's something that'll fit better on here perhaps the hell dust gloves uh but for now the gloves at the balance hand are a decent option and in a similar vein we have the line breaker boots once per turn whenever you dash which remember we can do quite often with our bonus actions uh we gain wrath for two turns so manthara gets a little bit angry we and wrath will give us a plus one bonus to damage of melee weapons for every turn the condition has remaining so if you quickly Dash twice with a bonus action uh you're going to get like a plus four to your damage with your melee weapons which is kind of sick so yeah I mean it's a fun little option so you know feel free to use it uh as for our accessories uh I have picked up the pearl of power amulet which allows us to restore any spell slot up to level three once per long rest as an action so you get an extra Divine Smite basically cuz unfortunately with the way this build works we do only get level two spell slots but when it comes to power this is more than enough as for the ring we have here I've gone for the ring of poison resistance Dr and M as well do tend to work with poison quite a bit so it makes sense that they may build up somewhat of an immunity to it and again I was kind of limited for options here so you have to forgive me the Ring of poison but having a nice resistance to poison damage which won't come up too often but can come up is nice to have but feel free to swap this outfit whatever you like and finally the eversight ring preventing us from being blinded so we're not affected by our own Darkness if we want to use that to gain Advantage I was surprised I hadn't used up this ring yet so it was nice to throw it on a build that made sense uh if you want an alternative to the parallel power amulet though we do have the surgeon's subjugation amulet once per a long rest when scoring a critical hit which we should be able to do fairly frequently you can paralyze the target for two turns it's okay I kind of flavored it as putting like a drown poison on your blade that paralyzes people but overall it's not that great I kind of prefer the parall power amulet here but if you've already used its effect you might as well Swap this in and finally I did forget to mention this earlier but an alternative armor we can pick up is the cerebral Citadel armor meaning that we have an immunity to being frightened which is nice if the wear is Infested by a m flare taple which we are they gain a plus one bonus to intelligence wisdom and saving throws and it's a decent chunk of heavy armor uh overall this is mainly here as an alternative if you don't want to use krick's armor as I feel like it fits nice fashion wise and if we're focusing on the ID stuff I mean damn that actually looks pretty good in fact if I put the cloak cutting broom back on yeah that actually looks really cool so I think it's nice fashion wise but I feel like Reaper Embrace is more fitting over all uh so yeah I believe that's everything as you'll see in the combat footage showing now and I will have shown at the beginning of the video this build Treads um it's very resource dependent you're going to be burning through those spell slots pretty quickly so you might want to be slightly more conservative and only use them for big bosses but when you get to throw down you get to throw down dealing in absolute ton of damage with sneak attack and divine might stacked on top being able to pop Soul branding on absolutely everything you do and having a million and one ways to gain Advantage you're just going to be pretty Unstoppable you're very very tanky this is one of my first combat showcases where I actually jumped from one steel Watcher fight straight into the next and I burned all my spell slots on the first fight and was still able to you know Outlast and deal decent damage to the second fight as well so I feel like it works out quite nicely overall basically getting that extra bit of sneak attack damage on every turn was great again I do test these on the steel watches cuz I have yet to find a decent encounter that I think can accurately show off other builds but of course that comes with the caveat the steel watches are resistant to everything and have a bunch of damage reduction so it makes the builds look kind of underpowered in comparison but in reality they do a lot of damage it's just steel watches in particular are quite tanky especially when they completely nullify psychic damage as well which is a decent portion of this build's damage we're missing out on a whole 1 d8 of damage every time we attack so when you think about it this build really can shred if it was able to be thise effective against two enemies that are really a poor matchup for it but that's maybe just me making excuses if anybody else has a decent encounter that would be good for testing Single Character that exists in act 3 let me know um because really en character uh encounters with lots of different characters I mean single characters just get shredded immediately anyway cuz they're meant for a full party and one inone encounters are brilliant but they're few and far between the steel watches I've shown here are really the only ones that have a decent amount of power so it's kind of hard to say and again trying not to spoil anybody either I think this is at least the kind of least spoilery way I can do it I don't really want to test these on like a boss fight or something that's going to be spoiler that's going to be spoilers for people so I mean if anybody has a decent encounter in mind let me know as for channel stuff um not too much to talk about here still kind of just coasting along I'm keeping on this like grind of trying to get some extra videos out but I'm thinking this Sunday I'm going to try something a bit different I'm going to try doing something that's actually been long requested for the channel and that is modded builds cuz up till now for the Sunday videos I was doing uh D&D builds which I mean yeah that they're they're harder to make I'm not actually as much as I enjoyed having that creative freedom the actual process of making a d and build and then a video based on it is not as fun as just making something on Boulders Gate 3 and what I was doing with the D and builds is I was making them so that they could be modded into Boulders Gate 3 so why don't I just do the reverse why don't I make balers Gate 3 modded videos that could easily be translated into D andd that is the plan I'm going to try doing modded builds uh if you join my Discord that we I have always Linked In the description I made a new specific channel for people to link mods that they would like me to Showcase in their videos I'm primarily sticking to classes and subclasses right now but you know I think they would be quite fun to work with so now I'm going to be trying out some modded builds so this means we get access to things like hex blade blade singer um artificer even like that the options are pretty out there and I think it's actually going to be really fun because it lets me stay pretty close into my comfort zone sticking with inlb Skate 3 rules but also being able to really expand so I'm actually really looking forward to it obviously there will be be a big uh disclaimer at the start that the that the builds are themselves are modded um but I'm actually really looking forward to it as a prospective thing so please feel free to join the Discord and suggest some mods modded classes and sub classes you would like to see heck even classes that aren't from Dungeons and Dragons are totally acceptable here even somebody suggested the Magis uh class from Pathfinder which I'm quite interested in like kind of doing um and there's even like I know there some like Final Fantasy classes and such like that so there's a few things I would actually quite like to try so please uh send in your submissions there and I mean being a part of our community is fun join the Discord come to the streams you know we have a ton of fun here and speaking of streams I apologies that there was no stream last week it was Mother's Day here in the UK and I had some family obligations so you know couldn't really stream on a Sunday and I was busy on the Saturday because I have other stuff going on I am a busy human being at the end of the day who works a full-time job as well as managing this YouTube channel yeah so uh but I'm promise I 100% swear there is going to be a stream this weekend I'm not 100% sure what it's going to be yet I mean it probably is going to be another dity build stream as this weekend's D build Le vitar uh not this weekend sorry this Friday's D build latar is is the last one I have actually ready so I want to get you guys involved and get that made so yeah uh we'll probably do another dity build live stream this weekend so feel free to join in if you want to be a part of that series I rambled on a little bit longer because I know the combat footage is longer and I wanted to show it all off so but I think I am going to go for now thank you all so much for watching and I will see you all next time

Channel: HoboZone

Views: 15,886

Keywords: Baldur's Gate 3, Baldur's, Gate, Builds, Baldur's Gate 3 Builds, RPG, DND, DND 5E, HOBOZONE, DND Character, DND Build, OP Builds, Roleplay, Roleplay Builds, Lore Builds, Broken Build

Id: Wv4ezvK8c24

Length: 29min 12sec (1752 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2024