Baldur's Gate 3 - The Shadow Vampire (Astarion Build)

all right I am back with another video and today we are doing the next in my origin build lineup which is aaran now with aaran I mean obviously he's a rogue we're going to be starting as a rogue as per the you know the um the rules of the series uh but it's the question with Rogue is how far are you willing to go with it because with Rogue you either take a dip just to get the subass or even just a two one or two level dip just to get like you know the bonus action dashes or you pretty much go all the way in the damn thing to get the highest sneak attack possible now I don't just want to go all the way Rogue and call it a day I wanted to find a nice balance between Rogue and another sub M like multiclass subclass combo that felt good for aaran and with aarian obviously I wanted to capture the stealthy aspect of his character the vampire stuff but stalking in the night and then sneaking up on people and doing a ton of damage with a sneak attack but at the same time also being able to get the jump on them as well but then I didn't just want aaran to just just be like okay sneak attack over well I'm so I wanted him to be a decent allaround combatant as well but still plays well into his character and you know his General abilities as a vampire Rogue type so I hope I've got it right I don't think I'm breaking any new ground with this build I feel like what I've chosen is fairly obvious but I do hope that you know I feel like it's a good enough build anyway I feel like it's a fun build and I think and I think it's a powerful build and it can take a surprise that if you've been around on the channel for long enough you probably weren't expecting me to use so let's get into it first off asarian is a high elf uh which means you get to pick a high elf cantrip and I have obviously chosen friends because I think it makes perfect sense for aaran to get this cantrip it gives you advantage on Charisma checks against any non and hostile creatures if you know about aaran story especially what gets revealed in next3 you know why this would be make a sense as a perfect cantrip for him it doesn't require our intelligence to be high cuz if you don't know regardless of what um class or subass you choose uh your high of can trips will always scale off intelligence so I and since I didn't really want to invest much into intelligence with this build it was nice to just be able to pick a c trip that just works regardless of it so friends works really nicely here uh obviously as I said we're going to be starting off as a rogue giving us sneak attack which is just an extra 1d6 of slashing damage on a pH we have advantage against and we'll be able to bump this up as we level up more in Rogue so let's keep going as for our ability scores these are kind of spread all around again with Rogue I kind of like to spread out my ability stats a bit more because since we get so many proficiencies and expertise I want this to kind of be the skill monkey of the group in a way uh sim a bit similar to laser where she had her astral knowledge we can be a bit more of a skill monkey just with our wide array of skill proficiencies here so I've gone with a 16 in dexterity it's going to be our main attacking stat a 14 in Constitution because I feel like it's just enough to be good uh especially when we're not meant to be a full Frontline combatant but but we are going to be able to fight front line if we need to uh intelligence at 10 just so it's not in the negatives wisdom at 16 because it's going to be an important step for this build and cisma at 10 because as much as I would like to have it higher and you probably could bump wisdom down a bit to make charisma higher depending on your preference um we're still going to be able to get proficiencies and expertise to keep our Charisma checks high so you're definitely not going to feel out of character with a Charisma stat just at the Bas line so you'd be fine let's have a look at our skill proficiencies now we're going to be taking the obvious one here uh aaran comes with charlatan background meaning we get slight of hand and deception for free and because he is a high elf we also get perception for for free as well which is awesome which means we're going to be able to take expertise and Proficiency in slides of hand and stealth uh I've also gone for insight cuz I feel like that makes sense his him having the ability to read people in order to do what he does makes a lot of sense for at least in my opinion and then I've gone since we already get deception I've gone for intimidation and persuasion as our two Charisma stats I've left performance behind I don't think we need it because we're not taking bad levels on musical instrument proficiency or anything like that but I feel like we have enough skills to be a well well-rounded you know stealthy dialogue type character for sure now next up at level two I'm going to take our multiclass dip well not dip but multiclass straight away here just because I think it's going to contain a lot of abilities that we're going to want to get early on but really you can kind of do this in any order you like it doesn't really matter in fact you might think there's some things from Rogue that you want sooner like the bonus action stuff but I kind of want to just get into the main Crux of our other class for now just because I feel like we're going to get abilities from that class that are going to be way more useful in the early game so let's jump on over to and this was probably an obvious choice Ranger Ranger is going to get us a ton of things with a staran namely more skill proficiencies a ton of interesting stuff with a sub with a subass option and you know just it's going to give us a lot of what we want you'll see what I mean as we go for our favorite enemy I'm going to be going with Bounty Hunter this is going to give us Proficiency in investigation which is nice to have uh creatures you hit within snaring strike either ranged or melee have disadvantage on the saving throw I feel like it makes sense for aarian to be able to kind of like trap people who may have realized his game a bit too soon and start to run away so Bounty Hunter as a passive just for the you know whole and snaring strke thing really really works and we always love an extra proficiency see and now as for our other one our natural Explorer you could go with any of these I initially thought Urban tracker but we already have slight of hand expertise so it doesn't really make sense so I'm actually going to go with Wasteland Wanderer cold I don't know why but a Vampire having cold resistance just makes sense to me I think that was a thing in Skyrim and that's why it works for me I don't know I'm just going to go with this but if you want a little animal companion Beast Tamer works well and as for our other abilities we are getting investigation from our choice like I said and our other options are Athletics nature animal handling and survival so I think survival makes the most sense here next up at Ranger level two we are going to be able to get our fighting style and rang of spells and for our fighting style I'm going to recommend two weapon fighting we are going to be dual wielding with this build uh so we do want two weapon fighting in the long run so it makes sense to get it here also for our spells uh you can take whatever you like here it doesn't really matter uh normally I would say oh yeah you know grab Hunter's Mark or you know in snaring strike here which I am going to recommend for like the early levels but we are going to be getting a pretty important concentration spell later that you're going to be spending more of these on so while getting these in the early game is probably a decent idea I could see you respecing these out later but for now I'm actually going to suggest hail of thorns because we it's a decent attack that doesn't require our concentration so I feel like it would be a very nice idea to kind of have it in our Arsenal just in case but obviously you could take things like Hunter's Mark the utility spells and even speak of animals but I quite like grabbing these two for now next up at Ranger level three we are going to be picking our subass and you already know what I'm here for gloom stalker Gloom stalker is going to give us a ton of things we're going to be getting dread ambera hide allowing us to hide as a bonus action so we still get that even though we didn't take those little rogue levels right away we to get um umbral shroud allowing us to turn invisible if we're obscured this makes perfect sense for our staran like 100% And it's not showing here which is a bit awkward I don't know why the UI seems to be having a bit of trouble but we are also going to get dread ah here it is dread ambusher you specialize in taking out foes swiftly and ruthlessly you gain a plus three bonus to your initiative and on the first C of combat your movement speed increases by 3 m and you can make an attack that deals an additional 1d8 damage now this attack is considered like a b bonus attack like it doesn't use your action or your bonus action so on the first turn of combat you actually even this lower level you would technically get three attacks cuz if you managed to dual wield at this level as well that would be an attack uh with your action a bonus action attack and this extra dread ambusher attack so already you're going to be dealing a ton of damage on that opening round which is super super good uh we're also going to be able to grab another spell at this level and it's a take whatever you like situation I'll just we have a lot of a lot of my other origin builds already kind of get the utility spells so I think I we'll just go with Hunter Mark for now cuz again if you're not concentrating on anything at this level which you probably aren't it's going to be a nice bit of extra damage for you so you might as well pick it up kind of pick and choose whether to use a staring strike or Hunter's Mark at Ranger level four we are going to be able to grab our first feet and I would say h probably just an ability score Improvement is going to be your best option here bumping up that deck just to get the most damage out of your weapons possible I I would say that's definitely your safest bet then finally at range of level five we are going to be finally getting extra attack meaning now we can make two attacks of our action per turn but we also get things like Misty step which is super super nice to have on a build like this just allowing us to teleport all around the map like PE PE Pew really really good something I love for this build and again a vampire disappearing and mist and reappearing I mean come on come on that's like so super on theme let me have this one uh and as for our spells you do get level two Spells at this level and it's entirely up to you what you want to choose uh you could go with passive out Trace to give you and all your allies and plus 10 bonus to stealth checks meaning that all of you can kind of set up your surprise round and kind of put get yourselves into position before actually striking and this would probably be my personal pick but silence is also a pretty decent option if you want to make it if you want to guarantee that you're able to sneak up on an enemy without making any sound this could definitely work but I think pass out Trace is going to work a little bit better because it's a team wide buff [Music] and now that we have reached level five of Ranger I'm actually done with it well yes you could go to level six for like you know an extra favorite enemy and natural Explorer I don't feel like we actually need them so I'm going to leave them behind and we're going to go back to Rogue and we are going to stay there this means we're going to be able to get our cunning action allowing us to hide Dash and disengage bonus action we already have the ability to hide thanks to Bloom stalker but we might as well take for Dash and the disengage as well now at level three we get to pick our subass as you know and I've talked about door wielding I've talked about all sorts with this video right so you probably think oh he's going thief and on any other day I'd recommend it and in fact I still do Thief getting you giving you that extra bonus action would make this build extremely strong giving the ability to you know do basically four attacks if your door wheel building plus the extra one from dread Ambush on the first round you'd be able to get a ton of awesome stuff out of it and I don't feel like you would be too off theark having this raran but and I would and you know what that is the power option if you want to play this build as powerful as you can as a bit more of an effective Frontline fighter then absolutely go Thief but for a staran for a stealth build of course we're going with assassin it makes so much sense it's all about being stealthy sneaking up on your phes and it synergizes really really well with Gloom stalker getting that dread ambusher attack so let's read the features assassinate initiative you get you are the deadliest against unprepared enemies in combat you have advantage on attack RS against creatures that haven't taken a turn yet meaning that your dread ambusher is going to have advantage and as as well as your so basically if you go into your first round right you're going to get dread ambusher and your attack and your bonus action attack all of those are going to be made with Advantage meaning that your first attack is also going to be a sneak attack and you have a higher chance to crit on any of those which is super super super good assassinate Ambush any successful attack roll against a surprise creature is a guaranteed critical hit which is super super good as well again you can basically guarantee that at least one of your attacks on your first round is a crit hit if you manage to kind of you know get the jump on your enemies it's super powerful basically this build is going to be guaranteed to take out at least one enemy right at the start of combat so you get to kind of pick and choose an enemy that you know is going to be problematic and just get rid of them before the main combat starts and then with our range levels and our ability to use a bunch of different weapons we are still going to be effective once the combat actually starts proper and our stealth is broken and then finally assassin's ality meaning that um if we use our action or bonus action to kind of get that initial attack once combat actually starts they're immediately restored and while this wasn't super important before patch 5 patch 5 changed the way a couple of things work especially in onor mode this ability becomes way more valuable so you definitely want to pick this up I think assassin works perfectly here even if Thief if you're building more of a Frontline fighter version it's technically more powerful but assassin is just too good I think we need to stick with it next up a rogue level four we are going to be getting our final feat for the build and of course we're just going to take an ability score Improvement and max out our dexterity to make sure that our sneak attacks and all that good stuff with our weapons does as much damage as possible at Rogue level five we are going to be able to get evasion meaning that when an attack hits you we only take half the usual damage which is super super good or a uncanny Dodge not evasion at Rogue level six we are going to get an EXT a couple of extra skill expertise and I just like that the game's picked deception and persuasion for us cuz that's what I would have gone with and finally at Rogue level 7 we're going to get evasion and also the final kind of tier that we're able to grab for our sneak attack damage we're now going to do an extra 4 D6 on our Sak attacks and with evasion we're also going to be able to uh only take half damage on a failed deck save and uh no damage if we succeed which is super good and that is the build overall you're going to be getting a ton of utility out of this build basically being able to guarantee an enemy gets taken out of the fight right away with a super powerful sneak attack that comes out of pretty much nowhere and also you you being able to set up a staring whenever you need him before a combat starts this is going to be super important if you're trying to strategize in a mode like tactician or maybe even on a mode but I don't know how well this build Works in on a mode I haven't really completed that mode yet trying to do it on stream as a first time thing so you know whatever so really but then again once the combat actually starts you have a ton of options with your Ranger abilities and all your other stuff to be able to uh continue the fight even after your stealth is broken so you're not going to feel useless once that initial attack is up I really really like this build overall I I feel like it plays really well into what aaran kind of is as a character while also you know being good enough to be used in all facets of combat and of course you also get things with aaran that is unique to him like the vampire bite and again if you kind of go with that certain option in X3 you can make this a bit more powerful so you know pick and choose how you want to play aaran with this one now let's get into the equipment first up we have the covert cow while obscured the number you need to roll a critical hit while attacking is reduced by one this effect can stack this just means that if you kind of stick to the shadows and kind of stay in darkened areas you're going to have a higher chance to crit which is super super good again for a sneak attacking Rogue now you need now for those of you who aren't aware being obscured and being hidden are two different things you can hide in broad daylight you can be crouched in the middle of a busy street and still be hidden but you're not obscured you're not in the shadows you have to be obscured for this to work so overall it's kind of M you can sort this out later but I feel like if you play your cards right you can get a lot of use out of it and if you kind of like the way it looks I mean you can kind of wear it but I don't I don't want to hide a Stan's face I just don't as for our armor I've gone with the elegant studded leather because it's going to give us a plus two bonus to our initiative roles advantage on stealth checks and a shield and a use of Shield once per short rest this is basically just perfect for aarian it works super super well for his uh kind of you know gameplay style getting that advantage on stealth checks and that even bigger bonus to your initiative it fits perfectly with this build although this is an act three options so things like the Dr studded leather from act one or even the spider silk armor from Menara could work really really well for him in the early game until you get this uh as for our arm piece I've just gone with the dark justia gauntlets here because I wanted something that was just going to give us a damage buff to our attacks overall and I initially considered things like the stalker gloves which would add a 1d6 to our sneak attacks or uh there was something else that added uh like a one like a bonus to our like critical hit attacks but those felt a bit too situation so just being able to get a flat 1 D4 neonic damage bonus basically across all of our attacks made the most sense to me especially when this is really easy to get quite quickly in act two so that's what I decided to go with it's just a flat necron damage buff to everything we do which is super super good and then finally we're disintegrating night Walkers meaning we cannot be in webbed entangled or in sned and cannot slip on Grease or ice aaran is a fleet of foot Nimble stealthy person it makes sense that he wouldn't like you know slip up on what is effectively a home alone trap and we also get an extra usage of Misty step once per short rest which is super super nice as for our accessories I've gone with a bit of a combo here that you know people have suggested to me quite a lot we've gone with brood Ms Revenge meaning that whenever we are healed uh the we our weapon becomes coated in Magic and Deals an extra 1d6 poison damage poison and necrotic on like a vampire build just kind of made sense to me so it's nice to be able to have it and we're going to be able to have this up constantly thanks to the Ring of regeneration because at the beginning of our turn the ring activates healing us for one default hit points every turn meaning that every turn this uh brood M's Revenge buff is is going to proc and again I feel like having a bit of passive healing as a vampire makes sense so you know works out but here is the meat and potatoes the surprise I was talking about earlier we've got the Shadow Blade ring now if you've been around on the channel long enough you will know that my original opinion of Shadow Blade was a very negative one I didn't like the fact that you couldn't upcast it I didn't like the fact that it couldn't uh that it used up your concentration I thought it was a bit rubbish I have since done a complete 18 180 on this opinion character development I know this is the this is the this is the arc that we like to see on a channel like this you know somebody actually realizing they were wrong I was wrong about Shadow Blade I will say that straight up and I'm going to do a dedicated Shadow Blade build in the future where I fix my mistake I have to play through a decent chunk of the game to be able to make it work the way I want to but I've kind of I'm halfway there so expect that video some sometime in the future once the Christmas holidays are over but of course with the Shadow Blade ring we are going to get the Shadow Blade spell allowing us to conjure a shadowy sword sword in our hand that deals 2 to 16 psychic damage it takes up our concentration we cast it we can cast it once per short rest and it require and it lasts until our long rest so it works well as a main weapon so I'm going to cast it now as you can see we have it in our main hand here and it is going to get that necrotic damage buff uh and we have advantage on attack RS against likely our heavily obscured targets while using this blade so if we're sticking to the Shadows we're guaranteed to have advantage on our attacks it is super super good I mean you can see here that it does a ton of damage and it will work with our sneak attacks if we look here boom look at all that damage now I will address the elephant in the room with this one uh there is an item in Act 2 which is what I'm trying to get for my future build called the resonance Stone I'll have an infographic on screen now and basically what this would do is it would double all the damage that uh Shadow Blade does as long as you have it on your person but in order for that effect to keep up you kind of have to put it in your Camp chest and then take it out and put it back and take it out again every long rest it's a bit awkward I'll go over it in more detail in my dedicated shadowblade video but just so you know you can pick that up in X2 if you want to you know make this as powerful as it could possibly be but even without that shadow bled is actually still really powerful this is that concentration spell I was talking about earlier so fortunately when be able to use things like insing strike or pass trace or Hunters Mark if you're focusing on Shadow Blade but since we only get access to it once per short rest and only as long as we keep our concentration up you don't need to have it up all the time it's not 100% necessity I would just save it for the big fights where you need it and use our other weapon the knife of the under mounting King this uh reduces the number you need to roll the critical hit while attacking by one this effect can stack with things like the covert cow so now uh as long as you're obscured you're hitting uh Critical Hits on an 18 uh when you roll a two damage or less uh roll the die taking the highest result uh basically you're meaning your attacks are going to always deal high damage and this also has the Shadow Blade effect giving you advantage on attack rolls against slightly or heavily obscured enemies and it is a plus two weapon this can be obtained super early on in fact before even act two and is a super powerful weapon that works really well even in the off hand so you definitely want to have this it comos really really nicely with Shadow Blade here and then finally for our ranged weapons I've just gone with a dual crossbow combo since we can actually use it meaning we now have the Hellfire hand crossbow and the near misser basically because we have two weapon fighting and proficiency with these weapons there's no reason not to have a powerful ranged option for this build again if you went F Rogue this would be even stronger but since we're assassin we don't get that extra bonus action attack but we're still getting like either like basically two uh ranged or melee attacks per turn no three even cuz we have extra attack so you're not exactly going to be hard at for attack in fact you'll see in the combat photos that this build handles itself quite nicely uh I don't think there's anything else to go over here I think I covered everything as far as all the stuff goes so yeah that is the build overall you're going to get a ton out of this build again you're going to get that initial setup round where you get to deal a ton of damage on the first attack basically guaranteeing an enemy is taken out or at least weakened or has a ton of damage dealt to it probably good for single enemy boss fights especially but then also you get to be a powerful Frontline combatant using things like Shadow Blade in the knife and the under Mountain King to deal massive psychic damage crits and again if you get things like the resonance Stone that's going to get even more powerful but it's not required you can kind of just coast along with the damage as you have it um but yeah I mean it was nice to kind of you know do something a bit more straightforward just a simple stealth build that has a that has a bunch of Marshall and regular combat capability as well I think this whole thing mixes really nicely usually in my personal build for aarion I actually would mix Shadow Monk and Gloom stalker Ranger which I think has a pretty nice effect as well but overall I felt like again keeping in them with the rogish aspect I didn't want to go that route with this one I originally conceived a build that was a Assassin Rogue oh no a thief Rogue a shadow Monk and a Gloom stalker Ranger Allin one but I thought that was a bit too much and probably just kind of as like Jack of all trades master nun type deal so I decided to leave that one behind in favor of something that I felt worked better in the end and again you'll see in the combat footage that this build can do an absolute butt ton of damage so there's no problem there uh I know I said in my other videos that I recorded this all in one big bunch but it's actually Christmas Eve right now I wasn't able to record uh the last three builds all in one and I kind of left it for a little bit uh so I kind of have some feedback on the other uh origin builds that being uh carac Gail and will and those all seem to go over pretty nicely which was super good the Gail one was super popular for some reason and I think it's because people had a lot of opinions about Gail uh some people were not happy that I made made him a sorcerer which is totally fine uh but cuz I understand how intrinsically important being a wizard is to his story but I thought you know what let's just do something different and and most people did still like it so that's fine and then people weren't being like you know rude about it they were just like ah I don't know I personally see him more as a wizard and you know what that's perfectly fine totally get it um but yeah no uh people really like the will build people really like to the carlac build i' I mean not carlac build is one of my personal favorites for her it's probably that's the whole reason I wanted to do the or build Series in the first place and I think I'm pretty happy with all of the builds um the only one that hasn't come out yet is the lasel build which is going to come out on the Monday which is actually Christmas day and also later today um my lethal company video is coming out which I'm really really nervous about I hope that one does okay well well this will come out on the Wednesday so I guess I'll know by then uh yeah so I'm going to leave it here as you can tell my voice is starting to go a bit again cuz I'm still ill I haven't been able to kick this winter bug yet but I'm getting there so I will leave you all with the combat footage now and I will see you all next time

Channel: HoboZone

Views: 30,003

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: QurKe4ZGvME

Length: 25min 4sec (1504 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023