Baldur's Gate 3 - The Wandering Swordmaster (Kensei Inspired Build)

all right I am back with another video and today we're doing something that I think is actually a bit cool there is two combat Styles melee combat Styles in Boulders Gate 3 that are considered the most powerful one of which is great weapon master and the other is Tavern brawler open hand monk uh basically these two fighting styles cause either a two-handed weapon or an unarmed attack to just be extremely powerful massive damage bonuses especially when equipped with certain gear that can just obliterate enemies really quickly and then I thought to myself is there a way to combine these two fighting styles and basically create a giga melee build with an interesting bit of theming and I think I've found it I've decided to create what I call the wandering swordmaster basically someone who is highly trained in the blade but it's rather nomatic travel nomatic nomatic traveling all over fyon and maybe even Beyond St studying their craft of Marshall combat be it with a blade or with their own body and it's able to intertwine uh two-handed fighting with martial arts and I've gone for a bit of a kind of like Japanese theme as you can see I've got a katana here just because that's fun but obviously if you wanted to use a different weapon you absolutely could and I've kind of going with a tling here because I don't know why I kind of just like the vibe of the tling here and I haven't really built a tling that's kind of more on the human side either so I really enjoyed kind of working with this design but really the race doesn't matter you can play whatever you like although I do like the idea of this character getting advantage on intimidation checks and later on searing Smite and um branding Smite as well for some extra sword attacks just from our race but overall I feel like this build is going to come together really solidly and it has a lot of uh kind of room for experimentation on how you do the levels cuz it entirely depends if you want to get the sword stuff first or the martial art stuff first and it doesn't really matter which one you do but regardless let's get into the build we're going to be kicking things off as a fighter this is going to give us simple and Marshal weapon proficiency proficiency with any armor and you know a fighting style and of course we're going with great weapon fighting to allow us to roll ones or twos on damage die for even more power as for our ability scores I've gone with a bit of a weird Kit here strength is going to be at 17 and we are going to be bumping this off with with a half feet and if you so choose the ition of everlasting Vigor as well to get it to 20 I don't think this build actually needs to be at 20 strength the 18 does more than enough but obviously if you wanted to use the potion to get it to 20 strength you would go pretty overboard and get even more powerful uh than even I showcased in the combat footage so we're starting off of a 17 here because we're going to be rounding out that score no matter what dexterity is at a 10 now I debated putting the gloves of dexterity on this build because I thought then we could patch up our dexterity and have a bit more options in whether or not we wanted to use clothing or something like that but I thought I just used the gloves of dexterity too much it's been on a lot of my recent builds and I've kind of been using it as a crutch lately don't get me wrong it is necessary on a lot of builds that are multi- ability score dependent but the only reason we would really need to wear anything less than heavy armor on this build is if we were trying to do some weird Shenanigans with monks unarmored movement which we don't actually really need to do here so I decided to slap on out of 10 so at least it's not in the negatives and then put on heavy armor now this is going to be a bit tricky for our initiative score but I do have ways of patching that up later as you will see uh Constitution is at 14 again I would usually like to have this a little bit higher but it having it at a 14 is going to do us just fine especially when we get into some stuff later uh intelligence is at eight we don't need it wisdom is at 16 because it's going to help out with our monk features namely open hand monk getting the bonus to its attacks at level six uh with you know based on our wisdom modifier and we also you be using a piece of equipment that's going to buff us up according to our wisdom as well so we want this pretty high as for our skill proficiencies again trying to do builds all the time with mods using mods to resent characters doesn't let me change the um the background or it does let me change the background but for some reason it doesn't really show up here but I have gone with the soldier background here although the Outlander would work as well this proficiencies shown here are for the Fulk hero but which could also work so something like folk hero Outlander or uh Soldier would work but you're going to probably want Athletics and at least one uh conversation Proficiency in this case we are going to be choosing Athletics and intimidation from the fighter but you could get that from Soldier if you wanted and that is going to mean it make it so that thorat turgy is a lot more effective giving you advantage on that as well without any downsides and Athletics for strength based stuff in case you want to be throwing or jumping or whatever so pretty good pretty good stuff in my opinion now at this point point you kind of get to choose where you want to go uh you can either go to monk straight away to start working on the Marshall stuff uh the unarmed strike stuff or you can go further into fighter to work on the weapon stuff it's entirely up to you but I am going to recommend that at level two you at least take a one level dip in monk anyway this is going to get you something like Flurry of Blows and unarmed strikes uh this is going to and unarm Strikes as a bonus action cuz this is going to turn our versatile weapon here into a monk weapon because remember any a any weapon can be a monk weapon as long as it's not two-handed and you have proficiency with it since fighter gives us proficiency with all weapons that means as long as we're not to as long as we don't have a weapon with the two-handed property uh we don't uh we um can use it as a monk weapon and as such gain the benefits now two handing a weapon and using a two handed weapon are two very different things uh in the case of us using the Katana here which is a long sword this is a versatile weapon that we can wield with two hands but wielding it with two hands does not make it a two-handed weapon so it still works as a monk weapon basically anything that in tabletop would have the heavy property won't work here so things like great swords hell Birds glaes uh if there's not an option to wield it with one hand then it probably won't work but with versatile weapons they can be two-handed or one-handed so they do work here very long explanation but I get a lot of questions about that that's how it works so taking this one level dip into m like I said is going to give us flare of blows and the ability to make unarmed strikes as a bonus action after attacking with our monk weapon uh not too powerful at the moment that it's only a D4 but once we get things like tavn brawler and eventually level up a monk later that's going to become a bit more powerful I'm going to dip back to fighter now just to kind of show the levels in order and again this build is feet heavy obviously we want uh great uh great weapon master and Tavern brawler and since fighter gives us an extra early we might want to go that route first but again if you care more about The Punchy stuff because you kind of already have a decent chunk of power out of your weapon just from it being a 1 d10 weapon then that's entirely up to you uh but with at second level of fighter we are going to get action surge which is going to be really awesome for this build giving us a big burst damage round at fighter level three we get to pick our subass and I'm going to be going with Battle Master I will quickly point this out as well cuz I know people are going to ask ask yes there is some modded classes here but the mods I have installed are not affecting this build this is a completely vanilla build that you can build on Console but they are bringing mod support to console and by them I mean laran so as such I am going to be working more on modded builds in the future there's going to be one every Sunday and as such I'm trying to build up that little bit of a library so that when mods do come to console through however method that happens those builds should be available to everyone so when that patch officially comes out I'm hoping it's patch 7 that seems to be what they're implying then we might be able to get into some seriously good stuff here but for now we're going to keep this build totally vanilla as of patch 6 Hawk fix 21 I believe so we're going to be going with Battle Master here Battle Master is going to give us Maneuvers these Maneuvers are basically going to allow us to have special extra attacks that we uh spend a superior already die on we have four of these and they recover every short rest uh these are d8 and each of these um well most of these maneuvers will add that extra damage so not only going to be are we going to be getting extra damage from great weapon great great weapon master I cannot speak today uh we're also going to be getting extra die from these Maneuvers four times per short rest which is really really nice and you get to pick various Maneuvers that have different effects uh my personal favorite choices are disarming strike causing enemies to drop the weapon they're holding as well as having the additional damage repost which will allow you to use a reaction after an attack misses you to retaliate with a a attack immediately that deals a bit of extra damage that 1d8 sweeping attack to attack multiple enemies at once rolling our superity superiority die for the damage trip attack allowing us to knock enemies prone while dealing the additional damage and prone can be very very good giving us Advantage which can help with things like great weapon Masters penalty uh pushing ATT tank can be really good menacing attack to frighten enemies is nice uh goding a tank to basically Force an enemy to attack you these are all really really great so it's kind of a choose your favorite situation for this video I picked to in strike trip attack and repost but you can choose whatever you like at finter level four we are going to be getting our first feat and I even though we haven't really focused on the unarmed stuff yet I might pick up Tav brawler first just to round out that strength St but if you don't care about that so much you can go for great weapon Master first it is entirely up to you it's not going to make or break this steal I just hate seeing that 17 strength so I want to patch it up T braer is going to allow us to whenever we make an unarmed attack use an improvised weapon or throw something our strength modifier is added twice to the damage and attack roles so this is also going to enable a throwing play style as well or an improvised weapon play style which is just a ton of fun probably not on theme with the build if you're trying to go with this nomatic Warrior type build uh kind of theme but you know I mean it's there you don't have to play by my rules throw a goblin or two it's cathartic next up a find a level five we are going to be getting extra attack so that means we're just going to be a bit more effective all around with our weapon attacks which is great and at five to level six we get our bonus feat meaning that we now get to take great weapon Master great weapon Master is going to allow us to whenever we land a critical hit or kill a target with a melee weapon attack we can make another melee weapon attack using a bonus action once per turn so even if we don't want so as long as we can score critical hits or kills we can still use our bonus action to make weapons attacks we don't have to use our unarmed strikes especially if you're leveling up exactly as I am they're going to be a little bit weaker anyway and in using attacks with melee weapons that we are proficient with and our wielding at both hands so our twoh hand a versatile weapon we can deal an additional 10 damage at the cost of a Nega five attack R penalty and that feature can be toggled on or off depending on how likely you are to hit you can kind of pick or choose if you want to risk it or not uh this is one of the most powerful Feats in the game alongside Sharpshooter and tavn Brer it is just busted and the fact that we can get both Tavern brawler and great weapon Master on this build it's just going to make us very strong overall now a after level six of fighter I'm going to be taking the rest of our levels in monk cuz I want six levels of both again we are feet hungry so I wanted to pick up that extra feat and I also want to get the level six open hand monk features so let's start going there with level two of Monk we're going to be getting improved on Armored movement which does not matter for this build so I don't know why I'm bringing it up but we're also going to get patient defense steper the wind Dash and disengage all very decent features that we can that can have a use in in a variety of situations at level three we get to pick our subass and we are going to be picking up way of the open hand as I said for I for a less Fantastical nomadic Warrior this is probably one of the better uh subclasses I mean it's one of the most powerful melee subclasses in the game Bar None thanks to tavn braw that just making all of your flurry a blow stuff and your unarmed strike stuff just absolutely busted and of course at this level our damage die for our um unarm strikes is going up as well to a D6 rather than a D4 which is nice so we're going to be getting Flurry of Blows topple stagger and push allowing us to either push stagger or topple enemies and knock them prone so in addition to our Battle Master Maneuvers we also have kind of unarmed strength Maneuvers which I feel like is pretty nice I like the way the builds mesh thematically it's very fun at mon level four we get to pick up our final feat and I'm going to be going with an ability score Improvement cuz I want bump up our wisdom if you feel like this build is a little bit squishy you can bump up Constitution as well but with the equipment I'll be showing off later you'll see that this build is still pretty tanky regardless of our slightly middling Constitution and bumping up wisdom is going to give us a bunch of stuff again more power on our monk features and just it's it's going to be good for the build trust me and it's going to make us better at wisdom saving throws which is always nice at level five of Monk we are going to be getting another extra attack but this one does not stack are in non honor mode the Warlock one Stacks but this one does not however we are going to be getting stunning strike with both our melee weapon and our unarmed strikes allowing us to POS possibly stun targets which means they're completely out of action for a turn which can be pretty good if you manage to get this off consistently and finally at level six of open hand monk we're going to get a ton of stuff namely key empowered strike allowing our um unarmed strengths to overcome resistance and to non magical damage which is great we're also going to be getting manifestation of body mind and soul allowing us to add an extra damage type uh to of our choice to our unarmed strikes necrotic uh psychic or radiant now this is calculated using your wisdom modifier so that's why we wanted it a bit higher to make it a bit stronger getting 5 to eight extra damage which will stack up pretty nicely when we're making a ton of attacks we're also going to be getting homeless a body allowing us to give ourselves a bit of healing 18 uh gain half of our key points and we enter a temporary state of wholeness where we have an extra bonus action for three turns which means that's multiple Flurry of Blows U multiple unarmed strikes as a bonus action there's a lot of cool stuff there uh so combine this with action searge for a absolutely massive uh round big burst round of um of attacks basically I would activate this on the turn before you do action surge as this does take your action and then on your next turn action surge plus using that extra bonus action you will be able to destroy things with the extra damage you get from great weapon master and Tavern brawler so it's perfect now again you can either take the monk levels first or the fighter level first but to get those weapon proficiencies if you're not playing as a brace that gets them anyway you're going to want to start at level one a fighter but either way you want to level up this build you're going to be pretty strong around the level six s Mark so pretty good either way and that is the build as I said overall you're going to be getting a ton of damage all across the board your weapon strikes are going to be very very powerful a basic weapon strike for us deals around 20 to 40 damage this is with a plus two weapon which I'll get into in a minute uh but again if you were to use a more powerful weapon cuz again the the katana is a plus one long sword at base at the end of the day so you know if you pick up something a bit more powerful maybe a different long sword or maybe a Warhammer or a battle axe something else that's firsts to you can do even more damage than you'll see here I'm technically handicapping this build and it's probably still one of the strongest I've made but of course our unarm strikes are also going to do a ton of damage if we look at Flurry of Blows here we're getting a lot of damage here 1d6 + 12 with extra necrotic damage on top which I'll get into in a minute and if we look at the Maneuvers we get that extra d8 as well so let's get into the equipment cuz this is where the build really starts to kick in as well uh there's a couple of things I want to mention let's get into to the weapon first obviously for the theming of this build I've gone with a katana and a lot of people seem to like this weapon but at the end of the day it is just a plus one long sword it comes with some unique animations and flourish which I believe long swords don't normally have which is kind of nice uh and it does have some unique kind of running and attacking animations while wielding it that kind of fit more in line with um you know kind of a katana fighting style a bit more of a Japanese Samurai fighting style which I think is really really cool um but other than that it is a pretty basic weapon at the end of the day which is why I've decided to buff it with the Drake fro glaive in this instant basically allowing us to cast draconic Elemental weapon on it giving it a plus one bonus uh to attack and damage rolls and it deals an additional 1 D4 damage of your choice uh so that could be fire thunder lightning cold or acid damage and I have personally chosen Thunder damage here just to kind of diversify the damage types but you can pick whatever you like also I've gone with the dark fire short B for a ranged weapon giving us resistance to Fire and cold damage we already had resistance to fire damage as a tling but if you're not playing a tling and that can help and it's going to give us haste which I mean that's going to give us a bonus to our Armor class gain an additional action for more attacks and give us more movement speed so overall we're kind of going to be making up for our lack of unarmored movement there it is going to absolutely send this build into overdrive now let's get on to the armor I have gone with the mask of Soul perception here this is going to give us a plus two bonus to attack rolls and initiative roles as well as perception checks uh the attack roles that's great that's going to help us offset great weapon Master a little bit the initiative roles is great that's going to help offset our load decks when we first get into combat you're probably not going to be going first against faster enemies but again if you're playing as part of a team they can kind of get the jump on the enemies while before before your kind of turn comes up and then when your turn comes up you just go absolutely Bonkers uh but another option you can go with is the bone Spike helmet now it it's mainly for barbarians which we don't care that much about but it would give us a plus two to intim intimidation which is nice and menacing attack now this is interesting cuz menacing attack would give us a bit of extra damage on our attacks because this is a maneuver that the Battle Master fighter would get normally however this version we can use once per turn and it does not spend our superiority die so you always basically have a maneuver that you can get extra damage from and this one can frighten your enemies as well which is really nice so I can see this being an alternative option but I did find the plus two bonus to attack RS and initiative rolls to be a bit more useful at the end of the day our cloak is the cloak of displacement just making us a bit harder to hit which is always nice uh the armor of persistence this is an act three armor that is probably one of the best in the game it reduces all incoming damage by two you gain both resistance and blade Ward can trips constantly up blade Ward giving you resistance to bludging piercing and slashing damage combine that with the innate damage reduction you're going to be a very tanky character and resistance is going to give you a plus one D4 bonus to saving throws which is going to help a lot to offset a certain piece of equipment I'll be showing off in a minute but that's going to help us maintain concentration on haste for example or dexterity saving throws on um you know things like Fireball and the like but of course this is an act three option so if you want an earlier game option I can recommend the Adam adamantine splint armor this is also going to come with that overall damage reduction and whenever we are hit by a melee attack the attacker is sent reeling uh meaning that they uh have a negative one penalty to attack rolls for every time remaining this inflicts three turns so that's a negative3 to attack rolls making us even more tanky cuz we're harder to hit which is very good you can pick this up in act one and it will carry you all the way to act three where you can pick up the armor of persistence as for the gloves I have gone with the hell dust gloves we gain a plus one bonus to a spell attack roll and spell safety Z not really relevant for this build but hey it's there but we mainly get infernal touch allowing our weapon attacks to deal an additional 1d6 fire damage and our unarmed strikes to deal additional 1d6 necrotic damage and possibly inflict bleeding this is a One-Stop shop for a big buff to both our weapon and unarmed strikes perfect for this build it's an act three option though so if you want an act two version we have the flawed hell dusk gloves ignore the name mods are weird uh basically what this means is is that uh it's kind of a lesser version trading out those d6s of damage for d4s but you can pick this up in X2 pretty early on so it's going to supplement your play style really nicely and then you just go for the straight upgrade once you're in act three and this version also comes with rays of fire which is basically like a kind of scorching Ray can trip but it's much more powerful and it's got a fire theming so it kind of fits with the kind of tling vibe I've got going here anyway and finally for our uh boots here I've gone with the boots of uninhibited kigo allowing the wearing to deal additional modifier uh additional damage equal to their wisdom modifier with their unarmed strengths so at 18 wisdom that is a plus 4 flat to every unarmed strike we do which is great unfortunately again this is an act three option so I've kind of picked two generic decent options that you can pick up an X1 that'll last you until the end of the game but disintegrating night Walkers make it so you cannot be in webbed entangled and snared and cannot slip a grease or ice and give you a usage of Misty step once per short rest meaning that you're going to be very very uh mobile which is awesome speaking of being mobile you could also go with the boots of speed allowing you to use click heals which is basically the same as the rogue's cunning action Dash allowing you to Dash um at the cost of a bonus action with no uh short or long rest limitations so even though these two are pretty generic options that I recommend a lot they will do very nicely for this build until you get the main piece of equipment here in act three as for our accessories the necklace is a fairly obvious choice the sentient amulet you pick this up in Act One although it is a slightly lesser version and then you follow a quite fun quest line all the way until act three where you can get this Superior version the superior version allows you to cast shatter and it says is a level two spell but it's actually cast at level three dealing a bit of extra damage and we also get key restoration allowing us to once per long rest restore a number of key points equal to our martial arts die so I thought this meant that it was like oh if you have a d uh six martial arts die like we have you recover six key points that's not actually the case it rolls your Martial Arts die and you regain one 12 six key points in our case so it's not as good as I thought but hey monks need their key points we want as many as we can get so this is going to help as for our Rings this one's totally optional this is called the shadowcloak ring the wearer's weapon and unarmed attacks deal an additional 1 D4 damage against lightly or heavily obscured creatures and creatures made of shadow that creatures made of Shadow bit is obviously going to help very much in act two in fact this ring is pretty much good through all of Act 2 because basically all of it is lightly or heavily obscured so this ring can be pretty nice just giving again a little bit of damage buff to both of our weapon and unarmed strengths but you can switch this out if you feel like the restrict are a bit too situational but I tend to find that lightly obscured at the very least comes up way more than you would think it basically just means if your opponent is standing in not direct light uh then they are lightly obscured so this will go off a bit more than you think so indoor fights are really good uh fights and kind of later in the day are really good stuff like that it's not always going to come up but when it does it works pretty nicely but if you have um something else that you prefer then it will go nicely here and finally the risky ring and again this build is a bit of a risk reward system we're doing a lot of damage at the risk of you know kind of making ourselves vulnerable and this is kind of why uh you gain advantage on all attack RS which is perfect for offsetting uh great weapon Master however we receive disadvantage on saving throws which means especially where we cast haste this can be pretty dangerous this is why I wanted to have really high uh AC we have 20 here and also resistance from the armor of persistance as well giving us a little buff to our saving throws um and again starting with fighter means we have saving throw proficiency with Constitution so it's not as bad and I found that in my conat footage I did pass all of my um saving throw checks despite this downside so you should be pretty safe overall uh this is mostly a Net game for us but again that there always is that risk hence the name and I do believe that's everything I don't think there's anything else to mention so yeah I'll be showing the combat footage now on screen and as you can see this build does a lot of damage I mean what did you expect we've combined two of the most powerful melee damage dealing methods here the two Feats and this build goes absolutely crazy with it uh as you can see we use action Surge and wholeness of body to get that big burst damage round like I said haste absolutely makes us a flurry of blades our Maneuvers even though we don't get to use that much of them in the single combat they do add that extra bit of utility and that extra bit of damage for us as well and as you can see we basically just take care of a lot of these enemies absolutely no problem our arm attacks are able to do a ton of damage as well which is perfect for us so overall you're just getting a very powerful allaround fighter that has a nice blend of sword fighting and unarmed and martial arts capability and it's just very very fun and thematic to play and also very simple to play essentially you just kind of click attack buttons and go very very powerful but very very simple which isn't usually my cup of tea but I quite liked the theming here and how the mechanics mix together both thematically and well mechanically so you know I'm quite happy with this build I think it does pretty well uh as for end of video stuff Channel updates and all that like we still have we would have had the I guess this is going up on the Monday so the live stream would have been last week as well as my first modded build being yesterday hope that all went well um but yeah no I've like I say I've kind of been on a grind with these videos I'm basically kind of recording editing and editing a video every day in order to build up a bit of a backlog so that when um if I ever have to go away again you guys aren't left without content and YouTube doesn't hate me so that's kind of what I'm doing at the moment so if there's kind of a bit of um like if I basically say things in the video that might not be true as of the time of uploading bet you know why maybe these videos are recorded a few weeks ahead of time especially if that heavily anticipated patch 7even drops which I'm very very much hoping is what we've been waiting for again proper mod support for both PC and console would be insane I'm assuming that this is how I think that's going to work by the way just a little bit of theory crafting coming from uh playing Bethesda games like Skyrim and Fallout I imagine larion will have to open their own modding store thr something similar to Nexus but something that can be hosted on their own servers so that mods can be downloaded to console and I guess if they're giving us official mod support there is going to be a creation kit so I imagine that um mods that currently exist on Nexus probably won't be completely able to Port straight over to uh this new mod store that would work for consoles and the like they're probably going to have to there's probably going to have to be some effort on Lan's part to either make a way of porting already existing mods or mod makers are going to have to remake them from scratch which would kind of suck as there has been a little bit of drama in the modern Community lately where it's kind of the moders versus laran I don't know the exact specific specifics of it yet but a lot of popular mods have either hidden themselves or kind of made public statements on their mod page about basically how uh laran not providing official modding tools and like basically breaking mods with every update or something like that kind of uh you know messed up kind of relations I guess I don't know I'm not an expert on this whole matter so I'm hoping that this new patch where they're giving official mod support they make it easy for the moders to kind of keep their work going uh because as you know whenever a patch drops we have to wait a little while for mods to be fixed so you know I'm and that's a lot of work for people who do all this free time so I'm really hoping that laran kind of helps them out a bit and I'm hoping they do uh I I think they will larion are a very very good and consumer friendly studio so I think they absolutely would kind of throw mod as a bone in that case but anyway weird tanging aside uh I think that will do it for me I kind of just wanted to let the combat footage play so I just kind of started talking and hoping it would last long enough cuz this combat footage isn't as long as my previous ones again this build kind of shreds so I think I'll leave it all here thank you all so much for watching and I will see you all next time

Channel: HoboZone

Views: 11,484

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: kR2CkPFP9TY

Length: 29min 11sec (1751 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2024