Baldur's Gate 3: Wizard Class Overview

[Music] foreign what's going on everybody mortum here this time continuing our class overview series for Baldur's Gate 3 with the wizard the premiere spellcaster of The Forgotten Realms of the DND worlds who dedicate their lives to studying and utilizing magic in the various ways it can manifest itself which ultimately make up their Arcane Traditions that said we're not diving too deep into the math here we are mostly talking about class mechanics class fantasy that kind of thing and how it relates specifically to Baldur's Gate 3. though as a mention what is currently available in the Early Access period for Baldur's Gate 3 is two of what will ultimately be eight subclasses one for each School of magic so to speak and while we won't be diving into the nitty-gritty details of each one I will give you a general overview explaining how a lot of them work in general because ultimately we don't know if any of these will be changed or manipulated in some way by larion for launch to make them more interest sting as might be the case but wizard subclasses in particular follow a sort of General outline that makes them relatively easy to predict even in a video game with that out of the way I like to kick these videos off talking about the class fantasy of a wizard now in many ways a lot of the classes in DND have a lot of really interesting Nuance to them that if you want to put in a little bit of effort can give you something really unique even for someone of that class such as where they got their powers what they've done in life Etc in the case of a wizard that is certainly still possible however at the end of the day a wizard is someone with an absolute thirst for knowledge specifically as it relates to the Arcane Arts allowing them to cast spells they dedicate their lives to in many cases very literal study of magic and while that Pursuit might take them to dark and dreary dungeons or the stuffy air of a lecture hall Wizards are all unified by that common goal of studying magic how they they choose to do so is where the class fantasy of it comes in now I will say I thought about including a section about the weave and the goddess of magic Mishra in this video but honestly that's just too much to cover for a video like this that would be way off topic however I do want to mention briefly that in the Forgotten Realms Mortals interact with magic via a law of reality so to speak called The Weave often referred to as a fabric and when they are casting their spells they are ultimately manipulating The Weave to produce the effect of magic with the weave actually communicating with the raw power of magic itself it acts as a sort of intermediary and it is the study of the weave and how to manipulate it that Wizards pursue with basically everything they have so when it comes to class Fantasy A lot of it comes down to where did your wizard get their basic training or study if you will around how to use magic and interact with it and then what that continued study looks like are they someone who perhaps a attended a university for wizards of some kind where they could literally study or was it a more secretive affair with a wizard learning in secret how to raise corpses and the like or maybe simply finding Dusty old homes with spells in them ignited some lust for knowledge in you that set you on the Wizard's path however you decide your character got there that is ultimately what makes a wizard now how Wizards choose to use that power can also vary a great deal some people having learned how to essentially manipulate the forces of the universe use it in search of nothing's short of godhood while still others simply peddle their services as diviners or maybe some of them put their magic to work in service to Royals or under a military environment where they can wreak havoc on a battlefield so while the pursuit of knowledge is the thread that connects all wizards together how they choose to pursue that power and how they found it to begin with are largely where things around the class fans see can come into play and how you choose to fill those gaps in is largely up to you though in the case of Baldur's Gate 3 having a tadpole in your head granting you all sorts of various Powers might be exactly the thing your wizard was looking for from there though I want to move on and talk about some class mechanics and first we are going to talk some general information the primary ability score for a wizard is intelligence since what they do is quite literally study magic an ability score that represents their capacity to seek out and devour magic is naturally the way to go after intelligence you have a little bit of wiggle room depending on exactly what you want to do but generally Constitution or dexterity which will help you survive a little longer are great ways to go now when it comes to proficiencies Wizards do not get much theirs is a life of study of the Arcane not the martial lessons of the world they get no armor proficiencies they've done no training with that at all and when it comes to weapons they are only proficient with daggers darts slings quarter stabs and and light crossbows and even in those cases there are very few instances where a wizard wouldn't simply be better off casting a can trip instead of trying to use their actual weapon and because of this they are known for a certain degree of Frailty and one of the things about playing a wizard is overcoming that sort of physical Frailty as they are a bit of a glass Cannon now from there let's talk about spell casting importance in many classes but none more so than the wizard Wizards will have more spells known and spells available to them than pretty much anyone and they record all of these in their spell book this is representative of the Spells you know and everything and in Baldur's Gate 3 there's not a literal book you need to keep up with but generally this is referred to as a Wizard's spell book and right away as soon as you make a wizard you're going to be able to pick some can trips which are spells you can cast sort of at will anytime it's your turn at the cost of an action of some sort of course but will also pick up six first level spells and then every time we level up we'll get to pick two more that we can learn as a representation of our studies and them advancing these can be any spells from The Wizard spell list that you can actually cast that is to say you have the appropriate level to do so however in order for you to actually cast any of these spells you have to prepare them preparing spells essentially means that they are ready for your wizard to cast this is a number greatly reduced from what you will actually know the number of spells you can prepare is a function of your Wizard's intelligence modifier plus their wizard level so while we will know a great mini spells we have to prepare them in order to use them and even then we are limited by our spell slots again all this is mostly true for all classes but because this is the Wizards whole deal I'm explaining it very thoroughly now when it comes to spell slots you're going to gain more of these as you level up but spell slots are divided up into spell level spells will ultimately go from one to ninth level indicating their general power however with Baldur's Gate 3's level cap of 12 we will only ever be able to get up to level 6 spells so while at first level a wizard will only have two first level spell slots meaning they can only use those spell slots to cast first level spells by the time they get to 12th level if you were to go all the way to level 12 with them they would have four first level slots three spell slots for second third and fourth level spells respectively two fifth level spell slots and one sixth level spell slot now you can use higher level spells thoughts to cast lower level spells which will increase their effect but of course this means you won't be able to use those higher level spell slots until you rest and recover them as a result of this while Wizards focus on casting tons and tons of spells they are somewhat Limited in what they can do per day as they will eventually need to rest this is where your can trips come in and while they won't do as much damage or anything as a bigger actually leveled spell they do not cost you spell slots you can use them in lieu of an actual spell if you were to say run out of spell thoughts or if you simply don't want to a spinned one generally the damage on these can trips increases as you level up as well to keep them relevant the last thing here to know really is that it is also possible again as a reflection of a wizard study for them to learn magic elsewhere from outside of just leveling up you can usually do this by learning them from Scrolls being the most common way though this will typically cost you a small amount of gold to transcribe the spell into your wizard spell book but this will then turn that spell into a spell known it does of course need to be a wizard spell and between their naturally higher known amount of spells and their ability to scribe Scrolls Wizards can learn an intense amount of spells and because of that and their need to prepare spells ahead of time a lot of playing a wizard comes down to knowing what to prepare when because in a video game this essentially translates to either swapping spells out when you level or going to the prepare dispels pane where you can swap out what you have prepared and when in though you'll need to rest for these to take effect so to get the most out of spell casting it helps to have a general idea of what you'll be up against and what you think will be most useful so you know what your wizard needs to prepare for ahead of time even though there are of course some general spells that are useful in basically every situation from there though let's move on to other class mechanics outside of our subclass there's really only one and that is Arcane recovery this is an ability that will let you recover some of your spell slots in between short rests with a long rest of course just resetting them all together so with Arcane recovery you have a little bit of an extension to the amount of spellers you can cast per day though Arcane recovery is a bit Limited in how much it can recover for you so don't expect to fully recover your spells this way from there though we are brought to subclasses there are a couple more class Mechanics for a wizard but they don't come up until much later into their level progression which is past what Baldur's Gate 3's level cap is so there's not much point in talking about them however when it comes to subclasses is where things with a wizard get really interesting because ultimately this is showing off the specialization of our wizard they will pick an Arcane tradition which allows them to specialize in a school of magic and get extra effects when casting those spells however because there's so many of them all of them follow a general template again there's going to be eight of these in the launch version of the game however in the case of every single one of them you can expect the following right away at level 2 when you pick your subclass you'll get half off the gold cost of scribing Scrolls for that school of spell this just makes it easier to learn spells in your specialization and then from there at second Sixth and tenth level for Baldur's Gate 3 you can expect a class feature of some sort or an Ability Beyond just casting spells that typically augments them in some way and these features are really what are going to set individual Wizards apart so we'll talk about a few of them just so you can get a general idea of what they do but again the vast majority of these are not in Early Access so what they wind up doing with each might change a little bit however we can show off evocation and ab duration which are two of the more popular ones to be sure because evocation is your standard damaging spell casts your Fireballs your lightning spells that kind of thing most of those fall under evocation so right at second level evocation Wizards get the ability to sculpt their spells this allows them to use AOE spells where your allies are standing without actually hurting them and then their Sixth and tenth level features actually Empower their spells with the sixth level one giving them better can trips and the 10th level one allowing them to add their intelligence modifier to the damage roles of their spells but something like AB duration is quite a bit different right at second level whenever you cast an AB duration spell you can create a sort of damage shield on yourself and then at sixth level anybody within 30 feet of them when they get hit you can choose to have that damage redirected to your ward with their 10th level feature letting them add their proficiency bonus to things like counter spell which means AB duration has a slightly more defensive focus on its magic but that's really just the tip of the iceberg for these subclasses because things like necromancy is going to at level 6 give you extra benefits to your anime dead spell to of course symbolize what you know about necromancy however many of these have slightly more vague descriptions that go beyond what might be something you could Implement in a video game which is why I suspect they will make some changes such as the school of transmutation second level ability allowing you to alter the physical properties of an item in some way but this is only temporary so exactly what they do with that in the game has yet to be seen with that said I think you get the gist of what Wizards are all about and how they perform and specialize in spell casting while a sorcerer might get things like metamagic and rely on fewer spells known a wizard is really about exemplifying the knowledge they've gained and learned over the years so when it comes to playing a wizard there's a few things to know now obviously this class is best suited for some type of support or damage oriented spell casting as that is pretty much everything their class entails you're either going to be supporting your party through various spells or just trying to deal as much damage as possible which is certainly what Wizards are good at however that does have to be counterbalanced against their General Frailty any way that you can supplement what a wizard can do for you in terms of their life expectancy is certainly very helpful and in many cases even this can come down to spells to help mitigate damage however another big aspect of that is actually just knowing when and what to prepare now ultimately there are just way too many spells in D and D and certainly in Baldur's Gate 3 for me to go over them all in detail here and give you a rundown but basically when it comes to playing a wizard a lot of it comes down to to managing your spells and knowing what you're about to be going up against because it is a class where knowledge is very much so power and thanks to their very large number of spells known they can prepare for just about any situation but they do have to do that preparation now when it comes to multi-classing a wizard there are a few options but it is a class where multi-classing is kind of all over the place generally though a very common approach here is to simply try to give a wizard more survivability such as multi-classing than with a fighter for things like heavy armor and then action surge which for a wizard is very very good there are other forms of this as well such as Paladin which also gets heavy armor you can multi-class them with a cleric which can also have a variety of useful abilities depending on their domain and while things like that tend to be really helpful with a wizard who's already going to do fantastic damage with their spells you can still multi-class them with other casters to get interesting effects such as a sorcerer to get access to these Sorcerers metamagic and the Wizard's bigger amount of spells known which can be a win-win however the catch there is that they don't use the same casting stat with Sorcerers using Charisma so that can be a little bit hard to balance though certainly not impossible and honestly with balder's gate 3's removal of the attribute requirement for multi-classing already confirmed this might be easier than it initially appears though you do have to weigh any multi-classing with a wizard against what they are losing in terms of their spells so it can be a bit tricky to balance with this one with that in mind though whether you are casting Fireball in every situation as is tradition or you are raising corpses after many unsavory experiments in a dark laboratory or perhaps You're simply casting Illusions for a simple laugh here and there Wizards are masters of magic capable of wielding a men's power that can be devastating to both enemies and potentially friends alike so with all of that said that has been our class overview for the wizard in Baldur's Gate 3. I certainly hope you enjoyed it if you did like comment subscribe all that YouTube jazz but regardless of any of that truly just thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 119,952

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, Baldurs Gate, BG3, BG2, BG1, Baldur's Gate, Connections, baldur's gate 3 story, baldurs gate 3, bg3 story, baldurs gate 1 & 2 before 3, bg3 multiplayer, bg3 gameplay, bg3 panel from hell, bg3 panel from hell recap, bg3 final panel from hell, bg3 release showcase, baldurs gate 3 release showcase, baldurs gate 3 panel from hell, bg3 multiclassing, baldurs gate 3 multiclassing, bg3 classes, bg3 wizard, bg3 wizard guide, bg3 wizard overview

Id: XTasWsiipLg

Length: 16min 32sec (992 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 26 2023