BG3 Build Guide for Solo Lockadin Thief (as per request)

hey guys this is the breakdown video for the Solo character I use in my videos that a few people requested I'm just uploading act 3 for now since I think that's the ACT people would be most interested in and honestly I ran out of the energy to make the act one and two parts right now I may make an act one and two video later but I'm not sure since it's a bit of effort to make this kind of video when only like two or three people are even going to see it I also just wanted to quickly preface this video by stating that this is a no way an optimal build there are probably going to be a lot of mistakes inefficient things or things that could have been done better that you may notice while watching this video uh because before creating this character I hadn't really read any guides or watched any YouTube videos in other people's builds uh I think the only exception or the main exception to that statement is the gloves of the automaton with the form of artifice buff anyways this is really just the result of me trying to see what I could come up with independently as well as the exploits that I noticed along the way during my playthrough of the game anyways let's get into it starting with the classes of the build so the first class listed here is Paladin we take five levels in Paladin um for multiple reasons reason number one is divine Smite um and reason number two is because as a marshall class it gives us access to extra attacks um we take the oath of devotion subass because it gives us access to the sanctuary spell Sanctuary is a very powerful spell um when you're using a single character um or a Solo character uh you can use it defensively obviously but you can also use it offensively um and what I mean by offensive uses of sanctuary is enemy units tend to Cluster around you when you have this cast on yourself so even though they can't Target you um they will still approach you and then end their turn so when it comes back to being your turn again you have a bunch of enemy units that are all clustered in one spot which sets them up for uh nice AOE attack or AOE spell to deal a lot of damage all at once a second use of sanctuary is as a pre- battle buff so you can cast sanctuary in yourself before battle begins the guarantee that you're not going to be attacked before your first turn um and a third use of sanctuary is to cast it on yourself at the end of your third turn on potion of speed um that way when you are struck with the lethargic status effect that occurs at the end of potion of speed you can't be attacked during this period other benefits of the oath of devotion subclass are not as important but it does give us access to Sacred weapon which for us will give us plus three to our attack roles for 10 turns um and that doesn't require any concentration um at level four for this Paladin we're going to choose the uh feet Sharpshooter um because we're mostly going to be using a bow um for this build um the fighting style we choose doesn't really matter but I chose Defense level two fighter we're taking this because we want action surge um gives you an extra action once per short rest and we are taking the two weapon fighting style because we are going to be dual wielding daggers and the two weapon fighting style allows us to add our relevant ability score modifier to the attack rolls and the damage rolles of your offhand weapon the level two warlock is uh for defensive reasons um the patron we choose is the great old one and that gives us mortal reminder which we will mostly be using defensively and at level two we get to choose eldrich invocations and the eldrich invocation that's most important to us is Devil's sight um so why are these two uh abilities that Warlock gives us sort of really good defensive tactics well with Darkness um you can't really or enemies can't make ranged weapon or spell attacks into it so if we have devil sight we can just sit in a little cloud of darkness and it acts as a force field for us enemies that lack the ability to see in magical Darkness will um be unable to make any sort of ranged attacks and again that's both weapon and spell attacks at us and interestingly melee weapon enemies or enemies that will you know need to get to melee range to hit us they frequently will not enter Darkness um to me it seems that that's contingent on your armor class um if you have a really low Armor class they'll still enter the darkness to try to hit you but if your armor class is high enough it seems to pretty effectively deter them and this is probably because if they enter Darkness they will have disadvantage on attack rolls against you and you will have advantage on attack rolls against them um so so how do you get Darkness so um you can use the spell to conjure darkness which will give you a very large area of effect for Darkness or you can use arrows of darkness which will create a smaller area of effect uh for only three turns Which is less than the spell but it's still very useful because um that counts as an attack and so you could shoot an arrow of Darkness either just on the ground around you or at an enemy to do damage and then you'll still have another attack available for the action that you used to create that little area of Darkness okay going back to Mortal or minder and how that comes into play so mortal or minder is a passive ability that the great old one grants us um and what it says is if an enemy is hit uh and it's a critical hit they are going to be frightened for one turn unless they succeed a saving throw additionally any enemies that are within close proximity to that enemy that got got or that had a critical hit scored against them they also will be frightened unless they make a saving throw against uh the Mortal reminder pass of ability um and it's very useful because although we have sort of negated um the threat of ranged spell and ranged weapon attacks against us um and we've mostly deterred enemies with melee attacks from hitting us there will still be enemies that try to enter the darkness to hit us and they can potentially succeed um now if we frighten those enemies then they can't move meaning they can't even approach Us in the first place so that's sort of how mortal reminder uh and darkness work together to be a really useful defensive uh shield for us I think the more experience you have and if you kind of already know your enemy's U move sets and behaviors the level two warlock class becomes less relevant I think if I were to make this build all over again I would probably forego taking the level two warlock um and I would either put one more level in Thief or two more levels in fighter this would allow us to get the alert feet um which would give us plus five to initiative this would be uh this would make it so we wouldn't have to cast Sanctuary on ourselves before combat since we would almost be guaranteed to go first um in every fight given our high initiative role even without the alert feet if we still wanted to see in darkness we could use the eversight ring and if we still wanted the Mortal reminder debuff we could just choose the option of putting one more level in Rogue but keeping the level one great old one warlock um the level three Rogue we are using one because level one Rogues give us expertise and we need expertise in slate of hand so we can steal everything um we're going to be stealing lots of Scrolls lots of arrows potions Elixir and crafting materials um so having expertise in Rogue is essential the level three subass that we're going to take is thief because it gives us an extra bonus action and we'll need that extra bonus action for our band of the Mystic scoundrel um we want to fully um take advantage of this ring um and we do this by having two bonus actions and we'll talk about that a little bit later going to the statistics of our character the only two that are relevant are dexterity um which we want to get to 20 um and Charisma which we want to get to 16 um we get to 20 dexterity by using anal Boon from act one to get plus one in dexterity and then we do plus two from the thief's memory which can be obtained uh by the mirror of loss in the house of grief um the Charisma of 16 we just get that by um our base stats so going through the armor and weapons the first is the helmet of Arcane Acuity which is critical to the build um essentially says that whenever you successfully land a weapon attack on an enemy you gain two stacks of Arcane Acuity to a maximum of 10 and what Arcane Acuity is is well for this build the only thing that's relevant is it gives us plus two to our spell save DC so uh sorry plus one to our spell save DC so for every Arcane Acuity stack we get plus one to our spell save DC and this works really the the best way to do this is essentially the arrow of many targets cuz you can hit up to four enemies with an one Arrow of many targets and that means that in uh many scenarios shooting one of these arrows using one attack will give us plus eight to our spell save DC and we're essentially almost at our Max um just with a single attack um this will be very synergistic with our band of the Mystic scoundrel ring um that will allow us to cast uh hold monster hold person Etc so the cloak of displacement is not important it's just a good cloak so I'm wearing it similarly These Boots hust boots are not important they're just good so I'm wearing them the armor that we're using is elegant studded leather and that's because we want plus two to our initiative roles to help increase the chance that we go first during the battle the gloves that we're going to be carrying we're going to be carrying four different gloves actually two of them will be used for combat the hell dust gloves and the legacy of the Masters primarily we're going to be using hell dust gloves because it gives us 1 to six fire damage and that's going to be synergistic for one of the combos that we use um that combo being Arrow of many targets um held us gloves and oil of combustion so how this works is that um you coat your weapon oil of combustion when oil of combustion um or whenever your weapon hits an enemy they get uh coated with the oil of combustion status effect if they take uh fire damage then oil of combustion causes them to explode um dealing 3 to 18 damage or fire damage to themselves and to any creatures within a certain radius um I don't know what the radius is off the top of my head I'm going to guess it's maybe 6 M but it it might be less um or more I'm not sure um so we want to use this with arrow of many targets because then that maximizes the number of enemies that we can coat with oil of combust um and obviously the hust gloves will be our source of fire damage um to activate the oil combustion explosion and now the best way to use this um is if you have a lot of enemies clustered close together then you would hit them with your arrow of many targets because when they all explode um each of those explosions will deal damage to each other enemy in the prox in the in the vicinity so they're not just dealing 3 to eight damage 3 to 18 damage to themselves they're each doing 3 to 18 damage to each other so if you have four enemies which is again the number of enemies that aom many targets can hit that are standing close together and they all explode um they each will take four time 3 to 18 damage so they'll each take um 12 to 72 damage I believe um yeah 12 to I think that's right 12 to 72 damage um in addition to the obviously regular damage that we'd be doing to them and so that's a way for our generally low damage build to put out a lot of damage every other turn um to uh multiple enemies Legacy the Masters is just to be worn if the enemy is um immune to fire damage um and making you know making hus gloves irrelevant um so these are kind of your backup gloves the other gloves that we're using are gloves of thievery which will not be used in combat that's it's just a outof combat glove that gives us advantage on slate of hand checks meaning that it decreases the risk of us getting a critical fail on a slate of hand check to one out of 400 and obviously will increase the chance of success as well um the gloves that uh the other gloves that will'll be carrying around are the gloves of the automaton you get this in act two um from I think barcus um and these are not going to be used during combat they're just going to be used to buff ourselves before combat we're going to use their bonus action right before combat called ciry interface which will give us 10 turns of attack roll advantage and 10 turns of lightning resistance without the need for concentration once we activate it ability we simply swap them out for hus gloves or Legacy of the Masters the ring that we're using is the band of the Mystic sandrel uh is super important to the build and what it says is after you connect a SE a successful weapon attack um you get to cast an illusion or enchantment spell as a bonus action for us we're going to have two bonus actions so we'll be able to do this twice per turn um and the only spells that we're really going to be using with this are the hold monster spell the hold person spell and Tasha's hideous laughter um Tasha's hideous laughter is kind of the second line spell in the case that the enemy is um immune to hold monster or hold person and that's going to be your Undead enemies and cavok primarily um how we're going to be using or how we're going to be actually acquiring the ability to use hold monster or hold person is by stealing hold monster old person Scrolls you can also steal Tasha's hideous laughter Scrolls but as a warlock you'll have access to Tasha's hideous laughter um the other ring that we are wearing oh yes sorry I also wanted to mention um you know this is obviously going to be very good with the helmet of Arcane acity because we're going to have so much spell save DC bonuses that no enem is ever really going to succeed a throw against our um hold monster and hold person spells unless they roll like a natural 20 or something all right the other ring is uh the second ring is not as important as the band of the mystics c ring um I tend to use strange conduit ring killer sweetheart um in this slot um just because they can increase your damage in certain situations um I do use the smuggers ring outside of combat just to help uh give myself a bonus when I want to P pickpocket someone um then for our amulet we have the Amulet of The Devout this is just to give us plus two to our spell save DC further decreasing the chance that any enemy will uh succeed a saving throw against our band of the Mystic scoundrel spells so the daggers or the melee weapons that we're using are rapidity in the off hand and bloodthirst in the main hand rap CID is a very good dagger um you kill three enemies and then you um gain the buff that this dagger offers which is plus three to your spell save DC plus three to your attack rolls and plus three to your damage again you have to kill three things to get this but that's it's not a very difficult thing to do it will um go away after your long rest though the main hand weapon is the daker bloodthirst um and we're using this because it will allow us to apply the aura of murder debuff to enemies and Aura of murder debuff um says that enemies take two times as much piercing damage so the the question is you know why would we use this uh instead of ballist armor since ballist armor is much better and that's actually the reason that I chose not to use it in the build is because I think it's too good um it I remember when I was uh playing early on or one of my earlier playthroughs you know when I first discovered or or acquired ballist armor um I found that it felt just the game just became a little bit too easy um I found that you know even though I didn't really know what I was doing um I was still able to kind of cruise through the game just because all the enemies around me were taking double damage and what I mean by that is because ballist armor how it works is that uh all the enemies around you um they get the aura of murder debuff without you having to do anything just by virtue of being in proximity of you they will take twice as much piercing damage as they normally would so yeah I mean it just felt a little bit too overpowered um blood thirst on the other hand it's a lot worse which just made it a little bit more interesting so just quickly going through some limitations of bloodthirst in comparison to ballis armor one is that your mainhand weapons uh has to be this dagger um you know with boss armor you can put any great piercing uh weapon as your main hand weapon unfortunately with bloodthirst the main hand weapon has to be the dagger itself uh which is a shame obviously cu the dagger itself doesn't do a lot of damage um in order to actually get someone to have the debuff you have to land and attack on them um as compared to ball armor you don't need to do anything uh the debuff is applied to enemies for free um um you don't need to land an attack at all um and the attack itself so that first initial attack with blood thirst doesn't benefit from the piercing vulnerability debuff only subsequent attacks will benefit from it um then there's the issue that only one enemy at a time the enemy that you hit will have the debuff applied to them there are of course ways to get around this but you'll have to kind of arrange your build to to benefit from that so for instance if you have a barard you can use SL flourish to hit two enemies at once um if you're a fighter you can use sweeping attack or if you're a ranger you can use Whirlwind attack but other than that you're going to only be able to apply this uh debuff to one enemy at a time per attack um and finally the debuff only lasts one turn so if the enemy survives um One turn you're going to have to hit them again with the dagger in order to reapply the debuff to them so all in all I think that these limitations make the dagger more gratifying to you since it forces you to sort of have to do a little bit more planning um in how you're going to hit enemies the order in which you hit them and find different ways to overcome the limitations of the dagger so yeah so how are we going to make bloodthirst work so the main Paradigm that we'll be following is we hit someone with bloodthirst usually Divine Smite typically which will apply the piercing vulnerability um debuff to the enemy um and then we will shoot them with arrows of slay um arrows of slang or arrows really will benefit from piercing damage vulnerability because all arrows are piercing damage um and arrows of slay if you don't know are arrows that you can steal or buy from vendors that will do double damage to particular enemy types so for instance arrows of fiend slay will do double damage to fiends um and if we have the aura of murder or piercing vulnerability debuff on that enemy they'll end up taking quadruple damage um from what a typical Arrow would normally do um additionally this is why we're taking Sharpshooter because that will give us another + 10 to our piercing damage and in the setting of piercing vulnerability it will essentially be plus 20 um piercing damage to dealt to enemies so as I said we're going to be trying to land critical hits with bloodthirst um and in the situation that sneak attack uh is activated off a critical hit I do think that this um does quadruple the damage essentially quadruple the damage from sneak attack because sneak attack I do think benefits from the aura of murder or the piercing vulnerability debuff applied from bloodthirst even though it's the first attack and then of course because it's a critical hit you roll the damage twice or you get you get two damage rolls so it does essentially get quadrupled um so we definitely don't want our initial attack with these daggers which we're using to apply apply piercing vulnerability to be sort of throwaway attacks that did very little damage themselves but and we're only able to apply the debuffed enemies we want to make sure that the attack itself does a lot of damage and the way we do that is by Divine Smite uh and in particular double Divine Smite so there are ways to make it so that um you land two Divine smites with a single attack um as for the exact criteria to make this work I'm not 100% certain I've been able to make it work consistently for myself but if I had to give you a list of criteria that you have to specifically meet I wouldn't be 100% confident that that it was a comprehensive list or that all the criteria that I gave you uh were actually necessary um I found that you know it has to be a critical hit you'll need to make it so that your Divine Smite reactions um trigger automatically um and I not sure but I think that your enemy will be needs to be unable to take reactions against you and so the bow that we're going to be using is the Deadshot it decreases the amount that you need to roll a critical hit by one similar to bloodthirst um and it allows you to add your proficiency bonus to your ranged attack uh provided that you don't have disadvantage um we are going to be carrying some other bows with us gantter male and the reason we're carrying this is because it gives us the celestial haste ability we're actually never going to use gun male during battle we're just going to buff ourselves with Celestial haste right before battle and Celestial haste the definition I guess of celestial haste or the the literal description of it is that you get five turns of haste you have to concentrate on it but when the effect expires or when your concentration is broken you don't suffer the lethargic debuff um that you would otherwise experience from the regular haste spell so although regular haste does last 10 turns so L Ste haste you don't suffer the lethargic debuff and due to this I've been able to haste myself twice on the first turn what I mean by that is what you'll do um is you will cancel the celestial haste and after you've done this you'll then take a potion of speed so you get the benefit of haste from Celestial haste spell you cancel it and then you take a potion of speed so you get two haste actions um in a single turn by doing this um additionally there are ways that you can even further take ADV manage of celestial haste um and I think this is most apparent in the video where this character that I have fights answer or answer or whatever um in which he makes um nine attacks in one on his first turn um so how you do this is after you've made so you've buffed yourself with Celestial haste before the battle on your first turn um you essentially or what I do is I essentially um cancel the haste or cast something that will break its concentration again you have to have made one attack beforehand um at that point um the game kind of it it's kind of a difficult thing to explain but it seems to me that what the game does is the first attack that you've made will count towards your Celestial haste action and once you've cancelled this action um Celestial the celestial haste goes away but because you've already made an attack um the extra attack is still available to you even though Celestial haste has been canceled um and in honor mode this is a big deal because um in honor mode the only times you get an extra attack for an action is if it's from the very first action of your turn or from action surge so what we do by canceling Celestial haste after the first action and because Celestial haste's action is our first action in the turn is that we still get to maintain that extra attack but because the action has gone away uh the remaining non hasted action from the turn so the default action um sort of becomes the first action in the turn and you'll notice this when you look at your little dots at the bottom of the screen the Celestial haste dot goes away and then the second action slot moves into the first action slot and thus counts the first action and so we can get four attacks um in based off of these two actions whereas before we could have only been able to get three now to make this work you definitely need to not activate any other sources of extra actions so you can't haste yourself um until youve fully expended all the extra attacks from this you can't use action Surge and you can't activate elixir of blood lust so you have to expend all the um all the extra attacks or all the attacks from these two actions before you acquire any extra sources of actions or else this won't work um if you wanted to really get extra attacks you know you didn't you I could have not used one of those bonus actions to drink a potion of speed I could have instead before the battle thrown down some haste spores or thrown the potion of speed on the ground so that way my character during the battle could have just walked through the haste fores or walked the potion of speed in order to haste himself without having to expend the bonus action um so yeah this build could technically have 10 attacks in the first turn um a fighter could or pure fighter could have 12 attacks in the first turn and if we're on tactician I believe you get 15 attacks on your first turn um kind of doing all these things and again the sources of extra attacks for us will be Celestial haste potion of speed SL haste spores that were previously thrown to the ground um elixir of blood lust and action surge then obviously the bonus actions can be used for attacks as well so I also wanted to quickly talk about the Buffs that I apply to the character before battle um so one of the Buffs that I frequently apply is sanctuary um so one of the reasons that we do this is because um we want to protect our character uh before they make make it to we want to make it to our first turn essentially um generally we will be taking the first turn of the battle because we'll have such high initiative with our dexterity and the armor that we're wearing but in the event that we don't take the first turn um Sanctuary can help protect our character so they can make it to their their first turn um additionally Sanctuary is useful for us because um we're not going to be ambushing or surprising any enemies I know that you know that would be a good idea I think all builds would probably benefit from surprising the enemy um however um I I I like to have dial I like to go through the dialogue with each of the enemy uh characters um and also I'm not sure if ambushing and surprising enemies uh leads to you becoming an oath breaker Paladin which we obviously don't want to do we want to stay as an oath of devotion Paladin um I think for one of the other Buffs that I'll apply if I remember to do it is mirror image I think it's a good idea to always apply Mirror Image before a battle um it's especially useful if you want to save your Sanctuary for uh your subsequent turns rather than use it on your first turn because remember if you if you break your Sanctuary you can't use it for another full turn um we'll use Celestial haste on ourselves we'll use form of artifice on ourselves we'll use sacred weapon on the bow um and we will use oil of combustion or oil of Bane on the bow as well um and then we'll use potion of line to increase our mobility and elixir of blood lust uh I I think that my character pretty much always has elixir of blood lust on the moment the character wakes up from a long rest I have them take an elixir of blood lust as far as tadpull Powers go um the only Tad pull Powers I took were luck of the far Realms and whatever tadpull power is the prerequisite to luck of the far Realms um the reason I only took two was because I initially started out with the idea that I was going to do a no Tad pole uh play through but then like halfway through act three I was just like screw it and I just really wanted luck of the far Realms so I just took it so to pickpocket items from the vendor the first thing we're going to do is switch to the silver pendant which will allow us to cast guidance on ourselves um after we cast guidance on oursel we swap to the cloak of the cunning broom um Smuggler's ring and gloves of thievery uh the next thing we do is disengage which will create a fog Cloud via the cloak of the cunning broom then we hide in the fog cloud and then we proceed to pickpocket all the items that we need before teleporting back to the safety of Camp before the vendor realizes what we've done so anyways hope that was useful um and if not well whatever the end

Channel: ScoobyDoom

Views: 6,435

Keywords: bg3, baldur's gate 3, solo build, solo, band of the mystic scoundrel, honour mode, honor mode, warlock, lockadin, thief, rogue, fighter, padlock, paladin, blood thirst, bloodthirst, build

Id: V-sIAf2Qcd0

Length: 30min 23sec (1823 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2024