BREAK THE LOCK(ADIN) - BG3 Minthara Tactician Build Guide

hello my friends and welcome back to another Boulders Gate 3 build guide hope you're all doing well today I'm covering the character in the game that without abusing any mechanics or specific item combos has the highest per turn damage output of any single character as long as you're not abusing mechanics this is going to be the most damage that you can get every single turn of a combat and it can continue to do the same amount of damage forever while also reaching the extremely high burst damage potential at the beginning of combat that's available to every Paladin it also gets to abuse some extremely powerful defensive mechanics making your character extremely difficult to kill getting incredible saving throws as well as being um Out Of Reach of every other character in terms of damage output I think there's one other vanilla combo that doesn't use any specific uh abusive mechanics that can match this and I believe there are none that can exceed it so we're really looking at the top tier of power level in terms of characters to reach this we are going to have to use a more specific setup than some of my other builds so I'm going to be taking you through this build step by step in order very carefully I'm using Menara as the example character because this is going to be a warlock Paladin multiclass build it fits her very well and also this build really reaches the peak of its power or sort of comes online and starts uh reaching the break point where it becomes extremely powerful relative to other characters around level seven so that's about when you should be able to add Menara to your party so it's a really good fit for her as a build you can certainly play this build from level one and it will also be very good doing that although it does have a couple struggles in the very very early game that you'll need to take some specific steps to overcome I'll talk to you uh talk more about that as we go all right so just to Dive Right into this we are going to start level one as a paladin the reason reason for this is just getting heavy armor access we will be using both Paladin and warlock levels in an almost even split in order to maximize our damage output for the end game so starting Paladin gets us access to Heavy Armor which warlocks don't naturally get and obviously heavy armor is very good there's some extremely powerful specific heavy armors that are also very good for this build later on um I will talk about a couple of them when we reach the end of the video but for now just bear in mind that this character also gets to have heavy armor making it pretty solid defensively because you're going to be a two-handed weapon character operating in melee you will end up with lower AC than many other melee characters I talk a little bit about the downsides of this in my Paladin build but all enemies will always have disadvantage to hit you and you will never be able to be targeted by ranged attacks because this build gets to use Darkness better than just about any other build in the game and so Al for that reason if you are playing this build as a main character I recommend that you take D anyways because additional casts of Darkness are extremely powerful our Paladin subclass Choice I'm going to talk about this here doesn't actually matter the reason is that this build is going to use the secret fourth subass available to paladins the oathbreaker Paladin if you don't want to use oathbreaker for role playing reasons um you will end up with a slightly lower power cap at the end of the build um but also some other additional utility from just your normal Paladin levels and the best one is probably oath of vengance just like other paladins this character really loves to have advantage on attacks because Critical Hits are so valuable to you paladins love Critical Hits because if you are using a Smite attack you're adding extra damage dice to every attack and critical hits double damage dice meaning that a critical hit doubles your Smite damage as well on paladins so one thing that we're keeping an eye out for over the course of the game is sources of Advantage oath of Vengeance paladins have a built-in way to gain Advantage so that's the best of these sub classes if you don't want to be an oath breaker but to really cap out this build's power level you should be an oathbreaker our ability score is going to look extremely weird and this is part of the very specific setup that you need to build this character so we are going to clear this immediately and I will reset everything back to eight we need as much Charisma and Constitution as we can get because we are actually going to be using charisma rather than strength to deal our damage constitution of course is mandatory for every Melee character in the game as well as just every character I think it is it going to be extremely rare that I will post a build that doesn't start with 16 constitution in fact I think I've posted precisely zero builds that don't start with 16 Constitution and also because this character wants to maintain concentration on spells um at all times because you have a couple spells that are extremely powerful to concentrate on it's even more important that you get get good saves from Constitution and we will later be adding our Charisma to our saves as well meaning that you'll very rarely fail a concentration check with this character we also want as much Charisma as we can get because of course we're using that for our damage and then you need a bunch of dexterity dexterity is really good for initiative and one thing this character will struggle with is initiative roles so I like to get 14 dexterity even though we are in heavy armor um this will allow you to win initiative more often you could if you wanted to lower your dexterity but I don't recommend it for our last four points we're going to put them all into wisdom leaving us with eight strength if you are worried about your damage output at level one you could take a higher strength build and uh be a little more effective at exactly level one and then Respec into this stat spread later on but I think you should probably just take this stat split and rely on lasel and shadowart to see you through through the ithd Nautilus if you are worried about your level one combat Effectiveness for our skills the only thing that really matters here is that this build does get good access to pushing and shoving if you use strength Elixir so you can take Athletics um if you're a main character of course you're going to want to have points in your conversation skills and this build is excellent as a main character for the reason that it gets incredible Charisma and great conversations skills throughout so I like this build both for manthara or for a main character all right so that's our first level and we are set up already very well to be going into our next [Music] level at level two we're going to Branch off from Paladin and the reason for this of course is that we have the 16 Charisma and so we need to be combat effective as early as possible for that reason we are going to jump straight into warlock warlock of course uses Charisma as its casting stat so now you're basically a level one warlock with heavy armor which is a totally reasonable thing to be at this point in the game and you get access to eldrich blast which will you be your main combat mechanic for the first few levels for your cantrip selection of course you're going to take eldrich blast and I actually quite like having blade wward on this character it's typically a poor action in combat but you can pre-cast it ahead of combat to just gain one turn of damage resistance it makes it harder for you to lose concentration on other spells it's valuable for casters that intend to be in melee um another option that is actually worth mentioning and again I know I joke about this one a lot but sources of Advantage are really powerful for paladins who really want to go fishing for crits and you can take true strike cast it before combat um and have advantage on your attacks now later on you're going to have advantage on every attack from Darkness so I would wouldn't worry too much about this um it's better off to just uh you're you're better off taking blade Ward and generally I would advise against taking True strike but I just like to mention it because it really annoys some people in the comments for our character subass because we will be making every attack with advantage and we'll be fishing for critical hits throughout the game I actually think that even though we're a Melee character we're best off with great old one mortal reminder is a very powerful effect when you land a critical hit against a creature they make a wisdom saving throw or become frightened until the end of their turn frightened is a really good condition especially if you're a Melee character because enemies that can't move and have disadvantage on their attacks and ability checks are easy prey for your melee characters so if you can get up on an enemy hit them with a critical Hit And if they survive which is with this build unlikely that they survive but against certain bosses maybe there's some that are not immune to frightened especially in the early earlier game this can be incredibly powerful you can also throw a critical hit against one enemy it will frighten everything around them and then you move to the next enemy trapping them in melee with you and preventing them from acting easily so this is a very powerful effect and it's basically free so I really like to have that for our spell selection for warlocks um at in the early game you're going to want to have access to hex hex is kind of the gold standard for damage in the early game you use hex plus eldrich blast and 1 D6 Plus 1 d10 damage at range in the early game is is quite strong and at this point in the game you are not yet a Melee character you'll you will only transition to being a Melee character starting at character level four or warlock level three so for now we still want to maximize our eldrich blast damage so that you can make use of that in addition bonus action Mobility is very powerful so you could take expeditious Retreat um armor of agathys will stay useful as your a Melee character throughout the game this is a moderately effective spell that just gives you a little bit more HP generally speaking I think you're going to want to choose one of those two for this build and personally I would just go with expeditious Retreat you will Almost Never cast your second warlock spell at level one but um it's possible that you'll want expeditious Retreat for certain encounters so I would just pick that one up that being said that second spell choice is not that important so you should take what you consider to be most useful for you warlock level two we get access to eldrich invocations which is where this character's Charisma Synergy really starts to come online because we get to take agonizing blast this will stay useful until the end of the game it adds your charisma modifier to eldrich blast damage and so this means that you are doing 1 d10 plus 1d6 plus three damage with every range attack you're doing at this point which is again very solid damage for this point in the game it's better than a a uh a crossbow attack or something like that pretty much equivalent to a rogue sneak attack slight slightly worse than that but with no conditions to apply it so you're going to be able to keep up in terms of damage output with the other characters already at later levels eldrich blast starts firing multiple attacks with the same action so when you hit Level five and it's character level five not warlock level five eldrich blast will fire two beams and at level 11 it'll fire three beams giving you access to two or three times your charisma damage on every eldrich blast attack this is obviously super strong and will allow you to apply your very high Charisma over and over again um with agonizing blast even at range making you a very solid and capable ranged attacker who also in at later levels will become the best melee damage dealer in the game for our second uh eldrich invocation you definitely want to take Devil's sight this allows you to cast Darkness because it allows you to see in magical darkness and stand in it pepper enemies with agonizing blasts from within the darkness cloud and they can't shoot back at you because you are inside of a a cloud of Darkness as well later on when we get access to better melee capabilities if they come in after you you will have advantage on every single attack and they'll have disadvantage on every single attack meaning that not only will you be out damaging them you will also have incredible defensive capabilities against them with our heavy armor and disadvantage on every attack enemies are going to hit you very rarely and this additionally means that you will always hit enemies because you'll have advantage on every attack and get twice as many Critical Hits which are extremely important for paladins for our spell selection here you just take whichever one you didn't take from the the last level and then we get to warlock level three this is where the build starts really coming online because we get this packed boon with packed of the blade warlock you can uh bind any weapon that you are holding as your packed weapon this means that instead of the normal stat it uses strength for a non- finesse weapon or dexterity for a finesse weapon it will use your casting stat in this case Charisma to apply it's attack and damage roles this means that with a two-handed weapon with your with like this Warhammer for example you are doing 2d6 plus4 and have plus4 to hit making you as good at melee combat as a dedicated fighter or Paladin would be at this point while not having had to put any points into strength and this will get even better later on in the build this lets you be a fully functional Caster while also being a fully functional Melee character and is one of the real strengths of this build in addition to the extreme levels of damage that it will get later on in the game for our second level spell you actually don't necessarily need to take Darkness from warlock although at this point in in the game I will suggest taking it it's so important to your build um that you are really going to want to have access to this and later on you'll get other ways to cast it but for now warlock spell slots are going to be your best way to cast it and it's so valuable this Remains the single best defensive tool in the game making you completely immune to ranged attackers while also giving all melee enemies disadvantage against you and you have advantage against them remember at this point now we are also applying our Charisma to damage so we're hitting harder than just about any other character even starting at level four we also do want to replace a spell because how warlock spells work is you always cast your highest level spell so you really want to get rid of these level one spells and replace them with level two spells my pick here is you're going to want to replace expeditious retreat at this point for the much more valuable Misty step this gives you a Mobility option that allows you to avoid having to actually move and is just a way better Mobility option it's a bonus action that just teleports you 60 ft this is going to be relevant throughout the game and is one of the best spells in the game uh Bar None So is extremely valuable to have at this point there's a little bit of a split in the build we could either go to warlock level four basically to get our feet and increase our Charisma to 18 which means that we would be applying plus4 to every eldrich blast attack and every melee attack we made or we could take a second level of Paladin to gain access to smites at this point I think that you probably want to take your second level of Paladin because Smite attacks are so good but uh which order you take these in is going to be um somewhat interesting for you and I recommend kind of uh figuring this one out as you go that being said before we take our second level of Paladin there's something that we actually have to do and I will show you how to do that now so at this point you should have access to respecing which is very important to be able to do this by the time you hit level four or five you should be able to Respec your character easily we need to break our Paladin oath in order to become an oath breaker Paladin to get access to the things that that lets you have I will show you how to do that now the easiest way to break your Paladin oath is to slay an innocent character um and that's usually just any NPC unfortunately we are in our camp and so there's only one innocent around so I'm going to have to do something somewhat unforgivable and you may want to look away for the next 30 seconds of the video while we break our oath really quick this part of the process is actually somewhat easy to mess up so make certain you save before you do it I actually messed up while recording this so you'll probably have noticed a cut in the video there um the first thing that you need to do is go talk to Withers and Respec your character back to level one this is especially important if you get Menara with like her full levels of XP make certain that you are at level one we're going to be a level one Paladin taking all of the same making all of the same choices that we made last time confirm all of this this is all this should all be saved and then uh save the game again do not level up your character and go break your oath in order to do that you need to kill an innocent so I'm going to do that and now is the time that you want to look away probably if you insist death comes for them what's this all right it's safe to look back but we have broken our oath and we should now have a conversation trigger I'm going to skip this because uh there's a lot of story stuff skipping through the dialogue as quickly as possible both because it's very loud weirdly louder than every other conversation in the game and also because there's a lot of story stuff that I don't want to ruin if you haven't experienced it for yourself yet after that conversation when you go back to your camp this guy should be somewhere hanging out in it the oath breaker Knight this guy will allow you to become an oathbreaker Paladin and we are at level one the reason we had to Respec to level one is that once you are an oathbreaker Paladin you can no longer Respec your character anymore again you will be able to level up and take multiclass levels as you level up but you won't be able to Respec so again make certain that you save and make certain you save every level uh for the rest of the game to avoid messing something up and having to to redo your character from scratch because you won't be able to Respec go talk to this guy I have you called to me and then we do we just pass through this dialogue as quickly as possible your oath is broken tell him you want to become an oathbreaker and then it will pop up this screen showing that you are becoming an oathbreaker Paladin this gives you access to um the spiteful suffering action which is fine but it requires an action it causes enemies to take some damage and you have advantage against on attacks against them if you somehow can't reach an enemy to make a melee attack this is fine although you'll probably be better off just making an eldrich blast in that case um overall because this takes an action it's significantly worse than the vow of enmity one but the stuff that we get later on in oathbreaker Paladin levels makes up for it all right so we have done our Respec we are now in oath breaker Paladin and we can resume leveling we're going to take the same three warlock levels that we took before making sure that we make all of the same decisions in terms of Spell access and everything oops that's witch bolt not expeditious Retreat those icons look quite similar to me and we take devil sight and agonizing blast just remember to do that make sure that you are taking all of the same [Music] spells here we take Darkness again although we will probably sub that out later on and we sub out expeditious Retreat for Misty step and we get packed of the blade all right so now we're back where we were but we're now in oath breaker Paladin this lets us uh continue to level Paladin levels but here we go continue to level in Paladin gaining access to Smite attacks because we're a level three warlock we can use our warlock spell slots as level two smites and those recharge on a short rest so now we have access to really high level Smite attacks every single short rest and can continue to make um powerful Smite attacks much more constantly than other characters can we are going to also take the great weapon fighting fighting style which is another one of the great things that Paladin gets for this character because this lets you roll a one or two on a damage die when making an attack with a two-handed weapon this is so good for paladins because this includes damage dealt from your smites so the additional 3d8 that we're doing on every Smite attack is incred we also get to roll the damage making it the damage output of these both high and Incredibly consistent because we're level five Dr we also now get access to an additional once per day darkness which saves us from having to spend a warlock spell slot on that which is great and uh we also get access to some Paladin spells to prepare bless is always good to have access to this character will usually want to be focusing on Darkness but um it's never a bad thing to have bless you will certainly want command command can cause an enemy to drop prone um and if you are for example hasted from an Allied spellcast you can cause an enemy to drop prone wasting their next turn and then attack them with Advantage because they're prone on the ground the rest of these options are not as important um because our concentration is required for a lot of our other spells we don't want to have to be concentrating on the unique smites although wrathful Smite having a frightened option is pretty nice um generally after command and bless the others fall down uh in power level significantly but protection from evil and good can come up sometimes and cure wounds is never terrible to have access to especially because as an oathbreaker Paladin we don't get healing from lay on hands we instead get damage now we're going to go back to warlock for one level because this lets us get our ability score Improvement going up to 18 Charisma one other thing that's worth mentioning is if you're especially if you're a main character is you could take a 17 Charisma split on on this build you would lose two points in wisdom to take 17 Charisma and then you could be up to 20 Charisma already if you take The Hags hair um just worth mentioning that although for Menara you you will not be able to do that because you can't have her by the time uh you are taking that deal um I guess actually you can if you as a temporary companion so I'm I'm genuinely not certain how that work how that functions if anybody knows how that functions uh let me know but but for Menara as a character this probably is going to be you're probably going to just be going up to 18 Charisma here we take an additional can trip and at this point it doesn't really matter what you take so take one of the utility can trips like Mage hand or minor illusion for our spell selection one that is extremely worth mentioning for paladins who have high Charisma like this Paladin and thus have good save DCS most paladins are going to want to max strength and so won't have strong save DCS but one other Advantage this character gets is your save DCS will be just as good as any other spellcaster which means that you can use stuff like command and hold person hold person takes your concentration but guarantees Critical Hits against enemies that fail it I talked already about how good Critical Hits are for this character and so hold person lets you guarantee a critical hit on a Smite attack doubling the damage of your smites and increasing your damage output massively we then go to warlock level five because at warlock level five we get the class feature from packed of the blade that lets you make a second attack with your packed weapon once you uh are warlock level five and this is about where the the build really comes online because we have two attack we have third level smites from our level three warlock spells and we have all of the the Charisma to damage goodies that we've already mentioned um you are now as good or better than any other Melee character while also being a fully functional spellcaster at this point and the build only gets stronger from here for our level three spell the most important one by far is to have access to counter spell um usually you're going to be spending your warlock spell slots on Smite at this point but counter spell is of course very valuable we also will never be casting hex anymore so we want to replace that and my suggestion is to replace it with Hunger of Hadar hunger of Hadar is just a really good spell it's a huge AOE it uh does decent damage and it blinds enemies usually you'll prefer Darkness cuz you can safely stand in it yourself but hunger of Hadar is just a really good and really cool spell so it's great to have access to for eldrich invocation you are going to want repelling blast this gives you quite a bit of utility with your eldrich blasts cuz you can you can cast them and knock an enemy back 15 ft knocking them off of cliffs into abysses or just repositioning them into say your hunger of fedar that you have on the on the field or an Allied wall of fire or stuff like that the ability to reposition enemies is always powerful and something you should keep an eye out for on every character now we're done with our warlock levels and could go back to take taking levels in Paladin I always hit the wrong button there at Paladin level three we get access to some oath spells these are not particularly important um we also get immunity to disease which gives you a c a couple small advantages but again it's not terribly important Dreadful aspect is quite good frightened is a very powerful condition for for enemies and this one is a wisdom save based on your charisma so we unlike most paladins are going to to have again good save DCS because we're raising our Charisma as high as it can go and so the ability to frighten enemies within 30 ft in an AOE is is hugely powerful prepared spells again the level one spells don't matter and you're also going to be spending these level one spell slots either on command or on smites you remember you don't have to spend your warlock slots on Smite you can also spend your Paladin slots on Smite if you want to use a Smite attack at a lower level and that's a very valuable thing to do if you want those resources here of course we get to raise our Charisma up to maximum if you used anti-thy deal then you're going to want to take alert as your feet because alert gives you uh fixes the initiative issues that are basically this build's only weakness um so definitely keep that in mind alert is probably the s Le most powerful feet in the game by a a significantly wide margin so you should always keep an eye out for the ability to fit this in and if you're doing this as a Solo character I should mention also this is one of the better solo characters in the game as well um maybe the best it's very much worth doing here we get access to our second level Paladin spells as well as extra extra attack the extra attack from Paladin 5 and warlock 5 stack this gives us three attacks every round something that we are getting earlier than any other character has access to Fighters get this at level 11 we get it at level 10 and we're making all these attacks um based off of our casting stat while being a fully functional spellcaster we also get some higher level spells the level two spells again you don't really want these special smites uh cuz you're just you don't want to concentrate on that you'd rather be concentrating on Darkness pretty much all ways so I would take stuff like I I'd typically prepare stuff like Aid which can be used to to help mitigate um it it's pretty good damage mitigation if you have some summons in your party and good for allies lesser restoration can be quite useful in certain combat scenarios generally you're going to want to pick a bunch of utility spells from this thing because the only spells you're actually casting for their effects are com is command um and maybe occasionally bless at level six Paladin we get another one of the best class features in the game Aura of protection and you get get to use this even better than other paladins do this says plus zero but it's lying it's a plus your charisma modifier to saving throws so this is going to give you plus five to all your saves making you the character and all your party saves making you the character with the best saving throws in the game at this point you are never going to fail a concentration check because you are going to have uh plus eight to all of your concentration checks which is extremely strong um and you also have Proficiency in wisdom saves meaning that you will never fail the very dangerous effects that Target wisdom wisdom is usually the most important of the six saving throws uh Constitution and dexterity are the other two most important so that's part of why we have those stats so high and never failing a save against a wisdom targeting effect is very valuable for this character and finally at character level seven we get the reason that we are in the oathbreaker Paladin and that is Aura of hate remember you have to turn this on it does not stay turned on by default or it doesn't start turned on by default which is kind of annoying um and this will give you an additional your charisma in damage to every weapon attack so now we will be adding double our Charisma to every weapon attack for a plus 10 bonus to everything um you can also at this point if you wanted to uh and took Ethel's deal rather than alert you could take great weapon Master for an additional plus 10 damage doing plus 20 damage on every attack um both of those are extremely powerful options and because you're going to have advantage on every attack you are very likely to hit with your great weapon Master attacks so that's something else to keep in mind um with the default build without using Ethel's deal you are going to end up with massive damage bonus from your Charisma as well as your Smite attacks on every round and let's put it all together so first off you have to activate your class abilities with pack to the blade um oh not that one this one is always a little bit confusing you have to act uh bind packed weapon so once this is marked it's going to be using your charisma to damage so notice that we're doing 2d6 plus 5 there rather than the minus one we would be doing if it was using our strength and then if I activate Aura of hate which we can find here we will be doing 2d6 + 10 so let's attack something just to show that off so that was 17 damage just from a normal attack because and that was on fairly low damage rules and you can do that three times around so let's let's do that the average damage output from your rounds where you don't spend any smites is um 30 plus 21 so 51 average damage um from not spending any smites and that's obviously incredibly good if you want to spend smites you have two level three smites every short rest as well as some additional level one and two smites giving you access to massive damage output and that's before any bonuses or critical hits or anything something that you are really going to want to do on this character is to here I guess we're going to show three weapon attacks in one round one uh two and notice that we can still do a third break this desk oh we can't break the desk the desk is invincible so unlike every other character we get three weapon attacks in a round if you're hasted you get six weapon attacks so this character wears haste extremely well potions of speed or potions of blood lust will be your friend on this character um elixir of blood lust and potions of speed you can do both for three actions per round giving you nine total attacks for an average damage output over 150 before spending any Smite resources you also get to do all of this within a Darkness Cloud notice that we aren't blinded but the oathbreaker Knight is and so when we go to attack him we will have advantage on our attacks and if he were to hit us back he would have disadvantage on his attacks put together this character is one of the just most broken possible characters in the game a build I really wanted to show you guys for itemization you really don't have to do anything specific um a two-handed weapon that has multiple damage dice so a maul or a great sword is recommended because it plays very well with great weapon Master you're more likely to roll and anything that gives you guaranteed Critical Hits like this Killer's sweetheart ring is going to be very valuable as well also you'll likely want to drink an elixir of blood lust for additional actions and a potion of speed for haste in important fights all right my friends I hope that you've enjoyed this look at the extremely powerful oathbreaker locked in and as always if you have enjoyed the video do please feel free to leave a comment um like the video and you can subscribe to my channel for more builds like this basic builds for every class lore friendly builds for every character and other strategy game content not in balers gate I also have a couple more fun things uh in balers gate coming up so so keep an eye out for those we will be doing some things that aren't just build guides as well and I'm really excited to bring you those all right my friends hope you've enjoyed the video and I will catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 60,382

Keywords: Etarran, Cephalopocalypse, Baldur's Gate 3, Larian, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Build, Guide, Strategy, Tactics, Tutorial

Id: LWJv2qh3Nso

Length: 35min 38sec (2138 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2023