LAND DRUID Can Do EVERYTHING - Jaheira / Halsin Honour Build Guide

hello my friends and welcome back to another balers Gate 3 build guide hope you're all doing well today I'm keeping a promise we're going to cover my pick for the best land Druid build in balers Gate 3 land Druid is sort of the default Druid class because Moon Druid and spor Druid have much more specific play Styles whereas land Druid just doubles down on doing what Druid already does really well I think Druid makes the best fourth party member they can fit into pretty much any party no matter what your other three party members are the Druid will always be able to contribute because they can fill pretty much any role and they can vary what role they're filling from combat to combat based on what spells you cast what wild shape form you assume and so on Druids can provide tanking healing Battlefield control um ranged damage melee damage the possibilities are basically endless the only thing they don't really provide is high access to skills and stealthy ranged attacks but any other role that your party needs filled a Druid will always be able to do it so they make an excellent pick for your main character and an excellent pick to round out any party I think Druids are probably one of the best classes to have available on honor mode for a number of reasons one is just the sheer versatility and and power level of Druids and two is that Druids because they Pro have multiple health bars and excellent Mobility options means that you will almost always be able to escape a fight if it's going badly so a druid can always be your sort of Ace in the Hole if you at run into trouble for that reason I think we're going to focus this build primarily on emphasizing the versatility of Druid making sure that you can do all the things that Druids do really well and while making sure as well that we have access to a ton of the power inherent in being a full spellcaster before I jump in I do want to uh quickly thank a few people because I'm still catching up on the extremely generous donations that people made over the holidays so thank you so much to charie oo for $5 Rachel no jams for $5 seral Leon Leon for €6 Mercy T Browns for $5 Joey Central for $10 and Andy C for $5 thank you so much my friends I really do appreciate the generosity all right let's jump in and build this Druid we are using jira as the example character here but Druids do extremely well as a main character of course although we do get two of them throughout the game so um that would potentially mean either doubling up or leaving both hon and jira behind um I'm using jira here because something that I have noticed and this is uh just funny to me is that when I do a druid build with Hon on the thumbnail and a druid build with Jiro on the thumbnail the Jiro one does like five times as well in terms of you count so the people have spoken but if you are building this for a main character Druids actually have more interesting choices when it comes to race selection than other character classes because they have more to consider some racial passives work in Wild shape and some do not um and so it's important to know which ones are going to function for example one of my favorite racial picks is always wood elf because you get the additional 5T of bonus movement speed you don't get that in Wild shape as a druid the bonus movement speed will not apply so that is something that will potentially make you want to pick wood elf less than you normally would on the other hand one that does work and that is truly excellent is the halfling roll halflings being able to reroll ones is incredibly powerful especially because a druid's normal play style is to cast a concentration spell at the beginning of combat and then enter wild shape for the rest of combat so you really don't want to lose concentration on your uh the spell you're concentrating on halflings ability to roll ones can make certain that you don't do that so I think that overall the best pick for Druids is going to be halflings another thing that's also worth mentioning about Druids is because they replace their movement speed with their wild shaped forms movement speed they don't care as much about losing movement speed by picking a halflink or uh a gnome any of the slower races all right let's jump in and start building this character so first off off we of course have to pick our ability scores Druids are one of the most single attribute dependent or sad classes in the game you want to be sad not mad multi-attribute dependent and so that's a very good thing the reason for this is that Druids only care about the spell DC of their spells and when they wild shape they replace their physical stats strength dexterity and Constitution with the physical stats of the wild shaped form this is something that causes a lot of confusion that being said you do still want good dexterity because winning initiative is so important and you'll often want to start combat not in Wild shaped form and you do still want good Constitution because it will while you won't use your uh your humanoid forms Constitution for your concentration saving throws you do still use them for your hit points and uh for for your saving throws while in Wild shape you do still use them for your hit points and you'll use them for any saving thies you make outside of wild shape that being said you don't need intelligence at all you don't need charisma at all and you don't need strength at all because anytime you're going to be doing anything that involves strength you're going to be doing it as an animal pretty much and so you will always use the animal form strength for that reason we can actually take one of the weirder and cooler stat splits in the game the 8165 8178 stat split this lets us dump three stats down to eight which is a huge Advantage compared to other characters and gets us um while we do have two odd numbers we have more total stats in the important stats than any other type of character in the game you can of course get a small Edge um by taking even numbers at level one and then respecing to the stat spread at level four but this stat spread is going to be the one that you were going to want for your final um final set of stats when you are building this character for our skill selection the only thing that is really important is that you absolutely make sure you have perception perception is one of the best uh two or three skills in the game you can see my recent skill tier list for more on that and it's Druids are the best at perception because they are the only character that both wants to maximize their wisdom and gets perception proficiency by default clerics also want to maximize their wisdom but don't get perception proficiency unless they take a background that provides it so Druids are the only character that is going to have 20 wisdom and perception proficiency by default very they're the best at looking at things very important that you allow them to do that for your second skill selection it really doesn't matter unless you are a main character if you're a main character who's going to be doing dialogue you should probably pick insight and then maybe take a background that gives you uh at least one conversation skill like persuasion um survival the other wisdom skills are basically useless if you're not a main character animal handling is only used in conversation and can be completely bypassed by casting speak with animals medicine only comes up in conversations for the most part there might be like one that doesn't um and survival is completely and totally useless in the game because it's only used for finding the chests full of random Loot and if you fail a survival check you can just dig in that spot anyways to still get the loot for that reason I guess the best pick is going to be medicine because I think there might be a couple non- dialogue medicine checks in the game but uh your second skill selection doesn't particularly matter for our can trip selection we're going to go with guidance because every character that can take it should have access to it guidance is the best best spell in the game probably um especially on honor mode where you really need to reliably pass skill checks and then for our second selection something that Druids do suffer from is they have the worst selection of combat can trips available to any spellcaster with produced flame and Thorn whip you only have 30 foot range compared to 60 foot range that you would get from uh another spellcaster with Ray of frost or Firebolt and of course our Firebolt as jira is going to be very bad because it's based on intelligence which we want to dump as much as possible so you you don't want to use her racial Firebolt um so I recommend taking produce flame but in general one of the advantages to starting with 16 dexterity is that in the early game you can play with just a light crossbow allowing you to make attacks and with 16 dexterity you'll be just as good at using a crossbow as a dexterity focused character in the very early game so that will be your primary source of ranged attack produced flame is good just for the utility you can also take uh Thorn whip um you could also take resistance which is very useful for certain Encounters in the game and we'll probably pick up those later on another question I get a lot is why not shalele um which yes is how you pronounce it or at least as close as I can come without a Gaelic accent um and the reason for that is that past level one on a druid you're pretty much always going to be making melee attacks in Wild shaped form so you're just never going to actually use chele uh so I wouldn't recommend spending a cantrip slot on this at level two we get to select our subass which of course for this build is going to be the circle of the land circle of the land gets you access to a bunch of spells and the cool thing about it is it gets you spells that are not normally on the Druid class uh spell list the reason that that is so good is that that lets you be much more versatile and cover many more roles that you otherwise would for you also get another cantrip and so you're going to pick between Thorn whip which is good utility anything that repositions enemies is extremely powerful or resistance if you don't have access to this elsewhere resistance can also help in some dialogue uh trees which that's another question in fact some of the angriest comments I I have gotten are when I said resistance can help in dialogue trees and a bunch of people were like ah no it doesn't that you're thinking of guidance no resistance can help in some dial or at least in some encounters um if enemies are trying to read your thoughts or influence your decisions uh or in particular with the book of Fay during that dialogue check you're going to have to make saves so resistance can be used to boost those um but overall it's going to be relatively marginal which of these you pick I'm going to take Thorn whip because it does have some combat uses for our default prepared Spells at this level I should also mention this we are going to definitely want to have access to Healing Ward you're always going to want ice knife because ice knife allows you to create a field a surface um of ice which is extremely powerful in Boulder's Gate and because when an enemy moves on an ice surface they have to make a dexterity save to avoid falling prone and if an enemy Falls prone on their turn they lose whatever actions they haven't yet done on that turn so if you cast an ice surface under melee enemy that's not currently in melee then they have to walk on the ice surface and potentially just lose their whole turn if you cast an ice surface on a spellcaster there's a decent chance the AI moves before casting anyways um but also you can then move a Melee character which could in fact be your Druid next to them forcing them to move away from you and then potentially falling prone and not getting to cast a spell I recommend having speak with animals just because I really like it and it does give you some options in um combat uh long Strider is a spell you should always have access to any or not in combat excuse me gives you some options in dialogue long Strider is a spell you should always have access to on it somewhere in your party Druids as full spellcasters are a good choice for picking up long Strider this is a ritual spell so it does not require a spell slot and just boosts your whole charact whole party's movement speed by 10t um which is incredibly powerful and finally entangle um fog Cloud fairy fire these all have lots of combat utility so they're any of these can be very powerful create or destroy water also helps a lot in certain encounters if you're worried about enemies getting into melee with you you could take Thunder Wave I think that entangle is going to be sort of the default best choice overall for combat this gives you two ways to create hazardous surfaces and decent ways to support your allies while doing damage you of course also at level two get access to your wild shaped forms allow owing you to Wild shape into melee or to to enter melee in Wild shape for your level two wild shape forms you are going to want to use wolf if you have a melee Ally because you get advantage on attacks if there's an ally adjacent to you and can give that Ally free Critical Hits and if you don't have a melee Ally you're going to want to use the spider I recommend against the badger it has 10 AC and 13 hit points so you're going to get knocked out of badger form really easily at Druid level three we get access to a ton of super powerful spells and even more powerful spells because of we are the circle of the land each of these circles gives you access to two new spells which are always prepared so they work similar to a cleric's domain in that they are these spells are going to be always prepared what you're looking for when you're picking a circle of the land circle is spells that are not otherwise on the Druid class list so at this level for example Coast is really good because it provides you two spells that you don't otherwise get access to mirror image and Misty step similarly desert swamp and underdark all provide you with two spells you don't otherwise get something like Arctic doubles up on two spells you already get so we have hold person and Spike growth available from Arctic well hold person and Spike growth are both already spells you can prepare so you would never want to take Arctic at level three because you're just you're not getting any new spell a of the four spells of the four circles that provide new options I think in general the best of these is going to be uh the ones that provide Misty step which of which I think the best is underd dark web is a pretty powerful CC spell and Misty step of course is one of the best spells in the game although I will mention that swamp which gives you Darkness Darkness is one of the most powerful defensive Tools in in the game and especially in com combination with the eversight ring or warlock allies can be extremely valuable to have access to but overall for just the default best pick I think underd dark or Coast are going to be your best options and underd dark slightly wins out just cuz web I think is overall slightly more useful than mirror image that being said you can mirror image and it will still work after you wild shape you can Mirror Image ahead of time um it's not concentration so that will let you have higher AC when you enter wild shape if you have time to prepare ahead of time so either of those can be good can can be pretty powerful for our level two spell selection we definitely want to take flaming sphere um this is a summon it's a concentration spell you can pre-cast before turning into a wild shape and it will allow you to defend and and it will cause your cause enemies to attack the Flaming sphere instead of you and then probably uh some others that are really powerful are hold person is just a very solid CC spell although slightly worse than it is in tabletop Spike growth is extremely powerful for preventing enemies from moving and it's what I'm going to recommend picking um moon beam is very good in tabletop but not so good in Boulders Gate 3 because in tabletop you can reactivate the moon beam in order to um move it while in Wild shaped form similarly to do extra damage with heat metal but in Boulders Gate 3 for whatever reason they've CED it so you cannot do that and so there's no point in taking these spells that require reactivation every turn character level four we get a feat and one thing that I will mention is that Druids benefit more than just about any other class at least this version of the Droid from getting Ethel's hair because that will allow you if you have Ethel's hair you can set one of these two odd numbers that we took to even number without having to spend a full ASI on it um if you were able to do that and set your wisdom to 18 then instead of that you can take Tavern brawler um for constitution going up to 60 in Constitution or resilient in Constitution to get Constitution saving throws uh get Proficiency in Constitution saving throws while also boosting your Constitution to 16 if you didn't get Ethel's hair or for whatever reason are choosing not to then you can simply take an ability Improvement to boost both of these to an even number and I think that's going to work out very well for you but it's worth mentioning that getting Ethel's hair Smooths out your feet selection significantly something else that I have to mention um as a correction to my previous Druid guide for Honor mode is that I didn't know at that time that Tavern brawler is still bugged on honor mode as of the date of this recording and so is not giving you strength to your damage while in Wild shape it's only working for attack rolles just like it used to before they supposedly fixed it um on tactician or below you'll get damage and attack roles from Tavern brawler so for tactician or below I'm going to suggest taking Tavern brawler for Honor mode here I'm going to suggest you take resilient for Constitution and use Ethel's hair to boost your wisdom up to 18 prepared spell list you can simply add in one of the other ones that we didn't pick earlier or put back in something that you didn't take at a previous level remember of course that you can always change your prepared spells anytime outside of combat and so you don't have to pick the perfect spell list pick them based on the perfect default spell list pick them based on the encounter that you think you're about to face so here will take for example hold person hold person also lets you hold person and then move into melee as a wild chap Druid critically hitting um although as a landroid where it takes a full action to enter wild shaped that is less powerful than it is for a moon Druid you also get the Deep Ro wild shaped form which is your new default form this is going to be better than the other two available forms for the most available combat forms because the trample that knocks enemies prone is so powerful can trip selection we just take whichever one of the the ones we didn't take at previous levels at Druid level five we once again get to pick circle of the land spells and and at this level there are three that give us access to two new spells those are mountain swamp and underd dark Mountain gives you lightning bolt and flight not normally on the J spell list swamp gives you stinking cloud and vampiric touch and under dark underd dark gives you gaseous form and stinking Cloud however these spells are all on the Fairly weak end for spells lightning bolt is decent damage but just not really what dreid wants to do you want to be controlling the battlefield not just doing damage with your spells um and flight in Boulder's Gate because it doesn't let you actually fly is just not very good swamp gives you stinking Cloud which does have some very cool applications and you can see my build the mighty fart Druid for more on that but actually given that these three all provide somewhat weak spells I think that the best pick overall is going to be Arctic Arctic gives you sleet storm which you already have access to but sleet storm is one you were going to want to have prepared all the time anyway so basically gives you an extra spell slot an extra prepared spell every day and haste which is one of the best spells in the game particularly on tacti or below where you can use it to make multiple attacks with the haste action but even on honor mode it's so powerful on a spellcaster because you can self-cast haste and then cast another spell you can also as a landid self-cast haste and then enter wild shape using your second action allowing you to start wild shaped and then make all of your hasted attacks as you um want to I would only recommend doing this if you have taken resilient for constitution because losing concentration on haste is really bad and the wild shaped forms have weak AC so you're going to tend to take damage if you self-cast haste and then enter wild shape if you then lose concentration on wild shape it's really bad but a halfling with resilient in Constitution can self-cast haste enter wild shape and then continue to beat up enemies with pretty much impunity you are unlikely at that point to lose concentration on your spells haste is also just good enough when you're not in Wild shape form that it's extremely valuable to pick that up our prepared Spells at level three the only one that I really recommend you have is plant growth plant growth is incredibly powerful because it quarters enemy movement speed trapping certain enemies completely in position where they cannot uh can't do anything it also lets you make a gigantic flamable surface if that's something that you're interested in call lightning is another one that is normally very good for Druids in tabletop but suffers unfortunately from Boulders Gates implementation because you can't reactivate it while you're in Wild shape otherwise this would be an excellent spell for us at Druid level six we get land stride difficult terrain and that's one reason why we wanted the spike growth of plant growth um and why we value those so highly is that the land stride allows us to move freely through those effects so while everyone else is moving at quarter speed through the plant growth with land stride we are moving at full speed through the plant growth we also get access to Panther and Owl bear forms you're going to want to be an owl bear owl bear is really good um for a couple reasons one is just the best damaging wildshape form especially up until you get the um the highest level wild shape forms and two it gives you access to a a bonus action attack so when you have uh when you are a land Druid and enter wildbear form you can enter wildbear form as an action let me actually just show you this you enter wildbear form as an action with your wild shaped charge and then in the same turn you can still make your bonus action jump with crushing flight crushing flight does a ton of damage and potentially knocks an enemy prone and it has an enormous range while something else that you can do and uh for more on this go see my build the owl bear flies which is based on this gimmick is you can cast enhanced leap on yourself before entering this form um which doesn't take concentration and triples your jump distance to get the game's maximum allowed 100 foot jump distance that will let you cross any arena in the game in a single turn no problem at all um while having spent only your action and bonus action to make an attack extremely powerful effect that lets you cover the arena ex uh in basically instantly while knocking enemies prone and then beating the crap out of them you can even self-cast haste enter wild shape with your second action and then jump with your third action allowing to then in subsequent turns make two full actions worth of attacks especially in tacti or below this is incredibly powerful because in the late game you're going to be making six attacks in a turn as the owl bear form and in your first turn you get to knock every enemy's prone potentially preventing them from acting um as well as dealing a bunch of damage and getting you into position on top of squishy enemies again for more on that I did an entire build video on that combo so go go check out the owl bear flies Druid level seven we get access to well unfortunately there are uh zero um there there is exactly one Spell amongst all of these circles that is not already on the Druid spell list so 100% of the time at Druid level s with circle of the land you're going to take underd dark because it gives you greater invisibility every other spell gives you two that you already have access to which is uh I would say pretty annoying honestly not my favorite design decision by laran here um but the under dark version gets you greater invisibility which is a pretty useful spell in some circumstances if you know for a fact that you're going to have two of these prepared at all times um I think the one that is most likely would be Coast because freedom of movement and confusion are are spells that you're often going to want prepared anyways or Arctic because condra Elemental and ice storm are are then you could are also good to have most of the time then you could conceivably skip out on underd dark but most of the time you're just going to want underd dark giving you access to a brand new spell at level four uh we're always going to want to take condra Woodland being this gets you not one but two summons for the price of one and they're two really good summons you also probably want to remove entangle from your spell list at this point because now your Woodland being has access to entangle for when you need it you also want confusion this is one of the best possible spells to pre-cast before entering wild shape because it's a devastating concentration crowd control effect and Wall of fire lets you single-handedly solve certain encounters um so I recommend preparing that when there are encounters that are going to be particularly weak to wall of fire you could also take freedom of movement to bust out of stuns stuff like that or condra Elemental simply for a second day long summon Druid level eight we get access to a second feat and our second feat is going to be to Simply boost our wisdom to maximum this max out maxes out our spell DC um remember here that we've presumably taken Ethel's deal or taken an ASI to get to the to get to 20 wisdom that's why it's only showing 19 on the character sheet um but getting our wisdom to maximum maxes out our spell DC which is of course very important for every spellcaster at Druid level 9 we pick our final circle of the land Circle um and again there are no new spells on this list in fact I believe there are zero new spells on this list not just only one new spell um but that being said having access to um Cloud kill is or excuse me is cloud kill on the Druid spell list normally it is not okay so so cloud cloud kill is the one that you want access to um because swamp Arctic and underd dark give you cone of cold or Cloud kill um and overall I think you're going to be better off with Cloud kill because of a class feature that we're going to get Next Level I recommend taking uh swamp because you're more likely to want insect plague than you are contagion but overall this is the only one that gives you a new spell so you're going to take uh swamp at level five of course we get access to some new spells so we're going to pull all these off and we're going to always take conjure Elemental you can have this and a minor Elemental and a woodland being all in your party at once um that's a ton of summons if you want and Wall of stone lets you solve certain encounters similar to wall of fire there are some encounters you can just completely instant win with wall of stone at Druid level 10 we get access to two really cool things one is improved wild strike which gets us a third attack this is actually one level earlier than Fighters get their third attack our attacks are worse than fighter attacks because the wild shape attacks do not quite add up to a fighter attack especially in a version of the build that's not using Tavern brawler um but this is still a third attack in a round which is extremely powerful we also get uh Nature's Ward which lets disease and poison no longer affect us that means we can stand inside our own cloud kills we can stand inside our own stinking clouds and that allows us to basically be immune to most melee enemies because they would have to enter these damaging CC effect in order to get to us again for more on this check out my build video called The Mighty fart Druid we also get access to the dilophosaurus wild shape which has a ranged attack which combos extremely well with being able to stand inside our own clouds and our own difficult terrain effects with a cloud kill and a plant growth up and in Dilophosaurus uh form we can stand inside these Cloud effects peppering enemies with poisoned attacks while they can't really do anything to us this is another reason why it can be useful to use darkness and the eversight ring because with that combo you can become immune to ranged attacks um if you wanted to stand inside your own Darkness spells and thus be B basically immune to melee and ranged attacks in the extreme late game cantrip selection mostly doesn't matter at this level let's go to level 11 while we have most of what we want from Druid at level 10 I think Druid level six spells are so good that it's still worth going to Druid level six because any number of these spells can just instantly end some encounters in the late Game Heroes Feast is basically required for at least one encounter in the late game and also is just an incredibly powerful dayong effect something that Druids excel at is just providing powerful dayong effects and Sunbeam of uh by itself solves a different encounter in the late game wall of thorns is probably your best default one because this is just a great CC and damage spell and does um the effects of it's all the effects of plant growth and all the effects of wall of fire comboed into one spell and those are both excellent spells so I would recommend something like this as your default spell list finally at Druid level 12 we have a choice if you are finding that you are suffering from just not doing enough damage you can simply level up and take Tavern brawler which will upgrade your damage output significantly in Wild shape at that point you'd likely want to Respec very slightly to to put your Constitution back to an odd number so you can then take it um then boost it up with your Tavern brawler effect you could gain a a couple extra points of strength or intelligence or whatever um or we could take a level of cleric which would get us access to Heavy Armor if we take life cleric uh you could also take you could also get heavy armor in various other ways I don't recommend this necessarily because we have 16 dexterity which means that Medium armor any of the medium armors that provide full Dex bonuses are going to give you access to [Music] um going to give you access to better AC than most characters in heavy armor anyways but it's certainly an option I think overall your default best option is going to be picking up Tavern brawler um at this late level and while you could reorder Tavern brawler to be earlier I don't think it's as important a component of the land druid's damage as it is the moon druid's damage so that's why I don't recommend getting it until later and this is especially when you're going to start finding your wild shaped forms having trouble hitting um even on mode Tavern brawler combined with owlbear form or Tavern brawler um combined with one of the 18 strength forms is going to be a huge boost to your hit chance even if it doesn't increase your damage so it's still very good to do that anyways for gear you're basically completely independent of gear when playing a druid because you're going to spend a lot of your time in Wild shaped forms so you won't be using gear that uh so gear will not apply while you're in Wild shape form that being said there are a couple items that are particularly valuable one is the eversight ring if you're using a Darkness combo another is just a shield because not getting hit when you're not in your wild shape form is very good um anything that boosts your initiative anything that boosts your spell DC and one of the medium armors that provides full dexterity like the armor of agility are going to be your best options for for gear also of course anything that says it works in Wild shaped form or while shape shifted is at a preium because that's designed for Druids so if you see a gear a piece of gear that has that tag on it then definitely consider equipping it for your typical combat turn as a land Druid you're going to cast whatever you think the most powerful um and relevant concentration spell is at the beginning of of combat and then probably shift into a wild shape form some examples of this are haste followed by Owl bear form um confusion on a large group of enemies and then later and then shifting into alar form on a subsequent turn Cloud kill on yourself and then using Dilophosaurus form to make your your to force enemy melee characters to come to you all of these are extremely powerful options and so you're going to want to pick your concentration spell based on what the combat is going to look like um and then you spend the rest of the combat applying damage and being tanky in Wild C for do not forget that you can always always exit combat because you have uh many of the wild shaped forms provide excellent mobility and if things are going badly for you on honor mode you should be able to get away more easily than just about any other character especially if you took one of the circles that provides misy St all right my friends I hope that you have enjoyed this video and as always if you have do feel free to leave a thumbs up um comment on the video and of course you could subscribe to my channel for more balers Gate 3 build guides and other strategy game content cheers my friends and I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 58,143

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

Id: -QEGiAKFHJQ

Length: 35min 29sec (2129 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 10 2024