Paladin Builds - DO YOU HAVE TO MELEE? (Probably, yeah.) - Baldur's Gate 3

hey folks quilly team here and welcome to I guess another Baldur's Gate 3 class thoughts video I just recorded one where I talked about a Drew because I'm considering playing a druid for my live stream campaign uh if you are watching this on August 3rd on release date uh over at twitch.tv quill 18 I will be streaming balthaz gay three I might be playing a druid or I might be playing Paladin strongly leaning towards playing for my live stream Baldur's Gate 3 campaign and the reason for the Paladin which is what we're going to talk about in this episode is because I often like my character in an RPG to be the party Faith face my character is supposed to be the main character therefore my character is supposed to have the conversations therefore I want my character to have the Charisma I don't want to use a companion in my party to do the interaction with me which I'm not saying is the optimal or correct way to play right in fact it probably is quite good for your main character to dump Charisma and throw all the points into say your main combat stats or something like that um and then you rely on your companions to be able to fill in those gaps and things but that's not the way I like to play and as a paladin uh paladins do naturally have an inclination towards a high Charisma they do use Charisma for a few things like their spell casting abilities for example um so it is beneficial to go ahead and boost it now um I did actually post a video last week uh looking at different character builds and on that I was still using the Early Access version of the game and in the Early Access version of the game the human variant that was in there was the version that gave plus one to all attributes the plus one to all attributes or abilities or stats I will use those terms um interchangeable was very convenient because it allowed you to end up with a 16 strength 16 Constitution and 16 Charisma because in the the character editor here the highest that you can put there we go the highest you can put any stat to is a 15. that was the cap but as a human you get plus one to everything which means those 15s turned to 16 and that's really important because even numbers in uh in fifth edition d d well Third Edition and forward even numbers is where you get the value a 14 gives you plus two to roll so does a 15. it's only when you go to a 16 does that turn into a plus three so as much as possible you want even values just because a bunch of odd numbers kind of Waste Your Potential because you're not getting your full value out of things so whenever possible you want to try to end up with even numbers although again with at level four you will get to either add plus two to your stats either plus two in a single stats or plus one to two different ones or you can choose a feat that gives you some miscellaneous value some miscellaneous ability and some feeds also include a plus one to a stat those are tend to be referred to as half feet because they give you half of a plus due or they're half as good as a feet that doesn't give you an attribute bonus but in exchange they give you an attribute bonus um so then those are ways that you might be able to end up with equal numbers but let's talk about uh before we look at the the races or anything like that let's talk about what kind of ability points you likely want for the Paladin the game does Mark strength as the primary ability which makes sense generally speaking when you're playing a paladin you'll probably be upfront and personal in melee uh paladins do gain access to Heavy Armor they can also wear Shields so they are going to be quite tanky on the front line which is really good however there's no reason that you couldn't decide to go with a dexterity based um Paladin that uses archery now um your armor the way armor your armor class Works in fifth edition here is uh depending on the weight of the armor you can add some amount of your dexterity modifier to your armor class if you are wearing no armor or light armor you get to add the full modifier if you are wearing medium armor you can add up to a maximum of plus two which means this 16 dexterity here which is a plus three modifier you wouldn't be getting the full benefit of it if you were wearing medium armor you would still get the plus three to your dexterity saving throw you'd still get the plus three to any skill proficiencies that might use it although you might um I wonder if um I can actually confirm this in fifth edition some armors give you disadvantage to things like stealth checks when you're wearing them and I'm not sure if that applies here in Baldur's Gate 3. that's interesting I assumed it would but I just realized I don't remember if I've ever seen that be explicitly put in anyway the point is still that if you're wearing say medium armor you can only add up to a plus two from your dexterity to your AC so some of the extra dexterity here would be kind of wasted you still get value from it certainly would still help you with you being more accurate with range attacks and against the saving throws but you know you wouldn't necessarily get full bang for your buck and then if you go all the way up to Heavy Armor heavy armor doesn't use your dexterity at all for your armor class um it you just use the value of the armor as is without caring about dexterity so as a paladin you can wear heavy armor so you probably want to wear heavy armor which means you really don't get the same bang for your buck with dexterity which is why it's probably much more common um to end up with a very high strength as your primary combat attribute and going into melee plus you know it's a very classic knight in shining armor kind of vibe so what else matters is a paladin well you probably want a decent Constitution because um you want lots of hit points because you're probably going to get hit and then we get back to the Charisma conversation which again is used for spell casting oh there's a paladin you're not a primary spellcaster but it still helps but my idea of hey I like to be the party face um and so what I'd probably do is something like this where I end up with a 16 shrank to help in combat the 16 Charisma to really be the party Faith face of 14 Constitution for bonus hit points I've got two ability points left over uh and we can put them anywhere we could still put them into dexterity so that first of all before we get to Heavy Armor in the early game We're not gonna find full plate right away this would give us a little extra AC and throughout the entire game it will help with a reflex saving throw I probably am more inclined to do something like equal out the wisdom because I feel like there's a paladin we should be somewhat wise or you know we shouldn't have a lack of wisdom because you know just uh partially I guess it's because when I think of um the religious characters in D clerics and Druids they rely on wisdom so I feel like a paladin shouldn't have a terrible wisdom even though maybe it doesn't really matter here but that will generally lead us into conversation about skills so let's talk about that over here what skills might we look for first of all we should be naturally inclined I would suggest to look at obviously you want to look at skills well not obviously I look at skills where I already have a pretty good number in and then I choose to pile on that you can use your proficiencies here to compensate for a low value for example we have a minus one to religion maybe we think hey we should be I want to be a little bit better at religion so I'm going to put a proficiency point in there and get up to a plus one it's interesting that I can't uncheck it there we go and get it up to a plus one me personally I want to lean into the things that I'm naturally going to be good at and try to make it as good as possible and try to specialize characters for different roles that way if there's something that needs say an Athletics thing then I have one person in the party who's really good at Athletics instead of a couple people who are meh kind of thing um so Athletics is based on strength in fact I believe it's the only skill that's based on strength so that is one candid over there the other thing that's going to be useful for us is anything that's based on Charisma since we have put so many points into it so performance if you want to make some sort of musical Paladin but I was thinking mostly intimidation deception as well as persuasion oh which is down here currently already have the point because of the the background um which is in there now we could um one of the things the background is we can use the background to gain Proficiency in a skill that our class doesn't normally allow us to do like for example um well I still bought these do deception apparently I think we have access to that but we could if we in criminal for example it gives us Proficiency in deception and stealth and stealth was not something that um that the Paladin had actually deception might not be as well I'm a little bit the confuzzled here because we are human so we get one Proficiency in any skill as a human but the Paladin doesn't naturally have access to acrobatics sleight of hand a lot of these knowledge skills for example other than religion um and so you can use your background to compensate for that which is kind of Handy I don't think um a criminal well criminal background for Paladin is an interesting story I don't particularly care well I do want both okay what does it give us deception and stealth so I don't think the stealth is something that's really going to come up um the deception is kind of interesting you know if I go to aclight for a second here and just confirm yeah paladins cannot normally take deception which makes sense I think persuasion intimidation make huge amounts of sense for my Paladin uh and I really like that and it does feel like hey maybe putting the point in athletics makes some sense now here's the thing though if I'm gonna think about putting points in athletics intimidation and persuasion then as a background uh does Soldier make sense now we already have access to Athletics and intimidation as a paladin um so this background in a sense is maybe less valuable to us because it doesn't give us access to something new but it does give us access to something that we're already quite keen on and then for Paladin what are we left with well Insight medicine religion none of these are stats we're terribly good at so you know maybe we don't need to go that way but we don't have that many things yeah if we can pick up like our human side could still do that and then I mean if we are going to be the party face I might want um I want might want some value and insight because it might help with conversations but I kind of like the idea of having proficiency and insight as the party face kind of character over here deception feels wrong for Paladin but of course it depends a little bit on what kind of character we are if we're going to oath the devotion maybe deception really feels out of place right this is the classic knight in shining our honor uh armor um and yeah you're acting With Honor you know you're supposed to be virtuous probably lying is not part of that that bag but the others might not care as much right here this is about yeah the the struggle of like life and nature oath of vengeance is just about you know writing some wrongs uh and major wrongs over here Grievous sins you know concern yourself the small petty stuff necessarily um and so yeah some lies on the you know to make that work might be totally appropriate I think soldier's a great background thematically for the Paladin but Noble also works you know because first of all who could afford fancy shiny armor well rich people really so that kind of makes a lot of sense folk hero also makes a ton of sense now animal handling and survival are both wisdom skills which currently I have set to attend we could consider moving that around if we're willing to sacrifice some points somewhere you know like what if we did this and then you know put the extra point back in something whatever that that extra Oddball Point's not gonna matter if I did this we raised our wisdom up to a 12. what's nice about this is it does improve her insight as well right so again kind of another party face of the party conversational kind of skill um if we go folk hero then all of a sudden our animal handling and survival is a little bit more impressive like that um and so that's pretty good it also one of the very important skills in the game is in general tabletop or the digital version here is perception to spot hidden details that gives us a plus one and maybe we can put our human point in there again instead of deception for example because we're like well maybe this fits a little bit better I mean heck we still we still have a plus three deception um because we're High Charisma we're just not specialized in it the same way so that's interesting although I probably still want persuasion personally if I'm going to be the party face and so rather than animal handling and survival I'm I think I keep doing this I really like the guild Artisan background because I think I like the idea of the insight and persuasion I don't know if Guild Artisan Vibes with you the same way when I'm making a paladin right but persuasion and insight again really useful for party face type stuff and then uh where do we go from there well I'll probably put the points into Athletics so I can specialize my second class skill is less of an obvious choice I probably would take intimidation um because sometimes we're gonna have to tell the bad guys to stand down and be tough that way and our human perk um the only thing we can put into that we're really good at would be deception and performance which depending on what kind of character we're playing might be the perfect pick but yeah I think I might put the uh the human Point into perception over here I think I said said per session instead of performance performance and deception we would be very good at but I think I put it into perception for the plus three and overall I like this as sort of the party face kind of thing um and in terms of an oath for me the oath of the Ancients doesn't Vibe for me personally although I think it's quite good um the healing Radiance is a great area effect heal which is interesting and then yeah you get your particular oath going on oath of Devo or yeah you're yeah and then oath of devotion the the holy rebuke you throw this on an ally and then if anyone hits them they take damage I don't know if that affects the AI um in a tabletop kind of setting this sort of thing is um so in D and D and that includes this Baldur's Gate game there's not the standard sort of video game kind of MMO you know tank type character right with taunts and aggro mechanics and things like that enemies are free to attack whoever they want although you can sort of make enemies kind of stick you a little bit because if uh if you're in melee range with them and they try to break that they will draw it opportunity so you'll be able to get a free hit so that can disincentivize them for moving away and it was something like holy rebuke um if the enemies are aware that sort of thing is happening that they're not going to want to go and attack your squishy right so you put this on your wizard maybe we can disintensifies anyone to attack your wizard uh whether or not the AI in this game looks at that or not I don't know and maybe maybe you don't want them to look at it maybe you're okay with them hitting their your wizard as long as they're being hit back for example who knows oath of engines we got the inquisitor's Mite here this increasing the increase the amount of damage so bonus action to trigger so it's not too bad because we can use this and still attack that round whether yeah on an ally or ourselves the bonus radiant damage and the days that's quite cool um I like that quite a lot so um and then Vibe wise classic Knight angry night both good all right let's talk about races here uh because uh the races no longer provide the ability bonuses right you've got a lot more flexibility about what you choose um I am tempted by the human in the case of the Paladin over here and the reason is uh human versatility here I think is really I'm really appreciating the extra skill point um I with the Paladin I'm really I really have a lot of this is me personally right this whole party face kind of thing and I'm really appreciating the extra skill point to round that out that feels pretty good to me uh the Civil militia is interesting because it does give you basically access to all these pole arms which uh for me when I think about the palette and I'm usually thinking of like long sword and shield or maybe a two-handed sword but a bagel pull arm does feel pretty impressive and does give us some options that way and that's okay if we look at the elf thing I mean first of all any um any of these species any of the races here that gives us dark vision is hugely valuable because if we're fighting in dark place we will get a penalty to a lot of actions including our hit rolls um if there's not any light so we'd be forced to carry a torch or we'd have to have a spellcaster cast some sort of light spell in the area just to be able to provide the illumination so if we have dark vision we don't have to worry about that it's happening on its own I mean a lot of the races also have saving throw bonuses which are all good the proficiency here doesn't matter because uh we have access to all martial weapons as a paladin so the Elven weapon training doesn't actually matter same thing with the humans actually I didn't properly address it the Civil militia um thematically the idea of wielding these pole arms and things feels really good but we don't actually need it because we've got martial weapons um I really like this uh with uh with a cleric that I'm I'm playing I'm going to be playing with some friends uh there's a cleric um and some of the cleric domains do give you martial weapons but not all of them do and I'm playing a cleric of Nature and it gets heavy armor but doesn't get martial weapons so I went human so that I could use pole arms to add that out which is great incl in terms of Elven sub-races uh the extra can trip from the high elf is actually pretty enticing um although I think that if I were playing an elf Paladin I would really want to go what else because the movement speed increase would be fantabulous right because we're going to be a Melee character we're going to want to be able to run in and reach our enemies uh we'd also be want to be on the front line because theoretically we're going to be tough because we're going to have maybe the strongest armor we might be wielding a shield so we really want to be on the front and draw enemy fire away from our other people especially as a paladin right that's kind of our job so I think Fleet of food is an excellent excellent trade here tieflings again we got our dark vision we got our hellish resistance which is really nice um and I particularly like the Zario tieflings with thamaturgy over here to gain advantage on intimidation and performance checks but mostly to me it's the advantage on intimidation checks which is going to be so so powerful um magehand is uh well I don't know how useful it's going to be in balls of gate 3. I'm assuming probably fairly useful in a tabletop setting I would pick this every time uh just because of the stuff you can do I don't think we really need to produce flame for example but yeah if I was playing a t fling I would probably go Zario tiefling uh drow's interesting we don't need the weapon training it got Superior dark vision which is amazing uh we get the saving throw bonus and then maybe we open up some really cool storytelling I could see a maybe like an angry sort of oath of Vengeance Paladin I kind of thought that that might be kind of a Cool vibe uh GIF Yankee so I haven't looked at them a lot but astral knowledge is interesting interesting proficiency and all skills of chosen ability until long rest so you could choose you know whatever's appropriate for the day right if you do feel it today you need to do sneaky stuff or something then you take dexterity I don't know uh we get the main Chan bonus and Marshall proficiency doesn't matter because it just gives us proficiency which runs up armor and weapons which we're not going to need as the Paladin class uh dwarf over here all right again weapon training doesn't matter does give us dark vision which is great and we get some saving throw bonuses in terms of the sub race Dwarven toughness for more hit points amazing especially if we're going to be a front line and trying to gain attention The Shield dwarf doesn't matter for us because we get these armor efficiencies anyway your guard Superior dark vision and even more resilience to stuff very powerful sub race half elf kind of great because it gets the bonuses from the humans like civil militia while also getting dark vision while also getting fate ancestry in fact I think the big winners of the um the changes to the races in terms of attributes in Ballers Gate 3 with the system they're going is the half elf because they just seem to be um why would you be a regular Elf or a regular human when you could be a half elf in this situation High half health does get to pick a paladin what elf does get the increased movement speed and the drow does get the dancing lights can trip um which they don't get the drow half elf doesn't get the superior dark vision uh just gets regular dark vision um I don't know if the dancing lights is as relevant although if you're going to be partying with some humans or other races that don't have dark vision then having someone who can cast Dancing Lights kind of as a bonus can trip is Handy for some extra illumination you'll note if you do play a half elf drow you will still get reactions as if you were a draft and just sorry I like the I like the little flippy clothes um you will get reactions from NPCs as if you were a drowned people will be super racist against you halfling always super strong because of the lucky trick this is just fantastic right you have to re-roll your ones it's really good we get some saving throw bonuses um I don't know if naturally stealthy matters as much well it's interesting right because we're gonna be bad at stealth but if if you have advantage on a roll it's that's always a pretty good bonus the strong heart with even more um resilience is also exceptionally nice um I'm a little bit disinclined to take a halfling for a straight up Melee character like this though because of the reduced movement speed which I should note the dwarf gets as well uh we're just gonna have that much of a harder time getting into melee because the standard speed is nine meters per turn as opposed to 7.5 and again as an elf we um sorry as a Wood Elf we get an extra 1.5 so they move 10.5 per turn and I would feel that this speed restriction is an impediment although like classically Dwarven fighter type people is is very on brand right gnomes are also slow that no mccunting is amazing for all these saving throws uh sub race wise as well um the double proficiency history checks it's kind of cool and that means you do get proficiency with history for free plus a second time which is kind of awesome uh the force known Goods give you speak with animals which depending on what type of character you're playing uh for example with oath of the sorry oath of devotion over here no oath of the Ancients right which is all about nature and things it kind of fits quite well that you could also speak with animals the Deep gnome does have the superior dark version which is nice I don't know if the superior dark vision work means as much when you're playing a Melee character because mostly you want some dark vision but you don't necessarily need super long range and then it's got advantage on stealth checks which again we're not really gonna have a natural bonus to it so maybe we're not going to feel like we're gonna be that stealthy but Advantage does compensate for a lot of problems Dragonborn Paladin I mean I think that's like a pretty classic image that makes a lot of sense um the drag the Dragonborn don't really give you anything uh here at level one other than a breath weapon but they are pretty good so you get a cone of different um different elements so silver and white do frost breath black will do acid copper also does acid bronze and Brass oh bronze and blue there you go bronze and blue do lightning breath uh brass and red oh no brass what do you do oh brass is a line of fire as opposed to a cone of fire from Red ahaha is that the only one are all of them cones except for the brass dragon the same icon oh that's quite interesting huh very cool now what's nice about this is Alice Paladin yes you will get some uh clerical spells but you don't really have you're not going to have the same pool of like attacking magic spells and things like that right and area effect spells and being a Dragonborn all of a sudden gives you the ability to inflict damage on multiple different things as well as some sort of Elemental attack that you might not be able to get a bar you know dipping a weapon or something like that and so even though like there's there's not really any race features here literally the only thing Dragonborn get is a breath weapon oh and of course you do get resistance to your element which is kind of nice but this actually gives you a much more combat actions which might be very beneficial half orc definitely worth mentioning we got ourselves dark vision we got ourselves the ability to bounce back from potentially being downed uh and our crits do triple damage instead of double damage this is huge for damage dealing also I really like the idea of an orc Paladin in terms of a type of story so I think these are a couple of uh there's a lot of different and interesting ways to go ability wise I can't see myself really I guess for me personally the only question I have in terms of abilities is whether I maybe want to bring the wisdom up to a 12 or I want to go and max out Constitution for just a few more hit points on the front line one extra hit point per level may not make or break things is an extra plus one to a role going to make or break things I mean these are all very marginal little subtle changes you know I mean I don't think either one's a wrong answer it mostly I think is going to come down to um what skills you might want and I think if you're going to try to focus on if you want insight to be better I guess you put the extra point into wisdom and you do something like that I don't think losing the one hit point per level is gonna break you and this might feel better because there's going to be more situations where you're like you're gonna you're gonna miss a roll by one in a conversation and just be really disappointed so maybe I don't know let me know what you think also you know which one of these or are you just gonna break your oath and go down that that kind of dark oath breaker Paladin class and become a uh um blackard right I don't know anyway those are my thoughts about the Paladin who I'm maybe playing on my live stream right now twitch.tv quilly teen depending on when you watch this video thanks for watching it I'll see you next time bye

Channel: quill18

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Id: vLzMYg-KMk8

Length: 25min 42sec (1542 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 03 2023