The BEST ELDRITCH KNIGHT in Baldur's Gate 3 - Fighter / Lae'zel Build Guide

hello my friends and welcome back to another balers Gate 3 build guide today I'm going to be covering the best eldrich Knight build in balers gate in my opinion this is one of the most requested builds since I started doing build guides and so I'm very happy to bring it to you and I haven't yet posted a build for lasel I think this is a really excellent one that will fit her character very well she'll end up with some spells which of course you can flavor as her n natural ganki psionic abilities so it fits the character extremely well I think this is going to end up with a ton of tanking very high damage output and a decent amount of utility at higher levels especially for a party and I think is also one of the most powerful builds for soloing the game if you want a character to solo tactician this build is one of the best out there if you are building this for a main character rather than LEL ganki is actually one of the best races for this anyways so that's another reason to have lasel fill this role because the Misty step is so powerful on this character but as always The Usual Suspects of wood elf are incredibly strong I also quite like dgar for the natural and large since we're going to be a melee build and halfling I think also deserves a mention here because this is actually one of the best characters in the game at maintaining concentration on a spell since we start as fighter we're going to have Constitution save proficiency and high Constitution so it will be hard for us to lose concentration on a spell and the halflings lucky ability can prevent you from losing concentration even on a natural one so that's a very powerful Synergy for this class as well but let's take LEL through and build an eldrich Knight so first off as always with the companion characters the first thing we have to do is fix their stats and of course these stats are even going to need some additional tweaking because we intend to be casting spells on this character so let's clear all this and get going we are going to be taking 16 strength of course because we're a fighter and 16 Constitution because we're a fighter the main difference here is that I'm going to also put a 14 into intelligence to make sure we have good Spell access though of course there are some items that will let us mitigate this I'll talk about that later on and you can get some more optimal spreads if you want to perform resps once you have C access to certain items for our last four points it's less important you definitely don't want a dexterity penalty so you have to have at least 10 and personally I like just having the last two in dexterity for the initiative bonus although for a main character you might want to put them in Charisma to make your skills a little better or wisdom because it is a very important saving throw so either of you moving those two points into either of these two as well could be useful but I'm going to assume we're using this stat spread for now one thing also to note on a gith Yan is they have astral knowledge which lets you gain Proficiency in all skills of a chosen ability so when we're picking our proficiencies we want to pick one that we're usually going to cast astral knowledge on one one skill category and not take skill proficiencies in that category so for example if we wanted to always use astral knowledge on dexterity you wouldn't want lasel to come with acrobatics because you'd just gain that proficiency anyways and could instead move that somewhere else my recommendation is you want to pull everything out of these wisdom skill proficiencies um because survival perception especially are quite useful for a character who's not going to be your parting party face and just put your skill proficiencies into everything that's not everything on the fighter list that's not wisdom so that you can then activate astral knowledge select wisdom and have perception and survival proficiencies the other option I think would be to move acrobatics and take uh dexterity proficiencies which actually lets LEL do some lock picking which is kind of fun for our fighting style we are of course going with great weapon fighting for lasel for a non Lael character you could consider taking dueling instead or defense both of these are very powerful and would let you use a shield um which is obviously great on all these builds but lasel gets access to a lot of unique or gith yane specific two-handed weapons and so having her spec for two-handed weapons is the way to go for this character I believe all right let's level up as we continue to level in fighter we get access to action surge the single best ability in the game just get a second turn which is incredible and then at level three we are of course selecting eldrich Knight eldrich Knight gains uh spells and spell slots every three levels so we'll get additional spell progression at Three 6 9 and 12 if we were to take fighter all the way through so just keep that in mind for what spell level we have access to as we go for our spell selection we want since we only have 14 intelligence we are not going to want spells that opponents can save make saves against we want spells that buff us or have effects that don't involve saves since we'll be attacking a lot I quite like having true strike and then for the other option I would probably just take either Mage hand or minor illusion these two are just always incredible although if you have access to them elsewhere in the party maybe you want blade Ward maybe you want dancing lights or light something like that but let's assume that we're taking minor illusion here for these spells we want ones we are effectively selecting some spells that will always be prepared um because these are spells known and because of what we're doing later in the build we want to have a heavy focus on abjuration spells so I would suggest selecting Shield which is the whole reason to go into eldrich Knight in the first place is you get to both wear heavy armor and have access to the the single best defensive reaction in the game in Shield making you incredibly hard to damage and then we're actually going to take protection from evil and good this actually is useful in some fights in the game but mostly we're taking it just cuz it's a level one ABD duration spell that we can cast whenever we want to and you'll see why later on on our expanded spells we get to pick from any spell so this the Elder knite spell list is only ABD duration and evocation on our banded spell list we can pick any wizard spell and I think that the best one here is probably expeditious Retreat gaining bonus action dashes in the early game gives you so much mobility and as a Melee character you want to be able to get into range of enemies of course so expeditious Retreat is incredibly strong uh on this character and on any Marshall character so that's my recommendation for spell selection other options are enhanced leap and long Strider though you probably want those from other spellcasters unless you're soloing um and anything else that doesn't have a save like fog Cloud can be very good magic Missile gives you a range damage option that doesn't care about your intelligence uh ice knife actually can be useful to create an ice surface which enemies will fall on they the deck save is not based on your the save for for falling prone on the surfaces is not based on your cell spell DC so they'll have a chance of falling prone on the ice surface but I think in general expeditious Retreat will serve you best at level four we get our first feat so we are going to be leveling up in strength to make sure that our damage is going well here and then here we'll take probably just magic Missile because it's the best of these options you don't want spells that do damage because typically uh the ones that require a save um chromatic orb is another one that doesn't allow a save and so but it has a two hit roll um which is also based on your intelligence which will be low so we want ones that don't have a hit roll don't have a save such as magic Missile continue to level up and at fighter level five we get extra attack which obviously is really good especially in combination with our action surge allowing you to attack four times in a round incredibly powerful um you also get Misty step from your gith yanki race which gives you another bonus action repositioning tool guaranteeing that you'll be able to start a fight in contact with enemies all the time we're not going to replace any spells we already made the best spell selections and then at level six we actually gain an additional spell slot it's not listed anywhere here but we now are a level um a level two spellcaster which is particularly valuable for this character so we are going to of course and of course being a level six fighter we get an additional feat which means we get to 20 strength one advantage of Fighters is that they can hit 20 strength earlier than any other Marshall character at level six instead of at level eight um because of the bonus feat at level seven though we're going to switch things up into kind of a wild direction we are going to go with wizard and the reason for this is actually coming next level but we want to hit at least six levels in fighter so that we can get our additional feat and then we're going to want six levels in Wizard you could for your additional because you get the additional spell level at level five fighter you could get the you could go Five Fighter and seven wizard but six and six will get you an extra feet which is quite valuable so this is the split we're going to go with for our can trips again we're going to look for things that don't have a saving throw so something like blade Ward light and dancing lights and for our spells similarly we want utility Spells at level one now one thing to keep in mind is that we are gaining because we already have two spell levels from our eldrich Knight levels we're actually a third level spellcaster so we have level two spell slots even though we're only a level one wizard um and so even though we can only select these level one spells on level up you can now learn level two spells from Scrolls so which spells you're going to select should also depend on which spell Scrolls youve found since as a wizard you can now learn those spells for our spell selection though we're going to take anything that we don't have access to from our elrich Knight levels but in particular you want stuff like fog cloud is very powerful long Strider and enhanced leap are very powerful featherfall can be quite useful for getting into odd locations and I also quite like having fine familiar on Marshall characters because it gives you a flanking buddy um so if you knock someone over you're familiar can do a little damage with Advantage can just be very useful to pull enemies around the place as well and of course scouting gives you a lot of utility for prepared spells you take kind of whatever you want but I recommend having fog Cloud for sure because it blinds without a save and can protect you from archers and then probably just the mobility spells like long Strider if you don't have access to it from somewhere else feather fall then at level two wizard we get the reason why we're in Wizard and that is the ABD duration wizard subass so how this works is you get the Arcane Ward feature which has a poorly written tool tip that doesn't actually tell you what it does um what this does is when you cast an abjuration School spell you gain a number of Arcane Ward charges equal to the level of that spell so you cast a level one spell you gain one Arcane Ward charge up to a maximum of double your wizard level So currently this can be up to four every time you get hit it reduces the amount of damage You Take by that amount the the amount of the charges so if we had a four charges we would be reducing all incoming damage by four this Stacks with itself extremely powerfully to the point where it reduces damage a ton then after you take a point of damage it you lose one charge but only one charge and you can replenish those charges by continuing to cast more ABD duration spells so of course we're going to make sure we have access to as many different ABD duration spells as possible although at this point we've already got all the Spells we need so just take kind of whatever you um whatever you [Music] want at level three you can now learn level two spells from leveling up but we actually have access to level three spells because we're now a fifth level spell caster and the only ABD duration spell at level two is Arcane lock but Arcane lock is kind of fun cuz you can spam it on chests out of combat to boost your Arcane Ward so we'll definitely want access to that and then there's a couple defensive spells that are really good at level two in blur and uh Mirror Image both extremely powerful defensive spells that we could have running during fights Mirror Image especially is good because it doesn't require concentration Misty step of course is great to have even though we already have access to it and then obviously utility spells like invisibility and knock can be very useful as well um this is is going to depend again on which Scrolls you've found but focus on spells that buff you or have provide a an option that doesn't require an enemy to make a save rather than ones like um like Mel acid Arrow which allows a save or requires a to hit roll or like scorching Ray for example so definitely Misty step I think is the best one but it's going to depend on what spells uh what Scrolls you've found we now get another feat and here we are going to take here we actually have a couple choices great weapon Master is great if you are soloing highly uh recommend this one although if you're soloing I think the best CH choice is actually alert because winning initiative is so powerful and this character is going to have poor initiative thanks to your relatively low dexterity another option is in a party to take Sentinel which is probably the best feat for melee characters to have in a party since we will be so tanky and able to lock down enemies so well Sentinel will keep them next to us and prevent them from harming our allies so for a Solo character I would take alert for a non-solo character I would take Sentinel then of course you just pick whatever can trip and whatever level two spells that you haven't found that you think you might want continue to level up now we can learn level three spells but we can actually learn from Scrolls level four spells so keep that in mind at level three the by far the most important two spells to have access to our haste and counter spell counter spell is an abjuration spell as well so that will boost your Arcane Ward and also gives you um a tremendous amount of utility with your reactions and fights between counter spell and shield you have the two best and most important defensive reactions in fights so your reaction on this character is going to be incredibly valuable um and then haste of course increases your damage output enormously as well as increasing your AC which will already be quite good thanks to your Shields thanks to your just being in full plate all the time and then the other one that you want to grab is either protection from energy or Glyph of warding these are ABD duration spells you can spam outside of combat to build up your Arcane Ward and then finally at level six we get uh projected Ward which is fine it allows you to reduce damage to an ally um my advice is don't use this unless the Ally is in some real trouble but the thing that's really nice about projected Ward is just that it or about this is that we are buffing our damage reduction to 12 you could go to seven Wizard and Five Fighter and still have the same spellcasting level and still have extra attack you'd be giving up one feet and I think that you will typically unless you are going to use items to increase your attributes which I'll talk about in a second not want to do that but if you are going to do that then you're better off with Five Fighter seven wizard as your final build um and then of course we're just going to select whatever important spells we have not taken yet but notice that we have access to up to level four spells here because of our total Caster level and so we can learn a level four spell one that I quite like to have access to is fire Shield because we're going to be mixing it up in melee a lot maybe taking some hits so it this increases our damage significantly so we can learn that and then we can cast it all right I need to prepare it before I can cast it have to go here to prepare your spells as well so make sure that you have all the ones that are really important prepared something along these lines oh we probably want um I didn't level up protection from evil and good I took it as a fighter spell so we have access to that as well but make sure that you've got that and then outside of combat we can cast when we uh we can cast something like protection from energy notice that we have two points in Arcane Ward already so you can just Spam this on yourself spending our level three spell slots I meant to spend a level three not a level four there but you get the idea as long as we cast an abjuration spell outside of combat we can boost our Arcane Ward up to 12 we also have three points of Arcane recovery so we can get back one of those level three spell slots that we spent and that can then be spent on haste going into combat our level four spell slot can be spent on fire Shield allowing us to do damage while hasted and because this doesn't require concentration we can do damage um while concentrating on another spell such as haste once we have haste active and are wearing full plate we should have 20 AC at base 18 from the plate and then and that's completely non-magical plate 18 from the the plate and then two from the haste and then an additional five from a level one Shield spell although you can also upcast shield for even more AC and then we will be returning damage with fire Shield so let's put this all together so let me cast fire shield and then I'm going to cast haste on myself every kicked but another step on the path and then I'm going to grab mink here who's built with my MX build from a previous build guide if you haven't seen that one check it out but this is one of the highest damage builds in the game hitting for an incredible amount of damage every attack and with a critical hit um we only took 23 damage and succeeded on our concentration saving throw on haste because the damage was reduced mink took 22 damage back because of the fire Shield damage so they went even on damage and uh lasel reduced the damage thanks to Arcane Ward we now still have 11 points of Arcane Ward remaining and that's only because that actually hit many times you're going to be able to prevent that attack from going off I like that makes it just walking away even though the game is paused um he's he's like I I don't want any of this stop using me to demo this um many times you'll be able to block that attack using Shield thanks to your very high AC I also want to quickly talk about two kinds of items that can be very useful to increase this build maybe get up to 14 points of Arcane Ward and of course the more you stack that since it reduces every attack it multiplies with itself to become more powerful um and so if we don't need to spend points on strength we can give up one feet or don't need to spend points on intelligence we can give up one feet um and you can do that using elixir of Hill giant strength which you get in act one so if we were to take one of these every day then we don't need to level up our strength at all and in fact can start with eight strength maybe have some of these other attributes higher and the Warped headband of intellect which you get a little later in act one can be used to set your intelligence to 17 which means that we wouldn't have to put 14 into into intelligence which doesn't save us a feat but does allow us to make a slightly better stat spread overall the the best version of this build is going to be chugging Elixir all the time but I don't like to recommend doing that CU I think it's a little cheesy so I prefer the one that gets the feet this build also of course attacks twice every round plus has action surge you can haste yourself for a third action um and you will probably want to haste yourself in most fights and in the the really dangerous fights of course you can use haste and fire Shield all right my friend I hope that you have enjoyed this look at this eldrich Knight it is extremely tanky great at locking down enemies I think a great fit for lasel in terms of character also quite mobile thanks to expeditious Retreat Misty step haste and the natural gith Yankee mobility and very high damage output thanks to great weapon Master 20 strength and lael's unique weapon access which gives her access to some of the best two-handed weapons in the game all right my friends thanks so much for watching and if you've enjoyed this look at the eldrich KN then definitely please take time to hit like leave a comment I appreciate that very much and it helps with the algorithm and you can subscribe to my channel for more Boulders Gate 3 build guides and other strategy game content cheers my friends I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 14,156

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

Id: j3PyRJrmAsY

Length: 23min 17sec (1397 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 20 2023