The BEST GALE BUILD in BG3 - Lore Friendly Honour Build Guide

hello my friends and welcome back to another balers Gate 3 build guide hope you're all doing well today we're going to be covering a lore friendly character build for Gail using his class and subass from the game for Honor mode or of course lower difficulty settings Gail is an evocation Wizard and I've gone on record previously as saying that I think some of the other wizard schools are better to take over evocation wizard but evocation does get some very cool tricks and some advantages that are unique to evocation so we're going to talk about what those are and how to maximize the power of Gail as the evocation wizard that the game suggests that you make him evocation gets two major advantages um as you level up in Wizard and those are one it's just easier to play the evocation wizard makes your characters your allies and yourself immune to damage from your own spells fairly early on in the history of the game laran released stats saying that the single most common death for players was their own Fireballs which was very funny to me but also is in and of itself a great reason to play evocation wizard because uh you just can't have that happen and not only is it easier to play it also gives you a bunch of unique tricks built around that you can lure enemies to stand grouped on top of your allies and then drop a fireball on top of them with complete impunity if you're playing evocation something that other wizard schools do not get to do consider for example casting Sanctuary on an ally so they can't be directly attacked sending them into the middle of a group of enemies so the enemies cluster around them and then toasting them all with a gigantic Fireball from gaale off screen so there's a lot of cool little tricks that we can do with evocation wizard that aren't available to the other spell schools and I'll talk more about those as we go through individual spells all right let's get into building the lore friendly character build for Gail which I'm going to call mistress chosen since uh that's what he is right away of course we have to take a look at his stats which if you're playing um Gail as An Origin character or if you are respecing Gail early on you're going to need to fix Gail's stats are actually closer to being correct than most of the other origin characters the wizard default stats are are not terrible and they at least have the bonuses in the right place but he does have three odd numbers and it's always incorrect to take OD numbers when you are not always almost always incorrect to take odd numbers when you're building stats because only even numbers increase your actual bonus to those traits so let's fix those and get Gail suited up and ready to roll so we're going to swap his intelligence to 16 and Constitution to 16 drop all these points out of Charisma because Wizards have no use for that at all and take 14 dexterity and then with our remaining two points we're going to go up to 12 wisdom if you're playing this as a main character you could move some points into Charisma if you wanted more dialogue skills or move some points from wisdom into strength if you want more carry weight and jump distance but this is going to be the simplest and best build for most of the game this gives you solid hit points which is important for wizards because by default you get very few hit points per level so having 16 Constitution is important as well as increasing your Constitution saving throw which lets you maintain concentration on spells which is critically important for every spellcaster and of course gets you the highest possible intelligence um bonus in order to maximize the damage and DC of your spells for skills for a wizard you're going to want to increase any of the intelligence related skills Gail of course comes with Arcana and history from his background and you can add investigation and religion as well giving you good access to those skill points there is also unfortunately a bug currently because Gail has a floating skill point from being a human which if you've watched some of my previous videos you'll notice used to appear in a second column that would allow you to Respec his racial skill point unfortunately for whatever reason right now that is bugged hopefully that gets fixed soon and it's not letting you resp his human skill point um a number of people have pointed this out in comments of my older videos so until this gets fixed you're kind of stuck with whatever he has here uh to start with but the human skill point isn't that important once this does get fixed I recommend either placing it in slight of hand if you want him to double up as a secondary lock picker or don't want to bring someone else to pick locks or putting it in stealth just as the most useful spell to have unless you want a conversation skill on your wizard but for the most part I would either take the last intelligent skill that you don't have access to which would be nature or put it in slight of hand or stealth which can just be useful in certain circumstances all right for our cantrip selection what you'll notice here is that there is across the top of the cantrips bar a row of damaging cantrips you only really need one of these because you anytime that you're casting a can a damaging cantrip you don't need to be choosing between multiple damaging canant trips if an enemy is immune to the damage type of your damaging can trip just cast a different spell it uh unless you're completely out of resources you won't need multiple Dam damage Types on your canant trips you only ever need one there are basically two choices for good damaging canant trips one is Firebolt just cuz it's the highest damage available and the other is Ray of frost which does one less damage on average but reduces enemy movement speed by 10 ft and also has the utility of being able to freeze water surfaces Frozen surfaces are super powerful in this game because if an enemy is on a frozen surface and moves on their turn they have a chance to fall over and an enemy that falls prone on their turn loses the entire rest of their turn preventing them from acting so if you can place ice surfaces under enemies you can often cost them turns something to think about when you are playing a wizard especially an evocation wizard because it's tempting to think of yourself as just a pure damage dealing character is that Wizards are not damage dealing characters Wizards are about controlling the pace flow and optionality of combat that means that your best as a wizard is to have the right tool for the job which will often be trying to prevent an enemy from acting in a useful way sometimes the right tool for the job is a fireball and in fact if you're against lots of little enemies you know dead is the strongest uh the the strongest crowd control condition that you can apply but if you're against single more powerful enemies then a fireball that just does damage to them may not be the best use for your Wizard's turn you're looking to control the pace and flow of combat by having the right tool for the job the classic analogy is that if a monk or a fighter is Superman who can punch really hard maybe has a couple extra tricks like x-ray vision or whatever a wizard is Batman whose whole stick is having the right tool at the right time if you need a grappling hook your wizard has a grappling hook you need a a batarang your Wizard's got a batarang because you can prepare different spells for different occasions the power of a wizard is in their versatility more than their raw damage evocation Wizards play into this by allowing you to use raw damage in ways that other characters can't by grouping up enemies on top of your allies and still hitting them with AOE damage letting you control the pace and flow of combat that way for that reason I'm going to recommend that your damaging cantrip is Ray of frost which gives you a little more utility and that you also take minor illusion extremely important because you can use it to group enemies for AOE spells and Mage hand which is just excellent utility throughout the game for our spell selection here the most important ones to have access to at level one are shield which you absolutely need um it's the single best defensive tool in the game increasing your armor class by five makes you which you can do reactively when you are about to be hit makes you immune to just about every attack uh you're very very likely to be able to dodge attacks with this so it's extremely useful grease for the reason that I mentioned where enemies fall prone if they're on uh surfaces that can cause them to fall prone ice knife which is damage and also creates an ice surface so you don't necessarily need both of these but I like to have access to both of them magic Missile which is an evocation spell that does great damage and is 100% reliable this will always hit will always do damage nothing can stop it except for the shield spell and having access to an ability like that is extremely important in multiple uh situations long Strider which is a ritual spell meaning it doesn't cost an action and increases a character's spell by 10 uh speed by 10 ft for the entire day extremely strong for any character to have access to and very important for your party to have somewhere might as well be on your wizard who can just swap out spells whenever you need them and finally I suggest taking um chromatic orb on an evocation wizard again this gives you access to an ice surface while also doing very good damage so you'll notice we have three ways to create surfaces one thing to keep in mind about these surfaces though is that your evocation wizard feature which we'll get next level does not make your allies immune to surfaces but does make but does make them immune to the damage of the spell so just bear in mind that that's very important to consider where when you're placing your spells and what surfaces you're placing under allies another thing to keep in mind of course is that you are able to um you are always able to learn spells from Scrolls and so which spells you select on level up should be based on what spells you have access to on what Scrolls you have access to you'll notice that not every wizard spell is available on this LevelUp screen the reason for that is that in uh when you resp your character you keep any spells you've learned from Scrolls so Gail here has learned a few spells from Scrolls already um so you should make these selections based on which Scrolls you've already found choose ones that you haven't and then you can learn every spell in the game from Scrolls another spell that's really useful to have is Thunder Wave uh this you can use even on allies now because at at level two so you can move up into melee and push a bunch of enemies while leaving your allies unharmed because this is an evocation spell so your allies will ignore it um enhanced leap is very good and fog cloud is excellent utility you can blind and stop enemy ranged attackers block line of sight your typical prepared Spells at this level are going to be um notice that we have these extra spells showing is available they're not currently available but these are just the ones we've learned from Scrolls so ignore those your typical prepared spells are going to be something like Shield magic Missile long Strider um chromatic orb and expeditious Retreat something along those lines that will give you a decent amount of options in combat remember though always that you don't have to follow these prepared spells lists exactly you can always change your prepared Spells at any time outside of combat and you should be doing that frequently to make sure you have the right spells prepared when you go into um combats at level two the best spells for you to have access to here are going to be things like flaming sphere um flaming sphere creates a summon which enemies will Target and that lets you control the pace of combat very well because causing enemies to Target it are is very dangerous or very useful to you cloud of daggers um is also extremely powerful as an evocation wizard you also get access to scorching Ray you can then replace expeditious retreat with Misty step because it's also a bonus action Escape spell scorching Ray is just the best damage available at this level to you so that's very useful and you probably want to replace one of these other spells like chromatic orb with flaming sphere to make sure that you are always able to cast that in combat you'll notice that these spell list recommendations do not differ that much from other wizard spell list recommendations I've made and that's again because what evocation Wizards give you is versatility in combat but you are still just a fully functional wizard all of the time you don't have have to just only take damaging evocation spells and in fact you shouldn't here in um I'm going to make a a choice for your feet that is going to defer somewhat as to whether you are on honor mode or on lower difficulty settings on honor mode I think most characters should strongly consider taking alert with their first feet basically no matter what yes you get lower damage and spell save DCS but alert gives you plus five to initiative and the inability to be surprised which is extremely powerful for Honor mode because you can always run away from combat also it means that you never get surprised even through story events that make it likely for you to do so and because Wizards have powerful control effects one of the best things they do is stop enemies from acting going first is really important for wizards so on honor mode I would recommend alert on lower difficulty settings you could consider taking um just to intelligence or you could take something like warcaster to give you advantage on concentration saves but I think the most powerful option for most characters and the safest option is to take alert at level four if you're going to get access to three Feats during the game for our spells known again just take whatever you haven't found good Scrolls for web can be very useful and of course outof combat utility spells uh gust of wind is nice this is another one that allies will automatically save against and for our can trips we're going to take true strike just to annoy everyone in the comments because I like to do [Music] that at level three the most important spells to have access to on your wizard are going to be counter spell again extremely important even though you're not an evocation wizard now you get two of the best reactions in the game in shield and counter spell preventing enemies from acting is your whole purpose as a wizard so having access to counter spell is really good haste although it's less important for Honor mode since uh it the number of attacks that allies get is nerfed on honor mode but haste is still very important and of course you're going to want Fireball as an evocation wizard this lets you do all of the things we talked about use minor illusion or a sanctuary to Ally to group enemies and then drop a fireball on their heads I'll talk about prepared spells and stuff uh as we go but those are just some really good options for what you're going to pick we'll also take make sure that we have access to haste and another spell that I think is really worth mentioning even though it is a Conjuration Spell rather than an evocation spell is sleet storm it's a concentration spell that creates a gigantic ice surface and we already talked about why ice surfaces are good it also disrupts concentration of spellcasters which is fine but the most important thing is that it creates a gigantic ice surface you can also cast sleet storm drop concentration on it which will create a puddle and then freeze that puddle with uh uh Ray of frost to create a long lasting ice surface so if the if the ice surface gets melted by something or uh struck by a a flaming weapon or something you can always refreeze it because it'll make a gigantic water surface you could also Electrify the water surface again keep in mind that allies will have to make saves against this you should always check what spell School a spell is which you can see right here because only evocation spells do allies get to avoid the saves against for a prepared Spells at this level we're going to want something along these lines plus the addition of Fireball haste and counter spell um sleet storm is also worth considering but for the most part I think these are going to give you the best options haste you can also self-cast to to allow you to make to cast two other spells in a turn so if you want to pre-cast haste on yourself before combat you can then cast say a fireball and a scorching Ray on your first round of combat increasing your damage output significantly at wizard level seven we're going to get access to another uh another set of good spells I'm going to here takes um confusion which is just a very powerful control spell and ice storm which is very similar to sleet storm in that it creates a gigantic ice surface but doesn't require concentration and also has the advantage of being evocation so if you catch an ally in it they won't take damage from it so we can replace if we were to take sleet storm we could replace it with ice storm but the most important spell to get at level four is wall of fire there's a lot of of encounters that wall of fire just solves on its own entirely um any encounter where enemies have to come at you they can run through the wall of fire five d8 damage is a lot of damage um and because you're an evocation wizard let me actually just drop out of character creation really quick and I'll show this to you because we're an evocation wizard our allies can safely stand in our own walls of fire so we could set up something like this and while they are taking one damage from being on the fire surface they're not taking any damage from the actual wall of fire um this means that even Gail himself can stand safely in his own walls of fire although as you see here you might lose concentration from taking damage from the fire surface so don't don't count on that but you at least won't take damage from that this is more useful to set up on top of an ally where you can prevent the Ally from taking damage and uh you can see through walls of fire just fine so an Archer Ally for example inside a wall of fire is safe from melee enemy who will have to charge into the the fire to get at them and can continue to shoot arrows and so on as you go of course the save DC for the burning damage is also only 10 so if you have boosts to your concentration save through uh additional Constitution for example or through having taken warcaster you can pretty safely stand in your own walls of fire but that's not something that I like to count on because even the chance of rolling a natural one and losing con conentration on your spell is pretty bad um so you're usually going to want to use that that trick on an ally rather than on um yourself but very useful to be able to do that and to cause enemies to run into the walls of fire to come after you wizard level eight we're just going to increase our intelligence making sure that we get this to maximum as as quickly as we can and for our spell selection and we're going to fill out other good spells that we might want like greater invisibility banishment is very powerful um Contra minor Elemental gives you dayong summons which are always good in this system anything along those lines is extremely good at wizard level 9 we get access to fifth level spells and the the evocation spell we get here is cone of cold this isn't an amazing one it does decent damage but compared to sustained damage from a wall of fire or just upcasting a fireball it's not that much better um and it's shorter range and and a harder AOE to land but it does have the advantage that as an evocation wizard you can run close into melee combat and hit a bunch of allies with it and they will not take any damage from it so we'll still probably want cone of cold um additionally you're going to want condra Elemental which gives you another day long long summon you don't have a ton of great uses for your fifth level spell slots so spending one of them on a on a day long summon is extremely powerful here other spells that are worth considering preparing at this level something like condra Elemental um you can take confusion you can go back for hypnotic pattern which is the best control spell in the game um just stops enemies from acting for two turns you could also take lightning bolt if you want an alternative to Fireball lightning bolt has the advantage that wet enemies take double damage from it which uh I cover in more detail in my One-Shot lightning Lord build another thing to point out incidentally just while I'm talking about spells is that you might think cloud of daggers is really good because allies won't take damage from it but unfortunately they will take damage from it because even though it's a damaging spell it's a Conjuration Spell rather than an evocation spell however it's still just a great spell cuz it's guaranteed damage um enemies get no saves against it so it's just very powerful in that respect at wizard level 10 you get another cool trick for being an evocation wizard which is empowered evocation um allowing you to add your intelligence modifier to damage roles with any evocation spells this is a minor bonus for most spells but there's a couple that it really helps with because because this is every single instance of damage that you fire with an evocation spell it adds again so spells that multi- shoot like scorching Ray or most particularly magic Missile let you apply this bonus multiple times magic Missile that increases uh the damage based on your intelligence for every missile is super powerful because it's guaranteed lots and lots of damage and you can decide how much damage you need based on the health of your enemies so you can if you need to spend a spell slot of an appropriate level with magic Missile to drop an enemy um for the exact amount of damage that you need you will get very good use out of this with the evocation Wizards specialty because this is 100% guaranteed damage and the ability to just say okay you take 40 damage guaranteed is extremely powerful for every character especially against bosses and so on that might otherwise have ways to get around this uh these damage instances also spells like magic Missile and scorching Ray that do multiple damage instances are really good for removing stuff like um enemy Arcane Wards or whatever things that prevents single instances of damage there's a couple bosses that will do that and so having these multi-hit spells available is very good for those reasons as well wall of stone is another spell that can solve certain encounters it's one I always like to have access to so it's a good one to pick up and then um Cloud kill while a Conjuration Spell is a good way to do damage so it's probably worth taking uh here you might want to take just another utility can trip like blade ward has some utility or light at this point in the game though you've pretty much figured out what you need you could just take um Firebolt for example as well that will give you 3d10 fire damage which is pretty nice at wizard level 11 we get access to six level spells and the best one of these for in evocation wizard is Sunbeam which gives you 10 turns of firing 68 radiant damage blinding any uh enemies in the area and you can continue to fire these with impunity into combat every turn for 10 turns as long as you don't drop concentration repeated blinds like this are extremely powerful forcing the the enemy to make a save against it over and over again is really really good of course there's also the options of wall of ice similar to wall of fire uh which deals a bunch of damage but at your allies can ignore it um also similar to wall of stone in that dividing an encounter in two can be extremely powerful uc's freezing sphere is a good way to deal damage that your allies are immune to but generally speaking Sunbeam is going to be more efficient and of course chain lightning is just very good damage overall doesn't benefit from being an evocation wizard but still just a very good spell I think that the one that matters the most is Sunbeam so that's what I'll select here although of course again you're going to change out your spells based on what you find Scrolls for finally it wizard level 12 we get to max out our intelligence and pick pick the other two spells that we haven't taken crate greater Undead is also pretty nice The Mummy just gives you uh another option for the entire day which is also very useful so all of these spells have their places but I think typically you're going to want to spend your max level spell slot on an evocation wizard on Sunbeam because that's one that actually benefits a lot from being able to fire it into combat with your allies for gear for Gale um Wizards are very gear independent but one thing that you are going to want to keep an eye out for is that Gail as a human has access to Shields and light armor by default that's why we never bothered to take Mage Armor or anything like that um and so you're going to want to get his AC pretty decent with a shield and light armor there are good robes that you'll end up wearing in the late game and when you are uh doing that you could consider using Mage Armor but the shields are very powerful as well um anything that increases your spell save DC and spell attack rules like this shield for example is extremely strong basically anything that says save d DC on it is something that you should keep an eyee out for of course the best weapon in the late game is going to be marah Hesh here the legendary staff um which is here that is designed for wizards to to use and Deals a ton of gives you access to six level spells on a short rest very powerful um that's going to be best in slot for your staff early game actually a staff that I think that's under under rated is Nature's snare I forget exactly where you get this somewhere in the Druid Grove I assume but it gives you a chance to ins snare the target uh and that's on anything that has an attack roll so if you fire a Firebolt at them then you have a chance to ins snare ins snare is a super powerful control effect so this gives you a lot of utility on your can trips as well and of course just anything that gives you bonus save DC bonus damage on whatever is very powerful all right my friends I hope you've enjoyed this look at Gail and this lore friendly guide to an evocation wizard and as always if you have do feel free to leave a comment uh rate the video and of course you can subscribe to my channel for more of this and other strategy game content cheers folks and I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 91,308

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

Id: SgYjMuaqOA8

Length: 28min 10sec (1690 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 17 2023