The IMMORTAL TANK - BG3 Honour Mode Build Guide

hello my friends and welcome back to another balers Gate 3 build guide I hope you're all doing well today we're going to be covering one of the tankiest builds in balder's Gate this is going to be an incredibly difficult to kill character for Honor mode this character I think is especially good for Honor mode for carlac or a main character to tank through fights because due to the near inability of this build to be killed it's going to enable you to stay alive in honor mode even if a fight's going badly and because you're also extremely mobile you'll be able to get out if you see a fight starting to turn against you this build also because the core combo is actually quite lightweight it doesn't require a lot of build resources to build into the core combo of this build also gets to be a fully functional damage dealer and extremely powerful attacker you can use this as a throne weapon Tavern brawler build or a great weapon Master melee build or both at the same time while also gaining all of the benefits of the tankiness of this build simultaneously I will say that the build comes online slightly later although you're a fully featured Barbarian up until that point so you can either just play as a normal Barbarian up until late or Respec into this build once you hit Level 9 and the core combo comes online all right let's just jump right into it and start making the immortal tank so first off because we're building this build purely for power I'm going to in this build assume that you are willing to use uh strength elixir in place of putting points into strength I will say that this build does not actually suffer that much from not using strength Elixir you can do pretty much all of the same things so I will mention the alternate choices that we would make if we weren't using strength Elixir but because this build is designed for maximum power we are going to be assuming that you're using strength Elixir when I'm doing this build for that reason of course we are going to be putting only eight points into strength because because you can in act one purchase an elixir of Hill giant strength which when drunk sets your strength to 21 for the entire day and you can stock up on enough of these to last you the whole game starting in Act One um lots and lots has been said about this so I won't go over it but it gives you a lot of free stat points to play with as with any strength based build getting 20 strength for free or 21 strength but they're the same uh is opens up a ton of possibilities mostly because we can then take other Feats and don't have to put ability score improvements into strength for that reason the stat spread that we're going to be going with in to start with is going to be 16 dexterity to maximize initiative and armor class 16 Constitution to maximize HP and 14 wisdom to maximize the most important saving throw in the game with our remaining four points there's a couple options if you're a main character you can put these into Charisma in order to have a chance at passing some dialogue skills you can also put one point into Constitution and to take eth's hair to go to 18 Constitution increasing your HP even more um or you can put them uh into strength to tide you over in the early game before you get the Elixir honestly the last four points don't really matter I'm going to assume that you're putting them into Constitution and then the remaining two into Charisma but uh those last four points are not entire extremely relevant where you place them if you are playing this as a main character and not for carlac then the best choices of race are honestly Wood Elf or half wood elf are better than all of the other options because the bonus movement speed is extremely valuable for this character you will use the movement speed a lot we're going to be moving several times a turn with this character and so any additional movement speed we get from wood elf is extremely powerful for you as well for our skill selection the only thing that really matters is that you have Athletics having access to this gives you a lot of Mobility because because of uh or it gives you a lot of utility cuz you can reposition enemies and that's something that is very valuable for any strength based build all right let's confirm this and keep on building I have uh drunken elixir of Hill giant strength just so you can see what the numbers will look like once we actually drink The Elixir um and then let's level up the build at Barbarian Level Two there's no particular choices that you have to make but something that is worth mentioning about how barbarians work and about how tank based barbarians work specifically is that Reckless attack is actually good for tanks because it makes you easier to hit the reason for this is that uh this build will have lots of free HP and lots of damage resistances and so actually wants to get attacked giving the enemies advantage against you makes them the AI much more likely to Target this character and also we're going to probably invest in armor or magic items that deal damage back when we take a hit and so it can be extremely valuable to cause the enemies to Target you often with Reckless attack you're going to want to activate it even uh before you attack rather than waiting to see if you hit or miss to it precisely so that you give enemies advantage against you it also slightly increases your chance of scoring a critical hit to do it that way you also get danger sense which gives you advantage on dexterity saving throws against spell very relevant and will allow you to take half damage from a lot of spells which will then be further reduced by our damage resistances at Barbarian Level three we get to make the most important decision that we're going to make and of course that is what Beast heart or what subclass and what Beast heart we're going to take spoilers we're taking Wild Heart Barbarian Wild Heart Barbarian gives us access to be heart which gives us unrelenting rage uh the be heart rage gives you damage resistance against all non psychic damage while raging meaning that you take half damage from basically every Source in the game this means that any HP that we get and because we're going to have at uh High Constitution and take many levels in Barbarian we'll have lots of HP is Multiplied in value it also means that every point of healing we receive and we will be healing many times a turn is additionally multiplied in value you can think of taking half damage as effectively doubling your HP so any healing you get is also doubled in value when you're taking half damage while raging you also get a source of your own healing which can in fact which does also double in value because of the bare heart damage resistances so you can see it's already sort of multiplying together to make you extremely difficult to kill at Barbarian Level four um if you aren't the The Elixir build you're just going to increase your strength we will need to get to 20 strength of course if you are the Elixir build then my suggestion is that you take great weapon Master this will allow you to deal tons of damage you don't usually need a shield with this build although I will say that against enemies U against some enemies you can have a shield equipped and you can actually switch whether you're using a two-handed weapon or a one-handed weapon based on the encounter um but great weapon Master just increases your damage output massively it allows you to deal 10 extra damage with every attack and since we have 21 strength thanks to and Reckless attack the minus5 hit Chance is going to not be a huge penalty you will still hit very regularly something to consider when you are playing a tank in Dungeons and Dragons is that unlike other games there's no aggro mechanic in DND or in Boulder's Gate which is based on D andd of course um in something like World of Warcraft a core mechanic to the game is managing aggro and you'll have like taunts or uh damage bars or positioning based aggro that forces enemies to Target you when you're a tank no such mechanic really exists in Dungeons and Dragons so you have only three ways to get the enemies to Target you one is positioning if you're the only thing they can hit they're going to come after you two is uh forcing them to stay next to you through something like Sentinel preventing from getting to your allies and three is Threat Level if your Barbarian does enough damage to kill them if they don't Target it then they they're caught between a rock and a hard place right they either have to Target your tank or they just take so much damage from your tank that it doesn't matter what they attack this way great weapon Master is actually a tanking ability because it increases the threat level of your character such that you are able to uh Force enemies to either Target it or simply die at Barbarian Level five we kind of double down on that effect by gaining extra attack meaning that we are doing twice as much damage every single round of combat we also get barbarian fast movement which is incredibly powerful um for all the reasons that I talked about initially you are going to be getting additional movement speed is extremely valuable for this character another conceptual thing when we're optimizing something I like to talk about a lot is that every character has five resources every of combat your action which is dealing damage in this case and you have one of the best actions in the game as a result your uh reaction which for this character we will have a great use for later but also of course opportunity attacks with great weapon master and Reckless attack are excellent uh your bonus action which on this character is initially going to be spent mostly on Raging although again we'll get another use for that later your concentration which for this character is spent on Rage of course since you can't concentrate on a spell and your movement the further you move with every use of movement the better that resource is used so by increasing your movement speed you maximize the value of that resource every single turn very important to keep in mind that you want to both use every one of those five resources every turn and maximize the impact of each of them at every opportunity so increasing your movement speed makes the ability to move more valuable Barbarian Level six is where you can start to see the core combo of the build begin to come online it won't fully come online until Level 9 but this is where you can start to do the thing that we want to do because we get access to an animal aspect and the animal aspect we're going to select is stallion now when we Dash you get temporary hit points equal to twice your Barbarian Level 12 hit points uh at the current moment these 12 hit points are doubled in Effectiveness because you are going to be taking half damage every time you are hit so you can think of this as being 24 free HP every turn that you dash currently dashing takes our action so it's a pretty inefficient use of our our action but it does let you start the every fight with 12 extra HP because you can just do this out of combat um and the temporary hit points don't go away or anything like that so you can do this before combat starts and you just have a bunch of extra hit points but of course we can do better than that so having reached level six Barbarian we're now going to Branch out into another class that other class you may have been able to guess is rogue rogue gets you another skill where you can take something like slight of hand you'll be a very high dexterity character so you'll be able to uh actually be the party's lock picker very easily and of course you can then also be a stealth you you can put expertise in stealth if you want to do some archery this build also actually makes a very good Archer because you will be so fast um and have so much mobility and be gaining HP every time you move you can actually be quite tanky as well while being an Archer your hit chance will be a little lower thanks to your low your lower dexterity but if you want to do ranged attacks with this build you can also uh you could also maybe get to 18 dexterity with the gloves of dexterity or with anti-thy hair and 17 starting decks while sneak attack and great weapon Master don't play Super well together there are some times when you can use sneak attack um like if you are doing some archery and at Barbarian level eight the core combo of the build comes online this is where you get cunning action Dash allowing you to Dash as a bonus action this means that every single turn you can spend your bonus action on dashing gaining 12 temporary hit points that means the enemies need to do a minimum of 24 damage to you every single turn in order to reduce your hit points at all um and of course any healing you get or anything like that will also have the have incoming damage um and any flat damage reduction that you able to get on your armor pieces or gear or whatever adds multiplies that effect even more since you can do this every single turn it's extremely powerful and extremely valuable obviously spamming out so many free hit points every single round of combat means that you're basically Immortal functionally Immortal in combat because you uh the incoming damage needs to so out scale your hit points that it's just functionally impossible for the enemies to get through your tankiness we can of course do even better though we'll continue to take levels in Rogue um the second bonus action allows you to rage and dash in the same turn meaning that you can start your combat by uh raging and also dashing it also for carlac specifically gives you uh some actual options where you can use your Smite attacks and then rage in the same round of combat normally the zaral teelings smites conflict with rage because they're they both require a bonus action but here you could use the Smite and then still rage gaining the damage reduction because you now have two bonus actions from Thief Rogue this lets you actually use some of kac's sort of unique abilities or racial abilities in a way that normally she doesn't get to use because they conflict with uh with Rage which typically you're going to want to have and actually get some use out of the racial abilities for this character which is kind of nice cuz it you don't get to use those that often the additional bonus action gives you a bunch of other Mobility options of course you can jump every turn you can Dash and then still shove you can Dash and then Dash again if you just want to cover a lot of ground you can disengage and then Dash if you want to leave combat without taking an opportunity attack because you have bonus action disengage from Rogue so this gives you a ton of options in combat and allows you to generate HP every round of combat multiple times the one thing that you can't do is stack the temporary hit points on top of each other like if you dash twice you'll still only get 12 temp HP not 24 because temp HP doesn't stack like that but it's still a ton of extra HP then we go to Rogue level four because that gets us a feat and the feat that I'm going to suggest you take if you have not taken um if you are the Elixir build is Tavern brawler by this point you'll probably have a throwing weapon one of the the weapons with a returning effect and and if you took 17 con and didn't take Ethel's hair you can then go up to 18 Constitution while also taking Tavern brawler um the this allows you to have a ranged option and you can do tons of damage throwing something like narona which is this trident that carlac has equipped or the Dwarven thrower any returning weapon will work very well with Tavern brawler it allows you to double your strength bonus and gives you a powerful ranged option that's based on your strength in uh for this character the one downside is that you aren't a Berserker Barbarian so you don't get to double up on bonus action throws like you would if you were a Berserker Barbarian with Thief Rogue but the extra tankiness makes up for it and I think Tavern brawler is still probably the best pick just for throwing weapons Alternatives if you don't like that and don't or just want to use a bow or something you can take Sentinel Sentinel is excellent for every tank traps enemies next to you and prevents them from getting to your allies um SA aage attacker allows you to increase your damage even further of course or uh something like mobile increases your movement speed and allows you to ignore difficult terrain when you dash so since you're dashing all the time mobile actually has kind of some use cases for this character typically I'm not a huge fan of mobile but um and would suggest just taking Tavern brawler here but it is mobile is at it best on this character so if you were looking for an excuse to take it then this is a good time at Rogue level five we get access to uncanny Dodge which once per turn lets you have incoming damage from uh an attack and that will effectively quarter incoming damage from an attack so that means that if an enemy is attacking you with a single damage instance they need to do 48 damage to get through just your temporary HP which you'll then refill for free when it gets back to your turn this character is at its worst against lots of uh smaller enemies but those typically will not do huge damage inst instances and any HP gain that you have over time is going to incredibly impact this build as well the Ring of regeneration for example that heals you for a D4 every round because you're multiplying the value of HP so often and it's so uh difficult for enemies to even get to your actual HP pool has tons of value on this character and so is an excellent item to equip ring of regeneration also gives you uh an extra bonus because you can use it in combination with the whispering promise and the H hell Rider's Pride for additional damage resistances or bless because you're healing yourself every round and finally at level 12 um we could just continue uh there's a couple options here you could take level seven Barbarian going up to for temporary HP every round which would be totally fine that's a very powerful option my opinion the best option is actually to take a onlevel dip into a third class and take light cleric this will allow you to once per turn as a reaction which we have okay options for but not incredible options for impose disadvantage on an incoming attack which makes you even tankier this basically lets you counter the advantage that you're giving enemies with Reckless attack or impose disadvantage if you have uh haven't Reckless attacked if you are using a one-handed weapon and a shield this can actually make you incredibly hard to hit because you can apply good medium armor good dexterity a shield AC bonus and warding flare making you actually one of the hardest characters in the game to hit adding a whole other dimension to your tankiness you can suddenly at level 12 become an AC tank uh a Dodge tank basically in addition to an HP tank making you basically impossible to kill on multiple metrics another uh thing that I should mention is that um because you are a barbarian when raging you have resistance on some mental targeting effects uh so that's also very nice for our spells here you can take a blade Ward now blade Ward doesn't stack with your the the resistance from this doesn't stack with your R but it does give you an alternate source of resistance if you aren't raging so blade Ward is is pretty useful for a cantrip to have guidance of course is very valuable for every character to have and then it doesn't really matter what you take resistance is fine you can pre-cast this but uh you're going to be losing concentration on anything when you rage so you won't be won't have access to that of course healing is very valuable for you so you can take healing word although again you'll be raging most turns of combat so you won't usually be casting spells but having access to Healing word for the combats where you don't have Rage or don't feel like you need to use it can be very valuable as well take utility spells here of course our wisdom will not be high enough to land guiding bolts and you wouldn't want to anyways cuz you're just going to be whacking things with your giant two-hander not trying to dink around with spells just to quickly show you sort of how this looks in practice right we can use our bonus action Dash and we get 12 temporary HP and then when we're raging of course that temporary HP is twice as valuable every time we take damage we can restore it with a second Dash this also means if you are taking damage on your turn Say by moving through a spell effect you can restore that temporary temporary HP it makes something like going through a wall of fire to get to an enemy or over a spike field or something like that signific signicantly less dangerous for this character because we have Tavern brawler we are also able to throw weapons at maximum Effectiveness and because we have great weapon Master we can attack with our two-handed weapons in melee with maximum Effectiveness though you could like I said replace one of those Feats with Sentinel or something if you're so inclined all right my friends I hope that you have enjoyed this look at the immortal tank for Honor mode and as always if you have do please feel free to leave a comment uh like the video both of those things help me a ton with the algorithm as I say every time and I really enjoy reading everyone's comments I am sorry that I have not been able to reply to every comment lately um when I uh got sick and also just that coincided with just getting a lot more comments I mean it's been great the channel has been growing a lot um which is awesome it means I'm receiving a lot of comments but I'm now receiving like a hundred comments a day and so replying to them is just starting to become too timeconsuming do still read all of them and I really appreciate you leaving them and I will try to answer any direct questions that you have especially if they're easy to answer uh so do don't hesitate to ask questions I'll do my best to answer them if possible and of course you can subscribe to my channel for more of this and other strategy game content cheers my friends I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 52,203

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

Id: jG4MXhaRlWE

Length: 23min 18sec (1398 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2023