The PERFECT MAIN CHARACTER - BG3 Wyll / Bard / Warlock Honour 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 my pick for one of the very best main character builds in balers Gate 3 this is a personal favorite of mine and a character that I have used multiple times over in my own runs and in my honor mode runs as well and I think this character is going to be an incredibly strong pick for your main character because you get excellent access to dialogue skills some of the very best in the game you get some of the highest damage output in the game with weapon attacks and you also get access to at very high DCS basically all of the very best spells in the game so you can pretty much do everything you will cover almost all of the offensive power that you need for your party and the only thing that your party will need to cover for you is a little bit of defensive capabilities just to make sure that this character stays alive because otherwise it's going to solo the encounters all on its own the character I'm talking about of course is the bardlock which gets great damage great Spell access as well as access to some of the most broken item combos in the game uh item combos which are so powerful that I personally refuse to use them entirely because they trivialize basically every encounter in the game we'll talk about those later but this character is optimally suited to use some of the very best items in the game as well before I begin I'd like to thank leel strick for the twoo donation and Rhythm Deb Jules and Larry Sherman for becoming channel members thank you so much my friends I really do appreciate it and and let me know if I mispronounced any of those names so I can say them right next time uh really means a lot thank you so much for this character I am using will as the example character both because I think human is actually a pretty good pick for your racial option for this character but also because I think this perfectly fits Will's lore one it's a warlock build and he's a warlock um but also this character is going to be a swashbuckling melee fighter who will fight with a a one-handed weapon just as we see will in his intro so I think this character is an ideal pick for a lore friendly will build if that's what you're looking for or especially For An Origin character run as will playing as will as your main character because this is a great main character build and I think perfectly fits Will's background and lore as well as well as of course being an extremely powerful build if you're building this for a custom character I recommend taking half Dr as your racial option because the extra cast of darkness and shield proficiency are extremely useful um although GI yane is always a good choice for uh characters like this as well for the extra mobility and the for the extra Mobility from your racial spells as well as the ability to just gain Proficiency in every intelligent skill which is extremely useful for dialogue characters since intelligent skills are almost all used in dialogue or the normal very strong races are all powerful as well half wood elf gets you the additional move speed and shield proficiency uh dwar lets you remain permanently invisible outside of combat and halfling let you R roll ones all excellent choices here for our first level we're actually not going to take warlock we're going to take Bard because you get much better skill access this way and this will allow us to gain all of the dialogue skills we need right from the beginning but first we have to fix our characters uh terrible starting stats so let's go ahead and do that we are going to begin with 17 Charisma because we will be taking the actor feat later to get even better dialogue skills and so this will let us reach 18 with only the single point invested and so that's always excellent 16 Constitution one of the downsides of this character is that you will have relatively low hit points for a Melee character since you're taking levels in Warlock and Bard and so having 16 Constitution is even more important for this character than for other characters although it's often it's basically correct for every single character um but that will help mitigate one of the very few downsides of this character and 10 wisdom just because it's the most important saving throw for our skill selection we are going to take uh the only important thing here here is to make sure that we don't take deception or performance since we'll be getting those for free from the actor feat later although if you want to use these in the early game you could take a skill selection that uh picks those up and then Respec into uh to remove them once we get actor when you take actor it gives you expertise in those skills so you don't actually need Proficiency in them to have them it just gets you two extra free skill points I'm going to recommend spending those on slight of hand and stealth stealth will actually be pretty useful for this character later on uh and slate of hand will allow you to be a backup lock picker or your main lock picker if you don't have another dexterity based character though if you do you could spend that point on perception instead starting instrument is very important so don't get this wrong we all know what the right choice is so just make sure you pick that one and we are going to go with for our cantrip selection um we're going to pick up vicious mockery not because it's going to be a main component of our damage now but because it's extremely powerful with a specific item combo later down the line and so having access to it is going to be very important and we are going to take friends because this will let us get advantage on key persuasion checks you will also want to have access to minor illusion somewhere in your party so if you're if the rest of your party doesn't have minor illusion then this character could take it over friends it's very important to have this somewhere but only one character needs to have it for our spell selection we are going to begin with uh healing word extremely important to take on every character dissonant Whispers which is your best combat option for the early levels and just a great CC and damage spell um and then for your remaining spells you are going to want long Strider if you don't have access to it anywhere else in your party uh it is extremely important again that one character has access to Long Strider somewhere in your party this spell is a ritual even though it doesn't say so in the tool tip so it doesn't take a spell slot to use and just gives your entire Party 10 ft extra of move speed for the entire game uh as long as you cast it every day which is of course extremely powerful so it's resource free and ridiculously strong and then for our last spell I usually just take speak with animals just cuz I really like having this and don't want to keep track of having to drink a potion every day but you can also take Thunder Wave because it's a great emergency option fairy fire to help you reveal invisible creatures or Tasha's hideous laughter if you feel like you need more control for single enemies though usually dissonant Whispers paralyzing enemies in place will be more than enough control at these early level LS that's it for level one let's level up at character level two we're going to take our first warlock level this gets us much better combat options early eldrich blast being an incredibly powerful combat spell early in the game um giving us a great ranged option that's going to stay with us for the rest of the game at this point we're going to play mostly as a ranged character using our powerful spells from Warlock and our powerful or powerful combat options from Warlock and our powerful spells from Bard as well as our great supporting options to be a powerful ranged spellcaster at this point in the game and then later on we'll transition to being more of a melee fighter as we go down the line for our warlock subass I think there are two options here you could take the great old one which lets you get a lot of free critical hits or free fears when you critically hit enemies this character will be making tons of attacks per round and so this ability will go off very frequently or you could take the fiend and I'm going to recommend taking the fiend for two reasons one the ability to gain temporary hit points though it may seem minor is actually uh very useful to this character you'll be killing a lot of enemies since you do so much damage in the later game and so you'll be triggering this basically every single turn and those temporary hit points do add up especially when combined with defensive options like blade Ward or other forms of damage reduction um as well taking the fiend gets you access to one of the very best spells in the entire game command command allows you to with basically no questions asked remove one enemy from combat if they fail the save they just skip their turn uh and it levels up extremely well so as we get higher level spell slots are we will be freely upcasting this with our warlock spells to take several enemies down in a single turn as well this is an enchantment spell which is going to be extremely relevant for certain items later on you'll notice many of the spells that we've picked so far are illusion or enchantment spells this is because of the Ring Of The Mystic scoundrel which is a great item to pick up for this character for our second spell at this level we're just going to take hex later on we may swap hex out because we'll have better things to concentrate on but this is going to be a huge portion of our damage at this early stage of the game so it's great to have hex right now for our cantrip selection of course we take eldrich blast and then for our second one we're going to take blade Ward blade Ward allows us to protect the temporary hit points we're getting from fiend and later on will allow us to protect temporary hit points we get from armor of agathys don't cast blade ward in combat either cast it before combat starts or cast it specifically when you're trying to protect armor of agathys hit points or if your character is in a horrible position and and just needs to survive a round of attacks this is an inefficient canant trip to use as a main State during combat but a great option to have and there really aren't a lot of other powerful options for your warlock canant trips anyways so so it's great to be able to pick this up and use it when it comes up at warlock level three or character level three we take our second level of Warlock and we get to start taking El uh eldrich invocations like basically every other warlock character that has ever been made uh we are going to take agonizing blast and devil sight as our first two invocations agonizing blast gives us an incredible ranged option allowing us to add our Charisma to our eldrich blast when combined with hex this is some of the best damage output in the game in fact an agonizing blast eldrich BL uh an agonizing blast eldrich blast warlock with hex is kind of the Baseline for good damage dealer in the early game if your damage dealers are dealing more damage than that setup you are going to be uh very happy and if they're doing less damage than that setup then you probably need to try to increase it because this is the default damage for a damage dealer and is just a great way to to DPS down enemies one of the best damage setups in the game involves this devil site we're taking because of course when we get Darkness we are going to be able to or if we're half Dr we already have access to it or will get access to it at level five um when we get Darkness this will allow us to see normally in it which lets us set up areas of complete invulnerability to enemy ranged fire while gaining advantage on all of our attacks when we're in melee combat as well the enemies will be blinded themselves and have disadv Advantage giving us advantage on our attacks and disadvantage on enemy attacks which is an enormous uh advantage in combat of course for our remaining spell here we're going to pick up armor of agathys like I talked about this is useful to protect with uh because it combines very well with blade Ward to give you additional damage and it's double value when you're protecting the health with blade Ward um you also get to return damage if enemies get into combat and this helps keep you alive while being relatively FY this is also a way to convert a short rest resource a warlock spell slot which comes back on a short rest into something that lasts all day and therefore gives you a benefit for the entire long rest at warlock level three we select our packed Boon and the Packa that we are going to take is the Packa of the blade this allows us to bind a packed weapon letting it use our Charisma for to hit um for it to hit and damage roles rather than our strength or dexterity this OB obviously is awesome because it means that our spells and our weapon attacks key off of the same stat so we only have to raise one stat uh really high and this lets us be both a damage dealer and a powerful spellcaster combined into a single character we do need to remember to actually bind the weapon it's very easy to forget to do this and I do often get comments when I post blade packed warlocks of people whose blade pack blade packed weapons aren't working remember you have to actually cast this when you equip the weapon you want to be your blade uh your blade packed weapon and then it will use your charisma to attack for our level two spell selection of course we're going to take darkness and we could replace a spell here so we'll almost always be concentrating on darkness in fights at this point so we could replace hex um starting now I would I generally like to replace a spell Next Level rather than or replace hex Next Level rather than replace it this level but we could immediately replace it with misy step if we wanted to and that will give us access to better Mobility that's a call that you kind of have to make depending on whether you feel like your character is out of you know in danger a lot and needs the extra Mobility or whether you need the extra ranged damage more um and that will that will depend a little bit on just how your your fights have played out so far so I would make that call based on your experience of playing the character at warlock level four we are going to take the actor feat this gives us expertise in deception and performance which also gives us uh Proficiency in both of those skills which is of course excellent and um giving us two extra skills for free and giving us very very strong skill checks in both of those skills as well as bumping our Charisma up to 18 this means we're now adding plus four to hit and damage on our weapon attacks and our eldrich blast attacks and is great as a result for our can trip if we still don't have access to minor illusion we definitely need it if you you do have access to minor illusion you can pick up Mage hand it's also very useful to have access to Bone chill because preventing some enemies from healing in the late game is quite useful and around this level you're going to start fighting a lot of undeads uh and being able to give them disadvantage with bone chill is pretty nice as well you'll still almost always be using eldrich blast but bone chill does have some utility if you don't need minor illusion or the other spells for our spell selection here you probably want to take cloud of daggers this is just an excellent way to remove an enemy to do damage that does not require a saving throw at all and keeping enemies trapped in a cloud of daggers is one of the most efficient damage sources this gives your character a lot of AOE damage something it was previously lacking as well which can be very useful in certain encounters at level five we get to pick up another eldrich invocation which uh there are two choices here one is repelling blast which to push enemies being able to push enemies with your eldrich blast is really powerful for this character because you can push them into your hunger of Hadar or your cloud of daggers or uh just away from you if you need to disengage for whatever reason and so that's a very strong default although if you do want to use specifically a robe you could pick up the Mage Armor upgrade armor of Shadows which lets you set your AC to 13 I would recommend just getting Mage Armor from um an ally if you're doing that rather than having to take the invocation and repelling blast is an excellent invocation especially since they fix it in patch six and you can now turn it off for our spell selection we're going to take hunger of Hadar one of the Premier reasons to be a warlock at all the spell is incredible and extremely crippling to enemies and now since we have this spell that we really want to be concentrating on we can replace cloud of daggers um since we're almost always will prefer to concentrate on Hunger of fadar to concentrate on cloud of daggers in fights uh we can replace that with counter spell if your party has access to a lot of other counter spells you don't have to do this because this character is slightly worse at counter spelling since we won't get max level spell slots um compared to other characters but counter spells just such a powerful effect and this character also doesn't currently have a great use for your reaction and it's important to have a use for every resource you have every turn of combat um this is something I say a lot but every character has access to five resources every turn of combat your action bonus Action Reaction movement and concentration we have great uses for four of these up till now but don't really have a great use for our reaction and so um having counter spell gives us an incredible reaction spell as well and we can replace our default concentration of cloud of daggers with Hunger of Hadar which is just an incredible spell overall all right we've now made it to the peak of our Warlock lock levels and can go back to taking levels in Bard first off this gives us access to song of rest which is incredible for a warlock this is just an extra use of all of your spells every or extra two spells every day which is great this is going to be an extra two of your highest level spell slots every single day thanks to warlock spells refreshing on short rest and song of rest giving you an extra short rest so for our spell selection here we are going to take uh if we haven't selected it already tsh's hideous laughter we're now at the point in the game where we should have access to the band of the Mystic scoundrel fairly soon and so we can start picking up the powerful illusion and enchantment spells that we'll be able to cast as a bonus action band of the Mystic scoundrel lets you cast a an illusion or enchantment spell as a bonus action after you have uh struck with a weapon attack tsh's hideous laughter is an enchantment spell that disables an enemy for the rest of the fight so it's great to have access to this spell this of course does take your concentration but there aren't a lot of of other spells that you're going to need if you really feel like you will never cast this you could pick up Thunder Wave as a panic button but it's really good to have access to this spell at Bard level three we get to take our subass and of course we're going to take swords Bard this uh gives us access to all of these slashing flourishes or all of these Bic flourishes all three of which are great for this character this character does sometimes struggle with its defenses but since we'll have good since the HP is relatively low but since we'll have great AC um for since we'll be in in medium armor with a shield and decent dexterity we can make ourselves extremely hard to hit with defensive flourish slashing flourish of course just lets us hit two enemies which is incredible just doubles your damage output with that attack and mobile flourish pushing your enemy back uh 20 ft is extremely useful for the same reason repelling blast is so useful you can punt enemies back into your hunger of Hadar once they've left them uh forcing them to re engage with the damaging spell effects that you have been able to push them out of or that they've been able to escape um all three of these melee flourishes are extremely useful the ranged versions are also not totally useless though mostly you'll be attacking with range at range with eldrich blasts you probably will have a ranged weapon equipped and sometimes you can just use a ranged flourish to gain a little extra value for our level two spell selection again we're looking for powerful Illusions and enchantments that we can bonus action cast and so I'm going to recommend hold person hold person's also incredible for this character even if you aren't using the band of the Mystic scoundrel because you can just cast this before starting combat and then you get automatic critical hits with your weapon attacks a as you can cast this as your way of starting combat and then you get automatic Critical Hits since this character does so much damage it is going to do um it's going to be excellent to be able to hold an enemy still and get automatic critical hits you benefit a ton from that for our fighting style of course here we're going to take dueling this lets us use a one-handed weapon and shield and do extra damage which is great B level four we get another feat and since we're so Charisma dependent of course the feat we're going to take is to boost our Charisma you can get your charisma up to 24 with certain items and story events in the game and that is a ridiculously high amount of Charisma um that is going to make your character hit with plus seven and have ridiculously hard to resist spells so you will be doing more damage than any other character because of your very high base stats and have harder to resist spells than any other character because Charisma is easier to raise to ridiculously high levels than any other stat except strength for a spell selection here you probably still do want cloud of daggers somewhere in the build so you can pick that back up you could also take silence um you could take enhan ability if you are worried about passing certain scale skill checks in act three so any of those is great to have access to um this is going to be less a core component of your build and more something that you feel you need and so I recommend using this to fill a hole in your build that you are feeling the lack of whether that be AOE damage or passing certain skill checks or dealing with spell casters all three of those are are good options as a good default though just having cloud of daggers is never bad for a cantrip selection we take whichever cantrip we feel like we need in our party um presumably you have minor illusion and Mage hand from other party members but more Mage hands is always good so we can take that Bard level five gets us font of inspiration meaning that our inspiration dice now come back on a short rest which means we can now we're now almost entirely short rest dependent we do have bck uh spell slots but a lot of our high level spells and our best spells are being cast with warlock spell slots and so we can now make our special melee attacks with uh slashing flourishes Etc on short rest cool downs and our spells are on short rest cooldowns making this character extremely sustainable and very uh very short rest dependent rather than long rest appendant so you'll be able to have very long adventuring days with this character as well we also get level three spells here and we're going to pick up um I'm actually going to suggest picking up uh Glyph of warding here we will be concentrating very frequently on Hunger of Hadar rather than one of these other level three disable spells although it's great to have all of these having a non-concentration option is pretty good though fear and hypnotic pattern are both incredible spells that you will not be sad to take either we could also replace something like cloud of daggers or at this point dissonant Whispers which is probably not seeing much use we could replace with um one of the other spells uh one of those other spells both fear and hypnotic pattern are incredible disable spells so we could we could swap that out if you're no longer using dissonant Whispers at this point in the game the'll definitely use both of those Spells at character level 11 the build actually splits depending on what difficulty setting you're playing on the reason for this is that on honor mode the Warlock level five extra attack from your your blade packed and the barred extra attack from your Bic from your swords barred extra attack don't stack so you would still only get two extra attacks if we took two more B levels on tactician or below they do stack and so what two remaining levels you take is actually going to defer depending on what difficulty setting you're playing on I'll show you the honor mode build first and then we'll come back to the tactician or below build um but let's let's just jump into the honor mode build where you'll be taking two more levels of warlock since you only get two attacks with this build we just take additional levels of warlock this gets us fourth level Warlock spell slots which is great cuz those will come back on a on a short rest um so that'll give us a little bit more spellcasting power compared to taking two extra B levels for our spell selection at level 11 we are therefore going to take whatever control spell we didn't take from our Bard level so we'll pick up fear here now we have all of the best control spells in the game fear hypnotic pattern and hunger of Hadar together give you basically all the best things to concentrate on in combat and you get to choose which of those you want to use in a given combat depending on which is most effective all three of them have their place and one thing that I say a lot in terms of spell selection is don't be afraid to take a lot of different concentration spells because it's more important to have the perfect spell for the encounter than it is to um be able to use a slightly suboptimal spell and another spell you'd rather spend one spell to completely solve an encounter then concentrate on something less good and then spend a second spell and therefore you've spent more resources on the encounter spellcasters are all about having versatility so it's ideal to have just the best option for every possible encounter don't be afraid to take several different concentration spells on the same character finally at warlock level s we get access to fourth level warlock spells and continuing our theme of taking the concentration spells that by themselves solve an encounter we can take wall of fire and for our eldrich invocation we could actually take Dreadful word getting access to confusion which is a very another very powerful debuff although somewhat um somewhat redundant with the other control spells that we have like hypnotic pattern but if you're finding that you are unable to Target hypnotic pattern easily because enemies or your allies are getting in the way confusion doesn't hit allies so Dreadful word gives you access to another very powerful spell um other than that you could take mostly for flavor there are not that many powerful options from the warlock invocations at this level we've already got all the best ones so just getting access to yet another spell that can sometimes solve an encounter by itself I think is the best use of your warlock spell slot that's the honor mode build I'm now going to just quickly reload a save and we will talk about the tactician or below build on taction mode or lower difficulty settings the extra attacks do stack so taking a second level another level of Bard gets us access to a third attack in a round obviously that's incredible especially cuz all our all of our attacks are based on our Charisma so they are all hitting for lots of damage and we're going to get even more damage sources later uh from our items so of course the more attacks we hit with the higher the damage we do is going to be this is going to be incredible for us so we'll take our level of Bard and our for our spell selection we will similarly to the honor mode version of the build take whatever control effect we didn't take at the previous level and then level seven we get access to two cool things uh we could either take confusion but something I actually really like to take here is greater invisibility this character will have okay stealth checks especially if you use the gloves of dexterity and so greater invisibility can let you get a couple cheeky hits in before a fight starts you don't actually have amazing uses for your level four spell slot so this is a a fun way to just win an encounter especially if you get P without Trace from an ally so uh confusion is probably the the optimal pick here but greater invisibility is fun and adds a whole other dimension to this character so I like grabbing it here myself you can cast it on yourself and then make a couple attacks before the enemies as long as you keep passing your stealth check before the enemies can detect you for items for this build well we get to use the most powerful item combo in Boulder's Gate one that's so powerful that I personally actually don't recommend using it because I think it it kind of ruins the game balance by trivializing every encounter that you face but it would be absolutely remiss of me not to mention how powerful it is to have the Helm of Arcane Acuity on this character when you're making three attacks per round you gain Arcane Acuity six turns of Arcane Acuity gives you a plus six bonus to your spell attack rules which includes your eldrich blast and your spell save DC meaning that enemies basically can never succeed on a saving throw against your spells when you have spells like hypnotic pattern command person and so on um having enemies be unable to succeed on those saves is ridiculously powerful and you notice that we have been taking um illusion and enchantment spells well that combines with the band of the Mystic scoundrel to allow you to hit an enemy three times in a turn for six stacks of Arcane Acuity and then cast for example a hold person um causing an enemy to instantly fail the save and become paralyzed with no hope of getting out of it because your Arcane in curity St Stacks make your save DCs so high there's just nothing they can do about it you can even combine that with the Ring of Arcane Synergy and this is why when you have cantrip damage you gain Arcane Synergy for two turns and that gives you additional damage with weapon attacks equal to your spellcasting modifier so that'll double your charisma bonus to damage you can make a weapon attack with uh your first weapon action and then cast a bonus action vicious mockery cuz it's an enchantment using the band of the scoundrel um and then make your next two weapon attacks and every subsequent weapon attack with additional damage from the Arcane Synergy ring those three items together give you an incredible amount of damage and control and honestly I think are too powerful a combo for the game but they are a ridiculously powerful option that this character has access to for other items for this character the gloves of dexterity are great as they are for all light or medium armor characters and any of the medium armors that allow you to add your full decks to the build will be excellent potent robe of course is also really good because it will let you do um additional damage equal to your charisma on your Aldrich blast attacks as well as on your bonus action vicious mockeries so all of those together are going to be a ridiculous amount of extra damage if you have potent robe so either you want higher AC or you want potent robe to do additional damage on your spell attacks I recommend just getting the best one-handed weapon you can find whatever does the most damage and buying that as your packed weapon and for your Shield anything that gives you advantage on Save DCS or anything that gives you bonuses on initiative uh The Sentinel Shield in particular is excellent because initiative is one of the points that this character can struggle with not that you're bad at it but you know more is always good and if you go first with this character you'll basically always win the fight so any initiative bonuses you get are excellent all right my friends I hope that you've enjoyed this video and of course as always if you have feel free to leave a comment uh like the video and you can subscribe to my channel for more uh balers Gate 3 character builds and other strategy game content and of course if you've really enjoyed this video or any of my previous ones you can feel free to become a channel member or leave a uh donation down below using the buttons below the video cheers my friends I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 47,098

Keywords: Etarran, Cephalopocalypse, Baldur's Gate 3, Larian, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Build, Guide, Strategy, Tactics, Tutorial, Jaheira, Minsc, Astarion, Gale, Karlach, Shadowheart, Minthara, Wyll, Halsin, Lae'zel

Id: 7YH5o6ByAI0

Length: 31min 19sec (1879 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 27 2024