THE ULTIMATE HOLY PALADIN (Cleric/Paladin) BUILD in Baldur's Gate 3

paladins are probably one if not the most popular class in balers Gate 3 and you can get away with just 12 levels of pure Paladin with a very successful character but in this video I want to do something a little bit different and and when I originally sat down to do this video I had all these different concepts and ideas for paladins and I really got lost in the sauce and it kind of led me to believe that you can really approach Paladin in so many different ways and and really it could warrant multiple different build videos so if you want to see a build video here where I go into a pure offensive Paladin or stuff like that go ahead and let me know in the comment section below but today I'm going to focus on blending Paladin and cleric to make a Frontline kind of defensive support character you won't be dealing the most damage in the world you will be doing good damage but what you will be doing is holding the line healing other players allowing your defensive characteristics to really spread AC across the map for you to help you out in really kind of being that Bastion of Faith while maybe you have your Barbarian come in and Club something to death or your warlock destroy something from afar with an ELD blast whatever it is this character is meant to kind of be that ultimate Frontline support tank and less so much of an outright destroyer of worlds so if this is your first time on my channel the way I do things is by UPF fronting the knowledge of my videos so you can decide if it's the right one for you so with that being said we'll be taking seven LS into Paladin with the oath of ancients to add some healing and a great aura and then five levels into cleric in the Life domain this will further supplement our healing to make it so that it will be very strong this will allow you to dish out a good amount of damage as a paladin and have a lot of layered healing which we'll go through after we break down the build that's really the entire gist of this video it's really a simple build because I realized I just didn't have an easy to approach paladin on the channel that's all you wanted to know please feel free to shut shut the video down and get back to making your holy night before you head out please don't forget to like comment subscribe all of those things help me out in a huge way I currently have something like 89% unsubscribed viewership on the channel and that's a metric I am trying to change here by the end of the year so every little bit helps you can jump ahead to any part of the video that interest you the most using the chapters with the timeline in the description and if you need help with any other subject in bers Gate 3 check out my playlist linked below and at the end of the video let's get started here on this ultimate Paladin build in Bal G 3 and as always it starts in character creation so this is a single player narrative game do not minmax this Choice choose a race that makes sense for you and your character and the way you're playing don't just listen to some guy on the internet you know me you spent a lot of money on your game so enjoy your escapism however you want but that being said here's some just kind of standout picks that I really enjoy humans really good just because you're going to get in increased to your carry capacity which I'm always a huge fan of um I love D they're one of my favorite races in all of uh Dungeons and Dragons so I really like these guys they do also get an advantage on saving throws against charm and Magic can't put you to sleep which is really cool in addition to that too uh they will get a can trip which allows them to cast a Darkness nice ability to kind of blind things around them it's always actually pretty good halflings are pretty good for their ability to use lucky uh when you roll a one with an attack roll ability check or saving throw you can roll the die and must use the new roll half elves in general are always a nice choice here um you can choose a highelf for another can trip wood elf for increased movement or a d again for just being a Dr um same thing here with elves as wish if you wish dwarf really thrives here as well all the proficiencies don't matter because starting as a paladin you're going to get simple and Marshall as well as light medium heavy and shield so all proficiencies from everyone aren't going to help you out but you get an advantage on saving throws against poison and resistance to poison which is a very prevalent damage especially as it comes to traps and the gold dwarf really leans into the tanky direction of this character giving you one more hit point and increasing by one every time you gain a level this allows you to really kind of cascade with some good amount of Health Shield dwarfs here not as amazing because it's just proficiency uh dwar though are actually a really cool pick because they get shrink and enlarge as a cant trip I think at level three or five maybe it's seven it's one of those three and it allows you to enlarge your character and do more damage in melee which is actually a pretty cool thing I think honestly the two underd dark races of dwar and D are two of my favorite picks for paladins because I think it's very um not anti-hero but it's just against the typical cut of these of these two races and I kind of like that thieflings are always very strong too with both asmodus and mopes teelings because they have access to some very fun cantrips as they level up but what I will say is I think me mopes gets a darkness and tendrils and as modius gets two other ones um go with whichever one you want but the zarel tling what I will say if you want to choose Zario tling just do it but the two canant trips that they get branding Smite and Searing Smite you just get as a paladin by default so you don't get any additional benefit of having them as canant trips the fact that they are canant trips which is nice so you don't have to waste any spell slots to cast them but my problem with both of those smites is that they require an action and a bonus action so it is a lot of investment in an in well in an ability that will cost you all of your action economy in a turn so if you want to do it from a narrative standpoint please by all means go ahead and do it I just want I want you to be aware of that a a really strong option though for any Melee character is always going to be a half orc because they get Savage attacks when you land a critical hit with a melee weapon attack you deal an extra dice of weapon damage and Relentless endurance if you reach zero hit points you reg regain one hit point instead of being down it's a really cool combo for this type of build here CU we are going to be very kind of so I'm going to go ahead and just choose dwarf because I think if I were to make this character from scratch I don't typically play dwarfs because they're dwarfs um but comes from my Warhammer obsession with High Elves but um I think it's a really good one for this class and we'll be getting access to lay on hands which is for healing uh this is basically 2x your Paladin level for the amount of healing that you get here and then we have Divine sense gain advantage on attack roles against celestials fiends and Undead which is actually very good as the latter two you will be experiencing a lot throughout this game fiends especially in act three and Undead quite a bit in act two for our subass we'll be going with oath of the ancients for this build but like I said if you want to see some other kind of really fun different variations I have in mind for Paladin let me know in the comments below I have a pretty cool oath of Vengeance build I have in mind that I want to couple with some other things uh mainly Sentinel polar Master but both of ancients has access to Healing Radiance now healing Radiance will work off of three things um and basically this is going to come down to your um proficiency bonus your Paladin level and your charisma modifier so our Charisma modifier is three our Paladin level is one that brings us up to four and our proficiency bonus right here is two so this makes it so that we're doing six healing this proficiency bonus will go from two to three to eventually four by the end of the game naturally and our Paladin level will be seven at the end so at max level well at least Max Paladin level we'll be doing 11 healing alone plus an additional bit of Charisma now we're going to be able to supplement some more healing across the board so don't worry about that and the nice thing too about this is this heals you and then you regain another six hit points next turn so it's a really big heal that can really kind of Ripple across the the early portions of the game and it will still come in clutch in the later portions and also too it's a bonus action so I like that quite a bit for your background please this is a single par narrative game choose whatever background makes sense for you and your character um are you a reformed criminal that has found their way into the Paladin orders as a form of kind of um Penance for their own crimes in the past are you a former charlatan who cheated people over and you realize you know what I should I should lead a better life are you an acolyte who has taken up with a monastic order and joined into uh the Paladin orders whatever it is please choose the background that makes sense for you your character and have that color the decisions you make throughout this game there are so many ways to play it and it really allows you to have a lot of enrichment now if you just want a min max option Guild Artisan is my go-to because it gives us skill proficiency and both insight and persuasion both of these are skill checks that you will make throughout the game and they're very important ones most of the time so it helps you kind of get access to more content if you didn't think you would be able to and for our skill proficiencies I'll just remove all these we have access to Athletics religion medicine and intimidation now if you were to say choose um a d you would get perception here or I think uh Orcs get half ORS get intimidation so some of these will be colored based off of your race your racial decision Athletics is good for the ability to push things and resist being pushed or I'm sorry shove things resist getting shoved religion is actually a pretty cool one because you will actually have some religion checks that will help you out especially at the like 34 point of act two when you deal with uh a specific God's Temple and a couple other places um in act three that'll help out with the religion checks uh medicine I would actually asue for the most part unless you wanted to do it from any kind of narrative standpoint because it only really helps you if you tend on using the Alchemy mini game if you don't then just skip it um I would probably do this so that I have my persuasion my intimidation and religion checks all kind of covered for myself this gives me some kind of flexibility we already have Max uh Charisma so well well in this scenario uh so this helps us already with deception or performance if we ever needed to make those roles but this helps out with and persuasion let's now talk about our ability point now your abilities are a little jammed up because we are going into cleric um I have our wisdom only at 12 uh this is going to give us a plus one to wisdom checks this will also help out with our amount of spells that we can prepare as a cleric your cleric prepared spell amount is your cleric level plus your for wisdom modifier so for example here you can see that we will be just plus one so if our if we were a plus I'm sorry if we were a level one cleric we would have two slots right cuz plus one from wisdom one from cleric uh for Charisma we have that set to 16 now this is where the lion share of our Buffs come from our healing comes from all of our Paladin type of effects really come from being uh high in Charisma and we're going to go with just simply 10 dexterity because we are going to be using heavy armor we don't really need much more than that but we don't want to suffer a penalty 14 Constitution it is a little low um ideally you'd probably want this a little bit higher but we have plenty of ways to increase this at the end of the game trust me um but Constitution is going to help us out with concentration roles which we will be making lots of concentration roles are a constitution check and then lastly we have strength now I've set strength to 15 on purpose here because the first feed I'm going to choose for this character is going to push it to 16 now if you did not want to choose that feat once we get to that discussion you can get The Hags hair in Act One by doing that Quest and that will give you one free ability point you can put it here in strength and that even it out to 16 I almost never recommend anymore I I used to recommend it but I I almost never recommend odd numbers here because you don't get any benefit from an odd number take a look see strength is still plus two still plus two unless you you have a clear-cut way that you're going to improve that up to an even number every two even numbers after 10 is plus one to any of these check modifiers so we're going to go with 15 right now and we'll talk about how we're going to improve that but let's now get into some progression for this character level progression for this character is pretty fun and my guy's looking snazzy so uh our first levels are pretty much just going to be into Paladin basically just to break this down up front we're going to put five levels into Paladin we're going to put our levels into cleric and then we're going to finish off Paladin and um at level two we get access to Divine Smite so Smite is a very integral part of being a paladin right and this does not scale off of our Charisma which is actually kind of nice so if you wanted you could kind of have a lower Charisma Paladin if you so wish but this is going to scale off of the spell slots you use so it does 2 d8 uh radiant damage deals an additional 1 to8 radiant damage to fiends and Undead now if I were to use an ADD additional spell slauter a higher level spell slot I'm sorry level two rather than level one it's going to add 1 d8 and the native base damage of smite will increase as you level I think it's like around level uh five or so on my other screen I have information up that will help me with this with this statement um improve Divine Smite oh that's all the way at level 11 okay so never mind never mind I thought that happened way earlier but basically uh Divine smite as you level up will scale uh if you go harder in the pain on pallet and we got our fighting style so you have a lot of different ways you can approach this please take this guide as a well guide not as a Creed so if you want go with great weapon fighting if you really want to go with a two-handed paladin there's plenty of awesome weapons you can use but what we're going to go with is protection because I don't think many people use this and I don't think many people showcase it but I think it's a very fun way to play when you have a sheep Shield impose disadvantage on an attack against your allies when you are within 5T you must be able to see the attacker now if you want to still go with sword and shield but you don't want to use this then you would simply go with dueling this this is very confusing text but let me just say that anytime you are using a weapon with a shield or just one weapon in one hand an example this would be a Rapier um you will get this additional two damage with that weapon so if if you were to use a long sword and a shield even though a long sword is versatile it still counts as a dueling weapon because you are not using versatile weapon as a uh two-handed uh weapon when you are wielding a melee weapon that is not two-handed or versatile in one hand and no weapon in the other you deal an additional two damage of that weapon so long swords still count I know that's confusing but it still does work and we have to choose our spells so just kind of keep in mind here there are a lot of spells searing Smite we talked about the your teling um that have concentration on them right and we've kind of talked very Loosely about concentration but basically C needs to focus on meating the spell they can only cast one concentration spell at a time and their concentration might be broken when they take damage you would do that Constitution check to see if it is broken or not that's the thing that kind of sucks about Paladin all your smites for the exception of Thundurus right here are for the most part concentration wrathful Smite concentration searing Smite concentration but I'm still going to take all three them I like them a lot just keep in mind though you just can't stack bless on top of it and to be totally honest as well I probably wouldn't take bless with this character because I'm up close and personal and I'm buffing two other characters with bless and if I lose it those other characters they kind of suffer that that uh uh not penalty but they don't suffer the benefit that I once had so I'd probably actually not take bless from this character but stuff like protection from evil and good is very good protect an ally and uh an ally against the attacks and powers of aberration celestials Elementals Fay fiends and Undead those last three you'll be dealing with quite a bit they can't be Charmed frighten or possessed and um when these creatures attack they have disadvantage on that character the nice thing is this lasts until long rest so it stays online for a good amount of time it just requires your concentration so we're going to take that Shield of faith can be nice here it just is a flat two increase to your armor class but again it's a concentration ability so I'm not going to go with it and another concentration ability unfortunately here is heroism but that's a very good one make yourself or a Target immune to frighten and gain five temp Point temp five temp hit points each turn for 10 turns you can only have temp pit points though from one source so this will fall off in its usefulness as we get access to more temp pit points items throughout the game and we'll probably put in something like cure wounds because we're can have a lot of fun with that so we'll take this as is and we'll just keep leveling up our Paladin here get our level three where we get this Divine health and divine magic flowing through you prevents disease from affecting you and now we get yet our really cool Channel oath abilities as a ancients Paladin now Nature's wrath restrains an enemy they cannot move attack roles against them have de advantage and their attack rles and deck saves have disadvantage and then we get turn turn The faithless so turn nearby Fay and fiends both really great and in snaring strike is really cool here uh just keep in mind it is a concentration ability of course why wouldn't it be but it is a pretty good one and speak with animals is cool because it is a ritual so that means you can cast it without using the spell slot this is a laran game speak with animals is infinitely useful if you played Divinity original S one and two you know what I'm talking about but definitely have a lot of fun with that and we get another spell slot so put cure wounds um Divine favor is not my favorite because it is a concentration ability and it just is not really that awesome for me um in case you wondering why I didn't talk about it and command as well I'd rather I we don't have a high enough wisdom score to take advantage of command I'd rather use it on a pure wisdom cleric character we get another spell slot here which is go with whatever maybe just compell duel but now we can talk about our feet the Fey whees toesy woes let's have some fun with this bad boy you have a lot of options for Feats ability Improvement is always a staple you can just drop two points into Charisma or two more points into wisdom if you want to do more damage with your cleric spells choose whatever you want that makes sense for you um athletes okay uh getting up from prone is really nice and your jump distance increases but this is what is called a half feet meaning that it has one half of the feet that does one thing and the another half of the feet that gives you an ability score bonus this case being either strength or decks but it's always a nice one if you want to go with the dual wielding Paladin you can go with this you want to go with that great weapon Paladin definitely go with this it's a really really good one Mage Slayer is very strong here because this allows you to basically add another layer of magical defense into your character when a Creature cast a spell within Mele range of you you have advantage on any saving throw against it which is already great but now you can use a reaction to immediately make an attack against that Caster enemies you hit have disadvantage on concentration saving throws meaning that if they are holding um any kind of defensive spell online or and maybe they're cast to Darkness and that's affecting your whole party this allows you to kind of help get that offline a little bit easier lucky is very good here as well you gain three luck points which you can use to gain advantage on attack rolls ability checks or saving throws or to make an enemy reroll their attack roll so if you have a big hit that's coming your way you can make them reroll their attack hit or maybe roll your save if you failed it Whatever It Is take a big breath there resilient is nice just do resilient Constitution because you get one more Constitution which is nice but you now get Proficiency in Constitution saving throws which concentration saving throws are so this will Cascade meaning at this point it's only a plus two but then it becomes a plus three but then it becomes a plus four by the end of the game this is actually very very nice if if you want to keep your concentration capabilities online Savage attacker is really going to make you do a lot more damage in melee when making melee weapon attacks you roll your damage twice and use the higher result um Shield Master is great here because this is going to add an additional layer to your Shield you get two bonus to deck saving throws you use reaction to your Shield yourself and diminish the effects of uh any kind of spell that's cast on you on a failed saving throw you take only half damage so you can either completely mitigate uh spellcast or have the damage which is cool outside of that war cter war cter is not bad you gain advantage on saving throws to maintain concentration and you can use shock and grasp reaction but our reactions are kind of already jammed up and I'd rather not use something minuscule like shocking grassp but falls off very quickly if you do want to go the two-handed route polearm Master is very good in conjunction with Sentinel but I'm going to save that conversation for another video that focuses on this on the main point of its charact of the character but you use the these two in conjunction to do a ton of opportunity attacks so it is still a really really good one Mobile's nice for just being able to be well mobile the one I'm going to focus on though is heavy armor Master incoming damage from non magical attacks also decreases by three while you're wearing heavy armor and we get plus one strength so that's how our strength comes up to 16 on this character there are plenty of items in the game that are going to superficially increase your strength as long you got them there one of moonrise Towers it sets your strength I think 18 and there's another one in act three that will set your strength to 18 as well but this is a great way to just get that natural 16 I was going to take this anyway we do only get two feets so our second feet we have to decide how we're going to split this right I wanted a strong defensive character so we went with heavy armor Master but I still might take Savage attacker to really still give me some strong melee capabilities to have a little bit more punch but that's how I'm going to make this character and this completes our our uh Feats let's keep moving M through this into level five we're going to pick up some fun things that really give us a good power bump for one we have extra attack so now whenever we do an attack action we get another attack out of that singular action so we get a lot more action economy and this is a huge power Spike for your character around level five the game really takes off no matter what character you're playing and we get access to level two spell slots so now our smites can be a lot stronger this is all very good and we get level two spells and we get level to oath spells moon beam is a very strong spell it is a concentration ability but it's really good it does a good amount of damage you can move the little moon beam around and it will continue to do damage with whatever it hits the great ability and we get Misty step which is a really nice ability because it's a bonus action and it gives us a very far-reaching distance that we can just simply teleport to you can find Misty step on so many items in the game but it's nice to just kind of have it as a spell that's always prepared for you now for our prep repair spells that are level two I'm going to drop that and I'm going to put in magic weapon I like magic weapon until we get our cleric spells online it just simply gives you plus one bonus to attack and damage rolles it is a concentration ability though so keep that in mind if you just want to use more defensive things you can get protection from Poison which you know what I'd probably take out compell duel and put this in cuz it's just nice last until long rest re poison protection right uh you can get lesser restoration online if you want a is a nice one um and you also get branding Smite remember I talked about with the tling we're at level five Paladin and now we have both of the canps of the tling just so that you know they do exist here already for you breing spite is nice if you are playing against a lot of things that you know you're going to be dealing with that are going to go invisible um there are things in act one like that and in act two I will say you could swap off something like heroism for that if you wish because by probably by this time you have a lot of sources of temp hit points but go with whatever makes sense for you we've jumped into level six you can proceed with Paladin and just complete it and get it to level seven if you want but around this point you're coming into act two and I think this is when I want the extra utility from our multiclass online uh level six Paladin does give us access to or of protection but we'll go back to that when we switch back to it so we're going to move over into cleric this is going to give us access to some cant trips and some fun stuff so for cantrips we're going to choose blade Ward take only half the damage from bludgeoning piercing and slashing which is great um guidance if you don't already have a Caster that has guidance then take it if you do then just use that character and sacred flame is nice because it's just a nice range capability that's kind of in toe with your character um it does do wisdom as your spell casting ability so don't expect it to actually connect a lot you can simply go with another buff though if you want with thury gain ADV Vantage on intimidation and performance checks uh you would use this if you want to right before you jump into a conversation but it's nice nonetheless you can go with resistance too but it's a concentration ability and you know how stacked we are for those damn things uh for our subass we are going with the life domain which will grant us now cure wounds and bless so we'll be swapping those off if we already have them on as a paladin we'll be taking them off because we get these innately as a cleric and the subass feature of disciple of life this is crucial it's why we're kind of going into the life domain cleric and not the light domain cleric which I think a lot of people would think we're going to go with your devotion empowers your healing spells when casting a healing spell the target regains additional hit points equal to two plus the Spells level so if I cast a level four cure wounds then I get whatever that cure wounds is Plus in a plush plus an additional six hit points this allows us to Cascade that and we're going to get even better with it and that's a second time or fourth time I said Cascade can't decide a day um choose whatever deity that makes sense for you and the character you have in mind uh I'll go Helm that seems fun and then for prepare spells do not do something like guiding bolt because again it's going to go off of your wisdom and your wisdom's not that high to begin with I'd probably go with Sanctuary which is a very good ability that you're going to get a lot of use with throughout the game um and you can pick up maybe one of these that you drop from your Paladin if you so wish the nice thing about being um a CU we can just kind of swap our spells off on and off uh crator destroy why did I say with like an accent crater destroy water is really good if you have a spell cter with you that casts ice or lightning damage you can use this to cast pools of water around so this gives you a little bit of utility across your party do things that make sense for you and the party you have in mind not just what I'm saying because remember it's not just you who's making this character I'm sorry it's not just this single character in your party you've got three other ones so have some fun with it we're going to spice some more levels here into cleric more spells oopsies uh I'll just I'll put TR one to level three that's going to give us access to level three spell slots because uh we're a cleric and we are a paladin so that helps out with everything but our life domain spells give us lesser restoration which is cool and Aid heal your allies and increase their hit points Max by five hit points cool just a nice little B to have online all the time and for our level two spells don't look at things like hold person cuz again it's going to look at your wisdom score but you can rely on stuff like warding bond to help out or protection from posing which we just talked about a little bit ago enhan ability is really strong if you don't have another character that's got it silence is great because you're not relying on that that spell that uh difficulty check that's just silence summoning up a spiritual weapon is again going to be just good another great one here is Prayer of Healing just because you already give a bonus to Healing right and this is an ability that allows you to basically get an extra mini short rest without all the benefits of a short rest you just get the heal more or less of a short rest but not really not that much health but it's nice just to kind of have as like a all right we're out of combat let me heal the whole party really quick a lot of things you can do with that one and we're going to jump here into level four cleric uh for the feat I could go with Shield Master but I'm just going to go with Savage attacker give us a little bit more punch um you can even go with something like ritual caster to add a little bit more layers here if you want to help out with the buffing of the party um you could go with something like long Shredder to help out with that but I'm going to just go with Savage attacker and our cantrips I'll put in thury why not prepared spell weapon and we're going to get did I get everything from here last level here into Clarity and this is the reason we're taking that last level is because it unlocks level three spells and it it is a huge thing for us so for one we'll get free revivify so that will be online so we can always revive a companion for us whenever we want and we get Beacon of Hope your allies will regain the max hit points possible when healed they also gain advantage on wisdom saving throws and death saving throw so the cool thing about this is a it's a concentration ability that's not a cool thing that's a sucky thing but it's a nice thing that you just can give Max heals to people and it's a really really nice way to give those heals out now for prepared spells let's Dodge some BS and add in some fun ones Glyph of warding is very strong it is an offensive capability it will use your wisdom score but you can still have fun with it you can use the abilities that push people around and actually displace them it's very very fun I love the glyph of Waring but the biggest one and probably the most important one and the one that will probably take up all your concentration is Spirit Guardians we can use this capability to give us a constant Aura of damage around this character so even though they're holding the line they can constantly do either radiant or necrotic damage and if they resist it they still take half that amount of damage so if I'm going to go do 24 they they save against my my pitiful wisdom it'll still do 12 and that's just free damage right there you know what we're going to drop Prayer of Healing for Mass healing word I really like healing word because it's a bonus action and this allows us to get even more healing out so we're going to finish that going to jump back into Paladin so now we have the aura of protection the or of protection is going to give an increased bonus to saving throws based off of your charisma score so modifier so right now this is plus three this is going to be a plus three and we get level four spell slots now unlocked the level four spell slots can be used for smites or empowering our um uh spirit Guardians I was like what's the what's the spell I just spoke about and just again choose whatever makes sense for your character and your spells we're going to get one last level and it's the most important level in Paladin and it gets us this Aura of warding you and nearby allies take only half the damage from spells the aura disappears if you fall unconscious and we get 10 great spells and we're we're going to drop we'll drop those two and I'm just going to put these two in because remember now we've got cure wounds and bless online by default with our character so we have tons of abilities online let's see how they all kind of come together well let's put everything together and kind of have a conversation about this because there there there's tons of layers to this character um let's go ahead and press just any one of these abilties I don't know what that is on Console whatever brings up your reactions because ignore Shield blow and tenacity um but the big thing here is divine Smite so we can make it so that this will ask us if we'd like to use our divine Smite in certain situations right like hey did you just go ahead and use a hit well let's go ahead and have that ask me now okay well now this will ask for confirmation upon a trick Tri and it will say we will use your level four spell slot to use this Smite maybe you don't want to go that hard in the paint on it though you just want to press this one and press ask and ask basically clicking this little check box will make it so that yeah okay I will automatically do this with this checkbox clicked I will ask you if you'd like me to do this automatically so it's a nice one to just kind of have you can kind of have these all on like that if you so wish however you want to kind of set it up there you go you can kind of go through situation and this will allow our divine Smite to go off based off of the situation that unfolds right if we just do a normal hit oh well there goes your Divine Smite or did you want to do your critical hit no there you go there's your Divine Smite we want to have those things online and active we also have protection here uh so we want this will always be on but we still want it to tell tell us nonetheless so we can decide since you can only use and do this uh reaction replenish replenishable resource reactions such as opportunity attacks are responses you can have to event reactions can trigger both during and outside of your turn but they only can happen once per turn so just keep that in mind um so you just want to make sure you're kind of managing those bit now on top of that too we have our auras and auras I think if I click Paladin the Paladin kind of we have both of them and I'm going to turn both of them on right the aura of protection and then Glyph of war or Ora of War boing now you'll see that they'll just be here they're permanent they're always on I need to be within 10t of another one of my allies for these to have an effect so I can't just assume that they're going to work um just because I turn them on I got to make sure I'm around the other uh combatants so they get Advantage from just just keep that in mind and we also have though our lay on hands so lay on hands is going to do 28 healing it's not going to get the benefit from our uh life domain perk right so we click it and we've got three different types of lay on hands we can do a lay onand greater healing which will take two of our lay of our four lay onand charges and it basically takes our healing and it doubles it so 14 would be a lesser 28 would be a greater or we can do cure and VI your hands with the divine power to cure all diseases and poisons affecting a creature it's a single Target creature this would also use two lay on hand charges first is just your standard luster healing as what now we also have our Channel oath and this is part of the layered healing we were talking about right so I can use this and I can do a AOE heal around me go ahead and just cast it real quick that's going to do 14 and then wait for this to click down so it just did 14 Health right and there you go it does it again so this would basically do 28 total healing and it would do it immediately and then again at the beginning of my turn if I were in combat and it's nice to just kind of have that capability online cuz this will just help me get a little bit of extra healing on onto uh my team and the nice thing is that it's a bonus action so I can have this go off pretty easily and still do damage in that turn and these Channel oos recharge on a short rest as as opposed to our lay on hands which are a long rest lastly though we have our Channel Divinity this is part of our clar capability and it's guess what it's another heal so preserve life evoke a healing energy that restores your allies this is an action but it's a 30ft range we go ahead and cast that boom 36 right there right see that just that that standard 36 shows us like oh okay three times it's it's 3x um or it's 12 it's 3 * 12 Jesus Christ um it takes your total character level into consideration here so it's taking three times your character level not your cleric level not your Paladin level it's 3x your character level um and then outside of that we have all of our just kind of let's go ahead standard edition capabilities that we would have as a cleric or a paladin which brings us to our Spellbook so as a paladin unlike a lot of other classes we can swap our spells out at will same thing with our cleric so this allows us a lot of functionality to kind of pick and choose what we want to have in certain situations and certain scenarios so if you maybe did a fight and you're like man that really sucked I did really not I did not that did not go well you can use this ability to kind of jump in here and go well you know what maybe we don't need this branding Smite let's go ahead and pick up Shield of Faith instead whatever the situation is it allows you to kind of custom build out what you're doing which I really really like about this situation whereas a lot of other classes are hey you can only do that whenever you level up so I just wanted to kind of talk about these things especially to like uh healing word here or healing cure wounds healing word what what the hell is that cure wounds let's just go ahead and cast this on myself uh let's use a level four spell this is going to do 5 to 33 right and so that's did six plus 23 now if I if we take a look where there it is pure wounds we got that 23 for just casting the spell then the plus six as a means of our life domain character istic which is two plus that uh spell cast level right so this just shows you that we can add in a lot of healing into this ability into this um class to really help out across the board of course like healing word or one is healing word this one this one is so just to show off more healing here 12 plus that six this plus that six all the time so just to to show you just get a lot of a lot of additional supplemental healing which is really nice and that's what allows us to be a very cool support class and sprinkle all these things together let's now go into some equipment conversation to open up this conversation we're going to talk about weapons first and there are so many to choose from the one that you can get an actx one that's probably going to last you the majority of the game might even be the one that you just stick with is the blood of theander and I don't have it unfortunately but here it is on the screen once per long r when your hit points are reduced to zero you regain 2 to 12 hit points allies within 9 met also regain 1 to six hit points it's not a huge healing but it keeps you online permanently pretty much with this build Al also leander's light sheds Holy Light in a 6 met radius in combat fiends and Undead standing in the light are blinded unless they succeed as Constitution saving throw that's a huge bonus and like I said you will be dealing with lots of fiends and Undead by the time you get this when you jump into act because you get this the end of act one when you jump into act two this thing is going to come online and really really really really help you out also you get a level six evocation spell of Sunbeam and it's plus three enchantment on this it's just a really good mace it's going to last you a ton of time I strongly recommend it as far as the other weapons go I have a pretty cool one on called The Sacred star you just buy this in act three on a hit inflict one turn of radiant orb upon the target radiant orb can couple with a ton of additional items and I'll show you I think I'm wearing one of them but effected enti has minus one to attack RS for each remaining turn it also sheds bright light in a area surrounding it so you can use you can couple this with a ton of items that will add radiant orb or or or do more with radiant orbs active you can have a lot of fun with this Sanctified weapon so Undead creatures struck by this weapon are possibly turned which is cool they'll run away weapon enchantment plus two I like all of like morning stars for example or certain other bludgeoning weapons cuz theyve got tenacity when you miss an attack you deal three bludgeoning damage anyway so just you always do damage which which I kind of like um but you also get Dawn burst strike which is once every short rest but deal additional radiant damage equal to your proficiency bonus on hit light erupts around you in a 10-ft area enemies in light must exceed a dc13 con saving throw or be blinded it's just more blinding and you also get Heart Stopper which causes chest trauma they lose an action or concussive smash which is Da as a Target can't take reactions lose a dexterity bonus in their Armor class it's a really really good just solid weapon you'll get here in act outside out of that an act one weapon here would be faithbreaker which you'll get on the goblin Camp it's just a really good Warhammer um I'm showing off things that are one-handed and versatile so you can still use them here with your mace uh but please by all means use twoand weapons if you so wish this one's really good because it has this was all all in no absolute power which does radiant damage and piercing damage and force damage it's really damn strong and it pushes something back 17 it's a really good ability it's just a solid little Hammer you'll get early in the game um a lot these are all from act a f aluve which you'll also get in the underd dark um is a really good one here because it's going to give you last rate which is cool Rush attack which is lovely poml strike which is a cool bonus action but mainly we want fer Lou Melody which gives you actually which gives you either sing which basically does a 20 foot range one D4 bonus to attack RS and Charisma wisdom and intelligence saving throws or shq where they have a penalty on those same saving throws and they take one to four Thunder damage whenever they get hit enemies that is so it's a really nice little capability it's a really cool Little Weapon that you'll get early in the game and'll lash you for quite a bit in act three you can get the Hammer of the just slay the Wicked This weapon deals an additional one to six bludgeoning damage against fiends and Undead it natively does a 1 D4 additional radiant damage and it gives you detect thoughts it's just a nice little cool Hammer that you can get very easily in act three uh the black the blackards sword I don't think it's Black Guard it's blackard um on a hit infused with one of your smites the target must succeed a constitution saving throw or be become dazed we talked about that that's um disadvantage on wisdom saving throws can't take reactions and loses dexterity bonus on their armor class since you'll be doing smites this is a really good one to use it's one of the few weapons that actually keys off of your smites so it's a very nice one but outside of that too you can even just use something like uh the legendary Trident that you get to give a little bit of spice in this direction you can throw it if you want and it comes right back to you for Thunder damage it gives you some really cool abilities that you can charge and do a bunch of Thunder damage or you can do a big huge gust of wind and do Thunder damage it's a really really really cool Trident you get very very very very early in activate like the first like 10 minutes uh bellm which you'll get by doing jiro's quest line um gives you perfectly balanced which is basically just another swing um with your off hand and you use this once per turn so this is always active it's just a bonus action so basic you attack with your main hand and you get the extra attack then you use bm's uh perfectly balanced strike to just do another bit of damage with your uh bonus action and then lastly we have the hand maiden's mace which will set your strength to 18 it's a great way to just get that additional strength doing some additional damage you're not going to be doing a ton of damage but these are all really great supplemental weapons that allow you to do more than just simply hitting things with them they give you a little bit more bang for your buck but those are your weapons here for your Paladin as far as your other gear goes I like something simple like the shield devotion because you get one level one spell slot I just look at that as another bit of currency that I can use for SM it does give me Shield of devotion Aid and shield bash which is great but an early Act One Shield would be adamantine Shield that you can make uh through the Grim Forge it's really strong and it's going to last you quite a bit of time attackers can't land crit strikes on the wear wearers which is always great um you'll eventually get something like Krick Shield which is good plus plus one bonus to spell save and spell attack rolls advantage on Deck saving throws um The Shield of shielding is really cool here too because it gives you Shield a level one ABD duration spell as a reaction Armor class increased by five and you take no damage from magic Missile always really cool to have and then lastly we have viconia walking Fortress which is probably the best Shield but I don't like it because I don't get any spell slots from it I just kind of like the shield of devotion it fits the character for me spellguard is nice because it helps you kind of resist spells reflective shell and warding bond are two really nice defensive capabilities and rebuke the mighty is cool because when you get hit you basically can do a 2 to eight Force damage knock something prone and just have a lot of value out of that also it gives us the most Armor class of any shield in the game as I quickly check but I'm pretty sure Shield gives plus three so this allows us to kind of be that veritable walking tank as far as our jewelry goes we have amul of the Harpers is another advantage on wisdom saving throw gives a shield uh one that I don't have actually on this save is the Amulet of Greater health and that is probably the best in slot because that's going to set our constitution through the roof which is going to help with all of our many concentration roles I definitely recommend that if you can get it um you'll get that in the act three House of Hope two other ones though ulet of restoration this just gives us healing word and mass healing word that you can cast without having to deal with a spell slot and then amul of The Devout you gain plus two bonus of spell save DC you gain an additional use of Channel Divinity so this is just another heal that you can have online it's a nice to have I definitely think that the am of g health is better than both of these though as far as our Rings go Amulet of regeneration is nice for just some raw hit points killer sweetheart is a autoc crit hit which I love I like ring of free action ignore the effects of difficult terrain and cannot be paralyzed or restrained so you're really not just being held down um Crushers ring is a very good early ring which increases your movement speed and the whisper promise Whispering promise is another really good early ring when you heal a creature it gains 1 D4 bonus to attack rolles and saving throw so you basically bless them for two turns what I think you can really get from this character is the ability to completely push cleric out of the party if you want you can have this character be your Paladin and cleric and then your other characters can all be damage oriented that's why I like this character a lot you can make the argument of course about healing and how healing is not the best in D and D and I get it but most of us are not minmax D and D players most of us play these games like typical RPGs where we think we need a Healer and there's nothing wrong with that you can basically fit both into one here with this class and you can use all the supplemental things that give bonuses whenever you heal so you have a lot of fun with stuff like that um as far as our helmets go I I think Helm of balron is the one that fits this character the most your helmet heals you for two hit points at the beginning of every turn you have plus one bonus to Armor class and saving throws you're immune to stun you can't be crit hit it's that tanky kind of helmet it's very Paladin looking I love it very early helmet though is helmet of smiting when you apply a condition with one of your Smite spells you gain temp hit points equal to your charisma modifier very good in the very early portion of the game and that would remove any other temp hit points that we get flawed hust helmet is when you'll get midpoint which is very good wielder has plus two bonuses saving throws against spells one um helmet that I did not actually put in my inventory here is this helmet uh Weir's Crown you'll get this end dis of act one when healing another when healing another the wearer gains one to six hit points so if you want to really focus on healing this is a great way to get a little bit more value because it also heals you which is really really cool for our cloak I've got the mantle of the Holy War uh Warrior cuz this just gives us Crusaders mantle radiator holy power that emboldens the nearby allies their weapon attacks deal an additional 1 to four radiant damage keep in mind it's a concentration ability so I wouldn't use this over say um Spirit guardians but it's still one that you can take a lot of advantage of and use get some pretty good value out of even something simple like cloak of protection for Armor class and saving throw is is just fine uh you can go with fabaceous cloaks you gain eight temp hit points after casting a spell while in melee so you have that capability you can use the cloaks of Elemental absorption or cloak of the weed weave which allows you to get plenty of Elemental absorption online the best armor though is easily the armor of persistence all incoming damage is reduced by two you gain resistance and blade Ward they're always active rather than you having to cast them so you take half damage from all melee and half damage from all uh magical spells the hell dusk armor is a good one but you can just simply buy this you cast friend on Damon in act three this is very very very affordable and you got it you're good to go um it's got 20 raw AC it's just very very good some other good standout ones though are the adamantine splint maale this is the scale male which is medium but the splint mail is heavy you'll make that at the end of act one and it's really good it's all incoming damage is reduced by two and things are sent Reeling for three turns and attackers can't land crit hits on the wear so you wear that for a good chunk of of the game pretty pretty much until you get armor persistence unless you want to use something like Rippling Force mail you gain Force conduit when taking any of the melee damage types which basically allows you to do Force damage out once you reach a certain amount of stacks and then Reapers advant Embrace which you would get from uh Krick at the end of act two which is very very good doesn't really fit the character as much but it's still a really solid suit of heavy armor as far as our gloves go you can go with anything that you want um I like revive Reviving hands when you heal a creature it gains the effect of Blade Ward so if I use my many many heals including my big huge AOE big huge AOE he no nope nope no my big huge where is it I am dumb there we go big huge AOE heal they get Blade Ward which is great right so they take half damage from uh bludgeoning piercing or slashing damage when you revive a creature it gains the effect of death Ward so you get a lot of value out of being a really cool healer with these gloves but early gloves are really nice when you use your channel oath spells uh you gain heroism so this really leans into being that pallad and character you'll get both these helmets and these gloves uh in the beginning portions of Act One it allows you to turn online pretty quickly for your boots you can go something simple like boots of speed or the disintegrating nightstalkers which give you Misty step and you can't be in webbed and Tangled and snared but the boots of persistence which match the armor gain freedom of movement and long Strider you're just you are you are literally not going to be stopped at all it's just such a good combination of everything but this is your gear everything all put together let's now see how this performs in combat all right so we're going to jump into some combat here and show some things off but usually I do this where I have that character queued up instead I'm just going to go ahead and press attack with my character right in the center of all of the Mayhem here and hopefully we'll be able to show some stuff off so I've already put um warding Bond onto um my main character and to carlac and Waring Bond of course I switch over to my well well it doesn't matter we'll get to it in a second once I get to my character but either way I'm going to skip all my characters's turn so that it gets to me warding bond is going to allow us to kind of separate some of that damage and it's going to increase the resistances that we've got so that we're a little bit more staller right um as far as like me being able to be that kind of support character here and what you can see here too is that we got Health from my helmet and my helmet and ended up actually kind of like triggering some additional Health from my already passive capabilities which is great right um I did not turn on Magic Weapon or anything like that because instead I'm going to focus on Spirit Guardians and I'm going to put Spirit Guardians here at uh level four so it's going to go from 3 to 24 to 4 to 32 damage and it's going to give me quite a bit of just additional damage around me if I turned on and that's my concentration so we're already just doing some good layer damage in here and that was unfortunately my action but I still have a bonus action that I can do things with um I can do stuff like cast Sanctuary we can do Mass healing word I can do that healing Radiance all sorts of stuff and I'm going to actually let this go through a whole another set of turns here um but where is warding Bond here we go so wed Ally they gain resistance to all damage right and a plus one bonus to their Armor class and saving throw so since that's on right now she has all these resistances active and this helps to keep carlac in the fight a little bit longer while I can kind of move around and get these these Spirit Guardians going here oh cuz I do want to show off some smites too let's go ahead and have any extra turns I can do here we'll go ahead and spend uh let this go through they're probably they're probably just going to jump out over here with my casters no big deal and this again though I'll use Shield just because whatever but it's going to increase my Armor fast even further so my character has just a disgusting amount athletic roll how pitiful I'm just taking all this damage and just tanking right through it here right cuz we're we're carlac and I are splitting it which is even better little heal going off from them uh Carla opportunity attack I thought it was mine I was like cool there and we're about to come back around in my turn um as soon as we kind of push through these and with this you know I'm letting some characters take some hits so that I can show off some of the healing capabilities I've got too here right and that's important right because this character is not here to do the the bulk of the damage that's what carlac is here for or will in my build is here for I mean even uh Shadow hard who specked into light she's more apt to do damage than um than my character to be totally honest go ahead and do that and see if we can kill there we oh Wombo Combo there just getting all sorts of damage and we'll do that we'll do that and let this come back around to me so coming back into my character we still have Spirit Guardians damage going out right so that's a good thing to have going that's going to give me that persistent little bits of dam sure come back into it oh of course You' it would cost me to stand back up but that's okay that's no big deal and we can have some fun with a Smite now I can go ahead and press this we can have it as a reaction I'm going to press this just so I can kind of talk about it a little bit more but we can really charge this up right we it can just do 10 to 34 on a base but then we can jam this bad boy up to 13 to 58 so I still have the capacity to do plenty of damage when it needs to be done but the of course the the consequence here is that I'm using my spell slots and even just taking a look at my base level one spell slot I'm still using 10 to 34 on this it's quite a bit that I'm still getting access to so even though um we are are using our upper level spell slots for other things we still can get quite a lot of just simply a level one but I'm going to go ahead and I'll use this Divine Smite right here of course I don't have enough why would I oops oops oops what that is just hog swaggle I I'm just too far away what a what a great video this is right um but either way we'll show this off and then I'll cut it and we'll come back to this and I'll show me doing a Divine Smite but we can still use our bonus action here and we can get a little healing radius uh Radiance going down to heal in an AOE around me right cuz these one this is an action this one here is that bonus action action and this is another action we can still use preserve life you know go ahead and do this and get a big AOE heal and I just gave everyone blade Ward so now everyone's kind of stacked up they can do plenty of stuff with all that and that's quite fun so let's go ahead and cut this and jump to a point when I can show off using that actual Smite but coming back into this let's go ahead and now do one of big bad smites and we've just we're dealing with all sorts of crazy stuff on this battlefield right now right so let's go ahead and just show off what a level four Smite would probably look like 70% yeah we'll do def like a guaranteed one here boom so we still could do a ton of damage six what all it was we had 12 we had 12 we had 62 radiant damage coming out of that Smite alone you can see that it's still just able to do quite a bit of damage here go ahead and just hit things and just kind of have a little more fun but there's just so much damage I can come out of Simply using Divine Smite so while this character is super tanky as you can see my health is still stacked up at 95 I haven't taken any damage it still has the ability to dish out considerable bits of damage but again you have to kind of consider that that damage is on a bit of a premium right you are using those spell slots and I think that it's very common that a lot of people just really say no don't worry about healing don't touch healing it's not worth it just worry about killing things faster because you're delaying delaying the inevitable and that's definitely a way you can play I I definitely encourage it but you know when I think of a paladin I think of a Mainline tank type character that uses a shield and a mainhand weapon and holds the line with some sort of healing capabilities with also a lot of defensive capabilities and this is what really struck me as that type of Paladin you can definitely go down the route of like a Vengeance Paladin with two-handed weapons and going all sorts of damage and blah blah blah blah there's tons of ways to pull damage out of Paladin but I think that our true defensive Paladin is what I kind of Imagine or see in one so I wanted to really create that one here for you guys today hopefully you have a better idea of how to really make this defensive Frontline kind of character that can hold the line and help bolster everyone at the same time but also dish out little BS of damage whenever you really needed to happen if you have any questions about this build or ways you would might change it by all means go ahead and let me know in the comment section below there's a lot of different things that you ways you can approach this uh we haven't even got into the complexities of stuff like lock it in and so on so forth but as always guys thank you so much for watching here today have a good one and take [Music] care

Channel: ItalianSpartacus

Views: 55,362

Keywords: baldurs gate 3, THE ULTIMATE HOLY PALADIN (Cleric/Paladin) BUILD in Baldur's Gate 3, baldurs gate 3 gameplay, baldur's gate 3, bg3 paladin build, bg3 paladin cleric multiclass, bg3 paladin cleric life build, bg3 best paladin build, bg3 paladin vs cleric, bg3 paladin or fighter, bg3 paladin multiclass, bg3 paladin, bg3 paladin oath of the ancients, bg3 best paladin oath, bg3 paladin guide, bg3 paladin cleric tank

Id: -u2yRyHa8Os

Length: 58min 49sec (3529 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023