True Death Knight Guide and Build BG3

hey everyone I'm Ronin and welcome back to another balers Gate 3 video today I am making a quick guide on how to make the melee Necromancer aka the death knight when I made my Necromancer guide I had a few comments asking to make a melee version for the Death Knight theme and I actually had a poll when I did premere the video asking if you did want to see that and I had 95% people vote Yes so that's what we're here to talk about today is how you can take the Necromancer theme having better Undead doing extra damage more and whatnot while maintaining that melee focus in combat and that's what we're going to do so when you think about the death knight obviously we're going to be going six points into the wizard to get the better Undead that leaves you six levels to put inside other classes in my opinion you would want to choose a marshall class that can also have spells that way you'll get to have better spell slot so you can upcast better Undead for more Ghouls and things like that so with that being said you have a few options a barbarian is out I don't think they're going to be a good match at all because they don't have any spell slots could you make it work I mean maybe I but I'm not going to try so in my opinion the ones that are going to actually work would be barred because you do have a lot of spell slots for Bard and Bard is a pure Caster so you will get six ranked spells if you do Bard which is pretty cool and you do get extra attack as bards if you actually subass in two of the three sub classes that they have obviously Paladin especially o breaker Paladin works I mean thematically it's just there and in my opinion probably the strongest option Aldrich Knight is another great option as well and because uh fighters in general get an extra feed at level six you'll get three feet still versus only having two and that's a pretty big bonus I do think you could technically also do this with a ranger if you wanted but that's going to be up to you I don't think ranger for the theme fits but hey it would work at least when it comes to mechanics and game so for me I think it's going to come down to alri Knight versus the oathbreaker Paladin I do think the earthbreaker Paladin because the Divine Smite is going to be a little stronger and we'll talk about why when I make the build but you can obviously do this for anything I just listed as well but you want to think about do you want to be Dex based if so I do think going the bar version would be a little bit better however if you want to be a two-handed like juggernaut not just doing massive damage like I'm going to be trying to do then you're going to want to go probably eldr Knight or EarthQuaker Paladin so let's go ahead and break this down if you do want to see more guides like this that are a little bit quicker that do overviews definitely let me know in the comments down below what you want to see next I'm probably going to be doing an elemental Archer build or dual building next but there are plenty more requests that I'm working on so definitely stay tuned all right guys before we break down how I actually build the character I do want to state I'm doing the O Breer pal in version for this because I think thematically just fits the best but as I mentioned earlier any of the Marshall classes that have some type of casting will work for this as well to pick what you want the concept and how the build a character is can be very similar regardless when it comes to origin characters any origin character will work I think aerion is especially nice if you plan to make him Ascend in act three because then you become really strong getting one d10 additional necrotic damage on all your attacks and of course the dark urge is pretty cool getting the Slayer form I mean it's it's really sick so keep that in mind I do want to State uh for custom characters I really like half eles because you can be an elf of a beard if you wanted I'm a big fan of the wood elves in general getting the increased movement speed is really nice drows are really cool because you'll get Darkness for free you'll get fairy Fire based off of Charisma and if you're playing the Paladin version Charisma is your casting stat so that's pretty useful get Yankee I mean even though they're ugly do have some of the best combat that like things you can use in game free Missy step is really big really all the racers are going to work even dragon born I think thematically fit especially if you choose like the acid breath if you go white you can get the frost breath I think that fits the like death KN theme as well so really race pick whatever you want uh also shout out to zerel teelings being able to have branding Smite for free and Searing Smite is really powerful as well I personally am going to be going a halfelf I just really I'm a big fan of half in general like lorewise but really pick what you want uh when it comes to the subass oath of devotion is the easiest to break which is why I'm doing this I do want to State one thing if you plan to Respec later on like say you get the gauntlets of Hill giant strength or you get the neck piece to give you higher Constitution you will have to renew your oath first and then break it again later on really easy to do that and I'll show how to do that later in the video but for now if you plan to just follow my guy guide without respecing you won't have to worry about it so oath the devotion is what I'm doing because it's the easiest to break and you can break it pretty much as soon as you start the game background pick whatever you want here really it's not going to make that much of a difference but ability scores you can see this is the ability score I'm going with and there are going to be a couple of things I do want to point out a our dexterity is really low we only have 10 dexterity so you have two options here do you want to use the elixir of Hill giant strength throughout the rest of your playthrough to give you 21 strength every long rest if so dump strength and put it in dexterity I'm not a big fan of doing that I've done it for a couple of runs and basically just kept resetting long rest to steal the potions from anti-l early on really easy to do but I don't like doing that consistently and I know a lot of my viewers don't like that either so I'm not going to build my character that way I'm also not using The Hags hair if you use the hags hair you'll have an extra feet for free and that's one benefit the eldrich Knight version has is the fact that they have a third feet as this because they get an extra feet at level six that you would normally not have as the Paladin version but you don't need the extra feet regardless it's just a bonus so there are some ways to mitigate the low dexterity we'll talk about later on but if you do want some extra dexterity you could easily dump Charisma to put in dexterity if you want I'm not doing that and if you do plan to use the Constitution necklace that you get much later on in act three then obviously you can dump all your other stuff and put in dexterity as well skill proficiency wise I am going with insight and persuasion you could dump Insight if you want put it in something else like medicine religion whatever you want it's going to be up to you all right so let's go ahead and break into how I'm going to level and then we're going to talk about gear cuz gear is going to really make and break the build uh in act three early on not so much all right guys I am in act three I'm going to Showcase my character I just respect so I can show you how to break your oath super easy if you do want to do this as an oath breaker so all you got to do is come here I'm right here on the map very beginning at Rivington and what you want to do is go ahead and it says attack some of these NPCs here and kill them so I'm going to attack one of the refugees I want one that's going to be walking by so it's going to be easier to hit so we'll go with this guy here attack him I killed him oath is broken and now I can simply run away and I'm good to go once you do break your oath and you actually talk to the guy to become an oath breaker your new thing you get is going to be spiteful suffering this is going to be better if you use two-handed weapons with great weapon Master because you will be able to give yourself advantage against the enemy uh this does take an action though which is a little unfortunate if this was a bonus action this would be way better but it does have some Niche uses if needed all right guys so at level two Paladin this is when you get to choose your fighting style for the sake of Simplicity we're going to go levels 1 to six in Paladin and then 1 to six in Wizard however I will go over some things you can do instead during the level up process the reason you want to get to at least level five for Paladin right away though is to get your extra attack ASAP and with some gear we'll talk about you'll be able to raise Undead anyway without the need of The Necromancer stuff right away right so fighting style you have two options here do you want defense for plus one to your AC overall Universal regardless of how you play dueling is really nice for the sword and board play style if you have a one-hander and a shield your one-handed attacks would do additional plus two damage there are some really nice one-handers in this game especially in act three that we're going to talk about that are really really powerful and in my opinion it is really really fun and you can save your really nice twoh handers for other people if you want want but if you do plan to use a two-handed weapon great weapon fighting obviously it's going to be really nice to roll bad rolls one thing to note if you do two-handed weapons you will be taking the great weapon Master feet later on it's going to be required for even more burst meaning you only have one extra feet if you do go with the dueling instead you don't need great weapon fighting when it comes to the feet itself so you'll have another feet you can use for whatever you want so keep that in mind for this video I am going to be going with dueling just for Simplicity sake however great weapon fighting is a great choice and I'll go over gear wise which you can do for two handers as well prepared spells pick whatever the hell you want it's not going to matter the main spells you're going to be using are going to be divine Smite anyway and eventually raise dead to get your cool Undead Minions going in my opinion bless is okay command's decent pick whatever else you want it's going to be up to you so at level three Paladin guys you get the Divine Health meaning you are immune diseases Dreadful aspect is really nice as an earthbreaker it's like an AOE fear you can put on enemies this is really nice to help out your allies like the Allied Undead get some extra hits in as well as when it comes to mummies they have a unique ability that can only do if the enemy is frightened so having this is pretty useful control Undead will be really useful for act two to have extra Undead minions you also get hellish rebuke so you can as a reaction attack the enemy with a spell and inflict wounds is okay um I rarely use this I only use this if they're going to be resistant to my melee damage but for the most case they usually aren't valad in level four your first feet and I know what you're thinking ability Improvement right get your strength no we're not so if you had an odd number here you would go like that but we don't what I'm doing instead if you follow my guide I'm going to be going heavy armor master or I'm going to be going for athlete athlete will increase your strength or de it plus one give you extra jump distance really fun stuff or in my opinion if you want to be a little bit more tanky since your Constitution is a little bit lower heavy armor Master is really good this will give you strength plus one up to 18 strength and all incoming damage that isn't magical so all physical damage is going to be reduced by three making you even more tanky and with the heavy armor that we're going to be wearing already reducing damage by two anyway this Stacks making five less damage so real quick I do want to Showcase before we talk about the other pallad and stuff when it comes to leveling I have 18 strength here so there is a potion you get the potion of everlasting Vigor this will put us up to 20 strength base which is really nice and if you go the two-handed version of this because you only have one feet cuz you're going to be using great weapon master and then the feet I just talked about for heavy armor Master this is a great way to get to 20 strength in act two araj and moonrise Towers have a Starion biter you get it for free if you are the sword and board version well because we're not going to be using great weapon master we're at 20 strength already so we're going to have a third feet and I could get the 22 strength if I wanted to all right Paladin level five this is why we wanted to get the level five ASAP you get your extra attack so that way you can attack twice double Divine smites you know it's really powerful you get some more spells are okay but the Spells I want to talk about are the oathbreaker ones crown of madness has some Niche uses I don't use it all that often but darkness is really powerful and if you combine this with the blind immunity ring or a Helm you get in act three become immune to Darkness this is really really strong I like it a lot all right Paladin level six you either want to go Paladin six now or start going Necromancer in the Wizard subass so at Paladin level six you get Aura of protection this is based off of your charisma modifier our Charisma right here is 16 so this will give us plus three to all saving throws for us and and allies within range really powerful and I'm going to get it now okay so something controversial so Aura of hate we're not getting a lot of people including myself until I actually tested this this doesn't actually affect any of your Undead minions if you read it it says you and nearby fiends and Undead gain additional damage and it says plus three it's equal to your cisma modifier dealt with melee weapons well the skeletal archers you summon use range weapons the ghouls as well as the zombies their attacks are all considered improvised attacks like unarmed so they're not actually weapons and this doesn't count for them so unless this is patched this will not affect any Undead this will only affect one minion so far that I found and that is my uh cambon if you summon it using the infernal Rapier that you get from a quest reward so we're not going to be getting this instead we're going to be going six points into wizard they just get better Undead in general so now we're going to go into to our wizard here cantrip wise it doesn't matter you're not going to be using these cantrips for damage whatsoever um so go ahead and pick whatever you want I do want to give a shout out to Firebolt though because this is useful to burn things like spider webs and things like that Mage hand obviously has uses outside of combat and if you did want minor illusion or something else it is useful for the sake of the build bone chill I mean it fits but how powerful this is I don't know I feel like Melee attacks would be better but it fits the them so we'll take it spell wise here we're going to dump a lot of things here and I'm going to talk about spells so we are going to be keeping magic missiles even though this is a spell for damage that doesn't really fit the necromancy theme this is just strong if you ever fight targets you have a couple low HP Targets this is a great way to knock them out and it's a great way to initiate combat from ranged if you ever really need to so I would say definitely get this and then get your Shield this is a nice re re action if you want to increase your AC by plus five making you a very very tanky I mean you'll have a lot of AC as this build then the other things are going to be ritual spells so enhanced leap long Strider featherfall all those are really really good and then your last spell pick whatever the heck you want in my opinion I don't think it's really going to be all that great cuz most of your spells are for divine Smite so pick whatever you want here prepared spells so I'm going with magic missiles and because you are part wizard you can start learning other spells as well which is pretty cool so that means you can learn haste and other cool things like that if you have Scrolls for it scroll for Missy step for example really powerful [Music] stuff all right which level four this is when you gain another cantrip pick whatever you want spell wise here go ahead and pick whatever you want it's not going to make or break anything cuz you're only going to have some so many spells you can use regardless so then your feet here this is when if you were using a two-handed weapon you would go with great weapon master in order to a have a critical hit or a kill give you a bonus action for an extra attack really really powerful for burst it gives you and you can toggle it for a negative five modifier to your attack but you will then gain plus 10 damage to the damage roll which is really powerful so if you're using a two-hander go weapon Master this build however I'm showcasing it as sword and board so we have a feet we can use for whatever the heck we want you could go ability Improvement here if you did want to get your strength to 20 and with that potion you would be at 22 strength which is pretty cool you could go for something like alert if you want the extra plus five to your initiative also really powerful because having low dexterity kind of sucks but there are plenty of ways to mitigate that that we'll talk about the so it's going to be up to you if you want more damage obviously strength if you want more AC alert other things that are also really useful Savage attacker is really nice because this will roll damage this will roll damage off your weapon so if you have any additional enhancements like extra fire damage extra necrotic damage Force whatever it is this will roll that this will also roll damage from Divine Smite so I'm going Savage attacker here and then level six this is when you finally get some cool things so if you didn't already have access to animate dead you get it for free now obviously as a wizard you can learn it from a scroll regardless so you can get that as soon as you start multiclassing in the Wizard anyway you have better summons and more summons basically your summons have extra HP do more damage and you can summon extra Ghouls and everything else you gain extra spells here as well pick whatever you didn't pick before that you think is going to be good for your team it's going to be up to you hold person could be useful Fireball I mean pick whatever you want all right guys real quick this video is longer than I anticipated so I'm going to try to make gear as fast as possible so for your Helm I'm a big fan of the hell dust Helman act three free darkness is nice to be to basically see inside Darkness cuz you're immune to Blind so this is really nice act two you can get the circle of Bones giving your Allied Undead resistance to physical damage really nice and you get animate Dead for free the birthright Helm is nice for plus two charisma getting you another plus one in your modifier for that so that's really nice when it comes to other things the Grim skull Helm is also pretty useful you can't be crit and you're resistant to fire damage also really useful other Helms feel free to mess around with what you like it's going to be up to you but those are my recommendations when it comes to the cape cloak Protection Plus One AC and saving throw really nice doesn't really matter pick what you want chest piece Reapers and Brace is really great this will give you a canri how the dead that you can use once per rest this is really nice you can numb the targets it looks cool it's very death nighty theme you get it at the end of back two you get an ability you can toggle on and off right here if you take a look at my passives I can toggle this on and off and I can't be moved by spells or anything like that really really strong this reduces all incoming damage by two and this will stack with the heavy armor Master feet we talked about earlier so it's really strong and add act 1/2 the adamantine splint armor has a similar effect it also has magical plate very powerful as well obviously in act three the hell dusk armor that you get for killing Raphael one of the best things in the game period really really strong pick what you want here it's going to be up to you though glove wise if you want to add noxus fumes to the enemy so you can see my weapon here just for this showcase has an additional 1 D4 acidic damage and an extra one uh weapon enchant and that's because I use the Drake throat glave this has a special Elemental weapon thing here and I have a video on this you can check out my channel that goes into detail about it but basically I can add a plus one attack roll bonus to any weapon I want and an element for another 1 D4 damage and it lasts until my next long rest really really strong so if you want noxious fumes on the enemy putting acid damage on your weapon with these gloves are really cool and I'll showcase what that looks like in combat in a minute but other gloves that are going to be really useful the abyss beckoners are actually way stronger than I initially anticipated uh I got to put the comment on screen now a viewer commented about this in my Necromancer video These are way stronger thought for Death Knight version only I don't think it's that great for the like ranged Caster version but if you plan to use exclusively ghouls this is really great I do find it with the uh other summons not as great but with ghouls is really strong and it's really cool if you want to help mitigate the low dexterity obviously gloves of dexterity are really good you get those in act two with the mountain pass dark Justice ear gloves for extra necrotic damage extra fire damage from flawed hell Dusk and then my personal favorite the hell dust gloves in general really really strong gives you an extra cantrip extra fire damage and extra spell safe DC so if you equip these if you take a look at the weapon I'm using I have the torch right here the torch has plus one D4 acidic plus1 D4 necrotic plus1 D4 fire it has a chance to burn the enemy as well and if you go to take a look at my attacks because I have the gloves as well it also has plus 1 D6 Savage attacker by the way will roll all that damage for higher damage really strong when it comes to the boots obviously the night Walkers are one of the best boots in the game you get those in the Grim Forge I'm also a big fan of the hell dust Boots These are also really really powerful and really strong as well when you get these in act three when it comes to your rings the only one that's going to be required is going to be the cryp Lord's ring if not you won't be able to have create Undead as an oathbreaker version this is really really strong and in my opinion one of the coolest rings in the game check out my Necromancer video I have a guide to the quest chain for this as well as the torch as well and you also get the staff too from that Quest chain when it comes to two-handed weapons I think the halir of Village is really good this will give you the plus one bonus to initiative roles and advantage on ability checks and if you do the trick I talked about with the Drake throat glaive you can give this another element and another plus one weapon enchant as well this is great cuz the plus one initiative will help out with your low dexterity if you combine that with the hell Rider Longbow you get an act three which gives you plus three initiative you'd have plus4 initiative overall so it really helps out the low dexterity for that the necklace pick whatever you want and amulet Missy step is nice just for the extra Missy step if you plan to use the Amulet of Greater Health don't forget you do have to renew your oath and break it again but this is great because this gives you a ton of HP I go from 88 to 136 and the other ring is Crushers just for the extra movement all right let's break down combat all right so let's go ahead and get the noctus fume on this guy so I don't want to kill him real quick to doing a showcase so you can see he has noxus fumes on him now so if you take a look at the debuff it's for three turns and just for three turns hostile creatures in a radius of 10 ft of him will take one D4 acid damage so this is a nice combo with the torch specifically because the torch has a chance to burn as well so if you have the guy fail the DC for the noxus fumes as well as the burn at the same time you can get periodic damage on the enemy up to eight additional damage just by existing which is prettyy cool and this AOE will affect enemies as well and it will not affect you from my understanding one other thing too the dance maob ghouls that you summon a because they're Ghouls and you're summoning them these are actually all considered Undead THS as well so they're going to be affected by your increased damage bonus and HP from the subass level six Necromancer with the wizard as well which is just pretty cool in my opinion so we're going to go ahead and enter combat now I'm going to enter turnbas mode in a second I'm going come over here all right enter turn base mode bam I'm going to try to have one of my goals open up I want to try to get this guy paralyzed so I can show you the powerful like combo of paralyzation but I'm pretty sure these guys have high Constitution saving throws I missed anyway wow unfort all right still I mean they do decent damage I mean 20 damage just from a regular attack is not bad I'm not going to react to that because I don't need to finish him off right now and I want to save my reaction for something else I do want to showcase though like all this damage here all this would normally be doubled on my minions and instead it's it's reduced like this is really powerful that's because of the gloves all right so my turn I'm going to go ahead and use my ption to speed now to get the extra action so I have a couple things I can do a that guy is in a really bad spot I don't like him being up so high so maybe I should have went with the flying ghouls so they could fly up to him might have been better than the regular ones I already Ed my bonus action so I can't teleport to him so I'm going to leave him up there for now instead I'm going to come over here I'm going to use my channel oath here for my Dreadful aspect I'm going to try to get these guys frightened so they can't move so I only got a couple of them but you can see from being frightened it gives them a couple debuffs a when you're frighten you can't move so against melee characters it's like a pseudo CC but they also have disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls which is nice to have I still have my extra damage I can do but I'm going to let my ghouls do some work here this ghou can't really reach anybody can he you know what he might be able to let's jump right here and have him get in my arura and then also be able to attack her critical Miss dang dude 60% critical Miss Unfortunate no big deal we'll try a you instead wow am I just getting unlucky right now like holy crap all right well if that's the case let's go ahead and just start doing some damage then so one thing I could do instead of doing damage if I want to stop him from attacking I can use my darkness spell and put it right on top of him so he'll be forced to move out of it cuz he's not going to be able to shoot out cuz he's blinded and I'll just end my turn here so my necromania theyel you can't control but they will attack hostile creatures I mean look at that hardly any damage to my minions so they rolled a 20 or 25 I have 24 to hit so I'm going to use my shield so they miss and now I got plus 5 AC for the rest of the turn really good stuff wow they really must have really good roles here I mean I am on tactician mode but still all right so the mummy is here the mummy has a cool multiattack ability they can do but it only works on targets that are basically afraid so let's move him out and let's use it so he did get saved on The Mummy rot which is a cool debuff to have to reduce their HP and they can't heal but it does some decent damage alone I mean look at this this is so nice I have so many minions and this is only with me being a death knight imagine combining this with another pure Necromancer like like imagine another Necromancer using a bunch of skeletons to shoot from afar and stuff it's it's really insane so he was forced to jump down because of my darkness spell but man I'm not getting anyone to be paralyzed which is a little unfortunate cuz I did want to showcase it let's see if if this guy can hit him and get it nope claws saved okay how much HP does he have 16 I might actually be able to knock him out which I do want to do cuz I'm going to Showcase devour this works if they knock prune as well so if you have ways to knock people prune this is also really useful but we'll go ahead and just attack him normally all right so I knocked him out which is good because now if I have a ghoul like this guy that's hurt he can devour to heal in the next turn all right so I don't need my darkness spell anymore but I can just leave it there for now so if I want to move I could use my hell crawler to come over here jump up whatever I need to do I have Missy step I could do for terrain distance as well but I think by now you you understand how this works so we're going to go over here and attack this guy here let's go with a big level three Divine Smite on killed them we'll hit him again and he will die and we'll use Divine Smite rank one they didn't even need to use it cuz he died anyway and you can see he's knocked out and that's because of the passive I put on so now I can have another goal heal off of him if need be I'm going to run up here and know we'll just attack this guy instead critical m d really all right so I did some decent damage to her base let's go ahead and go with a level three and if you take a look at the damage I do want to showcase again why I like Savage attacker you can see like radiant damage if we take a look at it the rerolls look at all the damage that was rerolled from two to six all that stuff like it's it's really good to have that wow there we go finally got one paralyzed guys jeez they were rolling pretty high on that stuff which is good because on my turn I'm going to Showcase why I like paralyzation because of the combos you can do for really big burst and they I think they did end up taking out one of my guys which is a little unfortunate but that's okay all right mummy go ahead and just attack him you missed man that's the only downfall of the Undead their hit rate isn't the best but you have so many of them it's pretty nice still all right she's paralyzed give me my turn cuz I want to get the 100% crit and just knock her flat though she might die before I have a chance to all right here we go so you can see she's paralyzed paralyzed one turn remaining if you take a look attacks against the entity always crit if I'm within 10 ft which is really really cool so we'll use Missy steps just to get right next to her and now we are going to crit her and hit really hard so you can see I have 100% chance to hit as well which is really nice I don't even need to use this because I'll crit regardless and I didn't even use the Divine Smite because the crits just killed her anyway if I would have had Divine Smite I mean imagine a rank four Divine Smite doing some big time damage and critting at the same time she would be toast but that's basically how you play the build guys I mean I could find other things to fight but I think by now with this video you understand how the combat works and the video is already as long enough as it is now but this is the build this is what I like doing when I go to use archers and regular zombies though I will not be using the gloves instead I would use something else for extra melee damage anyway guys if you enjoyed this video like And subscribe let me know what you want to see next I'm probably going to be doing the elemental Archer next but I'm not sure I'll see you all the next one take care

Channel: Blood Ronin

Views: 15,791

Keywords: baldur's gate 3, bg3, build, necromancer, death knight, oathbreaker Paladin, necromancy, death magic, divine smite, arthas, best build, guide, Oathbreaker, warlock, paladin, multiclass, mortal reminder, fear, devil's sight, great weapon master, fighting style, hex, misty step, crown of madness, hold person, TASHA'S HIDEOUS LAUGHTER, slow, counterspell, aura of hate, inflict wounds, control undead, spiteful suffering, darkness, dreadful aspect, ghoul, mummy, raise dead, create dead

Id: 0dcFrlwULA4

Length: 33min 31sec (2011 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2023