Who Minsc is and How to Build Him in BG3

if you weren't paying attention last week was a massive milestone in Boulder's gay 3 News Laren released two trailers to Hype the game and announce the official release date it's going to be August 2023 it cannot come soon enough I'm so excited anyways one of the things that the trailers Larry release showed us was they're leaning on Minsk very hard for their marketing Minsk absolutely will be in Boulders Gate 3 and probably he'll be one of our companions just like a Starion or Shadow heart this is something that Laren really hopes will sell copies of their game I understand this completely Minsk is a iconic character in this franchise I personally love him in fact I had made a build months ago to translate Minsk into the Baldur's Gate 3 system and so for this video I want to discuss who Minsk is for those who don't know how he played in the original games and what made him so iconic and then show you my I think very clever build for playing him in Boulder Skate 3 so let's get into it so who is Minsk well this is men's right here I punch Minsk was a character in the original Baldur's Gate series and back then there really wasn't a lot to characters there was all the standard d d stuff like race class alignment their stats and then after that all that the game creators really did was write a short backstory which you could find in their biography just a few paragraphs along usually there was for some I'd say for most companions a short Quest that you could do uh and in some of these quests they would have lines but the lines were very short and then there's their portrait and they're voice acting that's it it wasn't really seen as a selling point in the games back then part of the fun of the game that you would really get to know and interact with these characters and maybe change them they were really just Sidekicks and the best ones the ones I really remembered as a kid were ones with little usually humorous gimmicks you know a funny moment a funny way of speaking just something funny about them that would stand out to you and that was the peak of companion design and frankly I kind of miss it although the things that we do with companions these days are also really cool Minsk was a human neutral good Ranger if you read his biography it explains that he is a rashemi Berserker who's on a quest and part of his quest is to Bodyguard the witch Donna hair I wish my ear this is done here but the really big part of Ben's character and this was kind of again just a glimpse into an older way of making characters was his statistics these days when we make a character we really make them you know we author our characters but back then at least the way I played and the perception had the way other people played was that characters were discovered as much as they were authored let's say where you really didn't make a character from scratch there were certain fixed points of Randomness so the process of making a character kind of was like an augury ritual you rolled some dice to generate their stats and then you interpreted those dice into a character you kind of read the tea leaves so to speak and that was the really fun part I I still frankly prefer making characters this way than with Point pie there are balanced issues but it's just so fun and I could really see the process of interpretation going on with Minsk even when I was a kid and I first encountered him because if we look at his stats here he has an 1893 strength this is a relic of an older edition of DnD where Warrior classes like Rangers or Fighters would get bonuses to their strength and that's what's represented by the secondary number basically what this means is that he is close to the peak that a human can be as far as strength is I mean he is almost supernaturally strong and then he also has a 15 dexterity a 15 Constitution but then when we get to his mental stats he has Aid intelligence six wisdom and nine charisma that isn't good right so here is a character that is very physically gifted but mentally speaking they're a and the way that the writers for Boulder's gay one interpreted this is that Minsk has suffered a head wound in his past and that's what leaves him with these very deficient mental stats so what he is for your for your party is kind of like a Forrest Gump character he has a kind of strange wisdom to him he always seems to do the right thing and wants to do the right thing but you know literally speaking he's just a bit slow he's a little bit slower than everyone else and one of the funny ways that manifested in the game is with this this is Boo Boo is a hamster minsk's hamster which takes up a quick item slot you cannot remove them trying to just makes that squeaky sound Minsk is convinced that boo his hamster is in fact a giant space hamster and this was a thing in d d back then giant space hamsters were a cosmic Force but of course Buu is small how could he be a giant hamster when he's just normal hamster-sized well Minsk answered that he is a miniature giant space hamster with all of the wisdom of the cosmos packed into his tiny hamster brain and Minsk would talk to boo Minsk relied on Boo as kind of like a Jiminy Cricket boo was his leader his conscience and His companion now that is the writing of the character immense but how did he function mechanically well as you can see he makes with his stats he makes a pretty good warrior and if he was a base class fighter he'd be much better the only unfortunate thing is they made minska Ranger which in Boulder's Gate wanted to Rangers are kind of a they're weaker than Fighters they're one of the weaker classes in the game they're slightly weaker than Fighters but with an even slower experience progression but nevertheless I played with him often and the way I always built him in Baldur's Gate 1 is as a two-handed sword wielding warrior in a one-up five-back party composition um so to me he just seemed tailor-made for this sword the spider's Bane spiders Bane's a plus two great sword which was really good and while you were wielding it it made you immune to effects like hold and web I would sit down here back and my other Wizards at my party and spam web spells while Vince ran in and chopped everyone to death with spider Spain and then the remaining Warriors of my party were always archers archers were so good in Boulders gate one so like I was saying I do a one up five vac composition five casters and archers firing into the web spell and one single Minsk tanking anyone who passed their saving throw and chopping the bits everyone who failed while being completely immune to the web spell through spider's body this is still I think a good strategy for Baldur's Gate one and it was the classic way to build mints but by Baldur's Gate 2 I started equipping Minsk differently and I just kind of assumed everyone else did as well because with Baldur's Gate 2 you got the introduction of the two weapon fighting style in the original Baldur's Gate one you could not dual wield weapons that wasn't introduced to boiler's gate 2 and once it was introduced Rangers kind of got to do it for free and Minsk is a ranger I wanted to use this cool new thing on him so I typically equipped Minsk with the iconic flail of Ages this is one of the best weapons in Baldur's Gate 2 hands down extremely extremely good weapon and you get it very early in the quest you want to do anyways so mins got the flail of Ages and in the offhand I would equip him with the defender of East Haven this is a classic double dual wielding flail combo the defender of East Haven is a really good offhand stat stick kind of weapon you want your offhand weapon to be a static anyways and this one gave you plus one of your armor class which is negligible latent Boulder Skate 2 but the big one is the plus 20 resistance to physical damage men's CAD ways of stacking even more physical damage resistance through the armor face spell and other things uh yes that's how I played Minsk the dual wielding flail combo in Boulder's Gate 2. so in summary to me the core parts of mint's character is first that he's a human Ranger he believes even small creatures Can Be Giants fights in combo with a wizard and can either dual wield or use a two-handed weapon so here's how I translate that men's concept into Baldur's Gate 3. of course we do have some very obvious decisions Minsk is a ranger has to be a ranger human Ranger and I give him the folk hero background because he's literally the hero of the sword Coast as far as attributes go here's the spread I went for the only really controversial Choice here is the 13 wisdom whereas in the original Baldur's Gate game he has a six wisdom but he's older now and wisdom is kind of necessary for Rangers so I don't mind uh bumping up his wisdom as long as he has the lowest possible intelligence and the highest possible strength that a human can get at level one that's what really matters to me and then the only other really big choice that you make in character creation is oh a ranger Knight I think ranger Knight fits him best the history skill proficiency makes sense when he's literally lived through so much history right it's not that he studied it he was just there and this is the important one take the Beast Tamer option the natural Explorer ones are tempting but we are going for Beast Tamer here it's essential to the build for reasons which I'll explain you know once we've kind of gone through the levels for level two here I am level two I take the two weapon fighting we're gonna be dual wielding flails or kind of like flails um later so definitely the two weapon fighting feature and then spells spells don't really matter that much you could take Hunter's Mark speak with animals is funny and kind of thematic for him so sure let's do that then for level three we are going to take the Hunter subclass and we are going to take the Giant Killer prey this is very seldom used but it's a key part of this build what's going to be cool about the Giant Killer is an interaction with a spell that I will show you later on but for now level three just take it Giant Killer and then we're going to skip ahead to level four now then at level four the big decision we make is our feet there's lots of options here but I really want to take the Dual wielder feat because I want to be able to dual wield flails which are not finesse weapons all right now I've made some pretty unorthodox choices very sub-optimal choices when leveling up Men's gear so I want to show you why I did all of these things primarily the build functions around a triangle of interlocking synergies between the Giant Killer feature the enlarged person spell and the find familiar spells so we're actually going to start by summoning our familiar and of course who could our familiar be except for our hamster boo it's not a hamster it's technically a rat but we can just use our imagination and say it's a hamster alright let's show this build in action by starting a fight here our fight begins nice and we actually have boo starting all right so our combat is against an ogre that's a large creature and a hobgoblin that's in medium it's pretty important the size of the creature we fight for the Giant Killer feature so for now I'm just going to hide there now watch this what you saw there is this ogre attacked Minsk and then he retaliated that is his giant killer feature with giant killer whenever a creature that is large or bigger attacks you you can use your reaction to make an attack against them now long time viewers of my Channel or readers of the articles on my website know how powerful it is to use your reaction to make an attack it really boosts your DPR a lot especially at the low levels that we're playing in in the Early Access you can think of optimizing in fifth edition and Boulder's Gate 3 as finding efficient uses of your four major action slots that's your standard action your bonus action your reaction and your concentration an effective build will use all four of these consistently and efficiently now one of the hardest action slots to optimize is reaction by far it's really hard to use it consistently and efficiently but giant killer is a very efficient use that doesn't cost any resource at all however it's very situational its use you have to be attacked by a large or bigger creature and most of the enemies you fight are around medium size but we are going to work our way around that with the second part of our interlocking Synergy that's the enlarged reduce spell so this spell allows you to enlarge a Target or reduce a Target typically you enlarge an ally to buff them or reduce an enemy to debuff them but we are actually going to use it to enlarge this Hobgoblin alright he failed his saving throw he gets to make a constitution saving throw to resist in this case he failed and now he is also a large creature and you can see now interesting part of this build is since Minsk is dual wielding larion actually allows him to attack with both of his weapons uh on that retaliation reaction that's very very strong he's basically getting two bonus attacks now in a reaction that is extremely efficient all that's left to explain is the third part of our interlocking Synergy which is the fine familiar spell which we use to summon our miniature giant space hamster boo now remember when I cast enlarged person on this Hobgoblin he made a constitution saving through saving throws are always unreliable unless you can find a way to debuff them now let me ask you what is the strongest Constitution saving through debuff in Baldur's Gate 3. now you're probably thinking it's a tie between all of the features of the game which impose disadvantage on Constitution saving throws if you're thinking that you're wrong you're so so wrong it's funny because the best way to debuff Constitution saving throws in Boulder's Gate 3 is Boo see boo gets this ability infectious bite it's a standard attack and if it hits it does one damage but it also applies the infected status condition this status condition applies disadvantage on Constitution saving throws but it also reduces enemy Constitution by one okay so if we examine this hobgoblin here so if we imagine that this hobgoblin had a 12 Constitution a 12 Constitution would give it a plus one to its Constitution saving throws boo lands the infect attack on him it would reduce his Constitution from 12 to 11 which actually reduces that modifier by one so now he doesn't get any bonuses to his Constitution saving through and on top of that he also has disadvantage on the saving throw so it doesn't work on everyone but targets that have that even numbered Constitution stat infectious bite becomes the best debuff to Constitution saving throws so this is the build you have boo biting targets to infect them then you can use your wizard in this case it's Gale if it was the original game of course it would have been the wizard Dinah here she will cast enlarged person to make those medium-sized targets into large and then of course here's the the best part about it this was just a miniature giant hobgoblin and to Minsk even the tiniest hobgoblins could be secret Giants and he's ready to slay them that's pretty much it for the build but I do want to give a quick note about what equipment to use I forgot to include it in the clip so I'm just going to say it really quickly there are two key items for this build and that is the Helm of grit in combination with the shattered flail used in your off hand the big reason we want the shattered flail is well one of the big reasons is it's the closest thing to a flail that we can get in Boulder skate 3. I like to imagine in my run that it is the flail of Ages shattered again waiting to be reforged again but there's also mechanical reasons why it's really good and that is that the shattered flail is one of the best on hit weapons in the game what I mean by that is it gives you a lot for each hit and the more hits you can get with it the more you're multiplying those bonuses I mean it's a plus to May so that's already plus two damage on hit and then it heals you one by six on each hit in Boulder's Gate 3 paradoxically you can get the most hits with your off hand weapon which is why we're wielding in the offhand the reason you get the most is because you get extra bonus action attacks with the Helm of grit when you drop below 50 Health which is going to be happening often for mints because as we saw this build requires him to be tanking hits from large creatures his armor classes are going to be that high so he'll be taking damage and he'll be dropping below 50 and that will give you that extra bonus action attack which will then be healing you back and he'll also get an attack with his offhand on those retaliation attacks so one of the effects of this build is that it gets a lot of offhand attacks and with the shattered flail net offhand you're getting the most on hit bonuses on those attacks there are some other equipment things and ways to run this that I haven't talked about in the video but you can find them all in the written article I made for this on my website which I will link below that's it for the build just to end with some news patch 9 is going to be dropping on December 14th probably a few days away from when most of you will be watching this video we are expecting the Paladin class to get released in the patch and I'm I'm hoping some other new goodies that I can review so stay tuned I will have the Paladin class review out as quickly as I can in this very busy time of the year but otherwise guys thank you for watching I'll catch you next time

Channel: Aestus_RPG

Views: 16,791

Keywords: BG3, Baldur's Gate 3, D&D, Minsc, Baldur's Gate, 5e, Aestus Guides, Builds

Id: 6cDGwWmeDIk

Length: 20min 33sec (1233 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 12 2022