Baldur's Gate 3 Best Beginner Wizard Builds
Sep. 16, 2023Baldur’s Gate 3 Best Beginner Wizard Builds
In this Baldur’s Gate 3 Wizard Build Guide, I’m going to be showing you the 3 Best Beginner WizardBuildsthat you can use to put together an effectiveWizardearly on in the game. Note that these are a mix of singleClassandMulticlassBuilds that play a little bit differently in terms of their themes.
We’ll have more advanced Wizard Builds later on but for now, let’s get into what the early-game Builds are.
The firstBG3Wizard Build is essentially a pureEvocation Wizardup to Level 6. What’s great about this is two things. First, because you’re going pure Wizard, you’ll gain a lot ofSpellsandSpell Slots. And second, at Level 2, Evocation Wizards can’t damage themselves or other friendlies with theirEvocation Spells. So every time they cast these, affected allies automatically rollSaving Throwsand take no damage even if they should have at least received half.
What you can do is to throw these Spells onto yourself or your tank, especially if enemies are surrounding you. This style of play lends itself extremely well to new players who aren’t familiar with Baldur’s Gate 3 or D&D 5th Edition because they don’t have to worry about getting damaged. Friendly fire isn’t something you typically have to worry about in RPGs and eliminating this by having 2 levels of Evocations is really good.
The other thing is that Level 6Acid SplashandPoison Spraycan’t deal no damage. Enemies that save against them will minimally take half damage so if you like eitherCantrip, then this will benefit you.
ForFeatsat Level 4, I tookAbility ImprovementforIntelligencebecause all you’re trying to do with these Spells is connect and prevent enemies from rolling successful Saving Throws. So the higher your Intelligence is, the less likely they’re going to save against your Spells to then take full damage from, say,FireballandLightning Bolt.
You won’t really focus on Spells that haveConcentrationsince you’ll only use them occasionally. An example of this isBlurto prevent from getting hit. Instead, and with this Baldur’s Gate 3 Evocation Wizard Build, you’ll be dealing damage in bursts.
Moving along to the next Build is the BG3Abjuration WizardFighter Multiclass Build. This includes 5 levels of the School of Abjuration Wizard and 1 level ofFighteror the other way around. But if you do Fighter first, you’ll gainHeavy Armor Proficiencyshould you wish to useHeavy Armorand you’ll also gainProficiencyonConstitution Saving Throwsto help maintain Concentration. However, both Classes have differentSkillsso if you’re worried about having the right ones outside ofCombat, then you might want to go with the Wizard first.
You’ll then gain Proficiencies onMartial Weapons,Medium Armor,Light Armor, andShieldstogether with aFighting Styleat Level 1. I like to takeArcheryjust because I don’t have anyStrengthin this Build. We do have someDexterity, which makes it so that you have the option of attacking with a Bow or Crossbow when you don’t want to cast Spells. Of course, you can always use a Cantrip and deal melee damage with aShieldandFinesse Weapon. You’re going to be all over the battlefield with this Build.
It’s going to be like a Battle Mage type of Build because you can wearMediumor Heavy Armor and wield a Shield. Because of these, yourArmor Classwill be way higher than the typical wizard but you can also take theShield Spellto further increase it by 5. Overall, your Armor Class will be 24 if you start with 19. This is very high in the first Act of the game. It’ll simply get higher from there, especially if you don’t have another tank in the group.
Moreover, when you cast anAbjuration Spell, you’ll gainArcane Ward, which will reduce the damage that your character takes. You’ll want to keep reducing the damage you take so that you can go into melee range and remain fine. You can then use something likeBurning Hands,Thunderwave, orShocking Grasp. Enemies are barely going to touch you since you’re super tanky, thereby affording you a lot of survivability.
And as you move higher and higher in terms of levels, this Abjuration Wizard Fighter Build will obviously move away from trying to attack withMartial Weapons. Instead, you’ll lean into Spells since you’ll have a lot more Spell Slots. You could probably do something like 10 levels of Abjuration Wizard and 2 levels of Fighter to give youAction Surgeto cast 2 Spells in one turn once everyShort Rest.
This brings us to our last early-game Baldur’s Gate 3 Wizard Build, which is another pure Wizard Spellcaster except that it’s going to be aNecromancer Wizard. This is focused on creating an undead army and I want to show you how you can do that at the beginning of the game.
At Level 6 of the School of Necromancy, you’re going to gain theAnimate Dead Spellfor free. If you’ve grabbed it at Level 5, you’ll probably want to respec and pick a different Spell. What’s really great about Animate Dead is it allows you to summon an additional undead by consuming a corpse so there has to be two of them. Remember that you can only have two of them up at once. So if you try and cast the Spell again, it’ll just replace the ones you already have.
The two undead or skeletons are going to have increased HP equal to your Wizard’s level so that’s 6 at this point. They also have additional damage equal to your Proficiency Bonus, which will be +3. The way you go about making an undead army is by summoning zombies and then when you’re in combat attacking enemies with them, they’ll gain a status effect called Crawling Gnaw.
Crawling Gnaw lasts one turn and if they die before it expires, they’ll become a smaller version of a zombie with 10 HP. Even though they take 1 necrotic damage every turn, they operate on their own to continue to attack targets. Additionally, they apply this status effect to the enemies they hit. So as you get more and more zombies and they keep killing these enemies while applying Crawling Gnaw, your army is going to grow and grow.
What you need to do is to set up your zombies to be able to attack targets as effectively as possible. You can use things likeEnlargeon one of them so that his hit chance becomes higher to deal more damage. Keep in mind that this requires Concentration so you won’t be able to use other Concentration Spells. But you want to try and buff your zombies so they can remain effective.
You can useLongstriderto increase their movement speed orMage Armorto give them higher Armor Class. If you have aClericorPaladinin your group, you can have them cast Aid to bolster your zombies’ HP and help keep them alive. The main thing here is that as a Wizard, you want to set up your minions to be able to apply Crawling Gnaw and then finish enemies off yourself. Or have the minions finish them up so your army continues to grow throughout combat.
So you might systematically pick off enemies that already have Crawling Gnaw or soften them up with something like Fireball. Or even put them toSleepfor your minions to easily deal crit damage. Minions have a very low hit chance so putting enemies to slip makes it so that they basically can’t miss and it’s going to guarantee inflicting Crawling Gnaw.
Remember to use Animate Dead once in order to get those zombies out there and significantly grow your undead army. It’s a really fun style of play that I think is unique to the Wizard. And as you get higher level Spells such asHypnotic Pattern, you’ll be able to support these zombies even more and it can be a ton of fun on the battlefield. You can CC tons of enemies at once and then let your minions go to town on them while you maintain Concentration.
So that wraps up our article on the three early-game Wizard Builds. I hope you guys got something out of it and it has inspired you to play your Wizards in different ways. Or perhaps in ways you hadn’t thought of before. We do have more Baldur’s Gate 3 Class Guides and Build Guides coming so stay tuned for those.
Auberon
Writer at Fextralife. I really like vanilla ice cream.
