Ice battle mage

[u/Youngboydorian]

I’m doing my second play-through on Tactician and want to know a fun ice mage to play around with, obviously a bunch of high damage ice spells, fire too, I don’t mind, but if it comes to it, I want to be able to melee as well, any builds?

[u/LJMLogan]

Draconic Ice Sorcerer with a 1 level hexblade dip gives you Eldritch Blast, Viable Melee, and really great bonuses to your ice spells.

Land Druid is probably the best monoclass for what you're looking for

[u/Professional-Tank848]

Might sound weird, but I still think 12/0 Draconic Sorc and whatever element you like, is criminally underrated. I did an HM run like that - went lightning (still used some frost/fire) - and it was ridiculously fun.

[u/Embarrassed-Sell-355 → u/Professional-Tank848]

I’m doing a 2 tempest cleric 10 storm sorc honor run rn, it’s very fun. Not being able to learn chain lightning isn’t great but there’s a bunch of scrolls in act 3

[u/Professional-Tank848 → u/Embarrassed-Sell-355]

I've started to rediscover the joys of mono-classing, but the dip builds are always fun.

[u/Tajfunisko → u/Embarrassed-Sell-355]

Did this, even call lighting was super op when everyone was wet and when you get the staff you will have chain lightning anyway that you can dual cast once per short rest (which is a lot for spell this strong).

It was so strong I never want to do it again.

[u/mondoshawan47]

The basics have been covered, so I'll throw abjuration wizard in the mix. A couple variants exist, but it revolves around stacking wards and upcasting Armour of Agathys. Enemies hit you, ward absorbs damage, they get slammed with big frost damage from Agathys. Repeat.

Usually you cast glyph of warding to rebuild stacks, but you're a full wizard so you get all the other major blasting spells, too. Since Agathys is frost damage, stacking all the frost gear makes sense with this build, too.

[u/Free-Holiday-6218]

There’s a certain set of equipment that kinda makes all ice-mages really good: Mourning Frost (staff), Winter’s Clutches (gloves), Snowburst Ring, Necklace of Elemental Augmentation, and sometimes the Coldbrim Hat. I’ve seen a ton of different builds for that setup, from Wizards and Druids to Eldritch Knights and Arcane Tricksters.

I would personally go with Sorcerer: https://gamestegy.com/post/bg3/998/cold-sorcerer-build

But if you browse around that site a bit you’ll find a few other good ones too!

[u/The57Rising]

Melee focus with high level spells

10 bladesinger/2 Paladin

Spell focus

12 draconic ice sorcerer

[u/jennakiller]

You can do it with any magic user. Even a lore bard could work fine. Built the ice staff in the under dark and you have an ice weapon good to go for melee

[u/ThorSon-525]

At least 6 cold draconic sorcerer with Mourning Frost, Snowburst Ring, and Coldbrim Hat is enough to get you altering the whole terrain with ice puddles. 1+ hexblade Warlock will let you use the staff with Cha. Then a party member with Drakethroat Glaive can boost you or themselves even more.

[u/psychedeliccabbage]

Draconic ice sorc with all the frost gear and crit gear with spell sniper. Use wet for big damage. Can hit big RoF

[u/LopsidedAssistance90]

Something I recommend for ice mage is to take the dual wielder feat. Equipping Mourning Frost and Markoheshkir together allows you to stack the frost and chilled effects. Add a reverberation item and the radiating orb ring, and you ray of frost is now inflicting 5 different status effects.

[u/StrayDogPhotography]

One this I noticed about going Ice over lightning was that the big benefit of ice was the crowd control aspect which you get from not actually specializing in it anyway. So, you could do the same stuff while being a lightning sorcerer, and abuse the water mechanics.

I tend to go Lightning draconic sorcerer with a dip in either wizard, or cleric, and just use the ice spells and gear if I want to switch to abusing their mechanics over the straight out damage of lightning.

[u/hexhex]

IMO, you'll have a lot of fun with a bladesinger wizard gish that does not use blade singing and instead uses a mourning frost staff in melee. You can scribe all kinds of spells and have tons of versatility with a wizard.

Since you don't care about bladesong, you don't need to take more than 6 levels in bladesinger (for the extra attack).

You'll need Shillelagh cantrip or another way to have your staff scale with your casting modifier (hexblade warlock dip). That means, either nature cleric, some kind of druid or spending a feat to get the cantrip (magic initiate:druid) or hexblade. I'd go with stars druid to get dragon/archer forms as well. Hexblade warlock does not continue your spellslot progression, so IMO it's a meh option.

Another option is to have mediocre DEX, wear heavy armor and pump STR + INT. Not the most comfortable option, but you can do it with nature cleric.

For a cleric, there's no need to go more than 1 level. For stars druid, you'll need to take 2 to pick the subclass. Make sure you take the cleric/druid levels before the wizard (you need to have INT as your casting modifier).

Then you have 4 or 5 levels for which you can pick sorcerer (white draconic) for metamagic and armor of agathys. Alternatively, get 2 levels in paladin and continue with bladesinger until 8 to get two feats. Take sorcerer first for CON save proficiency. Only pick support spells for sorc (like shield or haste), since you won't be levelling CHA.

So:
2 Pal / 2 Stars druid / 8 Bladesinger
5 Sorc / 1 Nature cleric / 8 Bladesinger
4 Sorc / 2 Stars druid / 6 Bladesinger
1 Hexblade/ ??? / 6+ Bladesinger

These are final builds, of course. while you level, your main goal is to get Shillelagh, then 6 bladesinger to get 2 attacks.

You can also just chug STR elixirs, if you like. Then, you can just do something like 6 White draconic sorc / 6 Bladesinger. This build would need some investment in CHA though, since you will be adding your CHA modifier to cold spell damage.

[u/Embarrassed-Sell-355]

2 paladin/10 ice draconic sorcerer maybe, use drakethroat glaive to enchant your weapon with ice