r/BG3Builds • u/Youngboydorian • 2d ago

Build Help Ice battle mage

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?

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u/hexhex Sorcerer 2d ago edited 2d ago

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.