Baldur's Gate 3: Pure-Class Fighter Lae'zel Build Guide

Ultimately, I designed two builds for Lae'zel: a pure-class fighter for the Queen's path, and an Open Hand Monk for the Prince's path.

This build for Lae'zel embraces her traditional Githyanki upbringing, fighting with a silver sword and remaining loyal to her queen.

Fighters are versatile in all combat styles. They are not only weapon masters but are also proficient with shields and all types of armor.

It's an extremely pure class, unpretentiously focused on multiple attacks, with a very smooth progression curve, making it very easy to get started with.

In reality, the strongest build for a fighter is the Battle Archer, but it requires farming for arrows and competing for gear, so I mercilessly abandoned it.

This time, I'm presenting a pure-class Battle Master, the "King of Hacking" in Baldur's Gate, holder of the 13-cuts-in-6-seconds record, and a true alpha-striker.

The main idea is to turn off your brain and just charge in, hacking and slashing!

1. Lae'zel

1.1 The Gith

Humans, elves, dwarves—these are races that most players are familiar with. But for many, the Gith are a new encounter.

In ancient times, a group of noseless humanoids lived happily.

Then the mind flayers came sailing by, saw them as high-quality labor, and enslaved them all.

They were enslaved for so long that they forgot their own traditional culture.

Until one day, a noseless heroine named Gith led a successful slave rebellion. From then on, they called themselves the Gith.

Gith established an ultimate military, racist, and centralized society, waging a relentless war of revenge against the mind flayers.

As the saying goes, "without external enemies, there will be internal strife." After escaping the mind flayers, a Gith named Zerthimon felt that Gith's ways were too extreme.

"What you're doing," he argued, "makes you no different from the mind flayers, except in appearance."

Zerthimon's views gained a lot of support, and eventually, the Gith split into two factions.

Those who continued to follow Gith called themselves the Githyanki, while those who followed Zerthimon called themselves the Githzerai, and so they remain to this day.

1.2 The Queen's Champion

As a Githyanki, Lae'zel was indoctrinated from a young age, blindly loyal to her queen.

As a Githyanki warrior from the Astral Plane, Lae'zel is known among her people for her ferocity with a silver sword.

She firmly believes that her life's mission is to exterminate the Mind Flayers, and her ultimate goal is to please her supreme queen, Vlaakith, and become a Red Dragon Rider.

The Githyanki use their psionic powers to complement their physical strength. These psionics were installed in them by the mind flayers in the Astral Plane.

In the game, this is represented by the skills Mage Hand, Misty Step, and Jump.

By using psionics to connect with the Astral Plane, they can access fragments of knowledge left behind by creatures that lived, moved, and died in the silvery clouds of the Astral Plane.

This is the origin of Astral Knowledge.

2. Stat and Leveling Progression

Level 1:

• Fighting Style: Great Weapon Fighting
• Attributes: 16 Str, 16 Dex, 14 Con, 8 Int, 12 Wis, 8 Cha
• Proficiencies: Athletics, Perception

Level 3:

• Subclass: Battle Master
• Maneuvers: Precision Attack, Menacing Attack, Riposte

Level 4:

• Feat: Alert

Level 6:

• Feat: Martial Adept (choose any maneuvers)

Level 7:

• Choose any maneuver!

Level 8:

• Feat: Savage Attacker

Level 10:

• Choose any maneuver!

Level 12:

• Feat: Great Weapon Master

3. Equipment

To be honest, you can wear whatever you want. Fighters are proficient with all weapons and armor, so you can give her any hand-me-downs from the party.

In principle, as long as you choose the biggest weapon (because we chose Great Weapon Fighting and Great Weapon Master) and the heaviest armor, you can't go wrong.

The better Githyanki-specific weapons start appearing in the Act 1.5 monastery, such as the Soulbreaker from the centurion, which gives +2 to initiative, which is great.

You can also get the Psionic Vengeance circlet from the inquisitor. You don't need to understand what it does, just wear it.

In the mid-game, you can also forge a piece of Adamantine Splint Armour at the Grymforge.

If you still find the game too difficult, you can get the Astral-Touched Tadpole in the first act.

4. How to Play

Level 1: Attack.
Level 2: Attack, Action Surge, Attack.

From Level 3, you get 4 superiority dice per short rest. How do you use them? Let's see:

Precision Attack, Menacing Attack, Action Surge, Precision Attack, Menacing Attack. Precision Attack to increase your chance to hit, Menacing Attack to increase your damage. Use all four dice in one cycle, it's that simple.

Level 5: Menacing Attack, Menacing Attack, Action Surge, Menacing Attack, Menacing Attack.
Level 6: 5 superiority dice, because we chose Martial Adept.
Level 7: 6 superiority dice.

Level 11: Attack, Attack, Attack, Action Surge, Attack, Attack, Attack.

We fighter players have so many moves!

Do you like my six-hit combo of Disarming, Distracting, Goading, Menacing, Tripping, and Maneuvering in one turn?

If that's not enough, you can also use Haste, drink a Potion of Speed, and combined with the effect of Great Weapon Master, you can get 13 attacks in one round and obliterate your enemies.

Next time, I'll bring you a more technically demanding build: the Open Hand Monk.

As I was writing this, I realized that the backstory of the Gith is endless.

Maybe I'll open a separate thread to talk about it sometime.