Baldur’s Gate 3: Best Gale build in BG3

The Wizard of Waterdeep, the Thoughtful Thaumaturge, Gale the Magic User. Baldur’s Gate 3‘s wizard companion can be a powerful addition to your party. To make him so, you’ll need to give him a good build. Luckily, we’ve got all the info you could need.

Be forewarned that this guide may touch on some spoilers of Gale’s questline.

The best build for Gale in BG3

Gale is a Wizard, and like all Wizards in BG3, he is an incredibly powerful, high-utility member of any party. Your focus should be to use the BG3 preparation system to swap out his spells when you need them, learning high-utility spells that you trade out for your combat setup when required. But choosing the correct class features and spells is going to be quite important.

As a wizard, Gale is an Intelligence-based spellcaster. By default, the game recommends that you give him the Evocation subclass, a spell school dedicated to high damage while protecting allies from your own spells. Since Gale joins your party at level one, you have a lot of room to change him. You can even multiclass with him at higher difficulty levels, if you have a specific slot you want for his build.

That being said, thanks to the incredible Withers, it is possible to respec Gale into any class you’d like and even give him any ability score setup you’d prefer. For the purposes of this guide, we are going to keep Gale’s basic stats and class of Wizard.

But, if you do want to improve his stat setup, you probably want something like this:

• STR: 8
• DEX: 14
• CON: 16
• INT: 16
• WIS: 14
• CHA: 8

Round out his defensive stats so you get the benefits of them immediately, rather than at level four.

This guide will detail some build options for Gale with and without the multiclassing class feature. We will also not detail builds that hard-require magic items to exist to make Gale work. In most cases, Gale will never need a magical item that improves stats to be an effective team member. You might prefer to give him them for an entirely different reason, come midgame.

Without multiclassing

If you decide not to multiclass him, Gale will become a level 12 Wizard by the endgame of BG3. Wizards have a handful of major choices that they will have to select, but the most important ones are spells.

Here are a few of our tips to make your Gale as strong as possible.

Choose the Abjuration Subclass. Gale doesn’t have great Medicine, making Transmutation a chore for him. Divination is a great subclass, but not if you want Gale to have a wide board of magic spells with low cost. Abjuration is great for saving money since several Abjuration spells are found scattered throughout the early and midgame. It’ll also give Gale a small pool of health, which works well with his lackluster defenses early on. Make sure to get him a Shield so he can make use of that Civil Militia trait.

The reason we don’t choose the default Evocation subclass, despite its ability to save a lot of money, is that you aren’t really getting much utility out of it. Sculpt Spells only matter in very specific situations, when your party member is stuck behind enemy lines. And dealing half damage on a cantrip is fine, but not really worth the investment. Even for a blaster Gale, we don’t think Evocation is worth investing in. We’d much rather prefer the durability or utility upgrades found in other archetypes for the Wizard of Waterdeep.

Gale’s Spells

Spells are the most powerful part of Gale as a Wizard. So, when allowing him to learn them, make sure you have a good spread of utility, survivability, and damage. When entering a fight, try to make sure Gale has three distinct options available to him:

• A way to deal damage to one or multiple enemies, like Fireball.
• A way to buff an ally in a fashion that allows them to attack an enemy they couldn’t otherwise, like Haste or Fly. This can also be used on himself to get a good angle on a target.
• A way to reposition himself, like Fly or Misty Step, in case he gets into danger.

As long as his prepared spell list includes these three options, Gale will always have something to do during a fight. Early on, this usually includes weaker magics like Magic Missile, Chromatic Orb, or Expeditious Retreat.

You’ll also want some options for other situations:

• Ways to screw over bosses with gigantic debuffs, like Hold Person. If you can find a way to lock down multiple enemies, such as with Web, you might find that many encounters fall apart as well.
• Ways to buff an important ally’s damage to potentially one-tap an important enemy, like Magic Weapon. These are much fewer and farther between.

As you level up, be sure to check each spell level that Gale can cast and make sure you’re casting spells from those levels. For instance, once you reach level five, Gale might not be as interested in casting Burning Hands. Fireball does the job just fine, after all. You can fairly safely replace low-level damage options, like Chromatic Orb, when you learn the higher-level spells that emulate what they do.

But, some low-level damage spells, like Magic Missile, do something very unique: Guaranteed Force damage that can chip a target to death without any rolls required. Keep that in mind as you build Gale’s toolkit.

You should have his combat spell selection ready at almost all times. You don’t want to be caught with Feather Fall or Arcane Lock on your hotbar when goblins attack. Instead, swap out your out-of-combat utility spells when they are required, preferably for your lowest-impact aggressive spell.

Feats for Gale

Gale’s incredibly strange stat setup makes those the place we’ll start. As boring as ability score boosts are, a Gale without respecing should invest at least two feats into ability score boosts.

• Level four: Split between Intelligence and Constitution. Gale has odd numbers all over his most important stats, which is a bit of a blessing in disguise. At level four, you can even out both his INT and CON, bringing him to a plus-four on spell attacks and DCs and about eight bonus health from constitution. While his AC without magical items might be disgusting to look at, it should only come up in emergencies. And AC of 15 with Studded Leather and a Shield is really quite okay.
• Level eight: Either 20 Intelligence or Moderately Armored. A pure Wizard Gale has an interesting midgame. 20 Intelligence is an obvious choice, boosting your spellcasting potency and the durability of your Abjuration shield. But by taking Moderately Armored, you get your Dexterity to 14 and get proficiency in a very strong armor category. This’ll push Gale’s AC from the 15 we discussed earlier to a very solid 18, with zero magical items to help. That’s a huge improvement and worth considering. Especially as you reach midgame and Gale just keeps getting domepieced by every arrow under the sun.
• Level 12: Either 20 Intelligence or Moderately Armored. We’d suggest taking the other option here. Gale’s spell DCs have to be maxed out by endgame if you want him to successfully neuter high-level enemies. But his AC should also be held together by something other than sticks and string. That being said, if you have too many people boxing for Medium Armor and Gale’s AC is acceptable with the magic items you have for him, then you can consider a feat like War Caster for his Concentration or Elemental Adept to improve his blasting potential. Alternatively, Spell Sniper turns your Scorching Rays into devastating attacks, even in endgame scenarios.

With multiclassing

If you want to multiclass with Gale, while keeping the Wizard level one ability, we suggest investing exactly two levels into Fighter. While Gale can also do great work with Cleric or Ranger multiclass, putting two levels into Fighter unlocks Fighting Styles, Medium Armor Proficiency, and the devastating Action Surge free action to tear the battlefield apart.

There are two reasons why we think the Fighter is a great choice for Gale.

• Gigantic AC boost. With just one level in Fighter, Gale gets Medium Armor proficiency and the Defense fighting style. On average, that takes your armored AC from around 13 to 16. And, as you approach endgame, giving Gale your hand-me-down armor and shields will let him rise to respectable AC which might mean the Shield spell can readily keep him at high health.
• Action Surge is king. One of the strongest abilities in the entire game, Action Surge is great on the Fighter. But, on a caster? Have you ever thrown two Fireballs into a room of Goblins on the same turn? 54 average damage at level seven is nothing to sneeze at, even if it costs a lot of resources to do so.

Two levels in Fighter will cost you your level six spell slot, which isn’t that big of a problem. You weren’t even going to be able to use Arcane Recovery on it. The loss of a feat isn’t great, but considering we were considering taking Elemental Adept for that level, it’s not a big problem either.

Cleric would instead provide Gale with Heavy Armor, as would Ranger. If you want his AC to be very solid and have a few other characters vying for Plate, then it’s not a bad decision. A level dip in Cleric also provides Gale with a few extra support spells like Bless or Shield of Faith. A Ranger dip comes with Heavy Armor with Ranger Knight as well as the ability to get Sleight of Hand from your Natural Explorer ability “Urban Tracker.”

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