Baldur’s Gate 3: [EN] The Divine Champion of Justice – A savage Paladin burst damage build

Most of my playthroughs with martial characters, Paladin or not, involved either a non heavy weapon/shield combo or a two handed weapon, usually the latter. And considering how much love two handed (versatile and heavy) weapons get in the game, it is not very surprising.

But I was getting tired of that. I really wanted to play a powerful, damaging dual wielding martial build. My first attempt at this ended up carrying my first successful Honour run, and I have refined it into what you’re about to see. The result is not only capable of dishing out really good damage, it is also very good on the defensive side and super fun in terms of role play.

This build also performs extremely well when paired with good controller builds that can cast Command and Hold X spells. The latter especially feeds into your heavy critical damage as it paralyses targets and gives you free critical hits.

We’re going to aim for 9 Paladin / 3 Champion. Here’s why.

9 Paladin

• Access to the standard Paladin kit, including a fighting style, Smites, utility and control spells, healing, etc.
• Access to two much needed feats.
• Access to Aura of Protection.
• Access to a lot of subclass perks.
• Access to level 3 slots and some of the most powerful Paladin abilities, including Blinding Smite.

3 Champion

• Access to an extra fighting style, which includes Two-weapon fighting (not available for Paladin).
• Access to Action Surge.
• Access to the first perk of the Champion subclass, which reduces the score required to get a Critical hit by one.

Reducing the Critical score of our character is going to be a core aspect of the build. We’re going to be attacking a lot, rolling a lot of damage die with advantage, so any critical hit is massive for us.

• Very good on the defensive side, with 22+ AC, damage reduction, healing, good saving throws, utility against charming.
• Decent critical chance.
• Disgusting damage potential.
• Super good concentration saving throws in the late game (+13 at least).
• Can use a lot of different weapons: double light, double medium, two handed*. Maces, longswords, warhammers…
• Great party face with high Charisma, social proficiencies, and decent dialog options.

*Disclaimer: while this build going to perform decently well with two handed, it is much better with dual wielding (more attacks means Savage Attacker and your high Critical Chance are more useful). More to the point, if you want to play a Paladin with a two-handed weapon, you’re better off playing a Paladin/Warlock multiclass. You do you.

• No margin for an Ability Score Improvement feat. It isn’t that bad, as you can make do with 16 STR for most of the game. In the late game, you will get a fixed 23 STR with no need for investment. You can also use STR elixirs (but it is kind of boring, so I won’t blame you if you don’t).
• Has kind of a weak early game, on the weapons side especially. Dual Wield isn’t available until level 8, which means you have to dual wield light weapons, or play with a two-handed weapon or a shield.
• Burns through spells slots quickly and needs to long rest often. This is not really a problem in terms of resources, but isn’t necessarily very fun.

Open Paladin. Take 17 CHA, 16 STR, 14 CON. Rest is up to you, but INT and WIS won’t matter too much, and you probably don’t want negative DEX. Your best stat is going to be STR, followed closely by CHA.

If you want to be the party face, make sure you get Persuasion and Intimidation proficiencies. You should always get Persuasion through background (Guild Artisan or Noble). I’ll explain why later.

If you don’t care about being the party face, then this is irrelevant.

As a Paladin, you also need to choose your Oath.

For this build, Oath of Devotion is by far the best. The spells it gives you seem most useful to me (Sacred Weapon especially).

Second, it matches the Justice theme of the build best – of course, you could always ignore that aspect and build a Divine Champion of Vengeance.

The most important thing about this Oath is that it is the only one that allows you to get Hag’s Hair for you or anyone in the party (while saving Mayrina at the same time) without breaking your oath. Of course, you can always pay up if you do, but I like to avoid that if possible.

Bottom line: pick what you will, but Devotion is best.

Half-orc is by far the best for this build. You get one extra damage die per critical hit, and we’re going to do a lot of those.

Below Half-orc, other species are more or less equivalent for this build. Githyanki utility is great.

Your first objective, as usual with martials, is to get level 5 and Extra Attack. You’re actually going to level up as pure Paladin until level 8.

At Paladin level 2, take any fighting style apart from dueling.

At level 4, you get your first feat, and this isn’t the most trivial of choices. We’re going to want two feats on this build: Savage Attacker to boost our damage, and Dual Wield to be able to wield two medium weapons.

Usually, you’d want to be able to dual wield early. But there aren’t that many good medium weapons for you at this stage… and Savage Attacker is just way too good, especially as a Paladin.. It basically gives you advantage on any damage dice you roll, which, according to the wiki, results in a minimum increase of 25% on any dice roll. Even better, it’s going to be applied to your critical hits… and to your smites as well!

You should always go for Savage Attacker first. In the meantime, you can dual wield light weapons, play with a shield, or even play a two handed weapon (if you choose the latter, you can also go for Great Weapon Master).

Around level 5, you should get Hag’s Hair. You don’t need it, but if it’s useless on everyone in your party, you can always get to 18 CHA early.

Keep leveling Paladin until level 8. At level 8, get your Dual Wielder feat.

This build does not need Hag’s Hair. Do not waste it on this character.

At level 9, go ahead and respec.

Opening Fighter or Paladin can seem up to debate here, because a party face would want to preserve Persuasion and Intimidation proficiencies. However, there are two better reasons to open Fighter first:

• CON saving throws proficiency: we are actually going to use concentration quite a bit, and we do not want to drop it. This could be achieved through a Transmuter’s Stone[bg3.wiki], but BG3 has enough set up to do after each long rest as it is.
• Our Diadem is going to work with the spellcasting ability of the last class we opened. If you follow the leveling plan correctly, the last class you opened will always be Paladin, ensuring your Diadem scales with CHA. You never want to have it scale with INT, which will happen if you open Fighter last.

Intimidation proficiency can still be acquired when you open Fighter. Persuasion proficiency can not, which is why having it through background is important if you are the party face.

Moving on to the actual respec: open Fighter. If you have been stacking STR elixirs and are willing to use them now, dump STR (see late game ability scores below). Otherwise, take the same stats as before.

It’s fine if you don’t want to dump STR just yet, especially if it’s to free your elixir slot for Bloodlust, Viciousness or Vigilance. However, you will have to do a second respec once you acquire your final gloves.

After that, take 8 Paladin levels with the same choices as before. Make sure your two fighting styles are Defense + any style that matches your weapons choice. Careful, two weapon fighting is only available for Fighter. You should end your respec at 1 Fighter / 8 Paladin.

At level 10, get your last Paladin level. This will unlock level 3 spell slots and two of our most important spells: Blinding Smite and Crusader’s Mantle. Getting Fighter 2 earlier for Action Surge is fine, especially in Honour Mode.

After that, get your two last levels in Fighter. At Fighter level 3, take the Champion subclass for extra critical chance. You should end at Champion 3 / Paladin 9.

Around that time, you should get access to Mirror of Loss. Get Patriar’s Memory, and +2 CHA. You should end up with 20 CHA.

Once you start wearing Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength, or earlier if you use STR elixirs, you can respec to dump all STR. Technically, you can even start using STR elixirs from the get go, but I think that is overkill, and can wait until your first respec.

Regardless of when you choose to dump STR, you should get 17 CHA, 16 CON, and 14 WIS. DEX isn’t going to do anything for us: we are wearing heavy armor, not using finesse weapons, and not a ranged character. WIS on the other hand is a bit better defensively.

The only reason to take higher DEX would be to get better initiative. That is a fair reason, and you could even reach 16 DEX (with Hag’s Hair) without lowering CHA or CON, but honestly, that’s probably bait.

I usually do not bother mentioning them, but Luck of the Far Realms is really good here for a guaranteed crit. Psionic Overload is good for extra damage, especially if you can cast it as a bonus action.

Going half-illithid is great for Fly, Freecast and Persuasion/Intimidation expertise.

Take all your special smites. The key interest of your special smites is that they can actually be combined with a standard Divine Smite, since Divine Smite can be used after any successful weapon attack. That means you can chain together Blinding Smite and Divine Smite to deal 5d8 Radiant damage (instead of 3d8). That isn’t counting your weapon damage or other damage sources. Keep in mind that using a special smite will consume both your action and your bonus action, which means you won’t get to do an off-hand attack that turn.

Other than that, you’ll want to pick Divine Favour. It’s a Concentration spell that is really good for early game burst damage, as it can be cast as a bonus action and will trigger your conduit ring.

Crusader’s Mantle is a version of Divine Favour that lasts longer and works on your allies, but it costs both an action and a level 3 spell, which makes it better on your support.

The rest is up to you. Don’t bother with healing or protection spells, leave that to your Cleric.

Disclaimer: I will not be covering any exploit that allows using normally inaccessible weapons such as Flame Blade or Deva Mace. While they’d be super powerful for this build, I consider that cheating. That is, however, just my opinion, and if you want to use them, nobody can stop you. My point is that the build doesn’t need that to work.

Your end game goal is to dual wield medium weapons, such as longswords of warhammers. But that will not be possible until level 8, so in the meantime, you will need to choose whether you want to play a two handed weapon, a weapon and a shield, or two light weapons.

For two handed weapons, the Everburn Blade[bg3.wiki] is a pretty solid choice. It’s literally the earliest good weapon in the game, and you can keep it for the entirety of Act 1. It’s also even better with Savage Attacker as the extra damage dice also gets advantage. Later in the act, you can get Sword of Justice[bg3.wiki] or Jorgoral’s Greatsword[bg3.wiki].

For shields users, any +2 shield coupled with a decent +1 medium weapon will do.

For light weapons, there are a lot of good choices. Shortsword of First Blood[bg3.wiki] and Steelforged Sword[bg3.wiki] are accessible early and are great for you. Later in the act, you can get the Shining Staver-of-Skulls[bg3.wiki]. At the crèche, you can of course get the Knife of the Undermountain King[bg3.wiki]. Leave it to someone else if they need it more.

If you attack the Duergar on the skiff in the Underdark you can get Intransigent Warhammer[bg3.wiki] in a chest. This can be a pretty neat source of advantage, but it doesn’t justify going out of your way to get it.

Gloves of the Growling Underdog[bg3.wiki] are an excellent source of advantage for you and are staying for a while.

There is a case to use Luminous Armor for a time as you will often be dealing some Radiant damage. Drop it once you get your heavy armor.

In the Underdark, make sure you grab the Adamantine Splint Armour[bg3.wiki]. This is staying for a while (even the whole game if you want critical hit immunity). Disintegrating Night Walkers[bg3.wiki] are also good for you, but leave it to someone else if they need it more.

At the Crèche, make sure you get the Strange Conduit Ring[bg3.wiki]. This is usually worse than other rings like Caustic Band or Callous Glow, but less so for you as you will want to be concentrating on a spell often. You can easily get Divine Favour or a special smite to trigger it. Callous Glow and Caustic Band are still better, but it’s easier for you to use Strange Conduit Ring as an alternative.

You can use The Blood of Lathander[bg3.wiki] if it is free. This weapon is super good for you, and can stay until the end of Act 2.

Finally, get the Diadem of Arcane Synergy[bg3.wiki] which is your absolute best headpiece and should go to you in priority. This will add your CHA to weapon damage when you inflict a condition… and giving any of your Auras to an ally counts as a condition, so this will pretty much always be active.

There aren’t many good items for you in this act. You could use Risky Ring, but you don’t have anything like Great Weapon Master to make up for, so this ring is better used on someone else.

At Last Light, get Cloak of Protection[bg3.wiki]. Shield users can also buy Shield of Devotion[bg3.wiki] for an extra level 1 spell slot.

At Moonrise, you can buy Drakethroat Glaive[bg3.wiki] and use it on your main hand weapon, if someone else doesn’t need it. Two-handed weapon users can also buy and use Halberd of Vigilance[bg3.wiki].

After a certain trial (make sure you respect the rules), you will be able to get Killer’s Sweetheart[bg3.wiki], which will be one of our ways to guarantee a critical hit once per day. The description of the ring is horribly misleading: once you have killed an enemy, you actually get to choose when to turn an attack into a critical hit. It prompts as a tooltip, like Luck of the Far Realms, but doesn’t use a reaction.

Speaking of critical hits, you should grab and wear the Surgeon’s Subjugation Amulet[bg3.wiki] as fast as you can. Getting a free paralysis with a critical once per day is super good to burst a target,

At the end of the Act, you can get Ketheric’s Warhammer[bg3.wiki], which is a pretty good off-hand weapon for you. You will not keep it for long, however. You can also wear his armor for a time if you like.

You should have reached level 10 just at the end of Act 2 ; once you are into Act 3 (and not locked out of camp), you can get one of the best weapons for this build. Get a Cleric Hireling, level them up to 10 and use Divine Intervention to get the Devotee’s Mace[bg3.wiki]. This will be your main hand weapon from now on. Technically, you can do this multiple times if you respec the hireling, but as you might have guessed from my earlier disclaimer, I’m not a big fine of duplicating Divine Interventions.

Once you get access to the Lower City, go see Vicar Humbletoes. Buy the Mantle of the Holy Warrior[bg3.wiki] ; you’ll not wear it, but you want your support character to wear it.

After that, go steal the Hammer of the Just[bg3.wiki]. If we conveniently ignore that you effectively have to rob it from a deity, this hammer is a perfect thematic fit for us. Apart from which, it deals radiant damage on a hit-per-hit basis, and extra damage to Undead and Fiends, which we will see in abundance.

My two weapons of choice are Devotee’s Mace and Hammer of the Just. If you don’t like them, there’s a lot of other options for you in act 3: the Orphic Hammer[bg3.wiki], Voss’ Silver Sword[bg3.wiki], the Blackguard’s Sword[bg3.wiki]. Evil playthroughs, while an oddity for such a build, can also use Duke Ravengard’s Longsword[bg3.wiki] or the Vicious Battleaxe[bg3.wiki]. Make sure you use Vicious Battleaxe in the main hand. You can even keep The Blood of Lathander for your off-hand weapon.

On the armor side, grab Armour of Persistance[bg3.wiki] and Boots of Persistance[bg3.wiki] at Dammon’s. These will give you some pretty neat buff and aren’t usually contested.

The optimal way to play this build is to pair it with a character that can cast Hold X spells and paralyse your targets consistently, which means critical hit chance is less important than Initiative. That makes Hellrider Longbow[bg3.wiki] your best ranged weapon, as it will give you a much needed boost to Initiative. If you are not playing with guaranteed paralysis from a control character, then you need to stack up critical chance boosts, making The Dead Shot[bg3.wiki] your best ranged weapon. Both bows will almost never be used, they’re just there for passive bonuses.

If you have a control character that can consistently cast irresistible Hold X spells and paralyse your targets, the Surgeon’s amulet becomes less important. There are two very good amulets that you can use in this act.

The first one is Amulet of Greater Health[bg3.wiki], which will give you flat 23 CON and advantage on CON saves. It is insane for this build. Maintaining your concentration, while obviously less critical than someone who cast Haste, is an important part of your damage. Getting a fixed CON score also means you can get additional points in DEX and WIS. Having decent WIS is good on the defensive side ; and high DEX will help with Initiative, which by that point will be very important, especially in Honour Mode.

Unfortunately this item is very contested, and will probably be needed by someone else. Your fallback is the Spell Savant Amulet[bg3.wiki] for an extra level 2 spell (essentially one more smite per day).

Do not use Sarevok’s Horned Helm. Yes, it has great bonuses including better critical hit chance, but the Diadem will always be better for you. If you really want to give the diadem to someone else (which I do not recommend), Helldusk Helmet[bg3.wiki] and the Helm of Balduran[bg3.wiki] are better replacements, as they provide insane defensive bonuses including crit immunity.

Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength[bg3.wiki] are technically slightly worse than Legacy of the Masters with 5 STR (Hag’s Hair + Mirror of loss), but it is a +6 vs a +7. Getting Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength frees your elixir slot, frees Legacy of the Masters and Hag’s Hair for someone else, allows you to get better CON and CHA (which will boost your damage, HP, and saving throws). So, you get the damage back with CHA, and the minor loss on attack rolls is… well, minor.

For a time, you can be tempted to use Strength Elixirs. I personally don’t like to use them all game long with this build (it is unnecessary and I do that on enough builds already). Instead I use them after my level 9 respec and until I get the Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength.

Apart from this, you’ll mostly want to use Elixirs for tough encounters in Act 3. You can also use them for some tough encounters in Act 1 and 2, especially in Honour mode (legendary bosses).

If you want to increase your critical hit chance, you can go for Elixir of Viciousness. If you pair the build with a controller that paralyses targets for you, it is irrelevant.

The optimal elixirs to use are either Bloodlust or Vigilance. Bloodlust is obviously great for a build that kills a lot of stuff. In Honour mode I would probably use Vigilance instead. The extra initiative will help to kill enemies, bosses especially, before they get to play ; and your extra action wouldn’t benefit from extra attack anyway.

In my opinion, medium weapon + shield is the best alternative for the early game. Light weapons can punch decently hard with Savage Attacker and smites, but there aren’t many good light weapons in the early game, and they usually are contested by other builds that will make better use of them.

Two-handed is fine, but underwhelming compared to a dedicated Paladin/Warlock hybrid. Plus, you’d have to use Great Weapon Master rather than Savage Attacker, and we are not necessarily built to play around the malus.

Wielding a decent one handed weapon in the early game is perfectly fine. The shield will be a good help in the early game, and dual wielding only becomes relevant once you’re able to get critical hits a bit more consistently, which happens to be in the mid to late game.

With Champion and The Dead Shot, you will crit on 18-20, 17-20 if you use Elixir of Viciousness. This is good, but guaranteed crits are better. This is why we get Killer’s Sweetheart and Luck of the Far Realms for two different ways to get a free critical hit once per long rest. You can then paralyse the target (if it’s a boss, otherwise do not bother) with your amulet, bypassing any saving throw, which allows for any subsequent melee attacks.

Remember, Luck of the Far Realms needs the attack to succeed to be able to transform it into a critical hit, but Killer’s Sweetheart can turn any attack roll, even a 1, into a 20. Always use Luck of the Far Realms first and try to preserve Killer’s Sweetheart (to use it on a failed roll) if you can. Killer’s Sweetheart tells you the result of your roll, so you can tell whether you need to use it or not.

Also, remember that Luck of the Far Realms uses your reaction, but the Surgeon’s Amulet and Executioner do not.

With your smites, weapons, STR and CHA scaling, extra damage sources (Psionic Overload, Crusader’s Mantle, Strange Conduit Ring, Divine Favour, etc.) and Savage Attacker to give you advantage of all these damage rolls, any paralyzed targets isn’t staying in play for long.

Your burst damage set up would look like this:

• If necessary, apply coating (Oil of accuracy if you want better hit chance, Oil of sharpness if you need to overcome damage resistance). Preferably right before the fight starts.
• Get Hastened (preferably by a caster)
• Have an ally close to the boss (preferably your support).
• Optional: make sure your support is concentrating on Crusader’s Mantle (unless he’s already concentrating on something more important, e.g. he has hastened you).
• Walk towards the ally to activate your aura on them and thus, your arcane synergy.
• Have your controller cast Hold X on the boss or make a normal attack and get a guaranteed critical either with Luck of the Far Realms or Killer’s Sweetheart then trigger the paralysis with your amulet.
• Use a special smite (e.g. Blinding Smite), trigger a normal Smite when the game prompts you to do so, then keep attacking, triggering as many Smites as you can.
• Keep attacking until you have used every action you had (standard action, Haste action, Action Surge, possibly Bloodlust).

You will get between 5 and 8 attacks, based on the ruleset (Honour Mode means only 1 attack from Haste and Bloodlust) and Elixir used. All of them will be critical hits, apart from the first one if you had to use the amulet.

Assuming you are using Devotee’s Mace, use Blinding Smite, then a level 3 smite, then three level 2 smites, and all 5 are critical hits, you will roll in total:

insert damage rolls

The average total damage for this is insert average.

Bosses are going to melt. Here is me bursting Sarevok’s 340 HP in one turn, not even following the optimal set up.

You should always deactivate your auto off-hand attack. Your bonus action can serve for other purposes (special smite, coating usage, Divine Favour) and you want to have it available. Don’t worry, it will still often serve to attack too.

The following should always be configured to ask you before using :

• Executioner (Killer’s Sweetheart).
• Luck of the Far Realms (Uses a reaction).
• Divine Smite on Hit and on Critical Hit.

However, if you’re about to burst a paralyzed boss, you can temporarily configure all smites to trigger freely on critical hits.

In theory, that would give you an extra feat, which you could use to get +2 CHA. But that means losing on Paladin level 3 spells and two level 3 spell slots (that you’ll want to use, for smites if not anything else). In my opinion, it’s just not worth it.

The Fighter kit is always good on any martial. The first two levels here give you CON saving throw proficiency, the Two-weapon Fighting style, which will boosts your off hand attacks, and Action Surge which is insane for your burst damage potential. So, the fighter dip is pretty much non negotiable.

However, as I said earlier, the optimal way to play this build is to pair it with a good controller build that can cast Hold X for you and consistently paralyse your targets, bosses included. As far as bosses go, if nobody can paralyse them for you, you will always want to use the Guaranteed Critical Hit (Luck of the Far Realms or Killer’s Sweetheart) into Paralysis (Surgeon amulet) combo. This eventually raises a question: do we really care about increasing critical hit chance if we can already drop The Dead Shot and Elixir of Viciousness?

The answer is: probably not. But is there really any better choice? The first two fighter levels are needed by the build, and so are our level 3 spells, so Paladin 9 is staying. There aren’t many things we can do with the last level, and we might as well leave it in Fighter. Eldritch Knight will not give us anything meaningful. Battlemaster is okay. At the end of the day, I think keeping Champion is fine. Worst case scenario, it doubles our critical hit chance from 5% to 10%, we have 3 attacks per turn (2 main hand, 1 off-hand). There will be cases where we attack enemies that are not paralysed. Might as well have a better crit chance.

If you really want to, you can take a level 1 Sorcerer dip to get the Shield reaction, but it will fight with Luck of the Far Realms and it is honestly overkill when you’re already rocking high AC.

Paladin Bladelock (or Lockadin, as it is usually dubbed) gets to attack three times with their main hand weapon, like a level 11+ fighter would. It can’t stack this with the Champion subclass (you need 5 levels in both classes to get extra attack from both), which is a minor detail. It doesn’t get Action surge to bolster burst damage however (you want your Paladin auras).

My gut feeling is that in terms of raw burst damage, a Paladin Bladelock using a two-handed weapon and Great Weapon Master is better that this build. But if you want to play dual wield, I feel like Paladin Champion is better because of crit chance consistency (unless you are always attacking already paralysed targets, in which case Bladelock Paladin is pretty much the best everytime).

That is just my gut feeling, but at the end of the day, outside of modded difficulties, I don’t think the difference matters that much. If you want to play a dual wielder, go for Paladin Champion. If you want to play a heavy weapon, Paladin Bladelock is likely what you want.

Getting that involves being a horrible person to Astarion, ignoring his consent (which is even worse as a Devotion Paladin). You do you, but this particular choice will always be a no for me. And anyway, you don’t really need the +2 STR. You will get fixed amount of STR by the late game.

If something isn’t clear to you, or if you feel like I missed something, let me know in the comments below. I read every single comment I get, and will do my best to answer yours.

Thanks for reading the guide and I hope you have fun with the build!