Baldur's Gate 3 - The Shadow Vampire (Astarion Build) 

Astarion: "I'm a seductive courtesan meant to lure the unwary away with my physical and social charms. I am temptation given form." Larion: "Okay, got it. Charisma 10."

I thought at first Shadow Vampire means Shadow Monk, but Gloomstalker also makes sense. I recently tried building him as Arcane Trickster Wizard multiclass which ended up super fun. Being able to stealthily cast fireball is my new favourite Astarion gameplay now.

“Sneak attack over, well I’m fucked” is something I think he would say 😂

I do love this build for astarion, it’s incredibly strong. I have a playthrough (still in act 1) where I’m doing the same thing but went thief over assassin. I feel like he still does good opening round burst damage (not as much as assassin/gloom of course) but thief just gives him more consistent utility and damage past round 1 imo. But also since making him a bard on my most recent playthrough it’s really difficult to go back to anything else. This man was MADE to cast vicious mockery 😂 (for him in particular, bard just feels like a better version of arcane trickster with the focus on illusion, enchantment and psychic magic). Also thank you for opening my eyes to the shadow blade. This changes everything 😮

This is my personal fav build and the one I played on my first run. Makes a lot of sense for Astarion as well. If you want to lean in to nova damage going archer with sharpshooter is really good.

That was my build with the vampire on my very first run. It was so damn strong. The dmg with two hand crossbows is rediculous

This is my go to for him between this and swords bard.

love the Vampyr ost

i recommend using the bhaalist armor instead, if you can get it

I like this video

my only question is what if due to certain choices you made in act 1 and 2, you dont have that shadow ring? what would be a decent alternate?

I'm working on a Astarion build of Rogue/Archfey Warlock. I think being able to charm/frighten along with the invisibility when hit seems perfect for a vampire.

Sharpened Snare cuirass does what bounty hunter does, but for all attacks and spells that inflict restrained. No stealth penalty, and adds your full dex modifier to AC like light armor. This means you could take Keeper of the Veil to inflict disadvantage on fiends, elementals, celestials, undead, fey, etc which fits with vampires being superior undead and help burst down Ethel.

If you get a statue made of yourself at the circus in act 3 you get 1d4 extra damage per attack too as long as you examine it at the start of your day

SOMEBODY ELSE ACKNOWLEDGES GLOOMSTALKER/ASSASSIN, YES! It's within my top 3 favorite things to play in both Baldur's Gate and actual D&D and it seems like nobody else acknowledges it. I did it as a Dark Urge stealth archer and wanted to do it as a melee build and you've given me the perfect framework. I LOVE YOU!

Bro when you said we weren’t gonna expect what you were gonna do with this build I thought of lands Druid hahahaha

Love your builds. You always make me wanna restart and try it but I gotta hold strong especially since I’m on my honor run. Not sure if you’re still doing requests, but something I was thinking about doing next and could fit with your theme of ‘origins’… someone who fully embraces the mindflayer. I’ve personally always resisted but I’ve been wanting to do one where the character fully embraces it and uses their abilities to the max. Anyway, thanks again for the builds!

gale and astarion are some of the most polarizing characters in this game. people love to be really really loud about their opinions on these characters. anyway, more on topic, my favorite way to build astarion is assassin rogue/vengeance paladin. it gives him the charisma stat he thinks he has, plus leans hard into the "kill some poor sod in a single turn" style of gameplay. tacking a big divine smite onto an assassin's guaranteed crit is a thing of beauty. plus, if there's anybody in this party that wants revenge more than anyone else, it's astarion. anybody who slights him even a little bit is catching a smite

I look and look at different builds, and I literally ALWAYS end up with either pure bard or bard/rogue. I can only feel him under that setup. Oh, and with violin, it HAS to be a violin.

i like how fast you talk it helps with the adhd

I always build Astarion as Thief/Gloomstalker and in my fourth run I want to try something different for him. Thank you for this build 🙂

Personally I could not stand playing Astarion until I made him a monk.

In my current tactician run I built astarion to take 4 levels into rogue thief for bonus actions and a feat:sharpshooter. Then 5 levels in champion fighter with crit fishing gear to stack the reduced number to crit. Took two weapon fighting and dual wielder since I was using phalar aluve at the time to dual wield. Finished it with 3 levels in gloomstalker. I’m using the dex gloves too. So first round of combat I can make 2 attacks, 2 bonus off hand attacks, dread ambush, then action surge for 2 additional attacks putting it at 7 for first round. On avg it’s 4 per turn. I call it a machine gun build. I made him ascend to get the extra necrotic and it’s silly how powerful he is. I really don’t know if it’s the most efficient how I built it but I love it all the same. I really like how you added shadow blade and took assassin in this build. Really like the build idea and your videos in general. Thanks for the video!

Nice build. Trying them out in my latest playthrough (albeit I have never finished the game) Get to act 3 and then restart. Trying with Lae'zel build as the leader and the other builds joining in (Gale/Asterion/Shadowheart). I am running Shadowheart as the shar healer. Gave Shadowheart the Returning Pike for the time being. Look forward to seeing what you do for her, though I guess Rogue/Cleric. Maybe a different spin. Using Disguise Self on the other 3. to form a full Githyanki party ;)

Gale as a Lore Bard also feels rather apt. Dip into knowledge cleric (of mystara, obviously) for big brain skill monkey antics.

Love these, can't wait for the shadowheart one

I went with beast master with astarion to add an aditional combatant to the field and make it so he can basically always proc sneak attack but the usefulness fell off near to the end of act two since beast master doesn't really multiclass well.

So very close to a build I use on him on 1/3rd of my games. The other 2/3rds being 4 Thief, 8 Swords Bard. But that requires Chr not Wis

I'm considering making this build for my honor mode run but adding Shadow or Open Hand Monk on top of Gloomstalker Ranger and Thief or Assassin Rogue.

I rlly liked this build, definetely gonna use this on my next campaign

I always use a similar build for Astarion, so i really like it. Arcane trickster isn’t really the best and strongest rogue subclass. Assassin paired with Gloomstalker works way better Only difference is, i gave hin 3 levels Warlock, for the Darkness spell. That way he can always obscure himself if I want him to get sneaky in less dark surroundings ;)

How to make the shadow blade appear in the right hand? For me it's always the left hand

This is the build I'm going for with my Dark Urge, curious to see how you will build yours. I made my Astarion a bard lol

Do you think that Arcane Trickster 9/Wizard 3 is a good lore friendly build for Astarion?

Gloomstalker Assassin is slept on , this build is cold af 🥶

So just putting in a request for a future build when you have time, but I'd love to see what you come up with for Xena Warrior Princess.

This one looks SICK

Maybe if Astarion is a party face/main character in your campaign this build can have some sense, but if you want to utilise gloom stalker/assassin build up to it maximum potential, fighter split is a must. At least 2 levels for fighting style and action surge. Better with 6 levels of fighter, because spells of rangers mostly terrible, and extra 1d6 to sneak attack can be ignored - battle master give you much more. So, final build will be fighter 6/rogue 3/ranger 3. But you want to start as ranger to level 5(extra attack) , respect to rogue 1 from level 6(keeping extra attack), going to level 9 with rogue (ranger 5/rogue 4 for feat), after that getting to fighter 2, and at level 12 fully respect to final build. And if you can choose a cantrip as high elf, minor illusion much more useful for this build.

Hunter's mark doesn't make sense, if you wanna do damage just shoot an arrow and if you're hiding it can even not trigger combat and you can keep shooting till they see you. (If you start with hunter's mark they almost always See's your location)

For the equipment you can have dark justiciar helmet as it does covert critical and gives you magical durability and gives you constitution saving throws +1.

Lol at the home alone reference

Making ascended Astarion into dual wield bard pala rogue. Smite plus all the damage rider into a crit just erases bosses

very effective :3 and fitting

Yeeah Im gonna have a relationship with that pretty boy

Could you try to do an Astarion build as a 9 rogue(at) /3 wizard(enchant)? With high int and using Potions of speed and scrolls of hold monster to fix action economy and crit procs?

would be cool to see a cleric build that focuses on lone wolf honor mode play, seems like to me that pretty much all classes got builds that can solo honor mode with but cleric. I'm excluding tempest cleric as I see it more of a complementary subclass for sorcerer. any ideas for that kind of build with other subclass than tempest?

Curious question, are you doing just the origin characters that you can play at the start or will you be doing the other companions like Minthara, Halsin etc?

Do you still need to move around the resonance stone in your chest every long rest ? Patch 5 notes mention it being fixed but i didn't try it

If you go rogue 3 for thief/assassin, ranger 3 for gloomstalker, and fighter 6 you still get two feats, two fighting styles, action surge, and the fighter subclass(generally battle master). All for the cost of misty step (which you can easily get from gear.) and some sneak attack die which incosistent at best.

Am I missing this or are you not able to change your racial cantrip at Withers? I was planning to use all your builds in one playthrough, but when I went to respec Astarion to give him Friends I couldn't :/ is this some sort of mod or just not a console thing?

Didn’t Karlach use the hellfire hand crossbow? Or was it a normal crossbow? Or am I just misremembering as usual?

Wouldn't the alert feat synergize really well with this build?

Can you outline the class leveling in written form please? So far it's Rogue 1, Ranger 2...

I like how no one ever shows the build off...