Baldur's Gate 3: Best Builds For Lae'zel (2024)

As you progress through Baldur's Gate 3, you'll come across many different companions - Lae'zel is the first, a githyanki fighter who has no time for frivolities. She's devoted to the task at hand, and rather difficult to please if you care about being nice to strangers.

While building a character is far easier in Baldur's Gate 3 than in many other CRPGs, there are still lots of choices to make, and with each choice heavily altering a character's abilities, it's important to make the right ones.

Updated December 11, 2023: We've gone ahead and updated this guide with what we know of the game, including some more tips on getting the most out of Lae'zel.

Lae'zel Overview

Lae'zel is a githyanki fighter with a mean streak - you'll meet her not even a minute into your adventure during the prologue, onboard the Mindflayer ship. Once you get off the ship, you'll find her a little bit up from the beach, trapped by some tieflings. It's worth rescuing her - she's a fantastic warrior.

With 17 Strength, Lae'zel is going to hit hard. If you can find a way to boost it a little, likely through the Ability Score Improvement feat at level four, she'll hit even harder. Her Dexterity and Wisdom are a little on the disappointing side, but 14 Constitution isn't bad. Lae'zel fits an obvious role - hit things and hit them hard - and she does it well.

There are three options for Lae'zel's progression, dictated by the subclass she chooses at level three: battle master, champion, or eldritch knight. As the latter requires Intelligence, which is really not Lae'zel's strength, it's really only viable to take her down the battle master or champion routes.

Building Lae'zel As A Battle Master

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With decent bulk and high Strength, you'll want Lae'zel to be leading the charge into battle with a melee weapon more often than not.

Unless your player character is specifically designed around tanking, Lae'zel will be the meatiest companion you have, and she's great at diving headfirst into battle.

This build starts to shine as soon as Lae'zel hits Level 3 and unlocks those useful manoevres. Riposte will save your hide more times than you think, and Distracting Attack is a fantastic utility to have - especially since it can be used with ranged weapons too. Use this on high-health enemies, such as bosses.

Once you hit Level 5, however, the build really comes online, and the sheer strength of the Fighter class makes itself known. Being able to attack multiple times a turn - even mixing melee with ranged attacks. With Action Surge, Lae'zel has the potential for some of the highest single-turn damage output in the game, and making proper usage of this ability is key to maximizing her usefulness.

In terms of altering the build to suit your tastes and strategies, we do have some recommendations:

• Swapping the feat choices at Level 6 and Level 8 is perfectly reasonable - hitting 20 Strength as soon as possible is a perfectly valid goal for a martial character.
• While we believe we've chosen the absolute best Manoeuvres in the game with this build, the order may need tweaking based on your party makeup. If your party is rather frail, moving Rally to the first batch of choices is no bad idea. We'd swap it for Menacing Attack.
• If you're doubling up on martial characters, consider replacing one of the Manoeuvres with Commander's Strike.
• While Multiclassing is an attractive option for many, a lot of fighter's power comes from its gradual and significant increases in power. Specifically, the Superior Extra Attack feature that arrives at Level 11 is crucial. At most, we would say you could spend one level elsewhere without severely harming the build's potential. Good options for this would be barbarian for Rage, or rogue for Sneak Attack (this is handier if you can easily guarantee that Sneak Attack is enabled, either with easy access to Advantage or by having multiple martials).

The Best Equipment For Lae'zel

Any powerful, magic weapons and armor you come across is the basic rule for outfitting Lae'zel. As a fighter, Lae'zel can use any weapons with skill and, therefore, can take advantage of any magical effects that you need at the time.

With the Great Weapon Master route, you'll want to make sure these are two-handed weapons more often than not, but she can still make do with strong, lighter weapons that don't have a home with your other allies.

• When picking weapons for Lae'zel, make sure they have either the Two-Handed or Versatile tags in their tooltips. When wielding a Versatile weapon, Lae'zel will use it in two hands as long as she isn't equipped with a shield.
• Good weapons include:
  • Sword of Justice
  • Githyanki Greatsword
  • Larethian's Wrath
  • Halberd of Vigilance
  • Soulbreaker Greatsword
  • Sorrow
  • Blooded Greataxe
• Lae'zel will also likely be one of the few party members you have proficient in Longbows. While we haven't kitted her out for Archery, she can still make use of powerful magic bows, so don't neglect them!
• The armor that Lae'zel starts with is very good - she probably won't need an upgrade throughout the entirety of Act 1, letting you spend your money elsewhere and kit out other characters with the armor on offer. Upgrade when you find particularly good pieces that come attached with great magic effects, such as the Adamantine Splint Armor.
• You can grab quite a lot of githyanki equipment from the Creche in Act 2 - this is perfect for Lae'zel as it will often provide extra benefits for a githyanki character who equips it.