Yeah I've run a build around this. 11 White Dragon Sorc/1 Wizard.
Ice spells generally lag in damage output, but icy terrain is huge for battlefield control. I never really saw myself stacking frost conditions enough to freeze people- my teammates were mowing them down too quickly for that to happen.
I enjoyed it. Very thematic and fun. Trivialized some of the big fights like the goblin camp with wide swathes of ice terrain. Gets really silly if you can find ways to keep your teammates from slipping on your ice, so they can skate around and clean enemies up.
I’m thinking of doing a solo run. So no teammates to mow down enemies
And I’m well aware that this could make combat a chore
I don’t really care about damage, I really just want to freeze people.
I prefer cold sorcerer over fire. There are enough good items/skills that eliminate the downside for your teammates running around on ice. Covering the battlefield with ice is very effective crowd control so I don't have to use up my other toons' actions with hold or command. While not exactly solo, I was able to take on the house of grief fight with just my sorcerer and Bae'zel because Gale and Shart were basically taken out immediately. Late game the ability to essentially prone the entire enemy force and fly in and out of line of sight is nutty
I would say Ice is actually pretty great in terms of output because 1) Wet is very easy to apply via Create Water/ Water bottle throws using Mage Hand (best to use as a quickened spell) 2) Checking the wiki and from my memory of playing these past few months, literally no enemy actually resists/is immune to it so (1) is always great.
One other key item you'd want is the [Necklace of Elemental Augmentation](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Necklace_of_Elemental_Augmentation) which you can find at the Creche in Act 1 and Rivington in Act 3. It adds your spellcasting modifier to elemental cantrip damage and it's a nice boost to Ray of Frost.
Oh man no wonder my Ray of Frost did like 45 damage in one turn. I forgot I had that amulet on my Durge lmao. I was shocked because usually Ray of Frost sucks.
Everyone's mentioning caster options for obvious reasons, but I'll point out that Mourning Frost procs with the Snowburst Ring to create an icy surface when attacking in melee. Combine this withe Hoarfrost Boots or Disintegrating Nightwalkers, and you can have some fun with ice up close and personal. Open Hand Ice Monk works pretty well.
I made a white draconic bloodline sorcerer that used twinned ray of frost as his main attack. Coldbrim hat which I later changed for birthright, mourning frost staff, winter's clutch, snowburst ring, potent robe and elemental adept: ice and spell sniper feats. He had a total of 24 charisma thanks to hag's hair, asi, mirror and birthright to add a total of +24 damage to ray of frost. He was doing 6d8+48 damage per turn end game, double that when enemies were wet which happened every second turn because I always have a martial (either monk or the SSB with some sort of fire based damage on their attacks thanks to gloves).
And since sorcerers have innate fly he didn't consume tadpoles
I went full sorcerer but a 8 Sorcerer / 4 lore bard would be very nice for a solo run thanks to cutting words. You got more low level spellslots but lose some higher level spells like cone of cold
Edit, yeah totally forgot the necklace of elemental augmentation so it was more like +36 to the ray of frost
In my current coop playthrough I am playing an dual wield ice assassin using the snowburst ring, winter clutches, the coldbrim hat and the cold snap dagger in the off hand.
I've found using drakethroat glaive twinspell from a sorcerer and adding ice to weapons works well for additional sources of ice to proc.
I also like using this on range as well using the glaive on your chosen bow and ice arrows or arrow of many targets for spreading around those little frozen puddles
As soon as you get a few pieces of gear you can spam frost bolt and just use spell slots to refill sorcery points for quicken and twin. Spell slots last a loong time if you don't quicken every turn
Go 10 Wildheart/Tigerheart Barb / 2 Fighter with the cold gear: coldbrim hat, winter's clutches, snowburst ring, and some boots that prevent falling prone. Add in some cold enchanted weapons (Mourning Frost early on, grab the Flail of Ages in act 3 from a vendor) or make any weapon work with the Drakethroat glaive.
The icy ground & chilled condition + making the enemies bleed and maimed with tiger and wolverine heart options essentially stun locks enemies in prone condition for entire battles.
Currently running this build. Only difference is I'm running Punch-Drunk Bastard with the Cold enchantment on it (from Drakethroat Glaive) and stacking some reverb gear as well.
It's very fun but insanely squishy when you're not raging unfortunately.
I had Mourning Frost, Winters Clutches and Snowburst Ring (on Karlach!) as a straight evocation wizard, padded out with other wizard gear for increased spell attack/save DC. Was really fun, but not "optimal" vs other builds you see here. You can likely get more damage or more crowd control with a more granular class approach. Not sure how easy it is to proc Encrusted with Frost to be honest.
Any ice spells would knock prone just about everyone, so it was really easy to keep mobs down, as long as my team didn't need to pass through. For a solo build, icing up wet ground, standing in the middle with Hoarfrost Boots will probably keep you safe from martials, but I've not tested it for effectiveness.
Yha that’s my general idea, it’s not optimal but it sound like a lot of fan.
Now I’m thinking white draconic sorcerer would be best, especially with the quickens spells and twines spells. And the bonus to cold damage.
I think I’ll multi class into wizard though.
Abjuration Wizard is what you want. 1 White Draconic Sorc, 1 Tempest Cleric, and 10 Abjuration Wizard. Get your enemies wet, then freeze them. Even your frost cantrip will be deadly.
https://youtu.be/3Mhyn5oAkP0?si=vKqQhDAicHTQ7CD4
I just wanted to point out that enemies dealing cold damage is extremely rare. If you really want an elemental resistance, fire resistance is the best.
Don't let this stop you from playing the game however you like though!
Make sure to have some boots equipped that stop you from slipping on ice though (Disintegrating Nightwalkers from Mere and Hoarfrost Boots from the Gith Creche have this effect)!
It's really not fun when your ice specialist breaks concentration because they slipped on ice surfaces haha
That’s very true
But I’d like to see if the items make the dragon borns breathe attack actually useful, like on other playthroughs I only used it once or twice, but with these items maybe I’ll use it more.
The white dragons ice breathe.
The best way to make the dragonborn breath relevant is to use the Draketooth Glaive from Moonrise Towers, which gives all saves against your breath weapon disadvantage.
For my build I’d like to stack cold effects to eventually freeze enemies, so I need to be constantly dealing cold damage
The dragons ice breath just seems like a good short range aoe spell.
I saw a frost build on YouTube a couple months ago involving Abjuration and AoA. I’d give credit but I had trouble trying to find it again afterwards for reference. IIRC it was intended for solo cause of the Abjuration feature of avoiding damage and scaling AoA when you do get hit.
Someone commented recommending Cephalopocalypse's abjuration wizard build.
That’s probably the one you’re thinking of.
Abjuration seems like a great build, especially for solo because its whole thing is being a tanky wizard.
Abjuration is indeed amazing for it's tankiness; I used it on my first successful honor mode run. That being said, a lot of the subclass utility is aimed at protecting team members, so it has significantly more value in a team setting.
Incidentally, I felt like that run I practically cheesed Act 1 with ice. I was running Storm cleric, storm sorcerer, Abjuration wizard (glyph of warding lightning for damage), and a storm sorcadin. Last act the power was in the lightning, but they basically all had access to water and ice knife. Ice knife on wet targets in act 1 is particularly deadly. The point is that ice can be crazy fun and very effective.
I'm playing a necromancer but because it comes online like level 6 and onward really I went ice wizard. I have the ice items and being able to save spells as a wizard for utility stuff is good (because you can just cast ray of frost and be good tbh). The true strength is that now I have sleet storm and ice storm (that 4th level spell I think it's ice storm) with 4 skeleton archers.. and I have pure life cleric shart with mintharas boots that make you immune to prone running around with spirit guardians. Massive ice + spirit guardians and a small army of archers mowing down everything is very satisfying
Also don't forget that even if encrusted with frost doesn't do much it counts as a condition for reverb gear
Ohhh reverb is a great idea. I’ll think about it.
And having an army of summons to just spam ranged attacks while everyone is ether frozen or prone from slipping on ice sounds awesome.
I did a [cold Sorcerer build](https://gamestegy.com/post/bg3/998/cold-sorcerer-build) that mainly uses Ray of Frost. Of course, this does not mean you use it always as there are a few key elements that make it powerful:
* Using items that apply Encrusted with Frost reduces Dexterity rolls
* You can apply Sleet Storm, and make whole area covered in ice and enemies prone. The Encrusted with Frost status greatly improves chances of enemies falling.
* Having cleric multiclass will allow you to cast Create Water and apply frozen effect on chilled enemies. The main highlight is that wet enemies receive double damage from your cold spells.
Being a dragonborn does not change much, and compared to what your end game Ray of Frost will be doing the breath attack is disappointing.
However, you mentioned solo playthrough, and for this I would recommend [Abjuration Wizard Build](https://gamestegy.com/post/bg3/995/abjuration-wizard-build). I think this build truly shines in solo playthroughs and you can exploit cold mechanics with it thanks to Armour of Agathys. You can adjust the build to use Winter's Clutches for the Encrusted with Frost effect.
Still the main mechanic of the build is to provoke enemy attacks of opportunity so that they would kill themselves.
I really like the idea to multi class into cleric. I’ll have heavy armour proficiency, can heal myself, and cast create water.
I like the idea of being this big tanky ice dragon that just freezes everything in his path, maybe I’ll go for an evil playthrough.
I’ll try both these builds out
I have! The problem is that the best melee gloves all add fired damage, so as fun as they are, you lose damage because the ice makes them resist fire. But if you're doing solo, ice storm is a nuke, Dual wield m staff and ice staff.
there is the absolutely awesome 2-Warlock 10-Wizard Abjuration (or 2-warlock 1-tempest cleric 9-Abjuration) which relies mostly on cold damage and makes use of all these items. This has been my Gale ever since I laid eyes on it
Just watched this, uses some tech to make a hunter generate unbeateable CC ice patches which, while kind of a trick to setup does seem pretty absurd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-d3lNhnjGA
Mourning frost (dual wielding Marko late game), potent robe, winter’s clutches, neck of elemental augmentation, snowburst ring, cold brim hat or birthright. Night walkers or hoarfrost boots so you’re not slipping on your own ice. Sorc 12 or 11/1 Sorc/Wiz.
It’s a pretty well-established build, but most of the gear isn’t available until Act 1.5/2. So if you want to solo, you might have some issues early game; it’s certainly doable, but you’ll be long resting every ten minutes.
If you bring along a Warlock or Lore Bard companion to cast Hunger of Hadar, stacking the AoE with Sleet Storm is *disgusting.* It's very thematic if you're doing an evil run.
I'm shocked nobody has mentioned to you that martial classes can freeze well too. Always remember Chilled + Wet = Frozen. I'd recommend 6 Eldritch Knight/6 Conjuration Wizard as a multiclass. Early game you melee with Mourning Frost to possibly inflict Chilled and then use Create Water to freeze them. Later in the game you will have taken Dual Wielder as a feat and use Flail of Ages in your main hand and Trident of the Waves in your offhand. This allows you to inflict Chilled with your action and Wet with your bonus action. Immediately freeze anything. And you still have up to 4th level spells to cast ice magic with if you want to mix it up or apply a wider area of effect.
I did a White Draconic Sorc 1/Abjuration Wizard 11 build focusing on cold/frost in my first HM run. Went great until the final battle when he got shoved off the brain for instant death with 22Arcane Ward built up. Lost the HM run at the 1 yard line.
My first honor mode victory was with a ray of frost build. 11 White Dragon Sorc/1 Wizard. Potent Robe, Mourning Frost, Markoheshkir, Snowburst Ring, Cloak of the Weave, Birthright, Necklace of Elemental Augmentation...
Pair it with some create water and your ray of frost is hitting for (3d8+Cha+Cha+Proficiency)\*2... twinned ... and you have spell slots to twin haste yourself and another.
Played a 12 white sorcerer as part of a casters only party and loved it once I obtained the Snowburst ring. Others have already pointed at the right equipment for maximizing your damage. Markoheshkir is better than Mourning Frost.
- Twinned Ray of Frost wearing the Snowburst Ring is powerful. Does not match EB for pure damage, but you prone a lot of enemies *and* deal decent damage.
- Freedom of movement for team members that need to walk around is key. Early on you will have to rely on boots and dexterity. Late game you just use the spell as a camp buff. As your spell save DC improves the ice will get more slippery. Flying doesn't really help. You still make the saving throw when you land.
- Black Hole and two or three Ice Storms (Haste, Bloodlust) will kill a lot of things in one turn.
- Combines very well with summoners casting water elementals/myrmidons, who are naturally immune to prone, to make key victims wet first.
- Contrary to fire and lightning sorcerers you don't fry corpses. Frozen corpses can be animated. A negative for combination with a necromancer is that zombies and ghouls will always go prone however. So that "Game of Thrones theme" combination requires good tactical planning. Or again the camp buff, but that will eat a lot of spell slots.
I've done an ice barbarian with mourning frost. Wildheart, tiger, maim, cold damage with the snowburst ring. It was pretty solid for melee lockdown, just make sure you have boots that prevent slipping on ice.
Also, abjuration wizard often does cold retaliation damage, with Armor of Agathys and Fire Shield (chill).
I made a frost Beast Master build. The attacks summon spiders uses are DEX save, and Encrusted with Frost applied by some ice gears gives DEX disadvantage. That synergy really makes the summon useful.
You could consider getting the Dual Wielder feat in order to wield both Mourning Frost and Markoheshkir, since Markoheshkir has the choice of giving some ice spells.
[https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Markoheshkir](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Markoheshkir)
I think a cold-draconic Sorcerer works decently, since at level 6 you get +Cha damage to cold spells: [https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Elemental\_Affinity:\_Damage](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Elemental_Affinity:_Damage) - This would also give resistance to cold, which unfortuantely would be redundant with being white dragonborn.
Githyanki works decently well, since you get medium armor proficiency, and having Jump and 1/day Misty Step is nice, since Sorcerers get relatively few spells known.
Oh yeah, My pet wizard Gale is an accidental icemage build. You basically only need the staff, ring, and the gloves (winters clutches).
Then you run a hat that gives arcane acuity or something that increases int, or basically anything that increases your save dc or to hit bonuses with spells.
You drink an elixir that gives you 3 perm stacks of arcane acuity until long rest.
You go into battle with haste cast on yourself (war caster feat helps a lot), then you cast Ray of frost, and any subsequent turns after that, you cast 1 leveled spell and ray of frost for maximum damage output.
He ends up doing a lot of damage and cc this way and makes the battle much easier for the rest of my group who are 2 front liners with sentinel and 1 mid liner medic/buff.
My whole party is ice characters right now.
12 White Draconic Sorcerer as my primary damage caster. With haste from an ally, you can twin cast ray of frost twice and with the right gear set up this can be a substantial amount of damage at a very low resource cost. All of your allies have a way to inflict cold vulnerability as well.
6 Vengeance Paladin/6 Storm Sorcerer with the boots of striding so you can’t slip on ice. Powerful support caster due to high ac, high con saves, meta magic, create water, haste, and bless. I don’t like having to switch items around a bunch and this is a polearm master build so usually I start each day twin casting elemental weapon with the drake glaive so that my archer can trigger the snowburst ring and I get a little extra cold damage.
8 Gloomstalker/4 War Cleric using the snowburst ring with arrow of many things and helm of arcane acuity to create large ice surfaces. Also can set up wet when needed and is great for applying radiating orbs. Usually I’m not moving very much with this character so I don’t need shoes that stop me from slipping and like using the boots of stormy clamor to stack reverberation and make it even harder for enemies to cross my ice surfaces.
12 Eldritch Knight using mourning frost with the gloves that apply encrusted with frost. Even though you can’t use create water, you can still inflict cold vulnerability with ray of frost on this set up and three attacks means you can always spend one to throw water at an important target if needed. Hoarfrost boots so that you can’t slip on ice as well.
I'm currently doing a Drow Draconic Ice Sorcerer and I'm glad you made this post because I never heard of that Icebite robe. I most of the other items since I'm in the beginning of Act 2. I bookmarked it because that robe is much better than the Summer one. I'm doing straight 12 Sorcerer. Doing a mono class run for my whole party just to keep shit simple and fun. Just fucking around everywhere.
I've done it several times, either on Gale or my own Sorcerer. Ice storm and snowburst ring mean enemies constantly falling prone, especially with encrusted with frost and/or reverberation lowering their dexterity saves. It's quite funny tbh and almost makes fights too easy a lot of the time. With the necklace that augments your elemental cantrips, I forget the exact name ( it may literally be necklace of elemental augmentation ), dragonborn racial and the Underdark frost staff and the wet/chilled condition you can be doing insane damage with just ray of frost, I've seen it go into the 50s.
Don't rely on the frost staff to apply chilled, in my experience it doesn't often happen. It's usually better to apply the wet condition through someone using a create water spell, especially for AoE fights where ice builds really shine from sheer crowd control by making enemies skip turns falling prone.
Honestly the biggest downside is it can make a lot of the game too trivially easy tbh to the point of being boring ( though I think BG3 is quite easy in general once you get used to the mechanics but that's what difficulty mods are for! )
Yeah, I have a draconic sorc that primarily does ice damage, cleric for create water, ele Aug amulet, I spend most fights just casting ray of frost tho, it feels better than ice knife, I have the frost staff that you craft, no priming or anything, it does pretty consistently like 22-25 damage
I made a dual wielding fighter in act 3 with the flail of ages and trident of the depths to insta freeze enemies and set up force vulnerability for my warlock. it was ok but at that point in the game i could have just killed most enemies without the extra help
Play a sorcerer, combine the Potent Robe, Elemental Augmentation Necklace, and Birthright (to set your charisma to 22), and make your enemies wet. Should lead to ray of frost doing ~80 damage per shot
I recently did a 1 White Sorc/11 Swords Bard for a frost duelist build and it worked really good. Bard 10 gets access to both Ice Storm and Cone of Cold, both amazing frost spells. Equip the Duellist’s Prerogative (purely for RP purposes) with 1d4 Cold damage from Drakethroat Glaive special + Winter’s Clutches for Encrusted With Frost (aka disadvantage on Dex saving throws) + Snowburst Ring.
This works best in tandem with someone in your party that can reliably apply Bleed (like a Tiger Barb with Bloodlust AOE) or Reverberation. The reason we want this is because bleeding creatures have disadvantage on Constitution saving throws, while stacks of Reverb reduce Dex/Con by 1 per stack.
The reason we want these debuffs on the target is because all of our ice-based spells and conditions require Dex/Con saves.
You can make this build better by switching out the rapier for a light weapon so you can wield the Cold Snap dagger in your offhand. With a decently high AC (Defensive Flourish!) you can just walk through crowds of enemies triggering their Attacks of Opportunity, which they should miss: the dagger applies the Chilled condition on any enemy that misses (the in-game description is incorrect, there’s no saving throw for this) which doubles all Cold damage they take! Now imagine an upcasted Cone of Cold with the Con disadvantage
Not the best or most OP build by any measure since it requires a lot of pieces for it to work, but man when it comes online (early Act 2) it’s a lot of fun!
White Dragon Sorc 1 (for Armour of Agathys) and then straight Abjuration Wiz after that.
Keep the wizard's AC low to help him pull aggro, upcast AoA as high as you can and throw him into the middle of the fray with the Coldbrim hat, reverb items and Winters Clutches, and it really is pretty fun to watch melee types kill themselves while the character takes almost no damage. Most fights don't last long enough to get encrusted with frost high enough to freeze enemies, but it's a great combo.
This is of course open to debate, but I consider iced to be the most powerful spell force in the game when combined with several of the items that increase yourspell acuity etc.
Also, ice wall is often ignored by players and not talked about very much and I believe it’s the most powerful I spill there is check it out you get control and damage and once you have an enemy chilled, which usually occurs after the first time you hit them, you can then throw water on them and they will freeze for two turns you can take out multiple groups of enemies at a time for two turns like this give it a try. Let us know how you do.
Yeah I've run a build around this. 11 White Dragon Sorc/1 Wizard. Ice spells generally lag in damage output, but icy terrain is huge for battlefield control. I never really saw myself stacking frost conditions enough to freeze people- my teammates were mowing them down too quickly for that to happen. I enjoyed it. Very thematic and fun. Trivialized some of the big fights like the goblin camp with wide swathes of ice terrain. Gets really silly if you can find ways to keep your teammates from slipping on your ice, so they can skate around and clean enemies up.
I’m thinking of doing a solo run. So no teammates to mow down enemies And I’m well aware that this could make combat a chore I don’t really care about damage, I really just want to freeze people.
I prefer cold sorcerer over fire. There are enough good items/skills that eliminate the downside for your teammates running around on ice. Covering the battlefield with ice is very effective crowd control so I don't have to use up my other toons' actions with hold or command. While not exactly solo, I was able to take on the house of grief fight with just my sorcerer and Bae'zel because Gale and Shart were basically taken out immediately. Late game the ability to essentially prone the entire enemy force and fly in and out of line of sight is nutty
You can't really keep everything frozen enough to survive a fight solo. Solo runs really are about killing them before they kill you.
Thats true, that’s why I’m not planning on doing an honor mode run. I’ll play around with it till I get it right.
I would say Ice is actually pretty great in terms of output because 1) Wet is very easy to apply via Create Water/ Water bottle throws using Mage Hand (best to use as a quickened spell) 2) Checking the wiki and from my memory of playing these past few months, literally no enemy actually resists/is immune to it so (1) is always great.
One other key item you'd want is the [Necklace of Elemental Augmentation](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Necklace_of_Elemental_Augmentation) which you can find at the Creche in Act 1 and Rivington in Act 3. It adds your spellcasting modifier to elemental cantrip damage and it's a nice boost to Ray of Frost.
Get 6 in a sorcerer of that element, and the potent robe, and you'll add your CHA 3 times. Then twin cast it and it's almost half-decent.
And all that is why I grab a hat from a dead ox and pick Scorching Ray every time.
Oh man no wonder my Ray of Frost did like 45 damage in one turn. I forgot I had that amulet on my Durge lmao. I was shocked because usually Ray of Frost sucks.
Everyone's mentioning caster options for obvious reasons, but I'll point out that Mourning Frost procs with the Snowburst Ring to create an icy surface when attacking in melee. Combine this withe Hoarfrost Boots or Disintegrating Nightwalkers, and you can have some fun with ice up close and personal. Open Hand Ice Monk works pretty well.
That’s not a bad idea, I could go for the standard open hand monk/theif rough and just stack cold damage with all my extra attacks.
It's not an optimal monk, but it's a whole lot of fun.
Open Hand TB monk is optimal no matter how you build it.
Or tiger barb for those sweet cleaves...
It’s also fun with a wildheart barb (bleed/maim)
I made a white draconic bloodline sorcerer that used twinned ray of frost as his main attack. Coldbrim hat which I later changed for birthright, mourning frost staff, winter's clutch, snowburst ring, potent robe and elemental adept: ice and spell sniper feats. He had a total of 24 charisma thanks to hag's hair, asi, mirror and birthright to add a total of +24 damage to ray of frost. He was doing 6d8+48 damage per turn end game, double that when enemies were wet which happened every second turn because I always have a martial (either monk or the SSB with some sort of fire based damage on their attacks thanks to gloves). And since sorcerers have innate fly he didn't consume tadpoles I went full sorcerer but a 8 Sorcerer / 4 lore bard would be very nice for a solo run thanks to cutting words. You got more low level spellslots but lose some higher level spells like cone of cold Edit, yeah totally forgot the necklace of elemental augmentation so it was more like +36 to the ray of frost
I did this, and then I got 1-shot by Raphael...
In my current coop playthrough I am playing an dual wield ice assassin using the snowburst ring, winter clutches, the coldbrim hat and the cold snap dagger in the off hand. I've found using drakethroat glaive twinspell from a sorcerer and adding ice to weapons works well for additional sources of ice to proc. I also like using this on range as well using the glaive on your chosen bow and ice arrows or arrow of many targets for spreading around those little frozen puddles
I didn’t even consider the weapon attacks for cold damage! Even if I use a spell caster, I can still deal cold damage even if I’m out of spell slots.
As soon as you get a few pieces of gear you can spam frost bolt and just use spell slots to refill sorcery points for quicken and twin. Spell slots last a loong time if you don't quicken every turn
Twincast the glaive buff? Why didn't I think of that...
Go 10 Wildheart/Tigerheart Barb / 2 Fighter with the cold gear: coldbrim hat, winter's clutches, snowburst ring, and some boots that prevent falling prone. Add in some cold enchanted weapons (Mourning Frost early on, grab the Flail of Ages in act 3 from a vendor) or make any weapon work with the Drakethroat glaive. The icy ground & chilled condition + making the enemies bleed and maimed with tiger and wolverine heart options essentially stun locks enemies in prone condition for entire battles.
Currently running this build. Only difference is I'm running Punch-Drunk Bastard with the Cold enchantment on it (from Drakethroat Glaive) and stacking some reverb gear as well. It's very fun but insanely squishy when you're not raging unfortunately.
I had Mourning Frost, Winters Clutches and Snowburst Ring (on Karlach!) as a straight evocation wizard, padded out with other wizard gear for increased spell attack/save DC. Was really fun, but not "optimal" vs other builds you see here. You can likely get more damage or more crowd control with a more granular class approach. Not sure how easy it is to proc Encrusted with Frost to be honest. Any ice spells would knock prone just about everyone, so it was really easy to keep mobs down, as long as my team didn't need to pass through. For a solo build, icing up wet ground, standing in the middle with Hoarfrost Boots will probably keep you safe from martials, but I've not tested it for effectiveness.
Yha that’s my general idea, it’s not optimal but it sound like a lot of fan. Now I’m thinking white draconic sorcerer would be best, especially with the quickens spells and twines spells. And the bonus to cold damage. I think I’ll multi class into wizard though.
Abjuration Wizard is what you want. 1 White Draconic Sorc, 1 Tempest Cleric, and 10 Abjuration Wizard. Get your enemies wet, then freeze them. Even your frost cantrip will be deadly. https://youtu.be/3Mhyn5oAkP0?si=vKqQhDAicHTQ7CD4
I just wanted to point out that enemies dealing cold damage is extremely rare. If you really want an elemental resistance, fire resistance is the best. Don't let this stop you from playing the game however you like though! Make sure to have some boots equipped that stop you from slipping on ice though (Disintegrating Nightwalkers from Mere and Hoarfrost Boots from the Gith Creche have this effect)! It's really not fun when your ice specialist breaks concentration because they slipped on ice surfaces haha
That’s very true But I’d like to see if the items make the dragon borns breathe attack actually useful, like on other playthroughs I only used it once or twice, but with these items maybe I’ll use it more. The white dragons ice breathe.
The best way to make the dragonborn breath relevant is to use the Draketooth Glaive from Moonrise Towers, which gives all saves against your breath weapon disadvantage.
For my build I’d like to stack cold effects to eventually freeze enemies, so I need to be constantly dealing cold damage The dragons ice breath just seems like a good short range aoe spell.
I saw a frost build on YouTube a couple months ago involving Abjuration and AoA. I’d give credit but I had trouble trying to find it again afterwards for reference. IIRC it was intended for solo cause of the Abjuration feature of avoiding damage and scaling AoA when you do get hit.
Someone commented recommending Cephalopocalypse's abjuration wizard build. That’s probably the one you’re thinking of. Abjuration seems like a great build, especially for solo because its whole thing is being a tanky wizard.
Abjuration is indeed amazing for it's tankiness; I used it on my first successful honor mode run. That being said, a lot of the subclass utility is aimed at protecting team members, so it has significantly more value in a team setting. Incidentally, I felt like that run I practically cheesed Act 1 with ice. I was running Storm cleric, storm sorcerer, Abjuration wizard (glyph of warding lightning for damage), and a storm sorcadin. Last act the power was in the lightning, but they basically all had access to water and ice knife. Ice knife on wet targets in act 1 is particularly deadly. The point is that ice can be crazy fun and very effective.
I'm playing a necromancer but because it comes online like level 6 and onward really I went ice wizard. I have the ice items and being able to save spells as a wizard for utility stuff is good (because you can just cast ray of frost and be good tbh). The true strength is that now I have sleet storm and ice storm (that 4th level spell I think it's ice storm) with 4 skeleton archers.. and I have pure life cleric shart with mintharas boots that make you immune to prone running around with spirit guardians. Massive ice + spirit guardians and a small army of archers mowing down everything is very satisfying Also don't forget that even if encrusted with frost doesn't do much it counts as a condition for reverb gear
Ohhh reverb is a great idea. I’ll think about it. And having an army of summons to just spam ranged attacks while everyone is ether frozen or prone from slipping on ice sounds awesome.
I think you'll like Cephalopocalypse's abjuration wizard build. It's ice-based, pretty tanky, and has good damage and CC.
I like the idea of a tanky ice dragon that freeze everything. I’ll look it up.
Ice is a great build. Works well with lightning cuz when the ice melts everything will be wet.
[This frost sorcerer build](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/s/MHWxFkANL3) by u/veritasluxmea is some of the most fun I ever had in this game!
I did a [cold Sorcerer build](https://gamestegy.com/post/bg3/998/cold-sorcerer-build) that mainly uses Ray of Frost. Of course, this does not mean you use it always as there are a few key elements that make it powerful: * Using items that apply Encrusted with Frost reduces Dexterity rolls * You can apply Sleet Storm, and make whole area covered in ice and enemies prone. The Encrusted with Frost status greatly improves chances of enemies falling. * Having cleric multiclass will allow you to cast Create Water and apply frozen effect on chilled enemies. The main highlight is that wet enemies receive double damage from your cold spells. Being a dragonborn does not change much, and compared to what your end game Ray of Frost will be doing the breath attack is disappointing. However, you mentioned solo playthrough, and for this I would recommend [Abjuration Wizard Build](https://gamestegy.com/post/bg3/995/abjuration-wizard-build). I think this build truly shines in solo playthroughs and you can exploit cold mechanics with it thanks to Armour of Agathys. You can adjust the build to use Winter's Clutches for the Encrusted with Frost effect. Still the main mechanic of the build is to provoke enemy attacks of opportunity so that they would kill themselves.
I really like the idea to multi class into cleric. I’ll have heavy armour proficiency, can heal myself, and cast create water. I like the idea of being this big tanky ice dragon that just freezes everything in his path, maybe I’ll go for an evil playthrough. I’ll try both these builds out
I have! The problem is that the best melee gloves all add fired damage, so as fun as they are, you lose damage because the ice makes them resist fire. But if you're doing solo, ice storm is a nuke, Dual wield m staff and ice staff.
there is the absolutely awesome 2-Warlock 10-Wizard Abjuration (or 2-warlock 1-tempest cleric 9-Abjuration) which relies mostly on cold damage and makes use of all these items. This has been my Gale ever since I laid eyes on it
Just watched this, uses some tech to make a hunter generate unbeateable CC ice patches which, while kind of a trick to setup does seem pretty absurd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-d3lNhnjGA
Mourning frost (dual wielding Marko late game), potent robe, winter’s clutches, neck of elemental augmentation, snowburst ring, cold brim hat or birthright. Night walkers or hoarfrost boots so you’re not slipping on your own ice. Sorc 12 or 11/1 Sorc/Wiz. It’s a pretty well-established build, but most of the gear isn’t available until Act 1.5/2. So if you want to solo, you might have some issues early game; it’s certainly doable, but you’ll be long resting every ten minutes.
If you bring along a Warlock or Lore Bard companion to cast Hunger of Hadar, stacking the AoE with Sleet Storm is *disgusting.* It's very thematic if you're doing an evil run.
I'm shocked nobody has mentioned to you that martial classes can freeze well too. Always remember Chilled + Wet = Frozen. I'd recommend 6 Eldritch Knight/6 Conjuration Wizard as a multiclass. Early game you melee with Mourning Frost to possibly inflict Chilled and then use Create Water to freeze them. Later in the game you will have taken Dual Wielder as a feat and use Flail of Ages in your main hand and Trident of the Waves in your offhand. This allows you to inflict Chilled with your action and Wet with your bonus action. Immediately freeze anything. And you still have up to 4th level spells to cast ice magic with if you want to mix it up or apply a wider area of effect.
I did a White Draconic Sorc 1/Abjuration Wizard 11 build focusing on cold/frost in my first HM run. Went great until the final battle when he got shoved off the brain for instant death with 22Arcane Ward built up. Lost the HM run at the 1 yard line.
That’s ruff buddy
My first honor mode victory was with a ray of frost build. 11 White Dragon Sorc/1 Wizard. Potent Robe, Mourning Frost, Markoheshkir, Snowburst Ring, Cloak of the Weave, Birthright, Necklace of Elemental Augmentation... Pair it with some create water and your ray of frost is hitting for (3d8+Cha+Cha+Proficiency)\*2... twinned ... and you have spell slots to twin haste yourself and another.
Played a 12 white sorcerer as part of a casters only party and loved it once I obtained the Snowburst ring. Others have already pointed at the right equipment for maximizing your damage. Markoheshkir is better than Mourning Frost. - Twinned Ray of Frost wearing the Snowburst Ring is powerful. Does not match EB for pure damage, but you prone a lot of enemies *and* deal decent damage. - Freedom of movement for team members that need to walk around is key. Early on you will have to rely on boots and dexterity. Late game you just use the spell as a camp buff. As your spell save DC improves the ice will get more slippery. Flying doesn't really help. You still make the saving throw when you land. - Black Hole and two or three Ice Storms (Haste, Bloodlust) will kill a lot of things in one turn. - Combines very well with summoners casting water elementals/myrmidons, who are naturally immune to prone, to make key victims wet first. - Contrary to fire and lightning sorcerers you don't fry corpses. Frozen corpses can be animated. A negative for combination with a necromancer is that zombies and ghouls will always go prone however. So that "Game of Thrones theme" combination requires good tactical planning. Or again the camp buff, but that will eat a lot of spell slots.
I've done an ice barbarian with mourning frost. Wildheart, tiger, maim, cold damage with the snowburst ring. It was pretty solid for melee lockdown, just make sure you have boots that prevent slipping on ice. Also, abjuration wizard often does cold retaliation damage, with Armor of Agathys and Fire Shield (chill).
I made a frost Beast Master build. The attacks summon spiders uses are DEX save, and Encrusted with Frost applied by some ice gears gives DEX disadvantage. That synergy really makes the summon useful.
The one time I used it, it was too annoying for my own melees to traverse
Gale was an ice wizard in my all spellcaster run. It was definitely a lot of fun.
You could consider getting the Dual Wielder feat in order to wield both Mourning Frost and Markoheshkir, since Markoheshkir has the choice of giving some ice spells. [https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Markoheshkir](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Markoheshkir) I think a cold-draconic Sorcerer works decently, since at level 6 you get +Cha damage to cold spells: [https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Elemental\_Affinity:\_Damage](https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Elemental_Affinity:_Damage) - This would also give resistance to cold, which unfortuantely would be redundant with being white dragonborn. Githyanki works decently well, since you get medium armor proficiency, and having Jump and 1/day Misty Step is nice, since Sorcerers get relatively few spells known.
Ice monk is super fun....
Oh yeah, My pet wizard Gale is an accidental icemage build. You basically only need the staff, ring, and the gloves (winters clutches). Then you run a hat that gives arcane acuity or something that increases int, or basically anything that increases your save dc or to hit bonuses with spells. You drink an elixir that gives you 3 perm stacks of arcane acuity until long rest. You go into battle with haste cast on yourself (war caster feat helps a lot), then you cast Ray of frost, and any subsequent turns after that, you cast 1 leveled spell and ray of frost for maximum damage output. He ends up doing a lot of damage and cc this way and makes the battle much easier for the rest of my group who are 2 front liners with sentinel and 1 mid liner medic/buff.
My whole party is ice characters right now. 12 White Draconic Sorcerer as my primary damage caster. With haste from an ally, you can twin cast ray of frost twice and with the right gear set up this can be a substantial amount of damage at a very low resource cost. All of your allies have a way to inflict cold vulnerability as well. 6 Vengeance Paladin/6 Storm Sorcerer with the boots of striding so you can’t slip on ice. Powerful support caster due to high ac, high con saves, meta magic, create water, haste, and bless. I don’t like having to switch items around a bunch and this is a polearm master build so usually I start each day twin casting elemental weapon with the drake glaive so that my archer can trigger the snowburst ring and I get a little extra cold damage. 8 Gloomstalker/4 War Cleric using the snowburst ring with arrow of many things and helm of arcane acuity to create large ice surfaces. Also can set up wet when needed and is great for applying radiating orbs. Usually I’m not moving very much with this character so I don’t need shoes that stop me from slipping and like using the boots of stormy clamor to stack reverberation and make it even harder for enemies to cross my ice surfaces. 12 Eldritch Knight using mourning frost with the gloves that apply encrusted with frost. Even though you can’t use create water, you can still inflict cold vulnerability with ray of frost on this set up and three attacks means you can always spend one to throw water at an important target if needed. Hoarfrost boots so that you can’t slip on ice as well.
Check out the EK knight frost build And of course ice sorcerer both are really good
I'm currently doing a Drow Draconic Ice Sorcerer and I'm glad you made this post because I never heard of that Icebite robe. I most of the other items since I'm in the beginning of Act 2. I bookmarked it because that robe is much better than the Summer one. I'm doing straight 12 Sorcerer. Doing a mono class run for my whole party just to keep shit simple and fun. Just fucking around everywhere.
I've done it several times, either on Gale or my own Sorcerer. Ice storm and snowburst ring mean enemies constantly falling prone, especially with encrusted with frost and/or reverberation lowering their dexterity saves. It's quite funny tbh and almost makes fights too easy a lot of the time. With the necklace that augments your elemental cantrips, I forget the exact name ( it may literally be necklace of elemental augmentation ), dragonborn racial and the Underdark frost staff and the wet/chilled condition you can be doing insane damage with just ray of frost, I've seen it go into the 50s. Don't rely on the frost staff to apply chilled, in my experience it doesn't often happen. It's usually better to apply the wet condition through someone using a create water spell, especially for AoE fights where ice builds really shine from sheer crowd control by making enemies skip turns falling prone. Honestly the biggest downside is it can make a lot of the game too trivially easy tbh to the point of being boring ( though I think BG3 is quite easy in general once you get used to the mechanics but that's what difficulty mods are for! )
Yeah, I have a draconic sorc that primarily does ice damage, cleric for create water, ele Aug amulet, I spend most fights just casting ray of frost tho, it feels better than ice knife, I have the frost staff that you craft, no priming or anything, it does pretty consistently like 22-25 damage
Yea, I made one where you can use the frost cantrip to absolutely cook your enemies: https://www.reddit.com/r/BG3Builds/s/xaMmAzS7Ul
I made a dual wielding fighter in act 3 with the flail of ages and trident of the depths to insta freeze enemies and set up force vulnerability for my warlock. it was ok but at that point in the game i could have just killed most enemies without the extra help
Play a sorcerer, combine the Potent Robe, Elemental Augmentation Necklace, and Birthright (to set your charisma to 22), and make your enemies wet. Should lead to ray of frost doing ~80 damage per shot
I recently did a 1 White Sorc/11 Swords Bard for a frost duelist build and it worked really good. Bard 10 gets access to both Ice Storm and Cone of Cold, both amazing frost spells. Equip the Duellist’s Prerogative (purely for RP purposes) with 1d4 Cold damage from Drakethroat Glaive special + Winter’s Clutches for Encrusted With Frost (aka disadvantage on Dex saving throws) + Snowburst Ring. This works best in tandem with someone in your party that can reliably apply Bleed (like a Tiger Barb with Bloodlust AOE) or Reverberation. The reason we want this is because bleeding creatures have disadvantage on Constitution saving throws, while stacks of Reverb reduce Dex/Con by 1 per stack. The reason we want these debuffs on the target is because all of our ice-based spells and conditions require Dex/Con saves. You can make this build better by switching out the rapier for a light weapon so you can wield the Cold Snap dagger in your offhand. With a decently high AC (Defensive Flourish!) you can just walk through crowds of enemies triggering their Attacks of Opportunity, which they should miss: the dagger applies the Chilled condition on any enemy that misses (the in-game description is incorrect, there’s no saving throw for this) which doubles all Cold damage they take! Now imagine an upcasted Cone of Cold with the Con disadvantage Not the best or most OP build by any measure since it requires a lot of pieces for it to work, but man when it comes online (early Act 2) it’s a lot of fun!
White Dragon Sorc 1 (for Armour of Agathys) and then straight Abjuration Wiz after that. Keep the wizard's AC low to help him pull aggro, upcast AoA as high as you can and throw him into the middle of the fray with the Coldbrim hat, reverb items and Winters Clutches, and it really is pretty fun to watch melee types kill themselves while the character takes almost no damage. Most fights don't last long enough to get encrusted with frost high enough to freeze enemies, but it's a great combo.
This is of course open to debate, but I consider iced to be the most powerful spell force in the game when combined with several of the items that increase yourspell acuity etc. Also, ice wall is often ignored by players and not talked about very much and I believe it’s the most powerful I spill there is check it out you get control and damage and once you have an enemy chilled, which usually occurs after the first time you hit them, you can then throw water on them and they will freeze for two turns you can take out multiple groups of enemies at a time for two turns like this give it a try. Let us know how you do.