Baldur’s Gate 3: BEST Gale Companion Build

If you’re looking to center your party around magic-based companions and playstyles, the best BG3 Gale build is a must-have. Like most in-game companions, you can find Gale in the early-game phase near the Ravaged Beach during Act 1, and as a Human Wizard, he can provide several powerful defensive and offensive spells. So with the right gear, abilities, and progression, he can be a valuable asset to your team.

Best Gale Build In Baldur’s Gate 3

Here’s a brief overview of Gale in BG3, detailing his Feats, spells, and Cantrips at each level for his build, along with the potions and scrolls you’ll need.

Best Build And Level Progression For Gale

The level progression in BG3 is arguably the most vital part of any build, especially Gale, as you’ll be picking his Cantrips, Prepared and Regular Spells, and Feats, all of which will determine his stats and overall playstyle. Unlike other melee-based companions like Karlach, a Barbarian, Gale’s progression offers much more variety and versatility thanks to the sheer amount of in-game wizarding items.

However, before starting, it’s worth noting this companion’s Race, Human, which cannot be changed at any instance or level. As such, you’ll receive the following Traits as part of the build:

• Base Racial Speed: The distance you can move per turn is 9 m.
• Civil Militia: You have weapon proficiency with Spears, Pikes, Halberds, Glaives, and Armour Proficiency with Light Armour and Shield.
• Human Versatility: Increase your carrying capacity by a quarter and select an additional Skill (ideally Intelligence or Wisdom) to be proficient in.

To get a better idea of Gale’s initial strengths and weaknesses, you can find his base stats and figures from the list below:

Level 1/2: Evocation Subclass And Add-on Spells

With Level 1, you unlock the Arcane Recovery action, which replenishes spell slots while your character is out of combat. However, your first significant decision with Gale comes at Level 2, where you must decide the appropriate subclass for him.

There are eight possible Wizard subclasses, each with unique skills and benefits, but the suitable pick is the Evocation Subclass to make this companion a heavy-hitting spellcaster.

1. The Evocation School is excellent for long-range and AoE damage and utility, making Gale a primary choice in most mobility-limited battles.
2. Furthermore, as an Evocation Wizard, you automatically save your allies from any friendly fire by Evocation spells, so you can cast attacks like Acid Splash without worrying about your teammates getting hit.
3. By choosing this subclass, you’ll also access two additional slots for Level 1 spells for your companion, where you should select the Charm Person and Fog Cloud spells based on their focus purely on strategy.
4. Ideally, you should pair an Evocator Gale with melee-oriented characters like Monks or Barbarians to cover long-range and close-range engagements.
5. Following the pick, you’ll unlock the following Subrace Features:
   • Evocation Savant: Learning Evocation spells from Scrolls costs half as much, becoming 25 gold pieces per spell level.
   • Sculpt Spells: Create pockets of safety within your Evocation Spell. Allied creatures automatically succeed in their Saving Throws and take no damage from them.

On top of selecting a subclass, you also need to choose 5 Prepared Spells from a starting list of 17 for Gale. Since you’re going for Evocation, you should mainly prioritize Evocation Spells since removing Friendly Fire gives them a much more significant advantage.

As such, these are the spells you should equip:

• Magic Missile: Shoot 3 Magical Darts, each confirmed to hit and deal 2-5 Force Damage.
• Burning Hands: Each flammable target is hit with 3-18 Fire Damage.
• Ray of Sickness: Call forth a sickening energy and possibly Poison the target.
• Thunderwave: Release a wave of thunderous force that pushes away all creatures and objects.
• Mage Armor: Protect a target from attacks by increasing its Armour Class by 13 + its Dexterity modifier.

Level 3/4: Ray Of Frost Cantrip And Ability Improvement Feat

The following few levels primarily include you unlocking even more spell slots for Gale to utilize. With access to Level 2 spells, you’ll now have a lot more variety between choosing offense, defense, healing, and buff alternatives, adding to the already diverse build.

1. You unlock two more spell slots and an extra Prepare Spell slot for Level 3, and keeping up the trend with Evo Spells, you should equip the following:
   • Shatter: Damages all nearby enemies and objects and enforces Disadvantage on inorganic creatures’ Saving Throws.
   • Prayer of Healing: Heal all allies you can see.
2. It’s better to put Shatter into the Prepare Spell list from these two to make it even more potent in terms of damage.
3. Moving to Level 4, you can learn two more spells, ideally Darkness and Scorching Ray, since they’re related to Evocation, and equip the Ray of Frost Cantrip, reducing the target’s movement speed by 3m.
4. Furthermore, you can also choose your first Feat ability at this level, where you should select the Ability Improvement Feat for raising your stats.
5. This ability gives two skill points you can dump into Intelligence since it’s the primary casting modifier that any Wizard, including Gale, would use.
6. With the extra INT levels, you gain a considerable boost in your spells’ damage and their chances to land a regular and critical hit. 

Level 5/6/7: Learning And Preparing More Spells

From Level 5 and beyond, you’ll only be learning two spells each time, one of which you can also put into the Prepared list to optimize your build’s efficiency further. Unlike the previous levels, you now gain access to Level 3 spells of various types, which can impact Gale’s combat to a much higher degree.

1. Starting with Level 5, you should for a lethal spell combo by selecting Fear, a Level 3 Evo Spell which projects a frightening image that causes targets to be fearful, and Fireball, a large AoE projectile that emits Fire Damage.

2. By putting Fear into your Prepared Spells, you can stunlock enemies, making them easier to hit, after which you can cast the Fireball, which can easily knock off several enemies from the battlefield.
3. For Level 6, you should focus on mobility and passive effects by grabbing Grant Flight and Mass Healing Word to fly onto different allies in your party and heal them mid-combat.
4. Furthermore, you also gain a new Subclass Feature, Potent Cantrip, which improves your cantrips by making them harder to evade. 

5. Finally, once you hit Level 7, you can work with Level 4 spells and balance Gale with defensive abilities by choosing Haste, making you or an ally faster and harder to hit.
6. You can also pick the Remove Curse spell to remove all the Curse and Hex-related debuffs from you or your allies.

Level 8: Elemental Adept (Fire) Feat

Once you approach Level 8, you can choose your second Feat ability for the Human Wizard, and this time it’s better to stick with his main benefit, damage. The aforementioned Fireball at this stage would likely be your best spell for damage output, so to make it even more efficient for Gale and his build in BG3, one of the recommended Feats is Elemental Adept, specifically the Fire variant for its Feat Passive.

1. Elemental Adept (Fire) makes mobs less resistant to fire-based attacks like Fireball and Scorching Ray, making fire-immune enemies go down to resist and nullifying enemies with average fire resistance.
2. As such, this is the perfect addition to Gale’s party since fire is one of the more common resistances, and Fire spells typically tend to be the most helpful damage-wise.
3. Besides the Feat, though, you can now learn up to two Level 4 spells with each progress, and with the recent upgrade to your fire attacks, you should go with the following for Level 8:
   • Wall of Fire: Create a blazing wall of fire, burning anyone who dares stand too close.
   • Conjure Minor Elemental: Conjure a minor elemental to fight alongside you.

Level 9/10/11: Stronger Spells And Acid Splash Cantrip

Upon reaching Level 9, you’ll access Level 5 spells, most of which contain highly versatile Evocation abilities. These spells range from protecting to giving passive AoE attacks, where meeting certain conditions gives you a massive bonus on HP or attack power.

1. For Level 9, the only major magic you need is the Wall of Stone, a defense-based spell that raises a solid non-magical wall you can use to buy time to recover HP or let Gale offer temporary buffs.
2. As for the other slot, you can choose whichever one you like, although I’d suggest going for the Dispel Good and Evil spell because of its unique ability to eradicate a debuff from any ally completely.
3. Moving on to Level 10, you’ll get your second Cantrip, with the premium choice being the Acid Splash with its wide AoE and decent damage, along with another two regular spells, Flame Strike and Destructive Wave. 
4. Also, this is where you’ll unlock another Subclass Feature, Empowered Evocation, which lets you add your Intelligence Modifier to damage rolls with Evo spells.

5. Finally, Level 11 brings you Level 6 spells with a massive jump in effectiveness and strategical advantage over their predecessor, so the best choices here include:
   • Chain Lightning: Strike an enemy with lightning; three more bolts will leap from the target, electrifying as many as three other enemies within 18m.
   • Otiluke’s Freezing Sphere: Create a ball of churning ice that can be launched instantly to generate a frosty explosion or stored for later use.

Level 12: Magic Initiate (Wizard) Feat

This is the max level for most classes in Baldur’s Gate 3, and also where you’ll get to pick the third and final Feat ability for Gale. Most players here go for ASI and boost their stats like Intelligence or Wisdom. However, since we’ve expanded Gale’s offensive capabilities so far, it’s best to choose the Magic Initiate Feat and its Wizard Feat Passive.

1. With this Feat, you learn two additional Cantrips and a Level 1 Spell from the Wizard’s Spell list, which can only be cast once per a Long Rest.
2. Magic Initiate is typically used for Multiclassing and adding versatility, and although you don’t need the former advantage, the latter can be useful against enemies with different immunities.
3. You can select Fire Bolt and Produce Flame for the Cantrips because of its incredible base damage and because it gets a buff from the aforementioned Elemental Adept Feat from Level 8. 
4. However, it’s worth noting that these Cantrips and the spell rely only on Intelligence, so you must focus only on that specific stat if you want to utilize these newly acquired abilities properly.
5. Of course, besides the Feat, you also learn two more Level 6 spells, and the optimal choices here include:
   • Globe of Invulnerability: Creates a barrier that makes creatures and objects inside it immune to all damage.
   • Wall of Thorns: Create a 60-ft-long, 10-ft-high, 5-ft-thick wall of brush that slows movement and can inflict 7d8 piercing damage (damage/lvl).

Best Potions For Gale’s Build

Other than progression-based items and abilities, you can diversify your build with potions. These consumable items can add temporary buffs like letting you gain resistance, replenishing HP, boost stats, and much more.

Considering how Gale’s spell and Feat selection has been thus far, the prime choices for potions include the following:

Recommended Scrolls For Gale

Besides potions, scrolls are another consumable item that you can use to learn spells and comes without class restrictions. Like potions, you can find most of them randomly from chests, bodies, enemy encounters, and specific locations like the Blighted Village.

You can only use scrolls once per battle, making them a minimal resource, and you can find the top-notch scrolls for Gale to learn from the list below:

That wraps up this detailed guide on the best BG3 Gale Build, covering his level progression, feats, spells, and recommended consumables to be reserved for him. As seen, this companion mainly relies on his spellcasting and spell collection, like most in-game Wizards. So to gain further knowledge on this diverse class and character, visit this Subreddit Post to get ideas on Multiclassing Gale. 

Learn more about other intriguing recruitable companions in Baldur’s Gate 3 from this guide on the best Shadowheart build. For your melee-focused party members, make the most out of them by equipping the best Greatswords. And if you want to turn your attention to relationship-building instead, consider reading up on all the Romance options in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Next:

• Baldur’s Gate 3: Gandrel Choices
• Baldur’s Gate 3: Stone Disc Puzzle
• Baldur’s Gate 3: How To Unlock Gilded Chest
• Baldur’s Gate 3: How To Get The Owlbear Cub