With his impressive stature, boastful personality, no patience for evil, and his miniature giant space hamster Boo, the unstable Rashemi 
Ranger 
Minsc is easily the most famous among the Baldur’s Gate companions.
In his original iteration, Minsc wore heavy armour, wielded a greatsword, and had a unique-to-him Berserk ability. Without taking anything else into account, this would suggest some Ranger/
Barbarian multiclassing for a Baldur’s Gate 3 Minsc. However, Ranger and Barbarian might be the two least synergistic classes in the game. And Minsc’s new ability scores just about ensure he can’t effectively wield anything larger than a toothpick, nudging him towards a dual-wielding play style.
Considering all this, our Minsc build offers two variants. One that embraces Minsc’s new identity, and the other that goes against the grain and tries to make him into an efficient great weapon master. Neither of these options takes any levels of 
Berserker or even Barbarian, instead simulating Minsc’s untamable nature through certain gear choices.
Companion Build Goals
To start things off, here are our general guidelines for companion builds:
Build Summary
The more natural version of this build combines Minsc’s Ranger levels with a few levels of 
Rogue, allowing him to become your party’s main scout and locksmith.
- Subclass
- Fighting Style
- Multiclass
- 3 levels of Rogue to get the
Thief subclass on character levels 9-11
- Feats
- Key Spells
- Important Gear
- Armour of Agility
- Risky Ring
- Cloak of Displacement
- Horns of the Berserker
When you recruit Minsc, your party will already be either close to or at the level cap of 12. Which means you’ll be doing a lot of bulk leveling right away. At least this will allow you to ignore the early game efficiency of Minsc’s build, instead focusing on his ultimate form.
Because Larian in their infinite wisdom decided to give all companions baseline ability scores for their starting class, Minsc will be best suited for a dual-wielding role. To make him even better at it, we’ll be grabbing three levels of Rogue to get the Thief subclass. This will let us make more attacks per turn, but will also turn Minsc into a great character for exploration. No lock or trap will be able to withstand him. And thanks to 
Hunter’s Mark, 
Colossus Slayer, Sneak Attack, assorted gear bonuses, and just his sheer number of attacks per turn, our Minsc will be dealing a lot of damage. He’ll also be deceptively sturdy, especially when facing tough, boss-type enemies.
Alternatively, thanks to The Dancing Breeze – a special glaive you can purchase in Act 3 – you can still run Minsc as a great weapon master. This particular glaive has the Finesse property, which allows it to use Dexterity instead of Strength for its Attack and Damage rolls. If you decide to use this glaive, we’ll be grabbing four levels of 
Fighter to get the 
Great Weapon Fighting style and an extra feat that will give us 
Great Weapon Master. This build won’t do quite as much damage as the other one and will lack some of the nice utility Rogue levels offer. But, if you feel that Minsc should use a big weapon, it will still serve you well.
Minsc Overview
Right after recruiting Minsc, here’s what he’ll look like:
- Race/Subrace –
Human
- Starting Class – Ranger
- Favoured Enemy –
Mage Breaker
- Natural Explorer –
Beast Tamer
- Abilities
- 12 Strength
- 17 Dexterity
- 13 Constitution
- 8 Intelligence
- 15 Wisdom
- 10 Charisma
- Background –
Folk Hero
- Skill Proficiencies
Spells and Abilities
This section will highlight all the things we’ll be picking when raising Minsc’s level.
Fighting Style
When grabbing your second level of Ranger, you’ll get a chance to pick your fighting style. If you’re going the dual-wielding route, the choice is obvious.
However, if you decide to use The Dancing Breeze, then you should grab 
Defence here, as we’ll be getting Great Weapon Fighting from our Fighter levels later.
Subclass
Since we’ll be getting either 8 or 9 levels of Ranger, the 
Hunter subclass will give us two things:
Few enemies will die to a single hit in Act 3. Which means Colossus Slayer will essentially give us a free 1d8 damage per turn. Not bad.
With Multiattack Defence, Minsc will be your best tank when dealing with bosses and other tough enemies. His AC will be naturally pretty high. Getting +4 AC against every attack after the first will make Minsc nigh unhittable. And the great thing about it is that the first attack doesn’t need to hit for this feature to start working.
Favoured Enemy and Natural Explorer
As a 1st level Ranger, Minsc will have Mage Breaker chosen as his Favoured Enemy and Beast Tamer as a Natural Explorer feature. Upon hitting level 6, you’ll get to choose another option from each of these lists. We’ll be grabbing:
Bounty Hunter will make our 
Ensnaring Strikes easier to land and grant us Proficiency with 
Investigation. Urban Tracker will simply make us proficient with 
Sleight of Hand.
Multiclass
Upon reaching character level 9, we’ll be grabbing three levels of Rogue. Here’s what it will get us (don’t forget to manually adjust your skill selection when grabbing your first Rogue level):
- Proficiency in Acrobatics
- Expertise in Sleight of Hand and Perception
- 2d6 Sneak Attack
- Cunning Action
- Additional Bonus Action
- Resistance to falling damage.
And should you decide to go the Ranger/Fighter route, the four levels of Fighter will give you this instead:
- Second Wind
- Great Weapon Fighting Style
- Action Surge
- Extra Feat
Since you’ll only be getting three levels of Rogue, but 4 levels of Fighter, do keep in mind that the Rogue variant will give you access to the 3rd level of Ranger spells.
Feats
Our feat choices for Minsc are fairly straightforward and mostly just deal with his ability scores.
Ability Improvement
- At level 4, we’ll be putting a point into Dexterity and a point into Constitution.
- Ability Improvement
- At level 8, we’ll be putting two points into Dexterity to get it up to 20.
If you go the Fighter route, you’ll get an extra feat at character level 12:
Spells
Since Rangers don’t get that many spells, we’ll leave the supportive ritual spells to our other casters, instead focusing on things that help Minsc deal more damage and control the battlefield.
Here’s what you should be grabbing:
- Ranger level 2
- Ranger level 3
- Ranger level 5
- Ranger level 7
- Ranger level 9
Equipment
The great thing about us getting Minsc so late in the game is that we’ll basically be able to get him a bunch of powerful end-game gear right away without worrying about his early game power.
- Weapon – Two Light Finesse Weapons
- If you’re going the dual-wielding route, your goal will be to give Minsc two of the best weapons with both the Light and Finesse properties. This basically means the best scimitar and shortsword you can find. Things like Belm, Knife of the Undermountain King, and Crimson Mischief work great on him.
- Weapon Option – The Dancing Breeze
- Sold by Exxvikyap in the Rivington General, this +2 glaive has the Finesse property, allowing Minsc to use it with his high Dexterity score. It’s mandatory for the Ranger/Fighter build.
- Ranged Weapon – Gontr Mael
- Since Minsc is a Ranger with a high Dexterity score, he’ll be pretty good at using bows. As such, this +3 legendary bow is great for him. It will also let him cast an improved version of
Haste on himself once per long rest. You can loot it from the Steel Watcher Titan in the Steel Watch Foundry.
- Handwear – Helldusk Gloves
- Looted from Haarlep in the House of Hope, these gloves offer a nice chunk of extra damage and make it easier for Minsc’s spells to land.
- Armour – Armour of Agility
- Sold by Gloomy Fentonson, this suit of medium armour allows Minsc to add his full Dexterity bonus to his AC score. And it looks cool.
- Headwear – Horns of the Berserker
- Minsc may not be a Berserker here, but he’ll still feel like one wearing this helmet sold by Entharl Danthelon.
- Footwear – Evasive Shoes
- There aren’t that many great footwear options for Minsc in the game. But if you have Evasive Shoes lying around from when you got them from Mattis at the Last Light Inn in Act 2, he could definitely use them.
- Cloak – Cloak of Displacement
- Sold by Entharl Danthelon, this cloak grants all enemies Disadvantage on hitting Minsc until he gets hit during a turn. Together with Multiattack Defence, this cloak will make Minsc very tanky.
- Amulet – Spell Savant Amulet/Amulet of Greater Health
- Found inside the first High Security Vault of The Counting House, the Spell Savant Amulet will grant Minsc an extra 2nd level spell slot.
- Alternatively, the Amulet of Greater Health you get in the House of Hope will set his Constitution score at an impressive 23.
- Ring – Risky Ring
- Sold by Araj Oblodra inside Moonrise Towers in Act 2, this ring will somewhat emulate a Barbarian’s
Reckless Attack feature by granting Advantage on Attack Rolls and Disadvantage on Saving Throws.
- Ring – Strange Conduit Ring
- Since most Ranger spells require Concentration, this ring found inside Inquisitor’s Chamber of Crèche Y’llek will grant you a nice bit of psychic damage.
The Gameplan
With mottos like, “Full plate and packing steel” and “Magic is impressive, but now Minsc leads. Swords for everyone,” you can imagine what Minsc’s role will be in your party. Throw him in the thick of things and watch him chop everything up. At the same time, he’ll be quite evasive for a man of his size. Your best bet is to use him as your tank when dealing with bosses and other enemies that get multiple attacks per turn – Minsc is great at avoiding those.
In Baldur’s Gate 3, for the first time in the series, Minsc can actually summon Boo as a combat familiar. While small in stature, Boo is quite tanky for a familiar and can be great at distracting your foes.
If you get 9 levels of Ranger, Minsc will get access to 
Plant Growth – a great spell that will slow the movement speed of most enemies. And since Minsc is naturally immune to this spell’s effect, he’ll be able to ensure he can get to his foes while they can’t reach your more squishy party members.
