Quick Links
Where To Find The Githyanki Inquisitor
Githyanki Inquisitor Fight Mechanics
Tips For Fighting The Githyanki Inquisitor
After the Mountain Pass arc in Baldur's Gate 3, you'll likely have inevitably become familiar with the Githyanki—a race with a tragic history of enslavement by mind flayers, ruthlessly committed to eradicating any illithid traces from the world.
RELATED: Baldur's Gate 3: Where To Find The Blood Of Lathander
Regardless of how you navigated their fiercely xenophobic and militaristic society, however, you'll eventually find yourself fighting the Githyanki Inquisitor, Ch'r'ai W'wargaz. Even after dodging the fury of their patron goddess, this final battle can pose a significant hurdle for the unprepared party. This guide provides everything you need to know about the Githyanki Inquisitor encounter and strategies to ensure you emerge victorious.
Where To Find The Githyanki Inquisitor
The Githyanki Inquisitor, or Ch'r'ai W'wargaz, can be found in the Githyanki Crèche Y'llek, and can be considered the final 'boss fight' of the Mountain Pass storyline.
There are multiple routes you can take to approach the crèche—most of which will end with you in the Inquisitor's Chambers, where Vlaakith—the patron goddess of the Githyanki—herself will make a request of you.
If you are traveling with Lae'zel and want to progress her storyline, you'll need to agree to show Vlaakith the Astral Prism—the artefact you've been traveling with this whole time. After this, Vlaakith will ask that you enter the Prism and kill its inhabitant.
While it may seem counter-intuitive to progressing the storyline, you'll need to go along with the Inquisitor and Vlaakith here—refusing their orders will cause Lae'zel to turn hostile, and angering Vlaakith can even lead to an instant total party kill.
Once you're in the Astral Plane, you will meet your Dream Guardian and decide whether to kill them.
Leave the prism without killing your Dream Guardian, and you'll find the Inquisitor and his lackeys ready for a fight once you emerge. There is no way to avoid this fight at this point, but you'll at least have the backing of Lae'zel by your side if you've done everything right.
Githyanki Inquisitor Fight Mechanics
If you've followed the story so far, you'll have seen the fear that the githyanki have towards The Inquisitor—and for good reason: he's a powerhouse.
Once he gets going in the fight, he becomes nearly impossible to hit, becoming a bastion of heavy-hitting damage while amplifying his minions' damage. You'll need to target them in order to properly fight him, a mechanic that we'll cover more in-depth in a later section.
Additional Combatants
The Inquisitor is accompanied by four other githyanki in total: two Ardents (ranged spellcasters), one Warrior (a tanky bruiser) and one Raider (ranged crossbowman).
How you should handle this fight can depend on your party composition, but we advise taking out the Raider first. His high single-target damage, augmented by his Archery features, can easily take out a squishy party member per turn.
You'll want to keep the Warrior busy with a tanky front-liner of your own and focus down all of the ranged attackers before they can snipe your party.
The Githyanki are built to resist mental effects and spells, which is apt given their history with Illithid enslavement—and abysmal for a party that relies on saving throw spells. They're also martially adept, and most can attack several times per turn while nullifying damage of your own.
Here are some common features that some of them share, and which you should look out for during this tough fight.
Githyanki Parry | Reduces damage from unarmed or weapon attacks by 10. Since this feature takes a reaction and can only be used once per turn, any classes with more than one attack per turn (Extra Attack) should focus all of their attacks on the same Githyanki (who will have already used this feature during that turn). |
|---|---|
Perfect Sentry | Makes it impossible for this creature to be surprised. That said, given the circ*mstances of the fight, it's unlikely that you'll surprise them regardless. |
Psionic Empowerment | Allows the creature to inflict an extra 1d6 psychic damage on a successful spell or weapon attack. |
Psionic Revenge | When the creature succeeds on a Saving Throw, it inflicts 1d4 psychic damage back to the attacker. This also grants the creature a +1 to all mental (Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma) Saving Throws. |
All these slivers of psychic damage may seem small, but they can easily add up to devastating measures, especially when the Inquisitor is using his Mindlink feature, which inflicts vulnerability to the psychic damage type. This is explained more in the next section.
Tips For Fighting The Githyanki Inquisitor
Mindsteal Link
The most formidable mechanic of this fight, the Githyanki Inquisitor will use his Mindsteal Link ability on the first turn, connecting himself to every surrounding creature in the room. This has the following effects:
- The Inquisitor gains +1 Armor Class (AC) per surrounding creature.
- The Inquisitor additional 1d4 psychic damage per surrounding creature.
- Causes surrounding (connected) creatures to lose 2 AC.
- Causes surrounding (connected) creatures to become vulnerable to psychic damage.
Needless to say, this makes the Inquisitor a veritable fortress of a tank while greatly debilitating your party. The initial cast of Mindsteal Link will boost his AC up to 23 at least—more if you have any familiars, summons or constructs on the field. This makes him extremely difficult to target with spell or weapon attacks.
This, combined with the Inquisitor's hefty Saving Throw bonuses and four Saving Throw proficiencies, makes him nearly untouchable.
How To Deal With The Mindsteal Link
At all costs, you'll want to avoid bringing in additional creatures or allies that he can siphon AC from—this includes:
- Ranger companions.
- Warlock familiars.
- The Cleric's Guardian of Faith.
- Hordes of Undead—sorry, Necromancers.
Vulnerability to psychic damage is also especially dangerous to have in this fight because each githyanki deals extra psychic damage per attack and succeeded Saving Throw, and the Inquisitor himself also deals extra psychic damage per creature in the room.
You can remove each Mindsteal Link connection in two ways:
- By killing the creature that he's linked to.
- This means you should target the additional combatants in the room before you try to take down the boss—which is generally a good strategy in Baldur's Gate 3 due to the nature of action economy.
- That said, you can't very well kill your own party members (or at least, probably shouldn't), so you'll have to remove those links another way.
- By hitting the Inquisitor with the creature he's linked to.
- Successfully landing an attack on the Inquisitor will remove the link.
Mobility And Target Prioritization
The Githyanki will make frequent use of Misty Step to let them bypass frontline defenders to target squishier targets. Ensure that your casters have protective measures like Mage Armor or Shield.
Terrain And Positioning
Unfortunately, this battlefield offers very little by way of cover. Your ranged party members, however, can capitalize on the elevated ledges to take advantage of the height advantage.
Besides, though the area isn't conducive to creative maneuvers, you can always change the environment to your favor—through aptly placed Smokepowder Barrels or a well-aimed Iron Flask.
General Combat Strategy
Though this fight has a unique mechanic, it's still a pretty conventional combat by Baldur's Gate 3 standards.
Any combat strategies, especially ones that help you deal with multiple enemies, will come in useful while fighting the Inquisitor—except, of course, the ones that are explicitly nullified by his features, such as bringing additional allies.
NEXT: Baldur's Gate 3: What Should You Do In The Githyanki Creche Infirmary
