This article was originally published on A Little Bit Human.
When it comes to starting up a lengthy RPG campaign, the most important choice at the beginning is always which class to pick. Baldur’s Gate 3 is no exception. The most fun Baldur’s Gate 3 classes will have you shapeshifting into bears, answering every dialog query with Eldritch Blast, or throwing your own allies against enemies once you’ve run out of weapons to throw (thank Lolth for Barbarians).
Of course, you can always min-max and power-game as is the case with any Dungeons and Dragons-based video game. But half the fun of D&D campaigns– Baldur’s Gate 3 included, is messing around with the rules and making happy accidents. The world is your oyster as long as you pick the most fun Baldur’s Gate 3 classes.
From most to least, these are our picks. On a side note, the classes that aren’t featured here (there are 12) were excluded either due to their redundant play styles or how similar they are to these ones.
UPDATED: We’ve added more surprise classes.
Barbarian
Sure, spellcaster classes can toy with reality once they’re at a high enough level, but Baldur’s Gate 3 caps at level 12 for its Dungeons and Dragons 5E ruleset. And in that low- to mid-level gameplay, one meathead class shines for their blunderous ways to achieve victory; as far as meatheads in Dungeons and Dragons go, the Barbarian is prime rib.
He can make your ribs hurt from laughter with all the Barbarian shenanigans both in and out of combat.
We did mention that you can yeet your Gnome or Dwarf allies right into enemy clusters because… because!.
Sure enough, your dialog options are ‘strong.’ Who needs the art of conversation when you can just threaten to throw everyone off a cliff?
The murder hobo potential is highest here and physical obstacles? They don’t exist, as long as you don’t roll a ‘natural 1’ and faint from headbutting the gate of an enemy camp. There is a high chance of failure for puzzle-related stuff, but when in doubt, just intimidate everyone with grunts and shouts.
Bard
This was to be expected.
You can practically wiggle your way out of combat or dangerous encounters by seducing everyone like a proper lute player. If that doesn’t work, just run back to your whole party and sing for them while they deal with the consequences of your failure. That counts as buffing them up.
They also get some of the spells from the Wizard or Sorcerer spell compendium, making them flexible and versatile. This practically makes Bards a jack-of-all-trades class. And with abilities like Cutting Words, you’d be murdering enemies twice.
More importantly, Bard is a Charisma-based class, meaning you’ll have plenty of success with in-game dialog.
Sorcerer
For your plethora of roleplaying options, picking a Draconic or Wild Magic Sorcerer paired with an interesting elf class (like the Drow) is a goldmine for creativity.
The dialog options are interesting here, to say the least. And you can use your lineage as a Sorcerer to a certain effect in order to trigger some different outcomes.
Let’s not forget the fact that you can also use magic. The Draconic Sorcerer, for example, is a certified pyromaniac who can just throw Fireball at most problems (including disagreeable party members, both AI or humans). They’re like the spellcaster version of the Barbarian.
Meanwhile, Sorcerers also regularly dip into the Charisma stat, meaning you shouldn’t have problems seducing your way into enemy camps while secretly threatening to commit arson.
Druid
Anyone who has tried out the Druid in Dungeons and Dragons will know that variety is this class’s biggest strength. Once you have the wildshape variants going, you have a million ways to approach both combat and roleplaying encounters.
You can turn into some of the most common animals and use their forms to spy or eavesdrop while turning into a bear for combat and other stuff that should or shouldn’t involve bears.
To that end, there’s no shortage of fun to be had as a druid in Baldur’s Gate 3. Druid also has this special ability to be able to talk to animals, similar to a perk in Larian Studios’ older game, Divinity: Original Sin 2, which is Baldur’s Gate 3’s spiritual predecessor.
Paladin
It might be a cliché to create a heavily-armored Paladin who now sees most enemies as heretics and have them talk and act like a Warhammer 40K Space Marine, but it’s still no doubt fun.
It also helps that the Paladin is one of the effortlessly strongest classes in the game, thanks to their Smite ability. If you get lucky with a D20 roll in-game, you might just even kill enemy bosses in one hit.
And thanks to the Paladin’s varied and thematic subclass options, there are plenty of interesting ways to approach this class. Regardless, you’ll be talking your way in and out of combat as well, thanks to their Charisma main stat.
If you want a fun melee class that isn’t as crass as the Barbarian but isn’t as generic as the Fighter, then Paladin it is.
Warlock
Warlocks, thanks to their Charisma primary stat, are also impressive and suave characters outside combat. And the magic allows for a lot of creative and resourceful avenues of exploration in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
For combat, this is where the Warlock can get rather formulaic; Eldritch Blast is just too powerful to ignore, and it’s meta for most Warlock subclasses to rely on it. You can use other cantrips or spells, but when you need to delete an enemy in an emergency, no spell works better or is cheaper than Eldritch Blast.
Still, the Warlock’s spells are the edgy variants of the Sorcerer and Wizard spell pools, and you’ll find yourself having plenty of solid combos with Darkness on demand and some shadow shenanigans.
Ranger
If you want to bring your pet along in Baldur’s Gate 3, you can give them a digital representative thanks to the Ranger and its animal companion selection. This makes combat and world exploration segments for Rangers too dynamic and even endearing, especially when your animal companion succeeds in their rolls.
Moreover, that animal companion counts as another party member, which is practically an advantage.
If you ever get tired of your bow, you can also switch to a melee build, and the Ranger would still be competent.
Rogue
There are lots of locked doors, chests, and pathways in Baldur’s Gate 3, and having to save scum, again and again, trying to roll the dice on that ornate chest is not fun.
So in subsequent playthroughs, or if you prefer the cloak-and-dagger types, better pick a Rogue. Regardless of their subclass, Rogues can and will excel in Sleight of Hand scenarios.
You can easily get a +10 or +12 for lockpicking and trap disarming, making exploration a breeze. Moreover, sneaking is exciting. You can pickpocket everyone’s underwear (including those of your companions’). Just don’t get caught.
Monk
Monk is one of the most unique classes in the game and there’s a broken build for it going around right now that can solo the game on Tactician difficulty. By ‘solo,’ we mean a single person in the party– wrecking in-game armies.
It’s all thanks to the Ki Points system and a certain Feat called Tavern Brawler which makes Unarmed combat overpowered. But we’re min-maxing here.
What about Monk made with plenty of mistakes? Well, the answer is that it’s still fun thanks to the numerous Unarmed combat items and the Ki Points. Besides, punching a dragon to its death never gets old, and even Barbarians aren’t that mad.
Or You Can Just Multiclass Everything
Too hard to pick favorites? Well, the good news is that Baldur’s Gate 3 is by far one of the most faithful digital conversions of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition ruleset. So you can multiclass.
Actually, the game likely won’t even stop you from picking all the classes we mentioned here (and those which aren’t here). That ought to be the undisputed jack-of-all-trades though it’s probably closer to joker-of-all-trades since you’ll be a walking disaster who can’t pick a lane. All the more fun for Baldur’s Gate 3.
