BG3 Top 10 Builds – Baldur’s Gate 3 (2025)
Get inspiration for your Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough, as we explore the top 10 builds for BG3 in 2025. These builds work great on any difficulty, from Story to Honour mode, and are a great place to look if you’re struggling with BG3’s combat or just out of ideas.
While it’s been out for a while now, Baldur’s Gate 3 keeps pulling in new and returning players with its excellent roleplay elements and DnD-inspired combat. In this guide, we’ll provide ten powerful builds that are also easy to learn and play, along with links to the guides for any builds you’re interested in trying out for yourself. If you’re struggling with the game or looking to try something different, we have something for everyone in this top 10 builds list for BG3.
Table of Contents:
1 – Battle Master Fighter Build
The High Damage Battle Master Fighter Build beats all the others in the Top 10 Best BG3 Builds, ranking as the strongest build in BG3. Despite having no spellcasting ability, the Battle Master can do pretty much everything. Utilized correctly, the Battle Master can carry your party through many encounters in the game, almost taking out entire enemy groups single-handedly.
When fully levelled up, the Fighter has two Extra Attacks, which means each Action gives you three attacks with your weapon. Combine this with the Haste buff, either from the Haste spell or a Potion of Speed, and you increase this to six attacks per turn. Combine it with an Elixir of Bloodlust, too, and you’re up to nine attacks in a turn (seven if you’re playing on Honour mode, which nerfs the Bloodlust Elixir). Add one more attack onto that total once you’ve found a way to make attacks with your Bonus Action. You can also gain an additional Action once per Short Rest with the Fighter’s Action Surge. That’d make for a very ridiculous 13 attacks in a single turn, or 11 on Honour mode. Of course, this is a best-case scenario, and you won’t always be able to do it, but it helps to demonstrate how strong the Fighter can be, even for players who are still learning how to play BG3.
The Fighter just scales so well with the buffs provided by Alchemy that it can pull massive weight in your BG3 playthrough. The Battle Master subclass adds even more to your Fighter, allowing you to deal bonus damage and debuff enemies with your attacks with special actions like Menacing Attack and Trip Attack.
Another highlight of our Fighter Build is the combination of the Gauntlets of Hill Giant Strength and the legendary Balduran’s Giantslayer greatsword. These Gauntlets give you a massive Strength Modifier of +6, which applies to all of your melee attacks as bonus damage. The Balduran’s Giantslayer then doubles this bonus damage to 12, making your melee attacks extremely deadly.
The only weakness of this build is that you need to reach the melee range of enemies to be in your element, but there are plenty of ways to deal with this problem, so it’s not a big deal after the early game. Once you’re in melee, you’re an absolute machine, and not many enemies in the game can stand up to your enormous damage potential.
To find out how to create this powerful melee build for yourself, check our Battle Master Fighter Build Guide.
2 – Evocation Wizard Build
The Evocation Wizard Build comes a close second. It doesn’t have the raw damage output of the Fighter Build, but it makes up for this with its incredible versatility, and it does have decent damage output in situations where you require AoE damage, too.
The Wizard has access to an unmatched range of spells that can perform just about every task you could want. AoE damage, single-target damage, buffs for your allies, debuffs and crowd control to hinder enemies, spells to manipulate minds, open locks, fly, teleport, and much more. When you don’t need to cast a spell on your current turn, you can keep chipping away at enemies with Cantrips like Fire Bolt, which scale up for more damage as your Wizard levels up. The Wizard has so many powerful spell options that we won’t discuss them much here, but at Level 5 you should grab the Fireball and Haste spells. Fireball gives you great AoE potential, and Haste allows you to buff a character with more Movement Speed, Dexterity and an extra Action on each turn – it is a great pairing with a powerful melee damage dealer.
We went with the Evocation Wizard because it adds some extra damage to your Evocation Spells (the Evocation School contains many of BG3’s best damage spells), but you can swap to another subclass and do just as well.
Our Wizard Build combines items like the Hood of the Weave and the Helldusk Gloves to maximise your Spell Save Difficulty Class and Spell Attack Roll stats, making your spells as difficult as possible for enemies to dodge or resist.
The main difficulty of the Wizard is the fact that it’s quite squishy and can feel a little frustrating because of this, especially in the early-game when you don’t have many good spells yet. The best way to overcome this is with experience and planning – try to use the map to your advantage and keep your Wizard in an advantageous position, away from melee enemies and out of the sight of strong ranged enemies.
To learn more about creating a formidable and versatile spellcaster in Baldur’s Gate 3, check our Evocation Wizard Build Guide.
3 – Circle of the Moon Druid Build
The Druid Build allows you to manipulate the powers of nature with elemental magic, damaging and hindering enemies. It is also good at buffing and healing allies, and you can use Wild Shape to transform into a large selection of animals and creatures, boosting your melee prowess or providing you with other bonuses, such as the ability to fly or squeeze through tight spaces.
Our Circle of the Moon Build focuses on the animal transformation side of the Druid class, but if that’s not to your taste then you can easily respec to the Circle of the Land, gaining a wider selection of spells. Even without making the switch, the Circle of the Moon Druid is a great spellcaster, able to cast repeatable AoE spells like Moonbeam and Call Lightning in the early-game, and later on becoming able to dominate the battlefield with Insect Plague and Sunbeam, two of the strongest spells in the game.
This build is very versatile and can offer something to players of just about any playstyle. The only difficulty is that it is a bit tricky in the early-game, when you don’t have access to your best Spells and Wild Shapes yet. It also doesn’t have any good attacking cantrips, with Thorn Whip being the only option. But the lack of a Cantrip isn’t too much of a big deal when you can transform into a sturdy animal like the Bear or Owlbear instead.
For the Circle of the Moon Druid, we combined the Armour of Moonbasking with the Shapeshifter’s Boon Ring to give you a lot of defensive buffs when you are transformed into one of your Wild Shapes.
To find out more about this build, see our Circle of the Moon Druid Build Guide.
4 – Berserker Barbarian Build
Our Berserker Barbarian Build is influenced by our Fighter Build mentioned above. Both of them are melee-focused damage dealers, so in many cases, what works for one works for the other. The Barbarian uses the rage mechanic to improve its damage output and gain Resistance to physical damage from enemy attacks. While many builds struggle in the early-game until they’ve unlocked their best Actions and Passives, the Barbarian increases in power faster than any other class, having all of its most important class and subclass tools unlocked by Level 5.
The Berserker also gains access to Reckless Attack, allowing you to roll attacks with Advantage (can be triggered automatically when you are about to miss), but giving enemies an Advantage when attacking you. You can also use Frenzied Strike, giving you an additional attack using your Bonus Action on every turn. The Berserker Barbarian can’t attack quite as rapidly as the Fighter Build, but it still has awesome damage potential and is just as fun to play.
The main weakness of the Barbarian is that it’s quite one-dimensional, lacking any support potential. But it does an extremely good job as a melee heavy-hitter.
Learn more about how to create this build with our Berserker Barbarian Build Guide.
5 – Eldritch Blast Warlock Build
While the Warlock doesn’t have the same range of spells available to the Wizard, it offers a different take on spellcasting and an interaction with Cantrips that can be very strong indeed with the correct setup.
Our Warlock Build focuses on applying as many buffs as possible to the Eldritch Blast Cantrip, which can be improved to get much better damage (eventually firing three projectiles instead of one, with each projectile triggering damage bonuses separately) and to knock enemies back. It has a great synergy with the Hex spell, which is available from very early in the game and allows you to apply extra Necrotic Damage to each hit from Eldritch Blast. Since it knocks enemies back, you can also put down AoE effects like Hunger of Hadar and knock enemies into the area, damaging, slowing and blinding them. Alternatively, you can just knock enemies from high places.
The main issue with this build is that it runs into a block against enemies who are resistant or immune to Force damage, but in these rare situations, you can focus on using your spells to buff allies or debuff the enemies instead.
The Potent Robe is a must-have item for this Warlock Build, adding 5 damage to every projectile of Eldritch Blast. This works well in tandem with the Mask of Soul Perception, which gives a +2 boost to your Attack Rolls, making Eldritch Blast more likely to hit its target.
This is a great damage dealer that is easy to play. To learn more about how to create it, check our BG3 Warlock Build Guide.
6 – Radiant Light Cleric Build
Our Radiant Light Cleric Build for BG3 is one of the best support builds available. It makes use of the Radiating Orb debuff to apply crippling debuffs of up to -10 to enemy Attack Rolls, which can cause even formidable enemies to blunder and miss all of their attacks. To apply the debuff, you just need to deal Radiant Damage to an enemy, and we’re not short of methods to do this.
This build is quite gear-dependent, but the good news is you can already start collecting the required items in Act I. The Callous Glow Ring makes for a great synergy with Radiating Orb equipment like the Luminous Armour, allowing you to quickly apply many stacks of the Radiating Orb debuff.
Some of our best options for applying the debuff are the Sacred Flame Cantrip, the Spirit Guardians Spell and the Radiance of the Dawn Action, which is unique to Light Clerics. You also have access to a range of other powerful spells, including Aid, which can give your entire party up to 30 extra max HP, and Insect Plague, which deals heavy AoE damage and slows down anyone trying to move through it.
The main disadvantage of the build is that it’s rather weak in the first few levels, relying on Radiance of the Dawn to do most of its heavy lifting. Once you reach Level 5 and gather a couple of pieces of the required equipment, the build gets much stronger, and by Act II, it’ll feel like a huge asset to your party.
To learn how to make and use this build, check our Radiant Cleric Build Guide.
7 – College of Lore Bard Build
The College of Lore Bard Build is a real jack-of-all-trades, and also a great choice for roleplay, which its excellent Charisma and the ability to play music with various musical instruments that you can find in BG3.
The College of Lore Bard has an increased focus on spellcasting, since the Bard has a decent selection of spells to cast. You can also use Bardic Inspiration to buff your allies, and do a decent job at fighting in melee when you need to.
Our Bard Build uses items like the Robe of the Weave to increase your Spell Save Difficulty Class, making your spells harder to resist. Thanks to its amazing versatility, the Bard is the perfect class for beginners, so if you’re new to the game and want to try out everything that the game has to offer (and have good odds at swaying NPCs with persuasion or coercion), then the Lore Bard is the ideal choice.
To find out more, see the College of Lore Bard Build.
8 – Oath of Ancients Paladin Build
The Paladin is another popular choice for beginners and is just as good for roleplay as the Bard. With the Paladin, you gain your powers from your sacred Oath. The Oath’s wording depends on your subclass, but if you break the Oath with your in-game actions, this can have consequences for your character and potentially allow you to switch your subclass to the Oathbreaker Paladin. While our build isn’t designed with that in mind, it will still work fine if you decide to go in that direction during your playthrough.
Paladins use powerful Smite spells like Branding Smite to buff their attacks, giving them the potential to deliver deadly bursts of damage to foes. Even if you set it up offensively, with a two-handed weapon, the Paladin isn’t quite as good at dishing out melee damage as the Fighter and the Barbarian is, which is why we’ve ranked it down in number 8. But it is still good, and it’s very fun to play – Larian did a great job at making the Smite spells look and sound “juicy”.
Since the Paladin can wear Heavy Armour without any consequences, we can also build the Paladin into an absolute tank, thanks to items like the Helm of Balduran and the Adamantine Splint Armour. Combined with a heavy-hitting weapon like Balduran’s Giantslayer, you’ll be a sturdy and dangerous melee fighter who can also support your party with some basic spellcasting when needed (the Paladin isn’t nearly as good at spellcasting as full casters like the Cleric, though).
You can learn more about how to create this Paladin build on our Oath of Ancients Paladin Build Guide.
9 – Thief Rogue Build
The Thief Rogue Build is a bit tricky to rank. The Rogue’s very strong damage bonuses when attacking from Stealth mean that in the hands of a skilled player who wants to push the class to the limit, it is extremely powerful, arguably more so than anything else on this list. But the vast majority of players aren’t going to play it that way.
However, you should still utilize stealth as often as possible, as the Rogue will perform much less effectively without sneaking. Getting the bonus damage from stealth attacks is an essential part of the Rogue’s toolkit. The Thief gives you an additional Bonus Action, which creates a simple yet powerful combination with the Rogue’s ability to Hide, Dash or Disengage using a Bonus Action instead of a regular Action. This means you can outrun most enemies easily, and can dash, hide and make a sneak attack on the same turn.
In Act III, you can use the Shade-Slayer Cloak and the Mask of Soul Perception to make your attacks more accurate and more deadly.
Find out more about this simple yet effective build on our BG3 Thief Rogue Build Guide.
10 – Wild Magic Sorcerer Build
We finally come to the Wild Magic Sorcerer Build for Baldur’s Gate 3. While the Sorcerer is still a really good spellcaster, it is overshadowed in many ways by the Wizard, who gets a larger selection of spells and can memorise way more spells than the Sorcerer can.
So why use the Sorcerer at all? Well, you do get some fun extra tricks that the Wizard can’t do, thanks to your Metamagic Actions. These allow you to apply various improvements to a spell as you case it, such as adding a second target to a spell that’s usually single-target, or improving the range of a spell, allowing you to make melee spells work at a range of up to 9 metres. The Wild Magic subclass also allows you to generate random magical surges when you cast spells. These trigger random effects on you or on characters around you. These effects or usually beneficial, but can occasionally cause you problems. This adds a chaotic energy to the combat in BG3, so if that sounds fun, you might enjoy the Wild Magic Sorcerer.
Despite ranking 10th on our list, the Wild Magic Sorcerer is by no means weak.
The equipment setup for the Sorcerer is very similar to that seen on our Wizard Build. We’re primarily focusing on gear that improves your Spell Save DC, making your spells harder for enemies to resist.
Check our Wild Magic Sorcerer Build Guide to learn more about how this build works and how you can recreate it in your BG3 playthrough.
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