Baldur's Gate 3 - Let's Discuss Party Composition (Classes & Roles)

figuring out your own character's class and build can be quite the task and many of you suffer from Choice paralysis as you really want your first run to be perfect well let me make things worse for you now as we start to think about full party composition I do want to preface this discussion by saying that just like with your own character whatever your party consists of you can absolutely make it all work in Early Access I've tried all sorts of party compositions I've used three paladins I've used only casters I've done runs with no healers Etc and all of them have worked out just fine there's a million ways to handle situations in Baldur's Gate 3 especially when pertaining to combat because of that even if you don't have what many would consider to be an optimal party you can still make it work in fact without the cliche optimal party you may be pushed to think a little bit more creatively and in doing so you'll likely discover very powerful unique ways to conquer your enemies adding more fun than you ever could have imagined so the most important message of this video is play whatever you want and run with whatever party composition that you want to and if you're playing multiplayer let your friends do whatever they want to do DND and bg3 are designed for this now with all that said though I'm still going to talk about a few things that stood out to me in the crazy amount of time that I spent playing Early Access we're going to focus in this video on the combat side of party composition because if you can't get through a combat encounter sometimes you can't progress the game especially if you die in terms of the RP aspects of this game and even the utility focused aspects I will do a separate video on this topic in the future and I do touch a little bit on it at the end of the video but just note that very rarely do I have a problem creating this type of party comp without also being able to satisfy the RP and utility elements of the game so one role that you may want to consider having in your party is a support character that is capable of healing other party members but more specifically being able to heal from a distance this character can also do some party Buffs such as bless or maybe bardic inspiration as a Bard all the better having a purely focused healer in Baldur's Gate 3 is not necessary in my opinion although you can focus a build on that and it will be just fine don't let that discourage you but one thing that I did find out that I don't want to live without in my party composition is a character that can cast a distance heal now the reason for this is that in Baldur's Gate 3 when a character's hit points drop to zero they fall unconscious and in this state they're not prone onto the ground and they're forced to do what the game calls death saves which are basically behind the scenes roles every round of combat and if that character fails three of those roles they end up dying if they succeed three times they become stable but they're still downed even if that character does end up succeeding that's a lot of time that that character is just knocked unconscious just laying there on the ground not able to participate in combat you're going to want to get them up as fast as possible one of the best spells in this game to Aid you in this is called healing word healing word may not be the most powerful heal in the book Numbers wise but it has a range of 60 feet and it only costs a bonus action to use and of course a spell slot many other spells and even the help action cost in action so if you end up helping a character up from their down state by healing them with a spell or using the help action that's pretty much all that you're doing on your turn with healing word you can heal them while also getting them up from a distance and unlike heels such as cure wounds which are melee range you'll still have your action to spend on your turn so having a character in your party that has lots of spell slots so primary spell casters that also have access to this spell is basically like having a character that's going to just keep denying enemies from getting actual kills now the classes that have healing word on their spell list include bards clerics and druid threads and healing word is a level one spell so you'll have this spell right away at the start of the game now of course there's other ways to pick up healing words such as multi-classing and Feats there may even be some subclasses I'll have to look into that but let's keep it simple here these three classes will excel with this spell and having it handy can be a literal Lifesaver Now The Bard class is a little bit more advanced to play I would say but The Bard offers some fantastic versatility for party support and The Bard class is really good at a variety of different skills in the game as well now since Charisma is a barred spell casting ability bards can also be excellent faces for the party but more on that later the cleric class can really be the ultimate support class if you want them to but the cool thing is there's also a ton of subclass choices for the cleric that allow you to make your cleric a really good damage dealer such as with the light cleric and the light cleric still has access to spells like healing word and bless so you don't have to go all out on support alone but just having the support different options available really make a big difference now the Druid has some great heals but it's also an extremely versatile class and really excels in Battlefield control the only time I would not necessarily consider my druid as my support character would be if I was running a moon Druid as with that subclass I plan on spending most of my time in Wild shape form and while you're wild shaped you can't cast spells like healing word overall having a character that can at least step into the role of support when needed perhaps at the start of combat they toss out a few Buffs and then for the rest of the encounter just being able to heal if needed especially from a distance has been one of the most useful party positions that I've filled the next party position is going to be a character that has good AOE potential now AOE stands for area of effect so a character that can cast or use abilities that affect multiple opponents at one time or have the potential to now whether you do this for damage or Battlefield control or both both of those options can be great but I would definitely say that having a character with good damage AOE can make a huge huge difference in many combat encounters and also save you a ton of time there's several great AOE spells in the game one of the most popular ones is of course Fireball of which the wizard and sorcerer get but also the Light domain cleric and the fiend Warlock the best AOE classes in this game I would say are probably the wizard Sorcerer And Druid with the Druid offering a bit more on the battlefield control side of the spectrum I have not regretted any run that I've done with a wizard or a sorcerer or a land Druid specifically in my group if I were to narrow this down even more the wizard class has access to the most spells in this game game making them phenomenal to fill this position now the sorcerer is a bit more specialized so if you know what you're doing it can be great but with that wizard versatility comes a plethora of spells and you definitely check off several of the AOE ones such as Fireball clouded daggers and shatter if you care more about the heavy damage AOE spells and that fits your style I would consider Wizard and sorcerer over the Druid but the Druid still has some decent damage ones like call lightning and Moonbeam when you have enemies that are grouped up in Baldur's Gate 3 which will happen a lot or perhaps you force enemies to be grouped up with like a choke point getting off an AOE spell can absolutely make that character without a question when the MVP or that day in the game now rather than telling you that you have to take a certain class what I would rather you do is instead just consider taking a spell caster and then keeping an eye out for AOE spells as you plan ahead or even as you level up having a Caster that at least has some of these in their Arsenal can make a world of a difference the next party position that I notice can be a huge help to fill in Baldur's Gate 3 is having a tough front liner character a character that goes right at the enemy gets right in their faces can take some blows and also dish out some damage now you certainly can go the tanky route and focus on having a really high Armor class and really high hit points we can also take the strategy of the best defense being a strong offense if you do go that route though you probably want to make sure that that character has support behind them because they may go down quite a lot the classes that can really excel in this front line roll are of course Fighters paladins sometimes Rangers depending on how you build them barbarians of course and I can't leave out Moon Druids as the druid's wild shape can really make a character extremely hard to kill building a character that has a good armor class perhaps you consider using a shield to boost that even more and getting that character on the front lines to take some pressure off of your other party members is huge if you want to go full tank consider barbarians with their rage and high hit points paladins can also have really good armor classes from their armor and maybe a shield that they have accompanied with their own support spells which make them even tougher to kill and of course Fighters which have really good hit points and can pretty much build into any martial style that they want and then Moon Druids of course if that's your style next up is your damaged focused character and this is your party member that is in your party to kill and if you can build this character to be more single Target focused it can really make a huge difference in a combat encounter you can look at this from a selfish perspective as I want to get kills and I just want to kill everything because I'm a killer or you can look at it from a support perspective to where you're targeting enemies that are threatening your party members and taking them down quickly will save their lives Focus fire is almost always a good thing in games and having a character that can really make an impact on an enemy's hit points will allow you and your party to just drop enemies leaving less of them to attack you of course an enemy wizard with one hit point is still an enemy wizard that can cast Fireball so it's very valuable to have party members that can actually get those kills and quickly this damage role can be filled by a variety of different classes and subclasses in this game but you do got to consider if you want to be ranged or melee focused I would say that ranged focused damage dealers would make the game a little bit easier on you as there's a ton of opportunities in bg3 to get advantageous positions on the battlefield and you just dish out damage without the Enemy being able to even get to you or even see you if you're really good at hiding but I gotta say don't let that stop you from going that melee damage route just be aware that melee characters tend to go down more so having support for them and be important damage classes in this game can include Rogues with their sneak attack Rangers with their Hunter's Mark and other damage boosts warlocks with their hex Wizards as they have every spell you can think of sorcerers with their powerful spells and metamagic barbarians with their Reckless attack and rage damage focused Fighters with their action surge paladins wielding two-handed weapons and dropping Divine smites left and right and even monks with their endless attacks and so on there's a ton of ways you can build most classes into that damage specific role and having one party member really specialize in just killing things will not go underappreciated so that's what I noticed after way too much time in Early Access a character that's at least capable of some support with healing word it's really a fantastic spell and that support character having a few Buffs or even enemy debuffs to at least use once or twice in an encounter can be really beneficial a Caster that has at least a few very powerful AOE options a front liner with decent survivability and then a character who can fill that damage role whether you go in right at the enemy's faces or you do more sneaky damage from afar either or will work now a more advanced topic for a party composition would be specific class synergies but I'll leave that for the official release now just to briefly touch on rounding out your party with classes that have good utility uses and are good at certain or many skills I want to mention that the Rogue and The Bard have a very large list of skills to choose from and they get to learn more skills than other classes and they get to become experts at many skills allowing them to double their proficiency bonuses these are called skill monkey classes in d d and if you really value that consider having a rogue fill your damage dealer spot or a Bard for your support another important more RP aspect to bg3 is having a character that can be the face of your party and handle and now navigate dialogue situations well paladins warlocks and bards are all charisma-based classes so these classes naturally can fill that role quite well now with that said I personally don't care as much about having a high Charisma character because I find that failing a lot of these dialogue checks in Ballers gay three can many times lead to more entertaining results than if you succeed in everything so something to consider and the last thing that I'll briefly touch on but I will go more in depth into this stuff in the future video our classes that have great utility spells now the wizard stands out here big time as they have access to the largest spell list in the game which includes a ton of utility spells Arcane lock gaseous form magehand fly feather fall and the list goes on now some other classes such as the Sorcerer And the Warlock may also have access to some of those spells that I just mentioned but both of those classes are more limited in the amount of spells that that they can learn and then you got to think about classes such as the Druid with its wild shape ability and the utility use that you can get out of the various animal forms turn into a cat to eavesdrop turn into a raven to fly on top of a building turn into a badger to burrow underneath a wall and then of course I can't leave out the Bard class which seems to be in every topic of discussion right now as The Bard gets some of the best utility spells in the game and that's going to be it for this particular video in future videos when I get my hands on the full game hopefully I can give some better visual representation of things that I'm talking about and also I want to reiterate that whatever party composition sounds the most fun to you I really encourage that you at least give it a go it's not as serious of a choice as some might make it out to be thank you all so much for watching and I'll catch you on the next one oh

Channel: WolfheartFPS

Views: 269,974

Keywords: baldurs gate 3, baldurs, gate, baldurs gate 3 gameplay, baldurs gate 3 classes, gameplay, classes, races, baldurs gate 3 beginners guide, balders gate 3, baulders gate 3, boulders gate 3, rpg, rpg 2023, upcoming rpg baldurs gate, crpg, wolfheartfps, wolfheart fps, larian studios, baldurs gate 3 party composition, bg4, build

Id: 48ORydZ2OwY

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 29 2023