BG3 Bard vs Druid vs Cleric - Which Baldur's Gate 3 Class Should You Play?

so in this Baldur's Gate 3 video we're going to be comparing The Bard cleric and Druid classes and I've already done cleric in the Paladin fighter and cleric video but I compared it more from a martial class to Marshall class comparison you're going to see more of a different angle in this video where we're comparing it to Druid and Bard which are more support type classes so you're going to see how the cleric Stacks up against Druid and Bard when it comes to supporting you know your party so just taking a look at these classes during character creation you'll notice immediately that Bard's clerics and Druids all have the same health so that shouldn't be a deciding factor for you bards have light armor whereas clerics have light medium and Shields and so did Druids so bards are a little bit behind in terms of their proficiencies when it comes to armor additionally bards have proficiency with simple weapons hand crossbows long swords rapiers and short swords while clerics have proficiency with simple weapons and Druids have even less proficiencies with just a number of different simple weapons so in terms of these things Bard's going to come out ahead of cleric cleric's going to come out ahead of Druids so if you're looking at you know which class is going to be better in Marshall combat Bard is a bit ahead and if you're choosing cleric or Druid you may want to take a race or multi-class with another class that has some of these proficiencies if you plan on giving them more martial capabilities when it comes to saving throw proficiency bards have dexterity and Charisma while clerics have wisdom and Charisma and Druids have wisdom and intelligence dexterity is a very good saving throw you're going to use that in combat a lot to avoid AOE spells or to reduce the damage you take for them and wisdom is also very very good this is another one that's used quite often and Charisma isn't used all that often between Bard and cleric so that one's not going to be used all that much but intelligence as someone pointed out in the previous video or a previous one of these is that you know mind players do a lot of mind control so intelligence is not a bad one to have it's probably better than Christmas so Druid probably has the better of the saving throws out of all three classes when it comes to skills bards can choose any three skills they want which is crazy good clerics can choose from all very limited number of skills including persuasion and Druids can choose two skills from a larger pool than clerics but they don't include any dialogue skills doesn't really matter much though in my opinion because cleric and Druid are not typically going to use dialogue simply because they don't use Charisma for their spell casting whereas Bard is a good candidate for persuasion deception or intimidation because they do use Charisma for their spell casting and they have the option of any three skills which makes them the best choice if you want a very flexible class in terms of what you can do outside of combat so let's take a look at Druid first and Druids get a lot of magic that is related to Nature the elements animals stuff like that more so than clerics or bards so when you're talking about the Druid being a spellcaster a lot of their spells are focused in this regard and just like clerics they use wisdom for their spell casting ability modifier which means they're going to want a good amount of wisdom in order to cast spells in combat effectively particularly hostile spells that are targeting enemies and something particularly interesting about Druids is that at level two they gain their wild shape class feature and this allows them to shape-shift into different animals inside and outside of combat so that they have different interactions for instance maybe you change into a baron combat and you have more tankiness and higher melee damage than you would normally as a druid or maybe you shape-shift into a badger outside of combat and then you know disappear under a wall and come up on the other side so there's a lot of applications of these animals both inside and outside of combat a lot of them I don't think will know the entirety of what they can do in terms of you know the possibilities in this game until way later because people get really creative with this stuff and I think you're going to see some interesting Reddit posts and YouTube videos things you can do in animal form in this game that people will just be discovering like weeks and months after this game and that's definitely that separates something that separates Druid from cleric and I imagine there will be a few clerics out there that will actually pick up a couple levels of Druid in order to take this class feature because these two classes both use wisdom for their spell casting this would be a natural Synergy between the two and I can see some clerics picking that up in order to have that feature in the game so then also at level of two Druids are gonna get to choose their druidic Circle and they get to choose from circle of the Moon circle of the land and circle of spores which is the new one in the full game that was not in Early Access the circle the land subclass is a heavily spell casting focused subclass for the Druid and this is for a couple reasons first they gain access to Natural recovery which allows them to regain expended spell slots outside of combat can't regain all of them but you can regain some of them once per day which allows them to cast more spells than either of the other two subclasses before they need to rest additionally they're going to gain access to something called Circle spells which are spells that are added to their spell list that are based on their connection to the land and you get to choose what type of land this Druid is connected to whether that's the forest or the coast or the desert and which region that you choose is going to dictate which spells you gain as you level higher and higher with this Druid subclass and some of these spells are going to be from from the clerics spell list already and some of these are going to be from outside of it so the game spells they wouldn't have access to otherwise and why this is important to know is that just like clerics Druids have to prepare their spells ahead of time before they use them in combat so they may know a lot of spells but if they don't have them slotted in their prepared spell slots they aren't going to be able to cast them in or outside of combat so what's great about these spells that you gain even if they're already on the Druid spell list is that they don't count towards your prepared spells but you can always cast them and this is not particularly hard to do you simply need to be outside of combat you go to your spell list click off the spell you don't want prepared and then click on the one you want and again the ones that are part of your circle spells are always going to be available to you whether they're prepared or not and circle of the Moon grids on the other hand have more of a focus on the wild shape a class feature allowing them to transform with a bonus action which is great for combat scenarios because you can use your bonus action to change form and then still attack with your action in the same turn and additionally they're going to be able to shift into more animals than and the circle of the land or Circle the sports Druid can so they're going to have more varieties of animals and creatures they can change into compared to these other two subclasses so if you really like wild shape and you like that mechanic then this would be the subclass you'd want to choose and then that brings us to circle of spores which is one we haven't seen in the game so we're assuming that it's going to be based off the handbook here we don't know the exact details of it but essentially the way this subclass works is that you gain something called Halo of spores at second level when you pick this subclass that are these invisible spores around you that deal damage to enemies that move into your range if you use a reaction and also increase the damage you do with your melee attacks and as you gain higher and higher levels the impact of these invisible spores get stronger and stronger further boosting your melee damage dealing more damage to enemies healing you or giving you extra health and eventually you'll even be able to throw these spores into like a different area and enemies walking into that area will be affected by them so it's kind of a unique mechanic for the Druid and it's one that you'll be able to play around with separate to your spells and kind of makes the Druid a little bit at least initially want to be kind of in the thick of things where enemies are going to walk into their invisible spores and one other thing I want to mention about the Druid class before I move on to cleric is there can trip called chileli sheleighly allows them to imbue their staff or club with nature magic essentially which allows them to do one to eight damage plus their wisdom modifier in bludgeoning damage and then they can use their spell cast ability for attack roles with their attacks so it sort of transforms your weapon into this magical Implement that's going to do damage based on your wisdom modifier and this 1d8 role and it's going to use you know if you're playing a druid it's going to use wisdom for your attack roll so you don't need to have like high strength or dexterity necessarily if you use this because you can just use your wisdom to deal damage in combat which is something that's really unique to Druids and there's a reason that maybe some other classes might dip into Druid at least one level in order to pick this up like cleric for instance that all use is wisdom they could use this as a bonus action to buff their damage and then they wouldn't need strength or dexterity in order to be able to attack what they could use wisdom which would allow them to just you know crank wisdom higher and put a lot of their extra points in the Constitution or something like that and one important thing I want to note about this is that you don't need to use concentration in order to maintain this right you just cast it and then it's there for 10 turns so it's not important to like worry about concentration you just cast this change your weapon now it's not always useful in some cases if you're multi-classing right because maybe the weapon you have is actually going to deal more damage maybe it's like one d10 or 1d12 plus your you know strength modifier and you have tons of strength so that might not benefit you but this is really good for classes that use wisdom because of that extra wisdom modifier bludgeoning damage and obviously you can use it in a pinch with other spell casting classes because the attack roll at least uses your spell casting ability even if the extra damage comes from wisdom so clerics as I mentioned before and also in our previous video use wisdom as their spell casting ability modifier so they're going to need a decent amount of wisdom in combat and they get to choose during character creation their domain this is sort of like the Divinity or area that they worship as a Divine class and these domains impact a number of things but one of the things they impact is the spells that they gain as they level up each domain has a focus on different types of spells and they're going to gain some of these spells some of them are from the cleric list and some of them are outside of the cleric spellus naturally for instance the light domain gains a lot of fire spells and a lot of these fire spells you wouldn't normally find on the cleric list but they'll have access to them by choosing the light domain so if you want to play a light cleric this is a class that you would want to choose or a domain you want to choose if you pick life domain for instance they have a focus on healing spells and they're going to gain a lot of spells that they would normally gain as a cleric anyway but the thing here is that these spells just like Druid spells need to be prepared and clerics are going to know a lot of spells but they have to prepare their spells normally however their domain spells spells they get from choosing a domain are always prepared for them so they don't count towards their prepared slots so if you chose life domain for instance and you got a lot of healing spells that are always prepared you could put other spells in your slots you know for what you have prepared and you don't have to spend a lot of time putting the healing spells in there so that's one advantage that you gain by choosing a domain as well and another thing that clerics gain is the channel Divinity class feature which allows them to kind of do something that is the embodiment of their God this is usually an AOE for instance if you choose a life cleric you're going to do an AOE heal around you that's going to heal friendly units but for instance if you choose the light domain your channel Divinity is going to be Radiance of the Dawn which does an AOE radiant damage to enemies in the area so instead of healing you're going to deal damage so this is going to vary depending on which domain you choose and besides these things which really help to Define what each domain does each domain has unique class features that are specific to that domain that further kind of dictate what those domains are going to do for instance the trickery domain allows the trickery cleric to use blessing of the trickster which grants another creature advantage on stealth checks as long as they maintain concentration on it so that's going to allow that character to roll two dice when trying to pass a stealth check take the higher the two values and that's going to allow them to remain stealth much more easily and then as they get higher level they're also going to gain the ability to use their Channel Divinity charge instead of what they would normally use their Channel Divinity to do to become invisible if they want instead so the end of their next turn so you can see that the trickery cleric has a bit of a focus on stealth and becoming invisible and also being difficult to hit with some of the Spells they gain from their trickery domain so if you're trying to be a bit of a slippery cleric or more like a kind of like a rogue hybrid cleric then the trickery domain would be a good choice for you and if you take a look at the Tempest domain they actually gain proficiency with martial weapons and heavy armor at level one which is great if you're trying to make a cleric that's more combat focused and they also gain the ability called Wrath of the storm which allows them to deal lightning damage to an enemy that strikes them in melee combat using their reaction up to a number of times equal to their wisdom modifier before they need to take a long rest to replenish this so they can do this many times before they need to arrest to gain this back and that's going to allow them to deal damage in combat even when they get hit which makes them kind of you know tanky not in the way that they're going to be harder to kill although heavy armor may make them harder to kill but they're also going to want to get into melee combat so that they can use that feature and as they get higher level they're also going to gain the feature that allows them to push enemies away from them whenever they deal lightning damage to that enemy so let's say they hit them with that a class feature when they get struck in melee combat they can push that Target back 10 feet maybe that knocks them off the ledge or maybe they cast a lightning spell later on and it pushes enemies backward into each other or groups them up or knocks them off Ledges so that you know domain has a bit of a focus on those things besides the Spells they gain and the channel Divinity of the game you can see how these things further Define how these domains work and the last thing I want to mention about clerics before we move on to the Bard class is that the knowledge and light domains gain at level 8 as a class feature something called potent spell casting what this does is adds their wisdom ability modifier to the cleric cantrips that they cast so if they cast something like sacred flame they're going to add you know plus three or plus four damage to their role with the can trips whereas all the other cleric domains at level 8 gain something called Divine strike which increases the damage with their weapon attacks by 1d8 so they're gonna duel more damage with weapon attacks than those two domains so if you're playing a knowledge or light cleric you're far more likely to cast a can trip when you're not casting a level one two three four spell Etc because you're going to deal extra damage with those however if you're playing any of the other domains you're more likely to use weapon attacks when you're not casting a level one two three four spell Etc because you're going to deal increased damage with your weapon attacks once you've reached level 8 obviously so moving along to The Bard class The Bard class is very musically and inspirationally inspired by acting and putting on performances and is kind of a over-the-top character sometimes in your group so if that's something that you want to play then a Bard would be a very good class for you and bars are also full spell casters just like Druids and clerics and at the same level at level 5 for instance they all have the same amount of spells they can cast four level one three level two and two level three so they're on par with these classes in terms of what they can cast the difference is that they use Charisma for their spell casting ability modifier or these other two use wisdom and just like other charisma-focused classes like Paladin warlock or sorcerer this makes The Bard a great candidate for dialogues because those extra points of their Charisma modifier are going to add to their dialogue options because they're going to have high Charisma for their hostile spells and they also have three skill proficiencies that they can choose from which means they can choose all three dialogue proficiencies or they can mix and match the ones they want and keep in mind also that you can choose your background during character creation which will also give you two proficiencies so they basically can make tailor make a character with the exact five proficiencies they want which is something that no other class in the game can do and it doesn't stop there at level two they're gonna gain something called Jack of all trades which actually makes it so when they make a skill check with a skill they're not proficient in they actually use half of their proficiency rounded down so they're even going to be good at skill checks things they don't have Proficiency in making them just kind of an all-around good character at skills but wait there's more at level three they're also going to gain expertise and two skills that they're proficient with and at level 10 they're going to gain expertise in two more skills they're proficient with which means they're going to have double their proficiency bonus to four skills at level ten so they're going to be phenomenal outside of combat in terms of dialogue checks regular skill checks and you can make bards extremely versatile in this regard and bards also have a feature at level one called bartic inspiration which allows them to buff one of their party members as a bonus action they can't Target themselves behind you it must be a different party member they can add one D6 to the role of an attack roll or ability check or saving throw and that will that buff will last until one of those characters uses that or long rests and this is really good inside of combat to you know buff attack rolls that's good outside of combat to help hit dialogue checks or lock picking stuff like that and also can help prevent damage you know while you're in combat as well and this is available to be used as many times as the Charisma modifier of The Bard so the higher Charisma you gain the more often you'll be able to do this and you're gonna be able to use this that many times and tell you long rest and which point this will replenish and bardic inspiration is just one of those really good all-around things particularly if you didn't bring like a druid or a cleric to help use guidance for like dialogue checks or lock picks or something you can use bartic inspiration sort of in place of that it's a little bit more limited in the fact that you can only use it a number of times before a long rest or guidance is kind of infinite in that way but it's still really good in that way and it can actually provide higher roles than guidance so there is a little bit of you know an offset to that but keep in mind if you did have guidance you could use guidance and this together which would really help you benefit in your roles and also note that bardic inspiration gets more potent as the bar levels up for instance at level five it's going to become a 1d8 to the rules of these things at level 10 it's going to become a 1d10 so this is going to make party conspiration even more effective as they level up bards also gain a class feature at level 2 called song of rest which essentially allows them to use this once per long rest to short rest the whole party that means anything that's replenished on short rest is going to be replenished so like if you fighter who's got action surge uh or second wind and they're both on cooldown or a warlock who spells are expended but you don't have any more short rests you can use your bar to replenish these things making it extremely potent because you essentially get three rep short rests if you're playing with a Bard in your party and one more thing that I want to mention is that bards also gain the font of inspiration class feature at level 5 which allows them to regain their bardic inspiration on short rest or long rest so that means every time they short rest they're going to get it back which is huge right because they get too short rest by default and because of song arrest they can do three short rests which allows them to use this much more often while they're out on a landscape and lastly one thing I want to talk about about is vicious mockery this is a can trip that bards can use so it's a level zero spell they can cast every turn if they want it does a tiny bit of damage but what's really great about it is it gives an enemy Target this advantage on their next attack roll and this is really really important when you're fighting against hard to kill enemies because if you keep giving them disadvantage to return with your Bard they're far less likely to deal damage to your tanky characters that are in Daily range of them or your squishy characters if they're a ranged character that's flinging range spells this is really really important in very certain situations and because bards can use it every turn they don't always have to attack they don't always have to cast a spell sometimes they can do this like if you're fighting like one target for instance that's just really hard to kill your Bard would probably be better off using this every turn to help prevent party damage than attacking or using a spell every turn while your other three characters take care of that that's not always true but it's a very good strategy in tough fights so moving on to the Bard subclasses we have College of Laura College of Valor and new one that was not in Early Access College of sorts so let's take a look at College of Laura first the first thing they gain by becoming a college of lore Bard is three more scale proficiencies so they gained three they wanted at character creation plus two from background that's five skill proficiencies then these three that's eight and they will also gain expertise as I mentioned earlier at this level so they can have eight skill proficiencies two of which that they have expertise on at this level and then they'll gain two more expertise and two of those skills later on when they get higher level that is incredible that means your Bard is basically good at almost every skill check in the game like there's way more than eight skill checks but you can fill in the weaknesses of your party with the skill checks that you need with a Bard and frankly no other class has the flexibility that they do to do that and they also gain at this level cutting Words which allows them to use a Arctic inspiration die you know the 1d6 here 1d8 at level five and one d10 at level 10. It's Gonna Roll one of those and it's going to subtract it from the attack roll the damage roll or an ability Shack like if someone's trying to detect you while you're hiding as a reaction to that they can do this if they want you know every time they have a reaction so that's really important because that can make a character miss one of your targets that could reduce the damage a Target does it can make you not be detected if you're hidden or something like that so there's a lot of application defensively from The Bard as well in this regard and then at level six College of lore bards are going to be able to pick two Spells at the same level as them of another class so at this point it's level three spells or lower they could also be can trips if they want and this is huge because this allows them to really tailor their Bard to specialize at this part of the game and like maybe they pick up Fireball they want to fling some Fireballs with their level three spell or maybe they pick up haste further boost you know other characters there are a lot of options you can pick up guidance if you want in order to be able to use guidance if you don't have a cleric or Druid I don't necessarily recommend that because I think they're more powerful spells but you could the fact that you can is why this is so important and there's a lot of freedom and I think a lot of people are going to labor over just what two they can pick up and this can make a Bard completely different than another bar to this one class feature alone so then we come to the College of Valor subclass and this is a much more martial focused subclass than College of Laura because firstly it's going to give you proficiency with medium armor Shields and martial weapons and this is going to allow your Bard a lot more flexibility in terms of the weapons they could use it's going to make them a little bit more tanky in terms of armor you won't need to be as reliant on dexterity for your armor class and also being able to use a shield means you can further protect yourself from damage and it also changes their bardic inspiration diet to a combat inspiration dial which allows them to do all the things they could before with it but also use the bardic inspiration die to add damage to a damaged roll so before it could be an attack roll or an ability check or a saving throw but now it can also be a damage roll so you can further boost the damage of your party members by using this in combat and probably the most important feature they gain at level 6 is extra attack this means when they use attack as an action in combat they'll be able to do a second attack on that same turn this allows them to catch up to level 5 Fighters level 5 paladins level five barbarians level five monks and level 5 Rangers in terms of the amount of attacks that they can do they get at one level later so those classes will enjoy this sooner but they still have all this spell casting that they can do on top of that those classes don't have that Paladin has very limited spell casting Ranger has very limited spell casting but Bard is a full spell Caster so they can have an extra attack as a full spellcaster if you take this subclass so that's something you might strongly consider and this takes us to quality of Swords which has a focus on martial combat and sword-based combat they're going to gain when they become a college of Swords Bard Proficiency in medium armor and also with a scimitar weapon and on top of that at the same level they're gonna get to choose a fighting style between either dueling or two weapon fighting dueling is mostly used with a sword and shield and two often fighting benefits using two swords so they're gonna kind of specialize in one of those two types of melee combat when they become a college of Swords Bart and they also gain something called blade flourish which allows them to use their bardic inspiration die to increase the damage they deal to Targets in melee combat but then to give them one of three benefits they have defensive flourish which will give you extra Armor class based on what your role on your vardic inspiration die so you're going to get damage and armor class from that one or you can pick slashing flourish which increases your damage depending on what you roll but also allows you to deal the damage of that Arctic inspiration diet to a nearby Target within five feet so you kind of have like a little bit of AOE capability not for a ton of damage but a little bit and then the mobile flourish allows you to deal increased damage but also push the target away from you and then move up to them if you want but sometimes you know maybe you push them off a ledge and they die so that could be really good in certain circumstances as well and then College of Swords also gain an extra attack at level 6 just like College of Valor so these two classes are going to be Marshall focused and they're kind of similar except the College of Swords has more of a focus on its own damage and its own effects whereas getting combat inspiration for college of hour allows you to buff the damage or attacks or defenses of other characters in your party so one is more team focused in the College of Valor and one is more personally focused in the College of sorts so as always we'll talk a little bit about multi-classing before we wrap up this video we'll start with Druid and a few good classes to multi-class with Druid in my opinion are Monk monk gets at level one um unarmored defense which increases the amount of armor class they have based on their wisdom so one level of this depending on what your wisdom modifier is of your Druid could boost your armor class by three or four that's huge just from one level so consider taking that on your Druid if you want this is also a good one for a cleric as well for the same reason because they both use wisdom another potentially good choice for Druid is Barbarian simply because when you are raging and then you are in animal form like wild shape your rage should still apply to the attacks that you do while you're in Wild shape this hasn't been tested obviously we have not played the full version of the game with this combination but Works in tabletop this should work so this would be a very good combo if you're trying to make like a melee Druid that uses wild shape and rage and Ranger also make a very good combo here because of wisdom as their shared spell casting ability and like for instance as I mentioned I think a little bit earlier in this video you could theoretically use like shillelae here and you know use that as your main wisdom as your main stat for attacking in melee combat as well as using your casted spells and then pick up stuff from Ranger like their fighting style level two and maybe pick up like an animal companion at level three we're more focused stuff as you multi-class into their you know subclasses and then when you're talking about cleric I think it's likely that clerics will probably take like at least one level of Druid in a lot of cases in order to gain access to shillelagh especially if they're going to play like a melee uh character um that seems to make sense to me why they would want to do that clerics can also take for instance like a couple levels of fighter in order to gain action Surge and to gain access to like second wind and some more proficiencies as well this could benefit like the weapon selection that they could take for instance so I can definitely see cleric taking something like that and Ranger is also multi-class very well with druds for the same reason they use wisdom as their spell casting ability modifier they can pick up fighting styles from the ranger there are a lot of good synergies between these you could play a ranged Ranger that then casts cleric spells and so this is also a really good combination for a clearing and then moving on to bards bards are typically going to multi-class with other charisma-focused classes this is paladins warlocks which is a popular build called sorelock a lot of times bards take this to pick up like Eldritch blast or something like that or a sorcerer to pick up some different spells sorcers have different spells Than The Bard so that that could be a reason to do that also pick up sorcery points if they want to use those in combat and because two of their subclasses gain extra attack at level six as well as medium armor proficiency and access to other weapon proficiencies they don't really have as much of a need to multi-class with other Marshall classes specifically because you can't stack extra attacks so five levels of fighter and six levels of Bard aren't going to give you even more extra attacks so there's less of a reason to do that I think probably mostly you'll see bards mixed with warlock mostly because of the short rest mechanic the fact that warlocks gained their spells back on short rest and bards can provide an extra short rest that's a huge combination right there and I think a lot of players will probably lean in that direction so that wraps our video for Bard cleric and Druid I hope you could see cleric a little bit differently in this video than in the fighter Paladin cleric video I was trying to take the Caster angle more than the melee angle or Marshall angle in this video to try and show how they stack up as a Caster versus these classes I think I'm only going to do one more of these videos before launch we'll see if I have time to do more the full version of the game is kind of where I'm looking to get the rest of the guys the class guides obviously I want these to be reflective of actually what's in the game because there are a lot of differences between 5e and Baldur's Gate 3 and I don't want to add confusion in the guides that are going to sit on the wiki for years so we'll make sure that we do the full Guides of every thing in the full version of the game but I think I'm going to try and do a fighter Barbarian monk video or a fighter Barbarian Ranger monk something like that I don't know if I'll get four classes into it but to try and compare you know three more Marshall classes and try and narrow that down again if you guys have feedback let me know if this was helpful if there are things I forgot to mention please leave them in the comments below [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Fextralife

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Keywords: bg3 bard vs sorcerer, bg3 bard vs warlock, bg3 bard vs cleric, bg3 bard lore vs valor, bg3 bard subclasses, bg3 bard spells, bg3 bard skills, bg3 cleric vs druid, bg3 druid guide, bg3 cleric multiclass, bg3 bard multiclass, baldurs gate 3 class, baldurs gate 3 class guide, baldurs gate 3 classes, baldurs gate 3 guide, baldurs gate 3 beginners guide, baldurs gate 3 gameplay, baldurs gate 3, baldur's gate 3 bard, baldur's gate 3 cleric, baldur's gate 3, baldur's gate 3 Druid

Id: TwgwafjGHnU

Length: 28min 45sec (1725 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2023