Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Party build

You're certainly correct in that they absolutely don't get *nearly* as much mileage out of Tavern Brawler as they might. Stat Wise, they don't need Int or Cha, and Wis and Con aren't going to get a half boost, so starting with a spread of 16 Wis / 16 Con / 15 Str / 10 Dex / 8 Int / 8 Cha is fine, which then gets Str bumped to 16 with Tavern Brawler, but that's still not that impressive. It means they can throw things in a pinch and be reasonably good with them, but yeah, basically always in combat you'll want to have a wild shape up. At the same time, you don't get the damage boost from Tavern Brawler, which is likely a bug, but either way I think it's still worth it.

Why?
1) Druid has some broken spells, absolutely you want that Spike Growth combo going but you don't want the Scout worrying about it. You also get Hold Person which can give a Rogue and Paladin auto-crits (always disgusting), the elementals are absurdly powerful (especially the water elemental), and even things like "enhance ability" can be useful, particularly to give Cats Grace to your Scout early for advantage on all Dex checks, letting you safely steal for infinite wealth if so inclined. The whole kit is just great. Unfortunately, all of them use Concentration, so you need to pick the right one for the situation.
2) Druid permits early power spiking by being able to Web opponents as a Spider, letting Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master reliably hit and thus trivializing early encounters and combat. Without basically at-will advantage, your damage output with those two suffers significantly, but Druid provides that.
3) The Owlbear has some busted damage output in the right situations, especially if double enlarged doing jump attacks. In fact the part I'm not sure about is Mobile, Athlete may be better. Jumping on your enemies can be not only hilarious, but deadly. If you're going for some of the most powerful options, I feel like that one is up there, the highest damage I've heard from it is 821 damage.
4) The impact of Tavern Brawler on say the Owlbear form, even as limited as it is, should not be underestimated. While enraged in that form you're at 22 strength, so it's +6 to hit. That's taking a to-hit of 10 (55% hit rate) and moving it to a 4 (85% hit rate), or a 54% increase in damage. It won't always be that good (sometimes it's already easy to hit) but Tavern Brawler is so freaking busted that even when only half of it works it's a *massive* damage boost. It's so good that I couldn't possibly recommend 'the strongest party you can get' and not have it in there, right? And while there are many other builds that utilize it better, there aren't many builds that do so while being a full caster, or while avoiding sucking up the Str boosts (so they can keep going to your 'face' character instead).
5) There aren't that many good feat options for Druids anyway. Basically what I see as the 4 best options for this would be a Wisdom ASI, Athlete, Mobile, and Tavern Brawler. If you end up doing nothing but jumps the best combo *might* be Mobile *and* Athlete, but otherwise Tavern Brawler just doesn't have meaningful competition for this character and role.

I'm not 100% confident in it, but it seemed to have all the right pieces - good Wis score to cover Wis skills, good support spells to enable and heal others, good Str and can use Tavern Brawler without needing Str boosting items, and has some hilarious and broken tricks it can pull off. Plus flavor for days, ensuring easy access to all the animal stuff and some fun alternate paths to things.

But yeah, basically you pop on a concentration spell, wildshape, and leap into melee, literally and figuratively. Note too that not only can your Caster Cleric shove enemies off cliffs or through spike growth with their auto-pushback, you can also cluster enemies together to be jumped on. Even the normal attack damage isn't bad, average 60 damage per round or 120 damage per round if you self-haste, and it provides a nice counterbalance vs your other two combatants in having very, very reliable damage even against crazy high ACs. Anyways my apologies for the rambling, I hope that makes sense, and I'm still working on the alternate comp.