Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General POLL: What classes have you played in the full release?

Inspired by the BG3 birthday stats (posted here), I thought I'd see if there was an interest in some polls here on the same topics, so we can see how representative of the wider player base we are.

I'll kick us off with a poll on classes.

What classes have you played since the full game released? Let's say current ongoing playthroughs, failed honour mode runs and any characters who made it at least through act 1. That is, not characters you created and just played through the prologue with (yes, yes, I'm projecting).

If I've set the poll up correctly you'll be able to select multiple options. I'm not sure of the best way to handle multiclass without warping the stats: perhaps select the primary class if there is one, or else the multiclass option at the end. And sorry, each class can only be voted for once so this poll won't be representative if people have played multiple characters with the same class.


What classes have you most enjoyed playing? What subclasses did you choose? (I'll perhaps do a subclass poll in future but can't be bothered with the typing today )

What (primary) classes have you played since the full release? multiple choice
	Barbarian
	Bard
	Cleric
	Druid
	Fighter
	Monk
	Paladin
	Ranger
	Rogue
	Sorceror
	Warlock
	Wizard
	Multiclass with no primary class (including jack-of-all-trades)
Votes accepted starting: 24/08/24 09:43 PM
View Results

I hold my original first playthrough as Bard (College of Swords) and Rogue (Thief) and my first successful honor mode run as Sorcerer (Wild Magic) and Rogue (Thief) as the two I enjoyed the most.

Thief/Swords Bard and Wizard with two levels of Wild Magic Sorcery might be my favourite combinations.

My first playthrough was a wild magic sorceror with a few levels of rogue. I loved wild magic, but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to try it on an honour mode run so respect! In my playthrough there were really fortunate rolls (I recall the fight against Raphael was made much easier when half the enemies were suddenly turned into cats and dogs) but I also seem to recall narrowly escaping a few times when magic went awry. Generally, though, sneaky witch-thief characters are my default, and tend to be the first class I play in any cRPG when available.

But my second run as jack-of-all-trades surprised me with how fun it was. I'm really glad I tried that.

Those are the only two runs I've finished. I'm slowly slogging through my first Durge run as a gloomstalker ranger and am just exploring Rosymorn Monastery, but don't feel I've quite worked out how to use him properly yet. And I've just defeated the goblin leaders in my second attempt at my open hand monk honour mode run. He doesn't feel as though he's come into his own yet, either, but I have just picked up the tavern brawler feat and am hoping that'll make him more effective and fun to play.

My favourite class by far is bard. My first playthrough was a halfling lore bard, my current honour mode is a sword bard. I also love wizard and sorcerer and have ongoing games with them. My wizard has two levels in rogue and is a great skill monkey - especially since she is githyanki and has astral knowledge.
I played rogue, druid, warlock and paladin too. Mostly I liked them, though paladin is not for me, I just level Wyll as a paladin (after a certain story element) and/or Minthara, if I can knock her down.
I love spells and skills and being able to do a lot of stuff.

Pretty even across all classes so far.

That wild magic sorcerer was built around spamming cantrip attacks and fishing for crits and the spell slots were mainly for fueling sorcery points into quickened, distant and twinned cantrips, so I rarely rolled for any magic surges (since you only roll when casting levelled spells). But I'll take the respect nonetheless.

I am playing a durge as gloomstalker ranger/warlock in another honor mode run. Since I have beaten honor mode, I've gotten cocky and avoid some of the more OP combinations now, so no Titanstring Bow and Strength Potions for my ranger, he's relying on good old Harold.

I finished all of my Honor Mode playthroughs as Bard & xx, but I enjoyed Bard/Paladin the most. My current one is Sorc/Warlock... it's already act 3 but somehow I miss my bard.

I've played every class and every subclass.

The most fun character I've played was probably the 6/6 Lore Bard/Diviner Wizard. Between Cutting Words and Portent Dice you can mess every enemy's stuff up. (The initial plan was 5 Lore Bard/1 Wild Magic Sorcerer/6 Diviner Wizard but after the entirety of Act 1 and having not a single positive Wild Magic proc I decided to just grab an extra Bard level instead)

Another fun character was my 4 Arcane Trickster/8 Diviner Wizard where the idea was to play more of a gish style with all the items that provide a boost to melee attacks after using a spell/cantrip where I'd use a spell/cantrip and then an offhand attack with a shortsword to proc all the items (Twice because the sneak attack also gets a copy of each proc). Not sure this works anymore since they changed it so that Arcane Trickster can now sneak attack with spells/cantrips.

In terms of sheer hilarity at power levels, Life Cleric was actually pretty silly. Using Luminous Armour, Spirit Guardians and dual wielding there was a lot of Radiant Orbs on everything, to the point where the game crashed on several occasions due to applying so many stacks to so many inanimate objects (Notably in high enemy density areas where Spirit Guardians would trigger a TON of hits, such as the Morgue in the Mindflayer Colony)

In terms of classes I didn't like so much:

Paladin - I just found the class kind of boring. Especially given how Divine Smite > Almost any other use of spell slots. Channel Oath is neat but most of the abilities are just underwhelming. It can be a strong class, especially with Warlock multi for triple attacks and Chr double dipping, I just never found it particularly appealing.

Barbarian - It could be fun. If Improvised Weapons didn't suck completely (Yes, even with busted Tavern Brawler it sucks). Like, messing around in Act 1 smashing Goblins with other Goblins and throwing enemies into pits/fires/AoE spells was silly. It just wasn't very effective (And then if I ever did something like... Throw an actual weapon or punch with my bare fist it's even more depressing due to the sheer power these things have over smashing heavy crates and large enemies into things). Also, the lack of scaling for the effects of Wild Magic Barbarian is sadness. The stuff is cool in Act 1, but falls off hard when even cantrips get their additional dice when leveling up...

Ranger - Honestly, Ranger has always seemed to be in an awkward spot in most DnD iterations... Sort of like some weird mid-point between Druid and Rogue but not quite as good as either (Or a multiclass of Druid/Rogue). Beast Master just felt weak with companions being squishy and having awful accuracy on Tactician (And lacking in the "Companion" feeling). Hunter and Gloomstalker just always felt "Why aren't I just playing as a Rogue?". Gloom + Assassin was kind of funny until Assassin got nerfed (And I got fed up of playing the subclass when there are SO MANY scripted fights and auto-initiating dialogues that trigger even when you're undetected)

I've tried out most, and I like to multiclass.
I've been ignoring Monk and Druid for almost thirty years, as well as Barbarian or Warlock since these have been added.
Might not exist as far as I'm concerned.

In no particular order - Cleric, Bard, Fighter, maybe Paladin or Ranger seem to be my favourites. Best fit with my primitive "don heavy armopur and get stuck in melee" playing style.

I must say, I love druid, but since we get the wonderful Jaheira and she basically never leave my party from there on out, I mostly don't play it. Though I do plan an all druid run at some point.
I did an all bard run and that was hilarious and wonderful.

I'm not sure how to count bard, since I like to get more (especially melee) damage by multiclassing to the point that "bard" loses its identity as such per se.

My main is always Sorceress, it was my first playthrough. I chose Wild Magic, which is both hilarious and frustrating.

Second was a Wizard Necromancer. The Necromancer was more planning and strategy, which I like. Planning out where to get corpses (maybe leaving some for later) and when to long rest so I didn't waste any good corpses. Honestly really fun! Much stronger necromancy spells than if you do not specialize in Necromacy, so viable for strong fights. I took down Orin one-on-one (or one-on-one + undead friends) with that build.

Yup. Even on their own the Sword and Valour Bards stop being casters and become melee brawlers. The line between Eldritch Knight and the "two attack" Bards is blurry ...
But that's with WotC.

Everything except fighter. My real motivation in changing up classes is to see all the different flavor dialogue, but fighter just has no flavor for me.

Not really.

Sword and Valour Bards are still full casters (In the sense they get 1 spell level per level). While EK and AT both are partial casters like Paladin and Ranger. Heck, both of these Bards still even get a Magical Secret at level 10.

It's only if you multiclass Bard into non-caster classes that they stop being casters (Or if you purposefully don't use any of their plethora of useful and powerful spells at all for some reason)

Which is something that could be argued should change. Making these subclasses get reduced spell levels as a cost for getting their second attack so they're not both a full caster AND martial (Though, I wonder how that could be implemented... Perhaps requiring a college choice on level 1 so that only Lore Bards get the full spell level on levels 1 and 2?).

Amen.

I voted on all options except druid as that is the only one on this polling list I have not really played around with, just not had a time to do another full playthrough with a new class.

Looks like bards are winning, especially given the folks who have said they’ve played multiple bards so the numbers in the poll will be understated.

But still a good spread, and I suppose it’s not surprising that the CHA based characters are edging it. Or that druids are lagging with two possible druid companions.

Yup. The auto-switch to Tav for dialogues, which works (most of the time) basically forces one to make Tav the Face.

Those Bards are essentially an eldritch knight more focused on (spell) damage and cc instead of mobility and defense, I can see that. My issue is more my own play style, though -- I could have played any of them as more "bardic", but they tend to lose the class feel in my hands unless I set out to do a bard in a "squishy" spellcaster role.

You can do some very interesting things with college of swords, things an eldritch knight simply can't (like decent spell saves). It still doesn't feel like a bard if you focus overly on the melee. I don't know why that is.

I played everything...

My first choice was a 7/5 Conjuration Wiz/Beast Master Ranger multiclass. Was disappointed with the conjuration school, thought I'd be a menagerie keeper, yet at the time NPCs were freaking out at summons and the act3 optimization was horrid. Therefore I played with the raven only, what a bummer.

I don’t know how others feel, but there is one and only one reason I refuse to use Druids in BG3 - the godawful UI. Shapeshifting messes with hotbar everysingle time, so it is either submitting to compete chaos of Larian’s Ui design, or re-organising the thing after every single shapeshift.

AAA RPG and UI is among the worst ones I have seen in a long time

Well yeah Bard is a full caster now. Definitely a wonderful change. Especially since it still feels balanced.

Except for the part in which skill focused classes (Rogue, Bard, a little bit also Ranger) just rule in BG3. That doesnt refer to combat though.

I think the companions' canon classes play a role. Bards really slot well into the mix with their classes, and since they are so versatile they work with most party compositions.

Yeah, I picked my first character purely based on what I wanted to play, but the default classes of the companions is weighing on what I'll play next time. Rogue is one of the options I'm considering, but I'll definitely be taking Astarion (because I didn't last time) so I'm not sure if I'd want two rogues.

CHA is good for the character who'll by default be leading conversations, although presumably you could have (let's say) Wyll act as the face of the party by clicking the Change Character button when you get into a conversation?

Bard is a poor choice of class for the main character, since the inspiration feature does not work on self. Since in every dialogue our MC gets dragged into the conversation, the civil application of bardic inspiration becomes unavailable.

That's what Shadowheart's Guidance, Persuasion expertise and (non-bardic) inspiration is for

Or play an Eloquence bard that basically can't fail almost all speech checks.

Although to be honest, the odd failure makes the game more fun (maybe not if you lose an Honour Mode run to it, sure).

I honestly didn't need that so far for my bards. I seldom botched a conversation skill. Plus, if you are sword bard, you need your inspiration for those sweet flourishes. I have to literally restrain myself from playing bard every single time.

If I am playing a bard, between expertise, guidance and proficiency bonus I am rolling 21-40 on every speech check without bardic inspiration. There are very few speech checks that you need higher than that to pass.

I've also played several main characters with poor charisma and simply accept failing speech checks sometimes and the results are usually just fun to see.

Plus bard gets Jack of all Trades, which helps a lot with skill checks

Druid and Cleric, the focus was on healing and protecting, with Druid also summoning helpers.

Hmm.

Jack of all Trades is +1 to all skills you dont have proficiency for, and +2 once you hit level 9.

I mean its very much on theme for Bard. And its certainly not nothing. But its not really much of a gamechanger.

I heard of the claim that in tabletop Bard gets this advantage also on pure Ability Score rolls, i.e. if you roll against Wisdom etc. That would indeed be strong.

Aye, in TT (Also, RAW) it is applied to all ABILITY rolls you don't have a proficiency bonus on.

Meaning, not only skills, but also things like Initiative (Which is a Dex ability roll), Counterspell (Charisma ability roll), Concentration (Con ability roll) and direct ability skill checks.

Which is pretty nifty.

In BG3 though, it's just a slight boost to the skills you haven't put proficiency in (Most likely non-Dex/Chr skills like Perception and Insight). Which can make a difference, but will largely be overshadowed by party members that actually have the stats for these skills (Such as having a Cleric/Druid with Perception proficiency finding all the traps for you)

Sorcerer, wizard, druid (not counting 1-2 class dips).

I have a character for every single class c: I'd have even more for each subclass if I didn't run out of save spaces lol

My main is a warlock druid, though I quite enjoy monk, as well.