Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Are barbarian a tanky class ?

Hi, I'm asking cuz I'm on my second run fo the game on tactician and I'm looking for somethign else then Fighter for Lae'Zel.

I play as Astarion pure trickster (I know thats weak) and picked up the wizard going for evoker and made Shadowhearth a War cleric.

So I'm using Shadow and Lae'Zel as front liner.

Barbarians are quite tanky.

When they're Raging, they get resistance to all physical damage (Resistance meaning they only take half damage). With Bear Wildheart this changes to resistance to all damage except psychic.

In addition to this, one of their main stats is CON so it's easy to get a lot of health (They can also use their CON modifier for more AC if unarmoured).

first lets assume you defind 'tanky' as having lots of hit points + other defences both armour and resistences i.e, this characters main job is to take damage but not die

the most tanky class is Druid but Barbarian or fighter is a good 2nd

all 3 can also put out damage while being tanky but Druid takes longer to learn, barbarian is pretty simple and fighter is the most basic class

Well ... yes and no.

You can explicitly build Barbarians MOST EXTREMELY tanky, more so than any other warrior. Something like this:

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Str 8, Dex 17, Con 16, Int 8, Wis 15, Cha 8

CLvl1 - Rogue 1 - or start as Barbarian and take Rogue next level
CLvl2 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 1
CLvl3 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 2
CLvl4 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 3 - Wildheart subclass, Bear Heart (resistance to all damage types but psychic)
CLvl5 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 4 - Feat: ASI +1 Dex, +1 Wis
CLvl6 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 5 (Extra Attack)
CLvl7 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 6 - Stallion Aspect
CLvl8 - Rogue 2 / Barbarian 6 - (Dash as Bonus Action = constantly get temporary hitpoints every turn)
CLvl9 - Rogue 3 / Barbarian 6 - Thief subclass for extra bonus action (allows to constantly dash whenever you received damage)
CLvl10 - Rogue 4 / Barbarian 6 - Feat: Tough (or ASI +2 Dex, or Ritual Caster for Disguise Self to use Githyanki psychic damage resistance items, etc)
CLvl11 - Rogue 5 / Barbarian 6 (Uncanny Dodge, halven incoming damage once per turn)
CLvl12 - Rogue 5 / Barbarian 7 (lesser Alert feat for free; thats why I wouldnt take Alert with this character, usually an extremely good choice)

It should be noted to get the resistance from the rage you have to attack every round, and to renew your temporary hitpoints you have to dash every round.

You can dash out of combat to get the tempoary hitpoints. You can dash without actually moving to get the tempoary hitpoints. Besides dashing can also trigger certain beneficial effects from various items, too.

Also have ideally an Abjuration Wizard in group as the most tankiest and broken class and use the two lover rings from Act 2 to halven incoming damage additional to the Bear Rage and the Uncanny Dodge, becoming even more riddiculously hardy.

If you can get any damage reduction from items its applied AFTER the damage is halved up to three times, too. Unfortunately this build can neither wear heavy armor nor pick up the Heavy Armor Mastery feat.

You probably should logically use Shields and Medium Armor without Dex bonus limit to get your armor class through the roof, too.

Maybe get psychic resistance through itemization.

You can constantly use Reckless Attack to make yourself the prefered target for enemy attacks. And with high enough armor class you still wont be hit that often.

The advantage from attacks against you from Reckless Attack is the only way in the game to make enemies prefer you as a target, except for certain spells, which are of course a limited resource and only work against single targets.

Using Reckless Attack also gives you very high chances to hit and to crit, and boosts very much any improvement to crit chance you posess though items, allowing for a quite high damage output as well.

You can either use Finesse weapons or Strength Elixiers; maybe default to Finesse Weapons and pick Strength Elixiers for especially tough encounters.

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But there is of course nothing that forces you to go for this. You can also go all out damage with a Berserker build, or some of the other Hearts. For example Wolf Heart is super strong if you have a melee focused group.

Such a build would still be quite tanky, but wouldnt have that great armor class, and would not have the damage reduction that other builds can have, namely from heavy armor and the Heavy Armor feat.

And as a *pure* rogue class, Arcane Trickster is the only choice I would consider. Especially if you make good use of the invisible and permanent Mage Hand, like dropping stuff to the ground, then throwing it with the mage hand, thus de facto giving you more actions per turn, AT is actually perfectly solid.

From a powergaming perspective, both Thief and Assassin are VERY front loaded and only interesting for a 3-5 level dip. Thief naturally combines super well with Open Hand Monk, Assassin naturally combines super well with Gloomstalker Ranger. From a powergaming perspective, pure class Thief and Assassin are among the weakest subclasses in the game, because Rogue got nerfed compared to the original D&D5 definition.

Pure Thief is okay. Extra bonus action for messing around with Cunning Actions is nice. It also gives you some insurance in case you miss your standard action attack, you get up to 2 more tries to get your Sneak Attack damage in for that round. Among other things you can utilize extra bonus actions for (Such as using off hand crossbow shots to break bottles of water you've placed down next to enemies to make them Wet for your casters to blast them apart with Lightning/Cold spells)

If you're not powergaming and using maxed builds and/or abusing multicast Haste... Rogue is perfectly fine. Sneak Attacks do scale pretty well and they're ridiculously easy to set up in 5e (And nothing is immune to them. Freaking Undead and Oozes...)

Rogue only really falls off when powergaming because Haste is so overtuned with Larian's homebrew that getting 3 attacks out of a Fighter (Or Warlock multi) or an additional spell out of any caster is insane... While Rogue doesn't get to Sneak Attack more than once per round...

Assassin is the awkward subclass. Since you have to metagame pretty hard to actually get any use out of its meagre bonuses (Since you have to know where the fights are so you can prepare to sneak up on them. Then of course figure out how to deal with the plethora of forced dialogues that ignore not being visible or the forced fights that occur with or without dialogues)

Still, you're a Rogue so you have your Sneak Attacks but outside that... Yikes. Assassin really ranks up there along with Illusionist and Enchanter for contending for "Worst subclass in the game". It's only real merit is that people actually do use the subclass when multiclassing with Gloomstalker, while both Illusionist and Enchanter simply don't have any merits for builds, be they pure or multiclassed (Especially when compared to the powerhouse Wizard subclasses like Abjurer, Evoker and Diviner)

I didnt claim a pureclass Thief or Assassin would be outright *unplayable*. So yeah they are "still okay".

I said Rogue is clearly underpowered. All other classes are pretty well balanced against each other, but Rogue clearly lags behind.

A Wizard of a subclass you dont fancy (IMHO those are all pretty fine, though Abjuration is completely OP) or a Trickster Cleric or a Valor Bard still is a Wizard, Cleric or Bard. Which is why they arent as weak.

And I'm saying Rogue is "Fine"

When you're not powergaming or abusing Haste, the class is fine. Sneak Attacks do bunches of damage and Cunning Actions are nifty.

Relative to other classes, they're on par with most but the power outliers. Besides things like Monk using Tavern Brawler/WotOH and Narcoleptic Paladins (Resting constantly to have tons of spell slots for Smite spam) and aforementioned broken homebrew Haste... Rogue isn't underpowered at all.

Like even if we compare something like Fighter vs Rogue at high level. You have a Fighter doing 3 attacks of something like 2d6+2+Str (With option for once per combat to do it again with Action Surge). While a Rogue will do 6d6 Sneak Attack + something like 1d6+2+Dex + 1d6+2 (With Luck of the Far Realms allowing once per combat to double that Sneak Attack by way of ensuring a crit). So something like 39 damage for Fighter and 33 damage for Rogue on average (Assuming a "Normal" build of 20 main stat for +5)

That's not a particularly big gap and is a comparison to one of the strongest martials (And classes) in the game.

As mentioned, it's only if you start powergaming that Rogue falls behind. Using Elixirs of Strength to get +8 Str modifiers (+16 for unarmed/thrown) and using Haste (Especially on non-Honour Mode) to amplify every non-Rogue martial's extra attack (Especially Fighter, Wildshape Druid and Bladelock with their double extra attacks).

Though this is a bit off topic given that this thread is about Barbarian.

Yes of course Rogue is "fine". Again its not my argument that Rogues would suck unbearably.

Its my argument that Rogues havent been fully realized and thus, while all other classes are quite close together, Rogue clearly lag behind everybody else.

Fighter is probably the overall strongest class, especially if Larian had implemented level 20, but thats another discussion.

If you want to build the tankiest warrior, going Bear Barbarian with Stallion and five levels of Thief is the toughest build I know of.

Again, Rogue only falls behind if you powergame.

But if you powergame, literally every class lags behind Paladin/Warlock, Monk/Rogue, Sorcerer and Fighter to such a point where (Pure) Rogue lagging behind other classes is barely even a concern.


Abjuration Wizard with 5 levels of Fighter is the tankiest warrior build. Between the damage reduction of Heavy Armour (+ Mastery) and Arcane Ward (Especially with Warding Bond for full resistances) and the AC boost from Shield casts, taking damage is a rare occurance.

But Bear Barbarian is certainly the tankiest self sufficient class simply due to its innate resistance gain (Other classes have to rely on items or Warding Bond to get resistances). With overall Barbarians being relatively tanky due to the base nature of Rage itself providing resistances to Slashing, Piercing and Bludgeoning damage.

Why yes this is a powergaming discussion. We literally discuss the game balance. Thats a powergaming topic. Not a storytelling topic nor a roleplaying topic.

The forum is about powergaming and the thread is about powergaming.

About the various exploits you mentioned, I dont really mind they are in the game. If you start to use stuff like Radiant Orbs and Arcane Acuity and Reverbration etc then the game gets quite easy. Though honestly you probably have to have these elements otherwise the ironman mode would be even more of a PITA. The game is endless and there are a LOT of encounters. Managing them all without reload aint easy.

But for this topic I just mind that if you just play the game without trying to exploit anything, one class, Rogue, clearly lags behind.



As I pointed out above, you can stack various resistances to get really over the top high durability. I repeat:

- Wildhear rage with the Bear Heart, which you get as Wildheart (3), requires you to attack every turn though, and doesnt work against psychic damage
- plus Uncanny Dodge from a Thief (5), unfortunately only once per turn, and it also uses up your reaction
- plus the two lover rings with an Abjuration WIzard - who with correct play on high levels has zero danger of ever actually getting damaged; the Barbarian would die before the Wizard
- plus any damage resistance you can get, which is applied AFTER all three halfling of damage happeing above
- plus as high armor class as you can manage from high Dexterity and using a medium armor that has no limit on Dexterity bonus plus Shield plus possibly other sources of AC, to minimize the number of hits you have to mitigate in the first place
- plus as many hitpoints as possible from Con 16 and the Tough feat, though honestly thats probably at this point not really necessary anymore, but i wanted to demonstrate the maximum possible
- plus finally temporary hitpoints every single round from Stallion Aspect, which you get as Wildheart (6), and which you can get again and again by using the Bonus Action from Rogue and the extra Bonus Action from Thief

Thats a lot more than just the basic high hitpoints and resistance against physical damage that every Barbarian gets, or just the resistance against all damage but psychic from Bear Heart.