Baldur’s Gate 3: Best Barbarian build in BG3

Baldur’s Gate 3 has about six classes that can enter melee quite effectively. Of those classes, two of them are designed to get into melee and rough it out, and one does it with a massive frown on their face.

The Barbarian of Baldur’s Gate 3 is an exceptionally powerful, resource-driven melee class that must be built carefully. Ensuring you choose the right race, ability scores, subclass, and feats is important to turning your Barbarian from a wall of meat to something to be truly feared.

Barbarians must be handled carefully since they are rather tricky to effectively move onto the frontlines. Their ranged options are extremely limited, so let’s talk about the tools we need to get angry.

The best Barbarian build in BG3

The best Barbarian build in BG3 is one that can quickly and effectively tear an enemy to shreds with melee damage. Because of that, we’re going to focus primarily on the high-damage Berserker Barbarian build. There is another fantastic build in the Wildheart Barbarian which is a great way to clog up hallways or provide extra utility.

There are going to be a few caveats to this build. There are a lot of different options for a particularly complicated player in BG3, so we have to set some standards.

• We are playing an Origin Character. For this build, we have full control over our race, background, and ability scores. Check out our Karlach guide to get a good idea of how to power that infernal engine.
• Our Party consists of Astarion, Shadowheart, and Wyll. A rather aggressive party, the mix of Shadowheart for healing, Astarion for out-of-combat, and Wyll for chatting people up will be good for our angry lad (or lady). We can focus largely on damage because of it. Wyll can be tagged out fairly regularly for Lae’zel if we need more frontline. But, our focus will be on our high-health, high-damage Barbarian.
• We cannot multiclass. Multiclassing opens up a few very powerful builds for the Barbarian. But, they also offer theoretically endless possibilities. We are going to narrow down the best pure Barbarian build, which can be useful if you’re on the lowest difficulty setting or just looking to see what an endgame barbarian looks like. If you want advice on what multiclassing a Barbarian can look like, check out some of our suggested builds. Barbarian/Moon Druid is great fun if you’ve never tried it.

Now we’ve got this all down, we can touch on our goals.

What is a Barbarian’s role in a party?

The Barbarian serves as a melee damage dealer and tank in BG3. The Barbarian is unique in that it is the only class in the game to come with a base of 12 Health to start, and an additional seven health per level after the first.

It also can access the Rage class feature, improving its durability against physical attacks by halving the damage and slightly improving their own damage capabilities.

However, the Barbarian is the most resource-focused class. Their entire toolkit is based on Rage, of which they get a fairly limited number: two to start, then one extra at levels three, six, and 12. These rage stacks only come back on a long rest. It is critical for a Barbarian to assess a combat situation at the start of a fight and decide quickly on whether or not they should use one of their very precious Rages.

While Rage is the core of their build, they can still deal great damage with their Reckless Attack ability, allowing them to always have advantage on attack rolls at the cost of receiving attacks at advantage. Reckless Attack only applies to melee attacks, though, making being in the face of your enemies critical to the Barbarian’s game plan.

While Barbarians can use Shields to boost AC, Reckless Attack keeps our AC from being the main source of our durability. We’ll focus on a two-handed build here, but a Shield Barbarian is a viable option if you really want them to tank.

It is important we make the best use of Rage possible while covering the holes in our game plan when we’re not angry as sin.

Best Barbarian race and ability scores

As we discuss in our Barbarian starter guide, we want a mixture of speed and out-of-combat versatility. We’ll go for the Zariel Tiefling (a la Karlach). The Tiefling’s natural Fire Resistance provides us with good protection against the most common element, and gaining advantage on Intimidation checks gives us an out-of-combat niche.

Our ability scores are Strength 16, Dexterity 14, Constitution 16, Intelligence 8, Wisdom 10, and Charisma 10. While there are options, like Auntie Ethel, to bump Strength up from 17 to 18, we prefer the much more solid groundwork provided by three even ability scores. If you want that 17 in Strength or Constitution, you can drop Charisma to eight. But, you must plan on taking that ability boost for yourself. We prefer allowing other party members to get it. We don’t need a silly hag buff to be as buff as possible.

Best background for Barbarian

Barbarian’s sturdiest background is probably Street Urchin or Entertainer. Street Urchin allows our Barbarian to use their surprisingly solid Dexterity to pick locks and scrounge around. Entertainer lets us use Thaumaturgy and the occasional Acrobatics check. For this build, we’ll be an Entertainer and let Astarion handle the sneaky stuff.

For skills, you should still take proficiency in Athletics and Intimidation. Athletics is a great traversal tool across the entire game and Intimidation works with your Thaumaturgy. Great for most areas in the game.

Best Subclass for Barbarian in BG3

We hate having to choose between Berserker and Wildheart in BG3 since they both have so much to offer our Barbarian.

For the purposes of this build, assuming you have some additional party members on the frontline, we are going to tentatively go with Berserker Barbarian as our pick for the best build. Frenzy’s incredible bonus action—both the costly extra Weapon Swing and the less costly Enraged Throw—allows the Barbarian to perform massive burst damage in a turn.

The Wildheart Barbarian is largely notable for its tanking ability. The Bear Totem turns the Barbarian into a tanky bruiser against all elements. However, Fire is the most common element, and our Tiefling already has resistance to that. So, we’re going to take the durability of the Barbarian and tear our enemies to shreds with Berserker. Trust us, Mindless Rage is so handy in the mid and late game that you’ll hardly miss Wildheart’s tankiness.

Recommendations for a Wildheart build

If you want a Wildheart build, we recommend Wood Elf Street Urchin for the movement speed, Perception proficiency, and some resistances to crowd control. We also recommend Bear Heart and Aspect of the Beast: Tiger (assuming you have some synergies), and Aspect of the Beast: Wolverine. This bleed build can let you become highly accurate, though you’re still missing out on Frenzy. Bleed in general is great for a Barbarian, and we recommend trying its synergy if you don’t want the raw damage of Frenzy.

Best Barbarian Feats in BG3

Unfortunately, many of the best feats for Barbarian are boring ability score improvements. A Barbarian’s stats are key, and Strength and Constitution are huge milestones for the class. That being said, you can make one or two feats work for the Barbarian.

Our build is only going to have one such feat. It’s going to look something like this.

We take the plus-two at level four to improve our accuracy, and then get Great Weapon Master for midgame. Great Weapon Master sacrifices five in your attack roll for a +10 to damage. While Reckless Attack can make up for that, we’ve found that the loss in accuracy can make specific early-game fights difficult. We like to wait for midgame, where enemies become damage sponges, to let our Barbarian locate good Greatswords. However, if you don’t mind missing every now and then, taking Great Weapon Master at level four and swinging for the fences is a perfectly reasonable strategy. Especially if you plan on taking many long rests.

The only other big feat we would recommend looking at is Polearm Master. This feat gives you a fantastic bonus action—a free attack—as well as much easier access to opportunity attacks. For a Wildheart Build, this ameliorates our biggest gripe with the Subclass. However, it does so at the cost of a plus-one to attack rolls or by sacrificing the massive damage of Great Weapon Master. If you’ve ever fought some of the endgame fights in this game, such as the House of Hope, you’re going to want to be fairly accurate.

Honorable mentions to Sentinel for keeping area control and Mage Slayer to decimate many of the several spellcaster enemies. We just can’t find a place for them in our build without losing Strength, and we value plus-ones far too much in this game. Maybe if Larian makes a 20th-level expansion, we can talk more about fun feats like these.

Magic items to look out for

When you are building a Barbarian, you have a few magic items you want to find. Assuming you aren’t Karlach, you don’t need Soul Coins. But, even if you are, you’ll also want some items such as:

• A high-damage two-handed weapon. Even ones as simple as Commander Zhalk’s greatsword can provide high damage without much investment, but you’ll want to locate more over the course of the game.
• Armor like Adamantine Scale Mail that punishes enemies for hurting you is extremely helpful. We love Reckless Attack, but our health bar doesn’t. Use that to deal high damage to your foes.
• The Helmet of Grit gives you a bonus action at half-health, especially deadly for a Berserker. However, the Grymskull Helm prevents you from getting critically hit when you Reckless Attack and also lets you cast Hunter’s Mark.
• Gloves of Uninhibited Kushigo provide some extra damage on the Berserker’s bonus action, though we prefer a plus-one on attack rolls from items like Gloves of Dexterity to make hits more common.
• Boots of Speed can be useful for a Barbarian looking to take down a target that’s fleeing from them.