Creating a powerful character can be challenging in Baldur's Gate 3. There are so many options it can be overwhelming, like when deciding what the best cantrips to pick are. Another area that can be confusing and hard to narrow down is feats; with so many to choose from, you may be wondering what the best ones in Baldur's Gate 3are.
Baldur's Gate 3 - All Feats, Ranked (Tier List)
| Tier | Feat |
| S | Ability Improvement, Alert, Lucky, Magic Initiate, Mobile, Skilled |
| A | Actor, Defensive Duelist, Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, Sentinel, Sharpshooter, Tavern Brawler, Tough, War Caster |
| B | Athlete, Dual Wielder, Durable, Mage Slayer, Resilient, Savage Attacker, Spell Sniper |
| C | Crossbow Expert, Martial Adept, Ritual Caster, Shield Master, |
| D | Charger, Dungeon Delver, Elemental Adept, Heavily Armored, Heavy Armor Master, Lightly Armored, Medium Armor Master, Moderately Armored, Performer, Weapon Master |
Feats can be selected in place of a stat increase at levels four, eight, and twelve, meaning you can take up to three feats. These range in usefulness, so consider your build carefully before picking up a feat. You can always respec if you don't like your choice, so don't get too concerned if you make a mistake. Let's dive into the best feats in Baldur's Gate 3.
S-Tier
Ability Improvement
This is easily one of the best and easiest choices to make. Some feats give a +1 to stats, but this gives you two points to add to any stat, whether you wish to add them to the same or split them up. This tends to be my choice each time I level up, unless I have a specific build in mind.
Alert
Initiative is an important aspect of combat, so gaining +5 to it is superb. This allows you to place yourself at the front of a combat's turn order and allow you to move first; you also cannot be surprised, which is particularly helpful when dealing with stealthy enemies. Alert is one of my favorite feats, and I often pick it, especially if I find my character falling behind in initiative order.
Lucky
Lucky is easily one of the best feats in the game, giving you three chances to gain advantage on attack rolls, ability checks, or saving throws—it's less a stroke of luck and more divine inspiration. The worst part is determining when to get your free advantage, but that is a good problem to have.
Magic Initiate
Getting more spells is always a bonus, making Magic Initiate quite powerful. Its use goes up depending on what class you choose, but Warlock for Eldritch Blast, Cleric for Guidance, or Druid for Shillelagh are always good choices. You can use Magic Initiate to round out your spellcasting; just make sure your stat for that spell choice is good enough to use it.
Mobile
Mobile is an amazing feat for martial classes, but it is also good for spellcasters. It provides additional movement so you can move around the battlefield easier, but being able to disengage after making a melee attack is powerful for crossing the battlefield and shutting down enemies. You don't even need to land the attack to trigger this effect.
Skilled
While not as helpful in combat, gaining proficiency in three skills suddenly increases your character's utility. You can choose any skills you want, whether you want to fill in some weaknesses or play even more to your strengths. It proves itself handidly when you have various options for handling a situation.
A-Tier
Actor
Actor provides a bonus to your Charisma and helps you take advantage of Deception and Performance. It doubles your bonus in these skills, making you a powerful face character. It also gives you the skills if you do not currently have them, so you can use this to round out a weak Charisma skill pool, or to become even more adept at deceit.
Defensive Duelist
As a Dex-based Paladin, Defensive Duelist has saved me on multiple occasions. The ability to add my proficiency to my AC has caused many attacks to miss and keep my character in the fight. While the sacrifice of my reaction hurts, my Paladin typically fights side-by-side Karlach or a spiritual weapon, both of which can deliver an opportunity attack for him.
Great Weapon Master
Make an additional melee attack as a bonus action of landing a critical hit or finishing blow and gain an additional 10 damage on attacks, but you make attacks at -5. The latter can be offset with Reckless Attack, Bardic Inspiration, and other abilities. Using GWM is an easy way to land powerful attacks if you can work around it.
Polearm Master
Polearm Master is one part of D&D's most cheesiest combo (the other being Sentinel), but is still quite good on its own. It allows you to make opportunity attacks when a target comes in range, which is especially potent on weapons with reach; it also lets you use a bonus action to attack with the butt of your weapon.
Sentinel
Sentinel lets you make an attack on targets that attack one of your allies, provided they are in range. It also gives you advantage on opportunity attacks and reduces that creature's movement to zero when you land on an opportunity attack. Combine this with Polearm Master and you can keep an enemy both out of range and prevent them from running away.
Sharpshooter
Sharpshooter has the same perks and cons of Great Weapon Master, sacrificing your chance to hit with a -5 modifier but dealing an additional 10 damage on a successful shot. You also ignore the rules of high ground, allowing you to fight from the ground just as effectively as above. Ranged attacks have slightly fewer options to mitigate the -5 to hit, but you can still get around this (stealth being a primary one).
Tavern Brawler
Tavern Brawler is a handy feat for times when you find yourself unarmed, and contributes to builds focusing on throwing items and weapons or even tossing enemies off cliffs. It allows you to add double your Strength modifier to unarmed attacks and throws, which can be very strong for characters with high Strength scores. With the right setup, this feat lets you deal upward of 100 damage, but you need to build around it for it to be effective.
Tough
Health is one of the most important aspects of Baldur's Gate 3, as it is directly tied to whether your character lives or dies. For this reason alone, Tough is a great choice of feats because it gives an additional two hit points per level. This may not seem like much, but it adds up and is especially noticeable for characters with little health to start off with.
War Caster
War Caster can turn your spellcaster into a true war wizard, sorcerer, cleric, bard, warlock, or druid. Doing so gives advantage on concentration saves, which are crucial for keeping concentration spells active. It also allows melee spells — primarily Shocking Grasp — to be used in place of opportunity attacks. This can be pretty strong, albeit situational.
B-Tier
Athlete
Athlete isn't bad, but it gets outranked by better feats. Gaining a boost to Strength or Dexterity can help round out your stats or get you that better modifier, but its other perk is somewhat lackluster. While standing up from a prone position requiring less movement and a better jump are good for staying mobile, they are more situational than useful.
Dual Wielder
Anyone building a two-weapon fighter will want Dual Wielder, as it gives a bonus to AC and lets you dual-wield weapons that aren't light. With that, your options are greatly expanded and your attacks hit harder. Even if you don't use non-light weapons, getting the AC bonus while dual-wielding is a great benefit since you sacrifice a shield.
Durable
Durable is another feat that gives a bonus to your stats. The +1 to Constitution can be helpful for characters lacking in this area and helps get more HP. That said, the ability to regain all hit points on a short rest can be helpful if you take many of these. Can be extremely good on characters with large health pools.
Mage Slayer
Mage Slayer is a feat that offers situational benefits, but extremely powerful ones when you can take advantage of them. My favorite part is forcing a spellcaster to make their concentration save at disadvantage when striking them, so it's harder for them to keep their spells up. The melee benefits are okay, but most spellcasters will simply keep their distance or try to run away.
Resilient
Resilient allows you to increase any stat by one and gain proficiency in that stat's saving throw. I find this to be most useful for spellcasters, as it allows them to gain proficiency in Constitution, which is helpful for succeeding on concentration checks. Other than that, I typically avoid Resilient in favor of other feats.
Savage Attacker
For those who want to increase their damage, Savage Attacker ensures you have the greatest chance of rolling high. The bigger your weapon's hit die, the more helpful Savage Attacker will be.
Spell Sniper
Spell Sniper has been nerfed from its 5E version, but is still a fairly decent feat. You gain an additional cantrip to expand your spellbook, and score a critical hit on a 19 and a 20. You can stack this feat to further increase your critical range, but I don't recommend it.
C-Tier
Crossbow Expert
Crossbow Expert sounds good on paper, but if you consider your ranged character wants to avoid melee combat, it becomes less useful. That said, it allows you to fight effectively with a crossbow at close range, but you could also just switch weapons since this is a free action in Baldur's Gate 3. The doubled time for Gaping Wounds lets you inflict additional bleeding, but overall is lackluster.
Martial Adept
Anyone who has played a Battle Master Fighter knows they have some powerful and awesome maneuvers, which you can pick up yourself with Martial Adept. This feat gives you a superiority die and two martial maneuvers to use it on, which can alter the effects of your attack and give you various bonuses when in melee combat.
Ritual Caster
Ritual Caster is like Magic Initiate, except less useful. Instead of learning any two spells, you must learn ritual spells, limiting your options. Additionally, you don't get a cantrip, so you are stuck with the ritual spells. While ritual spells aren't bad, they are less useful than other spells, making Magic Initiate the superior choice.
Shield Master
Any martial using a shield should consider this feat, especially if they have low Dexterity. This gives a +2 bonus to Dex saves, which can be handy against the infamous Fireball. You can also reduce the effects of a spell that requires a Dex save, potentially taking no damage. Overall, this is primarily a defensive feat with situational use.
D-Tier
Charger
Charger simply isn't worth picking up, really only giving you two additional attack types (neither of which is particularly good). This is especially true considering you are likely going to be stuck in combat after first using a charge, meaning you need to disengage before using it again.
Dungeon Delver
Dungeon Delver isn't terrible, but it isn't that good either. Having advantage in discovering traps and saving throws against them is helpful, but a high Perception will typically do just fine. Still, if you are tired of setting off traps, it may be worth picking this feat up.
Elemental Adept
Elemental Adept is fairly pointless. Unless your whole build revolves around a single damage type, selecting this feat is unnecessary. Changing spells or damage types is better than wasting an entire feat on removing a weakness to a single damage type.
Heavily Armored/Lightly Armored
Gaining proficiency in heavy or light armor is easily obtained by most classes that want to use them. If you don't already have either of these, you might as well just multiclass into Fighter and get the other benefits of the class, rather than using a feat to do so.
Heavy Armor Master/Medium Armor Master
Heavy Armor Master is not worth wasting a feat to reduce three points of non-magical damage. Even at low levels, there are better uses for a feat. Medium Armor Master does have its perk of removing stealth disadvantage from medium armor and increasing your Dexterity modifier limit for AC, but you can just use light armor to get around this.
Moderately Armored
Moderately Armored is not the most useful, as all it does is give you medium armor and shield proficiency. There are other ways to gain these, so using a feat to do this is something of a waste.
Performer
Don't bother taking this feat unless you really want to form a band. Bards are about the only class that needs proficiency in musical instruments (something you will already have), so I highly recommend just playing an instrument poorly and letting your Bard carry your skill.
Weapon Master
Weapon Master is another useless feat that lets you use various weapons. Most martial classes should have a comfortable amount of weapons they can choose from, and spellcasters shouldn't be close enough to need to use them.
Best Feats for All Characters
For more information on Baldur's Gate 3, check out BG3 Tactician Difficulty Guide – Baldur’s Gate 3 Difficulty Differences and BG3 – How to Cure the Shadow Curse on Pro Game Guides.
Published: Aug 8, 2023 10:49 am