The Fighter class is your main physical damage dealer in Baldur’s Gate 3. They are meant for dominating enemies with their sheer number of attacks and make up the front line in a party composition in BG3. By definition, they are veteran soldiers, military officers, trained bodyguards, and dedicated knights. They are masters of martial combat and make short work of anything in their way.
Depending on the types of weapons you are going to use, the Fighter’s primary ability score is either Strength or Dexterity. They are also viable for tank build in BG3 because of their armor and shield proficiencies. In most cases, you will forego the use of spells unless you pick a certain subclass. As such, they will need casters to support them from the rear to be fully effective.
Fighter Hit Points
The Fighter class is one of the more enduring ones in terms of Hit Points. This is the reason why they can assume the role of front-liners whenever the party needs them. For fighters, the hit die is a 1d10.
At character creation, you will get 10 HP + your Constitution modifier bonus. At higher levels, your health can increase by an average of 6 plus your constitution modifier bonus.
Fighter Class Actions
A Fighter’s class actions reflect their role in the party and in battle. As such, they get the Second Wind healing ability and the Action Surge. The latter allows them to perform an additional action in a turn, once per rest.
Second Wind
At level 1, fighters pick up Second Wind. It is a free heal you can use once per short rest, which keeps you in the fight that much longer.
Action Surge
Things get interesting when we reach level 2 because this is when we get Action Surge. It allows you to do an additional action once per long or short rest on your turn. This ability alone can give you many attacks, especially at higher levels when you get an extra attack. You combine both together to annihilate your foes.
Fighting Style
Starting right at level 1, a Fighter gets to select a Fighting Style from all the options available in Baldur’s Gate 3. This is the most number of fighting styles any class can get in the game which makes sense given their role.
Archery
While you are using a ranged weapon, your character gets a +2 to your attack rolls in BG3. This is the most versatile fighting style because it applies to all ranged weapons. This is best used for archer builds.
Defense
The Defense fighting style adds +1 point to your Armor Class while wearing armor. This is best used if you want to build your Fighter like a tank.
Protection
Protection allows you to inflict a disadvantage on the enemies that are attacking your allies around you. So, whenever an enemy comes marching toward your friend, you can use your reaction and cause a disadvantage to the foe.
Great Weapon Fighting
When you are wielding a two-handed melee weapon and receive a damage roll of 1 or 2, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll.
Two-weapon Fighting
In this fighting style, your character wields weapons in both hands to attack. One of your hands will make the primary attack; while the other one (your offhand) will do a secondary attack. The damage of this offhand attack can be increased by adding your ability modifier to the total damage output.
Dueling
Holding a melee weapon in only one hand and no weapon in the offhand gains you a +2 bonus to damage rolls, allowing you to deal extra damage. This is best for fighters who will wield a shield and don’t necessarily want to become a tank.
Proficiencies
The proficiency area of the Fighter class is the true representative of your training experience in the art of martial combat. Essentially, you will be able to use and equip nearly all types of weapons and armor in Baldur’s Gate 3.
Weapon: As a fighter, you will find yourself proficient in all Simple and Martial Weapons.
Armor: In terms of armor, you get to choose all light, medium, and heavy armor. On top of that, you can also make use of shields.
Saving Throws: The Fighter class gets proficient in two saving throws, namely Constitution and Wisdom.
Skill Proficiencies: You will get skill proficiencies in Athletics and Intimidation.
Fighter Subclasses
At level three, the fighter will get to choose from three subclasses in Baldur’s Gate 3. Your choice here will reflect your approach to combat.
Battle Master
The Battle Master subclass and build allow you to gain access to special combat maneuvers that run off of a resource called Superiority Dice. Every subsequent level gives you new maneuvers, which becomes a total of seven at level 11.
These combat maneuvers add damage and a lot of versatility to what you can inflict on the enemy.
Champion
In this subclass, you don’t necessarily become a dynamic fighter. Instead, you just become a better fighter. You get to hone your fighting and martial prowess and perform incredible feats in fights.
The Champion is all about maximizing criticals. With this subclass, you get
Improved Critical: While regular critical hits are activated when you roll a 20 on your attack roll, the Champion fighter gets to do a Critical Strike on 19 and 20.
Remarkable Jump: With this feature, a Champion’s jump distance is increased by 3 meters.
Eldritch Knight
The Eldritch Knight subclass of the fighter is a spellsword and has limited spellcasting ability in Baldur’s Gate 3. You cannot expect to get particularly powerful spells obtained as a Wizard or Sorcerer. But you’ll get enough to make short work anything in your way. This makes you more of an all-rounder and is perfect for times when you lack magical power in your party.
What makes this particular class interesting is once you start getting into higher levels, you pick up a few interesting subclass features.
War Magic: Achieved at level 7, this feature allows us to make a weapon attack as Baldur’s Gate 3 bonus action when casting a cantrip as an action.
Eldritch Strike: At level 10, we get the Eldritch Strike feature. As you hit an enemy with your weapon, the attack will cause a disadvantage on the enemy for its next saving throws if you successfully cast a spell in your next turn.
