Baldur’s Gate 3 player explains why you should always change companion subclass

Baldur’s Gate 3 players are taking a second look at some of the subclasses assigned to their party members, and not a lot of them make sense.

Subclasses are a big part of Baldur’s Gate 3’s flexibility and replayability. On top the wide range of classes you can play as, each one also have a set of subclasses that drastically change how you play.

Choosing the right subclass can be tricky, especially when you don’t know what they do, and a lot of players are tempted to just leave the origin characters as their default. However, this creates a major problem: many of the default subclasses are awful.

Take Astarion’s subclass. By default, he’s an Arcane Trickster, a fascinating subclass made even more interesting due to its complete lack of damage. Having this in your party is like running around with a second cleric who doesn’t heal. Considering how powerful assassin builds are on him, you’re definitely better off switching it over.

Several players have noticed this for other companions too, and one made a list of some of the worst culprits.

Baldur’s Gate 3 players consider alternative companion subclasses

A player on the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit put together some of the worst subclasses in the game, as well as some choices that were just downright confusing.

They said: “There’s a couple that make sense, and then a couple that absolutely do not. Astarion defaults to Arcane Trickster, while levelling up Rogue on a Tav would otherwise default to Thief. Halsin and Jaheira are both druids, but Halsin defaults to Circle of the Moon and Jaheira defaults to Circle of the Land. Minsc defaults to Hunter Ranger, while levelling up Ranger on a Tav gets you Beast Master, instead.

“With Lae’zel, I can understand her being a Battle Master, but I would have thought she would fit Eldritch Knight better. However, some of the others make no sense. For instance, why is Karlach a Wildheart Barbarian?

“It’s interesting to me that her background was initially Soldier, but they changed it to Outlander on the release of the game – it seems like they want to emphasize some connection with nature, maybe from before she served Zariel, but she grew up in Baldur’s Gate, so Wildheart doesn’t exactly make sense.”

Another player said that they had also seen the light by respeccing Astarion into an assassin, saying: “Astarion defaulting to Arcane Trickster kind of makes sense, I just find it clunky as a player so I run him as an Assassin.”