The Best Feats For Barbarians In Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 provides you with many options for playing the game. You can be a Druid and use nature’s wrath as your weapon, or become a studied Wizard who knows all the spells down to their minute details. A simple but extremely fun option is to become a Barbarian, though.

Barbarians’ primary focus is to take lots of hits and dish out more. Their class features all revolve around damage output and longevity. Therefore, the feats that are the best fit for barbarians are also in the same vein, either boosting durability or pure power.

Updated by Britt Poteet on November 26, 2024: As the game has endured many changes and updates since it’s release, the articles are updated to reflect the most up-to-date information about Baldur’s Gate 3.

11 Lucky

To be fair, Lucky is an all-encompassing feat that not a single class should realistically sleep on. You get three free advantages on attacks, ability checks, or Saving Throws per long rest. This is amazing, and Barbarians also really appreciate it.

The thing that might lead to more Barbarians who are Lucky is this: Other than the feat that’s at the top of this list, they really don’t rely on feats that much. This gives them the perfect chance to pick up Lucky, which some other classes may not find.

10 Durable

A big perk to playing a Barbarian is that they are hard to take down during combat. The durable feat makes the tank characters even harder to kill. It increases your Constitution by 1, allowing for a maximum of 20.

You also fully heal every Short Rest, so this feat is a great benefit as you level up and combat becomes harder. Strengthening your barbarian’s defenses and further fortifying your party is always a good thing.

9 Alert

One of the key features of the Barbarians is their Rage. While raging, they take half damage from most sources and deal improved damage. With that being the case, raging as fast as possible is crucial to play as an effective raging monster.

With Alert, you get a plus-five bonus to your initiative, meaning you’ll likely move first in most encounters. As a Barbarian, your Dexterity should already be somewhat decent, so Alert is just the icing on the cake. It’s simple, but getting to enter Rage before enemies start acting is invaluable.

This feat works great with almost all classes, but Barbarians appreciate it more than many.

8 Athlete

Athlete is not a life-changing feat, but can be excellent under the right circumstances. Firstly, if you’re prone, it allows you to stand up with less cost to your movement. Secondly, and more importantly, it increases your jumping distance by 50 percent. Oh, and you get a plus one to either your Strength or Dexterity, so use that to round a stat up to an even number.

While Athlete provides a few bonuses, the most important boon here is the jump distance. You want to always be on the front lines as a Barbarian. Therefore, if your movement or the terrain doesn’t allow you to walk there, you simply jump there. This can make it so easy to close distances and allow you to explore the map’s secrets with less effort.

7 Charger

Speaking of getting to your enemies faster, Charger fills that niche amazingly, too. You get a charge action that lets you charge forward and attack an enemy without provoking Opportunity Attacks. You can also invest your bonus action into this and get extra damage out of it. This action alone would make Charger worth taking, but you also get a charging shove action.

The shove action is absolutely the unsung hero of Baldur’s Gate 3 combats. You can simply push enemies into a chasm and insta kill them without breaking a sweat. Luckily, the shove distance depends on your Strength, and you’re likely the strongest character around as the Barbarian. Fools will be flying to their demise soon after you pick this feat up.

6 Mage Slayer

While Barbarians’ bodies may be machines honed to destroy stuff, their minds are usually on the weaker side. This means that a spellcaster is any Barbarian’s worst nightmare. Casters have many options that force the character to make an Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma Saving Throw. Things that an average Barbarian definitely does not excel at.

Well, Mage Slayer is the perfect feat to remedy that. As long as you’re within melee range of a spellcaster, you get advantage on Saving Throws against their spells, can attack them as a Reaction if they do cast a spell, and even induce disadvantage on their Concentration Saving Throws. This is the perfect way to deal with those pesky spellcasters by far.

5 Martial Adept

Playing as a Barbarian may feel monotonous after a while. After all, your main move is to rage and hit stuff, and you might want more variety in your gameplay. Martial Adept is the perfect feat for you if that’s something you feel. With this feat, you learn two Maneuvres from the Battle Master subclass and receive one Superiority Die to fuel them.

There are many Maneuvres to pick from, and you can choose to fit your party’s needs. You could go for Feinting Attack to buff your damage or learn Goading Attack to taunt enemies into hitting you. The options are all valid, so feel free to experiment and find the best fit for your party.

4 Savage Attacker

Savage Attacker is not generally seen as a great fit, which is a sentiment that carries over from Dungeons & Dragons. However, this feat can be truly impressive in Baldur’s Gate 3, especially on a Barbarian. Savage Attacker has a simple effect: you roll your damage dice twice and use the higher result.

In Baldur’s Gate 3, unlike D&D, tons of items and features add some damage die to your attacks. This means that the amount of dice you’re rerolling with Savage Attacker can be absurd. Combine this with items that increase the Critical Hit range, and you’ll be dishing out ungodly amounts of damage with each hit.

This is not the most statistically powerful feat, so leave this one for last and pick more crucial feats first, such as Great Weapon Master and Sentinel.

3 Sentinel

Sentinel is great for all melee combatants who aim to stop the enemies’ positioning. This also applies to Barbarians since they always want to be surrounded by soon-to-be-dead enemies. Sentinel is a feat that allows a whole array of new options to you, ranging from new ways to make Opportunity Attacks to preventing enemies from leaving your vicinity.

Barbarians are likely to be in the middle of the mess at all times, likely the ones initiating the mess to begin with. With that being the case, Sentinel is a great option that allows you to both annoy enemies and protect your party mates who’d rather not get rushed by enemies, such as the Wizard or the Ranger.

2 Tavern Brawler

On top of being a hilariously flavorful feat, Tavern Brawler is quite strong. With it, you get to increase either your Strength or Constitution by one, which is always nice, and stats that you should focus on already as a Barbarian.

On top of that, when you make an unarmed attack, use an improvised weapon, or throw something, you add your Strength modifier twice to the damage. This can lead to very powerful builds focused on a punching Barbarian, but the best addition here is the throwing damage. Barbarians are typically strong; some can even use the Enraged Throw action, so go wild with what you throw and hit people with.

You can even use enemy creatures and hit others with them to deal extra damage. There’s even an achievement for doing just that

1 Great Weapon Master

Here’s the king of feats for any Barbarian out there, especially those that wield a weapon twice their size. With Great Weapon Master, you instantly become almost twice as effective at killing enemies. To begin with, you get a Bonus Action attack if you deal a Critical Hit or kill a creature with your melee attack.

The “All In” action is what breaks the game, however. You can choose to get a minus-five penalty to your attack roll but a damage buff of ten. This is a rare occasion where you get such a sizable net damage buff that it’s hard to top. The penalty doesn’t even matter to the Barbarian that much since you’ll be using Reckless Attack almost exclusively, giving yourself advantage on the roll.