Baldur’s Gate 3’s 8th major patch will add 12 new subclasses

Despite the fact that Larian Studios is done with Baldur’s Gate 3 and has stated that they have no intention of producing DLC for the game (up to the point of starting DLC, then canceling it, because it wasn’t really coming from the heart), they keep dropping entire patches that — on top of the expected bugfixes and such — keep adding features on par with what other games would provide in (non-free!) DLC. Patch 7 brought a whole passel of changes, including official mod support and an official modding toolkit, and most players probably weren’t expecting much more at this point in terms of content other than the upcoming Photo Mode that we knew was in the game’s future.

And then, on November 27, Larian dropped the news that in 2025 BG3 will be receiving a Patch 8, featuring Photo Mode… but also cross-play between different platforms and, to the delight of build-tweakers everywhere, 12 new subclasses. None of them are new to D&D, but every one is new to Baldur’s Gate 3. Let’s take a look at each of these and see what kind of fun abilities each one brings to the game.

Barbarian — Path of Giants

It’s interesting to see what Larian is going for with the Path of Giants, in that it mostly seems to be a bundle of passive abilities — increased strength and size (which in turn lets you deal extra damage with Throwing attacks) and increased carry capacity. The post mentions “forget chugging elixirs” for the sake of increasing Strength — many ‘meta’ builds for strength-based characters recommend dumping Strength and instead taking an Elixir of Hill Giant Strength after each long rest, given how plentiful they are — but will Giant’s Rage displace this practice? Furthermore, can extra damage on thrown attacks be better than the Berserker’s ability to throw weapons as a bonus action and knock the target over? I guess we’ll have to see.

One note: on the table, Path of the Giant gives you bonuses at level 10 to throwing other characters around, friend and foe alike. If Path of the Giants includes this “fastball special” feature, it will instantly become my new favorite. There is nothing quite like the feeling of chucking a bad guy into another bad guy.

Bard — College of Glamour

This one starts slow, but quickly builds into something interesting. One of the most widely known Swords Bard builds uses one of its Magical Secrets on Command, due to it being one of the most powerful battlefield control spells in Baldur’s Gate 3, especially when upcasted. The College of Glamour, however, gets their own special version of it — and adds on features to what was previously kind of a useless status effect, Charmed. Mantle of Inspiration functions as a groupwide version of Aid (although giving everyone temporary hit points instead of real ones), but then if an enemy attacks into those temporary hit points, you have the chance to Charm them — and then to turn that Charm into Mantle of Majesty, which appears to be a spell-slot-free version of Command.

This feels pretty exciting for Bard, and I’m looking forward to trying it.

Cleric — Death Domain

We don’t know a whole lot about what the Death Cleric will do in BG3 — other than a Larian-homebrewed ability to explode corpses for damage — but the most exciting part is the confirmed addition of new necrotic-damage-dealing spells, including probably the most powerful damage-dealing D&D Cleric cantrip, Toll the Dead. For those who haven’t used it, this spell does 1d8 damage if the opponent fails a save (and scales at the usual levels to 2d8, 3d8, and so on), but if the opponent has taken any amount of damage, that bumps up to a scaling 1d12 instead. If nothing else, this’ll give Shadowheart a brand new spell that she can whiff with her terrible starting stats. (Seriously, go respec Shadowheart to max out her Wisdom as soon as you can. It makes a world of difference.)

In the tabletop game, Death Domain turns any single-target necromancy cantrip into a dual-target spell, deals extra necrotic damage on a melee strike, and can learn to ignore necrotic resistance entirely. These seem really feasible for Baldur’s Gate 3 as well, and that last passive in particular would go a long way also towards making a Death Domain cleric not dead weight in the game’s undead-heavy Act 2.

Druid — Circle of Stars

Rather than turn into an animal, the Circle of Stars Druid uses their Wild Shape forms to manifest a Starry Form and one of three constellations — the Archer, the Chalice, or the Dragon. The first two sound pretty similar to the tabletop incarnation, with the Archer firing radiant damage arrows for extra ranged damage and the Chalice having buffed heals; if the Archer works like it does at the table, this will give Druids a nice consistent way of dealing damage with bonus actions. The Dragon appears to be buffed slightly — in its tabletop version it simply let you treat a 9 or less on a Concentration check as a 10, and above 10th level it let you fly and hover at a slow speed, but Larian’s post mentions the Dragon also dealing damage. The wording is a little vague, so I’m interested to see what it ends up doing (and it’s not the only subclass in this post that’s better at retaining concentration on BG3‘s powerful concentration spells, either).

Paladin — Oath of the Crown

Only one of the abilities listed for Oath of the Crown is one we’ve seen before — Divine Allegiance lets the Paladin use a reaction to take damage in place of an ally, although at the tabletop it’s only got a 5-foot range. Hopefully it gets buffed a little more than that. The other two appear to be brand new. “Taunting enemies with strategic interrupts” sounds like Champion’s Challenge, but the idea of it being an interrupt is weird and cool! There’s also no indication what “guide your companions in battle with Righteous Clarity” actually means. My guess? This will finally give us a Paladin subclass that knows the extremely important and powerful Guidance cantrip.

Fighter — Arcane Archer

Baldur’s Gate 3 has no shortage of cool archer builds, like the Rivington Rat Eldritch Knight archer, but what it didn’t have was the most dedicated archery subclass in the game, the Arcane Archer. The truth of the matter, however, is that D&D‘s Arcane Archer is fairly underwhelming, being very limited in how often it can use its signature magical arrows. Given their track record so far, though, I trust Larian Studios to do some cool things with this subclass. We already know that Banishing Arrow and Shadow Arrow are in the game (and their GIF demonstrating new bow-firing animations shows a Bursting Arrow to boot), and it’ll be interesting to see if they bring over the rest of them as well — or homebrew some entirely new ones — and make this extremely flavorful subclass have the power to match its flavor.

Monk — Drunken Master

Baldur’s Gate 3 has a few items that interact with the Alcohol condition — things like the Drunken Cloth light armor sort of imply that maybe the Drunken Master was always in development on some level, but now it’s finally coming in Patch 8. Based on the description, Larian is entirely homebrewing this one, which is fine; it’s kind of a collection of weird passive abilities in the tabletop version.

BG3‘s take on the Drunken Master offers mechanical reasons to be Drunk, to make enemies Drunk so they can’t hit you as easily, and to punch them so hard they sober up and take a hangover’s worth of psychic damage at the same time. But most intriguing is the idea of being able to consume alcohol to recover ki — these points can get used up pretty quickly, so having a way to recover them easily using common items you can find in the environment is a wild and fun concept.

Ranger — Swarmkeeper

BEES! Right off the bat we can see that BG3‘s Swarmkeeper is buffed from its tabletop version; rather than just being a cloud of small creatures that does some piercing damage, different swarms do different things. The Cloud of Jellyfish can deal electric damage and shock enemies (which in Baldur’s Gate parlance means they can’t take reactions). The Flurry of Moths deals psychic damage and can blind enemies. The Legion of Bees deals piercing damage and can knock enemies back a whopping 15 feet. This offers some wild and fun options for a melee ranger, which is a fairly underserved archetype in Baldur’s Gate (other than at 11th level Hunter Ranger — so basically the endgame). Plus whereas the tabletop Swarmkeeper can fly, the video game Swarmkeeper learns to teleport — there’s no keeping you out of the fray, and no escaping your swarm of BEES!

Rogue — Swashbuckler

This is a class I’ve had the pleasure of seeing in action at the table, so I know how effective they can be. Fancy Footwork’s ability to shut off opportunity attacks targeting the rogue can free up your bonus action for any of the other things rogues love to do with those, and if Larian ports over the Rakish Audacity passive — letting you add Charisma to your initiative rolls — this also become a very interesting option for a “face” character rogue. It appears they’ve got some new tricks in the video game version, as well, between Blind pulling out some pocket sand to blind a foe on demand and Disarm knocking an enemy’s weapon out of their hands (something typically exclusive to the Command spell or the Battle Master Fighter’s Disarming Strike, usually).

Additionally, one feature wasn’t mentioned, but I’d love to see it — in D&D, if the Swashbuckler hits an enemy while no other creatures are within 5 feet of the Rogue, they get to Sneak Attack, whether they have advantage on the attack or not. This is a fun and powerful feature that makes them into single-target duelists like none other, and it’ll be interesting to see if Larian gives this ability to their take on the Swashbuckler.

Sorcerer — Shadow Magic

Is someone at Larian Studios reading my diary? I love Shadow Sorcerers. It sounds like this is going to be a faithful representation of the ability, too;. We already know Improved Darkvision is in, as well as Strength of the Grave to make you harder to kill, and Shadow Walk to let you teleport from shadow to shadow (which means Larian is granting it below its tabletop level of 14). They also are evidently homebrewing their version of the Hound of Ill Omen, which at the tabletop is mostly a dire wolf made of shadow whose purpose is to grant your targets disadvantage against your spells; I’m guessing they plan to make it a bit more interesting — maybe it can hinder opponents in new and exciting ways.

Warlock — Hexblade

On the tabletop, the Hexblade Warlock is the premiere way to make a melee Warlock, buffing up the extremely anemic Pact of the Blade into something that doesn’t just die instantly in melee range and has some real power behind its attacks. However, a lot of the passive effects that players know them for in D&D (like the ability to use Charisma for your melee attack and damage bonuses) are actually rolled into Pact of the Blade in BG3, so Larian is either going to have to focus on their other abilities — like Hexblade’s Curse — or homebrew some new features out of whole cloth. We already know from their post that they intend to bring over the Accursed Specter feature, where slaying a creature lets you command their soul as a disembodied specter for a while, so it’ll be interesting to see what they do here.

Wizard — Bladesinging

Pick up that sword, Gale, you’ve got a new casting animation! Besides actually showing your Wizard casting spells using their weapon, it appears Larian intends to fairly faithfully port over the Bladesong ability, and that opens up a fun new archetype for Wizards. If you’re not familiar, this ability — which can only be used while wielding one-handed weapons and light or no armor — grants you an Armor Class bonus equal to your Intelligence bonus, speeds you up, and gives you a bonus to retaining concentration on spells when hit. Bladesinging is also the only Wizard school to gain Extra Attack at level 6, and I’d wager we can expect to see that in BG3 as well. If they pop Sword of Victory (adding your Intelligence bonus to your melee damage) down from level 14 to something attainable in Baldur’s Gate 3, we’ll be looking at a whole new way to play Wizards, and that’s really what new subclasses are all about.