Baldur’s Gate 3 allows you to personalize your character’s path in almost every way possible, both in combat and personality. One word you’ve probably seen popping up often is feats, as this element of choice can greatly expand your character’s prowess. If you haven’t reached level four, however, you likely haven’t seen feats pop up in any character menus, and may be uncertain of how or when they will matter. We’ve got you covered.
In Baldur’s Gate 3, Feats are very similar to those of the game’s source material, Dungeons & Dragons. Feats become available starting at level four, when you will prompted to select a Feat as part of the leveling up process. Concurrent Feat levels are level eight, level 12, and level 16. In Dungeons & Dragons, you are given the option to select a Feat or receive two points to increase ability scores, whereas in Baldur’s Gate 3 the choice is removed, and the ability score increase is moved to the feat list as ability score Improvement.
Therefore, you will be selecting feats in Baldur’s Gate 3 no matter what. But which feats should you choose?
The best feats in Baldur’s Gate 3
There are 42 different feats to choose from in Baldur’s Gate 3, so it can become very easy to spend a full hour window shopping at level 4 (speaking from experience here). Here are our choices for the top five best feats in Baldur’s Gate 3 so you can spend less time reading and more time…feating?
Anyway, this list is not Class specific and is designed to present viable choices no matter what character route you take. This means that super specific feats will not be included—but that doesn’t mean those feats aren’t good choices for specific scenarios.
5) Actor Feat
This Feat has a number of different benefits:
- Increases your Charisma by one (to a maximum of 20).
- Doubles your Proficiency Bonus on Deception and Performance checks.
- Grants Proficiency in Deception and Performance.
This feat has tons of merit even if you are not playing a class that uses Charisma as a primary ability score. In Baldur’s Gate 3, Charisma affects all prices for buying and selling, bartering leeway, and dictates Performance, Persuasion, Deception, and Intimidation. This game is chock full of instances in which fights can be avoided altogether, allies can be made in battle, or infighting can be caused amongst enemies. Almost every single instance depends on Charisma. The doubled proficiency bonus helps ensure that your rolls will succeed during these instances.
4) Mobile Feat
The Mobile feat has the following effects:
- Adds 3m of movement speed (a 30 percent increase for most races).
- Difficult Terrain doesn’t slow you down after using Dash.
- You don’t provoke opportunity attacks after a melee attack.
Something you’ve probably noticed in Baldur’s Gate 3—the game loves its Difficult Terrain, ranged NPCs love taking advantage of their range, and retreating or advancing can be easily punished. Accordingly, the benefits from this feat are massive. The added movement speed will ensure that the melee characters in your party can make it to the fight in a single turn, or that ranged characters can escape. Difficult Terrain is a very common condition to be added by spells in this game—sometimes if feels like every fight has Difficult Terrain turn up in one way or another.
Perhaps the best part of this feat is the freedom from opportunity attacks. This allows ranged characters to retreat to safety after being advanced upon without punishment, or for melee characters to rush an opponent’s backline. You won’t know just how much you’re missing out on with this feat until you pick it up.
3) Durable Feat
The Durable feat has the following effects:
- Constitution is increased by one.
- Regain all hit points on a short rest.
This feat is huge no matter what class takes it. In Baldur’s Gate 3, Constitution determines your total number of Hit Points. For each level, hit points increase by a standard class-dependent amount, plus your Constitution modifier. Increasing your Constitution modifier counts retroactively, meaning the game dictates that your Constitution modifier has always been the current number, and 10+ hit points can easily be gained upon taking this feat.
Better yet is the full hit point replenish on short rests. You can take two short rests between long rests, and this is something that you’ll constantly be needing to do. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a difficult game with well-programmed enemies that target low health characters, removing them from a fight. Essentially, they make all the strategic decisions that a player character would. If you take a short rest while in bad shape without this feat, you’re still going to be in bad shape for the next fight. The Durable feat is, for all intents and purposes, two extra lives per day.
2) Ability Improvements Feat
This Feat is basically a must-have for all characters at some point, and does the following:
- Increase one ability score by two, or two ability scores by one, to a maximum of 20.
In Baldur’s Gate 3, ability modifiers are used for all attacks, all skill checks, all saving throws, and all damage rolls. In other words, basically everything. Even if you already have a great starting score in your primary ability score, you must take this feat at some point.
When creating a character, the maximum ability score is 18 with a +4 Modifier. Notice how the feat specifies that an ability can be raised to 20? At 20, an ability’s modifier is +5. This means that a character literally cannot reach their full potential without the help of this feat. Retroactive Constitution modifier also applies to this feat, meaning that just like Durable, tons of hit points can be gained in a single level.
1) The best Feat in Baldur’s Gate 3: Lucky
Lucky does the following:
- Gain three Luck Points.
- Use a Luck Point to gain advantage on any roll.
- Give an enemy disadvantage on any Attack Roll.
My friends and I used to refer to this feat as “the meta-gaming” feat in Dungeons & Dragons. In other words, the Cheating Feat. At first glance, it doesn’t seem particularly overpowered. Advantage and Disadvantage is definitely useful, but the most powerful feat in the game?
Here’s the catch: Luck Points can be expended AFTER seeing the result of a roll. Don’t like the result? Roll it again! This feat, when used correctly, is quite literally the difference between life and death. Did a boss roll a critical hit that’s about to explode your healer? Make the boss reroll! Fail a death saving throw and don’t have any Scrolls of Revivify handy? Just try again! Did your Barbarian just whiff an attack after the whole party spent their turns buffing them up? Sounds embarrassing, run it back!
This feat is basically playing god(s). In fact, it’s so good that it’s not at all uncommon for Dungeon Masters to ban this feat in Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.
Which feats to choose in Baldur’s Gate 3
Here’s the best part: pretty much any feat you choose will ultimately make your character better. Some, like Lucky, are just more widely applicable in more situations.
Again, this list is universal, don’t be afraid of choosing a feat that isn’t on this list. No feat will make or break a character, either—you won’t ruin a playthrough by neglecting to choose the most powerful feats possible. Have fun, and choose feats that are appealing to you. If being an absolute unstoppable menace is your definition of fun, well then, refer back to this list.
