In order to have the best Balder's Gate 3 run you can have, you will need to have a well-balanced team. Someone to cover magical utility, someone to be stealthy, someone to converse with all the NPCs, and someone to destroy absolutely everything they encounter in combat.
Polearm Master is a very powerful feat in Baldur’s Gate 3, and its power just gets even more impressive when you build into all of its strengths and pair it with other feats.
Updated by Chad Thesen on September 27, 2023: This guide has been updated to feature new embedded links that can allow easier navigation for readers. These embedded links include guides for how to build the best Fighter and Wizard characters for your party.
Best Polearm Master Ability Distribution
Polearm Master gives you a range of different weapons to use with the feat. This includes glaives, halberds, quarterstaves, and spears. None of these offer the finesse quality, meaning you should not focus on Dexterity for optimal results. You will want a Strength-driven class of character. Strength will be your main driving force for this feat for both your attack action and the bonus action. Your character will not be paging through volumes of books or expected to know the history of the universe, so you can make Intelligence as low as possible. The same can be said for Charisma. Constitution, on the other hand, will keep you alive on the frontlines, so this should be your secondary focus after Strength. Dexterity and Wisdom come up more than others in terms of Saving Throws, so these can serve as the middle ground. This concludes your knowledge of Abilities for this build.
Primary Abilities (Max these out): Strength and Constitution
Secondary Abilities: Wisdom and Dexterity
Dump Abilities (Ignore These): Intelligence and Charisma
Best Race For The Polearm Master
Half-Orc is a no-brainer, just like this build. First off, they get Relentless Endurance. With this feature, anytime your health drops to 0, it instead drops to 1. This can let them survive a fatal blow and finish off their foes before they go down for good. Polearm Master is all about attacking more often. Savage Attacks lets you capitalize on that by letting you roll one more of your weapon’s damage dice another time and adding it to the total damage. When you factor in Extra Attack, the rate of this feature increases, and so does the build’s damage output.
Alternative Race Option
Dwarves are not a bad choice, they offer a lot of toughness and tankiness. However, in a game like Baldur’s Gate 3, taking down an enemy faster means you mitigate all future damage from it. Not being squishy is good, but not optimal if your damage output is very bad. Half-Orcs benefits are in a league of their own that no other race option offers for this build.
Best Class For The Polearm Master
The Fighter class is the optimal pick for this. They are all about Strength in combat and get a total of 4 feats by the time they reach level 12. This lets you fully optimize them for using any of the weapons that make use of Polearm Master. They also offer a wide range of subclasses for different weapons that make use of Polearm Master.
Battle Master
Selune’s Spear of Night should be the weapon you desire for a Battle Master, and it may well be the best weapon for a Polearm Master in general. This will give you Advantage on all Wisdom Saving Throws and Perception Checks. Both of these are great for staying alive. As a Half-Orc, the Darkvision is not a factor. For any race that does not have Darkvision, it is a welcomed extra topping. This Weapon has Weapon Enhancement of +3, the highest amount offered. This will add +3 to your Weapon Attack Rolls and your damage with the weapon. Moonmote can make things much harder on enemies at closing the distance to your allies, while Moonbeam can unleash a high damage blast of Radiant damage when you need it.
Champion
Shar's Spear of Evening is a Champion’s friend. This lets you get right up in an opponent's face and cast Shar’s Darkness with it. Normally this would be a bad thing, as Magical Darkness can make your own rolls suffer. However, this weapon grants complete Immunity to Blindness. Not only that, you get Advantage on all of your Saving Throws for every single Ability while you are lightly or Heavily Obscured. If that was not overwhelmingly enticing enough, the weapon also has a Weapon Enhancement of +3. This makes the frontline using it obscenely tanky.
Eldritch Knight
Markoheshkir is a Quarterstaff that is great for Wizards. As an Eldritch Knight, you will have high Strength and be getting into melee range a lot. This lets you reap the benefits of Polearm Master while also bolstering your spell caster-like nature. This only has a Weapon Enhancement of +2 and does not deal as much damage as the above options. However, thanks to Arcane Enhancement, you receive a +1 to all your spell attack rolls and +1 to all of your spell saves. In addition to casting Kereska’s Favor, which imbues you with Elemental Energy, this weapon also has Arcane Battery. Arcane Battery has it so the next spell you cast will not consume a spell slot.
Warzard (Fighter Wizard Multiclass)
Just like with the Eldritch Knight above, the Markoheshkir is a truly amazing weapon in the hands of this Fighter Wizard multiclass. They will have access to a lot more spell slots and can even reach their 6th-level spell slot, while Eldritch Knights are stuck at only 2nd-level. If you enjoy playing an Eldrtich Knight, want a more tanky Wizard, or even want to try your hand at an all-Frontliner party. This multiclass might be something to try out for a second playthrough.
Best Skills And Background For The Polearm Master
Strength only has one skill associated with it, Athletics. You can pick this up from either your Background or the class you will be selecting. Since you are going with a Fighter, they can pick up Athletics and Perception. Wisdom is a middle-ground Ability, and it can happen now and again, making having this useful when you normally fall short by 1. It is best to take a Background that also gives you some passive rolls you will constantly be making in the game. This means a Background that gives 2 Wisdom skills. Folk Hero is a great choice for Animal Handling and Survival proficiencies. All you really need is the Athletics, but having a moment where one of these other skills saves the day when they are not supposed to will be a rush of satisfaction.
Alternative Background Options
Soldier is a great alternative, giving you Athletics and the ability to rack up Inspiration more often than other Backgrounds. You will be less proficient across the board, but you can make up for that by spending those Inspirations often.
Best Feats For The Polearm Master
A fighter gets 4 feats, the first of which will be Polearm Master. There are other feats that are great for Fighters, Barbarians, and Paladins, such as Great Weapons Master. However, Great Weapons Master uses a bonus action in the same way Polearm Master does, but not all the weapons you use Polearm Master with will meet the requirements for its maximum benefits. So, the other feats to pair this with will be Sentinel, Mage Slayer, and an Ability Improvement for your Strength. Sentinel synergizes very well with Polearm Master’s extended Opportunity Attacks.
|
Level |
Feat Name |
Feat Description |
|
4 |
Polearm Master |
When attacking with a glaive, halberd, quarterstaff, or spear, you can use a Bonus Action to attack with the butt of your weapon. You can also make an Opportunity Attack when a target comes within range. |
|
6 |
Ability Improvement (Strength) |
You increase one Ability by 2, or two Abilities by 1, to a maximum of 20. |
|
8 |
Sentinel |
When an enemy within melee range attacks an ally, you can use a reaction to make a weapon attack against that enemy. Target ally must not have the Sentinel Feat. You gain Advantage on Opportunity Attacks, and when you hit a creature with an Opportunity Attack, it can no longer move for the rest of its turn. |
|
12 |
Mage Slayer |
When a creature casts a spell Within melee range of you, you have Advantage on any Saving Throw against it, and you can use a reaction to immediately make an attack against the caster. Enemies you hit have Disadvantage on Concentration Saving Throws. |
Best Party Composition For The Polearm Master
You will be covering frontlining and bolstering combat more than any other member will be capable of. This means the others need to cover various other roles in the group. First, someone to detect things going on around and act as a healer when things go south. This requires high Wisdom and access to healing spells. You can have a Cleric, Ranger, or Druid fill this spot. A Cleric can help on the frontlines, a ranger can increase damage from a distance, and Druid can alternate between these two thanks to Wild Shaping. Next, you will want someone knowledgeable and can unleash an overwhelmingly high amount of damage in a single turn using a limited resource. This screams Wizard, who will make Intelligence their primary Ability. You will now need someone to handle traps and move silently through the shadows. This is where a Rogue will shine thanks to their high Dexterity and proficiency in Thieves Tools.
Polearm Master's Role In Combat
Your first and foremost objective is to close the gap and get into the faces of your enemies; once this is accomplished, you will be using both your Action and Bonus Action to pour on as much damage as possible. Thanks to your other feats, you can use your Reaction to attack even more. The other members of your party can attack from a safe distance with the Polearm Master’s extended Opportunity Attacks, and if one of them is targeted by an enemy, the Polearm Master will be able to use their Reactions to strike enemies outside of their own turn. This can finish off foes faster.