Baldur’s Gate 3: Best Karlach companion build

Barbarians in Baldur’s Gate 3 are extremely strong vanguards, and if you had to pick one for your party, Karlach is the must-have companion. Here’s the best build for Karlach in BG3 that transforms her into an unstoppable tank.

Karlach the Barbarian in Baldur’s Gate 3 has a compelling questline that is also connected to Wyll‘s story. She is a Tiefling who escaped from Avernus, being hunted by Zariel’s minions.

While Karlach is one of the most powerful companions in terms of dealing raw damage with a melee weapon in Baldur’s Gate 3, to make the most out of her build, you need to respec her and alter her stats and skills.

With that in mind, here’s the best companion build for Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3 that helps you decide the ideal skills, subclass, abilities, and more.

• Best subclass for Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3
• Best Ability Score for Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3
• Best skills for Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3
• Best build for Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3

Best subclass for Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3

The best subclass for Karlach’s Barbarian build in Baldur’s Gate 3 is Berserker, as it does more damage than any other melee-based subclass in the game.

The Berserker gets the ability to use a bonus action called Frenzy while raging, which adds an extra attack to your turns. Your offensive strength gets increased, enabling you to hit harder and attack more enemies at once.

Best Ability Score for Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3

Here’s what Karlach’s Ability Score should look like for her companion build in Baldur’s Gate 3:

• Strength: 16 (+2)
• Dexterity: 16
• Constitution: 16 (+1)
• Intelligence: 8
• Wisdom: 8
• Charisma: 8

The Barbarian is the most straightforward DPS class, and as such, your most important ability is Strength. You also need to focus on Constitution for survivability along with Dexterity to land your hits, so dumping Intelligence, Charisma and Wisdom won’t hurt Karlach at all. You don’t need her to be the face of the party, nor an investigator, just a killing machine with raw power.

Best skills for Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3

You should focus on the following skills for Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3:

• Athletics (Strength)
• Survival (Wisdom)

The Barbarian class in Baldur’s Gate 3 relies primarily on Strength, which is why Athletics is a good pick. Meanwhile, Wisdom is one of the skills that you can pick but this Barbarian build for Karlach is not focused on using Survival and with the -2 penalty to its Wisdom stat, don’t count on it as a viable option, just a placeholder since Barbarians don’t get access to other skills.

Best build for Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3

Here’s the best companion build for Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3:

LEVEL	FEATURE
1	Unarmored Defence – Rage
2	Danger Sense -Reckless Attack
3	Subclass: Berserker – Additional Rage Charge
4	Ability Improvement: Strength +2 (or Savage Attacker Feat)
5	Extra Attack – Fast Movement
6	Additional Rage Charge
7	Feral Instinct
8	Feat: Great Weapon Master or Charger (This last Feat is tremendously useful)
9	Brutal Critical
10	Additional Health
11	Relentless Rage
12	Ability Improvement: Strength +2 (or Sentinel Feat)

Berserker mainly focuses on dealing lots of damage, using improvised weapons taken from the environment, and even throwing their enemies against each other. A useful tip would be placing Karlach in the middle of the battlefield, surrounded by enemies, triggering rage, and then wreaking havoc among their ranks by taking them down one by one and making use of her reaction to strike them down with Opportunity Attacks.

The Charger Feat is a great addition to the Berseker’s already empowered crowd control melee abilities and will turn Karlach into a train of pain, able to ram down groups of enemies, taking them down easily as she moves through the battlefield.

Savage Attacker and Sentinel Feats are great to have, but they will reduce Karlach’s total Strength Ability Score to either 18 (if you pick one of them) or leave it at 16 (if you pick both). Considering there are plenty of items you can use to make Karlach’s Strength stat climb up to 20 without spending your Feat on Ability Score increase, you should definitely go for it if you want to.

That was all the information you needed for the best Karlach companion build in Baldur’s Gate 3. Here are some more guides on the game you can check out:

Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 3: Gameplay changes, and more | Best Paladin build in Baldur’s Gate 3 | Best Druid build in Baldur’s Gate 3 | Best Bard build in Baldur’s Gate 3 | Best Sorcerer build in Baldur’s Gate 3 | Best Wizard build in Baldur’s Gate 3 | Best Fighter build in Baldur’s Gate 3 | Baldur’s Gate 3: How to get Us companion