There are three major roles, I would say. Do note that there are thousands of ways of composing your character skills, and any character can be a mix between the roles, but for the sake of this article, we’ll separate them first.

The first of the three is the damage dealer – these come in the form of glass cannons, which deal a tremendous amount of damage to both multiple and single targets but are very fragile. The second is the brute or tanky type, who can handle being the focus of the enemy on the frontline.

The third is the support type. This is a character who has more supportive spells than others and whose objective is to mitigate damage, replenish the party’s hit points when needed, buff the party with enhancing spells, revive dead players, and crowd-control enemies.

So, what are the best healers in Baldur’s Gate 3?

The best healing class in Baldur’s Gate 3 is the Cleric with the life domain subclass. Clerics gain access to powerful healing spells at lower levels than other classes and have plenty of spell slots to cast them. The life domain allows clerics to always have their healing spells prepared, making extra room for other spells. Other viable healers include Land Druids, OoTA Paladins, and Bards.

However, it should be noted that healing should be a secondary focus in Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’ll explain why later on in the article.

Below is a more comprehensive list of all healers in Baldur’s Gate 3.

The Best Healing Classes in Baldur’s Gate 3

It’s important that you find a support character that you enjoy playing, as there are plenty of classes with healing abilities that work differently.

All of them are not equally effective and excel in different areas but personal preference is a big part of the game as so many elements can be mixed and matched.

One thing, for instance, is that damage always outpaces healing in Baldur’s Gate 3, which makes a healer with the ability to mitigate damage rather than only restoring it an incredibly powerful supporter.

The best way to maintain your party’s hit points is to win battles quickly, by either dealing a lot of damage or crowd-controlling the enemies to give your party an advantage.

Below is a deep dive into the primary healing classes in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Related Article: Do DnD Parties Need Healers?

Cleric

Clerics wield divine magic, and their toolkit has made them one of the best support classes in the game. They’re support-focused spellcasters with healing abilities, crowd-control abilities, buffs, and debuffs that give enemies disadvantage.

Aside from all that, they’re able to deal a lot of damage with the right type of abilities.

Their arsenal of healing spells consists of single-target heals and large area of effect heals, providing a mix of restorative spells for any situation. In addition to their powerful healing spells, they have spells like Feign Death or Death Ward that prevent characters from dying.

Clerics will grant the entire party support and provide a tactical advantage in almost every encounter. With the life domain subclass, the Cleric is able to cast healing spells without preparing them first, which frees up extra slots for other supportive or offensive spells.

Guidance, an ability that grants a bonus on ability checks, is another bonus of having a Cleric in your party. Overall, the Cleric is a great supportive class that grows strong quite early in the game but truly excels at the end of the game.

Paladin

The Paladin class harbors a few curative spells from the start of the game. Initially, Paladins are able to cast a single-target heal called Lay on Hands and a spell called Healing Radiance, which restores 5 hit points to any surrounding characters.

As the game progresses, the Paladin is given new and more powerful restorative spells, such as Aid, Lesser Restoration, and Revivify.

The Paladin can cast auras to protect allies, deal a good bit of melee-focused damage, have high hit points, and can defend themselves quite well.

Paladin healers are, therefore, more bulky healers that not only negate damage by healing, but also by preemptively protecting allies against it by buffing them or neutralizing enemies.

Our recommended subclass for a supportive paladin is the Oath of the Ancients.

Bard

Bards are jacks of all trades, capable of filling every role in the game. The class gives you a charismatic character that should front your dialogues due to their high skill bonuses.

In combat, Bards come with a bunch of different supportive spells that will grant your party bonuses to different types of rolls.

Their strength is the amount of utility that they have at their disposal. They’re usually lower than other classes in the damage output charts but they make up for it by making other characters more powerful through their buffs.

Druid

Druids are one of the most versatile healers in the game but have fewer hit points than some of the other classes. This is compensated for by a wide arsenal of varying abilities, both protective and offensive.

The class can shapeshift into various forms which grant the Druid hit points and effective abilities for damage output. When the Druid’s hit points are brought to zero while shapeshifted, the class is forced back into its regular form rather than dying, making it incredibly powerful.

The Druid misses some of the supportive abilities that Clerics come with, but they’re equipped to deal a fair bit of damage and protect themselves quite well by shapeshifting.

They start out with the curative spell Healing Word at level 1 and as the Druid progresses, the class picks up other supportive spells that grant protection and resistance against various elements.

At level 6, Druids gain access to Heal, which is a powerful healing spell that restores hit points and removes some negative status effects.

Do You Need a Healer In Baldur’s Gate 3?

You don’t need a purebred healer in your party in Baldur’s Gate 3, but you should absolutely have characters with both restorative and supportive spells in order to facilitate battles.

Potions, scrolls, and long rests are good ways of keeping your party replenished, but having a character with curative spells and the ability to blind, paralyze, or fear enemies is of incredibly high value throughout the entire game.

Strong enemies will deal a lot of damage to your party unless they’re given disadvantage, which you can achieve by using abilities such as hold person, blind, fear, turn undead, and so forth.

If your support character has a wide array of spells that mitigate damage or prevent it from happening, then that’s even more effective than re-healing the hit points lost from taking the hit.

Therefore, focusing on a mixture of supportive spells, damage abilities, and pure healing spells is the way to go when creating a designated support class. In this game, being able to deal damage in addition to healing is the way to go.

So, let’s go over the different situations that can arise when death is looming in Baldur’s Gate 3. What happens when you die in Baldur’s Gate 3?

When a playable character dies in Baldur’s Gate 3, you can use a Scroll of Revivify to resurrect them. However, they’re somewhat expensive to buy and you only have one for each character when you first start the game. If you have completed the Dank Crypt at the beginning of the game, you can recruit Withers who can help you resurrect fallen party members for 200 gold.

Let’s go over this in detail. There are circumstances regarding character deaths that can confuse players, so let’s be thorough. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about player death in Baldur’s Gate 3.

What Happens If You Die in Baldur’s Gate 3?

There are multiple ways to resurrect characters in Baldur’s Gate 3, but Scroll of Revivify and Withers services are the 2 most common ways of doing this. You can also use spells to do it, such as using the spell Revivify (Cleric or Paladin) or Resurrection (Bard or Cleric).

For the majority of cases, playable character death isn’t permanent. Now, resurrection works the same way in both multiplayer and single-player. The only criteria you need for resurrection are the required resources and a willing party member.

Most players find Withers themselves when exploring the wilderness at the beginning of the game. He can be found at the end of the Dank Crypt which can be found shortly after the Nautiloid crash.

You will need to complete the dungeon before being able to free Withers. After doing this, don’t attack him. Leave the crypt. After you’ve done this, he will make a new home in your camp, which can be accessed by long resting or simply clicking Go to Camp at the bottom-right side of your screen.

Sometimes when characters die, their bodies can’t be reached, for example, if they’ve been pushed off a cliff or something similar. This can cause some confusion since you can’t target their body with a Scroll of Revivify.

Instead of going to Withers and wasting 200 gold, you can solve this by using the Scroll of Revivify on the blue orb that spawns near where the character died.

The blue orb spawns there to prevent players from getting completely wrecked if the body of a character disappears from the map, but you don’t get a tooltip or something like that to explain that they left the orb behind.

Withers Isn’t Showing Up in the Dank Crypt

Some players have reported a bug where Withers does not show up at the end of the Dank Crypt. If this happens to you, try reloading from the last save.

You can also just continue playing since Withers will eventually show up at your camp anyway, but this can take some time and since you’ve most likely just begun your journey, your best bet is starting over completely.

What Happens If Your Party Dies in Baldur’s Gate 3?

If your entire party gets killed in Baldur’s Gate 3 (not an entirely unlikely outcome, depending on the set game difficulty), you need to reload the game from your latest save. This is called a TPK (“total party kill”).

That’s why you should make sure to save your games often. Baldur’s Gate uses an autosave feature, but personally, I like to save the game manually now and again, especially if I have my suspicions about an upcoming area.

Saving in Baldur’s Gate is quite flexible, and can be used at almost any time. For example, you can save the game during dialogue or combat.

If only one party member is alive in a fight, however, and you don’t want to reload the game, you can try fleeing the battle. You will need to retreat 27 meters from the enemy first, however, for this to work.

After fleeing, you will spawn in your camp. Talk to Withers and resurrect your companions. This can be useful if your last save is from some time ago and you don’t want to waste time.

Cases Where You Can’t Bring Back Characters in BG3

I mentioned earlier that playable characters’ deaths aren’t permanent, in most cases. In some cases, however, they are.

Depending on your choices, playable characters can die permanently. I won’t go into detail here since I don’t want to spoil the game for you, but depending on who you side with in certain situations and the attitude you hold towards characters, they can permanently be gone from the game. Scroll of Revivify won’t work on them.

So, what are these cases? Well, generally, you can tell quite easily. Deaths like these play out during cutscenes. Again, to avoid spoiling the game, I won’t list the specific moments where this can happen.

When this happens, you lose potential storylines and dialogue options in the future. In my opinion, this is a good thing. It gives Baldur’s Gate 3 an insane amount of replayability factor since you can effectively change the story of the game for every new run.

How Does Death Work in Baldur’s Gate 3?

Let’s go over the mechanics that are involved in playable characters’ deaths. When a character first gets “downed” in combat, a somewhat confusing symbol will appear over their head, signaling their condition. The game doesn’t do a very good job explaining what this is, in my opinion.

Characters with this condition make a death-saving throw at the start of every round (this happens automatically in Baldur’s Gate). Death-saving throws are done by rolling a d20 (a 20-sided die).

If you get a number over 10 on your death-saving roll, the roll is a success. If you get a number under 10 on the roll, you fail the roll. Fail three rolls, and you’re a goner. Succeed three rolls, and you’re “stabilized”, meaning you won’t die unless damaged, and your character doesn’t have to perform the death-saving throws.

Downed characters don’t have to succeed/fail three times in a row for a final result. The game counts overall roll count.

However, there are differences between the power levels of rare magic items. An interesting question, then, is: what are the best rare magic items in DnD?

Strap in, because this article is quite long. Here’s the list of the best rare magic items in DnD 5e. I’ve taken into account both design and power levels.

Amulet of Health

Wondrous Item, rare (requires attunement)

Amulet of Health makes your Constitution score jump to 19. if you’re already at 19 or higher Constitution, the item does nothing instead. It’s a fairly vanilla item as it goes, but it’s really strong.

If you’re squishy, you can get multiple ability score increases just by equipping the ring. Of course, this helps you become tankier, but it can also help you with Constitution saving throws to maintain concentration.

Sun Blade

Weapon (longsword), rare (requires attunement)

The Sun Blade is a really cool item that gives you a bunch of benefits. The Sun Blade longsword hilt radiates energy to form a blade. It deals radiant damage instead of your normal slashing damage, and it deals a bonus 1d8 to undead creatures.

It’s a +2 Finesse weapon that can be wielded by a lot of different classes. Having a melee magical weapon is in itself strong, and a magic weapon with a +2 bonus is even stronger.

Moreover, Sun Blade has the ability to light the way for 10-30 feet and provide dim light for an additional 10-30 feet, which is also a neat ability. I’d argue that this ability isn’t really the main upside to the weapon, but it’s a fairly useful ability and a fitting one for the Sun Blade.

Ring of Spell Storing

Ring, rare (requires attunement)

The Ring of Spell Storing is an incredibly useful ring that lets you cast spells into it for storage. How does this work in practice? I’ll refer to the Basic Rules:

“This ring stores spells cast into it, holding them until the attuned wearer uses them. The ring can store up to 5 levels worth of spells at a time. When found, it contains 1d6 − 1 levels of stored spells chosen by the GM.”

The ring can be used for a multitude of purposes, but some uses to consider that are arguably somewhat game-breaking are 1. You can use the ring to give a non-spellcaster friend a concentration spell. This is especially useful if he/she has a high Constitution score, of course. 2, you can lend class-exclusive spells to your friends!

It’s good even if you don’t give the ring to your friends. If you end up not using say a level 5 spell in a day, you can cast it into the ring and have an extra the next day instead. This can be particularly useful if you’re prepping for a difficult encounter.

I’m sure that there are more uses for the item that I haven’t mentioned here, but the Ring of Spell Storing is a fantastic utility item. Personally, I really enjoy items like this one, where you get to be creative as opposed to items with flat stat gains on them.

Necklace of Fireballs

Wondrous Item, rare

Necklace of Fireballs is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s a necklace with 1d6 + 3 beads hanging off of it, and you can detach these beads and throw them at stuff. When they hit said stuff, they explode to the same effect as a level 3 Fireball.

The Necklace of Fireballs is especially useful early game, as it doesn’t require attunement and has a relatively strong effect. The fact that the item doesn’t require attunement is strong as well because you can pass the item around and use your turns to pelt enemies with the beads.

You can also throw multiple beads or the entire necklace if you want. For each bead after the first one, you increase the Fireball by one level. You can toss any number of beads as a single action.

Of course, after you’ve expended your 1d6+3 beads, the item is gone, so don’t spend them too frivolously.

Helm of the Gods

Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement) From Mythic Odysseys of Theros

The Helm of the Gods is an item that lets you cast a different spell each day, up to three times. The helm is originally from the DnD sourcebook Mythic Odysseys of Theros, but you can easily incorporate it into other campaigns with a little creativity.

After finishing a long rest, you can pray to one of the 15 Gods that are listed in the Helm of the Gods item description and store the spell in the helm. In other words, you can prepare one of 15 different spells from the list to use as you want. You can only store one spell in the helm.

The helm regains charges every day. It starts with three charges and then regains 1d3 of charges every day. The helm has an additional, fairly underwhelming effect which lets you know whether or not there’s a Celestial or Fiend within 30 feet of your position.

Bracers of Defense

Wondrous Item, rare (requires attunement)

The Bracers of Defense gives you a +2 AC bonus if you’re not wearing any armor. That’s pretty strong in and of itself, but additionally, it stacks with other similar bonuses, such as Barbarians’/Monks’ Unarmored Defense and Mage Armor.

As you can tell, that’s a pretty massive boost in AC, especially if you’re affected by one of the buffs that I mentioned. As I said earlier, it’s not really my favorite type of item flavorwise, but it’s sure strong.

Cape of the Mountebank

Wondrous Item, rare

The Cape of the Mountebank lets you use Dimension Door once a day. Dimension Door lets you teleport, once a day, within 500 feet’s distance. You don’t have to see the place you want to go with your eyes, you can visualize it as well.

You arrive precisely at the place you want to go, which makes the spell really reliable. You can’t get back the same way you came, however, so you might want to use the spell somewhat conservatively. Or not. Either way is fun.

Overall, it’s a really good tool for escaping, positioning, and chasing. The cape doesn’t have to be attuned either, which is, of course, a bonus.

Armor of Resistance

Armor (light, medium, or heavy), rare (requires attunement)

The Armor of Resistance lets you get resistance (50% less damage taken) from one non-physical source while wearing the item. Unfortunately, you don’t get to choose what source.

Either the DM chooses it for you, or you randomize it through a d10 roll. Resistance to any given source is very useful, and for that reason, I think it makes for one of the 20 strongest rare items in 5e.

Read more: How Does Resistance Work in DnD?

A lot of DMs let their players choose what resistance to get, and that makes the item considerably stronger. With this little house rule, you can tailor-make your character’s defense.

Rod of Rulership

Rod, rare (requires attunement)

The Rod of Rulership lets you charm any creatures within 120 feet for 8 hours. To prevent this, they must pass a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw.

The Rod can either be incredibly strong or not particularly strong at all, depending on what types of enemies you’re facing. But if the item is used appropriately, it can completely carry encounters.

If the enemies you’re facing have fairly low Wisdom, then the Rod just completes the encounter for you. However, many groups play multiple encounters each day, and you only get to use it once per day.

If you could use the Rod of Rulership more than once a day, it would probably be pretty broken even with the DC 15 Wisdom saving throw taken into account.

Necklace of Prayer Beads

Wondrous Item, rare (requires attunement by a Druid, Cleric, or Paladin)

The Necklace of Prayer Beads has 1d4+2 non-magical and magical beads on it. The magical beads do not necessarily all serve the same purpose, as the DM either selects the effects of each bead or randomly selects them by rolling a d20 as many times as the number of beads on the necklace.

Here are the different effects that the beads on the Necklace can have:

The beads aren’t destroyed or rendered useless when you have cast a spell using one of the beads, it can’t be used until the next day. Furthermore, you can cast the spells from your beads using a bonus action, which is very resourceful indeed.

Brass Horn of Valhalla

Wondrous Item, varies

The Brass Horn of Valhalla is an awesome item both aesthetically and mechanically. It lets you summon spirits by blowing the horn.

The spirits have the same stat specifications as a Berserker. The spirits can fight for you, and they disappear when they die or after one hour’s in-game time.

There are a couple of different types of these horns, and what type you get varies depending on a d100 roll or the selection of the DM. The Horn also has requirements for using it, depending on the type.

Here’s a table for the different types of Horn of Valhallas in DnD:

Honestly, the effect of the item is pretty broken. Make sure to not give a low-level party this item since the spirits will most likely wreck everything in their path for the hour that they’re active.

For example, if you get the Iron horn, you can summon everything between 10 and 25 (CR 2) spirits. If your enemies aren’t considerably difficult, you don’t really have to do that much besides blowing the horn.

The saving grace of the item is that it can only be used once every 7 days. That’s a really long cooldown, but again, the effect is so strong that the cooldown time is justified.

Helm of Teleportation

Wondrous Item, rare (requires attunement)

The Helm of Teleportation works just as advertised: you get three charges, and as an action, you can remove one charge and cast Teleport.

Just like many other items like it, the Helm regains 1d3 charges each day. It’s a fairly straightforward item, but it’s deceivingly strong. The environmental challenges that mid to low-level parties face are very relevant, but the helm can significantly help with this.

Teleport is a 7th-level spell, and you get three charges of it per day. Normally, you would get the spell at level 13. Based on this, we can quite safely conclude that the helm shouldn’t really be awarded or given to low-level characters.

Flame Tongue

Weapon (any sword), rare (requires attunement)

Flame Tongue is a sword that you can ignite with flame, making attacks deal an extra 2d6 fire damage to its targets. The flames shine in a 40-foot radius (flames also shine dimly for an additional 40 feet).

The Flame Tongue is any sword, so it’s accessible to pretty much anyone. As far as comparisons go with other weapons, the Flame Tongue is hard to outmatch.

If you want to get into the nitty gritty regarding the damage of the Flame Tongue, I’d recommend checking this DPR calculator.

Experiment and compare the Flame Tongue with other weapons. I’m sure you’ll come to the same conclusion as I have: the Flame Tongue is really strong.

Daern’s Instant Fortress

Wondrous Item, rare

Daern’s Instant Fortress is one of the coolest, most creative items in DnD in my opinion. It’s also very strong.

The fortress is initially a little metal cube. However, if you spend an action, you can place it on the ground and speak a command word.

The command word will very quickly transform the little cube into a fortress, spanning 30 feet high and 20 feet wide on each side.

The fortress has a battlement on the top and two floors on the inside, connected by a ladder. When the fortress appears, creatures in its expanding area must make a Dexterity saving throw. If they fail, they take a bunch of damage and go flying.

Furthermore, the fortress has a door that spawns right in front of the caster. The door can’t be coerced or persuaded to open by magic — only you can open it, and you do so by commanding it to open. This costs one bonus action.

Every part of the fortress (walls, door, etc) has 100 hitpoints each and is immune to physical damage except for siege equipment. The fortress has resistance to every other form of damage.

I’m not sure if I have to explain why this item is good, quite frankly, as I’m sure you can imagine the potency of Daern’s Instant Fortress.

One thing to note, however, is that players shouldn’t really use it in tight spaces. The DM can easily and rightfully punish reckless players by making ceilings cave in on their heads.

Cloak of Displacement

Wondrous Item, rare (requires attunement)

Cloak of Displacement is a universally useful tool that’ll help you take less damage during combat. When you wear the cloak, enemies have disadvantage on attack rolls on you.

If you take damage, the effect goes away. Until it’s your turn again. The power of the effect speaks for itself. It’s a straightforward but strong item that can be used effectively by any PC in the game.

The Cloak of Displacement can be countered in a couple of ways, so it’s not overpowered by any means. For example, if the opponent has advantage on their attack it will cancel out the initial disadvantage. When they hit you, you’re open to attacks until your turn.

While the cloak can be used on all characters effectively, some character archetypes will stand to benefit more from it. For example, front liners will most likely get hit more than once every turn which somewhat diminishes the item’s usefulness (although not entirely).

Mizzium Armor

Armor (medium or heavy, but not hide), rare

Adamantine Armor is an uncommon armor that turns critical hits on you into normal hits. Mizzium armor is like an upgraded Adamantine Armor. It negates critical hits in the same way that Adamantine Armor does, but it has an additional benefit.

I’ll quote the sourcebook (Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica):

“…when you are subjected to a magical effect that allows you to make a Strength or Constitution saving throw to take only half damage, you instead take no damage if you succeed on the saving throw.”

In other words, Mizzium Armor can make you take no damage at all from certain spells if you pass their Con/Str checks. That’s pretty powerful.

Cube of Force

Wondrous Item, rare (requires attunement)

This is one of the most complicated items in DnD, so I recommend checking out the item description in the Basic Rules for further clarification. I’ll try to condense it to the best of my ability.

The Cube of Force is a small cube with six faces. You can spend an action to press one of them to gain different Wall of Force effects. The cube starts with 36 charges, and depending on what face you press, you expend a varying number of those charges.

The better the Wall of Force, the more charges you spend. Here’s a table with all of the effects from the Cube.

Moreover, the cube loses charges if the barrier is hit by certain effects. Examples of such effects are Prismatic Spray, which removes 1d20 of charges from the cube, and Disintegrate, which removes 1d12 of charges.

Some DMs refuse to hand their players this item because of the potential wombo-combos and game-breaking effects this item has. For example, with face number 3, you can stand behind the barrier and spam cantrips on your foes while they can’t do anything (if they’re melee, which they are most of the time).

Stirring Scaled Ornament

Wondrous Item, rare (requires attunement)

Scaled Ornament comes in different rarities, from uncommon to legendary. Stirring Scaled Ornament is the rare version of the item, and it grants you +1 to AC and immunity from being charmed or frightened.

In addition to those two effects, you can choose to give creatures advantage on saving throws that they would make to avoid being charmed or frightened or to end one of the conditions.

The item is useful for all characters, the buffs are universally good, but they’re especially potent for melee classes like Fighters and Barbarians.