Baldur’s Gate 3: Druid class guide – Best race, background, and spells

Druid spells, cantrips, and class progression in BG3

Let’s talk about the best Druid spells and cantrips you can choose during Baldur’s Gate 3‘s character creation process.

Druid cantrips

As mentioned in our guide on spells vs cantrips, cantrips in Baldur’s Gate 3 are spells that can be cast freely each turn or as often as you’d like. No resting or prepping is required. As such, you want to pick those that will be helpful both in and out of combat.

You can choose up to two cantrips during character creation:

• Guidance – Grants target a 1d4 bonus to ability checks.
• Poison Gas – Deals 1d12 poison damage.
• Produce Flame – Conjures a flame that lights up the area around you; 1d8 fire damage when thrown.
• Resistance – 1d4 bonus to saving throws.
• Shillelagh (bonus action) – Imbues your staff or club with 1d8+Wisdom; uses your spellcasting ability for attack rolls. Since it’s a bonus action and it greatly improves the damage of your weapon, choose this as one of your cantrips.
• Thorn Whip – Deals 1d6 piercing damage and pulls the target closer to you. This becomes invaluable since (a) you could pull down an enemy to remove their height position advantage, (b) they’ll take damage if they bump into obstacles or if they take a huge fall, and (c) you can bring foes closer to your allies, so they can beat them up.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

Since Druids can swap out which cantrips they want to use anytime through their spellbook, there’s not such thing as a bad pick. But personally, I like to keep Shillelagh and Thorn Whip. The former is great for when you’re forced to engage in melee combat. Otherwise, the latter, as explained a moment ago, has a few great mechanics just in one simple cantrip.

Druid spells

There are 13 Druid spells during Baldur’s Gate 3‘s character creation, and you can choose four:

• Animal Friendship – Charms a beast.
• Charm Person – Charms a humanoid.
• Create or Destroy Water – Call down rain or destroy a water-based surface.
• Cure Wounds – Heals a target for 1d8+3 HP.
• Entangle – Sprout vines to grab creatures.
• Faerie Fire – Encases multiple targets with light, making them visible and ensuring that attacks against them have an advantage.
• Fog Cloud – Heavily obscure and blind creatures; prevents creatures from making ranged attacks into and out of the fog.
• Goodberry – Creates berries for yourself or an ally; the berries heal for 1d4 HP.
• Healing Word (bonus action) – Heals for 1d4+3 HP.
• Jump – Triples a target’s jumping distance.
• Longstrider – Increases a target’s speed (movement range).
• Speak with Animals – Concentrate so you can speak to various beasts.
• Thunderwave – A strong spell that does 2d8 thunder damage.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

During character creation for the Druid, I went with Animal Friendship, Goodberry, Healing Word, and Thunderwave. Once I hit level 2 (which added another level 1 spell slot), I selected Speak with Animals. Both Animal Friendship and Speak with Animals are great Druid spells in Baldur’s Gate 3. These are primarily for roleplaying purposes and coercing furry pals such as the owlbear and owlbear cub, and Scratch the Dog.

Meanwhile, Goodberry (seen below) is useful since you can generate lots of consumable fruits with it to help allies. Of course, Healing Word is also there—as a bonus action, you can use it on the same turn as other abilities or spells. Lastly, Thunderwave is something that can be helpful when blasting foes.

Anyway, for the first areas in your Baldur’s Gate 3 run as a Druid, you’ll make use of the Thorn Whip cantrip to pull enemies closer (seen below), all while your attacks are bolstered by the Shillelagh.

Class progression

• Level 2
  • Pick Druid subclass
  • Gain Wild Shapes
    • Cat, Wolf, Spider, Badger
• Level 4
  • Pick a Druid cantrip
  • Gain Wild Shape
    • Deep Rothe
  • Pick a feat
• Level 5
  • Wild Strike: Can make an additional attack after making an unarmed attack in Wild Shape.
• Level 6
  • Gain Wild Shapes
    • Owlbear, Panther
• Level 8
  • Pick a feat
• Level 10
  • Pick a Druid cantrip
  • Improved Wild Strike: Can make two additional attacks.
  • Gain Wild Shape: Dilophosaurus
• Level 12
  • Pick a feat

Baldur’s Gate 3 is available on Steam.