Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game that can potentially provide a ton of challenges for you and your party, but it’s possible to overcome its toughest trials by building the perfect party composition. Picking a strong arrangement of characters and classes can greatly ease the pain of the highest difficulty within Baldur’s Gate 3, known as Honour Mode, which adds a ton of new challenges to the game and punishes party wipes with complete Game Overs.

While there are plenty of individual classes who are great at Honour Mode, team compositions can allow for the entire party to synergize and use unique builds that aren’t as strong alone to a very efficient degree. These will also give you a better chance at beating Honour Mode, especially for newer players who struggle to get used to the harder challenges the mode provides.

Brute Force With Lae’zel, Karlach, & Gale

Stomp Through Any Situation With Raw Power

A well-built arrangement of Lae’zel, Karlach, and Gale requires a very aggressive style of play, leaning on the idea that the party will constantly move forward and attack the enemy. This composition mostly relies on pure damage with a few supportive abilities, usually meant to amplify the damage of the party or prevent allies from being swiftly taken out. This will result in many bosses being defeated fairly quickly, as well as being able to run through most encounters, though it can falter in situations where you’re under-geared.

Lae’zel, Battle Master 11/War Cleric 1
Karlach, Wildheart Barbarian 8/ Fighter 4
Gale, 12 Evocation/Divination Wizard
Tav/Durge, 12 Oath Of Vengeance Paladin

Lae’zel and Karlach will be key damage dealers in this composition, as their builds allow them to strike multiple times in a single turn, allowing for huge amounts of initial damage. Gale provides high damage while having plenty of optional supportive abilities, such as Hold Person and Counterspell . Evocation allows him to assist in damage without being a threat to his front-liners, while Divination allows you to quickly change a roll in your favor, which can be important in this composition as it lacks supportive abilities.

Casters’ Paradise With Halsin Or Jaheira, Gale, & Wyll

A Spell For Every Situation

Like the previous composition, a casting-focused composition with Jaheira, Gale, and Wyll is quite aggressive, but this one takes a more tactful approach. This composition relies on multiple spells to control the state of the battlefield and deal tons of burst damage. Another important factor of this composition is that it also requires Long Resting more than most, but it can be devastatingly powerful when every party member has all their spell slots.

Gale, 12 Divination Wizard
Wyll, 2 The Great Old War Warlock/ 10 Draconic Sorcerer
Halsin, 12 Circle of The Moon Druid
Tav/Durge, 12 Storm Sorcerer

This composition provides a ton of ranged damage and crowd-control options of various spell levels for everyone in the group. The Druid (Halsin or Jaheira in this case) would be the primary front line as a wild-shaping druid, who also has the potential to cast important spells in key scenarios. Wyll would focus on Eldritch Blast for single target damage and Gale, as a Wizard, would tend to focus on Area of Effect damage. Both would also need utility spells in their kit to maximize their efficiency in battle, though this is more pressing for Gale rather than Wyll.

The Tav/Durge will do best by opting for a Sorcerer build that’s focused purely on dealing damage, utilizing the Sorcerer’s incredibly high damage output. This can be further inflated if you choose to invest in 10 Storm Sorcerer/ 2 Tempest Domain Cleric levels, as sacrificing later spells slots allows for a greater improvement to your earlier skills. This is great for players who wish to not Long Rest as often while still focusing on this playstyle.

Obscured In Darkness With Astarion, Shadowheart, & Minthara

Striking Your Enemies Hard From The Shadows

A selection of Astarion, Shadowheart, and Minthara with some darker subclasses actually has thematic reasoning behind it, but in terms of gameplay, it also makes for a perfect composition that can always leave the enemy guessing. When using this team, the best narrative choice is a Dark Urge Tav, and the general party aims to constantly sit in the darkness spell or out of sight to win battles without the enemy being completely aware of the situation. While this party is more gear-dependent than the others listed, it’s easily one of the safest compositions once you get it online.

Shadowheart, 7 Trickery Domain Cleric/ 5 Gloomstalker
Astarion, 6 Shadow Monk/ 4 Thief Rogue/ 2 Warlock
Minthara, Oathbreaker Paladin 10/ 2 Warlock
Durge/Tav, 11 BeastMaster Ranger / 1 War Cleric

This composition relies on darkness, which the Beast Master can easily provide with their raven companion at higher levels. Shadow Monk Astarion also gets a boost from being a vampire ascendant, which works well for the theme of this team. Shadowheart in this comp has great utility while also being able to provide suitable support. Minthara finishes off this team by dealing high damage as an Oathbreaker Paladin, with the Warlock levels allowing her to see within the darkness.

This team works best when the player is thematically evil, as a lot of the choices you’ll need to make for the best gear/buffs on this route come from evil choices. This is the main reason why this team is more thematic than most, but the buffs and gear you receive greatly enhance the team both in power and in the ability to see in darkness.

Extreme Safety With Gale, Shadowheart, & Lae’zel

Slow Pace, But Never Die

A party composition with some cautious builds for Gale, Shadowheart, and Lae’zel is more defensive than other strong Honour Mode choices. Focusing on safety above all else, this is the best team composition for survival. While your fights won’t be fast with this team, they’ll be safe, as this team has extensive control of every state of combat at any time through support spells and healing.

Gale, 12 Divination Wizard
Shadowheart, 12 Life Domain Wizard
Lae’zel, 11 BattleMaster Fighter/ 1 War Cleric
Durge/Tav, 12 College of Eloquence Bard

The dice that the Divination Wizard acquires can easily turn certain rolls in your favor mid-combat, which can stop harmful attacks from working or prevent the enemy from successful crowd control. This, combined with the sustainability of Life Domain Cleric and Crowd Control/Utility of the College of Eloquence Bard, gives you the upper hand in ensuring combat goes according to your plans. Lae’zel provides the damage the team needs to be effective, and she has decent utility and survivability as well.

This team composition has a lot of freedom for alterations, such as swapping Karlach in for Lae’zel if you want more aggression to take advantage of all the healing and support. Gale in this build also tends to be more of a damage dealer using Divination support and can be purely passive, though he does risk hurting his front line with certain spells. Due to how safe this team is, you should be able to challenge almost every fight rather than avoid some due to them being normally fairly dangerous.

Necrotic Summoners With Wyll, Jaheira/Halsin, & Gale.

Tons Of Summons To Overwhelm The Enemy

While many compositions can utilize summons loosely, selecting Wyll, Gale, and Jaheira or Halsin and speccing them correctly primarily focuses on having plenty of summons to overwhelm the battlefield. In this case, those summons are all of a Necrotic flavor. By using skeleton summons, combined with plenty of buffs and auras from the team itself, you have plenty of damage and minions to take over any encounter with the proper unit placement.

Wyll, 7 Oathbreaker Paladin/ 5 The Great Old One Warlock
Gale, 6 Necromancer Wizard/ 6 War Cleric
Jaheira/Halsin, 11 Spore Druid / 1 War Cleric
Durge/Tav, 8 Wildheart Barbarian/ 4 BattleMaster Fighter

This might seem like a weird spread of subclasses at first, this team becomes a huge threat when put together, especially later in the game. Spore Druid is the main summoner of the party, able to call almost every summon in the game into battle, with Oathbreaker and Necromancer covering the skeletons.

Wyll and Gale provide key buffs such as aid, Bless , and Aura of Hate, which can greatly increase the damage and survivability of all your summons. The Durge/Tav will be a front-line attacker with great supportive abilities, such as Commander’s Strike, which can provide additional attacks to all your summons.

While there are many ways to get additional summons within this party, it does not typically need it, as the Spore Druid, combined with the skeletons of the Oathbreaker and the Necromancer, provide plenty. However, summons such as Scratch can provide great support, especially within Act 2 of Baldur’s Gate 3. This party can be hard to navigate at first, but once mastered, the power of summons can make Honour Mode far easier to clear.