Baldur's Gate 3 is based off of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition (5E), which has several classes. I'm curious if all the official classes in 5E are available in Baldur's Gate 3. Additionally, I'm also wondering if there are any classes in Baldur's Gate 3 which aren't available in 5E.
In other words, is the list of classes available in Baldur's Gate 3 identical to the list of classes available in D&D 5E?
Best Answer
Baldur's Gate 3 includes all 12 principal base classes that have been around for at least two editions (the Warlock, being the newest entry, was introduced during 3.5, and turned core for the 4th edition), and have been published as such in the 5th edition Player's Handbook.
With the subclasses it's a bit more complicated:
Most of the additional subclasses from the game have been published in the supplementary 5E sourcebooks: the Bard subclass College of Swords, the Ranger subclass Gloom Stalker, and the Sorcerer subclass Storm Sorcery were published in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and the Druid's Circle of the Spores and Barbarian's Wild Magic in Tasha's Guide to Everything.
The only outlier here, Barbarian's subclass Wildheart, is Larian's reinterpretation of Path of the Totem Warrior (see e.g. here).
As for the Artificer base class: this was introduced in the Eberron campaign setting, already during the 3rd edition (but as a Wizard specialization already as far back as 2E), and made its reappearance during the 4th and 5th in non-core rulebooks. As jwodder points out in their answer, it was published in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, which is a sourcebook (expanding on the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual).
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything was published in 2020, whereas development on Baldur's Gate 3 already started in 2016: apart from the exclusion of the Artificer base class from the core rulebooks, this could account for this class not having made it into the game.
There is a mod available to remedy that, though.