If you go barbarian, you can rage and then wildshape to be a really tanky bear but you won't be able to concentrate on any spells while raging Cleric is probably better for a caster druid, and Light Cleric has a great reaction at 1st level to impose disadvantage on an attacker. Ranger has good options for proficiencies and resistances at 1st level. If you go 3 levels into ranger, one of the subclasses can give you an animal companion

Barbarian works well. Rage stays active after you wild shape, so you can be a raging bear.

Monk might also work. I am not sure how the calculations work in BG3. But you could potentially gain a decent amount of AC.

And as with all Spell casters a single level of Wizard gives you access to learn spells from scrolls. Spell levels aren't class locked in BG3, so you can still learn level 4 spells from scrolls even as a level 1 Wizard as soon as your Druid has access to level 4 spells. Druid isn't the best for this and sorcerer/cleric would benefit more from it. But it still gives a ton of additional utility ritual spells.