So I Played Baldur’s Gate 3…

WARNING: SPOILERS

I purchased Baldur’s Gate 3 just one day after the release and finished it yesterday. The game is really good and surprisingly cool for something built on 5^th Edition rules. The run took me a total of 52 hours 5 minutes(based on the time of my last save, which I made during the ending dialogue). This article is going to be a commentary on various BG3-related things, just because why not.

Party Composition

I generally didn’t recruit that many companions, and at the end of the game I still only had four. Not that I cared much, you can only have four characters active at a time anyway. My party consisted of my warlock, Shadowheart, Lae’zel and Gale.

Shadowheart(Passing Without Trace Into My Warlock’s Heart)

Shadowheart is really good by default, but it’s agonizing that she only has 13 Dexterity. I take psychic damage whenever I see medium armor and a modifier of less than +2. She is a Trickery Cleric by default, i.e. the best PHB Cleric subclass, but unfortunately that doesn’t mean as much as it does in 5e. Pass without trace is made worse by the fact numerous combats begin with a cutscene that negates your stealth, and apart from that your spell list is uh… bless, sanctuary, healing word, aid, spirit guardians, animate dead.

With all due respect to the Cleric class, I suggest changing her class by level 5. She’s much more useful as a Fiend Warlock.

Lae’zel(her name contains two Ls, her class is another one)

Lae’zel starts as a melee fighter, which is basically another way of saying she’s a worse warlock without spell slots. While the existence of guaranteed good magic weapons is one-tenth of an argument in favour of the fighter class, trading one use of Action Surge per short rest for the ability to cast spells is so huge that you can just forget magic weapons exist and sell them all.

I spent ten minutes pondering whether I should make her an Eldritch Knight or a Battle Master at level 3 before remembering I had 100 gp and deciding to make her an Illusion Wizard.

Gale(Magic-Hungry Loser)

Gale’s disease makes him something of a liability, but it goes away eventually and you have enough useless magic items to feed him. He starts out as a Wizard, making him the only character in my party whose class I never needed to change. A shame his spellbook unironically contains witch bolt though.

Warlock Build

The BG3 Warlock meta is somewhat similar to the 5e PHB Warlock meta, except our invocation options are a bit different. The feat progression I took is Moderately Armored at 4, War Caster at 8 and I never hit level 12.

Invocations

As predictable, making D&D 5e into a video game means Devil’s Sight simping has become more mainstream. To be fair, there comes a point at level 7 where you run out of useful options so you might as well take it.

The first two invocations you pick should be Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast. Agonizing is obvious, Repelling is obvious to optimizers. Just because we didn’t have enough knockback, they turned it into a 15-foot push. The average humanoid enemy needs to use all its movement to get back to where it was standing before you hit it with two beams.

Unlike in base 5e, Minions of Chaos is an absolutely essential pick on a Warlock build once you reach level 9. The Warlock spell list is terrible at that level since we don’t have synaptic static or danse macabre, so getting conjure elemental means everything. I tend to favour air elementals because of their ranged attacks and high mobility, but none of the options disappointed me. Each elemental gave me 10-20 additional damage every round, and every single character in my party had one. The one time I accidentally angered a Steel Watcher in act 3, we successfully scrapped it before it could land a hit on us.

Fiend is the king of the Warlock subclasses, just like in 5e when the PHB was all that existed. This is the case because of the following:

• You will be killing enemies very frequently, so Dark One’s Blessing can easily net you 50+ hit points in a larger encounter.
• With the nerf to hypnotic pattern and fear, you need a real big gun 3rd-level spell to stay powerful. Hunger of Hadar is awesome, but fireball is more widely applicable.
• Wall of fire is also really good, actually. As it turns out, the avatar of the god of death is a sitting duck so slapping him with 5d8 damage every single round is huge!
• Towards the end of the game you will be receiving a lot of either psychic or fire damage, so being able to simply choose to only take half as much is incredible.
• There are some pretty meaningful skill checks, so Dark One’s Own Luck is actually awesome.

Good Spells at Each Level

Not hex.

• Cantrips: eldritch blast, blade ward
• 1st-level: expeditious retreat
• 2nd-level: darkness, misty step, shatter
• 3rd-level: counterspell, fear, hunger of Hadar, hypnotic pattern
• 4th-level: dimension door
• 5th-level: conjure elemental(via invocation)
• 6th-level: create undead

Does not include subclass spells. For those, see below:

• Fiend: command, fireball, wall of fire
• Archfey: faerie fire, sleep, plant growth, greater invisibility
• Great Old One: Tasha’s hideous laughter, detect thoughts, Evard’s black tentacles, telekinesis

Pact Boons

Blade might as well not exist. It was weak when eldritch blast only threw enemies back 10 feet, increase that by 50% and bladelocks are left in the dust by the dust they were left in in base 5e.

Tome is a huge winner, getting not only good cantrips but also a free 1/day cast of three 3rd-level spells. Haste is a huge winner in this game simply because the extra action doesn’t have any limitations. Two fireballs in a single round aside, some of those late-game illithid powers are insanely good.

Chain is great for letting you send your imp to attack people. Unfortunately the Deepened Pact for it seems a little buggy and I cannot benefit from its extra attack except on the very first round of combat after the imp is summoned.

A Few Words on Wizard

Since I played two Wizards I can also talk about those, because why not. Overall, I’m very impressed by the power of Illusion and Necromancy. Illusion is extremely potent in the early game, and I have wasted numerous ogres’ turns by making them attack a fake cat. Necromancy is just a gigachad summoner, having a skeleton army is really useful when each bone bro deals an extra 1d10 necrotic damage per hit. I’m kind of tempted to forgo Chain entirely on my next playthrough and take two necromancers and two tomelocks. Oh well, we’ll see.

The nerf to hypnotic pattern and fear is sad, but sleet storm is as powerful as ever – more powerful, actually, since you force a save against prone on the turn you cast it. Sleet, fireball and hunger of Hadar were my most frequently-used spells in the entire playthrough.

Should You Become a Mind Flayer?

Illithids are ugly, degenerate abominations that should be wiped out(for the record, I am not a Gith agent, I would say the same about those ugly greenskins too – the stars belong to mankind and the undead and I shall conquer them for Barovia), but unfortunately the answer is yes.

The power provided by your illithid powers is immense, and if you’re playing a martial then your transformation likely provides more value than your class. I wish I was joking, but being able to take an action as a bonus action is that good.

As far as pre-transformation illithid powers go, I think the best ones are:

• Mind Sanctuary
• Luck of the Far Realm
• Freecast
• Mind Blast
• Fly
• Psionic Dominance
• Charm

Main Meta Differences Compared to 5e

• Warlocks lack good 6th-level spells, with only a silly mummy to mess around with
• Hypnotic pattern and fear nerfed
• No mounted combat in any form
• Familiars don’t take the Help action but can attack
• Eldritch blast buffed
• Heavy Armor Master is a worthwhile feat on a Githyanki Wizard at level 8 purely because you get good heavy armor
• Weapons are slightly better
• Multiclassing has no stat prerequisites
• Rest casting does not exist
• Heavy obscurement and blindness are significantly more devastating because they limit the range of attacks
• Summoning spells don’t require concentration and last until your next long rest
• Long resting requires food, i.e. it’s dirt cheap
• Short rests are limited to 2/day and heal you for 50% of your hit point maximum, Hit Dice do not exist

Favorite Characters

Aside from myself, Strahd von Zarovich and Big Floppa(the latter two are unfortunately not in the game), my favorite characters to interact with were Shadowheart, Gortash and Withers. I did not pet the dog even once. I’ll see how much XP he’s worth in my next playthrough.

Is the Game Good?

YES. I give it a 9/10, taking away just a single point for the multitude of weird crashes(do not long rest near the goblin camp, don’t wear armor when you level up after the Nighstong, don’t fast travel too often).

That’s all I have to say about Baldur’s Gate 3 for now, I may talk about it more if you’re interested. Thanks for reading, and until next time!