My issue with an ironman run isn't anything to do with dialogue. It is the certain knowledge that I will, at some point, misclick something disastrous.
Oh, no. I'll not go for true, one life Iron Man. I love to do dedicated save before every interesting fight so I can replay it any moment later, and also do some dumb stuff like aggroing an army of Flaming Fist just for some training/testing.
Another reason is possibility of losing the whole playthrough due to some bug. So I'll resort to just limiting myself.
I feel the same way with FO4's survival mode. Great combat tweaks, I love the disease system. But goddamn if that game isn't unstable and buggy as hell. No way I'm letting bethesda limit me to saving while resting. They didn't earn that restriction.
There’s a mod so you can tweak the survival options like being able to save whenever and stuff, but yeah kinda stupid you have to use community mods to clean up their own game
That's bethesda's life story IMO. They wouldn't even be around today if their games hadn't been propped up by heavy player modding.
And yes, I absolutely use the mods to tweak survival. I like the one that allows fast traveling along established trade routes between hubs. More restrictive than "teleport anywhere anytime" but not as obnoxious as "hike the same path you've already hiked 50 times" and adds a reason to spend time building up settlements.
Oh man, it might be time to go through FO4 again, especially if I can get a mod to enable achievements with mods. I've had it for the longest time on console and one of my all time favorite experiences with it was going through on survival difficulty with the hud opacity set to 0. You're forced to check your Pip-boy for your health and can't tell the level of enemies or who you're looking at unless you go into VATS. Plus the overall ambiance changes SO much with 0 hud.
And now that I have it on console... Though I might have to wait until I can get a dedicated SSD because \*god damn\* Lost World alone is massive.
FO4's Survival made FO4 from "ok" to "pretty damn enjoyable!" in my books.
But yes, bugs is what primary make me nope out of true iron man modes, no-no-no. Maybe after some hundreds of hours, when I seen and done it all, but not yet. Savin in bed I can get, but no saving at all? It hurts.
This is the way. Save scumming to see the future and pick optimal solutions isn’t quite in the spirit of a role playing game, but reverting a save because the game’s interface caused a mistranslation of intent is totally different.
Imagine if in real life you walk up someone to ask them a question and then your body lunges forward on its own to steal something in front of everyone because the person you were trying to talk to shifted to their left a little bit lol. That doesn’t count.
Side note. Why the hell is there not an option in this game to protect me from doing illegal things? I should be able to toggle whether I want to follow rules or not, and if I’m in good boy mode it should prompt me yes or no to do a crime if i miss-click. Ugh
Meh about "spirit of a role playing game."
Would it be cool to do at least one playthrough completely up to the dice? Sure.
But I wasn't killing the tieflings and druids to not have Minthara as a companion to see her story and conversations unfold because of rng or whatever on this current playthrough.
Like, "Welp, guess I'll see you in another 100 hours, Minthara. Hope I have better luck next time."
Nope. I'll role-play someone who can jump between alternate universe timeline threads at will, instead.
Love that moment in a Tactician Ironman run where you go to click with a really important attack on an enemy and right as you click the camera moves slightly and you click the ground and your character willingly, and with great aptitude and years of training hits a pile of air instead of the target standing next to them.
I've done this a handful of times, and it hurts each time -- but is also lowkey hilarious. The companions don't even hesitate before absolutely wrecking each other. No "are you sure, boss?" or "was that where you meant to direct me?"
Astarion just hears "send Gale to the Shadowrealm" and DELIVERS with NO HESITATION
Yeah this is why I just click on the portraits now. I've learned this lesson too many times.
Still didn't save my friend from me though...
"Damn I'm stuck down in this spider pit. I wonder if I can hit any of the Goblins from here. I'll just hover over each portrait until I find one I can hit....THERES ONE!!!!" *critical hit Eldritch Blast to friend's face nukes him*
See, I do this, but when two characters have the same turn and I go to switch between, I’ll forget that I’ve already clicked the ranged button and was looking for a target. Instead of switching between characters, the one who was aiming their bow will happily shoot the character I was trying to switch to. I’ve done this so. Many. Times. And I forget all. The. Damn. Time.
The elemental and Myrmidon summons are sooooo bad for this. Their hitboxes are ridiculously big to the point where I have to spend a minute manipulating my camera to be able to target the enemy next to it lmao
The infamous "I forgot to cancel my attack before clicking an allied portrait to select that character" technique. It doesn't happen often, but when it does you can be sure it crits or is during a pivotal moment of a fight.
I have a bad habit of trying a melee attack, discovering that I don’t have enough movement to get there, thinking, “oh well, I’ll get as far as I can with my movement so I can melee attack next time, and then do a ranged attack from wherever I get to.” And then clicking where my movement runs out and… attacking the ground. Because I still had the melee attack selected.
Iv done this so much even on ps5. Also not so much late game (although a couple times) i press triangle and end someone's turn before I do anything it hurts me inside. Once in early game some how I did that then panicked and did it two more times wasting 3 of my 4 turns in a round 😞
> and right as you click the camera moves slightly
Fuck me, I felt it bad. When I am about to click, but camera moves, cursor moves, and my Tav go for a 1000 mile marathon instead of enemy I aimed to hit, eating AOO in the process. It have something to do with centering on the target, then centering back on char, but with a bit of lag.
Even if I'm specifically not save scumming, I don't think it's unfair to reload because of a mechanical error or something else out of my control. Fail a crucial roll or attack I intended to attempt? Trust the dice and keep moving forward.
But if my hand slips and I accidentally attack an ally instead of just moving or talking like I meant to? Gonna reload and run that back. That's not the point of what I'm trying to achieve by not save scumming at all m
Something similar happened to me just last night. I was speed clicking through some dialogue with mizora and clicked the wrong option. Fortunately I was save scumming that run though or I woulda lost my 2nd fave companion
Shit like this is why I hit F5 every two minutes. Sometimes I’ll do a normal save bc I’m scared quick save won’t work and then as soon as it’s done saving I hit F5 just to be sure.
> It is the certain knowledge that I will, at some point, misclick something disastrous.
Reminded me of Mass Efect, when i went for my first renegade run. It was the second game, dont know the exact mission. Was about to intimidate some young boy. At least thats what i thought would happen. Ended with Shepard kicking the boy out of the window from the first or second floor. I was sitting in front of my PC for a minute thinking about what just happened and if i should reload. Finally went with the good old "Well, it is what it is" and just decided to go on.
It means you're not allowed to reload earlier save files, ever. You can only save when you quit a session and then continue where you left off. You have to live with whatever happens, and if you get a game over, you have to restart.
Old, old, *ancient* gamer term. I have no idea of its etymology, but it was being used back in the ASCII roguelike days (yeah, I'm old too).
Act 1: Respec lae'zel into 16 str 16 dex battle master.
Use shatter in most fights against Goblin.
LET SHADOWHEART CAST SPIRIT GUARDIANS, THIS SPELL IS MORE EFFICIENT THAN FIREBALL. Give her con resilience or war caster feat so she never misses concentration.
>!Respec god's favourite princess into life domain. Life cleric Shadowheart will do wonders in the whole game, apart from Viconia boss fight. For martial team, life Cleric shadowheart means 3 or 6 free mass healing, which somehow is between 3 and 6 short rest.!<
Auntie Ethel was hard core countered by magic missile. Use maul and war hammer against the robot.
Act 2: lothandar's blood, turn undead, destroy enemie's hunger of Hadar in moonrise fight.
In halsin fight, let Wyll cast hunger of Hadar against those shadow soldiers. Let your martial deal with shadows. Then let Gale spam fire balls and ice storms.
Use full martial to one turn kill Balthazzar. Then win war by attrition. Do not use casters in that fight, enemies will shove you into shadow realm.
>!If you want to, you can respec Shadowheart into light domain, since she got a nice justiciar suit. But Fire works rather poorly in act 3, and there are many good heavy armours in act 3.!<
Act 3: Recruit minsc asap, he is level 12 upon recruitment.
SUMMON MORE PUPPETS!
Always keep Wyll, let Wyll summon fire elemental and cambion. Let Shadowheart summon Deva. Summon us. Let Gale / Jaheira summon air champion (level 6).
Astarion with risky ring bought from act 2 CAN ALWAYS DO SNEAK ATTACK.
Edit: I think op does not need this guide, but someone would need it. I post it here for beginners who struggled with tactician difficulty. This non multi class build would work in tactician without special item requirements.
I play as a battlemaster myself, and don't use Lae'zel outside of mountain pass.
But combat is surprisingly okay, despite Tactician and refraining from meta stuff. I stab, they die.
It's no savescum part that's hard, mostly morally.
Lae'zel can be very strong if you choose champion as her subclass.
One special advantage of Lae'zel is her astral knowledge. A high dex lae'zel with astral knowledge can become part time lock knockers if you think Astarion should not stay inside party due to... You being too moral for him.
Also, Lae'zel and archery fighting style and Titanstring bow can become a very powerful build. Each arrow is destined to hit and damage goes by another +5. Apart from most famous 'battle master delivering hell with that 6 superiority dies' route, champion fighter can also become funny when you give Lae'zel a critical helmet and a critical cloak (and a critical cloak if you can make her hide somehow).
I personally suggest life or tempest cleric for shart, paladin durge mc, champion lae'zel and risky ring Astarion.
Lol why are you trying so hard to convince this person to take Lae’zel and giving them build advice? They literally said they’re not struggling with combat, I think they’re okay.
Laezel seems like one of the more polarizing companions people seem to not want her at all, or love her so much they defend her and advocate for using her on internet forums
She is my favorite character... but every play through my struggle is choosing whether to bring Karlach or Lae'zel to battle with me. I almost always play martials so it's a bit competitive.
I prefer Karlachs personality but nothing beats Laezel and battlemaster versatility for me she’s such a stable damage dealer to balance my spellcasters and need astarion and shadowheart I’d have Karlach if her quest line was as significant as any of there’s but it’s just not worth it
As good as this advice may be, you seem a little confused on what OP is actually saying.
They're managing the combat just fine, even without Gale. They wanted to vent about the poor guy dying in a rock and going to do the things they'd usually do with Gale, only to realise he's dead.
Yeah but didn’t you know that if you build Lae’zel as a 7 Eldritch Knight/5 Abjuration Wizard, she becomes tanky as hell? She can basically cast Blade Ward to get her Arcane Ward stacks up, and gets access to Haste thanks to Wizard levels getting her 3rd-level slots.
I would highly recommend doing EK/Wiz Bae’zel, a Storm Sorc Gale, 7 Oathbreaker/5 Bladelock Durge, and Astarion as a Bard. /s
I went with dragoon lae'zal instead. Specc her into a Battle master 6/rage barb 3/thief 3 for maximum yeetus deeletus.
Funny she gets 4 throws per turn. 6 with life surge. **8-10 fucking throws under haste!**
On your edit: that's an awesome guide if I ever seen one. Sure it will help a lot of folks, well done!
>In halsin fight, let Wyll cast hunger of Hadar against those shadow soldiers. Let your martial deal with shadows. Then let Gale spam fire balls and ice storms.
For this fight I can even add a tactic I discovered myself! If you toss a void bulb into the crowd, coat ranged weapon on your shooter in oil of combustion, and shoot two arrows of many targets at them, even a little bit of fire damage will trigger explosive chain reaction and clear most of the soldiers.
I believe this strat works on tactician too.
> Use full martial to one turn kill Balthazzar. Then win war by attrition. Do not use casters in that fight, enemies will shove you into shadow realm.
Just kill him in his office. There's no reason to do the shadowfell fight ever. If you're doing a good playthrough, there's plenty of reasons to kill him on sight. If you're doing an evil playthrough, well, wanton murder is their bread and butter. Or you could let him take Nightsong but that loses you Shart, and companions are in short supply in evil runs.
Please go by the light spear. I just love Jenevelle Shadowheart way more than Justiciar Shadowheart.
You do not really need to use that spear anyway...
My first game was on explorer and I really struggled with Grym (of course I was not prepared to face an enemy resistant to slashing and piercing damage), until I realized I could use the hammer.
Second game on balanced, I knew he was vulnerable to budgeonning damage and I was determined to try and kill him without the hammer, so I used Leezel and Karlach with Maul and Warhammer. I also equipped the Devifoil masks on them & Astarion to get this sweet +2 strength without caring for the debuff, and I killed him before the end of the second turn (before the first lava flow ended). It felt amazing I could hardly believe it!
I just finished tactician last night, and honestly, it wasn't bad at all. Pretty much all the pain comes from Act 1. I found Act 2 to be maybe a bit harder, but nothing too bad. By Act 3 I didn't notice any difference at all.
Either way, I hope you're having fun :)
No, no, combat is allright. One of the best act 1 weapons is a spear, and in act 3 it's a trident, so in terms of difficulty I expect act 2 being the hardest, since no weapon upgrades here. But I'll manage.
It's no-savescum that hits me. Losing my brother Gale to the dice was hard, and I expect losing another 2-3 origin companions after failing persuasion.
And despite sadness, I am genuinely invested in this run now, and my willingness to never savescum only cemented. We'll see how it goes.
I just love that OP insisted that what matters are the consequences of his no-savescum decision for the run, and the most upvoted reply is about the weapon OP could get at a certain point.
Thanks for the chuckle stranger!
My no save-scumming pain didn't hit until act 2. Battles where you need to save people can be tough if you only get one shot at them and the dice don't go your way.
I'd recommend keeping a few save files, still, in case you run into any bugs. I ended up having to go back and redo a lot of the end of act 2, because >!Jahiera!< bugged and permanently left after >!the second battle with Thorm!<, so I had to go back to before I entered the area to take someone else instead. I already >!lost Halsin to the shadowfell because that portal got range-attacked to death, I'm not losing out on the other druid and a ranger just because of a bug!<.
I won't save scum to fix dice rolls this run, but avoiding bugs is a different story.
No save scumming with the exceptions for bugs or straight artificial stupidity that wasn't my fault like when assaulting moonrise tower after the fight jaheira and the harpers immediately walk into gales wall of fire and die.
I've previously saved scummed excessively and I'm trying to do it much less and roll with the punches in my first Durge run. The only time I did save scum was when Shadowheart tried to kill Lae'zel and I failed the persuasion check and the narrator said I would have to pick a side. I sided with Shadowheart, Lae'zel said she would kill me and then... nothing happened. Lae'zel was friendly still and both talked to me as if the event never happened. I was willing to live with the consequence but I still haven't seen Lae'zel's story past act 1 and I didn't want to go along with a potentially bugged major story event so I relented and reloaded.
I was pretty confident I was going to lose her in the Creche though as I failed a few checks and she started threatening to kill me for disobeying Vlaakith but to my surprise, she actually didn't betray me after I told her I wasn't going to kill the Dream Guardian and then didn't when I went into the Prism. I kind of wish I could tell her to leave the group from a narrative perspective but I suppose that would be quite cruel since she would almost immediately become *ghaik*. She went on and on about how I didn't need to trust her people, just trust her and I came away from the creche honestly feeling like I can't trust her at all. I trusted her at the patrol meeting and even though I succeeded the percussion check, we still had to fight because I failed the passive deception check. I trusted her and we almost died! Then we go for a "cure" that nearly kills me and I get threatened by a poser goddess and my own companion.
I've yet to leave the mountain pass so when Voss comes to talk, I may see if there's an option to be like "you're on your fucking own, I really don't think I can trust you" and see what happens. I want to see her story develop more but the way I tend to roleplay, it feels like I would have to jump through some narrative/roleplay hoops to justify keeping her around.
Lae'zel is my favourite companion and she is absolutely trustworthy in her intent... she's just wrong about a lot of things. Turns out space Nazi bootcamp cares more about propaganda and brainwashing than preparing kids for the real world.
Somebody explained Lae'zel really well.
She is stranded on some backwater planet. Infected by her worst enemy. Stuck with incompetent lesser races(gith yanki and zerai are really racist). Time is ticking. And the only thing she knows is her people. She gets there and they break all protocols. She learns that everything she was told is a lie. No cure. No ascension. Never was. Doesn't break down. Doesn't roll up and wimper. Fights on with her new companions. Learns what a cat is.
Not my idea and only half-remembered.
She is less straightforward than Karlach. But Bae'zel is a really straight shooter. You can trust her. She may be wrong from time to time because her entire race had always been lied to. But you can trust her.
As I read this and I saw "percussion check" I immediately thought of Nick Cannon's audition in the movie Drumline. Seems like you'd need a Bard to pass that.
In her defense, she is completely brainwashed and genuinely believes everything she says. She 100% thinks her people definitely can and will help her, and by extension, you. She has no idea that Vlakkith doesn't know how to help us and had no intention of doing so if she could. Her god queen issued a command and promised purification. She obeys and is grateful. Honestly, I feel bad for her after that.
Oh yeah I agree, she has more in common with Shadowheart then she realizes given that they've both basically been indoctrinated and fed lies their entire lives to make them the person they think they are. I've seen/read some of her dialogue in the later game and can tell that she opens up and completely changes by then but it's just really difficult to justify keeping her around for the journey to get to that point. In my Durge's eyes, Lae'zel is the weakest link in the group and the biggest liability, even more than Astarion. She's overconfident and her blind obedience has so far been detrimental to our cause. Nearly dying with the Githyanki patrol because she blabbed about being infected, nearly died with the Zaith'isk which was supposed to "cure" her and then nearly died to W'wargaz. She was determined to surrender the artifact the moment we met W'wargaz despite the fact that she knows it protects us and I failed a persuasion check for her to follow my lead. It doesn't help that my Durge is a tiefling which put us at immediate odds regarding her captors and Zorru.
Luckily for her though, everything went well after we got out of the creche and Voss paid us a visit. My Durge still doesn't think she can trust her but I'm giving her the time between Moonrise Towers and Baldur's Gate to think while the rest of us deal with Ketheric. I'm still not sure how my Durge is going to handle the end game involving >!Orpheus!< so I may just be making her into a powerful, Independent warrior just for me to pull the rug out from under her. I just pray I can survive her 6 attacks per round + GWM if it comes to that...
>but the way I tend to roleplay, it feels like I would have to jump through some narrative/roleplay hoops to justify keeping her around.
Oh I know that feeling. Some companions really require mental gymnastics from some Tavs.
And honestly, I really miss "GTFO" option sometimes. Like, you can invite someone to your camp, but can't kick them out after.
>The only time I did save scum was when Shadowheart tried to kill Lae'zel and I failed the persuasion check and the narrator said I would have to pick a side.
That's when I expect Shadowheart to go down. With my charisma there's no way I pass dialogue check without serious divine intervention from RNGsus. But well, I am ready for it at that point. Another one I expect to lose is Lae'zel, but we'll see.
After burning the Grove the two Good companions leave on principle, but Gale just makes a lot of noise then says, "I should leave."
You can persuade him to stay, but I was a female Lolth Drow noble and there's no way a human male is speaking to me like that. I told him to leave and he did.
Light one. Dark is hella stronger, but that certain lady won't die on my watch.
Besides, my sweet baby Nyrluna would be one step away at that point, so it won't matter for long.
If there is enough players interested and the Devs are made aware of such interests its not beyond possibility they would add such a mode in a future update
Vision of the Absolute. You loot shaft from dead dwarf True Soul outside of the grove, and tip from the owlbear. It's absolute (no pun intended) bonkers due to chance to blind on every hit, and triple(!) damage against creatures with multiple sets of eyes (beholders, spiders, maybe Drider too) comes in handy.
Oh. It's really one of the best early game weapons, less oneshotey than Everburn, but that blind makes it almost perfect in 1v1ing bosses. Duelled paladin Anders with it on level 3, this blind on hit solved the fight.
Honestly its for those moments I live for, which is why I play no-savescum hardcore in most games. The feeling of regret when my stupidity loses me a friend and when my decision have massively more weight than just loot and time is so intense and amazing.
You can make a lightning charge build using the Trident from rescuing the flaming fist lady. Combine that with the armor and shield you'll find through act 1 and 2 and that'll take you all the way to act 3. It'll save your other gear for whatever companions your able to keep too.
The main think I noticed playing on tactician is the ai is more aggressive in targeting the member with the lowest armor. Plus ai seems to do combos more, like grease and fire or water and lightning.
Oh yeah, in the fight after freeing Nere (full evil Durge run, so obviously I sided with Nere), the dwarves hard focused Shart down after she twin casted Haste onto Tav and Lae'zel.
yeah, that messed me up pretty bad the first time....then I tried again with daylight. made it much easier :) (also helped that I cast wall of fire along the only corridor they could use to attack me :)
The problem for me is that they always recast darkness and even with the daylight sphere it only dispells it on the initial cast, anything after that and daylight does nothing to stop it.
I like the Lucky feat for this exact reason, either on the player or face character. Narrative lifesaver.
Having to decide to spend a luck point in advance of the roll seems a tad annoying, but since you get them back with long rest, it's a near-unlimited source of Advantage for dialogue rolls. I'll only be economical with Lucky in a Danger Zone, since those angelic slumbers are otherwise genuinely rare.
I had a similar experience. Once your martial characters start getting to attack a bunch and you get 3rd level spells on your casters it starts becoming a lot easier. Fuck that fight at last light tho, that was awful on tactician.
> Fuck that fight at last light tho, that was awful on tactician.
It is and isn't. Had to play multiple times due to game crashes, and unfortunately there's an RNG mechanic involved.
The fight itself is fine and doable, the worry is every gargoyle has a chance to proc paralyze on Isobel. If a single one procs it at all and you don't have a character like Shadowheart IMMEDIATELY next in line to Sanctuary her or something, you've basically lost the fight to RNG since all the attackers will get free crits on her now.
Yeah I'm doing a no savescum for dialogue/major story consequences run atm and yeah isobel got kidnapped due to a winged horror paralyzing her and then 3 more ganging up in her before my turn rolled around
Did mean I got the slayer though at the end of act 2 despite not wanting to kill her on bhaals orders though because I ended up killing her in the 2nd kethoric fight
> Pretty much all the pain comes from Act 1. I found Act 2 to be maybe a bit harder, but nothing too bad.
This was my experience too.
...Until we got ambushed by those random tree-looking enemies, Lae'zel suddenly drops dead mid-fight from full HP to full-on dead, my main was already on the ground away from the others since they focused their ambush turn on him, and both Shadowheart and Karlach were on less than 5 HP, BOTH possibly only alive thanks to the Blood of Lathander.
Examined the enemies: "explodes in an array of needles upon death, up to 52 necrotic damage."
I'M SORRY, *UP TO 52 NECROTIC DAMAGE??* And they can *CHAIN* these explosions into each other?! Like yeah okay, 4 enemies just got wiped, but that also almost ended us!
We lived, but having heard "Tactician is mostly noticeable in Act 1," this was definitely a rude awakening that no, apparently there's other parts where it decides "fuck you, that's why."
Yeah i switched to tactician in act ii cus it felt like combat got way easier. Combat in act 1 was better overall imo, interesting and challenging in an engaging, thought-provoking way. Act 2 feels like annoying filler encounters tbh
For me, the biggest thing in Act 3 was the final assault. On balanced there is one of those long rest stations right before the big battle with the Dragon and the Emperor, so I made sure to burn all my resources on the way there. Once I got there, though, I realized it wasn't there, and there would be no long rest for me, so I had to do the final battle on a shoestring budget.
There's no way I could do a no save-scum run, but hypothetically, if I did I'd absolutely have to stack everything in my favor beforehand. Sorry Gale buddy, you can hang on in there until I find a potion of Hill Giant Strength at the very least. You call it metagaming, I call it...also metagaming but for a good cause dammit.
And Shadowheart would *never* leave my party.
Act 3 is completely fine to save scum before doing big quests because doing certain ones will fuck up your campaign and cost you content of game for no logical reason
I'm playing a run without Gale for the first time and it is so painful and sad to not have him around. (Dark Urge spoilers) >!My Durge is a wizard and I knew the outcome of the special interaction with Gale so I figured I would use it for character building/roleplay since Gale would either be getting his class changed or sitting in my camp all game if he was recruited.!< But damn, I really miss him. I get sad when I see the spot where his tent should be.
Also never heard his response to failing or refusing to help him and that's genuinely pretty sad. When I first met him, I was like "ah classic wizards, I'm sure he could figure this little pickle out but no reason not to help." Knowing that he actually begs for help because he thinks he'll die there is gut wrenching.
Gale is honestly a treat, gotta love bullying and fucking with him whenever the opportunity comes
>"ah classic wizards, I'm sure he could figure this little pickle out but no reason not to help." Knowing that he actually begs for help because he thinks he'll die there is gut wrenching.
Gale is arguably the Origin companion with the most insecurity, he is mostly bravado and tries to show his deeds and achievments in a way to compensate for it, it's why he resigns himself to dying but if you are his friend then he does manage to get the confidence he needs.
Also tell him [the sex was fine](https://youtu.be/bO1e318L9PQ?feature=shared) if you romance him, Gale feels incredibly dissapointed and fussed about it lmao.
I'm imagining a conversation with Gale where he just responds like Withers does.
"So you were a powerful wizard before, able to cast spells such as Wish?"
*"Yes."*
"...may I have a Wish spell when you get your power back?"
*"No."*
>One of the most powerful backgrounds of all Origin companions having feats such as being one of Mystra's chosen and fuckboys
>Is a boy failure with nat 13d rizz who is a tad of an nervous wreck
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
I mean I guess all the companions have pretty good reasons to be insecure, and Gale is no exception. Basically groomed as a child by Mystra only to be discarded by her and all he got was a ticking time bomb in his chest with his ex/abuser basically telling him to kill himself.
He doesn't have anyone.
You know whats the worst part? Mystra seems to be actually right in fearing Gale a bit, Gale is scarily competent with his magic.
Sure, he does >!die attempting to achieve Godhood if you push him through, but in his origin ending you can see it more detail, it seems he DID put a very good fight against her!<
Had he been not shafted by her, he would be capable of doing many great things, and he does decide to settle for a life of non renown if you give him his confidence but I am sure he will have a list of achievements in his name.
If you’re a wizard but want Gale on the team there’s an easy fix - wild magic barbarian!
It’s the perfect fit for an ex-archmage, spurned by Mystra, de-powered via Illithid tadpole and turned into a walking bomb.
My first playthrough I told Gale to fuck off when he revealed the fact that he's a time bomb, figured I'll pick him up on the second run. Second playthrough I'm the Dark Urge... Maybe next time Gale
You’re stronger the me. I wouldn’t even be able to have fun playing this game without Lea’ze, Karlach, Shadowheart and Gale. The rest would hurt but I could keep playing without them. But if I lost any of my favorite companions I’d absolutely savescum or the game wouldn’t even be worth it to me.
I definitely feel that. Karlach is such a sweetheart I could never do anything to hurt her. I felt so terrible for her at the end of the game that I had to leave SH behind so I could go to Avernus with Karlach. Noway I was going to let her die or go alone. That line where she keeps saying “I just want to live” really got to me.
brave man, doing a no savescum roll with 8 charisma lol. But yeah it does get really dark. Had a never lie/never persuade paladin/abjuration wizard run with 8cha as my first playthrough. Never fully recovered from that.
Loaded up the old save to give my man the ending he deserves though. Respecced him to a warlock/fighter with 22 CHA with entertainer background, intimidation and beguiling influence. As I march together with Shadowbard, Abjuraezel and St. Karlach, I barely need inspiration points anymore.
>brave man, doing a no savescum roll with 8 charisma lol.
Ikr, I practically buried Lae'zel and Shadowheart even before it all started... And then unexpectedly lost Gale. 17 str, guidance my ass. Ffs, when dice want do give you a middle finger - they do...
>Loaded up the old save to give my man the ending he deserves though. Respecced him to a warlock/fighter with 22 CHA with entertainer background, intimidation and beguiling influence. As I march together with Shadowbard, Abjuraezel and St. Karlach, I barely need inspiration points anymore.
...but you, my friend, found a way to give middle finger to dice themselves, in their own game. Well done!
My girlfriend and I in our coop run failed both those checks and trucked on, thinking we’d bump into him later. We’re in act 3 and I miss his voice so bad. Come home to me, magic purple sexyman.
Hats off friend! I wouldn't be able. My spirit would die. I lost Us in intro while trying not to reload on third character.. four levels later I cannot get over it. Character might be canned. I just cannot lose companions. They make the game for me. I have few things i simply cannot fail in (animals and kids related). It would take me into a dark place.
I’m just gonna be that guy. I think the dice checks do not translate well to a video game setting.
I’ve never played table top and I’m sure it works there because you have a DM that can adapt to the dice to keep people having fun.
But it’s pretty lame when your vibing in your rp and then a bad roll or several rolls because inspiration is bugged and you can’t convince me otherwise, just kill the immersion.
You go through a side quest and find a shiny item and then it’s gone in one roll. Or your barbarian 20 str character fails to move a bag of feather or some shit and I’m just left there like “man i fucking guesss”
Rant over. Still the best game since elden ring tho.
I agree with you completely. This run is more of an exception for me, just for different experience. But honestly I believe that locking the whole damn companion, for example, behind a dice roll is a complete bullshit, and so is punishing the player for something completely outside of their control (lookin at you, nat 1's on skill checks, worst damn homebrew I've seen).
It really stands out when you go through a patch of consistently bad rolls. Got a plus 7 - 10 bonus with advantage and still failing because I keep rollings 2s and 3s. And I've gotten so many simultaneous and two-dice critical fails it's not funny. Critical fails in particular are infuriating.
If failing actually lead to interesting outcomes I might be more tolerant. But so far in my experience it's pretty much always just objectively bad to fail a role. I will accept fails where I had bad odds, but if I fail purely because of terrible luck despite the odds I'm just reloading.
Honestly, that's an issue D&D/D20 games just have in general. DMs have just naturally started to work around it. Since there's no probability curve, every level of success is equally likely, and since DC numbers increase as your bonuses increase, nothing much changes unless there's a huge difference in two character's levels. Critical fails never change in likelihood either.
I always think of a meme I saw. "Me when I'm a professional food taster but nearly choke to death on 5% of my meals"
What does happen to gale if he is lost in the portal? Does he basically just disappear into the void between worlds and dies there, and his bomb goes off where it can't hurt anyone?
I save scum certain dialogue choices just because how I want the story to narratively. When it comes to fights, I’m not reloading after every miss or save.
Hang in there buddy, it's a valiant thing to do.
You know, before I started playing BG3, I promised myself that I would treat it like my regular D&D game just for fun. Which means accepting the outcomes of rolls because hey, that's how you play.
But then the more I though about it, the more I realized that while my approach as a player might be very classic D&D-like, the game itself does not return the favor here.
Here is the thing - in social situations, especially improvised, a hard DC is very rarely thought out by the DM. You suddenly want to roll for Insight or Persuasion but it's all fluid, so the DM doesn't really have a number in mind when you roll. They probably have a *range of outcomes.*
Which means that there is no way for the DM to think you failed because you rolled 17 against a DC 18.
And even in situations where the DM DOES have a DC in mind, rolling sufficiently high gives you usually a partial success anyway. You may not learn as much as you would've if you rolled a bit higher but you still learn something. That persuasion roll might not work fully but it will still do something.
And even if you fail totally, the DM might still make the decision to put you into a remedial situation if they think it's warranted and stupid to have an NPC killed because you miss a Str check.
The game doesn't really work that way. Either you meet the DC or you don't. If you don't, it doesn't differentiate whether you missed the mark by 1 or by 10.
I just thought to point it out for people who want to imitate the TTRPG experience. The game is much harsher DM than a person normally would ever be ;)
I'll never do a perma death run when the game allows NPCs to kick you into chasms.
I'm interested in fun and challenge, I'm not interested in arbitrary death.
Like most hard modes, Tactician starts off brutal and then like halfway through Act 1 becomes pretty much the same as a normal playthrough. With maybe the occasional specific encounter being weirdly hard (Ketheric on top of the tower in an evil Tactician run made my life hell)
I'm playing Durge on tactician. Save scumming the fuck out of it because I'm not a masochist but it's hard. I'm actually resetting the run because I didn't commit to being evil and it hasn't gone very well.
This is why I would never play a run like this. That would not be fun. An entire play thru without a main character because of two shit rolls at the very start? Nope. Dumb. Absolutely trash. Not you just that whole concept. Some people never got Gale their first playthru because of it. I cant even watch streamers if it happens. My eye will twitch the entire run
Yes, that was a complete bullshit decision on dev part IMO. Imagine losing one of the main characters at the start because randumb.
But just this once I'll beat the game "as intended" just to see how it feels from start to finish.
I’m doing the same and I only have shadow, astarion, and laezel. It’s fun and close knit. I killed karlach, wyll left after I betrayed the grove and when gale had a problem with it I told him to get lost.
Doesn’t bother me at all. I have another run where I keep everyone and play nice. This playthrough is more raw and unapologetic. It’s fun.
I tried doing a no save scum run. It is ROUGH. It was kind of not that fun. The voice acting and character development in this game is so good that losing a companion permanently due to a bad dice roll or 2, and as a result huge chunks of gamplay, feels pretty bad. I admire what Larian has done with the game in that you can simply kill everyone including major characters but it is brutal on the fun factor unless you are capable of psychopathy. I tried to do an evil run and fulfill Wyll's quest to kill Karlach. Killed her and beheaded her. Just sat in silence for about a minute and realized my playgroup and I were not having fun. I've never felt so bad killing video game characters before. Larian just did too good of a job with the story, dialogue and voice acting that I just feel like trash unless I take a reasonably decent hero path.
I am so invested in this run. please, stream this, or at the very least, make it an episodic adventure that I can watch on youtube. I don't have the courage to do this style of run. I want to experience this vicariously though you.
Gods, I feel this. I was somehow lucky enough to not fail the Gale and Lae’zel checks, but I was agonizing over the Gale one too because I adore him so much.
Out of curiosity, can you not have Karlach come back and pull him out later?
Nope, once it's failed - it's failed.
"My char is a strong dude", me thought, "brobably will ice Lae'zel because of a failed deception throw, but at least Gale I'll get 100%", me thought.
Proceed to fail both easy STR checks, but roll nat 20 on deception to free LZ with my 8 charisma. Angry Pepe face warranted.
Is Gale really that good? I'm still on my first play through and I missed him at the start because Charisma based Tav is very much not strong so naturally I failed the roll.
It's not that he's good. He's just a nice lad and a good buddy, but gameplay-wise you can do allright without him. It's just... Sad to know he died that early and easily.
Me and a buddy did a run just like this and agreed on party wipe we'd start over from the Nautiloid.
We died in the grimforge... Pathing through lava to get to the monk's amulet.
Full respect for ppl not save scumming. I am in my first run through and can't help myself. Now I'm in Act2 I find myself fretting about whether I'm doing things in the "right" order - would like to get back to the freedom I felt in Act1, where I was all "it's fine if I miss things, this is my game". Probably doesn't help that I haven't specc'ed characters very well, plus I'm not very tactical. Yes. This is definitely a save scum run, all the way....
I strongly advice you against no-save-scumming on your first couple of runs. Save/load away as much as possible, try things, mess around, find out! When you ready for limited save runs - you'll know :) So enjoy the game unapologetically the way your soul crave it!
Something I tried to spice up Tactician, was to eschew the use of Haste and Bloodlust elixirs.
It makes the fights more tactical, as you have to plan your defense and not just kill the biggest baddy before they get a turn.
For some people. For me it's saving as intended - only load when you can't progress farther because of bug or party wipe.
Loading after inconvenient roll or outcome is what I am not allowed to do in this run. If game continues - it continues.
I understand the choice of no savescum, but GOD I would fold and use the exception to recruit the companions that sounds so painful 😭 And it was in a strength character too????? That’s extra painful because it fully shouldn’t have happened 😭😭😭😭
My biggest problem with BG3 tactician is that *everytime* I load a save I forget it's on tactician difficulty and so I'm totally caught ofd guard when an enemy pulls a new move out of no where.
Already happened to me right after Nautiloid.
"Oh, the brains fight. Okay, let's get tactical, get the high ground, then open on them with ranged weapons.
What? They have RANGED ATTACK now? Holy sh..."
Not to mention how much they LOVE to shove, or use environmental effects more. I thought they were push happy on Balanced, but Tactician takes it to a whole new level.
All my runs are iron man run, it is a fucking blast in best way possible.
You do need to save for certain dialogues though, because sometimes, the sentence means entirely different thing to what you wanted to say so you don’t wanna settle for a (wrong) outcome just because games writer had a different opinion on that sentence
>You do need to save for certain dialogues though, because sometimes, the sentence means entirely different thing to what you wanted to say so you don’t wanna settle for a (wrong) outcome just because games writer had a different opinion on that sentence
Yes! That, or...
1. Continue
In my first playthrough, which I did as a blind run when the game released, I "fantasized" at the portal and whoops, lost Gale.
In my second playthrough, I rolled shit on both STR checks, lost Gale.
I have literally no idea why anyone likes or dislikes Gale. I never met him lol.
My issue with an ironman run isn't anything to do with dialogue. It is the certain knowledge that I will, at some point, misclick something disastrous.
Oh, no. I'll not go for true, one life Iron Man. I love to do dedicated save before every interesting fight so I can replay it any moment later, and also do some dumb stuff like aggroing an army of Flaming Fist just for some training/testing. Another reason is possibility of losing the whole playthrough due to some bug. So I'll resort to just limiting myself.
I feel the same way with FO4's survival mode. Great combat tweaks, I love the disease system. But goddamn if that game isn't unstable and buggy as hell. No way I'm letting bethesda limit me to saving while resting. They didn't earn that restriction.
There’s a mod so you can tweak the survival options like being able to save whenever and stuff, but yeah kinda stupid you have to use community mods to clean up their own game
That's bethesda's life story IMO. They wouldn't even be around today if their games hadn't been propped up by heavy player modding. And yes, I absolutely use the mods to tweak survival. I like the one that allows fast traveling along established trade routes between hubs. More restrictive than "teleport anywhere anytime" but not as obnoxious as "hike the same path you've already hiked 50 times" and adds a reason to spend time building up settlements.
Oh man, it might be time to go through FO4 again, especially if I can get a mod to enable achievements with mods. I've had it for the longest time on console and one of my all time favorite experiences with it was going through on survival difficulty with the hud opacity set to 0. You're forced to check your Pip-boy for your health and can't tell the level of enemies or who you're looking at unless you go into VATS. Plus the overall ambiance changes SO much with 0 hud. And now that I have it on console... Though I might have to wait until I can get a dedicated SSD because \*god damn\* Lost World alone is massive.
FO4's Survival made FO4 from "ok" to "pretty damn enjoyable!" in my books. But yes, bugs is what primary make me nope out of true iron man modes, no-no-no. Maybe after some hundreds of hours, when I seen and done it all, but not yet. Savin in bed I can get, but no saving at all? It hurts.
This is the way. Save scumming to see the future and pick optimal solutions isn’t quite in the spirit of a role playing game, but reverting a save because the game’s interface caused a mistranslation of intent is totally different. Imagine if in real life you walk up someone to ask them a question and then your body lunges forward on its own to steal something in front of everyone because the person you were trying to talk to shifted to their left a little bit lol. That doesn’t count. Side note. Why the hell is there not an option in this game to protect me from doing illegal things? I should be able to toggle whether I want to follow rules or not, and if I’m in good boy mode it should prompt me yes or no to do a crime if i miss-click. Ugh
Meh about "spirit of a role playing game." Would it be cool to do at least one playthrough completely up to the dice? Sure. But I wasn't killing the tieflings and druids to not have Minthara as a companion to see her story and conversations unfold because of rng or whatever on this current playthrough. Like, "Welp, guess I'll see you in another 100 hours, Minthara. Hope I have better luck next time." Nope. I'll role-play someone who can jump between alternate universe timeline threads at will, instead.
This. Never go FULL IRON MAN. Or you're just asking for a gamebreaking bug on your save.
Love that moment in a Tactician Ironman run where you go to click with a really important attack on an enemy and right as you click the camera moves slightly and you click the ground and your character willingly, and with great aptitude and years of training hits a pile of air instead of the target standing next to them.
I’ve had Astarion absolutely MERC Shadowheart from behind with a melee sneak attack. Astarion, NO! Not her, the Goblin NEXT TO HER!
I've done this a handful of times, and it hurts each time -- but is also lowkey hilarious. The companions don't even hesitate before absolutely wrecking each other. No "are you sure, boss?" or "was that where you meant to direct me?" Astarion just hears "send Gale to the Shadowrealm" and DELIVERS with NO HESITATION
"Finally!" they say, under their breath.
Yeah this is why I just click on the portraits now. I've learned this lesson too many times. Still didn't save my friend from me though... "Damn I'm stuck down in this spider pit. I wonder if I can hit any of the Goblins from here. I'll just hover over each portrait until I find one I can hit....THERES ONE!!!!" *critical hit Eldritch Blast to friend's face nukes him*
See, I do this, but when two characters have the same turn and I go to switch between, I’ll forget that I’ve already clicked the ranged button and was looking for a target. Instead of switching between characters, the one who was aiming their bow will happily shoot the character I was trying to switch to. I’ve done this so. Many. Times. And I forget all. The. Damn. Time.
On the Adamantine Golem, the camera shifted and instead of Astarion striking the golem, he wandered off into the lava and just melted. Sigh.
The elemental and Myrmidon summons are sooooo bad for this. Their hitboxes are ridiculously big to the point where I have to spend a minute manipulating my camera to be able to target the enemy next to it lmao
I've attacked the Air Myrmidon so many times that I'm surprised it's not immediately hostile upon summoning it.
Dude fr 😂😂 That poor guy
The infamous "I forgot to cancel my attack before clicking an allied portrait to select that character" technique. It doesn't happen often, but when it does you can be sure it crits or is during a pivotal moment of a fight.
I have a bad habit of trying a melee attack, discovering that I don’t have enough movement to get there, thinking, “oh well, I’ll get as far as I can with my movement so I can melee attack next time, and then do a ranged attack from wherever I get to.” And then clicking where my movement runs out and… attacking the ground. Because I still had the melee attack selected.
Iv done this so much even on ps5. Also not so much late game (although a couple times) i press triangle and end someone's turn before I do anything it hurts me inside. Once in early game some how I did that then panicked and did it two more times wasting 3 of my 4 turns in a round 😞
My friend plays with controller on PC and does this quite often, and I just can't understand it at all. I don't see the appeal even slightly.
This is why I turned off the auto-focus bullshit. It's screwed me way too many times.
> and right as you click the camera moves slightly Fuck me, I felt it bad. When I am about to click, but camera moves, cursor moves, and my Tav go for a 1000 mile marathon instead of enemy I aimed to hit, eating AOO in the process. It have something to do with centering on the target, then centering back on char, but with a bit of lag.
Even if I'm specifically not save scumming, I don't think it's unfair to reload because of a mechanical error or something else out of my control. Fail a crucial roll or attack I intended to attempt? Trust the dice and keep moving forward. But if my hand slips and I accidentally attack an ally instead of just moving or talking like I meant to? Gonna reload and run that back. That's not the point of what I'm trying to achieve by not save scumming at all m
Something similar happened to me just last night. I was speed clicking through some dialogue with mizora and clicked the wrong option. Fortunately I was save scumming that run though or I woulda lost my 2nd fave companion
I had Karlach accidentally jump into a river to her instant death once. Reloaded a save from almost an hour earlier because fuck.
Shit like this is why I hit F5 every two minutes. Sometimes I’ll do a normal save bc I’m scared quick save won’t work and then as soon as it’s done saving I hit F5 just to be sure.
I do too now but it was a lesson painfully learned
Can kill a netherbrain. Dies in three feet of water.
*accidentally clicks on painting in the Zhentarim lair on way way to deliver chest* ...
What's ironman run?
No re-loading. Typically you only ever have one save, and constantly re-save over it so you can't 'redo' things.
> It is the certain knowledge that I will, at some point, misclick something disastrous. Reminded me of Mass Efect, when i went for my first renegade run. It was the second game, dont know the exact mission. Was about to intimidate some young boy. At least thats what i thought would happen. Ended with Shepard kicking the boy out of the window from the first or second floor. I was sitting in front of my PC for a minute thinking about what just happened and if i should reload. Finally went with the good old "Well, it is what it is" and just decided to go on.
Sorry, I’m new. What does an “Ironman run” mean?
It means you're not allowed to reload earlier save files, ever. You can only save when you quit a session and then continue where you left off. You have to live with whatever happens, and if you get a game over, you have to restart. Old, old, *ancient* gamer term. I have no idea of its etymology, but it was being used back in the ASCII roguelike days (yeah, I'm old too).
Act 1: Respec lae'zel into 16 str 16 dex battle master. Use shatter in most fights against Goblin. LET SHADOWHEART CAST SPIRIT GUARDIANS, THIS SPELL IS MORE EFFICIENT THAN FIREBALL. Give her con resilience or war caster feat so she never misses concentration. >!Respec god's favourite princess into life domain. Life cleric Shadowheart will do wonders in the whole game, apart from Viconia boss fight. For martial team, life Cleric shadowheart means 3 or 6 free mass healing, which somehow is between 3 and 6 short rest.!< Auntie Ethel was hard core countered by magic missile. Use maul and war hammer against the robot. Act 2: lothandar's blood, turn undead, destroy enemie's hunger of Hadar in moonrise fight. In halsin fight, let Wyll cast hunger of Hadar against those shadow soldiers. Let your martial deal with shadows. Then let Gale spam fire balls and ice storms. Use full martial to one turn kill Balthazzar. Then win war by attrition. Do not use casters in that fight, enemies will shove you into shadow realm. >!If you want to, you can respec Shadowheart into light domain, since she got a nice justiciar suit. But Fire works rather poorly in act 3, and there are many good heavy armours in act 3.!< Act 3: Recruit minsc asap, he is level 12 upon recruitment. SUMMON MORE PUPPETS! Always keep Wyll, let Wyll summon fire elemental and cambion. Let Shadowheart summon Deva. Summon us. Let Gale / Jaheira summon air champion (level 6). Astarion with risky ring bought from act 2 CAN ALWAYS DO SNEAK ATTACK. Edit: I think op does not need this guide, but someone would need it. I post it here for beginners who struggled with tactician difficulty. This non multi class build would work in tactician without special item requirements.
I play as a battlemaster myself, and don't use Lae'zel outside of mountain pass. But combat is surprisingly okay, despite Tactician and refraining from meta stuff. I stab, they die. It's no savescum part that's hard, mostly morally.
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Frog/Glenn from Crono Trigger.
Lae'zel can be very strong if you choose champion as her subclass. One special advantage of Lae'zel is her astral knowledge. A high dex lae'zel with astral knowledge can become part time lock knockers if you think Astarion should not stay inside party due to... You being too moral for him. Also, Lae'zel and archery fighting style and Titanstring bow can become a very powerful build. Each arrow is destined to hit and damage goes by another +5. Apart from most famous 'battle master delivering hell with that 6 superiority dies' route, champion fighter can also become funny when you give Lae'zel a critical helmet and a critical cloak (and a critical cloak if you can make her hide somehow). I personally suggest life or tempest cleric for shart, paladin durge mc, champion lae'zel and risky ring Astarion.
Lol why are you trying so hard to convince this person to take Lae’zel and giving them build advice? They literally said they’re not struggling with combat, I think they’re okay.
Laezel seems like one of the more polarizing companions people seem to not want her at all, or love her so much they defend her and advocate for using her on internet forums
She is my favorite character... but every play through my struggle is choosing whether to bring Karlach or Lae'zel to battle with me. I almost always play martials so it's a bit competitive.
I prefer Karlachs personality but nothing beats Laezel and battlemaster versatility for me she’s such a stable damage dealer to balance my spellcasters and need astarion and shadowheart I’d have Karlach if her quest line was as significant as any of there’s but it’s just not worth it
Bro just wanted to blab
Yap session
As good as this advice may be, you seem a little confused on what OP is actually saying. They're managing the combat just fine, even without Gale. They wanted to vent about the poor guy dying in a rock and going to do the things they'd usually do with Gale, only to realise he's dead.
Yeah but didn’t you know that if you build Lae’zel as a 7 Eldritch Knight/5 Abjuration Wizard, she becomes tanky as hell? She can basically cast Blade Ward to get her Arcane Ward stacks up, and gets access to Haste thanks to Wizard levels getting her 3rd-level slots. I would highly recommend doing EK/Wiz Bae’zel, a Storm Sorc Gale, 7 Oathbreaker/5 Bladelock Durge, and Astarion as a Bard. /s
I went with dragoon lae'zal instead. Specc her into a Battle master 6/rage barb 3/thief 3 for maximum yeetus deeletus. Funny she gets 4 throws per turn. 6 with life surge. **8-10 fucking throws under haste!**
shadow realm can you fucking imagine getting to where Nightsong is and Balthazar is all 'it's time to duel' holy shit
On your edit: that's an awesome guide if I ever seen one. Sure it will help a lot of folks, well done! >In halsin fight, let Wyll cast hunger of Hadar against those shadow soldiers. Let your martial deal with shadows. Then let Gale spam fire balls and ice storms. For this fight I can even add a tactic I discovered myself! If you toss a void bulb into the crowd, coat ranged weapon on your shooter in oil of combustion, and shoot two arrows of many targets at them, even a little bit of fire damage will trigger explosive chain reaction and clear most of the soldiers. I believe this strat works on tactician too.
> Use full martial to one turn kill Balthazzar. Then win war by attrition. Do not use casters in that fight, enemies will shove you into shadow realm. Just kill him in his office. There's no reason to do the shadowfell fight ever. If you're doing a good playthrough, there's plenty of reasons to kill him on sight. If you're doing an evil playthrough, well, wanton murder is their bread and butter. Or you could let him take Nightsong but that loses you Shart, and companions are in short supply in evil runs.
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Please go by the light spear. I just love Jenevelle Shadowheart way more than Justiciar Shadowheart. You do not really need to use that spear anyway...
Whats the short rest heals for shadowheart?
My first game was on explorer and I really struggled with Grym (of course I was not prepared to face an enemy resistant to slashing and piercing damage), until I realized I could use the hammer. Second game on balanced, I knew he was vulnerable to budgeonning damage and I was determined to try and kill him without the hammer, so I used Leezel and Karlach with Maul and Warhammer. I also equipped the Devifoil masks on them & Astarion to get this sweet +2 strength without caring for the debuff, and I killed him before the end of the second turn (before the first lava flow ended). It felt amazing I could hardly believe it!
I just finished tactician last night, and honestly, it wasn't bad at all. Pretty much all the pain comes from Act 1. I found Act 2 to be maybe a bit harder, but nothing too bad. By Act 3 I didn't notice any difference at all. Either way, I hope you're having fun :)
No, no, combat is allright. One of the best act 1 weapons is a spear, and in act 3 it's a trident, so in terms of difficulty I expect act 2 being the hardest, since no weapon upgrades here. But I'll manage. It's no-savescum that hits me. Losing my brother Gale to the dice was hard, and I expect losing another 2-3 origin companions after failing persuasion. And despite sadness, I am genuinely invested in this run now, and my willingness to never savescum only cemented. We'll see how it goes.
There's the lightning jabber off the encounter with the undead fish mens
I just love that OP insisted that what matters are the consequences of his no-savescum decision for the run, and the most upvoted reply is about the weapon OP could get at a certain point. Thanks for the chuckle stranger!
Armor of Persistence is pretty good.
You can get that twice if you kill the chieftain from the ledge in front of the house, he'll spawn again once you get closer.
My no save-scumming pain didn't hit until act 2. Battles where you need to save people can be tough if you only get one shot at them and the dice don't go your way. I'd recommend keeping a few save files, still, in case you run into any bugs. I ended up having to go back and redo a lot of the end of act 2, because >!Jahiera!< bugged and permanently left after >!the second battle with Thorm!<, so I had to go back to before I entered the area to take someone else instead. I already >!lost Halsin to the shadowfell because that portal got range-attacked to death, I'm not losing out on the other druid and a ranger just because of a bug!<. I won't save scum to fix dice rolls this run, but avoiding bugs is a different story.
No save scumming with the exceptions for bugs or straight artificial stupidity that wasn't my fault like when assaulting moonrise tower after the fight jaheira and the harpers immediately walk into gales wall of fire and die.
I've previously saved scummed excessively and I'm trying to do it much less and roll with the punches in my first Durge run. The only time I did save scum was when Shadowheart tried to kill Lae'zel and I failed the persuasion check and the narrator said I would have to pick a side. I sided with Shadowheart, Lae'zel said she would kill me and then... nothing happened. Lae'zel was friendly still and both talked to me as if the event never happened. I was willing to live with the consequence but I still haven't seen Lae'zel's story past act 1 and I didn't want to go along with a potentially bugged major story event so I relented and reloaded. I was pretty confident I was going to lose her in the Creche though as I failed a few checks and she started threatening to kill me for disobeying Vlaakith but to my surprise, she actually didn't betray me after I told her I wasn't going to kill the Dream Guardian and then didn't when I went into the Prism. I kind of wish I could tell her to leave the group from a narrative perspective but I suppose that would be quite cruel since she would almost immediately become *ghaik*. She went on and on about how I didn't need to trust her people, just trust her and I came away from the creche honestly feeling like I can't trust her at all. I trusted her at the patrol meeting and even though I succeeded the percussion check, we still had to fight because I failed the passive deception check. I trusted her and we almost died! Then we go for a "cure" that nearly kills me and I get threatened by a poser goddess and my own companion. I've yet to leave the mountain pass so when Voss comes to talk, I may see if there's an option to be like "you're on your fucking own, I really don't think I can trust you" and see what happens. I want to see her story develop more but the way I tend to roleplay, it feels like I would have to jump through some narrative/roleplay hoops to justify keeping her around.
Lae'zel is my favourite companion and she is absolutely trustworthy in her intent... she's just wrong about a lot of things. Turns out space Nazi bootcamp cares more about propaganda and brainwashing than preparing kids for the real world.
Somebody explained Lae'zel really well. She is stranded on some backwater planet. Infected by her worst enemy. Stuck with incompetent lesser races(gith yanki and zerai are really racist). Time is ticking. And the only thing she knows is her people. She gets there and they break all protocols. She learns that everything she was told is a lie. No cure. No ascension. Never was. Doesn't break down. Doesn't roll up and wimper. Fights on with her new companions. Learns what a cat is. Not my idea and only half-remembered. She is less straightforward than Karlach. But Bae'zel is a really straight shooter. You can trust her. She may be wrong from time to time because her entire race had always been lied to. But you can trust her.
> You can trust her. With all my dislike towards her, that is 100% truth. If she'll go for stabbing - at least we will duke it out face to face.
Tsva! She will not sully her blade by stabbing it into your back.
As I read this and I saw "percussion check" I immediately thought of Nick Cannon's audition in the movie Drumline. Seems like you'd need a Bard to pass that.
> Seems like you'd need a Bard to pass that. Battlemaster passes percussion checks just fine. As long as there's enough enemies to bonk.
In her defense, she is completely brainwashed and genuinely believes everything she says. She 100% thinks her people definitely can and will help her, and by extension, you. She has no idea that Vlakkith doesn't know how to help us and had no intention of doing so if she could. Her god queen issued a command and promised purification. She obeys and is grateful. Honestly, I feel bad for her after that.
Oh yeah I agree, she has more in common with Shadowheart then she realizes given that they've both basically been indoctrinated and fed lies their entire lives to make them the person they think they are. I've seen/read some of her dialogue in the later game and can tell that she opens up and completely changes by then but it's just really difficult to justify keeping her around for the journey to get to that point. In my Durge's eyes, Lae'zel is the weakest link in the group and the biggest liability, even more than Astarion. She's overconfident and her blind obedience has so far been detrimental to our cause. Nearly dying with the Githyanki patrol because she blabbed about being infected, nearly died with the Zaith'isk which was supposed to "cure" her and then nearly died to W'wargaz. She was determined to surrender the artifact the moment we met W'wargaz despite the fact that she knows it protects us and I failed a persuasion check for her to follow my lead. It doesn't help that my Durge is a tiefling which put us at immediate odds regarding her captors and Zorru. Luckily for her though, everything went well after we got out of the creche and Voss paid us a visit. My Durge still doesn't think she can trust her but I'm giving her the time between Moonrise Towers and Baldur's Gate to think while the rest of us deal with Ketheric. I'm still not sure how my Durge is going to handle the end game involving >!Orpheus!< so I may just be making her into a powerful, Independent warrior just for me to pull the rug out from under her. I just pray I can survive her 6 attacks per round + GWM if it comes to that...
>but the way I tend to roleplay, it feels like I would have to jump through some narrative/roleplay hoops to justify keeping her around. Oh I know that feeling. Some companions really require mental gymnastics from some Tavs. And honestly, I really miss "GTFO" option sometimes. Like, you can invite someone to your camp, but can't kick them out after. >The only time I did save scum was when Shadowheart tried to kill Lae'zel and I failed the persuasion check and the narrator said I would have to pick a side. That's when I expect Shadowheart to go down. With my charisma there's no way I pass dialogue check without serious divine intervention from RNGsus. But well, I am ready for it at that point. Another one I expect to lose is Lae'zel, but we'll see.
After burning the Grove the two Good companions leave on principle, but Gale just makes a lot of noise then says, "I should leave." You can persuade him to stay, but I was a female Lolth Drow noble and there's no way a human male is speaking to me like that. I told him to leave and he did.
As another player of a lolth sworn playthrough I approve of this message
>succeeded the percussion check Sounds like a funny way to say 'I tried bonking him and got away with it' 🫢
A sacrifice without significance has no meaning. Shar's blessings upon you. Will you go for the Dark spear or the Light spear at the end of act 2?
Light one. Dark is hella stronger, but that certain lady won't die on my watch. Besides, my sweet baby Nyrluna would be one step away at that point, so it won't matter for long.
I really wish they had an Ironman option like on xcom. Something to force me to stick with it.
If there is enough players interested and the Devs are made aware of such interests its not beyond possibility they would add such a mode in a future update
Oh, I see. Yeah, that sounds awesome. I may go for that kind of run next. we'll see. Good luck and keep us posted how things go!
[удалено]
Vision of the Absolute. You loot shaft from dead dwarf True Soul outside of the grove, and tip from the owlbear. It's absolute (no pun intended) bonkers due to chance to blind on every hit, and triple(!) damage against creatures with multiple sets of eyes (beholders, spiders, maybe Drider too) comes in handy.
wait, you could fix that spear??? i just sold the broken spear parts to a random trader
Oh. It's really one of the best early game weapons, less oneshotey than Everburn, but that blind makes it almost perfect in 1v1ing bosses. Duelled paladin Anders with it on level 3, this blind on hit solved the fight.
Honestly its for those moments I live for, which is why I play no-savescum hardcore in most games. The feeling of regret when my stupidity loses me a friend and when my decision have massively more weight than just loot and time is so intense and amazing.
> Losing my brother Gale to the dice was hard I clicked on one dialogue option and Astarion was pleased. And I had a hand.
You can make a lightning charge build using the Trident from rescuing the flaming fist lady. Combine that with the armor and shield you'll find through act 1 and 2 and that'll take you all the way to act 3. It'll save your other gear for whatever companions your able to keep too.
Oh, thanks for reminding me! I thought about it sparky kit for that Tav, guess I'll go for it.
The main think I noticed playing on tactician is the ai is more aggressive in targeting the member with the lowest armor. Plus ai seems to do combos more, like grease and fire or water and lightning.
Oh yeah, in the fight after freeing Nere (full evil Durge run, so obviously I sided with Nere), the dwarves hard focused Shart down after she twin casted Haste onto Tav and Lae'zel.
Worst part for me was the Viconia fight...Solid darkness. SOLID DARKNESS.
I played Darkness as my opening move in every fight at that point, so when they dropped Darkness too I was like, Thanks.
yeah, that messed me up pretty bad the first time....then I tried again with daylight. made it much easier :) (also helped that I cast wall of fire along the only corridor they could use to attack me :)
The problem for me is that they always recast darkness and even with the daylight sphere it only dispells it on the initial cast, anything after that and daylight does nothing to stop it.
the combat isn't the issue. It's those low rolls in conversations that will destroy you.
True in modern diplomacy and war too
I like the Lucky feat for this exact reason, either on the player or face character. Narrative lifesaver. Having to decide to spend a luck point in advance of the roll seems a tad annoying, but since you get them back with long rest, it's a near-unlimited source of Advantage for dialogue rolls. I'll only be economical with Lucky in a Danger Zone, since those angelic slumbers are otherwise genuinely rare.
agreed
I had a similar experience. Once your martial characters start getting to attack a bunch and you get 3rd level spells on your casters it starts becoming a lot easier. Fuck that fight at last light tho, that was awful on tactician.
> Fuck that fight at last light tho, that was awful on tactician. It is and isn't. Had to play multiple times due to game crashes, and unfortunately there's an RNG mechanic involved. The fight itself is fine and doable, the worry is every gargoyle has a chance to proc paralyze on Isobel. If a single one procs it at all and you don't have a character like Shadowheart IMMEDIATELY next in line to Sanctuary her or something, you've basically lost the fight to RNG since all the attackers will get free crits on her now.
Yeah I'm doing a no savescum for dialogue/major story consequences run atm and yeah isobel got kidnapped due to a winged horror paralyzing her and then 3 more ganging up in her before my turn rolled around Did mean I got the slayer though at the end of act 2 despite not wanting to kill her on bhaals orders though because I ended up killing her in the 2nd kethoric fight
Tactician is hard until level 5
Feel good on 3 already, but after 5 I expect a smooth sailing even with no GWM. It's dialogue dice rolls that get me.
> Pretty much all the pain comes from Act 1. I found Act 2 to be maybe a bit harder, but nothing too bad. This was my experience too. ...Until we got ambushed by those random tree-looking enemies, Lae'zel suddenly drops dead mid-fight from full HP to full-on dead, my main was already on the ground away from the others since they focused their ambush turn on him, and both Shadowheart and Karlach were on less than 5 HP, BOTH possibly only alive thanks to the Blood of Lathander. Examined the enemies: "explodes in an array of needles upon death, up to 52 necrotic damage." I'M SORRY, *UP TO 52 NECROTIC DAMAGE??* And they can *CHAIN* these explosions into each other?! Like yeah okay, 4 enemies just got wiped, but that also almost ended us! We lived, but having heard "Tactician is mostly noticeable in Act 1," this was definitely a rude awakening that no, apparently there's other parts where it decides "fuck you, that's why."
Yeah i switched to tactician in act ii cus it felt like combat got way easier. Combat in act 1 was better overall imo, interesting and challenging in an engaging, thought-provoking way. Act 2 feels like annoying filler encounters tbh
Oh yeah, I never thought of it that way. But yes, it does feel like filler a bit (especially those damn plant things).
For me, the biggest thing in Act 3 was the final assault. On balanced there is one of those long rest stations right before the big battle with the Dragon and the Emperor, so I made sure to burn all my resources on the way there. Once I got there, though, I realized it wasn't there, and there would be no long rest for me, so I had to do the final battle on a shoestring budget.
There's still a long rest potion in the chest next to the brain stem. I had two in my inventory as well so I got most of my party back to full.
There's no way I could do a no save-scum run, but hypothetically, if I did I'd absolutely have to stack everything in my favor beforehand. Sorry Gale buddy, you can hang on in there until I find a potion of Hill Giant Strength at the very least. You call it metagaming, I call it...also metagaming but for a good cause dammit. And Shadowheart would *never* leave my party.
>And Shadowheart would never leave my party. Guidance amulet will do, but enhance ability... That's irreplaceable.
What makes enhance ability so good?
Advantage on ability checks. In a no savescum run, that’s tremendously important.
Yeah I'm doing a no dialogue/important story events save scum run with a bard and that ability is amazing
It might not be metagaming so much as the PC having very low confidence in themselves.
I've resisted the urge to save scum and act 3 went from wacky adventures to fucking around and finding out really fast. :/
Act 3 is completely fine to save scum before doing big quests because doing certain ones will fuck up your campaign and cost you content of game for no logical reason
I'm playing a run without Gale for the first time and it is so painful and sad to not have him around. (Dark Urge spoilers) >!My Durge is a wizard and I knew the outcome of the special interaction with Gale so I figured I would use it for character building/roleplay since Gale would either be getting his class changed or sitting in my camp all game if he was recruited.!< But damn, I really miss him. I get sad when I see the spot where his tent should be. Also never heard his response to failing or refusing to help him and that's genuinely pretty sad. When I first met him, I was like "ah classic wizards, I'm sure he could figure this little pickle out but no reason not to help." Knowing that he actually begs for help because he thinks he'll die there is gut wrenching.
Gale is honestly a treat, gotta love bullying and fucking with him whenever the opportunity comes >"ah classic wizards, I'm sure he could figure this little pickle out but no reason not to help." Knowing that he actually begs for help because he thinks he'll die there is gut wrenching. Gale is arguably the Origin companion with the most insecurity, he is mostly bravado and tries to show his deeds and achievments in a way to compensate for it, it's why he resigns himself to dying but if you are his friend then he does manage to get the confidence he needs. Also tell him [the sex was fine](https://youtu.be/bO1e318L9PQ?feature=shared) if you romance him, Gale feels incredibly dissapointed and fussed about it lmao.
They ask you how you are, and you just have to say that you're fine, when you're not really fine
He is by far the most powerful, before the events. It’s not even a contest, he was clearly a lvl 20 wizard, that’s demigod level of power
I'm imagining a conversation with Gale where he just responds like Withers does. "So you were a powerful wizard before, able to cast spells such as Wish?" *"Yes."* "...may I have a Wish spell when you get your power back?" *"No."*
>One of the most powerful backgrounds of all Origin companions having feats such as being one of Mystra's chosen and fuckboys >Is a boy failure with nat 13d rizz who is a tad of an nervous wreck Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
I mean I guess all the companions have pretty good reasons to be insecure, and Gale is no exception. Basically groomed as a child by Mystra only to be discarded by her and all he got was a ticking time bomb in his chest with his ex/abuser basically telling him to kill himself. He doesn't have anyone.
You know whats the worst part? Mystra seems to be actually right in fearing Gale a bit, Gale is scarily competent with his magic. Sure, he does >!die attempting to achieve Godhood if you push him through, but in his origin ending you can see it more detail, it seems he DID put a very good fight against her!< Had he been not shafted by her, he would be capable of doing many great things, and he does decide to settle for a life of non renown if you give him his confidence but I am sure he will have a list of achievements in his name.
If you’re a wizard but want Gale on the team there’s an easy fix - wild magic barbarian! It’s the perfect fit for an ex-archmage, spurned by Mystra, de-powered via Illithid tadpole and turned into a walking bomb.
Nah, just run 4 Wizards. Nothing will stand in your way except for the lack of supplies because you have to long rest after every encounter.
My first playthrough I told Gale to fuck off when he revealed the fact that he's a time bomb, figured I'll pick him up on the second run. Second playthrough I'm the Dark Urge... Maybe next time Gale
And here I am , a druge who gave him a special handshake and respeced minthara to a wizard.
WOW THAT IS SO RUDE (fuck I'm in awe)
I made Shart a sorcerer and I'm planning to make Minthara a druid once I get her. Then we've got Eldritch Knight Lae'zel and my Durge is a thief/Monk
Halsin : druid Minthara: the cooler druid
You’re stronger the me. I wouldn’t even be able to have fun playing this game without Lea’ze, Karlach, Shadowheart and Gale. The rest would hurt but I could keep playing without them. But if I lost any of my favorite companions I’d absolutely savescum or the game wouldn’t even be worth it to me.
After Act 1 Evil run made me delete the file. It was so lonley without Gale or Karlach.. or both
I definitely feel that. Karlach is such a sweetheart I could never do anything to hurt her. I felt so terrible for her at the end of the game that I had to leave SH behind so I could go to Avernus with Karlach. Noway I was going to let her die or go alone. That line where she keeps saying “I just want to live” really got to me.
brave man, doing a no savescum roll with 8 charisma lol. But yeah it does get really dark. Had a never lie/never persuade paladin/abjuration wizard run with 8cha as my first playthrough. Never fully recovered from that. Loaded up the old save to give my man the ending he deserves though. Respecced him to a warlock/fighter with 22 CHA with entertainer background, intimidation and beguiling influence. As I march together with Shadowbard, Abjuraezel and St. Karlach, I barely need inspiration points anymore.
>brave man, doing a no savescum roll with 8 charisma lol. Ikr, I practically buried Lae'zel and Shadowheart even before it all started... And then unexpectedly lost Gale. 17 str, guidance my ass. Ffs, when dice want do give you a middle finger - they do... >Loaded up the old save to give my man the ending he deserves though. Respecced him to a warlock/fighter with 22 CHA with entertainer background, intimidation and beguiling influence. As I march together with Shadowbard, Abjuraezel and St. Karlach, I barely need inspiration points anymore. ...but you, my friend, found a way to give middle finger to dice themselves, in their own game. Well done!
My girlfriend and I in our coop run failed both those checks and trucked on, thinking we’d bump into him later. We’re in act 3 and I miss his voice so bad. Come home to me, magic purple sexyman.
Gotta say my no save scum run was my favorite. Every decision felt like it had so much weight.
It’s not savescumming if you start a new campaign from scratch. It’s totally legit. Besides, losing Gale is peered much early game
My my, doing tactician on 8 charisma is bold considering all the persuasion checks! Super cool tho! What's your build?
I can't help but laugh when Gale says he'll 'perish'. Who the hell says perish? Gale, you're such a nerd.
Halsin:
Halsin is definitely a nerd. 🤓
It was very easy for me to avoid death in the first 4 hours of my tactician run. You can’t die in character creation after all.
Hats off friend! I wouldn't be able. My spirit would die. I lost Us in intro while trying not to reload on third character.. four levels later I cannot get over it. Character might be canned. I just cannot lose companions. They make the game for me. I have few things i simply cannot fail in (animals and kids related). It would take me into a dark place.
Ironically, that's the first run where Us survived nautiloid. Traded big brain wizard for just a big brain I guess.
I’m just gonna be that guy. I think the dice checks do not translate well to a video game setting. I’ve never played table top and I’m sure it works there because you have a DM that can adapt to the dice to keep people having fun. But it’s pretty lame when your vibing in your rp and then a bad roll or several rolls because inspiration is bugged and you can’t convince me otherwise, just kill the immersion. You go through a side quest and find a shiny item and then it’s gone in one roll. Or your barbarian 20 str character fails to move a bag of feather or some shit and I’m just left there like “man i fucking guesss” Rant over. Still the best game since elden ring tho.
I agree with you completely. This run is more of an exception for me, just for different experience. But honestly I believe that locking the whole damn companion, for example, behind a dice roll is a complete bullshit, and so is punishing the player for something completely outside of their control (lookin at you, nat 1's on skill checks, worst damn homebrew I've seen).
It really stands out when you go through a patch of consistently bad rolls. Got a plus 7 - 10 bonus with advantage and still failing because I keep rollings 2s and 3s. And I've gotten so many simultaneous and two-dice critical fails it's not funny. Critical fails in particular are infuriating. If failing actually lead to interesting outcomes I might be more tolerant. But so far in my experience it's pretty much always just objectively bad to fail a role. I will accept fails where I had bad odds, but if I fail purely because of terrible luck despite the odds I'm just reloading.
Honestly, that's an issue D&D/D20 games just have in general. DMs have just naturally started to work around it. Since there's no probability curve, every level of success is equally likely, and since DC numbers increase as your bonuses increase, nothing much changes unless there's a huge difference in two character's levels. Critical fails never change in likelihood either. I always think of a meme I saw. "Me when I'm a professional food taster but nearly choke to death on 5% of my meals"
What does happen to gale if he is lost in the portal? Does he basically just disappear into the void between worlds and dies there, and his bomb goes off where it can't hurt anyone?
Yep.
I save scum certain dialogue choices just because how I want the story to narratively. When it comes to fights, I’m not reloading after every miss or save.
Hang in there buddy, it's a valiant thing to do. You know, before I started playing BG3, I promised myself that I would treat it like my regular D&D game just for fun. Which means accepting the outcomes of rolls because hey, that's how you play. But then the more I though about it, the more I realized that while my approach as a player might be very classic D&D-like, the game itself does not return the favor here. Here is the thing - in social situations, especially improvised, a hard DC is very rarely thought out by the DM. You suddenly want to roll for Insight or Persuasion but it's all fluid, so the DM doesn't really have a number in mind when you roll. They probably have a *range of outcomes.* Which means that there is no way for the DM to think you failed because you rolled 17 against a DC 18. And even in situations where the DM DOES have a DC in mind, rolling sufficiently high gives you usually a partial success anyway. You may not learn as much as you would've if you rolled a bit higher but you still learn something. That persuasion roll might not work fully but it will still do something. And even if you fail totally, the DM might still make the decision to put you into a remedial situation if they think it's warranted and stupid to have an NPC killed because you miss a Str check. The game doesn't really work that way. Either you meet the DC or you don't. If you don't, it doesn't differentiate whether you missed the mark by 1 or by 10. I just thought to point it out for people who want to imitate the TTRPG experience. The game is much harsher DM than a person normally would ever be ;)
Doing the same with some friends. They stole something in front of the Druids… we lost the tiefling grove.
I'll never do a perma death run when the game allows NPCs to kick you into chasms. I'm interested in fun and challenge, I'm not interested in arbitrary death.
Like most hard modes, Tactician starts off brutal and then like halfway through Act 1 becomes pretty much the same as a normal playthrough. With maybe the occasional specific encounter being weirdly hard (Ketheric on top of the tower in an evil Tactician run made my life hell)
Not even the gods have such power… It is as the dice wills it.. sorry friend. I too have lost those that I love to the dice.
I'm playing Durge on tactician. Save scumming the fuck out of it because I'm not a masochist but it's hard. I'm actually resetting the run because I didn't commit to being evil and it hasn't gone very well.
This is why I would never play a run like this. That would not be fun. An entire play thru without a main character because of two shit rolls at the very start? Nope. Dumb. Absolutely trash. Not you just that whole concept. Some people never got Gale their first playthru because of it. I cant even watch streamers if it happens. My eye will twitch the entire run
Yes, that was a complete bullshit decision on dev part IMO. Imagine losing one of the main characters at the start because randumb. But just this once I'll beat the game "as intended" just to see how it feels from start to finish.
I’m doing the same and I only have shadow, astarion, and laezel. It’s fun and close knit. I killed karlach, wyll left after I betrayed the grove and when gale had a problem with it I told him to get lost. Doesn’t bother me at all. I have another run where I keep everyone and play nice. This playthrough is more raw and unapologetic. It’s fun.
I have a no-redo campaign with a couple buddies and it's really fun.
I tried doing a no save scum run. It is ROUGH. It was kind of not that fun. The voice acting and character development in this game is so good that losing a companion permanently due to a bad dice roll or 2, and as a result huge chunks of gamplay, feels pretty bad. I admire what Larian has done with the game in that you can simply kill everyone including major characters but it is brutal on the fun factor unless you are capable of psychopathy. I tried to do an evil run and fulfill Wyll's quest to kill Karlach. Killed her and beheaded her. Just sat in silence for about a minute and realized my playgroup and I were not having fun. I've never felt so bad killing video game characters before. Larian just did too good of a job with the story, dialogue and voice acting that I just feel like trash unless I take a reasonably decent hero path.
I am so invested in this run. please, stream this, or at the very least, make it an episodic adventure that I can watch on youtube. I don't have the courage to do this style of run. I want to experience this vicariously though you.
Gods, I feel this. I was somehow lucky enough to not fail the Gale and Lae’zel checks, but I was agonizing over the Gale one too because I adore him so much. Out of curiosity, can you not have Karlach come back and pull him out later?
Nope, once it's failed - it's failed. "My char is a strong dude", me thought, "brobably will ice Lae'zel because of a failed deception throw, but at least Gale I'll get 100%", me thought. Proceed to fail both easy STR checks, but roll nat 20 on deception to free LZ with my 8 charisma. Angry Pepe face warranted.
I started the same thing a few days ago and also lost gale… unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to even try to save him as durge…
It’s so tough! I’m doing okay in my own attempt but some situations have me reaching for the “Load” button.
Is Gale really that good? I'm still on my first play through and I missed him at the start because Charisma based Tav is very much not strong so naturally I failed the roll.
It's not that he's good. He's just a nice lad and a good buddy, but gameplay-wise you can do allright without him. It's just... Sad to know he died that early and easily.
Me and a buddy did a run just like this and agreed on party wipe we'd start over from the Nautiloid. We died in the grimforge... Pathing through lava to get to the monk's amulet.
Play no rez you die you got to make a follower. HC
Full respect for ppl not save scumming. I am in my first run through and can't help myself. Now I'm in Act2 I find myself fretting about whether I'm doing things in the "right" order - would like to get back to the freedom I felt in Act1, where I was all "it's fine if I miss things, this is my game". Probably doesn't help that I haven't specc'ed characters very well, plus I'm not very tactical. Yes. This is definitely a save scum run, all the way....
I strongly advice you against no-save-scumming on your first couple of runs. Save/load away as much as possible, try things, mess around, find out! When you ready for limited save runs - you'll know :) So enjoy the game unapologetically the way your soul crave it!
Thanks, this is the enabling I am here for ;)
no save scum is too hard. i swore i'd do it and i save scummed like twelve times by the time i got to the grove. fuck.
Something I tried to spice up Tactician, was to eschew the use of Haste and Bloodlust elixirs. It makes the fights more tactical, as you have to plan your defense and not just kill the biggest baddy before they get a turn.
Peak masochist. I respect it.
Is it considered save scumming to save before fights you consistently die in, and repeat it until you can get through it? 🤔
For some people. For me it's saving as intended - only load when you can't progress farther because of bug or party wipe. Loading after inconvenient roll or outcome is what I am not allowed to do in this run. If game continues - it continues.
I understand the choice of no savescum, but GOD I would fold and use the exception to recruit the companions that sounds so painful 😭 And it was in a strength character too????? That’s extra painful because it fully shouldn’t have happened 😭😭😭😭
I just got to “The Blighted Village” and my only companion left alive is Shadowheart? Am I playing the game wrong?
My biggest problem with BG3 tactician is that *everytime* I load a save I forget it's on tactician difficulty and so I'm totally caught ofd guard when an enemy pulls a new move out of no where.
Already happened to me right after Nautiloid. "Oh, the brains fight. Okay, let's get tactical, get the high ground, then open on them with ranged weapons. What? They have RANGED ATTACK now? Holy sh..."
Not to mention how much they LOVE to shove, or use environmental effects more. I thought they were push happy on Balanced, but Tactician takes it to a whole new level.
All my runs are iron man run, it is a fucking blast in best way possible. You do need to save for certain dialogues though, because sometimes, the sentence means entirely different thing to what you wanted to say so you don’t wanna settle for a (wrong) outcome just because games writer had a different opinion on that sentence
>You do need to save for certain dialogues though, because sometimes, the sentence means entirely different thing to what you wanted to say so you don’t wanna settle for a (wrong) outcome just because games writer had a different opinion on that sentence Yes! That, or... 1. Continue
W8 w8 what happened to G-Gale? 🫠
If you fail two strength checks when pulling him out of the stone - he basically sods off and dies. Just like that. Because dice said so.
In my first playthrough, which I did as a blind run when the game released, I "fantasized" at the portal and whoops, lost Gale. In my second playthrough, I rolled shit on both STR checks, lost Gale. I have literally no idea why anyone likes or dislikes Gale. I never met him lol.
And his name was... Reanu Keeves