When working my way into the Bhaal temple to confront Orin, I had to pass through a trial to prove my worth, which means defeating the "Farslayer" at the end of a chasm with ruins.
This is easily the most frustrating fight of the entire game for a number of reasons:
- It makes literally no sense at all; I need to prove my worth as an indiscriminate murderer of innocent, mostly defenceless prey, by surviving an ambush by a small army and a near indestructible apparition who casts a delayed power word kill on my entire party? WTF? There is no way in hell the people beyond this chamber all managed to do this, as it took me over an hour and dozens of attempts with a part of four level 11 adventurers with very rare or better gear and a wide range of spells.
- Enemies being able to bonus action shove means you are in constant danger of having party members instantly killed at any time. I don't mind shove being easy outside of combat for the shenanigans/thinning numbers, but enemies and players having bonus action shove in combat is ridiculous.
- Ambushers all seem to have Sanctuary on them, so even if you spot them, you can't kill them. That's right, it's a Bhaalite trial in which you're not allowed to murder anyone using weapons, you have to use area effects… WTF?
- I'm not even sure how you're supposed to do this; there isn't nearly enough time to get to the end before the power word kill wipes the entire party. But if the intention is that you're supposed to sneak down, that seems to be extremely difficult as even with Astarion on his own with Blessing of the Trickster there were several points where I just automatically lost the Hiding condition (no roll). And Astarion simply cannot kill the Farslayer on his own anyway, so is the goal to sneak past the entire trial? How is that correct?
But worst of all, it seems the "Unstoppable" condition on the Farslayer is currently bugged, because in every attempt I made I could only do 1 damage per hit no matter how many times I hit him (or with what damage types); there was simply no way for me to hit him 95 times before power word kill wiped out my party. In the end the only way I was able to beat him was by misty stepping behind where he appears, then using a bard's mobile flourish to knock him into the chasm for an instant kill (because while he can't be pushed, and repelling blast doesn't work, mobile flourish seems to). That felt very much like using a bug to "fix" another bug.
I just don't see how this encounter is
supposed to play out as a Bhaalite trial (or mechanically at all), and it seems to me even without this bug it would be one of the worst encounters in the game. And it's not like the fight with Orin is much better thanks to mass frighten and stun effects, and the Bhaal cultists who can go invisible as a bonus action an infinite number of times
when See Invisibility doesn't even work properly to counter them (oh and there's plenty of room for them to instant kill you via shoving again). I know the Bhaal temple is supposed to be unpleasant, but I have to say it is a part of the game that I actually hated playing, it just wasn't fun at all; that's not really a proper bug, but it could do with some major improvements, otherwise if I get around to replaying BG3 I'll be looking for mods to either skip it entirely, or make it as trivial as possible.
It's a shame when I've had fun everywhere else.
Update: In what way is this a spoiler? The Dead Three have been a feature of every single Baldur's Gate game and I don't mention any connection to the main story, only that you go there eventually.
