Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Friends Spell leads to new major story plot path?

Encountered what I thought was a bug in the Save Arabella Quest while talking to Kagha. For some reason, she turned hostile and attacked after I convinced her [Deception] to turn Arabella over to me. I thought this was a bug (still could be), but upon further reflection, I think that it could be because I used the Friends spell on Kagha. Could be that she turned hostile after the Friends spell expired. This led to a whole new story path that I had never selected before and had not intended of siding with the Tieflings to kill the druids. On the one hand, I’m glad it happened so that I could experience this new path. (I seem to find something new on every play through). On the other hand, wow!, the end of the Friends spell causes a major plot and storyline decision that is mainly out of my hands. Anyone else experience something like this? My intention on this play through is to really experiment with the Friends spell as a High Half Elf Cantrip. I found more than I expected.

Yeah, happened to me too, thought it was a bug. For whatever reason, Kagha started pacing around agitated, saying something about some aggression, and then finally attacked me. It occurred to me later this is probably because of Friends. So, now I make sure I am out of range when I break the concentration on that spell. The plotline is not new though, it can be triggered in different ways.

Sorry, didn’t mean to imply that it was new to the game, just new to me. I was surprised that such a major plot point could be triggered by the Friends spell ending. I guess it could be considered fair, since I was trying to influence a (minor) plot point by using the spell in the first place. It would be nice if such major plot choices couldn’t be triggered so easily by accident like that.

Well, it's triggered if you enter into combat with any druid in the grove, which makes sense. And Friends can now make you enter combat if you're careless. I think it's up to the player here to mind their spells.

Well, in previous versions Friends did litteraly nothing (i mean after expiration, it allways gived advantage as it should) ...
Now it was finaly fixed, so its only temporary advantage with sometimes HUGE cost to pay.

But it still have its uses, if you know what will happen.
Also, its written right there in tooltip. But i missed it at first too.

If they have actually implementing a "drawback" for using the Friends spell that's good... But going straight into attack mode instead of taking just a significant hit in "likeability" seems a bit of a stretch.
Then again Kagha didn't exactly starte in the best terms with our party, so maybe it's that rather than "When friends expires people will attack you no matter what".

I noticed something similar as well: After convincing Kagha to let Arabella go through persuasion and using my Sorcerer's Friends spell to get advantage, everything seemed to be fine at first and I talked to Rath next. Afterwards I noticed, that I had gotten into dialogue with Kagha again, albeit without the cinematic perspective. I *think* she was questioning me about what happened at the gate, but I don't quite remember and I was able to persuade my way out of the situation without a fight. I think I still have a save game from somewhere before that, so I can go and check again later today.

I believe this only aply to Kagha ...

I used Friends on Astarion, and all i get was "disagree" when it expired ...
I used Friends on some vendor NPC, not sure wich one it was, but i have the feeling it was Druid from Grove ... and when it expired he come to me and acused me from beaking the law ... so i talked out of the situation (NOT using Friends again, but i wonder if it would incerase dificiulty) and all was good.
I didnt used it to Kagha myself, yet ... so not sure if that was the problem, but certainly sound like it.

I will avoid using that spell!

You don't have to avoid using it, just go out of range when you break the concentration on it, and after a minute, you can again normally approach the NPC and they won't be aggressive.

This is a good implementation, assuming that the disapproval remains even after talking them down. Casting friends on someone is a hostile action, and they should call you out for it after it ends. But going directly to combat is too punishing in most situations, especially how BG3 will then make all nearby neutral NPCs also hostile.

Casting Friends, stealing, and knocking someone out should all use this type of interaction. NPC comes up to you angry and accusing. You can defuse the situation by a persuasion/intimidation/etc check, but a failure leads to combat.

Certain important NPCs could have unique dialogue for these situations, but generic dialogue for all other NPCs is perfectly fine and would save Larian a lot of work.

Yes, this is what happened to me. I could tell that Kagha was agitated and trying to talk to me about something when I tried to talk to Rath, but the game got hung up and didn’t show any cinematic or dialog boxes/options for either Rath or Kagha. Maybe because of the timing of trying to bring up both Rath and Kagha’s conversations at the same time? I hit 1 to try to unstick the game and Kagha and all the druids except Rath turned hostile. I guess I probably hit a hostile conversation choice by accident. Good to hear that it sound like there is a way to talk yourself out of this major plot point. Just need to clean up the bug of the Kagha dialogue not properly showing up at that point.