Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What about Gale multiclass Wizard/Cleric of Mystra?

I mean, he claims to be devoted to her so much etc etc, why not take a cue after Elminster and give him 1 level of cleric? It's a flavour, as opposed to a powergaming, choice.

I think the WORST thing they could do, is go the SWTOR route of making any companion do anything. Gale is a Wizard, not a Cleric. Not only that, as his backstory states by his own narration, he is seriously out of favor with Mystra, so there is that...

I don't think you can be a cleric after your goddess dumps you?

Ur-Priests are like bitter old exes who still leaches off your Netflix account

tbh, we still dont really know much about how larian's origin characters are going to be implemented if player selected or how much control the player will have over making adjustments to character features both at character creation or when leveling up during playthroughs to really say either way. early on larian intimated that multi-classing would be a bg3 feature (possibly even during ea) so i would assume that any character (pc, npc, origin or not) would be able to lvl into any class the player wants contingent on their ability scores meeting the prerequisites - but this may be a long way off in implementation and frankly idk if larian will follow the 5e approach here.

it also raises further questions regarding how much larian is going to allow players to tweak origin character features (race, class, skills, ability scores, etc all have been suggested in earlier threads) - normally id be pro-player choice, but i think too much optionality here would be a significant resource investment that id argue would be better served towards other feedback topics. that said, larian may be more inclined to opening this up if the studio keeps the planned act1 party/map locks and current max 4 party size mechanics in place - but, again hard to tell based off of news from the recent panel discussion. maybe the eventual patch 4 notes will shed some light on this topic

Mystra however just dumped him from his status of Chosen, did she not?

I'm more interested in knowing how a level 1 character was boinking a goddess and playing around with Netherese magic items on the Astral plane.

I assume he wasn't meant to be level 1 to start with, considering he said it was his exceptional prodigious skill with magic that made Mystra attracted to him, though that doesn't actually make him being a level 1 character much less silly. Like even if we assume the tadpole is intentionally cutting him off from magic, why would it leave him able to access any? Why let him gain strength again? It's a pretty bad background that requires a lot of handwaving to make any sense.

Also creates plot issues with making a satisfying power progression and lead up towards the ending. Like how do you end up feeling like you've really become a great hero or master wizard when your characters backstory is being budget Elminster, beloved of the goddess of magic herself?

I noticed with D:OS2 that Larian has a penchant for introducing level 1 characters with level 20 backstories. It was so bad in D:OS2 that I completely lost interest and stopped playing it after about 3-5 hours. So far, Gale and Karlach are the only ones I've seen in BG3 that have super off-putting and severely out of place for the level of character backstories. I haven't uncovered enough of Lae'Zel or Shadowheart's backstory to tell if they're equally as bad. Wyll seems to be a bit in the wrong direction (but I force myself to make the assumption that you aren't supposed to recruit him until at least level 4, and that makes it almost palatable) ...and Astarion can be excused because he was basically a mindless meat puppet for the last 200 years.

This is one of the main reasons why I want to have the ability to just roll with a party of completely custom made characters. I've been role playing since the 3rd grade (I'm 44 now). Having my NPCs not have any story options at all is much better, to me, than having them have stories that are completely out of place for their level. It doesn't break the experience nearly as much for me to have nothing there as it does for me to be wondering how I'm supposed to believe that they accomplished feats that would require a level 20 character to even attempt while they were still basically level 0.

Yeah it's a weird tendency they have, particularly carrying it over to DnD where "character with extravagant completely inappropriate background" has to be one of the most well talked about beginner mistakes out there. It's not like this is some new territory they're covering lol, people have worked out how to not do this a long time ago.

Gale and Karlach are definitely the worst, like Gale was a full on archmage chosen and Karlach was well known enough in the fucking blood war to be recognized on sight as "demonsbane", meaning she'd have to be elite erinyes tier at least. All of that is just way too much for a level 1 character, both mechanically and plot wise. Like how are you supposed to feel particularly cool when your whole backstory is about how much stronger you used to be, and when you know you'll never hit that point again in game because level cap is relatively low?

Shadowheart and LaeZel are both a little over the top, but it's not a big enough gap for me to really be bothered, most CRPGs have some degree of level compression, and both of those could pretty easily be level 3-4~ in their backstory. Shadowheart isn't the greatest champion of Shar, mightiest warrior in the whole religion, Laezel isn't the grand general of the gith, they're just people who were given a mission, shadowhearts in particular didn't even seem to involve fighting at all.

Glad to know that I'm not the only one seriously put off by that. I think when we get closer to launch my playthroughs will just kill the companions (especially Gale, Karlach, and Wyll) on sight so that I won't even be tempted to get bogged down by the horribly out of place backstories on them.

Did you not get the dialogue between Gale and Wyll? It's about that they lost a lot of power since they got the tadpoles. So basically, the tadpoling pushed them back to level 1.
Plus in Gales case, he also lost Mystras favor and therefore even more power.

And he has something basically sucking magic power, as a wizard he is basically fighting against everything. It is a miracle that he is level one and not just cursed away from using magic entirely.

Also I think it would make more sense for him to be completely locked out of being able to be a Cleric or Paladin of Mystra.

You can't even be a Paladin of Mystra already

This just kind of reads like a hand wave to me at least. The tadpole doesn't really seem to want to take your powers away, abyssal sorc shows people can still be super strong even with a tadpole in their head, and he's still perfectly able to level up and cast normally.
I personally think the impact a backstory that big has on your plot progression is a larger issue, but it just feels a bit contrived to me that the tadpole would drain all of your levels without causing any other issues, and that it would also do this to martials like minsc or karlach too (as even if she is a paladin she's not gonna have a level 15 paladins health).

Also I'm a bit unclear on his relationship with Mystra at this point, doesn't the weave scene suggest she's still looking over him?

I think they have decent reasons (if a little contrived) for the level 1 thing.

For gale, having his magic constantly sucked and being scorned by the goddess of magic is a big excuse to say he can't do any feat he could do before.

Wyll was getting power directly from his patron right there, she was giving him the victories. And now he has to do things on his own, the pact gave him a route to power he didn't explore before which is essentially level 1.

That being said, it'd be nice to see every character have a picked Deity so that if you multiclass to a holy class, they already have a Deity selected for it, though I'd legitimately argue for Gale to be locked out from holy classes and maybe other characters have something they can't ever do cause of their nature's/backstory. Like Astarion might not ever be able to do holy either cause he's a vampire, or Shadow heart never being able to do druid?

I think it's because Larian draws in general more from Bioware/Dragon Age than DnD.

I mean, BG3 and DoS2 handle it worse than Origins and 2, since in those games you actually started with young people as companions and only got to meet the more experienced ones after a few levels, but Inquisition is basically the same as far as this goes, what with the first companions being a Dragonslayer, a lvl 20 bard, and bald wolf.

Sure, but I don't think Gale would be able to be a competent wizard at all with all those disadvantages. He's just not companion material if he's that messed up, guy should be stuck at handling beginner magic pretty much forever. Also like I said I don't know how scorned he's meant to be, there's hints that she still watches over him in a caring way iirc.
Wyll is weird because warlocks are weird and it's never properly explained how they get their power in any sort of consistent manner. Sometimes they draw from the relevant planes, sometimes they're taught secrets, sometimes they draw from their patron, it's pretty poorly written overall and makes it pretty impossible to judge Wyll either way. He either makes some sense or makes zero sense at all, depending on what warlock interpretation you're using.

I do agree with you they have some reasons for it, but I think it being so contrived is a big issue for me at least, and it'll just get worse the more examples we need to accept.


Yeah hard agree on that, Inquisition was pretty bad with this. Thought i guess you could argue you start at a stronger point? You're pretty impressive pretty quickly in that game, and Solas has his own weird stuff going on that makes him kind of excusable. Varric is out of place, but I'm like 90% sure Varric being so out of place in combat in general is an in joke at bioware lol, guy's primarily an author and he keeps up just fine with all these elite career fighters.

Did you not play DA 2 or really play DA:I to hear Varric's backstory, because I can tell you he is a helluva lot more than an author that is keeping up with elite career fighters. I mean he was an elite fight in before you even met him in DA2. Also, in DA:O you absolutely did NOT start with young fighers besides Allistair. Morgan was a top level mage, Wynne as well (I mean she was even an instructor). Leliana was a trained bard and assassin for royalty. Zevran a trained assassin and crow. So where exactly are these "young" fighters besides the MC? So basically EVERYONE besides the MC was more powerful characters to start that they scaled down to your level. Also with DA:I they really never went into the backstory of the Inquisitor, but the companions, once again, were established powerful characters that the scaled down to level with. Cassandra was a trained knight and the Chantry Seeker, Iron Bull a trained merc, Dorian and Vivian were both powerful mages, and again Varric was a trained, accomplished rogue from DA2. So your whole argument about lvl 20 characters being scaled to level 1 is basically the MO of basically most of the RPGs today that have companions.

A lot of games scale people down with a lot less excuses. An archmage smited down to level 1 is a bit easier of a pill to swallow to me compared to a partly weakened god who is for some reason level one and running around using basic mage spells (I will not be indicating what character this is cause spoilers, but it is a game with companions that may or may not have been mentioned) or in Inquisition you got Iron Bull who is an accomplished merc captain and qunari spy (not a spoiler) yet joins level 1 and clearly unable to do the feats he is famed for.
Games tend to have a suspension of disbelief with companions being scaled, and at least BG3 has an excuse for their scaling.