Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Gale can't cast Chromatic Orb?

Okay, what am I doing wrong? I wanted Gale to have another option for lightning damage in this playthrough so had him learn chromatic orb.

I'm sure I'm just being dumb here, but I can't seem to cast it. The spell is in his spellbook, in his prepared list, and he has spell slots. But when I select Chromatic Orb and hover over any of the options it says "Spell is not Prepared". The screenshot below illustrates.

(Btw, when I squint really hard I can see that it has a tiny, tiny tick at the bottom right of its icon in the spell book, which some other spells such as Find Familiar and Magic Missile also have. I have never noticed this before, but wonder whether this means a spell was selected at level up rather than learned from a scroll? That's certainly the case for those other two spells, though I don't remember for sure for Chromatic Orb itself.)

Just to rule out something simple, it looks like you don't have an action currently in that screen shot. To the left of the red triangle for a bonus action there would be a green circle if you had an action, and since you're in turn based mode it means you wouldn't be able to cast any spell.

Having said that, I don't know why it is saying that Chromatic Orb isn't prepared when it clearly is in your spellbook.

The little ticks are the spells you have had Gale prepare, if you check all of the spells with the tick they are the ones that are also in the prepared section.

I just tried changing prepared spells, even doing that right after learning them, I was able to cast them immediately.
Unless I'm missing something as well, this might be a bug.

Fair question! He actually does have an action, but when you hover over a spell or other ability that uses an action, which I'd done to pop up the tooltip, the green circle flashes and my screenshot happened to catch it when it was duller. He can cast any other spell, it's just Chromatic Orb that's affected.


Duh! I don't believe I didn't make that connection. In my defense, I picked spells that I intended to use at level up and I thought prepared spells were already indicated by the yellow highlight round their icon ... no, that's a rubbish defense, I'm an idiot

My Gale can’t either and I have spells slots available and it’s prepared.

Well for my sake, I'm glad it's not just me being dim, but for yours, I'm sorry you have this problem too

Do you recall whether you learned it from a scroll or at level up? I didn't notice the problem immediately, and by the time I did I'd forgotten.

I reported it. But it happened after level 5. But I cant be sure, but I may have chose it as one of his level up spells cause it was available. But I will be honest I think I had already known the spell from earlier. Not sure if by scroll or lvl up…

Cool, thanks for confirming you've already reported it. Was your Gale ever able to use the spell? The first time I actually tried the spell was already unavailable, but I can't remember whether he had the spell before level 5 and if he did I couldn't be certain whether it was already greyed out before then. In short, I am of very little use diagnosing this particular problem!

Iirc I had used it before.

Sent in a save game to support as they could not duplicate it on their end. Once they got my save, they saw the issue and have created a bug report so the team can further investigate…

I know the reason of this bug.
If yo learn chromatic orb from scroll example lvl 1.
And after that you level up to lvl2.
The game dont recognize that you already have it.
And you can learn it agan on lvl up screen .
After that its bugged and you cannot cast it any more and there is no fix.

I hope this will help.

Yeah, I came to the same conclusion. However, I still had to jump through the hoops (make sure no mods, check game integrity, etc). LoL

No it have nothing to do with mods cuz i have steam deck .
I cannot mod the game .
Or mybe i am too noob for this:)
In any way my game is not modded but just because i dont know how^^.

Does that mean only learning it at level 5 prevents the bug?

Thank you! I hadn’t got around to figuring out this problem yet so that does help.

Does that mean that the game is still showing us all spells not already picked at level up, rather than hiding ones we’ve learned from scrolls (and it’s just a coincidence that two of us saw the problem with chromatic orb)? I knew this was an issue with previous patches but hadn’t got round to checking if it was fixed. I guess not?

the game has always ignored scroll when offering you new spells at level up [a long standing design issue] however not being able to cast the spell after picking it again at level up is a new one... its probable the level 3 slot is behind it and that would mean its not just chromatic orb but any spell repicked

my current run is Pally ... more testing is needed because "August is coming"!



edit confirmed ... taking orb at level when you already know it causes the bug

Okay, with a bit more testing and the helpful hints here (plus some luck with the saves I happened to have from my last playthrough), I can confirm that:

• If Gale learns Chromatic Orb from a scroll at level 1, does not prepare it, then picks it at level up to 2, he can then cast it, ie the bug does not occur.
• If Gale learns Chromatic Orb from a scroll at level 1, prepares it, then levels up to 2 and picks the spell again the bug occurs and he can no longer cast it.
• If Gale learns Chromatic Orb from a scroll at level 1, prepares it, then swaps the spell out of his prepared list again, levels up to 2 and picks the spell again the bug does NOT occur.
• If Gale learns Chromatic Orb from a scroll at level 1, prepares it, CASTS it, then swaps the spell out of his prepared list again, levels up to 2 and picks the spell again the bug occurs and he can no longer cast it.
• If Gale has already learned Chromatic Orb and picks it at level up to 3, then the bug occurs and he can no longer cast it, no matter what. But feasibly I had had it in his spellbook and cast it at some point between my level up to 2 and level up to 3 saves. I don't recall.
• I can't get the bug to occur with False Life, Protection from Evil and Good, or Burning Hands (the scrolls I happened to have found in my saves up to level 3).

Then I got bored of reloading, so that's it for now! At least it's confirmed that it's not just at later levels that the problem occurs, and it's not all spells that are affected.