Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Paladin class NEEDS Deity Choice!

Speaking of which - and apologies for the digression - has anyone got any views on how long ago Anders turned? I can’t recall the exact words now, but I’ve certainly got the sense in the past that it has only just happened and that Zariel appeared to give help against the gnolls in return for Anders and gang agreeing to serve her and seek Karlach. That would perhaps help make sense of the corpse in the toll house being labelled as a refugee rather than a paladin and still being sworn to Zariel. But I’ve never been entirely certain if that was right or if they’d been sworn to Zariel for longer and have been sent to this area by her.

There's no timeframe reference except that Anders talks as if the memory is fresh.

His band likely formed after his conversion and probably are from around Elturgard, which isn't surprising given Zariel's connection to the city of Elturel.

As a paladin of Tyr midway between Elturel and Baldur's Gate, he was most likely an Elturgard Companion Knight and converted either before the city's descent or, holding a grudge, converted in Avernus itself, maybe even directly in Zariel's presence. If the latter, he's been fallen mere days or weeks.

And during Elturel's descent could have been where and when his band of mortal Zalielites was formed.

Devils have extreme difficulty plane-shifting to mortal realm, so the group probably came back within the city of Elturel when heroes saved it. Zariel has some foresight (in the adventure there is a possibility of her giving the city up in exchange for a better bargain), so maybe she instructed them to enter the city to return with it as her mortal agents?

Totally disagree with the OP. In 5e, the paladin's power comes from his/her oath. You can choose a deity, but it's for flavor. You can do that in this game too. This may be true of 5e clerics as well which have a domain as far as game mechanics go with a deity chosen for flavor. (But I haven't played a cleric in either 5e or BG3). To be clear, what you do for flavor may be the most important part in live TTRPGs, but is less likely to impact a video game implementation.

This is really excellent detective work. It never occurred to me that we were standing on the doorstep the chain of events that led to their fall. I am going to consider that actual unless Larian says otherwise.

My working hypothesis is that the fall is even more recent and was precipitated by Zariel seeking Karlach and offering her aid to travellers at the toll house (including Anders) against the gnolls specifically to get their help to find her. That is, finding and killing Karlach was the price of Zariel’s aid. But I’m also going to pay more attention the next time I play to check whether there’s anything that either confirms or disproves this. I guess one thing that would disprove it would be if Zariel would have no way of reaching out to make such a deal, but I don’t know what means she might have for cross-planar communication.

Level 3 Sending spell can cross planes with only minor chance of failure, but sender needs to be already familiar with sendee. There are work-arounds and Zariel has greater powers at her disposal, so pretty sure she could communicate with Anders direct.

Thing is, she's not a demigod, so can't create simultaneous avatars. Her agenda is packed full therefore need to prioritize actions or delegate to lieutenants. If Karlach was as important as we're led to believe, Zariel could have made it a priority that day.

Dead member in the toll house talks about pact power, so probably warlock. With direct connection, that character could've been the lynchpin to bring the band together, and thus Speak with dead spilled the beans.

I would like Paladins to be Warrior-Clerics, serving specific Deities.

Yeah thats what they were always meant to be.