Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General New (earlier for PC, later for PS5) BG3 release date and more

Yeah, a lvl 1 Legendary Blood War Veteran is meh, but great news all in all.

Now I wonder which Subclass is the best for RPing an ultimate Stealth Charname - Thief, Shadow Monk or Gloomstalker.

Also, big plus for Ukrainian localization.

Barely related, but I have to say that while I was never Minsc' biggest fan, I can admit his epilogue in Throne of Bhaal was one of the best "We got you" moments for me playing and replaying Baldur's Gate 2 over the years.

Oh wow. I love those sorts of endings. They feel full and final, with a sense of grandiosity.

I didn't care much for Throne of Bhaal, but those ending slides are a reason I always include it in my BG1&2 playthrough.

It has a bad reputation for being a power-player-fest climbing up to absurd levels of powers that adds very little in terms of narrative and exploration, but I can't genuinely say I've ever gave a shit, since I always had a blast playing through it.

The new "mega dungeon" was fairly good as well.

Love Karlachs look. I'm also hyped for the last origin character, I really hope, it will be Helia.

I'm happy, that we won't get party locked, that was a big grievance of mine.

Have you no joy in your heart?! I hadn't even considered having her as a companion could be a possibility, and now that you've said *that*, I've got my fingers crossed she's announced at the PFH.

I meant that if they are up to 10 companions and they are going to announce another one it lands them at 11. There are 12 classes in the game and if they add one more they would be able to have a companion for every class.

I know people are thinking there might be 'two druids' or something like that, but it wouldn't shock me if Larian throws a curveball or two with the companions and what their class will be.

Could be wrong though! Maybe it's just one more and there will be an overlap with having multiple druids or something, but no companion offerings of other classes. Or maybe the non-origins will be able to change their class or something... or maybe all of them will be able to?

Druid is deeply tied to both Halsin’s and Jaheira’s backstories. We are definitely getting two druids.

Yep, now multiclassing is confirmed we can make an educated guess that Jaheira will be a Fighter/Druid as she was in BG1/2, but I don't see how either she or Halsin could drop the Druid class entirely and their stories make sense. It does seem a bit weird to have two companions with druid classes when we have a limited number in total, but I'm just going to hope that when we see the game there's a good story reason having both of them rather than swapping one of them for a character with a different class.

I guess it is possible we'll be able to tailor companions' classes to something entirely different and hang whether it makes sense if we want to. I'm not sure I could bring myself to do that, though, even if the game let me.

I expect that they will tailor Jaheira's playstyle enough to make it noticeably different than Halsin's. Maybe she will get a unique Druid Circle.

My question would be how they treat companion multiclassing - unlike BG1&2, when multiclassing was picked during character creation, in 5e multiclassing happens on a level up. As such, unless our control over companions class progression is limited, Jaheria can ship as Druid or fighter only.

I don’t think I would want to be forced to have Jaheira as Druid/fighter, as a I would rather keep an ability to multiclass companions as a I wish for subsequent playthrough, which I think will be needed considering fairly smal pool of companions.

It’s a good question. It certainly seems possible that for some characters, particularly non-origins ones, they might be at higher levels when we meet them so may come multi-classed already. Personally I’d be fine with that and wouldn’t necessarily want to tweak it, but I can understand that others want more flexibility. Though even if companions do come with a few levels already, we might get the ability to respec. Could go a variety of ways!

Yeah, I hope Jaheira isn’t multiclass by default because I don’t think Fighter / Druid is as useful in 5E as it was in 2nd Ed. If I want to give her heavy armor there is a feat for that, but 1 level of Fighter is locking us out of an attribute increase / feat at level 12.

I suspect for Lore reason Jaheira will have to be a fighter Druid. It’s her subclass/es that I wonder about. I wonder if they may have home brewed a “master Harper” sub class for her or some thing else to help her be *different or special*?

Minsc don’t need anything special… he is already “special”.

Has it been confirmed that every companion will start at level 1? Maybe some of them will be level 2 or 3.

But your overall point about giving the player maximum ability to shape their companions is one I completely agree with. This is especially important given that we will have only 12 levels, which is already too few to create a decent multiclass character who won't be seriously underpowered relative to single class characters. In my experience with 5e, multiclass characters begin to catch up with single class characters only around level 14.

Yeah, level 12 is a critical level because of this, which is exactly why having it as the final level is so very problematic for multiclassing.

Final ... for now. I'm personally hoping BG3 is our BG1 equivalent and that we'll get the chance to continue developing our characters in expansions/DLC, or even a sequel.

Personally I wouldn't want to rush the story of my PCs' adventuring career for the sake of getting to higher levels in one game, and while I'm not a 5e expert I can see that level 12 makes a lot of sense as a stopping point for single class characters. Not so much for multi-classing, I understand, but that's the choice folk will have to make about the costs/benefits of multi-classing their characters in a low-mid level adventure which seems fair enough.

Wow this influx of news over the last couple of days. too good. We're less than 30 days out now!!! (with EA)

My secret hope with the 11 announced companions (including the 7th origin) there are a couple of hidden ones that remain unannounced and you may or may not run into naturally over the course of the game. Or guest characters. I know a couple that I am pulling for, that will go unnamed for potential spoiler reasons. At the very least I'm hoping to have very beefy encounters with them.

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