Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Which companion(s) won't make it?

I reckon I will murder Astarion every single time if he either pulls a knife on me, or tries to suck my blood, or anything other. So, that's every game until he's the player character. That's fine, at that point I'll his sotry entirely fresh and I'll play him as the soulless, treacherous Vampire. None of that 50 shades of Twilight in my game.

Jaheira and Minsc will be in my first game from the moment I recruit them, until victory or defeat.

Gale. Well, we'll see. I kind of *hope* he's The Betrayer, becasue that makes him interesting. If not, and just everything he says he is, then he's the sweet voiced exposition cannon and rather boring.

Wyll is the only one I don;t really have an opinion on. I have a dislike for the Warlock class, so I'm not too anxious to play that, but storywise I just don't know, yet.

Karlach seems fun, but... She'll be in Minsc's spot until I get him.

Minthara I will have on some runs, but even for an Evil Character, there is so little incentive to join with the Gobbos. Just like Bodhi in BG2.

Laezal seems quite fun, and I'd like to see her story play out one way or the other.

Shadowheart is my favorite, and I'm still not sure what to do with first game. I'd like to play her as a Player Character, but if her story already unfolds in my Tav game, that would be bad. So I might actually just kill her as Tav first, but that doesn't seem right, either.

Ha! That's so aptly put.

More on Astarion: I very much enjoy his VA, and he is easy on the eyes, but that's sadly where my appreciation of him ends. Between his massively corrupt magistrate background and his present state as an evil vampire spawn, if Larian does make it an option to "redeem" him, I get the feeling it's going to be so shallow and unearned. Like, "The fan girls want their toxic psychopath boyfriend without having to play evil characters." "Okay, with enough dedication, you can make him arbitrarily shift to Neutral." Even though the decision to become a better person generally needs to come from a place of sincerity and genuine shame, which I've not yet seen evidence of Astarion being capable of experiencing.

Astarion will either die as soon as I see him (which is what I did in EA) or gets delivered to the Gur monster hunter.
Wyll may live or die depending on how Larian has rewritten him, but most likely never gets to be in my party even IF I recruit him.
Minthara will just die as the wicked, evil being that she is.

The Companions I'm not sure about what to do are Lae'zel and Karlach. I hate Karlach's new face, so she might end up dead so I can use her armor. If a mod gets released that restores her old, heavily scarred appearance, she'll live.

Gale's sudden but inevitable betrayal is to be expected. The others can be coopted to work together for mutual benefit. Siding with Minthara and the Goblins seems shortsighted as they turn on you even if you support them. Not to mention killing refugees is a waste of time and effort. What precisely will I gain from it? The slaves of the Absolute have better loot.

I definitely wouldn't trust him but we will probably be able to turn his plans against him. This is a game that is all about all of the skill checks and there are a lot methods like persuasion, deception, maybe mind control with the tadpole, etc. I fully plan to go through his story and if I can betray him and get him killed at the very end to avenge Mystra that would just be the best.

My biggest issue with Gale is that he costs loot to maintain so to speak. In early access I was lucky enough to have on hand items I wasn't going to use anyway, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to put up with it in the actual game. It might be better for me to simply not recruit him. But I'm also interested in seeing where his story goes and how we can affect it, so he'll probably get to come along. Undecided, but leaning in his favour.

I answered poll in perspective that what co panions I will not be using.

I never kill any companions unless they attack me first.

I don't want to go into the spoilers, but you can keep him around even if you deny him the items.

That depends on how good the loot from his quests is...there better be something very good there.

Interesting. Definitely something I'll take into consideration

While true, I don’t think it will lead to a good path/ending for him.

If he is as cunning as he presents himself initially, I think it'll be just fine. I am personally against babysitting a grown man by feeding him magic on the schedule. Once? Sure. Twice? Fine.. but more? I say learn to provide for yourself, sir!

I think, everyone has their own power-ups if you will, if you play as them, possibly with them.

So, Tav has the Illithid Tadpole, Gale has his Magic Item Consumption, Shadowheart has her Religion, Wyll has his pact, Astarion has his meals, Durge has his killings and Laezal... IS a bit of a mystery to me, as of yet.

SO I think ther is at least some truth to what he's saying, here.

Wyll and Gale are the two that would probably not survive, Gale is getting double killed, 1 for jump scaring and 2 for eating all my magic items like a drug addict, just take him to the spot where our Tavs first wake up after falling and kill him there, if he blows up there, there would be 0 causalities since everyone on the beach is already dead, Wyll however immediately dies if he dares to threaten Karlach.

My thing with this line of thinking is, Gale is part of your party. He's contributing to getting those items. Really he shouldn't need to be asking the way he does, he should be framing it as getting his own share of the items he's earned as partof the party. At least in my playthroughts, no matter my character's class, he comes in and fights with the party, he contributes to exploration, so as far as I'm concerned he's entitled to a share of the loot.

Also, unrelated to the above, but I think people are way too hard on Astarion's introduction, and that's as someone who doesn't really like Astarion. He tells you why he attacks you; he thinks that you're one of the thralls from the ship, there to attack him. That is to me, a perfectly reasonable justification. Sure some more brutal characters would take that as cause for a death sentence but I think any reasonably tolerant individual would be miffed but understand. I'm certain that most players would do the same thing if they saw someone they assumed to be an enemy.

And related to the poll itself, I'm not killing any members of the party unless it's really a kill or be killed situation. The only situation where I've ever killed a companion in a game is WotR with Camellia, and she turned out to be a straight-up serial killer.

My argument has always been that it doesn't matter what is reasonable, and what a real person would do in that same situation. It's an aggressive introduction to someone you're supposed to like, and spend hundreds of hours with. Combine that with the fact that I can't call out his obvious bullshit "Hey, there's a brain thing in the bushes!" (if i'm ONE OF THOSE BRAIN THINGS WHY WOULD I CARE?), and the only way to avoid having a knife to your throat like a rube is to fall for his ridiculous line. Combine that with him forcing himself on you at camp, no way to avoid that either, and he's gone. Every time.

I don't care if he's realistic, I care that he's introduced in a way that takes agency away from me.

Wow, I've never thought Gale was so disliked.

*IF* I were to play the game, ideally I'd get rid of everyone except Karlach, Halsin, Jaheira, and Minsc on principle. But I also don't want the two old retreads. And a hard 'no' to mercs. So I'll have to decide from among Lae'zel, SH, Gale, and Wyll, which are the least bad and whom I can grit my teeth and tolerate.

I didn't play EA yet, but I see people don't like Minthara a lot, because she's evil, but don't she got a tadpole in her head? Maybe we can remove it at some point later in the game, and make her normal or something?

Minthara needs to die in one of the two initial "paths" relating to the druid grove. At least this seems to be the case in early access. So she's bound to get a lot of votes for that reason.