Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion The Dark Urge - Pondering the Canonical Class

Agreed. The "canonical" race/class of Durge is in a sense a white dragonborn sorcerer per Blood in Baldur's Gate as has been noted, but as they've been designed specifically as a character that we can define race, class, gender, appearance for however we wish, we're all completely free to ignore that and come up with our own version depending on what makes sense to us.

As long as we don't go into the debate with the expectation there will be definitively right or wrong answers, and with the understanding that we have hardly any info to go on so it's mainly wild speculation, we can still have fun talking about what race/class we each think best fits Durge.

We don't have complete information yet but I feel like once the game is out the game itself will define a best class to play the origin because as you play the origin there are rewards only the dark urge can get and nobody else. Unless maybe there are different rewards for maybe resisting the dark urge that might benefit a different class or some other twist we don't know about like maybe some ways to alter the properties of the gear.

ONE of the dark urge specific rewards is most suitable for an assassin. There is more than one reward.

But it appears you have decided what you are going to believe and will therefore ignore all evidence to the contrary.

-The Doctor

Not sure if anyone had mentioned this but Larian website lists the Durge as a White Dragonborn Sorcerer, probably of Draconic Bloodline

We don't really have evidence to the contrary. Like I said I believe the website entry is a mistake or red herring. But we'll find out in a few days when all the origin rewards are known. But given who the rewards come from yeah, I'd be surprised if they are not all geared towards a specific build.

Gaining invisibility is going to inherently be strong for any character regardless of class, race, or playstyle. Invisibility is often an investment of concentration or a rare and/or expensive potion, getting it regularly by landing a killing blow naturally lends a huge advantage.

Therefore I don't think firmly committing Durge to one or two classes or playstyles is warranted, at least not yet. After all, as others have already pointed out, we only know ONE reward/perk from giving in to their urges.

Not really...because it only activates when you kill an enemy. Early game or against bottom tier enemies it will work for any class but later on and against tougher opponents it would be a waste to have that on anything but a damage dealer. But it goes even beyond that, you need it on a character that actually benefits from invisibility for more than running away...you really don't want your front line damage dealers to become invisible because then all enemies start focusing on your squishier party memebers. To make proper use of it that cloak has to go to a rogue...there's no other class for it really...high single target damage and hits a lot harder from stealth. The rogue is designed to strike and hide on repeat. At an actual D&D table nobody but the rogue should take that item because it would harm the overall effectiveness of the party.

You're free to disagree, but some of your points are off.

You're arguing from the stand point that enemies aren't already going to target your squishier party members in tactician mode, which Larian has already said they will. Invisibility or no it's going to happen. If you're not playing tactician mode, worrying about such things is premature.

Any class can deal damage, even the "healer." This notion that there is some ironclad separation like this is an MMO is utterly false. Yes, a character can build to specialize in healing, but even then they have access to many means of causing damage, as well they should.

On the side, if you're going Dark Urge you already know you're going to be alone, party members may not be concern for long anyway.

But back on the topic of invisibility not being strong-

Invisibility provides:
- An advantage on your attack coming out of invisibility.
-Freedom to move out of danger, giving you distance and an opportunity to get to high ground or just disengage from a fight entirely.
-Damage mitigation seeing as the majority of foes won't be able to do anything with you being invisible.
-The ability to avoid fights entirely.
-An easier time stealing and interacting with well guarded objects
-Various generic advantages in RP and unconventional interactions

These are all things all classes can benefit from in excess.

I don't think you understand...what is a Sorcerer going to do with invisibility? Nothing...it's a ranged caster that strikes from distance and does not gain any benefit from stealth and doesn't even have the damage dealing capabilities to reliably activate stealth. It's a total waste. You can try to force it but it will only cause problems. Especially on tactician where you want enemies to die as fast as possible you want to put that on a character that a) reliably activates it and b) benefits from invisibility for more than running away. It's a total waste on anything but a rogue. Sorcerer is more of a AOE, battlefield control, support class.

Darth_Trethon, I can understand the disappointment because of failed expectations, but don't forget that multiclassing is a thing and TDU's progression through the story has no canon as of now. It means the rest of his canonical class progression might or might not be completely up to the player. It is also possible that we'll face an NPC Durge who'd turn out to be a Sorcerer/Assassin hybrid or smth.

I understand perfectly well what you're trying to say, it's just that I can't possibly see what you're saying being an issue when I've seen invisibility used to great effect in the EA game such that a solo character can take out the githyanki patrol with reliable results on various classes, namely sorcerer.

Agreed. However, the cloak is called 'Deathstalker' something. Deathstalkers are/were priest-assassins from the Church of Bhaal. So, just going by that cloak; I'd say Trickery Cleric / Assassin. Not everyone's cup of tea in 5E. It's certainly not something you'd want to combine with what we've established as the canonical Sorcerer class. But, it is something I'll be running for either Durge or Shadowheart. Or both if it's super fun.

Having said all this, we don;t know how we *acquire* this cloak. Perhaps, if you go resist-the-Urge, you take it *off* a Deathstalker in your quest to rid yourself of the curse, or somesuch. Treasure doesn't define a character.

For me, personally, I think 'Canon Durge' is as much an Albino Dragonborn Sorcerer as 'Canon Abdel Adrien' is Gorion's Ward. There's no 'Canon Tav' either, just a default one being a Cleric of Selune. So far, anyway.

I've been mainly focusing on how badly the Sorcerer tag on the website seems to fit the origin at least from what we can tell so far. But I will say, I don't think that there will ever be any canon asigned to this game and if they ever declare a canon it would be purely for the purpose of story continuity to another game where they can't account for all the possible BG3 endings but I don't think there will ever be a direct sequel from here. This is the end of the story of the dead three. If there is more Baldur's Gate it would be an entirely new story with completely unrelated plot, etc. But even if they were to declare one ending canon for such a purpose I doubt it would be a Dark Urge story...it would most likely be a best possible good aligned custom character ending. And if a Dark Urge specific story wouldn't be declared canon then the entire origin would be as good as nonexitent and entirely non-canon regardless of what the website says now.

True. The whole idea of pondering the canonical class has to do with a specific desire of making at least a single run thats as close to developer's vision of 'canon' as possible. It is a specific request I have in those games after experiencing them for dozens of times. I think having both interpretive and streamlined edges to your game is very helpful for rounding up the experience as a whole. Games like this support a great deal of replayability and it is nice to have an anchor point amongst the myriads of ever-changing player iterations of the plot.

On the side, I suppose there is a curious detail that has been overlooked in the whole discussion-

The Dark Urge killed at the end of Blood in Baldur's Gate. They were specifically named which does have some implications.

Perhaps the main character isn't the customizable "Tav" avatar, but the Dark Urge, and may be related to why the Dark Urge is customizable.

COMPLETE speculation as I've nothing else to remotely back it up, but it IS curious and noteworthy.

This is something that's been lying in plain sight for so long, yet it completely went past me somehow. Another curious part is how the BiBG ended, suspiciously mid-way and with the death of our Tav character. What if this 'YOU DIED' ending is not the only one? In BiBG, there were clearly more days for us to investigate, as shown on the time scale at the bottom.

It is clear that detective Tav and TDU share a backstory and there is a possibility Tav is not as blank as it seems. A 'canonical' version of avatar Tav could also be a small possibility.

Could Tav be present in the game if you start your game as an Origin character or a TDU?

I genuinely wonder how the Dark Urge will interact with Orin the Red. They must be related in some manner. Rivals? Siblings? Exes? The timing for the initial murder spree is also curious, taking place before Bhaal's total return with the death of the last Bhaalspawn. And what role does Sceleritas Fel play? Are we (the Dark Urge) the only ones who can see/hear him?

Well I don't think we create an extra character if we play the dark urge...other than the guardian but that's something else entirely. As for BiBG mentioning Tav, I don't think it's much deeper than an easter egg. Swen also recently encouraged people not to play Dark Urge first but at least for most other games people typically only play the game once. Even if far fewer people drop BG3 that fast I'd still expect Swen to strongly urge playing the Dark Urge first if this was indeed their idea for overall canon.

Sceleritas Fel was seen by Tav in Blood in Baldur's Gate, so it's safe to say he's not some hallucination, but that doesn't discount that he could still be an extension of the Durge's will, conscious or unconscious.

YES!! Me too, they both seem to be working for the same god so I would expect at least some special interactions unique to the Dark Urge there. I would also love to see a plot similar to Morinth from Mass Effect there where we might intentionally let Orin kill a party member and impersonate them without anyone else being the wiser. Probably just wishful thinking or if such a thing were possible it probably wouldn't be exclusive to the Dark Urge. Larian did say we can't fix her but I mean...what if we don't want to fix her, can we work with her? Probably not but one can hope.