Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Origin Character Canon Builds

As much as I love fully customizing, I would also like to build out the Origin Characters the way Larian envisioned them. Is there a canon build for each of the characters to max level? Like, I assume Wyll is meant to be Pact of the Blade, but I don't even know what subclass La'zel and Astarion are supposed to be.

Why would they have canonical builds? That would get in the way of "play the game your way and it's different every time."

No. I don't think Larian are going to publish a detailed layout of what to choose for every origin character at every level. And that would be silly anyway because certain builds work better with different party compositions.

Laezel and Astarion could reclass to any martial class really.

Laezel wants to be a githyanki knight which would be a high end eldrich knight, however her story seems to be trending words breaking with gith culture so it might not make sense late on.

Astarion again can fit anything. If you give him the necromancy of thay, going arcane trigger or even just full on reclassing him to wizard might be good.

Let's make Shadowheart a Paladin.

Shadowheart's entire origin story is intrinsically tied to her being a Cleric of Shar so if you respec her into a paladin then her entire story will no longer make sense.

Shadowheart, Will, and Gale at least you should never respec into other classes. Though in general, respecing origin characters is a bad idea. If you want a Paladin in the party and you don't want to play one yourself you could recruit Minthara.

Like others have said, I doubt there are full canon builds for any of them for a couple reasons. 1) With all of the reactivity Larion has built, what's "canon" (especially mid-late game) will vary with each playthrough. 2) As others stated this would be contradictory to Larion's philosophy with the game.

A good example of the first reason would be possibly dipping into Knowledge Cleric for Gale depending on what happens with Mystra. If not, he'll stay full wizard.

I started a thread a while ago, that discussed canon subclasses for each companion:Companion Subclasses

I am actually thinking of doing that myself!

Wyll got remade by Larian so perhaps he is a Bard now... whatever he ends up as will be untested

all characters have a default pick when you level them up [Ghal is known to be busted] so you can just press 'ok' and move on if making choices isn't your bag

I was in part joking, but in part not because there's not much difference between a cleric who adheres to Deity X and a paladin who adheres to Deity X in my view (or a warlock who adheres to Deity X, either, for that matter).

I assume it will not be possible to muiti-class companions, but let's pretend it will be, for the sake of discussion. In this hypothetical discussion, there is no "should" anything.

No, Wyll is definitely still a warlock...we've seen footage from the final game about precisely what happens with his physical transformation at the start of the game. Wyll's entire story is VERY strongly tied to him being a warlock and if you change that it will stop making any sense whatsoever. Definitely not a bard.

Multiclassing(assuming it's possible for origin characters) is more of a gray area and it depends how heavy you go into other classes too, but it creates a similar situation to respec where it's more like "Well Shadowheart technically still has one level in Cleric of Shar" but if we're being honest no, she's not really much of a cleric.

Also the problem with saying you could interchange Cleric, Paladin, and Warlock is bad...warlocks generally do not serve gods for the most part, while Paladins and Clerics do, so that's one important distinction...Wyll could not be a Cleric or Paladin and still have the same patron or for his story to still make sense. And then Shadowheart beyond obviously not being able to be a warlock could not he a Paladin because there is no Paladin of Shar subclass in the game...wouldn't work.

If we're going to argue about how good a cleric Shadowheart is, she's as good a cleric as you play her, since all her actions are controlled by you. In terms of the strength of the Trickery domain, it's a strong domain in PnP.

If they allow multi-classing of companion NPCs, Larian will be implicitly saying it is in fact not bad.

A warlock's patron is whatever it is in the world the GM has created. In Wyll's case it's a naked blue-skinned aerobics instructor with horns, wings and a tail. But it certainly could be a deity.

There is no "paladin of Deity X" subclass in D&D, either. Paladin subclasses are determined by their Oath, not what otherwordly entity they adhere to. Cleric subclasses are not even determined by the entity the character adheres to. That's determined by the Domain. Shadowheart could just as easily be a Death domain cleric (rules as written, the Death Domain is an NPC-only Domain, but she is an NPC).

You speak about the game as if it has an existence independent of the person playing it.

My point wasn't about how good Shadowheart is from a gameplay perspective at all but about how much it makes sense for the purposes of her story...she is devoted to shar so unless something in her story changes, it makes no sense for her to serve anyone else by multiclassing into paladin.

The argument that because something is allowed it is endorsed is also very bad...you could technically respec Shadowheart into a barbarian but that is not what she is at all..not even a little bit. Literally all of her dialogue and story will continue to treat her as a Cleric of Shar so all you achievend was breaking the story. Larian allows it as more of an extreme case scenario because someone will be bright enough to kill all the strong characters and try to roll with Sorcerer PC, Gale, Shadowheart, and Jaheira at which point they will get promptly stomped into the ground over and over and over because none of them can take hit...that's why respec is allowed at all, so player who aren't very bright don't get stuck in a situation they can't progress.

Next, wrong about that. Warlock Fiend patrons are not deities...full stop. If a DM wants to say you are the warlock of a deity but you still play as Fiend Warlock that's homebrew, which DMs are allowed to do but BG3 as a videogame can't accommodate that. Warlocks of deities are specifically denotated as such in their subclass like Raven Queen Warlocks...but deity patrons are very rare, and none are in BG3.

And lastly BG3 Cleric subclasses as they pertain to their deities are defined by their actions...Shar wants to literally destroy all of existence...it would make less than zero sense for a cleric of Shar to have a Light or life domain...you can try to cling to "but rules as writte..."...NO. That is a bad argument.

Origin characters should absolutely not respec or multiclass AT ALL because it breaks any amount of sense they make for the story.

So why can't a paladin serve Shar? Do you think all of the Oaths are somehow incompatible with Shar?

Says who? Fiend, deity, po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

It's all head canon. We can do or say whatever we want. If Larian allows me to multi-class Wyll or Shadowheart as a paladin, then I might just do that. If they don't, I'm fine with that, too. But if they do allow it, as I mentioned, they are implicitly giving their blessing in terms of their notions of canon. Actually, since they are getting rid of the 13 stat minimum for multi-classing, if they allow companion multi-classing, I could multi-class everyone as a paladin.

Again, you talk of the game as if it exists independently of its player.

First of all, ALL the oaths for paladin except Oathbreaker are about serving some level of good...even the Justice paladin has an oath to Justice. Shar is literally the most evil deity in D&D...she does NOT give one flip about justice or goodness of anything like that at all. And if you behave like a jerk while playing a paladin the game WILL brand you an oathbreaker very fast.

Not in BG3 it's not headcanon...not AT ALL. Warlock patrons here are not deities...pretending they are is not how that works at all, because the DM in this case is the game itself and it will not accommodate homebrew the way a human DM might at a table.

And in this case, yes, a lot of the lore and story of this game does exist independently of the players.

The way a player can interact with the game world is limited because it's a computer game, but not whether or not it makes sense for Wyll to take levels in paladin. If it's allowed and I choose to do it, then by definition it makes sense in my game, even if it seems silly to you. Everything in the game is pretend, including whether or not Wylll's patron is a deity. Nothing and no one can stop me from saying to myself, again assuming I can multi-class Wyll as a paladin, that Wyll's patron is a deity. Because I am the co-DM of my own BG3 game. That is head canon.

We have reached the "agree to disagree" stage in this discussion.

Just because the game allows it does NOT mean it makes sense "by definition"...it literally does not. You could respec him entirely into barbarian, which the game allows, and then literally all of his story continues to be about his warlock pact and escaping the grasp of his patron...which makes less than zero sense. That is literally only allowed strictly because players who don't know what they are doing could end up with a terrible party composition and then they end up getting destroyed in most combat scenario...this allows them to break the companion story but be able to progress in the game.

I see nothing wrong with companions having an anchoring point in the player-verse which we can then call a 'canonical' or developer's iteration of the story. It does not in the slightest contradict their philosophy of 'play however you like' because it will be a an additional option to play on top of the existing freedom, and the key word here is option. Things like this only keep the universe coherency and eradicate the need for debate like the one we are having here and in the TDU thread I've recently created.

I said (or heavily implied) earlier that if Larian wanted to disallow something from happening in the game for the sake of story coherency, they could simply do so. E.g., if they don't want me to make Wyll into a paladin, then they can keep it from happening.