Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General For those of you with lots of hours in EA...

Greetings!

I've played EA up to about halfway through a certain enemy encampment and I've decided to stop playing until the full version comes out. I'm not sure how far that is in terms of all that's available in EA, but I'm assuming not super far because I've heard about going to the underdark and that kind of stuff.

Anyway, I was hoping those with much more experience with the game might help me decide what character/class to go with in my first official playthrough. I have several "canon" characters from my own story-writing and PnP DnD experiences:

"Al'Al" (short for Aluando the Altruistic) - Lore Bard - One of my favorites because he was a disposable character made up at the last second to offer guidance to a bunch of younger players in PnP DnD, but they loved having him in the party so much, and I ended up loving RPing him so much more than I thought I would, that he is now a mainstay.

"Paladin" - Oath of Devotion Paladin - Another off the cuff character (a paladin literally named "Paladin"!), this time when I was DMing. It started as an NPC rescue mission, but the party ended up liking his particular brand of "honorable self-sacrificing lawful stupidness" so much that he became a regular NPC companion who pushed the story along!

"Jonathan" - Gloom Stalker Ranger - I've never played this character in DnD, but he was the first fantasy character I ever wrote about: an Aragorn type character, but even more gritty and dour, and obviously without the messianic backstory.

Now, I know you can't really directly compare Lore Bards and Devotion Paladins and Gloom Stalker Rangers, they fill wildly different roles in a DnD party, but if you were to choose between those three classes for your first playthrough, which would it be and why? Also, to be completely honest, as much as I love DnD, I wouldn't say my experience in BG3 EA has been super easy. It's a pretty hard game for someone who is, I guess, somewhat casual like I am. So, with that knowledge, which do you think would yield the most fun experience based on what you've seen of the game?

Thanks for your help!

I've been planning for Gloom Stalker since it was announced it'd be in the game and will not stray from that for my first playthrough. Not sure if it's for everyone, but to me it seems a *lot* of fun, especially for a first run, as the Gloomy is good at exploration and finding those hidden doors!

You are far enough into EA to know which companions you like. If you haven't seen any Karlach media (the last Origin character), i would look up a little bit to get an idea of who she is. Based on your favorites, I would pick whichever class compliments them.

i.e. if you plan on having both Karlach and Lae, your Paladin might be overkill on number of frontliners

If you don't want Shadowheart, it might be worthwhile to run your bard so that you have some basic support for your crew.

(Of course you can always multiclass or respec any of them once you have a better idea of how the game feels.)

Right now I'm giving the edge to the gloom stalker, I think. I haven't seen Karlach yet, but I did see some information on her online. So between her and Lae'zel, I guess that frontline aspect is taken care of with companions. I really do like my paladin, and I'd love to give him the everburn, but ranged fighting is so powerful in this game, or so it seems to me...

If I were to take the bard, do you think a lore bard plus Gale is overkill in the magic department? I know Bards are full casters, but sometimes they don't feel like full casters to me. I have progressed the most in AE with that lore bard and I have enjoyed the RP/conversations with him SO much, but again, I feel like you miss out on a bit of combat stuff that the Gloom Stalker should be able to do.

Also, I've heard that we can do custom companions in the full release. My assumption is that they could be in your "let's get stuff done" party, but then all the origin characters would still be at your camp. So while you miss out on incidental interactions between origin characters and the rest of the world, you can still follow their main plot points during camp scenes?

Part of me wants to do Devotion Paladin, Life Cleric, Gloom Stalker, and either Lore Bard or Abjuration Wizard as a complete custom party.

If early access is any indication, all of your choices will work fine. It's a matter of taste and preference.

Personally, I'm slightly more interested in trying out the Gloom Stalker ranger, but that's only because it's new. And, well, it is kind of fun to go sneaking around and exploring.

But that's not to say that Paladin and Bard aren't solid choices. I've had great fun playing both classes through early access.

Bard, most fights can be avoided or made significant easier if you can pass a conversation or notice a other wise hidden trap. The companions are decent for killing enemies, your choices are all RP dialogue focused from my interpretation. Bard is the best face of party, while not being completely useless In combat. Gloom / Paladin can be faces but you will struggle a lot

You've probably hit on my greatest weakness, which is that I AM RP focused, and somewhat casual in other regards, but certain aspects of non-optimization still bother me. For example, in my bard run, I easily talked my way out of an early combat encounter directly after the tutorial and then realized I got no XP, and I missed out on all the loot from not killing the guys... So, I do love bard for conversation stuff, but at the same time, using conversation to get out of combat encounters actually seems counterproductive. Somehow, I manage to be a "casual" that is simultaneously concerned about getting as much XP as possible.

(One of my favorite "bear and pretzels" type DnD experiences was going through the Sunless Citadel with just my tempest cleric and a buddy's sorcerer, just two characters, angling for as much XP as possible and taking the whole thing just us, haha)

Anway, so far, I'm thinking:

1. Gloom Stalker
2. Lore Bard
3. Devotion Paladin

Thankfully, there's nothing saying I can't do a playthrough with each, but honestly, my life is so busy, if I finish the game once, I'll be pretty happy. So, still looking to nail down the best option.

*edit to get rid of a ridiculous looking emoticon!*

You bring up a great point. If you want to kill everything for the xp, then yeah, bard is slightly less quick at murder than a highly focused gloomstalker. Lore bards help a lot with cutting words and can drop faerie fire for you teamates to capitalize on, but that is just support stuff not raw damage.

If the choice is solely based on xp, my next question would be: are you planning on doing as many side quests as possible, or at least a majority? If so, I wouldn't worry too much about xp, you max out about halfway through EA if you do most things, and I suspect if there wasn't a cap we'd be halfway to 7 by then end of EA.

If you are just going to play through the story, then aiming to kill everything in your path (or most everything) is probably worth it.

You also get xp now for avoiding combats via dialogue.

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a "completionist," but I generally will look to do what I can to gain XP in any particular area before moving on. There's time's when that becomes tedious, though, so I just forge ahead. But in general, I pay significant attention to side quests.

Another aspect of this is... for the Devotion Paladin... I genuinely enjoy the "lawful stupid" aspect of the prototypical "virtuous" and "honorable" paladin. But I do it in a sort of goofy way, I suppose. Take Sturm from Dragonlance, combine him with Carrot from Terry Pratchet's discworld series, and toss in a heap of the paladin from "Gamers: Dorkness Rising," and there you go. But my question is, can such a character WORK in BG3? I mean, I don't see that character taking anything but the most straight forward "kill the bad guys" approach to things... So, when you need to go and kill certain enemies in the middle of other enemies, this guy is probably gonna go, "Ok, we'll get to the main guys after we carve through these guys in front of us... no poop on my face, no real even TALKING to these bad guys... they're clearly bad, we're here to put an end to ALL OF THEM..." I mean, is that even a feasible thing to do in this game? I've been in a few situations where you just got mobbed so quickly... I think this might be why the devotion paladin is in third place... I just don't see how he'd be ok with sneaking through an enemy encampment or *pretending* to be allied with them even for "the greater good"...

Thoughts on that one?

I wouldn't recommend the paladin, simply because accidentally breaking your oath is not so hard as it should be imo.

Personally I find the bard to be weak in combat, but opinions may differ here.

I would def recommend the gloom stalker ranger, I also have a feeling he will fit into the campaign nicely, but that is just a feeling.

Do not worry too much about difficulty, in the full release there will be 3 difficulty modes and you can change difficulty 'on the fly' if you want to. Pick a character you'd like to role play is my advice.

Breaking the Oath has very little consequences.

It does cause you to lose your subclass abilities?

You can give
You can bribe someone in your camp and have them restore your oath. It’s spoilery. It’s kind of expensive if your not having a companion stealing and pickpocketing everything not nailed down

I consider that a minor nuisance.
You keep the CLASS abilities, like Smite, Lay on Hands, spells etc.
I think I even got to keep Speak with Animals.

The biggest gap in the party structure right now is a ranged striker.

You can set astarion on his path but he seems more tailored to melee.

I agree that any could work. You could even have hours of fun creating them all, and just play through the prologue with them all and see which one grabs you most.

Personally, though, for a first playthrough I think the Bard has the advantage of being a class that's likely to be curious and talk to everyone and pass dialogue checks, so you can roleplay while also as a player feel justified in exploring as much of the game as possible. But of course, you could do that with any class if you liked

i can just imagine a Gloomstalker, going into some interior space lit only by torches, extinguishing them, then running around like an invisible ghost killing everything without having to bonus action hide.

No judgment on my part toward anyone who does this, but I don’t think my RP focus would let me disregard my oath just to easily buy it back. And again, unless I were actually playing a character who is a kleptomaniac, I wouldn’t be pickpocket/stealing every last thing. I mean, looking in every chest/barrel that isn’t flagged as “stealing”? Sure, that’s just a classic RPG fare, but not much beyond that unless it were literally required for a quest or something.

So, I think the Paladin will have to wait for a second play through if I ever get that far.

That decision between lord bard and gloom stalker, though… that’s still a rough one.

Actually, here’s a question: what do you think a bard best replaces, the support nature of a cleric or the general purpose magic of a wizard?

I’d pick a bard out of these 3.

But i just love passing those skill checks more than seeing slightly higher damage rolls))