Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General [Poll results] The popular choices for PC, Companions, party members, romances.

Hey all,

I made a little poll a while ago, about the popularity of the various characters, and who would be used how in people's first playthrough.

Here are the results !



A note about the data.

I shared copies of the same poll on the Official Forum, on Reddit, and on Discord.

The Forum poll got 90 responses. This one was posted, and that was about it. But due to the nature of the Forum, it stayed bumped up for a while.

The Reddit poll got 697 responses. This one was posted, and aside from replying to folks, that was about it. Some people may use the display of threads by hotness on Reddit (instead of the display by posting dates, which is the correct choice). So it may have stayed bumped up a bit.

The Discord poll got 58 responses. I posted this one significantly later, since I initially didn't have access to Discord. Then, I reposted the link a couple of times a day for about 3-4 days, iirc. The nature of Discord is so that nothing lasts more than 30 minutes (and that's during off-peak hours). I guess I could have posted more to reach numbers similat to that of the Forum, but hey.

Clearly, Reddit seems to have more participants. That or the folks there are into polls like crazy.

Also, because the Discord and Forum polls have relatively low numbers, there is a decent margin of error attached to the values obtained in those polls. On the one hand, this is a bit sad if we want to compare the Discord and Forum crowds to the Reddit crowd, because unless the differences are really big, we can't say much with any reasonable confidence. On the other hand, that won't be a big deal because --spoiler-- there are apparently very few differences.



The results ! The results ! The results !

Alright, alright, here we go.

Link to Reddit poll results.
Link to Forum poll results.
Link to Discord poll results.

I was able to compile the data from the 3 polls' answer spreadsheets into one single spreadsheet. But I can't get Google Forms to spill all the results in nice graphical form with a finger snap. So, 3 sets of nicely presented results is what you'll have in terms of graphics.



Choice of the Player Character.

95% of players will play a Custom Character (CC). More specifically, we have about 71% of players planning a Fully Custom Character (without the Dark Urge Backstory), and about 24% going for a Custom Character with Dark Urge Backstory.

Of the Origin Characters, the only ones that are selected significantly are Wyll (at about 2%) and Karlach (at about 1%).



Ally or enemy : the fate of each Companion.

For each of the Companion, I distinguished 3 scenarios.

Recruit means you'll recruit the Companion, after which they'll either stay in your camp or be in your adventuring party.

Antagonise means the Companion will likely die, either very soon after you encounter them, or a bit later. You may also turn them over to whoever is after them.

Don't recruit is the in-between. You won't kill them, but also not invite them to join you.

Looking at the Recruit rates, the ranking is as follows :

1 : Shadowheart, 95% (with 4% of Don't Recruit, 2% of Antagonise)
2 : Karlach, 92% (with 5% of Don't Recruit, 3% of Antagonise)
3 : Gale, 88% (with 7% of Don't Recruit, 5% of Antagonise)
4 : Minsc, 84% (with 11% of Don't Recruit and 5% of Antagonise)
5 : Wyll, 83% (with 11% of Don't Recruit and 6% of Antagonise)
6 : Jaheira, 83% (with 13% of Don't Recruit, 5% of Antagonise)
7 : Halsin, 82% (with 11% of Don't Recruit, 7% of Antagonise)
8 : Lae'zel, 81% (with 11% of Don't Recruit and 8% of Antagonise)
9 : Astarion, 80% (with 8% of Don't Recruit and 12% of Antagonise)
10 : Minthara, 26% (with 19% of Don't Recruit, 55% of Antagonise)

One thing is clear : most players will Recruit most Companions. This makes sense given that, with the camp system, you can recruit a character in your group, build a relationship with them, see their story, etc, without having to insert them in your adventuring party, which has only 3 openings. So you can essentially max out your narrative content in one playthrough.

In terms of popularity as recruit/ally/camp member, Shadowheart is queen. To nobody's surprise, I presume. She was endorsed by Larian as the character you should play with. She might also benefit from being the only conventionally-attractive female that doesn't require you to murder refugees (see section on romances below).

After that, newcomer Karlach is a popular Companion. Her clearly good-hearted bend makes her a prime choice for Good playthrough. And the wholesomeness she displayed on the last PFH probably didn't hurt her popularity.

Beyond those two, Gale is detaching himself from the rest of the pack.

Interesting, Astarion only comes up 9th. So, despite all the fanart from Reddit, he is far from being that popular. Well, I'm sure that his introducing himself by putting a knife to the throat of the PC explains a lot of his 12% Antagonise rate. Trying to snack on the PC without asking for consent first probably doesn't land too well either. He is the 2nd most antagonised character.

Finally, poor girl Minthara isn't going to see the camp of many players (on their first playthrough, remember). In fact, more than 50% will kill her. I'm not sure what the 20% of Not Recruit players have in mind. Either they will bypass the Goblins vs Grove situation because it's none of their business and try to reach Moonrise Tower by their own means. Or they hope that they can side with the Grove without seeing Minthara dead, which is likely to be impossible if the EA Act 1 is any indication.



Party composition.

From the aggregated data, the ranking is :

1 : Shadowheart (67%)
2 : Karlach (53%)
3 : Gale (38%)
4 : Astarion (29%)
5 : Lae'zel (18%)
6 : Halsin (15%)
7 : Variable (spot 4) (15%)
8 : Wyll (11%)
9 : Minsc (9.6%)
10 : Jaheira (9.6%)
11 : Minthara (9.0%)
12 : Variable (spot 3) (6.9%)
13 : Custom PC (spot 2) (5.7%)
14 : Variable (spot 2) (5.7)
15 : Custom PC (spot 3) (2.1%)
16 : Custom PC (spot 4) (1.5%)
17+ : Hirelings and empty spots.

Note : the numbers here are the percentages of parties that include a given character. The total is 300% (or about, due to rounding), because every party has 3 slots in addition to the PC.

Unsurprisingly, Shadowheart is the most selected party member.

Unsurprisingly again, she's followed closely by Karlach. And then Gale. Same top 3 as in the ranking above.

However, the next most frequent in-party Companion is Astarion. He might be a Marmite character : you love him or you don't. Some will kill him when meeting him, or soon after. Some will Recruit him and have him in their party.

The same happens to Lae'zel. She isn't that popular in terms of recruitment, but she seems to find her way in a good number of parties.

Also to note, more players will have a party with a rotating slot than a party with Wyll. Wyll isn't super popular, it seems.



Romances.

From the aggregated data, the ranking is :

1 : Shadowheart (26%)
2 : Karlach (21%)
3 : Minthara (11%)
4 : Lae'zel (9%)
5 : Astarion (9%)
6 : Gale (7%)
7 : Halsin (7%)
8 : Jaheira (5%)
9 : Wyll (3%)
10 : Another PC (assuming it's possible) (1.5%)
11 : Minsc (0.9%)

Note : the percentages here don't mean too much. Every participant could cast up to 4 votes for the romances they are interested in, and the characters with most votes are ahead. Also, the percentages were obtained after discarding the votes unused.

Again, Shadowheart and Karlach take the top spots. Perhaps interestingly, the top 4 spots are females. (Although for Lae'zel vs Astarion, the numbers are perhaps a bit too close to conclude.)

I'll note that more people said there interested in a Jaheira romance than in the Wyll romance. So, come on Larian, where is the Jaheira romance ?

A small number of people indicated being interested in a romance with Minsc. Maybe they just saw this character in the trailer and don't know him from previous games. Otherwise, well ... no shaming, just gaming.

Note that Minthara is popular in the romance question despite her low ranking as Recruit and as party-member. This is because this questions asked "what romances are you interested in exploring", and is not restricted to the 1st playthrough. Presumably, she will be Recruited and romanced on a good number of second-or-later playthroughs.


I also asked how many romances people were planning of running in their first playthrough. The aggregated results are :
0 : 5%
1 : 73%
2 or 3 : 14%
As many as possible : 9%

So, the vast majority of player plans to explore one romance in their first playthrough. Some plan to explore a polyamory, some would like to romance everything and everyone that is romanceable. Interestingly, 5% of players are uninterested in pursuing/reading any romance along with their adventure.

In a similar note, in the "pick the romances you are most interested in" question, participants could select up to 4 options. Many did not use their 4 votes. In fact, about 38% of the votes went unused.

The vast majority of players plan to pursue the romance until the end of the game. Which makes sense, from a content exploration point of view : if you drop a romance mid-playthrough and later want to see its ending, you would have to go through all the beginning again (unless you make multiple saves).

Finally, the vast majority of players plan to play it safe with their romance. Of those who plan to cheat on their partner(s), 7% want to see if they can get away with it (if EA is any indication, my suspicion is that with every tadpoled character casually reading the minds of every other tadpoled character the PC, that might be difficult), while 6% want to see what Larian has in store if they get caught.



That's all for my little poll about the popularity of the BG3 characters.

A few people complained that they could not choose the Race/Class/etc of their PC. It wasn't the point of this poll. But worry not, I've got you covered. The next poll is all about the players options, and how you play the game.

A pity this post got buried. I want to revive it with a direct link yo all results. Very educational, especially parts about commitments: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1...cPxjunU7klfqmL6T_C5NrSDCoA/viewanalytics

Show the scope of Larian's miss with Halsin:

Love me some Shadowheart. <3

I know there’s been speculation that the romance poll results shook out like this because a bunch of straight/bi guys are playing, but queer women love Shadowheart (and Karlach!) too.

I'm about 12 hours in on a Honour Mode Gale playthrough, and I can honestly say that I enjoy that. I was rather sceptical, but I like my game.

The reason I picked Gale is because I find him utterly annoying as a companion, constantly yapping as an unreletenting exposition cannon. And, in my first playthrough he kept coming at me saying he wanted to be romantic. So after that, I always skipped him or ate his hand. I also never had Karlach alongside Lae'zel in my active party and being a Wizzie, that suddenly becomes viable.

And, since I'm curious about his story I picked him as my protagonist. It's good! He doesn't yap at *all*, and you actually get his Tressym in camp for the exposition on his quest, who is a lot more fun than actual Gale. The actual value of said exposition is rather weak, though - unless you had him as a companion first, you probably wouldn't understand what his deal is right away. But the cat is fun. Larian really nailed all the animal-speech. I hope the Tressym will interact with Scratch and/or Cub.

Other than that, you get nothing a Wizard Tav wouldn't get, so he is, in essence, rather boring in Act 1/2 as his story doesn't kick in until Act 3.
I'm also positively impressed with how the game improved this patch. So many added things I notice.

I haven’t played as Gale, but that’s so great that you get his Tressym at camp!!!