Act 1
Everything starts off smoothly, save for some early boss fights. I'd never actually fought the owl bear before. I always left it alone and picked up the cub at the goblin camp. So to suddenly fight not one, but two at around level 3? Yiiiiikes. I had the two humans that were absolute followers to help me so they tanked a good few hits, but it was a close early fight.
I proceed to slowly decimate the local goblin and gnoll populations, trying to soak up every bit of XP I can. I'm going for a good character run, so I help out Karlach, prove to the grove Kargha is bad, save the tiefling kids, etc. I get to the goblin camp without much trouble and make my way inside. Now, my Tav (Burrall) is a wizard, which means his CHA stat is practically a dump stat. I try to use Illithid persuasion to get in, because that will be easiest.
Nat. Fucking. 1.
So now, before my subclass even kicks off, I've gotta do this the hard way of fighting almost everything at once. We manage by being tactical with higher ground, and leading the gobbos into aoe kill zones, or wherever they were more manageable. We get Halsin, free Volo, and slaughter every last gobbo and drow we see (sorry Minthara I did try to knock you out but I didn't do it right because I aggrod THE ENTIRE BUILDING).
The party goes great, everyone has a good time, and we make our way to clear the rest of Act 1 before moving on. Phase Spider? Not too bad and I get a really cool book for a Necromancer. Neat. Auntie Ethel was... well it was bad, because I'm a spellcaster who can't cast spells when I fight her, otherwise she summons clones. Again. Turns into a very boring but relatively safe fight with physical damage only. We make our way to the underdark, which honestly was uneventful until Grymforge of course.
I convinced some of the Duergar to take out Nere with me, making the fight a lot easier. Yes it was slow because of his new ability, but honestly a pretty safe fight. But GRYM? That's a whooooole other beast. See, if you're not in the know, Grym now has an ability when he gets attacked to get temporary hit points, and DOUBLE movement speed. So getting him to the hammer, is nearly impossible unless you have bait sitting on the hammer for him to go to. I did not plan for this ahead of time, as I liked going into the honour mode fights raw, for the most part. Karlach does allll the heavy lifting by beating him with a hammer, and the rest of the party + skeletons are just rage bait for him to attack because they hit him last. By some miracle I manage to get him onto the hammer, which I use to finish him off, then deal with the mephits after. Another close call, but we get some nice armour upgrades for our efforts.
Then came the mountain pass. You see, I got the fight between Lae'zel and Shadowheart some time ago. My CHA is shit. I have no inspiration. 8 on a 10 DC. And just like that, I lost the party's Gith. And since it's Honour mode, I decided to run with what that meant in character. Every gith, even the one I've hung out, have been cold blooded killers, who will likely execute me on sight. So what to do in that situation but fully enforce my all encompassing life philosophies on the neighboring populace? (Genocide. I'm talking about genocide.)
We cruise on in like we own the place and slowly clear out the creche via taking everyone out in their own enclosed areas without alerting the others. Then I walk into the inquisitors, fully rested, thinking 'this will be a breeze'. The inquistor was easily the closest to a run ender I'd had. Multiple people died multiple times, arming myself with skeletons helped HIM with his mind link effect. He was finished via AoE spells, the odd lucky skeleton shot, and magic missile.
Before heading to Act 2, I realize that coming across usable bodies, might be a problem, since not everything drops a usable corpse. So to stack up, I collect every usable corpse I can find in the creche and at the goblin camp, then throw them into my travelers chest and use it like an interdimensional meat locker. Keeps the bodies nice and fresh.
Act 2
I think Act 2 was actually he least impacted by any serious story decisions. Buuuut I did plan ahead a bit. The Thorm family was dealt with mostly through talking, save for the toll booth which was a fight. Isobel was kept safe and I didn't give into the urge. Thaniel was saved and reunited. We saved all the prisoners just fine. With one teeny tiny caveat. When we were at moonrise and got our orders from Zrell, I followed her to the room before Balthazars 'lab'. Where she was almost completely alone. Zrell has been a real problem for me in the past during the assault on the towers so I decided to remove her early. I think that's a bit of a pattern for me in this run. I tend to kill off as many people as I can assassination style before things really kick off, since I know who will be a problem where.
But Balthazar is where things got dicey again. See, I've never actually done his fight at the Nightsong. I always kill him when I meet him, and this was no exception. But his cloudkill spell really did a number on us and I couldn't keep up with his damage in that small room. People died, got ressed, and he eventually went down because of Astarion being an assassination rogue at the start.
Yurgir was easy since I was able to go into the room with Astarion, who I have persuasion expertise on, and got Yurgir to self-delete thankfully. The rest of the gauntlet was pretty typical. We saved Nightsong and started out assault.
Killing Zrell proved to be a major boon because of her lack of spells. With the fist and the harpers we made short work of it all. Even the fight with Ketheric went smoothly, and I did read his diary and messages in his room, so got some good dialogue/usage out of it later. We descend into the mind flayer colony and I am... nervous. See, I had previously done a tactician run and the colony was fine. But rejuvenation pods can be... funky. So I figured the one in here would be single use. I decide to clear everything that I can before I absolutely need to use it, which I did just before freeing Zevlor. Fine enough fight, only 1 spell slot used and 2 short rests to heal with.
Ketheric fight time. Little nerv-annnnnd I make the roll to get him to skip to phase 2. Neat! Avatar kills most of his minions, I free Aylin and it's a pretty simple fight. I use flying ghouls to keep the necromites that spawn on the ledge down and avoid excess healing, and it goes rather well with honestly, things REALLY looking up for act 3.
Act 3
Things are going well, too well, so I fear I'm going to get over confident or this is where the game completely dicks me over. Sooooo I want insurance. The kind of insurance you can only find by stealing every rare book in the collection of Sorcerous Sundries. MEGA magic missile, I can now summon a deva, and with the Necromancy of Thay I can now summon 5 explosive ghouls. I also have SH constantly summon her deva/djinn/cambion at the start, and my own elemental with all of my arcane recovery + necklace that gives a free spell slot, to be a true summoner build. Action economy really is the only thing that matters, if you don't care about how long it will take for you to load up the actual Baldurs Gate area. The game has... difficulties with loading up the posse.
I'm doing every sidequest possible to level up before the final set of bosses, stalking up on summon elemental scrolls and other power house magics for emergencies. I decide to do 2 specific things last. Ansur, the House of Hope and Orin/Bhaal plot. We managed the Iron Throne really well with only 1 NPC death due to shitty pathing that left me trapped and unable to free him a turn earlier.
I started with Ansur. I stocked up on Dome of Invulnerability and set off. Took control of the myrmidons in the fight, had my minions pre-set up before it started, and we start a looooong drawn out fight of throwing everything at him all the time. Dome saves us from the first massive blast and then... I mess up.
See, I noticed that cold damage should work fine, so I thought 'Why not?' and did a ray of frost. Freezing nearly half the battlefield, as Ansur went up for his final breath attack at 1 hp. Try to get SH to me for the dome. She slips. That's fine, I can just misty step to her an- I slip. Fuck. Okay Karlach, Astarion one of you can use the Dome of-they don't have the spell scrolls. I didn't distribute them amongst the party. Karlach is bear totem so she's probably fine... right? Astarion you're on full HP AND have a potion of invulnerability/resistance to everything. Chug it and hope for the best.
The blast goes out, Burral and Shadowheart die instantly. Karlach? Almost dead. Astarion? Actually pretty fine, he was full before hand and isn't even at half yet. With one last shoooot, dead. Ansur down and panic attack avoided.
We can talk about the House of Hope next because... well in STARK contrast to Ansur, I over-prepared. I came rocking a summon elemental scroll for every person in the party, Us, 2 Devas. and intellect devourer bodies (they count as corpses usable with raise dead and what not). I brought out EVERYONE for that fight. I really wanted Yurgir, I really really did. Four sets of inspiration and needed a Nat 20. Five tries later and no cigar. So we do mambo. Burrall and Shadowheart are dominating the cambions for even more forces on our side, Hope is immediately kicking people out with her spell, and we decimate Yurgir in a solid turn and a half. All of my forces are still standing (save the exploding ghouls) and it's just Raphael. We knock down the soul pillars and put him down as he deserves.
And yet... the Bhaal plot was still a different story. First, the tribunal. We got in fine, no problems, but... I chose the wrong dialogue option because I didn't think it would be that bad. Sarevok attacks with his 3 ghosts.... AND 3 OATHBEAKER PALADIN GUARDS.
Fuck.
I quickly take out the healy ghost because it can undo FAAAAAR more than the occasional 20+hp a round. The others are casting slow which we gotta stop, and some minions are blocking the paladins from joining the frey. Then try to use Astarion to get a sneak attack on Sarevok, and hits... which Sarevok proceeds to then teleport into Astarions face, nearly one shotting him.
FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK.
Very little in that fight went our way, but we have to all focus nuke Sarevok, and we down him 1 turn after the paladins reach us, ending my undeserved heart attack. We proceed to the Bhaal temple (the Farslayer fight isn't bad when you have multiple teleports and flying minions). I'm a durge so this means my totally fair and unbiased duel, where I bring in an army of summons on my character.
And this... is where my run gets unequivocally fucked.
I get one turn of attacks of myself, thanks to a vigilance potion, and Orin jumps me and fears me... for three turns. Most of my minions too. So it's up to a few ghouls, a deva and a fire myrmidon to bring her down. And by golly gosh they almost di it. Except... I miskicked. The fire myrmidon, or ANY myrmidons hitbox is weirdly large. So I smite it instead of her at 35 health. Maybe the attack would have done enough. Maybe it wouldn't have. But Orin proceeds to rip me to shreds and wins the duel, before the rest of the Bhaal army steps in to kill the party. Res myself, magic missile Orin down and we clear the place out. And Bhaal is not happy.
I can no longer free myself of the bhaalspawn curse and one day I will go absolutely mad.
THIS is where my story changes permanently. Because in character, I am absolutely fucked. After this, I'm gonna go mad and slaughter everyone I care about. Unless... maybe? Better than nothing.
The plan was simple. Bhaal can't control me if I'm no longer really me. So my good aligned necromancer, who hasn't touched a single extra tadpole, is now chugging them. We get to the final final bit and willingly becomes an Illithid while NOT EVEN FREEING ORPHEUS. WHY WOULD HE FREE ORPHEUS? HE HAS NO REASON TO THINK THE GITH WOULD EVER BE UNMURDEROUS. So while I have played this character with the same intention as almost all the rest of my characters save for class/race, instead of freeing orpheus, not touching a tadpole, and MAYBE sacrificing himself at the end with the Illithid bullet so the Gith can prosper via revolution, I have a character following the emperor and saying hell yeah to becoming Illithid.
We churn through the fights to the brain like butter, full summoner army in effect. Sure enough I was right, and there are NO rejuvenation pods here, so good thing I saved those long rest potions for until now.
We get to the top, and start the final fight with a lot of haste and summoning every recruit we can. But... there's a problem. A bug maybe? The turn count down for the Illithid ship to start firing is... missing.
Oh well, I know it's 4 turns.
We get into the actual brainscape to fight and... the final countdown, the last race against he clock with ALLLLL of the marbles. Is. Missing.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
I have no idea how much time I have, if there even IS time. All I can do is go full balls to the wall ASAP. But the brain has a quirky little legendary ability. Where it gets immunity to all damage types it received last round.
3 turns of juggling this and we make it. Big hooray I WIN HONOUR MODE. If... only it were that simple. Burrall, the character who made it this far was now a willing Illithid, something I desperately didn't want but there seemed like no way out. Except there really was no way out. Bhaal started to take control, even with the Illithid form. Burrall would still be a monster, and his soul might already have been lost because of the transformation. So I did the only thing I could do.
Die with my Honour intact.
