Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Companion permadeath and Ironman mode

I really liked the party mechanics in the Xcom games when played in Ironman mode. The Ironman mode could be set independent of difficulty. It effectively disables save scumming. You have to live with all your decisions, good or bad. And you have to accept that some of the characters your are emotionally invested in will die, and die permanently. This combination of mechanics makes the game much more thrilling; both loss and victory are much more intense.
It also makes combat much more engaging and tactical. Characters do not die immediately, they take a few turns to bleed out. That means you have a choice between continuing to attack with your remaining party members. or take some time to stabilise the fallen companion (while the enemy keeps attacking). Fleeing combat with your wounded could also be a (humiliating) option. It also means: not running around like a headless chicken because there are no real consequences to doing so. Both combat and exploration become more realistic.

Another benefit of permadeath is that some silly game elements can be removed, like revivify scrolls growing on trees and that poorly conceived undead revivify-o-matic at camp.

I think it would be great to have these options in BG3: no unlimited resurrections and no save scumming, as independent options before starting a game. Playing the game will be much more rewarding. It will taste bittersweet, but its taste will be much more intense.

D:OS2 had ironman mode, so I am sure BG3 will have it to, once the game is finished and has difficulty options.

Resurect is part of DnD universe and system, though it is supposed to be rather expensive, not dirt cheap as it is in BG3.

It is the combination of Ironman mode and no resurrection that could make the game really gripping. Although playing with such settings will probably be best once you are familiar with all the game´s quirks. On a second playthrough for example.

If there really have to be resurrect scrolls, then make it so that there is only one in the entire game, to make things interesting. Having unlimited resurrection defeats much of the purpose of Ironman mode.

When you start playing the game, you know you will finish it in the end, and achieve victory. But how good will reaching that end feel if you were brought there on a golden escalator? The journey will be much more intense and memorable if you achieve your goal with the loss of two or three dear companions, who valiently gave their lives as true heroes (or perhaps cursing your lack of leadership). Maybe you even had to permanently take leave of your romantic companion? And had to make do with a suboptimal, imbalanced party? A game like this needs major setbacks for the success to be all the more enjoyable.

That can still change ...
Maybe Larian just didnt want us to few hours gather money for single ressurection, just bcs something were buged and our companion died.

It would seem reasonable to me that prices for both skeleton services and revivify scrolls would have discount to 1/10 of final value right now.

I don't really think anyone needs to sell anyone on the inclusion of an Ironman mode, least of all Larian. RPGs of all stripes have them nowadays and I'd be shocked if this one didn't come full release. I find the idea of such a run completely unappealing but I am curious how it would work in this instance. After all resurection scrolls are part of the canon, as some have said. Also, it seems like only a full party wipe would end a run since the game doesn't seem to care who the player's "primary" character is. The resurection skeleton can be removed easily enough, but the negatives of Gale dying is a major part of things and I don't know what they would do about that.

I find it very hard to understand why people need the game to force them to play ironman and can't force them on themselves should they wish to, and this is something I see mostly in Western RPG communities.

If you go to any Pokémon community, you'll see dozens of way people found to put different kind of restrictions upon themselves to make the game more challenging, from nuzlock to only playing with ditto. They set the rules for themselves and follow them, and share the experience with each other. Same with the fire emblem community.

The only reason some sort of iron man might be necessary is because of maybe multiplayer, but again if you set up the rules and play with someone that wants to play that way, I don't see why someone will break them if he does. Forcing the rules with game settings on someone who doesn't want to play that way doesn't seem productive.

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