Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback On why Gale dies too much

personally for me it's been shadowheart.

Yeah, 10ish years of WoW taught me that human beings are complete idiots.

I don't even bother with MA, i just put him near nooks and crannies to hide his ass and he always survives lol. Even funnier when the Enemy A.I. tries to go for him because of how is coded and gets opportunists attacks from the whole party because of placement and pathfinding.

Maybe it's because he is more used than other characters. I mean, if people doesn't bring astarion he can't die, right? so he doesn't push the "astarion deathcount". Same goes for shadowheart, Wyll or Zae'sel or whatever the gith is called. If people aren't using some characters is just logical they're not gonna die. And the more they use it is also logical there's gonna be more of that character dying, just because it's a probability

I have found Gale to be the nicest and most interesting companion, so i'm glad to have him in the team. However, he doesn't seem to be dying that much for me, Astarion has died way way more than Gale, at least on my playthrough

Gale was my first death so he set the expectations of plot development after my characters got peeled off the ground. Sadly Lae'zel wasn't too talkitive after being a grease stain...

Of course the AI choose the most vulnerable character to kill first - we'd all be lambasting the AI if it didn't Gale has more than one defensive spell to cast

Hmm I must be doing something wrong then - in my current Wizard playthrough, my PC and Gale are usually the last two standing (I decided for a different route than usually: went straight to the Risen road - took on the toolhouse gang very early on and was actually kinda surprised it worked out).
I second the others - mage armour, Misty step and Mirror image are your best buddies - even before ofenssive abilities (I actually LOVE Astarion, Gale, Wyll and my Wizard setup)

He dies the most because his armor is a dress that doesent contribute to his AC.

Even with mage armor his AC is below my leats armoured teammate. And when taking into account the damage that wizards can dish out it also very wise to take him out first. Its for very good reasons that in many rpg's the rule 'take out the spellcaster first' applies xD

I'm betting most people's Gale who dies alot, magic missile is their most cast spell as well.

If they are asleep they can't kill Gale
If they are on the other side of a fog cloud they can't see Gale to kill him
If he has mage armor up and staying at range he is more likely to live than not in average encounters
If there are 4 Gales with mirror image he's very likely to live.

Thing is playing a mage you can do what other people can do, cast damage spells and trade blows with the enemy and wizards who do loose those battles about as much as they win them. Or you can do what no one else can do and make life on the enemy so agonizing they fall prey to your team. On my team Magic Missile is Gale's last resort, he has it in case a teamate leaves an enemy at 1 or 2 HP and there are other monsters still in play, but most of the time, if he's going to use a spell slot at all ( because these cantrips are fire) it's a sleep spell, or a color spray, or a fog cloud, or a mirror image, or a misty step away.

He doesn't die the most, that's not actually what Larian said. Shadowheart dies the most.

???

Shadowheart is a beast of a tank from lvl 3 on, her crappy dex makes her terrible at lvl 1 and 2, but at level 3 she will out tank any of the other companions, even tankier than lae'zel when she's geared towards tanking which would be incredibly wasteful seeing as Jump and a 2 hander is absurdly broken. You don't have much need for a healer when you can jump an insanely huge distance then action surge, cleave, menacing strike to kill one cannon fodder mob and kill/nearly kill and potentially fear an actual challenging mob.

Enemies just straight bee line for gale most of the time though, which makes me think the AI is far too aware of who can do what in your party. Reminds me of how DOS2 had its issue with every single enemy in the game knowing that Fane was undead despite the line that wearing a mask/cowl/helm supposedly hides that fact (and I never found a mod that could fix that behaviour despite claims to contrary). Like how on earth would a bunch of spiders know to phase past my party to lynch Gale, only the big spider in that fight didn't and that was only because there wasn't enough room to reach him past all the other spiders, as soon as enough of them dropped, sure enough, the big spider was straight on Gale. I think Gale's common deaths are simply a sign that combat AI needs to be better tailored to the mobs that are using it, animals and any creature with a low enough INT score should not be picking or differentiating between targets, they should be attacking the nearest threat every single time. Targeting the lowest AC or HP character is a luxury of intelligent opponents, such considerations should not be a part of the baseline AI scripting.