No. They imply that they are but you can do both the Underdark and Mountain Pass regions
Ugh. I think I want to shelve my Evil Playthrough until Patch 2 gets released (sounds like ‘sometime’ in September) since part of it is supposed to include fixing a bug blocking some 1,500 lines of dialogue from Minthara. Since recruiting her was a part of my plan, it’s hard to justify doing it now and knowing that I’m missing out.
Boooo…
Okay, wow. As it typical for me, my first playthrough is radically different from my second.
Most games like this have that macguffin that drives the story forward. In this case, it’s the mind flayer parasite inside the character. In my first play through, I pushed for that. I ran from one cure to the next. While I’m not done yet with my first, and will finish that, I started my second.
New character, paladin, and new ideas on how to do it and what I want to do. Going a bit slower and exploring more. I’m finding entire areas I didn’t even see on my first game! Impressed with the depth of the game and the options allowed. In my first play through, I let the computer advance the NPCs. (Although I agree if I set it to do that, they should just advance without any input from me. It’s up to me to learn the abilities of my friends to use!) Now, I’m controlling that a bit more and multiclassing some of the NPCs to cover what I know I need for skills in the group I’m taking.
I don’t really see this game having “good” and “evil” so much as “snarky” or “nice”. I mean, at any point, you can attack someone. Really, any response should require a CHA skill check, but it’s just the special ones that give that. Again, from my first play through, I have picked the bad things but a warlock build means they like me as I insult them! Or it could be that I can’t myself play evil, even if it would be interesting to see what the games does with a fireball in the middle of the market!
Thanks for the discussion!
You can have your cake and eat it too: Not sure what skill checks I passed, but the pixie can give you a permanent blessing that negates the Shadowcurse.
So I just hit Act 2 in my evil playthrough (moving much more quickly in general and skipping a good bit of the Underdark) and I hit a “meh” wall. Which, you know, no fault of the game itself considering how many hours I put into playthrough number one. But that’s a great reason to accept the meh and shelve the game for a while.
Plus, next week is Starfield.
Yeah, I’m not confident that I’ll actually complete my second run but was having fun starting Act I again and seeing the changes. I could see some mid game burnout though so maybe an enforced break is good.
Not jazzed up about Starfield (space opera just isn’t my genre) but I might replay Solasta to pass the time.
Counterpoint: BG3 has too many skill checks. You’re only really supposed to call for a check if you have a realistic chance of failure. An “Easy” task is a 5 so you shouldn’t ever need to make a check against a 2 but BG3 has you do so on occasion. Honestly, even DC 5 checks should be kept to a minimum and you shouldn’t really be breaking out the die rolls for anything less than a DC 10*. Things like telling an NPC your name or reporting on something you saw or saying “We’ll help you out” aren’t things that should, by 5e guidelines, require you to roll a die.
*Also, critical skill failures/successes aren’t a thing in 5e so, if your mods are greater than the DC, you shouldn’t roll a die at all. Likewise, if you can’t hit the DC even with your mods, there’s no sense in rolling.
On a similar topic regarding non-dialogue skill checks (like perception, survival, nature, etc.):
If each member of the party fails the skill check, can you go back to camp, swap party members, and get additional checks? I’ve never tried it. Does anyone know how BG3 implemented it?
I believe that would work, yes.
Absolutely, and I definitely wanted to see the mountain pass since it was one of the only things I skipped the first time through.
The game is almost too replayable, in that depending on your main character and companions, you’ll take a very different path playthrough. I’ve replayed Act I about a half-dozen times, Act II three times, and some distance through Act III on one character. And I keep restarting because I think “oh, I’d love to play through this with a new main concept and this or that companion”. And I do love it! Shades of alt-itus in City of Heroes.
Most recent run is a monk who doesn’t use weapons and always has the non-lethal option on. And not recruiting any companions or camp followers. (Using some mods to make this more survivable.) Trying to decide if sleeping with Halsin breaks my vows if I don’t let him stay in the camp afterwards.
Some disturbing thoughts about Lae’zel: she’s not reached Githyanki adulthood, so any intimacy with her is pedophilia in their culture. And, since non-Gith have slave status, you can’t give your consent to her, either. /evil
Well, never mind about needing to delay then!
I’m playing through the game right now with a bard, and I’m loving the dialogue options with persuasion and intimidation. I’ve convinced two bosses to kill themselves, so far.
Yep. My bard is not great in combat, or at least I’ve not figured out how to make her useful (beyond the hilarious “cutting words” insults she keeps shouting at people to make them miss their attacks or saving throws). But damn is she great in dialogue. I think I’ve talked four bosses to death so far.
Yeah, my Astarion has a ridiculous sleight-of-hand skill roll, but because they include critical failures, I’ve always got a 5% chance of failure. It just feels wrong.
At level 10, with 4 Magical Secrets, 5th level spells, an item that gives me Cha to hit and damage with weapons for 2 rounds after causing spell damage, a second item that gives Cha to cantrip damage after causing damage with a weapon, and a third item that lets me cast an enchantment or illusion spell as a bonus action after making a weapon attack - I finally feel powerful as a lore bard.
Get him the gloves that give advantage on all SOH rolls to make that a 1 in 400 chance of failure. (Though as of late even without them my pickpocket DC is -4 for many items…
Hard disagree here, there are some truly evil choices. Watching the corpses of the tiefling children all lined up after assaulting the groove does not feel snarky, it feels like a war crime. The problem is that the evil choices hardly ever make sense from a narrative or gaming stand point.
I dunno, I’ve seen some people claim that siding with the goblins makes no narrative sense. I disagree –
Summary
there’s supposedly a new deity in town, people are telling me that I’m special in the eyes of this deity and the people working for this deity are people I could slap around. Also, I have the advantage of not being fully under the influence of the deity. To me, that sounds like a golden ground floor moment for the right kind of individual. Start working my way up in the estimation of the Absolute until I can determine if I can usurp the Absolute or just work as High Vicar For Life. My current character is a Lloth-Sworn Drow so our entire mission statement is based on fucking over the person ahead of you and taking their spot. Can’t do that with a bunch of loser tiefling refugees.
Yes. Think about Astarion, at the beginning of the story. He wants to keep the tadpole, he wants to add more tadpoles, he wants to learn to control it. Why? >!Because it allows him to walk in the light, free from his vampiric master’s control, and because it grants him power.!<
And later on, at the start of act 3, when >!you are offered the astral tadpole - Astarion is not willing to undergo yet another transformation for personal power, but GALE will go on and on about how powerful he could become if he adopted illithid biology.!<
It’s very easy to come up with a character that either thirsts for power or fears something else enough to think they need this power badly enough to become a mind flayer for it.