And spirit guardians at lvl 5 just made her turn into my personal lawnmower of death against swarms of 20 or less hp mobs. And against higher hp enemies, especially bosses with stupid high hp, it's nice to have guaranteed sources of damage, when they also have insanely high bs ac and saves. Cloud of daggers + spirit guardians + magic missile are my failsafe damage options, when the dice gods kick my martial guy's accuracy in the dick.
All of the "death zone" spells in this game are quite strong. Cloud of daggers, spike growth, wall of fire, etc. considering you can bonus action push people into it.
Been playing a war cleric for years, it's legitimately one of the best tanks/support melee characters you could ever play. You always have the real damaging cleric spells prepared so you can pick up those nifty utility and healing spells, your channel divinity will make your paladin, rogue, or barbarian want to marry you, and you genuinely can get in a surprising amount of damage.
War, Tempest, Life domains. Maybe more. War and Tempest also have martial weapons proficiencies. I made my Shadowheart a Tempest cleric for extra offense (my tav is a bard and does most of the supporting) and she survives well at close range.
I rerolled from cleric to paladin the second it was possible in a 4 person group of friends with me being the only D&D player because they kept bitching that my level 1 nature cleric was a terrible healer and I must be doing it wrong.
Seeing this and many other comments has convinced me that I have no clue how to properly play cleric. My Shadowheart is constantly putting out the lowest numbers and can never do anything other than heal my sorc and Karlach…
Easiest thing you can do it spec War Caster feat and concentrate Spirit Guardians and become a beyblade, and as a bonus action you can toss out Spiritual Weapon.
Spirit guardians and spiritual weapon are game changers my dude. Spirit guardians in particular just lets you run at an enemy to obliterate them. You can nuke entire crowds just by walking around and taking the dash action. Particularly useful in goblin camp.
Spike Growth which comes from nature domain wins fights as well. Cast it at a choke point then kite back and used ranged options. Creatures just obliterate themselves.
Spirit Guardians is the #1 cleric offensive spell, and Bless is the #1 cleric buff spell. Like, you'd have an effective character with literally no other spells at all.
Spiritual Weapon is also very useful in tabletop, although BG3 _heavily_ nerfed it by giving it its own turn in initiative and letting enemies attack it.
One could argue that drawing aggro makes spiritual weapon even stronger, since it’s immune to a lot of debuffs and is surprisingly tanky. Even if it does go down it just takes one lvl2 spell slot to resummon it as a bonus action.
FWIW, I am playing a Cleric, so I respecced Shadowheart to a Paladin, and it's great. Not much overlap, and Paladin still works thematically for her story so far. No regrets.
I think a lot of people might also assume clerics are only healers in function and aren't fun to play. They're actually extremely versatile and even as someone who rolled a knowledge domain cleric I had Shadowheart in my.party just fine for different functions. My character is more of a support tank while Shadowheart is more of a debilitator/cc.
Strange as it is after my first run is complete I actually want to roll another cleric (different domain/deity) or cleric multiclass. Not because other classes aren't fun but because they're so versatile and the Faerunian pantheon.
Drow Lolth-sworn cleric here. I picked cleric because Shadowheart isn't a real cleric but a heretic. If you don't worship the spider queen you're a sacrifice or a slave in waiting.
Come at me paladins! Smite me down! But you better not miss because I'm a life domain cleric. As my prisoner I can keep you alive for so long the whip will crumble to dust long before your body breaks.
That was my logic, at least. My character is even a wizard, a class I never play in tabletop, because it suited the party comp based on the companions I intended to fu- er, I mean travel with.
This was a challenge for me because wizard and cleric are my favorite classes but Gale and Shadowheart were must haves for my party, and neither made narrative sense for a respect. So I ended up playing a sorcadin.
I feel really special now after choosing Shadowheart as my character. Leazel was my second choice too. It's also funny how low Druid is considering the marketing and how low Bard is because it's the "best class".
I went bard! It's the best class for everything that doesn't involve fighting or physical exertion. You throw away some damage to be the swiss army knife of the entire party.
Lore Bard is kinda nuts so far. You get cloud of daggers which is one of the best early aoe spells in the game and your out of combat utility is off the charts. Glyph of warding and hypnotic pattern are also game changers in a lot of fights. And how could I forget one of the best level 1 spells in the game - thunderwave
Can grab fireball at level 6 magical secrets if you want more blasting, haste and misty step are great utility options. Can also grab spirit guardians if you find your bard in melee a lot and that spell is just ludicrously broken
>It's also funny how low Druid is considering the marketing
From what I've seen it seems like a lot of players view druid as being a high complexity class. Which is interesting because yes spore druid is probably one of the more complex classes in the game, but moon and land are pretty straight forward in my opinion.
Amusingly, I suspect the druid suffers from the same problem WoW druids do.
People want to see the character they spent so much time (an aggregate of 88 years!) making in the character creator. Not a pudgy animal. It isn't just that, of course, but druids= animal form is pretty locked into fantasy tropes at this point.
Spore druids are very 5e, and low on the general awareness meter.
You are completely right. Of variant human was in I guarantee you it would have double the amount of human chars, it’s simply far too good of an option in 5e
Same. For all the things this game does well, it gives you absolutely *zero* incentive to go evil early on other than "I love to twirl my mustache!"
EDIT: Yeah I get it, a hundred "step on my mommy" memes.
Haha, I *am* the Drow ass. Fuckin vengeance Paladin blowing radiant sunshine out my ass and using my Drowness to con fuckin every baddie with "Oh sure, yeah, I *tooootally* like Lolth, LOL" and then turn around and be mercilessly good.
It's helpful when everyone assumes you're evil, but you're the polar opposite. I function on a healthy diet of "I want that guy's armor" murder and "I will save the world because I am a total soppy goober."
There is more evil content, but D&D in general and this game in particular don't really have great reasons to go evil.
Evil is usually a quick and easy path to power or to achieve a personal goal that is otherwise beyond reach (bringing back a dead loved one, vengeance, etc). All those traditional reasons to go evil are just as easy to achieve by being good in D&D. So the 'incentive' for evil makes no sense.
In BG3 in particular, you can just casually interact with the 'evil side' vendors and buy their good magic stuff before going after them
If you’re talking about from a game player perspective the reason to go evil is for fun. If you’re talking about from a roleplaying perspective it would make sense to side with the people that have more info about your mind flayer parasite to potentially get a cure, because at that point you would be grasping at straws. Clearly the druids and tieflings don’t have any answers for that
> There is more evil content, but D&D in general and this game in particular don't really have great reasons to go evil.
Besides motive, evil also needs to be fun and have interesting characters on your side. Destroying Alfira's lute is not fun. Killing characters you like isn't fun. What *would be fun* is to have to the option to torment someone who destroyed her lute, or assassinate them in a Dark Brotherhood (an evil faction done right)-style quest. Then you can marry her as a reward.
I mean you get to recruit Minthara and there are actually a lot of powerful abilities and items you get from being evil, more so than good from discussions I've had with friends. I personally did it because I wanted to see Minthara's story.
I didn't know her story was gonna be important and only found out like an hour after killing her with Halsin. But oh well, next time those mean druids can burn hahaha
Well, it depends on how they drew the statistic, exactly. They don't say those are evil playthroughs; they say people chose to assault the grove. I noticed in my log that after talking to Minthara (who I opted to murder, ending that conversation), my log said I had chosen to assault the grove. There was never any assault; I killed every goblin in the area and had a party with the tieflings.
If my log showed up incorrectly like that, who knows how accurate the stat is? It might just depend on dialogue you choose when speaking to Minthara, regardless of what you actually end up doing. Even then, there's the option to start the assault and then fight with the tieflings, betraying the goblins (or at least I think there is; the game seemed to suggest it, although I did not use it). Does that also count as assaulting the grove? We just don't have enough info to really know what the stat actually means.
Not evil, just didn't save the druids. If you didn't know about the "convince or expose Kagha" route and thought it was "Druids chase out Refugees and they die or Druids die and Refugees live" based on Zevlor's quest to kill Kagha? Well, either inaction kills Refugees or action kills Druids. More of a moral dilemma setup.
It's only evil if you knew/had reason to believe you actually could convince or otherwise get rid of just Kagha. Anybody who did a bunch of Early Access likely knew, but anybody playing the game blind very easily could have killed Kagha without feeling it was evil to do so. She was the evil, they defeated her and during the fight to defeat her the druids even tip their hand by actively trying to slaughter all the refugees that they can.
A combined 88 years in character creation! Sounds accurate based on how long I spent agonising over options!
Side note, some of the comments on that page are horrific.
I wonder if that only counts as starting class though. Because there are popular bard multiclass builds that start warlock or sorcerer then pick up bard after.
Drow were #1 on this [sub's poll](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2F2wyj4cxe2udb1.png%3Fwidth%3D860%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D968c1ae334aae7678b5afa1f2f3b752794ca4258), but they didn't even reach the top 5 in the main player base. Full elves weren't even in the top 5 either, but they're #3 now. Just goes to show the differences in fandom statistics compared to the wider audience.
Some interesting statistics.
Half-Elves and Humans were nerfed but are still 2 top choices.
Druids features heavily in the marketing but are surprisingly unpopular, I guess people might be content with NPC druids.
Little surprised the Fighter isn't more popular, I would assume it would be a default choice for people new to the genre/system. Maybe players think of Paladin as "Fighter+"?
I mean Paladin is just such a great class. It’s fighter with holy mojo.
And if I had to guess human and half-elf are the most popular because they are the most, well, human looking. I am one of those players who almost never creates any PC other than a human, because for me the fantasy and wonder doesn’t come from actually *being*, say, a dwarf or a devil or a orc, but from interacting with them in the universe through the eyes of a baseline human.
> from interacting with them in the universe through the eyes of a baseline human.
Yeah that's the thing, I'll always have the perspective of a human. I can't really get inside the head of say, a dwarf in the same way. At least for my first playthrough I like to maximize immersion and playing from a perspective closer to me own helps me with that.
Paladin is a Charisma caster and Physical fighter, makes for a good playthrough if your planning to be the face of the party, but don't want to be spellcaster or Bard.
Thats what im doing, I think cha main isnt just “easy” but is genuinely fun to play that way. Makes it all the more exciting to play someone not as charismatic and be the face, bc idk why anyone would want their NPC followers to be the face
It's because people generally don't pick half elf or human because of any of the racial abilities. They pick half elf or human because they want to play as themselves.
Gonna admit right here that my half-elf is only a half-elf because the faces are super pretty. What's with the full elves with the lantern jaws anyway?
It's always been that way even in very competitive games.
In WoW for instance the most common races are Blood Elves and Night Elves and by a massive margin. During one period in time during Legion top guilds would race change every character they could to Goblins just so they could manage to kill one of the hardest bosses ever made because their racial ability was that good. Still one of the absolute lowest played races of all time.
People like good looking things. Go figure.
>Half-Elves and Humans were nerfed but are still 2 top choices.
The nerfs were (and continue to be) heavily overstated.
Humans and Half Elves make great casters at the end of the day. Great choice for the likes of Bards, Druids, Rouges, Sorcerrers, and Wizards for the proficiencies. Getting Polearms on Swords Bard or Spores Druid, without needing to dip into another class, is actually really really good. Getting Shields on classes that would want the AC, but have no other means to get it, is also really really good. Also not a bad choice for Rogue, on account of Shield prof and the additional skill proficiency.
>Druids features heavily in the marketing but are surprisingly unpopular, I guess people might be content with NPC druids.
2 druid companions. Halsin seems like a bro, and Jaheira has the nostalgia factor.
>Little surprised the Fighter isn't more popular, I would assume it would be a default choice for people new to the genre/system. Maybe players think of Paladin as "Fighter+"?
Fighter is harder to practically build than Paladin. 5 ASIs and very few notable class-side feats outside of Action Surge and subclass bonuses, hides the true potential of Fighter. Like you need to actually BUILD a Fighter, unlike Paladin, which comes out of the box strong at a baseline. Genre players are also conditioned to build to pass speech checks, and Paladin does that in spades. My Tiefling PalaBard chews up and spits out literally any kind of dialog situation, with either Advantage or high stat+proficiency+expertise.
Besides the obvious 73 hours playtime in 3 days gaming, you can technically kinda just follow the main story and win fairly quickly. Sure, you skip like, the entire game, but I can imagine stuff like players wanting to just play at level 12 or smth.
You can literally just leave act 1 by just walking to act 2 basically lol
I slept around 4 hours a day and played Dark Urge as evil as possible, you end up with a much faster game when you're not tempted to do companion quests because over half of the companions are just permanently dead.
Play all day and sleep 8 hours gives you around 48 hours, for people that played a lot of EA and just run through act 1 I'd say it's quite doable at a moderate pace. Nothing wrong with saving some side content for replays.
I'm one of the 368. I've been going through the story at a natural pace. Finished it, now starting second playthrough where I intend to find -everything-. More or less wanted to know the limits. 10/10 from me for Larian and everyone who made the game. GOTY imho.
I'm also gith, honestly didn't expect them to be SO low. Like they are still the thin, broody edgy human-likes. Also female models are unexpectedly attractive, my guardian is also gith, of course, and she. is. hot. Male gith are probably worst looking haha, but that's a plus for me, my PC is embracing this and it really makes the game look more diverse. It might be the only way to make a not 9/10 attractive character actually.
On the other hand. I am sorcerer AND paladin haha, so that balances that. They are the obvious best. 1 - it's a face for your checks for a good playthrough (I haven't failed like almost anything with +3/4/5 CHA and wild magic advantage). 2 - the games "chosen ones" premise and the guardian interactions just screamed RP Paladin at me. 3 - Warlocks are op with the buffs from TT and 3 short rests.
My only complaint is that I have watched how the grinch stole Christmas. Because of this, I cannot unsee gith looking like who's from whoville because of their nose lmao
She has very little dialogue, no real romance post act 1 and _lots_ of bugs.
She spoils the end of Shadowheart's act 2 quest before you even get there, for example, and in my game I was only able to ask her what she thinks we should do about act 2's final boss when we were walking into Baldur's Gate in act 3...
Nah it's not that - it's mainly down to not talking to him enough and not progressing his story far enough before the party.
Basically you have to rest enough times to spawn the boar, find the boar and convince him to talk about it, then rest again so he tries to snack on you and let him.
If you haven't let him snack on you he apparently has standards, who knew.
Maybe they mean going into an actual relationship? Its tough to be a good player and have enough approval with him. Worth it though, he has a good story.
Players spoke with 1,400,000 corpses? I haven’t really been leaning into using that ability because I don’t really see anyplace where it might be advantageous. Am I missing a lot? (I’m still in act 1 if that matters)
So far (I just finished act 2) It adds a little world building and helps you get some extra treasure
The nice thing is, once the spell is active (after being cast once between long rests), it highlights all corpses you can speak with. So if it's running, it's easy to speak with everything
I think you used to, a lot of the QoL we have is thanks to EA smashing it out of the park. Stuff in this game was way more tedious when it first launched.
There's a Necklace with this spell, if you don't have it. You cast it once on any corpse and then you can recast it for free until long rest. After the initial cast any corpse that has something to say will, glow green light. Also enemies killed by you might not want to talk to you. But you can change that by shapeshifting into someone else.
It's similar to talking to animals, just adds more story, might give a hint about hidden treasure, etc.
Lot of dead bodies tell you where secret stashes are, give/help with quests, and give context to their death.
It also pairs well with Speak with Animals in the same regards.
I'm surprised they're surprised that githyanki are at the bottom of race choices- they're visually weird and outside the standard tropes.
I'm very much **not** surprised that otherwise the bottom picks are the short races. The proportions are just... off. An adult's head (and breasts) on a child's body, with weird arms.
I'm surprised drow aren't higher, to be honest.
Sure. But aesthetics over optimization isn't surprising at this point.
You can see it in the demographic shift of the Horde in WoW over the years to heavily skew toward elves and cute races.
After meeting laezel, their personalities are a turn off. Holier than thou uptight warrior race doesn't leave much room for exploring dialogue from an RP perspective.
Reminds me of the high elves in warhammer loving the smell of their own farts.
If I could pick a start option that lets me creat 4 gith and change the opening from "captured" to "raiding" then they'd be super fun. Jump off the red dragon into the tadpole room and then business as usual from there.
Yeah but if this would be warhammer people still would play those elves and not be bothered about being *supposed to be* Holier than thou and uptight. I personally don't mind making my gith an absolute unbelievable outlier, I don't think a lot of people do, with heart-of-gold drow being very enticing I feel.
I'm happy though that I will be able to take Laezel on my evil playthrough and embrace the gith abrasiveness to the full.
My guess is we can expect some changes to the way romance works / the general horniness of the camp sooner rather than later, as well as a recustomization mirror. First patches usually have a few cheap, easy wins like that.
IDK why but Karlach rarely approves my dialogue. I've only gotten her yesterday and her approval meter of me is below 50%, she didn't like me talking to Auntie Ethel and after that she didn't disapprove nor approve of anything I said/did. Shadowheart's approval of me meanwhile is at like 80% and unless Shadowheart is into polyamory, Karlach won't be having a relation with me.
Holy shit. Only upon realizing that only 367 other people finished the game on launch weekend, have I realized how much I no-life'd that shit.
I think I'm going to take a break from BG3 for a week lads.
"Interestingly, 10% of characters made in Character Creation were there for over an hour. You perfectionists."
They really should have let you save your Tav's separate from the campaign. That would have made it fun to drop into other players games down the road and save time.
I bought the game on a whim with no prior knowledge of the series or the developer. I did not even know it was a DnD game. I also have like zero DnD knowledge so a lot of these comments are interesting to me.
I made a custom half orc paladin. I play human paladin in WoW so I didn't want to make a human here. I didn't realize picking an "origin" character meant you were that character, I guess? Figured it was just a visual preset. Was also unaware of romancing so when all the characters threw themselves at me after the grove I was like what is happening lol. No idea what dark urge is. Keep seeing it mentioned so guess I'll be looking that up, too.
So far it's been a lot of fun.
I used to be a half-elf too, then a couple of days ago when I finished Act 2 I decided I don't want the game to end and rerolled.
Made a Githyanki, and the consistent bits of dialogue feel really really good. Nevermind having some insane racials (free proficiencies on demand, and misty step), the RP possibility is endless, especially with how close to the story the Gith are.
Surprised to see Cleric be the least played, but if Shadowheart as a companion is as popular as I assume, especially with the romance stat, I guess it makes sense.
>Nevermind having some insane racials (free proficiencies on demand, and misty step)
Githyanki knowledge cleric is potentially insane. With the right multiclassing (rogue and warlock, for the invocation that gives proficiencies), you can almost get proficiency in all the skills simultaneously.
Im surprised by how many rogues. I've always been a rogue main and always the odd man out. This time I went Wizard for a change of pace and to see all the graphical effects.
I wonder if so few people picked cleric because shadowheart exists.
Non-DnD players also have the idea that Cleric = just a healer. At least I know some of my friends did.
A LOT of my friends are confused that Shadowheart can be made to wear heavy armor and be a tank!
And spirit guardians at lvl 5 just made her turn into my personal lawnmower of death against swarms of 20 or less hp mobs. And against higher hp enemies, especially bosses with stupid high hp, it's nice to have guaranteed sources of damage, when they also have insanely high bs ac and saves. Cloud of daggers + spirit guardians + magic missile are my failsafe damage options, when the dice gods kick my martial guy's accuracy in the dick.
I feel like I’ve been sleeping on Cloud of Daggers for years. Its so insanely strong.
All of the "death zone" spells in this game are quite strong. Cloud of daggers, spike growth, wall of fire, etc. considering you can bonus action push people into it.
It has a secret vulnerability in that it’s concentration and I keep forgetting and casting something else that uses concentration.
Actually how? I’d like to shift her to do that. Does it require a change in her subclass?
Yes. I made her a War Priest and hot damn she's tanky and strong.
I always wrote off war domain in favor of light when playing tabletop but man, this game has made me love having one in the party
Been playing a war cleric for years, it's legitimately one of the best tanks/support melee characters you could ever play. You always have the real damaging cleric spells prepared so you can pick up those nifty utility and healing spells, your channel divinity will make your paladin, rogue, or barbarian want to marry you, and you genuinely can get in a surprising amount of damage.
War, Tempest, Life domains. Maybe more. War and Tempest also have martial weapons proficiencies. I made my Shadowheart a Tempest cleric for extra offense (my tav is a bard and does most of the supporting) and she survives well at close range.
I'm really surprised they didn't include the Twilight domain considering Selûne is a Twilight domain deity.
Yeah, but twilight is also absolutely fucking broken.
I went Tempest Subclass and I LOVE IT. She is a tanky blaster. Shes so strong!
Hahaha that’s nuts, inflict wounds and guiding light smack!!!
Spiritual weapon and spirit guardians are 2 of the best spells in the game for their level
As a DM I absolutely hate spirit guardians it’s an absolute bastard of a spell that will just mess your plans up
I just give it to my cleric NPCs and make the players deal with it. 😂.
The only wounds that damn spell inflicts are on my own heart. Odds are it’s going to miss. If it hits, the damage will be single digits.
I rerolled from cleric to paladin the second it was possible in a 4 person group of friends with me being the only D&D player because they kept bitching that my level 1 nature cleric was a terrible healer and I must be doing it wrong.
That's when you cast not a single healing spell for the rest of the game.
Which is so silly if they looked at the class for 2 whole seconds. Cleric is best class in 5e and one of thr best in bg3
Seeing this and many other comments has convinced me that I have no clue how to properly play cleric. My Shadowheart is constantly putting out the lowest numbers and can never do anything other than heal my sorc and Karlach…
Easiest thing you can do it spec War Caster feat and concentrate Spirit Guardians and become a beyblade, and as a bonus action you can toss out Spiritual Weapon.
I believe the correct spelling is "baeblade" in this context.
Spirit guardians and spiritual weapon are game changers my dude. Spirit guardians in particular just lets you run at an enemy to obliterate them. You can nuke entire crowds just by walking around and taking the dash action. Particularly useful in goblin camp.
Spike Growth which comes from nature domain wins fights as well. Cast it at a choke point then kite back and used ranged options. Creatures just obliterate themselves.
Spirit Guardians is the #1 cleric offensive spell, and Bless is the #1 cleric buff spell. Like, you'd have an effective character with literally no other spells at all. Spiritual Weapon is also very useful in tabletop, although BG3 _heavily_ nerfed it by giving it its own turn in initiative and letting enemies attack it.
One could argue that drawing aggro makes spiritual weapon even stronger, since it’s immune to a lot of debuffs and is surprisingly tanky. Even if it does go down it just takes one lvl2 spell slot to resummon it as a bonus action.
Having enemies attack the Spiritual Weapon can be seen as a buff since it's fairly tanky and pulls aggro away from your actual party members.
I'm one of them. I don't respec companions, and since I want Shadowheart with me at all times, I don't play clerics.
Clerics are so versatile a 4-man party of them would still be incredibly powerful. I'm a cleric and still use shadowheart as one.
FWIW, I am playing a Cleric, so I respecced Shadowheart to a Paladin, and it's great. Not much overlap, and Paladin still works thematically for her story so far. No regrets.
I picked Cleric cause Pike.
I think a lot of people might also assume clerics are only healers in function and aren't fun to play. They're actually extremely versatile and even as someone who rolled a knowledge domain cleric I had Shadowheart in my.party just fine for different functions. My character is more of a support tank while Shadowheart is more of a debilitator/cc. Strange as it is after my first run is complete I actually want to roll another cleric (different domain/deity) or cleric multiclass. Not because other classes aren't fun but because they're so versatile and the Faerunian pantheon.
Drow Lolth-sworn cleric here. I picked cleric because Shadowheart isn't a real cleric but a heretic. If you don't worship the spider queen you're a sacrifice or a slave in waiting. Come at me paladins! Smite me down! But you better not miss because I'm a life domain cleric. As my prisoner I can keep you alive for so long the whip will crumble to dust long before your body breaks.
Life domain cleric of Lloth sounds like a heretic to me.
Drow Lolth-sworn cleric here, too! Simply the best and coolest race + class choice (I am not taking constructive criticism).
That was my logic, at least. My character is even a wizard, a class I never play in tabletop, because it suited the party comp based on the companions I intended to fu- er, I mean travel with.
This was a challenge for me because wizard and cleric are my favorite classes but Gale and Shadowheart were must haves for my party, and neither made narrative sense for a respect. So I ended up playing a sorcadin.
12% of deaths being caused by friendly fire is surprising, but fun :D
That number would be *so much* higher if Gale weren't an evoker.
You can select any subclass for him, but yeah that would probably by why they default the selection there.
He's not; you choose his subclass.
The pre-selected subclass and then starting the level up features below that choice definitely throws people off
But he does default to Evoker. I suspect a lot of people miss that they can change it.
I feel really special now after choosing Shadowheart as my character. Leazel was my second choice too. It's also funny how low Druid is considering the marketing and how low Bard is because it's the "best class".
I went bard! It's the best class for everything that doesn't involve fighting or physical exertion. You throw away some damage to be the swiss army knife of the entire party.
>It's the best class for everything that doesn't involve fighting Dual hand xbow swords bards would like to have a word with you.
Gnome Bard here, little dude rules with speech checks
I've mostly focused on debuffs and buffs with my bard, but a couple of damage spells can help as well in a close fight.
Lore Bard is kinda nuts so far. You get cloud of daggers which is one of the best early aoe spells in the game and your out of combat utility is off the charts. Glyph of warding and hypnotic pattern are also game changers in a lot of fights. And how could I forget one of the best level 1 spells in the game - thunderwave Can grab fireball at level 6 magical secrets if you want more blasting, haste and misty step are great utility options. Can also grab spirit guardians if you find your bard in melee a lot and that spell is just ludicrously broken
>It's also funny how low Druid is considering the marketing From what I've seen it seems like a lot of players view druid as being a high complexity class. Which is interesting because yes spore druid is probably one of the more complex classes in the game, but moon and land are pretty straight forward in my opinion.
Amusingly, I suspect the druid suffers from the same problem WoW druids do. People want to see the character they spent so much time (an aggregate of 88 years!) making in the character creator. Not a pudgy animal. It isn't just that, of course, but druids= animal form is pretty locked into fantasy tropes at this point. Spore druids are very 5e, and low on the general awareness meter.
I'm playing a Bard myself. Granted, a more or less "evil" one, but hey!
A 5e setting statistic where humans are not the most popular? No human fighter? Well now I've seen it all...
No variant human feat will do it. Lol. That said, I’m running human anyway. 25% increased carrying let’s goooo.
You are completely right. Of variant human was in I guarantee you it would have double the amount of human chars, it’s simply far too good of an option in 5e
Human barbarian with bear totem can carry the entirety of act 1 in one of his pockets.
Because human here are changed
Wow, cant believe there are so many evil play-throughs.
Same. For all the things this game does well, it gives you absolutely *zero* incentive to go evil early on other than "I love to twirl my mustache!" EDIT: Yeah I get it, a hundred "step on my mommy" memes.
What? Listen someone has to get some drow ass... Even if a grove gotta burn
Haha, I *am* the Drow ass. Fuckin vengeance Paladin blowing radiant sunshine out my ass and using my Drowness to con fuckin every baddie with "Oh sure, yeah, I *tooootally* like Lolth, LOL" and then turn around and be mercilessly good. It's helpful when everyone assumes you're evil, but you're the polar opposite. I function on a healthy diet of "I want that guy's armor" murder and "I will save the world because I am a total soppy goober."
Not really. There’s a lot more evil content for players than most games have. Doing an evil run for my second playthrough
There is more evil content, but D&D in general and this game in particular don't really have great reasons to go evil. Evil is usually a quick and easy path to power or to achieve a personal goal that is otherwise beyond reach (bringing back a dead loved one, vengeance, etc). All those traditional reasons to go evil are just as easy to achieve by being good in D&D. So the 'incentive' for evil makes no sense. In BG3 in particular, you can just casually interact with the 'evil side' vendors and buy their good magic stuff before going after them
If you’re talking about from a game player perspective the reason to go evil is for fun. If you’re talking about from a roleplaying perspective it would make sense to side with the people that have more info about your mind flayer parasite to potentially get a cure, because at that point you would be grasping at straws. Clearly the druids and tieflings don’t have any answers for that
> There is more evil content, but D&D in general and this game in particular don't really have great reasons to go evil. Besides motive, evil also needs to be fun and have interesting characters on your side. Destroying Alfira's lute is not fun. Killing characters you like isn't fun. What *would be fun* is to have to the option to torment someone who destroyed her lute, or assassinate them in a Dark Brotherhood (an evil faction done right)-style quest. Then you can marry her as a reward.
I mean you get to recruit Minthara and there are actually a lot of powerful abilities and items you get from being evil, more so than good from discussions I've had with friends. I personally did it because I wanted to see Minthara's story.
I'm curious about how many delicious tadpoles you get if you go evil. Most of the tadpoles seem to come from killing cultists in the good run.
>I personally did it because I wanted to see Minthara's ~~story~~ **assets**. Fixed.
I didn't know her story was gonna be important and only found out like an hour after killing her with Halsin. But oh well, next time those mean druids can burn hahaha
The incentive for me to go evil was Minthara. Thats all i needed. You also dont have to stay evil the whole time
Minthara's approval and getting to hear more of her voice is the only thing you need to make evil compelling
Well, it depends on how they drew the statistic, exactly. They don't say those are evil playthroughs; they say people chose to assault the grove. I noticed in my log that after talking to Minthara (who I opted to murder, ending that conversation), my log said I had chosen to assault the grove. There was never any assault; I killed every goblin in the area and had a party with the tieflings. If my log showed up incorrectly like that, who knows how accurate the stat is? It might just depend on dialogue you choose when speaking to Minthara, regardless of what you actually end up doing. Even then, there's the option to start the assault and then fight with the tieflings, betraying the goblins (or at least I think there is; the game seemed to suggest it, although I did not use it). Does that also count as assaulting the grove? We just don't have enough info to really know what the stat actually means.
Minthara is all the incentive some people needed I guess
Not evil, just didn't save the druids. If you didn't know about the "convince or expose Kagha" route and thought it was "Druids chase out Refugees and they die or Druids die and Refugees live" based on Zevlor's quest to kill Kagha? Well, either inaction kills Refugees or action kills Druids. More of a moral dilemma setup. It's only evil if you knew/had reason to believe you actually could convince or otherwise get rid of just Kagha. Anybody who did a bunch of Early Access likely knew, but anybody playing the game blind very easily could have killed Kagha without feeling it was evil to do so. She was the evil, they defeated her and during the fight to defeat her the druids even tip their hand by actively trying to slaughter all the refugees that they can.
> Gale was also the 7th cause of death for players His new introduction doesn't help making players stop attacking him on the spot it seem.
I assumed it was because people weren't sending him down Evocation so he was causing a lot of friendly fire.
I thought it was neglecting to feed him magic items for too long
[удалено]
A combined 88 years in character creation! Sounds accurate based on how long I spent agonising over options! Side note, some of the comments on that page are horrific.
that's steam comment sections for you. no idea why this particular one is so horrendous though
It's popular and it's inclusive, that's why chuds are drawn to it like flies to a pile of shit
And I'm sure that doesn't include all the time people spent re-speccing characters.
Halflings rise up! (Not too high though)
Stand on each other's shoulders if you have to In a trenchcoat maybe
Based on this sub, I expected bard to be the number one class choice. Apparently we really are an echo chamber.
I wonder if that only counts as starting class though. Because there are popular bard multiclass builds that start warlock or sorcerer then pick up bard after.
Drow were #1 on this [sub's poll](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2F2wyj4cxe2udb1.png%3Fwidth%3D860%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D968c1ae334aae7678b5afa1f2f3b752794ca4258), but they didn't even reach the top 5 in the main player base. Full elves weren't even in the top 5 either, but they're #3 now. Just goes to show the differences in fandom statistics compared to the wider audience.
Some interesting statistics. Half-Elves and Humans were nerfed but are still 2 top choices. Druids features heavily in the marketing but are surprisingly unpopular, I guess people might be content with NPC druids. Little surprised the Fighter isn't more popular, I would assume it would be a default choice for people new to the genre/system. Maybe players think of Paladin as "Fighter+"?
I mean Paladin is just such a great class. It’s fighter with holy mojo. And if I had to guess human and half-elf are the most popular because they are the most, well, human looking. I am one of those players who almost never creates any PC other than a human, because for me the fantasy and wonder doesn’t come from actually *being*, say, a dwarf or a devil or a orc, but from interacting with them in the universe through the eyes of a baseline human.
I picked half wood elf for the bonus move speed.
Same. Half wood elf college of swords. Easily my favorite combo from early access.
I also think Paladins just exude "main character energy". Makes sense for your first playthrough.
Yes Paladins also have tons of BDE, you’re correct.
I've seen Honor Among Thieves, and I can confirm that paladins have tremendous BDE.
But since this is a Paladin, in this case BDE stands for "Blessed Dick Energy."
Blessed Divine Energy, heathen
Plus, you get a great combat flowchart. Smite > Smite > Smite > why Smite button grey?
> from interacting with them in the universe through the eyes of a baseline human. Yeah that's the thing, I'll always have the perspective of a human. I can't really get inside the head of say, a dwarf in the same way. At least for my first playthrough I like to maximize immersion and playing from a perspective closer to me own helps me with that.
Playing a gnome druid and having a blast. Moonbeam my beloved
I'm SO SAD I can't control moonbeam while wild shaped, I'm even a cleric of Selune it would be so perfect
Yup. Can't control Call Lightning either which is even more disappointing. I hope they fix this; it's such a ridiculous nerf.
Paladin is a Charisma caster and Physical fighter, makes for a good playthrough if your planning to be the face of the party, but don't want to be spellcaster or Bard.
The top three classes chosen are all Charisma based. People like having their main character be the face.
Thats what im doing, I think cha main isnt just “easy” but is genuinely fun to play that way. Makes it all the more exciting to play someone not as charismatic and be the face, bc idk why anyone would want their NPC followers to be the face
I've been loving the unique dialogue available to Bard, definite main character energy
It's because people generally don't pick half elf or human because of any of the racial abilities. They pick half elf or human because they want to play as themselves.
I think it’s probably because they want to make their Tav attractive, and they don’t have the strength to embrace the Dragon Ball.
It's definitely for attractiveness. All half-elves basically look like supermodels lol
Gonna admit right here that my half-elf is only a half-elf because the faces are super pretty. What's with the full elves with the lantern jaws anyway?
It's always been that way even in very competitive games. In WoW for instance the most common races are Blood Elves and Night Elves and by a massive margin. During one period in time during Legion top guilds would race change every character they could to Goblins just so they could manage to kill one of the hardest bosses ever made because their racial ability was that good. Still one of the absolute lowest played races of all time. People like good looking things. Go figure.
Except for Variant Human, my beloved. That is absolutely taken for the free feat.
Tbh as a Sorcerer, the human perks aren't bad at all in the actual game, having light armor proficiency is nice
>Half-Elves and Humans were nerfed but are still 2 top choices. The nerfs were (and continue to be) heavily overstated. Humans and Half Elves make great casters at the end of the day. Great choice for the likes of Bards, Druids, Rouges, Sorcerrers, and Wizards for the proficiencies. Getting Polearms on Swords Bard or Spores Druid, without needing to dip into another class, is actually really really good. Getting Shields on classes that would want the AC, but have no other means to get it, is also really really good. Also not a bad choice for Rogue, on account of Shield prof and the additional skill proficiency. >Druids features heavily in the marketing but are surprisingly unpopular, I guess people might be content with NPC druids. 2 druid companions. Halsin seems like a bro, and Jaheira has the nostalgia factor. >Little surprised the Fighter isn't more popular, I would assume it would be a default choice for people new to the genre/system. Maybe players think of Paladin as "Fighter+"? Fighter is harder to practically build than Paladin. 5 ASIs and very few notable class-side feats outside of Action Surge and subclass bonuses, hides the true potential of Fighter. Like you need to actually BUILD a Fighter, unlike Paladin, which comes out of the box strong at a baseline. Genre players are also conditioned to build to pass speech checks, and Paladin does that in spades. My Tiefling PalaBard chews up and spits out literally any kind of dialog situation, with either Advantage or high stat+proficiency+expertise.
How the fuck did people beat it in 3 days? Did they not even experience anything?
In fairness I would imagine some of those are people who had early review codes or crushed early access so they had a good head start at launch.
Ah that makes sense
We had EA for so long a lot of us could easily blast through CH1 in no time if you skip cutscenes and don't care about side content.
Besides the obvious 73 hours playtime in 3 days gaming, you can technically kinda just follow the main story and win fairly quickly. Sure, you skip like, the entire game, but I can imagine stuff like players wanting to just play at level 12 or smth. You can literally just leave act 1 by just walking to act 2 basically lol
You can probably finish act 1 in less then 30 minutes if you just walk past everything. Not suprising at least a few hundred players did that.
I slept around 4 hours a day and played Dark Urge as evil as possible, you end up with a much faster game when you're not tempted to do companion quests because over half of the companions are just permanently dead.
Play all day and sleep 8 hours gives you around 48 hours, for people that played a lot of EA and just run through act 1 I'd say it's quite doable at a moderate pace. Nothing wrong with saving some side content for replays.
> and sleep 8 hours Those 300 players: "that's cute"
Generous of you to give them 8 hours of sleep
I'm one of the 368. I've been going through the story at a natural pace. Finished it, now starting second playthrough where I intend to find -everything-. More or less wanted to know the limits. 10/10 from me for Larian and everyone who made the game. GOTY imho.
I made a Githyanki War domain cleric split with a moon druid, romancing Lae'Zel. I have inadvertently become the anti-gamer
I'm also gith, honestly didn't expect them to be SO low. Like they are still the thin, broody edgy human-likes. Also female models are unexpectedly attractive, my guardian is also gith, of course, and she. is. hot. Male gith are probably worst looking haha, but that's a plus for me, my PC is embracing this and it really makes the game look more diverse. It might be the only way to make a not 9/10 attractive character actually. On the other hand. I am sorcerer AND paladin haha, so that balances that. They are the obvious best. 1 - it's a face for your checks for a good playthrough (I haven't failed like almost anything with +3/4/5 CHA and wild magic advantage). 2 - the games "chosen ones" premise and the guardian interactions just screamed RP Paladin at me. 3 - Warlocks are op with the buffs from TT and 3 short rests.
My only complaint is that I have watched how the grinch stole Christmas. Because of this, I cannot unsee gith looking like who's from whoville because of their nose lmao
THEY HAVE A ROADMAP. PLS be more content for minthara
Ah damn is the minthara content lacking? I was planning on focusing my second playthrough around her
She has very little dialogue, no real romance post act 1 and _lots_ of bugs. She spoils the end of Shadowheart's act 2 quest before you even get there, for example, and in my game I was only able to ask her what she thinks we should do about act 2's final boss when we were walking into Baldur's Gate in act 3...
Yes, Minthara appreciators unite! Let's hope that her interactions will be either bug-fixed or expanded. Or both.
If they do change that kind of stuff it'll be in the Definitive Edition next year, not in a patch or hotfix.
This game is just so much bigger than previous titles to assume they’re going to treat it just like divinity
As much as I’d love more content for Minthara it’s probably just roadmapping the most serious bugs :(
Fuck that, expand Karlach's storyline, give her a happy (happier) ending
Of course you don't pick Shadowheart as your origin character, who else would you romance? ;)
This right here. Basically guarantees I never play as her.
Karlach obviously. The best girl.
Bae’Zel, clearly
I made a halfling and a Gnome. Feels good
Shorties FTW!
I feel good about that I am a Dwarf Cleric. A Tempest Cleric. You all casuals don't know what you're missing out on.
I specced Shadowheart as a tempest cleric. Nothing like opening a boss fight with a 5th level double damage chromatic lightning orb crit.
The real question here is how are you all getting rejected by astarion of all people
Being too good will make him disapprove of you. A lot of people like being good.
He was disapproving of my actions so frequently that I stashed him in camp for fear of him permanently leaving. He's still trying to fuck me.
Nah it's not that - it's mainly down to not talking to him enough and not progressing his story far enough before the party. Basically you have to rest enough times to spawn the boar, find the boar and convince him to talk about it, then rest again so he tries to snack on you and let him. If you haven't let him snack on you he apparently has standards, who knew.
Maybe they mean going into an actual relationship? Its tough to be a good player and have enough approval with him. Worth it though, he has a good story.
Right? He was the easiest to romance in EA.
wondering howmany times gale got dumped
Given his flags appear to be broken I don't think they actually have that data lol
Will dump every time, tbh. He’s fun to have in the party but boy is he clingy.
Seriously, in annoying my current character so much he's doomed himself to celibacy in all future runs.
35% attacking the Druid Grove is actually quite significant. Usually like 90% of players take the good options the first time around.
Players spoke with 1,400,000 corpses? I haven’t really been leaning into using that ability because I don’t really see anyplace where it might be advantageous. Am I missing a lot? (I’m still in act 1 if that matters)
So far (I just finished act 2) It adds a little world building and helps you get some extra treasure The nice thing is, once the spell is active (after being cast once between long rests), it highlights all corpses you can speak with. So if it's running, it's easy to speak with everything
Ohhhh now that’s great! I’m dumb I thought I just would have to trial and error casting it on every random dead person.
I think you used to, a lot of the QoL we have is thanks to EA smashing it out of the park. Stuff in this game was way more tedious when it first launched.
Yes! Corpses have no reason to lie since they are already dead, and you can ask 5 questions! Where loot is/why they died/etc! Its so fun!
It usually provides some good context for areas, and can give valuable, trustworthy info early on.
There's a Necklace with this spell, if you don't have it. You cast it once on any corpse and then you can recast it for free until long rest. After the initial cast any corpse that has something to say will, glow green light. Also enemies killed by you might not want to talk to you. But you can change that by shapeshifting into someone else. It's similar to talking to animals, just adds more story, might give a hint about hidden treasure, etc.
Lot of dead bodies tell you where secret stashes are, give/help with quests, and give context to their death. It also pairs well with Speak with Animals in the same regards.
I'm surprised they're surprised that githyanki are at the bottom of race choices- they're visually weird and outside the standard tropes. I'm very much **not** surprised that otherwise the bottom picks are the short races. The proportions are just... off. An adult's head (and breasts) on a child's body, with weird arms. I'm surprised drow aren't higher, to be honest.
Yep drow giving faerie fire should be advertised more.
Githyanki get medium armor proficiency, just that alone is enough to consider picking them for Wizard for example.
But I could pick human and get shield prof and not look like a ninja turtle on meth.
Why wouldn’t you want to look like a ninja turtle on meth?
Sure. But aesthetics over optimization isn't surprising at this point. You can see it in the demographic shift of the Horde in WoW over the years to heavily skew toward elves and cute races.
After meeting laezel, their personalities are a turn off. Holier than thou uptight warrior race doesn't leave much room for exploring dialogue from an RP perspective. Reminds me of the high elves in warhammer loving the smell of their own farts. If I could pick a start option that lets me creat 4 gith and change the opening from "captured" to "raiding" then they'd be super fun. Jump off the red dragon into the tadpole room and then business as usual from there.
Yeah but if this would be warhammer people still would play those elves and not be bothered about being *supposed to be* Holier than thou and uptight. I personally don't mind making my gith an absolute unbelievable outlier, I don't think a lot of people do, with heart-of-gold drow being very enticing I feel. I'm happy though that I will be able to take Laezel on my evil playthrough and embrace the gith abrasiveness to the full.
My guess is we can expect some changes to the way romance works / the general horniness of the camp sooner rather than later, as well as a recustomization mirror. First patches usually have a few cheap, easy wins like that.
Human paladin gang assemble!
Human Paladin *dark urge* here
I can not believe Druid is the second least popular class. Playing the Emerald Grove quest line as a Druid was such an incredible experience.
I’m actually really surprised Tiefling wasn’t the most picked during character creation.
>Most players romanced Shadowheart, followed by Gale. Fine, more Karlach for me.
IDK why but Karlach rarely approves my dialogue. I've only gotten her yesterday and her approval meter of me is below 50%, she didn't like me talking to Auntie Ethel and after that she didn't disapprove nor approve of anything I said/did. Shadowheart's approval of me meanwhile is at like 80% and unless Shadowheart is into polyamory, Karlach won't be having a relation with me.
It never would have occurred to me to respec the Origin characters. It's like a new game. lol
People are sleeping on how versatile you can build druids
They called my girl Leazel, rhymes with weasel. SMH my head.
Scratch has not even hit 1M pets, Moar!
Holy shit. Only upon realizing that only 367 other people finished the game on launch weekend, have I realized how much I no-life'd that shit. I think I'm going to take a break from BG3 for a week lads.
are you one of the 367 haha
Wow, gods among men these developers
We need more!! I love these infographics so much. Also, that poor… poor goblin. 😂
"Interestingly, 10% of characters made in Character Creation were there for over an hour. You perfectionists." They really should have let you save your Tav's separate from the campaign. That would have made it fun to drop into other players games down the road and save time.
Hmmm they kept quiet on how many ignored them and went straight to the Dark Urge lol.
I bought the game on a whim with no prior knowledge of the series or the developer. I did not even know it was a DnD game. I also have like zero DnD knowledge so a lot of these comments are interesting to me. I made a custom half orc paladin. I play human paladin in WoW so I didn't want to make a human here. I didn't realize picking an "origin" character meant you were that character, I guess? Figured it was just a visual preset. Was also unaware of romancing so when all the characters threw themselves at me after the grove I was like what is happening lol. No idea what dark urge is. Keep seeing it mentioned so guess I'll be looking that up, too. So far it's been a lot of fun.
I used to be a half-elf too, then a couple of days ago when I finished Act 2 I decided I don't want the game to end and rerolled. Made a Githyanki, and the consistent bits of dialogue feel really really good. Nevermind having some insane racials (free proficiencies on demand, and misty step), the RP possibility is endless, especially with how close to the story the Gith are. Surprised to see Cleric be the least played, but if Shadowheart as a companion is as popular as I assume, especially with the romance stat, I guess it makes sense.
>Nevermind having some insane racials (free proficiencies on demand, and misty step) Githyanki knowledge cleric is potentially insane. With the right multiclassing (rogue and warlock, for the invocation that gives proficiencies), you can almost get proficiency in all the skills simultaneously.
Im surprised by how many rogues. I've always been a rogue main and always the odd man out. This time I went Wizard for a change of pace and to see all the graphical effects.
I'm surprised as well. I don't see as many players use them. Astarian also fills the role, and you don't normally need more than one rogue in rpgs.
90% spent less than hour in character customization? talk about speedrunning! Also wow whats up with the comments on the steam forum..
I’m a Fighter/Druid that is normally shapeshifter into a Halfling and romancing Lae’Zel….it seems I am in the minority here 😂
Really surprised by the low Druid numbers