The Adventures of Tallon the Rogue - Baldur's Gate 3
You don't need me to tell you how good Baldur's Gate 3 is or how much I enjoyed playing it. So, instead (because it's all I've been playing for months and I've got nothing else to write about!), I'm going to tell you HOW I tackled my first playthrough of Larian's epic RPG. I tried something a little different, which you might want to try for yourself!
I spent a lot of time in the character creator, trying to decide what kind of character to play. I also went rifling through the settings, as I usually do before starting a new game. I spotted a few options that caught me eye, and thought I'd use them to make things a little more interesting - and more like a true Dungeons & Dragons experience.
Tallon the Rogue
First, a bit about my character. I was playing Tallon as a luckless rogue. He had no interest in magic or in saving the world, but he wasn't exactly selfish or evil either. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and just wanted to get the tadpole out of his head!
I know its weird to play a perfectly normal human with no special powers in an RPG that's supposed to be fantasy escapism, but the character seemed to fit with how I planned to play.
Setting up the Game
First, I disabled Karmic Dice. This is a feature designed to "avoid streaks of success or failure". Basically, it tweaks the random number generation (RNG) to make the game seem fairer. But Dungeons & Dragons is not meant to be fair, so I turned it off!
Next, I turned down the number of autosaves and quick saves, so the game only kept the 5 most recent ones. This was intended to discourage save scumming, but gave me an option to recover if I had a total party kill.
After that, the idea was simple: embrace the dice rolls! If I failed any roll in the game, I just had to go with it. Even if that meant failing a strength check to open a sarcophagus and never finding out what was inside it. And even if that means you can't persuade a companion from going down a dark path. No save scumming!
I later realised that I'd created a slightly more forgiving version of Honour Mode, but on Normal Difficult and perhaps not quite so unforgiving!
Highlights from Tallon's adventure
So, I set off on my adventure, and it generally went pretty well. There were a few hiccups along the way, but, if anything, that just made it more entertaining. Part of the fun of playing D&D is the unexpected twists and turns, and having to explain why a skilled rogue like Tallon would fail to charm a guard or unlock a low-level door.
I don't want to spoil too much, but here are some of the highlights:
- I lost a companion character early on and was unable to bring them back, so I basically missed out on their entire story.
- I killed another of my camp followers in an incident with a powerful book.
- My party accidentally got completely off their faces before a great battle.
I also spectacularly failed to romance anyone. I had my eyes on Mama K, naturally, but I didn't find her until it was too late. The only other companion to show any interest in Tallon had tentacles, and I'm just not that kinda guy!
For more specifics... Well, if you haven't played the game, maybe don't click on the show spoilers button below and skip to the conclusion!
Show spoilers
The following is a more detailed account of Tallon's adventure, but do not read it if you do not want to have parts of Acts I and II spoiled for you!
Death of Lae'zel
Early on, while exploring the ancient ruins (and before I had recruited Withers), I took a long rest. During the night, Lae'zel snuck up on me and tried to kill me. I tried to read her mind, looking for a way to wriggle out of the situation... and rolled a Natural 1! Then I tried to persuade her not to kill me, and failed the persuasion roll (bearing in mind charisma was one of my highest stats!).
We ended up in combat. I hadn't worked out that you could toggle non-lethal attacks at that point. So, I killed her and never brought her back, because even when I did recruit Withers, he didn't give me the option. I also hadn't realised that Scroll of Revivify could resurrect people, I thought it was just a way to help someone who was downed recover from a distance. (Googling it, it looks like it is not possible to resurrect her if she dies at that point anyway!)
As a result, when we got to the Githyanki creche, I didn't enter - as I felt the Gith would just attack me without Lae'zel in my party. I also had a Githyanki corpse in the corner of my camp for the rest of Acts I and II, which was a little unsettling!
Necromancy of Thay
As I said, I had no interest in magic or in using the Mindflayer tadpoles to grow more powerful. So, when I found the Necromancy of Thay, I inspected it, and noticed that it was vulnerable to radiant damage. I took it back to camp, put it on the floor next to the campfire and used Shadowheart's Guiding Bolt on it. The book turned to ash amidst holy flames... and shadowy creatures emerged!
Fortunately, as it was in the middle of camp, so ALL of my allies came rushing into combat, and we made short work of the creatures. But not before they killed Volo. And so, another companion was lost.
Volo would later leave a note in the camp - BESIDE HIS CORPSE! - to say that he had left the party and would meet up again with us in Baldur's Gate! So even Larian hadn't thought of everything!
Into Darkness
I found a chest, deep underground, near the edge of an abyss. Shadowheart's perception check revealed that it was a trap. I tried to disarm the trap and rolled a natural 1. The chest exploded. I resisted the damage and knockback from the explosion, but Shadowheart was knocked backwards and fell to her death.
That wasn't a major story beat, it was just hilarious! Particularly as she was the one who had spotted the trap!
The Drunken Assault
We were about to charge into the assault Moonrise Towers, but my crew was injured and had used up all their spell slots. But I didn't have enough supplies for a long rest. So, I went back to the Last Light Inn and raided the cellar. When I picked the supplies to take a long rest, I didn't realise that the auto-select had selected nothing but alcohol! I got an achievement for it, and we went striding confidently - if a little unsteadily - into the end of Act II.
Failed Romance
I did some Googling to discover why I had failed to romance Karlach. By the time I found her, I'd already started picking off the goblin leaders, and I didn't make the first attempt to fix her infernal engine before Dammon left the grove. This meant that the two of us weren't close at the time of the celebration after the goblin leaders were defeated, and missing that one story beat cuts off the romance option for the rest of the game.
Final Thoughts
So yeah, I might try full Honour Mode at some point, but I had a lot of fun on my first playthrough by embracing the chaos of the dice rolls and not trying to get a perfect score (but still having a slight safety net if something went horribly wrong!).
I'm most annoyed that I missed out on the chance to romance Karlach; it seems unfair that if you didn't do the right thing when you're presented with the one opportunity to being a relationship, then you can't romance her at all, no matter what you do and how much time you spend together later in the story.
However, weird as it may sound, I actually like the fact that a couple of the companion characters died, and that I missed out on their content, because it gave me a reason to play through the game again and explore their story and see what happens if I do things differently.
So, all in all, I had a great time playing Baldur's Gate 3 on "Honour Mode Lite". It's such a great game and I'm already having fun playing through the game with a totally different character, and getting to know the companions that I lost on my first playthrough. I'm excited to see what happens next!