Current Events > Starting a BG3 playthrough, no DnD experience. What do I *need* to know?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I want it to be as blind as possible and I want to avoid min-maxing, but I also don't want to get 30 hours into a save file to realise I've fucked it.

High rolls are good! Low rolls are bad!

If you aren't playing on Tactician or Honor, you'll do just fine with leveling any class direct to 12 without worrying about multis or whatever.

The classes that don't have squadmate representation are Bard, Monk, and Sorcerer.

Bard is arguably the easiest starting class since it gets a lot of boosts to skills, especially conversation ones.

there's a custom difficulty that I personally use to give me the best experience possible.

During Act 1 there are a lot of events that happen when you sleep at camp so do not get too shy about doing so more than you might need to sheerly to have events trigger. On the flip side there is one actively bad one that happens when you take too long to do it (you'll pretty quickly figure out which one it likely is in the story if you think about it) so don't sleep too much.

Otherwise the big thing would be to look at the missable quests on the wiki. While you can get some minor spoilers mostly it will spoil ones that have utterly no bearing on anything important (IIRC) and it's mostly just a good checklist of random nonsense that is easy to miss.

I had basically no DnD knowledge going into it and I got by just fine. Just play the game and pay attention to the tutorials.

Make use of short and long rests.

Save before battles.

Save early and often

Learn to love the Z Axis in combat

Long rest often

Start as a high charsma class

Lae'zel is bae'zel

Also, there's nothing wrong with trying The Dark Urge for your first playthrough (I did it myself), but I wouldn't recommend it.

The game is quite easy, especially on the lower difficulties. Pick whichever class you think sounds the most fun and just roll (ha) with it. Fighter (for unga) and Bard (for everything else) are the best beginner choices. Don't bother multiclassing on your first playthrough, everything is strong as a pure class.

Search areas thoroughly and pick up the huge amounts of food lying around in Act 1 and you'll have food to rest as many times as you need to.

It's 99.9% impossible to brick your playthrough no matter how bad you are, you would almost have to intentionally self-sabotage.

The Long Rest thing was weird to me because my first play through I was sure that long resting too much would affect the parasite.

And I struggled so much because I would only rest when absolutely necessary and even then not enough

Use the environment to your advantage. Sometimes you can do way more damage just pushing somebody off a ledge or blowing up a barrel, especially early in the game.

I 100% plan on being a fighter when I play that game. That'd be my advice. I have played 1000s of hours of tabletops RPGs, designed many custom systems. I own like 30 actual D&D books.

In the end, all that knowledge, that's what I have learned. My knowledge condensed.

Roll a fighter.

TheDurinator posted...

The game is quite easy, especially on the lower difficulties. Pick whichever class you think sounds the most fun and just roll (ha) with it. Fighter (for unga) and Bard (for everything else) are the best beginner choices. Don't bother multiclassing on your first playthrough, everything is strong as a pure class.

One exception: Rogue. Being a pure rogue is generally not recommended. You can make it work, but it won't be as strong as other pure classes, hence why most rogue players multiclass. But that's a little advanced for a first playthrough.

Ivynn posted...

One exception: Rogue. Being a pure rogue is generally not recommended. You can make it work, but it won't be as strong as other pure classes, hence why most rogue players multiclass. But that's a little advanced for a first playthrough.

Pure Rogue is also strong, but you need to have a very firm grasp of gameplay mechanics and enjoy mage hand micro.

Robot2600 posted...

I 100% plan on being a fighter when I play that game. That'd be my advice. I have played 1000s of hours of tabletops RPGs, designed many custom systems. I own like 30 actual D&D books.

In the end, all that knowledge, that's what I have learned. My knowledge condensed.

Roll a fighter.

The fighter is one of the easiest and pretty powerful classes to play as for beginners, coming from a D&D noob myself. It's nice having 3 actions to use per turn, compared to the classes who only have 1-2 actions per turn. My previous run where I played a Githyanki fighter, I easily powered through with brute force on Tactician with my two Fighters; my character, and Laezel. Making up the front line, melee attackers of my group. While I used Gale to cast the Haste spell on one of my fighters (the spell doubles your actions points) for the more difficult fights. And the 4th spot in my group varies, depending on if I need another melee class member, or a healer in the group.

I wouldn't worry too much about choosing Bard, or having a high charisma. You can multi-class one of your other squad mates into a bard class to be used in conversations, and to barter. There are some dialogues only your MC can engage in, and you can save your game during dialogue, if you want to reload and try again on passing conversation checks. I did that a bunch on my Fighter run.

read everything

except for the spoilers ITT

Nothing beyond the fact that every action is tied to the rolling of a die beyond the normal 6 faces a regular die has.

It was a table top game originally that had to account for instances of player interaction and thus you needed higher or lower probabilities to give a feeling of decision of fate. Baldurs Gate got its popularity from streamlining these systems in the background so the player could experience a wide adventure whilst only having to really manage the in-depth class system that fleshes out the lore of the different worlds/scenarios.

BG3 brings those systems more in your face to see and the game does a pretty good job exposing and explaining all of them to you. Theres not much you need from your part to get a fun experience out of it.

Ivynn posted...

Long rest often

Start as a high charsma class

Lae'zel is bae'zel

also, this

Karlach > Shadowheart > A Stump > Lae'zel

I will not stand for this Shart slander. She is best girl

maximize your class's attack stat. it determines your hit chance for your spell/weapon (e.g. str for fighter, wisdom for cleric spells, int for wizard spells, etc.)

Try to really role play your character. Don't fret about getting the best rewards or outcomes on a quest but just do what feels right for your character. This is not a game where you are going to do or see everything in one playthrough and once you accept that it becomes way more relaxing.

Speaking of relaxing, they game will seem to push a lot of urgency on to you almost from the jump, but there are very few genuinely time sensitive quests you have to worry about and they are very well-telegraphed. So don't feel like you are rushed to do things or should be minimizing long rest.

First and foremost, play the class that works for the character you are RPing, but if you are fairly class agnostic, I would recommend a charisma focused class (Bard, Warlock, Paladin or Sorcerer) as a lot of players will use their player character for most dialog and charisma characters are just the best at it.

It's almost impossible to game over via player decision. So you basically can't fuck up via your choices. Furthermore, you can completely respec any characters class and levels for a trivial fee so you also can't fuck up a character build. At least not permanently. (And in fact several companions would probably appreciate a respec as their base stats are a bit shit).

This technically counts as a small spoiler but it's one of the few times where exploration can wildly change the trajectory of an act in a way that doesn't necessarily feel rewarding for players and the game doesn't warn you about it. So skip the spoiled text if you want to play completely blind but otherwise:
In Act 2 there is a place called the Grand Mausoleum. If you enter there and complete the accompanying dungeon within, it will prematurely end many quests and story arcs in Act 2 with no warning. I would recommend you do that once you feel reasonably complete with what you have accomplished in Act 2 first.

Shadowheart is the most overrated character in the game. I can't stand going through another playthrough with her in my party constantly talking about Lady Shar and Shar lore, everytime I run into anything Shar related.

I sided with Laezel and killed Shadowheart in my most recent playthrough as a Dark Urge, Evil Human. I don't think I'll miss much not having her around. Same with Karlach, who I also offed early in the game

Let's not have this conversation in the guy's "I want a blind playthrough" topic, yeah?

DrizztLink posted...

Let's not have this conversation in the guy's "I want a blind playthrough" topic, yeah?

yeah don't read any spoilers.

the game is much more fun if you go in blind and just explore things. even if you save scum as much as I did

Seriously. I managed to avoid talking about something that you can learn about almost the second you start the game, stop talking about things that he wouldn't learn about until the 5+ hour mark (though Shadowheart "spoiling" the "twist" to anyone who knows D&D was pretty silly).

HighSeraph posted...

Karlach > Shadowheart > A Stump > Lae'zel

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/242d1644.jpg

Ivynn posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/242d1644.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/898082c7.jpg

All waifus are waifu-able.

Nothing wrong with save scumming.

It's better to explore everywhere than to just focus on one single quest, that way you don't miss anything.

Also make sure you long rest a lot so you don't miss any camp scenes.

You can play pretty much however you want and the game world will adapt accordingly, it's really just up to you how you want events and the story to unfold.

It's pretty hard to unknowingly fuck up a save file. But here's something I would've wished was more clear on my first playthrough.

None of the villain bases are inherently hostile to you unless you make them hostile. You're really free to go and explore wherever you want, and as long as you use some common sense in the conversations, you're fine.

This is really important in Act 2, depending on which route you take to get there. Because a lot of players (myself included) had the impression that going to a certain location might trigger a major boss battle. But it's actually just a normal location you can enter, and you'll miss out on a lot of cool stuff if you don't check it out.