Forging a legend

Bring your tabletop character to life

Whether you’re referencing a penand-paper character sheet or have a character loaded up in D&D Beyond, it’s easy to introduce your adventurer into Baldur’s Gate 3. The character creator in our hands-on is not final, with both the half-orc player character race and monk class found in the fifth edition Player’s Handbook notable exclusions during our playthrough.

We also can’t fine-tune our custom protagonist’s individual physical features or wardrobe, though there is a robust colour palette and selection of presets to choose from. Beyond selecting a character background that influences certain skill proficiencies, you also can’t delve too deeply into what your character was doing before being abducted by mindflayers. Ah well, Keren’s penchant for absurdly large sleeves, love of garlic bread, and tragic backstory about her disappeared adoptive family will just have to live on as the mental lint that drives our in-game choices.

Baldur’s Gate 3 will suggest sensible stat distributions for whichever class you choose, though we are most definitely not sensible. 13 points in dexterity – who needs co-ordination when we can have a silver tongue? As stats are dished out via point-buy, you’re free to shave off a few digits in one place and redistribute them elsewhere. With this system, there’s little stopping you from creating wonderfully lopsided builds. For instance, you can create a beefy, person-of-few-words protagonist by funnelling everything into strength and letting all your other stats languish with a negative value to add to skill check rolls. We don’t recommend this approach (characters like this have a habit of getting taken out by an upset tummy due to a low constitution score) but it will keep you on your toes.

you need to recover from disaster, you’ll find your way out.

A KIND OF MAGIC

Let’s talk combat. As you may have guessed, our bard skips every leg day and isn’t much of a fighter. Lae’zel instead can tick that box in turn-based fights and, paired with Shadowheart the cleric, our girl squad has offence covered. In combat Keren can then fulfil a support role, giving her partymates an ability boost via Bardic Inspiration or causing the enemy to double over prone with Tasha’s Hideous Laughter – after all, it’s a lot easier to hit things when they’re rolling along the floor, giggling.

Bards enjoy a few tricksy spells like this but more dedicated magic users, like Origin character Gale the wizard, can open up avenues of elemental opportunity too, with spells doing everything from casting a slippery sheen over surfaces to lobbing a bolt of flame at wellplaced exploding barrels. Warlocks, on the other hand, like Origin character Wyll, pledge loyalty to a supernatural patron and in return boast the tricksiest spells of all.

But what if Keren had never met either of the aforementioned action girlies or any other Origin party

members? Fortunately bards tend to have a lot of points in charisma, and can talk their way out of a surprising number of potential scraps. Keren, with an unusually low dexterity score, is far from the most fleet-footed bard but anyone with points in the right places – such as Origin character Astarion, a high elf rogue who’s become a bit of a fan favourite – can avert coming to blows by sneaking around. However, if you still thirst for violence but want to be smart about it, rogues can also launch surprise attacks from stealth.

Often it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. For instance, Wyll the warlock is a living legend known as the ‘Blade Of Frontiers.’ If your custom protagonist is lacking in the social skills department, Wyll can make the most of his 16 points in charisma and take the lead in high-stakes conversations instead. Or say you’ve created a paladin protagonist clad in clanking armour; you can hide out at a safe distance while you send stealthy Astarion to sneak past imposing enemies and nab goodies from right under their noses.

You can always go it alone but, like any tabletop session, it’s often more fun with friends. You’ll be able to venture to the city of Baldur’s Gate yourself, either with a party of Origin characters or in local split-screen co-op, on PS5 from 31 August.

“You can always go it alone but, like any tabletop session, it’s often more fun to go adventuring with a gang of friends.”

1 2 1 You always have options, even if you’re not the strongest fighter. That said, we’d advise against getting caught in the middle of this deadly tango. 2 Sneaky rogue Astarion does not trust people easily, but you may grow to rely on one another. 3 You can often talk your way out of conflict, though not everyone will be swayed by pretty words alone. 3

The mindflayers’ ship hosts horrors from imps from the Hells to writhing brains with unlikely appendages.