BG3 – Pickpocketing – The Argothald Journal

If you’ve been reading the posts in my Baldur’s Gate 3 series, you may have noticed that I’m no longer doing my didactic “D&D lessons” as much as I used to.

That’s mostly because, from what little feedback I get, they’re just not interesting. I’ve shifted these posts to be mostly photo albums of my adventures in the game.

From playthrough 8: Karlach flirts with Wyll.

Recently, I’ve started playing BG3 with Real Angela. Her confidence with the BG3 system is steadily increasing. I “held her hand” during the early hours of the game, but that’s becoming less and less necessary. She’s basically mastered being a Barbarian.

Meet Real Angela’s first BG3 character, Fey the Half-Drow Wildheart Barbarian.

You can get in her face if you want to; she’ll only break an arm or two. But harm one hair on Scratch’s head, and your head’s on a pike.

I’m playing a Rogue. Fey can have fun smashing stuff, while I handle the finicky tasks like picking locks and disarming traps. It helps that the items that make a character a good Rogue are mostly useless to a Barbarian, so we’re not competing for gear. It also suits my general fondness for stealth games

I’m playing Bellandria, an Elven Thief Rogue.

As we’re playing, she hears me muttering, “Click R3… OK, I’m clear… Hide… Sneak… Pickpocket…” She knows in general what I’m doing, but I don’t think she understands exactly what I see.

So here are a few instructional pictures on the life of a typical Rogue Thief. I get to give one of my patented BG3 system lectures, under the guise of helping a friend understand the game.

Sandalwood is my character in my 13th playthrough. She’s an Herbalist Witch, but that’s not relevant here; what matters is that I’ve boosted her Sleight-of-Hand skills. I’ve clicked R3 to see the goblin’s field of view, shown in red. (R3 is what you click in BG3 to show this if you’re using a controller.)

I go into Turn-based mode, and select the Hiding Action from Sandalwood’s list of skills. The game now shows me the potential option to use Pickpocket. However, Hiding is an Action, so I have to wait until my next turn.

Rozzak moves as he patrols the room. He doesn’t spot Sandalwood, because her Stealth skill is quite good. Now Sandalwood is able to select Pickpocket as an Action.

The Pickpocket skill allows me to look at Rozzak’s inventory. When I position the selection on the measly 12 gold he carries, I see that I only have to roll a 0 or above to take the money (lower section of the panel). This is an almost-automatic success; I’ll fail if I roll a 1 on a twenty-sided die.

Rozzak still doesn’t notice Sandalwood. He continues to patrol as Sandalwood lurks nearby, ready to Pickpocket again.

I use the Square button to select the Bloodstone in Rozzak’s inventory. If I get it, the only thing I’ll do with it is sell it, so I select “Steal and Add to Wares.” This makes it a bit easier when I visit a vendor; I can sell all my Wares with a single button-press. It’s a bit harder to Pickpocket the Bloodstone, as its value is higher than that 12 gold; the number I have to roll is 6. However, Sandalwood has so many Sleight-of-Hand bonuses that effectively I’d have to roll a 1 in order to fail.

That’s pretty much the life of the Rogue: use R3 a lot to see where I’d be spotted, Hide when I can, take what I need.

From playthrough 1/14. Subtitle: “Shadowheart: Impressive, Though I’m not sure I want to know why you’re so skilled at… that”.

Combat is similar: A Rogue gets bonuses if they attack while they’re Hiding. However, I’ve found that screenshots of combat are even duller than these Pickpocket photos. I’ll spare you.

For example, here’s a screenshot from playthrough 8, the one that introduced us to Arctic Druid Angela. She’s shifted into Panther form for this combat, and just defeated Reaper of Bhaal Ogga (whoever they are). However, if I hadn’t provided that explanation, you might not be able to interpret all the mid-motion blurs to figure it out.

What’s the name of the game?

Since you’ve gotten this far into this post, I’ll share with you one discussion I’ve had with Real Angela: She initially called our game “playthrough 14.” I said I’d prefer to call it “Angela’s playthrough 1,” to give her full credit.

Is it “Bill’s playthrough 14” or “Angela’s playthrough 1”? Real Angela’s response: “Why not both?”

That’s why I’m labeling any photo captions from our game with “playthrough 1/14.”

For example: From playthrough 1/14. Fey has met Mizora, and hates her.

More pictures?

I don’t know if I’ll post a full write-up of playthrough 1/14. She’s playing on a PC, I’m playing on a Mac, and we both use Steam to share the game.

It’s harder for me to take screenshots on a Mac than on a console: On a console, I just hold down the Select button for a second, while on a Mac I have to do a three-fingered Cmd-Shift-3 on the keyboard while holding the controller.

As an example of the difficulty with making screenshots on the Mac, here’s an image from playthrough 1/14. The caption is “Selected answer: Pet him.” This tells me that Fey is about to pet Scratch. I would not have wasted the photo op of Scratch being petted. But I have no such images in my photo library. I must have hit Cmd-Shift-3 multiple times, but only one of them resulted in a saved image.

When Larian releases Patch 8 in a couple of months, cross-playform multi-player will be available. I can then shift to playing with Real Angela on a console, and I’ll probably start accumulating my usual pile of screenshots. Maybe I’ll come up with an interesting narrative for our game.

Or maybe she’ll do her own write-up! We’ll see!

Bellandria digs where Lae’zel is coming from, but Fey finds Lae’zel to be arrogant and difficult to put up with. That’s why having a different perspective is refreshing.

Note: Real Angela (whose Real Name is just “Angela”) explicitly gave me permission to use screen captures from playthrough 1/14 in my blog. In fact, she volunteered this permission; I did not need to ask for it.)