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Warning: unlike my previous guest post, where I was trying to be delicate about revealing game information, this one is spoiler city. Spoiler metropolis.

This playthrough is called 2/14.5 because it’s my second playthrough, and Bill’s 14.5th, since he only joined me part of the time I was playing.

Characters

For this playthrough, my main character was Raelia, a tiefling paladin swearing the Oath of Vengeance. This seemed like a no-brainer for me since my real life anger has two levels: ‘petty vengeance’ and ‘big vengeance’. I figured this would be easy.

Except it’s actually pretty restrictive to play a paladin with an oath, even one you agree with, because the interpretation is so rigid (common theme with religion). I eventually decided to just embrace the chaos and became an Oathbreaker Paladin. However, I kind of forgot about the control undead powers of an oathbreaker paladin (arguably one of the more powerful things in it) because I basically only remember the things in my first two wheels. Still, I prioritized being able to move quickly over the battlefield and Smiting my enemies, and that worked well for me. Paladins also need to have high charisma for successful spells, which made the roleplaying aspect easier as well.

Tieflings come in all sizes and colors, and I chose a pale redheaded tiefling with a burn scar and heterochromia. I also added the mod that let me have my baby owlbear as a companion, because if I don’t try to rescue all the pets, assume I am a doppelganger.

I will say that I have one gripe about the character design of tieflings, and it’s a common one I find for tailed humanoid creature designs —- the tail position makes very little sense. In humans, our tailbone is our coccyx, all the way at the very bottom of our spine, tucked down into the pelvis. It’s a vestigial holdover from when we would have been on all fours, and the tail would be the counterbalance. Look at where tails are on cats and dogs. On an upright biped in most fantasy settings, it is prettily stuck onto the small of the back, even though it doesn’t make much sense for the anatomy.

Speaking of strange aesthetics, Bill decided to play Tavelle, a dragonborn Bard. He had not played a dragonborn character before, and does not think that he will again. I think the kissing scenes with a dragon head might have freaked him out a bit.

Let’s put a different picture of her up. No point in all of us having nightmares.

Tavelle started off as a Swords Bard, but then Bill realized that I had a whole slew of melee characters already, so she got re-specced into a Glamour Bard. I had not come across this subclass before, and it took me a while to understand it.

To be honest, I had never quite understood the point of bards — they aren’t smashy enough to be melee fighters, and they aren’t magicky enough to be spellcasters. The stereotype is that bards are just charismatic slimeballs that want to sleep with everyone. Glamour Bards are a bit different because they focus on crowd control. Instead of dealing damage, they “hold” (magically paralyze) enemies, charm and command specific subjects, change the environment, etc. I had a large enough group in 2/14.5 that I did not fully appreciate the crowd control (”Bill, we don’t need to do this setup where you hold the monster, I can just smash it while it wriggles!”) but as I tried it myself in playthrough 3, I understood the subclass a bit more (more to come in blog post 3)

Hirelings

By this point, you are all very familiar with Arctic Druid Angela and her sagas, and if you aren’t, how are you getting wi-fi so far underground? We all know that Bill had created her and her sisters in an effort to entice me to join him in playing BG3 (talk about the long game), so for funsies, I decided to create my own set of hirelings. Meet William…

Winston…

And Waterston…

I haven’t come up with whole fanfiction backstories for them though. I’ll leave that to Bill. I had enough trouble trying to learn how to figure out new builds on my own.

Mods

I started this playthrough with a bunch of mods because the first one we kept “pure” and unmodded. I went a little mod-happy because once I popped the seal, I just kept adding things. Some of them were things that simply made quality of life easier (buffs lasting for longer, better displays, etc), some were cosmetic (different camp outfits, dye colors, and there are several decisions your character can make that will leave their features physically changed, and I wanted to keep my character how I designed her), and some made the gameplay much easier (infinite elixirs, uncapped inspiration points, etc.)

I consider the higher carrying weight a quality of life issue because I WILL keep going back and carrying the items — this just saves me a few stubborn trips.

One of the big mods that made the game much easier was the “Adjustable Party Limit.” It was not chosen to make the game easier, but because one of my favorite things in RPGs is the banter among companions. More companions meant more banter, with different possible permutations, sometimes with multiple characters.

The problem was that, despite the fact that Bill and I chose the mods simultaneously and specifically to work with cross play (“okay, I’m on page 2, row 4”), many of them did NOT work with cross play. Something something different updates versions for PC vs console something something. But it did mean that I would have to turn off several of the mods in order to play with Bill. Some of these were negligible, but some were annoying. For instance, one of the mods was to have different camp clothing, which meant whenever I had to suddenly turn them off, my characters would be naked. In my next session, if I turned the mod back on, I’d have to go back to the specific vendors to purchase them and re-dye them all over again. Gear that was equipped from the ‘extra encounters’ mod would disappear, which was less cosmetic and more problematic. Doable, but annoying. The constant turning on and off the mods also seemed to trigger more random bugs scattered through the game. The action/spell slots set up in each character’s wheels would get shifted around, sometimes having the very basic “melee attack” moved all the way back to wheel 4 in Siberia. If an enemy made me drop a weapon mid-battle, sometimes it merged into the ground Excalibur-style and I would not be able to pick it up again afterward.

It also meant that it became impossible to tell if something was happening because it was Tactician mode or because it was a bug or because Bill was joining for some sessions. Which happened a lot. At a couple of points, the game straight up would just crash every single time I tried to travel between two waypoints.

Super annoying, and I’m not sure how to get around this. I had thought that choosing the same mods would be able to make it work, but alas.

Tactician Mode

Due to the mod issue, as well as wanting to see what I remembered on my own, this game was much more self sufficient than 1/14. I still sometimes texted Bill for advice (”hey where was this magical item found again?”) but I wanted to do mostly on my own. There were decision points that I made in 1/14 that I wanted to make differently in 2/14.5, since I wanted to get more of those 17,000 endings and all that.

However, some of the mods made the game a bit too easy on balanced mode. These included increasing the level cap to level 20, and increasing the XP gained. This did make the game more FUN because I leveled up more so I had more opportunity to try different multiclassing, but it made my characters overpowered in comparison.

I play mainly for story and typically stay on whatever the ‘normal’ mode is. However, my motivation for taking on ‘hard’ mode was not pride. It was very simple: I liked punching things in the face. More and longer battles meant more punching things in the face. So I made the decision to switch to Tactician Mode.

On Tactician mode, the computer starts doing different things. Enemies will use debuffs more often, and stack them. They actually heal each other. They’ll do multi-step processes like throw a grease bottle at you and then set it on fire next turn. Their AC (armor class) is higher, making them harder to hit, and their HP is often triple what it was on explorer mode. Any dice rolls also have a higher DC, making it harder to succeed in persuasion/stealth/etc.

It certainly made the game a lot harder. There was much cursing at the screen. I used short rests more often, and blew through healing potions like the hydration station at the midpoint of a marathon. I still don’t think I’ve figured out strategy as well — most people will use multiple steps and laying out traps. I think I only succeed out of attrition and decent builds. Still, it was fun, and I will continue this into playthrough 3. To make it more difficult, I will probably take out some of the mods that made things easy, and just have the basic ones I like.

Gameplay

Since I fully intended to have more Astarion this time around, I had to learn how to use my rogue properly.

I was pretty good at the lockpicking, but the stealth attacking is not my style. I don’t usually rage quit but the stealthing made it happen. Also, most rogues apparently sneak attack long-distance from darkness, but I just can’t get away from the melee fighting. I did have him end up being a rapid-action DPS, with at least four attacks a turn, and rolling criticals on 16+ Pretty sweet!

Bill and I specced Lae’zel as an Arcane Archer, something I was very hesitant about because she seems so in your face, but worked out well. At first, she did not seem to work very well despite giving her a high dexterity score (unlike melee weapons, archers use dexterity as their attack modifier), but then Bill figured out that she also needed a high intelligence score because her arrows are considered spells. Once she was re-specced, she became the beast we normally expect, and stayed in my party almost the entire time.

My ex-darling Karlach (another playthrough, my love, I swear) was done as a Giant barbarian specializing in thrown weapons. This build was very simple, a little OP, and extremely fun. It’s hilarious watching giant Momma K suplexing a giant velvet couch into an enemy’s face. Toward later levels, she got strong enough that she beat up the enemy with its teammate. Not alongside, mind you. WITH the teammate AS the weapon. In fact, at one point, she used the Duke as a thrown weapon against his abductor, much to the chagrin of the Duke’s bodyguard.

I kept Gale around as an evocation wizard. This was new to me because in 1/14, Bill would take over the wizards. I don’t use spellcasters as much for a couple of reasons. One is that I like the up front smashy smash, since I am a barbarian at heart. Two is that I lack the patience to balance jiggering around spell levels so I don’t run out of slots. One of my favorite urban fantasy series (Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews) involves a world where magic and technology ebb and flow in an inverse relationship. The main character, when making a threat to a powerful mage, tells him “your magic works half of the time. My sword works always.” My hero.

That being said, it is very fun to send a giant fireball careening into a group of three or four enemies and kill them all at once. So points to Gale for making me actually like wizards.

Part of the reason that Gale stayed in my party was because Tavelle had a surprising whirlwind romance with him. Bill joined for about a third of the sessions that I was doing, so neither of us had really thought Tavelle would get into a romance, but Gale sort of tripped and fell into her shiny scaly arms.

While I had seen a secondhand romance before (in 1/14, Bellandria had romanced Minthara), this is the first one that I saw beginning to end, with romance scenes, and a full ending. It was sweet, but a little bit weird, like I was intruding on something. I kind of felt like I should back up and close the door. I had also not romanced Gale myself yet, and may be a little bit odd when I do so in the future, almost like flirting with a guy that a friend had already called dibs on. He does seem rather sweet, and different compared to how he comes off as a non-romanced Companion, which we will see in Raelia’s romance as well.

 

Differences in my gameplay

Since I had the first playthrough out of the way, I felt like I could use my second one to branch out a bit.

In 1/14, I sold any items I wasn’t using. I didn’t want to keep track of multiple different magical items, and I was afraid of running out of money, so if it wasn’t something I could use, I sold it. This became a problem in late game because I started re-speccing my characters into other classes, and realized that I was missing certain gear that would have worked for them. So in 2/14.5, I did the opposite. Anything weapon/armor that had a magical component, I sent to camp, which led to a dragon hoard at the end of the game, most of which didn’t get touched anyway.

2/14.5 also started on balanced mode, which gave me the option to multiclass, meaning that I could have my characters be more than one class. Now having done this, I don’t know how I lived without it! I had originally thought D&D somewhat complicated for this option, but it works very well here, and there were characters that went into three different classes to get the best synergy. This shifted me from having very clear cut roles of “Raelia smashes swords into faces, Astarion thief sneaks, Gale does fireballs” into Raelia can sneak in with extra bonus action to smash a flaming sword into someone’s face!” I’ve become much more interested in testing out certain builds, which has gone through into playthrough 3. I even bought WiFi on a plane flight I was in so that I could continue typing up builds. I might be a bit obsessed.

 

Companions

Bill has slandered me a couple of times now by saying that I don’t like certain companions because they kept secrets from me. That’s not exactly true — I’m not so entitled as to think that strangers need to trust me with their close secrets right off the bat, even going by videogame rules. But I DO take issue with them when their secrets affect me.

In my previous post, I had written about how I had ended up with the ‘ideal’ ending, partially due to Bill’s guidance, but mostly due to what made me feel good about the characters at that time. This time around, I intentionally made different decisions because I wanted to see how it would change them. It isn’t as easy as a binary path, since many of them then have forks even after the Big Decisions are made. Some of these new decisions were with the first fork, some with the others.

The first example of the big ones was regarding Lae’zel, the githyanki fighter, and our very first companion. She starts the game as an ‘angry frog’, a militant zealot, and utterly devoted to their leader. One of the first major decisions of the game takes place among her people (and is an entirely optional quest, which blows my mind). In 1/14, I think I sat there and agonized out loud for about 15 minutes while Bill went to go feed cats or do laundry or something while I hemmed and hawed. This time, I intentionally chose the opposite path, doubling down hard on it.

And it didn’t really change the outcome of that quest, to my great disappointment. I had come to expect so much of the writing that I thought there would be a huge game-altering change. It didn’t. I continued to double down on it, even though it didn’t seem like it made sense. It doesn’t affect the rest of the game, but it does definitely affect her final plotline, possibly even to a fatal extent, and again, much ‘worse’ than in 1/14.

For each Companion, they tend to have a major split in their storyline, and then a smaller fork in each split. I still had Shadowheart turn away from Shar (who I honestly just think is garbage) and chose the other path in her smaller fork. I didn’t necessarily agree with it, but I wanted to see what would happen. It did turn out to be less awful than I thought, although not as ideal as 1/14. I suppose this means that I’ll have to take the dark path in my next playthrough to see what happens, and I am not looking forward to it.

Another big change is that when I hit Act 3, I ran full speed to get Minsc as soon as possible. People who have played Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 will recognize the name, and this legacy character is a Companion in BG3. I haven’t played the prior games, but even without them, I FUCKING LOVE THIS DUDE. He is absolutely hilarious, has some of the best banter in the game, and I genuinely cannot tell if he is for real or just out of his goddamn gourd. He’s simple, straightforward, righteous, and enthusiastic about the applying of feet to buttocks. As barbarian as you can be without being a barbarian.

He does not have a character arc, because ostensibly, you only pick him up in the last 10% of the game or so, but he has enough personality that I kept him with me all the time. He’s probably at least 25% of the reason that I wanted the adjustable party mod, because I wanted to hear his banter with the rest of the party, and boy, did he not disappoint.

One of the banters I came across that Bill has not (always an achievement when I manage it) involves Minsc and Astarion both being in the party near the docks in the Lower City. Minsc comes across a fishmonger, and starts yelling the following:

Minsc: Astarion! Astarion, FISH!

Astarion: Minsc, please. Slow down. Use your words.

Minsc: Minsc has thought of how you may be a more virtuous vampire! Feast on fish instead! They are made of naught but neck!

Come on. How can I help but to love the guy?

 

The vampire in the room

In my previous playthrough, I didn’t name names but it wasn’t hard to figure out that Astarion was the character I felt incredibly negative toward. I never fully forgave him for trying to feed on me without permission (and then had the audacity to be annoyed that I was mad!) and that was compounded by the fact that he kept trying to push me into making awful decisions that were just as selfish and shallow as he was.

By the time he left the party and told me “I hope you die screaming”, I pretty much felt the same way. My only regret is that I didn’t strip him of all the gear and magical items that he ran off with.

The final trigger for that was a decision where the player can choose to help him gain unspeakable powers, or refuse to help. Astarion was incredibly self-absorbed and callous leading up to that moment, reacting with disgust and dismissal at the innocents affected by his own evil. There was no way I was going to give this sullen toddler with fangs even more power than he already had. I made my decision with the information I was given, and I stand by it. I hope the asshole is hiding in the sewers somewhere, feeding on rats.

However, the consensus on the internet seemed to be that Astarion was the most romanced ‘bb’ of the game. Even real-life people I came across had either romanced him or wanted to romance him. I genuinely did not get it. My only experience with him was the above, and I was much more likely to shove a stake in his heart than romance him. Was I wrong, or were the masses? I resolved to find out.

 

Romance

In my previous playthrough, one of my romances was with Halsin, the big gentle druid with a voice like honey. Halsin is incredibly sweet, genuine, open, and supportive. When he is interested in a relationship, he expresses it, but also says that he doesn’t want it to ruin your friendship, and if it makes you uncomfortable, he can drop it and won’t bring it up again. In a real way, not in a ‘friend-zone’ way. He’s one of the few companions that doesn’t whine about being left at camp. He prioritizes his needs of defeating the shadow curse that has haunted his past for a hundred years, but once he does, he joins your team wholeheartedly and supports your choices, even when he doesn’t personally agree with them. Sure, he doesn’t have a dark and broody complicated backstory, but I’m getting older and don’t have the patience for drama anymore.

Yet the Internet seems to regard him with either neutrality or antipathy. Consensus seems to be that he is boring and doesn’t have enough going for him.

So y’all want the dramatic, self-absorbed, whiny, materialistic pretty boy over the sweet, supportive, independent partner? Just choosing the toxic masculinity entirely?

Y’all need therapy.

So in this playthrough, I intentionally romanced Astarion, because I wanted to see what the fuss was about.

Long story short, I get it.

It isn’t so simple as “oh look he has a tragic backstory — feel bad for him!” I am a big believer that “your trauma is not your fault but it is your responsibility”, and I have come to expect more of BG3 writing, and it delivered. You do learn much more about his trauma and why he turned out the way he did. Sympathy for a character is not enough for me to like them. But more importantly, your relationship actually changes him as a person, as all our close real-life relationships do.

At one point in the game, a scientist asks him to feed on her, in exchange for a powerful permanent buff, a choice that seems straightforward. Vampires like blood, I like getting stronger, win-win! But Astarion smells something off about her blood and doesn’t want to feed on her. You can either convince him to do so, or tell him that he gets to make his own decision. The latter surprises him, because no one had let him make his own decision about his own body before. This is the hinge point upon which his entire romance revolves.

The interesting thing about this to me is that it has nothing to do with sex. In fact, he is open about the fact that he only slept with you to manipulate you into being his ally. Once he actually develops feelings for you, he starts to question the sex entirely. His romance isn’t even about the fact that your character shows love for him. It’s literally about giving someone agency over their own body, and how that changes him.

One very vulnerable scene involves him telling Raelia that he has never felt like he had control over his body and choices before. There are several options that you can respond, and me being ace, I chose the option “it sounds like you need a friend, not a lover”. To me, they aren’t mutually exclusive, and honestly, it really did sound like Astarion needed to learn the value of relationships in general, regardless of romance or sex. I’m a big believer that the foundation to any relationship is genuine friendship.

Afterwards, I realized that that could be seen as the option to quit the romance, and wondered if I had made the wrong choice. But amazingly, the game was able to parse out the nuance of that. Astarion stopped having sex with Raelia, but they remained in a relationship. He still called her darling, he still kissed her, he still continued to grow as they interacted. It simply didn’t involve sex anymore, because he was choosing to figure out his own body and consent first.

Be still, my heart. What incredibly realistic writing.

It wasn’t just one of those things that a game simply doesn’t show certain cutscenes either. When offered to join a threesome, my version of Astarion turns it down because that’s not where his head is at. Then, after being propositioned by Halsin, Raelia asks Astarion if he’d be okay if she enters that relationship. Astarion gives his blessings (he’s refreshingly un-jealous), but asks if it is because he hasn’t slept with her in a while. Both of these situations make it clear that my previous answer didn’t end the romance, but that they simply are not having sex, and that’s just how their relationship is at the moment. What nuance! I am so floored that not only did the writers create a realistic interaction (again, in a character that I was very willing to hate) but one that involved different aspects of intimacy and detail.

When I got to the end of his personal quest, and he comes across the collection of his lifetime of victims, he reacted very differently compared to his counterpart in playthrough 1/14. The first Astarion barely wanted to look at his victims, showed very little remorse, and just wanted to move on. It was part of what made up my mind that I wouldn’t help him ascend. This Astarion, grown and changed throughout the game, having developed genuine love for someone he would have seen as a victim in his previous life, is horrified. To hammer the point home, I kept choosing options that made it clear that this could have been Raelia, a notion that disquieted him further.

I believed both versions of Astarion for the playthroughs that they were in. It wasn’t just that the romance let me as a player learn more about him, but that Astarion 2/14.5 genuinely changed. Our interactions actually grew him as a person.

So when it came time to decide whether or not to help him, Raelia tried to persuade him that he was better than this, but left the choice up to him. And in a move that would have shocked Fey from 1/14, Astarion agreed to relinquish the power, giving up what he had once thought would be true freedom. The next private scene between them is one of the best scenes I’ve come across in the game – vulnerable, realistic, and heartwarming. It really is worth experiencing for yourself. Ultimately, Astarion is glad at the choice he made, and feels ready to have sex with Raelia again, of his own free will and desire.

Jesus, Larian. I was not expecting this. How did you take someone who told me to “die screaming” and actually make me care so much about his growth? How were both of these situations so realistic and believable? How did I get sucked in like a black hole, against my will? Bravo. Truly.

Ultimately, does it change my opinion of his character? Surprisingly, yes. He’s still selfish and shallow. I as Real Angela wouldn’t want to hang out with him. But I understand him better. He’s much more interesting than he was in 1/14, and it is hard to actually watch a well-written character change and grow in front of you, and not feel some sort of connection. So the short answer is that while I still don’t necessarily like him as a person, I am absolutely blown away by the writing of this character and romance.

 

Poly Mod

Speaking of romance, one of the mods I wanted to add was the “polyamory fix” mod. There isn’t really a way to make characters poly, but it removes the ‘jealousy’ aspect programmed into it. As a poly person, I squint suspiciously at this because that’s a very simplistic and inaccurate view of poly, but beggars can’t be choosers.

In theory, this mod should have been great for me. After all, in both of these playthroughs, I intentionally pursued a relationship with Halsin. In actuality, I kind of hated this mod, which surprised me. It was one of the ones that I had to keep turning on and off when Bill joined, so I don’t know if some of my issues were just bugs. While it did give me the option to romance multiple characters, I found that I actually didn’t want to. I don’t know if it was because of how invested I got in the Astarion romance, but when I accidentally ended up in a relationship with Wyll, I found myself feeling awkward and kind of irritated — what was it doing here? I don’t think I actually chose any options to intentionally flirt with him. And Wyll, bless his heart, doesn’t really have much to his romance, comparatively. It’s all very sweet and Bridgerton-esque, but I didn’t feel like there was much that changed in either him or Raelia, unlike the Astarion romance, nor did I get the sweet support that I felt from Halsin. Wyll was just…sort of there as a number, without the emotional attachment. And I don’t think that’s a great way to approach poly.

It also had the unfortunate side effect of messing with the epilogue of the game. Without spoiling too much, after the final battle, your character has a conversation with their romantic partner, deciding what to do with their lives now that the danger is mostly gone. Hilariously, Raelia had this with all three of her partners (and I was only invested in two of them). She told Astarion that she would join him in his next chapter, and gently told Halsin and Wyll that she would see them later if their paths crossed again.

However, at the epilogue party, the game seemed to have gotten confused at how the mod changed things. When she met up again with Halsin, he spoke of missing her and acknowledged that it has been too long since they saw each other. So far, so good, so realistic. But when she went to speak with Astarion (who ostensibly, she had been spending the past six months with, doing [redacted things]), he treated her like a regular teammate that he hadn’t seen in the past six months. This was supposed to be the very end of the game and their storyline together, so it felt like a slap in the face.

Given that I didn’t actually like how it approached multiple relationships (aside from Halsin, where it seems the writers intentionally worked that in), I don’t think I will be using this mod again. It’s great for people who want to see multiple romances and get as many sex scenes as possible, but that’s just not how I want to approach things.

Wrap Up

Mods made the game much more fun, but also significantly buggier. Or maybe we can blame Bill. I did learn that I am able to do Tactician mode, at least with mods. I’ll try decreasing some of the mods next time around to see if I can do a harder version.

I managed to learn a lot from my first playthrough, so I was able to do a good chunk of this one by myself. I did skip several of the quests that I found tedious (collecting body parts and fighting poltergeists), but otherwise, I found that I tended to follow what had been guided in playthrough 1 — I took the same paths to get to the next stages and kept the same NPCs alive, to the point that I forgot there were other options. That’s something I’d like to focus on changing in the next playthrough.

I did get to try several of the other ending options for my Companions, and while I liked some of them, I disliked others. These weren’t even the biggest decision points for the characters, but the smaller ones. Each Companion has a major fork in their road, and then a smaller one after that. My next playthrough is going to lean more heavily into Bad Choices, so we’ll see how that turns out. However, playthrough 2/14.5 has reinforced for me that my choices in 1/14 (and how much of it was guided by an invisible omniscience hand, we can’t tell) gave me a ‘better’ outcome than some of these.

It was funny to me because the thing I was most looking forward to having fun with (all the different mods) ended up disappointing me in the end or making the game more difficult. Whereas the thing I was only doing out of sheer curiosity and the desire to prove the internet wrong (romancing Astarion) turned out to be the thing that affected me the most in this playthrough. The universe works in funny ways.