Recently, I started my second campaign in Baldurs Gate in addition to the campaign I play with my wife in co-op. My wife and I opted for the easiest difficulty in our playthrough since neither if us ever played similar game.

This time I felt like it would be such a breeze since I already know a bit more about the game and DnD in general. I opted for the balanced mode with my new character and started going through Act I and boy oh boy do I get wrecked almost everywhere. Multiple of my characters already died and I had to revive them.

Characters

Including Gale, which in turn triggered cool mini-quest to revive him, but the magic aura around his dead body killed Astarion multiple times.

I feel very scared going into each combat and trying to plan as much in advance as possible (keep in mind I mostly know what awaits me there, because I’ve gone through Act I already).

Where I got wrecked

I got wrecked at the church before you get to Whithers, I got wrecked by the hyenas and gnolls by the caravan road, I got absolutly wrecked by the Paladins of Tar and

I just don’t know what am I doing wrong.

My party

I play as high elf paladin and most of my encounters so far I’ve had Astarion, Gale, and Shadow in my party. I feel like the only actually useful member is Astarion. I probably don’t know how to utilize Gale well enough and my Tav paladin just feels like a paper-thin wall between the enemy and the rest of the party.

Are these early encounters in Act I intentionally challenging so that the game “force-teaches” you to utilize everything at your disposal and will it get easier later on or am I just on the wrong path with my character and my party? Honestly, I can’t imagine going through the goblin camp in this state.

  • @Azzu@lemm.eeEnglish
    7•4 months ago

    I mean depends on what you mean by playing “wrong”. If you mean non-optimal, then of course, because almost no one is. If you survive each encounter with at least one alive, then you’re not going game over though, and it’s trivial to resurrect the rest of your characters, just need some money. Perfectly fine way to play the game.

    If you want some general tips on how to play fights better:

    • Always always always focus the target that has the worst damage/survivability ratio first, and only that. Enemy wizards. Or ranged enemies. Or small, fast critters. Each enemy does its full damage no matter what its hp is. 10 half-HP enemies are much worse for you than 5 full-HP ones and 5 dead ones. That said, still use your AOE spells with your wizards etc, but then immediately target only one of those damaged ones to go down first.
    • Each combat participant has a threat radius around it, which is the radius in which they can deal damage to something. If the threat radius of 4 enemies overlaps on one of your characters, that character is in big trouble. But in turn, if the threat radius of 4 of your characters overlaps on one enemy that enemy is in huge trouble. So, always create situations in which all your characters can do damage to an enemy, but they can’t do the same to you. For example, positioning your ranged characters on a cliff could make them immune to a bunch of melee enemies and deliberately not running your melees in, waiting for the enenies to come to you and using (sub-optimal compared to melee) range attacks on your melees until then.
    • Use healing word and throwing of potions to pick up downed characters. Don’t heal before they go down, it’s mostly not worth it. If your bonus action is not used, keep drinking healing potions with it in hard fights. If you can, spread around the damage on your characters, like I just said, 4 half-HP characters are damage-wise exactly as strong as 4 full-HP ones, but 2 full-HP and 2 downed ones are much much worse.
    • Use your long rest abilities, like spell slots, liberally. There’s enough resources laying around to rest often.