BG3 es fini and the Everquest Beastlord Build

People of the Friendly Necromancer!  In the past week I have wrapped up two (count 'em, TWO) play-throughs of Baulder's Gate 3. What a fantastic game. Even now I'm feeling compelled to start up a new character download a few mods, and do this all again! But no . . . no . . . self-control is necessary here. I have some Wizard101 and Path of Exile 2 in my very near future.

OK, so first, my buddy Dylan and I finished up our playthrough with Moonstar and Avantador. It was a pretty interesting journey where we crashed through the game, failing all kinds of encounters, and skipping all kinds of side content to reach the final conflict. We even failed our final battle once. We even failed the trip up to the final battle once, but it was nothing we couldn't overcome on our second try. 

The best Firework Show Baulder's Gate has ever seen!

To make matters even better, Moonstar and Shadowheart finally hit the sack together. You have no idea all Dylan went through to riz that character up.

Blush!

Unfortunately Laezel left me and went to be a slave to her queen. I tried to stop her, but she was all Marty McFly about her density, I mean, her destiny.

Bye Laezel! Enjoy servitude!

I was able to take everything I learned from the playthrough with Moonstar and Avantador and use it to make my trip through the finale a perfect trip with Volt. I had gathered a MEGA ton of heroes and helpers, which made everything easy with the dragon fight. I mean, it wasn't without a few challenges, but without my playthrough with Dylan, I wouldn't have known the best use of Shadowheart's Divine Intervention comes right before you trash the netherbrain.

Bye Bye Giant Brain!

As you may recall, Volt was my experiment in building an Everquest Beastlord in Baulder's Gate 3. I'd say it was pretty successful.  To those ends, he’s a glorious 2 monk, 5 Ranger, 5 Cleric.

Similarities to Everquest Beastlord:

• He’s got a pet. When I call a pet out, it’s typically a Bear and it’s awesome at goading attacks. For a while I was even using special demonspirit gloves that would give him extra resistance to pretty much everything, which was great.

At fifth level, your pet gets introduced to helmet hair

• He’s got a slow spell and heals. This was a main requirement for me and is why I spec’d him all the way to 5th level cleric in the Domain school. That’s how he’s sporting his slow spell. It’s pretty epic.

Such a good debuff

• He’s a dual wielder with martial arts. Having two weapons and mixing it up in melee with your pet was always what set the Everquest Beastlord apart from the other pet classes (necromancer and Mage specifically).

If only Everquest models looked this nice!

Where things start to get different is just the nature of Baulder’s Gate 3 and the D&D gameplay in general is as follows:

• Use of psionics. The illythid tadpoles I add to my character’s brain are giving me all kinds of psionic abilities. One thing that’s actually pretty cool is the ability to shapeshift into a Displacer Beast. I suppose the argument could be made that the ability to shapeshift into a beast is very much in line with a few of the AA abilities in the Beastlord’s repertoire.
• Scrolls and potions. I mean, scrolls and potions give you access to every spell in the game. You’re not going to see a beastlord casting Disintegrate and Firewall in Everquest. On the other hand, Haste Spores are very in-line with casting haste, and poison being applied to your weapon strikes is also very “Everquest beastlordy.” Again, you could argue these things make up the gaps.
• Dragonborn aren’t Iksar. I mean, if I could play as a lizardman in Baulder’s Gate 3 I probably would. There actually is a mod that changes Dragonborn into Lizardmen, which doesn't seem horrible -- just not my pointy iskar from Everquest.
• Bears aren’t a good pet for Iksar (although they are for Barbarians). In Everquest, your Iksar pet is a little dino puppy/stegosaurus thing. Rangers in BG3 get your choice of bears, wolves, falcons, spiders, and boars (I believe). Again, there is a mod that will allow you to get a Dilophosaurus pet at level 7, but that wouldn’t work with my build anyway. I suppose the argument could be made that the flexibility of the type of pet you can summon is way cooler than Everquest's system anyway.

So there you have it. I'm very happy with the amount of value and fun I've gotten from Baulder's Gate 3. If you're concerned about the mature things you can encounter like Moonstar rizzing up Shadowheart, there's a toggle for that so you can turn it off.

Overall, I really love this game.

Happy Dueling!