TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Baldur's Gate III

Go To

Subpages


    open/close all folders 

    A-C 
  • Accidental Innuendo: As part of Gale's resurrection protocol, one of the steps involves playing a flute to summon a mephit. Once you have the flute and try to play it, the narrator informs you that "Gale's magic flute is ready to be played."
  • Adorkable:
    • Karlach, despite being the barbarian of the party and having an infernal engine in her chest, is a bubbly woman who enjoys dancing with herself when idle, and will crack jokes when doing certain tasks and activities, such as whispering "Entering Stealth Mode" when set to hide/sneak. She's also a huge fangirl of Minsc and Jaheira, and begins squeeing with excitement upon meeting and joining forces with them. On top of that, romancing her has her just so overjoyed with emotion when you start expressing interest in her, bringing out even more dorky qualities.
    • Shadowheart, which becomes very apparent when romancing her. She attempts to flirt when you start dialogue with her but quickly admits she's bad at it, privately enjoys reading, flowers, and animals, and if you gift her a night orchid she'll attempt to convince you it's dangerously poisonous to touch with your bare hand before immediately declaring "joking!" while giving you finger guns. Even the love scene on a good playthrough, involving going skinny dipping and sex on the beach, will include her squealing about how cold the water is, squirm after sitting on a pebble, then follow it with turning "sandcastles" and "swimming lessons" into code for sex, all of which makes her just extremely endearing.
    • Gale loves his books, his cat, his mother, and infodumping about the Weave. He all but nerdgasms upon reaching Sorcerous Sundries bookstore, and he's fond of puns and chess references. For all his erudite speech and witty asides, he's pretty terrible at actually flirting, often derailing into Gibberish of Love about the player's (unwashed!) smell or how much of a turn-on it is to watch them in battle. Some fans joke that Gale is so utterly dorky in these moments that he stack overflows into being incredibly charismatic. It also helps that once Gale finally gets it together in the romance department, he turns out to be incredibly loyal and devoted (even remaining just as ridiculously in love if his partner becomes a mind flayer) and is just generally a giant enthusiastic dork about the relationship.
    • Halsin is generally calm and collected, along with being well-known for his sexual prowess, but if romanced he becomes surprisingly nervous when he and the player character are about to have sex for the first time. The player can even lampshade this, with one dialogue option outright calling him adorable for it.
  • Allegedly Optimistic Ending: Karlach's endings were severely criticized for being far too depressing despite being presented as a somewhat optimistic tone. Either she explodes from her engine being overcooked just after managing to get out of Avernus, she becomes a mind flayer where she slowly loses if not her soul, then her identity all the while having to eat brains to sustain herself, or she goes back to the very place that tormented her for 10 years. None of her endings felt satisfying in any way especially for someone as nice as her and even though it's presented as a Bittersweet Ending like the rest of her companions, to the fans though, it just comes off as a flat-out Downer Ending. The backlash to this led to one of her ending having a scene being added of her and Wyll and/or the player character readying to journey to Avernus together, with the epilogue later revealing that Karlach has found a way to permanently stabilize her mechanical heart.
  • Alt-itis: With 11 race options (some of which drastically change dialogue), 12 classes (and 46 subclasses between them), and several more specific build options (tadpole powers, weapon loadouts, known spells, etc.) it can be very difficult to play the game to the end without getting distracted by the prospect of a new character.
  • And You Thought It Would Fail:
    • While they weren't necessarily expecting a failure, Larian was expecting it to be a niche success for a certain type of audience, not helped by the delayed release leaving some people to ignore it. The fact that it blew up with other demographics into one of the best selling and most critically acclaimed* game of 2023 took them completely by surprise.
    • The initial reveal was met with a lot of skepticism; it was originally revealed in the E3 2019 panel for Google Stadia, which would be defunct by the time the game got a full release in 2023. Furthermore, it wasn't being made by BioWare, and the franchise had been dormant for almost twenty years. A lot was stacked up against it, which made its success even more surprising for the skeptics.
  • Angst? What Angst?:
    • You can kill both Elminster and Tara right in front of Gale and he'll barely show any reaction (let alone disapproval) over the fact that the player has just killed his closest friends for no reason other than For the Evulz.
    • If the player chooses to hand over Shadowheart to Viconia, none of your companions show any grievances over the fact that their leader betrayed and sold out a lifelong friend particularly given that in the previous act, they managed to convince her to rebel against Shar's worship so for them to not react over the sudden backstab and make Shadowheart a slave again feels completely jarring. Karlach in particular, despite being under the exact same scenario that led to her slavery in hell, only reacts with mild acceptance rather than complete outrage at what her leader had done especially given her more appropriate reactions if they either choose to massacre the tieflings or if Wyll was inavertedly dragged to the Hells.
    • If the player makes the Dark Urge a morally-good character who tries to resist their murderous impulses (and at least managed to suppress it at the absolute worst moments), Bhaal will kill the Dark Urge for their defying his will and "their rightful place" as his Dark Messiah. You would think that the party and especially their romanced companion would have some kind of reaction, especially after Withers revives them, but they barely act as if they didn't just get a front-row seat of the Player Character dying.
    • Another companion who can be lost with little reaction: If Lae'zel is on the Orpheus path, she will naturally oppose his assimilation by the Emperor or an illithid Tav/Karlach during your final scenes in the Astral Plane, and can potentially pick a fight to the death with the entire party over it. If she is killed at this point, there is no reaction or comment from any of your companions that they were forced to put down a heretofore loyal companion.
    • If you choose to turn Karlach into a mind flayer, she's over the moon about it since it means her infernal engine isn't going to kill her anymore and she doesn't have to go back to Avernus, having to eat brains for the rest of her life a mere afterthought.
  • Ass Pull:
    • If an Origin Shadowheart is unable to persuade Lae'zel to back down, the latter will take the Artifact by force only for it suddenly explode and kill her. At no point in the game was there any indication that the Artifact is capable of retaliating against any potential thieves and given how much of a Control Freak the inhabitant inside it is, it begs the question as to why they simply didn't do the same to anyone that attempted to steal it such as the Githyankis or The Absolute.
    • The Emperor siding with the Netherbrain in Act 3. If the player chooses to free Orpheus, the Emperor declares he has "no choice" but to side with the Netherbrain and departs immediately. While the game makes it clear that the Emperor will do whatever it takes to survive and warns the player of the consequences for freeing Orpheus, him siding with the Netherbrain has been criticized for not being telegraphed or foreshadowed enough to the player (as the few instances of foreshadowing can be avoided until the last choice), not helped by the game not allowing the player to question the Emperor about why they would do so. Some players also feel it runs contrary to its established characterization as someone valuing freedom away from the Netherbrain, given how everything else it does is specifically trying to stop the Netherbrain at all costs. His decision to defect is done directly after the Netherbrain says everything about the Emperor was All According to Plan, so either his defection was also according to plan, or he just gave it an advantage it didn't count on.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • The Emperor is the most noteworthy example of this in the game among fans. It's generally agreed on two things: The Emperor is not an unambiguously heroic creature, and almost all of his actions have some degree of calculation behind them. However, everything else about him is thrown in the air—particularly, his morality tends to turn into a massive debate. His fans see him as an extremely well-written example of a grey area character who for all his flaws has his share of redeeming qualities. However, his detractors see him as an unforgivable Manipulative Bastard and tend to view him as the outright evil choice between siding with him or Orpheus. There is also the fierce debate as to whether the Emperor's past self is either the parasite or Balduran, with fans claiming bits of Balduran's soul/mind survived ceremorphosis while his detractors claim that he's merely the parasite that thinks he is Balduran. Finally, the topic of whether the Emperor is driven by emotion or logic in some scenes is often discussed. Particularly the scene where you react harshly to his advances. To detractors, this is a mask-off moment where he shows the depths of his cruelty and how his previous kindness was merely a farce meant to manipulate them; to fans, this moment is him trying to hurt the player for emotionally wounding him, and is using intimidation to mask his previous attempt at vulnerability with them.
    • While there's no denying that they're overshadowed by Raphael, whether or not the Chosen of the Absolute themselves are well-written antagonists is a matter of debate. Supporters sees them as well-developed characters whose constant presence throughout the story, relationship to the companions and the voice actor's performance made them compelling and legitimately threatening adversaries that made them not only entertaining to watch but also incredibly satisfying to take down. Detractors on the other hand, sees them as one-dimensional cartoonish villains whose heinous acts made it hard to take them seriously, having too little screentime to establish their character as well as being utterly incompetent buffoons whose attempts at world domination always fail. While Ketheric's reception overall remains positively-received, Gortash and Orin ended up having mixed reception from the fans.
  • Breather Boss: Sovereign Glut is this as you can position him before speaking to him. When combat starts, it's pretty easy to use Eldtrich Blast to send him off the ledge into a chasm or to the ground for massive fall damage.
  • Breather Level: The Moonrise Prison is one, when trying to free the prisoners (which may include Minthara). The layout of the place is such that the party only has to face one or two opponents at a time if they don't go around grabbing unwanted attention, and the reward for freeing the prisoners can be quite significant.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The Myrkulites found in the Moonrise Towers prison during the assault on the Towers is this, as it is easy to completely miss them. The focus of the assault is to reach the rooftop, and the prison is located underground. Even after the assault is complete, they will remain at the prison and not attempt to force their way out.
  • Broken Aesop:
    • In Gale's questline, if he is selected as the player character or if unromanced as a companion, the aesop of "godhood is bad" when he becomes the God of Ambition is rather unambiguous. However, as a romanced companion, Gale can extend godhood to his partner, which makes a very big difference to said partner's situation, and more so if said partner was Astarion or Karlach. Accepting godhood as Gale's partner is by far the less morally ambiguous way for Astarion to get rid of his status as a vampire spawn (as well as gain power), and for Karlach to get rid of her infernal engine.
    • Also in Gale's questline, the aesop of "chasing power is bad" is contradicted by the fact that Mystra only meets with him — and thus can only offer him a cure for the orb — if he reads the Annals of Karsus. Gale becoming fixated on the crown when he first sees it may seem like Aesop Amnesia, but even if so, pursuing more knowledge about it is the only path that has the potential to save his life and end in a cure.
  • Broken Base:
    • Astarion fans are heavily split on the romantic ending with Astarion if he ascends. This debate became an absolute wildfire after after a certain patch to the ending scene of the romance. It's meant to be clear that if Astarion ascends, he is essentially on track to become like Cazador, his abuser. He becomes much more forceful and dominating towards the player character, and originally when he forces them to kneel and kiss him, their face shows clear discomfort. However, after a patch, their expression is changed from uneasy to ecstatic. This set off a huge argument between those who liked the change since it made the dynamic between an ascended Astarion and the player character seem less abusive and those who disliked the change because it made the dynamic between the two seem less abusive, which they argued at best defeated the entire point of Ascended Astarion's ending for the sake of another happy ending and at worst fetishized abuse, which felt wrong given how Astarion's whole arc as an abuse victim under Cazador was treated with utmost seriousness. It got so heated that the official forums introduced a temporary ban on all discussion of Astarion's possible endings.
    • Fans tend to debate often about Gale's relationship with Mystra, specifically when it comes to who is truly to blame for their falling out. Gale is one of the more good-aligned companions, but he's also established as a flawed individual who made serious mistakes in his relationship with Mystra, and is now dealing with the consequences. Even then, some of his fans tend to downplay, ignore, or even outright reject the notion that he ever did anything wrong in his relationship with Mystra. That being said, Mystra's actions in the aftermath show that she's not free of fault either: she orders Gale to destroy the Absolute by self-detonating, even though the Non-Standard Game Over confirmed that her idea would have ended in untold disaster, especially after Act 3 reveals that her priority was not the safety of the mortals in Faerûn but the destruction of any and all Karsite artifacts, namely the orb inside Gale and the crown on the elder brain. All in all, the game shows that both Gale and Mystra brought deep flaws to their relationship, such that it deconstructs the Divine Date trope, but this is overlooked by some fans who seek a black-and-white villain in that story.
    • The game incorporating the equally controversial houserule that Natural 20s are always successful on all dice rolls (as opposed to having special effects on attack rolls and death saving throws) and Natural 1s are always failures. Those who like the rule argue that it creates interesting emergent gameplay scenarios that broaden and deepen play, encourages the player to let everyone make tests instead of writing off anyone but specialists, and that, most of the time, 20s were going to succeed and 1s fail anyway so the actual effect is minimal. Those who hate it argue that ensuring failure is unnecessarily punishing for the few classes who can be competently built to succeed on some checks even if they rolled poorly (rogues especially suffer from this heavily reducing the power of their Expertise class feature before Reliable Talent comes online at the end of the game, and spells like guidance and bless or class features like Bardic Inspiration lose a bunch of their potency when there’s a flat 5% chance that their benefits can never turn a failure into a success), and that the game can sometimes permanently kill off characters (including party members!) or pinch off entire questlines on the outcome of these rolls, so enforcing a flat 5% chance of failure clashes horribly with the computer being the one running the game, rather than a human GM who could use their imagination or accept player creativity to contain the damage, which already has an entry under Scrappy Mechanic.
  • Captain Obvious Reveal:
    • That Astarion is a vampire (apart from the fact that this was spoiled by promotional materials before the game even released). If his entire demeanor and wardrobe doesn't immediately scream "vampire," the player can also see two clear puncture marks on his neck during cutscenes. The game itself lampshades this: if Astarion "confesses" to the player that he is a vampire, one of the player's possible responses is, "Well... yes. Obviously."
    • Even as soon as it was first revealed, people were already correctly calling that the Dark Urge is a Bhaalspawn. Even though the developers stated that the Dark Urge's secrets would have to be found once the game came out, the signs were everywhere. Even the Dark Urge's introduction at character creation screams the reveal, with the blood drops appearing at their feet, an instantly recognizable element of Bhaal's icon.
    • That the Absolute is an elder brain. It's obvious, as what else would have such close ties to mind flayer tadpoles? That said, the real twist is that it's actually a Puppet King, enslaved to its "chosen" - and it was using you the whole time to free itself.
    • Fans of the previous games in the series will probably have guessed whose face lies beneath the Mother Superior's mask long before she demands Shadowheart to speak her name: Viconia DeVir.
  • Catharsis Factor: When doing an Origin playthrough as Astarion, you can enact a cruel act of revenge to Cazador. You can intimidate Cazador into begging for his life, carve the ritual runes into his back, and stab him to death, paying back Cazador all the torture and abuse he inflicted upon Astarion without Astarion having to lose his humanity or kill the rest of the vampire spawn. It's so satisfying that many players wished that they could have talked Astarion out of ascending after the runes are carved on Cazador's back.
  • Cheese Strategy:
    • The usage of doors linking two separate areas to conduct hit-and-run attacks using a single character, to take out numerous enemies with low HP. This strategy is best seen in the Goblin Camp and Temple of Jergal against the rival adventurers. The cheese part is due to the fact that the game considers combat to have ended when leaving an area. Combined with the Assassin sub-classnote  and even Anders will fall as long as the party has another member in range to keep him in combat.
    • Within the Gauntlet of Shar, during the party's conversation with Balthazar outside his chambers, Dark Justiciars start to teleport in, triggering a fight. With a Knock spell, the party can open up his chambers and drag Balthazar into the fight. There is another room close to the area, where the rest of the party can hide in (with the doors closed). Eventually, the Dark Justiciars will overwhelm Balthazar's entourage and the only danger of this strategy is that the Dark Justiciars may also overwhelm the party if one or two portals are not closed earlier.
    • The Gauntlet itself became infamous for this over time. The Self-Same Trial can be made significantly easier by unequipping everything to cripple all of the shadow doubles, while the Soft-Step Trial can be trivialized with invisibility. Larian has tried to cheese-proof the Faith-Leap Trial by making it so using Jump, Fly, Misty Step, or Dimension Door will instantly kill you, but that only kicks in after the trial has begun; there's nothing stopping the player from separating the party and using those to get to the end platform before someone else activates the trial.
    • If you bring Astarion to the fight with Cazador (which you probably will, given as it's the centre of his story) Astarion will be captured and placed at the end of the battle arena, leaving your party a man down until you get someone over to him, past all the enemies, and free him with the "Help" action. However the fight won't start until a member of your party comes in range and Cazador and his minions will ignore summoned creatures. One such summon, the dog Scratch, can use "Help." So you can run him up to where Astarion is going to be, put him in stealth so he won't be in initiative order, then free Astarion immediately.
    • There's also the alternative option of doing the opposite: having your party approach Cazador and leaving Astarion a few feet back so as to not trigger his capture scene. This allows you to bring him into the fight immediately after it starts without having to save him from the ritual.
    • For the battle underneath the House of Grief, instead of fighting the Sharrans at the foyer, retreat to the corridor where the entrance of the hall is located. While there, set up area-of-effect spells which damage and/or slow enemies down. Then, wait for the Sharrans to run up and gather at the chock point while the party continues to pelt them with AOE attacks.
    • For the final battle against the Netherbrain, it has an reaction attack, Retributive Brainquakenote . The cheese comes when the party stacks some runepowder note /smokepowder barrels, smokepowder grenades and other explosives note  on platforms next to it, cast Globe of Invulnerability as protection, and just tap the brain. The (hilarious) danger with this method is that if too much explosives were used, the game crashes.
    • If you want some good early-game Exp, once you've made Commander Zhalk drop his sword, you can then help chip away at him until both he and the Mind Flayer are fairly low on health. Then use the nearby Nautiloid Tanks and Shadowheart's Firebolt to ensure that they both die in the same turn (since if one survives, they'll target you next, and that's a much harder fight to win). If you're willing to get really cheesy in exchange for even more Exp, you can completely trivialize the Cambions by having one character stay behind in the room with the Sacrificed Cultists while everyone else enters the Helm, begin combat with said Cultists, trap at least one of them in an adjacent room using chests, and then hide before switching back to the Helm battle until the Cambions spawn; if the solo character is positioned just right, they can attack the closest Cambion with either a light crossbow or a ranged spell attack without entering combat with them, allowing you to take as much time as needed to kill them.
  • Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: Baldur's Gate III is well-known for its immense and active modding community. For players wanting to experience more of Dungeons & Dragons within the confines of the game, there are a plethora of mods that add new features and player options from the tabletop game (whether from official sources or homebrewed) such as spells, classes, subclasses, feats, magic items, etc. There are also mods that provide several quality-of-life changes such as unofficial bug fixes, adjustments to the game’s UI, and extensive translation for non-English speaking players. And given the explicit nature of the game, there’s definitely no shortage of Not Safe for Work mods, either. In February 2024, Larian Studios had announced plans for a first-party modding solution, including an official modding toolkit as well as bringing mods to consoles, to arrive later that year.
  • Common Knowledge:
    • Many people believe Omeluum is at risk of enthrallment once it gives its ring of mind-shielding to you, and that the ring actually does protect the wearer from elder brains noticing them. This is despite the fact that Omeluum clearly states that its arcane talent is what allows it to resist enthrallment, the ring's description says it only protects against charm, and the story's events regarding the Absolute do not change regardless if you wear the ring or not. If Omeluum is saved in Act III, it will outright tell the player that the ring does not hide you from elder brains and that it lied about the ring's effects so you wouldn't give up hope on a cure.
    • That Lenore must have died from the bulette she was trying to tame. Many cite the Slippery Chainmail you can get from the bulette's body upon killing it as proof of her being consumed. However, that chainmail was only in the bulette's body during Early Access; now, it's found in a chest. Furthermore, she managed to get to Baldur's Gate before she went missing, never returning to or near her tower. Thus, it's never confirmed she died to the bulette or if she's dead at all, leaving her ultimate fate a mystery.
  • Complete Monster: See here.
  • Contested Sequel: A truly weird example, in that it's not Baldur's Gate III's merits as a game that people dispute (it's a famous multi-award-winning title after all), but its merits as a sequel. Fans of the original Baldur's Gate games are generally pretty unhappy with the attempts to link III to the original trilogy, citing copious Happy Ending Override bordering on character-assassination for multiple members of the original cast and the Bhaalspawn plot elements feeling tacked-on and confusing in the context of their Myth Arc. Even more recent fans of Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus have complained that it "canonizes" the boring (and honestly kind of depressing, if not as bad as it could be) status-quo ante bellum ending from that module. While some players do like the feeling of continuing the lineage of previous events in the setting, the sentiment that the plot elements that make the game a sequel are overall some of the weakest parts of the story and don't really need to be there is a very common one.
  • Continuity Lock-Out:
    • While playing Blood in Baldur's Gate isn't required and you can experience the whole game without knowing the full story of the Dark Urge and Sceleritas, the prequel does explain who the Dark Urge was and their relationship with Sceleritas.
    • The game seems to expect that the player has played the Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus module, as many of the things it references from it are given vague explanations or references that only make sense if you have played the module. Zevlor for example mentions a broad overview of Elturel ending up in Avernus, but said overview is vague enough that someone unfamiliar with the module wouldn't understand how it happened, who was responsible for it (outside of Zariel), and how they came back to the material plane. Karlach especially can be hurt by this, since a lot of her character is tied to things the module brings up or discusses, but are not given proper explanations in the game (infernal war machines, Zariel, etc).
    • To a lesser extent, players unfamiliar with the original games in the series will be lost as to why the true identity of the Mother Superior is treated with such drama and tension, due to Viconia DeVir having no role or relevance in this game until her reveal, whereas those who are familiar will find the situation incredibly shocking (although not necessarily in a good way).
  • Creepy Cute:
    • The intellect devourers. In D&D lore, these foul aberrations are walking brains with tentacles and freakish clawed legs ritualistically extracted from unfortunate mind flayer thralls, and hunt by devouring and replacing a target's mind to control them as a meat puppet. However, on the nautiloid, all of them are non-hostile as long as they think you're a thrall, choosing to scuttle about minding their own business, and may even toss you passing words of encouragement. The very first intellect devourer you encounter in game can be bloodily and messily extracted from the lobotomized skull of a still-living human. When it speaks, it does so with a bizarre speech pattern that constantly and abruptly changes in pitch, speed, timbre, and volume. And yet... it immediately thanks you for saving its life and declares you a "FRIEND!", joining as a temporary follower for the rest of the tutorial. If Us survives the tutorial, you can later find it caged in an enemy lair. Upon its rescue, it proceeds to call you FRIEND again in its creepily endearing speech pattern, and happily rejects its former masters to join you as a (pretty strong) summonable companion for the rest of the game, taking the form of a cat when around other people.
      Intellect Devourer: You are beautiful.
    • Shovel, a quasit familiar. Despite being a fiend who loves all kinds of violent, immoral acts, she's both amusingly ineffective as a monster and is endearingly excited at seeing/being in the presence of a dragon. She will also help you for whatever duration of time her summoning lasts.
    • Squire, the Thorm family dog. She's an undead hound mostly made of bone, dried skin, and magic, giving her an eerie appearance. Despite this, if you use Speak with Animals and convince her you're not a threat, you will find that she's still the loyal, dutiful dog that she was in life. She'll accept being pet if content enough.
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • After defeating the Absolute, depending on your choices throughout the game, Lae'zel may elect to part ways with the group. You can convince her to remain in Baldur's Gate with you because you're her friend or even her lover, and she will agree... only for you to have the chance to immediately leave to take Karlach back to Avernus. Origin Gale can pull a similar stunt, romancing Lae'zel, convincing her to stay on Faerun, and then when meeting with Mystra immediately trying to get back together with her as loversnote .
    • Astarion being forced to eat rats by his former master? Horrible. The dryad asking during the love test what Astarion desires more than anything in the world, with the player having the option to suggest "A nice, tasty rat"? Hilarious.
    • Some of the mean/rude dialogue options available to the player character are so awful they loop around to being funny. For example, the breathtakingly mean response the player can give to Mystra tasking Gale with a suicide action to stop the Absolute:
      Player: So we'll be rid of the Absolute and Gale in one fell swoop? Win-win.
    • Similarly: Gale being pressured by his own patron goddess into performing a Heroic Sacrifice? Tragic. Gale gaining the option to blow himself up at any point, for absolutely no reason or net gain, and actually going through with it? Hysterical.
    • Regardless about how you feel about sleeping with the Emperor, the expressions of the companions unfortunate enough to see it thanks to the tadpole are nothing short of hilarious. It gets even better if the player later frees Orpheus, who will include "fornicating with a mind flayer" when berating the player for their List of Transgressions.
    • Astarion calling Cazador out for the centuries of pain he inflicted on him and countless others? Cathartic. Cazador responding by dropping this line: "I have known you for two centuries. Have I not suffered enough?" it's so unexpectedly snarky that it crosses into funny again.
    • Dribbles the Clown being dismembered is horrifying. Him being replaced by a doppelganger even more so. But the Collection Sidequest that tasks the player with finding his severed body parts all over Baldur's Gate so the ringmaster can put him back together and get him back on entertaining people pushes it into peak Black Comedy.
    • Victoria's fate is tragic, given that she's a child and the player will never find her alive. You're expected to remove the curse on her body to access the room she's in, but it's possible to lug around her still-cursed corpse and fling it at enemies for free AOE damage every turn (provided they're not immune to necrotic damage).
    • Almost everything that comes out of Minthara's mouth falls into this category, from her dialogue when spotting a trap ("let us send forth our least favorite, to be sure") to her Laughably Evil Brutal Honesty on other characters' foibles. Perhaps most infamous is this exchange with her favorite bullying target, Gale:
      Minthara: Do you have elder siblings, wizard?
      Minthara: In Menzoberranzan, after a house has two sons, every subsequent male-born child is slaughtered at birth, as it is useless, even for breeding. You have the aura of a third child about you.

    D-K 
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • Literal spiders in this case. Phase Spiders are seen as the most frustrating enemies to face off against in Act 1 due to having several tools to ruin your day: they can attack from a good distance, teleport around to attack, and when they do die, they release a pool of poison that effectively locks off the area they died in. They also can put damage over time debuffs on you and hit hard enough that a character leaning towards a Glass Cannon will almost die in one hit from their attacks. They can be encountered fairly early on too, which is important because in the tabletop, they are the kind of enemy you would throw one at a low-level party, and yet you can fight several of them at once.
    • Advanced gnoll types were a nightmare to fight in Early Access, mainly because they could attack three times per turn at levels as low as 4. They also had uncanny luck with their crit rolls even with the Karmic Dice option enabled, often dealing two or even three crits in a row, which was pretty much impossible to survive for anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of the barrage. Oh, and they usually showed up in packs of three to eight. The full release dialed this back considerably so that only the singular gnoll boss has a comparably threat level, with normal ones being mostly on par with other humanoid enemies.
    • Shadow-Cursed Needles and Vine Blights, as well as the Shambling Mounds, are lethal in Act 2 due to their ambush approach. While enemy ambushes are not uncommon, the perception DC to spot these particular creatures is so high (around 30) that it's common for your entire party to routinely fail the check, resulting in all characters being surprised. The Blights tend to bring a suitably large raiding party to boot, so you and your companions might take a sizeable hammering before you even get to act. Worse yet, they explode upon death for even more damage, which can easily affect multiple party members due to the small areas you tend to fight them in.
    • Mind flayers/illithids are not just central to the plot, but suitably dangerous too. Mind flayers are high-level creatures in general, but are doubly dangerous due to their signature ability combination of Mind Blast + Extract Brain. The first is a cone attack that deals sizeable damage AND stuns any targets that fail a tough wisdom saving throw. Stunned is an annoying status effect as it is, but also allows the mind flayer to use Extract Brain on such a target. This ability does not just deal ludicrous damage, it also instakills a target if it reduces them to 0 hitpoints. The game seems to recognize the illithids' might and rarely pits you against more than two of them at once. In the few instances where you do face more, better hope your party succeeds its wisdom saves.
    • All of the githyanki encounters on higher difficulties are brutal, demanding very strong party compositions and some lucky initiative rolls if you don't want to get immediately merced. They have superb mobility thanks to psionic Misty Step, AoE stuns/fears, attack multiple times per turn, parry the first hit against them, and the bosses as of Patch 5 summon even more chaff for the Legendary Actions. You basically have to alpha-strike them, or die.
    • The Zealots of the Absolute are all juggernauts on their own, being Oath of Vengeance Paladins who can smite you twice a turn for massive radiant damage, or channel their oath to hinder your party's mobility, all while having sizeable AC to make landing any non-AOE attack a pain. Where it crosses the line into groan-inducing, however, is when they all gang up on you at once, most notably during the siege on Moonrise Towers near the end of Act 2. Suddenly, their weakness of limited spell slots and only having one use of Channel Oath each becomes a lot less impactful when they're all spamming them at once; meanwhile, their individually high ACs are only made more dangerous when you have more than one to focus on.
  • Designated Villain: The eagles are being depicted as murderous thieving jerks who supposedly stole the blue jay's nest as well as being highly hostile to the player should they come upon their territory, making them deserving of death... Except that one glance at the nest and you can clearly tell that it's too big for such a small bird, let alone even being able to to build something big in the first place so it's pretty clear that he just wants said nest out of greed. Moreover, while they are being a jerk to the player, they're simply defending not only their territory but also their own offspring, something that pretty much every other birds of prey in real life would have done. Unfortunately, the game does not give the player the option of exposing the blue jay's lie nor is there a way to be able to settle this peacefully, even knocking them out would have said bird finish them off anyway. At most, the player can only either kill the blue jay or refuse to indulge the blue jay's request in the first place; if they do the latter, the blue jay doesn't get to claim the eagles' nest even after they're dead.
  • Diagnosed by the Audience:
    • Doni, a member of Mol's gang of orphaned tiefling children, speaks entirely in growls and other noises, and using Detect Thoughts shows that he is overwhelmed by the noise and light outside of the gang's hideout. This has led players to theorise that he is on the autism spectrum.
    • Gale is affectionately memed as autistic, due to his Socially Awkward Hero tendencies and single-minded fixation on magic.
  • Die for Our Ship:
    • Naturally, as a game with a developed romance feature, there is some debate between which companion is the best to romance and who has the best romance angle, but the most bitter rivalry exists between Lae'zel romancers and Shadowheart romancers, which seems to only partly be a result of people taking their canon feud too seriously. Shadowheart is reportedly the most popular romance option and has, more-or-less, become the unofficial mascot of the game, which is likely due to her being the most conventional of the female romance options, but as a result it's not been uncommon for Lae'zel romancers to needlessly hate on Shadowheart and her fans due to the belief she's boring, in comparison to Lae'zel's more unusual Cute Monster Girl looks and unconventional romance arc. Ironically, as both are very easy to gain approval of and begin romancing as well as having similar arcs about overcoming cult brainwashing, a lot of the mud-slinging that tends to result can fall quickly into hypocrisy.
    • Halsin has been the topic of heated debate for his potential polyamory with not one, but two companions:
      • Some Shadowheart romancers dislike how accepting she is of opening your relationship to him specifically, how some of their ambient banter can appear flirtatious, and how eagerly she agrees if he offers to join the orgy at Sharess' Caress. This has led some players to take the trope name quite literally by relishing in a potential in-story death for Halsin, chiefly declaring him "Orin bait" and letting her kidnap and kill him. As a less bloodthirsty option, others have employed mods to remove any hint of Shadowheart's interest in him.
      • He has also caught the ire of diehard Astarion romancers, due to the camp scene where Astarion confirms that he is fine with the player taking an interest in him, with the player having no option to back out of the arrangement.note  Due to Astarion's trauma revolving around sexuality and intimacy, and his initial apprehension out of fear that the player is considering someone else's advances due to him wanting to put anything sexual "on hold" earlier in his romance (until he's reassured that one has nothing to do with the other), some fans have labeled Halsin (and to some extent, any player character who pursues him while with Astarion) as a sexual predator who "pressures" people into polyamorous relationships while disregarding their boundaries—ignoring the small fact that Halsin has no way of knowing Astarion's traumatic history since the latter doesn't really open up to anyone but the player, and he makes it very clear from the start that any polyamorous shenanigans are only happening if everyone knows what they're getting into and will drop the matter with no hard feelings if the player or their partner refuses.
  • Disappointing Last Level: Act 3 is this to some compared to the other two, for a multitude of reasons.
    • The plot moves at a breakneck pace compared to the previous two acts, multiple quests appear to go nowhere or just end abruptly, some of the party members' personal quests (namely Karlach's) end arguably ending on an unsatisfying note, the antagonists Gortash and Orin being woefully underdeveloped compared to Ketheric from the previous Act, and the ending is regarded by many to be just as half-baked, particularly the Emperor's sudden Face–Heel Turn should you try to free Orpheus.
    • Not helping matters is that players have datamined a lot of cut content, which many players felt should have been in the final product. What made it even worse is that your companions at that point have reached already maximum level and cannot become any stronger aside from new equipments even if you skip most of the content which meant that players who wanted to go for 100% Completion and do every single sidequest in the game might just lose interest and either stopped playing altogether or rushed to the endgame and accept Gortash's alliance against the Final Boss right after obtaining Orin's Netherstone as soon as they hit Level 12.
    • To add insult to injury: Act 1 and Act 2 feature unique music for every location and situation, including a unique song for the Last Light Inn that accentuates the location's special role as a friendly place of refuge in the middle of the Shadow-Cursed Lands. Cut to Act 3 not only reusing a lot of music from the previous two acts, but overusing the aforementioned inn's theme songs on the city's streets, making it lose its unique touch. In addition, there are only three camp locations: one for Rivington/Wyrm’s Crossing, one for the Lower City (which is sprawling and rather unpleasant due to the constant rain), and the Elfsong Tavern, which removes the companion’s personalized tents. Compared to the wide variety of camps in Acts 1 and 2 based on your location, it’s quite a letdown and somewhat of an immersion breaker.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • On the other side of the coin with Ron the Death Eater, characters such as Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Astarion, and Minthara often have their greater character flaws (racism, greed, cruelty, etc.) downplayed or outright erased by some fans, often with the excuse that they are "misunderstood" or that they can all be excused by their circumstances. While they are all victims in their own way of abuse and manipulation, there is a tendency by some to completely downplay or even outright ignore their own negative behaviors, especially regarding how they act before Character Development kicks in.
    • Astarion has attracted a fervent version of this related to one of his endings, despite the story spelling out The Chain of Harm that occurs if he ascends, with Vellioth's lessons — which the player must receive in order to progress — driving home the cycle of vampires usurping their cruel masters and becoming equally cruel in turn. Indeed, should Astarion ascend, he will quickly demand that a romanced player literally kneel down and obey him, and passing an Insight check will have the narrator flat-out tell you he holds contempt for the player if they submit. Despite this, a vocal subset of Astarion fans insist that ascending is his healthiest and most romantic path, and that he truly loves the player character to the point of making them a "vampire bride", even though "vampire brides" are not mentioned anywhere in the game nor are they even from the edition of Dungeons & Dragons that Baldur's Gate III is based on. Lastly, Astarion's ascension requires him to sacrifice 7,000 souls to the Hells for eternal torment, but fans who romanticize this path tend to justify this ("they were damned anyway", even though sparing them shows they have a chance for redemption) or simply ignore it.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • By the developers' admission, Halsin was originally just an NPC in Act 1, but he became unexpectedly popular during Early Access as a result of compelling writing on his part (and being a handsome druid), so he became an Ascended Extra for the final release in response. Minthara similarly went through a cycle of being initially just an NPC that was a hit with players and expanded upon before full release, with many lamenting that recruiting and romancing her coming at the cost of a lot of content. Patch 5 has rectified the latter issue somewhat by making one still able to recruit her later on should they knock her out in Act 1 in order to save the tieflings, thus recruiting her no longer means missing out on all the content for Halsin and the tieflings in the second and third acts.
    • Among the non-companion supporting characters, there's a few that many players wished were recruitable or even romanceable, with the tiefling refugees having quite a few. Alfira, the tiefling bard, is a particularly noteworthy example, whose status as this is actually weaponised against the player if they're playing The Dark Urge, but otherwise is merely a bit player in the story. Some have mentioned that, on a non-Dark Urge run, they wish she was a party member, given the lack of a default Bard amongst the playable cast.
    • Rolan is immensely popular, despite being very minimal in the overall story, and one of the most referenced characters players wish were party members. His Jerk with a Heart of Gold personality, relationship with his siblings, and his character development makes him likable, eventually peaking with him potentially joining forces with the player if they fight Lorroakan. The fact he aides the player in the finale does a lot to make helping him worth it, and his voice actor does a great job making him unique as well.
    • Also among the tieflings refugees, Dammon has proven to be a popular character in his own right, primarily for being the one to be able to help out Karlach with her infernal engine, and even getting a bit of Ship Tease with her based on some circumstances. Like Rolan above, he can also help in the finale, potentially making armor for the owlbear cub.
    • Many of the cat NPCs reveal over-dramatic and grandiose personalities when you cast Speak to Animals, befitting their feline nature. Players have particularly warmed to His Majesty, a vain and blustering Sphynx cat, Malta, who narrates his own life in a hard-boiled third-person monologue, and Myshka, a sweet little creature who asks the PC (in a trilling feline dialect) if they're its mother.
    • Barcus Wroot is an optional character you can meet in Act 1 and can be missed without any story issues, but he's fairly well loved by the community for being a somewhat cautious but brave deep gnome who wants to help his friends, yet is willing to call them out on their behavior in later sidequests. The fact he isn't a fighter but tries to help makes even more memorable, helped by his voice actor doing a good job making him stand out. Some have wished he was a Companion, given the lack of gnome, dwarf, or halfling Companions.
    • Both animal party members Scratch and the Owlbear Cub are extremely popular among the community. The Owlbear in particular gets a lot of love for being able to join you in the final battle, while Scratch is considered extremely important to the party by players, to the extent it's considered borderline taboo for anything bad to happen to him.
    • Despite being an antagonistic Hate Sink who has little major story impact, Auntie Ethel is quite popular due to her evil, yet charming personality, as well as her strong performance by her voice actress. Like the Owlbear cub and Rolan, she can also join you in the final battle.
    • Many fans have an affection towards the kobold trader in the circus, Popper, due to being a rare non-hostile kobold, on top of him being hilarious and genuinely being excited when you agree to trade with him.
    • There's also a bit of a fanbase for Omeluum, primarily for being an unambiguously friendly mind flayer who helps you out with your tadpole.
    • Out of all characters, Kar'niss is popular within the fandom, primarily for being the only drider in the game, on top of him actually not looking that bad for one.
    • Inside Grymforge, Stonemason Kith was proven to be pretty popular for being the only Nice Guy of the otherwise selfish or Jerkass duergar.
  • Epileptic Trees:
    • With explicit nods to Gorion's Ward and Imoen and in-person appearances of Jaheira, Minsc, and Viconia DeVir, Edwin Odesseiron, Red Wizard of Thay is the only party member in both the original games entirely absent from 3. Or are they? The Forgotten Realms supplement Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy, though of dubious canonicity, gives an interesting account of what became of Edwin: he usurped Ramazith's Tower from Lorroakan, whom he killed and replaced, and conjured a simulacrum to send out into the world (and also provide himself with intelligent conversation). The Lorroakan encountered in 3 practically radiates Edwin's Big Bad Wannabe, Insufferable Genius, and Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain energy, operates out of Ramazith's Tower, clads himself in Edwin's trademark colors, and interfaces with clients through a pompous simulacrum. Attention is never drawn to this, even if Minsc and Boo come face-to-face with the relevant individual, but those are a lot of coincidences.
    • Fans unhappy with the reductive portrayal of Sarevok Anchev in III prefer to believe the individual they encountered was the eerily prescient imposter mentioned in the Disorders of the Nerves and Mind: A Treatise book.
  • Evil Is Cool:
    • Raphael in spades, thanks to his suave yet smug mannerisms that are buoyed by Andrew Wincott's deliciously evil performance. Him breaking out into a Disney-esque Villain Song during what many consider to be one of the best boss fights in the game is the icing on the cake. It's a common sentiment among players that he serves as a better antagonist than the Chosen of the Absolute, who are considered to be rather underdeveloped.
    • Auntie Ethel is a minor character overall, but she's considered memorable for her evil and sadistic nature that is elevated by her voice actress, Rena Valeh, being able to effortlessly do a kindly grandmother voice, and then switch to a creepy evil tone. Her lair and the horrors she has in it do a lot to make players love how evil yet charming she is for a hag. The icing on the cake are the insults she doles out when using Vicious Mockery, as they're personalized to each of the Origin companions and often foreshadow their backstories and perceived shortcomings.
    • Minthara has garnered this reputation for being the Token Evil Teammate who, in spite of her ruthlessness and ambition, possesses a charismatic personality that her voice actress, Emma Gregory, was able to portray very well. It really says something about her popularity among players when they even wish for a legitimate way for them to save the inhabitants of the Emerald Grove without killing her so that they can recruit her later on. Come Patch 5, the developers provided one, allowing players who knock out Minthara to fulfill the requirements to defeat the goblin leaders to still be able to recruit her later on at Moonrise.
  • Fan-Disliked Explanation:
    • Several players familiar with the Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus adventure module expressed dissatisfaction with how this game handles the outcome of the module. While it makes sense that Baldur's Gate III would have to find a way to properly handle the different outcomes of it, the choice to go for as status-quo of an outcome for said module as possible (Zariel is not redeemed but Elturel is returned) has been criticized by some for being not only boring, but also unsatisfying from a story angle to those hoping to see the potential impact of the module on the game.
    • Many fans of the original game are about as thrilled by the extensive Happy Ending Overrides multiple returning characters have experienced as one would expect.
    • "I Want to Live" is canonically the player's theme, according to the componist, but most fans reject this interpretation, given how the lyrics seem absolutely tailor-made for Astarion.
    • Halsin's backstory of being enchained and used as a Sex Slave by Drows was criticized for not only being unnecessary to the character (and you can only learn it by trying to bring along for the Drow Twins' brothel) but it also felt that it didn't portray his status as a victim (especially when compared to Astarion in the same game) respectfully due to the former supposedly enjoying his time there. This one is subject to some Alternate Character Interpretation, however, as some find Halsin's attempt to discuss it lightheartedly a realistic example of how a person might downplay past trauma.
  • Fandom-Enraging Misconception: The romanceable characters are not "playersexual", they're all bisexual/pansexual; shown in-game as all of them show interest in and flirt with both men and women.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • With Starfield, due to the Dueling Works nature of the two, both being major AAA RPG games released weeks apart. Upon the release of Starfield, it became common to see people trashing one game in favor of the other.
    • One also exist with some fans of BioWare's entries. The change from Real-Time with Pause to Turn-Based Combat and the Happy Ending Override of the Bhaalspawn saga are among the most contentious issues.
    • In continuing the subject with BioWare, one has emerged with Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Many players compare Veilguard very negatively to Baldur's Gate III any many ways, with some even cited BG3 as the "true sequel" to Inquisition. What's more, BG3 wasn't even made by BioWare despite having made the first two games to begin with, which further adds to the tension.
  • Fan-Preferred Cut Content:
    • Some datamined content reveals that Minthara was at one point planned to become pregnant with the player character’s child very close to the end of the game. Those who like Minthara were upset that such an outcome was scrapped, as what remains of the plotline seems interesting for Minthara as a character, but also find the idea interesting on a Dark Urge playthrough, as certain conversations with Jaheira and Sceleritas Fel do tease the possibility of Bhaalspawn having children of their own and whether or not they would end up inheriting Bhaal's taint. Patch 5 further added the Playable Epilogue, where Dark Urge players can potentially receive a letter from Sarevok Anchev in which he taunts the Urge that, should they have a child, their child will perpetuate the Vicious Cycle.
    • Karlach had an ending planned which saw her no longer worry about her infernal war machine being an issue, and getting a happier outcome than her final fates in game, something the community felt was a choice sorely missing given how much of a downer her endings felt, and wish it had been kept in, though the Patch 5 DLC does remedy this somewhat, as the epilogue party shows that if Karlach became a mind flayer she copes remarkably well, and if she returned to Avernus she's planning on pulling a heist to get blueprints to fix her engine.
    • Quite a few players feel this way about Wyll's characterisation in Early Access, where he was written to be more of a Fake Ultimate Hero who had more of a grudge against Goblins and more mixed-leaning-positive relationship with Mizora, but whose arc would be about becoming a true hero worthy of the facade of the Blade of Frontiers. While it proved unpopular with Early Access players, hence Larian rewriting him so extensively, a growing sentiment since the release of the game has been that it had potential that was overlooked by Larian choosing to make Wyll more of a traditional 'knight in shining armor' hero, and that seeing the Early Access Wyll have a more dynamic arc across the acts would have been worth the growing pains of his early characterisation.
    • Datamining reveals there was a cut companion named Helia, who was a halfling bard werewolf. Some player were disappointed she was cut, as they feel that a bard would fit nicely with the party that's already got a fair number of redundancies, while a halfling would be a very distinct choice in a party filled with humans, elves, and half-elves (apart from Lae'zel, Karlach, and Wyll's devil-touched transformation should Karlach be spared leaving him in muddier waters, all of whom are at least partly human or elf in ancestry). Some players are even known to change the Hireling Brinna Brightsong's name and appearance to create the illusion that Helia is there.
    • Some of the cut content features an ultimatum being given to the player if they manage to recruit both Minthara and Halsin, something originally impossible without exploits or mods until Minthara was patched to allow her to be non-lethally taken out. The sequence provides one of the few occasions in the game where the player is forced to deal with inter-party conflicts after Lae'zel and Shadowheart resolve their feud, not to mention it gave both Minthara and Halsin a great deal more depth to their characters and helped mend the feeling the two were shafted for anything to do later in the game, which the players wanted more of. However, just as many are glad it was cut as Halsin becomes incredibly Unintentionally Unsympathetic in the confrontation due to the conflict mostly just coming down to Halsin having Fantastic Racism against Drow for reasons that only become known if the player participates in a foursome, while Minthara makes extremely valid points about what will happen to her if she's not protected by the Astral Prism, so there's a feeling the conflict was removed due to how it would have rendered him far too unlikeable or been massively out of character for him.
  • Fashion-Victim Villain: Gortash is seen as this by some players, with his rather flamboyant outfit and unkempt hairstyle making him feel out of place in a Dungeons & Dragons setting and more like a Final Fantasy character.
  • Friendly Fandoms:
    • With Divinity: Original Sin II, given that both games are made by Larian Studios, and have a number of similarities.
    • The Dark Urge Origin has brought a lot of comparisons to Camellia from Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.
    • With the Dragon Age fanbase (specifically for fans of the first three games, but especially Origins), as Dragon Age: The Veilguard was still in Development Hell at the time of Baldur's Gate III's release and Dragon Age fans sought a similar story, character, and choice-driven RPG.
    • With The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as both are critically-acclaimed games based on beloved fantasy franchises. Even though they competed over many Game of the Year awards, both fanbases seem to respect the quality of each other's game and appreciate their differing approaches to game design, leading to Baldur's Gate and Zelda fans seeing each other as Worthy Opponents.
    • With Delicious in Dungeon as part of a larger friendship between Delicious in Dungeon and Dungeons & Dragons fans thanks to both being Medieval European Fantasy settings and author Ryoko Kui's own interest in D&D games, including BG3.
    • With Cyberpunk 2077, due to them being major roleplaying games with a similar premise about characters being on borrowed time and initially being manipulated by an entity that exists in their heads, helped by the former's expansion pack being released around the same time as this game. It's to the point that Larian Studio's Twitter account shared crossover art with the two.
  • Goddamned Bats:
    • Goblins in Act 1 for obvious reasons. If you choose to antagonize them, expect to fight many, many of the green buggers. As per tradition they're often relatively frail, but numbers more than make up for this. Especially true at their stronghold.
    • The shadow-cursed ravens in Act 2 like to appear in flocks. They deal moderate damage and can quickly overwhelm a character with numbers. Individual ravens have only a single hitpoint, however, making good AOE spells like fireball highly effective at taking out whole groups of them.
    • The Bhaal cultists that show up in Act 3, because while they're relatively low level for the point in the game they appear in, almost all of them have access to a buff called Unstoppable, which reduces all incoming damage to 1 up to three times and blocks crowd control, as well as the ability to go invisible whenever they please.
  • Goddamned Boss: Kar'niss in Act 2. He's not an outright hard foe, as while being a drider can make him a slight challenge, and he is generally fought in situations you can make it easy to beat him (such as working with the Harpers). However, he's one of the few enemies up to that point with access to Sanctuary, meaning he can No-Sell attacks or targeting effects, letting him move around while his allies fight for him. Without something like Silence or Counterspell to counter it, he tends to open a fight with Sanctuary while recasting it at the first chance he gets, giving you only have a few turns to attack him, and he has a decent amount of HP. While he can't attack back while using Sanctuary, it makes him an annoying fight because of how often he casts it, letting him potentially drag out a simple fight.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • The animation does very well to account for custom characters with different sizes, heights, etc. interacting with the environment and other characters. However, some players who have chosen to be a custom character of shorter stature (gnome, dwarf, etc.) have run into a bug with kissing their romanced companions in which the animation for a taller PC plays. Meaning, the PC kisses their lover's midsection while they in turn kiss the air. Significantly rarer, but sometimes the opposite can happen, where the romanced companion will use the animation of kissing a short-statured PC, IE, kneeling down to meet them face-to-face, on a normal or larger sized companion. The result makes it appear they are kissing something else. It certainly makes the post-kiss smirk many of them have take on a very different light.
    • If you ask someone in your party to go back to the camp while you are in a dangerous area, such as the shore of a magma river, you can see them walking away without flinching while the terrain is killing them, and then appearing in your camp completely unscathed. Once in the campaign map again, some weird things can happen to them, such as being considered dead by the game but being still able to talk and move, but not to use some actions.
    • On a similar, if different, example; swapping out party members and then leaving camp will usually put your party back where they were originally, but if you are inside a building with multiple floors, the game will sometimes spawn your swapped out party member on top of the building or on a different floor, as if they were dropped from orbit unto the building. Usually it isn't that hard to get back together but it can be funny to watch someone get to a location they weren't probably meant to.
    • There is a possible glitch where Gale, should he sacrifice himself by destroying the Netherbrain along with himself, will inexplicably be by the player's side and the scene will play out as normal.
    • If you take Halsin with you to confront Oliver, and have him use Wild Shape, he'll remain in his animal form when Oliver's shield is broken and the automatic cutscene plays. If he's taken the Cave Bear form, this combined with the camera angles will result in the characters continuing normally with the scene while the screen is filled with nothing but fur.
    • There was an oversight involving the Chest of the Mundane which could be found in Act 1. It is a chest that turns any object placed inside of it into mundane junk like spoons or plates. The primary purpose of the chest was for the player to open it, see only junk, and walk away. But as when an object is taken out of this chest, it returns to its previous form, the chest is filled with multiple treasures worth grabbing if you are savvy enough to take them out. However, at launch, when objects were placed in the chest, their weight would be shifted to whatever piece of junk they were turned into which would inevitably be less than 1 pound. So players would carry the chest with them and essentially have endless carry capacity if they just put things in the chest. Eventually the chest was patched so even if an object was transformed inside the chest, it would retain its original weight, making the chest pointless to carry around except for the hell of it.
    • The game sometimes does not register whether torches are lit or not. As a result, while you can use Create Water to douse the lit torch in the Bibberbang field as part of the attempt to save Baelen, the torch may reignite itself after a reload. In Act II, before securing a Moonlantern or Dolly, you're better off respecing Shadowheart as an Assassin if you wish to use Hit-and-Run Tactics, as you might have to waste an action toggling on the torch with other characters.
    • When Patch 6 was released, it added a few new pieces of Inspiration, including one for Acolytes (which includes Shadowheart) for freeing the Nightsong. This had a weird effect on saves that got to that point prior to the patch; if such a game was loaded after the patch was downloaded, that Inspiration would immediately be granted, followed by getting the Spear of Night. Consequently, if the save was already past the point of receiving the first one, you got a second for free.
    • For those who wanted to kill Wyll's patron Mizora without losing him, Zariel's Protection does not protect against ability score damage— this allowed a Wizard to drain her INT to 1 with the illithid power Ability Drain, then kill her by reducing her INT to 0 with the illithid power Absorb Intellect. Alternatively, Mizora can be hit with Flesh to Stone or Flesh to Gold, which, on the narrow chance that it's successful, will be inexplicably permanent. If this happens, Mizora won't show up to make Duke Ravengard kneel during the mission to rescue him (though her spiders will still appear).
    • As of Patch 8, if you give Shadowheart the Noblestalk, there's a good chance that you'll still have the option to give it to Derryth. It's not a guarantee, but if you don't get it, rolling back to an earlier save and trying again will sometimes trigger it.
    • The Helldusk Armor is the Infinity +1 Sword for armors, and thus is already a top contender for the best armor piece in the game. It gets even better with a bug that, for some reason, applies the +1 AC bonus from the Defence Fighting Style twice on it, resulting in a +2 AC bonus. You can wield a two handed weapon and still get the AC bonus of a shield with it. This bug has even survived the final patch.
    • Oath of Vengeance Paladins have an oath ability called Vow of Enmity, which lets them choose a target and gain advantage on all their attack rolls against them for 10 turns. However, you can target yourself with this, and there is a bug where by doing this, you get advantage against everyone for 10 turns. Whether this is fair game for Honor Mode or not depends on who you ask.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • When the player comes across a book of necromancy in Act 1, they either have the option to destroy it, or give it to Astarion in the hopes he can learn how to summon the undead with it. His voice actor, Neil Newbon, would later reunite with D&D to play the infamous lich Vecna in this trailer for the ''Vecna: Eve of Ruin'' adventure. Liches are known for their ability to summon the undead. Whoops.
    • A central plot element is the player party's infection with the tadpole, a slug-like creature that gets injected into the eye and is projected to slowly eat away your brain. In May 2024, it was revealed that controversial politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been facing health issues from a dead worm eating parts of his brain. While the memes about RFK Jr. being mind-controlled by a worm became universally widespread, Baldur's Gate III players had a particularly grand time with the similarity.
  • Ho Yay:
    • Following the end of Act 1, Alfira and Lakrissa can be seen together, with the former showing a lot of distress when the latter gets abducted by the Cult of the Absolute. Should the player reunite with them at Baldur's Gate in Act 3, there is even a dialogue option where the player can tease them about them being a couple, which leaves Alfira flustered and Lakrissa amused. Notably, interacting with either of them when they're on the roof has Alfira looking at the city, remarking that she could never tire of this view... and Lakrissa agrees while looking at her.
    • Your Companions tend to flirt quite a bit in their idle chatter, which results in this as they don't hold back with the same gender. Astarion and Wyll will often make backhanded compliments to one-another that come across as flirting, and will make comments to Shadowheart that imply he finds Wyll attractive, meanwhile Shadowheart and Karlach will playfully tease one-another and gush about the other's clothes, among other examples.
    • Minsc comes off like he has an one-sided hopeless crush on Astarion. He has long-winded reactions to other companions being downed, but Astarion gets a succinct Say My Name and Big "NO!". He's insistent that Ascended Astarion's "twinkly-eyed wiles" doesn't work on him, and that Boo should neither look into his eyes or think of nesting in his "thick and downy mane". In the epilogue, he keeps showing up to see Astarion, no matter how and where the latter moves his lair. While Astarion is not flirty with him, he is far less snarky with Minsc than the other companions.
    • Even aside from the chatter, Lae'zel and Shadowheart's dynamic, should the player keep them both alive and engage with them enough for their character development, will evolve from bitter rivalry to making compliments about the other when they're not around, which as a side effect results in their banter coming off as Enemies-to-Lovers. Fuel was thrown on this fire in the announcement for Patch 8. Among the improvements, kissing animations were updated. The splash screen for the update is Shadowheart and Lae'zel making out.
    • Barcus Wroot and Wulbren Bongle. They're supposed to be childhood friends, but the way Barcus acts feels like he has a one-sided crush on Wulbren.
    • In fact, all three romances we see among the Ironhand gnomes are same-sex, though one ends dramatically, and one never connects as pointed out above.
    • After The Reveal that The Dark Urge was the original Chosen of Bhaal and an ally of Gortash in his scheme, many players have interpreted that The Dark Urge and Gortash had some sort of romantic history together based on their interactions. If the player's Dark Urge is a male, this trope applies.
  • I Knew It!: When Shadowheart was unveiled in Early Access, many players correctly guessed that Viconia will make an appearance since both of them worship Shar.
  • Inferred Holocaust: At the end of Act 2, if Gale detonates the Netherese Orb and kills the elder brain, all of the tadpoles under its control will complete their suspended ceremorphosis, unleashing a wave of mindflayers on the Sword Coast that will likely spell the region's doom.
  • Informed Wrongness:
    • During the Iron Throne sidequest, you are given the choice between surrendering the submarine captain over to Umberlee's worshippers, who intend to punish him for polluting the waters and killing one of their own. Handing him over to face justice is treated as the "bad" option, with morally good companions like Wyll and Karlach disapproving it. However, he caused the death of a woman (even if accidental) without any remorse, which was only because he was helping ferry political prisoners to an undersea prison, something he was consensually taking part in. He even holds the seamaidens in contempt because they were making the journey to the prison more difficult for him by swimming in the waters he travels through, and seems pretty proud of the fact he hit one of them. While he helped you rescue the prisoners, it's only because you either tricked him or forced him to, and he maintains a "I just look the other way" attitude to avoid taking responsibility for what he's done.
    • In Act 3, Mizora traps Wyll into a Sadistic Choice: he can either permanently end his pact, or reforge it into an eternal one in exchange for her help in rescuing his father. Should Wyll escape the pact, a few companions will react as if he's either crossed the line or made a difficult choice that otherwise could have been avoided. Conversely, these same companions comment more approvingly if he renewed his pact instead. There's little acknowledgment that Wyll was screwed no matter what he chose or that the circumstances of his father's abduction were out of his control. To add insult to injury, unlike the other companions' personal quests where the companion must make the decision themselves or a Persuasion check is required from the player to make them choose differently, Wyll's "choice" is whatever the player picks for him, so it comes across as jarring that they're condemning him for a choice that didn't even fully belong to him.
  • It's Hard, So It Sucks!: A variation. One common criticism isn't that the game itself is too hard, but that the easy mode is too hard, making it harder for newcomers to really get in and experience the game proper. This isn't helped by multi-classing being locked in said mode, meaning the mode that is meant for easier fights inherently makes the game harder.
  • Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: While the game has a plethora of villains who are either too complex or entertaining to truly hate as well as Hate Sink NPCs that players Love to Hate, there are some characters who are simply detested by players for being a jerk.
    • Nettie, despite not being as bad as Kagha, her supporters or the Shadow Druids, wound up receiving far more hate than either of them combined due to trying to poison the PC instead of curing them like they originally promised to the point that even good-aligned players prefer to kill her than actually cooperate.
    • Marcoryl and Tahan are found by fans to be more despicable than even Kagha herself, due to their radical isolationist beliefs, their venomous disdain for anyone that isn't a druid, and their refusal to change their outlook even if Kagha is convinced to stop the Rite of Thorns and talked out of siding with the Shadow Druids, the latter of which both show ungrateful contempt towards the player for (potentially) doing. Even players who decide to spare Kagha may not extend the same mercy to the other two.
    • Even though Mayrina is a victim of Ethel's machinations, she ended up receiving far more hate than the local Hate Sink due to showing no gratitude towards the PC after rescuing her from her cage unless they pick specific dialogue choices that the average player certainly wouldn't know. The improvement of her demeanor in Act 3 did nothing to quell their hate.
    • Angry Mar'hyah, the abusive kennel master who you can encounter in Act 3, is universally despised by players (particularly animal lovers) for physically and emotionally mistreating the dogs under her "care"—especially after it's discovered that she used to abuse Scratch. She's hardly better with people either, as she also abuses her assistant for merely showing concern for the dogs' well-being.
    • Mizora, Wyll's warlock patron, is a divisive figure for this reason, personally being antagonistic to the two arguably friendliest party members (Wyll himself and Karlach), smug as hell, and getting little to no comeuppance during the game itself; killing her the one time you're allowed takes Wyll out with her, and if you don't the worst she gets is mildly annoyed that the player gets one over her by freeing Duke Ulder. Even the people who like her as an antagonist want to kill her at times.

    L-S 
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
    • Shadowheart, who is not only by far the most popular companion to romance in the game, but is also shipped with the other companions, too, particularly Lae'zel, Karlach, Minthara, Astarion, Nocturne, and Halsin.
    • Karlach and Astarion, to a lesser extent, are also shipped with a lot of characters, particularly on fanfiction websites. Karlach is often shipped with Shadowheart, Lae'zel, the player character, Astarion, Dammon, and Wyll while Astarion is often shipped with the player character, Gale, Halsin, Wyll, and Karlach.
  • LGBT+ Periphery Demographic: The game has become popular amongst the LGBTQ community, thanks to the representative characters and creative team behind the scenes, not to mention that all of the romances can be pursued regardless of the player's gender. A custom character's gender can be customized to great detail, from pronouns to appearance, down to their voice. All hairstyles and accessories can be worn by any gender and feature, besides more classical fantasy looks, with a wide array of queer-coded styles.
  • Love to Hate: Raphael has gotten a lot of appreciation for his truly over-the-top Smug Snake persona that alternates between Cold Ham and really chewing the scenery, and just how much he obviously enjoys oozing evilness. His launching into an epic Disney-style Villain Song just sealed the deal, so to speak.
  • Low-Tier Letdown: Due to the game's ability to reclass characters, all of the companions are helpful in some form, but the subclasses vary in quality. For specifics:
    • Trickery Domain is the worst cleric option due to the focus on stealth and illusions. While marginally better than its tabletop version (where it also tends to be ranked low as well) due the difference between a human DM and the game's AI, the Trickery domain offers some boosts to stealth skill tests, as opposed to the powerful direct combat benefits the others have, can Channel Divinity to grant allies advantage for a minute (which is good, but clerics have other options to do something similar) or eventually gain invisibility while in shadows (which is easy to lose), and their Divine Strike deals the ever-unpopular poison damage. To top it all off, clerics get access to medium armor, and most good medium armor imposes disadvantage on stealth anyway, counter-synergizing with the class's intended specialization unless the player spends a rare feat choice on Medium Armor Mastery. And for all that, a cleric has plenty of other options to improve stealth anyway, to say nothing of the incredible power and duration of a Druid or Ranger's low-level Pass Without Trace spell completely overwhelming any of the class's benefits. note This is a contributing reason why Shadowheart is statically one of the worst performing party members by Larian's own statistics, as she starts off as a Trickery Domain cleric, splits the difference between Strength and Dexterity to push her into using medium armor, and remains inconsistent if not reclassed.
    • Eldritch Knight fighter and Arcane Trickster rogue are considered the worst subclasses for their respective core classes. On paper, this turns both into Magic Knights who supplement their weapon and skill tricks with spells, but in practice both classes suffer heavily from having to split their stats and feats to try to improve both their spellcasting and their primary roles, and spell scrolls being democratized so everyone can use them (as opposed to the tabletop, where it's almost impossible to use a spell scroll without spellcasting) makes their puny and limited spell lists even more embarrassing. Meta builds also favor the Thief or Assassin as Rogue subclasses due to the incredible amounts of action economy they can generate through the Thief's additional Bonus Action and the Assassin's ambush tactics, while Champion Fighter is simple but effective. They can be used competently when built for utility, but they are unlikely to outshine their counterparts. While Eldritch Knight would be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap with the introduction of the Booming Blade cantrip in Patch 8, Arcane Trickster has no such easy fix.
    • The College of Valor is generally considered the least effective Bard subclass. On paper, the Martial Weapons proficiency seems great, but Bards can already use plenty of good Finesse weapons anyway, and in practice those are the only weapons they'll bother using due to benefiting more overall from Dexterity than Strength. The only Finesse weapons they don't have innate proficiency in are Scimitars, which are rarely better than rapiers and can be used by the College of Swords anyway. It also falls into the issue of generally focusing the Bard on stats they don't really benefit a lot from. Meanwhile, Combat Inspiration has its uses, but is generally outclassed by Lore's additional Magical Secrets choice and Swords' Blade Flourish abilities.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Withers, or rather Jergal. See this page for details.
  • Memetic Badass: Swen Vincke and Larian in general. In the month leading up to the full release, fans have called them the kings of the RPG genre and made claims such as making Belgium relevant for once. Vincke's habit of wearing plate armour, including to award shows, certainly helps with this. He then managed to elevate his reputation among gamers to nearly godlike levels when he used his stage time during the Game Awards show of 2024 to deliver an absolutely epic Take That! against greed and complacency in game development while most of the studio and publisher bosses responsible for these practices were sitting in the audience right in front of him.
  • Memetic Loser:
    • Wyll, at least in earlier versions of Early Access. Your first encounter with him is during the goblin combat outside the Emerald Grove, where he would announce himself by yelling "MAKE ROOM FOR THE BLADE OF FRONTIERS!" (without a cutscene like the final version) and jump down into the fray, and — assuming he didn't instantly die to fall damage, of all things — it was very easy for him to get immediately murdered by the rest of the goblins. Since you (obviously) can't recruit him if this happens and you can only resurrect already-recruited companions, not NPCs, many players were left confused about who this guy was or what he was trying to accomplish, and left wondering when the man with the devil lady on the loading screens would show up. There's also the fact that his patron is a Cambion which is rather low on the infernal totem pole of diabolic hierarchy. His personality and character arc were also considered by fans to be one of the most boring of the origin characters. Wyll's reputation got a little better with the full release as he received a complete rewrite. And in the final game, he at least has the good sense to cast Feather Fall before jumping off the cliff. Another observation which contributed to the meme (and remained in the final game) is that unlike other companion personal quests where the companion must make the difficult choice themselves or requires a speech check to change their mind, Wyll's "choice" on whether to break his pact with Mizora or be bonded to Mizora forever in exchange for intelligence on where his father is held and assistance for the rescue is whatever the player picks for him.
    • Shadowheart, to a lesser extent. It's been reported that Shadowheart has unusually terrible luck with attack rolls, resulting in her frequently wiffing her attacks (both melee strikes and ranged spell attacks) at the worst time for a lot of players. According to Larian's statistics, she's also the companion most likely to die in battle, despite the cleric's decent armor proficiency and sharing a party with Squishy Wizard Gale. As such, there's been more than a handful of memes and jokes spring up about her being pretty bad at combat outside of healing, despite ostensibly being a battle medic, desperately needing glasses, or just being an endearing loser. It should be clear this is rarely used to hate on her character, but more affectionately make fun of her.note 
  • Memetic Molester:
    • Gale. As the requirements to trigger Gale's romantic storyline are particularly easy to stumble into (to the point many suspect it might be bugged, and was later confirmed to be bugged), Gale will proposition players who've barely interacted with them. Meanwhile, the storyline with him can lead him to being a manipulative creep towards a romanced player. As a result, he's gained a reputation for being the creep (or at least remarkably desperate) among the group.
    • As a result of Halsin's dialogue tree also being bugged, players who otherwise never talked to him at all except for quest-related reasons, and even explicitly avoided any even remotely romantic dialogue options during these conversations, can suddenly find themselves being propositioned by him. Not helping this is the fact that he responds to your rejection with confusion and hurt, claiming he felt you treated him like a lover, even if you barely paid attention to him and have spent zero time together outside of his sidequest.
    • Lae'zel is memed as being hypersexual and hyperviolent, due to how quickly one can romance her (speedrunners have gotten to triggering her sex scene in two minutes of playing the game), and how githyanki custom involves a lot of violence mixed with sex and the design of her underwear resembling bondage gear, creating an interesting image.
    • Mystra, as the game leaves it ambiguous just how old Gale was when he first became her student; at most, what's established is that her current incarnation is fairly close to Gale in terms of age. The fact that he was considered a wizarding Child Prodigy and he himself has described the progression of their relationship as teacher-student before they became lovers has led to the interpretation that Mystra groomed him. This is not helped by a side comment from Minsc that in Rashemen, young boys gifted with the Weave were "hidden away" lest they catch Mystra's attention.
  • Memetic Psychopath: Halsin is more than willing to kill the pair of goblin children that have been taunting him in the animal pens at the Goblin Camp... even if he'll chew out Kagha for attempting to sic a deadly viper on a tiefling child. This has led to the interpretation that Halsin is either a Hypocrite or racist against goblins.
  • Mis-blamed: While the game has been criticized for a number of contentious narrative decisions concerning the fates of the cast of the earlier Baldur's Gate titles such as the liberal use of Happy Ending Override and removing certain redemption arcs from the canon, these decisions weren't solely made by Larian Studios, and a lot of the blame lies on the Forgotten Realms license-holders, Wizards of the Coast, who have been adjusting the Forgotten Realms setting since the first two games came out. For example, the lengthy Time Skip between 2 and 3 wasn't Larian's idea. It wasn't even Wizards of the Coast's idea! The first two games use 2nd edition D&D, while the third uses 5th edition, with the system's rule changes in-universe being explained due to historical events that occurred in the interim (including the death and rebirth of Mystra, the Spellplague, the second Sundering, etc), so the time skip is just a natural result of the Forgotten Realms itself having had a timeskip.
  • Narm:
    • The game's facial animations are fairly detailed and help sell many of the emotional scenes a player can experience, but for some reason your party members' expressions change in conversations they are present for, but not actively part of, meaning you can have emotional scenes be made unintentionally comical because one of your party members is in the background making over the top expressions despite not being focused on.
    • The MC's default facial expression bears a disarming resemblance to the DreamWorks Face and often shows up in scenarios that maybe demand a more serious expression. It's hard to feel Tav's horror and rage at Orin kidnapping one of their companions when they seem to be doing a Megamind impression for her at the same time.
    • For some, the fact that the party members initiate the romance can come off this way - the characters will tell you not to dally too much, yet can suddenly start hitting on you (Lae'zel is in particular prone to this) moments later, making them feel like they have some really Skewed Priorities.
    • Party member conversations can trigger at very odd times - oftentimes related to romance. This can end up with some hilarious times like a character confessing a big secret after you just fought for your lives or while you're Covered in Gunge.
    • The fact that companions' battle dialogue stays the same throughout the whole game can often heavily clash with the actual fights they're having, with such scenes as Lae'zel denouncing Vlaakith, swearing to destroy her, and starting the subsequent fight against Vlaakith's troops by yelling "For Vlaakith!"
    • Lae'zel and Shadowheart's Duel to the Death was appropriately treated as a tense moment but the fact that they're in their Camp Clothes while they're doing it (along with Shadowheart being on top of her as she's preparing to slit her throat before sunrise) can end up making their confrontation coming off as more fan-servicey than intended, causing players to unfavorably compare it to a Cat Fight more than anything else.
  • Narm Charm: The introductory scene featuring General Ketheric Thorm where he lets a goblin skewer him, only to rise again and taunt them to try again can come across as downright comical considering this spooky, undead necromancer's presently challenging an all-too-lowly, Level 1 goblin with no more than 10 HP to their name. However, Ketheric's cold demanding said goblin try again after showing the attack was ineffective, before killing them after it fails a second time, manages to make the scene work in spite of how funny the premise is.
  • Never Live It Down:
    • Because of the Signature Scene, Baldur's Gate III will alwas be considered "that game where you can bang a bear".
    • Most people point out how utterly horny and clingy the characters are when discussing the game due to how easy it was to start romances in launch builds. Part of this was a glitch that made characters want to start romancing you at rather low approval ratings.
  • Nightmare Retardant:
    • If the Dark Urge hasn't lost their Bhaalspawn nature and defies Bhaal at the end of the game without killing themselves shortly after, six months later their murderous impulses will drive them to attempt to kill everyone at Withers's epilogue party in the night. Scary, but somewhat less so if you know how Withers deals with anyone attempting to ruin his party.
    • In a similar vein, Raphael's ending monologue if he wins, gloating to the player about how he will soon be Lord Of All Nine Hells, destroy the Abyss and lay claim to the multiverse. It's genuinely chilling... until you think about it and realise how extremely unlikely it is that a level 12 cambion could even come close to pulling any of that off, especially when we learn the fate of Gale in the endings where he ascends and tries to challenge a Greater God.
  • Older Than They Think: D&D players that are familiar with the fifth edition rules will notice that one of the various changes that Larian made when adapting the ruleset for this game was to make the level one spell, Grease, flammable. The rules as written in 5E do not have Grease as being flammable, however Grease used to be flammable in older editions.
  • One-Scene Wonder: The squirrel who is traumatized by the sight of Halsin making love to the player character in bear form is a big part of why that scene is so memorable.
  • Popular with Furries:
    • The inclusion of dragonborn as a playable race has made the game rather popular with the scalie community. It helps that the default character for the Dark Urge origin is a tall, rather handsome albino dragonborn.
    • To a lesser extent, Popper had managed to hit it off with more than a few scalies himself, helped by being a kobold with an interesting and funny personality with an openly-admitted hobby in corpse looting.
  • Ron the Death Eater:
    • Despite being a good-aligned character and confirmed as such by Word of God, Gale gets this treatment from a lot of fans, in part due to how his Early Access writing made him more morally ambiguous. While Gale does have a manipulative streak and can come off as quite smug early on, some players and reviewers often exaggerate his flaws to spin him as the worst of the companions, despite the fact many of them are guilty of some terrible crimes and will get worse if the player isn't able to be a positive influence on them. While he does suffer a bout of Aesop Amnesia upon finding the means to reforge the Crown of Karsus, this is born out of his desperation to cure his magical ailment and his inner resentment over Mystra leaving him, and whether or not he actually goes through with it or realizes he's about to repeat his mistake and relent is up to the player.
    • The aforementioned 'evil' companions themselves, as some players will single them out as horrible, irredeemable jerks with no positive qualities. While they have their darker traits, none of them chose the path they took, and all have at least one quality that shows they are more than evil. Out of all 'evil' companions, Lae'zel often has her negative traits emphasized the most. Lae'zel is blunt, prefers bloodshed over heroics, and often disapproves of you showing mercy early on as she had been raised in a society designed to produce fanatical soldiers. However, once she actually sees Vlaakith for what she is, she has to be encouraged to stay on her side rather than latching on to Orpheus, Vlaakith's only potential rival. Astarion is also the subject of centuries of abuse and slavery with a lot of resentment towards the world and a desire for strength so he can't be hurt again. Given the chance, he can be prodded into growing into a less selfish person, though he's admittedly quite bad early on. The problem is that, if the player refuses to engage with them or their stories, they'll likely only see the negatives and, doing so, the story conforms, and has the character develop negatively due to neglecting them (i.e. not helping Lae'zel learn the truth of Vlaakith's manipulations will result in her remaining loyal to Vlaakith which will result in her wanting to kill Orpheus). It also doesn't help that many of them made bad first impressions during the playtest; later patches and the full release greatly toned down the extent to which most party members were hateful people with angsty, bitter attitudes about everything.
    • Halsin, not unlike Gale, has this due to how easily his romance flags can trigger without the player intending or realising, resulting in him propositioning players who are already in relationships. Bear in mind: Halsin himself is poly, and several of the Origin characters can be as well (Shadowheart and Astarion specifically), so none of this is encouraging cheating, and in fact Halsin will insist on you getting your partner's permission should you take him up on it. Despite that, a minority of players, particularly those who don't understand polyamory or have less-than-stellar opinions of poly folk, have reacted as if he's a sexual predator they need to kill first lest he politely ask for romance. Some have even claimed that Halsin is a pedophile because he is so concerned about Thaniel - who is one of Halsin's oldest friends and essential to the natural order in that region - and because he is so happy becoming a Parental Substitute to children who were orphaned by the Absolute.
    • Inversely from Gale's above entry, but Mystra also gets this from Gale's more dedicated fans, and those who are projecting real world issues onto the characters while also being unaware of the Forgotten Realms' larger canon. Due to the Merlin and Nimue aspect of their relationship, many have cried foul on Mystra romancing Gale after he became her Chosen, to the point many have accused her of grooming in order to cast Gale as less at-fault for his actionsnote . This tends to include exaggerating how young Gale was when she started tutoring him, with claims floating around he was as young as 8, having assumed Elminster only would have only met Gale at this age to see his talent for magic on Mystra's orders despite the fact that by the timeline of the game, this incarnation of Mystra (who has no memories of the previous Mystra incarnations) had only existed for the last 5 yearsnote , while her previous incarnation died over a century ago. As such, Gale would have been older than Mystra when he became her Chosen, given he himself is 35; while they certainly had a power imbalance, nothing indicates Mystra abused this, and in fact, among the issues with their relationship were largely born from Gale resenting being less powerful than her. Despite this, its not uncommon to see Mystra included alongside Cazador, Mizora, Zariel, Gortash, Shar, Vlaakath, and other backstory "villains", with many wishing they could have fought her.
    • Yet another "villain" who gets flak is Ulder Ravengard; some fans claim his decision to kick Wyll out of the house at 17 for having made a pact with Mizora for no discernable reason (as Mizora hid the evidence of the battle and her contract rendered Wyll physically unable to speak of the details) makes him worthy of death or confrontation from the player/Wyll. Never mind that Wyll himself finds the action completely justifiable given that his father wields considerable political power, so finding out his son made a devil with a literal devil for what looks like no reason would obviously be something scandalous, and Ulder forgives his son as soon as he IS shown proof that Wyll had a good reason for making a pact with a devil. Not only that, but Wyll makes it clear that up until he made his pact with Mizora, Ulder was a good father who raised him well, so he isn't depicted anywhere close to the abusive father some fans try to paint him as, and in universe Wyll will get angry if you suggest something along those lines to him.
  • Sacred Cow:
    • Almost immediately. Even during Early Access, the game was being held up on high esteem, but upon full release it became, alongside The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as a shoe-in for Game of the Year (2023 being a year with heavily stacked competition, this is especially impressive). As a result, anything but utter praise tends to get hostility from parts of the internet. The game's Reddit page in particular became infamous for how anything remotely critical or suggestions for changes will be met with at least some users becoming antagonistic and insisting that the improvements are technically unfeasible or would make the game worse.
    • The owlbear cub as all cats and dogs are held sacred in the fandom, especially Scratch and the cats who can be adopted by Derrith Bonecloak. Even the most vicious of murder hobos will go everything in their power to keep them safe. This passes without question in any discussion regarding them.
  • Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: The Berserker Barbarian Path, and Rangers as a whole, are considered Low Tier Letdowns in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, but the game fixes both classes.
    • The Frenzy state Berserkers enter when they rage has a major drawback in the form of a Fatigue Mechanic that accumulates levels of Exhaustion— six of which is instant death in Fifth Edition. This mechanic is entirely absent in Baldur's Gate III, which is a big reason why Karlach is such an effective fighter.
    • Rangers have their Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer abilities completely overhauled—in the case of the former, rather than choosing a handful of enemy types, they get unique abilities to reflect a specific quarry they hunt or faction they work for, such as Ranger Knights gaining Heavy Armor and History proficiencies or Keepers of the Veil geting a free cast of Protection from Good and Evil and an Arcana proficiency for the sake of dealing with outsiders and aberrations. Natural Explorer changes from "be unaffected by certain terrains outside of cities" to "gain resistance to Cold, Fire, or Poison Damage, get the Find Familiar ability, or get a Sleight of Hand proficiency", with the latter explicitly mentioning that it's meant for work in cities— something which the original ranger in the PHB had as a major gap in its abilities.
  • Scrappy Weapon:
    • Acid and poison damage are mostly a waste of time, resources, and character potential. No other elements have so many potential targets that are resistant or outright immune to them, and the surprising rarity of damage over time effects from either to counter their often lower base damage makes their damage output fall well short of almost any other element. If you have to choose between acid/poison damage or literally anything else, pick literally anything else. Worse, for acid this is actually a change from the tabletop: while poison absolutely earns its reputation for having its theoretically generous damage dice countered by ubiquitous resistance and immunity, acid in normal 5e is a Boring, but Practical damage type that's doesn't have huge spike-damage spells like Fireball but in the bargain is rarely resisted by most enemies the way fire damage is.
    • When it comes to magical damage types, necrotic damage has a similar problem. It can deal huge amounts of burst damage if the target is susceptible to it, but there are so many enemy types that simply aren't that it's more of a liability than something to focus on. It's also a damage type that many enemies are resistant or even immune to, making it even more useless. It doesn't help that Act 3 is where you really have the tools to use it better, but by then a player likely won't want to at that point. And this is also a change from core 5e, where necrotic resistance is surprisingly rare until players start cracking the higher levels of the game.
    • Selune's Spear of Night is widely regarded to be an incredibly underwhelming weapon for being a Legendary equipment and the setup it takes to get it. Besides giving an advantage on Wisdom Saving Throws and Perception Checks, the spear's main draw is the ability to cast Moonbeam at will as well as an aura that hamper enemy's movement & empower your allies with Radiant damage. While they're both good spells to have, the problem is the fact that both can only be used once per Long Rest and without it, all you get is a better chance to resist enemy debuffs and detect traps, switches or ambushes neither of which is comparatively useful for a weapon of such rarity. The weapon wound up being outclassed by the Blood of Lathander that is obtained late in Act 1 and especially by its Shar's Spear of Evening counterpart due to its Darkness ability being usable once per turn and said weapon's passive also complementing this by giving additional bonuses in obscured terrains as well as being able to see through said Darkness.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge:
    • Most commonly, players often refuse to use Long Rests as much as possible. Interestingly, this is only partially for the added challenge of managing health, spell slots, and short rests, but also because many feel it makes sense narratively given the feel that time is of the essence (ironically, long rests are tied with story progression triggers, so not resting regularly will actually ruin the flow of the story instead of better fitting it).
    • Some players have reported trying to do a "Murder Hobo" run, after the tabletop game stereotype of a player who has zero interest in role-playing or story engagement and just wants to fight and get treasure, which in-universe would resemble a homeless drifter going around killing everything in their path. The idea is pretty simple: kill everyone, including the companions when you come across them (making this a Solo-Character Run), steal everything you can, and try to complete the story while doing this.
    • On the flip side, trying to make sure every ally in some fights, such as The Goblins vs Tieflings battle in Act 1, the assault on Moonrise Towers in Act 2, and the Steel Watch Foundry in Act 3, gets out alive. Given how fragile these allies tend to be, not to mention their Artificial Stupidity in some cases (the Gondians in the Steel Watch Foundry are particularly infamous for this), trying to be a hero and rescue everyone can be much easier said than done. At least the party can mitigate the second one by assassinating cultists at the upper levels and docks of the tower to reduce the number of defenders during the assault.
    • In a similar vein, trying to rescue characters from a scripted fate that happens offscreen or via cutscene, by doing things like knocking them out, killing them and using revivify later, making them move using a conjured cat, or others methods that stop them from being present when the game expects them to be.
    • Some players have also reported making a challenge run in which the player does not romance anyone... and this includes not getting propositioned by companions or NPCs either - and no using hirelings. Some people have joked that this is much harder than it looks since getting too high an approval rating means they'll start soliciting you.
    • As if Honor Mode wasn't brutal enough, several players have attempted Solo Character Runs, where they play through the entire Harder Than Hard game with zero companions at their side.
  • Self-Fanservice:
    • When it comes to furries, they often portray Halsin as an anthropomorphic bear with a masculine build. This most likely comes from a combination of his true form being a Hunk, and his Wild Shape form of choice being a bear.
    • Due to Gortash's features being heavily mocked, one of the most common appearance mods is to alter his face to make him into a more conventionally attractive man (which includes shaving his facials as well as tidying his hair) that fits the narrator's claims of a "Handsome Young Man".
    • One of the most common appearance mods is to give Shadowheart (and other medium female body types in general) skimpy clothings that greatly expands their cupsize compared to the modest ones in-game.
  • Signature Scene: By far the most widely-known and memed scene would be Halsin's romance scene where he unintentionally transforms into a bear and the player can outright do the dirty with Halsin in bear form.
  • Special Effect Failure: This is a very beautiful game. But sometimes, skipping a character's dialogue can cause some bizarre situations when they try to be more cinematic, since it can cause things like characters talking without their mouths moving, jerking around, or the literal floor disappearing.
  • Spiritual Adaptation: Quite a few fans have compared the game to Dragon Age: Origins in nature. The gameplay is similar in design, but other elements such as being a group of adventurers tainted by a dark force that will corrupt you, but allowing you to use its power to fight back against it, has lead to similar comparisons. Given that the Dragon Age series was made by the same studio that worked on the previous Baldur's Gate games, it isn't too surprising.
  • Squick:
    • Around the outskirts of the Blighted Village, it's possible to walk in on a bugbear and an ogre female getting their nasty on. Complete with moaning, door creaking, and actual thrusting animations should you decide to ignore your companions' warnings and barge in anyway.
    • When getting past the goblin outpost, Olak may try to trick the player into smearing Worg feces on their face. If you're playing as a barbarian, you can order him to EAT the poop as punishment for lying.
    • The fact that your romance with Halsin can involve him Wild Shaping into a bear to make love has made certain people uncomfortable, especially given the fact that the clip of that released during the launch stream circulated without context note .
    • You get the option to have sex with your dream guardian/the Emperor, who is a mind flayer, i.e. a brain-eating tentacle monster. Similar to Halsin, you can make it a bit easier to stomach by requesting that he shift to his dream guardian form, but there's zero indication going in that this is an option.
    • Among the mad debtors in Raphael's home, there is one that diligently watches over his used chamber pot. The debtor, who has a suggestively dirty-looking character model, describes himself as the pot's "lover".
  • Stress-Relieving Gameplay: For those who don't like how Withers chastises you for seeking romance or not seeking romance, picking the option "My love life is none of your business, skeleton" is immensely satisfying.

    T-Z 
  • That One Achievement:
    • The "She Cannot be Caged!" trophy to rescue the goblin Sazza three times in a playthrough. Nowhere is it mentioned that this trophy is locked to an evil playthrough where you side with the goblins and wipe out the druid grove. Siding with Halsin, even if you choose to only target the goblins' leaders and spare everyone else, Sazza will just randomly drop dead as soon as Ragzlin, Minthara and Gut are all dead, even if she's nowhere near the fighting. While it is possible to get it on a good playthrough, it requires a massive amount of luck or planning with non-lethal damage to complete the steps for it, making it difficult to complete it no matter how you play the game.
    • Karlach's character achievement is this by virtue of requiring the player to romance her. All of the other companion achievements can be gotten even without romancing them, meaning Karlach's can stand out for requiring commitment to a full romance.
  • That One Attack:
    • Goblins using acid or fire arrows. Neither of them is too bad on their own, but the sheer number of goblins who have them can lead to parties being spammed by ranged AOEs.
    • Speaking of goblins, while it's not technically an attack, their War Drums around the Goblin Camp can be this if one of them manages to use it. If a single goblin manages to touch one, then all the goblins and their allies in that area will go hostile PERMANENTLY, meaning you can't use any strategy other than to kill them from that point on.
    • Balthazar's Cloudkill, which he can cast very frequently given that he starts off his boss fight at a significant Initiative boost and uses a Potion of Speed on top of that. Your party will spend most of the battle under the debilitating effect of Cloudkill's poison could, which can very quickly sap the HP of even your tankiest companions. Unless you go into the fight buffed for poison resistance, the tables can turn against you very quickly.
    • Hunger of Hadar and Darkness, particularly prominent spells used in the bossfight against Disciple Z'rell and Mother Superior; both reduce your ability to make ranged attacks and give disadvantage to closed ranged attacks, but the former also has every character suffer constant damage while inside it and reduced movement, which makes escaping it rather difficult. You can't even Misty Step out as you need to be able to see where you're teleporting to. With the latter battle, there will usually be multiple casters casting it, allowing them to spam the attack to hit your entire party no matter how separated they are, and keep casting it every time you dispel it. Making matters worse is a Game-Breaking Bug that makes it so attacking a character that's Concentrating on Darkness will more often than not crash the game, so outside of some niche workarounds you're basically trapped as soon as a caster gets that spell off.
    • Ketheric has an AOE attack that hits in a large area and inflicts the frightened status on everyone hit by it if they fail to pass the fairly high DC. Failing locks those people in place and gives disadvantage on checks and attack rolls, which makes the fight really hard to win after he uses it. Worse, due to Ketheric leaving the fight once he gets low on HP, the effect may become bugged and not end due to him not dying and thus the effects are considered still active, forcing a reload. The bug was eventually patched, but it still is annoying to deal with being unable to properly react to the enemy if he uses it.
    • Steel Watchers in Act 3 have a melee attack that not only has farther range than one would expect, but also has a chance to inflict prone and maim on the target, causing the target to be knocked over and more vulnerable to melee attacks if prone, and have no movement speed and disadvantage on Dex saves if maimed. This makes them extremely deadly because they can trap an unfortunate person in place, letting them or other enemies attack without issue back to back. This is also why quests like saving the Gondians is so hard, as the Steel Watchers effortlessly can take out the Gondians thanks to the attack and effects, not helped by the attack itself doing a pretty hefty amount of damage even if they fail to inflict either status. And God help you if they inflict either debuff before they begin to self-detonate, which can potentially kill anyone stuck near them.
  • That One Level:
    • The attack on the Last Light Inn in Act 2. There isn't any warning that talking to Isobel, which the game outright tells you to do, will trigger a fight, catching players off guard, and even if you expose Marcus as a mole for the Absolute, he'll return when you speak to Isobel, triggering a fight. Once it begins, all your allies except for Isobel and Jaheira are stunned and unable to flee or fight back, letting the enemies that spawn downstairs have an easy time killing the defenseless NPCs, which can lock off quests should any with one die. On top of that, if Isobel is reduced to zero HP, she's taken away by the Cult of the Absolute in a cutscene and the barrier over the inn drops, killing everyone but Jaheira and a tiny amount of NPCs, cutting off a ton of things like quests or shopkeepers such as Dammon. As if that wasn't enough, Isobel suffers from Artificial Stupidity and often runs around enemies instead of staying still, taking attacks of opportunity that whittle her low HP down. Marcus isn't really a hard foe, but he has a lot of HP and tends to spam attacks that can hit multiple characters, or focuses on Isobel, while the other enemies seem to prioritize attacking Isobel. Unless you really focus on protecting Isobel and leave the downstairs enemies for Jaheira (who isn't weak but not enough on her own) to handle, defending Isobel can be a wall that prevents progression or interacting with the Last Light Inn characters. Fortunately, you can even the odds a little by rescuing Halsin in Act 1, as he'll be present and will help in the fight as a level 5 druid, but you do have to check with an NPC to trigger part of his quest to have him spawn there; if not he won't be there to help. On the flip side, ignoring Isobel until the assault on Moonrise Towers will keep everyone safe, while Marcus is executed off-screen and left to rot in Z'rell's room.
    • Crèche Y'llek. It's impossible to do the primary sidequest there (which is optional but is part of Lae'zel's storyline, and she'll remind you of it frequently) without becoming hostile to the place, necessitating you to fight your way out. Since githyanki are a Proud Warrior Race, you can expect them to put up a hell of a fight, each of them getting multiple hard-hitting attacks per turn. If the warriors don't kick your butt, the archers sure will. This can be mitigated a little if you follow the Blood of Lathander questline, as you can evade most of the githyanki and fast travel from the room the mace is located in, but even this quest requires some exploration, puzzle solving, and trap-disarming to pull off. On top of that, the area has some valuable loot, but good luck getting any of it. Also not helping matters is the fact the story gives the party (except Lae'zel) a lot of reasons not to be there: the only reason you're not mind-controlled is because of an artifact that you carry, and the inhabitants of the Crèche are searching for it. The way that the game handles this story aspect is rather rough, and your characters or the people you talk to keep bringing it up in a But Thou Must! fashion, until you eventually enter the hiding spot of your protector because you're ordered to kill him despite saying you are not interested AND being called out by said protector as this being an ''incredibly'' foolish thing to do.
    • The Iron Throne. You discover a secret underwater prison, but your discovery of said prison triggers a sequence where it will be destroyed within less than a minute. You have 6 turns on Balanced difficulty (5 on Tactical, and 8 on Story) to get in, rescue the prisoners, and get out. There are three important prisoners who each have ties to different questlines as well as a number of more minor prisoners. If you do everything perfectly and use the right characters, spells, and consumables, and doing the right things in the right order, you will barely have enough time to save everyone within 5 turns to succeed on Tactical, and that's with no bad luck. Suffice to say, there probably hasn't been a single player who was able to complete the Iron Throne while saving all prisoners on a single playthrough who hadn't done it before and/or was using a guide. It's meant to be reloaded and retried once you start to discover all of the mission's peculiarities. And even if you somehow managed to do absolutely everything perfectly by saving all of the hostages, all you get for a gameplay reward is one Inspiration Point for the Folk Hero Background called "Against All Odds" and nothing else.
  • That One Puzzle:
    • The Faith-Leap Trial in the Gauntlet of Shar. One has to navigate across invisible platforms in order to reach the Umbral Gem on the other side. Fail three times the character doing it is reduced to one HP; fail a fourth time and they're flat-out dead. There used to be a handful of ways to cheese it, but Larian seems determined to patch out every new one that players find; as of writing, flying or jumping over the maze will have the same effect as stepping off of the path, as will clicking on the lower corner of the final platform and letting pathfinding do the rest. Misty Step still works, but finding a landing target in the magical darkness can be finicky at best.
    • The other part of That One Boss that makes fighting Grym, the guardian of the Adamantine Forge so frustrating. There are four platforms in opposite corners, and to harm Grym you need to keep the lava flowing by renewing it every three turns. The puzzle is that as an alternative to plinking him with Scratch Damage, you can lure him into the center of the arena and have a character in the southwest corner pull their lever to bring down the hammer on top of him, doing more than half his health in damage. The game even views this as the easy solution, giving you an achievement if you avoid killing him this way. What's the problem? Well, it's very hard to actually lure him and get him to stop in the center unless you have someone stand practically on top of the anvil as a sacrificial lamb. He tends to move about 60% of the distance between the two corners on his turn, which tends to result in him passing the anvil and getting out of range. On top of that, he only responds to threats if they successfully hit him, so if you go last with the character you want to be his target and they miss, he will go after one of your other characters instead and has a good chance of dropping them. Finally, if you don't disable your Opportunity Attacks/equip your characters with ranged weapons, trying to get his attention to focus on a character on the opposite side of the arena will be for nought if the character he's next to successfully hits him when he turns and walks away from them. Overall, while the tactics of manipulating his threat to yank him around is the clear puzzle that makes him a Puzzle Boss, it is an extremely frustrating encounter that shouldn't have been so finicky.
  • That One Sidequest:
    • The Gondian sidequest chain in Act 3 gets a lot of flak. Rescuing the captives from the Iron Throne is bad enough, as it's a very difficult encounter you aren't given much warning for and is almost impossible to complete perfectly if you don't have the right party, builds, or equipment, especially if you're trying to save every prisoner including Omeluum and Wyll's father without Mizora's help; it's followed up by a fight in the Watcher foundry where some players' desire to protect every NPC helping them in a fight is sorely tested, as the allied AI seems determined to get itself killed as fast as possible such as by deliberately taking opportunity attacks then misty stepping back into melee, running into dangerous terrain which they often caused in the first place by spamming oil and fire spells, and not standing clear of Steel Watchers that are very clearly about to self-destruct. In the already controversial third act, it's often mentioned as one of the worst-designed parts. On top of that, the motivators the enemies activate that will kill the Gondians can sometimes glitch out and spawn in the air, preventing them from being interacted with, and forcing a reset.
    • The "Free the Artist" sidequest. In Act 1, you have to pay a hefty sum of money (1000G) to buy Oskar's freedom even if you use a persuasion/intimidation check to significantly reduce the slaver's price (600G). Then, Oskar demands another hefty sum (200G) to travel to Baldur's Gate in comfort, and it's not made clear in-game that this payment isn't required to progress the storyline (it only affects companion approval).note  The problem is that in Act 1, money is rather hard to come by and you would rather spend it on valuable equipment. The continuation of the sidequest in Act 3 is even worse, as the villa that Oskar resides in is filled with cursed skulls that repel and deal damage to the player, preventing them from progressing further into the mansion. Worse is that these skulls are placed close to the stairs, which inflicts additional fall damage to players and their party members. The initial only way to destroy the skulls was with fire spellsnote , but the problem is that their sturdy nature means you will have to deal above 25 damage to destroy them. This, alongside the huge number of invisible enemies and the game's clunky camera control, and you have what many players consider to be the worst-designed level in the game.
    • "Investigate the Suspicious Toys" is considered frustrating by many players, not for its difficulty, but because the game does not specify what the player's objective is. Concluding the quest requires players to kill all the staff employees in Felogyr's Fireworks. The problem, however, is that there are Flaming Fist officers and a Steel Watcher standing outside the shop, and getting into a fight with the employees – even if you do it in stealth mode – has a high chance of attracting the Fist's attention, forcing players to fight them as well.
    • "Find Dribbles the Clown" is one of the more tedious sidequests in Act 3, because unlike most sidequests, the game doesn't give any hints or direction for where each piece of Dribbles can be found, instead the player has to explore and find them, across two different zones, meaning at least three loading screens to finish the quest, and you have to pick up each piece of the clown, taking up inventory space. What makes it worse is that some pieces of Dribbles are in plot relevant locations like the temple of Bhaal, meaning you can't even get it done right away, while others are in areas you need to break into. The reward is a fairly powerful ring for magic users, so the reward is worth it for anyone wanting more magic items, but without a guide to indicate where you can find each piece, it doesn't seem possible to naturally find each piece due to some parts being in places a player wouldn't ever think to check.
    • Romancing Astarion. Since most players lean towards good, and Astarion tends to disapprove of many heroic acts in Act 1, a lot of players struggle to raise his approval high enough to trigger the romance—something directly lampshaded by Larian themselves, who released a statistic of how many players have been rejected specifically by Astarion. It is entirely possible (if not quite simple) to romance Astarion as a good player who is kind and helps everyone, however, it's fairly non-intuiative for a blind playthrough because he has no linear questline until Act 3. For example, one of his highest approval bumps in the game is allowing him to bite you, but only if you never threaten him. If you let him bite you, but threaten to stake him if he takes too much, you'll get only +1 approval instead of the +10 you'd get if you didn't threaten him. There is zero indication of this disparency and zero indication of how much approval you missed out on if you made the wrong choice. Another high bump you get is from letting him kill Gandrel in self-defense, a character not at all foreshadowed anywhere and who is tucked away in a fairly easily-missed spot in the swamp. Another is letting him barge into an ogre and bugbear having sex, which is nearly impossible to even get the option for unless he is the only person in your active party, as other party members tend to speak over him. In general, nearly all of his highest approval bumps are stumbled across by pure chance or easily missable, making it frustratingly difficult to raise his approval to even evil players without either a guide or some mods.
    • "Investigate the Beach" an early game sidequest will pit you against four harpies on a beach near the Druid's Grove. The harpies have quite strong attacks for early game and with their Alluring Song, which one of them will almost always be singing, your party will probably end up wasting your turns after being charmed. This on top of them standing across the water, difficult terrain which halves your movement range, making melee fighters take several turns just to get close enough to hit them. The harpies are of course unaffected by the terrain since they can fly. Making this even trickier is that the quest will automatically fail if you long-rest after triggering it (such as by, say, innocently wandering along the path out of curiosity), meaning you can easily be locked into completing it with potentially low spell slots and weak equipment.
    • "Steal the Sacred Idol" as per the Quest name, require you to steal the Druid's Idol to give it to Mol who will then reward you with one of the best defensive ring in the early game that grants a boost to your AC and Saving Throw. The problem? Taking the Idol, regardless of how obscure you are will initiate a fight between the Tieflings & the Druids and due to the battles happening in real time (which in a turn-based gameplay, proved to be disastrous as there no way to react or sprint to their help in time), makes it nigh-impossible to prevent most of them from dying. While it's possible to be able to steal it without provoking the Druids after Kagha is exposed, there is no indication that this is even possible and you won't be able to receive this Sidequest from Mol if you did not do so beforehand.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • The announcement that Baldur's Gate III would use Turn-Based Combat instead of Real-Time with Pause turned out to be rather divisive with hardcore Baldur's Gate fans. On the negative side, reactions range from being mildly disappointed but still excited about the game, to insisting that the franchise is now ruined with a game that's In Name Only. On the other hand, this is actually a case of History Repeats, since the original Baldur's Gate received criticism for having Real-Time with Pause combat instead of Turn-Based Combat like the previous Dungeons and Dragons games when it came out.
    • In the early access version of the game, the mindflayer parasites had a Power at a Price system, providing you with a Sadistic Choice of gaining more power at the cost of falling ever closer into The Corruption, with the entity in your dreams even being your ideal lover who would urge you on to slip further and further. You would have to carefully weigh your choices and be ready to suffer unforeseen consequences for your actions. The depiction of the tadpoles graphically burrowing into your brain, which turns a sickly grey and purple color, seemed to bode nothing good, but seemed to be bring some interesting ideas gameplay and story wise. In the final release though, this mechanic was gutted to the point of only impacting your appearance if you embrace your illithid evolution, and the choice to become a mindflayer in the endgame is a completely voluntary one where you can decide anything regardless of your prior decisions. This is eventually fixed up in Patch 7's expanded evil endings, however, where using the parasites causes you to undergo ceremorphosis and succumb to the Grand Design unless you clear a skill check to resist.
    • The game's design of several races, particularly elves (especially drow) and tieflings, has gotten some mixed reception, for differing reasons. For elves, the game opts to just give them the exact same body and build as humans, rather than following the D&D canon proper of elves being shorter than humans, and with Drow especially being significantly shorter with their women being taller than their men on average. For Tieflings, they're given unique bodies that includes ridges and spines protruding from their body that resemble bat wings under the skin, strange markings, and generally leans into trying to justify the Fantastic Racism against them rather than them simply being the Horned Humanoid Cute Monster Girl race. As such, fans of the drow who like the fact they're so short normally next to humans and other elven races are disappointed in them having the same general height as other 'tall' races, while fans of Tieflings are disappointed that there's no option to whether they have these cosmetic features, especially as the game doesn't even include tail customisation for them (unlike Dragonborn). Tieflings, at least, have benefitted from the modding community making many 'smooth skin tiefling' mods, but drow currently lack any option for their height (and likely won't get any given it would impact the game's romance scene interactions).
    • Wyll's character and personal questline, which was mostly scrapped and rewritten after Early Access feedback, has garnered some of this. Some fans feel that Early Access Wyll's vendetta against the goblins and glory-seeking tendencies made him a more interesting and complex anti-hero, and that with those aspects removed, his rough edges have been sanded down so much he's become The Generic Guy and a Pinball Protagonist in his own storyline. While most agree he's more likable and charming than he was in Early Access, the overhaul resulted in him being Out of Focus compared to the other characters, and what few plotlines he has feel underdeveloped. Not helping is that, despite fan feedback vocally asking across the post-release cycle that Wyll needed more content, Larian gave Wyll nothing specific outside of his own custom evil ending in Patch 7..
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • All three of the Chosen of the Absolute have a case. For Ketheric, there's a Persuasion option to attempt to convince him not to sacrifice himself to Myrkul. Even if you succeed at it, he does it anyway, even if his daughter is also standing right there begging him not to do it. Likewise, it's entirely possible to learn the Awful Truth about Orin the Red's Dark and Troubled Past, which causes her such a Villainous RRoD that Bhaal has to personally intervene to force her to transform into her One-Winged Angel form. Many feel that this would have been a great opportunity to explore more of her past, particularly while playing as the Dark Urge. But the worst offender here, by far, is Gortash, who makes an offer of We Can Rule Together with the player characters, which even the Emperor confirms he is completely serious about and isn't planning to double-cross them. Even if he survives to the climax, he's unceremoniously killed off by the Absolute with no possibility to save him or prevent it in any way. Many players have likened this to railroading, preventing players from working with the villains in any meaningful way, despite the option being teased in-game. This is especially glaring given the aforementioned dearth of content for an 'evil playthrough.'
    • Picking a warlock subclass will occasionally have you get a sense of your patron, but they never actually appear or have any bearing on the plot (in fact, until this was patched out to fix it, it would negatively impact the option of talking Yurgir into killing himself, as the warlock option replaces the insight check needed to figure out how to do so). However, the game has options in game for potential patrons for all three of the available patrons (Raphael and, after his defeat, Yurgir both cover the Fiend pact, Auntie Ethel and Thaniel cover the Archfey pact, and the tadpole itself covers the Great Old One pact), all of whom are actively tempting the player to make deals with them or embrace their power, so with a bit of tweaking to their initial introductions, they could have easily been depicted as the patrons for the three warlock subclasses with little rewriting needed for their overall role in the story.
    • Recruiting Minthara in Act 2 involves freeing her from the Absolute's control. While she remains the Token Evil Teammate due to her own ambition and her upbringing in drow society, she still has her good share of Hidden Depths. The problem though is that without mods (or complicated sheep exploits), Minthara could not be recruited in a "good" playthrough where the player defeats the goblins, despite the fact that her involvement with Act 2 begins with the revelation that wiping out the Emerald Grove was All for Nothing because she didn't get the Astral Prism (which she won't, because handing it to her would be a game over), causing Ketheric to punish her anyways. Therefore, logically she'd be in the same situation if she survived the player defeating the goblins (she can be defeated via knocking her out, though for a while this caused the game to still think she was dead), and she's self-aware enough to realize she has no choice but to ally with the party no matter their prior history. While the intent to give evil playthroughs exclusive content is understandable, Minthara specifically being exclusive to an evil playthrough was seen by fans as a waste of opportunity. It was because of this that by Patch 5's release, Larian eventually made Minthara recruitable in any playthrough as long as she survived Act 1.
    • Lae'zel and Shadowheart's feud in Act 1 is a mini-arc the two have that is a recurring interaction in dialogue and at camp, building to the two nearly coming to blows, and can end with Shadowheart killing Lae'zel if you let her. Such party conflicts were practically a signature mechanic in the original Baldur's Gate games, and even later Bioware titles like Mass Effect 2 had shades of them. However, if the player convinces the two to work together instead, their animosity and conflict is almost completely dropped save for the two snarking at each other, and shortly after treat each other as reluctant friends. While party dynamics are not a big piece of the story, theirs sticks out because it resolves around the prism, a key part of the game's story, making it strange the game built their feud up so much early on, only to drop it quickly.
    • Isobel's diary mentions feeling something off about herself after she was resurrected, and the nature of her return is presented as unusual even by the standards of the setting. On top of how she seems to be vaguely sick -as demonstrated by her coughing fits- the game seems to be setting up something about Isobel's resurrection having consequences or some form of effect that the story will need to address, especially given Myrkul's role in the game, but all of this is never addressed, and her diary is the only reference to her feeling something wrong. It doesn't help that details about Isobel were cut from Early Access that would have explored more about her death and revival.
    • When arguing with Gale about his ambitions for godhood, some classes have a unique dialogue option pointing out that Mystra herselfnote  was once a mortal who ascended to divinity. This parallel is quickly dismissed and is otherwise left unexplored by the story. This unique dialogue points out to Gale that ascending would corrupt him as much as he believes Mystra to be, which perfectly fits with the game's recurring theme of choosing to propagate unhealthy cycles or to break them. More explicitly addressing this parallel might also reduce the amount of Guide Dang It! needed to navigate the tricky and notoriously buggy flag system that leads to Gale's final decision. It could also provide more character development for Mystra herself, whose seeming cruelty and detachment in ordering Gale's suicide attack might be given additional insight and context. This wouldn't be an issue if, again, the game didn't explicitly point this out, making it seem like a potential direction for Gale's character to go.
    • Also in Gale's questline, the Annals of Karsus describes three components of the Karsite regalia, two of which are accounted for in the game and are plot-critial to Gale's story: the crown being used to control the Elder Brain, and the orb in Gale's chest. However, the book also lists a rod/sceptre as the third component, but this is never directly accounted for in the game. There is one allusion to Raphael seeking it, but it is not directly named as his target and nothing further is made of it. This misses an opportunity to explore the idea that Raphael is seeking all three of the Karsite items, which means he would need Gale's orb to complete the set. This would open up Gale's story to having a true "final boss" which he currently lacks. If the rod of Karsus were brought into play, keeping it for himself or returning it to Mystra could also be a critical choice he makes before the final battle which then subsequently determines what he does with the crown, which means his questline could actually be resolved before beating the game. Some have wondered if the rod was meant as a potential DLC hook.
    • Making githyanki playable but not their fellow gith subrace, the githzerai, wastes a ton of potential given the central place the plot places on githyanki politics. Since the business of killing illithids is explicitly the one thing the two estranged branches of the gith will collaborate on despite their blood-feud, it wouldn't be impossible, and the possibilities it would offer are many and fascinating. It doesn't help that githzerai have been generally seen as the more PC-friendly of the two kinds of gith for entire editions now, or that githzerai have plenty of old-time fans in a way the githyanki don't thanks to Planescape: Torment.
  • Ugly Cute:
    • Intellect Devourers are disturbingly adorable for what's basically a mind-flayer-aligned human brain with short legs and Combat Tentacles. The way they scuttle about, as well as their cutesy voice and innocent demeanor while non-hostile, might make you want to pet them rather than kill them on sight.
    • Lae'zel, as a githyanki, has the expected "alien" qualities, from greenish skin with raised, almost scale-like spots, to an unusually small nose, sharp teeth, and serrated ears. But many players have expressed that she's oddly cute by githyanki standards, especially those who view her as the best romance option, with her githyanki qualities giving her a more interesting look than the comparatively traditionally attractive Shadowheart and Amazonian Beauty Karlach.
  • Underused Game Mechanic:
    • There are rare instances during conversations where party members will roll a skill, which can affect the conversation depending on the result. These seem to be safety nets to ensure character specific conversations allow for them to be represented even when not the main speaker. However, these are so rare that it comes across as an after thought or only created for specific conversations where the game really wants you to have a specific character with you. A player may never even see these instances because they are so rare due to multiple factors. The first meeting with Voss in Act 1 if you have Lae'zel in your party is one of the few times a player may ever see this feature.
    • Non-lethal damage is something a player can chose to enable when fighting, meaning you don't kill with melee attacks but leave enemies knocked out. As a mechanic, it not only has severe implementation issues but feels underdeveloped, since outside of only one instance where it is necessary, non-lethal damage basically functions the same as killing an enemy, and they often don't get back up after. The game itself doesn't seem to account for it either, since you can do stuff like non-lethally take out the people Ethel has under control, but nothing happens if you do so. Later patches have added more cases where this works, but it's still under-developed due to being unclear who it impacts the story for, with non-lethally knocking out Minthara in Act 1 and Minsc in Act 3 being the most well-known instances of this due to it being the only way players can recruit them (good-aligned players, in Minthara's case.)
    • Players can select their character's voice out of several options when creating them, but they're all very similar posh English accents saying the exact same lines with slightly different enunciation, not necessarily fitting for the vast amount of character options the game gives you (i.e. gruff dwarves, savage orc barbarians, large dragonborn, or street-smart urchins). This has led to frustration from players wishing for more variety in tone/accent/lines and begs the question of why development wasted money on multiple voice actors if all the performances are just going to be virtually identical anyway. Adding to the confusion is the fact that some measure of voice variety had been a mainstay in many earlier D&D games, including the previous Baldur's Gate titles. And the game employs a Silent Protagonist format, so you only hear the voice you choose in idle chatter rather than in dialogue; if you choose to play an Origin character, this also extends to them as well, which is further disappointing given how well-received the party member voice acting has been.
    • The Hirelings system, which borders on being entirely a Scrappy Mechanic because of how it was implemented. Rather than simply allowing the player to create a secondary custom character for the sake of Alt-itis or to fill a niche none of the companions fill (IE, Sorcerer, Bard, Monk, etc., or non-human/elf races like gnomes, dwarves, dragonborn, etc.) or to simply let players customise the party they play with entirely, Withers provides several pre-made custom characters that have no personality or story attached, essentially just lesser versions of what the companions already offer. They did later patch the ability to rename and redesign these characters via the magic mirror, but this was still limited by the same limitations for the player character (IE, you can't change their bodytype or their race, not even their subrace), which is an issue given how the hirelings only cover a very limited range of potential characters (IE, there's no small sized party members). Why they can't simply make a hireling from scratch is unexplained, but would have made a better means of implementing this feature.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Mayrina. While the game allows the player to call her out on her choice to listen to Ethel, who's revealed to be a hag, the game pushes the player to view her as an innocent woman deserving of sympathy, as most of the party save for the more "evil" aligned push for her safety, because she's emotionally devastated over the loss of her husband and discovered she's pregnant without any idea what to do. However, some players struggled to sympathize with her deciding to trust a hag, of all things, with her baby's future without considering the potential consequences of her deal, making her come off as a Horrible Judge of Character at best, and a selfish mother at worst. Compounding this is that, unless the player is able to show her Ethel can't be trusted in easily-missed dialogue windowsnote  she shows no gratitude to the player for her rescue, instead berating them for "ruining everything" and getting defensive when questioned about her choices.note  While she mellows out by Act 3 and properly apologizes, this often comes too late to change some players' impression of her.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Shovel, the quasit familiar, is female. However, this information is only given in a single line in the flavour text of her achievement. Outside that she never mentions her gender, nothing about her design is particuarly feminine (or even gendered), and her Third-Person Person speech and nature as a familiar means no-one uses pronouns for her in game. As such, it's very easy for people to either guess a gender or just assume that, as a demon, she's genderless.
  • WTH, Costuming Department?: The design of Mystra, the Mother of All Magic, has come in for some criticism as she is wearing a basic Palette Swap of Counselor Florrick's dress. Some fans consider this underwhelming and uncreative for one of the most powerful deities in the setting's pantheon.
  • The Woobie:
    • The tiefling refugees, good lord, the tiefling refugees. Not only did they live through the descent of Elturel, but they were cast out by Elturel's citizens out of racist Misplaced Retribution. As they travel to Baldur's Gate, they get attacked by gnolls and goblins. Although they found shelter in the druid grove, the majority of the resident druids see them as a burden and want to kick them out. And depending on the player's choices, they can be slaughtered by either the druids or the goblins. And even if the player saves them from the goblins, many of them were later slaughtered or abducted by the Cult of the Absolute. By the time Act 3 rolls around, only a fraction of the tieflings you saw at the start of the game managed to make it to Baldur's Gate, and that is dependent on the player's choices. And once they get there, most are barred from entry due to Gortash using paranoia about the Absolute cult to discourage sympathy for them as a means of maintaining authority, resulting in them being stuck in Rivington where they're still targeted for racist xenophobia. Trauma Conga Line does not even begin to cover it.
    • Animals aren't safe either. Scratch, the dog, mourns for the death of a human, among other things in his past, and can even be returned to his abusive owner. A cat named Grub can also be this with his nervous personality only letting Yenna near. If Yenna is kidnapped by Orin, he'll be turned into skewered meat a disguised Orin can try tricking you into eating.

Top