Baldur's Gate 3 combines the mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons 5e with turn-based strategy games in a complicated dance of rules and options that could get the better of even veteran players. For those playing on Normal and Tactician difficulties, using every dirty trick in the book is necessary to win some combats.
Although you could technically choose any combination of origin characters, mercenaries, and companions to take your party to the end, if you don't want a frustrating mess of saving and loading, then there are a lot of factors to consider when designing your team. Even after all that, making the most out of their skills and features is a whole other challenge.
10 Avoid And Utilize The Surprise Condition
The Surprise condition appears whenever you enter combat when your party isn't expecting to. The condition essentially gives one side an entire round's worth of combat to prepare or make attacks, which most often leads to a party wipe with low-level characters.
You can also trigger surprise conditions on enemies by attacking them from stealth while they are not in combat. If you know there is no potential dialogue or cutscenes, you should always start combat this way when you can. If you suspect an ambush attack, send just one character in and keep the rest back, and the others won't be surprised.
9 Buff Before The Fight
This is important to remember as waiting until combat to apply buffs and heals will eat your actions and essentially start the character who buffed a turn later than usual. This is useful for spells like Mage Armor and Shield of Faith, which last until your next long rest, meaning you can cast it right as you leave camp and have it always prepared.
With spells that only last a few turns, if you know you are about to walk into a fight, stand on the very edge of it and enter turn-based mode and cast the spell before walking forward. This also applies to summons like Spiritual Weapon.
8 Don't Forget Potions And Poisons
Potions and elixirs are life-saving tinctures that allow you to get the upper hand on creatures who might have the same damage potential and actions as you, but will also drink potions during the fight. Make sure you dole them out before the fight starts and be wary of potions like Potion of Speed, which have turn timers and might run out before you start combat.
If you have a spare bonus action, and you are making a weapon attack, coat it with poison first. You will get more damage per turn, and, with rare poisons, you can apply devastating conditions that put targets to sleep or blinds them. They are also usually cheap, easy to craft, and found in many containers, so you won't run out.
7 Play With Ledges In Mind
On medium and hard difficulties, enemies love to use shove actions and Arrows of Roaring Thunder to send you into chasms and immediately kill your character. Unless you are trying to get a height advantage, don't risk standing next to infinite abysses.
However, this is also an opportunity to remove enemies from combat by shoving them off ledges too. Make sure you are doing so with a character with high Strength so that it is more likely to succeed, and not on characters with important items in their inventory, as their body will be lost.
6 Toggle Your Reactions To "Ask"
One of the more nuanced systems in Baldur's Gate 3 is reactions, which range from opportunity attacks to counterspells and even some magic item abilities. As a default, some of these reactions trigger automatically and will use up resources.
You should always toggle reactions to ask so that you can make better decisions than the AI. This is especially important for abilities like the Bard's Cutting Words, as it defaults to automatic, and will use up all of your Bardic Inspirations before the second round of combat on weak or unmissable attacks.
5 Summon Or Bring Allies
One term you might hear floating around, especially in D&D circles, is the action economy. The side of combat with the most actions is usually the one that wins since they have more opportunities to deal damage or inflict disastrous effects.
By summoning allies, such as through summoning spells, Beast Master companions, and spider egg cluster grenades, you will force enemies to spread out their actions among more targets, and you will have more actions to use against them.
4 Focus On One Enemy At A Time
In Baldur's Gate 3, health is almost never tied to damage potential, so six enemies at one health point each are still more dangerous than one enemy with 20 hit points. To get the action economy on your side, target single enemies at a time so that they have fewer attacks or spells to make against your party overall.
In boss battles, this means you should save the highest health enemy for last so that all of their minions don't stack up against you even after you take out the heaviest hitter, and they still wipe your party. While it might seem like you should target healers, few will ever be able to out-heal the damage you deal, so always focus on the squishy damage dealers first.
3 Use Spells That Remove Enemy Turns
While spells like Fireball and Lightning Bolt have some pretty rewarding sound effects and damage numbers, there is a valley of underused spells that have just as devastating effects with less flash and thunder. Spells like Hypnotic Pattern and Darkness stop certain enemies from taking turns in combat, allowing you to focus on a smaller group at a time.
Darkness is best used against ranged attackers, as they won't be able to target your party without line-of-sight, and Hypnotic Pattern essentially paralyzes them until the spell ends. You will want to be careful with the wording of these kinds of spells, as some end the effect when they take damage. If you have to concentrate on it, the caster should stay away from damage sources.
2 Carry Barrels And Bombs With You
Carrying over from the strategy in Divinity: Original Sin 2, smokepowder and firewine barrels can be used to devastating effect if otherwise lacking immersion. This is best used in areas like the goblin camp in act one, where you can set up explosive barrels around a group of neutral enemies you plan to attack.
These kinds of barrels act as bombs, and must be targeted with enough fire damage to destroy them to ignite. The same concept can be used with smokepowder satchels and grenades, which you can craft with alchemy and have similar damage potential while not being nearly as heavy as barrels.
1 Balance Your Party
While rolling out of the nautoloid crash with four rogues is a fun idea, you will be lacking crucial skills, abilities, and weapon proficiencies that are required to kill certain enemy groups. Make sure you include a character that is proficient in each armor type, from light, medium, and heavy, so that you can utilize any magic items that require it.
You will also want to have at least one spell caster and a character who knows a ranged healing spell like Healing Word in case one of your party members go down in combat. Finally, have at least one character specializing in melee combat and one in ranged combat, otherwise a stray goblin with a bow could be more of a problem than they should be.