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[punchyboy]

Here's a game I haven't played as much as I ought to. I bought Baldur's Gate 3 in early access just before it launched and I've mostly been playing multiplayer with the boys. I think it's high time I gave it some single player attention, and what better way than by bringing the glory of The Champion to the premises?

This is going to be a standard playthrough of Balanced mode without the Dark Urge background on a custom character.

Here's the punchy boy of the hour. The reason I went with Barb is that Monk is a lot more DEX focused, and The Champion is not about skill and efficiency. He's about punching BIG and HARD, preferably with painful things that most people aren't going to think of as weapons.

After our character is done, we proceed to the tutorial level.

So this is unusual. Our Champion has somehow found himself in distress. Between being captured and infected by Mind Flayers, things aren't very cash money right now. Still, we proceed through the ruined ship, which was apparently under siege by wyvern-riding alien warriors known as Githyanki. Soon enough, we meet one of their ilk.

Some funky mind-worm parasite wi-fi connects our brains briefly and we surmise that neither of us are thralls of the Mind Flayers. We agree to a partial truce and soon enough battle ensues with some imps nearby.

This is more like it. The Champion has an axe but who cares about that when you have a 95% chance of hurling your enemy like a rag doll straight onto another unfortunate soul. The Champion quite literally mops the floor with all these losers and quickly moves on.

I like to imagine he punches the unfamiliar device as a general response to what he doesn't understand. As usual, this triggers an encounter.

That was easy.

Here's a fun fact, I never knew you could try to jimmy Shadowheart's pod open.

Well, more than jimmy. This is a full on James-Johnsoning of it open through brute force alone. We're not really able to do it on this interaction but another one lets us roll a strength check.

Bugger.

Well. I say we leave this woman behind, seeing as all worthwhile options are exhausted. Goodbye, Shadowheart.

Gots me shit to do, sorry.

My man's so large the camera can't keep him in frame, it's great.

So this dude thinks we're his mind thralls because well, why wouldn't we be? He put a worm in our skulls. We're going to pretend for now. They're in a fight but it's really boring and I just throw imps around again until we reach the nerve machine that will take us out of Brazil.

As the psionic wormhole takes us from this blasted realm into another, The Champion is knocked free from the ship, falls five straight kilometers and survives, as he would.

Overall I'd say a nice prologue to the story of The Champion's chronicles in the Forgotten Realms of Baldur's Gate III. Tune in next time to find out if Shadowheart survived, if she's still mad at me, and how hard I have to punch her so that is no longer so.

[punchyboy]

The Champion Manifesto

"You're fit to learn the proper meaning of a beatdown"

Back in 2014 or so, me and a couple of friends had the best gaming experience of our lives. It happened on a crusty, barely functional MMO total conversion of Fallout 2 hosted somewhere in Russia. FOnline2, as it was called, was absolute anarchic insane fun.

No character in our party was more iconic than The Champion. The character was purpose built within Fallout's SPECIAL ruleset to be the most frightening, stupid character in existence. His weapon of choice was a rock, one with which he'd beat his enemies senseless at a rate of 14 to 15 attacks per turn.

Known to shrug off hails of bullets, The Champion is an implacable man. He cannot be stopped. He cannot be reasoned with. If you wrong him, he will chase you to the ends of the earth. There is no impediment you can deploy to prevent his violent designs. If you attack him, you get turned into an example.

Over the years, we left The Champion and FOnline2 behind. Until now. Enter: The Champion with a Thousand Faces.

This blog is my attempt to create a text based Let's Play page in 2023. I will be playing several RPG games, with one goal: Recreate The Champion in each of them. The tenets of a Champion are very simple:

Max Strength and Endurance. Everything else is dump stats.

If at all possible, eschew weaponry and gear. The Champion doesn't play with toys.

The Champion is not a murderer. He does not attack without reason.

Expect to hear of the first Champion soon. Until then, be safe.