#baldur's gate 4

[fuckyeahbaldursgate]

This is actually a pretty good shout considering there are still people are Obsidian who worked at Black Isle, who originally published Baldur's Gate and developed Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment.

[patchodraws]

alright everyone, here’s my pitch for baldur’s gate 4 !!

(spoilers for bg3 below obviously)

it's called moldur's gate 4. after her deal with raphael fell through, mol spent the next two decades or so looking for a way to gain power and wealth in baldur's gate, ultimately stumbling upon some kind of macguffin (like an extra powerful wish spell) which she used to rewrite history to make it so that it's actually her city, named after her for heroism during the netherbrain attack.

most people go along with it - after all, it's a magical effect - but those who had either had tadpoles in their brains or who'd personally known mol before her deal with raphael remember the truth, and she's sending her goons to hunt them down and silence them. most of those people are dead, many others have fled moldur's gate, and those who have escaped her wrath are now joining up and planning to overthrow her, revealing the truth to the people while looking for a way to undo her wicked wish.

arabella and mirkon are origin characters, mattis has promised to keep his mouth shut so long as he gets to keep operating his popular shop in the lower city, cliffgate curiosities, and the original 6 origin characters of bg3 are all mentors who you can meet in your search for a way to reverse mol's wish.

[spacemonkeysalsa]

BG4 brainstorm

I know they've already got a bunch of it written and outlined or whatever, but I can't turn my brain off, so I'm just going to talk exclusively about the way in which I'd like to see BG3 characters and events incorporated into BG4, if they are even going to do that-

First off there's-

The Stuff That Doesn't Need To Come Up In The Narrative Right Away But Let's Establish The Underlying Assumptions Shall We?:

The white dragon born dark urge managing to overcome Bhaal and defeat the elderbrain, in the end, but with a somewhat uneven series of good and bad choices at their back.

Minthara is probably dead, though I’d love it if she was still around and you absolutely can get away with that, narratively, thanks to the patches.

On the other side, Halsin, Dame Aylin and Isobel are probably alive.

Astarion and Gale are both alive and may or may not be the god/godlike versions of themselves.

Karlach and Wyll are alive and still in Avernus together (unless the DLC drops and we have Blade of Avernus/Fixing Karlach's engine adventures between the games) not explicitly as a couple though, I'd leave that ambiguous.

Lae’zel and Shadowheart are in love (this is both the most specific my post-headcanon gets, and entirely non-negotiable) but spend a lot of time apart because of respective responsibilities. Lae’zel can be a diplomat or a freedom fighter, but Shadowheart is a Selunite living with her parents on a farm and overcoming her fear of wolves by also raising some wolves alongside her adopted Githyanki son.

What Larian did with legacy characters from the earlier game was smart, in that they didn’t overuse them or reveal too many details about what they’d been doing in the interim, so like, we’ll keep it basic, leave a lot up to the imagination, but the writing around their appearances and roles in the story would match the above info.

Starting with origin characters, I think there’s potential to include familiar faces.

First Familiar Face - Githyanki egg all grown up. He shouldn’t be called Ptaris, because this is kind of assuming that the path where he ends up with that name doesn’t happen. For now, I’m just going to call him Egg, as I can sort of imagine Lae’zel using it as a slightly mocking but ultimately affectionate nickname, and miss “I picked my own name” maybe sort of leaving it up to him.

Egg - as I would write him, would have spent some time on the astral plane, like one of his moms and so his age is kind of a ??? because time is different there, and Egg would have also spent some time living with one of his moms on the farm. There’s sort of an obvious characterization available here. Where does he belong? Who are his people, really? You could write him confused and conflicted, or you could take the route I like and say that he was raised by the two most perfect people to help him understand that. He has his half-elf mother’s compounding knowledge of temperance between seemingly conflicted forces, and disparate elements, and his githyanki mother made sure he grew up confident and sure of himself and proud of his incredibly unique heritage. Also, these two states of mind aren’t totally mutually exclusive, cognitive dissonance is a major part of life, and an appropriate coming of age theme. I already love Egg. In keeping with the idea of temperance, I’d put him firmly in the true neutral category.

Second Familiar Face - Mol. Like. Just give me more Mol. What a great character, I’m so stoked imagining her grown up. I would write her as our team warlock, even if Raphael has been eaten by Mephistopheles. She can still do eldritch blast and the works ever since her pact with him. She’s pretty concerned that the implications of this are that Meph is her true fount now, and she wonders if he knows, or if there’s some small bit of his power he’s not aware is being lent out to her, and what he’ll do if he ever learns of her existence. She keeps these worries close to the chest though, instead projecting nonchalance that comes off as careless and callous during the earlier parts of the story, before she opens up. Probably neutral evil.

Third Familiar Face - Arabella. I’d make her so, so weird. Her magic is druidic, so she’s probably our druid, but you could easily get away with sorcerer or a secret third thing and I wouldn’t be mad. As a fully grown woman she speaks with the annoying esoteric air of a dryad and personifies inanimate objects, and is constantly carrying on conversations with animals when left to her own devices. She and Mol do not get along anymore, though they still care a lot about each other and there should be some cuteness about their history and childhood as buddies and little lost refugees together. Chaotic good.

I think you could get away with including all three in the main party, even early game, but I wouldn’t do more than that. New original characters are potentially more important and I would have the plot and the bones of the game be more closely tied to these totally new faces rather than relying on sequel energy. Even if all three games exist in the same universe and share themes, elements, and some characters, they don’t really feel like direct sequels and I think that’s a good thing. The only reason I think you can get away with using these three kids from the third game like this is because as adults, they’ll be completely different people, to the point that the story would have to reintroduce them anyway. The fact that they have any connections to the events of the past games doesn’t even really need to be explored beyond the kind of high-level backstory stuff that affected everyone in the world:

Arabella: “Remember when Baldur’s Gate almost got destroyed by an Elder Brain?”

Mol: “Yeah, that was wild.”

Egg: “No, I was there, but I hadn’t hatched yet.”

Mol: “HOW OLD ARE YOU?”

Egg: “Ugh, it’s complicated.”

I would probably continue with the often fun but at times vaguely serious “kill all the gods and masters” themes from previous games, and use this as a way to get everyone into hell for a portion of the game to go toe-to-toe with some archdevils, and also as an excuse to get Karlach and Wyll in the game (it's hard for me to get too much into this idea tbh, because I'm still hopeful that they'll be lvl13-20 dlc that involves Avernus, in which case, all of this is resolved and idk where to go from here with those two as I'm sure it would be affected a lot by how all that theoretical dlc content turns out, and I'm like so invested in going to Avernus with Wyll and Karlach).

And, Legacy character time!

Lae’zel I think could be our Jaheira analog, meaning she’s a previous origin character who I think could join the main team and be a party member for a chunk of the game without breaking anything. I would keep it until later though, but make it about as simple as recruiting Jaheira, in that it feels almost compulsory if you just follow a common path and progress the game.

Shadowheart would work nicely as our Minsc analog, in that she could be introduced as a very late game party character, essentially starting off as a lvl 12 cleric of light, as Selune intended, and I would make her recruitment more complicated and involve a side-quest. A rough idea for that side-quest would be trying to successfully get a message to Selunite allies, asking for aid. If you manage to meet the requirements and your messenger isn’t killed—and I think it would be fun if there was some randomness to it, like maybe a background constitution check that just mysteriously triggers when you cross into a certain area, and if it passes, it means your messenger (wherever they are) safely made it, and if it fails, they didn’t. So, I would let Shadowheart have a big damn hero moment and ride into a battle (on the back of one her wolves, why not) and join in the fight as an unexpected ally. From a play testing point of view, it would be especially fun to set up a certain fight so that waves of enemies arrive, and there’s a point where most people get overwhelmed and that’s when she shows up. But, for extra complication, if you don’t have Lae’zel or Egg with you at the time, she shows up for the one battle, saves your ass, then fights you if you’re responsible for either of their deaths, and if they are in your party, then you have to pass the roll, and play the whole thing for family drama.

Gale and Astarion, if you wanted to go with their bad endings, then Gale becoming and god and Astarion ascending would be the canon and there’s a lot to work with. Or, if you wanted to go with the good ending, then Gale is professor Dekarios and Astarion would either be an adventurer or leading the spawn in the Underdark. Professor Dekarios could easily just be a helpful mentor-type. His participation in shenanigans can be limited to a side quest or two, an Elminster/Volo like series of cameos etc. He’s a good adventurer when he has to be, but it’s not really where his heart is and we always knew that. He’s a wizard in his tower/in the classroom, but sure, he’ll lend a helping hand as he still remembers how valuable a service that can be. As a silly goose, I’m tempted to write a Volo/Elminster/Gale scene that involves all three of them very wine drunk and arguing about something absolutely no one else could hope to understand.

God Gale I can’t resist making him one of the baddies. It’s sad, but it feels appropriate. If he’s now the god of ambition then he failed to learn a pretty fundamental lesson during the course of BG3, and Tav/Durge who didn’t help him out with that failed and should feel bad. Offense absolutely intended. The logical conclusion is that Gale has become exactly the sort of god that once threatened and made his life miserable, especially since his antagonism towards Mystra with this ending seems to just be couched in pure unexamined hurt, and pettiness rather than a real understand that even as one of the “good gods” she wronged him, and she was wrong from the beginning and that there might just be something inherently bad about having and wielding this kind of power, at all.

He doesn’t get that, but it’s a bit due to wilful ignorance, I think, so I’d continue that and I wouldn’t make Gale knowingly the big bad. it just doesn't fit his character. You have a mortal avatar/chosen, some very ambitious enemy who Gale is helping, without a clear understanding of exactly what kind of schemes he’s backing. He’s too removed to really understand that he fucked up, and by the time he figures it out, it’s too late. Necessarily, his presence like this would be minimal, maybe we don’t even know for sure that he’s involved in any capacity until quite late, and even then, I’d make getting an actual appearance from the guy, pretty hard fought.

Astarion would be our other antagonist, and I think you can get away with going in any of the three different routes with him (Ascended, Spawn Adventurer, Spawn Dad) and make him an antagonist regardless. It would more be a matter of setting, do you want a quest in a big gothic castle or at a fancy party? A totally new location where he can turn up unexpectedly? The underdark? Setting might be the deciding factor, but his behavior and his role in the story could more or less follow the same pattern because the degrees of difference in his personality as ascendant/spawn are workable. That’s the thing about being a neutral evil aligned character—it’s maybe the broadest category as far as D&D character rep goes. He can get away with doing basically anything and still remain in that alignment because it takes an extreme act of unhinged evil to shift his alignment towards chaos, and anything good he does can still be dismissed as a cheap “pet the dog” moment by everyone who is unwilling to admit that he might have some capacity for redemption in him.

I would not make him a big bad antagonist though, because why would he ever bother, what’s actually in it for him? And I would want to create a route where he can join your side, but I wouldn’t have him join the camp/party in a permanent sense, at most you could do a Dame Aylin thing and keep him around and available for additional dialogue, a later quest or two.

In any case, even at his most antagonistic, Astarion isn’t truly ambitious. In BG3 he’ll ascend if he gets the chance, he'll try and run the city as long as the network is all in place already and it's not too much work, but he was never going to go out of his way to set all that up and he’ll settle. You could easily tie his story together with God Gale, if you wanted. “Ambition gets you stabbed to death by your spawn—of course none of this shit was my idea! I didn’t have a choice!” He was always quite good at delivering overdramatic ( but more often than people want to admit, totally valid) justifications for his behaviour, so I’d use that again, to utilize him to his maximum anti-hero/anti-villain potential.

He’d make a great red herring villain in the story, like let everything—including his old allies—think that he’s some mastermind (and let bg3 fans freak out a little that they've characterized him wrong), or that he’s more involved and more willing than he actually is. Then story beats slowly reveal that he’s a smaller level antagonist, pressed into the service of the bigger bad by circumstances/fear/whatever. It brings back bad memories. He’s pissed about it actually, doesn’t want to be doing any of this, has maybe been planning his own escape/betrayal for a while now. The player can ignore all that and just kill him here, or they can help him and see where things go if you give him a chance to ally with you against your common enemy. Fans can then continue their very stupid argument about whether he’s a hero or a villain, and we know that arguing is what truly makes them happy, so everyone wins.

A possible later quest could tie with Mol, if Astarion is the vampire ascendant, because in that scenario they are both in a weird ambiguous state where Mephistopheles is maybe their master or maybe not? D&D lore arguments continue?

Doing all of this would obviously be a lot, but I'd be thrilled if some version of any one of these ideas appeared in bg4. Assuming, I ever stop playing bg3 long enough to get trully invested in bg4 eventual existence.

[thenugking]

FLYMM? Oh boy I am excited for this one - 21, 22, 24?

21. Describe a defining moment from their past, which makes them who they are today! 

I mean I was thinking of going with the time their brother disappeared out of their life and their parents were suddenly a lot happier and they suddenly had a lot more money for a while. But I don’t know if that was defining as much as a few days of happiness over proper meals and not having to deal with Enver being a dickhead today, turning into an increasing feeling of unease the longer he was gone.

The biggest defining moment for Zephyr came several years later, when their other brother woke them up in the night and told them he was taking some money he’d hidden away and leaving, because he wasn’t sticking around to let their parents sell him like they did Enver. Here’s all the places he hides money and food that their parents don’t know about, and he suggests Zephyr use them too and get out as soon as they’re old enough, and he promises to write to check up on them but they can’t tell their parents where he is. Zephyr, who was 12 at the time, freaked out about losing their favourite brother too, and yelled for their parents to wake up and stop him. Their brother told them being a snitch wasn’t going to make their parents love them any more when there was no one else to get at, and booked it out of the house. He didn’t write any letters back after that.

It’s the biggest regret of Zephyr’s life, and also the moment that they finally stopped repressing all their concerns about their parents and suspicions of what happened to Enver, and realised that no, there isn’t anything they can do to be good enough for these people. That if there’s another debt, they’re not going to make themself helpful enough or kind enough or smart enough or quiet enough that their parents will value them as much as their own safety and comfort. It’s the moment they decided to stop trying to appease other people, while also unfortunately cementing for them that fucking up out of fear will lose you the people you care about forever.

22. How is your Tav’s relationship with their family? Their parents? 

NOT GOOD. Zephyr was the baby of the family, and growing up was the favourite, as much as Sally and Dravo had one (causing resentment from both their brothers). Once they were the only kid left, all the abuse was focused on them. They left home when they were 14, signing on to work on a ship and get the fuck out of Baldur’s Gate. They’ve come back to the city several times since, but always avoided going anywhere near the family home.

They had a bad relationship with Gortash growing up (he was… never a nice person, but certainly made worse by Sally and Dravo treating every sign of neurodivergence or normal kid fuckups as a sign that he was a monster, and took out his problems on the smaller, younger kid). Zephyr’s relationship with their oldest brother was better, though still pretty volatile, since a bunch of kids in an abusive home are never going to have great coping strategies or conflict resolution skills. By present day, Zephyr is repressing their past as much as they can (that’s the same as Letting Go and Moving On, right?) but misses both their brothers and desperately hopes they’re both safe.

Then their old associate Nine Fingers gives them the heads up that she’s been looking into the local arms dealer who’s suddenly causing the Guild a whole lot of trouble and she’s pretty sure he’s Enver Flymm, and it would benefit both of them if Zephyr would go and have a talk with him and find out what’s up. Zephyr had a whole complex mix of emotions on finding one of their brothers again. But they were pretty sure the reunion was going well, up until the moment Gortash had a steel watcher grab them while he rammed a tadpole in their eye and told them it was far too late to try and make amends (for, yknow, not stopping their parents being abusive monsters when Zephyr was an eight year old).

24. What does your Tav consider to be their own biggest character flaw?

Zephyr acknowledges that they’re selfish. If asked, they would immediately go on the attack about it (that part is totally Not a character flaw!!) because fuck you, what’s wrong with keeping themself safe and happy when no one else cares enough to?? But they’d admit, to themself at least, that it’s deeply selfish of them to, say, not tell Karlach some things that she really deserves to know, just because they’re deeply enjoying spending time with her and they don’t want her to learn the truth and immediately start hating them. Zephyr’s had a lot of experience with allies turning on them on hearing about past fuck ups/things that were not in fact their fault, which is definitely down to the fact that they fundamentally can’t be good enough for people, and not because of the “immediately going on the attack whenever they get scared” thing.

[wearethewitches]

Omigod, Arabella as bg4 protagonist???

[evilroachindustrial]

The game's memory getting so bogged down for some folks by Act 3 being the result of the game accidentally keeping track of every time you stole something over the entire game is absolutely hysterical.

[lazylittledragon]

some beach babes i started while i was on holiday <3

[rheill]

This has been in my mind since August but I couldn't figure out which character would say it. Then I started a Karlach Origin run and realized: Karlach. Karlach has a face that knows what The Grinch is.

[gvalesdraws]

scribble from my playthrough. there is definitely a statue of astarion somewhere in baldurs gate because we wouldn't survive without him

[nesquako]

Dragon age is more alive than ever and i want to share my wisdom in this matters

[swordmaid]

back to the shadows 🌑

inspired by the storm by pierre auguste cot, shri’iia and astarion running away from the sun bc he’s a vampire and she has sunlight sensitivity.

please zoom in to see the details! 🥹🫶

[cymk8]

self care shart

[malsorie]

Nightwarden.

[danikatze]

[ID in alt text]

Guys he's so pretty..

[deathlywounded]

"Hunt" part 1. My tav Revna and daddy Halsin. Rev is a spore Druid/urchin wood elf (my favorite kind of Druid) they have horns due to spending the last years of their life living in isolation away from civilization, adopting the likeness of goats and cervines in the heart of the forested mountains. Such is their love for these animals they decided to keep the horns and the singularly colored eyes (also, they miss the weight on their head when not wearing them) Decided to make them a genderless beast because, hear me out, a shapeshifter being connected to nature n’ living away from human costumes studying fungal behavior. What would a being like that need a damn gender for? Nothing, the answer is nothing."

Here is my art Instagram, I´m far more active there. And do NOT use/repost my work without consent or credit, dammit.

[grezzirossi]

My Bg3 Party with the cutest barbarian and 3 pathetic guys.