Quick Links
InBaldur’s Gate 3, the combat is sometimes known for being unforgiving. No one wants to get caught off guard, but sometimes combat gets intense, and you’re quickly outnumbered. Thankfully, there are ways to manage the unruly crowds that want to tear you apart.
RELATED:Baldur’s Gate 3: The Best Healing Spells
Spells can do plenty of damage, and ranged attacks keep your party members out of harm’s way. There are tricks available to every class, but these are some of the best and easiest ways to control the masses of enemies that attack you in the Sword Coast. Hopefully, this will save you from a total party kill.
How To Do Crowd Control
It can be tempting to jump in, spells blazing, and take out everyone nearby. However, Baldur’s Gate 3requires an element of strategyeven in its easiest difficulty. Until your characters are at a higher level, you’ll need togo slow and plan your movements. Keeping the party together ensures that each member has a layer of protection.
If a character is downed, another can helpbefore an enemy takes them outfor good. This saves you from being down a character per turn (which can quickly spiral out of control) and keeps you from using a scroll to revive them. Keep characters with low health towards the back and try tofile enemies through a narrow pointso you canpick them off one by one.
Best Spells For Crowd Control
Magic is your ally in slaying hordes of enemies. There are plenty of useful spells throughout the game, but a few are available early on to learn in multiple classes, making proper crowd control easy.
Grease
As a Level 1 spell, Grease is incredibly useful. Not only does itslow enemieswith a chance to make them prone, but it’s also quiteflammable. When you cast grease, you can have another charactercast the firebolt cantripto light the area ablaze. This deals a good amount of damage and inflicts burning on some enemies.
Grease covers a wide area, making itperfect for casting in hallwaysor areas you need to funnel enemies through. This forces enemies to roll for saves so that they don’t fall prone, and it exposes them longer, giving you a chance to take them out with ranged attacks.
Silence
Nothing is more frustrating thanenemy casters hitting you from a distanceor when they heal the opponent you just spent the last three turns whittling down. Make it stop by silencing them. Silence is a second level spell thatprevents enemies from casting spellswithin a soundproof sphere. When placed strategically, it can beeffective for several turns.
It’s a concentration spell, so you’ll wantwhoever’s casting it to be undisturbedby other enemies. Otherwise, the spell could fall apart and leave you vulnerable again.
Sleep
The Sleep spell can magically put enemies to sleep, forcing them toskip their turn in combat. This buys the party time to act without retaliation from all enemies. You can select enemies up to acombined number of 24 hit points, allowing you to knock a few enemies down at once if you whittle away at their health first.
If you upcast the spell, you canput even more enemies to sleepso you’re party can focus on taking out one enemy at a time.
How To Avoid Taking Damage
While there are spells to helpraise your armor class and shield your party from damage, other mechanics are advantageous in crowds. One mechanic ishaving the high groundin combat.
In Baldur’s Gate 3, moving your party to a platform or area at a higher elevation than enemies gives your characters a+2 bonus on ranged attackson characters lower than you. Likewise, being above your enemies meansthey gain a -2 bonusto attack you. This improves the odds of enemies missing their attacks, buying you more time to wipe them out.
Be careful, though. Enemies can also have high ground against you.
