Baldur's Gate 3

I’ve been playing the Guardians of the Galaxy game lately, and after realizing how similar Lae’zel and Gamora are, I know I have to reinstall BG3 for a Guardians playthrough.

Major spoilers for ending of BG3:

Like if you go full tadpole as a Gnome, do you end up as a pint sized Illithid?

Edit: trying to figure out the spoiler tag...sorry

(I'm limiting spoilers here to the House of Hope. I'm still in my first playthrough, so I haven't seen it all yet.)

How does it work exactly? BG3 wiki is not exactly helpful here. Is it the same as detect thoughts spell, with int ability check each time you pick the option?

As Karlach, can I spoilertell Gortash "Go fuck yourself" in act 3 without starting a fight (when he proposes hid deal to you)? I really want to, but I also really don't want to lose my honor run.

Spoilers for Act 3, by the way.

Suffering from chronic restartitis I’ve just had an idea about a semi unique build I have not seen much discussion about anywhere. I’ve been wondering whether it would be viable or not.

Apparently if the majority of your camp supplies are alcohol, the game now gives you a hangover debuff after a long rest. Thankfully it doesn't last very long, but that's a fun little update.

I failed the strength check despite being a paladin and using inspiration. I never saw him again even after getting through nearly all of act 2. I've asked this before, maybe even in this community, but no one gave a concrete answer, likely because the game was still new.

I'm currently on my 3rd playthrough, and I'm playing as a dark urge character who gives into his urges. For spoiler prevention I'll describe what I just finished as vaguely as possible. I just completed the durge objective that gives you a powerful reward in act 2.

In my first playthrough he was able to talk to Raphael outside of the Gauntlet of Shar. This time Raphael just left without ever giving Astarion a chance to ask any questions. So, I reloaded a save, did the whole House of Healing fight again, made sure to have Astarion selected when we approached the Gauntlet, and it auto switched to my character when the conversation started and he left again. Have they changed this sequence? Is it bugged? Do only certain dialogue choices give you a chance to barter?

What classes do you like to build for everyone?

I hadn't tried it in 2 different playthroughs because it's rated really low online. But since I've used the other builds already, I figured I'd give it a go for Astarion in this new playthrough. He has an item that makes him invisible for two turns whenever he kills someone, which basically makes him a one man killing machine. For 3 different battles now I've split him off from the group and sent him out ahead to sneak attack the enemy group. Welp, reinforcements were never needed. He sneak attacks from range, turns invisible, moves away so he can't be detected, and attacks again. Each attack one-shots his victim, and he can make quick work of entire groups of enemies.

What have been some of your takeaways and must haves?

game good

while picking up some paperwork. AAARGH.

So Half-illithid warlock Tav + storm cleric Shadowheart + Minthara hits like a truck apparently. Everyone has initiative bonuses, so first turn Minthara hastes Tav, Tav casts black hole to cluster all enemies together, then Hunger of Hadar's them, Shadowheart then calls an upcasted Call Lightning with divine strike and obliterates everything. You can delete half the health of almost all the enemies in the first round if you get lucky, and they all get severe movement penalties from the black hole and hunger of hadar. Plus Astarion multi-classed rouge/fighter/gloomstalker with action surge and crit bonuses can pick off like 4 enemies in the first round too. Then Minthara smites the survivors into oblivion.