Baldur’s Gate 3 Basic Principles of Tactical Combat

When facing an opposition squad, you should always aim to deal more damage than you receive. Although it should go without saying, it is important to keep in mind when truly *evaluating* any move you may make in tactical battle. Will this improve the damage I can inflict or the damage I could potentially sustain? If you keep in mind this rule, which will serve as the standard by which all other rules are judged, you won’t make any mistakes when creating your own combat strategies.

2) Simmer the fire

Enemy units with only one health point can nevertheless deal just as much damage as adversaries with full health. Area effect spells such as lightning bolt and fireball are excellent at dealing a ton of damage, but eliminating an enemy unit ends that unit’s capacity to hurt you. When in doubt, pick the assault or combination of attacks that will most likely destroy an enemy unit, particularly before they may respond to lessen the damage you will receive.

3) Retrench your hurt units (or heal them).

Contrary to the aforementioned rule, *your* units can keep doing damage if they are still alive. If they have low health, seek for a chance to safely disengage and deal damage from a distance while avoiding opportunity attacks. You can deal more damage if you keep your units in the battle.

4) Engage melee opponents from a distance and ranged opponents up close.

For both melee and ranged assaults, each of your player characters has a few possibilities. The mages will have both close-range and far-reaching spells, while your fighters will be able to utilize bows. Make sure they are prepared for every scenario. Although many foes only have melee or ranged attacks, some characters will be *better* at doing close-range or ranged damage. By coming close to opponent range units, they either gain the edge to attack you directly or, if they move away to shoot, they set up a free chance attack. On the other hand, keeping away from opposing close combat fighters allows you to pelt them with projectiles from a distance. You can maximize your damage output and reduce your damage input by attacking your opponent’s weak points.

5) Use your high defense units to contain their melee units.

Some of your units will have more hitpoints and AC (the value displayed beneath each unit’s image). This score is increased by wearing extremely effective armor or having extremely excellent dodging dexterity. This indicates that enemies are more likely to miss them or, if they do, have more hitpoints to allow them to continue the battle. Make sure your melee units can withstand the blows while sparing your weaker units from attack. More of your units will stay in the fight if the enemy’s damage is concentrated on your troops that can either shoulder it or avoid it, increasing your damage output and decreasing your damage input.

6) Attack their mages and archers from behind their lines.

On the other hand, try to have a unit that can slip past their defenses and begin eliminating their high-damage but feeble-defence units, such as wizards and archers. Due to their ability to safely retreat from a melee scrum using a bonus action or dash as a bonus action, rogues can occasionally pull this off. Weak magicians can be readily defeated with double weapons or stealth assaults. As an alternative, if you have a fighter or barbarian (Karlach excels at this thanks to the Athletics feat), you could have enough jump (z key) to leap up to ledges or behind the lines where their ranged units are hidden.

Keep in mind that killing enemy mages may also have the effect of causing them to lose focus while casting spells that could harm your characters.

Use the terrain.

In BG3, terrain is a crucial component. You may be able to hold off opposing forces at a chokepoint. Or there are noticeable height disparities in numerous levels. Using ranged attacks from above can help you in attack roles, while seizing the high ground can hinder melee troops’ ability to get to you while also disadvantageing their archers. The ability to push (v) foes to a lower level gives you the chance to slow them down and deal falling damage, but be careful not to get shoved yourself! Utilizing the terrain effectively gives you numerous options to increase your damage output and reduce the harm that is coming your way.

Keep in mind that you have a lot of control over getting your units into position before a battle or even getting your opponents to fight on your side of the field of battle.

8) Get into a battle on your terms.

You can start a fight on the most advantageous conditions for you in addition to looking for the greatest area on which to fight. This might involve utilizing a rogue to use sneak attacks to eliminate a few scattered adversaries without starting a fight. Alternatively, you can receive a surprise round and concentrate all of your damage on their highest damage dealer before transitioning to regular combat (good candidates include foes with 25 hit points or less and out of line of sight from other enemies). There are many options here, but getting into a fight on your terms will increase the damage you deal to the other side and minimize the damage you absorb.

9) Prepare strategies for dealing with numerous, weak foes.

Occasionally, a swarm of numerous weak foes may surround you. As a result, your fighter’s high-powered single attacks will only knock out a single little monster rather than bringing down a larger, more hazardous monster. Determine what maneuvers each of your characters may use to cope with more adversaries who have lower hitpoints. Area of effect spells from mages are excellent in this situation, but fighters also have cleave, which can damage numerous adversaries at once. Even classes like rogues that don’t have clear area of effect skills can have explosive arrows, bombs, or alchemist fire at their disposal.

Be aware that you can frequently carry a few barrels of fire wine and smoke powder to preposition or utilize before battling groups to cause a lot of area-of-effect damage (just make sure you have a way to light it when you need to!).

10) Spells that do not deal damage can tip the damage scales in your favor.

Some spells, such as hold people, sleep, enchant people, and grease, don’t deal any damage, which may make them less exciting than a lightning bolt or a fireball. Not so! Any spell that renders an opponent unit helpless for one or more turns means that for those one or more turns, they are not engaged in combat with you. By effectively employing these spells, you can reduce the amount of damage that is dealt to you, giving you more time to tip the damage balance in your favor.