Baldur’s Gate 3 – Hidden Mechanics

Hidden Mechanics You Wish You Knew About Earlier

Throwing a Potion

I figured out pretty quickly was that I could heal party members by throwing potions at them. What I failed to consider for the longest time was that characters could also throw potions at their own feet to self-heal.

Because throwing a potion costs an action point whereas drinking a potion costs a bonus action, this means that any character is capable of self-healing through the use of potions twice in the same round.

Another thing I saw about the throwing of potions. You can also set one on the ground and attack it which causes it to spread farther than throwing does apparently (not tried it yet to see).

Disguise Self Spell

Disguise self spell allows speaking to corpses you killed yourself. Of course they need to have something to say, not every corpse has. But they normally refuse to speak to their killer.

Clicking and Dragging

Clicking and dragging on most objects lets you move them around.

Seriously useful for moving environmental things around like water barrels, explosives, etc for combat, but also as a movement tool by stacking boxes for stairs.

It doesn’t use action or bonus action either so you can casually move stuff around the battlefield as long as you are close to the object so you’re only really limited by your movement.

Dropping Loads of Javelins

Another useful application is dropping loads of javelins or random weapons. Put them all in a pile and have a mage hand just throw them as weapons.

Action economy is a huge in DnD and having more actions per turn is a real advantage, so while a mage hand throwing some stuff around doesn’t sound like much, that damage adds up per round.

Shove Your Injured Party Members

as a bonus action, you can shove your injured/outnumbered/bad situation party members to get them away from a threatening enemy or out of a nasty AoE. this is especially useful when your party member is out of movement, or is last on the initiative tracker at the start of combat.

Candle Tip

You can have your thief rogue carry a candle around to place on the ground to dip their weapon in when they don’t have a use for their extra bonus action to increase thier dps.

20 Strength

Having 20 strength lets you throw Medium sized enemies. I went the entire game thinking Lae’zel’s chucking potential ended with Goblins and Halflings.

High Initiative

Have your character with highest initiative start a battle with enemies, while all your other teammates hide in shadow(or hide them far from the battlefield). As long as your hidden teammates not being detected, they won’t be dragged into the battle. They can move freely and do anything. Prepare and navigate them to the back line of the enemies who have been turn locked by your high initiative one (as long as this guy don’t end the turn, all enemies dragged in battle can’t move). Your lowest initiative heavy hit fighter/spellcaster can nuke high threat targets in first round by this ambush tactic.

More Helpful Hidden Mechanics

• If you kill sombody you can put the body in you inventory – they work like chests – and hide the body, or decorate your camp with it.
• My dark urge has the whole grove as corpses in his camp, the bard should be alone – so I was nice and put all her friends next to her .
• But you can decorate the camp with other items. if you don´t want corpses.
• If you have one coprs in your inv, nobody reacts if they haven seen the kill, they don´t miss the NPC in you inventory – but if you loot them in your inv they react to the steal if you are seen.
• In the underdark in the Tower is a chest that can be found with a perception check, if you put it in your inventory, you can use it as bag, with one spezialty all items in it have no weitght – but 5k+ items my crash the game. One Problem with it, it transforms the items all in an special item. – all the same icon and name, bad if you seach for something, but they get the Orginal form if you take them out.
• If you steal from an Trade-NPC, and one of you Companions has an unused levelUp and you level him after the seal , the etrade resetsl the Inventory, same if you go to your camp sleep and come back inventory resets. Good to make fast or infinite money and stuff that they sell. (hire some in the camp, – if you are 12 they get Exp to level 12, go to the trade NPC, und level them up 1 level steal again – next level…)
• You can do both ways to act 2 if you don´t cross the way into Act2, best do underdark firt, cause the lift is easy to ignore then go over the pass into Act2.
• There is a rare Mushrom, that heal 100% and removes all debuffs if eaten.
• The well in front of Auntis house. yea the rooten Well if you let your team dring from it ( they get a 10 or don´t know at the moment 10% HP buff till sleep. IF you are in a fight and drink from it teh butt will be a debuff.
• If you pick up a mask in Auntis hideout – and put it on you ucan find a secret passage in the Underdark.
• If you steal in the hidden camp next to the Burning Building a key at the east in teh Hide out, there is a fake Wall bening that is a life that can be unlock with that key – next way in to Underdark.
• In the distroyed City – that where the DeepGnom is, in the Spider Cave there, at Waypoint in the Cave use federfall and jump down next way into Underdark.
• If you are a Loth Fem Drow, and side with the gobs, you can bypass the Fight with the Drow Leader at the Adamant Smithery and make him akt like a littel dog.
• Dropping item is free in this game so anyone with magehand or magehand ability should drop their excess bottle, explosive vials, toxin, poison, water bottle so magehand can set up something by throwing/ just dealing damage
• Chest of mundane turn any item put inside to very light very mundane item you could throw 100kg chest this way or transformed oil barrel. Just open inventory and chest of mundane, right click and throw
• Respect could be used as pseudo healing or filling your spellslot for 100 gold.
• Benched hireling could use warding bond on you for damage mitigation and 1 ac. They might die but use it anyway if you have revivy or spell.
• Arrow of the many is really easy way to inflict your coating debuff to bunch of mobs I would reccomend combustion coating and drow poison for humanoid.
• Containers with Medium Sturdy or such works very well as a blocker for doors, the enemy will try to attack it but don’t do enough damage to hurt it. Especially on Act 1 in the earlier areas and fights, they will opt to attack a chest and may do 0 damage to it.
• You can shift-click on items in the inventory for selecting multiple items.
• Send all camp supplies to camp. no need to carry them and they can be used without issues at the camp and they weigh a lot.
• Speaking to the dead will always work if you disguise yourself (spell) before. otherwise you might get a message that the corpse doesn’t want to talk to its killer.
• Friends cantrip gives you advantage on charisma dialog checks but on higher difficulties it also makes them hostile towards you when the effect ends. there is a warning now, but in EA there wasn’t any and I couldn’t understand why the entire grove was hostile towards me :).
• Ritual spells are very useful and do not cost a spell resource – longstrider, speak to animals, speak to the dead etc.
• You can only concentrate on one spell. no shield of faith and bless together from your cleric. bless seems to be the better choice though especially with some gear coming later.
• When bartering, you can sell all wares (you need to mark items as wares though beforehand). the button is at the bottom part of the screen.
• You can throw potions at your companions to activate their effect on them – throwing a heal potion will heal the companion etc. throwing water bottles and grease bottles is useful too.
• If you are playing on explorer and want to multiclass just switch the difficulty for the level up window. (don’t entirely understand why this was limited on explorer)
• Always invest a proficiency point in either Athletics or Acrobatics (depends on your stats). every enemy in this game seems to want to push you from a cliff/into a pit//lava etc.
• There is a useful amulet later which provides a healing cantrip but can also puts the recipient on sleep. however, elves/half-elves are immune to sleep effects…