Baldur’s Gate 3 Dropped The Ball With One Staple Cleric Feature

Clerics are an essential class for any party in Dungeons and Dragons. Although they’re typecast as healers, they come with an arsenal of offensive and supportive spells, making them both versatile and flexible for a variety of playstyles. In addition to their range of spells, their subclasses can change the role the cleric plays in the party. A cleric’s subclass is often linked to the deity they worship. While these two characteristics aren’t connected in Baldur’s Gate 3, it makes sense from a character-building perspective. Baldur’s Gate 3 removed the option of worshiping some of the most evil deities in The Forgotten Realms, including Myrkul, Bane, Bhaal, and Shar.

7:29

Related

Table of Contents

Toggle

Baldur’s Gate 3: How to Break Wyll’s Pact with Mizora

Wyll’s warlock pact in Baldur’s Gate 3 is unfair, but it’s not unbreakable. Here is how players can end it.

Evil Gods in Baldur’s Gate 3

The Evil Gods Available to Clerics

Shadowheart’s default subclass is the Trickery domain. As she worships Shar, this makes thematic sense, as Shar is a goddess of darkness. Shadowheart stands alone in being able to worship Shar, however, as custom clerics aren’t able to choose Shar or any of the traditionally evil gods aside from Tiamat, Lolth, and Vlaakith. As Lolth and Vlaakith are closely tied to the Drow and Githyanki races respectively, clerics would only choose to worship them in very specific circumstances. This leaves only Tiamat, the dragon god, available for evil-aligned clerics to worship.

Other Evil Deities in the Forgotten Realms

As the only “evil” domain in Baldur’s Gate 3 is the Trickery domain, other deities usually open to clerics to worship in Dungeons and Dragons aren’t available, such as Hades. Dungeons and Dragons also allows clerics to worship Bane, Bhaal, Myrkul, and Shar. This creates obvious conflicts of interest with Baldur’s Gate 3‘s main storyline against the Chosen of the Dead Three and interferes completely with the Dark Urge’s storyline.

Evil Deities For Clerics in Baldur’s Gate 3

Roleplaying Dead Three Worship

A cleric’s source of magic is channeled from their god, and a player character working to undo their god’s plans would have their magic cut off. However, this could work for an evil playthrough similar to the Dark Urge storyline, where the player could become a rival for the Dead Three’s Chosen, whether they worship Bane, Myrkul, or Bhaal. Cleric Domains in Baldur’s Gate 3. As it is, Ketheric is officially a Paladin but has a skill set very closely aligned to a Death Cleric, and the Oathbreaker Paladin’s skills and spells are rooted in necromancy and controlling the undead, which also align with a Death Cleric’s skill set.

The Death Domain

Being able to worship more evil gods associated with death would also come hand-in-hand with bringing in the Death Domain as a subclass. While Baldur’s Gate 3 already has the Trickster domain, it’s more suited to deities with chaotic, trickster alignments rather than evil alignments. The War domain would also be an appropriate domain for Lawful Evil gods such as Bane, but including the Death domain would have covered a wider variety of interesting gods.

Cleric Alignments

This would have given players who rolled clerics more options. With their reputation as support or healers, clerics can often get typecast as Lawful Good aligned characters when there’s the potential for so much more. Although Shadowheart functions as an example of a cleric who isn’t Lawful Good and worships an evil goddess, the Trickster domain doesn’t give the full range of what an evil cleric should be able to do, and Shadowheart herself isn’t evil unless pushed in that direction by an evil player.

Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a Dungeons and Dragons inspired RPG developed and published by Larian Studios. Featuring both a single player and cooperative element, players create their character by selecting a starting class, take on quests, level up, and engage in turn-based combat using the D&D 5th edition rule set.

Franchise

Baldur’s Gate

Released

August 3, 2023

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence

How Long To Beat

30 Hours

Metascore

96

Split Screen Orientation

Vertical Only

Number of Players

1-4

PS Plus Availability

N/A

Local Co-Op Support

1-2 Players