Baldur’s Gate 3 features 4 different difficulty modes, but it’s not quite clear how they affect the game. However, you’ll need to pick wisely, as they drastically change the game.
Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t an easy game, even at the best of times. With so much relying on the luck of a dice roll, you can fumble your way through its enormous story, failing almost every challenge. Of course, you can make things a little easier for yourself, or harder if you prefer, by switching what difficulty you’re on. However, with 4 to choose from, it can be hard to figure out their differences. Fortunately, that’s where we come in. Below, we’ve broken down the differences between every difficulty mode in BG3.
What Are the Differences Between Each Difficulty Mode in Baldur’s Gate 3?
There are currently 4 main difficulties in Baldur’s Gate 3: Explorer, Balanced, Tactician, and Honour, with each one drastically changing the game. The difficulty you select changes enemy difficulty, shop prices, roll success rate, ability check success rate, and it can even open up new features, such as the ability to multiclass. They also change a myriad of other minute details, although these won’t be as immediately noticeable.
You can also completely customize your difficulty in Baldur’s Gate 3, tweaking everything from enemy aggression to previewing dialogue check difficulty before rolling. It’s important to note that Balanced, the intended way to play the game, changes nothing and has all settings on default. Of course, if you want to make things easier or harder and don’t fancy changing the settings yourself, then you can see a breakdown of the most significant differences between the difficulties below;
Explorer
- Enemies’ maximum health is decreased by 30%.
- All party members’ health is increased by 100%
- Merhcnat prices are discounted by 20%
- +2 proficiency bonus to you and your allies’ attack and save throws
- Multiclassing is unavailable
Tactician
- Enemies’ maximum health is increased by 30%, with some bosses getting even bigger increases
- Enemy AI is far more aggressive and will kill downed characters more
- Certain enemies will gain new special attacks and passive abilities
- +2 proficiency bonus to enemy attack rolls. They also can get better saving throws, additional attack rolls, and more
- The required Camp Supplies needed for a Long Rest increase to 80
- Merchant prices increase, and your sale price decreases
Honour
- Bosses are significantly harder and have new Legendary actions
- You are limited to one save file for the entire campaign
- If your party dies, you’re forced to either delete your save entirely, forcing you to restart or switch to Custom difficulty, which ends your Honour run
Those are all the differences between the four difficulties in Baldur’s Gate 3. For more guides just like this one, be sure to check out our Games Hub.