Honor Mode in BG3 is maybe my favorite game mode of all time. I usually hate playing hardcore/one-life/single-save modes, but there's something about being forced to never save-scum and just roll with what the dice give me that makes me absolutely love it.
Case in point: this past weekend, I lost my duo Dark Urge run. It was supposed to start out as a solo run - me as the Dark Urge, playing a Gloomstalker Assassin. I'd planned on being a "good" Dark Urge... except that, when I was in the druid grove, I failed the perception check against the little tiefling girl that steals from you when you talk to Mattis.
I had never failed that check before, so I stupidly thought I could just pickpocket back my stolen items. Nope. The guards wanted to arrest me for stealing from a child, and suddenly I'm fighting every tiefling in the grove. So I run over to the druid idol and steal THAT, which kicks off an all-out 3-way war between the druids, the tieflings, and me.
Somehow, I won.
Everyone else in the grove was now dead, though. I decided I needed backup in case I did something stupid again - however, I murdered Lae'zel and Shadowheart on the ship, and hacked off Gale's hand. Astarion was still sitting on the beach looking for help, so I brought him along and turned him into a monk.
We made it through almost all of the rest of Act 1 with relative ease; two high-Dex, high initiative, high damage characters make short work of most encounters - dropping in to stealth whenever things got hairy. Then I got cocky in the Githyanki Creche. I beat the Inquisitor and decided to grab the Blood of Lathander before I finished up the area and moved to Act 2.
I'm disarming the traps on the way to retrieve the legendary mace. With all my bonuses, I had something like a +11 to Slight of Hand checks (and advantage), making it almost impossible for me to fail.
Almost.
In my hubris, I forgot to leave Astarion back at the entrance as an insurance policy. I get a critical fail on the last trap, no inspiration to save us. The trap triggers, and we are both knocked into the pit. Game over.
I sat in my office, totally stunned, for a solid minute. But losing like that just made me want to play even more; when I get some time this weekend, I'm going to come up with a whole new plan and try again. I'm thinking about an evil Wyll run - I never really used him nor played Warlock, and it could be very interesting.
