A confused player turns to the community of Baldur’s Gate 3 to complain about the illogical behavior of his companions in the game. However, the community explains to him that it is not the companions who make the stupid decisions.
What is the player complaining about? The player Un-originalality writes in a post in the subreddit of Baldur’s Gate 3 that his companion (in this case Astarion) is absolutely dumb.
He and his wife are currently in the first act of the game and are having a great time with Astarion and Shadowheart. However, a situation in a battle has left him extremely confused.
“We are fighting against a few guys and Astarion has only 1 HP left. He is out of range for healing, so my fighter throws a healing potion at him… but he dodges. HE DODGES. WHAT?!”
The player does not understand why a companion would dodge healing, but the community explains to him why no one likes getting a bottle thrown at their head: “It’s instinctive. If someone were to throw a glass bottle at you, how would you react?” (Korrocks on Reddit)
Here you can see the animated short film for Patch 8 of Baldur’s Gate 3:
The companions are not dumb; they just want to survive
Why do the companions dodge the thrown healing potions? Anyone who wants to heal a companion from a distance in Baldur’s Gate 3 but does not have healing spells or enough range can throw a healing potion. Most players, like the author of the Reddit post, know this.
However, it depends on the exact spot you aim for. If you aim at the character themselves, it does not count as a simple throw – but as an attack. And a ranged attack must exceed the target’s armor class; otherwise, it misses, and the target can dodge. Therefore, Astarion is not dumb; he simply has a healthy will to survive.
Since Astarion only had 1 HP remaining, the thrown potion would have killed him. In this case, even video game characters say, “No, thanks.” Even though he could be revived through the healing puddle on the ground.
Anyone who really wants to heal their target by throwing a potion must aim for the ground beneath the characters. There it bursts and heals all targets that are close enough. This is anyway more effective – and can trigger different effects with different potions.
What else does the community warn about? Some players mention that they have also had bad experiences with thrown aids.
- darkuen: “I learned this the hard way when I threw a potion at Volo so he could talk to animals and listen to the bear he was drawing. Instead, I made the whole druid grove my enemies.”
- Todojaw21: “This happened to me in my current run. The Githyanki merchant did this to one of her allies in a fight, and he was hit so hard on the head that he died.”
Due to the many responses, the player will hopefully not throw glass bottles at his companions in the future of his gameplay and instead heal correctly. Then his help will not be rejected in a thankless way. Perhaps he should think about why Astarion’s camp provides items that he actually should not be able to use: Astarion has an item in Baldur’s Gate 3 that he technically should not be able to use – but there could be a good reason for it
