Thanks dude!
Yeah I mean it's definitely doable, I've ascended the brain stem like half a dozen times thus far, although I'm not sure it would be particularly enjoyable to play Honour Mode without having already played through the game on Tactician mode to completion beforehand. It's mostly the same difficulty there, aside from the legendary actions, like with the same sort of basic enemy behavior and the same number of camp supplies to long rest (80 instead of 40, single use restoration pods etc.) So you can kinda game it out from one mode to the other. Though it's never been as exciting as the very first time trying to get those Golden dice.
Going from Tactician to Honour the challenge is sort of just figuring out new ways to use Inspiration as more of an essential resource. The Inspiration meta becomes the most important meta I think. Any bonuses there, whether from spells or items, party comps and such, that will allow us to put a thumb on the scale whenever the dice are actually rolling, but the option to re-roll when you fail is the key. So if we have 4 inspiration points at the max, that's like 3 re-rolls to get through a given dialogue with skill checks. I don't know why I just feel like I can never burn the last point unless it's super mission critical hehe, ensuring that Minthara doesn't get put to death by Ketheric, or that Lae'zel doesn't get nerfed by the Zaithisk, stuff of that sort. But otherwise, since Inspiration caps off at 4, it's good to anticipate burning through them quite often. Sometimes I try to leave a couple easy ways to recoup inspiration when needed, like if you can remember where/when it gets rewarded from the various characters in-game, you can delay doing that stuff until you have fewer than 4 inspiration. Examples would be like saving the Magic Mirror in the Blighted Village till you have Astarion in the crew, to get the Charlatan inspiration. Or Shadowheart waiting on shooting down the Moon in the Selunite Outpost to get the Acolyte inspiration. Sometimes characters will be inspired by random stuff that's already transpired, if you bring them on board in the same area before leaving, even the zombies, just depending on what Background they have.
Durge has a unique Background (Haunted) with lot of easy inspiration gets, like where you can stomp the wounded Flayer on the beach for a bonus inspiration to kick things off, or do the random things to either embrace the Urge or resist the Urge, like from fairly early on. Other characters get excited for other stuff, so rotating them around can help, but it'd be hard to know when to do that without having seen it play out once before already. With the full 4 inspiration points, the other main resource to manage is camp supplies, which seemed pretty trivial to me when using reloads, but for a no-reloads run becomes more key/ Just to make sure the crew is stacked with the spellslots and such. There are a lot of tedious things one can do to take pressure off the long rest/camp supplies, like by using Withers for respecs, or recruiting zombies to do camp casting for goodberries and the like. In a pinch I'd say go for whatever, but there's usually enough food that it's not too bad unless you horde everything like I tend to do. Again I don't know why, but I just never want to sell any of the named items. They tend to just accumulate and live in the camp chest. I'll think well this will be handy 50 hours from now when I need to buy another scroll of Invulnerability, but until them I'm always thinking 'hmmmm maybe it will be useful for some esoteric build?' Though that's rarely the case. When I tidy up and sell more stuff as I go, it's pretty rare that we run out of food, even if going full narcoleptic with the constant long rests hehe. Tradeoff is usually more click tedium or backtracking to shore up the loot/GP, whereas in Tactician I'd probably just steal and reload or press ahead without really bothering hehe. Honour mode caters to the meta on the minutia for that stuff and justifies it in a way, like for all the things I'd typically ignore. CHA bonuses for the merchants, making sure Wyll or Alfira is doing the talking there, now that I've switched from a Draconic Sorcerer to a Dragon D'wizard with INT/WIS for the prime attritbute instead of Charisma. I went from a Silver tongued Bronze Dragon lineage, that made Deception and Persuasion a breeze, to one where I have to use Intimidation more often.
Using the high yield explosive barrels and bombs, or kiting tricks with dagger clouds to get through the tougher battles is another aspect. Some fights are relatively easy to blow past that way, but then it can also feel like a bit of cheap shot sometimes. Just depends where the priorities are I suppose. So in my current run, Lump's Circlet of Intellect is going to be a key part of the build. Usually I'd sound the Ogre Horn in the fight with Dror Ragzlin (because that can be a tough fight) but last time I did that, Lump got nailed by an explosion which collapsed the platform he was standing on! I lost the Circlet and the Returning Pike in one big kaboom, all fell into the chasm. Karlach was hella depressed about losing her signature thrown weapon.
If the same thing were to happen this time though, I'd be pretty hosed though cause I need the Circlet for the build. So instead I called them into the Gith fight, where we nearly got killed. Frank sadly didn't make it out of that one. Somehow Alfira managed a bardic inspiration to deceive Lump into trying again for 2500 gp. But anyway, just an instance of shit going haywire, even with the best laid plans.
Anyway, while it remains entertaining, and a solid BG game for me in the replay aspect, I still feel like it's missing something. We're doing the same encounters in the same areas over and over again, so the character builds, the party composition stuff, and all the emergent antics in-combat, I think those are what keep me coming back. I feel like if there were more Companions and more surprises on offer there, it would be somewhat easier to gloss over the fact that the path through the game is largely similar each time. I mean BG1 and BG2 were like this for me as well, so there's that, but also we had many more companions to keep greasing the wheels in those games. Here there are only 10, excluding mods like the Alfira one I've been using.
ps. I think having Kagha as a recruitable companion would have been a way to fix the general issue with Druid redundancy in BG3.
"But Black Elk" you say, "Don't we already have 2 Elf Druids?" hehe
Too true, but I think if Kagha was on board as well it would seem less like "Druid and a spare", and more like a Druid at the ready for each act. So more of a rotation. They might have even done it Druidic challenges where we had to pick. Or I don't know, like maybe because there all Druids, and Elves, that this could be an opportunity to differentiate the Elves and put the focus more on that. Solving the reduntant Druid problem by adding more Druids has a nice circular symmetry to it lol.
Since Kagha is a villain initially she could break either direction, Shadowdruid throughout, or a redeemed Druid via player intervention at the Emerald Grove. In which case her coming along with us could be like part of the penance issued by Halsin. So rather being demoted she gets charged with helping us undo the shadow damage in the shadow cursed lands, or something along those lines. If the party sides with the Shadowdruids, then the Evil group can still have a Druid without bringing all bringing all the other companions into it. Basically making Kagha into the fail safe Druid, where even if you allow the Rite of Thorns she shows up afterwards with viper in tow. In the Underdark where all the mushroom stuff is going down with Glut and Spaw, leaves room for a Spore Druid angle which could be filled by Kagha. Especially if it's like a bad trip there, to foreshadow the Shadowlands stuff in the subsequent act.
In essence instead of having 2 Druids with similar priorities who come online at roughly the same time in the game (Act II to III transition), here again, it would be more like just 1 Druid per act. Potentially with conflicts between the Druids themselves (whether for Elf reasons or Druid reasons), rather than breaks with the other companions. Or alternatively the unique challenge of keeping all 3 Druid around and on the same page, with some tension there. Like in the case of a 4 Druid campaign where the player is also a Druid.
Pushing it to the extreme in this way, I think rather than stealing the spotlight from each other, it would feel a bit more like 'just the plot' on the Druid front. Bringing the Shadowdruids into it but then not returning to the subject at all in later acts feels like a bit of a miss. Kagha could perhaps bring a bit more continuity there for the Druid arc as the game progresses. Compared to Jaheira who has the Harper element going on, and Halsin who's pretty clearly aligned with whatever, Kagha could drop a wild card into the mix! Obviously just pipe dreaming now, but I mean a Viper familiar, some Yuan-Ti angles. Talk about legs to run right there!
