Baldur’s Gate 3 player abandons Barbarian class altogether after “intense” introduction

When players first meet Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3, she is an intimidating character to come to terms with. One player found that they stopped using her Barbarian class entirely because of this. 

Baldur’s Gate 3 players first meet Karlach in the Wilderness, either after Wyll tells you about her or you do some of your own exploration. If you decide to talk to her, she tells you about some Paladins who are trying to kill her and asks for your help to deal with them. 

The other main thing that comes up is that she is quite literally on fire. While you cannot be sure at this point why this is happening, it is made clear that she has some issues dealing with rage.  

If you decide to chase the Paladins down and kill them, Karlach decides to let go of this rage a little bit. She runs around the building where you fought the Paladins, setting everything on fire and knocking objects about. 

For one player, this proved to be a bit much. In a Reddit post titled ‘Why I didn’t use Karlach or any Barbarians for >100 hours,’ they explain that the class mechanic seemed too intense. “Played through the game multiple times ignoring Barbarian as a class because of this, never realizing that was just a specific moment for her,” they said. 

Interestingly, though, this Baldur’s Gate 3 scene where Karlach runs around and sets things on fire only happens that one time. A player commented on the thread, explaining why this may have been a bad idea. 

“‘She has to keep attacking or she will lose her class ability’ is someone’s awful way of trying to explain the Rage mechanic,” they said.

The scene was meant as an explanation for the Barbarian Rage mechanic where if you don’t take or do damage for a turn, your Rage will prematurely end. However, the scene made it seem like the fire trails of Karlach would happen every time after a fight for the OP. 

Another player shared that this scene was almost the end of their Honour run. “For some ungodly reason my already low on health companions refused to stop following Karlach (didn’t manage to select someone else or just detach them, no clue why) and they all got fully killed by the fire trail,” they said. “I was so scared she would just kill herself, too, as she had like 5hp and just seemed to go around in circles.”

The scene is definitely an interesting start to the journey players find themselves on with Karlach, having her almost kill some and dissuade others from using her at all. 

For more on Baldur’s Gate 3, read about this massive Halsin plot hole players found and why this player decided to go full Durge halfway through a run.