What are Legendary Actions in Baldur's Gate 3?

Dec. 5, 2023

Legendary Actions in BG3 are special moves that certain bosses can perform - on your turn!

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What are Baldur’s Gate 3 Legendary Actions? Added as part of the Patch 5 update, Legendary Actions are solely a part of Honour Mode (the new highestBaldur’s Gate 3 difficulty), that are conditional actions that all the major boss fights can use against you - and not only that, they can take those actions on other characters’ turns, not their own! It’s yet another way to make Honour Mode even deadlier and even the odds between the player and the foes they face - so I’ll lay out exactly what that means and what Legendary Actions in BG3 are going to do to ruin your perfect strategy.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Legendary Actions in boss fights explained

Legendary Actions are a part of theBaldur’s Gate 3 Honour Modedifficulty added as part of Patch 5, that have the following changes on gameplay:

Legendary Actions in BG3 are basically an attempt to make the game more difficult in an interesting way, mimicking a rule in D&D wherein powerful monsters can take certain actions on other players' turns too. It’s supposed to balance out the whole “one supposedly tough monster getting whaled on by 3-6 people in a row” thing, though Baldur’s Gate 3 making Legendary Actions conditional is an interesting change that gives more scope for tactical thinking.

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All the major boss fights inBaldur’s Gate 3have legendary actions, and as mentioned, you can check to see what those actions are by right-clicking them. However, regular enemies won’t have them - these are specifically for powerful entities worthy of being called “Legendary.” In the early game, such bosses will include the infamousBaldur’s Gate 3 hagAuntie Ethel, the Phase Spider Matriarch, and theBaldur’s Gate 3 owlbear- basically any enemy who’s worthy of having their own dedicated health bar at the top of the screen or who feels meaningfully unique in some way.

Legendary Actions are also thematically appropriate to the boss in some clear way - for example, the Owlbear summons her mate to aid her in the fight, and the Phase Spider Matriarch wraps up people in webbing before spawning in more baby spiders.

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Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and raconteur with a Masters from Sussex University, none of which has actually equipped him for anything in real life. As a result he chooses to spend most of his time playing video games, reading old books and ingesting chemically-risky levels of caffeine. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at USgamer, Gfinity, Eurogamer and more besides.

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