Normally, thinking about Baldur’s Gate 3’s Warlock class conjures images of potent spellcasters whose power stems from pacts with various entities. Martially-minded players are, however, not left out and can still opt for the Pact of the Blade, which developer Larian Studios plans to infuse elements from the Hexblade subclass.
Baldur’s Gate 3 won’t feature a full-on Hexblade subclass at launch, but a rather important feature of it will be transferred to the Pact of the Blade, making it a choice worth considering for our playthroughs.
Baldur's Gate 3 Pact of the Blade
“Warlocks must choose a pact. One such pact is the Pact of the Blade, which allows them to devote themselves more to weapons, create a pact weapon related to them, and so on; the part of the pact that was missing was the extra attack: a lot of martial classes have an extra attack available and Warlocks don’t,” Lead Systems Designer Nick Pechenin said in an interview with Multiplayer.it via Google Translate.
“The problem is that the weapons are balanced around the number of attacks per turn, so we added this to make the pact of the blade more interesting.”
Pechenin confirmed that the Hexblade will not be featured when the RPG launches but noted that the developer “absolutely researched the class when we implemented the changes to the Warlock,” naming “small details, like attack modifiers,” alongside the aforementioned extra attack.
This, of course, helps Baldur’s Gate 3’s Pact of the Blade become a more competitive option when compared to both the class’ magic-driven alternatives and other martially-focused subclasses.
It also shows that, as faithful to Dungeons and Dragons’ fifth edition as it plans to be, Larian Studios doesn’t shy away from implementing changes to features in an effort to make them better suit its sprawling cRPG experience.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is due out on August 3 on PC before arriving on PlayStation 5 on September 6.
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