Action Economy in Baldur’s Gate 3 refers to the idea of how much you can do in a single turn, and to maximize it you’ll need to strategize. Starting this may be as simple as two actions and a free action, such as an attack and a movement. However, as you move forward in your playthrough you’ll start to gain a lot more mechanical options to play in a turn. Some of these may be instant actions such as activating a magical item or boon, while others may be additional bonus actions or reactions. For instance, monks gain the ability to make an unarmed strike as a reaction to their melee attacks to deal additional damage.
Due to the nature of the growing action economy, this is a manner of making your character more refined or complex. You can get away with quite a bit of different action types in a single turn if you have access to them. As such think of action economy less as being able to do more actions independently, and more how they can be chained together. In many circumstances, these chained actions can end up creating far more damage than even some of the most powerful spells. So to learn how to maximize action economy, it’s best to know your different kinds of actions, and how they interact with combat.
Looking for more Baldur’s Gate 3 content from Keengamer?
- Baldur’s Gate 3 | Character Building Tips and Tricks
- Baldur’s Gate 3 | Tips And Tricks For Dice Roll Success
- Baldur’s Gate 3 | Things To Improve The Experience
- Baldur’s Gate 3 | Adamantium Golem “Grym” Guide
- Baldur’s Gate 3 | 10 Great Permanent Spellcasting Bonuses
Action Types
Action types in Baldur’s Gate 3 are easily defined as the means of how a character does something. How an action is defined is dependent on the complexity of the determined event. For instance, swinging a weapon, or casting a spell requires a lot more effort and time than say using a potion. Because of this actions that would require a level of determination would usually be classified as an action. Bonus actions are defined as quick-to-do things such as opening an item, moving five feet, or drawing a weapon. These are the most common forms of choices that can be seen throughout the game, however, two more exist.
Full actions are defined as something that would require an entire turn or more to accomplish. These are usually either very physically intensive actions or generally very complex magic. Otherwise, reactions are a mechanical operation as a result of a condition being met. The most common form of reaction is an attack of opportunity which allows something to attack a creature leaving their zone of attack. By this, reactions can be some of the most appealing since they don’t necessarily need to be accomplished on your turn. Because of this, they can be strategically instigated to be more useful outside of your turn in combat.
Instant Effects/ Passives
Some actions can only be instigated through instant thought actions, or passively. These include such things as turning a magic weapon’s elemental effect on or even using a racial trait. There are many examples where this transpires across everything from classes to features which can change up how you interact on your turn. Overall though, these effects don’t mix up your actions economy, rather acting as flavor to improve or hinder them depending on how you play your cards. It’s for this reason that as you progress through the game you’re going to want to focus on the effects of items you pick.
Monks are a valuable character class if you want to make the most out of your action economy due to their many reaction attacks.
Other unique passive effects include things such as passive auras or boons you might have gotten from your adventuring. Very commonly these are another layer of spice that can greatly improve how your potential turn combinations are going to go. In this way, you start to achieve the very essence of what action economy is meant to accomplish. However, all of the instant and passive effects in the game won’t change what a good action strategy can present you!
Strategizing Actions
One of the most important things to consider when building up an action economy is your strategy for what to do with it. It may be simple for anyone whose played a fighting game, but very few effective combinations are built from random things. Instead, try to build up a lead-up from the start of your turn to the end where each action builds on the other. A good example of this would be a fighter and monk combination making a melee attack, and a flourish, then leading off with an unarmed strike. From there you could easily action surge and continue this combination again for six attacks at level three.
Another thing to keep in mind when you’re trying to build your strategy is the addition of items and magical effects that may maximize efficiency. Use your teammates and treasure to further this along with artificial effects. Some things like rings, weapons, and armor can all have unique effects that can be used as instant or passive events. Additionally, they may have their reactionary conditions which can be stacked with other ones to greatly improve how you interact with a situation.
Fighters with magical weapons can be greatly overpowered due to their ability to action surge and gain back all actions not associated with an item.
Gaining Actions
So the first step to building up a more well-developed action economy is obviously to increase your pool of available actions. This can be done in a few ways which have some pretty notable advantages over just item optimization. For the most part, this can be done by either taking on certain classes or by taking on features. Both are a valid means of adding more flavor to your turn, by adding not only substance but versatility. Classes like the monk, rogue, and fighter excel at mastering multiple attacks in a turn. This ensures that you can maintain a certain level of efficiency during combat even as casters start to dominate the damaged basis. In light of this, even a good caster can benefit from a decent action economy.
Meanwhile features like Polearm Master allows the player to add additional attack options to their turn so long as they have a stipulation met. In this way, there’s no end to the potential combinations made available in Baldur’s Gate 3. Of course, there are additional means of increasing your action count such as magical items and enchantments found throughout the game. However for the most part these will act as additional means of furthering your combination. However, for the pinnacle of gaining additional actions per turn, you will want a certain ability from the fighter class.
Action Surge
Extremely important to the strategy of most optimization is the fighter ability called action surge. This will be available at level two under a fighter and grants them the ability to replenish their actions that turn. While icredibly potent and can translate to dealing an intrusive amount of damage in a turn so long as it’s planned out. The downside to action surge is that it can only be used a limited amount of times per test, making its effects limited. Ultimately this means that while Action Surge can be an extremely valuable tool in your kit, it should not be the only one you put at your disposal. Instead, focus on means of gaining extra attacks!
Action surge is a potential fighter ability available at level 2!
Extra Attacks
Most commonly, you’ll be getting extra attacks through your class if you are part of the martial archetype. These can be an incredibly potent way of dealing damage later on but are locked behind levels. Additionally, like the issue with features for a character, these are generally limited by the scarcity of the class’s ability to gain them. This means you usually won’t gain more than one or two additional attacks when playing Baldur’s Gate 3. However, when mixed with reactions or passive mechanics you can simulate extra attacks quickly. It is this mixed with action surge that creates the next step of a solid combination.
Limited Actions – Material Costs
Limited Actions refer to class and feature-based effects that are only accessible a certain amount of times per day. These are usually replenished after a short or long rest, however, define how many times a combination can be accomplished. This means it becomes quintessential to understand how limited or effective your combination will be as a whole versus in pieces. Thinking back along the lines of fighting games this can be seen in small build-ups versus longer combinations. If you can sustain these combinations for multiple attacks, what is the upper limit before its resources are exhausted?
Material cost in a combination is something that often gets forgotten about but refers to how many limited resources are consumed. If your combination requires you to burn one of every item in your toolbox to pull it off, chances are it will not be sustainable for multiple uses. This is why if you do use these limited resources, it’s best to build up a level of acceptable loss in the effectiveness of its use. At this point, it becomes more of a discussion of after its initial use, how likely are you to be able to do it effectively again before your next test.
Rogues are very good for building additional action economy, especially with their thief subclass that has access to the additional bonus action per turn!
Item Based Effects
Along the same lines as limited effects comes those bound by items, which are usually in themselves limited. Items will often use an innate effect such as elemental damage, along with offering a spell or ability a limited amount of times. In this sense, you have to maintain knowledge of how many times these effects can be used and under what conditions. Every item will operate differently, which is why you’ll want to focus on how they interact with the method of your combinations. As the most essential aspect of most people’s combinations, these powerful effects can often lead to an instant kill so long as thought out properly.
However, once this has been used up, the player has to begin thinking of alternatives to the combination. In short, your actions economy’s maximization shouldn’t be dependent on the effects or actions associated with a single magic item. There may be a nice use of certain effects a limited number of times, but after this, you need to consider how these will affect your overall effectiveness. When the action economy is dependent on this you don’t create a true optimization, instead only a temporary gain for combat. Instead, you should try to either spread out these effects or get those that can be used over and over.
Recognizing Strengths and Weaknesses
One thing that will help you determine how effective your actions economy is the strengths and weaknesses associated with them. If you can’t deal a lot of damage with your actions economy, or accomplish your goal you should rethink it. The upward strength of a combination should be defined by the sheer power and maximum damage that is output by it. Meanwhile, the weakness of it should be dictated by the minimum amount of damage done by it when the combination is most depleted. However, there is a third aspect to consider when rating the level of efficiency of your combination.
Combinations will be your best friend in Baldur’s Gate 3, but make sure you know how that action economy will work for you!
Simply put, judging the effectiveness of your actions economy should be on how easy it is to utilize for the player. You shouldn’t depend on combinations or strategies that require the player to use things that they’ll have a hard time doing. To further this idea, you shouldn’t try to maintain a combination that is unsustainable for the rest of the group in question. For instance, using chain lightning over and over may be nice for the wizard, but probably isn’t good for their allies caught in the crossfire. In this way, there is one last thing to consider when talking about maximizing the action economy of a character.
Numbers and Rests
Considering how many numbers you have for your overall party and how they can be used before each rest can be a great strategy. The main aspect of this focuses on the number of summons a party can create, producing more numbers than the enemy. In short, if you can have more party members in a fight than the enemy you already have the action economy advantage.
However, to complement this, you’ll want to know how often you can use these resources before you have to take a long rest. Knowing this will help you maintain control over your combinations, and make sure you don’t deplete yourself entirely. Because of the limitation of actions before a long rest, you have to maintain a level of awareness that you will almost always be spending more than the enemy.
