Every Custom Mode Option In Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 becomes bigger and bigger with every patch it receives. Outside the main three difficulty settings — Explorer (easy), Balanced (medium), and Tactician (hard) — the game now has two extra difficulties, Honour and Custom. Our focus here will be on the latter.

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Custom mode is the equivalent of having a session zero with your Dungeon Master and discussing homebrew rules. Or, for those unfamiliar with TTRPG, you get to alter a few rules in the game, such as making your character stronger or weaker than they should be and resources needed for resting, among other things. We’re here to dive into these options and show you how much you can customize your adventure.

4 Single Save

If you want to practice for Honour Mode, this option might help you. Single Save is the anti-saving scum, forcing your campaign to have a single save slot. Unlike most other options in Custom Mode, this is not something you can change after your campaign begins, so be sure of your choice.

This single file essentially means you won’t be able to test multiple outcomes or return to a save file before an important dice roll just because you failed at it, as the game will automatically save if you choose to return to the main menu. Unlike Honour Mode, however you can still reload the game if you die.

3 Basic Player And Enemy Changes

The core feature concerning your power, as well as your enemies, is the Character Power option. Leaving it in Explorer mode will make you and your companions significantly better, with absurd amounts of extra health, while keeping enemies more docile.

Tactician has stronger enemies while keeping your characters with the correct number of hit points based on their class and Constitution. Balanced does the same to your health, but doesn’t make the enemies as strong as Tactician. You can also regulate Enemy Aggression, making them strategize more in combat and even go as far as attacking downed companions.

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Enemy Loadouts affect the number and type of enemies spawned in certain areas, and you can also use Additional Combat Mechanics to give enemies extra abilities or extra muscle in certain situations. You can also make it impossible for enemies to do Critical Hits, which kind of makes the Adamantine armor less effective.

Lastly, you have Hide NPC Health, meaning you’ll only be able to see the health of the characters you control. It’s a good way to spice things up, as you won’t know how long it’ll take for enemies to go down.

2 Deeper Player Character Changes

Concerning the characters you control, you can still do a few extra things besides changing the overall Character Power. You can use Proficiency Bonus to give you a higher (or lower) proficiency bonus than you’re supposed to, and they will stack with the regular bonus.

A higher bonus means you’ll pass Ability Checks more often if you have proficiency on them, and your attacks will hit more often, as proficiency plays a role in that, too. Meanwhile, Always Prompt Reactions does what the name implies, having the reaction window pop up whenever a reaction can be made.

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You also have the option to turn off Death Saving Throws. No, that doesn’t mean insta-kill (which would be a fun challenge). It means your character will be stabilized but downed when their health reaches zero, and you can get them back up through help or healing without fearing for their lives.

Disable Free First Strikes lets you choose whether you lose your action or not in the first turn of combat, in case you start a fight by randomly attacking someone who bothers you. As for your resting needs, you can choose to have Short Rests heal you completely and adjust the Camp Cost Multiplier, decreasing or increasing the number of supplies you’ll need to perform a decent Long Rest. Finally, you can turn off the option to do Multiclassing in a very traditional DM fashion.

1 Changes To The World

If money is a problem for you, you can adjust Trader Price Modifier, decreasing the cost of all items, or increase it, encouraging your thieving mercantile skills. You can also use Hide Failed Perception Rolls when exploring, which means you won’t metagame whenever you see a failed roll, and be properly caught off-guard by traps, simulating a more accurate TTRPG experience, only knowing something is up if you pass the roll.

During dialogues, your character will occasionally do passive rolls, too. You can choose not to see the result of these rolls during dialogue, meaning you’ll have to work with the dialogue options you see without having extra information.

Also during dialogue options, you may have to roll a die to persuade, intimidate, or use another skill. By default, you can check the difficulty beforehand, but you’ll be able to turn that off in Custom mode, as well as turn off the ability to preview how much you’ll need to roll in these situations, simulating a common scenario in D&D, as the DMs don’t always tell you what number you need to hit with your roll.

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