True grit.
Dungeons and Dragons fans could argue forever about which spell is the worst in the game, but it’s generally agreed that True Strike is a contender. The cantrip grants the caster an advantage on their next attack roll, meaning you sacrifice your current turn for a better chance of hitting your target in the following round.
In theory, it poses an interesting tactical quandary. In practice, there are just too many alternative uses for a turn to make casting True Strike worthwhile. You could cast it with a bonus action via something like the Sorcerer’s quickened spell, but even then you’d be better off casting almost anything else.In other words, True Strike is practically useless, which made it inevitable that some clever clogs would try to complete Baldur’s Gate 3 with it.
Enter Fracture, a gaming YouTuber who has attempted to complete Baldur’s Gate 3 with many ridiculous self-imposed restrictions, like playing through the game at level one or without taking a long rest. His latest run is by far the most extreme, however, as not only does he limit himself to only using True Strike, he also sets the game to Honour Mode. So if he dies, it’s game over.
As reported by GamesRadar, Fracture makes clear he isn’t using any clever workarounds to deal with enemies and other problems posed by the game. “I didn’t use explosives. There were no necrotic corpse shenanigans. I didn’t attack my enemies or use weapon special abilities that deal damage. There were no offensive spells of any kind, apart from the all-powerful, unstoppable True Strike.”
With only True Strike to hand, Fracture can’t beat enemies through combat (at least, not initially) so to progress through the early part of the game, he uses stealth and the Disguise Self spell to access dialogue options from other races.
This enables him to sneak and bluff his way to the mage’s tower in the Underdark, where he picks up the Boots of Stormy Clamour, which add Reverberation to an enemy when he inflicts a condition on them (such as True Strike). When Reverberation stacks four times, it deals 1-4 damage, allowing the worst spell in the game to deal a piddly amount of damage, equivalent to a single casting of the Vicious Mockery cantrip. No doubt Gortash is quaking in his boots.
This is such a meagre amount of damage that it would take Fracture far longer to kill most enemies before they killed him. His solution is to implement a variety of tricks to minimise damage taken, such as Arcane Ward—which decreases damage dealt to the character based on the number of stacks you have equal to his Wizard level. Using these tricks, he makes his character virtually indestructible.
This doesn’t do anything to make combat any less grindy, however. Indeed, Fracture casts True Strike over 2,000 times throughout the run, spending dozens of turns beating bosses like Myrkul and Orin using just this cantrip (though he decides against fighting Raphael).
Remarkably, Fracture does manage to complete the game. He doesn’t draw any conclusions about the quality of his experience—though given how many combat scenarios he fast-forwards through in the video, I don’t think he’d recommend it. He does have something to say about DnD’s much-maligned spell at the end, though: “It’s official, True Strike is the best cantrip in the game.”
This is far from the only bizarre way players have managed to complete Baldur’s Gate 3. Less than a fortnight ago, YouTuber Proxy Gate Tactician completed the game while playing exclusively as a party of cats. The next challenge, clearly, is to complete the game as a party of cats while only casting True Strike. I would say I’m pretty sure that’s impossible, but those are dangerous words to utter when you’re talking about Baldur’s Gate 3.
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