Knowledge is power, and that’s especially true in Baldur’s Gate 3, as the game can be brutally hard for those who don’t prepare well for battle. You can make combat a lot easier by examining foes, preferably before blades are drawn, so you know their strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to make the most of your resources.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is based on the Dungeons & Dragons 5E rules. In D&D, the Dungeon Master usually doesn’t tell the players the stats of the enemies they’re fighting, as the player characters typically wouldn’t have a way to gain that information. However, Baldur’s Gate 3 does offer players vital knowledge about the monsters in the game, even before a battle begins.
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Baldur’s Gate 3: Why You Need To Check Enemy Stats
If you want to learn information about an enemy, you can right-click on it with the mouse to bring up the Context Menu, then select Examine. To do this on a controller, hit L3 to bring up cursor mode, then hit down on the D-pad when hovering over the enemy. If done correctly, it will bring up a page similar to the one shown in the screenshot above.
The UI in Baldur’s Gate 3 usually tells you an enemy’s current hit points and level, giving you an idea of their threat level. The benefit of using Examine on an enemy is that it gives you even more information, including its stats, resistances, Armor Class score, and any special attributes it has, such as Darkvision.
Knowing these stats is important in Baldur’s Gate 3 because it’ll give you the information you need to tailor your approach in combat. If you don’t know an enemy has Fire Resistance, you might waste an action hitting it with a Fire Bolt and barely doing any damage. If the enemy has a deceptively high Armor Class score, then you’ll know to hit it with guaranteed attacks, like Magic Missile, or to attempt to hit it with saving throw spells, such as Sacred Flame, which ignore Armor Class. Knowing its stats is also important, as you can see where it’s weakest and choose spells accordingly.
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Baldur’s Gate 3 can be a difficult game, especially for those who are unfamiliar with D&D 5E rules. The enemies in the game go hard, and you’re expected to use every tool available to you to overcome them. As such, you should use the information provided to exploit an enemy’s weaknesses and score an easy victory.
