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Shortly after Baldur's Gate 3 launched, I watched a video that changed my life. You may have seen it – the infamous clip of an Owlbear divebombing one unlucky cultist from the top of Moonrise Towers. Now, I'm a spellcaster at heart. Give me a wizard or warlock every day of the week, and may they never stoop as low as a melee attack roll. But seeing a druid deal the most damage you've ever seen, let alone as a belly-flopping Owlbear, changes a man. It makes them take stock of their values.
Fast-forward a year. In 2024, I played my second Baldur's Gate 3 campaign as a wizardly Dark Urge. During the attack on Moonrise Towers, I got my first taste of the druid's Wild Shape ability while controlling Jaheira – and to cut a long story short, spent the rest of that campaign enjoying combat as the High Harper more than my own Durge.
Fast-forward again – last time, I promise – and I'm currently in my third playthrough. A few things are different. Not only is this my first multiplayer campaign, but I'm also playing as a druid with a one-track mind: I am going to be the chunkiest, furriest Guy Flattener the Sword Coast has ever seen.
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Early attempts go… poorly. For starters, I don't realize that the Owlbear's divebomb is a specific skill – I just assume that if anything big and heavy jumps on something, it would do damage. When I transform into a regular ol' bear and jump off ledges, I assume I'm simply missing the target – first with a lone goblin outside of Emerald Grove, again with Auntie Ethel in her den, and again while fighting the Spider Matriarch. It's embarrassing – not just the way I flop on the floor, prone and helpless next to my enemies, but because this is all playing out in a multiplayer campaign and my friends have front-row seats to my failures.
Still, it's incredibly fun to slap creatures as a bear. I catch myself transforming immediately in combat, neglecting my druid's fairly tame selection of spells in favor of throwing down with paws. It's a far cry from my usual D&D playstyle, which is to throw magic while being as far away from danger as possible. Melee has never done anything for me in the past – sue me barbarians, but it's just not silly enough – but apparently that doesn't apply to rearing up as a bear and slapping a goblin so hard it bursts like a mince-stuffed water balloon.
While multiattack keeps my bear form surprisingly viable for most of act one, my grizzly guise falls to the wayside when I unlock the Owlbear Wild Shape at level 6. It's a straight upgrade: I'm all bear, just with a bit of owl for good measure. Importantly, within one transformation I realize that the Owlbear's Crushing Flight ability is the divebomb I've been looking for. Better yet, it's a bonus action – meaning I can dive onto things and still slap them twice!
Though Crushing Flight does nowhere near the same amount of damage as that video in regular use, it's still one of the handiest abilities I've ever used in Baldur's Gate 3. There are some teething issues – I now have to confirm whether allies taking their turn at the same time are done moving before I jump and let's leave it at that – but having never been the big and burly tank of the group, leaping ahead of my squishy warlock and cleric pals to unleash carnage up-close is enough for me to turn my feathered back on magic.
While the Owlbear alone would be enough to keep my playthrough exciting, I've broadly fallen in love with Wild Shape. It's now my favorite ability in D&D, ranking above even Fireball and Eldritch Blast (sorry, Patron). Out-of-reach loot? One moment, let me just turn into a raven and fly to it. Oh, you guys can't fit through that tiny gap? I'm a cat now, and I can fit! Ignore the fact that most of these forms can't hold their own in combat – though that's what the Owlbear is for – and you're basically getting to play several parties rolled into one. My druid will go to any lengths to protect nature, so I'm also popping tadpoles like candy to gain their power – isn't a mindflayer just another Wild Shape, really?
At this point in a feature, I'd usually take a moment to pensively consider why Wild Shape, in all of its simplistic violence, is so much fun to play. The multiplayer side of things (see: having an audience) helps – did you know that you can still sit or lie in furniture as an animal? But why, in a game where you can raise the dead and call lightning down from the skies, is a bellyflopping Owlbear currently my strategy of choice? I'm afraid I have no answers: if I wanted to think, I'd still be slinging spells.
Once I stopped treating Baldur's Gate 3 like a video game, I finally got good at it
