balduransbones | BG3: The Tome of Nuz Locke

Part I: The Idea

This began as a single comment from @aubergion on Discord:

inadvisable bg3 playthrough idea: a party member that dies cannot be resurrected, ever. go full nuzlocke. end the game with a party of hirelings and one companion from Act 3

Which is a) hilarious, b) appealing to the part of me that loves random chance and roguelikes, and c) also the part of me that's been playing with Honour Mode as some roguelite timeloop nonsense, entirely unnecessarily. There are, of course, mods that can help enforce this, but I play a completely vanilla game.

Part II: Proposed Rules

Pokemon Nuzlockes have a whole wide range of additional rules, but the core rules of the challenge are:

Limited Encounters: You can only (attempt) to catch the first wild Pokemon you encounter in each area. No second chances. (If it's a double battle, you can pick which one to try for.)
Permadeath: Fainting = death, and there's no coming back. Revival items are not allowed and fainted Pokemon must be released. (Common variant: or boxed, but never used). "Blacking out" or "whiting out" (having no un-fainted Pokemon in your team) = you lose.

So, in the spirit of that, based on the chats with Aub, I propose the following Basic Rules:

Limited Recruitment: You can only (attempt) to recruit a Companion or hire a Hireling once in each area.
Permadeath: Death = true, final death. No use of revival spells, scrolls, or Withers' services is allowed. Dead companions must be removed from the party (placed in Withers' closet) ASAP.
With Honour: Play in a Single Save difficulty, either true Honour Mode or a Custom Tactician difficulty.

Now, even without considering that Pokemon Nuzlockes have a bunch of common extra rules, you can probably see at least a couple things that need defining there. What exactly counts as an 'area'? Waypoints? Named subregions of a regional map? Distinct maps, including sub-maps? What about campsites? And if absolutely no resurrection items are allowed, does that mean that recruiting and then losing Gale = guaranteed game over?

The resurrection question is easy. Pick your difficulty by picking your ruleset (Gale Clauses are optional and could be mixed & matched):

Classic: As written above. No resurrecting, ever. Not by spell, not by scroll, not by the talking corpse, not even of Gale.
- Gale Clause: Classic, but if Gale dies you may play through unlocking the Scroll of True Resurrection and use it, on Gale only. This can be done only once.
Spell Slots Needed: Only your party members can cast resurrection spells (Revivify), the use of scrolls and Withers is not allowed.
- Gale Clause: Revivify scrolls may be used, but only on Gale.
No True Resurrection: Revivify scrolls and party member spells can be used to resurrect, but Withers cannot. Can apply the Classic Gale Clause, if desired.

But what if the Avatar dies? In Pokemon, a Trainer fainting = game over for a Nuzlocke, mostly because it meant the entire team was down (until Scarlet/Violet). But the Avatar can go down without the rest of the party dying. What to do? The way I see it, there are two good options (if you are playing without mods):

Avatar Death = Game Over. Self-explanatory. Better keep Tav alive!
Play as The Dark Urge. Allow Durge and only Durge to be resurrected by Withers. IYKYK.

Optional Rules

No Mooching: Maximum recruited (living) party members is 3 + Avatar.
Only What We Can Carry: Don't use the camp chest, at all. Combine with No Mooching for extra fun!
I'm Not Hiking Back Alone: Swapping party members can only happen in camp. For a little extra challenge, only during an Evening of a Long Rest.
Circle to Circle: You can only fast travel by actually using the Ancient Sigil Circles / actually clicking on the waypoints in-world, not from the map.
Nicknames: Play a custom avatar (Tav or The Dark Urge) and name yourself some variation of "Nuzlocke".
Roll a D12: Randomize your avatar's class & race.
Change It Up: Randomize every new party member's class upon recruitment (or once Withers becomes available, for any recruited before then).

Areas

Ultimately, what is defined as an "area" is up the player. There is no single satisfying way to define it. Areas as Waypoints is most likely the easiest to track, but beyond the very early game, waypoints are not especially limiting, numerically: there are 19 in Act 1 alone. Each large regional map (the Crash Site, Underdark, Rosymorn, SCL, Rivington, and the Lower City) has connected submaps - both simple interiors (e.g. Zevlor's "office", Lower City shops) and more complex "dungeons" (e.g. Whispering Depths, Gauntlet of Shar, House of Healing Morgue, Iron Throne, etc.). There is no clear objective definition for any of these, and the named subregions on the overworld maps have difficult to define boundaries and are far too numerous to be anything like a limit.

And then there are the campsites. There are a variety of different campsites throughout the game: 5 in the Nautiloid Crash Site region, 2 in the Underdark, 2 in the Mountain pass, 4 in the Shadow-Cursed Lands, and then 3 in the city (+ the "intermission" campsite at Wyrm's Overlook between acts 2 and 3). These are both very distinct and limited, and tied to being in specific locations, which supports the Nuzlocke experience of being excited to go somewhere new. You could use the campsites alone - for each new campsite "unlocked" you can recruit 1 companion or hireling... but there are a total of exactly 17 unique campsites. With 6 Origin companions, 4 bonus companions, and 12 total hirelings (although you are limited to 3 at a time). That may be too limiting!

So, that all said... here are my 3 proposed possibilities:

Areas as Unlocked Waypoints

Basic: Each unlocked waypoint counts as one "slot" open for recruiting a companion. You can never recruit more companions + hirelings than you have waypoints.

Strict - First Encounters Only: Companions must be recruited "with" the nearest waypoint to them. If multiple companions "share" a waypoint (e.g. Gale & Astarion), you may only attempt to recruit one of them. Hirelings can only be hired the first time you reach a waypoint, if you have enough gold (100 GP).

Optional - Compounding Cost: The second hireling is 200 GP (100 x 2). The third hireling is 400 GP (200 x 2). The fourth is 800 GP... and so forth. "Pay" this extra cost by dropping the excess gold beyond 100 GP on the ground somewhere (and not picking it back up again, smart-ass).

This puts some strong limits on very early game party sizes and options: there are at most 3 waypoints before the initial Grove & Goblins fight, one of which has Gale in it. Due to the existence of multiple recruitment points for all companions except Gale & Astarion, they are the only ones where you will have to choose one or the other. Per Nuzlocke rules, failing to recruit one does not allow you to then try to recruit the other! Beyond the early game there are plenty of waypoints, so recruiting the maximum number of hirelings will be easily possible.

Areas as Unique Campsites

Basic: Each unique campsite Long Rested in counts as one "slot" open for recruiting a companion / hiring a hireling. You can never recruit more companions + hirelings than you have unique campsites.

Strict - First Encounters Only: You may only recruit / hire a new party member if you have one available (i.e. have the gold or have not yet attempted to recruit) when you FIRST make camp (Long Rest) at a unique campsite. (It is assumed that you would backtrack the next day to "pick up" an available companion.)

Optional - Compounding Cost: As above, cost of hirelings doubles each time.

This one has a lot of potential, but that potential may be "too limiting to actually be fun". There are enough Act 1 campsites available that you would be able to attempt all the Companions before going past a point of no return, at least. An "attempt", in this case, means having a conversation with the possible Companion where recruitment is an option. Not choosing any of these options is a forfeit and the companion may not be attempted again, even if encountered again or a "slot" becomes available. (Yes, if you failed or forfeited on Shadowheart at the Grove, you would have to turn her down or kill her at the goblin camp... if you wanted to be honourable!)

Areas as Unique Campsites and Regions

Basic: Each new Regional Map entered and each unique campsite Long Rested in counts as one "slot" open for recruiting a companion / hiring a hireling. You can never recruit more companions + hirelings than you have unique campsites + regions. The major regional maps are: the Nautiloid Crash Site, the Underdark, the Mountain Pass/Rosymorn, the Shadow-Cursed Land, Rivington, and the Lower City.

Strict - First Encounters Only: As in "Areas as Unique Campsites", above OR the first Long Rest after first encountering a potential Companion MUST be your first time Long Resting in a unique campsite. This may take some thinking upon encountering a companion: can you, if you recruit them, travel to somewhere that you can do this? Functionally, this limits certain companions to being recruited in certain areas/before your first time camping at certain camps. (See list below.)

Optional - Compounding Cost: As described above.

I'm not sure what ruleset I'll try first! But I definitely do want to try it! (And I'm definitely playing Durge.)

BG3: The Tome of Nuz Locke