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kimothepossom · 3 months

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I wanted to comment but I realized it would be probably too long. Also minor spoilers will occur. As we already talk exact spells that Gale is/was using in the game, there's one combination I rarely see being mentioned. Buckle up, buckaroos, I'm gonna nerd out and it's going to be sad. So... The quest with ressurecting Gale is one that made me wonder, how long that man was thinking about his own demise, but to the point. There's a spell that's called 'Contingency' which is like writing a line of code that will be activated when certain conditions are met. Gale had to think about it and create a set of steps, cast the spell on himself a long time ago which means it was already in his head for some time. If we look at the spell slots table for wizards we can see that the lowest that this could be done is at 11th wizard level. But wait, there's more! You can upcast spells, right? Let me introduce you to Instan Summons a spell that can summon items, which I believe that we - as Tavs - are saying "Ressurection Scroll" in Ignan (Fire Elemental language) and rest is just some extra protective steps.

But it's a 6th level spell. If we look into Contingency spell again, we see that it's a 6th level spell that require a 5th level spell or lower for the 'step spells', but if we upcast it to 7th level we could use another 6th level spell for the 'step spells'. Which means that Gale had to be at least at 13th level when he was casting all of this. He had plans for his death for a very long time. Small EDIT: It was pointed out to me that it may sound like he was thinking about his death leveling up his wizard class. To clarify: I meant as he was getting less powerful due to the effects of the orb.

Archwizard Gale lore???

Okay, SO! My personal headcanons for Gale's powers, both as archwizard and Chosen of Mystra, are based upon the following:

D&D makes a distinction between "archmage" and "archwizard," with the former being a spellcaster dedicated to the arcane arts and either: the counsel of royalty, a lich tyrant, or a reclusive hermit, all with multiple apprentices, and the latter being "an arcane spellcaster of extremely high power who successfully claimed a floating enclave," that specification coming from the time of Netheril.

Gale is NOT royal counsel, NOT pursuing lichdom, NOT a hermit (willingly), does NOT have apprentices when he first makes the claim, and does NOT have a floating enclave.

Despite these, he still claims "archwizard" as a title. This is significant, especially from Waterdeep, where the most powerful wizards in the world gather, including Laeral Silverhand (another of Mystra's Chosen, immortal to a degree, and Open Lord of Waterdeep) and Vajra Safahr (current Blackstaff and Archmage of Waterdeep).

Bonus points for his significance, he is Gale of Waterdeep. His personally chosen moniker marks him as outstanding among Waterdhavians. There might be a handful of people named Gale in Waterdeep, but there is only one Gale of Waterdeep. This is further backed up by Lorroakan recognizing him, with his only reason for Gale being lesser than someone who supposedly figured out immortality being that Gale was Mystra's discarded lapdog.

Gale is skilled in all manner of magic. This is confirmed directly in his epilogue, where you can question him about his choice teaching the School of Illusion, and he says that he wanted to teach ALL the classes there, but the staff told him no. That includes schools you wouldn't normally associate with him, like Divination and Necromancy.

Based on all of that, I've decided that "archwizard," as Gale means it, is a term referring to a wizard who's multiclassed into all their subclasses.

Does this make him overpowered? Yes. But he's an archwizard, prodigy, and Chosen, he's MEANT to be within the bounds of his own lore.

In addition, I also believe him to be an untrained Storm Sorcerer, based upon the following:

Sorcerers and wizards differ in that sorcerers know magic intrinsically, while wizards study it to use it.

When talking to Halsin as Origin Gale, you can tell him that as a baby, you summoned a whole pack of rabbits. Presumably, baby Gale was NOT reading and comprehending arcane textbooks.

Gale has an intrinsic understanding of the Weave, by his own admission, saying he could compose it rather than just control it. He was also casting third level spells like Fireball at eight years old.

Gale's theme is all about storms: his name is Gale, he occasionally says "A rough tempest I will raise" in combat, almost all his official art has him controlling lightning, and his robe is thunder purple. This continues into God!Gale's design, where he has literal glowing lightning bolts framing his eyes, and his outfit is lightning blue.

K'ha'ssji'trach'ash: On his own, the mephit is pretty self-contained; it's a magma mephit capable of revealing the true form of a True Ressurection scroll. However, the key to getting him to do this is to respond to the question "what is my name" in Ignan with the correct answer. After which, K'ha'ssji'trach'ash says "T'i n'uthrantha m'ahthra Gale." We don't know what this means, but it's clear that he's talking to us, about Gale, possibly thanking us or asking us to pass a message along. This implies that he doesn't speak Common, or else he would, because we answered correctly. Why do I bring this up? Storm Sorcerers have an innate ability called Wind Speaker, which allows them to speak Primordial (including Aquan, Auran, Ignan, and Terran). Thus, Gale can speak to/understand K'ha'ssji'trach'ash, despite his known/studied languages being Common, Celestial, Giant, and Draconic.

Because he's untrained, and rather than Storm Sorcery being just a Lv1 flavor bit that does little, I've decided that Gale has access to the class features of Storm Sorcery without access to its spell slots or Metamagic, that way it's reflective of his power without training.

With both of these conclusions, both archwizard and sorcerer, I've decided to pick and choose which class features are from which iteration of both classes, because BG3 and official D&D have a few key differences that were mostly changed for gameplay reasons. I've then taken those and added more flavor to them, based on the already-given flavor of D&D and effects of BG3, doing away with the mechanical side of things for storytelling reasons.

On top of this, because the maximum level you can reach in BG3 is Lv12, and we know that the Orb consumes "the greatest of [his] talents," I've decided that the Orb consumes any ability beyond Lv12 until its removal.

That being said, beyond whatever spells and slots you care to give him, the powers I think Gale has pre-tadpole are:

Abjuration

Arcane Ward: When Gale casts Abjuration spells, residual magic shields him from the worst of incoming hits

Projected Ward: Gale can extend Arcane Ward to someone nearby instead of himself

Improved Abjuration: On short rest, Gale can strengthen Arcane Ward to sustain itself beyond a single hit

Evocation

Sculpt Spells: Gale can control his Evocation spells and keep them from harming allies

Potent Cantrip: Gale can force enemies that resist his cantrips to take half damage from them anyways

Empowered Evocation: Gale's Evocation spells are particularly deadly (based on +INT modifier to damage rolls)

Necromancy

Grim Harvest: Gale can harness the power released when a spell kills a creature to heal himself, UNLESS it's undead or a construct

Undead Thralls: Animate Dead: Gale can reanimate a corpse

UT: Additional Undead: Gale can efficiently harness the power it would take to reanimate one corpse to reanimate two corpses with Animate Dead

UT: Better Summons: Gale's reanimated dead can take more of a beating than others' dead

Inured to Undeath: Gale's been exposed to necromancy enough that he's resistant to necrotic damage, and his life force capacity can't be reduced (this one in particular helps with the "Netherese bile" flowing through his veins)

Conjuration

Create Water: Gale can call forth rain at will (BG3's feature over D&D's to align more with storm sorcery)

Benign Transposition: Teleport: Gale can teleport up to 30ft, and can use that to swap places with an ally

Focused Conjuration: Gale's concentration on conjuration spells can't break due to pain

Enchantment

Hypnotic Gaze: So long as Gale holds eye contact with someone, he can charm them into stopping everything they're doing and staring at him in a daze

Instinctive Charm: Reflexively, Gale can make a split-second charm attempt to redirect an attack at someone directly nearby

Split Enchantment: Gale can efficiently harness the power it would take to enchant one person and instead enchant two targets at once

Divination

Portent: Gale can focus and gain split-second glimpses into the immediate future (such as the next blow about to be thrown in a fight)

Expert Divination: Casting divination comes naturally enough to Gale that he can cast divination spells using a lower spell slot

Third Eye: Gale can increase his powers of perception and gain a very limited Darkvision/Ethereal vision at will, as well as read any language

Illusion

Improved Minor Illusion: Gale can cast illusory effects with incredible ease

See Invisibility: Gale's experience with illusions lets him detect invisibility spells at work, focus on them, and see through them

Illusory Self: Gale can create an identical double of himself reflexively to confuse opponents

Transmutation

Experimental Alchemy: Using transmutation magic, Gale can more efficiently refine potion ingredients, occasionally enough to create a second potion

Transmuter's Stone: Gale can lock some of his transmutation magic into a stone, granting whoever holds it an effect of his choice from the following: Constitution proficiency, Darkvision, extra speed, resistance to acid/cold/fire/lightning/thunder damage

Shapechanger: Gale can polymorph himself once a day without consuming a spell slot (only into beasts with a CR of 1 or less)

Storm Sorcery

Wind Speaker: Gale can speak, read, and write Primordial (Aquan, Auran, Ignan, and Terran)

Tempestuous Magic: Gale can summon gusts of wind around him immediately after casting a spell greater than a cantrip. These winds are strong enough to propel him in flight for ten feet

Heart of the Storm: Gale has resistance to lightning and thunder damage. In addition, whenever he casts a spell that deals lightning or thunder damage, the magic that erupts is stormy and more powerful than other kinds of magic at equal level

Storm Guide: Gale can subtly control the weather around him, causing rain to stop falling in a 20 foot sphere centered on him, or wind to blow in a different direction in a 100 foot sphere centered on him

Feats

These are based on what I, personally, think make the most sense for him pre-tadpole:

Ability Increase: +2 to INT score

Elemental Adept: Thunder: Spells/attacks ignore resistance to thunder, and when a spell he casts causes thunder damage, it can't critically fail

Elemental Adept: Lightning: Spells/attacks ignore resistance to lightning, and when a spell he casts causes lightning damage, it can't critically fail

Okay, so Gale's crazy powerful, right? What could he have possibly lost that's greater than all this?

Well...

Abjuration: Spell Resistance: Gale was in tune enough with the Weave that he could resist spells (as well as gaining advantage on saving throws against them)

Evocation: Overchannel: Gale could deal maximum damage on a 1-5 level spell without ill effect on first cast, but suffered unresisted necrotic damage when using it again

Necromancy: Command Undead: Gale could bring undead made by other wizards under his control

Conjuration: Durable Summons: Gale could give anything he summoned a temporary shield against damage (30 temp HP)

Enchantment: Alter Memories: Gale could make someone unaware they were charmed by him, as well as make them forget something that happened during that charmed period

Divination: Greater Portent: Gale used to be able to predict more split second decisions ahead with ease

Illusion: Illusory Reality: Gale used to be able to pull shadow magic together into illusions and make them, temporarily, real. He can still do a limited version of this, but only via concentration to keep the threads together (hence the "anatomically correct" illusory wizard in the Drow twins scene; shadow magic is NOT the same as the Shadow Weave)

Transmutation: Master Transmuter: Gale could consume magic stored in his transmuter's stone in one go, using it to transmute one object into another, remove curses, diseases, and poisons, raise the dead, or reduce a creature's apparent age by up to 30 years

Storm Sorcery: Storm's Fury: Gale could react with lightning damage when struck physically Wind Soul: Gale was immune to lightning and thunder damage, could fly at a speed of 60 feet, and could reduce his flying speed to 30 feet for 1 hour to make four additional people fly

Yeah. Ouch. And that's not even including his former Chosen abilities.

Gale's Chosen abilities

Silver Fire: Gale could command pure energy of the Weave in the form of silver-white flame, which, at his command, could destroy anything in its path, banish dead magic areas, restore torn Weave, purge external magic and psionic effects from his own body, teleport without error to the last location he used the ability at, or cast spells without verbal, somatic, or material components

Mantle: Gale could cast the dangerous Mantle spell without suffering any ill effects, while other wizards casting the spell would suffer a drain of life force as long as it persisted

Weave Detection: Gale could detect magic's presence without the use of a spell

Weave Tapping: Gale could cast high level spells repeatedly without losing a spell slot, although this was discouraged by Mystra

On the page for Mystra's Chosen abilities, it says that sometimes her Chosen gained an immunity to magic, as well as disease and poison. I don't think Gale was so lucky, however; in the House of Healing, he mentions that he once turned himself in to a hospice in Waterdeep for a "bout of ruddy pox." Him having turned himself in implies he was an adult at the time, and should, therefore, already be Mystra's Chosen.

All that to say: behold, Gale of Waterdeep, in his original splendor. How the mighty have fallen.

#gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #baldur's gate 3 #nerd talk

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