Baldur's Gate/Characters/Foes

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


List of the various foes encountered in Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Bhaal

YOU CANNOT RUN FROM ME! YOU CANNOT RUN FROM YOURSELF! I AM THE BLOOD! I AM THE INSTINCT!
Voiced by: Kevin Michael Richardson

The former (now deceased) god of death and assassins, Bhaal is the main character's (and Imoen's, Sarevok's and a load of others) father. An unapologetically evil deity, he had premonitions of his death and created a plan: he'd invest his essence into his half-mortal children, let them grow up and die, and their essences, combined with his high priestess' efforts, would resurrect him. Everything went as planned except his high priestess deciding "Lol no".

Associated Tropes:

  • Anything That Moves: Humans, elves, dwarves, halflings and gnomes? He'll make no distinction. Giants? Dragons? You bet. Goblins, kobolds, chinchilas? Without hesitation.
  • Big Bad: Arguably of the whole series. In Throne of Bhaal, he gets replaced by Amellissan.
  • A God Am I: In his backstory, he was a mortal who quested to become a god.
    • Along with two others. There's an actual book (actually about ~2 pages of reading) in-game that documents this.
  • God of Evil
  • Lawful Evil: Invoked.
  • Legacy Immortality: Literally. His children hold his essence that will allow him to resurrect. It's essentially the same gambit as Bane used, except Bane put all his stock in one vessel. Bane eventually came back. Bhaal... didn't.
  • Physical God: Sort of. Bhaal had been a nonphysical god, but during the pre-game Time of Troubles was forced to a physical avatar, in which he died.
    • And prior to the time of troubles as well, in order to father some of his more long-lived offspring like dragons and giants (and to a lesser extent, dwarves, gnomes and elves).
  • Posthumous Character
Sarevok

I will be the last. And you will go first.
Voiced by: Kevin Michael Richardson

Sarevok was one of the most powerful of Bhaal's children, and is the main antagonist for the first game, though you don't determine that it's actually him until fairly late (until then, you're chasing his adoptive father). In Baldur's Gate, Sarevok is responsible for a massive Xanatos Gambit that you only gain full understanding of by reading his (completely optional) diaries and letters. In the end of Baldur's Gate, you slay him and his soul is sent to Hell, where your mutual father Bhaal resided.

In Baldur's Gate II, CHARNAME subconsciously summons him to act as one of the trials (s)he faces before (s)he can confront Irenicus in Hell.

In Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (the expansion), Sarevok shows up yet again, convinces you to give up either a fraction of your divine soul or convince Imoen to do the same, and comes back to life (a Resurrection spell being unhelpful due to his Bhaalspawn nature... despite working fine on Imoen). He then joins your party if you let him and is easily the best warrior in the game.

Associated tropes:

  • Bald of Evil: He shaves his head and his in-universe alignment is Chaotic Evil.
  • Batman Gambit: Manipulates Amn and Baldur's Gate to the brink of war with an iron shortage and pins his foster-father as the reason, making CHARNAME and company either kill said foster-father or taking the fall for it.
  • Beard of Evil: A neat goatee, as seen in his Throne of Bhaal portrait.
  • Big Freaking Sword
  • Black Knight: First game only. With Spikes of Villainy to match.
  • Brother-Sister Incest: Thankfully, not canonical, but there's a fan-made mod which adds a Throne of Bhaal Sarevok romance for female player characters. And fanfiction, of course.
  • Cain and Abel: Sarevok and you.
  • Chaotic Evil: Invoked.
  • Chaotic Good: Invoked: in Throne of Bhaal, you can convince him that good is better than evil if you live the example yourself.
  • The Chessmaster: He looks like a brute, but you have to remember that this is a man who very nearly ascended to godhood through a plot that began with industrial sabotage.
  • Critical Hit: While technically everyone can do so, Sarevok gets special mentioning due to his Deathbringer Assault, a Critical Hit that does 200 damage in a single blow (to get a picture of how much damage this is: the dragons in the game have around 150-250 HP each). He also has one that simply stuns an opponent for a round or two.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Justified and a twisted version. Since he lost his essence, he's trying to be CHARNAME's right-hand man if/when CHARNAME ascends to godhood.
  • Determinator: As a deceased Bhaalspawn without his essence, he shouldn't be capable of doing anything, but he still forces himself into a ghostly existence to bargain for his resurrection through sheer willpower.

"I Live! Flesh and blood and bone, I am alive! (Evil Laugh) I swore I would scratch and crawl my way back into the world of the living... and I have done it!"

  • Eleventh-Hour Ranger: Definitely applies to him, considering you get get him at the last leg of your journey.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: When you're voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson, this is inevitable.
  • Faux Affably Evil: In Throne of Bhaal.
  • Freudian Excuse: If you don't want to end up with an evil ending in Throne of Bhaal, you have to acknowledge that this is what separates him from good Bhaalspawn such as the Player Character, possibly, and Imoen.
  • Genius Bruiser: This guy, who is still the strongest party member barring maybe CHARNAME in Throne of Bhaal even after his Good Is Dumb downpowering, orchestrated a massive Xanatos Gambit and almost managing to pit two countries at war. Statistically Speaking: Strength: 18/00, Constitution: 18, Intelligence: 17.
  • A God Am I: Sarevok's motivation and plan in Baldur's Gate I. After you kill him, he gets over it, though by setting his sights only very slightly lower.
  • Good Feels Good: Decides this if he becomes Chaotic Good.
  • Good Is Dumb: In Baldur's Gate I, Sarevok has a ton of magic resistance and non-standard powers. After he joins you, he loses it all, though the game does justify this by his losing his Bhaalspawn essence as well as his special Bhaal-artifact sword and armor. And he's still the strongest fighter in the game.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: His portrait in Throne of Bhaal.
  • Heel Face Turn
  • Hero with an F In Good: If you have been evil all your life, being a hero is going to take some getting used to. Not to mention that bad reputation you built up...
  • Jumped At the Call: When he discovered his heritage, he jumped at the opportunity to fulfill what he thought was his destiny. Throne of Bhaal reveals that he researched the Bhaalspawn Prophecy extensively and his knowledge proves quite useful.
  • Large Ham: He loves his evil speeches as much as any spike-wearing evil warlord.
    • In one humorous banter, his hamminess is actually brought up by Minsc. Minsc criticizes him for being not hammy enough for being an ex-evil warlord.
  • Lightning Bruiser: When you fight him at the end of the first game, he's a Made of Iron boss-level fighter who also starts the fight with an innate Haste spell effect on him. Unless you Dispel him immediately, he's faster than almost anything else in the game, and can gib anything short of an endgame-level hero in 1 hit.
  • Magikarp Power: With Ascension installed, if you keep his Sword of Chaos, which can be found in the first dungeon of Shadows of Amn, he will be able to restore some of its original power and upgrades it to a +4 weapon with several nifty abilities.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Manipulated his foster father into thinking he was the one in charge, and convinced Baldur's Gate that the Iron Throne's intentions were wholly noble.
  • Not Quite Dead: You have to kill him twice before he can join your party.
  • Purposefully Overpowered: As a teammate, he's about as powerful as one can get before crossing into sheer broken ridiculousness. Numerically, his stat total is 96, a fair bit higher than any other character. Justified, of course, by how powerful he is in the story.
  • Scary Black Man: Though his race isn't apparent until Throne of Bhaal.
  • Scary Impractical Armor: In Baldur's Gate I only. There's a certain point beyond which you simply have too many spikes.
  • Sdrawkcab Name: He travels incognito without his armor as the scribe Koveras in order to infiltrate Candlekeep.
  • Separated at Birth: As it turns out, Sarevok was separated from the protagonist at birth, though they have different mothers.
  • Shadow Archetype: It's not really gone into in Baldur's Gate I, but in Baldur's Gate II, it's clear that both he and the gods viewed him as this.
  • The Starscream: You can tell he's the Big Bad from his appearances in the beginning of the story, but he doesn't visibly take the role until killing off his adopted father and taking over his organisation, and besides, you don't know he's that guy from the beginning at first.
  • Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred: He tries this on you when you first meet him in Hell.
  • There Can Be Only One: And as it eventually turns out, Sarevok is far from the only person with this plan.
  • Timeshifted Actor: Kath Soucie plays him as a child.
  • Tin Tyrant
  • Villain with Good Publicity: In Baldur's Gate I. In Throne of Bhaal, if he makes is Heel Face Turn, he becomes a Hero With Bad (and admittedly well-earned) Publicity.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: In Baldur's Gate I, he's immune to all types of energy, effectively making him immune to all direct damage and area-of-effect spells... except for the energy neutral Magic Missile, a level one spell.
  • You Remind Me of X:

Sarevok: You remind me of myself... before I was slaughtered and cast into the Abyss.

Tamoko

Loyalty to one's lord is all that can be expected.
Voiced by: Diane Pershing

Tamoko is Sarevok's loyal concubine and advisor. Unlike most of his underlings, she's not apparently very evil and is truly in love with him, but can nevertheless see what evils he's sunk to and, realizing she can't help him on her own, asks CHARNAME to not kill him. Whether or not CHARNAME agrees is up to you, but if you do, Sarevok learns of it and orders her to fight you (implicitly, he orders her execution, since she's obviously no match for you alone). You can force her to leave peacefully if you won't fight back, making her finally realize that Sarevok's evil is his own doing and not his blood's.

Associated Tropes:

  • The Cameo: She shows up in ToB alongside a theoretical version of yourself, gone done Sarevok's path.
  • Dark Chick: She's the only antagonist who isn't actually evil (well, sort of, see below); she doesn't share the others' goals, and isn't even antagonistic much of the time.
  • Infinity+1 Sword: Not a blade, but she has the best piece of armor in the game: Full Plate Mail + 1.
  • In the Blood: She thinks Sarevok is naturally a good man, corrupted by his heritage. If you prove to her that you're a good person, she'll realize she was wrong, and that whatever evil Sarevok is guilty of is his own doing.
  • Love Martyr: Though she can be talked out of it.
  • Neutral Evil: According to her game file. Invoked.
  • Road Cone: Canonically, she dies at some point during the story: Whether or not you killed her is unclear. The epilogue of Sarevok's good end has him burying Tamoko back in Kara-Tur.
Jon Irenicus / Joneleth

You are but a gnat compared to my power.
Voiced by: David Warner

The villain of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Irenicus is a soulless formerly-elven mage with dreams of godhood. The elves, in a moment of absolute short-sightedness, stripped him of his elven lifespan but not his magical powers and cast him out for attempting to become a god rather than, y'know, KILLING him.

Irenicus constantly cheats any attempt to learn his motivations: only his diaries let you know what he's thinking. His end goal is to become a god and gain ultimate magical power; in the short term he just wants to overcome his now-human lifespan.

Irenicus was voiced by veteran actor David Warner, who is well-known for his ability to handle 'dramatic villain' roles, such as the former Magus of Castle Wyvern in Gargoyles, Ra's al Ghul on Batman the Animated Series, and Erasmus Pea in The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse.

Associated tropes:

  • Badass Boast: Spoken while annihilating several enemy mages.

Irenicus: I cannot be caged! I cannot be controlled! Understand this as you die, ever pathetic, ever fools!

You will suffer. You will all suffer!

  • Dangerously Genre Savvy: Irenicus flat out ignores any attempt to squeeze his plans out of him. You have more luck tricking his flunkies and his sister than you do him.
  • Deader Than Dead: First, you need to kill him. Then you need to kill him in Hell. Then he dies in yet ANOTHER place in Hell, and dies for real.
    • And even then, not necessarily... Following the logic train here, he's not really dead, just in another even lower abyssal plane. There are also some game mods for Throne of Bhaal that have Irenicus return as a character. One has him in cahoots with Melissan, returning during the final battle at the Throne of Bhaal (the Ascension mod), where another has him return as a playable character that can be obtained shortly after beginning Throne of Bhaal, though he of course only agrees to join you for his own reasons.
    • Let's just say that in the ending of Shadows of Amn, the developers had to put in the montage of his being thrown into low abyssal plane and getting tortured by demons to show that Irenicus is really dead this time.
  • Enemy Mine: Irenicus' alliance with the Drow is made possible by their mutual hatred of the elves.
  • Evil Brit: They brought in one of the all-time best sinister-sounding British actors specifically to invoke this.
  • Evil Sorcerer: Downplayed. His character sheet even makes him a sorcerer, even though in-game he's always referred to as a 'mage', and he leans more toward mad-science Magitek than mysticism as well.
  • Expy: His habits, backstory, personality, goals and vocal patterns are remarkably similar to Gendo Ikari.
  • Fate Worse Than Death: What he suffers when you finally defeat him.
  • Final Boss Preview: He's fought three different times in the course of Baldur's Gate II, including in the final battle; the first is less than halfway through the game.
  • Genius Bruiser: Irenicus is the greatest wizard elves ever had, and is built like a pro wrestler. He also dresses as one, which adds a solid amount of poor drama.
  • A God Am I: Irenicus' original, and ultimate, goal.
  • Heel Face Turn: If you have an addon for Ascension (appropriately titled Redemption), it's possible to turn him against Amellysan and redeem him.
  • Kick the Son of a Bitch: His slaughter of the Cowled Wizards, arguably.
  • Large Ham: A great example of how one can be Large Ham without raising one's voice.
  • Neutral Evil: Pure, distilled Neutral Evil. Invoked
  • Oh Crap: The look on his face in the final cinematic, right when he realizes his magic no longer works, fits this trope to a T.
  • One-Winged Angel/Super-Powered Evil Side: Transforms into the Slayer in the last battle.
  • Our Elves Are Better: Or, rather, our former elves are worse, and know it.
  • Our Souls Are Different: Your divine soul and Irenicus' mundane soul are literally different, so a key part of his plan is to steal yours.
  • Planet Heck: Irenicus didn't plan to fight you in Hell, but he has no problem with doing so once it happens.
  • Revenge: Irenicus' other goal. He was lucky that becoming a god and killing a ton of elves were not only not mutually exclusive, but achieving the former was most easily accomplished by doing the latter.

Once my lust for power was everything. And now I hunger only for revenge. AND I! WILL! HAVE IT!

  • Silence, You Fool: "Silence, dog! You have no purpose but to die by my hand."
  • That Man Is Dead: What Irenicus says about Joneleth when Ellesime confronts him at the end.
  • Unknown Rival: Not really an example, but Irenicus stops caring about you after he steals your soul, to a point where he's absolutely surprised you'd come after him to get it back (he was hoping you'd have just crawled off and died without your soul).
  • We Are as Mayflies: Irenicus despises being a human (or the equivalent of a human) partially because of his limited lifespan.
  • Zerg Rush: What finally does him in.
Bodhi

You are becoming an impressive pest, one I am finding difficult to ignore!
Voiced by: B.J. Ward

Bodhi is the absolutely evil sister of Jon Irenicus. When she lost her soul to the elves like her brother did, she tried to compensate by intentionally getting inflicted with vampirism, which didn't work PERFECTLY but did gain her her immortality back.

Associated Tropes:

  • Ax Crazy
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: Her desire to "hunt" the Bhaalspawn results in your Super-Powered Evil Side being released and you escaping. Whoops.
  • Chaotic Evil: When you not only prey on people - literally - but also like to play with your food... Invoked.
  • Dark Action Girl: Most bosses in this series rely on magic or powerful special abilities, but not Bodhi. She's just a very powerful physical combatant who can kill even the strongest characters with a few normal attacks.
  • The Dark Chick
  • The Dragon: To Irenicus.
  • Enemy to All Living Things: Most other vampires in the story can pass rather easily for human, but everyone who encounters Bodhi is deeply unnerved by her unnatural air.
  • For the Evulz: Irenicus is motivated by ambition and a desire for Revenge. Bodhi, on the other hand, just revels in killing and maiming. Irenicus lampshades her lack of complexity as a character at one point by saying that her hunger for blood has overwhelmed even her desire for vengeance.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: Sort of. Depending on player choices, the party will have to fight her either twice or three times. The first fight (which only happens if the player sides with the Shadow Thieves in the Guild War) ends when she flees after "testing your strength" for a few rounds. In the second fight, in the maze beneath Spellhold, she freaks out and runs away when the Player Character suddenly transforms into the Slayer, the Avatar of Bhaal. Neither fight is hopeless in that the party doesn't actually lose, but you can't defeat her either.
  • Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Bodhi enjoys stalking and killing mortals, which leads directly to the lapse into Bond Villain Stupidity mentioned above.
  • I Have Your Wife: Bodhi kidnaps whoever you're having a romance with.
  • Lady Macbeth: In her backstory. It's suggested that Bodhi was the one who encouraged Irenicus' move to The Dark Side, in what was probably a non-romantic way.
  • Large Ham: Good thing she has fangs, because she certainly likes to chew the scenery.
  • Like Brother and Sister: She and Irenicus constantly refer to themselves as siblings, but it's never made clear whether this is literally true or not.
  • Mercy Lead: Sorta. When Bodhi releases the party into the Spellhold maze so that she can hunt them, she declares she'll come after them after a certain unspecified amount of time. In an unmodded game, she doesn't decide time's up until the party reaches a certain specific area of the dungeon, which could be quickly or after quite a long while.
  • Motive Decay: Her backstory suggests fairly complex goals and motivations, but as noted above by the time of the games she comes across as pretty much a standard Murder!Death!Kill! villain who's in it purely For the Evulz.
  • Our Souls Are Different: Like Irenicus, she's missing hers.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Unusually for a female vampire, she's neither morally ambiguous nor seductive.
  • Recurring Boss: Depending on the player's choices you'll have to fight her either twice or three times over the course of the game; she's only really a serious threat in the third encounter however as the first two are scripted to end after a few rounds.
  • Stripperific: Has a thing for revealing black leather.
  • Torture Cellar: She's got one in her hideout.
  • The Vamp: In the novels, but not in the game.
Kangaxx

I am Kangaxx and I have been cursed. I am dead yet not dead. Cursed to eternal entrapment in this tomb by cruel enemies! Cursed to a fate worse than death!

Baldur's Gate II's bonus boss, Kangaxx the lich is either the hardest boss in the game or one of the easiest. You meet him as a skull, and he asks you to track down his body. If you do so, he assembles himself into a lich and attacks you. After you kill him, he turns into a demi-lich, a floating skull that spams imprisonment, the most powerful spell in the game. Unlike many bonus bosses, he's not so much more powerful than late game bosses that fighting him is pointless, as you'll still find challenge after him. Of note: Kangaxx has the highest to hit requirement of any enemy in the franchise. He's not merely immune to non-magical weapons, he requires +4 weapons to even harm. Until the very late game, there are only three +4 weapons even available, and two are staves, which are effectively useless in combat.

Associated Tropes:

  • Bonus Boss: And one you can only fight by intentionally picking a fight with two other powerful Bonus Bosses found underneath Athkatla.
  • Chaotic Evil: He doesn't care how you get to revive him, and he promises you great rewards only to break his word to give you eternal suffering.
  • Fate Worse Than Death: See his quote above.
  • Obviously Evil: His bones are described as radiating a sense of pure evil, in case you needed another hint not to trust the talking skull.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: "I am free! The world will burn to ash!"
  • Our Liches Are Different: He's a demi-lich.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can
  • Shmuck Bait: Anyone who falls for Kangaxx asking him to reassemble his body kind of deserves to be imprisoned forever, but it's the only way to earn the single best ring in the series.

Obviously I should beware offers from strange skulls in the future... - The Player Character

  • Spam Attack: As a lich, Kangaxx has all of the standard lich abilities: powerful spells, the ability to cast them immediately after one another (which normally requires an additional, special spell). As a demi-lich, Kangaxx has literally only two attacks, which he will spam like nothing else: Imprisonment, which instantly removes a party member and sends him or her to the center of the earth to be put into eternal stasis (effectively a death that requires a more exotic raise dead spell), and Wail of the Banshee, which is a simple area of effect save or die spell. He will use both constantly.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: The demi-lich is the most powerful undead enemy in the game... but it's still undead, so using a cheap, available everywhere Protection from Undead scroll will make the battle easy.
Lord Jierdan Firkragg

A red dragon posing as a human lord. Firkragg shows up early to give you a quest with a promised reward of 10,000 gold, a fortune at this point in the game. It turns out however that he really wanted to lure you into a trap because of some half-explained slight he had with Gorion, and also because he's bored and wants to "study" you.

Associated tropes:

  • Bonus Boss: One of the nastiest opponents in the game, but fighting him is not required to finish the story, or even to finish the Sidequest he appears in.
  • Breath Weapon: Dragon, duh. Hope you packed enough fire resistance.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: He's the one who engineered the bridge drop on Ajantis, the NPC paladin from the first game.
  • Infinity+1 Sword: He has one of them, the Holy Avenger +5, in his hoard. His scales can also be used to create one of the better armors in the game.
  • It Amused Me: One of the reasons why he decides to meddle with you.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Red dragon, and probably the closest to classic western dragons in both appearance and behavior.
  • Skippable Boss: He explicitly gives you the option to fight his minion instead of him. Depending on when you take this quest (and how much you like to cheese), this might be a good idea. You can return for that Holy Avenger later.
  • There Will Be Cake: No, he'll never give you the 10,000 gold he promised. Just kill him and take his loot.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: A standard power for most full dragons in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Amelissan The Blackhearted

Remain dust, my foolish god.
Voiced by: Heidi Shannon

The Big Bad of Throne of Bhaal. The former High Priestess of Bhaal: Bhaal himself entrusted Amelissan with the ritual that would use the essences of the dead Bhaalspawn to bring him back to life. However, she completely betrays him in favor of using the essences to ascend to a godhood herself, and by the time you actually kill her, she has stolen the lion's share of Bhaal's essence.

Associated Tropes:

  • Big Bad: Of Throne of Bhaal.
  • Boss Rush: In a semi-official Ascension mod, she first summons Irenicus and Bodhi. If possible, she'll also turn Imoen into the Slayer, forcing you to either put her down or play keep-away until she snaps out of it. When you defeat them, she then summons all of the Five at once to attack you. Then, once two of the Five get finished off, she steps into the battle, summoning demons to aid her as her health goes down.
  • Chaotic Evil: Unlike the other Big Bads and a few other villains from the games, she lacks any real motivation for her villainy, except simply wanting more power.
  • The Chessmaster: One wonders why the other members of the Five, who are smart and ruthless enough not to trust each other, arbitrarily trust her.
  • Chewing the Scenery
  • The Chick: What she pretends to be.
  • Devil in Plain Sight: To anyone with a lick of RPG-knowhow, it's really startlingly obvious that this lady will turn out to be the villain. Some mods even add in dialogue options that allow your character to say just that to her face.
    • Oh hey, let's not forget that this is revealed to you in the second boss fight. Gromnir explains almost her entire plot to you. Then you kill him and speak with Melissan, in which you are given a load of different ways to tell her your secret escape ability and go on a quest for her. WHAT THE HELL? SERIOUSLY?
      • She might be obvious otherwise, but the paranoid bad guy explaining all about it in Hulk Speak is hardly very believable by himself.
      • Also, before she reveals her true nature Melissan's dialogue makes her sound genuinely sincere and innocent, even extremely naive. Before she drops the facade, the only way to see that she is evil is to judge her by the consequences of her actions. In a world of cartoonishly over-the-top villains, she seems just too damned normal to be evil...
      • Even unmodded, you can let her know that you don't trust her. Right after the fight with Yaga-Shura:

Melissan: CHARNAME! You live! I had heard the sounds of combat and returned this way only to find the giant dead and you gone!
CHARNAME: [one of the dialogue options] Expected me to be dead, eh? Sorry to disappoint you.
Melissan: Don't be a fool, CHARNAME! I cannot express my relief at finding you alive after all the carnage this monster and his army have wrought here.
[...]
Melissan: I offered you information in return for Yaga-Shura's death. It may be too late to save Saradush, but that information could still help you, if you will listen.
CHARNAME: [one of the dialogue options] This had better not be lies, Melissan. I'm in no mood.

  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Sarevok was just a man, and Irenicus merely had his own power and a divine tree's power he stole. Melissan, however, had nearly all the strength of the god of murder but still goes down if you stab her a lot. To be fair, punching out Cthulhu is fairly common in the setting: Forgotten Realms deities are not immortal and indeed have a fairly high mortality rate.
  • Dragon with an Agenda: To Bhaal.
  • Evil Is Hammy: Once it's "revealed" she was evil all along, she becomes hammy enough to match Sarevok.
  • A God Am I: You better believe it. Noticing a pattern in the villains?
  • I Can Rule Alone: Bhaal really ought to have found someone more trustworthy to oversee the plan to resurrect himself.
  • Just Eat Gilligan: You would, but the game won't let you.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Plays the Five against the other Bhaalspawn, and then you against them, to release the maximum number of essence for her to steal.
  • Marathon Boss: You first fight against her, then some air elementals, then her along with some demons, then the Elemental prince, then her along with some slayer shadows, then some powerful demons including the fallen solar, and then finally her. And the real kicker? You have to do this in one go, meaning you cannot rest or regain spells throughout this battle unless you use the Wish spell. And in the Ascension mod, it's even worse.
    • Mercifully, all of the creatures she summons vanish each time you bring her down to low health, and she teleports away to recharge, so in each fight the party should make inflicting damage on her their #1 priority. The third fight against her is arguably the toughest, as she will move far away from the party and keep on summoning monsters to attack them. In the fourth and final fight she abandons that strategy and tries to melee you to death with only a couple of summoned creatures as backup, making it significantly easier than what came before.
  • Older Than They Look: Mellisan must be, at the very, impossibly youngest, 35, and is likely 40-50, but she looks like she's in her mid-to-late twenties.
  • Planet Heck: A strange example. As she gains the power of Bhaal, she warps Hell to her liking, so that by the point, you actually fight her you're still technically in Hell, but it's really rather pleasant.
  • The Reveal: Not that it comes as much of a surprise.
  • The Starscream: To the Five, to Charname, and finally to Bhaal herself. Pitting her enemies against each other is her MO throughout Throne of Bhaal.
  • Time Stands Still: One of three enemies immune to Time Stop, though she herself doesn't use it.
    • Unless you're playing with the aforementioned Ascension mod.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Has a massive one when she is defeated by CHARNAME.
The Five

The Five are five particularly powerful Bhaalspawn who join forces for the dual purposes of taking over the world and becoming more powerful as they kill their siblings... or so they think. Though this is true for Illasera, Yaga-Shura, Sendai and Abazigal, Balthazar planned to betray them all along for the forces of righteousness, to snuff out the line of Bhaal before it destroyed Faerun. He uses you to do so, and then attempts to kill you himself.

Associated Tropes for all of them:

  • Equal Opportunity Evil: Balthazar employs only humans, but only because only humans can be monks. The rest use anyone willing to work for them/that they can enslave.
  • Five-Bad Band: Well, obviously.
    • The Big Bad: Balthazhar. Fought last, most powerful, only revealed after other four are dead.
    • The Dragon: Abazigal.
    • The Brute: Yaga-Shura.
    • The Evil Genius: Sendai fits best, given her status as Puzzle Boss and Sequential Boss who throws all her minions at you first. She's really one of the dumber ones of the five in terms of planning, however.
    • The Dark Chick: Illasera. Fought first, dies first. Hasn't got an army or much of a plan.
  • Hunter of His Own Kind: While all the Bhaalspawn are driven towards finding and killing each other, these five made a career out of it.
  • There Can Be Only One: They all knew they'd eventually betray the others.

Balthazar:

Your part in this ends here... I shall see to that.
Voiced by: Jeff Osterhage

  • Alas, Poor Villain: Averted: he's really just a giant jerk despite his noble intentions.
  • Bald of Evil: He's not actually evil - more of a Knight Templar/Well-Intentioned Extremist.
  • Bare-Fisted Monk: Puts 3rd Edition's shiny new monk class to good use.
  • Calling Your Attacks: Lunar Stance! Shadowless Kick!
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: He gets a huge amount of non-standard abilities, including Invisibility, Magic Missile (?!), Sunfire and a teleport ability.
  • Flash Step: See Teleport Spam below.
  • Good Is Not Nice: Statistically, he is good, and his goal is noble... his methods, however, are not.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: He plans to kill himself after all the other Bhaalspawn are dead, which is, ironically, exactly what Bhaal would have him do.
  • Knight Templar
  • Lawful Good: Also proof of the trope Good Is Not Nice.
  • The Man Behind the Man
  • Sixth Ranger Traitor: Notably, in the Ascension mod, if the main character is good, and you make some sensible dialogue choices, you can convert him into a Sixth Ranger for the final battle. Which is very handy because the Ascension mod turns the final battle into something to behold.
  • Teleport Spam: The infuriating thing is that there's no reason why he can teleport. Monks can't, and he's not a spellcaster. Could theoretically be from his taint and Bhaalspawn powers. After all, CHARNAME has a pocket dimension that can bypass a magic barrier that prevents normal means of teleportation.
  • Time Stands Still: Contrary to popular belief, he isn't passively immune to time stop. He has a reactive counter move that allows him to ignore it; however, it is possible time stop him if the time stop goes off while he's in the middle of another of his special attacks.
  • Token Good Teammate: Of the Five. Not that the others realize it though.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: His methods of preventing Bhaal's resurrection are questionable, and he admits it if you call him out. He also wants you killed because you're a Bhaalspawn and you won't be able to convince him that you want the same as him, even if you're Lawful Good with 20 reputation, unless you play with the Ascension Mod. He will, however, admit that you're as much as a victim in this conflict as he is.
  • What a Senseless Waste of Human Life: He refuses to see reason about the whole killing-all-my-siblings-but-for-a-good-cause issue unless the player uses the Ascension mod.

Abazigal:

Those insolent words will be your last!
Voiced by: Jim Cummings

  • Berserk Button: If you taunt him about killing his son Draconis, he will immediately skip to the end of the conversation and start attacking you.
  • Big Freaking Sword: When he's in human form.
  • Breath Weapon: When he's in dragon form.
  • Chaotic Evil
  • Dragon with an Agenda: He's the only member of the Five clever enough to see through Balthazar, but he never gets an opportunity to put that knowledge to use.
  • Fantastic Racism: He is as about as arrogant towards you and your party as you'd expect from a dragon in this setting and believes only dragons are worthy of being Bhaal's children. His own divine heritage, on the other hand, seems to bring him mixed levels of approval: his son Draconis (and presumably the rest of his family) think highly of him for it; other dragons, such as the green dragon bound to him guarding his door, look down on him for it, considering him a "mongrel half-breed".
  • Giant Flyer: Like all dragons in Dungeons & Dragons.
  • Large Ham: He's even voiced by Minsc's voice actor.
  • One-Winged Angel: He starts out appearing near-human, but with blue skin. Then he turns into a dragon.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: He's the son of a blue dragon.
  • Shock and Awe: Blue dragons breathe lightning breath.
  • This Cannot Be!: Word for word.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: The only Bhaalspawn boss that can potentially be instantly killed by Vorpal weapons, dragon-form only.
  • Worthy Opponent: He plays this up, but despises you for not being a dragon (despite his ironically half-dragon status, since his father was a god).

Yaga-Shura:

Figured I was stronger than the rest of them, maybe. But not all of them together.
Voiced by: Kevin Michael Richardson

  • Big Damn Heroes: Averted. The party shows up just as he begins his assault on Saradush. They do kill him, but the city is destroyed anyway.
  • The Brute
  • Chaotic Evil
  • Drop the Hammer: His weapon of choice is a powerful rune hammer. Players who take it off his dead body can later upgrade it with the right items.
  • Evil Army: Until he dies, he leads it.
  • Genre Blind: As noted below, his defenses have some flaws: he apparently hasn't read the Evil Overlord List. The biggest being betraying the one being who knows how undo spell granting his invincibility.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: He enjoys eating the hearts of his enemies, in particular other Bhaalspawn he's killed.
  • Improbable Species Compatibility: He planned to breed with a captive human woman. Um, what? That's if possible even weirder than what Bhaal did. At least a god could be expected to shapeshift to match his mate, even if it is a chinchilla, and have magical adapting DNA, but a fire giant can't help being about eighteen feet tall.
  • Nigh Invulnerable: A full quarter of ToB is getting around this, which is annoying considering that all things considered he's a minion.
  • Our Giants Are Bigger: Fire Giant.
  • Soul Jar: A variation of this is the explanation for his Nigh Invulnerability.
  • This Cannot Be!: Word for word, when you defeat him. If he weren't so Genre Blind, he'd realize that rendering himself invulnerable by putting his essence into his heart and keeping it in a secret location hardly makes him invincible.
  • You Are Too Late: The whole portion of Throne of Bhaal that deals with him is a bit of a Shaggy Dog Story. The heroes go to great lengths to help people in the besieged city of Saradush, then to even greater lengths to defeat Yaga-Shura and lift the siege, and succeed in doing both, only for his army to succeed in razing the city and killing everyone inside anyway. But then again, the heroes were playing into Amelissan's scheme to kill all Bhaalspawns in the city and Yaga-Shura himself.

Sendai:

Know this even as I die... the return of our father is inevitable. Though I fall, the others will ensure Bhaal is reborn!
Voiced by: Vanessa Marshall

  • Big No: Right as she dies, she lets out a massive one.
  • Did Not Do the Research: A female drow mage/cleric. Female drow in second edition did not become mages, that was considered male work.
    • Sort of, anyways. There's at least one female drow character in the Realms (Liriel Baenre) who is a mage. It's not without precedent.
    • Sendai is never stated to be a follower of Lolth (so the mage prohibition wouldn't matter), and given she's above ground and the child of a follower of Bhaal, is probably a Vaeruinian priestess at most or possibly even no god at all (gaining her spells from the Bhaal essence she has).
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: Averted. Once she realises who exactly it is that's trashing her base, she flips out and starts reaching deep into her bag of tricks to try to come up with some way to stop you.
  • Epic Flail: It's her main weapon, though her statues are capable of using other weapons as well.
  • Neutral Evil: Her In-Universe alignment.
  • Oh Crap: When she realizes you're a Bhaalspawn and not just a regular dude.
  • Our Elves Are Better: Dark Elf.
  • Puzzle Boss: She uses a few class-shifting animated statues of herself when the player finally confronts her.

Illasera:

I may yet mount your head on the wall with all the other Bhaalspawn I've killed... I haven't decided.
Voiced by: Grey Delisle

Gromnir Il Khan

"Haha! Good fun!"
Voiced by: Jim Cummings

A bloodthirsty and paranoid half-orc who rules Saradush with an iron fist, he's afraid of Yaga-Shura's army destroying his city, a fear that is not unjustified. He's a terrible leader who leaves the military to its own devices, not particularly intelligent, and in charge primarily because of his Bhaalspawn heritage making him strong enough to intimidate anyone more suited than him for leadership into backing off.

Associated Tropes:

Demogorgon

DEMOGORGON IS FREE! DEATH MY SCEPTER AND PAIN MY CROWN! THE PRINCE OF DEMONS WILL LOOSE SWEET DESTRUCTION!
Voiced by: Jim Cummings

A demon lord locked away by Helm, god of duty, into Watcher's Keep, Demogorgan serves as the series' ultimate Bonus Boss.

Associated Tropes:

Tazok

One of Sarevok's underlings from the first game. He is the leader of a group of bandits who are in league with the Iron Throne. If the player character attempts to infiltrate this group, they will be required to fight him (although not to the death). He later shows up during the final showdown with Sarevok and makes a surprise reappearance in Firkraag's lair to, once again, fight the hero.

If the player recruits the Player Character Kivan in the first game, it will be revealed that Tazok tortured and murdered Kivan's betrothed.

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate/Characters/Foes?oldid=2028569"