Control Undead | Baldurs Gate 3 Wiki

Warning about this Class Action and Spoiler Warning for act 2 and 3.

During the Cursed Monk Quest's end in Act 3 (That you START in act 2 near the Gryforge by picking up he the Sentient Amulet necklace in the locked contained behind where the Lava elemental patrols) I ended up fighting the Monk and the 3 Undead he awakens for that fight, but not wanting to bother with him as an enemy, I used Control Undead on him with my Oathbreaker, this VISUALLY SAID on screen with floating yellow text that it made me lose 45 Attiude with my 3 current party members: Karlach, Wyll and Minthara. When I opened their character sheets later: at least their approval of me had not moved at all since Wyll's approval of my character was maxed before and after the fact, but given that this still happened, I wanted to warn people that this action still seems to sporadically remove attitude and that may have consequences as loosing between 20-40 attitude is what makes most NPCs hostile.

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As of Feb 19th 2024, this ability is just not feasable. I have a level 12 (7 OB Paladin/5 TGOO Warlock) and the controlled undead creature does not travel with you between Acts or certain warp points, like going to the House of Hope (Fast travels are ok), which breaks the entire point of having a controlled undead.

Since it doesn't "officially" join your party and show under the summons sidebar, you do not have manual control over it which means it's behaviour is inconsistent and hard to keep inside your Aura of Hate which is where you want it to be for the added buff. Sometimes it is nice not having to manually control your summons, but I'd rather use him strategically and not randomly (this should be a feature you can turn on/off). I controlled a Death Knight in Act 3 (in front of Sarevok's doors) and when he isn't being stupid and moves right, he can do some pretty good damage.

It cannot travel with you to camp, and when you long rest, your control is broken so you have to go back to the last location you were at outside of camp before LR to find it again to re-control. (If you worked hard to get the perfect minion and you want to keep it for a long while, otherwise just move on, but be aware it may start attacking civilians/vendors)

You cannot heal it unless you spam Aid over and over. (Travelling between Rivington and the Lower City seems to full heal. This may work in other areas, but I haven't tested)

Aside from all these frustrations, it's worsened by your inability to respec your OB Paladin, unless you pay the gold to reclaim your Oath, make your changes, and then break it again (which gets more expensive each time). The best way I found to keep breaking Oaths is to fight any enemy (as an Oath of Devotion) knock them out then kill them while they lay on the floor. Even bad aligned enemies will cause the Oath break. (My assumption is that it's dishonorable to kill when they have already been defeated and are unable to defend themselves.)

There are very few good undead creatures in this game that make this skill shine, and even if you found a good one, you'll just be paranoid about it dying the whole time.

I love the concept of Control Undead and would love to see these issues be patched in future, but these complications do not make building towards it worth the effort, even if you knew the perfect/optimal formula and were confident that you'd NEVER need to respec, just having the option to touch up as you move through Acts is nice to have, without a massive gold penalty to boot.

On one small plus side, whatever buffs you give it (Longstrider, Aid, Freedom of Movement, Protection From Poison, Hero's Feast) will stay permanently, even through long rests, but again you have to find it and re-control it each time.

It is my opinion that you're better off making a regular Paladin (pure or multiclass) and just worry about making your Smites as awesome as they can be. This skill takes too much effort to work properly, and should only be used for roleplay reasons.

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As of Feb 19th 2024, this ability is just not feasable. I have a level 12 (7 OB Paladin/5 TGOO Warlock) and the controlled undead creature does not travel with you between Acts or certain warp points, like going to the House of Hope (Fast travels are ok), which breaks the entire point of having a controlled undead.

Since it doesn't "officially" join your party and show under the summons sidebar, you do not have manual control over it which means it's behaviour is inconsistent and hard to keep inside your Aura of Hate which is where you want it to be for the added buff. Sometimes it is nice not having to manually control your summons, but I'd rather use him strategically and not randomly (this should be a feature you can turn on/off). I controlled a Death Knight in Act 3 (in front of Sarevok's doors) and when he isn't being stupid and moves right, he can do some pretty good damage.

It cannot travel with you to camp, and when you long rest, your control is broken so you have to go back to the last location you were at outside of camp before LR to find it again to re-control. (If you worked hard to get the perfect minion and you want to keep it for a long while, otherwise just move on, but be aware it may start attacking civilians/vendors)

You cannot heal it unless you spam Aid over and over. (Travelling between Rivington and the Lower City seems to full heal. This may work in other areas, but I haven't tested)

Aside from all these frustrations, it's worsened by your inability to respec your OB Paladin, unless you pay the gold to reclaim your Oath, make your changes, and then break it again (which gets more expensive each time). The best way I found to keep breaking Oaths is to fight any enemy (as an Oath of Devotion) knock them out then kill them while they lay on the floor. Even bad aligned enemies will cause the Oath break. (My assumption is that it's dishonorable to kill when they have already been defeated and are unable to defend themselves.)

There are very few good undead creatures in this game that make this skill shine, and even if you found a good one, you'll just be paranoid about it dying the whole time.

I love the concept of Control Undead and would love to see these issues be patched in future, but these complications do not make building towards it worth the effort, even if you knew the perfect/optimal formula and were confident that you'd NEVER need to respec, just having the option to touch up as you move through Acts is nice to have, without a massive gold penalty to boot.

On one small plus side, whatever buffs you give it (Longstrider, Aid, Freedom of Movement, Protection From Poison, Hero's Feast) will stay permanently, even through long rests, but again you have to find it and re-control it each time.

It is my opinion that you're better off making a regular Paladin (pure or multiclass) and just worry about making your Smites as awesome as they can be. This skill takes too much effort to work properly, and should only be used for roleplay reasons.

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Throw the Iron Flask near absolute darkness in Act 2. Kill the Spectator when it is in the darkness and it will revive as a Zombie. Use Control Undead. Congrats, you now have a pet Spectator.

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As of 5th Feb, 2024 undead still become hostile after a long rest. Has potentially bad outcomes in Honor mode, so just be careful where you leave it when you rest. Controlled one of the shadows in the Act 2 fight where Rolan is attacked and for the rest of the day whenever I got in a fight, no matter where i was, Rolan would be thrown back into combat at Last Light Inn. It was funny having the cam cut back to him at the inn, fists raised to fight nothing while I was dealing with random undead.

A little tip is that if you control one of the undead nurses you can drop a weapon and they'll scoop it up if they're unarmed. Chucked an axe and after the fight she grabbed it and used it until she died, at which point I recovered it from her corpse. Lets them benefit from your Aura that improves undead and fiend weapon damage. The Nurses also do not become hostile if they make their save against domination.

People calling this weak or limited are looking at it the wrong way. It's very useful to swing the action economy in your favor by simultaneously removing an enemy and gaining an ally. It's a level 3 ability with a wide range of efficacy. Think of it like giving your paladin an extra 10-20 DPR, with niche upsides. In act 2 you will always have a target, and I'm looking forward to some of the powerful random undead all over act 3.

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Unfortunately it's more of a gimmick than anything.

The good is it doesn't require concentration. The bad is you're gonna need high spell DC for this to be really useful and if your a paladin you probably won't be investing enough to gain such a high stat to where this is reliable.

The lvl 3 exclusiveness locks it from being useful for multiclassing for Necromancy Wizard due to Necromancy being so reliant on levels.

It's unfortunately the only way to acquire an undead that actually uses a weapon so that Aura of Hate isn't so useless.

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imagine controlling a death shepherd

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well, lets assume i fight the thing in the iron flask at the myconid colony.
myconids as they are, they will raise it once it is dead...
becoming "undead"

so....

is this the pet of the oathbreakers dreams?

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does it have to be lower or can it be the same level as the character?

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the only feature of the oathbreaker i'd really like and it is too weak,
will the controlled undead still instantly become hostile after the long rest?

if i can get only 1 neat pet, can it at least be easy to keep it mine and "alive"?

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Does it mean... If I reach level 12 my 1st oath breaker unit gonna be the Oathbreaker himself?

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the undead will stop following you around if moved by a repulsion mine or throw etc.. it'll still be friendly, but it'll just stand there. i hope this gets fixed

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wondering if the total levels for control undeads will consider levels in other classes when multiclassing..

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Looks like either the problem people were having with this ability was patched in the early hotfixes, or it's caused by something that goes deeper than just using Control Undead. I went to the first mountain pass encounter with a full party consisting of Astarion, Lae'Zel, and Shadowheart, and none of them lost affinity with me after successfully casting it on a ghoul. I then controlled one to end the fight to see if that would cause an affinity loss, and didn't experience one there either. Seems like this ability's fine.

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Test it on some undead at the mountain pass area, had wyll and shadowheart in the party I dont see any -attitude when using the ability.

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Control Undead works very well in certain situations, there's a couple undead bosses in Act 2 you can subdue with this, making things a lot smoother.

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-45 with Wyll too. Really makes oathbreaker less powerful if I can't use it's power without taking huge approval hits.

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Used this and lost straight up -45 attitude with Shadowheart.

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Using this gives you - approval with Astarion XD

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Completely broken for now. Took control over a skeleton in Dank Crypt. The button to Wither's chamber wouldn't open because the game still thinks enemies are present after all except the controlled one are dead.

Control doesn't persist between loads, so as soon as you load a save, it will agro and combat will start.

Fought the goblins at the gate with it. Zevlor cast magic missile on me while allied, then all allied NPCs (except the skeleton) turned hostile for half a round, and got back to being allied after hitting me a bunch.

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