How to perform non-lethal attacks in Baldur’s Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 gives you dozens upon dozens of ways to dispatch your foes. From tearing them apart with brutal Eldritch magic, or the classic sword and shield approach. It’s safe to say that you’ve got a lot of options for dispatching enemies. However, if a situation calls for a calmer hand and less bloodshed, there’s one thing that’ll work best. Here’s how to deal non-lethal attacks in Baldur’s Gate 3.

Baldur’s Gate 3: How to perform non-lethal attacks

As with most of the controls in Baldur’s Gate 3, it may seem confusing at first, but in practice, it’s very simple. All of the inputs we need are located on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. So we aren’t looking for any menus buried five layers deep. Baldur’s Gate 3 is generally pretty good about simplifying its user interface.

Below your toolbar, you’ll see various categories including common, (whichever Class you chose), items, passives, and finally, custom. The tab you want is passives and you should only find one or two abilities in there. But the symbol depicting someone getting hit with a mallet is what we want. So just hover over and click on it to toggle non-lethal attacks.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

It’s worth noting that once you hit this toggle, the entire party will now deal non-lethal damage. Now this does have some restrictions. You must be either unarmed or using a melee weapon to deal non-lethal damage. I’m afraid that a fireball is a lethal move no matter what you decide to do. So if there’s a character you really do not want to kill, make sure you aren’t using spells to finish them off. And be sure to turn non-lethal damage off after fights are done just in case you forget. You could always leave it on and impose a no-killing rule for your entire game, but with how chaotic Baldur’s Gate 3 can be, the non-lethal approach may be hard to sustain.