Morale

Creatures in the Baldur's Gate series are naturally subject to fear and rage. These can be seen as "normal" states of mind stemming from the creature's psyche. They affect combat behavior as Morale states, which must not be confused with status effects.

Mechanics[]

From a gameplay standpoint, each creature keeps track of its current morale, breaking point and recovery rate. The Morale stat is an integer between 0 and 20^{[verification needed]} which may plummet in various situations such as witnessing the death of an ally, taking a lot of damage over a short period of time or being low on hit points.

When a creature goes through enough mental pressure that its Morale stat reaches or falls below its Morale break stat, its behavior changes in one of two ways reported in the combat logs like so:

• Morale failure: Panic, causing the creature's flight from the fray
• Morale failure: Berserk, causing it to attack without discernment

A creature in such a state is said to be in morale failure, and the circle at its feet should become yellow. If it was in the player's control, that control is lost until recovery.

A Morale break stat of 0 means immunity to morale failure. The protagonist and many creatures have permanent immunity thanks to this.

Morale recovery[]

Natural recovery occurs one point at a time. The Morale recovery stat describes the amount of AI ticks that must pass for morale to increase one point. Most creatures have this value set to 60. With the game's default configuration, 15 AI ticks occur within one second, so 4 seconds are needed for Morale to grow one point with a Morale recovery stat of 60.

Companion morale stats[]

While the protagonist has unbreakable morale (excepting Durlag's Goblet), this cannot be said of all companions. Their stats are listed below. There has often been talks of Khalid being more sensitive to morale failure, or of high Charisma from the party "leader" being a good way to keep party morale in check, but whether this is true (and how) is unclear. ^{[verification needed]}