Baldur's Gate 3 speedrunner asks the important question: How many people can you bang in a single playthrough?

What is the highest body count achievable in Baldur's Gate 3? - YouTube What is the highest body count achievable in Baldur's Gate 3? - YouTube
Watch On

My honour mode playthrough continues to crawl through act one at a snail's pace, but players and speedrunners who've repeatedly sprinted through the mahoosive RPG are still finding new ways to replay Baldur's Gate 3. You may have seen the sex% speedrun category, but have you seen the BG3 body count run? And no, before you ask, it's not that kind of body count.

Streamer and speedrunner delphara (who currently holds the #3 record for a BG3 sex% run) did the hard work of going through Baldur's Gate 3 to figure out just how many people you can have sex with in a single playthrough. Bad news for Gale and Wyll enjoyers, as both boys are slow to romance and monogamous, making them bad picks for delphara's randy run. 

Instead, polyamorous companions like Halsin and characters who will jump in the sack in act one or two are preferred, which still leaves quite a few romance options on the table (or the bench or bedroll or whatever surface is available and not currently on fire).

It seems like the maximum possible body count is 12, if you count "experiencing rapture" with Naoise the wood elf courtesan you meet in the Nymph's Grotto room of Sharess' Caress. Doing so nets you a +1d6 bonus to d20 rolls until the next long rest, which sure sounds like sex to me.

Not everyone is into the horniness of Baldur's Gate 3—our own Robin Valentine called it "a bit much"—but I'd argue it's a natural evolution for the series. One of the first western RPGs to feature rudimentary romance options was a Forgotten Realms game called Treasures of the Savage Frontier released in 1992, and Baldur's Gate 2 was the first BioWare game to let you date companions, which became a trademark part of the studio's subsequent RPGs. This setting and this series were both early adopters of romance in RPGs, and Baldur's Gate 3 pushing at the boundary of acceptability is simply continuing that good work.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

Read more
A BG3 Tav kissing Karlach in one of the updated Patch 6 kiss animations.
All Baldur's Gate 3 romance options: who you can pursue
Two characters from Avowed looking to the left and standign in a jungle with a shaft of light piercing through it
Those mad lads at Obsidian were bluffing us: Avowed does have a tiny bit of companion romance, as a treat
Watching an all-romances speedrun of the legendarily janky Fallout: New Vegas is a delight
Astarion
Players are still finding edge-case Baldur's Gate 3 scenes, like one where you play as a kidnapped Astarion even if you made your own player-character
Lou Graham
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 won't have typical RPG romantic relationships, but it will feature 'romantic feeding'
Pixel-art portraits of Astarion and Shadowheart against a seasonal backdrop of Stardew Valley
The Baldur's Gate 3 mod for Stardew Valley is out, so here's another opportunity to romance Astarion
Latest in RPG
A screenshot from SaGa Frontier 2, showing one of the protagonists wandering through a quaint fantasy village
One of Square Enix' most underrated PlayStation-era JRPGs just shadow dropped on Steam
kingdom come: deliverance 2 henry looks confused
'Medieval Batman' completes Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 pacifist playthrough with zero kills and 535 knockouts
The Huntress holding a bloody spear.
The biggest update since Path of Exile 2's early access launch is coming next week, bringing a new class and a bunch of endgame changes
Key art for the Ranger class in Path of Exile 2
Path of Exile 2 director isn't worried about ARPG competition, in part thanks to seasons: 'So long as people are willing to come back and play our game for a month four times a year, then I'm good'
Wuk Lamat, a character in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, stares in an unimpressed manner.
'I can't really say what they were thinking' says whistleblowing modder, as Final Fantasy 14's attempt to thwart stalkers falls terribly short of the mark
Raidou Kuzonoha and pals, looking like they've about to drop the most fire single of the 1930s
Raidou Remastered is finally bringing the historical Shin Megami Tensei supernatural sleuth spinoff to PC this June
Latest in News
A screenshot from SaGa Frontier 2, showing one of the protagonists wandering through a quaint fantasy village
One of Square Enix' most underrated PlayStation-era JRPGs just shadow dropped on Steam
The titular character from Princess Mononoke is depicted riding the wolf goddess Moro and carrying a spear.
Studio Ghibli AI image trend floods social media, cheered on by OpenAI and denounced by critics as an insult to Hayao Miyazaki
Marvel Rivals tier list - Wolverine
Marvel Rivals director says a future patch will reduce the shooter's insatiable hunger for RAM: 'It's a very big problem'
Hogwarts Legacy potions professor holding a potion
An unannounced Hogwarts Legacy expansion and 'definitive edition' have reportedly been cancelled
Story of Seasons - A cahacter in a purple tuxedo stands outside in a town square talking to the player
Story of Seasons is doing another Harvest Moon remake and it might be the best the series has ever looked
Assassin's Creed Shadows change seasons - An upper-body shot of Yasuke looking cheerfully up into the distance.
Assassin's Creed Shadows puts up the 'second highest day-one sales revenue in Assassin's Creed franchise history'