Baldur’s Gate 3 guide: How to revive characters (2024)

Battles are tough in Baldur’s Gate 3, and you and your characters can die at any moment. Just like other role-playing games, when a character’s health is whittled down to zero, they are removed from the fight. However, if you’re not familiar with how death is handled in Dungeons & Dragons (Baldur’s Gate 3 uses the same system), then death can be confusing.

In this Baldur’s Gate 3 guide on reviving characters, we’ll explain the game’s death system and the multiple ways you can bring your characters back to life.

Death and saving throws

When any character you control loses all their health points (HP), they don’t instantly die. Instead, the moment one of your characters’ lives hits zero, they get knocked down and the game will begin rolling a 20-sided die for them. This begins the process of rolling saving throws that will either cause your character to revive themselves or die.

A life and death counter will appear over a character’s head once they begin rolling saving throws. If the game rolls a 10 or below, they will get a death counter. If they roll above 10, they will gain a stability counter.

Reviving characters

You can get a character back into the fight several ways, even after they’ve technically died by failing their saving throws.

Using the Help command

Once an ally gets knocked down and begins their saving throws, you can actually interrupt the process and get them up right away.

If you move another character within five feet of a downed teammate, use the Help command to get them back up. By clicking on the hand-holding icon on the left side of your actions menu, your active character will take up an action that turn to help a fallen ally up. The revived partner will come back with some health and resume their place in the turn order.

Using the Help command takes up an action for that turn, so make sure the character who is doing the helping isn’t putting themselves in too much danger by lifting their ally up. Then again, there’s always going to be some urgency as you want to manually revive a teammate before they have the chance to hit three death rolls.

Healing spells

While a character is in the process of doing their saving throws, if you use a healing spell on them, they will automatically recover as if they’ve rolled three successful rolls. They won’t come back with much health, but at least you’ll have them back on their feet.

Scroll of Revivify

If your teammate rolls three death rolls, they will die. However, casting the spell from a Scroll of Revivify will instantly bring them back.

Any character can use the spell as long as the item is in their inventory. To revive a teammate with the scroll, use it like any other item. Once cast, a large area of effect will appear. Select the dead teammate, and they’ll come back to life.

If you have a wizard in your party, they can also learn the spell. The ability to revive takes up a level 3 spell slot, so your wizard will have to be a high level to add it to their list of prepared spells.

The Talkative Skeleton

If you’ve completed the Overgrown Ruins quest, then you’ve freed the skeleton in the sarcophagus, who ends up back at your camp.

Baldur’s Gate 3 guide: How to revive characters (2)

After a battle where an ally dies, fast travel back to camp and speak to the skeleton near the beach. He will revive any character for 200 gold. Money can be scarce in Baldur’s Gate 3, so you may need to hold off on reviving an ally until you can afford it.

The upside to paying the skeleton to revive a teammate is that, once the debt is paid, your dead partner will reappear at camp as if nothing happened. There’s no need to go back to where your ally fell to bring them back, like you would if you were using a Scroll of Revivify.