Baldur’s Gate 3 Players Are Baffled By How Weak Jaheira Is

Jaheira is the High Harper and a legendary druid responsible for stopping multiple apocalyptic events around the Sword Coast. The Half-Elf is a companion in the original Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal and Baldur’s Gate 3. Jaheira can become quite powerful in the former two games, aiding Gorion’s Ward in their fight against The Lord of Murder.

Jaheira is once again encountered in Baldur’s Gate 3, intent on stopping Myrkul’s chosen Ketheric Thorm from invading Baldur’s Gate with an army from the Shadow-Cursed Lands. However, this time around, Jaheira isn’t quite the force to be reckoned with as she used to be. This is because, for gameplay purposes, she’s been downgraded to Level 8. Furthermore, her build is far from optimal, making her quite weak by NPC standards at this point in the game.

Jaheira’s Glory Days Are Done

In a recent Reddit thread by BenjiB1243, players converged to share their stories of the High Harper being more of a liability than a help in her early interactions with the player. “She got one tapped by a skeleton, isn’t she supposed to be like this badass from previous games or something?” reads the original post.

My colleague Tessa Kaur wrote a piece about this when Baldur’s Gate 3 was released, expressing that she found it exceptionally hard to keep Jaheira alive during the initial assault on Moonrise Towers. If Jaheira dies during this sequence, she will not be revivable and will not join the party as a companion for Act 3. It’s a death sentence to let Jaheira and the Harpers fight for themselves, so the best way of keeping Jaheira alive is placing the player and their party in the front lines.

Of course, Jaheira is also “old and tired” as ConanTheCybrarian points out. Half-Elves have a life expectancy of 180 years, and Jaheira is at least 150. She’s had her adventures, and if Baldur’s Gate stopped facing existential threats every half-century or so, she could retire in peace with her family in the Lower City. Unfortunately, evil never sleeps and so neither does Jaheira. The drop-off in power can’t be wholly explained by Jaheira’s advanced age, but there’s certainly a sense that the High Harper is continuing to fight past when she probably should have stopped, which partially explains why she isn’t as powerful as she was in her youth alongside Gorion’s Ward.

As others have pointed out, once you’re able to change Jaheria’s build, you can make her into the god-slayer she once was.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is the long-awaited next chapter in the Dungeons & Dragons-based series of RPGs. Developed by Divinity creator Larian Studios, it puts you in the middle of a mind flayer invasion of Faerûn, over a century after the events of its predecessor.