Version used for review: 2.0.
“When asked about his past BRISTLELICK, also known as Fhargh, mentions that he was born in his first pack’s lands, near Waterdeep. He spent most of his life there until a group of adventurers led by Anamal Cord came to these lands to prove their manhood. They killed many of Bristlelick’s friends and family. It was then that Bristle decided to leave his lands, join a different pack, and become a bandit…“
Bristlelick isn’t like other gnolls you meet in Baldur’s Gate. While most of them attack you on sight and don’t seem particularly bright, Bristlelick is True Neutral, and he enjoys a good fight and a good meal. He will approach you outside the Bandit Camp in chapter three with an offer.
He wants revenge for the death of his friend and close companion, Bull-Tall. This loss weighs on his mind heavily and is the catalyst for quite a few of Bristle’s banters, though he doesn’t appreciate sympathy. This isn’t your classic dramatic “fifth romance option” mod – Bristlelick is a simple gnoll with a dynamic past and strong personality who’s still grieving over a friend.
Once Bristle has had his revenge, he will ask you to be his new pack-leader. He’s fiercely loyal and he’ll fight by your side no matter what. When he talks to you about Bull-Tall and his past back in Rasheman, it’s clear that the more time Bristle spends with you, the more introspective and thoughtful he becomes.
The gradual buildup of friendship with Bristle is considerably well written, and his past is actually interesting. He’s a gnoll, and you’re… not, but he makes an effort to understand you and learn from you, acknowledging your strong leadership but also your presence in his life as a friend. A close one, like Bull-Tall.
Gnolls weren’t meant to travel the planes or fight epic creatures, though, and he’ll express his worry over these things as your adventures start getting more and more grand. At the end of Caelar’s crusade, he’ll head back up north to Rashemen to show the new Bristle his old home.
Before doing so, however, there is some unfinished business to take care of, in the form of two separate quests, both contained within BG1. The first quest involves avenging the death of Bull-Tall — the reason why he left the bandits in the first place. Killing Garclax in the cave of the Bandit Camp is something thorough players would probably do anyway.
The next quest doesn’t start until Bristlelick has fully begun to trust you and considers you a worthy pack-leader. He asks you if you would go with him to the south of the Friendly Amn Inn, the place where Bull-Tall’s body still lies, to bury him. It’s a moment that genuinely made me somewhat emotional. I cared for Bristlelick, and it’s clear that he cared for Bull-Tall. There are some nice RP oriented responses on how Bristle should move forwards to honor Bull-Tall.
There are no loot rewards for either quest.
There are quite a few timed talks in which you’ll get to know Bristlelick, as well as some scenery talks when you first enter specific areas. There are numerous banters with other NPCs – many in the group merely tolerate him, while others find ways to connect with him. I had to force these banters with Ctrl+I, however; perhaps there was a bug that prevented them from triggering. I encountered zero spelling errors, a few minor formatting issues, and a few tasteful uses of descriptive parentheticals. All in all, I couldn’t ask for much more.
I don’t want to spoil too much of Bristlelick’s story, because it’s genuinely worth playing for yourself. The content here certainly isn’t perfect – and it’s not quite on the level of Beamdog or BioWare’s work, but that’s a harsh standard to set. I love this gnoll and I want him to live a long and fruitful life.
What I don’t mind discussing in depth, however, is the pure mechanics of the character. Bristlelick comes with a custom kit — the Gnoll Bruiser, a fighter kit unique to him.
Provoke is a good ability to use against bounty hunter groups, as it works at range and can be useful to quickly turn the group against one another. However, to serve the same purpose we also have a nifty spell called charm. Any time Provoke worked for me, a dire charm would have worked better. Not a terrible ability – and it’s certainly better than nothing.
Ferocious Bite sounds interesting, as it’s basically a physical Larloch’s Minor Drain with a chance to provoke the target. It does not heal over the user’s maximum HP, though, and if you’re fighting someone one-on-one, there’s a decent chance that them going berserk is the LAST thing you want to happen. Healing 1d12 at the end of BG:EE and 2d8 at the end of SoD (where potions of extra healing are available in droves) is completely irrelevant, especially if you’re doing it in melee combat. There’s a better way to heal Bristlelick anyway, which we’ll get to soon.
Inspire Ferocity is a good ability. Fighters don’t often get much to do in the pre-buffing period of combat so it’s nice to have Bristle pop this one off right before you run off into the fray. It only lasts 3 rounds, so remember that you can always just use another one on whoever the situation calls for.
Pack Tactics is Bristle’s best ability. +2 to THAC0, movement, and crit rate is nothing to sneeze at, even if it only lasts for two rounds. After that, everyone the spell hit gets a +2 bonus to AC. This is really handy for your frontliners, though it only has one use per day. Save it for the boss of the dungeon you’re in, or for an unexpected enemy ambush.
As for the disadvantages, the weapon restrictions don’t mean much, because Bristlelick is locked to the weapons he starts with anyway. Since you can’t put points into dual wielding or single weapon style, there’s no reason not to give Bristle a shield for when he’s using his bastard sword, which gives him +2 AC.
Given that we’ve discussed his abilities already, one look at Bristlelick’s stat spread will show you that he’s an absolute beast in combat. He has the strength of Dorn but has an extra 32 hitpoints at level 8 at their base constitution.
Although I think a lot of Bristlelick’s design is more RP-focused, he’s still probably the best frontliner in the game, with the exception of maybe Kagain with the Big-Fisted Belt and Brawling Hands. Bristle’s unique items and morale failure immunity make up for it though.
The THAC0 bonus on the halberd is nice but not exactly essential. Bristlelick’s strength is really high and he can easily achieve Grand Mastery in one of his weapons of choice. I personally don’t think it’s worth it to keep him at such low HP just for a bonus to his THAC0.
I got Bristlelick up to -11 AC with his bastard sword, Pellan’s shield, The Brawling Hands, Ring of Protection +2, with full plate-mail armour. Add the residual bonus from Pack Tactics and some protective spells and you’ve got one hard-to-hit gnoll.
I assume Bristle’s hand is just for flavour. His sling is just a regular sling other than the THAC0 bonus. His mane protects from critical hits and gives 25% cold resistance, which is nice but I don’t think too many enemies in BG:EE deal cold damage.
The other effect from his mane is what we care about here. 1% of physical damage resistance for every successful hit for five rounds is nothing to sneeze at. It encourages him to take damage and use his halberd to benefit from it.
Letting Bristle get hit by Sarevok is bound to get him killed in seconds, but by cheesing this – letting the entire party pile on damage to Bristlelick with low damage weapons, with a lot of healing potions at your disposal, hypothetically, something beautiful can happen…
Granted, I did this on Story Mode to make the process easier, but after it had been achieved, Bristle was able to solo Sarevok on Hardcore with the help of Durlag’s Goblet after the resistance starting to fade.
Because Bristle has inbuilt immunity to morale failure, there is no downside to using Durlag’s Goblet to heal himself. Dorn has inbuilt fear immunity, and anyone who wears Kiel’s Helmet can use the Goblet as well, but giving it to Bristle allows him to build up his damage immunity when facing high damaging opponents.
So it’s really up to your preference, and the situation – do you want an AC tank or a sponge that builds resistance? Either way, he’s going to be dishing out a ton of damage with his halberd or with his sword.
As you can see above, Bristlelick’s portrait is an edited screenshot from the Bandit Camp cinematic from the Enhanced Edition. It looks great, and it was a smart move to pull from some pre-existing art. It fits the vibe of BG:EE quite well.
It doesn’t blend in perfectly with the other portraits, but he’s a gnoll, so I think it’s a given that he was never going to.
Bristle’s voice is custom recorded, and it’s not terrible. It doesn’t meet the quality of some other mods out there, but it’s certainly better than most. I got used to it, and I appreciate it for what it is. Outside of recording in a professional studio, I couldn’t ask for much more.
Bristlelick meets the game-feel of Baldur’s Gate 1 almost perfectly, in my opinion. BG:EE is wacky enough that I can believe having a gnoll companion, and his writing completely sells it. He’s sympathetic, but doesn’t like sympathy, and he’s strong as hell, but he really just misses his friend.
He feels most at home in a low-level adventure. I got the impression that he accompanied me in Siege of Dragonspear purely out of respect and loyalty. At the end of the day, I understand that travelling to Avernus and back again is a bit outside of the gnoll paygrade (even if he did tank the final boss for me).
If you feel like downloading a mod for BG:EE that only adds to the experience, then I sincerely believe that you can’t go wrong with Bristlelick. If you’re disappointed with the lack of non-partnered frontliners in SoD, then Bristlelick is the gnoll for you.
Thanks for reading.
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