Baldur's Gate 3 lets you stop a guaranteed death in Act 1 with some clever trickery

If you've played Baldur's Gate 3, you've seen Kanon. You may not remember him, but you've definitely seen his untimely demise at the sharp end of a magic arrow.

You see, Kanon is the tiefling who opens the gate for Aradin and his men when the party first arrives at the Emerald Grove. His primary purpose in the story is to give the tiefling refugees someone to mourn, especially Kanon's sister Arka, who is the tiefling who threatens to murder the imprisoned troll Sazza.

Conventional thinking was that Kanon's death was set in stone, a scripted event that could not be influenced. However, that answer did not satisfy Aero_Naught, who tried to find a way to save the doomed tiefling, making some incredible discoveries along the way.

Today is not your day

The poster's original method was a complex caper involving a dead Wyll, but thankfully further experimentation yielded a simpler method to save Kanon.

There were two obstacles to overcome to save Kanon: stopping the cutscene from triggering and making sure a scripted “die” command wasn't triggered on him. The latter is a failsafe Larian placed in the game to ensure that Kanon dies if the party chooses to avoid the Emerald Grove.

Wyll and Mizora from Baldur's Gate 3 over a flaming background. Wyll has glowing red eyes.

Family

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You can't leave the camp if you're dead, right?

First, you need someone who can summon a Mage Hand, like Gale. Summon Mage Hand at a safe distance from the Grove entrance. Then initiate a conversation between the caster and another party member before switching back to controlling the hand. Flee the hand past the trigger point of the cutscene, which will prevent the cutscene from triggering since the caster is already involved in a conversation. The trigger will now not activate when the party approaches the Grove. You need to go deep enough into the Grove to ensure that everyone involved (ie Aradin, Zevlor, Arka) moves to their next spots.

Next, we need to stop Kanon from cooling down for unknown reasons. This can be done by a quirk in the game's faction system, which causes Kanon to specifically turn hostile and then immediately friendly if someone around him is attacked. We return to the gate and attack the character Elegis, which initiates dialogue as the party was seen ambushing someone.

Choose the option to attack, and battles will begin for a moment before ending immediately. Then go down the hill and attack the character Kaldani and select the attack option once more. Kaldani, Wyll, and Kanon will all become temporarily hostile. One only needs to knock them all unconscious to trick the game into thinking that Kanon is already dead, preventing the dice command from being executed.

Kanon will then wake up, alive as the day he was taken out into the cruel world that almost took his life. Of course, Arka and Memnos will still act if he's dead, and Kanon has no say in the matter. Still, he's alive, and they can sort out all their family and personal issues at a later date.