B.A. is an unnamed goblin encountered by Carl and Princess Donut on the First Floor in Dungeon Crawler Carl. Princess Donut assigns him the name B.A. when she, Carl, and a group of neutral goblins meet in the goblin-controlled neighborhood near Carl and Donut's original dungeon entrance. The novel does not establish that B.A. had a personal name before Donut addressed him, and it does not give the initials an explicit meaning. B.A. appears only briefly, but his encounter is an early demonstration of several important features of the dungeon. Intelligent mobs can change from hostile to neutral when a rule or status effect permits it; conversational non-player characters can respond to a crawler's Charisma; and an encounter that initially looks like combat can become a social negotiation. B.A. also becomes the first goblin in the group to accept Donut's improvised authority. At her request, he leads the crawlers toward goblin engineers, beginning the chain of events that results in the construction of the Goblin Chopper. No history for B.A. before the events of the novel is provided. He is one of the low-level goblins who occupy a neighborhood near the western edge of the First Floor map. The area is organized around goblin machinery, explosives, engineers, murder dozers, and a fortified workshop. It lies close to the location where Carl and Donut first entered the dungeon and where they destroyed a Goblin Murder Dozer during their earliest hours as crawlers. B.A. is therefore part of a community that has already suffered direct losses because of Carl. This matters when Carl returns. The goblins do not simply forget the destruction of the murder dozer or the deaths of its operators, but Carl possesses a goblin pass mark that changes the rules of the meeting. When he displays the mark, the red enemy indicators above three approaching goblins turn white. Their weapons are lowered, and an expected fight becomes a tense conversation. The change in tag color does not make the goblins friendly in a human sense. It indicates that Carl has free passage and that the three cannot immediately treat him as an ordinary intruder. B.A. and his companions appear uncertain about what their rules require. Their confusion gives Donut an opening to take control of the exchange. The three goblins approach with pineapple sticks. Carl attempts to explain his right of passage carefully, hoping to avoid provoking them. Donut immediately reveals that Carl earned the mark after destroying a goblin vehicle and killing its crew. Her blunt account undercuts Carl's diplomatic plan, but it does not restart combat. She then approaches the first goblin and asks his name. The goblin replies that he does not think he has one. Donut declares this situation unacceptable and names him B.A. She names the other two goblins Face and Murdock. The scene does not explain why she chooses those particular names, although the three together reference the members of the television team in The A-Team. The allusion is Donut's, not evidence that the goblins themselves understand or adopt the cultural reference. After assigning the name, Donut asks B.A. to take them to engineers. He agrees and addresses her as ma'am. Donut corrects him and insists upon her title, Princess Donut. B.A. accepts the correction and leads the party deeper into goblin territory. B.A.'s escort takes Carl and Donut past additional goblins, including the more dangerous Goblin Bomb Bard, and into a large mechanical workshop. The workshop contains goblin engineers, shamankas, steam machinery, and six murder dozers. Carl's goal is to buy or commission a vehicle that can cover long distances and possibly travel down stairs. The novel focuses on B.A. only during the opening of the escort. It does not identify which of the three goblins remains physically closest to the crawlers throughout the route, nor does it describe a later individual action by B.A. inside the workshop. The group nevertheless performs a necessary narrative function. Without their neutral status and their willingness to guide the crawlers, Carl and Donut would have had to find another way through a densely populated goblin area. The negotiation eventually escalates beyond B.A.'s role. Donut's high Charisma, Carl's pass, the shamankas Rory and Lorelai, and the goblins' technical ability become more important. The resulting bargain leads to the construction of a steam-powered chopper from scavenged materials and goblin machinery. B.A. is not individually identified again after the workshop sequence. His survival through the destruction that follows is not confirmed. The First Floor later collapses according to the crawl's schedule, and the novels do not state whether B.A., Face, Murdock, or the other goblins were recycled, transferred, killed, or otherwise retained by the dungeon. For this reason, the character's status is best recorded as unconfirmed after Book 1. Describing him as alive in later continuity would go beyond the available text, while describing him as dead would make the same error in the opposite direction. B.A. receives little individual characterization. The scene establishes that he can speak, understands crawler language through the dungeon's translation systems, recognizes the goblin pass, and responds to social pressure. He is hesitant rather than aggressive after his tag changes to white. He also accepts Donut's authority with surprising speed. That response should not be interpreted as proof of personal loyalty. Donut explicitly connects her success to her unusually high Charisma score. Mordecai has explained that, on the early floors, her Charisma may allow her to persuade many speaking, non-boss entities whose tags are not red. B.A.'s cooperation is consequently both a character action and a demonstration of a game mechanic. The encounter also gives B.A. a small but meaningful degree of personhood. He is introduced as a generic level-two goblin, yet he speaks about his lack of a name and reacts to the title Donut gives him. The scene does not resolve whether the dungeon created him with memories and an interior life or whether he is following a scripted behavioral framework. Later books make the status and autonomy of NPCs one of the series' central moral questions. B.A.'s scene is an early, modest example of that uncertainty. B.A. is the clearest participant in Donut's first sustained use of Charisma as a tactical tool. Earlier scenes establish her transformed intelligence and rapidly changing capabilities. The goblin meeting shows that her social statistics can alter an encounter just as decisively as a spell or weapon. She does not merely charm B.A. into liking her. She identifies uncertainty, gives him a usable social role, demands recognition of her title, and directs him toward a concrete objective. The sequence broadens the First Floor beyond a chain of rooms filled with enemies. B.A. and the other goblins can be negotiated with after Carl's status changes. Their cooperation shows that tag color, local rules, reputation, and crawler choices can interrupt the dungeon's expected combat loop. This lesson becomes increasingly important as Carl learns to search for loopholes rather than accept the scenario presented to him. B.A.'s practical contribution is navigation. By taking Carl and Donut to the engineers, he connects their need for transportation with the faction capable of building it. The chopper later affects exploration, combat, Carl's growing mechanical skill set, and the party's ability to help the survivors of Meadow Lark. A minor escort action therefore has consequences beyond the length of B.A.'s appearance. The text styles the name as B.A., with periods. The live archive slug uses ba for readability. The name is assigned by Donut and is not presented as the goblin's canonical birth name or dungeon designation. The trio of B.A., Face, and Murdock is a pop-culture joke based on The A-Team. B.A. Baracus, Templeton "Face" Peck, and H. M. Murdock are members of that fictional team. Donut offers no explanation inside the scene, and Carl does not comment on the reference. The joke also fits the immediate situation: she rapidly turns three uncertain goblins into a temporary escort team. Donut names B.A., gives him a direct instruction, and requires him to address her as Princess Donut. Their interaction is brief and unequal. Donut has the social statistic and confidence necessary to control the encounter, while B.A. is a low-level mob responding to both dungeon rules and her Charisma. Even so, he becomes her willing guide rather than a defeated enemy. Carl possesses the goblin pass that prevents immediate hostility. He is also responsible for destroying the earlier murder dozer, a fact Donut announces to B.A. and the others. B.A.'s response shows how dungeon mechanics can temporarily override a strong reason for resentment. Face and Murdock are the other two unnamed goblins in B.A.'s group. The text presents them collectively and does not define a hierarchy among them. B.A. receives the most direct dialogue because Donut addresses her request to him. Rory and Lorelai are goblin shamankas encountered at the workshop. They are not established as personal acquaintances of B.A., but they belong to the same neighborhood and occupy a more authoritative position within its society. B.A. is a level-two goblin when encountered. He carries a pineapple stick, the characteristic weapon associated with the early goblin mobs. No named skills, spells, achievements, class, or equipment statistics are provided for him. His most consequential demonstrated abilities are linguistic and social. He can recognize Carl's pass, understand Donut's request, navigate the goblin neighborhood, and lead outsiders to the workshop. These traits distinguish him from a purely mindless combat unit, even though his combat capacity is never tested during the scene.
- Dungeon Crawler Carl
- Face
- Murdock
- Princess Donut
- Carl
- Goblin Neighborhood
- Goblin Pass
- Goblin Engineer
- Goblin Shamanka
- Goblin Chopper
- Charisma
- B.A. is a Donut-assigned name. The source does not identify an earlier name.
- The periods in B.A. are retained in display text, while The story URL omits punctuation.
- His final fate is not stated.
** Dungeon Crawler Carl Chapter 15