Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Initial Observations (08/10/20)

Barely cracked the game open at the moment, but right off the bat I have a few comments.

Character Greation and Classes

• Backgrounds and Skills: In 5e Character Creation, your background is specifically noted as the last element you need to fill out to complete Character creation (other than stuff like spells or such). This is because when you select a background any Skill (or Tool) that it would grant you proficiency in that you have already selected (either because it was granted by your race, class or subclass) essentially becomes a free select skill that can be chosen from any skills. This is one of the best elements for character customisation as it allows you to pick up those niche skills that are specific to your perception of your character (maybe your rogue is a runaway wizard's assistant who has been living on the streets, picking up the criminal or urchin background lets you swap stealth (a skill you would have likely picked up from your class) with arcana (to emphasise this element of your background)), at present this isn't possible. I'm not sure if the system would allow it, but shuffling the character creation process to follow that of the source material would greatly increase character variation.
• Warlock GOO: I'm sure this has been mentioned already by someone, but the Great Old One Warlock (my favourite of the three PHB options) is at present quite inferior to it's Fiendish counterpart. I know that the Awakened Mind telepathy it gets in PnP wouldn't be something that translates into the game, but it does need something to balance against the fiend. Suggestions would include some form of Fearful aura (though that would likely tread on the Fey Pact Warlock's ground), adding 1/2 Charisma to saves vs 'mental effects' (spells targetting Wis,Int and Cha) or (and this would probably take far more work but would thematically match the ability) an out of combat ability to read the 'surface thoughts' of NPCs (basically a 'sense motive'/insight effect).
• Rogue: Hiding, Disengaging and Dashing have been the rogue's bread and butter since 5e came out. Watering down Cunning Action by allowing everyone to Hide and Disengage as a bonus has made the class very subpar. Additionally, Expertise at 1 & 5 are assumed as a part of the Rogue's balance as a class and with this and the Cunning Action nerf the class as a whole basically falls short of being playable.

Playing the Game

• Hotbar abilities: Sometimes I have noticed that hotbar abilities don't seem to activate even though they appear to be active, and with the number of new class/race combo's I'm running through to test, it isn't always obvious whether an ability/spell has actually been selected properly or not. Several times I have clicked or double-clicked a spell on the taskbar, noted that it is highlighted and then clicked an enemy, only to have my squishy warlock or wizard dart into melee combat and swipe futiley at the enemy with a dagger. Additionally I have had a small number of abilities seemingly vanish at random from the Hotbar, forcing me to manually add them back in.
• Jumping: In PnP Jumping is limited by your strength score, you can jump a maximum distance (vertically or horizontally) equal to your strength score, consuming the relevant amount of movement. At present (as far as I can tell) everyone seems to be able to jump the same distance, my Warlock with Str: 8 can jump just as far as Laz'el, which seems weird.
• Autosaves: Not sure if this is just my system but autosaves (only autosaves not manual saves) seem to slow the game to a crawl, everything stalls out and stutters and on a number of occasions I have assumed it has crashed, only for everything to suddenly 'catch up'. This does not seem to be affected by changing graphic options so I assume it isn't an issue along those lines.

A couple of QOL things I would love to see are:

• Not a fan of the current dicerolling mechanic, as a number of others have mentioned the Skill Mod + Proficiency should be added to the number rolled, not (as appears to be happening), be deducted from the target number. It's the fundamental D&D 5E mechanic and the current method stops the game feeling like a modern Dungeons and Dragons game, As I understand it (having never played) the "deduct from target number" seems to hark back to AD&D days of THAC0 rather than modern 5E.
• The ability to see more detail on dice rolls, either as some kind of popup tracker, or appearing in more detail above the target's head.
• The ability to move the standard location of the various popups i.e. so that looting popups could be dragged to the side of the screen and then from that point on all popup of that type would appear there rather in the middle of the screen, right over the top of the party.

This is what I have at present, but likely add a few more as I get further into playing.

Annoyingly the Forum system locks posts after a certain period. I had started updating the first post here before the lock happened but will just post this as a new post instead as after spending the last hour updating the formatting to make it look right I can't be bothered to redo the entire thing again.

Updated on 12/10/2020. New additions in Red

Character Creation and Class Abilities (Updated: 12/10/20)

• Backgrounds and Skills: In 5e Character Creation, your background is specifically noted as the last element you need to fill out to complete Character creation (other than stuff like spells or such). This is because when you select a background any Skill (or Tool) that it would grant you proficiency in that you have already selected (either because it was granted by your race, class or subclass) essentially becomes a free select skill that can be chosen from any skills. This is one of the best elements for character customisation as it allows you to pick up those niche skills that are specific to your perception of your character (maybe your rogue is a runaway wizard's assistant who has been living on the streets, picking up the criminal or urchin background lets you swap stealth (a skill you would have likely picked up from your class) with arcana (to emphasise this element of your background)), at present this isn't possible. I'm not sure if the system would allow it, but shuffling the character creation process to follow that of the source material would greatly increase character variation.
• Warlock GOO: I'm sure this has been mentioned already by someone, but the Great Old One Warlock (my favourite of the three PHB options) is at present quite inferior to it's Fiendish counterpart. I know that the Awakened Mind telepathy it gets in PnP wouldn't be something that translates into the game, but it does need something to balance against the fiend. Suggestions would include some form of Fearful aura (though that would likely tread on the Fey Pact Warlock's ground), adding 1/2 Charisma to saves vs 'mental effects' (spells targetting Wis,Int and Cha) or (and this would probably take far more work but would thematically match the ability) an out of combat ability to read the 'surface thoughts' of NPCs (basically a 'sense motive'/insight effect).
• Rogue: Hiding, Disengaging and Dashing have been the rogue's bread and butter since 5e came out. Watering down Cunning Action by allowing everyone to Hide and Disengage as a bonus has made the class very subpar. Additionally, Expertise at 1 & 5 are assumed as a part of the Rogue's balance as a class and with this and the Cunning Action nerf the class as a whole basically falls short of being playable.
• Wizard Spells: Wizards should not be able to learn spells from outside their list from scrolls. This is particularly egregious in the case of Cleric-specific spells as healing has almost always been specifically the domain of the Divine caster (except for the special snowflake that is the Bard).
• Spell Memorization: The capability of Wizards, Clerics, Druids and Paladins to change their Spell's memorised on a Long Rest is already a strong head up on their 'Spells Known' counterparts. Changing this ability so that they can do so at any point they are out of combat not only flies in the face of the Vancian casting that D&D is based upon but makes these classes much more adaptable than their Bard, Ranger, Sorcerer, Warlock brethren.

Playing the Game (Updated: 12/10/20)

• Hotbar abilities: Sometimes I have noticed that hotbar abilities don't seem to activate even though they appear to be active, and with the number of new class/race combo's I'm running through to test, it isn't always obvious whether an ability/spell has actually been selected properly or not. Several times I have clicked or double-clicked a spell on the taskbar, noted that it is highlighted and then clicked an enemy, only to have my squishy warlock or wizard dart into melee combat and swipe futiley at the enemy with a dagger. Additionally I have had a small number of abilities seemingly vanish at random from the Hotbar, forcing me to manually add them back in.
• Jumping: In PnP Jumping is limited by your strength score, you can jump a maximum distance (vertically or horizontally) equal to your strength score, consuming the relevant amount of movement. At present (as far as I can tell) everyone seems to be able to jump the same distance, my Warlock with Str: 8 can jump just as far as Laz'el, which seems weird. Update on this. I really think this is an issue, particularly as Disengage is combined into Jump. I have noticed that combat quickly turns into a game of leapfrog, with my squishy Warlock bouncing around the map as a bonus action to escape from melee and still being able to make an attack. D&D especially at low levels, is all about the action economy, making the difficult choice between getting that extra strike in when in a threatened space or taking the Disengage action to safely pull yourself out of the line of fire. At present those choices don't really exist and making Jump/Disengage a bonus action devalues a lot of other options in the game.
• Autosaves: Not sure if this is just my system but autosaves (only autosaves not manual saves) seem to slow the game to a crawl, everything stalls out and stutters and on a number of occasions I have assumed it has crashed, only for everything to suddenly 'catch up'. This does not seem to be affected by changing graphic options so I assume it isn't an issue along those lines.
• Surface Effects: Fun the first time you come across them, annoying after a while and then extremely boring when you realise that most combats can pretty much be resolved with one character with a firebolt cantrip and another with some kind of flammable thrown object or Grease. These need to be used sparingly as a part of the environment and the items you can pick-up to help cause them need to be likewise spread more widely. Similarly, if it doesn't make sense for something to burn, it shouldn't. Stonework, Natural Rock, Brickwork, Water, none of these are flammable and really should cause any surface effects applied to them to "fizzle". (Personally, a limitation on amount and some sort of differentiation between how terrain affects surface effects could be interesting, and make things a little more challenging).

Spellcasting (New: 12/10/20)

• Cantrips: Yeah, it's been said before, but really bears repeating. It's pretty clear that the proliferate use of surface effects, and the addition of additional effects to the cantrips themselves have led to many of these being 'nerfed' as compared to the 5E versions. Most of these additional effects seem to be purely for making spellcasting "fun". I can't really see the reason for this, spellcasting is already fun, cantrips are supposed to be the basic tier "I hit it with my sword" style of attack. Levelled spells are where a spellcaster is supposed to be breaking out actions that can break the action economy. Reverting to the 5E implementation of cantrips (or a close approximation) is something I think is really needed as soon as possible.

Potential Bugs (New: 12/10/20)

• Ragroll Corpses: In my latest start I decided to kill each of the injured thralls you can talk to in the Nautoloid (the ones that pretty much babble nonsense about "Red Rats" and being gored by a Bull). When I did so the Ragdoll physics went berzerk, leaving two extremely stretched out corpses that looked like something out of Goat Simulator. For Clarity I did this with Eldritch Blast (in case that makes a difference).
• Companion Pickpocketing: During my first interaction with Shadowheart I managed to sneak right up to her and pick her pocket. Not in itself a problem (and quite immersive - one issue with older games is IIRC you often were often unable to pickpocket key NPCs/companions), however there ought to be some level of difficulty involved in actually stealing things from her/them. I managed to take everything she had, including a certain quest item I'm fairly certain she ought to have been keeping an eye on. There either need to be dire consequences for stealing significant items from your party, and/or the DC needs to scale dependent upon what you are stealing (i.e. stealing the quest item in question should be more difficult than taking a random scroll because Shadowheart will be monitoring it closely, or stealing an NPC's large Greatsword should be more difficult than lifting their coinpurse because...well it's a Greatsword).
• Hiding/Unhiding: I have noticed that sometimes party members will, seemingly at random, drop out of Hide/Sneak and start just following along. Not sure if there is a reason for this but it can get annoying when every single member of the party successfully sneaks past a group of enemies only to have the last (Shadowheart I'm looking at you) calmly stroll straight through the group without a care in the world.

A couple of QOL things I would love to see are:

• Not a fan of the current dicerolling mechanic, as a number of others have mentioned the Skill Mod + Proficiency should be added to the number rolled, not (as appears to be happening), be deducted from the target number. It's the fundamental D&D 5E mechanic and the current method stops the game feeling like a modern Dungeons and Dragons game, As I understand it (having never played) the "deduct from target number" seems to hark back to AD&D days of THAC0 rather than modern 5E.
• The ability to see more detail on dice rolls, either as some kind of popup tracker, or appearing in more detail above the target's head.
• The ability to move the standard location of the various popups i.e. so that looting popups could be dragged to the side of the screen and then from that point on all popup of that type would appear there rather in the middle of the screen, right over the top of the party.
• Not a fan of the 'chaining' mechanic to move the whole party. It's fairly oblique, sometimes when I think I have unchained a character the rest still follow them whilst at other times when the party are chained together one or more will just remain behind unmoving (stuck on terrain?). The certainty of a simply Shift/Ctrl + Click or click and drag format/option to select multiple characters would work much better.
• Hiding is fun and seems to quite well so far, however I would love to be able to 'Hide' the entire party with a single click, rather than spending time moving to each character's hotbar to do so.

Great posts, I agree with everything.

Updated on 14/10/2020. New additions in Red

Character Creation and Class Abilities (Updated: 12/10/20)

• Backgrounds and Skills: In 5e Character Creation, your background is specifically noted as the last element you need to fill out to complete Character creation (other than stuff like spells or such). This is because when you select a background any Skill (or Tool) that it would grant you proficiency in that you have already selected (either because it was granted by your race, class or subclass) essentially becomes a free select skill that can be chosen from any skills. This is one of the best elements for character customisation as it allows you to pick up those niche skills that are specific to your perception of your character (maybe your rogue is a runaway wizard's assistant who has been living on the streets, picking up the criminal or urchin background lets you swap stealth (a skill you would have likely picked up from your class) with arcana (to emphasise this element of your background)), at present this isn't possible. I'm not sure if the system would allow it, but shuffling the character creation process to follow that of the source material would greatly increase character variation.
• Warlock GOO: I'm sure this has been mentioned already by someone, but the Great Old One Warlock (my favourite of the three PHB options) is at present quite inferior to it's Fiendish counterpart. I know that the Awakened Mind telepathy it gets in PnP wouldn't be something that translates into the game, but it does need something to balance against the fiend. Suggestions would include some form of Fearful aura (though that would likely tread on the Fey Pact Warlock's ground), adding 1/2 Charisma to saves vs 'mental effects' (spells targetting Wis,Int and Cha) or (and this would probably take far more work but would thematically match the ability) an out of combat ability to read the 'surface thoughts' of NPCs (basically a 'sense motive'/insight effect).
• Rogue: Hiding, Disengaging and Dashing have been the rogue's bread and butter since 5e came out. Watering down Cunning Action by allowing everyone to Hide and Disengage as a bonus has made the class very subpar. Additionally, Expertise at 1 & 5 are assumed as a part of the Rogue's balance as a class and with this and the Cunning Action nerf the class as a whole basically falls short of being playable.
• Wizard Spells: Wizards should not be able to learn spells from outside their list from scrolls. This is particularly egregious in the case of Cleric-specific spells as healing has almost always been specifically the domain of the Divine caster (except for the special snowflake that is the Bard).
• Spell Memorization: The capability of Wizards, Clerics, Druids and Paladins to change their Spell's memorised on a Long Rest is already a strong head up on their 'Spells Known' counterparts. Changing this ability so that they can do so at any point they are out of combat not only flies in the face of the Vancian casting that D&D is based upon but makes these classes much more adaptable than their Bard, Ranger, Sorcerer, Warlock brethren.

Playing the Game (Updated: 12/10/20)

• Hotbar abilities: Sometimes I have noticed that hotbar abilities don't seem to activate even though they appear to be active, and with the number of new class/race combo's I'm running through to test, it isn't always obvious whether an ability/spell has actually been selected properly or not. Several times I have clicked or double-clicked a spell on the taskbar, noted that it is highlighted and then clicked an enemy, only to have my squishy warlock or wizard dart into melee combat and swipe futiley at the enemy with a dagger. Additionally I have had a small number of abilities seemingly vanish at random from the Hotbar, forcing me to manually add them back in.
• Jumping: In PnP Jumping is limited by your strength score, you can jump a maximum distance (vertically or horizontally) equal to your strength score, consuming the relevant amount of movement. At present (as far as I can tell) everyone seems to be able to jump the same distance, my Warlock with Str: 8 can jump just as far as Laz'el, which seems weird. Update on this. I really think this is an issue, particularly as Disengage is combined into Jump. I have noticed that combat quickly turns into a game of leapfrog, with my squishy Warlock bouncing around the map as a bonus action to escape from melee and still being able to make an attack. D&D especially at low levels, is all about the action economy, making the difficult choice between getting that extra strike in when in a threatened space or taking the Disengage action to safely pull yourself out of the line of fire. At present those choices don't really exist and making Jump/Disengage a bonus action devalues a lot of other options in the game.
• Autosaves: Not sure if this is just my system but autosaves (only autosaves not manual saves) seem to slow the game to a crawl, everything stalls out and stutters and on a number of occasions I have assumed it has crashed, only for everything to suddenly 'catch up'. This does not seem to be affected by changing graphic options so I assume it isn't an issue along those lines.
• Surface Effects: Fun the first time you come across them, annoying after a while and then extremely boring when you realise that most combats can pretty much be resolved with one character with a firebolt cantrip and another with some kind of flammable thrown object or Grease. These need to be used sparingly as a part of the environment and the items you can pick-up to help cause them need to be likewise spread more widely. Similarly, if it doesn't make sense for something to burn, it shouldn't. Stonework, Natural Rock, Brickwork, Water, none of these are flammable and really should cause any surface effects applied to them to "fizzle". (Personally, a limitation on amount and some sort of differentiation between how terrain affects surface effects could be interesting, and make things a little more challenging).
• Ending Your Turn in Combat: Not really sure how to categorise this, but I have run into it two or three times so far so I think it worth flagging. A few times I have had the system fritz out, the 'End Turn' button looks like it has been pressed, but you are stuck with the character in question and cannot end your turn. Saving, Exiting the Game and reloading seems to undo this in most cases but at least once I have had to reload an older save to get around the issue (in that case Us had died in the final fight in the Nautaloid and for some reason even though he was down I could not end his turn).

Spellcasting (New: 12/10/20)

• Cantrips: Yeah, it's been said before, but really bears repeating. It's pretty clear that the proliferate use of surface effects, and the addition of additional effects to the cantrips themselves have led to many of these being 'nerfed' as compared to the 5E versions. Most of these additional effects seem to be purely for making spellcasting "fun". I can't really see the reason for this, spellcasting is already fun, cantrips are supposed to be the basic tier "I hit it with my sword" style of attack. Levelled spells are where a spellcaster is supposed to be breaking out actions that can break the action economy. Reverting to the 5E implementation of cantrips (or a close approximation) is something I think is really needed as soon as possible.
• Mage Hand: As it stands Mage Hand is overpowered. It effectively replicates 1/4 of a 5th level Spell Bigby's Hand, and does so without the expense of a spellslot. Even beyond the issue of power, on a couple of occations even after the Hand's duration has expired I have had it appear as a part of the party in the equipment list. This can be resolved by entering or exiting another zone, but looks a bit odd when the spell has dispersed..

Potential Bugs (New: 12/10/20)

• Ragroll Corpses: In my latest start I decided to kill each of the injured thralls you can talk to in the Nautoloid (the ones that pretty much babble nonsense about "Red Rats" and being gored by a Bull). When I did so the Ragdoll physics went berzerk, leaving two extremely stretched out corpses that looked like something out of Goat Simulator. For Clarity I did this with Eldritch Blast (in case that makes a difference).
• Companion Pickpocketing: During my first interaction with Shadowheart I managed to sneak right up to her and pick her pocket. Not in itself a problem (and quite immersive - one issue with older games is IIRC you often were often unable to pickpocket key NPCs/companions), however there ought to be some level of difficulty involved in actually stealing things from her/them. I managed to take everything she had, including a certain quest item I'm fairly certain she ought to have been keeping an eye on. There either need to be dire consequences for stealing significant items from your party, and/or the DC needs to scale dependent upon what you are stealing (i.e. stealing the quest item in question should be more difficult than taking a random scroll because Shadowheart will be monitoring it closely, or stealing an NPC's large Greatsword should be more difficult than lifting their coinpurse because...well it's a Greatsword).
• Hiding/Unhiding: I have noticed that sometimes party members will, seemingly at random, drop out of Hide/Sneak and start just following along. Not sure if there is a reason for this but it can get annoying when every single member of the party successfully sneaks past a group of enemies only to have the last (Shadowheart I'm looking at you) calmly stroll straight through the group without a care in the world.

QOL Changes

• Not a fan of the current dicerolling mechanic, as a number of others have mentioned the Skill Mod + Proficiency should be added to the number rolled, not (as appears to be happening), be deducted from the target number. It's the fundamental D&D 5E mechanic and the current method stops the game feeling like a modern Dungeons and Dragons game, As I understand it (having never played) the "deduct from target number" seems to hark back to AD&D days of THAC0 rather than modern 5E.
• The ability to see more detail on dice rolls, either as some kind of popup tracker, or appearing in more detail above the target's head.
• The ability to move the standard location of the various popups i.e. so that looting popups could be dragged to the side of the screen and then from that point on all popup of that type would appear there rather in the middle of the screen, right over the top of the party.
• Not a fan of the 'chaining' mechanic to move the whole party. It's fairly oblique, sometimes when I think I have unchained a character the rest still follow them whilst at other times when the party are chained together one or more will just remain behind unmoving (stuck on terrain?). The certainty of a simply Shift/Ctrl + Click or click and drag format/option to select multiple characters would work much better.
• Hiding is fun and seems to quite well so far, however I would love to be able to 'Hide' the entire party with a single click, rather than spending time moving to each character's hotbar to do so.