Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Improving the Fly Spell

I like the implementation of the fly spell, it is a lot of fun to use and basically go anywhere you want, especially with the verticality of the game, however, one of the main benefit of the spell is missing. That being out of reach for enemy melee characters.

It seems quite intuitive, that, if you could fly, the first thing you would do in combat is fly up and attack your enemy with ranged projectiles from out of reach. So it is somewhat immersion breaking, when I can not do that.

Now, I understand why that is. The way the movement system in the game works, I can only click on the ground to move. I like this system, it is fine the way it is. However, of course this means I can not just click into nothing to control my character.

An easy fix for this would be to add a seperate class action called levitate (as you probably have already with the levitate spell). So basically, you can spend some movement (just like when flying to any point you click on) and then fly 10ft up over the ground of the spot where you clicked.

When you then move by clicking, you do that 10ft above the ground. Until you either lose concentration, or use another 10ft to fly down again. This would fix the combat utility problem of the spell, without needing to change much. It would be very simple to implement and would probably make a lot of fans happy

In terms of power, quite a lot of enemies have arrows, spells, javelins and so on, so I don't think this would be overpowered. As for levitate, I think the similarity is no problem, since levitation could always be replicated with flight, even in tabletop, and fly costs a 3rd level spell slot, can not be used by warlocks, and levitate can be used offensively (to make an enemy levitate and basically take them out of combat)

TL;DR:
- give "levitate" action to character under fly spell
- spend movement to move up vertically
- easy to implement
- does not make levitate spell redundant

Please let me know if you like this suggestion, or how you would fix the fly spell (If you think it needs fixing that is)

EDIT:
The duration has also been reduced from 10min to 1min (100 turns to 10 turns).
I don't see why this is. Imo it should last 100 turns like in tabletop

The one problem I see with this would be implementing it in tight spaces, caves, buildings etc. But I am sure it would not be too hard to figure out.

Imo, just adding the two class actions "ascend 10ft" and "descent 10ft" would be enough.
From what I have seen, the implementation of the fly spell is one of the things of patch 9 that people were most disappointed by. But at the same time, it seems very easy to fix (compared to other problems) smile

Good idea?

It would be extremely cool of course.
But we are talking about "flying" for a lot of time now and I have lost hope for a proper flying system.

Your suggesiton does not look as simple as that to me though.

In exemple :
- What happen when you have to climb a wall ? Does the characters have a special animation ("flying along the wall") or do they just grab the wall and climb as other characters then fly again when they are at the top ?
- What happen when there is a river or any other obstacle you cannot cross on your feet ? Does the flying character has to avoid it or jump in the air even if they are higher ?
- What happen if someone target your flying character with, let's say fireball, shockwave or any other AoE spell ? Does it target the 10ft high area or the ground ? If it target the air, what happen with surfaces effects ? Burning the air with your fire arrow ?

True (though I have not been on the Forum for long), but then we did not actually have the fly spell, so now we can actually playtest and this is proper feedback.

As for the other points:
- I mean, you can do that now. Just start the animation 10 ft higher... You fly basically the shortest path to the point you click on (or in my case if you hover above that point). Like jump, but without the arch
- I do not understand that point tbh. You would solve that exactly how you would now, only that you could now target spots above places you otherwise might now, since they are not themselves dangerous (I could click on lava, since the air above the lava is not burning)
- I would limit knockback stuff for now to only horizontal. Spells in 5e have a 3d shape (cone, sphere, ...) so that is how you target people above you
- You fly above surfaces without touching them (that is already how it works now), and if someone targets you with for example a chromatic orb, no surface appears. Just like rn surfaces can not appear anywhere

Oh, also Fly currently lasts only 10 turns. In 5e it is 10min/ 100 turns.
The spell is quite a lot worse than in tabletop already, so why nerf it even further?
Should have its duration increased again!

An easy fix would be giving a flying character a 100% dodge against melee attacks with a proper animation (pulling back a little) unless restrained. That is "not cool" but at least it is very easy to implement I think.

Agreed

They don't have a Levitate spell to work from presently, so they need to develop that. However, I don't think we can really move vertically straight up in the game engine. At least, I can't think of any creatures/effects that use/produce this type of movement. But, in the end, I think this is just an engine limitation that they're not willing to spend the resources to alleviate.

It's a shame really, flying would be super cool, if not super intelligent, thing to do given the concentration requirement.

But why is that so hard? I am no programmer, so maybe I am stupid here, but it really does not seem like that difficult of a problem to solve. You have some z coordinate, you add a value to it (if there is no object above you). And the animation for flying in the air is also in the game. Right now, you just hover 1ft above ground, not 10ft...

You can use the fly spell as it is right now when you are standing next to some wall to basically fly vertically up (obviously not perfectly vertical, but basically...)

What makes that so difficult to program?

I like the solution for free "ascend/descend 10 ft" actions while you're flying. It seems relatively simple. And if it can't be visually represented in the game for whatever reason, just:

We should take it even further and just make them un-targetable by melee attacks. Otherwise, depending on the enemy AI, the enemies might spend turns melee attacking a creature that realistically is ~15 feet above the ground and un-hittable. Basically cheesing the game.

The problem I have with that solution is that
1) It is kind of immersion breaking, if my guy is obviously just standing there, hovering a centimeter above the ground, and the enemy can not reach him
2) to solve that, you would need to implement some kind of "dodgeing by flying away" animation, which to me, as an amateur, seems like far more work
3) there are situations, where you can cast fly on yourself, but should not benefit from the dodge effect. You can cast fly in the cave or in the house too, but because the ceilings are so low, you could not really use it defensively. So they would have to again check for stuff above you. But if you can do that, why can you not also move the model?

Seriously, I have heard this often that flight is not possible to implement because of the divinity engine. But why? I am sure I am missing something but it really seems like it would be easy to solve ^^

I can't say for sure, since I don't know the specifics of the DOS engine, but it may be that it effectively only keeps track of character (x,y) positions on a grid that we can't see. Clearly the maps can allow elevation (z) for terrain elements, but it may be that for characters all we have is their effective position on the underlying grid - and they are rendered in 3D at an offset above this terrain height (which involves a lot of work too). So if the engine is written like this, then it can't easily keep track of more than simple z-offsets from the terrain for a grid location (for rendering the character).
Even a levitate spell effect, which should just be +- z offset at a grid location, would need some fiddling with engine code, since it is likely that higher level scripting systems used for animation/pathing of characters (as used by level designers/artists) are written along the lines of 'move Character(c) from (x1,y1) to (x2,y2)'. Adding a 'z' to this (And keeping track of it) would require a lot of extra work and possibly worrying about solving 3D pathing. Proper flight requries a full 3D space - at the moment it seems like they are using the 'hover' abilty in DOS (avoid terrain effects), so not actual flight. I am not sure they can fix this without a lot of additional coding, too much effort for 1 (or 2) spells. Sadly. Of course, this is speculation - maybe they have refined the DOS engine to better handle z and we'll see more later.

Hmm, ok, that makes sense. Although I do think there are parts when you can go over or under a bridge for example. How would you keep track of that (since there are two viable positions with these coordinates?)

The simple solution would be:
introduce a status called "flying/ levitating". When casting the fly spell, you can spend 10ft of your movement to use the "fly up" action. This action gives you the status "flying". As long as the status is active, you are treated like you are 10ft over the normal position. (basically your model is changed so it is 10ft in the air). So like hover, but higher up. I guess that makes it harder with low ceilings/ buildings/ caves...?

So basically, if that is the case, just give us binary options. Either 10ft in the air or on the ground as base positions. Could that be implemented?
Thank you for the explanation btw, that makes more sense

That's a good point - perhaps they have layers (like levels/floors in a castle) and your character's z-height is reletaive to the layer you are on? I don't know if the technical detals of their engine are discussed anywhere, I'd be curious to know....

You pointed out the other problematic issue: if you don't keep track of actual 3D world/terrian/model data, then how do you deal with ceilings? If you did simply move the character model higer, then you may clip through a ceiling?

I suspect the hover is low enough so any issues are avoided...but it does look odd and raises the issues you mentioned earlier about attacks from ground etc.

I suppose they could limit fly to outside areas or very high-ceilinged caves (like most of the underdark)? That would be somewhat odd and inconsistent - but might work - each terrain area could have some label such as 'flyable' (as you have with walkabale areas). It

Yes! That sounds like a good solution that could reasonably be implemented without having to start all over again
Larian, please take note, we have just solved it ^^

Why do we have to settle for mediocre solutions, Larian wanted to make a DnD game and The Fly spell is an integral part of that world. Maybe they could have done some research beforehand to see if their engine was up to snuff or if they needed to make some modifications to it?

Only problem I still see are areas which are more or less free, apart from small parts. So for example, you fly in the overworld, then there is a bridge. It may be a bit weird to land for the 2m, walk under the bridge, and then start flying again. But yeah, this is BY FAR the best solution.

And levitating should be easy to implement, since the character is already levitating in the current fly spell animation, they just need to increase the height to 10ft if they have the "levitating" condition.

If you can not "levitate" a model because you do not have z coordinates, you could then basically modify the model so that it stands on a 10ft high invisible block basically. That way you still touch the ground and do not need to know the z coordinates, but look like you are up in the air (and obviously that invisible block should not be targeteable)

One thing we could do is reach out to modders for D:OS2, since they will know how the game map works. Then we can be more specific in how this problem could be solved.
Hope it is not too late to implement yet, I really love the Levitate spell. But this really does seem doable. I guess, if the worst happens and it is not fixed, it will be added by modders

We don't necessarily, do we? I think we found a good way to implement it even with the engine difficulties

No, that solution is the mediocre one i was talking about actually.

Hmm, tbh, I would take anything that goes beyond the current "jumping, but without the arch" ...