Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Class appropriate starting equipment

I would like to see players start with weapons and armor according to 5e PHB rules. It is a bit annoying that, for example, my Ranger has to start with 1 shortsword, 1 shortbow and leather armor when they'd be allowed 2 shortswords, 1 longbow and scale armor in the PHB.

Alternatively, adding a better variety of items in the tutorial to let us pick and choose from.

Agreed, I'd love to have that (along with an option to choose the colours of our armour).

Until we get something like it, using a mod (Starter Equipment Patch 8) is a viable solution. It's easy to use, since the equipment is defined in a text document.

+1

+1

I've posted this before, but here is my suggestion:

In our exploration of the ship, possibly in the room with Us, there should be a crate of weapons and armor including the starting gear you chose and possibly some other gear. This would also be a great opportunity for the game to tell us about different weapons through (optional) tutorial boxes. Explain weapons, finesse, reach, crossbows, the different armor types, etc.

Yes.

Please add it in character creation.

+1

I would prefer it in character creation and to have a choice of garb and colours, because as of now I would likely download a mod to give me more visual choice and that's a shame that I would need a mod for something like that.

As to why in CC, we see from the intro video that you get "captured" in whatever garb you wore and don't lose it, rather ceramorphosis will likely "destroy" / get you to remove whatever you were wearing once transofrmed into a mindflayer.

Full agreement

We are prisoners of the Illithids in those pods. There is no reason why we should have equipment.
A box with equipment makes most sense. Thats were the Illithids store all the stuff they took from their slaves.
It would also be a good point to explain the basics of equipment.

A box with equipment doesn't really make sense if you pay close attention to the events of opening cinematic. Everyone being teleported from the streets right into pods.

Part of what made the older D&D crpgs cool was that they gave an impression that character creation wasn't necessarily attached to any particular module or campaign, but that you could come up with a character idea and then bring that character into any adventure. The whole import/export character idea from BG and Icewind Dale and the Gold Box games. Granted the promise of that idea wasn't fully executed, but they paid lip service to it in the way that character creation process was framed at least.

I enjoy the idea of selecting our starting equipment with a variety of standard equipment types available from the outset. Ideally based on some cost in starting gold so that there can be trade offs and maybe some interesting decisions as to how exactly one kits out. Maybe it's better to spring for a better sword, or sink that coin into armor, or maybe buy some arrows, or something more utilitarian like a rope or a torch. Perhaps all the same stuff gets thrown at us in the tutorial if we explore, but I'd still rather have that be something that's part of character creation, cause it's an element of characterization. It irks me that every character just gets the same set of class themed armor and the same standard melee or range weapon, without any real input from the player. It makes every character of the same class look and feel too similar.

Importantly we should be able to choose our colors and select some elements of individual fashion to make each of our character feel unique. Even if the dude dressed in red, looks identical in every other respect to the dude dressed in blue or black, they'll still at least have something in the feel to set them apart. I'm surprised it's been two years and yet the character creation process feels largely the same as it did in 2020. Sure there are more classes now, and more hairstyle or whatever, but they're not giving me a reason to come back and try it again on the aesthetics front. I wish they'd have stuck with regular equipment for the entirety of the EA, esp with the level cap this low, so that then our choices about equipment at char creation wouldn't be immediately superseded by finding something that's +1 that then defines our whole look from the rest of the act. I don't know, I just thought we'd get more on the front end to keep it engaging, there's only so much you can do with a haircut.

So it's equipment taken from past slaves/meals/adventurers or from previous people who have turned into mindflayers or the mindflayers actually moonlight as door-to-door weapons&armor salesmensquid, whatever. It doesn't need to be explicitly marked "Here are the weapons your character was wearing when they got abducted, even though the opening cinematic teleports you along with your armor into that pod, don't worry about the inconsistency."

+1 that at character creation we can choose specific equipment and be able to customize its (at least the armor's) colors.
Also, can fighters/clerics/paladins start with Chain Mail yet? Please.

At what point in the process did they take whatever you're wearing when you're snatched up? We see the process in the opening cinematics, and at no point do they have some guards stripping victims of their stuff to put them in pods. From the mind flayer's perspective, would that even be practical? What if a few of the prisoners are guards, and just start killing everything they can, because they're fully armed and armored, and trained.

I'd much prefer that we choose our starting gear during character creation. It makes more sense with both the narrative, and what we're shown about how people were captured.

+1 to the selection of starting equipment.

OK, regarding the intro video it makes sense that we start with our starting equipment.
It would still be nice if the basics of equipment were explained at some point ( in case you turned tutorials on).


PS: Is it clear that YOU are kidnapped in the intro scene?
I do not see any origin characters in the kidnapping video.
If the player is a gith, an underdark race or Astarion (vampire) it makes little sense that you are kidnapped from a city at daytime.
The video just tells the player that Illithids kidnap people and infect them with tadpoles.

I wouldn't complain if we got the option, but if I have to be perfectly honest I'm not really sure why people care so much about starting equipment.
It's not like we are sticking with it for very long, anyway.
And with the possible sole exception of the longbow I can't really think of many basic items we don't cross already in the tutorial or shortly after.

It also shows the tentacles smashing buildings and grabbing people in tunnels. The end result is the same, from the position they were grabbed from to a pod, and it's done via what looks like teleportation.

I still like the idea of starting with nothing and finding starter equipment as we adventure. There are 2 mind flayer chests in the first chamber, and you could find starter weapons on the imps, thralls, in the chests by Us, on the desks on the lower level by Us. Plenty of places to find weapons, armor, spell focuses, etc.

Maybe make starting equipment to not only based on Class, but also based on Background and Race, to add more interesting composition

I think I know where my feelings come from.
I still remember the start of BG2. Lets compare:
- You start in a prison cell.
- An evil mage does something to you.
- You get out of the cell, your first goal is to escape the prison, then we go after the ones who did this to us.

Main differences:
- In BG2 we go after him because he kidnapped my friend. The really bad experiment on us comes when he imprisons us a second time in the middle of the game.

At the start of BG2 we escape our cell without equipment, there is a chest a few steps away and I think somebody says something like "We should grab some equipment if we want to get out of here."
But I guess it makes a difference if you are kidnapped by a mage in his dungeon or by Illithids on a flying ship.

+1

The most intense change to phb char creation and bg3 char creation I feel is the fighter. Your armor is so subpar and you dont get to pick your desired weapon also having back up axes and javelins for going 'swoosh' at range is nice!

The reason to care is because it makes character creation more engaging. Since this is the very first aspect of the game we interact with, it'd be nice if the player had some input to help shape the look and feel of their character in terms of the gear-out. If we aren't sticking with it for very long in EA, that's more a failure of the game's equipment progression in my view. We really shouldn't need a bunch of enchanted equipment with the level cap this low. If they had elected to make the aesthetic appeal more central to the equipment progression (e.g. choosing one suit of regular chainmail over another suit of regular chainmail, more because we like the way it looks, as opposed to stat bonuses) that'd be another thing, but they really haven't done that here.


I like the idea that background or race might provide some additional options, but then I worry we end up in a similar situation where the game's designer tells us how our character is going to look, rather than allowing the player to take the lead on that. I guess I just don't like the notion that game is totally dictating to us what our visual vibe is going to be, based on our choice of Class or some other element of characterization that should be independent of our visual aesthetic. None of the choices they've given us really look like how I picture any of my D&D characters. They all have some gaudy-ass color combination in the starting gear, or weapons I wouldn't choose. The Bard is a good example - I take one look at that starting outfit and find it hard pretty hard to select the class. Maybe I could get into a Bard who wasn't wearing teal carnival duds with a bunch of gold crosses everywhere, but since that is the only option, it just results in me not wanting to play a Bard. I don't think there is sufficient variety in the prologue or first act, even after wasting a bunch of druids and gobbos for a couple hours, my character still doesn't look like MY character at all.

Choosing colors would certainly help, since a lot of these outfits would probably be decent if I could just tweak the colors or patterns, but I can't, so they aren't. It's just a shame, because they spend so much energy trying to make everything else look cool, and then the PC is all weaksauce?

Wizard's robes are the worst offenders for me currently, since they just look horrid. At least the Sorcerer and Warlock have something going on, but the Wizard's robes all look ridiculous. Something tells me they are being total EA holdouts here, and just sitting on stuff for the full release, but I think it's a terrible strategy. They should have focused on front loading the aesthetic variety in Char Creation, so that people would have a reason to keep playing the never ending EA, which has otherwise been pretty light on delivering new early content. A change or new option in Char Creation options is immediately apparent like 30 seconds after loading and makes me want to explore the game further.