Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Melee & Ranged vs Main Hand & Off-hand

Greeting BG3 community,

A quick search of the forums didn't bring up this topic, but apologies in advance if this has been discussed already.

Feedback:

I'm by no means an expert on DnD 5e, but I'm a bit confused as to why characters have two weapon sets to choose from on the user interface (or inventory), one melee and one ranged (both mandatory: one cannot have 2 melee weapon sets, for instance sword and board + 2h-weapon, or in reverse, although not as likely to happen, one cannot have two sets of bows). On the current settings, a character has 4 weapon slots divided over melee and ranged, 2 for each (although basically 1 for ranged unless one is dual-wielding hand crossbows). If one wants to change melee styles during a fight, one has to enter the inventory and manually replace the melee weapon which kinda defeats the purpose of the weapon slots.

Suggestion:

Why not work with the same amount of slots, but use Main Hand & Off-Hand instead? (This would prompt the player to declare if his character is left or right-handed). A character can freely choose to fill 4 weapon slots to carry on him, but 2h-weapons require 2 slots, whereas one-handed weapons only require one, and 3-handed weapons require 3 and so forth, you get the point! An example to illustrate: one has a short sword in main, a shield in the other. Character decides he is not at risk of being hit and swaps the shield for a second short sword and fight with two weapons. When the melee opponent is defeated, character decides to swap off-hand sword for a hand crossbow to shoot at the archers or spell casters that are 15 feet away, all while the short sword never left the main hand. This would correspond with what would be possible in reality and it would allow the possibility to go both melee and ranged simultaneously, provided both weapons are one-handed. Then finally people could play musketeers, pirates or witch hunters the way it was meant to be, which is basically the point of this whole thread.

So, what say you? Aye or Yay?

I have an idea as to why BG3 might be restricted to one melee and one ranged weapon, though it's just a theory.

BG3 doesn't have equipment loadouts as such - the game doesn't recognise what you hold in your hands or what is equipped but shiefed. So for example if you equip shield you will get bonus from it, even if you switch to ranged.

Think of how hotbar work - you can directly access both ranged and melee skills and there is no way to specify what weapon you would want to use them for.

Imagine you have a worrier with multiple melee weapon equipped - how would you specify which weapon you want to use for manecing strike? The game doesn't support something like that. That's why every skill using both melee and ranged weapons has both ranged and melee versions.

Not an implementation of which I am fan of, as generally characters will specialize and stick to one, and having same category of weapons with different damage types would be more beneficial.

That would be specified by the weapon the character is holding at that time. Instead of melee & ranged presets, you'd have main hand & off-hand with, once you click on it, a drop box / popup with the available weapons in your weapon slots. Let's say you want to swap your 1h-weapon for a 2h-weapon, you'd click main hand, select the 2h-weapon from the popup (which would be the only main hand alternative in this setup), which would prompt an empty off-hand if your character was wielding a second weapon or shield.

The game has action + bonus action, typically doing something with the offhand (dagger or hand crowbow) will cost you a bonus action and in the example you gave, equipping the weapon from his storage also costs an action so yes that is totally in keeping with D&D rules

Your character can carry around a longsword & a greatsword but it takes time to swap between them during battle... With the right feat he could carry two longsword (dual them) which is also in the rules and my personal choice

The weapon system could be better and more immersive.

Swaping between range and melee 100 times is fine but if you need to do it with 2 or more melee weapons you can't. Like op said you need to dive into the inventory.

You always get the shield bonus even if you don't actively use it, don't know why. I would at least lower it to 1 AC and move the shield to the back. We could do with abit of extra effort of making a masterpiece like bg 2 was...

THe whole action use for swaping is cool i don't mind that, but make it consistent for range weapons as well. Archer now get free 2 AC bonus at all times same as casters. Shields and weapons could be used in casting animations.

You know like you see in CGi when wizzards actually use their staffs to cast and are not just used as crutches like they are in bg 3 and other games. Again extra effort... masterpiece.


There should be a dedicated shield slot like we have for bards instruments so they are visible on the back. The whole system could do with all sorts of improvments like scabbard and archery quiver those could be items, based on the quality they could do all sorts of things even related two swaping arrows system.

Lantern - torch swaping slot that does automatic diping so we don't have to manually click drop torch - candle, use candle, dip candle gimmick 500 times per playthrough. They could add other items swaping slots for consumables so we have tiny bit more balance with consumables, backpack system that gives you more weapon slots.

We asked for bare minimum, normal, classic weapon sets like you have in PoE 2. That would mean you are speared the tedious inventory clicking a bare minimum in 2022 or at least give us radial system system for it IF we have to do it manually.

Now we have this half made system where two handed weapons get to be better again and you can swap those just by clicking on the hot bar items. But the second you dual wield or want to use a torch whatever you are left out dry.
DnD obsession with two handed weapons keeps on giving. They always better off compared to others you get more reach, more damage, better action economy, better feats and now as cherry on top better UI control.