Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Inspiration Inconsistency

Hello! This is just a quick piece of feedback I noticed when playing as a Light Cleric of Selune.

Basically, there was a pretty jarring inconsistency between a particular action and subsequent inspiration that happened with my character:


Maybe I'm just reading too much into the immersion/Role Play aspect of the game, but it would be a good thing to fine-tune some of the decisions and consequences that can be made - particularly when it comes to inspiration (which rewards you for acting "in character").

Inspiration is given solely on Background basis as far as i know ... our class is not concidered at all.

I've never played with the acolyte background so I had not seen this before. That really doesn't make sense. Like, at all. Not unless you were specifically an acolyte of an evil deity which the background does not define. An acolyte of a different deity shouldn't be wanting to destroy the artifacts of other gods. It's not as though the setting has constant divine war among all sides as a feature. Plus Selune is a major good goddess, so going against her would be counter to the desires of most other good-aligned deities.

I’d agree it’s counterintuitive that a system that seems intended to reward roleplay can in some situations apparently do the opposite. Not that I’d encounter many examples like that given by the OP in a single player game, as I’d more likely not do things that felt out of character for my PC, but in a multiplayer game I guess the current background-based system could have our Cleric of Selune character inspired by a party member destroying the gem when more likely they’d be appalled. I think we get some examples a bit like this with virtual party members: I have to squint a bit to make sense of Lae’zel being inspired by saving everyone at the grove gates or helping the incompetent tiefling swordsman, for example.

I’d certainly not object if the system were made more sophisticated, though on the other hand it’s not a priority for me and I am okay to be pragmatic to handwave and/or stretch logic for the occasional oddity. I find the background-based system works pretty well in the majority of cases, there’s no obvious (to me) easy systematic way to establish exceptions so eliminating them feels like it would take a lot of work on a case-by-case basis, and even if huge amounts of work were put into it it feels as though there’d still be niggles as not every crucial roleplay aspect of our characters is represented in-game. Perhaps there is a cost/benefit justification for at least some improvements to the inspiration system, but it’s not something I’d particularly agitate for.

That all said, there might be a way of addressing issues specifically like that raised by the OP systematically if there were a mechanic for tagging certain actions as in accord (or not) with different deities’ prescriptions and that trumped the inspiration system where they clashed. Such a mechanic might be a nice-to-have anyway especially for clerics, paladins and monks (including the latter two classes as I think they should be able to pick deities too), and help bring to life their relationships with their gods. But obviously that’s not going to happen if it’s not already planned, and feels rather unlikely given we’ve not seen any indication of it. And it would open another can of worms as the game would then need to decide whether to permit clerics to flout dictates of their deity, and if it did then it would raise expectations that the game had some sort of mechanic for consequences of that (analogous to that for paladin oathbreaking).

But I’m definitely going off on a tangent now!

No you are absolutely right about it and not alone with that! I can absolutely understand you. I have reported dozens of inconsistencies. If we stay with the example of "inspiration", Larian has, as so often, somewhat short-sightedly created only the standard answers / results. But how these then fit together in the long term with other variables keyword immersion is not yet included in the work and needs revision.

Another "inspiration" inconsistency is for example:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthread...nders+keepers&Search=true#Post813362

And in addition to my former report. This Questline only starts if Aradin will stay at the Grove after the first defend. If Aradin, Remira and Barth leave the Grove after her disput with Zevlor. Barth can't be robbed by the Tiefling Kid... So the Quest for this inspiration goal would not be accessible at all...

This raises the question of whether this was insufficiently considered by Larian or is intentional, that you can't get all quests depending on your decisions???