Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Feedack on Gear and Tadpole Power, and how they will affect Builds

This post and thread are to discuss (/give early-thoughts feedback) on some aspects of "what makes your build" and "character progression" in BG3.

There has been much discussion about 2 of those aspects recently, in other threads. One is the choice of Race (in particular, how the reactivity, lore, look and the 3-4 Racial Feature weigh up against the Ability Score Improvement). One is the ability for players to respec and change the Class(es) and Ability Scores. This thread is not about those aspects.

Instead, this thread is about 2 other aspects :

• Gear (the equipement you wear) and "itemization" (the equipment-finding/making system ?).
• Tadpole powers.

The information this discussion is based on comes from Wolfheart and Fextralife.

• Wolfheart : video (at 21:15)
• Fextralife : video 2 (at 9:34), for tadpole powers.
• Fextralife : video 1 (at 9:44), for a brief comment about gear/itemization.
• Fextralife : video 2 (at 11:21), for a brief comment about gear/itemization.
• Fextralife : video 3, for gear/itemization.

What we learned from these videos is as follows.

• Equipment. Gear will have a really strong impact on character builds. As in, some magic items will be build-defining.
• Tadpole powers will work differently from what we saw in EA. It doesn't seem that we'll acquire powers through tadpole dreams, which we may experience after using our tadpole powers enough. Instead, we can collect tadpoles from True Souls we kill. We can then insert these tadpoles in our brains, in order to know Kung Fu learn/equip new powers. Basically, this adds a fourth mechanical aspect to building a character, besides Race, Class and Gear.

On the topic of tadpole powers, I don't have too much of an opinion at the moment.

In terms of theme/flavour, it fits perfectly with the campaign of BG3, obviously. Although I have difficulties imagining how characters who want to get rid of the one tadpole in their head may be interested in adding a few more, and I'm wondering if that means that the tadpole powers game/content will be more or less exclusively experienced only by power-seeking Player Characters.

In terms of mechanics, it has me raise a skeptical eyebrow. It could turn out well, it could turn out ridiculously bad.

But, according to Fextralife, Larian's philosophy, with the addition of this mechanical layer to character build, is to provide additional means of character progression, especially in the late game, when Character Levels and the new Class Features they unlock won't happen very frequently.

And overall, I'm really not really thrilled by this philosophy. I mean, Larian, if you really don't like D&D 5E as a game system, and you really don't want to stick to it, then maybe don't make a game based on it ?

So I disagree with the philosophy of where this comes from. But as I said, it can turn out alright, or it can turn out bad (like Shove or the unavoidable-damage fest that nerfs Concentration).


On the topic of gear, I seem to lean more toward not liking too much what I heard.

The philosophy of 5E's design is that Class is where your powers come from. You can often find some synergies with specific Races for particular builds. But your Race gives you 3-4 Features, once and for all, and those are rarely great as "standalone Features". Whereas your Class keeps giving you Class Features, every time you gain a Character Level. And some of those (usually the ones from the first levels) are standalone, signature, build-defining Features.

In 5E, equipement is of little importance. The game (through the Monsters Stat Blocks notably) does not assume that the PCs have any particular equipment. Some GMs and groups can play an entire campaign without any magical equipment. If you read/watch any optimised character build, they never use any items. Sure, some appropriate magic items can spice up your build. But by and large, magic items are meant as finishing touches, not foundational blocks.

By introducing build-defining magic items, I fear that Larian is going to dilute-away and eclipse Classes. Not that this is surprising. Larian's previous game did not have Classes. They stated or implied that they are not fond of Classes. And a fair share of homebrew rules that they introduced in EA diluted the importance of Classes. But again, Larian, if you don't like 5E's design, maybe don't make a game based on it ?


Overall, I am of two minds regarding the introduction of these 2 aspects of character builds.

One the one hand, I'm kind of looking forward to it, because of novelty. Since the game system (the combination of structure/rules and content/items) is not exactly 5E, the good and bad builds in BG3 won't be exactly the builds that are good or bad in 5E. For those players who like discovering and mastering a new game system, BG3 should provide some freshness.

One the other hand, I'm not exactly confident in Larian's system design skills. The vast majority of the homebrew rules they introduced was making the game ridiculous, imbalanced and broken. Most of these changes were withdrawn (Advantage for High-Ground, Advantage for Backstab, Cantrips make surfaces, Disengage as BA, Hide as BA, Automated Reactions), and hopefully the remaining few (Shove as BA, Shove to massive distances, Hide usually requiring no Stealth Check, missing projectiles still apply their magical effects) will follow to some extent. At this point, I would rather have Larian stick to 5E, just to avoid more nonsense. So I'm not particularly happy to hear that a lot of new stuff, that will significantly shape combat and character builds, is being introduced in the full release version without having gone through EA testing.


_________

EDIT.

Additional thoughts and comments after watching Fextralife's video 3, focused on items.


The language style in the tooltip sounds ... off ? ... Weird ? 5E has a standardise style to describe its rules, and what items do.

Fextralife's video uses a footage presumably provided by Larian to content creators. In it, we can see several tooltips that sound weird. Now, these tooltips also display the message "this is a very real actual in-game screenshot". This looks like an extra info layer displayed in the demo/showcase build that Larian used to capture this, so let's get this out of the way. But I would assume that the rest of the tooltip is how the tooltip would appear in the release version. And the language strikes me as ... ... not very D&D ? ... not very precise and technical ?

Example : the Gloves Of The Growling Underdog says "Gives you an advantage on your melee attack rolls while surrounded by two or more folks". The terminology "advantage" is very sloppy. Do the designers mean Advantage ? That's a very precise concept in 5E (namely, roll 2d20, take the max). Whereas "an advantage" is very broad. A flat +1, or a +1d4 is an advantage. Also, D&D typically refers to creatures. Does "folks" mean "creatures" ? Or just humanoid creatures ? Does a Worg count as a folk ? If this is Fextralife's writing, whatever. If this is Larian, it sounds as if the designers wanted to avoid giving the impression that there is a whole rules system under the bonnet. Like "this gloves make your melee attack rolls better if you're surrounded". What counts as surrounded ? Who cares. How much better ? Who cares. At this point, neither scenario would surprise me.


The game will contain 9 Legendary Items. They are extremely powerful.

I don't know more about them right now.

I just don't like the feeling that, so far, it sounds to me as if the items system comes from Diablo, not D&D. With a plethora of magic items, ranked by rarity (e.g. uncommon, rare, very rare, legendary), with associated colours.



Finally, there will be items available in the game exclusively if you play as the Dark Urge.

The example given in the video is a cape that has 2 properties. Firstly, the item gives you Expertise in Stealth (not "Proficiency in Stealth, and Expertise if you are already Proficient", but straight up Expertise). Secondly, the item gives you the following property : once per turn, when you kill an enemy, you become invisible for 2 turns. (So, if you logically adopt the stealthy striker/finisher playstyle to maximise the benefit, this item gives you near-permanent invisibility, no concentration, no spell slots or charges.)

I don't think it's worth focusing too much on just one item, but if the power level of those Dar Urge Exclusive items (and perhaps the Legendary items as well) are all along that line, then it sounds as if these items are more than just build-defining, and closer to game-breaking. ... Oh well.

I generally agree with your opinion. In a vacuum, I could see myself being excited for these additional systems; they could enable additional variety and depth of builds, which would be great! In practice however (considering Larian's design history - both in the DOS games and EA), I don't really trust them to do a good job and create a system that has a lot of horizontal but little vertical power disparity. I expect certain combinations to be drastically more powerful than others without any significant drawback, and overshadowing (or invalidating) other character options (e.g., race and/or class).

As someone who doesn't like Larian's ideas of balancing I'm not a fan of the tadpole powers (which sounds like another heavy handed attempt to have the evil edgelord playthrough that Larian is currently putting on the center stage) nor of the build-defining gear. 5e is about playing your character and its class(es) and not min-maxing your gear as its not in its design philosophy as Drath Malorn pointed out.

At this moment i've pretty much given up upon BG3 feeling like a 5e game, best case it will be a 5e on steroids - which might be fine if they surprise me and manage to have a balanced game (which I've not seen it in the EA). I also hope playing the game will feel a lot different than what Larian put a focus on in their presentations - which to be fair could be if the game is really as reactive as they constantly claim.

Larian has said at times that they have a lot of love and passion for this game and for Baldur's Gate, and I believe them. I believe they're putting their all into this game, and I actually believe they have a love and possibly even respect for the original Baldur's Gate games. But I also think they could not give a damn about 5e or even D&D as a whole beyond the BG games. I think that's been apparent in all of their design choices pretty much. They're trying to respect the idea of the Baldur's Gate games, but they see the 5e system as not really being relevant to that. And maybe they're even right in that thinking, since the old games certainly bear no systemic similarity to 5e. I'm no fan of 5e so this ultimately doesn't matter that much to me, but I am still displeased on principle for the people who do care about the system.

Honestly even though I play 5e I wouldn't mind if they managed to do a better version. But from what I've seen through EA their balance is horrible and their constant attempts to put their own stamp on everything keeps breaking the system they decided to use. I much rather take 5e with all its current flaws than what Larian is doing. They have shown far too often that they don't understand how things are connected in 5e (which is odd since its one of the most elegantly simple systems I've seen in 25 years of gaming and that's coming from someone who never before liked the D&D rule systems).

Personaly im more interested in Roleplay than how unballanced the game will be in the end.

And so i wonder ...
What was wrong about tadpole gaining power trough abusing it? O_o
Was that somehow problematic to implement that as we use our tadpole, its power grows and on each threshold we get option to pick another power from exactly same UI you created for this?

Why it was necesary to want our characters to insert yet another, and yet another, and yet another alien parasite in their own head? O_o

I just take it as another example of Larian's apparent inability to show any kind of restraint. They had an idea they thought was cool and threw it in.

I have a feeling one of my play throughs will have to be now,

Full evil dark urge with maxed out parasite insertions.

scratching head as well,

Not sure what im feeling other than I want Belts and not under ware on my character inventory sheet !!

So it was confirmed by devs that tadpole powers exist to give players more abilities because apparently there weren't enough. A new skill tree. It doesn't have much to do with the story, it's more of an excuse to get new Bonus Actions and stuff.

BG1's divine origin made a lot of sense as the source of strange powers. For you, the protagonist. The whole story revolved around that. In BG3, everyone just gets powers because powers are fun. Now there's a whole UI for just that. And what if my Tav wants that disgusting parasite out of their head for very logical story reasons? It's an alien parasite which is gross, unknown and put there to mind control you. Maybe the magic that altered it gets dispelled and it resumes killing you and turning you into a mind flayer? Well, tough luck, and here are your new fun powers! Another glaring disconnect between narrative and gameplay. Even evil power hungry characters likely wouldn't want to keep a brain eating alien parasite in their brain. But we are supposed to ignore all that because the powers make for fun gameplay? I expect more from an RPG. It cheapens the story.

So where's the reward for resisting using those powers and getting the tadpole out? Can you even get it out now that there's an entire skill tree UI for it?

As for gear, 5e specifically moved away from gear defining your character and being the most deciding factor in how powerful they are. And I loved it. It was always a weak point in earlier editions of D&D when high level characters turned super squishy when stripped of gear. And now Larian brings that back and lets you lose an entire build if you lose your gear. Which you won't of course, at least not permanently. I really hate the idea of gear defining your PC, instead of the character and their skills and experience. Another MMO trope that doesn't belong in a story driven RPG. The endless gear grind in DOS was infuriating so I guess it will be more of that from Larian then. The stupid lightning build from EA kind of hinted it already that they just won't get why D&D items are cool and unique compared to ever-changing MMO junk.

Unless your character is insane why they heck would you willingly stuff illithid tadpoles into your head? They are literally designed to corrupt your body and mind, to enslave you.

Must be reworking how illithid tadpoles actually work if one would desire to have one or more inserted into your literal brain.

I forgot the best part!

Collecting new tadpoles from slain enemies and adding them to your brain.

Is this development fatigue from Larian's writing team, or are they no longer even attempting to craft a believable story driven RPG set in the Forgotten Realms? The nonsense that actually ends up being developed into the game leaves me dumbfounded. Or is this the system design team calling the shots in BG3, who hate the D&D system and make writers come up with any excuse for their latest additions that help "fix" D&D?

Ah yes, another tadpole for my collection

Do you guys know if it is one skill tree per character (so do I have to collect tadpoles for each party member/ spread them between them), or can only the player character have tadpole powers?

This has some implications on how much better origin characters are over hirelings

It's probably only for the main player character, as every other companions priority is to get the bug removed ASAP, so I doubt you'll be able to convince anyone to shove more brain eating bugs up their brain.

The powers were expected... More items and powers were added, because 5e leveling up is so boring and they needed to add extra choices that players can pick from.

Be it from special weapons attacks to items - consumables or tadpole powers they all lead to the same thing, extra choices that 5e just can't provide on it's own. 5e was never made for this and it lacks choices and variety needed for video gaming.
Not to mention attunement was scraped so that's an extra kick in 5e rules and it's balance. One that i actually approve of, because limiting items like that in video game is insane.


Anyway the whole thing is even more unbalanced than EA, the items video was already added btw


unbalance is everywhere be it items or powers if we add that to all the homebrew(pets, action economy...), consumables, item - story buffs, and finally resting is still unfixed and broken for a spell slot system game so the only balance the game has is fun.

One could argue fun is all you need, but i guess that's different topic.

I am pretty sure advantage means advantage on attack rolls, and folks is just a misspelling, Fextralife used the word FOES when reading. So enemies, not friends.

These are not official descriptions, but him writing it down from memory, which you can see from the one where he forgot the name of the item and so called it ???

OK, I have to take my words back base on his video. Those items seem to be build defining only if you min-max, otherwise they are pretty much fine and nothing we have not already seen in other games. Let's hope the tadpole will become also a positive surprise no matter how odd it looks from the narrative perspective.

I wish everyone whould see as I see.
Let me explain.
So as a DM you can homebrow stuff and can tell your story and guide the players make them a good time.
And i think this is correct here.

They have rigth to do. I never ever played just by the core rules it was always little bit modified.

But as a player I just liked to play.
Ofc the dm can be bad but how?
If they put some personal feelings into the game. As well the payers ruin the day of other players and the dms.
Those hou played dnd should know this from years of experience.
And I kind of think that some of the people here there are just talking that they played dnd.
Or mybe they played other adaptation of a dnd game.
So pls be open minded and just try to have fun.

And for the trolls.
Me think y don't want fun..
Thnk less and do more fun.

Overpowered magic items has been part of every D&D video game ever. It's like game developers are afraid of being restrictive sensible with their loot, so they go totally overboard instead. In BG2 you could BUY the Robe of Vecna at the Adventurer's Mart! In NWN you could buy a helmet making you flat out immune to mind effects in the second chapter. I'm not surprised BG3 went overboard with magic items either, but some of those items seems waaaay overtuned. If no one mods out the most ridiculous OP'ness, I'll do it myself.

What's more concerning is the preposterously bad writing for tadpole progression. It was perfectly fine as it was, you could use the tadpole - but probably shouldn't. If you did, you'd unlock powers through some foreboding dream sequences. It's perfectly fine and reasonable. Makes it a temptation. I'd actually call it engaging and interesting, I liked it. The abomination of a story for the tadpole progression we'll be getting is so badly written it doesn't bode well for the rest of the game. Let's not forget this is a licensed D&D game. This goes into D&D LORE now. What the actual heck...

From DOS 1 and 2 I didn't exactly trust Larian's story and writing expertise to pull off a good D&D game. I loved the DOS games, but not for the writing. I don't want to trash the BG3 writers too harshly on their own forums, but man does the EA first look at the companions and now this "stuff tadpoles into your brain" idea cast a pretty dismal shadow over the rest of the story. The tadpole change single-handedly made me go from excited to apprehensive about the release.

I think the concept of stuffing additional tadpoles into your brain is incredibly immersion breaking. I imagine most players will only reluctantly engage with the seemingly ridiculous premise. The original concept of tadpole power increase with use was a way more compelling system.

I will also add that it just seems unnecessary to have a “highlander” power boost for “lone wolves” that kill off companions. However, if you wanted to keep it, it seems like it would be better to have your OG tadpole develop the ability to “psionically” absorb the powers of other tadpoles that have lost their host, without stuffing those tadpoles into your head.