Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Please Larian, it's a D&D game not a DoS game.

If I'm being honest I have mostly enjoyed the EA BG3 and while it has some technical issues to fix, and I really want to get into the rest of the story, it's a well done game. However, every new version seems to drift further away from the D&D RAW & RAI and closer to just being a generic CRPG with a "Larian" humorist twist and a D&D label. I could go through all the deviations but I think there are plenty (actually a metric f'load) of posts that cover things like the Shove mechanic, Potion Bombs, racial stats, etc. that detailing them again just doesn't make sense. The Balder's Gate franchise has always been a fan favorite not just for the story but for the rules they use, it's a nerd property not really a normie property and nerds like me like the limitations the rules provide. Creativity is born of challenge and rules provide a great deal of that challenge, it's the box we are put in that we break out of not by breaking the rules but by coming up with creative solutions within the rules. Without those limits, with this weird need to make a joke out of everything, infantilize and dumb down rules, all to cater to some "untapped modern audience" that never seems to actually show up with their money, CRPGs just become arcade games and frankly it sucks.

I know this post is late in the game but many of us have been sounding the alarm in this forum all during the EA process and Larian seems to just not care. So I put out this last plea: Please, at least give us the option to play by the RAW (with the few necessary changes because of the realities of making a CRPG), we are the fans that kept this IP alive with our money and time and we deserve some love as well.

Well shit, Larian better cancel the launch and start development over.

or you could just download a mod that tightens up the rules. That's what I am going to do.

It's D&D 5E and that is pretty well implemented.

Any issues you have with how the game plays is more in line with how similar DOS is to tabletop games than BG3 being similar to DOS2.

Well, one cant really deny that there was a lot changes revealed lately ...
Nor the fact that most of them cant really be desribed as "to feel more like DnD tabletop session".

But, lets be brutally honest for a second ... if anyone expected pure DnD experience ... they were just naive, that much Early Acess certainly prooved long time ago.

Which is something one could even get over to, if they could at least be described as "competent" or "well-thought".

While I will use mods to bring it closer to 5E the question is: should we have to rely on mods?
Many of the things I'll need a mod for could (and should have) easily be added as options, e.g. PHB racials, removing of weapon maneuvers, etc.

The Stat changes will be RAW in 2024 when the Player's Handbook is re-printed.
The multi-class changes can be ignored as you can still choose to put 13s in the appropriate stats that you multi-class into.

What specific catastrophic changes have been made recently that need to be reverted?

Here is my attitude on all that.

"Give me the fucking game now, I will fix whatever needs fixed in later patches or mods"

Nothing else matter, nothing else will get people to shut up and play. All criticism right now - on a game none but a select few have played - is bunk and useless. We are all just antsy and chomping at the bit and the sooner we get the full game the sooner we can start having fun.

THEN we can provide some real feedback. Right now it's just all speculation.

3 weeks!! I am trying to exercise more than usual but it's not helping.

If you want to play "your" game instead of Larian's game; yes.

Larian were always going to produce a Larian game. Lessons learned from DOS plus leveraging the 'Baldur's Gate' angle.
The shills are already hyping the game as the 'game of the decade' when we are only one third into the decade. I've even one muppet asking if it could be the 'greatest game of all time'.

If you are referring to a metric tonne then 1 metric tonne is equivalent to:
1.1.02 short tons (US) or
0.984 long tons (UK)
so not that big of a deal really.

Okay, no referring to folk as "shills" or "muppets" please. People are perfectly entitled to be stoked and excited for the game, and even if we think they're getting carried away there's no call for insults.

I really wanted to see a Core Rules difficulty setting. With stuff like...

- Scrolls restricted to spellcasting classes
- Prepared casters actually having to make choices memorizing instead of just changing their spells at-will and effectively having everything available at all times
- Shove being an Attack Action with the distance buff removed
- Actual restrictions or consequences for spamming Long Rest
- Multiclassing stat requirements enforced
- No potion throwing
etc...

But instead we get Tactician where there are more explosive barrels and arrows. Not exactly the same thing. Quite the opposite in fact.

Only give your scrolls to spell-casters.
Don't swap out prepared spells on the fly.
Don't spam Long Rests.
Put 13s in multi-class stats.
Don't throw potions.

All of these things are things that you do.

If following D&D rules is important to you, then why don't you abide by them?

If it comes down to it and the game doesn't enforce a more restrictive ruleset then folks are going to have to approximate it as best they can, but I can absolutely see why they want to recommend an option for the game to impose restrictions. And I don't think it's either an easy or altogether satisfying solution to just avoid what you don't like, even for features that don't impinge on folk even when they don't want to engage with them (as things like the poor stealth mechanic in EA certainly did). Personally, I'm very much on the side of the game being permissive and sandbox-y (as long as I can avoid cheese if I want to) and enjoy exploring the ways in which the game allows us to roleplay our characters in the way they interact with the world or find odd solutions to problems enabled by the systemics, but on the other hand I can see why folk who find their enjoyment from pushing up against the limitations of a game (which I myself do in other contexts) would find that removes something that they enjoy. Quite apart from the fact that until you get to know the game well it can be hard to know what restrictions to impose on yourself to maximise your enjoyment for a specific playthrough. I don't mind that because I fully intend to play and replay, setting different challenges for myself, and am up for investing the time, effort and thought into learning my options and thinking about how to do that and love that I have so many choices rather than a game that just says "no", but it does feel like a barrier to entry for new players as well as a possible bone of contention in multi-player.

I wasn't even aware you could throw potions or have non-spellcasters cast scrolls until I read about it on these forums. I've never changed spells on the fly or rested more than 7 times in an entire EA play-through.

I don't do these things to avoid Larian's implementation, I don't do these things because I'm playing D&D.
I simply don't understand why folks engage in behaviour that diminishes their enjoyment of game.

I think there are two sides to this, which I've already referred to in my post above so I'll just try once more in case I wasn't clear, then I promise I'll stop repeating myself!

First, it's not necessarily clear to folk up front what behaviour is going to diminish their enjoyment of the game. Like me, they might come to it with minimal knowledge of D&D and see that they can rest any time, anyone can use scrolls, they can have a +2 int orc, see enemies chucking potions, and so on, and have no idea whether that's D&D or not, and even might think they're "supposed to" take advantage of these things, though of course there's no such thing as "supposed to" in the game. I played hundreds of hours of EA and it took me a long while, as well as research into 5e and discussions here, to work out what limitations to impose on myself and, to some extent, be my own DM. Others might be quicker on the uptake, especially people with previously good D&D knowledge, but from my own experience I think it's not an easy thing to decide how best to engage with the game to maximise enjoyment. Now, of course, I hugely appreciate that it has the flexibility to give me and others with different tastes options in that space, but I still believe it could be a struggle for people, or alienate them, to begin with.

Second, there are different ways to engage with games. I think BG3 rewards players who prioritise roleplay (or just mucking around!) and ask what their character would do in a specific situation or what ways of solving problems there are, and try something out they think might work and, generally speaking, find that the game systemics can accommodate what they want to do. But those same systemics because of their very flexibility are perhaps inevitably going to be abusable. So folk who enjoy minmaxing or understanding the rules of a game in order to test their limits and find optimised ways of winning within them are going to tend to find BG3 unsatisfying. As I'm firmly in the former camp, at least when it comes to BG3, this suits me just fine but I can understand the frustration of those who would prefer a more testing challenge.

That's only a part of people's issues with the way the game plays, of course, but hope at least I've made my take on one element of if clearer. Of course, we might now just have to agree to disagree

Why play a dnd game if you hate dnd and want all the rules changed? Games have rules for a reason. Imagine someine changing the rules of chess and then chess players being told its okay the rules dont matter.

But if you love D&D, where possible, you can still play by the D&D rules.


If you love the old rules of chess nothing is forcing you to play with the new rules. Find a like minded opponent and play the game you love. You're the one moving the pieces.

I am happy as it is, I want a good story. I do understand why just not doing things like throwing potions isn’t really a good option. Yes you can limit yourself but the AI will not. So it’s one sided. I am always for options if that’s possible in the engine…

I will always challenge myself to play the best I can within the rules set by the game and therefore will never impose arbitrary restrictions on myself.

I will, however, point out on a forum how a change from source material makes a game worse.

Why do you think Ironman modes exist in games? By your logic players can just delete their saves themselves if they die.