Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Why the nerfs were made (speculation? or fact)

Its as much the gold standard for RPGs as McDonalds is the gold standard for restaurants.

It benefited from its dumbing down strategy coupled with unexpected windfalls like Stranger Things, the success of Critical Role (which now abandoned D&D) and Covid. But dumbing down has its limits and their much hyped movie was a flop.
Its strategy of diluting everything, races, skills, story, will eventually backfire because while that allows people to quickly pick and also does not create many hooks to stay with the brand as everything is just so meaningless.

I think calling 5e the best is an inherently bad claim. The best at what? It does stuff that it does well (though I personally would argue Pathfinder 2e does that stuff better) but the problem is that other systems are designed with other goals in mind. Judging a powered by the Apocalypse game and 5e is in some ways comparing apples and oranges. It's not even a question of personal taste, they're trying to do different things entirely. You could say 5e does combat "better" but can you say that when it's trying to approach combat from an entirely different direction than 5e? Same with the World of Darkness games. They're trying to be games about various flavours of personal horror, and I'd say they succeed at that. They're better horror games than 5e for sure.

Sorry to interrupt the discussion, it is rather interesting to read opinions on different PnP systems, but its not exactly fitting for this thread.

A lot of terrible takes I won't even engage as there is no real point. But D&D 5e is by far the best tabletop RPG...it strikes a near perfect balance and level of complexity. I will leave it at that.

Ime, this whole thing is driven by the ability score system's cut-offs at 15+2 and 16+3. I've had plenty of players tell me that 15 isn't good enough for main stat.

The debate now is nothing compared to 2013 when 5E was hashing out how to do race ASI's and ability scores. It was a huge playtest then, much much larger than present; current WotC leadership has way less cred than Mearl's team then. Anyway, they tried linking ASI's to class, removing them altogether, heck even removing ability score modifiers entirely. After all permutations, we ended up with 2014 system - which was most acceptable then, and kicked various cans down the road.

Now WotC thinks market has changed and they can implement changes some of them always wanted to do. Personally, I don't think they're being anywhere as exhaustive or inclusive (ironically) as 2013. I am getting a strong 2007 vibe when WotC tested mainly in-house and pushed 4E. To total disaster.

I was sure D&D movie would be a hit, watched it twice, but the fans just didn't go. This OneD&D is no sure thing either. My group has no interest in buying it. My friends say the races all sound the same. Divorcing ASI's from race may still not be a good idea.

Unless you want to do anything non combat related, have deadly combat, "combat as war", make noncombat characters, play other adventures besides combat centric ones,...
You get the idea. It does a tiny subfraction of RPGs reasonable well (although I would hardly call it best), but even there falls flat with unclear rules (which they then gaslight as being unclear on purpose to allow DMs to have control...) and things like the D20 making character attributes and skill just a secondary factor in success chances. But for anything else, including more modern combat scenarios, D&D is very bad.

The only thing D&D is really the best in is that thanks to its age and marketing its easy to find groups to play with.

I think you are right, my comparison wasn't really fair. My point of view is that I play (and DM) roleplaying games to roleplay, and D&D does very little in that sense while others games leads and push roleplaying far better. I personally like 5e because it can be easily played like a narrative focused game. I suggest the official module "The wild beyond the witchlight" to everyone, it's amazing.


Sorry Neprostoman, you are right, we went off topic by a lot. My bad.

Looks like WOTC have finally done it, they have fallen to complete and utter madness. Shame that a tiny But very vocal minority are able to destroy a beloved game bit by bit…

Ill keep playing 5E for a few years yet probably. But WOTC can go to H…

I have no emotional investment in this at all, but in my opinion...

If humans have a max strength of 20...

Then Half-orcs should have a max strength of 24...

And Halflings should have a max strength of 16.

Unless magic is involved.

Make the differences real. Let's play different creatures, not different outfits.

Makes sense that gnomes are better fighters than humans and that gith are better casters than elves.

DnD is the best. Any claim otherwise is wrong. It's that simple. We'll... it was... Unless WOTC ruins in with their racist and hateful changes.

There are parts of the lore that are unexplored and intriguing. I've always wondered what kind of kind of relationship Corellon and Mystra have. Corellon is the elven god of Magic in other settings but he seems to accept Mystra's rulership in all domains except elven high magic. There could be some tension in that relationship.

There are also some parts of the lore that explain why Mystra favors humans.

Spoiler for length

When WotC was first trying to figure out how to respond to the internet they put up their abandoned settings on the website for free download. One of those free downloads was the Nethril: Empire of Magic setting and it explains how humans became dominant in magic and why gnomes favor illusion magic. I'm not a lawyer but I don't you can take back what you've given away so you can find copies of the setting of web and *in my non lawyers opinion* doing so is legal.

Long story short - early Nethril is Rome and the elves are the Etruscans. Elves taught humans elven magic but prevented them from learning spells that could damage nature - no fireball for humans. Some human found the Nether Scrolls (later revealed to planted by the Chronomancer) The scrolls were the raw source code of magic and anyone who read them was on path become an archmage or even a demigod.

Nethril switched to the more destructive form of magic and became a empire. The elves were forced to follow suit and they stole the scrolls and started using netherese magic as well but spent their time finding ways to make it less destructive to nature. Humans on the other hand were creating paradise zones of eternal summer.

But Nethril fell and humans were divided on Magic: the Uthgart barbarians, the former peasants and slaves of Nethril -- decided to renounce all magic. It took centuries for some tribes to develop any tolerance for any magic at all.

Elves on the other hand thought they were correct. "If the humans had simply adhered to the nature-preserving restrictions we did Nethril wouldn't have fallen" Culturally humans have anti magic contingents among the Uthgart and in Amn. The high elves, on the other hand, are united in their appreciation of magic.

And it's worth noting Mystra had both Elminster and Khelben learned magic from the elves.

Tl:DR despite Mystra preference for humans, humans opinions are magic are diverse and deeply divided where high elven opinions on magic are relatively uniform: magic is art, magic is beautiful. So it makes sense that humans would get +1 to all traits where high elf would get a boost to intelligence and a cantrip.

Under this logic Moon Elves should get a wis bonuse as culturally they use divine magic as much as arcane.

But hey the asi changes fix that letting you run viable moon elf clerics and druids too!

The new asi changes let you play races closer to lore.

The new asi makes races more the same abd interchangeable. Might as well erase all races. That's where we're headed. Gotta erase racial differences amongst fantasy races because of evil real life racists who can't see all humans in the real world are equal - an issue on all aides if the political spectrum.

Fantasy races should remain untainted by that kind of garbage.

Its more that a player can come up for the idea of a character, make them any race they want from an rp perspective, and have them still be viable. If anything it'll increase the number of different races you find at the table.

As we've already addressed the race asi's don't even make sense from a lore pov, it's purely a relic from old rules. And and D&D keeps chasing the mainstream audience old relics like this have got to go so new players can be be allowed to play what they wish.

How are dwarves with bonus to con, and elves with a bonus to dex not fit the lore? And, the change won't increase the variance if races dnd. It'll be human, followed by anything remotely human (like certain tieflings) looking like half elves then elves then dwarves then whatever. The changes make the races more similar which is not good. It makes the choice of races less important which means the choice matters latter. Choices should matter more.

Who are those mysterious we you are talking about? You mentioned this 'ASI don't make sense lorewise' POV several times already but I don't see any actual strong argument behind it. If a small group of people repeat the same sentence one by one it doesn't make it true.

Orcs have muscular builds and it makes sense for them to have more CON and STR.

Halfling are small and hard to notice when compared to taller races, which equals more DEX. Lightfoot are culturally hospitable which translates to 1 CHA. Stronghearts have dwarven blood which translates to 1 CON.

Dwarves have sturdier and shorter builds which have more balance to them and it screams better CON.

Gnomes and high elves are connected to fey which let's them understand magic better which implies natural INT.

Not every stat 100% makes sense but saying that they don't is disingenuous.

Except for fighters, paladins, rangers and barbarians. Humans and half-elves are now almost literally useless on all of these classes, as these classes already get the new proficiencies that they get, which is now the only reason to ever consider playing them outside of maybe an extra skill proficiency or something that is speculated to be included. I don't think "completely useless" qualifies as "viable" but maybe I'm wrong. I get it, you now get to say that humans are THE BEST magic race because they get...armor and shields? That doesn't seem very magical to me, but hey, congrats man, I'm glad these changes which invalidate humans and half-elves (and arguably shield dwarfs) for half of the classes just so happen to work out for you.

"'half' inherently racist
imho it is vice versa. plz let me explain:
humans technically don't have races, the differences are way to small - we just call them races which is inherently racist. Calling a human 'half - whatever' IS inherently raacist then. Obviously.

Removing 'half' from a game where races actually exist is a bit racist tho because ppl. are taking our own human rules and problems and apply them into the games world. 'half' in DnD ist just a fact. Nothing more.

For me its best at, the richness of lore from decades of great writers and world creators. As from a mechanical / rules set. I personally have only really enjoyed 3.0 rules.

I started with the box set as a kid, however I was a kid, and honestly I loved it. Imagination is a powerful and wonderful thing.

oppsss