Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3 Mechanics that I'd like to see in Future Larian Games

So, with the last patch for BG3 out and the shift towards future projects, I wanted to highlight some aspects of BG3 and how it evolved Larian's titles. Of course I could also comment on things that are not so great *Cough*Toilet Chain*Cough*Hotbar*Cough*Inventory*Cough* but I feel that there have been a lot of threads/posts on such subjects.

Instead I'll comment about the things that BG3 does that I feel should be utilized in more games going forward:

1) Separating Movement and Actions. This is mostly due to the DnD basis of the game where you get all 4 action types to utilize each turn (Movement, Standard Action, Bonus Action, Reaction). Now, I couldn't care less about keeping the 3 separate action categories (I think that an AP system like in Divinity is superior due to the flexibility. Being able to bank AP for burst actions and the variable AP costs of skills adds more strategy compared to "I must use my Action, Bonus Action and Reaction to bonk something somehow every turn")

However, having that movement in addition to actions is a pretty big thing (And not just the piddly amount of movement you can get with a certain feat in DOS2) as it broadens the amount of tactics that are available as you can maneuver and reposition as opposed to being inclined to stand perfectly still at all times. It can also enhance what the enemy is capable of, as they can flank, do hit and runs and overall be more active than "Run directly at your characters, sinking all their AP into movement so they're not even a threat"

2) Dark Urge style Origins. My main qualm with Origin characters is that as they're all companions, I get to experience 99.99% of their story regardless of my character by simply taking them along as a companion. However, Durge provides actual reason to play as the Origin by the fact that they are not a companion. The only way to experience Durge's story is to play as Durge. This honestly feels far more befitting of having a selectable Origin character, giving you a unique twist on the story based on this independent character rather than just playing as a companion with a couple of extra personal insights.

3) Withers and the Magic Mirror. Having baseline access to respecs and customization changes is really nice. Both to be able to fine tune companions that may or may not have some issues *Glares at Shadowheart's default stats* and also experiment with options to discover how things work and what is good or not by playing the game rather than reading about it on some 3rd party site. (That said, sticking him in the back of a crypt with at least 1 significant fight in the way is a little annoying, when you have to start every run going through that fight with a Shadowheart that can't hit anything due to her incredibly poor stats)

4) Camp. Having this unique area to return to where allies and storage can be found is neat. I'd prefer a location that's more stationary for a hub area, so that it can evolve throughout the game. I.e. Allies you make showing up with representatives (For example in BG3, having say a representative of the Druids, Harpers and whomever you ally with in Act 3). Companions decorating their rooms more over time (Romantic partners moving into your room and decorating). The ability for you to decorate the place with things you find in your travels (Arms, armour, trophies, books, paintings... Furnature you've "Borrowed" etc).

But the basic notion of having this (At least partially) static area with a few ameneties like Withers, the storage chest, target dummies (Make them function properly in future games though so that they're better for testing abilities and equipment interactions) and maybe a couple of extra things like basic commodities vendor (Selling consumables and having a boatload of gold to buy all your garbage you picked up) and/or any crafting features (If you decide to implement such things) is neat.

5) Non-combat experience. One of the nicest things about BG3 is that talking your way out of a combat scenario grants the same experience as if you slaughtered everyone. Which is good as it provides more options without feeling forced to be a Murderhobo.

Of course, the fact you can do this and THEN still murder everyone for even more experience should be addressed (Shouldn't be too hard to make the enemies you bypassed via dialogue to no longer grant experience right?)

Hopefully this can be expanded on with more alternatives, such as completely sneaking past areas undetected also granting the experience you'd have earned had you directly tackled the area (Either by combat or dialogue).

Such things would likely be most simple to do by shifting experience gains away from random fights and encounters and more towards completion of quests, so it matters less on how you got to the completion and more that you completed it at all (This should also include if quest steps were completed or not. Right now in BG3 you get bonus exp if you do every single quest step compared to if you are able to skip them and directly finish the quest. For example, reading the scroll about the Rite of Thorns and the note in Kagha's Chest both provide experience that you won't get if you just get the note from the crevice in the Swamp)

Either way, more facilitation of not being a Murderhobo is always a good thing.

I'm honestly neutral about the first.
I'm neither a fan or a hater of systems that use action points rather than dedicated actions to manage turns. As long as the system in its totality holds together both can work perfectly well.

I agree about the second point.
This is the way to handle "origins" in a way that keeps them interesting AND flexible enough (as some sort of extended background for your custom character), without making you feel that you're missing out on a companion to do so.

Absolutely not a fan of the other two, on the other hand.-

Withers and the mirror are the classical example of "convenience that kills any immersion". When you have it you use and abuse it, but then you realize that the game lost something in the process, as virtually no decision feels like a long term commitment anymore.
The stats and class of your companions don't matter, yours even less and you can even re-edit your look constantly. After a while it feels like nothing has any weight.

I'm not even going to argue against their inclusion because i know how popular they are and how much people would whine about their removal, but I'm still free to comment that I don't like them.
At most I could argue that I'd love to see their use severely limited in any future version of "Honor mode".
For instance: say goodbye to respec to "8 STR" later only because you are going to use the STR 23 gloves. If you want to do that trick, you'll have to suck up going through the whole game with STR set at 8.

The camp is bad in the sense I'd prefer an Owlcat-like system where your potential camping spots are contextual to the world OR you can simply camp anywhere there's enough space for it at your own risk.
The instanced pocket dimension is aggressively meh, as far as I concerned. I could kinda of dig if they managed to make it contextually meaningful maybe (i.e. In a sci-fi setting your base could be the starship you move around with).

"Non combat experience" is a sloppy solution that doesn't solve really anything (i.e. you can still abuse the system getting the exp reward for the non-combat solution and THEN triggering the combat anyway for the extra exp.
A far better system would be a "goal driven" one. "You get the exp ONCE to solve a certain encounter in whatever manner, but then if you go murderhobo you don't get any extra reward for it".

___________

And now, in an attempt to add to the topic rather than just criticizing it:

- One thing that I'd love to see return in one form or another is a REACTION SYSTEM. For all the silly concerns people had before they added it to this game that it would "slow the combat down", having the option of the occasional input even during the enemy turn never stopped being thrilling.
Incidentally I'm almost confident that's not going to happen, because most fraud modern videogame designers think they know better and that anything with a "tabletop vibe" is intrinsically obsolete and "unfit for videogame format".

- Another feature of BG3 I hope to see return in future Larian games is STATIC HANDPLACED LOOT. Words can hardly explain how much I loathed the randomized itemization of the previous DOS 1 and 2 and how much I dislike "random loot" in general.

I want day and night cycle.

Me too, but that would be for the mirror threads "BG3 mechanics that are missing, lacking or would need to change".

I mean... Neither of those things really mattered much in Divinity either. With companions being literal blank slates and their starting "Class" being derived from them literally asking you "What class do you want me to be?" upon recruitment.

Even in other games like Owlcat's stuff, it barely matters. Other than the arbitrary restriction of "You can't respec below the minimum level they can join you at" which means like level 1 is locked in for the first couple of characters and later ones are locked in to like level 3-5.

I'd much rather effort is put into making things that actually matter be where decisions require committment (I.e. Actions and dialogue options) rather than making me have to restart a run because a feat happened to not perform like I thought it would.

Or things like me just using Hirelings because the actual companions have garbage stats (Which is the case for Pillars of Eternity... I at least was able to mod PoE2 so that companions didn't suck complete and total balls. Same is true for Owlcat's Pathfinder games, I ended up modding so I could full respec the companions so I could undo absolutely horrendous decisions made by the default characters that made them garbage so I didn't have to just use custom Hirelings for the entire game)


Honestly that's more of an issue with dumb things like items that set stats to specific things rather than the system itself. Given that Divinity games never had such things (Also most other DnD based games don't have them either), there's no reason why they would necessarily be a thing going forward.


Please note, that I never said anything about actual camping. Just the notion of the camp itself as a sort of hub area to sort out things like managing party members, equipment and the likes. Actual camping is pretty redundant unless you have a stupid Spell Slot system whereby you "Manage" spell slots by making people have to rest. Which rarely actually makes for anything interesting.

Especially in games like BG3 or Pillars of Eternity where there's 0 consequence for resting after literally every fight. Solasta at least limits your ability to rest based on specific locations and Owlcat games do a combination of location based things (Though there's always the cheese of just backtrack and leave the area and rest aboard your ship/in the wilderness) or better yet the PotR Corruption system. But even then it doesn't really add too much besides annoyance that your casters simply get progressively weaker while your martials run around at full power doing way more stuff with no consequence...

Which hinges around the design of casters just being flat out stupid broken when you get to high level where 1-2 spells wipes out entire fights and resting is redundant because you just use these OP spells and plethora of spell slots to blow through everything.


Yes, I stated that it isn't the best system. It is however the best one that has been done. Most other games forgo the act of even having any semblance of addressing the issue by having dialogue options to skip fights provide little to no experience in the first place so you HAVE to murderhobo to get the exp.

BG3 at least took some initiative to provide this alternative. They just need to continue down the path towards making things more flexible. Where you gain exp from interactions once by any means (Of course, the trickier aspect is the loot part of being a murderhobo... You get everyone's stuff that way where it's harder to hand out said items for alternate methods...)


Personally... I don't really care.

Reactions have never really felt particularly interesting. Though I can't tell whether that's the mechanic as a whole, or just the rather few actual effects that can be utilized as a reaction.

Then again, even in games like XCOM with "Overwatch" things to provide reactionary behaviour, it never felt particularly interesting.

Interrupts however, are interesting. But only because of the stupid D20 system, whereby things like Reckless Attacks, Shield, Portent Dice, Warding Flare etc. being used to fudge unfavourable rolls is useful. But I'd rather simply not have to rely on a die roll for things to function in the first place.


Honestly... I'm not sure where I stand on such a thing.

Like, yes, DOS's randomization being based on that luck stat and opening every container and magically finding loot was kind of stupid... But most of the notable loot was from static locations (Usually drops from boss enemies or vendors) and in fact I don't recall really ever using much of the randomly generated items beyond like level 2, it was always the staticly found items I used instead.

Static loot placements are the bane of BG3, where the beginning of every run involves the obligatory slalom between each piece of loot (Exacerbated by the fact that the vast majority of good items are on vendors...)

I'd rather see more randomization in loot so that runs feel different, so you're not just always running the same path to get the same items for the same builds. But obviously not DOS's luck based "Any container can contain any item"

Though all CRPG's do very much like their static loot... In some cases it makes sense, for noteworthy loot to be in specific places, like held by X boss or behind Y event.

But, I think the main issue is just how much of this "Specific" loot exists. With it often being enough to fully kit out your entire party (And then some), rather than the odd 1-2 notable items supported by an assortment of random magical items. So you end up doing this slalom of loot gathering to gear up rather than going for content because you can fill up on random magical items to tide you over until you eventually pick up a notable item as a replacement for something.

I know I am in the minority, but I really like the Origins. Tavs are boring to me and Durge lost me pretty quickly, but I enjoy my Origin play throughs greatly and don't feel like I am missing out on anything. (Well, in Gale's case maybe because he is Mister Exposition and the explanations he gives - about the shadow weave for example - do not get provided by a different source.) Each of our tadfools comes with their own mission which is just as important to them as dealing with the tadpole, which gives you a different perspective on the events and the primary mission for your game depending on whom you choose. To me, this is appealing and offers an experience that is sometimes even better than when they are my companions.

What I would like to see improved on is the reactivity of the rest of the gang to your personal quest (from the threads here, this seems to be a problem Durge suffers from as well) and more special interactions with the world. Shadowheart's Origin is spoiled with those.

It would also be nice if the Origins could stay included in banter if you play them Avatar and if there was more of this situational type banter which includes the player character. (I mean scenes like the one you get when investigating Balthazar's laboratory) I miss these little conversations in act 3, where I feel they would be most necessary as everyone's personal quests draw to a close.

I mean, you say it as if implying that I liked it in DOS 1 and 2... I didn't.
But it was praised by most even there, so I'm resigned to see it return in some form.

AND you can't change their basic stats.
That's already more than enough, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm for having some commitment and restrictions, not for ALL of them.

That's on you.
While I'd prefer for default companion to be at least SOMEWHAT competent (and ideally to have some unique ability on top of it) I'd rather deal with sub-optimal story-relevant companions that with robotic hirelings, if not as a last resort.
What people do with modding has no bearing on what's in the actual game, as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah,, I'm NOT going into this debate once again.
Sufficient to say I very much disagree that any system related to managing limited resources is inherently pointless.



But I do, because they do to me. Especially the non-automated variant -aka "innterrupts" (which "overwatch" in XCOM is very much NOT a part of.

Oh, but I am. 30+ years of playing RPG and adventure games of any sort made me pretty confident on what I like and what I don't.
I like the reliability and thematic pertinence of hand placed loot, I like item systems that keep the stat bloat as limited as possible, I like finding items that can potentially remain useful for half a playthrough, if not even all of it.

Conversely, I don't like dealing with randomly generated trash I need to constantly compare with multiple variations of the same item "but with slightly different stats" etc.

Well, we agree on the first part.
On the second part you seem to forget or ignore that most of these "uniques" were level scaled to the moment you dropped them and/or comically outclassed in a matter of a couple of levels, given the way itemization worked in the game.
Needless to say I was never a fan, as these characteristics openly contradict my above list of "things I like".

Eh, this is a hard disagree for me.
I'll take the "bane" of predictability in loot placement (which works great with rolling different characters and planning ahead what you want to do with them, incidentally) over the agony and the inventory busywork of having any place of drop feel generic and having to constantly compare them for trivial differences.

The issue is that in most cases, you experience the vast majority of these Origins from them being a companion.

You get a few special insights from actually playing versus simply having a companion (Even fewer if you have the companion take the lead in conversations - Not as easily done since the PC prioritization update, but still possible)

While what Durge provides is wholly unique to playing Durge.

I'll admit that Durge's actual story is not to my taste, the concept of having a unique Origin that can only be experienced as a PC is very much the sort of experience I'd expect from an Origin character.


No I'm saying it as if it is what it is, which is an industry standard that is becoming more common.

More and more games are embracing having the ability to respec and having companions where you have more control over their growth.


Which is 1) Already assumed in the limitation for not being able to reset them back to level 0 which is when basic stats are decided and 2) Not even a "Commitment" since you didn't pick any of that and any of your actual decisions CAN be re-allocated whenever you want.

The only difference is allowing level 0 or not. Even then BG3 with its level 0 respecs still retains things like Backgrounds. With things like the Mirror in DOS (Added in as a bonus feature) still retaining Origin characters races and aspects of their appearance (But I could however, give Beast a nice haircut)


And it's on YOU how much, if at all, you interact with respecs.

You can choose not to use it if you don't want to.

I, personally, like having the option. Even if all I do with it is fix a few of the more horrendous default choices, I'd rather than be in the base game than have to look towards mods to make certain companions actually playable (Given that I exclusively play on the highest difficulties, games like PoE/Pathfinder are very much revolving around min-max builds to do that successfully. To which horribad companion stats are non-functional)


Systems for managing limited resources are not inherently pointless.

But the use cases for CRPG's tend to make them pointless. Case and point, why even have spell slots in the first place in BG3 or Pillars of Eternity when you can literally long rest and replenish them at will with no consequence?


Interrupts are still pretty automated though. It's literally just a question of "Is this worth the use of my Reaction?" which is usually "Yes" because of so few things that use it. Honestly the only actual thought provoking interrupt is things like Shield and Counterspell because they use spell slots (But the former tends to still be quite automatic given the worthlessness of Level 1 and 2 Spell Slots)


While fully deterministic systems are "Very rarely done well enough", dice based systems are NEVER done well enough. Especially D20 based ones that simply don't have the size to offer actually good variance (Which is the point for TT, the system its designed for)

D100 offers a much better avenue of variance, while proprietary calculations provides much better video game balance.


That's nice dear.


I think you're equating with non-hand placed loot with "Looty Shooter Live Service Slop"

There can be variance in loot acquisition without any of that.

Stat bloat is irrelevant to such systems. As are "Multiple versions of the same item with slightly different stats". One doesn't have to bloat the game to make it so Dagger +1 can drop from any source where a weapon might exist during Act 1. No-one has to compare one Dagger +1 to another Dagger +1 to due to "Slightly different stats"

What you're talking about is not "Handplaced Loot" but "Hand GENERATED Loot". Of which random items can still be hand generated, they're just distributed in a more organic way.


Except they weren't? Most of my statically found items I used for the entire Act if not 2-3 Acts.

It was all the "Randomly generated" stuff that was scaled when dropped and were comically outclassed in a couple of levels. Hence me never using them past level 2.


Again, this feels more like your issue is with the Generation of items rather than the placements.

(Also, planning ahead to what I want to do with a character would stem from what I can reliably obtain. This doesn't necessarily mean a static location. Maybe "Goblin Chieftains Staff of Sticking" drops in Goblin Camp A or Goblin Camp B. Such as scenario means I can plan ahead to eventually having "Goblin Chieftains Staff of Sticking" but it means I don't necessarily just bumrush Goblin Camp A in every run because that's where it drops 100% of the time)

To me that isn't an issue. I like taking on the perspective of a character I like (or maybe not like so much) and experience the events of the story from their perspective in the decision making role. The additional scenes and insights do support that experience but they are not the reason why I choose the origin as my avatar. All my play throughs with companion origins have felt unique even though - as I mentioned above - the immersion could always be improved - and oh the bugs, the bugs.

And just to make it clear, I don't think Durge-like origins are bad. I mean I did try it, I even fussed with character creation and talked with a mate who had played it about character input and such. That it absolutely didn't click with me isn't the fault of the general concept. I simply wanted to voice that I do value the option to choose one of the companions as my Origin and play as them. I would hate to see this option not be present in future games.


But since you brought up PC-prioritisation, I hope there will be a better solution for this. In my Shadowheart-run I started out by letting Astarion, Gale and Lae'zel do most of the talking for me because it felt very sneaky and the three of them come with dialogue proficiency (opposed to Shadow who has no charisma and no proficiencies in dialogue) This was pretty cool, and made it feel like we were acting as a group - until it stopped working easily.

I sometimes loaded the game with the loading screens disabled (F10) and saw the sun is able to move, so I hoped we may eventually see it linked to short rests. Like, getting from morning to afternoon to evening, or something.

Eh, I don't have a preference. On paper there are compelling choices to be made if attacking and repositioning consume the same resources. Universal action points are pleasantly straightforward - I do agree though, that BG3 offers more interesting gameplay when it comes to "what I can do" than Larian's previous titles, but I think it has more to do with Larian not balancing their games toward tactical depth, than a system they use. So in a way yeah - it's better to give players seperate resources for attacks and movement, if giving a unified one means players with just keep attacking at all times.


That's far far better way of doing that - in fact I wish Larian would abandon companion Origins all together, design those as dedicated NPCs, and offer more customisable Origins - a bit like far more robust background choices.

I don't like those. Now I don't respec (I think it goes against a spirit of an RPG) and use visual customisation sparingly, and I don't mind those being included. What I dislike is how "in your face" they are. Withers being a dedicated undead NPC in your camp is just bizzare, but than again Larian games do have a quality of an immersion of a Fortnite. What is a Magic Mirror? What does it do in my camp? Who carries it around? I do like when my games at least attempt cohesion.

I think this was a major failure of the game. Yes, I get you need reliable space to create cutscenes, but having to rest so often to not miss out of story content was annoying. Storage completely nullified carry-weight, so just decide Larian what you wanna do. Either remove camp storage (or make it not as easily accessible), or give players unlimited stash ala. Pillars of Eternity. BG3 is the worst of both words. No interesting decision making, no immersion, just all the tedioum.


Yes, I generally prefer for that reason when RPGs offer XP for completing the task rather than individual actions. However, some hate when killing a thing doesn't move the bar forward. However, it is achieved though, I do agree it is important to support and encourage all variety of playstyles and interactions, rather than just selected ones.

Yeah well I havent played any previous Larian titles, so I cant really compare.

They just dont interest me. I watch what the fans say about them and I am just still not interested.

They start of as Diablo clones. I've once played Diablo 2. That was enough Diablo to last a lifetime.

Then Larian played around with physics. Sure that may be fun for like a couple hours. Just like pretty graphics. After that you have to ask yourself the question, is this actually a game ? And its not. Physics is a gimmick.

I want a great, challenging game that has no easy answers and keeps you thinking. Not something thats repetitive. What I ideally want is a couple well designed classes to choose from with about 50 actions each on maxlevel, and lots of mechanisms to make it hard to decide what the best next action to take is. Something like Vanguard: Saga of Heroes offered. I am looking for a game that improves on this, not dumbs it down further.

I also absolutely loved (and love) the mass of spells in Baldur's Gate 2: Shadow of Amn, though sadly many have been actually weak or useless, but it had such unique spells like Timestop or Mislead or Simulacrum, spells that allowed all kinds of shennanigans. Spells that are missing from many other games, like the absolutely boring spells in The Elder Scrolls.

The drawback of D&D is of course you only get this sort of variance on spellcasters. I want that on all classes.

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1. Movement and actions separate. - Yes.

I agree that games that dont allow you to move if you act are neither fun nor realistic.

I have many complaints about World of Warcraft. Not being able to move while spellcasting is one of them.

What you describe is not what BG3 offers though. Because you CAN spent an action to just run. The situation that opponents do nothing but run towards you is very common in BG3.

The game just also gives you a bit of basic movement you cannot skip instead.

Btw action points are for computer games. D&D is designed for tabletop. That they dont offer a concept of action points is therefore very unsurprising. It would be a PITA to have in tabletop.

I cant say I like action points. Saving action points up so you can do your big action doesnt appeal to me. See my intro above. I want to act all the time, and make what thing to pick the challenge, not a waiting game.

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2. Separate Origins - Mostly NO.

I never had origins before and If I never play another game with origins again, I would miss exactly zip. The whole idea of playing an origin character was completely superflous. I literally sacrifice a whole character I could design myself to merely play a premade character ... why ?

And The Dark Urge story wasnt really that great. There are more The Forgotten Realms deities than just this one ! There are a whole lot of FR deities that are more interesting !!!

And yes, bringing variance into the games is of course a good idea, but Origins are only one possibility, and I dont see why they are actually necessary. Having classes that play very differently, like for example the Malkavian in Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines (all dialogue is completely different, because your character is insane), is also an option for that.

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3. Withers and Mirror - Yes.

In my current BG1 game for example Jaheira is a Shaman, not the usual Fighter/Druid. I did this with a character editor (NearInfinity, the only editor that actually still sees current development, works with the EEs, and also allows to mod the game, which btw I'm also doing a bit. There is also EEKeeper but the project is dead and horribly bugged).

This greatly adds to replayability of games like this, where you have a main character, but also premade companions to group with.

Nevermind that the BG3 companions are all a bit poorly skilled, with many odd numbers in stats.

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4. Camp - Yes, of course.

Not an original thing to have. Many games have it. In fact in many games its always the same camp.

BG3 does a bit of variance with the camp sites but I dont really find that adds anything of relevance. In fact it removes the option to decorate the camp yourself.

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5. Non-violent quest solutions / non-combat content in general - Yes.

Did that even need to be said ? One of my favorite games ever, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, even doesnt award xp for killing mobs at all. You only get xp for quests.

And there are of course countless games that have quests without any fighting. Famously in Planescape: Torment you can skip over almost all combat.

There are of course horrible examples, too. I really hate that in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, you are forced to play a card game. And there are also racing games. If I liked card games or liked racing games, I would play those. I really dont.

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6. Day and night cycle

Yes. And that your people get tired over time, too. Not sure why Larian skipped over that.

Instead you get multiple quests that give you unique, very strong buffs that highly encourage you to avoid sleeping altogether for as long as possible, going for very specific builds to do just that.

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7. Random loot

No. Definitely not.

Either give me specific quest rewards and placed loot, for the good loot. Or give me a crafting system which allows me to make the best loot myself.

But dont make me parse through every stupid drop. I will simply opt out of your game.

No Man's Sky has something like this, but with star systems. The success is that you look up on the internet what items you want and then go to that star system. That is honestly very very very silly. But at least its not tedious.

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First off... What?

Divinity games are CRPG's not ARPG's. They are nothing like Diablo at all.


Ironically, I actually like that mechanism.

Of course, in the setting of an MMO it makes little impact besides making kiting annoying (Though that's more of a PvP thing and PvP in MMO's is usually pretty tragic at best)

But in something like an ARPG, it can add to the complexity of combat. Finding the time to stand still and cast off powerful spells.

However, this is predicated on said ARPG not being the Diablo-esk isometric clickfest where you have to click to move and so no attacks can be done while moving leading into the whole "Lifesteal meta" because in lieu of having actual mobility options you just sit there and facetank everything (Until you're one shot as the only actual method of you being able to die since you're otherwise healing 3000% of your max health every 0.01s)


It is. You CAN use an action to gain ADDITIONAL movement, but you have your base movement speed with no action required. I'm not opposed to having the OPTION to utilize actions for additional movement.

As far as opponents doing nothing but run towards you... It's a lot less prevalent in BG3 than in Divinity, since most enemies will have thrown weapons/ranged attacks to use while running in. So them just Dashing after you for several turns is rarely a thing.


Not really. I've played plenty of TT games that use Action Points. It's not a big deal at all.


Action Points plays into that. The fact that you CAN save up action points just adds to the challenge of thinking what to pick. It doesn't mean you HAVE to save up action points. It just provides the option, with the added benefit of reducing the impact of turns where you aren't capable of consuming all action points (Such as not being in range of an enemy to do attacks, so you move closer to a distant enemy)

Since the way Action Points function is you have different abilities with different costs associated with them and you decide how best to spend your pool of Action Points. You can still act every turn, you can even pool up AP WHILE still acting every turn (Depending on how many you get per turn vs how much actions cost) or find ways to spend each action point on every turn.

A basic example of this would be DoS2 with Lone Wolf feat. You gain 3 Action Points per turn. Most actions cost 2 Action Points while some cost 3 Action Points and some cost 1 Action Point.

With your 3 Action Points per turn, you can use 1x 3 AP ability, or 1x 2 AP ability and 1x 1 AP ability, or 3x 1 AP ability to consume all points for that turn.

Alternatively, you can use 1x 2 AP ability and save 1 AP for next turn, where you can then use 2x 2 AP abilities (Since you gain 3 more next turn, with the one you had left over from this turn allowing you to access 4 AP)

This system can become more complex with higher numbers of Action Points allowing for greater variance of ability costs and thus more combinations of skills to utilize your allowance of AP.


Technically, you don't have to "Sacrifice a character you could design yourself". As seen with Durge, which is compeletely custom.

The premise of Origin characters, is to change the backstory of the character. So instead of Tav who has literally 0 backstory and thus 0 characterization, you have someone who has a tangible connection to the world with a backstory.


I don't disagree.

I like the concept of Durge, rather than the execution.

It being a unique background for the player character which allows them to fit into the world and have unique story developments that cannot be experience by simply bringing along a companion.


The difference is where the variance is being created.

Origins like Durge provide variance in story. With unique interactions and potentially even unique plots (Like, imagine a BG3 Origin who WASN'T tadpoled. Which would necessitate entirely new plots to move them through the game compared to the "Gotta remove tadpole, pretend to be True Soul, sexy dream companion turns out to be squidface, use tadpole to beat brian")

While classes provide variance in gameplay, with potentially unique ways to participate in combat or perform non-combat roles. (Of course, the impact of class diversity does get mitigated by the number of companions you acquire and can bring along. Such as how many people don't feel the need to play any of the classes that companions default to because they experience them from bringing said companions with them).

The first Divine Divinity was basically "What if we tied the clickfest combat of Diablo to an actual RPG with questlines and a somewhat interactive scenario".
It plays exactly as an hack0n slash in combat.

Original Sin 1 going turn-based at the time was the novelty for Larian, rather than their standard.