Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Feedback about Action Bar and Spell

Hi guys!

I'll start with a premise: english is not my first language, so forgive me if I make some mistakes.

After a few hours I think BG looks pretty amazing, but I think the interface could be optimized with some quality of life:
A sub-menu for spell - maybe a pop up menu - could be very useful so that the right action bar remains only for objects (and maybe class features). I'm saying this because at a higher level a Cleric or a Wizard is going to have tons of Spell and the bar is going to look very unconfortable to use.
The option to improve a spell, like Cure Wounds, to cast it with a second level spell slot, could be selected with a right click on the spell icon.

Also Sneak Attack looks kinda strange to me: I get that maybe some player would like to decide when to use it and when not to, but a specific button looks kinda odd. Maybe an option to automatically activate it could be a solution?

I'd like to hear what you think about this!
Have a nice day and stay safe!

I was about to start a topic on the same thing.

I’m not very far through due to constant crashes, although I’m pretty sure that’s largely due to my flakey computer. (BG3 has finally made me seriously look into what’s wrong). However, I’ve played enough to have some thoughts.

Standard attack section is more or less fine. It’s quite nice to have the weapon specific special attacks here as well, but then that makes me wonder why a rouge’s sneak attack for example is on the other side? It could also be a bit clearer which is your current weapon set as the greyed out buttons seem almost as prominent as the highlighted ones. No big deal though.

The bonus action section is OK, but again it’s a bit weird that these are just the standard bonus actions, and you can unlock other bonus actions such as “dash” which then appear in the “everything else” section.

And the everything else section is where it gets pretty messy. Spells, scrolls, potions, throwable items as well as the special attacks and bonus actions mentioned above are all lumped in together, and they auto populate in random order. It’s also not clear which spells are cantrips and which use a slot without checking the tool tip. DOS games weren’t great for this either, but at least you had the whole length of the screen to group things as you like. Also in DOS games skills and spells all worked the same way- they had an AP cost and a cool down, so having them all in the same bar wasn’t too confusing. Now we have skills and items that use an action, skills and items that use a bonus action, spells that use a slot and spells that don’t use a slot, all crammed into right hand side of the action bar.

Without rearranging everything, I think it could be improved a lot by just having tabs on the right hand section. Maybe for weapon skills, cantrips, main spells, scrolls, and potions/consumables, and a favourites. Spells could maybe also be grouped by level (I’m not far enough in to know how much that could help). These could then all auto populate sensibly, and if there’s any that the player uses often, they could add them to favourites tab.

Yeah, I think you're right. (also, my PC sucks too, so you're not alone bro)

Maybe for a player with no experience in D&D 5e a lot of submenus would be confusing and less easy to approach, but right now the system may look fine to get in, but as soon as you reach lvl 3 it looks like a mess (wonder what would happen at lvl 10?).
Imho subemenus for each category could help the player base and give a fresh experience, but I get that this is not the first fix we need in the game.
Also that would prevent a great loss of time after every level up for the new bar setting (for every character).

Maybe it's not the right time for quality of life, but they're always appreciated