Hey I'm new here - just wanted to leave my feedback on BG3 early access
Baldur's Gate III Early Access is already looking really promising. If Larian keep up the good work and don’t ‘rest on their laurels’ so to speak this could easily become a game for the ages. There are however some major problems mechanically that do need to be addressed. I love the combination of verticality, surface effects and Ultima style interactivity merged into the DnD 5e ruleset. There is an amazing combination of Larian's homebrew rules with the 5e system to be found - we just need to get there. One excellent change Larian have made for example is the ability to use a levelled spell as an action and a levelled spell as a bonus action. You can't do this in PnP, but you absolutely should be able to in a video game.
SPELL MECHANICS - Need to distinguish arcane/divine spells. Wizards shouldn't be able to scribe divine spells, its way too strong (hopefully this is just a bug and not intentional, but it was not fixed last patch).
- Spell saves need to happen at the END of the enemy turn not at the start. Otherwise the PC needs the enemy to fail two saves in a row for anything to take effect for 1 turn. (This is hopefully a bug and it is likely frustrating players who already struggle with RNG).
- Only allow casters to use scrolls. This is critical. (Exceptions for revivify).
- Allow swapping prepared spells only on long rest (otherwise sorcerers will be very weak when they're added).
- Abjurer's ward doesn't scale at the moment, making it very weak.
- Mage Amor should go back to granting an AC of 13 + Dex modifier. The current implementation of +3AC will open it to abuse in multiclasses.
- Mirror Image is WAY too weak at the moment because misses cause you to lose images. Please fix this! Images should only vanish when attacks would have hit you but hit an image instead.
- Web spells are too weak at the moment. Remember it needs to take your whole action to try and escape the web.
COMBAT MECHANICS - Switch high ground advantage/disadvantage to a flat +2/-2 (or +4/-4) bonus. Advantage is too strong and needs to cost resources. Critically this also allows height bonuses to stack with things that grant advantage rather than making those things less desirable.
- Remove backstab advantage (or rethink flanking a bit). At the moment, its silly that you can circle behind anyone on your turn and gain this advantage and they don't react. Perhaps only allow when the enemy is flanked (i.e. engaged with someone else).
- Disallow eating food during combat.
NON COMBAT MECHANICS - Limit weight of food that a character can eat per rest (else non combat healing spells are irrelevant).
- Jump should cost movement and not your action.
- Disengage needs to cost your action (at the moment its too easy to escape melee - I'd give this back to only rogues as their unique thing).
- Try to limit long rests at release (ideally by forcing time to mean something in the narrative. At the end of the day, resource management is deeply ingrained into DnD).
CONVERSATION - Allow us to swap who is speaking in conversation - this is SO SO important in multiplayer but also in single player.
COMPANIONS - Please consider some non-origin companions (HALSIN IS AMAZING!!!)
- Please still consider increasing the party size to 5. Most DnD groups I play in are 5 person groups and we don't want to leave someone behind in mutliplayer. (I know this one is a longshot).
QUALITY OF LIFE SUGGESTIONS - Chaining seems to cause characters to run in circles when casting spells out of combat (try casting guidance). Can we fix this?
- Add an option to break concentration early
- Show lockpicking and perception dice rolls explicitly (or make this an option)
- Show shields/secondary weapons stowed on characters
- Add option to rotate character in inventory screen
- Make all crates/barrels climbable (it seems inconsistent that some just can't be climbed)
Prof. Dr. Dr. Mad S. Tist 