Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3 Could Be a Platform if it Were Closer to D&D RAW

Be polite and avoid personal jabs please, or consider not posting if you have nothing to add to the conversation. I believe it was WoTC's wish to tone down on the focus of alignment as a system. Though this doesn't mean that there's a concept of underlying alignments, we all have a bit of good and evil in ourselves and so does fictional characters, depending on how the writers approach them, or how they're conveyed through player action / interpretation.

I loved reading this because it drew on so many different thematic examples and throwing in Ayn Rand...perfection. And I couldn't agree more with your first statement. Alignment was supposed to just be a guide but it became a chain around our necks.

Hah, that's a great example. "I really want to wear these Robes of Vecna, better go slaughter some peasants to get to Neutral. Not too many though or I won't be able to wear my codpiece of Mordenkainen!"

One does one's best. *tips hat*

I'm glad someone got the reference.

Criticizing an opinion is not impolite. Is this really a forum for crybabies?

You've yet to criticise anything. Let me be more clear then: If you continue to fail adding anything to the conversation, other than trying to stir the pot with nonsense, you'll be offered some time off to clear your thoughts.


Edit: To elaborate on what I mean, you can communicate a disagreement or counter-point, without your judging snark. I'll quote your original post and change it to how it could be, expressing the same thought without coming off as impolite.




Alternatively just "Alignments are one of the founding ideas of the game" - Adding charged offensive terms such as 'ignorant' and then seeking validation among others as a passive attempt to ridicule someone else into submission / surrendering to your opinion, is an unhealthy way to foster debate. Eventually you'll escalate a conversation, and moderation will need to step in.

I would prefer not to have my thread locked.

Replying to give this post more traction. I agree with the game should be closer to a more typical 5E experience. Obviously, 5e cannot be ran purely RAW as the rules require DM interpretation. My issue is most of there changes are not even typical house rules or even areas where any house rules are applied. This make the game very disjointed from Pen and Paper 5e and creates huge balance distortions with in the spells and abilities. This make transitioning way harder than it should be between the two systems.

Given they are directly partnered with WoTC, I find it strange that WoTC isn't pushing for the game to follow 5e closely. As they could create a tandem strategy between the two building players bases from each other. Additionally, they can use both as marketing campaigns for each other by release campaign modules as part or teasers for campaign books. Or even release those books as fully playable modules.

I am not commenting on your particular examples at this time. Need sleep.

D&D without the rules and themes of alignment is just a generic fantasy adventure game. 5E was already an example of taking simplification too far and diluting the interesting part of the game. BG3 is making the problem even worse, but those without any experience with the rule system will obviously not understand the consequences of these decisions. The younger audience here comes from a videogame background, and that makes sense since that is the demographic being marketed to.

I'm sure BG3 will still be a good game, but this is one area where it's a major departure from authentic D&D mechanics (which are the reason for its longevity).

It's so nice to hear from people who feel the same way. There seem to be a lot of opinions to the contrary and some validation is very welcome, so thank you both.

I know that Larian is a capable company, but I just want them to understand that D&D is more than a combat system, and covering Divinity with a D&D veneer doesn't equal a job well done. Especially with a sequel to a such a legendary franchise.

There is a lot of variation in the quality of the "opinions" you will find here. It seems that many people have little or no experience with tabletop D&D and have never understood the fundamentals of the themes or the mechanics of the game. Some of that is irrelevant to making a videogame, but all of it is relevant if you want to have a valid opinion about what is good about a dice RPG and why. Of course, Larian is also marketing this videogame to people who don't have any appreciation for the slower, thematic RP elements of an RPG. You can clearly see from this game, and the great DOS1 and very good DOS2, that combat gets a much bigger share of the work and attention, and the story and RP elements are much more automated or reduced in Larian's games. So, it makes sense that some people will not understand why they are important or how to build interesting exploration, social, or non-combat gameplay.

Some of the mechanics you listed have a good chance of being revised and improved before final release. Sven has said the game needs a lot of work, and many of these seem like placeholder mechanics instead of final ones. Others, like Alignment, are very well-designed and immersive, and really make tabletop D&D great, but frankly have no chance of being included in a Larian-style vidoegame.

I started playing D&D in a bygone millennium, when video games were played on an Atari. The alignment mechanic was silly then, and it is silly now.

There are essentially only three ways it can go.

• The DM (who in this case is Larian) can impose upon the players their own consequentialist or deontological ethics. If they decide that good and evil are evaluated according to consequentialist ethics, then it won't be very fun for deontological players, and vice versa. To one person capitalism is Chaotic Evil. Socialism seeks to replace the anarchy of unregulated markets with a structured, centrally controlled economy that will prevent the exploitation of the proletariat. So then Socialism is Lawful Good. Of course to another, it is Socialists who are Chaotic Evil. They are the ones who seek to rebel against existing laws and power structures, in order to stifle free exchange and impose tyrannical economic oppression that would destroy the proven efficiency of the Free Market. To them, those who obey the law and adhere to the Non-Aggression Principle are the Lawful Good characters. There is no room for such varied perspectives on good and evil with Alignment mechanics. If smite evil works on them, they are evil. Full stop. One can easily see why Larian (or any DM for that matter) would not want to be the arbiter of whether Donald Trump is Chaotic Evil or Lawful Good in a game that is supposed to be fun for everyone. Which leads us to the second option...
• Avoiding this uncomfortable situation by never addressing any moral quandary more ambiguous than whether to save that injured puppy or sacrifice it to Bhaal. Or my personal favorite...
• House rules to omit all that alignment nonsense from the game.

Not only do alignment mechanics kill any kind of nuanced approach to ethics and morality, but it isn't even internally consistent with the setting. Faerun has a pantheon, rather than a single deity. So it should stand to reason that for a paladin to smite with the power of their patron deity, they should be smiting according to the misalignment of the one they are smiting, rather than some universal complex plane of law/chaos/morality.

A character who chose to spare a repentant murderer from execution should get good points according to the doctrine of Eldath, but by thus subverting justice they should get evil points according to the doctrine of Tyr. If a paladin draws power from their patron, a paladin of Tyr should be able to smite those pacifists who seek to undermine justice at every turn, whereas a paladin of Eldath should be able to smite only as an immediate act of self-defense or defense of others. A single universal alignment mechanic makes no sense for a diverse pantheon of judges.

I am very new to tabletop DnD but regarding your last phrase...

Isn't that how alignment is supposed to work?

As I understood it - and bear with me as I am new to both CRPGs and DnD - alignment in video games sometimes (not always though) just kind of chooses what dialogue options you'll have available. Not exclusively limiting to the chosen alignment, and often with room for character development - but ex. if you're Neutral Good then you won't have that many dialogue options from the Evil spectrum. Obviously, the downsides and limitations of alignments in CRPGs is a lot more obvious when compared to the flexible pnp-RPing (where a DM is fully immersed in the particular story and thus, enable more RP options). Or at least so I thought?

As for tabletop (5e, since I have barely any knowledge and literally 0 experience with prior editions) - I just used my players alignment to somewhat grasp what kind of decisions they were making - I didn't care to bind them to anything, it was more so that I could vaguely write my story so it makes sense accordingly (no sense in trying to write a hero's story with tons of good aligned quests / side quests if everybody wants to play shades of evil etc). As for abilities granted by deities, I always had my players specifically chose (or that I, as a DM, chose for them, whichever makes sense from a RP perspective) a deity and their spell/action would just work accordingly.

Like you said - being endlessly merciful and benevolent might not be the answer to all good options, but that depends entirely on which deity the PC is channeling from. I kinda just assumed that this was a part of why one would have a DM - to create this living flexibility from alignments. Ex. my cleric is a follower of Lathander and whatever divine favors / disfavors he'll earn along the way is judged by my interpretations of Lathander's teachings - not some universal dilemmas.

As for the alignments themselves, on paper, I did not realize that they were supposed to be limiting in practice. I just had my players loosely chose an alignment in order to have something to lean back for roleplaying- with greater emphasis on lawful, neutral and chaotic than good, neutral and evil - and moreover, (like I mentioned) so that I have some kind of idea what kind of quests I can write for the story. In other words, I just use it as some kind of helping tool tip to stay in character(s).

Almost all of the whining I have read about alignment comes from people with weak imagination and a poor grasp of the concepts of morality and law. Alignment is an essential ingredient in treating those issues in a role-playing setting. Of course it's simpler and easier to just delete all the components that you find confusing and difficult to implement, but that also makes it extremely boring. D&D is a template that requires players to bring their own knowledge and creativity to make it work, and you have to also find some decently intelligent people to play it with. Some people may not have access to those kind of resources.

This is how it works in Faerun though. Each god of the pantheon is associated with a typical alignment, reinforced by the literal existence of the hells with LE devils and CE demons. Clerics/Paladins are supposed to do things that match with their god's alignment/goals/values. Paladins of Tyr should follow the law and bring justice, where followers of Tiamat should be greedy and try to gain power at the expense of others. Everything in your example quoted is exactly how it works. I think you're conflating "Good" with "liked by the god," which is incorrect. An evil god likes evil actions and thinks that's the correct way to live, but they're still evil actions.

Intent matters for alignment, so your socialists'/capitalists' actions would depend on the environment they're in and their goal. Capitalist in order to amass personal wealth? LE. Capitalist because you want to fix the injustices of feudalism? LG, maybe NG or CG depending on how you're achieving their goal. In Faerun, Good is effectively synonymous with selfless/kind and Evil is ~greedy/selfish. But there's infinite different ways that you can play a Good character (e.g., Greater Good vs Individual Good), each of which is valid but might make more or less sense for different Gods.

This is correct, but it requires thought and creativity on the part of the players. There are many ways that smart groups of players have followed the Alignment rules to create interesting and thematically consistent adventures, and you should be able to do this on your own without expecting the PHB to hold your hand through it. Attempting to treat RP mechanics like a videogame ruins D&D. The fact is that morality and law are indispensible elements of a fantasy adventure, and Alignment is an efficient and enjoyable way to include them.

That's great if you just want to use alignment as a personal tool to stay in character. Personally, I think there are much better tools than alignment for that. What does your character want most? What do they fear most? What do they hope to gain? What are they afraid to lose? What do they think their patron deity would want them to do? What principles do they value? '"My character is evil, so they do the evil thing because they are evil" makes for a much less interesting villain than "my character is terrified of watching her friends die and being powerless to help them. She will do absolutely anything in order to never feel that helpless again."

Regardless of how you choose to motivate your character though, you don't need a ruleset for that. The function of a ruleset is inherently limiting by its very nature. Most of the time that is a good thing. It is great for limiting how far you can run, how many times you can attack, how convincing you can be when you lie to that guard, etc. In the case of alignment mechanics, it is designed to limit what classes you can play, what equipment you can use, etc. It allows you to cast Detect Alignment on Karl Marx and Ayn Rand to determine who is good and who is evil, completely bypassing the need for any evaluation of what those concepts even mean.

And since good and evil are tangible absolutes that can be determined with a simple spell, there isn't really any room for characters to have differing opinions on morality, or ever question whether they did the right thing. This creates an environment where Evil deeds are always done by self-professed Evil villains who identify as Evil and seek to further the aims of Evil in the name of Evil.

A nuanced exploration of ethical dilemmas was stifled by RAW alignment mechanics, which I imagine is one of the reasons they are now fading into obscurity.

Ah yes, BG3's nuanced ethical dilemma of "Do you want to help the poor, refugee, starving, homeless tieflings?" or "Would you rather brutally massacre them all for the lolz and so you can have sex with a hot girl?" xD (this is a jab at the game, not at you.)

I agree that often alignment can be a crutch when it's used as prescriptive rather than descriptive. But Ayn Rand would objectively detect as Neutral (on the evil-good scale) given her belief that the individual should "exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself." This doesn't mean that her ideas are wrong, as they might have the side effect of improving everyone's life. Or such a society would crash and burn into oppression and misery. So you'd still need to evaluate the merit of her ideas even after knowing her alignment.

This really shows the poor understanding of the game, and possibly the wrong choice of a hobby. This specific system is a way to allow players a way to include two very important thematic aspects of a fantasy world into a game, and is interesting and adds richness to it as a result. In general, the basic D&D rules are several hundred pages long, and are not "limiting." What a strange thing to say. That is the opposite of what a game is. I wonder how a person with this attitude ever got mixed up in a game with so many rules that limit their need for endless freedom and power. This attitude could be the result of only having experience with new or immature players, or just that the player is not part of the intended audience for the game. It's funny to hear this kind of tantrum being thrown because a player does not want to follow "The Rules." The rules are there for good reasons. The game is the rules. Their purpose is to allow for common participation in a logical representation of a shared world. That compromise is what allows cooperation and interaction. Someone unwilling or unable to compromise and exchange their perspective may cause problems in the group later. But this does not work unless the players bring a sufficient amount of their own awareness of how these rules are an opportunity. You need them to include more than just your own fantasies and daydreams. Seeing the value in the design of these rules does require a certain amount of maturity and wisdom, and is definitely the wrong game for someone with a solipsistic personality. The kind of person that thinks an economic scholar is "Evil" and an egoist author is "Good" may have difficulty in seeing the diverse possibilities that this game system is attempting to capture.

As a theoretical construct this is valid but we aren't really talking about the game in its true form where you are playing with other human beings who you can discuss the interpretation of the rules and come up with a balance that makes sense. We are discussing a computer simulation of the game that is meant to be played in person. There is no "common participation" - rules such as alignment which are by nature arbitrary then get applied in a way which is arbitrary by whoever decides and we all just have to live with it even if it makes no sense.

As an applied science those rules resulted in failures on multiple occasions.
Take Bg1 and 2. The concept of Alignment was juxtaposed with the concept of Reputation - so that if your reputation was too high your "evil" party members would complain and even leave the party. Why would an Evil person dislike having a good reputation?
Especially if a low reputation would result in being chased by guards and paying more for everything?

Alignment became this heavy-handed thing that dragged the game down. Solution, minimize its effect on the rules. In 5e, according to the Rules - Alignment is not a huge deal. So are you saying you prefer the 3.5 ruleset to 5e?

Yes, the videogame version of 5E (even if BG3 followed it exactly, which it clearly doesn't) is a very different experience from tabletop with a DM. Alignment, plot, themes, and anything non-combat related are the great strengths of D&D, and are the reasons why it has been popular. They are what differentiate it from generic fantasy RPGs. They are generous and very useful for mature players that want to participate in a shared world, as a party. If you are very self-centered, the D&D party system is not going to work.

Those are also the same parts that are much harder to add into a self-contained videogame system, of course. I am not necessarily defending any published videogame adaptation of them, though. My comments are in response to a lack of understanding of those elements in core D&D, not specifically related to BG3. I think anyone who has deeper experience with D&D does not expect any videogame to be able to add them, for the reasons you mentioned. I did not expect any of the BG games to have them, and I still enjoyed playing them. I am going to enjoy BG3, too.

As for the problem of which aspects of Alignment to include in a videogame, and how to do that in a consistent way, I'm not offering a game design solution to that. I agree that it's hard to do, and I am willing to accept imperfection in a videogame version of D&D because of that.

Removing emphasis on Alignment in 5E was a mistake for a lot of reasons. It's too OT to start a debate about that. It was not done because too many players were whining about it in campaigns, though. These kind of changes are initiated at a very high level, due to political or cultural factors. So, yes, I do feel that the game would be better if Alignment were reformed instead of hidden, the way it's being treated now. D&D is very long-lasting, so hopefully it will return in the future after being improved. From a philosophical point of view, some of the conceptualizations of law and morality are a little primitive, but those definitions can easily be reworked without just abandoning the system.

Again though, that's kind of OT here. The fact is that any videogame is going to have to accept a reduced RP element due to the closed-system nature of a videogame, and the need for the developer to anticipate every possible decision a player makes in advance. As I said, I think most people with experience in tabletop have realistic expectations about a videogame being able to include all of that.