Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Verticality and its implications

From the footage and comments released by the developers, it certainly seems like BG3 will have a lot of multi-level maps/areas. This creates a couple of concerns for me.

1.) I am afraid I will get lost and confused! I'm not the best with spacial awareness, lol.

2.) More seriously, I am concerned about what this will mean for melee characters in combat situations. Multi-level scenarios seem to favor ranged characters significantly over their melee counterparts. Ranged characters can bring "death from above" (or below) while melee characters struggle to get into position.

I am certainly not opposed to vertical encounters in general. But I hope this game offers plenty of non-vertical combats as well.

Say you built a pure fighter like Lae'zel or a custom Githyanki. If you go Eldritch knight then you could have ranged cantrips at level 3 which scale with level and do not use spell slots.

Stats

You are now useful close up or at range. If you are a dex based fighter then you can swap out a bow.

Having a caster use magic to allow your melee focused hero to quickly or immediately close the gap and go to town amongst enemy archers will do the trick.

If you plan on only using melee you will just need to do your best to scout out terrain and position effectively before the fighting starts.

In classic BG I always had ranged weapons equipped by default on my party, I think a lot of RPGs make ranged weapons ineffectual when in fact they have always been the deadliest weapons throughout history.

I guess every ennemies won't have range weapon and will come close to your party members. That's something your melee companions could deal with i.e.
I also hope we won't have only range combats with an ennemies on each rocks arround you and no one in front of you, but it doesn't look like this in the gameplay video we saw.

When it comes to verticality, I am more interested in how the world design is gonna be.

I know Larian has been talking more about combat when it comes to verticality, but watching the live stream(June 18th) again and again I really hope they can pull it off with the world design,

The way Swen broke into Goblin camp or the way he jumped into the Underdark gives me hope they have what it takes to make an insane world full of exploration and unexpected events

P.S. I might be using the wrong terminology here (world design), so feel free to correct me

Dashing and pushing enemies off a cliff should trigger opportunity attacks. Unless surprised.

Otherwise it's all too easy to push people around.

I am not sure it would be an opportunity attack in D&D 5 rules, but definitely at least a dex saving throw.

Dex or str or con save or even skill test, whichever is better.

Try pushing a giant or wrestler around.

It very much is a STR vs DEX or STR



Obviously, in BG3, shoving is a bit stronger than that, but I hope the check remains the same.

Encounter design being one of the strenghts of Larian and verticality already being present in their previous games - and also in D&D -, it would be quite a surprise if it actualy upset the balance of the game or make most fights too similar.

But if it does, players will see it in early access, there will be all sorts of heat maps to show it to Larian (as seen in a few interviews and presentations), and it will likely be adjusted one way or the other.

Larian probably won't limit weapon range as much as they did in DOS2 since it would go against the core material, and to an extent against the spirit of D&D. So sniping will probably be posible, but it should advantage the player. If I remember what we've seen about sneaking correctly, enemies will have a line of sight, so they seem unlikely to take down players from far out unless an encounter is designed for it.

I'm mostly curious to see how it will affect the design of the Underdark. We've seen glimpses and it looks like a relatively complex and layered open environment where verticality might make encounters more complex to design and balance.

You probably have the juiced up Jump you can use with melee characters to get close.

Will enemies also push you off cliffs?

Or is it a trick for pc's only. That would be a hugely unbalanced.

I suspect they'll be able to do it too, if it makes sense for the creature you fight. Larian doesn't seem to be scared of making strong enemies capable of doing the exact same things you can do.

In D:OS2 enemies loved to teleport you to lower ground, and burning surfaces. I done see why they wouldn’t do so in BG3 (with an exception that the push might be more difficult to script.)

Swen's next heavy suggestion for EA might be to make sure to position your characters on ledges before you engage an encounter....'just to see what happens'.

I think they should change push, into a good, oldfashioned kick.
https://youtu.be/nO-m1kXknVM