Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Early Access gameplay feedback compendium

Increase the amount of sources the game draws from, including mordenkainen and volo, for character backgrounds

Restore reaction spells to abjurers, incl durability of magical shields, and ensure that monsters like the Beholder Spectator actually get their reactions/Legendary actions abilities (dragons get them too)

include multiattack for creatures/PCs that can actually use it (Lae'zel should be able to, as all Gith warriors as per MM can do two attacks), as should the Intellect devourer. Astarion kind of does already. Thugs, however, don't.

Pickpocketing:
I like the new system where you make a roll for each item, it makes it way more interesting to decide how much you want to push your luck.
I would however like to see slighly more complex teactions to theft from NPCs.

• Since you can pickpocket someone any number of times it would be more immersive if vendors are capable of more modes than looking for a thief or "everything is fine". Perhaps the difficulty could increase if you come back to steal from a vendor that has noticed things going missing but havnt found a culprit to represent them being more alert?

• Another thing Id like to see is if NPCs didnt always immediately notice something getting stolen no matter how small. Like if I swipe a key or a potion from someone and roll really well it feels weird that they always know something was stolen 2 seconds after you close their inventory. Perhaps this could work something like narrowly succeeding your slight of hand check will make them notice like they do now, but if you roll a 15 on a required difficulty of 5 it feels like they wouldnt/shouldnt immediately know something is missing.


Edit: changing post because someone had already provided the answer

Yes it would be very noce to see something like the hexblade warlock. From what I understand warlocks is a class wizards have been looking at as somewhat underwhelming in power but havnt done stuff fore like the ranger because so many players think they are cool and are prepared to overlook them being a slightly weaker class. The hexblade kind odresses a lot of whats missing from making warlocks semi melee viable casters. Looking at stats of what type of warlock people tend to play on a statistical level the hexblade is overwhelmingly popular and kinda shows the weakness of the other subclasses.

There is the option about how to justify in game the camp mecanic, giving the player a rod of security or similar item during the rest tutorial will achieve that.

-> Spells informations, specially when you need to decide which spells you're preparing on the K menu. I miss being able to read the spells before choosing them and have the exact information on duration, range, target effect and damage, if it does damage or save , it'd be nice to know our save spell DC on that screen as well.

PCs dont get multiatack, La'zel will get 2 atacks at lvl 5 (with extra attack not multiatack). 3 at lvl 11 if the game goes to that lvl, Larian said they will try 10 as max but is not final yet.

yep, this is important, not only on spells, in everything. Right now you need to know it or go to the players handbook/dndbeyond or similar.

+1 it's my favorite class

Can we get Bladesingers, Hexblade makes melee viable warlocks, Bladesinger makes melee viable Wizards. Both allow alternative play styles for existing classes so are excellent. (Valor Bards too obviously)

Another one, that now requires jump but it should not.

Characters should be able to pass through ally characters spaces during movement as long as the movement does not end there. Right now they block each other pathing but you should not block ally pathing. As now, it forces you to use the op jump/disengage to go over your companions.

Whe should have cover. Right now we have full cover "path blocked" but non bonus to ac depending on partial blocks, no going down or hidding behind half cover. I want to hide my mage behind a table or a barrel and get the bonus for it.

+1

College of swords bard too. These are all gorgeous.

Rewarding non combat solutions:

My suggestion for this idea is to give xp per encounter resolution, not by killing enemies.

So wether you kill or lie through it you get the same anount of xp. Killing afterwards wouldnt give xp since the encounter was already solved.

This is like the milestone but on smaller scale, so if you get to an encounter or not, your total xp will differ from play to play.

Great idea, thanks for the thread. Posting my feedback on Rangers in this post;
Ranger Feedback (and some general gameplay)

Favoured Enemy
I like what you’ve done with this, and it is interesting though it is just a bunch of free skill proficiencies and cantrips etc. I’d like to see this expanded and refined once you add more cantrips. One featuring thorn whip and green flame blade would be nice, fitting the ranger fantasy.
I strongly suggest including the following as a base benefit of favoured enemy/foe from the UA Subclasses (soon to be published in the next D&D book) https://media.wizards.com/2019/dnd/downloads/UA-ClassFeatures.pdf
Favoured Foe 1st-level ranger feature (replaces Favoured Enemy)
You can call on your bond with nature to mark a creature as your favoured enemy for a time: you know the hunter’s mark spell, and Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for it. You can use it a certain number of times without expending a spell slot and without requiring concentration— a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. When you gain the Spellcasting feature at 2nd level, hunter’s mark doesn’t count against the number of ranger spells you know.
Hunters mark is like sneak attack on rogues for the TT RPG – you are balanced to have its damage pretty much all the time, and requiring concentration for it, spending spell slots etc is just too consuming on the Ranger – this is evident in your game as well. The ability to recast it for free as a bonus action if the target dies should remain as well, this all plays into the real fantasy of a ranger as an expert hunter.

TLDR for your summary;

*Include the Favoured Foe feature for Rangers; Hunters Mark can be cast for free as a bonus action (not requiring a spell slot, or concentration) [Wisdom Modifier] number of times per day.
*Include more "Favoured Foe" types, including ones using other cantrips like Thorn Whip and Green Flame Blade

Equipment
Rangers should start with a longbow. It’s a bit annoying not to have access to one for so long in the game, until you come upon the druid encampment. I also feel like access to a magical bow is missing for a long time, while most other magical weapons are available for other classes.
Rangers should also start with an offhand weapon, or a single martial main hand in which they are proficient.
Arrows aren’t a thing (yet?) and I’m not sure it adds very much to the game to have limited ammunition, but the character should wear a quiver at least, probably even make it an item (d&d has magical quivers as magic items, so it makes sense we have mundane ones to eventually replace with a magic item).
I think that the magical arrows which drop from DOS1/2 should do something a bit more special for Rangers. Perhaps empower the next two shots from your quiver with their effects? Give you two fire arrows, two lightning arrows? When you get the extra attack feature these will be used up quickly instead of being inventory fodder. 1D4 fire on a couple of shots is hardly game breaking, but it is a cool way to use these items.

TLDR for your summary;

*Rangers should start with a Long Bow, and the option of a single main hand or both main and offhand weapons
*Magical bows seem much more rare than other magic items at present
*Quivers should be an item (definatle a visible part of an archer character), ammunition to be debated/decided
*Magical Arrow items to have an interesting and special mechanic for Rangers (work on the next X shots, debate)


Speak with Animals
The “Speak with dead” feature in your game offers a recast of the ability for free once you have used it once. Consider adding this for Speak with Animals as well! This again is in the upcoming class changes for Rangers in 5E
Primal Awareness 3rd-level ranger feature (replaces Primeval Awareness)
You can focus your awareness through the interconnections of nature: you learn additional spells when you reach certain levels in this class if you don’t already know them, as shown in the Primal Awareness Spells table. These spells don’t count against the number of ranger spells you know. Primal Awareness Spells Ranger
Level Spell 3rd detect magic, speak with animals
5th beast sense, locate animals or plants
9th speak with plants
13th locate creature
17th commune with nature
You can cast each of these spells once without expending a spell slot. Once you cast a spell in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

*Speak with animals should work the same way as speak with dead already does, recast for free (or cast for free always as a ranger at level 3, as per 5E UA (soon to be published in the next book))

Colossus Slayer
Currently very bugged, doesn’t seem to work. Should be a D8 extra damage on any hit against a target already hurt? (once per turn) – Noticed a few times that damage does not seem to be in the combat log after hitting a damaged target.


Missing Spells
Hoping this is just because you have not gotten around to it, but Goodberry is missing (a real mainstay of Ranger play) as well as absorb elements and detect magic. I’m hoping detect magic will be there. I thought about it when we discovered Shadowheart’s pod in the tutorial, using detect magic to try and solve releasing her. Logically that means dispel magic should be in too, but level 3 so not appropriate for this puzzle at level 1.

Athletics/Acrobatics
These are not used at the moment, which is annoying. Surely, they should affect your jump distance as well as strength. Other cool implementations could include giving you bonuses to climbing etc so that it costs you less movement to get the high ground so valued by a bow user. This is exactly what a DM might ask for in a table top game, the player to make one of these checks to get high up for an advantage attacking.

TLDR for your summary;

*Athletics and Acrobatics to affect jump distance, vertical movement.

General feedback on EA experience here:

Camera

Is there a reason to lock the camera angle/tilt? I can’t remember if DOS/DOS2 was like this, but its really annoying when you’re fighting someone inside a building from outside, or when they’re above/below you significantly. I feel like I constantly want to angle the camera but all you can do is zoom, go to top down view (tactical) or swivel/pan around.

TLDR for your summary;

*More camera freedom


Combat

I think its too fast. Funny right? I heard Larian saying that speeding up combat was a focus for them in one of the pre-EA panels/shows/updates. I think it has gone too far the other way. We’re not given the time to enjoy combat, and a lot of the nuances fly by without really penetrating the scalp because the combat log zooms by and has separate lines that you have to mouse over in specific places to see the rolls, and what happened. Half the time as my light cleric it was hard to tell my reaction was going off, and if you check the combat log you can’t even see any acknowledgement that it was used. Speeding up combat was used as the reasoning for reactions having to be automatic, more on that later, and honestly its pretty hard to tell what is going on from one moment to the next, though some of the battle verticality and spread, combined with the camera angle lock might be to blame.

Even the crit marker is bad at the moment, because it’s the only dice roll you see but it completely hides the damage you do, putting you into some kind of action cam which often hides the actual impact of the attack. More on putting the dice on screen later.

The time it takes for some NPCs to “decide” what to do is vexing, and this is not intended I guess, so not part of my feedback above. I’m really talking about how fast activated skills fly by doing their thing. Something that is a d20 roll, followed by damage dice is over in half a second right now and I'd prefer it was a few seconds long I guess so we could see what is happening. It may also pave the way for a better reaction system.....

TLDR for your summary;

*Large debate about reactions (and how nerfed they are as automatic, non player controlled)
*Large debate around the pace of combat
*AI "thinking" delay/bug aritifically extends combat time
*See more dice?


Reactions

Automated reactions are not as bad as I first thought they would be. It makes sense for some things. AoO is fine, when it’s the only thing you have anyway, and stuff like “Shield” (Currently not ingame?) or even Riposte (battlemaster). The problem comes when a class has multiple reaction triggers, some more preferred or appropriate than others, or when an iconic and powerful reaction needs specific player agency and control to a) be used most effectively and/or b) to make the player feel powerful and like they’re having a key impact. Counterspell and Cutting Words would be my examples here. I don’t see any way of implementing these automatically, without nerfing them or changing them. Cutting words is a dice roll, and the caster is meant to know the attack result before they decide to use it. Moreover the caster might or would use this to prevent an attack on a key ally at a key moment, when an opportunity presents itself. Warding flare is another good example (improved). Impose disadvantage on a creature you can see attacking a creature other than you. Automatically this will just trigger on the first attack following the clerics players turn? I want to be able to save my wizard with it, or myself, or however I choose to use it. Choose being the key word. What about counterspell? Will I just stop some half-caster’s cantrip because it’s the first spell cast after my turn, leaving the party wide open for the fireball?

I’m not sure of the solution. But given that I feel like combat is already too fast, I’d honestly prefer interrupting the combat flow to present the player with a few seconds worth of “do you want to counter this spell?” rather than destroying these iconic abilities to make them work under the automated system. Please rethink this!


TLDR for your summary;

*Automatic reactions will not work for some more complex reactions for other classes/features from higher levels or not yet implemented
*Solution needed, do not want to see all these nerfed or left out to fit in with automated system currently in game


Rolls

I feel like we don’t see enough dice for a D&D game. I kind of get why a lot of it is hidden, and I’m not saying that we need to see every dice roll, but there are options here. We could just have toggles for a lot of it, so you can see your damage rolls and have it presented on screen instead of the “floating combat text” that shows just your damage – an option people could disable if they wanted.

Initiative is a good one for me. Currently I can’t even find where you see your initiative (number), you just get placed on the initiative track and that’s it. I feel like I want to see the dice, and see my bonus get added. It can feel pretty bad when you’re really low in a big fight. If you see the bad roll, then at least you experienced it on screen and understand what happened. Put the numbers on the portraits of the turn order too.

Doing this on screen I think could help make the combat more D&D, as well as solve some of the pacing issues mentioned above. I consider this a great multiplayer feature as well to be honest, anyone who has played D&D knows that one of the simple joys is looking at your friends damage dice and seeing those 4 D8s roll really high above average. Let us see that if we want, gate it behind an option if you think not everyone wants to see – but I’d be willing to bet it would be popular.


TLDR for your summary;

*See more dice/rolls ingame.
*All players in multiplayer should see dice rolls from allies
*Option to have attack/damage/initiative (basically any roll) show on the screen, at least the result (not neccessarily a rolling dice like a skill check)


(Multiplayer) Dialogues

Some fellas made a couple of great threads on this already https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGat...larians_dialogue_system_doesnt_work_for/ which I agree with 100%. https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/j6q59j/feedback_using_the_best_speaker_in_party/

First, my personal pet peeve, automatic dialogues or ambush dialogues. You need to bloody well pull ALL the players into it, not just the one who triggered it. I do not want to miss things because someone was exploring ahead a bit. It makes no sense and can only create a negative multiplayer experience. I’d also say that manually selected and started dialogues should also pull in all players to “auto listen”, and they can have the option to leave (but not start more dialogues) if they’re wanting to sell etc.

Further to this, the best party members bonus should be used for any checks. NPCs are talking to the party, not the player who happened to click them first. Your party will have a ‘face’ who does your persuading, a wizard who does your arcane divining and a cleric who knows about religion. And everything in between. Maybe you have some massive holes, but thats how you decided to play! Making it the person who clicks first who gets to do the checks makes no sense when you consider it a cooperative party experience, especially in multiplayer, at least most of the time. I’m sure there are some cases where it makes sense. I guess if I’m using speak with animals, I shouldn’t get to use my bard’s charisma for checks while talking to a chihuahua, and you can balance those edge cases by enforcing the checks to be from the relevant player where appropriate. For the most part though put the player's name in the conversation response so we know whos bonus is being used (and who is providing the option if its a cool race/class/background/etc option) and give us all options so other party members can chip in. That person should then see the DC and click the dice, and that character should be the one who says the dialogue. Currently other players in multiplayer can’t see these rolls either, but they should. Rolling dice and watching others roll dice is the backbone of fun in D&D!

In the same way, the current voting system isn’t really a voting system as far as I can tell. It’s a vote suggestion, and the person controlling the dialogue can ignore the rest of the party and pick what they want. I’m not sure how big a deal this is, but it doesn’t fit with the party/cooperative spirit of the game again. NPCs are generally talking to the party, not just the player who clicked them first.

The DC reduction based on your skill bonus also doesn’t make sense. Obviously it’s the same, mathematically, but it doesn’t feel as good. Likewise your “guidance” bonus doesn’t even get shown to you. You should see the Guidance dice roll next to your D20, and then see them all get added up with your bonuses to your result. Reducing down a DC just makes it feel like there was no point in rolling the check somehow, and yes, that is just human psychology but what can I tell you. D&D have been doing it this way for years, and it works!


TLDR for your summary;

*Don't allow people in multiplayer to so easily miss story content/dialogue from conversations, bring all players into the conversation by default (allow them to leave if they want to do something else)
*Already mentioned in your summery, NPCs should talk to the party, not just the initiating player - other party members skill should be available to use for checks
*"Voting" system is more of a suggesstion system at the moment, do we want democracy? (debate)
*Show skills and bonuses, show bonus dice and let us roll them, dont reduce the DC



UI (Spell Slots/Spell Levels)

Adding a button for every spell slot level you can cast a low level spell is not a scalable solution, and the space economy it destroys even at level 3-4 is already showing that. I would suggest revisiting this with spells being represented by single icons, and then the spell slot levels for each spell being presented. Maybe even do it both ways, so you can select the slot first and then that changes all the spells on your bar to that spell slot level of each spell so you can mouseover and read the increase. The base should always be in the tooltip as well, so you can more easily see what the higher slot is giving you in terms of upgrade.

The way they get splashed onto the bar is also annoying, especially with every potion, scroll and usable ending up there too. Which brings me to..


TLDR for your summary;

*UI is not scalable for multiple spell slot versions of the same spell, make better. (Select Spell slot first, then click spell? - Make it obvious when some spells don't have a higher effect using a higher slot (EG, Fairy Fire)



Inventory Junk

There is too much inventory bloat imo, and not enough sorting options etc to help you manage it. With better options for sorting/selling I'm sure it could work, but honestly there are too many scrolls and potions etc dropping at the moment. I'm pretty sure spell scrolls are meant to be a lot more rare in the D&D setting, and having them littering the world like this is a bit silly I think.

I hate, with a passion, the fact that keys dont disappear when you've used them. Or have a tooltip saying if you've used them. Make it easy on us, please! We've got a tadpole in our brains, I don't need an hour of inventory shuffling when we get back to town, only to find 10 keys with no idea if they're all safe to throw away. Have a heart!

TLDR for your summary;

*Make keys go away when we've unlocked the item they are for, maybe even have them as a separate inventory
*Too much junk around, too many scrolls. Loot in D&D is generally gold, and gems etc - weapons armor etc should be around, but more rare


Encounter XP (non-violent resolution)

There are already loads of encounters in the game where you can resolve a situation through dialogue, with nonviolent solutions. This is great, and is how D&D is supposed to be played! Awesome! However, a DM would also give you the XP for resolving the encounter. Probably the same as if you had defeated the encounter with combat. It makes sense to do this, but it doesn’t seem like Larian are doing this. There are a lot of guides for DOS/DOS2 where you simply kill everyone in sight for the “better” XP path through the game, and it’s a fundamental flaw. I’d honestly prefer milestone progression where the party levels up at key quest completions than have a situation where the best way is just always going to be murder your way through Faehrun, and all the other planes. Resolving a situation with good check rolls, using your out of combat skills should be just as rewarding as using your in combat skills to murder everyone! Switch to milestone progression, or just reward the XP for each encounter much more evenly. 100% parity isn't required, but at the moment I feel like you get WAY more for just doing murder death kill. If I am wrong, its not presented very well.


TLDR for your summary;

*Already debated widely - killing everything is by far the better choice at the moment, peaceful or lawful/good playthroughs are a perfectly valid playstyle, reward them too with XP/loot

Also, I think we need more feedback for dice rolls, showing our bonuses/maluses

-> Another smaller improvement in Character Creation: Choosing your starting weapon. In D&D every class has their starting proficiencies, which means a few array of possible weapons and armor you could choose to start with. I'd love to be able to choose my starting weapon whether should if be a Longsword for my Fighter or a Greataxe, maybe a Mace for my Cleric or a Warhammer. Also I'd be able to choose a Leather or Scale Mail as stated in the character creation in 5E.

Link to the thread: Choosing starting gear

Nice to see a response to my thread: http://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=682351#Post682351

Can you please add key bindings not saving in Stadia to your list?

Thanks!

Casting spells during dialogue should be possible.

I mean spells like Friends, Charm Person, Detect Thoughts, etc. Too often I have those spells prepared, but end up in an important dialogue without realizing it's about to happen. I really don't want to keep hitting Quicksave every 20 seconds so that I can reload and cast those spells where I feel it's important. There's already a "Start battle" button in dialogue and I've never pressed it. I'd like there to be "Cast a spell" button as well, filtered to only show dialogue-relevant spells.

Another suggestion : Savegames

Make savegames per character instead of general? So that if you are playing multiple campaings you have your autosaves and quicksaves "per campain"

I just feal that its easy to implement and could avoid things like .. a player using only quicksaves testing another character and overriding the initial campain

+1