Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Please have more faith in 5e rules

I'm up in the air about this.

There is more wrong with 5e then just Warlock, and Ranger. Take for instance (not applicable in game or I haven't noticed. not paying attention to it matter of fact.) It takes half your movement to stand in 5e. for a level one halfling thats around 10 feet, fiifteen for humans. Later as you level up the difference can be from that starting 10 ft. to over 30 for certain characters with certain feet at level 4. Then it continues to go up depending on feats and such. At one time it was costing one of my characters twice the movement of a rogue to simply stand up.

This is just one instance where me as a DM, and the DM who runs a game I'm playing in has here it comes House Ruled. Yes house rules are even stated as optional ways to run the game if a DM (in this case Larian Studios) deems them necassary for what ever reason. In this case some of 5e rules as stated in the handbooks may not fit in with what Larian wishes. Yes I really dislike that I can't have a 6 intelligent Fighter with a strength of 18, because of the caps that larian has put in place currently. Again this is similair to a House Rule.

Much of my limited yet thorough play through has felt like the standard rules, and my standard plays in pen and paper. None have felt to out of whack (except the familair/animal companion list) from any other times I've played a pen and paper. Beastmaster Rangers are still useless (this do to fact they don't get any combat animals currently). I am unsure as to what is wrong with warlocks (I've yet to play them on pen and paper, and haven't thoroughly looked through them ig. add to this I've seen no statement as to what OP felt is wrong with them.)

I did play a Warlock on this game and when I hit was destroying pretty much everything on ship, and doing some nasty damage after that. I was only using my Eldritch blast.

Clerics in game are imo odd and the one thing I've noticed is seperate from 5e rules. This being in the Domains that each god has, every god has the same ones. This may change, I'm hoping it does, but this might also be to lessen the confusion of those that don't play 5e. Again my opinion.

I don't mean to seem to be ragging on people. just wanted to point out that 5e books state House Rules are okay, so OP himself just invalidated himself by what he said. to sum it up. 5e handbooks states House Rules are fine. Larians changing of some things can be viewed as House Rule, which is fine with 5e.

It would be better if he states which things he has a problem with, and why. So Larian can add it to the data their collecting In Example I have a problem with the way your handling Ranger beastmaster and their animal companions. You are currently using the same noncombat familairs that wizards and others use.

Now Larian knows which rules he has problems with, and why. Other players can chip in then Larian has a greater amount of feedback then an abstract you should stick to the rules, which in voided by the House Rule itself.

5e expects the DM to houserule. The 1/2 movement to stand up rule was introduced because, again, 5e was meant to be easy to run - WotC having a vested interest in getting as many new DMs as possible running as many games as possible.

It was not built to be fiddly and fine tuned (3.x/4) but instead deliver decent performance to a wide range of people. They took out some of the more abusive exploits from 3.x, ignored others (declaring them something DMs can solve if it bugs them).

"Rulings not Rules" is a great design strategy and slogan for building a human run engine. Not so much for a computer game where ambiguity is The Enemy.

Right now I find combat to be very shallow and luck-based. I either win by exploiting LOS/shove or getting the initiative or get dumpstered because every enemy goes first and crits on every attack. A great many of the abilities and features that seem cool are far less effective than exploding barrels or shove, and every encounter is designed to require ruthless abuse of these new features or CRPG "AI"

One of the best turn-based tactical games has exactly that problem. X-COM is not unfair, but it feels extremely unfair and punishing exactly because you will miss a 99% hit change from time to time and an 85% in 3 out of 10 attacks.

Just show the attack roll and attack stats.

+1

I also think it would be soothing for a wide audience to be transparent with the rolls this way, and not use percentages. The rolls are also already accessible in the scrolling window, but the UI needs some tuning in demonstrating the rolls becouse it aint pretty at the moment.

I also think this should be implemented in dialogues - show the actual DC you need to beat and your bonuses to the d20 - people have no problem learning this the very first time they play d&d tabletop, and tabletop is way less intuitive than larians UI for dialogues that already looks really promising.

Personally it feels as though they made changes to 5e mechanics for seemingly no reason. Helping out underperforming classes such as ranger is fine, but stuff like cantrips making surfaces and forcing saves is just totally broken. Its especially grating to people that have played 5e as they expect something to work a certain way and it doesn't. Not saying that they not make any changes ever, they just need to be reasonable and consider balance.

Pathfinder Kingmaker started out as 1:1 rules as written. The game was hot garbage. Now, in its definitive form, the game has made numerous tweaks (both optional and forced) to the TT rules. Surprise! no TT game transfers 1:1 to a video game. Only a very small audience enjoys that experience, and under capitalism this does not make a successful product.

Yeah, thats one of them that I'm like eeeeehhhhh, to many things causing surfaces. As stated in my list of feedback in the stickied topic, all these surface things are well and good if it makes sense. Yet it's being overdone.

No, don't make a Baldur's gate game if you are not foloowing DnD rules. Otherwise, just make DoS 3

No, don't make a Baldur's gate game if you are not foloowing DnD rules. Otherwise, just make DoS 3.

+1 for the topic

Gotta agree there, sadly... but I've written enough about that issue, already. You take up an IP, you have limitations and responsibilities. You want to do your own thing, than make your own thing. It's no rocket surgery.

This. I'm fine if they just show the math better, but the implementation is fine. You can see the dice rolls if you want to. I know I look at them all the time to see if I rolled a 2 or a 3. Because I do a lot.

5e rules is released after careful design about action economy, and it's pretty balanced in low level party, I also wish they can stick more to the rule instead of modifying a big chunk of it and causing a lot of following balance issue.

I'm going to have to agree with you Merry Mayhem. I don't understand why they market this as 5e but just put in so many house rules or ignore many of the 5e rules.
I loved Pathfinder Kingmaker, probably the closest modern CRPG that follows the 3.5 rule book. They only thing Kingmaker needs to do to enhance it is to add more and fun elevation from the environment and better stealth mechanics.

I know some people will probably get upset for me for saying this but this feels more like DoS3 than BG3. It's fun but it feels like 5e with finicky DoS mechanics that I was hoping would be improved for BG3.

I agree with the rogue part. What's the point of cunning action when everyone can simply use their bonus action to use item and disengage easily.

Changing aspects of 5E is completely understandable if they are hard to translate into a video game. I get that. But as others have said, many of the changes seem to have no reason whatsoever. Turning so many actions into bonus actions take away the identity of certain classes. And giving so many of the spells environmental effects make it feel more like a video game and less like a TTRPG. Why does a firebolt set fire to the cobblestone beneath my feet? Why does small puddles of acid burn through my boots and damage me? Why does a bolt of ice fired at my chest create ice under my feet? Stuff like this, feels like Larian is too fond of DoS mechanics.

Not only that, but certain spells become overpowered (cantrips), while the environmental effects from 5e (Like Cloudkill and Fireball), loose some of their flavor since everything creates environmental effects.

I do like that you can set fire to grease etc, because that is something you would ask your GM if you could do. And Larian did state that they wanted come close to the TTRPG experience. Which is why I am confused when it comes to some changes.

I think one of the frustrations here is that there is a certain genius to the D&D 5th Edition rules. Those rules were in large part designed around turn based miniature combat and should be very very implementable in the type of video game Larian Studios is famous for. I believe a far more pure implementation of the rules would be well received and prove to be very fun for both D&D fans and DoS fans alike.

What I'm seeing in the current EA version sometimes makes me think the Larian team did not understand the use one rule or another means to the overall gameplay in D&D. That being said, I know it is easy to criticize from my couch and that it is a hard thing to merge D&D and DoS. Sacrificing some rules may be necessary to keep the overall game a fun and fast-paced experience.

My overall point here, then, is to strongly encourage Larian Studios to lean in favor of a purer implementation of the D&D 5th Edition rules wherever possible. I honestly think the DoS fans that aren't familiar with those rules would embrace them once they get a taste of the strategic and entertaining balance they have in turn-based combat. I've had great adventures using these rules.

Thank you, Larian Studios,

TriggerJock

+1

I understand certian ideas like re-working the ranger class so they have more utility without a DM.

However, a bunch of the rules shouldn't have been messed with.

+1 to Topic.

Not sure I agree about some of the stances being taken here (Warlocks being underpowered in PnP...there is a reason that a Warlock dip is pretty much a standard in any multiclass Charisma caster), but Larian seem to have tried to 'fix' things that they perceived needed to be fixed (giving everyone bonus action disengage, hide and shove, having cantrips to less damage but have additional effects, flipping the roll +prof vs target format), which has either broken a bunch of things that were not broken before, or has generally made the experience feel less like a D&D/Baldur's Gate game and more like a Baldur's Gate emulation/mod running on top of Divinity Original Sin 2.

There is a huge difference in a class being viable for a dip an the class being viable for higher levels.
Warlock is a very good dip class, the problem with them is their scaling for higher levels.

I don't mind some rule changes to make DnD fit into a video game, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 did that as well and it worked out fine.
I kind of do mind how far it's been taken away from what DnD normally feels like. Dipping, surfaces, cantrips that create surfaces out of thin air, infinite bonus shoves, food healing, help action healing...

I was actually kind of OK with the abilities given to each weapon as they were once per short rest refresh, then I saw how useful tridents were at closing the gap on round 1 and now every melee character walks around with a trident equiped and changes to their normal weapons on round 2. Maybe not a terrible problem but doesn't speak to the DnD theme, maybe another pass, but I do think short rest refresh abilities add to this as a video game.

I like when the terrain plays a part, verticality seems pretty awesome if we can tweek the AI to be able to deal with it. I like ranged being effective and a good reason to dash your melee up next to them to punish them for trying to remain ranged. I like the idea of shoving, I think it's worthy of a full action not just a bonus action, battle master's can already include it in their attack so fighters have their increased ability with maneuvers taken care of.

I like to CC as an arcane caster, fog clouds, sleeps, color sprays, greases and webs fill many of my memorized slots. I just don't think cantrips should be doing just as good CC as actual spell slots.