Originally Posted by Deemer
Originally Posted by Orbax
Originally Posted by Deemer
Originally Posted by Firesong
Video games work differently than table top games


Surface spam is a stupid gimmick.


...have you ever played DOS2? This is non-existent comparatively. Also, as a DM, a lot of players crave using surfaces and grease fires and all sorts of stuff. I think its a good way to introduce spell combos in a way you just never get to in TT because the rules dont allow for it. If you look realistically at most fights its Swing/miss/stay, shoot/hit 4/move 5 feet, swing/miss/stay, enemy swing/half damage on barb/stay, enemy multi/miss/hit/stay, sacred flame/miss/stay move 10 feet

Its fun in the meta of resources and your journey and seeing new creatures and new terrains. But translating the level of simplicity and almost 0 synergy players have with one another other than guiding bolt, its probably beneficial to bring environment more into play in a way that is hard for DMs to build or manage on a battle map - especially given how much time we have to actually make all the terrain and come up with random encounter maps and all that stuff. It explores some concepts a bit more, and game companies have been doing grease fires forever even though no edition I know of has grease as flammable. If it was DOS2 Id nope out of this, but I dont feel its unwieldy or unmanageable yet.

my 2c of course smile


Also I'm so sorry if your TT experience has been fighting in a white room. Encounters should have fun setpieces and narrative and interesting things to do besides exclusively autoattacking. 'Chuck a surface in there!' is not it, though, and that's BG3's approach to everything.


Well, I am a DM of 15 campaigns and run 3 a week for dozens of players, and no they aren't played in a white room - or if they are people seem to enjoy the white room. The point I was making was if you did a print out of actions taken per turn by the players and creatures its fairly straight line activity. Being at the table, with people, in the context of the game adds excitement beyond what is really happening. If you added what this game is doing to your standard D&D encounters, it would be crazy and it goes the other direction too; if you played out a standard D&D encounter that was recreated in a game platform it just isn't terribly exciting. People reference BG1/2 and things like that and I have noticed they reference things that were not in those editions of D&D.The game makers changed stuff and brought it into the game. They were not true to D&D.

Dialing in the amount used and the interactions and making a value statement as to whether you want the players skills and abilities to be much more prominent than environmental damage - I think thats a good argument. People want to be the heroes; if half the people die 2 turns later because they were trapped in fire from a burning goblin wine barrel they accidentally ignited then you dont feel like YOU killed them. So, I think they can try to find another way to make a group feel like they are the masters of the arena instead of 50/50ing with it for victory. The concept of spell + spell + environment synergy is fun, so how do you do it in a way where it feels a bit more under control and focused?

What is the problem you are solving? Does your proposed change solve the problem? Is your change feasible? What else will be affected by your change? Will your change impact revenue? Does your change align with the goals and strategies of the organizations (Larian, WotC)?