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

Adding a few thoughts here after putting some time in the past week.

Combat feels a little wonky right now. Especially with the whole vantage point thing. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to take cover in a building with a mage on top of the roof only to have said mage blast me through the roof with various spells. I've also experienced enemies perfectly throwing fire and acid potions through the tiniest of window openings two stories up to nail my party in the face. At the very least there should be some kind of dexterity check for that level of accuracy.

Far too often combat revolves around managing surface area effects. This mechanic works great in DOS, not so much here in a BG game.

Am I the only one who is bothered by the amount of resurrection scrolls there are and how often they are meant to be used? This includes the "help up" action as well. I can't quite put my finger on why it bothers me, just wondering if anyone out there feels the same.

I'm torn about the camp right now. I love that it's a place to go and talk to NPCs, get some character backstory, talk about recent events etc. I don't like how it currently functions however. I shouldn't be in the middle the goblin hideout, long rest back at my camp, then pop back up at the hideout where I left off. One thing I liked about long resting in BG was that you always had to be ready for a random encounter to occur. Maybe it would be possible to do something like having to find an out of the way room and chance a long rest in there. Have a character keep watch for a potential patrol coming by or have to roll stealth checks to stay hidden and quiet in said room or something. Just a thought.

Overall I really did enjoy playing the game but it very much feels like a DOS game with a BG skin on top of it. I'm hopeful as the EA progresses this game gets more of an identity more in like with the BG series as a whole.

Inspiration character: No matter if they are male or female ALWAYS wears a dress.

Don't tell me when I fail a perception/survival/insight check. It just makes me want to scim. I'd rather find out about it on an entirely different playthrough than leave wondering what I missed.

MULTIPLE SKILL CHECKS FOR A SINGLE DIALOG ARE HORRIBLE.

I'm surprised I don't see this suggested sooner in the first few pages, but in the 12 hours I've played for, this is the worst aspect of the game by far. It feels like you're simulating the shittiest, most hostile Dungeon Master to ever run a game. I'll use the Necromancer Tome as my example here, since that's what so recently caused me to rage quit.

Player: "I open the book."
DM: "Roll a Wisdom Save. DC 13."
Player: "15, got it."
DM: "Hmm...No. Roll another one."
Player: "What?"
DM: "You heard me."
Player: "Why? I just passed."
DM: "Because I said so. It's a really evil book, it's messing with your head. And the DC is 15 this time."
Player: "This is ridiculous. You coulda just increased the DC or told me to roll with Disadvantage if it's supposed to be super hard. There, rolled a 19. Happy?"
DM: "No! Roll again! DC is 18 now!"
Player: "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"
DM: "ROLL A-FUCKING-GAIN, AND IF YOU FAIL, YOU GET A PERMANENT PENALTY TO ALL WISDOM THROWS! ROLL THE DICE, MOTHERFUCKER!"

I don't even know what happens after the third roll, because despite all my save scumming, I haven't managed to roll three successes in a row yet. That's some serious nonsense.

Somewhat related, but Dialog options should say 'Check' and not 'Saving Throw' if it's supposed to be a check. I'm playing a wizard with Proficiency in Wisdom Saving Throws, but I don't get the +2 bonus for these rolls, and the dice roll itself calls it a Wisdom Check.

Agreed on all accounts. Except the Wizard lol. I love a wizard with cure wounds hahahaha

I just finished my first play through and I have a few insights I can add to the list:

1. Too often I would finish an encounter with one or two characters stabilized after 3 successful death saves and no way to heal them. This could be fixed by allowing other characters to use a healing potion on those downed companions. It should also be noted that abilities and spells that grant temporary hit points, (Aid and Rally come to mind), should also allow the downed character to stand up.

2. I know many people are asking to be able to choose the character to resolve conversations to benefit from better skill rolls and it's a great idea. To deepen this, it would be nice if you had two characters that shared the same skill proficiency be able to take the "Help" action to gain advantage on the skill roll. Conversely, you could have a good cop/bad cop situation where characters use opposite skill checks, Intimidation/deception/persuasion, to succeed on the check.

3. Selling items for the best price possible is too much of a hassle. I would spend 20-30 minutes of my time making sure Shadowheart or Wyll had all the items before speaking with the trader to get the best trade or most amount of gold. I would suggest an "Add all Wares" button that would pull from all characters/your camp stash to make this process less time consuming. It would also be nice to have a hotkey to mark items as a ware to expedite the process.

4. The single minded focus enemies have on characters, especially when they're rolling death saves. It's a real pain to have to constantly carry resurrection scrolls or go back to camp in order to revive a fallen character. It took me out of the immersion of the game to spend extra time and money constantly having to bring someone back. An easy fix for this would be to have enemies redirect focus to other characters or to throw in an extra ability for the "tank" classes which allows them to pull aggro.

5. The last bit is on the jump and shove abilities. The main issue I have with Jump is the ground stomp effect that deals damage and pushes targets that larger creatures get. Shoving creatures should take the place of an attack to either make the target prone or to shove them 5 ft or outside the AoO range. I feel it's being used too liberally as an additional way to inflict damage. It would be nice if a dex save was put into effect to stop a shoved character from being pushed off higher ground.

From their statement about how they want to stay faithful to DND 5e, the resting mechanic is not even close.
1. Being able to long rest anytime and anywhere negate the concept of spell slot, resources management.
2. Shoving as a bonus action is too strong, and shoving anything is nut. My weak medium creature should not be able to shove a giant robot off a tower. Even if his chance is low it does happen often. How does a low strength char shove a thousands pound creature through the air 4.5M??? what?
3. Everyone having disengage as a bonus action is not like 5e... this nerf attack of opportunity especially for melee class when everyone can hop out of the way without provoking attack of opportunity.
4. The ground affect is way too much damg. I like it, but right now a cantrip (fire bolt) can do so much damg even if it miss!!! In 5e if it miss, then it misses, but in this it's a guaranteed damg because it will set the target on fire and cause damg when they move through it....
5. Pickpocket is OP right now. I can pickpocket people and if I fail the DC does not go up and I can just keep doing it? The NPC does not retaliate?
There is so much more i can go into, but I feel like the MAIN CORE MECHANIC of DnD 5e is not being honor right now.

6 was previously answered.

5.2 if you scroll over them each one will tell you which stat it affects.

yes this.

Can we please get the jump and disengage actions separated into their own buttons or something? Or maybe a pop up like when you use hex, asking if you want to jump or if you want to disengage? So many times I want to simply disengage from an enemy and move back a bit, but I have to choose to jump to do it, and so I tell them to jump to the point I want them at and without even realizing it this requires them to move a few feet which then provokes an attack of opportunity which is the exact freaking thing I was trying to avoid!

So weapons have abilities tied to them now refreshable on a short rest, meaning as a fighter it's time to shine, weapon swapping is the new hotness, but when I put the weapons on my hotbar, and even if I lock it so nothing can change, soon as I equip a weapon by clicking on it, they disappear from my bar, can we just get a hotbar setting where nothing get's put on and nothing get's taken off without manually putting it there please? If I put a quest item on my bar in the prologue and it get's used and taken away in the prologue and I want to look at the cool icon for the rest of the game, let me, I really don't need help cleaning up my hotbar.

Interface:
Some button (tab, ctrl, shift, just something) that allows interactive objects to highlight. Whether or not I see something that can be opened or picked up should be based on the player's and party's perception, not my ability/amount of time I spend trying to find every object.
On a similar note adding something indicating what is noticed in a successful perception check as there have been many times I have succeeded in one and have no idea what my character or party member saw.

Short rests should not be limited to 1x a day. It should be unlimited as long as you're in a safe location, simply have the player choose the number of hit dice each character rolls to recover hit points with a limit of hit dice to level per long rest.
I have also noticed that my characters who are in camp but not in my current party don't seem to heal during my long rests, that might become irrelevant later in the game from some rumors I've heard that may or may not be true, but they should all heal anyway.

Also, I think having the actual hit die listed for each class and rolling hit points at level up with the other modifiers (CON modifier and the dwarven racial trait) being listed as well as the die roll (on screen would be exciting) to the change in HP.

Leveling the rogue it seemed that he was not given expertise? My high DEX Ranger with proficiency in theives tools seems equally capable of handling lock picks as Mr. Pale face is.

Finally, when leaving camp thus far I have had to leave with each member individually then group them as it is not allowing me to group all 4 characters then leave at once

A small thing I just noticed, so you have a text window you can pop out that tells you what actions and such you and the enemies have taken and can hover over the "hit" or "miss" words to see what the rolls and math were to get that conclusion, but when an ability or spell is used it doesn't have a description of what it does, it just says the name, action or bonus action, and concentration if it's a concentration spell. Would be kinda nice to know what this ability I've never even heard of called Soul Offering (that I'm pretty sure Larian just made up off the top of their heads) even does.

Inventory management - I like the Wares options, but like others mentioned, there needs to be a button "sell all wares"... also some kind of auto-sort option for the inventory, I have big gaps all over the place but cba reorder it all the time

Story items - please make a category for story items. Dont mix them together with other stuff too

Tooltips - this is SO important. On everything, really, I have a bunch of apples, beers, cheese, rum etc. sitting in my inventory and no good way of figuring out what they do. There are so many consumables and I dont feel like jsut trying it out (and writing it down, because I am going to forget, there jsut are too many...)
Not to mention all tooltips could use some love and there should be more tooltips for game mechanics too. It might be early release now, but when it goes full, I am certain that most players will ahve absolutely no experience with DnD, let alone 5e specifically.

Not sure if I'm correct on this one, but when you're just exploring around and suddenly trigger what seems like a random perception check (near traps or hidden objects for example), that is passive perception checks right? Cause those don't seem to be implemented correctly if they are. Passive perception checks are supposed to be...well, passive. They aren't a roll, they're a static number you have on your character sheet. If my passive perception is 17, then I beat any passive perception checks with a 17 or lower DC, anything higher than that I fail. It's that simple, my entire party shouldn't fail a passive perception check only to succeed on it if I save scum it and try again, because the outcome on it should always be the same.

I can help with that right now, food heals you and alcohol gets you drunk...that's it as far as I've found so far lol.

Cut Scene Issue:

At a particular location where Swen had some difficulty involving goblins.

I set up my party in a file to sneak round the back, with the mage at the back, but all were out of sight as far as I could tell. Lead character is spotted by a goblin, fare enough. However the mage gets dragged out of cover and into the target area. Being as robust as a chocolate teapot this did not go well. In general I think that cutscenes should only involve the character who first triggers the cutscene.

Another thing, please for the love of god fix AI targeting. I am so tired of every single enemy targeting the person that's downed and just killing them outright. Who is targeting literally the only person that is no longer a threat instead of, say, the wizard hurling balls of fire at their face? Like seriously?

agreed, that simply isn't how things are done in D&D at just about any table except for some very specific enemy types.

Then they should remove "help" reviving effect.