Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Solasta and spellcasting Interface

Seems the current UI is just about obsoleted by most level 4 casters...

Hot bar isnt going to be nearly enough imo... particularly going forward. Current UI set up at later levels could see the bar filled by 2-3 spells given all the different slots available to cast them... poorly/not thought out imo...

Not sure who was in charge of this but seems to be a fail in its current state...

Hopefully will be addressed before official release...

BG3 is a little more versatile than people are letting on...action bars need work though for sure, but its manageable if need be.

BG3 Cleric Interface


Solsta - for second pic imagine more squares popping up on top of the other squares (I deleted solsta already so I had to google for pics)


NwN1 - first pic wouldn't show

POE2 was also pretty nice too.

Ya, generally any game that has books with book sounds included into the interface has been pretty solid IMO.

You may be joking/sarcastic, but themed UI does add a lot when it comes to style/aesthetics/atmosphere/feel. Just one of the tiny things.

It wasn't a joke...

Also stone-y UI with stone-y sounds gets the job really done

Fortunately, the new patch addressed the congested hotbar issue using a stacking method similar to what Hex used.

Sorry, it's sometimes hard to tell on the internet.



Agreed, would be nice to see this.

No problem, it actually took a long time but I finally remembered what game had a real good book ui.



Game is Warhammer Online and it was called Tome of knowledge.

I agree the UI could use a lot of work but I’m not sure about the book/scroll direction. At the moment calling it a spell book is a mistake because it includes a bunch of non-spell actions (even straight up melee attacks). But even if they reserve it for spells only, Wizards (and Tome warlocks) should have books, it doesn’t really make any sense for the other classes – especially Sorcerers whose spells come from within, or innate spells from your race etc.

Having a literal book for casting in D&D doesn't make sense at all even for a wizard. A wizard casts by memory - that's the whole thing about preparing spells.

Wizards can’t not have a spellbook in 5E… it’s core to their class. Although, it could be reskinned into something else like a crystal, tablet, whatever. It’s part of the balancing of being able to have access to so many spells and it serves as a record of what spells you’ve learned. Also, it can become a plot device if it’s lost/stolen, or if you find a spellbook from another wizard.

And preparing spells is literally reading it from your spellbook into memory. The number of spells you can memorise is limited. If you don’t have a spellbook you can’t change your selection of memorised spells.

You misunderstood. The whole conversation in this thread is about how casting a spell looks like. Not how your full list of spells looks. So again a wizard casts from memory. He doesn't take his book out of pockets in a middle of a fight to read a spell from there.

No, most images here are from UI that tell you what spells this character knows, not how you cast them in normal gameplay.
So a book in case of wizards is totally fine.

I would also say that all classes need the same UI, because in 5E all classes with spells ( except warlocks ) use the same casting system.
I also think it makes sense to put all active abilities in the same menu so you can put them into the hotbar however you like.
So the spell menu should have the following categories:
- class abilities: Everything that can be used and you got it from a level up.
- item abilities: The special attack given by weapons and all spells or abilities that are given to you by the stuff you have equipped
- Spells sorted by level, from lv0 to 9
- In case of warlocks, all spells known from lv 1 to 5 are always shown in the highest lv they know and old spells move up automatically when you level up.
So a warlock of lv12 or higher has only cantrips (lv0), lv5 spells (here are all spells from lv 1-5) and then come lv6 spells and so on (can only be used once per day, but its still a lv 6 spell or higher)

Once again, I would prefer having the NWN2 menu for actually casting a spell instead of using a hotbar.