UI, Controls, QoL :
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5.
Roleplay, Story, Immersion :
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3.
Mechanisms :
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4.
SPELL CASTING
Spells affecting several creatures. Bless. Bless currently affects the creatures closest to the centre point. That leads to ridiculous situations.
Example : I want to ambush sleeping goblins. Shadowheart casts Bless. She and the 2 sleeping goblins nearest to her get Blessed, but none of my other companions. Great !
My initial suggestion was that Bless should have sensible priorities : companions > summons > other allies, and not affect neutrals. Someone in the Larian forums (I'm sorry I don't remember who and where) proposed a better solution : it should be possible to target the recipients of the spell, like Magic Missile does (with the possibility to target a same creature several times, naturally, to handle the "up to N creatures" aspect, and any target creature would receive Bless only once of course). As a matter of fact, the 5E PHB describes Bless as really just targeting up to N creatures, without any mention of any area of effect. So it's hard to understand why Bless was implemented the way it is.
Sleep. It would be nice if Sleep could allow us to select the targets.
A situation could occur where 3 enemies, A, B and C, form a line, and their HP are low enough that I can target any 2 with Sleep. With the current system, which seems to look at the closest solutions from the centre of the AOE, I would only have the possibility to cast Sleep on A+B or B+C, but no A+C. But in some cases, where A and C are annoying enemies that I want out of the way as soon as possible, I would want to target A and C.
That's not how the PHB describes the spell, but since you have changed the spell, making the HP affected deterministic in particular, it would be great to also have control on who is affected by the spell.
Spell targeting. Spells should allow me to target creatures within the displayed range. Sometimes, a spell indicates an 18m range and does not allow me to target a creature, when another spell that also indicates 18m range allows me to target that very creature. This is massively facepalming.
Example 1 : in the underground passage under the Druid Grove, entering from the Druid Grove, Shadowheart can shoot an arrow or cast Guiding Bolt to the archer up the cliff. But she cannot cast Blind, Charm, or Hold, on that same archer.
The harpies' beach is another nightmare. From the middle of their hill, Shadowheart can cast an arrow or Guiding Bolt to the two levels above, she can cast Sacred Flame one level above but now 2 levels above is too far, and for Silence, I couldn't even centre it on a point that is one level above. Yet all these have 18m range ...
It seems that the game has serious issues with targeting creatures that are above the caster. Again, given how much 3-dimensionality was touted, it is hard to not notice that it doesn't work well.
Example 2 : at the first door inside the goblin fortress, from one elevated gallery, Shadowheart can cast Blind on the archer on the elevated gallery on the other side, but if she wants to cast Guiding Bolt, she'll go down the ladder first to get "closer" (that she would actually be closer in 3-dimensional distance is not clear to me). Both spells indicate an 18m reach ... Why there is a difference in the effective casting ranges is thus a mystery to me.
Most AOE spells should have a 3-dimensional AOE (i.e. they should affect a ball, not a disc). This is most strikingly visible in spells like Sleep or the current implementation of Bless (which, as explained above, is already wrong in the mere fact of having an AOE).
At the moment, these spells apparently have an AOE which is a disc, so they can target/affect creatures at the same altitude. But as you made a point to make the world play in 3D, spells should work in 3D.
Obviously, it doesn't have to be the case that
all spells are 3D. Spells like Entangle, Grease or Web, coming from the ground, shouldn't affect the upper ground if I have their centre point be on the lower ground. But all spells affecting creatures within X meters of the centre point should use the 3D distance.
Invoke Duplicity is un-necessarily hard to use. It should not require so much space. It feels like it wants to take the space of an ogre (as I explain elsewhere, creature spaces are too big compared to the actual size of the creatures). But once the illusion is placed, characters can move through it. So, why making it so hard to place the illusion ?
General spell mechanisms. Please, allow us to stop concentrating on a spell. It doesn't make sense not to be able to stop. Concentration is an effort that spell casters must do to maintain the effect of their spell. Surely, they should be happy if I ask them to stop. Notably because the spell hinders me.
For instance, I want to stop Silence. Currently, the only way to stop concentrating is to take damage or cast another spell requiring concentration. But obviously, I can't cast another spell in order to remove Silence if my Shadowheart is the Silence zone.
(I've already mentioned allowing us to stop concentrating in the UI-QoL section, for mostly cosmetic reasons, but this entry is for a game-mechanical reason.)
Should the spells working like ranged attacks not have an extended range ? Ranged weapons have a normal range, and an extended range where we shoot with Disadvantage. Why not using the same mechanism for spells (like Guiding Bolt or Firebolt) that look like projectiles and where the to-hit determination uses the ranged attack rules ?
It should be possible to cast a spell with a higher level spell slot even if it doesn't strengthen it. At the moment, I cannot cast Disguise Self using a level 2 spell slot.
This would certainly be rarely useful for that spell, but the rule should apply systematically, for all spells. Without exceptions.
Hex. When the target of Hex dies, could we have a message other than "Concentration broken" ? It didn't break, it just didn't make sense to maintain it, which is why the Warlock stopped concentrating. This is bad feedback to the player.
Counter-intuitive rules. Silence does not interrupt a singing Harpy. It seems to prevent them from using Luring Song, but a harpy that has already started singing a Luring Song simply continues singing in my zone of Silence. Apparently, Luring Song is just a spell, it only requires vocalisation when cast and concentration afterwards, but no longer vocalisation ... This is counter-intuitive and counter-immersive.
Silence does not prevent me from playing drum. I'm a lot less sure how this one works. Or doesn't work.
Pin Down does not prevent flying creatures from using Fly. Technically, that's correct. The tooltip of this weapon ability just says that it reduces movement by 3m. I presume this is because, normally, you shoot a humanoid in the leg and the pain prevents the target from moving as easily. But given the name you chose for this ability (which is not in the PHB), I feel it would have been nice and natural if Pin Down could actually ... pin down a winged creature.
Spells that do not work as described (including not working at all). Please get spells descriptions right. BG1-2 had spells that didn't work exactly as described in-game, but that's not necessarily a good aspect to emulate. If different people write the code for the spells and write the tooltip texts for the spells, these people should have some serious harmonisation sessions before the full game releases.
Hellish Rebuke doing 0 damage. I have seen this happen against the harpies. Twice. Yet the tooltip says it deals damage but a successful saving throws allows to halve the damage, not negate (unlike Sacred Flame).
Guidance is a mystery. The spell description says it gives a boost to one skill. Yet, if I cast Guidance prior to a conversation, when I see several skill-based dialogue options, I see a bonus for each skills, which I presume stem from independent d4 rolls (since the bonuses vary).
If I first encounter the skill-based dialogue options, and then use an out-of-conversation companion to cast Guidance on the talking companion, and switch back to conversation, the bonuses are not updated to include the bonus from Guidance.
Then, when I choose a dialogue option requiring a skill-check, and hover over the roll target, there is mention of a Bonus, without mention that it comes from Guidance. This bonus is not the same as the one I previously saw (in the case of pre-conversation casting). I have the uncomfortable feeling that the bonus is re-rolled after I have selected the skill check.
Finally, computing "DC minus bonuses" doesn't not give me the roll target I am shown by the game. For example, roll target 10, total bonuses of 8, and the final target is 4.
Could you please sort out all of this spell ?
Thaumaturgy doesn't look as if it works. Before I choose a dialogue option using Intimidation, the game does not show that I have Advantage. Yet if I choose that dialogue option and hover over the roll target, I can see that Advantage is properly taken into account.
Could you please make sure that the display/feedback for this spell works throughout ?
Friends doesn't work. This spell looks a bit more consistent than Thaumaturgy : before I select the dialogue option requiring a Charisma skill check, it looks as if the spell doesn't work, and after I have selected the dialogue option and hover over the roll target, the spell truly doesn't work.
Roleplay spells. Please make roleplay spells easier to use. Some spells like Detect Thoughts or Speak With Animals are currently implemented in a rather impractical way, given how rarely they can be used. Indeed, because this is a video game, we can only use these spells and see something interesting when you have programmed that we can. Which is a very small fractions of the occasions where we could have something interesting. Casting them all the time in the hope to see something leads to disappointment. Not casting them leads to missing opportunities (unless we search online and then metagame, which is not very roleplay).
A suggestion would be to have a dialogue option offered if our party can cast this spell when the conversation occurs (spell memorised + available spell slot). Selecting such a dialogue option would consume a spell slot and from there on we would proceed with the spell being in effect.
Detect Thought and Speak With Animals. I'd love to have opportunities to use this spell. And, as explained above, that these opportunities arise as dialogue options or something, without me having to cast it all the time in the (vain) hope to see interesting content.
Animal Friendship. I tried on the Owlbear, and it doesn't work. Is that Owlbear not an animal ? Given that BG1-2 had spells like Hold Animal and Hold Person, I'm ok (-ish) with the fact that people are not considered to be animals (even though, really, they are). But the Owlbear isn't a person. So ... why does it not work ?
Amulet of Speak With The Dead. Why does the amulet say I can use the spell once per day, when I can in fact recast it once I've cast it. Am I missing something ? Is the number of recast finite ? Is there a way to loose the free recast ? At least for Hex, you can lose the free recasts if you lose Concentration during one Hex, before the target is dead.
Scrolls. Casting from scrolls should be class restricted. If we wanted scroll usage to have some strong credibility, they should only be readable by Mages. In the Forgotten Realms, they are the scholars who write and can decipher scrolls. Clerics, Paladins and Rangers receive their spells from deities or ideals and don't know how to write magic, so they shouldn't be able to make use of scrolls.
If we wanted to be less strict, scrolls could be usable by characters with an intelligence score above some threshold, or perhaps only characters with the Arcana skill.
At the very least, scrolls should be usable only by classes with spells and spell slots. Not accessible to everyone. Otherwise the classes lose in specificity.
Casting from scroll should probably be spellbook restricted. A standard Cleric cannot cast Magic Missile, a Mage cannot cast Cure Wounds. Otherwise the classes lose in specificity.
Copying a spell from a scroll should be spellbook restricted. Mages should be restricted to copying spells from their mage spellbook list.
Prof. Dr. Dr. Mad S. Tist 