Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Why Larian CAN justify calling Baldur's Gate 3... Baldur's Gate 3

I'd like to know why people keep making blanket comparisons and coming to ridiculous conclusions about BG3 when so far they've only seen a fraction of the game? That's all EA is--a fraction of the game--and the EA is far away from being finished, small fraction of the whole game that it is.

Amazingly, some posts I've read appear to believe that the part of the game revealed by the EA is, indeed, the whole game...;) I mean, the people who write these posts would have to believe that, wouldn't they? Otherwise, their "conclusions" would be absurd--which, of course, they are...;)

So during the later chapters BG3 will follow the D&D ruleset properly? Because one of the conclusions here is that the game kinda refuses to follow the rules.

BG2 differed immensely from the rules of 2.5. That's why there's literally dozens of options on the G3 mod to go back to pen and paper rules, 'true' grandmastery or whatever or to 'un-nerf tons of things BG2 had nerfed or powered up.

Could you please give us your HUGE list of things that had changed in the previous games ?

Because no... Not so much things were modified.
A few things were tweaked... For the best or not depending if you're a purist or not.

But it doesn't immensely modify the experience.

Combats in BG3 has nearly nothing to do with D&D and what you always have in mind during a battle is... Non D&D rules...

Story, atmosphere, art style, combat, music, gameplay are completely different, than the old games and BG3 was also a bit boring and slow for me.

I will take an other look in a year or when the game is out.

quite a few things, each one adding up to some major changes away from RAW - it is disingenuous to claim that BG1 and 2 were somehow super true to aDnD2(.5) since even a basic comparison between the RAW and the game allows you to see a huge number of changes which completely shape gameplay if you choose to let them.

The main thing being that as shipped the AI of enemies in BG1 and 2 is nothing like how they would react in a tabletop game. No moving out of cloud effects, no calls for help, no ability to open doors, no searching for enemies off screen - in fact i can imagine a forums post in 1998 complaining about how the game is cheesy because the battles are too hard unless you throw down a cloudkill and close the door.

A very major change, which i cannot over-stress the importance of, is the ability to very easily recharge wands and other charged items by selling and re-buying them form "just some guy" - this shapes the entire mid-game if you chose to use it since a 50 charge wand if fireball and 100 charge wand of monster summoning are all you need to play through BG1 and the first half of BG2 (this is equivalent to "barrelmancy", i call it "wand-mancy," why play any other way when you can just spam wand of fire?") - and then you get a wand of cloudkill which can effectively do the same but better.

Another major change that shapes the whole game is that there are no attacks of opportunity (i.e. the fleeing rules under "retreat"), I think its impossible to overstate how this shapes the gameplay - there are zero consequences for leaving combat allowing both easy kiting and tank cycling, neither of which would be possible in the same way without the lack of fleeing attacks of opportunity.

Enemy mages in BG1 and 2 are nothing like PnP mages, instead of dangerous enemies who have spent their whole lives mastering magic they are the butt of every joke, hacked to pieces before they can even cast a spell. Feeble in every way.

Ability to change equipment on the fly is also a big one - sure you cant change armor, but you can change everythign else: gauntlets, belts, bracers, rings, cloaks, even shield on the fly in combat.

As far as enemy stats go, their health pools are all over the place compared to PnP RAW, fiends have noticeably been very tuned down, beholders are not immune to their own eyestalks (lmao shield of balduran), vampire abilities are tuned so far down its sad.

As far as stat implementation goes, high intelligence not giving illusion immunities, wisdom not giving saving throw bonuses/penalties for magical defenses and spell immunities at high levels, no implementation of charisma reaction adjustment in BG2, constitution not providing bonuses to save vs poison/death

Also: the existence of rest until healed, stacking potions (ever drank 10 potions of power/heroism in a row?), no penalties for firing ranged into melee (again a massive shaper of tactics away from 2nd ed RAW, allowing the classic 1 tank and 5 archers in BG1), HLAs (bioware homebrew), no lighting ranges/vision limitations and consequently broken/useless infravision, no paladin tithes, restrictions on wealth or restrictions on associates to lawful good, generic rather than RAW cleric weapon restrictions, no thief use scrolls" ability at 10th level, no ability for wizards to scribe scrolls at 9th level... the list goes on and on, many of which are significant enough to completely alter the game away from aDnD 2nd ed

Well spoken! Thank you for this.

A lot of those points mentioned are not really "deviating from pnp" in the sense of changing the ruleset. It is pointing out limitations with the AI (or coding in general from back then, leading to some abuses like the wand recharging). While there are definatly changes from the pnp version to the game version to make it a better flowing CRPG, this is just nitpicking. "Roleplay limitations" can be considered to be a thing for literally every adaptation, it is very present in BG1 and 2, IWD, NWN and 2 and very much so in BG3 too.

This list feels kind of a case of just looking for stuff that might differ, to make a point. if you go look for stuff like this, you will find it, with pretty much anything. (Hence it being nitpicking, and kind of in a vaccuum/out of context too)

Oh yes maybe I shouldn't have been so categorical but if there are valid points, many looks more like bugs, technical limitations, options, details, personnal thoughts and things that weren't implemented.

Not sure this completely alter the experience, change the rules, unbalance D&D (skills, classes, ...) or leads players to use non-D&D mechanics as the most usual mechnics of the game.

(i.e such as all features/spells/... giving advantages in BG3 that are all completely useless)

This looks like a list only the most hardcore D&D purists would care about...

Most of the stuff you cited are quality of life improvements, bad AI, bugs and/or engine limitations.
Mages having low HP is a result from their low hit dice and constitution bonus limitations, this is in all editions. The only legit homebrew Bioware put in there was HLA's, which make epic levels feel more rewarding and are a great addition, this is not changing core mechanics like in BG3.

Yeah, and i'm not worked up about them at all, but wand recharging, free disengage, free fire into combat, potion stacking and changing equipment on the fly in combat are comparable to eating in combat, throwing barrels, jumping to disengage and the like - all together then make combat in BG1 (and 2) much different to how it would play out on the tabletop - you don't have to play like that, but these mechanics do change the tone of combat in BG1 and 2 completely away from the tone of aDnD 2nd ed. I don't mind that - the games are great, I simply feel that saying BG1 and 2 are RAW aDnD 2nd ed is disingenuous and a poor way to argue that BG3 should have its issues fixed.

I do still think BG3 should have those issues fixed and be closer to 5e, but I agree that using the BG1 and 2 reference is a bad argument. Those games did deviate from the ruleset fairly often (even though I do not necessarily agree with the list itself, there are other places where they drifted away from the actual ruleset)

Admittedly, 5e would be much better to adapt to a CRPG than 2nd edition (or even 3rd edition) is, so there still is no real reason for Larian to ignore the ruleset that is balanced (well. More or less At least more than other editions and more than all the home-brews rules added in BG3) and has been play tested for many years already

here's me playing Baldur's Gate 1, demonstrating how wands are the barrels of BG1. This would not be possible without wand recharging and free disengage - the first a bioware addition and the second a rules change/omission

https://vimeo.com/501449600

Just to nitpick: Wand recharging is not really necessary with the crazy amount of wands you can find or buy, and kiting can be done with potions of haste/paws of the cheetah/the haste spell.

I would even say just shooting fireball/lightningbolt wands into the fog of war/out of line of sight is an even more effective way to kill scary enemies (which takes advantage of the AI but still)

But ultimately, as bad as abuse in the older games is/was, that is no reason to have it be a case in a game of this generation. It no longer has the AI limitations that were a thing 20 years ago, as well as having a more balanced ruleset to work with.

i have SCS installed currently so it doesn't work, but yeah, as released fog of war abuse, while an omission by bioware rather than a deliberate "thing" still breaks the game something terrible -and the fact that SCS fixes that shows that it could have been made much better

I would kind of hope that BG3 becomes a game that functions on its own as a game, and is more true to the ruleset than older games were. Rather than us relying on mods to achieve that. If something becomes heavily modded to fix stuff from the base game, that kind of points of flaws in those base games I think.

As far as the rule changes for Stats - I think it is a serious thing, because there are supposed to be serious penalties for low charisma and wisdom, but as there are not one or the other can be safely dumped to 3 to boost other stats -You should never have been able to make a 3 wis 3 cha character in BG2 without some serious penalties according to adnd RAW, but actually thats fine to do that, allowing you to easily have very high str, dex, con from starting etc, even with a low roll, *shrug*. Again, its not a big deal for me, but saying that changes to stats rules doesn't effect game balance is impossible imo

Just because BG1/2 did some things badly, is really no excuse for BG3 to do likewise, surely? 5E rules are vastly different from AD&D or even 3E, and 5E has an entirely different design philosophy. I really think that needs to be respected...if Larian are going to call it a 5E game. There are two huge threads on this, at least, so it is a big deal for many people. I have no pronlems with the story, setting or calling it BG3 - but I want an authentic D&D (5E) experience. At the moment, it is quite far from that, and eminently 'cheesable'.

and all I want to point out is that using BG1 and 2 as good examples of implementation of RAW is willful nostalgia with no investigation of how the rules are actually implemented in BG1 and 2 and so doesn't hold water as an argument for RAW in 5E, it makes no judgement on how BG3 should implement 5E rules, just that there are much better ways to approach the flaws in BG3 than pointing to rules as implemented in BG1 and 2

I feel like I need to put a Boromir meme: one does not simply disagree with @alice_ashpool. But, here I am rushing in where angels fear . . . I'm sure this will go well.

Much of what you say is correct but here so points of disagreement.


Retreat rules /= attacks of opportunity. AOO is a 3rd ed rule and it works differently than does retreat. Yes, retreat was never implemented in the game. Retreat means -- I'm leaving, I'm running, I'm running back to base camp. It can be invoked by a failed morale check or in reaction to a spell.


Now that was weakness of the game -- it would have been nice to have a retreat button. But this doesn't have anything to do with kitting -- kitting is an exploitation of a weakness in the 2nd ed ruleset -- one that AOO was designed to fix. In 2nd ed there are no penalties for moving around in combat.

(AOO in 3rd ed, especially in 3.0, was OP. 5th has it right)

But there is an important difference between a. exploiting weakness in the ruleset b. exploiting engine limitations and c. using exploits that the devs have purposefully introduced to the game.