A number of players, and this set includes me, seem to remember Larian announcing BG3 as being somewhat DnD 5E on a computer, in their pre-EA communication. What we have at the moment, and what Larian is apparently shooting for, isn't quite a faithful adaptation of 5E rules. As a result, some players feel betrayed. But is that feeling warranted ?
I have decent reading and listening skills and I am not at an age where I should be worried about memory deterioration. So I tend to think that Larian did indeed say they would stay close to 5E rules. On the other hand, it's easy to fall prey to some mix of distortion-in-relay and echo chamber effects. After all, I have spend more time reading the forum than interviews these past months. So maybe I remember it wrong.
A couple of remarks, before I dive into the thick of things.
- I am not talking about what happened in the heads of the people at Larian. I am just interested in the distance between two measurable things : what Larian said, and what they delivered.
- The question is not whether Larian should aim at sticking to 5E rules for the full release of BG3. Nor why they should do that if one thinks they should stick to 5E. The question is whether players should have expected a set of rules close to 5E.
1) What Larian has delivered (so far).BG3 rules clearly differ from 5E in a number of ways :
- Revised basic-action economy. Even if Jump and Disengage are made two again, it's likely that Disengage, Shove and Hide will remain Bonus Actions in BG3 instead of Actions as in 5E.
- Jump, which now costs a Bonus Action but allows you to cover more distance than your normal movement budget would allow you to. (And also gives combat a Super Mario or cartoonish vibe.)
- Backstab and High-Ground rules. Which give you Advantage for free and nearly permanently.
- Last-minute and out-of-turn decision points. Reactions are automatically executed in BG3. Some spend-resource-to-boost actions are paid for at the last minute in 5E (like many of the Battle Master's maneuvers, and the Rogue's Sneak Attack), and pay-before in BG3. In the same vein, a spend-resource-for-rider-effect spell like Ensnaring Strike is one-attempt in BG3, but can last up to 10 rounds in 5E.
- Surfaces and elemental interactions.
- Dipping weapons in fire.
- Possibility to attack with the off-hand weapon without having attacked with the main hand. Possibility to cast more than one spell per turn.
And this list isn't meant to be exhaustive.
Opinions can diverge how on big these differences are and how big the impact is. Are we talking about tweaks, minor/significant/major differences, complete overhaul ? I haven't played 5E but I can understand how rules interact, and how changes in the rules induce changes in the balance. I feel these are significant differences.
2) What Larian said. I have found a couple of interviews, and I have quoted relevant passages below (colouring is mine). Note that these interviews cover a lot of text. I often scanned superficially the text and used the search feature with some keywords. If you find important passages that have been criminally-overlooked, please let me know. Same if you have videos, with time-stamps (the videos are long, so I didn't bother re-listening to them).
PCGames: Baldur’s Gate is arguably the most precious licence in CRPGs. How are you responding to the pressure and expectation?
Swen Vincke: We try not to think about it, and just focus on making the game that we would like to play.
[...]
PCGames: What can we expect of Baldur’s Gate 3’s relationship with D&D, given that it’s directly licensed from the IP rather than just inspired by it? Is it based on fifth edition?
Swen Vincke: BG3 is based on the fifth edition [of D&D]. We started by setting out the ruleset very meticulously, and then seeing what worked and what didn’t work – because it is a videogame, and D&D was made to play as a tabletop game. So for the things that didn’t work, we came up with solutions.
The cool thing we found is that a lot of what makes D&D, D&D, actually survived the translation, so I think that if you like Dungeons and Dragons and you want to play BG3, you’re going to be happy.
[...]
PCGames : What can you tell us about DOS2’s big features and whether they’ll make it into BG3? Particularly the game master mode, multiplayer and co-op gameplay, and the much-praised combat system?
Swen Vincke: I can tell you it’s going to be single- and multiplayer, and that you will be able to play the campaign cooperatively. That’s something that we pioneered in the Divinity: Original Sin series, and I think it should be part of every single RPG that comes out, to be honest. We’re not commenting on Game Master modes.
With respect to the combat system, this is based on D&D, so we’re using their combat system. We had to make a few tweaks, but we’re also trying to bring the stuff that you use in combat to overcome your foes, and which relates to how you imagine the fight to be, and how you imagine your characters doing things. We’re trying to make that possible within the game. So expect something that’s going to give you quite a lot of freedom when it comes to combat.
"The game is 5th Edition rules, so we’ve been integrating those," Vincke says of developing BG3’s gameplay. "While there will be a few tweaks here and there, gameplay will feel very true to 5th Edition. The challenge is how we bring that feeling of a Dungeon Master into a virtual space and make a world that feels reactive with stuff that’s not necessarily in the 5th Edition book because it’s relying on the DM to interpret player action."
Mike Mahardy: Can you delve more into the combat here? What were the biggest challenges in adapting the Fifth Edition rule-set into a video game?
Swen Vincke: We were very worried about things like the Fighter and the Rogue, especially at the lower levels, because they have very limited actions to them. That's why I picked a rogue to demonstrate today, because it actually shows how much stuff you can do, because you start thinking, "What can I do in this world?" You start playing to the strengths of the Rogue. As we were developing, we became more relaxed about that. We were quite worried because we thought we were going to have to invent a whole bunch of extra stuff so that every single turn you would have a choice.
[...]
Mike Mahardy: Divinity was very much your own thing. No other group had its hands in it. Now, with Baldur's Gate, you come in, and it's kind of the exact opposite. With Baldur's Gate, you have that added weight of nostalgia. What's that been like?
Swen Vincke: There's multiple ways that you can deal with that. You can let yourself be paralyzed by that pressure, because everybody has a different game in their heads that they want. But we're making a game that we think is going to be fun. We generally tend to make games that we like to play, and then hopefully there are people that will want to play it.
[...]
Mike Mahardy: I just imagine that the pressure of your success, coupled with the legacy of Baldur's Gate, must be its own challenge throughout development.
Swen Vincke: The thing we are telling people is that we are the dungeon master. And we're just going to play DnD together. That's literally what we're doing here. I think that's an okay approach. Every single person that plays DnD has their own version of it that they're playing.
When we talked to Wizards, we initially thought this is going to be impossible because they're going to want every single rule strictly implemented. On the contrary, they're very open to [change]. There are things that they want to have in there. Then there are things they say, "Well, try to make the best out of it." That's also how they approached 5th edition towards their own players. I think that's a large reason for their success.
We asked Vincke how the team is managing die-hard far expectations, as well as enticing a new audience to Baldur’s Gate: "Well we’re basically trying to make the game that we’d like to play," he says. "Given that all of us are very big Baldur’s Gate fans, we think we can make a game that works for all the fans out there."
[...]
"Baldur’s Gate was the definitive D&D game of it’s generation, and that’s what we’re trying to create," says Vincke, "but we’re also trying to make a good video game first and foremost, rather than a strict D&D adaptation."
"To put it in D&D terms, we’re your dungeon master and this is our campaign that we’re running, so there will be our own flavour and house rules. We’re bringing you one particular visualisation of this world, but that doesn't mean that there cannot be others."
[...]
It raises the question of how far a game can actually go in replicating that true D&D experience.
"We’re still experimenting, but a lot of rules translated really well," says Vincke. "We had to make a few tweaks and modifications to make them work with a video game, but things like having an action, movement and bonus action in a combat phase worked well.
Of course there are the finer details, like how specific spells and actions work, and we hit a few limitations with the D&D ruleset where we had to make tweaks. One example is the Fighter class. In the tabletop game it’s basically a tutorial class to teach people how to play D&D, but in a video game you don’t want it to be boring, so we had to add in a lot more player choice in combat.
With things like this we just try to make them make sense while making them fun at every step of the way. If we can stick to the rules then we stick to the rules, but if we need to modify them to make them more fun, or if they don’t work in a video game setting, then we’ll adapt them. The video game always wins in the end."
Well ... it's not as bad as I thought it would be.
On the one hand, when asked specifically about the faithfulness to the rules, translating 5E from tabletop to video game, and gameplay/combat, they have described their changes as :
- Necessary ("we need to", "we had to" multiple times).
- Tweaks.
- For the purpose of : (a) handling things that don't work in a video game setting (multiple times), or (b) making things more fun.
As far as the description as tweaks as concerned, as I said above, it's subjective. But I think it's grossly understating the impact of the changes. (As a side note, I find the quotation about being worried that they'd have to invent a whole bunch of extra stuff fairly ironic.)
Solasta is a lot more faithful to 5E and, from what I've heard, Solasta can at least be said to work.
The notion of fun is subjective, of course. Although this is an often forgotten fact. And they didn't exactly insist on it, when discussing specifically faithfulness to the rules and combat.
Finally there's the framing of these changes as necessary. But I'll come back on this below.
On the other hand, in several other places, notably when asked about the high expectations around BG3, they have said that they would focus on making the game they want to play (and I'll come back on this very point below). They've also said that they were the GM, that there would be house rules, and faithfulness to the rules wasn't their top priority.
All in all, I feel it's clear why many people expected a more faithful adaptation of the 5E rules. Especially if, like me, you haven't played a Larian game before, and thus didn't immediately make much of it when they said they'd make changes to 5E rules to make BG3 "more fun". These interviews containted more don't-expect-the-strict-5E-rules than I remembered though. But they were more linked to questions of pressure/expectations and DnD/GM feel. In the end, I think that saying here that the gameplay would feel "very true to 5E" and saying there that what they're shooting for is not "a strict DnD adaptation" isn't exactly sending the clearest message. So, I completely understand why some people feel there's a discrepancy between what was advertised and what is being done. And I think Larian could greatly benefit from better communication on this topic, clarifying what they envision regarding the rules for combat-and-adventuring.
Additionally, I feel there are two problems with Larian's communication and management of Early Access.
4) Larian's very own vision of fun combat. They have mostly painted their rule changes as necessary. As changes they
had to bring. Solasta showed, I believe, that there is no fundamental obstacle to making 5E
work in a video game, which is one half of the reasons Larian gave for making changes to the rules. The other half is "making the game more fun", but they haven't been very explicit about what that means. Rather, it sounds as if they've used "more fun" as a different way to say "better".
It really feels to me as if they constantly shy away from saying "
we find <this> fun, so we'll make changes to the 5E rules so that combat is closer what
we want it to be". They have not clearly given
their vision of what is fun gameplay.
Yes, they've said in places that they are trying to make the game that they’d like to play. I've said elsewhere that I think that's exactly how it should be. I'd rather they make the best version of their vision than make the game by referendum. But that doesn't specify their vision.
Now, putting pieces together, I can pick up some aspects of their vision (bearing in mind that I haven't played their games before, so I'm not familiar with their style).
- They consider Fighters to be for noobs and to be boring.
- They don't think low-level Fighters and Rogues are fun to play.
- They find
buffs/Bless boring and they like fireworks and damage (although they framed it as being not
their tastes, but the
players' preferences and failed to mention how their house rules influenced the supposed evidence they had).
It's certainly not the closest one could be of my own tastes. I've never had a problem repeating the Attack action with Tifa, Zell or Steiner in the old Final Fantasy games. But that's not a problem. I'd be very fine with hearing Larian assume their vision and communicate it, so that players can give them feedback accordingly.
(Side note : one great thing about tastes is that you can't really argue them. Whereas the moment you start saying "this is better", "this is more fun", or "players prefer this", people can argue.)
5) Releasing an incomplete ruleset : a bad idea. One thing that happened with the combat system, in my view, is the following.
- 5E provides a combat system which is, at the very least, decent.
- Larian declared that some aspects of 5E were boring and announced that they'd make BG3 "more fun".
- They changed some 5E rules they didn't like and added some of their own.
- The combat system that they let us play with is broken.
From there, it is not surprising that some players doubt that Larian is capable of doing "more fun" than 5E, or even merely decent.
Granted, the current system is incomplete. It is also not final, naturally, and I do hope that a lot of rules will change significantly. But I feel it is also incomplete in the sense that the rules for a number of things were left completely blank, instead of receiving even a first draft. For instance, there is no rule regarding the use of long rests (unless you consider that unlimited access to long rest is a rule ... which, from a technical point of view, it is ... ok).
I think it would have been preferable to work "in-width", setting a first-draft, hopefully-good-enough rule for every thing (which could have been the 5E rule for that thing, to save on design time), rather than working "in-depth", providing for instance a somewhat sophisticated elemental interactions system, and ending up letting people play with an incomplete system.
