Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Adding the Grapple action and solving "barrelmancy"

Agreed. I know this medieval fantasy and not medieval realism but the oil makes the game seem too modern. Medieval people didn't have that much use for mineral oil -- organic oils burned cleaner, natural fats congealed in way that made them useful . . .

I know I would rather be walking around in chainmail doused with flax seed oil instead of Mobil 10-30

A bunch of oil barrels with no purpose except as explosion fodder makes the game seem cartoonish.

Explosives were fully utilized before the end of the middle ages.

They were. Played a role in siege warfare. And then the invention of gunpowder led to end of castle walls. Magnesium / Greek fire was used, well, by the Greeks.

But these were rare rare substances used for a particular purpose. You wouldn't just run into large barrels of explosives just hanging out in caves. When I see the piles of explosives I experience the same sense of ironic detachment that I held onto while playing DOS.

In D&D if you want things to blow up you find a mage.

off (this) topic -- your point about strength being more important than intelligence for a mage is a good one.

What is historically accurate is somewhat irrelevant to what is possible in a fictitious world, but that being said, no one was running around in the middle ages with a backpack with 6 barrels full of explosive liquid that they could drop beside enemy, jump away , and then shoot with an arrow and cause it to explode.

Except for one of the best scenes in the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

I dont understand why people have a problem with carrying barrels in a backpack is unrealistic, while having no problem carrying a few full plate armor or arsenal for a small town garrison.

I'd say it has less to do with oil (which is a handy tool, but nowhere near as overpowered as it was in D:OS 1 and 2) and more with smokepowder. That stuff can wipe out a whole encounter if placed right, and one has to be really commited to their roleplaying to not just squirrel every SP barrel away to use for clearing out the goblin camp or some of the Underdark fights. It's not quite in the Deathfog territory (which at least had the sense to not appear in barrels until Act 4, but nothing stopped a particularly persistent player from terrain-swapping it into desired places where it was available), but it's definitely up there.
It's also curious whether or not barrels and other containers can be fit into bags of holding if they are to appear in the game. Because that will just remove weight as an obstacle to barrelmancy entirely.

A barrel in 5E weighs 70lbs alone, and can hold 40 gallons of liquid. If the liquid were only as dense as water at 8.3 lbs/gallon, then a single barrel alone would be ~400 lbs. A bag of holding can only hold 500 lbs worth of items, so you'd only be able to get a single barrel in a bag of holding if Larian implemented even basic equipment rules. The reality is that none of the starting characters should be able to toss a barrel around without a bag of holding if carrying capacity is 15 x Strength score.

It's just another example of Larian failing to actually read the rules because barrelmancy was already built into the engine from DOS.

Because the line has to be drawn somewhere. Carrying multiple armors is believable, packed on a mule for example....or as long as you have the strenght. Doesnt have to be realistic, just believable.
Carrying dozens of huge barrels full of liquid is idiotic at best. Might as well carry a door, tables, ships, bridges, trees, etc etc...who cares anymore.

Again in the silly funny world of Divinity this works great though!

Commented on the new "pick up and throw stuff" mechanic in the Patch 7 thread, might as well re-iterate it here as it's relevant to the topic:

The "creatures/objects as improvised weapons" thing may be a step towards properly implemeting grappling as a mechanic. Being able to just pick up and throw people (barrels) without actually getting a proper hold of them first is kinda ridiculously unbalanced, but if shoving were to be reduced to a mild poke mostly useful for moving an enemy (barrel) away a little or knocking 'em down as per the rules, the grapple + throw combo could then become your way to really chuck people/barrels around. There's risk involved as the grab could fail (always succeeding when used on allies and inanimate objects, though), but that would also make the whole throw-a-thon much less of a cheesy tactic, making it a tactical tool to use when it's *actually* relevant.

Throwing someone/something could work as a bonus action following the grapple on the same turn, kinda like how the Produce Flame toss is implemented, but if it's an inanimate object/you have high Strength you can carry whoever/whatever you grappled around. The objects like barrels and chests (except for the quest stuff) and boxes might as well have a "grapple only" flag ticked so that they can only be picked up and hauled around rather than pocketed into the whatever natural law-denying dimension that the inventory is at the moment.