Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Simplified Inventory

Others may not agree, but I grow weary of inventory management. I realized recently while playing Neverwinter Nights and Solasta that I waste so much time on inventory management. Now, for D&D, there needs to be some measure of this, but honestly, if you think about it, how realistic is it to he able to pick up six suits of armor, 3 barrels, 8 great axes, 10 short swords... And how much gold are they really and how much do you really do this in tabletop?

Why not simplify so players can focus more on story and adventure and combat. What do players care about most anyway? Equipment that is better or gives them a different advantage.

So, instead of picking up and carrying tons of useless things to sort through and sell later, which is unbelievable anyway, why not simplify? Whatever players can equip is what they carry. They can equip 1 backpack, and what they put in there is limited to potions and other smaller items that don't require much space. Allow more gold drops in the game instead so players can buy/sell gear without selling tons of junk they have to sort through and lug around.

I mean, think about it. Who carries around that much loot when fighting goblins and jazz? People say they want immersion, but carrying that much gear is immersion breaking and always has been in video games.

So I say let's simplify equipment and inventory management by limiting what you can really carry, BUT provide more gold to allow people to just buy better gear without having to first sell everything and the kitchen sink.

I agree about greatly simplifying inventory down to the most important things, though I'm not set on what exactly that looks like. A few spitball ideas:

1) Never implement crafting. Anything you can craft - just make it something that you can buy. Crafting is very interesting in tabletop RPGs, where you can come up with things from scratch. Crafting in video games, where you're just following recipes, is boring. This lets us remove from the game any item whose only purpose is that it's a crafting ingredient (I'm looking at you bones, spoons, and cutting boards).

2) Anything you find, you can quick-sell (possibly for ~75% of what you would get from selling directly to a vendor). This gives you a way to deal with all of those goblin bows that you don't need without having to drag them around with you. Having them exist as items in the game still allows you to pick one up in the middle of a battle and use it, if you need to.

3) Dramatically reduce the amount of consumables available in the game. The desire for this stems more from class balance issues than inventory management, but getting rid of this stuff would certainly help the latter. I'm fine with having a few consumables, but make them rare and precious.

4) Whatever the mechanism for limiting what you can carry, make it more clear and more engaging. The carry limit shown in the game isn't your actual carry limit; there are multiple stages to being encumbered and they aren't explained anywhere. Someone (maybe Niara?) posted something about this a while back and had good thoughts about it.

5) Give things dedicated places to live. Have keys go on a key ring and/or disappear after they're no longer useful. When you read a book, have the item vanish, but put the text in your journal. Have a little pouch where you keep potions. A quiver where you keep special arrows/bolts. A couple of spots on your belt/back for spare weapons that aren't in your hands.

But I like my druid's camp, decorated with all the flowers, mushrooms, glowing crystals, alchemical equipment and other shiny things she could find. It would look so boring otherwise.

Then you're really going to hate it when you see my suggestion that camp go away.

Ok. So provide a Search Room Button so characters auto search a room. Based on how high they roll determines the quality of items they find. Provide a loot summary screen with the following options:

1. EQUIP - Puts item in limited inventory slots on a character. You only have a certain number of equip slots. Maybe 5 more than they have currently, depending on the backpack you carry. You fill all slots, no more equipment on you.
2. SEND TO CAMP - Magically sends item to storage at camp for potential later reuse or as a momento.
3. QUICK SELL - Item is magically sold to vendor you've met of your choice.
4. DROP - Item is useless and won't be sold for squat. Chuck it.

I like your idea though about items just vanishing after they are no longer needed. Once you open that chest, make the thing just disappear. You left it in the chest. Something like that. Or, at the very least, send it to camp automatically.

I affraind i smell some contradiction here ...
Yes, no one ever draged "6 suits of armor, 3 barrels, 8 great axes, 10 short swords" into combat ... yet that, we are able to is "simplify so players can focus more on story and adventure and combat" ...

If you want realism, then run with every armor or weapon you pick back to vedor ...
I bet pretty sure, you will shortly forget for imersion and will be pretty happy you can drag "6 suits of armor, 3 barrels, 8 great axes, 10 short swords" into combat.

I think you lost me. My point is that it is unrealistic to haul tons of items around on you, and it is boring and tiresome to manage so much inventory, and for what purpose? To sell it for gold so I can buy better gear. Right?

So why not take that whole video games element out of it? Just let me have certain equipment slots. That's all I can carry. Let me find more gold while adventuring instead so I can buy better gear rather than waste SO much time selling a ton of useless gear first. Then make it so if I do find some really cool gear I don't want to wear but I don't want to lose I can send it to camp for storage.

Add to that a Search Room button so I don't have to play a Hidden Objects game on every inch of the game map and viola. Fast, simple, easy item management with pretty much the same end result.

That way, you don't have the Skyrim meme where the character is carrying tons of stuff, picks up a flower and falls over. Lol.

I don't bother picking up every piece of loot to sell and I don't bother with shopping that often, so for me the gold aspect isn't that important. But my characters tend to carry a lot of weird stuff, just as memorabilia of sorts. What I'd like to see is some containters for storage, with an option to automatically add items such as keys or scrolls, not limiting equipment slots to only few items. That sounds just too restrictive, tbh.

So the only purpose of exploring dangerous area would be to find gold we can spend to buy whats suits our characters ?

I'm not a fan of all those useless items and containers and I really don't like Larian's items (poison if you heal, disengage if you heal, bless if you eat an apple...... I hate this)... But if dungeons aren't rewarding that's not fun at all.

I like finding stuff, even if it's a 2H magical axe I won't use.

There's too much useless items in BG3 and/or too much items for specific situations. Looks like changing our equipment everytime, even during combats is something they like (I don't at all)... but that's probably another thread.

"But if dungeons aren't rewarding that's not fun at all."

That is my point. Dungeons are actually not very rewarding right now. It'd be one thing to find a magical 2H Axe while searching a room. All we get right now is a bunch of 1 GP items we lug around and sell. Id rather get gold than have a ton of useless gear that Im just gonna sell anyway for gold.

So why waste our time searching through endless garbage. Give us a Search Area button, based on the roll it determines what rewarding items we find. The higher the roll, the better the items. Instead of letting us lug around everything including the kitchen sink, let's just have our equip slots, more gold to buy better stuff, and negate the need to pick up every little thing to sell.

Ok. Thought about it some more. What about leave game as is but if there is ANY special item like a book with story content, a magical axe, magic arrows, a potion of speed, whatever that is of greater worth, if the characters come near those items they roll Perception to see if they spot then. Like spotting traps, they roll to spot special or valuable, not mundane gear or story items. If they succeed, the item or container highlights like a trap does now, so the player knows something special is there.

That way, players can search through every little thing if they want, but it gives players who don't want to do that the ability to still find cool stuff. Then, if I don't want to pick up everything, I just wont. My choice. Carry nothing if I want. Carry everything if you want.

Inventory sorting needs to happen, the clutter is real. It's also really confusing when you have 2 of the same herb, one which has no weight but the other one does.

Coping with the inventory is so tedious, and when none of the characters besides Lazael unless you also play Fighter has any bonus strength, inventory weight is a huge PITA when the game rains heavy grey armor and weapons just for the purpose of being sold.

But in this situation, players still have to search through the barrels because they don't know if they succeeded their perception checks or not.
Unless they're also notified if they failed the check, but at that point why not just always highlight special-item containers and/or remove any non-special-item containers?

Basically, it's like tabletop. If a DM has people search a room in tabletop, they roll Perception. Success means they find stuff. Fail means they don't. If you do a Perception roll for traps, story items, hidden buttons and levers, important books, keys, jewelry, etc., you never know what the failed roll was for. Is there a trap? Is there an important item you missed?

In video games, like you say, if they know they failed they'll keep searching. Fine. Keep searching if you like, or risk not continuing to search. Your choice. If you really want to make sure you find everything, search every nook and cranny. That's your choice.

I still think either way, give players more gold and less crap to sell with less ability to carry tons of stuff. In actual tabletop D&D, you just don't carry around all that stuff while trying to fight goblins and such. The rule is 5 times strength. My rogue has 10 strength, she carries 50 lbs. Then she's slowed down. At most, that's 5 suits of leather armor at best. Ring mail is 40 lbs. My Half orc has 17 strength. He can carry 2 Ring mails before encumbered.

I'm not asking for more than what D&D usually gives in rules. I say cut out the video game need to pick up tons and tons of useless craps to sell, give us what we need to buy better gear, let us find cooler gear while exploring, and limit our ability to lig around craps. If you limit my carrying capacity, is wont drag forks and knives and spoons. I'll save my space for good stuff.

That's exactly my point though; nothing has changed.
Prior to your suggestion, you need to search every nook and cranny to make sure you find everything.
Implementing your suggestion, you still need to search every nook and cranny to make sure you find everything.
The difference between tabletop and BG3 is that in tabletop, if you fail your perception/investigation check for finding treasure, the DM doesn't follow that up with a description of notable things in the room and allow you to then search them to find the treasure.

I'm in agreement with you that there should be less crap. But they should implement this via actually getting rid of the crap (and the empty containers), not by giving us a percentage chance to highlight the important containers and leaving in all the crap containers.

I disagree. If there are players who want to sift through all the things spending tons of time searching manually, I don't want to take that away from them. It is a change, though. Allowing for a Perception check saves me from having to play the Hidden Objects game. If I fail, I can opt to do a more thorough search, kind of like a Take 20, or I can move on and accept the failed roll.

And again, I'm calling for limiting inventory with the game providing more gold than useless crap to carry and sell. That's more the main point. In video games, people have gotten used to this idea that they need to pick up and carry every little thing so they can sell it and get more money to buy more cool stuff. That leads to senseless inventory management time wasted. Instead of Larian implementing all sorts of sorting features and new things to make item management easier, I'm saying limit how much people can carry and shift the focus so players don't feel they need to pick up and sell things.

Picture this: You wake up from the pod. Immediately, a Perception checks. You succeed. The tadpole pool is highlighted. You click on it. Cutscene. You run around it, Perception roll. Items on the table are highlighted because I succeeded. I click on them. Tablets tell me about images playing in my head. A Githyanki Silver Sword, etc. I read the items but leave them because as of right now I don't have a backpack so item slots are very limited.

I move on, another roll. Fails. I pause. Was it for a trap or a cool item. I don't know. I don't want to risk it. Move on. I leave the room, missing out on the potion of speed the dead mind flayer has and some gold a dead person has. Oh well. If I'd made the roll I wouldn't have missed these. I could have searched more, but since I failed the roll I might have also wandered into a hidden trap.

Later, I fight imps with Lae'zel. We kill them. After combat, Perception rolls for both. I fail. Lae'zel succeeds. 2 Imps are highlighted with important gear, a crossbow and axe. I need the crossbow but taking the axe would take up a slot I might need for something else. Skip it. Just take the crossbow. Her roll also highlighted 2 mind flayer bodies. I search them. Speed potions and a healing potion. Those are rewarding and important. Take them. Also, some gold. Grab. Move on.

I get up the stairs. Dead bodies. They don't have anything important. No roll is made. I move on. I could search them if I want, but that's up to me. I decide to search just for the heck of it. Hmm. Dead guy has some food. Well. That's not that valuable, but if I needed healing, like at times later in the game, finding food and eating it right there would be helpful. I may not pick it up and lug it around, because I don't have a lot of inventory space, but searching a body or chest manually and finding things like food might provide little things like this to help me on the moment.

Later, I find a backpack. Ah! Now more inventory space is available. Now if I want to pick up and carry SOME food and drinks, I can. Still, I have limited space so I would be discouraged from carrying too much useless stuff. I would only want to fill my pack with things I need, thus cutting down on senseless inventory management.

So why keep all the craps items on the game at all? Immersion for one. Second, pick items up and throw them at enemies. I think that aspect of the game as pretty cool. You can virtually pick up and throw anything. Third, it gives Larian the ability to hide cool items amidst a bunch of useless things. So IF you fail the Perception roll you can either continue to search manually and spend a lot of time hunting, Taking 20, or you can just forget it and move on.

What I don't want them to do is go to the other extreme. In Solasta, for example, all treasure is in highlighted places that are even shown on your map. There is no real searching for treasure. It's too easy to find it. There is no replayability. Every time you play, you can easily find all the treasure. I found that to be unfulfilling also. There needs to be some level of searching and finding. It just needs to be easier than BG3 is right now.

And again, I'm really just wanting less need to carry junk and sell it. Limit inventory. Even if you just use 5e rules more strictly, that would make inventory management so much better. I mean, if I know I can only carry 85 lbs as a 17 strength fighter before my movement gets reduced by 10 feet, I'm probably going to only carry things I really need to carry, especially if the game is giving me enough gold to buy better gear without having to carry 130 lbs of 1 GP items AND if my Ring mail is 40 lbs and my shield 6 already and my axe 4 so I can only really carry 35 lbs more before I'm encumbered.

Okay, so you're suggesting that the game tells you when you've failed a perception check to notice something?
I disagree entirely with that aspect. The game should not notify you when you've failed checks unless there is a tangible result for failure (falling athletics and falling down a cliff, failing persuasion and enemy becomes hostile, failing constitution and becoming poisoned). If you're still allowed to find the hidden thing on a failed perception check, then the failed perception check is effectively the same as a success: notifying you that something good is in the area. It's just less effective at doing so, as it doesn't tell you exactly what you've found.

And I do want to take away from others the ability to spend tons of time searching manually, because this would directly affect my playthrough by making me search through less stuff. Doing so just wastes my time and results in me acquiring a bunch of junk that I then sell. There can be some searching, sure, but at like <50% of the level there is now in BG3. Like you seem to want, with less crap and a more limited inventory.

Hmm. You know, you're not wrong. Hidden Perception rolls would be better. One benefit of video game is the game can make secret rolls without anyone knowing. That would be more real and true to D&D.

So yeah. You're right. If you stick true to classic D&D, if your character fails to perceive something, you CANNOT find it. Sucks to be you. That's part of role playing. That's what makes the Perception skill so important.

So back to the original concept. Perception rolls but in secret. The higher the roll, means you find better stuff. Fail the roll, fails to find hidden stuff. Limit inventory to keep people from hauling tons of useless stuff to sell, and instead provide opportunity to find more gold. Manual searching only rewards you with low grade items like food so it still might benefit a bit to search manually, but you know you aren't going to manually find anything real good in that way. Thus, you won't waste so much time searching every little thing unless you desperately need to pick up some food or something like that for healing because you'll know that only when something highlights is it worth something.

What do you think?

@GM4Him
I like that idea better. Of course, the important thing is for inventory to be simplified via less random crap in the world.

I don't necessarily want all important or cool items to be gated behind perception checks. Some items should be easily found; perhaps chests don't require a perception check to find and have better items than barrels/bookshelves/sacks/etc. And obviously, locked containers should have better items than unlocked containers, not 2 carrots and a single gp.
So basically, more impatient players can search only chests, locked containers, and perceived highlighted containers and find a good chunk of the cool & valuable loot.
Whereas more patient players can search all containers to ensure they find every single valuable thing.

Agreed. Now if we can just get Larian to implement this. 😁