Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Looks like Larian cheese is here to stay

>Passerby

id like if you would represent my arguments fairly.

>Are you stating for the record that it is DnD for any character, with any stats, wearing heavy armour, to automatically succeed in jumping over an enemy and then land behind him and then backstab him?

No but im saying any dnd character regardless of stats, armor or class can walk around to the opposit side of his enemy with no roll required. This is RAW.
But thats not even my point. No particular rule or ruling IS or ISNT DnD.
DnD has had tons of editions, erratas, optional rules, third party content, homebrew and forks. Wether or not something is DnD isnt decided by wether or not it follows one particular ruling.
Otherwise very few genuine DnD parties would actually be DnD.

>Simple yes or no answer.
which i gave you at the very start of the post: yes to all. all of these things are DnD. Stranger things happened at gaming tables.
But the fact that you want a simpel binary answer tells me that you think in terms of a video game where such interactions are hard coded. We are talking about a video game. But DnD isnt a video game. Baldurs Gate is a video game adaptation of DnD.
In DnD, absoluteley all of those things can happen at any given table under a number of given circumstances.
>Is it DnD for the DM to say that every grappling attempt automatically succeeds as long as he has 17 STR?
Yes.
Its still dnd, its just not an overly smart ruling.
but i prefer this over not beeing able to throw anyone because grappling hasnt been implemented like in any other DnD adaptation quite frankly.


>Save against damage.
Some things can be counterspelled. Some cannot. Theres guranteed damage from AoEs and auras and there have been for many editions.
If youre caught in an explosion theres also nothing you can do about it. Likewise, if youre standing in the middle of a barn filled with very flammable hay, and a goblin shoots a fire arrow into it, the only thing you can do about it is kill the goblin before he can fire the arrow.
This is the only logical conclusion to that scenario.
In my last session, the Priest killed a ghouls imply by standing next to him while surrounded by a fiery aura, which together with the ghouls weakness to the damage type resulted in its immediate disintegration without any save or AC allowed. I was quite bummed about it but it made sense.
> Is this how you play DnD?

Yes.
This is how you play DnD.
I dont know if youve read my post in full but id like to direct you again to the paragraph about the Ten-foot pole.
"Cheap tactics" is how you play DnD. its how you survive. If you play by the rules, you die. Low level characters are weak and prone to getting knocked out before they can even get close to an enemy if they have low initiative.
Getting the drop on the monsters, surprising them, trapping them or otherwise neutralizing them without having to pray for Nuffle the dice god is exactly how you play DnD.
Your enemies will do the same. Honor is for noble knights jousting, not for mercenaries scrounging through half forgotten caves duking it out with the dregs of monsterous society.
In case youre wondering, google Tuckers Kobolds.

Or in case youre a weeb, watch Goblin Slayer.


>Maximuus
>5 foot step action vs bonus action
it worked as a minor action in 4e and 3.5 so clearly thats not the issue
However in 5e the primary issue is that warriors arent sticky at all. 3.5 also had no solution for this mostly, pathfinder came up with some ways to do it.
Generally i think larian ought to copy the Mark mechanic from the Cavaleer class and give it to all martials (and battlemaster maneuvers too for good measure) thatd be a start. AoOs are a terrible way for melee characters to project threat especialy since withotu feats they are limited to one per round(rather than one per turnas in older editions, another stupid descision they should go back on)
>Flanking
im with you, flanking should be there, i still dont hate backstab because its somethign that i never understood why it isnt there to begin with. I think both of these should exist but as i said before, AoO should trigger upon leaving any threatened area opposed to leaving the reactors reach.
>Flanking optional rule
i forgot thats "optional" too in 5e. man i sure dont understand how people can play this game RAW. its so barebones.

>remove as a source of advantage
im not against that.
a flat +2 would be fine, thats how the previous edition did it.
The entire reason why advantage exists is because focus groups told WOTC that players were too dumb for basic math and that "players love rolling dice so let them roll TWO DICE"

>Shoving as a bonus action
i think its fine as a bonus action, implement proper grappling rules and the problem is gone.

>if you break concentration spells are close to useless
a matter of design.
I personally dont hate it because i think casters SHOULD be vulnerable. they used to drop in one hit by a goblin and for good reason.
If frontliners had better stickyness, casters getting mogged by weak enemies wouldnt be an issue.

So all in all i understand your points.i agree with you on some of them, not so much on others.
I think these dont need to be adressed one at the time, i think a good set of changes would make all of these points go away

>untangle disengage from jump (and give it a non retarded animation)
>Change how AoO works
>Implement proper melee rules (grappling, marking, one reaction per turn)

Honestly, the only problem I have with "backstab" (that is to say, advantage on attacks against an enemy that is not facing you) is that you can achieve it without allies, or rather, more than one enemy of the enemy. If two individuals face each other in combat and no allies or enemies are in similarly close range, it's just stupid that you should be able to simply walk around the opponent (or worse, jump over them) and then stab them in the back with advantage. Why would an enemy let you do that? It's just silly. Now, if there's more than one enemy close to an opponent, it makes more sense as they can't keep track of too many at a time.

Sordak, of you could use the tags, that would make your posts much easier to the eye

There seems to be a fine line between silly and "player agency" these days. Or a gross overlap.

I actually wish Larian would do a pass on BG3 to remove or tone down a lot of the "silly" parts.

Eating pigs heads in combat. Excessive shoving, throwing and jumping in combat. "Helping" PC's up repeatedly without any magical healing while enemies continue to pummel them back into the ground. Smashing a healing potion into someone's armor to heal them. Dipping a metal weapon in a candle. Metal burning without a flammable substance. Explosions looking for any excuse to happen. Jumping into crazy heights like a Marvel superhero rather than climbing like humans do. These things belong in a tongue-in-cheek platform game and not in an RPG trying to tell a grown up story. One that also has a responsibility of continuing an existing franchise where silly things can exist in writing but never as part of the game mechanics.

Oh god I completely agree so much. The silly stuff, which Larian is fond of, just doesn't fit the tone of the game, which so far is bloody amazing in sooo damn many ways... I think it ruins the mood, sadly, and I would cry from joy if they toned down stuff like that, for sure.

Could not of put it any better. +100.
Larian is too full of themselves. Little Larian'esk touches if perfectly fine. What we have right now is "we wanna be with the BIG BOYS!" identity crisis. So stuff is Larianized everywhere.

I forgot collecting and plopping down huge barrels from magic pockets.

They are called a Bag of Holding in D&D and even that rare and powerful magic item doesn't make it possible to use potions from someone else's inventory, or the entire party using the same Greatsword +1 to attack while also using a shield during enemy turns.

Oh god I keep forgetting those things exist. It always makes me depressed when I consider the fact that those are actual things in BG3 -_-

Also with a Bag of Holding, in 5E it holds 500 lbs. A barrel in 5E is 70 lbs, and holds 40 gallons of liquid. If that liquid were water, that barrel would be ~400 lbs, meaning that you could only get one barrel of water in a bag of holding with about 100 lbs left over.

Better yet, when fighting spiders and ettercaps everyone in the party can equip Visions of the Absolute for that extra 2d6 dmg before attacking and then pass it along to the next attacker in the initiative order. While eating a pig's head.

Is that considered a "creative solution" and "player agency"? Right now I just really need Larian to come out and say "of course not, but it's a low priority fix". Because I'm not sure they see any problem there.

I think many people in this forum are stressing out too much about battle mechanics. I agree with many of the above points and have highlighted areas for improvement in previous posts, but we need to keep perspective. I would wager that Larian has a laundry list of things to fix before release. Many of these items will be addressed, or we will have to wait for a mod to give the game the flavor we are looking for.

Let’s give these guys a little credit for what they have made. This game, even in its raw and unfinished state, is very fun. It’s story, so far, is the best I have seen in a cRPG since KOTOR. Larian’s CEO dresses in armor and is passionate about the project. Honestly we just need to give them a chance.

It would make zero sense from a development standpoint for Larian to spend the time and resources necessary to design the combat around DOS-type mechanics, with the intention of going back and moving more towards 5E and negating the work that has been put in to the project.

Not to mention, that every statement from Larian, has indicated that including DOS-style gameplay, was intentional, because they don't actually understand 5E rules very well, and have struggled to adapt them.

I'm annoyed as well that we haven't seen any major changes other than improved dice rolls. But it is still logical that Larian wanted to get as much done to get the game into early access and the hold off onto other aspects for later. So there are some Divinity hold-overs.

I don't know why RNG was the main focus, when disadvantage while attacking enemies on a higher elevation than you can confuse the player and result in a miss. (Note, this is not RNG's fault but a poor design choice).

That being said, where's a hotfix for rule implementation? If we can get a hotfix for different RNG, why not one to address backstab? etc.

Except that's not how Early Access works, what you are describing is Alpha level development where major design decisions are still in flux. Beta software is feature complete, Early Access, would be Beta or later level, core feature design is complete, even if they haven't released the content into Early Access.

I wouldn't expect major changes to anything at this point, what we are seeing, minus some tweaks, is what we are going to get at release.

Late into Divinity: Original Sin 2's early access backstab was changed, for similar reasons to player complaints now.

Alpha, Beta, and Early Access don't have to be restrictive.

For the record, there actually *is* a visual bug right now where your ranged attacks can actually roll for advantage, even though the preview tooltip doesn't show that you're high enough in elevation to get it. We think this might be evidence that Larian is tweaking some aspects of high ground advantage/low ground disadvantage... Or that literally no one cared enough to investigate closely until about a week after the latest patch.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/810002093250838551/814781578205986865/unknown.png

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/810002093250838551/814781901491142686/unknown.png

I'm still hopeful changes are coming.

Man, I spent the past half hour looking for your thread because it finally occurred to me that you were the one who first noticed it to begin with. Of course I couldn't find it because it got merged into another thread for some reason.

This game is so very beautiful, so it disheartens me to see all the wheel spinning.

I predicted that the modders would be transforming the game back to RAW, and that's what is happening.

5e tabletop is the most popular PnP game, and should have easily translated to this venue when they made the decision to adopt D20 turn based. The problem is that they never had the faith to try the RAW in the first place.

I had faith that if they didn't they would waist a lot of time and money.

Stop fighting it. I mean modders are pushing out unfinished classes, and making plenty of customization...efficiently.

I hear a lot of the same echoes from other posters:

Add a first person view option and let us look around.

The bug fixing is necessary.

Work on the character system...specifically get rid of petty drama and find ways to pull a diverse party together, rather than DISAPROVE, DISAPROVE, DISAPROVE.
The npcs should react to player decisions, not the other way around.

Avoiding the word "good" like the plague...give us characters with...erm...more character. The noble sort of NPCs, for those of us, who enjoyed feeling the atmosphere of working with the Harpers. Getting recognized by Elminster. Meeting simple Drama free folk that made the game feel like a living world going 'bout its business.

Figure that out fast, so you can make the story itself something very enjoyable to finish.

well ive made a pretty lenghty post on how id figure id come to a solution on this.
but the subsequent replies in the thread are just 7 pages of these three things:

1. demanding to remove "silly" things opposed to "gritty and realistic" things while failing to define what these are
2. demanding to return to RAW, posts clearly made by people that dont know RAW 5e and how it is too barebones to be a video game
3. congratulating each other on beeing upset about it


and man one thing i just cannot leave uncommented.
5e RAW is a good tactical game! hahahha oh dios mio!

You cannot even flank in 5e RAW, you cant do it!
you cannot flank, you cannot charge you cannot distract an enemy.
None of these thigns are possible in RAW outside of feats (which are not in the standard RAW mind you) or class features.
5e is a TERRIBLE tactical combat game.