Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Will Wait for Full Version

I've uninstalled the game and won't waste the SSD space on it until official release, or changes to the mechanics during EA that bring it significantly closer to the core 5e rules.

I enjoyed the game for the first 2 or 3 playthroughs, soaking in the story, graphics and voice acting. But once I started to really think about combat tactics, I couldn't ignore how much backstab and high ground cheese dominate combat to its detriment.

For me, and most of the posters here who are asking for closer 5e rules implementation, homebrews aren't bad just because they are homebrews. The Larian homebrews, such as backstab, high ground Advantage, barrelmancy, proliferation of surface effects etc, are detested because they are so much more powerful and easy to perform than the cost to execute them. These cheesy homebrews are so much more powerful than the native DnD spells and abilities that combat revolves around them. Why even use Faerie Fire to give your team Advantage against the targeted enemies? 1. It costs a spell slot, 2. requires the enemies to fail their Dex saving throw, and 3. can even affect friendlies within the area of effect, when all it takes to gain Advantage is to walk/jump behind enemies to backstab them or climb to a high ground?

These cheesy changes by Larian make combat too dumbed down, since the player, whatever class he is playing, just needs to know two mechanics: 1. backstab with melee characters, and 2. high ground with ranged characters. All combat in the game is balanced around these two homebrews. The player can throw out the majority of class abilities and spells and just use a small handful of them, since the rest are rendered largely useless thanks to Larian's cheesy changes to the rules and mechanics.

Well for me that means it is completely on the other side of the balance. For those who do not play 5e a lot, this feels like how they perceive dnd and is fun. They have achieved that side. But for those who were promised a dnd 5e game it feels very far from core dnd, and they start to notice mechanical changes that seem detrimental and therefor unfun to them. In making a game like this, you want to balance the interests of both kinds of groups, fans of the series you are adapting AND new players. I personally think moving closer to 5e will still allow them room to keep new players invested in the fun mechanics (for example the Weapon abilities, and to a more limited extent surfaces and barrels if they get toned back) while pleasing the 5e crowd. That and a lot of the cooler stuff 5e has to offer kinda depends ON certain 5e mechanics being intact, like paladins smiting or warlock familiars scouting and giving advantage.

Funnily, I think they would have had an easier time adapting 4e due to how 4e combat was constructed (and with that though I will lament that I won't get to the crazy summoning shenanigans I get in my 4e game...)

This! Well I plan on messing around see if I can get some 4e features into the game when it goes live with the editor. Get some use out of my old books.

DDO succeeded (still in developement 15 years later) because they built a game around an already established set of rules. At least originally.

BG3 MUST remain true to form to 5e to be a grand success in my eyes. Not verbatim but any talk of walking away from D&D rules is a recipe for disaster.

Make the old school D&D nerds happy....you wont regret it.

Me and my guild of old school gamers, Tyrs Paladium, is really hoping this game is a big success.

If they chose to do a 5e/4e blend that would have been well received. Even though 4e wasn't as popular as other editions, it still had some great ideas.

My players have always enjoyed 4e inspired homebrew.

I never played 4e. What are some mechanics that you would like to see implemented?

I'm not the best subject matter expert on 4e, I received advice to look into 4e for homebrew and it's been good advice.

You've probably read about +2 to hit on the forums:
One is a creature being "flanked" results in a +2 to hit for the flanking opponents.
Flanked Defined
+2 to hit "Combat Advantage"
Adding in "Combat Advantage" for high ground to replace 5e's Advantage, would be better for combat.

Another is the minion rule, it lays groundwork for more fluid combat balance. I love it for allowing me to control how difficult I want the encounter to be.
Minion Rule

The last is I have a homebrew rule for critical hits. I got the idea from looking at how 4e handled critical hits.
4e Critical Hit
They're all good options, so I became inspired to set a damage floor for critical hits. Where the players still roll double the dice, but the damage can't be less than the maximum of a normal hit.

Go into NWN 1 or 2 and try to build an Arcane Archer the way they're done in DDO. I'll wait. I can go back about 9 years in DDO, and at best, it's a hodge podge of rule sets, and some of them aren't even close to DnD, any edition. This game, right now, is miles closer to DnD than DDO. Even if we only look at pure casters. I mean, in DDO, so long as you have a blue bar, you can cast. Remember how stats from items aren't supposed to apply to whether you can cast a specific spell level? Oh, that's right, that's not a thing in DDO. The preferred method to build a Favored Soul is to dump Charisma, and then use gear to get your caster levels, and tomes.

So if they're aiming for old school DnD players, they'd probably be better served to steer clear of DDO.

several of the 3.5 features carried over, point buy going up to 18 and starting out as 8/10/10/10/10/10, standard was 22 points.
saves are fort, reflex, and will.
Ability checks were d20+one-half your level+ability mod+whatever else.
you got at will (cantrips), encounter, utility, and daily spells/abilities
got feats while leveling up 1st, 2nd, 4th, etc usually every other level.
paragon path at 11 (prestige class)
low-light vision was still a thing
some races got encounter powers

example racials, human: +2 to one ability, know one extra at-will from class, bonus feat, additional skill from class, +1 to saves.

skills were: acrobatics, arcana, athletics, bluff, diplomacy, dungeoneering, endurance, heal, history, insight, intimidate, nature, perception, religion, stealth, streetwise, and thievery.

actions were standard, move, minor, and free

opportunity action interrupts a action that triggers it

immediate action: (commonly readied action) interrupt or reaction, interrupt lets you react when the trigger condition arises acting before its resolved while reaction in response is after. (funny thing this is what confused me when i had a few convos on the forums 4e reaction means after, like you react to a situation not interrupt it).

I don't really know modding it'll be my first attempt so I guess the skills probably would be the easiest to start off on. I do want to break down actions as how they were in 4e though with interrupt and reaction. 5e with just reaction didn't make much sense.


Would of loved to see stuff carried over or mixed in for sure.

I wont EA, all we know this game might come after 2+ year.

If there was Battle Generator I might design battles. That sounds pretty fun. There could be somekind of "magical realm" and enemies are somekind of shadowy figures.

Btw, its no brainer that battles are coming. Dragon Age 4, Diablo 4, Witcher 4, ES6, KCD2 etc. Maybe even next FF. Hell, even GW3. Cavalry is coming, take out your pikes.