Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3 Could Be a Platform if it Were Closer to D&D RAW

I've been playing BG3 over the past week or so, and so far, the game appears to be very polished for something in pre-release and that's great! However, after putting in about 40 hours, I've noticed that the game feels a lot like DOS2 with a D&D 5E veneer, and as good as that game is, it's not D&D.

The Baldur's Gate 3 in my head is a platform. If Larian implements a DM mode and world editor like they did with DOS2, this game could be an incredible way to create new adventure modules using the D&D ruleset. If Larian chose to, they could create new official assets for use in adventure creation that would supplement the needs of module creators. It could be the next (non-MMO) Neverwinter Nights. The point that I'm trying to make is that if they build the game closer to 5E RAW, it would be a much more attractive prospect for community development and fan projects, a la Skyrim. D&D has never been more popular than it is right now, and building a game that fits the source material, that is familiar to fans of the source material, means that it will be easier for those people to adopt and to adapt modules for. I want that reality for Larian and for me, who would absolutely love to become part of that community.

So here are my observations on some of the design elements that I think Larian should address prior to release. I'm sure some of this stuff has been discussed to death, but I'm new, so bear with me.

Alignment
I know that some people hate alignment, and some people say it has no purpose in 5E. I disagree. Alignment provides a guideline for character development and a moral base to consider when taking actions in the game. Without alignment, many players would not consider their actions and simply do what they feel is the best option at the time. Additionally, there are alignment bound spells, abilities and races in the game. Alignment has wide-ranging effects that may not be immediately apparent in the moment-to-moment gameplay, but it can have major character and story ramifications when used properly.

I also know that they discussed this with WotC and Wizards said that they don't need to emphasize alignment. I think that this is the wrong choice, but if it's not going to be implemented in the main game, I would still like for the option to be there if a module editor is made available. It's a fundamental part of the D&D experience.

Food
Food severely unbalances the spell and action resource management aspect of the game and makes combat into a healfest. It's extremely easy to find and it can be used in-combat for an immediate health boost, just like a healing potion or spell. I know that Larian designed Divinity: Original Sin with food as an immediate buff, but that's not how it works in D&D. It's a requirement for life, and it can have beneficial and harmful effects, but it's not a magic potion. It can be important, but it should have more of a preparatory role and be used while at Camp and during rests, or for roleplaying purposes.

Jump
If people could jump around anywhere whenever they wanted to escape opportunity attacks in 5E, it would happen all the time, but it doesn't, because that's not how the game works and it's designed that way for a reason. Opportunity attacks (and Disengage) should not be so casually dismissed with Jump. So, Jump should still provoke attacks of opportunity while within melee range.

Wizards and Divine Magic
I can't understand why wizards have been made able to use divine magic. It breaks balance and diminishes the role of a cleric, not to mention the fact that divine magic is granted through faith, not through study. I really hope that this is something that just hasn't been addressed yet in development, because if this is intentional, it's a huge misstep.

There are other things but these are my initial observations. I want this game to feel like D&D and right now, it's just not quite there. I love Larian and the Divinity games, and I respect they are using what they've learned to craft this new experience, but D&D has a completely different set of rules at its core, and while they are meant to be broken, a lot of the things above remove the urgency and challenge of both combat and social situations that I think D&D has which Divinity does not. I want those things in this game, for the sake of the longevity of the game as well as my own personal enjoyment.

And at the very least, if a module editor/DM mode is implemented, please build in the option to use the above changes as rules in our own modules. I can accept Larian's design as "house rules" but I still want my modules to be closer to RAW.

Agreed


This is one I am not in agreement with. Its like saying someone isn't moral or ethical unless they are X religion. It also ruins the experience of getting to know your companions. It was a real problem with old school CRPG D&D games and BG1 and 2 where you would just be "presented" with the alignment.

In addition, say I am Neutral Evil and I am not living up to your expectations of what you think that means. I have observed that most people have a puerile idea of what evil actually looks like. Evil people must always be rude, greedy, cowardly and can never be authentic. Can a Neutral Evil person be ruthless towards enemies and protective of friends? Can a LG person? Yep to both.

Is Gale good or evil? He comes off as selfish and manipulative. He leaves if you wipe out the druid grove but is he doing that because he doesn't want to be associated with that behavior or because he actually cares?

is Shadowheart Good or evil? Or neutral? She is a priestess of Shar, so she must be evil, right?

Oh wait, let me check her alignment tag. Well that ruined everything.

No, Larian has it 100% right on this. Alignment has been a chain around our necks. I am glad to be free of it.


Agreed


As for the spell issue, the tags simply have not been implemented yet.

I think alignment should at least be present for enemy creatures purely cause I think there are a few things in 5e that actually do care about alignment and it does act as good shorthand for less complex creatures where the goal is not to get into the complexities and grayness. Like a random Demon from the Abyss should likely be marked as Chaotic Evil, while if somehow we got a demon as a companion it should have no marked alignment because the situation would be more complex.

I disagree. It would be redundant. A demon from the Abyss has to be Chaotic Evil. The Abyss itself is Chaotic evil, and it instill chaos and evil in anyone who spends too much time there. A demon is chaos and evil manifest.

Listen, having an alignment listed is like a laugh track in a sitcom. Its telling you how to think instead of allowing you to use common sense or figure it out yourself.

Regarding alignment, it doesn't necessarily have to be something that is made known to everyone. It doesn't have to be a tag, or a visible tag, but it is something that the DM (or the game) can use to identify your actions and make reactions in response, and it's something that the player can use to guide their own roleplay. Alignment is a fluid and mutable guideline that informs your personal moral outlook. I personally see it as something to look to when I consider the choices I'm going to make. Without it, I'd be less inclined to take the character's personality into consideration when making choices, and simply use my own best judgement, which may not be how the character would act. Creating an understanding of that character's general outlook between the player and the DM has a lot of benefits.

Allowing alignment to change based on a player's actions is great. It should be allowed to change. For a good example of how this can work, check out Pathfinder: Kingmaker. But just because it can change, that doesn't mean that it's not valuable to have in the game. Not only does it have direct mechanical effects, but more importantly, it forces the player to think more critically about their character's actions.

I think it just leads to meta-gaming. "I want to stay X alignment so I will do 2 Naughty things and 4 goody things". People will almost always act in their own best interest unless they have some sort of mental health issue such as impulsiveness, or a sexual attraction to violence and a need for control.

From a logical standpoint Halsin is the better bet in regards to finding a cure for your condition. From a logical standpoint working with humans and tieflings is safer and more profitable than working with gobbos and drow. Logically it makes sense to not to use the parasite as it co-opts your brain and thinking. These considerations transcend good and evil.

Astarion doesn't want to lose the parasite - not because he is evil, but because its his only chance at freedom in 200 years.

Then there is the what is evil mean question. Is it selfishness? Because that covers all humans. All human actions are inherently selfish.

However if I show up and tell you I am a Cleric of Bane and my God offers you "Bane's Freedom", then you know I am dangerous, that I am motivated by religious fervor and my alignment is irrelevant. Run!

People will metagame and min/max everything if that is how they choose to play. There are players who see the game not as a tool for storytelling, but as a power fantasy where the only thing that matters is how much damage they can deal in a round. If you're going to try and manipulate the system, then every part of the game exists for you to manipulate, so you can't argue that alignment encourages metagaming because those players would do it with every mechanic. You can accommodate those people, and even support them, but that doesn't mean the system is built entirely for them, and it doesn't mean that alignment isn't worth implementing correctly in BG3. Alignment has always been a part of the game and it's a lot of things to a lot of people, which we are illustrating by having this discussion. I think it's still very important.

As for your examples, I don't see how they show any problems with alignment as a game mechanic. Yes, these characters have multifaceted beliefs and motivations, but when I read these lines, I can still see Lawful, Chaotic, Neutral, Good and Evil. There may be nine defined alignments, but it's still a spectrum, and it's still subject to change. Those people who are mentally unstable and act unpredictably/without regard for law and order will fall under the Chaotic end of the Lawful/Chaotic spectrum. If they consistently do bad things that hurt other people, they will fall under the Evil end of the Good/Evil spectrum. If they make efforts to change their ways, then their alignment will shift, and that's totally okay. The alignment system simply informs the game, the DM and the player about who the character is, and if the entity who runs the game chooses to consider alignment, it can have effects on the game that the player or may not be able to predict, which creates opportunities for interesting situations that I want to have in the game. To say nothing of the actual codified mechanics that exist which relate directly to alignment.

+1 OP

Agree 100%

It is a major problem for D&D lore that alignment has been more ignored over time. The RP aspect of the game is built on alignment. The mechanics and world are build on the concept of alignments, both in the original types, and to different values and identities. Trying to remove this aspect of the game, while keeping the other parts of the game, just makes it inconsistent and very unsatisfying to play.

Unfortunately, as you noted, WotC actually endorses the unraveling of the fundamental D&D concepts, for reasons which don't matter for this game. So, Larian is getting away with doing what they honestly already want to do, which is make a game with much less RP focus, more combat focus, and ignore the thematic limitations and restrictions that made D&D interesting in the first place. Storytelling, with unforgiving themes and difficult character choices, is being left behind because of somewhat midguided motivations of newer designers and executives in the game business. Just look at what they decided to do by destroying the concept of good and evil in different races in a completely fictional fantasy univere. This fundamental component of D&D is being ripped out without concern for how it weakens the appeal and value of the game.

So, in the case of BG3, what we're getting is a strange product: after 50 years of RPG game innovation based on D&D, the biggest electronic adaptation of the game, with one of the few official licenses of the brand, is now a major departure from the core principles of the game, and is instead a good example of decades of derivative and generalized RPG game mechanics, which ultimately are descended from D&D. This game could just as easily have been made without any association with the brand, and it would not be similar enough to be at risk of copyright infringement, since so much of the generic RPG style has come from D&D. So, alignment, as important and valuable as it is, was the first thing to be eliminated by both the licensor and the developer. I wish this trend could be reversed, but unfortunately, cultural and political trends have forced this type of storytelling out of favor.

I sympathize with this, but if you want it to change, you have to make it known that you want it to change, right? If we don't ask for it, they won't do anything about it. It may not happen right away but there's no better time to try and get it implemented than prior to release. It's one of the benefits of being involved in the pre-release version of the game.

Ok, so just to clarify, are you guys saying you want just the main character to have an alignment that is affected by their actions?

Because I am not getting a clear idea of exactly how you want alignment to be used in these walls of words.

Who would see alignment? How would they see it? Would people react to it? How is it separate from reputation?

There is a (very) small list of mechanics that do care about Alignment, and in general its just a nice piece of role playing and a tie to the original system.

Reputation is something that is developed outwardly through the character's actions and affects how people perceive them. It's something that changes from person to person and from faction to faction. While you may have a great reputation with the peasants of a nearby town because you saved them from a goblin attack, the thieves' guild in Calimshan a hundred miles away will likely have no idea who you are and may try to rob you if you're in their territory.

Alignment is not visible to most people or creatures in the game, and is not a descriptor that most other entities can use to determine who the character is. If you consider it purely as a tool for character development, It is something that the player, the DM and in the case of a CRPG like BG3, the game itself can use to determine the character's moral outlook and guide their actions. It is meant to be a spectrum that changes based on the actions of the character. When someone takes actions that are contrary to their alignment, then it shifts in the direction of a different alignment. If they take enough actions that do not fit their current alignment, then it can change. Players can use this to recognize who their character is becoming, and if they decide that it's not who they want to be, they can try to make changes in their character's behavior. The DM or the game can use this as a tool to guide the player if what they're doing may have effects which are counter to their interests. If you haven't played Pathfinder: Kingmaker, I highly recommend giving it a look as a great example of how this can work in a CRPG.

As for the setting itself, the multiverse has real, tangible alignment-based creatures and organizations, as well as entire planes of existence that are made for specific alignments. If you happen to travel to one of those planes, the inhabitants can detect your alignment and will react to you accordingly. This is a pretty decent list of the planes that provides the alignment for each:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Plane

Traveling to a plane that contrasts with your alignment can have serious consequences. The planes are one of the more interesting aspects of D&D if you'd like to read up on them, and alignment is fundamental to how they work.

So yes, for multiple reasons, I think alignment is very important. Not only to the main BG3 campaign, but for any potential content that comes later, official or otherwise. This video from Mike Mearls (one of the lead designers for D&D) may help as well:

I know what alignment is and how it works on the planes. I feel like I have a partial answer in there but I need some clarification.

Ok, so just to clarify, are you guys saying you want just the main character to have an alignment that is affected by their actions?

Yes

Would people react to it?

Yes

Who would see alignment?

Just you? I think, I am not clear on this, but other people would be aware of your reputation.

So would you be able to see anyone else's alignment? Companions for example?

And for me this is the sticking point. I don't think you should be able to know your companions Alignment, because why would you?

And forgive me, but I don't need a dissertation on alignment. My biggest complaint about alignment is that its been WAY overused in the past. Larian has it right by limiting the use of alignment because it ruins narrative structure.

The way BG1 and BG2 did alignment was absolutely silly. Everybody's alignment right there to be seen.

Respectfully, I feel like I answered all of your questions in your last response. But to answer your new questions, no, everyone can have an alignment. No, people wouldn't react to a character's alignment unless they're capable of doing so. Each player/character can directly view their own alignment, as well as the DM, the game itself and any other entities which should have the ability to do so.

So you are not advocating that we be able to see our companions alignment correct? That's all I wanted to know.

No.

I feel like the only things that would react to a character's alignment should be things that actually CAN see a character's alignment. For example a Sprite or Unicorn can know it and react accordingly and it is part of their more out there beings. A sprite can know an alignment by touching someone and would likely attack an "evil" character unless sufficiently dissuaded and would possibly help a "good" character.

Also I don't think we should see our Companion's Alignments at the beginning, but I do think it should be an invisible thing that exists. Only becoming clear if they say cast that cleric spell that literally has its effect based on Alignment or a Pact of the Chain Warlock touches them with a Sprite, and even then things can be ambiguous.

We could see that say Gale has an Evil or Neutral alignment, but that doesn't tell much about him in the moment, just how much he has done in the past. And perhaps we detect that alignment cause of the orb in his chest which is marked as evil and thus bleeds into him, even if he is squarely neutral or even good (though I don't feel he is, one could actually make an argument he is). Alignment can be weird and knowing it still doesn't reduce the character or tell much beyond what the universe has calculated them as. Someone seeking redemption can still be marked as evil, and someone ordering an atrocity can still be marked as good. Afterwards their alignments change, but in the moment the universe and magic sees them as such. Or uh thats how I see it.

Alignment was a poorly conceived mechanic from its inception. Good riddance.

Alignment sucks the nuance out of roleplay. It puts the DM/Publisher in the unfortunate position of being the unilateral arbiter of which solution to the trolly problem is the "good" solution, and which is the "evil" solution. This is anathema to the actual job of a DM/Publisher which is to create a fun and engaging experience for everyone. Characters never have to wonder whether they did the right thing or not. They can just look at their character sheet and see whether they got good or evil points for urging the King to create an open borders policy or adopt a more progressive tax structure.

One arbiter might see Robin Hood as chaotic good because he works outside the law to help people in need. From a more objectivist/libertarian perspective, he would be chaotic evil, because he is essentially just a brigand who uses violence to impose his own ideas of equitable wealth redistribution by stealing the hard-earned, well-deserved wealth of the Dagny Taggarts and Hank Reardons who drive the engines of prosperity. Another might see him as lawful good, fulfilling his duties to the lawful monarch King Richard, in defiance of the unlawful usurper Prince John. Yet another might judge him as lawful evil, fulfilling his lawful duties to the evil tyrant King Richard who led an unprovoked Crusade against the innocent Moors.

A universal mechanic to determine whether Robin Hood should be able to wield the bow of Lawful Good Smiting +3 or not is just arbitrary and silly.

What an ignorant opinion. Alignment is one of the founding ideas of the game. Does anyone take seriously comments like this?