Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Can we talk about bows, crossbows and arrows/bolts?

I swear this will only take a minute, I don't have a long point to make.


Here...





To put it succinctly: what the fuck is wrong with projectile weapons in this game?
What bow or crossbow traces this kind of cartoony parabolic arc on such a short distance?

I've been bringing up this point occasionally since the start of EA and from time to time I've even witnessed people dismissing it as "I don't mind it, seems fine to me".
Well, no, it's not.

Not even a toy blowgun spitting paper darts traces this kind of curve on a three-four meters distance.

Where's the sense of impact? The illusion of strength behind the projectile?
How is playing an archer (or any sort of sniper/sharpshooter, call it what you want) even supposed to feel gratifying in a game that makes your shots feel like you were throwing paper planes AGAINST the wind?

And for the record, if anyone is wondering, I'm not even particularly passionate about playing ranged characters in general.

It's just that BG3 seems almost to want to make sure I won't ever even consider the idea, because it makes it look way more stupid that it should be.

Considering that for some reason BG3 actually tracks projectives (you can shoot at someone and projective will hit a wall, or stone or something) perhaps the arc is there to minimise unintentional unteruptions? Like considering how annoying it can be to find an angle from which you can hit from high up, how worse it would be, if characters aimed straight down?

I considered and I still don't see why this would be necessary.
Given that you can PHYSICALLY track the entire trajectory of the projectile and tell in advance if anything gets in the line of sight, I'd say that if anything that should count as even MORE reasons to avoid this stuff.

Also, the game already has OTHER type of projectiles that work basically in a straight line, incidentally (i.e. Eldritch blast, if I remember right), so let's not pretend it isn't doable.

Having you target a character then using the mouse wheel to adjust the parabola might do it for you. I know I've seen that in at least one other game.

Eldritch blast does indeed show a straight line, and it tells you if path is interrupted. Easy peasy solution…have the arrows do the same.

Personally? I would like for the projectiles to just go straight.
As they are supposed to do both in reality and according to D&D rules.
But sure, I would accept this compromise over what we have now if it was the only option.


Also, thanks for the confirmation, timebean.

One more detail that makes BG3 so immersion breaking. It absolutely make no sense in this world, like a lot of other thing.

That does look and feel incredibly stupid lol.

They should just alter their formula so that short range makes it straight. Starts straight and curves more and more as range increases. Longer ranges should add an incremental attack penalty at the same time. Archery doesn't make any sense in that a nearby target who is a little bit higher is harder to hit than someone at maximum range. Range should be a much more important factor with ranged weapons. And high ground should not add any attack bonus.

I seem to remember the arcs also let you hit targets over ledges you don't have a line of sight to. Can anyone confirm? Clearly line of sight should be separate from the projectile arc and you shouldn't be able to hit someone you can't see, much less with advantage.

The only thing these projectiles lack to be stylistically consistent with their visual presentation is making some funny squeaky noise when you shoot.

They could replace arrowheads with rubber suction cups. Everything would make more sense then and I'm sure it would work much better for a video game.

Frankly, a decent archer can alter the trajectory of a shot as needed. I suspect that's where the term "Archer" comes from.

So it would be nice if the trajectory in-game reflected the intended path the archer is trying to shoot to get to a proposed target.


Hmm... maybe that's what's going on here. Maybe a gnat has gotten between him and his target and he has to arch it over...

Just to put things in context: this is how bows and crossbows projectiles look at short range:





And this is the type of long range shot that requires a 40-45° angle:



(for the lazy ones or people who can't watch youtube, it's a crossbow shots aimed 200+ meters afar.
And this is without "magic" or super-human skill involved.

It's also pretty easy to solve if they want to keep the parable. A parabolic trajectory is a 2nd-grade equation once you have the initial force (or speed) of the projectile and its endpoint.
Just make all bows like, I don't know, 40-120lbs and you are good to go.

Sure, a decent archer can alter the trajectory of a shot. But no matter how good the archer is, creating an arch where the arrow travels 3 feet up then back down during a horizontal distance of 10 feet requires that the arrow has a pitiful velocity. My math says ~5 m/s (11 mph), whereas typical arrows travel at ~70+ m/s. For reference, baseball pitchers throw balls at 45 m/s, so an archer in this example is effectively tossing an arrow at ~1/10 the speed of a major league baseball.

The only way an archer can get such a curve and have enough velocity to pierce a target is if they used magic to ignore physics (arcane archer ability?). Or they're on a planet with like 10x earth gravity.

In order for an arrow to be an effective piercing weapon, its flight should only have an appreciable drop (1+ foot) if the target is ~60+ feet away. There's a reason why 5e bows have normal ranges of 80+ feet; closer than that, the arrow doesn't drop enough to miss your target.

I feel compelled to gratuitously bump this thread, since it keeps bothering me how stupid archery looks in the game and especially considering the fact that even an underpaid intern could fix this problem in a matter of hours if only Larian would acknowledge that a problem exists in the first place.

The ridiculous arcs also actually make it possible to target people on lower ground you don't even have a line of sight to. And you get +2 to hit.

Larian, get a grip please.

I would put more focus on Characters, so player doesnt think about this kind of stuff. That "projectile" or targetting system is more intereting than the characters.

Ive suggested Battle Personalities to them. Each Character has own personality, so player gets excited via that, not by the gameplay.

This has no relevance whatsoever with the topic at hand.
Something you are sort-of specializing on, incidentally.

Majorly. I've been wondering if it was just me thinking he's been quite off topic lately.