Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous vs BG3

You do not need a doctor to tell you that a body that is lacking a head is dead. It is absurd to insist you need a specialist in every case.

I know you’re just trying to be the cute smartass at this point, Vic, but you DO realize that I mentioned my experience with XCOM 2 (and more specifically with playing XCOM 2 at the difficulty level where the computer does not cheat in favor of the player) just to point that I’m familiar with dealing with “odds management” and NOT to claim that made me a coding expert, right?

That aside it’s pretty damn obvious at this point that you are clinging to your demand for expertise out of sheer fastidiousness and not because you have any actual point (let alone even just superficial understanding) on the degree the system used to fail its predictions in beta ( and probably still does now if activated).

You keep arguing as if the problem could be explained with the players not having an intuitive understanding of random chances out of your stubbornness to accept that the “odds” the computer predicted were in several cases completely impossible to replicate manually.

And I can tell you BEFORE seeing the exact math the computer tried to apply that no formula you are going to post here is going to disprove any of this, because knowing how the sausage was made doesn’t change the result. At most it can help to explain where its bad taste comes from.

Look, I think there was some kind of misunderstanding at some point. We both agree on the about the results (the auto battle does not replicate manual combat and its biased). So I never cared about the outcome and I was never defending the suitability of the system. And You do not need to be an expert or a supergenius to figure that.

But I have to disagree: how the sausage is made matters.
There is a huge gap between "you do not need a specialist or to be a genius to acknowledge that" and saying "the formulas and how the game works does not matter" or "it's not relevant" "I do not care" "that person has no idea of what he is talking about" just because you did not take that new info into consideration, or you do not care; even if that info agrees with the findings you get in the first place by pure intuition.

I know it rubs you the wrong way, but humans are not very good at calculating odds. in cases like that, it's better to verify. With numbers. There are plenty of threads about the game being bugged because someone got three critical misses in a row using a d20, in wasteland because he does not get bombs when tries to deactivate explosives even tho the skill says you only have 33% etc. It does not hurt to check just in case.

Maybe it's not strictly necessary, but it´s not useless as you said repeatedly.

I´ve never even said you were wrong, I only said I wanted to fact check our impressions. I like that kind of math games, so I checked. Not to disparage your opinions ( honestly, I do not care that much about you to do that) but because I like to know how the mechanics work.

...

I checked out of this argument an entire page ago. I'm not even sure what the point is.


---

Chapter 4 and I'm still enjoying the hell out of Eldritch Archer. Although the game lagging whenever I throw out a scorching ray has proven to be problematic in some really intense fights. Chapter 4 in general seems to require quitting and rebooting the game from time to time, or else things get weird performance and bug-wise.


I think once I transition into Legend, I'll go for a 20 Eldritch Archer/20 Spawn Slayer build. Not entirely sure what Spawn Slayer does, but it was suggested to me by someone else on another forum, and combining both sounds incredible on paper. The only thing Eldritch Archer really needs that they lack is access to sneak attack die, and it seems Spawn Slayer provides that along with full BaB progression and a bunch of rogue feats/talents and bonuses against oversized enemies, which it seems the majority of the game's late game bosses are. And Eldritch Archer in turn has natural access to Greater Invisibility/Haste, elemental enchants for elemental barrage abuse, and the ability to add INT modifier to attack rolls via Arcane Accuracy. I can pick up the Hurricane Bow spell later through greater spell access too.

Also, the take 20 once daily dispel glasses you can buy in chapter 3 is outright mandatory to have on someone with access to Greater Dispel. I ended up beating the chapter 4 superboss by using a combination of that and Evil Eye to drop their AC from like 58 down to 45.

The point is that I made a very specific factual claim that was openly questioned as unreliable and I defended it.
Thanks for asking.

I have to disagree about 3.5e "hating" casters. What it was is that in 2e casters were super-powerful and by comparison fighters, especially melee warriors, were extremely weak. The ridiculous extent to which wizards dominate in BG2 is an excellent example of this. Therefore, in 3.5e, there was a conscious effort to bring things more into balance between wizards and fighters, so wizards dropped in power and fighters became stronger. So without this comparative context, it is not fair to judge "weakened" wizards in 3.5e in some absolute sense.

I for one am extremely happy they did this, because I love playing melee classes and hate playing casters. So I always hated 2e for this reason that it heavily favored wizards over warriors, and love that in 3.5e fighters (and melee classes generally) have more to contribute.

Nothing against you here, but if you really "hate playing casters", then it makes sense that you'd be fine with the way 3.5e treats casters. Me on the other hand, I don't dislike martial classes, but I think the way 3.5e dumbed down magic in general is over the top. I understand the idea of "rebalancing the scale somewhat", but imo they way overdid it. I've already talked about this before, so I'll try to keep this from being a whiny rant.

Best things about casters now is either 1) support spells for the brute force fighters, or 2) a few shenanigan spells like Hellfire Ray, Disintegrate, Mass Icy Prison, or 3) a few specific spells for special situations, like True Seeing against Mirror Image/Greater Invis, elemental resistances (early game, at least) and so on (although a Cleric is all you need for these purposes, not sorcerers or wizards). That's really about it.

Playing Kingmaker, and even now in WotR, there were times I spent 15-20 minutes looking at the spell selection screen when leveling up, because the spells were so bad I didn't even want to pick any, and sometimes I even fell asleep on that screen, ngl. This goes for level 5-6 spells to level 9 ones. Like, how can they possibly be this bad? These spell systems couldn't be any less creative or fun. In my 2nd run of Kingmaker I played a pure socr and she was somewhat useful in the early levels with the pit spells (again, it was relying on a very narrow set of spells), and the further I was in the game, the more my sorc just sat out and watched fights while the fighters beat everything up (cause I wasn't even a buffer/support, so all support spells came from other chars). My rogue in the 1st run was actually more fun to play.

On the other hand, why bother playing casters when you can do 60-70 dmg per hit with martial fighters, crit for anywhere from 200-300+, 5-8 attacks per round, crit on 15-18? And let's not forget about the dozen attacks of opportunity that would be triggered within 1-2 seconds. Also, I may be in the minority here, but I HATE the idea behind "attack of opportunity" in these games (like, if someone being engaged in melee by 4 fighters can still manage to make an AOO against the fifth guy running past, then shouldn't that AOO trigger an AOO from each of the 4 melee dudes? Nope, even though the rule book says something along the lines of "everyone in combat is always looking for a chance to attack someone who is not paying attention". Somehow it's the guy being pressured by 4 other guys who is able to make an AOO, but not any of the 4 guys doing the pressuring.)

If there's one thing I can say I hope for in BG3 atm, then it's this: for the love of god I really hope playing a pure spellcaster in BG3 will be more fun than in these Pathfinder games.

Pure spellcaster is plenty powerful in WotR, you just have to be willing to become a lich.

Well, good news, there are some fun spells in D&D5e , even the cantrips. Many of them have interesting secondary effects added that are tactically useful and fun, like the pull effect of the vines, the summoning weapons that attack the enemy every turn, the flaming/waters sphere you can roll over tthe enemies "Raiders of the lost ark" style, the knocking effect of gust of wind and tide, planar shifting, merge into stone if they apply that... I am sure many of the spells would appear in the games.

Bad news, most of them you can only cast once at a time, due to the concentration mechanics of 5e. I´m not talking about the one that allows you to disrupt the caster´s concentration dealing damage to the caster, that makes sense. I am talking about the fact that you can only concentrate on one spell at a time.
Many buffs do not reach the entire party of four, most of them are f unless you heighten, are for only them and require concentration, so you lose them if you want to cast offensive spells.
Heck, you cannot maintain the paralysis in a creature you have with "hold person/monster", maintaining an animal/creature conjured (besides creating undead and similar, that are not that good in versatility or offensively unless you are a necro or similar) or cast a wall of fire or a storm without losing the previous spells.

I understand the need of those if you want to make a more dynamic tabletop game, with a faster pace and let your players focus on roleplaying and having fun... but I do not know if that simplification of the rules are really necessary for a videogame, where the game engine makes all the rolls for you no matter how complicated they are, takes care of all the calculations for all the spells you have activated and makes the enemies turn faster than what a human DM usually could achieve.

Those mechanics that make a roleplay table session more dynamic and fun make the videogame experience more limited than it could be. And I talk specifically of the concentration mechanics. Plenty of options for your casters, but they are reduced to cast cantrips or make the same tactical combos in every fight because they could only maintain one spell at a time so other combinations are forbidden. Double that because neither Solasta nor Bg3 allows multiclassing right now so you have to deal with one spellbook.

Solasta, even tho it makes the warriors more interesting, still has this limitation when you play casters. It follows very tightly the rules of D&D5e, so almost all the spells of the SRD are in the game, which is good, and they are applied as it is, purely RAW. In my runs I usually find myself repeating the same combos again and again even when trying new characters due to that limitation. They show you all the candy, but they only let you get one. You get the impression of a loss of potential of that formula, so many cool things you could do if you do not have to deal with the limited (for a videogame) concentration mechanics.

Bg3 added some interesting mechanics that allow you to have more options in combat. Since they made some rules changes I am still hoping that the devs or some mods would offer a solution that could make you have more versatility when you want to play pure casters. In D&D5e you can even make parties of casters-only so this addition would be very welcome.


Yeah or angel. lich and angel even made Mystic theurge, your one-stop spell shop for everything, very appealing since you can merge spellbooks so you can mitigate the loss of the casting levels and even add the lich ones.

Area-of-effect attacks, crowd control spells, summoning spells, buffs, debuffs... unlike in PnP you do not have to choose, you create an entire party, not only one character, so you can have both.

Another thing I think is missing or maybe I'm missing it is not being able to choose which spells you have memorized in WOTR.

Playing an eldritch archer and was able to choose seven spells during character creation. But I only had 2 memorized . Now I assume if I changed them the new ones wouldn't be memorized until I rested. So am I missing a way to choose which spells are memorized at the start?

I don't think that you can. Its annoying, but at least it is only a temporary annoyance. I think you *might* memorize the first one that you select... but I am not 100% sure of that.

Kind of rough to go with a "bad" spell all the way through the first part of the prologue, but tbh you have enough encounters in that region that you were gonna run out anyway.

Ok thanks

Will try picking a different spell first in the future.

Yeah, spellcasters have to be built in rather focused ways to be effective, same for the martials.

One of the companions, Nenio, for example has an Illusion focus. This isn't wasted on her. I've heard offhand that if you continue investing into that school tree with her feats and equipment, the save DC for her spells rockets to the level where she eventually starts becoming a one-shot machine with Phantasmal Killer despite that spell supposedly being bad by needing to get through two saving throws. The spell Weird has her doing this to an entire room of enemies.

Azata mythic path also augments spellcasting too, especially with Favorable Magic and Zippy Magic superpowers. The first forces enemies to roll twice and take the lower result when saving against your spells, allows you to roll twice and take the higher result for spell penetration checks, and enemies that somehow save against your spells take 75% of the spell's effect instead of 50%. The latter lets your single target spells bounce to the nearest target from the original target, and if it's a damaging spell, it also adds 2d6 force damage. It's also great for buffs like Greater Invisibility, affecting two party members for the price of one. Chain Lightning is considered a single target spell despite its bounce AoE nature since it originates from a single target you choose, and Zippy Magic basically allows it to hit an entire room twice. The mythic power Best Jokes, which allows Hideous Laughter to bounce to nearby enemies as long as each enemy fails the save, can be abused in this way with Zippy Magic as well, essentially forcing every enemy in the room to roll twice.

---

The companion interactions are still some top tier stuff.


Another good one is when Wenduag backs up Ember when Camellia insults her, because Wenduag recognizes that Ember survived on her own while highly implying Camellia's bullshit is basically only enabled by her noble status.

Also it's amusing watching the community's opinions on Nenio start shifting towards the better.

Haven't really touched the BG3 EA since last year. Haven't actually played anything this year so far.

Bought this though as I quite enjoyed Kingmaker, in particular the early stages and the chapter with the bloom and all the detective work (with the weakest part being some of the ending areas, as they felt rushed and full of paste&copy mobs). Also, Owlcat seem to be pretty promising. Hopefully they'll do Ustalav next.

I'm still at the beginning, but I'm enjoying this so far. I finished Kingmaker in RT exclusively, despite the fan patch that was later released during my playthrough. I would still finish it mostly in RT, as the encounter design wasn't made for TB (lots of biggie mobs). However, I'm currently playing Wrath on TB, as in particular later on in Kingmaker, it was real hard to digest WTF was actually going on in detail.

Characters doing mulitple attacks per "turn" (even more if "hasted") -- checks on concealment, attacks of opportunity, concentration and saving throws all being resolved simultaneously -- anybody arguing he could follow this on a mechanical level in particular in the later stages of the game must be like Neo in the Matrix. On some boss fights, this lessened my feeling of achievement, actually. During the game's very first major boss fight at the end of an early chapter, I shopped and buffed my party to the hilt. Including potions that would conceal them (a 20% chance of a mishit on every enemy attack roll). We won that fight on the first try. However, to get an actual "feel" of how much those potions made a difference, I had to go through tons of combat log, after the battle was over, that is. I'm neither a RT zealot nor a TB purist. But it's just obvious that this ruleset was made for turn by turn combat resolutions, as it happens on a table.

Will continue with TB and switch to RT if I encounter another area full of trash mobs, probably. You actually CAN switch mid-game, unlike in say, Deadfire, after all.

Couldn’t agree more. RT feels good when you’re plowing through mobs, but I find TB much more satisfying for challenging fights when the balance can hang on specific rolls. Crits feel better in TB too, you can actually revel in them. It’s definitely great to be able to switch back and forth at will.

Yeah, stuff like Crits too tend to get burried in all the real-time action. It's a great feature to be able to switch, though I'm not sure how they balanced the encounters around both concepts this time around, if they did. It's not a fan patch this time around, but an official feature, after all.

Already seen somebody arguing that some of the late game content would be quite chaotic in RT though (what with tons of auras being involved) and all the high-level and mythic abilities. Hopefully those battles aren't that big that they'd each take like two hours in TB or anything. (Personally I don't mind long battles as such though, in particular boss fights -- the major boss fights in some TB classic JRPGs are quite epic still, often too consisting of multiple stages lasting a good while each].

As I haven't played anything this year, it feels great to be back to gaming, and a complex RPG full of character options in general (must reward the Solasta devs with a purchase too still). I spend I don't know how long contemplating at what at all to pick -- I ended with a Tiefling Mutagen Fighter who from his background can conceal himself once a day, and focuses on the scythe (x4 crit damage).

Game seems to be doing just great too again, with 250,000 copies sold in just the first week of release.

I forgot to attach some imgs to illustrate what I was saying.


Not the biggest numbers. All the numbers showed at the same time cause they happened essentially within a fraction of a second. It's always the goddamn "attack of opportunity". And it wasn't just damage. Two of these characters caused guaranteed fear every hit (Thug's Frightening + Cornugon Smash) with an aoe fear upon kill (Dreadful Carnage) and the female tielfing char also Trips every hit (Pummeling Bully, also basically guaranteed, with 60+ CMB even close to 80 with True Strike).

That's why the question to me is, why playing a spellcaster, if not simply "cause I like playing a wizard!". The need for controlling spell is minimal because you kill things so fast with the amount of damage physical attacks dish out. You just need a dedicated tank to attract everyone's attention for a short while. There may be the occasional enemy who is immune to crits, immune to sneak attacks, immune to knockdown, takes half physical damage. Then you may need a sorc or Arcane Trickster who can Hellfire Ray him into oblivion, or some funky attacks that damage DEX for example cause said enemy has exactly 1 DEX, or some weapon that deals pure Force and/or Divine damage or something similar. Stuff like this, for example:


In short, spellcasters are only really needed for "trick fights". For shenanigans. For meme tactics. Not for general encounters. Also not even necessarily boss fights, unless a boss fight is also a trick fight.

I'm aware that this also has a lot to do with Owlcat's way of designing encounters, and not just because of the rule books. But how I feel about the way 3.5e treats casters is still the same. Making martial stronger is understandable, but the harsh punishment against spellcasters is too much.

Now I'm beginning to wonder about 1000 dmg cavalier charge

I play turn-based 99% of the time (core difficulty) but there are moments where switching in real time actually makes some difficult fights significantly more manageable.
For instance every time there are a lot of (or few but dangerous) casters/snipers on the enemy side playing in real-time makes a lot easier to interrupt their casting/punish them with AOO.

Practical example experienced just the last time I played a couple of days ago:
When I crossed the Baphomet's prophet with his insanely high initiative rolls three reloads were not enough to spare me his bullshit AOE spell that drained 30-40 permanent DEX points to my entire party in a single cast.
When I finally approached the same fight in RT I closed the gap immediately and exploded the annoying fucker.

Hmm. How do I talk about this at all...

Sosiel's chapter 4 quest and a huge surprise regarding your companion roster.