Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General New players and the problem with Shar

I agree with everyone here who's saying the dialog is messed up here. I've said so in other threads too. This is one of the things in BG3 thus far that really pisses me off. The PC is being seriously railroaded into either being a complete ignoramous idiot who shrugs and says whatever, or else a crazy person who screams about lying, when no lying has truly happened. And no, reading the books should not be the default for knowing things. In the context of the game, it is eminently reasonable that a character within that setting would not be spending their time picking up and reading every book they come across. Furthermore, even reading the books doesn't square with this issue because this particular dialog exchange comes quite early in Act 1, before you get to read many of those books anyway.

I know some of you disagree, but I think the greatest weakness in BG3 right now is rather poor quality of writing (across the board). Too much resources are being spent/wasted on silly gimmicks and "coolness" at the expense of the bread and butter of a good RPG: the writing.

It sounds like you just like to insult people. Well that is why we have ignore lists.

Wow, what an original way to engage in debate: "Well, he has a point, so I'm just going to resort to name calling to resolve it, because I don't have anything else"... Were you on the Witcher forums, trying to get all the lore someone may not be privy to in TW3, because they didn't play the first two games? How about the Skyrim forums? Are you old enough to have been on the forums that were discussing BG 1 and 2? How about NWNs? KotoR? What do these games have in common? The characters know more about the world than the player may know. No "simping" required, just a touch of common sense.

What are you talking about lol?
You have a scene where everyone is freaking about something (including your own character) with no description available besides as you said. Literally find and read every book availble in the off chance that that information would be critical in a coming scene.

The worst case is you have the narrator explain what is happening and who shar is when the conversation is brought up.
If you disagree then lets remove the narrator? Why do we need her? It just spoon feeds the players and insults their intelligence. The player should be able to tell what they are looking at without the narrator helping them.

And absolutely nothing of value was lost. bye.

There's a scene on the nautiloid where the characters get to see the transition of a person from human into mind flayer. The scene is a great inclusion because it gives the players a glimpse of what they're up against. This is the consequence of failure, it says. You turn into this.

That helps to crystalize the threat and make it more powerful.

There's nothing like that with Shar right now, and I agree that it's a problem. I don't have any great advice on how to solve it right now, though.

*

A couple of small things I feel like mentioning after reading this thread.

1. because Shadowheart is in my party and I can see her stats and such, I always felt like I knew who she worshiped. So it was a bit of a shock to me that I wasn't supposed to know when she finally opened up about it. Which made me think: if I didn't know, it seems like I would've asked. She's a cleric, after all. It seems like the most natural thing in the world to ask the cleric in your party about the deity they follow.

2. her armor is not the dead giveaway most people chuckle about, saying it is. If you didn't know her religion and just saw her, you wouldn't have guessed Shar based on that design. Plenty of people use gemstones for decorations, whether it be onyx, opal, black pearl, spinel, tourmaline, you name it. Saying it's obvious she worships Shar based on that is the definition of 20/20 hindsight.

Brilliant! Let's remove all the in game lore, it's worthless right? Except that, if you had found a couple of books lying around in places that you may actually get to before the temple, you'd at least have an idea of who Shar is, if you'd taken the time to read the book(s) when you find them/it, knowing that you are uninformed about the world's lore, right?

So every Cleric I have every played pretty much states who their god is. I am trying to remember if anyone I have every played D&D with would not tell me their god / goddess.

I expect it would be a common question when you met a Cleric. "Who do you worship?"

This is where BG3 is totally failing for me, If this was a pen and paper campaign, I would not want to adventure with any of these people.

This is the problem with the way Larian likes to do companions. There should be several of each class type available. Instead we are being railroaded. Want a Cleric, play one yourself or take Shadowheart. I been taking companions based on their class / role and ignoring their story / personality.

YOUR argument is we don't need any exposition or other cinematic of the lore and story BECAUSE we have reading material scattered around the world with the rest of loot.
I never made any such claim. I say we can have both.
In fact in this case since Shar and SH seem to be so incredibly important to the main story maybe we should have MORE content explaining what Shar is especially very early on.

Projection is bad mmk?

On the books as only means of lore dumps, it sucks. What we should have is a nice encyclopedia system where when we find a book, it's entry is added to it. Many other games have good encyclopedia system. They can be used for other stuff too, spell entries, lore about magic items, info about monsters and npcs, etc.

Key terms (Gods, famous people, well-known locations & historical events) should be highlighted in dialogue, and allow you to hover over them for a basic explanation. Shar - "Shar, The Mistress of the Night, is a neutral evil goddess and the twin of and counterpart to the Good-aligned goddess Selune. Her followers exhibit..." This solves the issue of Tav having in-world knowledge that we players don't. It also remains optional to read these blurbs, but difficult to miss like a library/codex (do I even need to included googling in this list?) would be.

This is a necessary change, but not sufficient. I agree with others that Tav's dialogue options leave a lot to be desired.

It might help to have a play inside the druid's grove, wherein the story of Shar and her dark worshipers is told. Perhaps a telling of how the dark justiciars stole children.

I don't know. I kind of hate plays in video games because they always feel stuck in time, stagnant, like the play never changes with the passing weeks.

But since the dark justiciars have impacted the locals, it seems reasonable that there might be stories about them. Anything visceral to help the players understand.

I agree that it should be more than just lore books, although I do appreciate the books. I just think it needs to be beaten in a little more fully, with imagery and sound.

woah, this is getting spicy! Let's tone it down to make the mods jobs a bit easier. It's Friday, let's all enjoy it

Plenty of people have leaves for decoration too but when I see Druids showing an oaken leaf front and centre on their garb I'm not going to think anything else than "hey that's the symbol of Silvanus right there"

it is usually the DM's job to remind players on key things that their character know but they don't. a DC 5 or 10 religion check upon seeing shadowheart's circlet or armor followed by a brief resume of shar upon success feels appropriate, the same way we can get information about intellect devourers, the descent or what a soul coin is (it's definitely not a crypto currency).

if you don't want to have a dungeon master in your dungeons and dragons video game, there are many games out there but if you do, it's a bit more difficult to find so I am glad larian choose to do it and did it well.

When I was playing the BG3 story using Tabletop, I did this very thing. Any time there was lore that needed to be made known, I had them roll either an Arcana check or a Religion check. That's what those skills are for, to see what the characters actually know about different things. If you fail the roll, you don't know, and if the player doesn't know, then the player doesn't get to know.

However, if you make the roll, the DM explains to the players what their characters know. So, when you first meet Shadowheart on the beach, whether she's wearing her armor or not, there should be a moment when you ask her who she is a cleric of. If she's wearing the armor, the DC for the Religion check should be REALLY low, like a 5. Shar is one of the most common goddesses of Forgotten Realms. Wearing her symbol should be a hugely easy thing for anyone in the world to spot. So, if they're going to have her wearing her armor right off the bat because she was on some top secret Shar mission and needed the extra custom armor for some reason, then most characters should immediately recognize her as a Sharite. Period. And the game should explain at least the very basics about Shar to the player.

And, for crying out loud, the armor is custom. It shouldn't just be some normal armor. She's a Sharite. Her armor should be customized so that it doesn't hinder stealth. Therefore, maybe she wore it on her mission to help her sneak and steal the artifact. That would give at least a reason as to why she's wearing it. If it's just regular armor some shmo in Baldur's Gate could pick up at the local flea market, then it makes no sense that she's flaunting Sharite symbols and then trying to hide that she's a Sharite, and especially that no one at all recognizes that she's a Sharite right off the bat.

And ESPECIALLY once you reach the grove and it tells you that you see a picture of Shar's symbol on the mural, and you recognize it at a Sharite symbol, characters should put two-and-two together and say, "Hey! Wait a sec! Shadowheart's wearing that same symbol all over her.

But if they put her in normal armor that doesn't scream Shar, they should have Shadowheart lie and come up with a different god or goddes of trickery so she can cast trickery spells and no one will suspect she's a Sharite right away. Then the first time you encounter anything about Shar, THEN the Religion roll should be made to see what you know.

I personally think this second path is the best. I mean, we already know she's a Sharite because we've played the game forever and we've researched it etc. However, new players would enjoy, I think, the mystery of uncovering her secret. Have her in plain armor and lie about her patron goddess. Then have the players find Sharite stuff and make Religion rolls to learn more about Shar. As the story progresses, they then begin to pick up on more and more hints from Shadowheart that she hates Selune and loves Shar. That would make the "Reveal" so much more meaningful, and the players would more likely go, "Hah! I knew it!" or "Holy crap! I did not see that coming. She's too nice to be a Sharite. Right?"

But again, the players need context for this either way. You can't just expect every player to read every book. Shoot! In BG1 and 2, I hardly ever read the books. They bored the crap out of me. Just give me the main story plot via dialogues and in-game events. Don't make me research and read crap all over the place or I miss major story elements. BG1 and 2 didn't do that. Most of the books and tomes were for lore purposes only. If the player wanted to learn more FR lore, they'd read all the books and tomes. If they didn't care, they'd play the game and still know the whole main story plot. If there was an important god or goddess in the story, the game explained them to you via someone explaining it.

I like the narrator, so I don't want my comment to come off as if I don't.

It's just that I don't think the narrator is enough in this case.

In storytelling, it's a matter of show, don't tell. Show the evil and danger of Shar worshipers, don't tell about them. It's more powerful to the player to actually see their evil in some way, as opposed to reading about it in a lore book or hearing the narrator say they're evil.

It's just not the same thing. A generic black circle isn't the same as the very specific looking oak leaf symbol of Silvanus. It's a generic black circle.

Ah, but it isn't. Shar's symbol is supposed to be well-known in Faerun; feared and hated by most good citizens. If a character encounters another character who is wearing a big ginormous black circle on their chest and shoulder pads and on a circlet on their forehead, and they say, "I'm a cleric," I think it's pretty obvious who that person is a cleric of.

Now, if Shadowheart wasn't wearing a ginormous black circle on her chest and shoulder pads and circlet, and she was just wearing the same armor without all that stuff, no one would think she's a servant of Shar. But, come on, it's like a big freaking target on her screaming, "Hi, I'm a Sharite cleric." It'd be like someone wearing a cross on their chest, shoulder pads and forehead and then someone later going, "Holy Cow! What? You're a Christian? I had no idea. Huh? Seriously? You're a Christian Priest? Whoa!"

books in game are always really nice but it should never be mandatory, finding odd information on the lore that would explain part of the world is their main purpose... more than that is usually expecting a bit much from the player, at least for the main quest (notes are an exception, I guess). if there is a side quest for every book in the game, I'm in... (would need a higher level cap though)

the thing is, the original material has limited "showing" capacity but astounding "telling" capacity and even if larian has madperson who actually went boldly where no other video game went before and show hands holding a gravity bound pendant for trivial reasons, we are talking about a cult about secrecy... I never played in this setting but from what I've gathered, with this setup, it will be hard to shine the light on the goddess of shadows in a really eye opening way

also, sometimes, one or two sentences well delivered as explanation can have a powerful impact

I did not wanted to bring datamine or spoilers but there are unused destroyed armors and if she dies (and get looted) before the crash, she spawns on the beach with a bandit armor while lae'zel stays naked so... for now, I'm just glad I can see this armor ^.^

Not that I disagree with that. But people wear crosses and cross necklaces and they aren't Christian necessarily.