Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Why I Want More D&D 5e Rules

+1 to all of this but additionally, the option to shove someone prone instead of pushing them away. Also, when anyone gets shoved, why are they able to immediately stand? They should be prone until their turn where they use half their movement to stand.

Maybe this was a clever negotiation tactic. Deviate so far from D&D rules that every time they change something back people are grateful.

The game is still all about cheesy exploits, unlimited long rest and pushing people into pits and lava. PC's who are forever lost or incinerated to ash get transported back to camp without explanation in a very arcade "3 lives" fashion.

It still doesn't feel like D&D to me. I'm not immersed. Everything screams generic video game and not Forgotten Realms or grown-up RPG. BG1&2 did not have this problem. BG3 feels more like Super Mario in Forgotten Realms.

I enjoy believing this is what happened with the Sonic the Hedgehog Movie
- Make something obviously bad, with no intention of using it
- Get lots of negative press coverage ("any press is good press")
- "Fix" it to something that's better (and that you always planned on using)
- Get incredible acclaim, benefiting from both the original negative press and people now feeling like they must watch the movie to support the fact that the devs listened.
- Profit immensely

Regardless, good job Larian for going back on some of your OP homebrew. Keep it up.

Huzzah. Emphatic +1. Excellently said, and I concur whole-heartedly.

Omg I would love Random Encounters during rest as a possibility. Can that even be done with this engine?

Well ...
Basicaly something quite simmilar is allready there.

I mean its still scripted obviously, but all you need to add is one random number generator, that ill determine if those enemies will appear or not and voila!
Impression of random encounter is complete.

You are kind of missing the whole point of Random Encounters. It is about variety. You know how variety is the spice of life. Having Random Encounters allows players to go up against more of a variety of enemies. It also provides greater replayability combat wise for the game as a whole.

During one playthrough, I might fight a pack of wolves near Moon Haven. Next playthrough, I might fight nothing near moonhaven, but I fight a giant toad at the bog. Then during that same playthrough I fight stirges also in the bog. Next playthrough I don't fight any of those, but I fight boggles or maybe bandits on the road.

Random Encounters allows things to be mixed up and it makes the world feel more alive. I take a long rest, I get up, and I might face something new that day that I never fought before instead of having an empty world with no enemies to fight once I've cleared a certain area out no matter how many times I've gone to bed.

I don't see how the engine would be a restriction IF Larian wanted to implement that.

It's not just about variety (and honestly there's only so many different encounters you can plan, anyway. At least without going bonkers). It's more than anything about introducing an element of uncertainty.
It's about having AT LEAST a small chance that not everything will always go as planned and the player will always be completely in control of how and when to engage in a combat.
It's about being forced to evaluate if, for instance, the benefits of resting outdoor may be out-weighted by the risks.

And so on.

It would be nice if they added watches to long rests so they arent spammed as much, which anyone whose played 5e knows destroys the class balance, especially of casters becoming op while martials and warlocks fall to the side. This seems to be something most here don't seem to fully understand why long rest spam is so bad. I know its not seen here, but wait until you have casters spamming Phantasmal Killer, Flame Strike, or other 3rd level or higher spells every battle while the martials just whack things or get caught in the AoEs, and then simply getting it all back before the next fight.

Regardless +10 to everything. I understand that not all of the rules can be faithfully adapted but I do not feel this is a 5e game. I feel this is Divinity with a DnD paint, and I say this while playing in 2 heavily homebrewed 5e campaigns as well as DMing one. I do enjoy some of their changes, especially to martials, yet the game just does not have the soul of dnd. I do not feel like Im traveling and working with a party, I feel like Im the main character with a bunch of lovable, snarky npcs who only contribute in combat and one contributes to help dialogue. I am not a DnD purist, I just want to at least feel the spirit of it.

And they all are done the same way ...

Developers spawn specific NPCs to specific places to attack you, prepare some behaviour for them, maybe track some routes for them to follow, etc.
And when you are approaching the place those enemies *may* show up .... developers let random number generator generate a number ... wich determine if this particular encounter will show up, or not.

Once generator will produce 1 ...
And you are fighting a pack of wolves near Moon Haven ...
Next playthrough it will produce 0 ...
And there is nothing near Moon Haven ...

Then it will produce 1 in different place ...
And you are fighting giant toad at the bog ...
Or it will produce 2 ...
And you are fighting stirges instead of toad ... or this particular encounter was prepared few metters away, so its another randon number generated.

The point is ...
You have to prepare every single encounter manualy, there is nothing like "now you just meet a pack of wolves" ... computers dont understand that, and if you "just spawn an NPC" it will just stand there and look at you, since engine will have no way to deal with it.
Therefore its much easiler for developers to simply left random encounters out and let you fight every single thing they prepare, since the only thing they add is the fact that those people whos random number generator will generate 0 will simply not experience their work.
That is the only difference.

Just because it's not easy, doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done.

They can do random encounters right.

That said, I will say this. I in no way want them to up the system requirements for this game. If random encounters were to put a strain on the game, for some reason, I would not want them to include them.

As much as I think they would improve the game, it is more intelligent to keep system requirements where they are so more people can play the game.

But, come on. Don't tell me it's too hard to create random encounters and not worth it. It makes the world feel alive. It surprises players and adds the element of danger instead of, "Well, I cleared out the world. I'm 100% safe now. I know there's an angry camp of goblins in a temple 100 feet from me, but I'm safe here in Moonhaven. Spiders below? No worries. Undead? Nah. Not worried."

There is no system requirement involved at all ...

All you invest is amount of time to create full encounter, and then code it so some people dont see it at all, not bcs of their choices wich players often like ... but simply bcs RNG generated wrong value.
I gues it might be seen as fun by someone, even tho i cant quite understand it, but what exactly does this improve?

//Edit:
Let me put it in different perspective ...
You are writing your fanfiction ...

So lets say you spend few hours describing how they were walking through the forest for example ... meet some guy, talked to each other, fighted some group of wolves.
And then after you will have it all done and prepared, and will be quite satisfied with how it looks ... you roll a dice and instead add to your fanfiction a sentence "so they walked through the forest for few hours" ... all the work you just made wasted, just bcs "random" factor decided.

Then you spend another few hours describing another part in the underdark ... same story as abowe.
And then you roll your dice and you write there instead "so they get through the underdark without any problems" ...

Does that sound like fun?

That is the main problem with random encounters ...
They may sound like good idea "on paper" but in reality they are just HUGE waste of time and resource for adding something that many people will possibly never even see. :-/

You're thinking linear story, like a novel.

Video game RPGs are like choose your own adventures. The author writes all sorts of paths that may or may not be followed by said readers. Adding a few more small one-pagers for random encounters is not that much extra work.

Think more like this.

If you go left on this path, turn to page 14.

If you go right, turn to page 18.

Turns to page 18. It reads, Roll a dice and consult the table below.

Rolls dice, consults table, and it says go to page 30. On page 30, it's a random encounter. One page event. Fights slimes. At the end, it says, "return to page 18 and roll again. Reroll page 30 result."

This idea of choosing your adventure is why I'm interested in a "story mode", or whatever it may be called, that removes the dice rolls for non-combat situations. After playing through the game several times it would be nice to just have the [success] or [failure] options revealed to us so we can choose how the story unfolds. Perhaps this could be implemented as a "new game plus" reward that unlocks after playing through "normal" once. This could be useful for those that just want to see all the different permutations of the story without having to pray to RNGeezus.

That completely negates the need, then, for skills. Why even bother with them if you never have need of them?

Rolling skill checks is not only an integral part of the game, it gives a lot more reason to replay the game. One playthrough, you succeed in saving Arabella via Persuade roll. Then next, you fail.

They already provide too many outs now. Because people didn't like failing saving Arabella, they made it so you almost can't fail no matter what. Now, skills matter even less.

I mean, I guess it makes sense to have the option - though I feel like we keep adding to their options list... Gotta be like a mile long by now - but if you're just going to save and reload every time you fail a roll, I guess it makes sense to want an auto succeed feature. It'd be like reading a light novel or manga then instead of playing a game.

A player wouldn't *need* to bother with them. The reason is simply to see all the content that was created play out in the game. That's it. A mod might be more appropriate for this. I mentioned that this would be a kind of reward to unlock. If you think about it, this would give players more reason to keep playing the game; I assume the developers would like this.

Irellevant ...
It really doesnt matter if player will get first to the swamp, then to the forest and finaly to the mountains ... or if he will explore those things in different order.

The point stays the same ...
You either experience (write or play) some adventure on that place where the adventure was prepared for you, or simply skip it whole bcs "random number generator generated valute that means you are not attacked right now".

I mean just imagine exactly this game as it is, and simply erase some encounters ...
Then imagine it again and simply erase different encounters ...
Then imagine it once again and simply erase different encounters ...
And finaly imagine it yet again and simply erase some mobs and replace them with different mobs ...

THIS is how "random encounters in PC game" would looklike. :-/

Irrelevant.

I'm not talking about encounters like ones already in the game. I'm talking about encounters that randomly generate on top of and in conjunction with ones already in the game, and those encounters would not be as in depth and serious. No voice acting required ot\r dynamic cutscenes. I'm talking something like, "You make camp in the clearing near Scratch. While camping, suddenly, a pack of 4 kobalds wanders into the area. They don't see you" Dialogue options:. Attack. Persuade to go away. Intimidation to scare off. Stealth to avoid. All characters in the party work together. Highest skill amongst party members is used.

Like in NWN 2 Storm of Zehir. I mean, it's been done before. It can be done again but better.

We're not talking huge encounters here. We're talking small, varied encounters to add some flavor and to make the world a more ALIVE place.

Sometimes i wonder if you ignore me on purpose, or just missing the point so hard. O_o

From engine point of view ... there is no difference between them.

Its just "final amount of encounters" minus random number.

The point was to imagine final situation ... its no matter of any "depth" or "seriousness" nor even "voice acting" or "cutscenes" ...
That is one of reason litteraly nobody mentioned those things until now ...

What im talking about is that those encounters still need to be prepared ...
NPCs need to be told where they can run, what they can attack, wich attack they can use, etc. ... its not just spawning an NPC and tell them "fight as usualy". :-/

Wich would require cutscene and possibly even voice acting.
I mean that is Larian standard ... you should be avare of what are we talking about.

This would mean even more work tho ...
Since that is not how dialogue options work.

I get your point. You're saying Random Encounters would take more work and such, and for what? So people might encounter them maybe?

But I'm saying that's irrelevant. We're talking about what would make the game better.

Everything takes more work. Should they do literally nothing anymore to make the game better just because it's work?

The true difference here is that you don't think it will make the game better. Many of us, though, do. The benefits of random encounters are that it creates a sense of danger. At any time, you could be attacked. You never know, even if you've played the game a hundred times and even if you've cleared out every area from all planned encounters. It creates the illusion of a living world, not static where once you've cleared it, nothing lives there anymore. It's just a ghost town. It creates variety and spices up the game so you never know what you might face this playthrough.

But you see this as unprofitable and a waste of time because players may not see encounters and thus the devs wasted their time.