Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Discussing the Panel From Hell on this here forum (for those not on Twitch)

The consensus in the forums seems to be overtly in favour of the narrator so I doubt they’ll be using a new one.

I would agree Larian were listening to criticism if they consigned their infuriating chained party control system down the toilet.

release news update: late 2022 or 2023

Semi-acknowledgement that 2023 is more to be expected, as far as the release date is concerned. (For those who are dying to play the full game, or at least know when it will be out.)

DEDICATED HOTBAR TABS FOR EACH SPELL SLOT LEVEL LETSGOOOO

wake me up in a year

So, looks like the patch is out again but not for Steam on Mac? I don't see the update.

On a negative side.

1) Can't wait to be thrown into lava by an enemy from even greatest distance then OP push allows right now. Can we at least nerf push now? As it is high Str characters can use both full action and bonus action to insta kill an enemy
2) I hate item design. If the game's balance wasn't a complete mess already, it will only multiply the issue.

Downloading update now. Looking forward to toying with the UI.

I am pretty sure that the chaining system is still there - difficult to say as they played in Coop.

They added group/ungroup all to main UI, which was added couple patches back as a shortcut. They also added "stealth all" button. So they are adding things to make current bad system as usable as they can, which might be not the ideal, but it's the best that we can all hope for.

I love the new UI/hotbar/tooltip design. Looks easier to navigate and less clunky. I'm undecided if I will play this patch -- the new animations and cinematics are appealing, but I don't play barbarians and that seems to be the primary "new addition". Don't want to be burned out on Act I before release.

I also learned that there's more Underdark entrances, but, um, can't say I've been tempted to jump down a pit to find out lol

That's the disheartening part, to be honest.


"Cool changes. Can we have a good control scheme now?"
"No, you'll get the shitty one but we'll go out of our way to add convoluted compromises to make it somewhat bearable".

Anyway, overall I have a positive impression of the changes they are making here.
Just bummed out we aren't getting level 5, for more than one reason.

Finally a UI redesign. Cool. More content and polish, cool.

Unexplored rooms are blacked out and you can no longer just see every unexplored space and everything in it. Scouting is useful now and Divination spells are hinted for later.

Then the negatives:

Shove is still a Bonus Action and has a ridiculous distance. Now you can Shove/Frenzy Throw AND Throw the same target into lava or a pit on the same turn. If you fail that one hit kill attack, hey just try again! (I'm sick of this OP stuff that ruins combat).

Throwing goblins is cool but it seems more powerful than weapon attacks. A single throw did 8 points of damage to the goblin thrown AND the target for a total of 16 AND got rid of the one that was attacking the character. Larian throwing all balance in the wind again in favour of spamming the latest gimmick. It's really cool to be able to do that, and it's really lame at the same time for being OP and making normal weapon attacks redundant. They should contain their excitement and try to make things more balanced.

Stealth is still completely broken. Nick's character FAILED a stealth check against Phase Spiders, but then just used Hide again and went completely undetected with Phase Spiders doing nothing. Both Barbarians stealthed right behind an Ettercap that did not get a Perception check to hear them. It's still all about exploiting the narrow vision cones and turn based mode with Dash. You don't need any investment in Stealth. Full Plate, 8 Dexterity = 100% success to sneak.

8 Intelligence non-spellcasters were still casting spells from Scrolls like a Wizard and Swen was excited about it. They even left Gale far behind. Why even bring a spellcaster when anyone can cast whatever, right? Do not like these changes to D&D that dilute the classes. I can see them later saying "it was fun and we decided to leave it in" and completely ignoring the fact that if you really want to use scrolls, you can easily multiclass for the ability.

New magic items with "when below 50% HP, stuff happens" or "when you jump, stuff happens" and item sets. Personally I do not like the gimmicky designs. Who the hell would design an item or weapon that only works when you are hurt? Sorry for being blunt but the nonsensical conditional gimmicks are just stupid. I see nothing wrong with a Long Sword +1 that has a name and a cool story. Maybe abilities with charges or other perks that make sense! Sets is a cool idea though.

Short Rest is still just an insta-heal button they could use while sneaking through spiders.

It's not a coincidence that "leaving characters behind" keeps happening at every stream they do.
When your control scheme is so completely detestable that even its own designers don't want to deal with it and keep acting with single characters...

Colour me disappointed... but unsurprised.

And another personal annoyance: Druids' Badger form still mechanically teleports.

Burrowing through the ground is not teleport. Badgers do not burrow through stone or air. Another poor excuse to hand out more teleport abilities. Why?


A Giant Badger has a burrowing speed of 10'. The mechanic is to allow going under walls or hide. It is NOT a Misty Step or Fly! Can we stop overpowering mundane abilities to asinine immersion breaking levels?

It is ... when Swen was ungrouping Gale, he did that by draging his character picture to the side.

Considering only the format of this stream, it was possibly the best PfH since the original.

Starting the stream with round table announcements and light discussion of new features - check
Short but sweet skits that both provide new information and are entertaining - check
Gameplay with a professional youtuber (not just Swen) resulting in higher quality mid-game explanations - check (I watched the gameplay section for like 5 minutes; I'm mostly assuming that the rest of the gameplay was higher quality b/c wolfheartfps was there)

Hopefully the future PfHs continue in this vein.

Yeah, the stream itself was fun. A bit calmer than previous ones even.

But they specifically mentioned it while listing things they were changing in response to listening to forum feedback…

Agree. It seems that if you can throw enemy, it is simply a better option then hiting them with weapon. The only hope is that there will be a major balance patch before 1.0, though looking at D:OS games tactical depth isn't Larian's priority. I suppose they follow AAA design philosophy where "cool thing happens if you press this button" is far more valued, then a system with depth and mastery potential.

Agree, it was a good Panel From Hell.
The kind of stream I'm waiting to discover a patch.


I also mostly agree with this.

Shove : nothing to say. I'm dissapointed to be honnest.

Scrolls: I hope it will be fix later.

Items : I really don't like this kind of item design. There aren't any +1d4 electricity/poison/... weapons but there are plenty of items with conditions that tells you how to play. Jump, stay in a surface, try to survive with half your HP, always use this spell,...
In my opinion there are creating too much variety and conditions for such a low level campaign. If itemization in DoS was not so good for different reasons, at least you were looting better armors and weapons...
In BG3 you never really find something better than your +1 weapon or +1 armor... Only items that can match (or not...) your playstyle.

About Stealth I think it's a "bug" because they're too far ("kshhh"). At the end, one of the spider teleport to the litte light, his position when he was spotted. Have to try.

My biggest fear is that "throwing" become the new "shove". Another totally unbalanced mechanic you'll have "not to use" if you find it too powerfull (missing interresting mechanics or design at the same time) but you'll have to deal with because ennemies will use it.