Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Why force we to have Range Weapon Slot?

IIRC BG1/2 allowed up to 4 ready weapon slots ( containing ANY weapon ) if you were a fighter, less slots for other classes, and also allowed 3 types of ready ammunition.

But then D&D2e used 1 minute combat rounds where it was generally assumed you could switch to any weapon in that timescale, so the BG1/2 weapon slots were actually a Bioware-designed convenience/limitation.

In contrast 5e uses 6 second combat rounds, during which you can nominally:-
- move about 10m ( or rather your moement rate )
- cast a spell/hit/perform other significant action
- possibly perform some reaction
- possibly perform one or more bonus actions ( particularly in Larian's implementation )
- interact with a single object in the environment as a free action
which is all a lot more frantic than is actually reasonable for 6 seconds, in real life.

Switching weapons requires interacting with 2 objects, so RAW 5e would need to use both your action and your free action to switch weapons in a single round.

An alternative argument is that you could hit with a weapon and stow it as a free action in one round, then draw another weapon as a free action and hit with it in the following round, thereby not wasting an action.

I think this is a 5e rule that is regularly ignored on tabletop. In BG3, Larian do correctly make you use your action if you switch to a weapon in your inventory, but they allow the 2 "ready" weapons to be freely switched, which is a reasonble compromise; but there is no good reason why the ready weapons should be of any given type, since switching between sharp/blunt weapons is just as valid as melee/ranged.

I would definitely favour more ready weapon slots for martial classes ( they need the love ), but I would also favour allowing only a single ready weapon switch per round, to avoid the exploit where you switch to a high damage or ranged weapon to hit, but always switch back to weapon/shield at the end of the round for the extra AC.

We should just have weapon slots for whatever we want to carry, no need to have them limited to ranged or melee. The melee slot is wasted on most of my characters, would prefer to carry different ranged weapons.

Actually, you'd be surprised...

There are a number of people who have taken the time and effort to make videos depicting the real-life implications of the 5e rules and limitations, and when actually acted out in real space with real people, they are *surprisingly* valid and realistic.

Here's a video of someone performing a few six second rounds:

https://blumineck.tumblr.com/post/6...ng-my-quest-to-post-my-content-so-others

It's quite feasible without being frenetic or taxed.

Maybe this is nonsense ... but why dont we take inspiration in druids?
If you are caster druid, Shapeshift costs you Action ... if you are Shapeshifting druid, it costs ony Bonus Action.

So everyone would have possibility to have two Meele and Two ranged weapon sets ...
And it would seem quite logical to me, if Martial classes would need to only spend Bonus Action to switch their active set of weapons ... since sheating and drawing weapon is basic part of every military (aka marital) training after all ... but others, who dont have such training would have to spend whole Action to do that, since it require a little more focusing for them.

Question then is there if they should spend it only when switching Meele 1 > Meele 2 and Ranged 1 > Ranged 2 (or vice versa, obviously) or even if they are switching between Meele 1 > Ranged 1 ... wich seems a little too restricting to me. :-/

For someone that has planned out what actions they will do, has prepared their understanding of the battlespace, has targets that are not doing anything inconvenient like moving about, or trying to hit you, then yes, you can probably manage a few rounds of make-believe 5e timings. Just look at some old Errol Flynn movies for proof!

But I did say "real life", in which you might be moving into an unknown space, with questionable lighting, with active, mobile enemies, while wearing heavy armour and vision-restricting helm, and wielding a heavy maul. In such circumstnces, you'd be lucky to take a few paces and swing your maul once in a six-second window, let alone multiple times for a higher level fighter, or the various ancillery actions alowed by the rules.

The truth is that the six-second round is a fairly arbitrary evolution of the AD&D one minute round, which was divided into 10 six-second segments. There were several ( not necessarily good ) reasons for that:-
- players acted simultaneously, so movement could be divided into 6 second chunks to move pieces across the play surface to see where contact actually occured, according to player-specified orders
- spell casting time at one point was specified in 6-second segments, so you knew when in the round a spell fired
- melee/ranged weapon speed at one point was specified in 6-second segments, so you knew when your hit ocurred
( note that back then, 2 actors in combat COULD actually kill each other as alternating turns were not used )

For no particularly good reason ( well, continuity, perhaps ), the six-second segment became the new combat round in 3e, and has remained ever since, regardless of what has to fit into it. In the older rules, there were actually aspects that depended on timing ( casting time & weapon speed modifying initiative to determine the order of events ), but in the newer rules, timing is no longer important.

I think it would have been better to simply delete the reference to an actual round duration, given that everything moved to action-based anyway; but old habits die hard, so now we have a system where you can perform up to 7 activities in six seconds, all without breaking stride.

That's not a bad idea, given that Larian like bonus actions for all. But I suspect there would be complaints about restrictive practice from some players

Well... Or they could have created a new type of action...

Something like "free actions" you can do, as regular and bonus actions only once per turn (to switch your weapons, to click a button or a lever, to drop an item on the ground,...).

Oh wait, that's exactly what Tactical Adventure did in Solasta and it works really well ! (Ofc TA has more respect and faith in the source material than Larian).

The slots being specifically melee and ranged is confusing, because what if you are going for a pure melee fighter who wants to have two different damage type weapons to switch between, or have a weapon + shield and a weapon + torch presets on hand? Seeing how the attack actions got unbound from their old UI position and are freely draggable gives me some hope for improvement in that field.

That depends on how strict you want to be with 5e rules. Free action allows you to interact with ONE item, so switching a weapon is TWO free actions, or ONE free action plus a main action.

Some 5e players say that dropping your existing weapon doesn't require any form of action, so you can switch weapons with ONE free action if you drop your existing weapon. That is certainly resaonable, since ( like disarm ) you then lose access to your dropped weapon, creating a negative consequence. Other 5e players simply decide that the actual 5e free action rule is lame for weapon switching, and allow weapon switching as a free action.

I didn't buy Solasta, as I found the demo level uninteresting, but according to your post, even Tactical Adventures deviate from 5e rules when they think it works better for their relatively narrow audience. Larian have to decide what is best for the much broader audience they attract.

I don't personally care if they choose to keep their existing mechanism, but I suspect it would be a better experience if the number of "ready" weapons you can have reflects your weapon familiarity, and a single weapon switch is allowed per turn. The Solasta model does not sound like an improvement at all.

It wouldn’t be a terrible idea to put an indicator for free item interaction in the bar next to bonus action. So you can see if it’s still available for switching items, pulling stuff out of allies’ backpacks, “bracing” your crossbow etc

I absolutely do *Not* trust Larian to understand or properly mark the difference between a "free interaction", and things which stipulate "no action required".

Not sure what do you mean with that crossbow ... but the rest sounds great!

Last time I looked, the Brace action for heavy crossbows was labelled free action (doesn’t use an action or bonus action). I think there might be some new ones like that in Patch 7. May as well throw these kinds of thing under the same “free item interaction” resource to keep things streamlined and working as expected. It would also include pulling levers, opening doors etc. Having an indicator would make it much clearer. “OK I equipped my other staff, that’s why I can’t open the door.”

OH you mean the weapon ability that gives you more damage!
I didnt recall it at first.

There is another game that can do this called Sola...

Never mind