Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Gameplay poll: traditional or simplified combat?

5E RAW isn't exactly balanced either.

BG3 isn't far off from being a decent interpretation, what I'd change is just set shove back as an action, remove enemy levels completely and build their statblocks with their statblocks from PHB, remove Wizard's ability to learn any spell, revamp long rest usage so it can't be spammed or has some sort of investment in how that is interacted with in correspondence with action economy, and balance encounters around that as you would in traditional D&D.

The "Gotta be 100% RAW omg the world is going under" craze baffles me, as I doubt any game you've ever played has been completely RAW and correctly interpreted and applied every single rule from the PHB from beginning to end. And if that happens to be the case, it was likely a very dull, rule-lawyering and boring experience.

Basically BG3 doesn't have to completely and religiously stick to PHB as written, no D&D adventure should, but the homebrew and adaptions to fit the experience you're trying to make should be made in the right places, not arbitrary with wide ripple-effects, such as shove being a bonus action.

This is an inaccurate and lazy representation of my post. I'm not attached to RAW. What matters is that the core rules have been refined, so they have a lot of balance and fun in them. There are good reasons why the rules are they way they are. Alternate rules are fine if you are capable of also creating balance, identity, meaningful decisions, replayability, and many other benefits which are present in the core rules. But if your system doesn't provide those things, then yes, RAW is better.

Basically, you agree with what I said. Because I didn't disagree.

I can't tell what your opinion is from your post, then. I feel unhappy with the "new" ruleset contained in the current state of BG3, and I think overall, boring RAW would be better than what we have. My ideal scenario would be that Larian implemented the PHB versions of many (not all) systems instead of what they have now. I think this is the conceptually simplest way of fixing problems that wouldn't be problems if 5E was implemented in the first place.

What problems are we talking about? Because apart from repulsion, practically nothing else is a significant problem that could be fixed by RAW.
In some cases, it could even make the game worse.

RAW 5e is awfully "basic". A clean 5e and especially PHB is quite boring for an RPG game that takes over 100h to complete.
I think Solasta (probably the only 5e game) has shown why the 3.5e is much better suited to gaming.
As a reminder, 5e is designed to be as general as possible to give more freedom to DM.

While I could agree with most of it, raw will not work for stats.
Most of the 5e campaigns are low magic campaigns, which means players shouldn't have too many (or even no) magic items, which definitely won't happen in BG3.
This means that the enemies should be stronger enough to challenge the player.

I voted for simplified. I like what Larian has done so far! 😊 I especially like high ground bonus, being able to use potions as a bonus action, being able to cast 2 spells (for example, as a bonus action + an action), and not having strict resting requirements.

One thing I would like added from 5e is ritual casting.

Oh! Yes! Absolutely. Ritual casting is a must.

I'm a little surprised to read that question. This forum has hundreds of threads with detailed arguments about how the mechanics in BG3 are less balanced and less fun than their 5E counterparts. I could not possibly list them all here, but many of them contain one or more of the following opinions about Larian's design choices: that they imbalance the game, reduce the diversity of gameplay choices, eliminate meaningful player agency, make obsolete many items and spells, and dilute class identities. These complaints would naturally be solved by implementing the already refined systems in the PHB.

I have not come across a large group of players complaining about using potions as a bonus action, so it is dishonest and misleading to act like anyone is opposed to that because "its not RAW." It has not come up, so people are happy with it, as they are about any other changes that are actually good changes. They are unhappy about the changes that are not good changes. It is obvious that D&D players are going to complain about a D&D game when the mechanics in the game are worse than what could have been copied from the PHB.

Just being a video game in its nature reduces the diversity of gameplay choices as far as being compared with tabletop. Disguise self, skywrite, pretty much any roleplay-centric spell that is meaningless for checks in dialogue or for combat loses its value with the lack of a DM and the improv that occurs around the table. As a RP first guy, (combat is like 6th on my list of preferred activities in tabletop), I suppose that's why I'm more lenient on a whole towards not treating nor expecting "D&D the video game" from any video game, ever. If I want to play D&D, I gather friends or find random players for Foundry VTT (screw Roll20...)


Fair, I'm on board with that point of view.

I think I have reasonable expectations, which is why this poll is about combat, and not about divination, or illusions, or wish, or a ton of other things. I never hoped for those things in the first place. I'm going into this as an experienced PC gamer as well. I believe that there are better ways to give players more interesting choices and much more varied gameplay than what has been implemented, and it just so happens that those systems have already been iterated and balanced before!

yeah i'm in the middle indeed... ow and i think the traditional poll will be i unhappy when we get level 5 hehe

Exactly ... +1

Exactly. + 1

All they had to do was to stick to the rules and only change something if it was impossible/hard to implement in a video game format. But they decided to make it "fun experience" and now we have their shove, their magic hand and their "reactions" instead of the DnD system.

I would get some homebrew for different difficulty levels (like bonus action potions in easy mode or something). But they completely messed the core things instead. Now they're either have to redo A LOT to present a proper dnd system (in some difficulty setting atl east) or their product won't even be a dnd game in my eyes.

It baffles me how many people on this forum don't understand how much easier it would have been for Larian to use the pre-developed D&D systems instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

This poll doesn't help much. 5e by nature is simplified so I don't know what you mean by traditional. If you mean playing as close to RAW then yes I can agree to a degree. Some of the homebrew like the hide action being a bonus action to everyone is something I don't like because it devalues rogues, but some of the homebrew like the rework of the ranger class, special weapon actions, and the barbarian homebrew actually makes the game fun to play. I have never seen a d&d game be played as only RAW because it is boring. I would say you need to rework the poll as it doesn't really show anything on than RAW and whatever you mean by simplified.

I have explained in multiple posts that I want to see the diversity, balance, and strategy from the PHB included in this game, and I gave some small examples in the opening post of those things.

To go with one of your examples, Larian has changed the mechanics so much that it is going to be hard for the Rogue class to feel interesting or special in this game.

And I completely agree with that. Then there is the ranger which is better to play in BG3 than the PHB version which is why I said that I agree to a degree. You need to change your poll because there are some changes that don't fall under simplified or traditional. So far your poll seems to fall under RAW=traditional and ???=simplified. I would not vote for either since there isn't a clear choice for some which you don't take into account. Some homebrew is good for the game because it makes it fun like bonus action potions or +2 to range attackr roll on high ground which adds tactics to the game.

The changes to Ranger are a special case, as that class has been in active development by WotC, and some of the ideas probably came from them instead of Larian.

Overall, though, I do feel that Larian has dumbed down or just ignored a large percent of the PHB, hence "simplified" because there are just fewer and more primitive rule systems.

At least you agreed with me that some of the homebrew is a special case and makes the game better. You can't say that going with "tradition" aka RAW is better in all manner of meanings. Even Solasta had to homebrew some things. I would rather it not be a clone of that game.

Like what have they ignored or dumbed down? So far the game is 85% 5e.