Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Free hand to cast spells?

Indeed it is, and if a rogue in a party I'm running tries to backstab a character with a tower shield on their back, they're going to fail. The simple reason being that the shield isn't some nebulous image, it's a solid object, that is there. If their weapon wouldn't cut through it like butter from the front, it's not going to cut through it from behind either. That's a lot simpler than trying to explain, as I initially asked when this came up, where did that shield go?

The only thing that should potentially restrict spellcasting is a Shield because it's cumbersome and slow to unequip. But even with a Shield I think you can put away your weapon as a Free Action to cast a spell, and then redraw your weapon as a Free Action on your next turn, only losing a potential Attack of Opportunity. Making that automatic in a video game makes sense and that potential AoO is not a game breaking exploit.

That said, I think it would be cool to give spellcasters some mechanical incentive to use two handed weapons instead of a Shield, because it just makes sense if you need free hands frequently. Shields are so powerful they're a no brainer for Clerics. There is no "spellcaster Cleric" with a staff, they're all much better off with that +2 AC from shields.

A Shield should also make archers slower to switch between melee and ranged. Or conversely, using a two handed sword with a Bow should allow for faster switching. Instant weapon switching is really useful in BG3 where battlefields are always wide open spaces. 5e mechanically already has a restriction for Shields. Equipping a Shield takes an action. I think that should be enforced in BG3. The previous BG games didn't let you equip bows in quickslots if you had a Shield equipped and while being a crude hard restriction, I thought it made sense and diversified character builds.

Shields are very powerful and should have some tradeoffs at least.

Rogue backstabbing someone doesn't mean they literally stab the person in the back. It means they sneak up from behind and get a stealth attack. They catch their target off guard. It can mean jumping up on their back and slitting their throat. It can mean reaching around and knifing them in the side or in the chest. It can mean stabbing them in the back of the neck. It can mean bashing them in the back of the head.

See. One thing many people fail to realize is that D&D combat is meant to be general. It isn't meant to be specific.

I don't know if you've ever played Battletech, but THAT is a game where something like what you describe would count. Every time you hit, you roll to see where you hit and you do damage to that specific location.

D&D isn't like that. You hit, and you deal damage. The percentage of damage you do against the overall Current HP remaining simulates just how bad the hit was. A rogue sneaks up on someone from behind and hits them with a Sneak Attack, dealing 1d4+2 for dagger and 3d6 for sneak attack, they might deal 6 damage or 24 - or even more if a critical. Doing 6 damage would symbolize the character maybe striking the target at the wrong angle. The target realizes the rogue is there at the last second and tries to duck out of the way. The shield kinda gets in the way, being on the back, and the rogue maybe does a minor slit to the target's shoulder or something. A 24 or more might mean the rogue totally caught the target off guard and slit their throat or reached around and stabbed them in the heart. The rogue completely avoided the shield on the back and went for the weak spot.

Oh, and AC represents how much protection you have on you to avoid taking any damage at all. It is the sum total of all your defenses - armor, ability to move out of the way of an attack, deflect an attack, etc.

This is why a rogue can actually have higher AC than a fighter. A fighter wears chainmail with AC 16 but no Dex bonus. Rogue wears Studded Leather + 2 with Dex +4, so AC 18 (14 for Studded Leather +2 and +4 for Dex). The rogue's armor is easier to penetrate, but they are so fast that they can avoid getting hit to begin with.

But if a fighter avoids damage wearing their chainmail, it is assumed that their armor did the work, for the most part. They still moved to avoid the hit, but the weapon likely connected in some fashion. The armor did the brunt of the work, though, to keep them from sustaining cuts and bruises.

An equipped shield provides +2 AC bonus because it can be moved about in any direction to deflect enemy attacks coming at a PC. The enemy could be behind, in front, to the right, to the left, it doesn't matter. The bonus is because they have something in hand to help slap the attack away. If it's worn, it does no good because it is, as someone mentioned above, bulky and if anything slows down and encumbers a PCs ability to avoid getting hit to begin with. It might cover 30% of your back or even 50%, but when an enemy is coming at you, how many people turn their backs to them to be awarded the bonus of a shield on the back? Most try to face an incoming opponent and then dodge away. OR... they pull their shield out and try to use it to then deflect. Few will actually duck down so their enemy strikes their shield on their back.

+1

Rogues don't backstab in 5e; they perform "Sneak Attacks." Rogues in 5e "know how to strike subtly and exploit a foe's distraction," which happens if they have Advantage on the attack OR an ally is adjacent to the enemy. Nothing in the rules requires them to be behind their enemy or target their back, or even references the enemy's back.

Additionally, facing isn't a default rule in 5e. An enemy's pawn that is facing you is treated exactly the same as them facing away from you.

All put together: shields on backs don't provide a benefit to AC or against sneak attacks in 5e. You can rule that as homebrew, sure, but WotC specifically made decisions when designing 5e. And such a homebrew should come with a penalty; otherwise having a shield on your back is strictly better than wielding it and why wouldn't everyone do that for the free +2 AC??

I suspect that shield giving +2 is less of a design choice and more the game not being set up to recognise weapon sets - afterall you don’t have to switch weapon sets to person melee/ranged attacks.

I wonder if the shield giving the plus two even when you're using a bow is just an EA thing. It's possible that will change between now and release.

If you'd like a simple answer for the shield-and-back question, consider this:

If you think you should get the +2AC for having a shield hanging on your back, then why doesn't everyone, literally everyone, do that?

- After all, you only need to be proficient to wield a shield - you don't need to be proficient with it to simply hang it on your back and *not* actively wield it.

- So, wizards, dual-wielders, monks and everyone can do this, if you get the AC from having it on your back. It doesn't interfere with the Wizard's casting, because they aren't wielding it. It doesn't block the monk's armoured defence, because they aren't wielding it, dual-wielders don't need to give up a wielded weapon, because they aren't wielding the shield.

- This being the case... what's the benefit of actually wielding a shield? There literally IS no benefit to wielding a shield now, because you get all the benefits of wielding the shield for not wielding it and leaving both hands free. Proficiency with shields is meaningless because lack of the proficiency means nothing, since you get the bonus while not wielding it.

Does this sound sensible to anyone here? Because it shouldn't if you're a rational person.

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If I have a rogue trying to back-stab someone with a tower shield (which is just a shield - there's no distinction of shield grades in 5e) on their back it's not going to fail because of that shield - that shield blocks the blow from the front because the individual wielding it is actively doing so and shifts the shield to block me when I try to stab around it... This shield on the back is not being monitored or watched, and it's not being wielded by an intelligent entity - it's something that I, an intelligent entity can see... so I'm not going to stupidly ram my dagger into the shield. I'm going to reach around the shield and stab the person in the kidney... because the shield, when not being actively wielded by an aware and intelligent person to stop me, is functionally doing nothing.

Except you do in this game ...

It could be why we are limited to two weapon slots only and why they have to be melee and ranged.

While for anyone not relying on melee having a shield in their melee slot is beneficial, one cannot dual wield or have a two handed weapon while benefiting from shield.

That's giving Larian a lot of credit. It's vastly more likely that Larian simply decided that the way people'd want to play D&D/BG3 is with one set of melee and one set of ranged weapons per character, and they didn't consider (or think important enough) the consequences of being able to swap freely between those sets or that some people might want 2 different melee sets.

I highly doubt that they created BG3's (simultaneously both too restrictive and not restrictive enough) weapon slot system with the intention of restricting shield usage specifically. After all, their implementation still allows ranged characters to get bonuses from a shield every turn which is a free +2 AC; why can only ranged characters benefit from this?

I agree that inventory interactions should be tweaked to avoid egregious abuses like people getting +2 AC because their shield is on their back. Other than that sort of thing, I think that most of the time somatic components can be performed like people have said, taking a hand off a weapon.

In Solasta, which has no Warcaster, I eventually had my Cleric just put away their weapon and go full caster + shield.

I think the most likely scenario was that Larian didn’t want players to have to manually switch between weapons sets before being able to use abilities in the hot bar. As it is, you can freely use melee/ranged skills, no matter what weapon set your character appears to hold. Constant shield bonus, is just a side effect of BG3 not really having switchable weapon slots - our characters have both melee and ranged equipped at all times.

With how the game is set up, allowing players to equip two melee or two ranged weapons would create new issues - as the game is set up there no way to specify with what weapon we want to attack. We have menacing strike on our hotbar - but with which weapon, if we have two melee weapon slots? In my book it’s another black mark against already unnecessarily unwieldy hotbar design.

As such we have one melee and one ranged - that’s also why there is both melee and ranged sneak attack - create one, and you cannot specify with which weapon you want to attack.

Needless to say I don’t like this approach at all. I think it is attempting to solve an issue that never existed, while creating host of new problems and unnecessarily limitations. Damage types tend to be a big consideration for melee classes in later levels - being forcefully limited to one melee/ranged weapon slot might get annoying later on.

Those are some good points. It makes sense with the way hotbar item abilities are used.

Allowing 2 melee (or 2 ranged) weapon sets would require: a dedicated hotbar icon for each set (which would be fine, and be basically equivalent to what we have now), the hotbar icon to ask which weapon set you want to use after you click it (probably the worst option), or for it just to use whichever weapon set is currently equipped.

That last implementation could work kind of well. When you swap weapon sets, all icons for the previous weapon set are replaced with icons for the new weapon set if needed. This would probably result in some reshuffling of hotbar icons which isn't great...but the hotbar implementation needs an overhaul anyway, so that could be one consideration when doing so.

I'm usually for a faithful adaptation of 5e, but in this, no. Here's why:

I played Solasta for the first time. I created a cleric. I adventured. First time I try to cast a spell, almost all spells are grayed out. "What the heck?" I say, and I spend forever trying to figure out why? Why are some spells grayed out and some not? Did I not prepare them?

I was super confused and disoriented. Then I realized that the game doesn't allow me to use them if I don't have a free hand.

Honestly, the mechanic isn't worth it in a video game. Materials versus somantics versus verbal... Making sure you have all the boxes checked each time you want to cast a spell... No thanks. It'll frustrate too many. And for what? So you are forced to unequip your weapon first. And for what? So you can't do an AOO... Maybe... If an enemy maybe triggers one. Yeah. It's not worth it. Just let the caster get AOO with their weapon even after casting. It's easier and less confusing.

Agree 100%.

Yes, It was another big reason I loved Hexblade in tabletop...I could use my pact weapon as a spell focus. Its a conundrum that the average gamer can be spared though.

I can remember making "the perfect build", and then "WHAT!!!???!!!, I can't cast spells?"