Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Githyanki Patrol - Why so Early?

+1 for the "pacing is really weird"

It's all ok if you don't take LZ, but if you do and you take her seriously then you pretty much beeline straight for this fight right after you go to the grove.

In this case it doesn't matter if the level cap will be higher, because you still won't have hit it because you won't have done all the other stuff that gets you the experience to get it...

The way the game presents everything at the moment is "tadpole bad, do something asap!" and then gives you two options, Halsin or Creche. One of these is what you're "meant" to do, and one just doesn't work.

For what it's worth I think they made Lae'zel's deception check easier. I don't remember her ever succeeding it before, even buffed up, but she got it 2/3 times unbuffed this run through for me. I wasn't sure he she even needed to roll, because the bardic inspiration I gave her went unused and there was no check logged, until she failed one.

I don't really have a problem with the difficulty of the encounter, especially when you consider they're supposed to occupy the same role as the Duergar ambushers in the gnome village. You're forced to autosave before the bridge, if people consistently tpk there you can take the hint and come back later. That's not exactly a great but it's there.

Gith are very arrogant as a race. They typically think of other races then their own as beneath them. A big cheese telling his underlings to 'deal with them' is very much in character. To be awarded a dragon in Githyanki society you have to be one of the elite. This guy is probably so far up his own ass he thinks anyone other then Vlaakith is an unwashed peasant not worth his time.

The reason why they are there is obviously the Nautiloid that crashed nearby. Im also fairly sure that you can talk your way out of the fight and I think having Laezel with you made it easier. Unless they changed that?

I think disguising (or beeing) a Gith yourself also got you additional dialogue and made it easier to avoid the fight but I only heard that part and dident try it yet myself. Complaining about things beeing exploitable or broken though is abit stupid during an EA. Yeah obviously stuff like that will be in the game. Report it to Larian so they can fix it and move on. I dont see the point in complaining about it.

A Gith dragon rider should be arrogant, yes. That doesn't mean he's stupid enough to leave before the fight, especially since they gave all Gith except Lae'zel like 16-18 in every stat including Intelligence and Wisdom, and especially if they know you have the item they seek. He would order his subordinates to kill the party and remain to watch the fight, assess the prowess of his troops and intervene or finish the job should they fail. Not making sure the task is completed is behaving like an idiot when big things are at stake. Exactly like Goldfinger leaving a captured 007 to die from some weird timed laser beam contraption rather than just shooting him.

That's the whole purpose of EA and this forum. Playing EA and silently accepting everything would be stupid and pointless.

Hear hear.

You took a topic about the Gith patrol to complain about broken features. Big differnce between complaining about something and letting Larian know you found a problem/error/bug/exploit/whatver that needs adressing. You are doing the former, not the latter.

What features? Do you even know? Why would you jump on such a sidenote?

Secondly, we are at a liberty of criticizing Larian's design decisions here. Especially since they are changing how an existing ruleset plays. And that is not "complaining". We are not just beta testers who report bugs and exploits while singing praises to Larian regardless of what they do to 5e. You don't need to defend a developer from criticism, they're grown ups.

I agree. Especially on the dragon flying away part, though obviously if there is a chance of a fight, we as players need that Dragon gone or it's beyond impossible.

I haven't done the encounter since patch 6 (so my info might be a bit out of date), but I always took issue with the timing of this encounter, and especially so if you have Laezel in your party at the time.

1. It can happen way too early and too easily. If you have Laezel in your party she practically leads you straight into them. Now, that's ok if there are multiple endings, but in virtually every case in the past, this always lead to a ridiculous fight. One you had little to no hope in if lvl 1-3, other than to know it's coming and cheese it, or come back later and have a chance at it. That to me (if it was to stay as is and isn't just an EA placeholder) is poor design, because the player hasn't a hope in hell of knowing this first time round. This isn't a "loop" game, it's an RPG.

Yes you get a cut scene warning you the Gith are there and without Laezel your team should perhaps see that they're a problem (an Origin character should probably whisper something to that end) and then, ok, you're choice if you engage.

However WITH Laezel in your party, the game, via Laezel, practically drags you into this encounter and it should mean you have a high(er) chance of succeeding through dialogue / have an alternative outcome where you are perhaps captured if it goes badly, or yes choose "to the death" if you're mad enough.

2. With Laezel in tow, there should also only be a very small chance she let's you take the lead on this. I appreciate RPG standards give the lead role to the player's character, but in this regard it doesn't make sense, unless I have a very high Charisma and I "persuade" Laezel that "I got this". To boot should you start but then fail the initial conversation with the Gith, they should want to default to talking only with Laezel (I think in part this does happen, but it should be more forced).

3. Shadowheart and "the item".
Now I appreciate this hunting party are ouf for the item and are technically less interested in helping you with the tadpole issue, but IF you haven't got Shadowheart in the party, or the item on your persons, then deception regarding this item's whereabouts should be easier. Maybe even you let the guards search you, again leading to capture if they don't believe you, because killing you isn't going to help them find it any sooner.

In both instances this could either lead you to the creche willingly or as prisoners. We haven't seen the Creche, so we can't guess as to whether this is even a place we want to be, but Laezel is adamant that we use that method of removing the critter asap, so other than the fact she uses a term that makes me doubt it ends well, its the most in our face option there is at the start of the adventure and more prominant than the Druid's grove.

The problem, to be clear, is not the dragon knight going away. That should be a given if the encounter must have any chance of survival.

The problem is that the framing of the scene is a bit weak and the reason he gives to leave us to his underlings contrasts pretty strongly with how urgent his mission seems to be.
If he decided to dispatch us WITHOUT coming to the conclusion that we have exactly what he's looking for it would make a lot more sense.

He seems to imply that he's not killing us with his own hands (and dragon) because "his mandate binds him" or something along that line, which is a bit vague and not explained very well. Maybe as a knight he has some sort of oath of never killing "children" of his tribe? If that's the case, this could be made a bit more obvious?

P.S. On a side note, I freaking love the actor voicing the dragon knight. His voice, his tone of contempt speaking to Lae'zel, the way he scolds his underlings for fooling around too much without results, etc.
Everything about his delivery is perfect for the role.
Wish I could have the same praise for the model and animation, though.

Yeah agree with you!

Thats kinda exactly what we are saying ...
Talking with kithrak should contain this endings and consequences:

1) He find out about our parasite, but NOT about the box ...
he orders Beretha to kill us and search our bodies just in case, and leave to continue his search for other survivors ...

2) He dont find out about our parasite, nor about the box ... we agree on helping ...
he orders Berethe to return to her duties, leave to continue his search for survivors ...

3) He dont find out about our parasite, nor about the box ... we dont agree on helping ... (You are useless to me scenario.)
he orders Beretha to kill us and search our bodies just in case, and leave to continue his search for survivors ...

4) He finds out about the box (it bugs me a little that in this scenario we cant block out his Detect Thoughts)
he orders Nathanos to burn us to death ... either instant game over, or impossible fight starts ... feel free to make dragon imune to Fire damage so clever exploiters cant surround it with exploding barrels.

I almost feel some of you are vastly overstating the importance of this part of the story so far.
The druids and goblins are little more than an incidental stepping stone along the journey. Chances are that absolutely NO part of this will matter a single bit as soon as we go past MoonSomething Tower and move into Act 2 reaching Baldur's Gate and surrounding area.

Wouldn't an easy solution then be to have a triggered animation when you approach them where the camera zooms in on the patrol and you hear the dragon dude say something to the effect of "ok my underlings, I have urgent stuff to attend to, you just make sure you get that item and leave no one alive" to which he flies away on his dragon on a killer Judas Priest's guitar riff. No jokes aside, they should rewrite this to make it clear you have little to no chance if you are under leveled for the encounter. Just a companion whispering is too easily overlooked IMO, just a new triggered cinematic when you approach them BEFORE IT'S too late would be better.

You're probably right, but that doesn't change the fact that its position in the context of the current story makes no sense. It operates under the assumption you metagame to the extreme and really kills the pacing and immersion.

Agreed.

And it's indicative of the broad trend of poor narrative design choices in the game, such as those around long rests, illithid powers, and other things. If they can't get these simple things right after a vast number of new player experience feedback, how are they going to go with the rest of the game?

I don't know about you, but the fact there is a dragon down there just makes me more curious. After all, I have a githyanki in my party. Only too late do I realize it is not enough to get me out of the encounter without a fight

People obviously have many opinions about this encounter, but most people seem to express, like myself, that something is off. Now how do we reach the devs about the topic? I don't see any devs getting involved in this forum. I hope they read some of it though

This is a little off topic but I think you're right and that really bugs me. It feels as though once we leave this area it's not going to matter at all. We are given no reason to care about the area or invest in it emotionally. Everything about the area that we could potentially care about is LEAVING the place. The place I don't even think has a name even. This feels narratively like it should be the starter area, the place where we learn about the setting, start getting hints at the main plot before we get the big narrative jump into act 2. But we already know that the tadpole is the big thing, a sword of Damoclese that's hanging over our head even though mechanically and to a certain degree storywise it's actually not. We're given no insight into the wider setting that would help get our feet under us, we get little opportunity to form bonds outside of our party, who have few to no bonds between each other. The whole story just feels off to me in a way that I don't think I've ever felt from an RPG narrative.

What do you guys suggest Larian does about the situation then? The Gith having dragon riders is already established. If the dragon would join in on the fight its just an automatic game over and the Dragon-rider beeing a cocky a-hole and letting his underlings handle it like a bond villain is also not the way you guys want the encounter to go.

So what would the solution exactly be then?

We could see the dragon in the initial cutscene, but have it and Kithrak fly off before we arrive. A subordinate (Beretha) would be the one we talk to.
Or partway through the conversation, before Kithrak knows exactly how important we are, he gets a message (telepathy? magic? another dragon rider?) that something requires his urgent attention so he leaves.

Or:

Right now, it's personal. Laezel wants to take off his head with his own silver sword. Any potential "solutions" should ideally maintain that level of anger. Having him fly off before the characters arrive would deflate his role.

I tend to agree that his actions seem odd.

First, I don't know why he jumps to the conclusion that the party has the weapon. "You were on the ship! You must have the weapon." --um, there were a lot of folks on the ship who don't have the weapon, right?--

Second, why would he fly away instead of immediately taking the weapon? I don't think this question is so easily answered, though. Maybe the weapon is dangerous? Maybe he's trying to get away from it and sacrificing Baretha.

There's just so much we don't know, so it's difficult to say this is right or that is wrong. I'm cautious when it comes to jumping to conclusions and assuming I'm smarter than everyone making the game.

*

I'm guessing the weapon is sentient, certainly. I'm also guessing it's the sentience of the weapon that altered the typical nature of the tadpole. In other words, it's why the characters are not like the other true souls.

Furthermore, I'm guessing that the sentience within the artifact is actually the dream person we're seeing, as opposed to a manifestation of the tadpole itself.