Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Difficulty levels/game modes

There's clearly roughly two separate groups, that often clash with each other - dnd fans and dos fans. My opinioin is simple - why a dnd franchise game should have dos mechanics? but let's leave it for other threads(or not).

I acknowledge the fact that Larian won't be choosing between the two, they want this game to sell as much as it can. So, my suggestion is to balance things out with difficulty levels/game modes. Not just "story mode/medium/hard", but rather "dos-like/more dnd-like". These levels may include:


DND-like:

1. No HP bars, but something like "slightly injured-injured-badly injured"
2. Food is very scarce, long rests are restricted in some areas, short rests costs food
3. Spells don't create surfaces(chromatic orb homebrew that thunder orb deals 3d8 and others 2d8 is bad)
4. Using potion is an action(+potions tweaked closer to dnd - e.g. potion of speed should only grant ability to do extra attack or extra common action. Potion of speed in BG 3 lets you cast two spells)
5. Shoving is an action
6. Hide is an action
7. No throwing potions, only administering them
8. Jump is part of the movement, so you couldn't jump more than your movement speed


9*. Reactions are popups for full control
10*. Attunement and identifying mechanics

(* this is debatable)

DOS-like:

Pretty much opposite of the latter

1. HP bars is on
2. Long rest whenever you want
3. Spells with surfaces
4. Potions are bonus actions(two fireballs with speed potion in the same turn yay)
5. Shove/hide/ jump are bonus actions

6.* Reactions are auto triggers


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I didn't mention difficulty of the fights, because it's a default setting, it'll be there anyway

Let's discuss, i could have forgotten something

That would be great. But I don't believe they can code well enough to implement it. As some people posted here their engine doesn't even have an actual z-axis.

Also as I understand it there are people who want to say that they're playing dnd (to whom? themselves, probably) but don't want to actually play dnd, they want funny barrel explosions into surfaces.

I like the idea (anything that brings BG3 closer to actual 5e rules is good in my book), but unfortunately I doubt they'd do it. We'll most likely be forced to wait for appropriate mods before we get to play BG3 the way it should have been from the beginning.

I know I sound bitter, but that's the way I see it and the current direction of development gives me little hope that things would change.

Its funny because when you put it this way even if I knew absolutely nothing of both the franchises I'd have absolutely no doubt on picking the first without a single second of hesitation.

Maybe I am a little biased towards dnd, but if anyone could show me why dos-like mechanics fit this game better, i would appreciate it

Major problem is that we don't actually know their direction. If someone at Larian said " We're going to build an actual DnD game, so wait for the release" or "We're not going to stick to every DnD rule, the homebrew stays", that would clarify a lot of things and our feedback would be more narrow and precise

I see 2 significant issues with this suggestion.
- 1.) Larian would have to implement and then balance 2 separate game modes, along with the 3-5 difficult levels within each mode. Larian only has a limited amount of developer-time, and splitting their focus will likely result in each mode being half-assed mediocrity, and even worse for the various difficulty levels.
- 2.) It isn't defined well. What does "D&D-like" mean? The "like" qualifier gives too much wiggle room, allowing any specific mechanic to not match 5e as long as the whole mode resembles 5e enough. The problems are: who is the judge of which mechanics are more or less essential to D&D, and who is the judge of whether an entire mode is close enough to D&D 5e? This comes down to Larian and/or player opinion, neither of which is objectively correct.

Instead of having 2 separate game modes, each of which stands on its own, Larian should create and balance for a single game mode (with various difficulty levels), and then add extra options/toggles/sliders for the things you mentioned above. Perhaps these difficulty options would be naturally adjusted with difficulty mode, or perhaps not. But implemented this way, Larian doesn't have to worry as much about those 2 issues above.

Just for clarification: I don't mind some deviations from the actual 5e rules, like potions as a bonus action (within reason of course, a haste potion should not allow for two spells) or the +2/-2 modifier for being on higher/lower ground.
Homebrew stuff can be ok, after all almost every PnP group has their house rules.

But as an official D&D product, they shouldn't deviate too far from the actual rules.

1) I know, but also I don't see neither how to merge two of this approaches(DnD and DOS) nor Larian's intent of doing it
2) I wrote "like" only because I don't know how to implement certain DnD spells into videogame(like suggestion or contingency), so it won't be exact implementation for sure

I can tell you why I like the combat in BG3. I love playing casters, and BG3 offers lots of fun ways to use magic. I can do combos such as a water spell + a lightning spell. I can cast a damage spell + either a healing spell or misty step in one turn. How BG3 does metamagic is lots of fun as well. With unrestricted long rests I am sure to always have something fun to cast.

As far as options go, I agree with mrfuji3 about toggles so that people can mix and match the options as they like.

What about casting 4 spells per turn, wouldn't it be even more fun? Also, why even have long rests, spell slots and sorcery points, wouldn't it be even more fun to just cast spells whenever you want?

My character seems to be forced to long rest, and I don't have an in-game clock to know if this is time based, or combat maybe?

They just start complaining that they can't go any further.

...But nothing really changes and they can keep going just fine.

That may be just an EA thing though... maybe it will get important later.
Or it may be just a hint to get people to use long rest more often. After all, I doubt I'm the only one who is extremely conservative when it comes to using resources.

I think I may be one of few people to have played BG3 before DOS2 without having played dnd before, and I actually really enjoy the blend of both styles of gameplay. I know that a lot of people criticise BG3 for being too DOS-like, so I was surprised when I eventually picked up DOS2 after like 200 hours of BG3 early access that the two games play really differently. I definitely prefer BG3 gameplay and combat to DOS2, so I would be interested in seeing how far they could take the faithful dnd rules, but as it is I'm really very satisfied with most of the actual gameplay in Early Access.

Well, then again that's all I have to try and judge so far.
And it's not like they ever said a word about what they are planning to do, anyway.

True. I guess we'll have to wait and see...

They definitely do! I think BG3 has potential to be immensely enjoyable and I hope it will get there before the release - there are moments of brilliance shining through the EA already. There are also three issues (push/reactions/concentration too easily dispelled through guaranteed to hit items/surfaces) which IMO pull back the combat from reaching a next level.

There are also some choices (like blurring uniqueness of classes) which I dislike, but don’t have to necessary result in bad gameplay.

Frankly reactions aside I've seen that some mods are already addressing several of these issues.

The problem is that in the current state of things there are a lot of instability/compatibility problems, especially when piling more mods on top of each other.
Hopefully things will improve over time, IF Larian is completely unwilling to address them to begin with.

1. No HP bars, but something like "slightly injured-injured-badly injured"

Oh my, that sounds like a table-top session.

Sounds good!