Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The One D&D project. Thoughts?

So what do you guys think about the proposed rule changes for 2024 phb? Particularly about character creation?

Personally I don't like that they've moved so many things to your choice of background.

link to UA2022: https://media.dndbeyond.com/compend...m=crosspromo&icid_campaign=playtest1

Edit: Oh, and as for being a viable subject on this forum...we already know some proposed changes is in BG3, do we think we will find more?

Edit2: After have reading through the document more carefully, and having pointers from others on steam forums, maybe the background change isn't so bad.

a) Jeremy Crawford is good at talking. Not just the tone and pace of his voice, but he also obviously prepared the video presentation well. It was very easy to listen to.

b) From what I remember, I liked everything that was introduced. Levelled feats, Inspiration, ... but mostly the Character Creation options. Humans were given some attention. Mix races as you please : 3/4-Dwarf-1/4-Gnome can actually be created. Etc.

But most importantly, your Race is no longer equated with your Culture and your past.

For instance, as an Elf, you'll benefit from the magical Elven abilities. But you are no longer forced to have Elven weapon training. Maybe you were an orphan raised by Dwarves. Maybe you have a "typical Dwarven character".

Since this is the BG3 section of the forum (not the chat where Sozz opened a thread already), I'll connect with BG3 by reiterating this feedback point for Larian (I know, it's not Suggestions & Feedback).

Don't lock dialogue options behind Race when it is merely personality. Your Race is not your personality.

• Halfings don't have the exclusivity of saying nice and friendly things. Any Race can say those things.
• Dwarves don't have the exclusivity to challenge goblins to come down and get punched. Any Race can say those things.
• But Elves do have the exclusivity to tell their dream apparition that being in a dream is freaking not normal. That's Elven biology.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know that. I did a search of 5.5 in the forums and nothing came up, and I never check the chat. Well, in that case it might be better to continue the discussion in that thread instead. Thank you Drath for letting me know

Races

• ASIs are all +2/+1 or three +1s and (kind of but not really) tied to backgrounds. This is...okay. Personally I'd prefer that at least some ASIs were racial, but WotC was always going to change to this. Having them (kind of) tied to backgrounds at least makes them more thematic than just "take a +2/+1, whatever man."
• Different Races have different lifespans; nice! It's not all "typically live as long as humans."
• Humans, Ardlings, and Tieflings are the only races that can choose to be either Medium or Small, which is nice I suppose but kind of odd. Assuming that this is meant for dwarfism...do elves/dwarves/orcs not have dwarfism??
• Dwarves have a specific use for stonecunning, rather than the more vague "History checks related to stone." One the one hand, great! On the other hand, tremorsense doesn't help with finding secret [stone] doors which is kind of sad.
• Elves have a reasonable and interesting description that explains the various subraces. Lore is good.
• Humans...I'm not sure. Inspiration and Skillful are meh, and you can only choose from a much-restricted set of level 1 feats. 2 weak feats where all other classes get 1 seems much worse than 1 free feat where other classes get zero. But on the other hand, you get that extra +1 ASI that Variant Humans don't get.

Feats and Mechanics

• PREREQUISITES FOR FEATS HELL YEAH!!! Correspondingly, feats are gated by character level!!! This will be good for balance and improve feelings of character progression. No more getting GWM and/or Sentinel at level 1 for So Much Power.
• 1st level feats babyyyy!!!! Maybe One D&D will untie feats from ASIs...please...
• Monsters can't make critical hits, and only "attack rolls with a Weapon or an Unarmed Strike" can crit. Suck it casters.

Grappling

• Being grappled now imposes disadvantage on attack rolls against anyone other than the grappler. This is great! The only effect of grapple in 5e being speed=0 was lame and underwhelming.
• You can make a grapple attempt as an Opportunity Attack, at least I think??? Tanking will now be an actual thing! Martial characters can prevent enemies from just running past them to the squishies.
• The fact that Grapple is an attack roll instead of an Athletics check AND that enemies can't use an action to escape, but get a free ST to escape at the end of their turns is...interesting. It'll be much harder to maintain a grapple, and likely harder to succeed in the first place.

Wording

• It seems like WotC is placing a larger emphasis on Keywords instead of using plain language! "D20 Test", "Slowed [Condition]", the 3 spell lists.

...I connect this with BG3 by the fact that they are both based on D&D.

..... Ummm..... WHAT?

- Monsters being unable to crit is ridiculous and stupid by ANYONE's metric
- Casters do NOT need any more nerfs.

Sorry, no, you can't have heard that right. I'm going to have to go watch that video now.

Reddit's repeated explanation for removing monster crits is that monsters have recharge abilities which suffices for the randomness. Plus, monster crits make it very (too?) easy and random to OHKO level 1 characters.

The exact line in the playtest pdf is "If a player character rolls a 20 for an attack roll with a Weapon or an Unarmed Strike...you roll the damage dice of the Weapon or Unarmed Strike a second time and add the second roll as extra damage." I.e., for sneak attack, smite, battlemaster maneuver, etc, additional dice aren't also doubled. For consistency, it makes perfect sense that spells wouldn't deal double damage because that'd be a lot of extra damage, whereas martials can add like 2d6 maximum (more likely 1d6 or 1d8) with normal weapons.

That said, I don't like making critical hits so wimpy. This is a huge nerf to rogues and paladins, a decent nerf to rangers, and even a nerf to battlemaster fighters. At least allow us to double our modifier to damage!

It's true about monster criticals, but I think monsters that wield weapons might still crit. Criticals in 5e need a revamp, and I'm not talking about more nerfing, of all the common house rules to incorporate, adding critical skill checks, but not something like x2 damage is queer.

No. Spellcasters not critting is dumb to me. I launch a firebolt and hit a person in the face. He should be dead. That's a crit. Same as if I fire a crossbow and hit a person in the face. 1d10 with no bonus for spellcaster. 1d10 with bonus for fighter using heavy crossbow. No difference.

And we do Crits as you get max damage on your regular damage dice but roll for extra damage. Otherwise Crits feel nerfed a lot of times. My wife would swing a greataxe and Crit someone. "Yeah! Crit! Die orc!"

Rolls a total of 10 with 4d6+4. Wha wha! But if a crit does 16 + 2d6... Now it's like HECK YEAH! A CRIT! That may not be RAW, but it's a lot less disappointing for players.

I can actually understand this a lot. I actually tend to cater Crits to who I'm playing with. If I'm playing with people who hate being wiped by a single hit - basically they don't want realism as much - no Crits for monsters. If I'm playing with people who like more fair Combat, then yes, monsters get Crits.

I equate it to difficulty settings in a video game. Crits for Normal mode done the RAW way and monsters too. Crits done homebrew for players and no Crits for enemies for Easy mode.

I also do variations where bosses crit but minions don't.

It's not about randomness - it's about risk and adaptation. Things can go suddenly very wrong, and that's an important part of being an adventurer. Recharge abilities absolutely do not cover that angle, at all.

Level 1-3 is over in the blink of an eye, and it's the DM's job, if they are running from level one, to pitch the content in a way that gets them used to adventuring, and used to their basic skill kit, with a fair risk bracket; it has literally never been a problem before now, and it still isn't one. There is zero need to put fluffy mittens on all the monsters, and I stand by my statement that it is completely stupid. I don't want to play in a world where everything I face is handicapped against the ability to get lucky or be decisive in the ways that I can; that's unfair and unrealistic. IF someone does, that's fair enough, but that's house-rule territory, and DM fiat zone; it's WHY the dm screen exists.

I'm also very strongly against the re-homogenisation of crits into all d20 rolls; either they are wholesale removing contested checks, or they are going to have to make additional fudge rules to account for contested checks in this situation, and that's bad design either way.

I don't know about the rules changes, but I absolutely hate the name "One D&D." It reminds me of techy nonsense jargon, as if they were trying to launch a new Xbox. I'm not a fan of .5 editions either. If it's been 10 years and you're dropping new revamped sourcebooks with major rules changes then call it 6th Edition, and don't try to pull a fast One on us or confuse our handy two character 6E abbreviation. I feel like they are tempting fate with that name change, and someone needs to check them on it before it goes to print.

I think everything sounds interesting and veering on the good side, though I disagree with nat 1s and 20s on skill checks being automatic failures/successes (unless they specifically define it in a similar way that Pathfinder 2E does, in which nat 1s and 20s just result in clearly defined worse penalties/greater successes). I am also not sure how to feel about critical hits being a player only mechanic AND restricted to weapon or unarmed damage. I feel like the former is unnecessary when the latter by itself would suffice in reining in the swinginess of the system.

Full judgement would have to be reserved for the next part of the changes/additions that they're planning on revealing next month, which is supposedly going to go over classes and I assume archetypes. By then, we should have a greater sense of the big picture - for example, there might be stuff in there that makes the critical stuff make complete sense. I already see people doomposting about Paladins and Rogues getting shafted by the critical change, but what if both classes actually had class features compensating for that like higher critical chance/critical damage modifiers?

I hope this means we get a wider variety of archetypes, including another arcane archer-type archetype for a caster class with a heavier caster/magical focus than the heavy martial focus that the existing Fighter version has, or a Paladin archetype that lets you smite with ranged attacks. I feel like archers have been pretty overlooked in 5E as far as character building options goes.

Ok well, for the rules it seems interesting enough to hold my attention. But seriously One D&D? Really? It sounds so markety doesn't it? Like they wouldn't would they, but I guess they would. Too bad, as I've actually been weirdly looking forward to 6th Edition branding and art direction hehe. I think if they don't stake a claim to the name, then it will informally be called 5.5 which is meh, or Anniversary D&D but there's already an AD&D. D&D50th? weak. OD&D? I thought that was the white box! I think it'd be better if they bite the bullet and just sling into 6. Maybe it's the occult hail satanist D&D in me, but if it's 6e in practice they should just rock it.

I like the many world kicks in that doc, and opening up more infernal lineages and celestial lineage stuff, especially the stargate vibe I'm getting from the recast aasimar. I think it could work. The size option thing to go extra impish also seems cool. The mix it up bag for races too. The only thing I could think of as something kind of new for PC races that they might add to really dial up a new Ed drop would be to do a Fey race themed ultra tiny. Basically faeries/pixies or half-fey as a potential PC race archetype. I think they could do stuff with size/shape change as a racial feature and that might be kinda cool. They've done a lot of monstrous race revamps to open em up, and I still like Yuan-Ti as one they haven't really done (Thulsa Doom James Earl Jones style version?!) but I think Faeries/Pixies might be more engaging for the general audience. Lines up with Elves a bit, in a sort of throwback for flavor, with an angle similar to the celestial/infernal dynamic they got going now but more fairy-tale than heaven/hellscape. Fae run, I think they could do a lot with it. Anyhow, yeah shifting more stuff from race/class to background seems to be an ongoing theme. I'm fine with it. I kinda get the crits as player only vibe, since the DMs got other ways to get their rocks off, but it is a bit curious. It will be interesting to see what they do with class.

Monster crits OHK'ing level 1 PC's isn't the problem. The linear HP progression is. Level 1 HP has always been a problem in D&D. You notice it immediately with the safety net levels 2 and 3 bring when you can suddenly take twice the beating and survive nasty crits.

They need to bump the HP of level 1 PC's. Give everyone their CON score + avg HD of HP at level 1. Fighter with 14 Con = 20 hp. Wizard with 14 Con = 18 HP.

Damages could be buffed as well with level progression to maintain balance.

Monster crits are absolutely necessary to make combat feel dangerous and keep players on the edge of their seats.

That's exactly how we do it when I play table top. We were tired of crits that did less damage than an acutual regular attack

All I am seeing is "Well folks. See? We're creating THE D&D experience here with BG3. One D&D proves it. We're creating a game that is ahead of 5e, leaning more towards One D&D. So you should absolutely not expect anything close to RAW 5e. Thanks.". Love Larian.

It sounds like a mixed bag to me so far. The changes to crits are just bad as far as I'm concerned. Taking them away from monsters just moves them one more step away from any sort of simulationism. I don't like monsters/npcs and PCs working on different systems, I'll just say that. Crititcal successes and failures for skill checks are really bad houserules IMO and should not be a core rule. Aardlings should have been called Aasimar. Just expand Aasimar to include the idea that they can have bigger and varied manifestations of their upper-planar heritage, just like Tieflings. I like that background and race are separated now. That's something I have wanted since I started playing, and although there have been little attempts here and there to address that (like 3rds background feats and regional feats) This is a solid step in the right direction. Not a fan at all of the removal of half orcs and half elves. Now from what I can tell you'd either make an orc or a human and tell your dm 'this is a half-orc' to simulate a half-orc and that's not something I like. Every race getting a cantrip or magical ability....not something I'm crazy about tbh. tremorsense is a good fit for dwarves and in line with abilities they have had in the past, but I'm against the mass proliferation of abilities just so everyone can have a gimmick on principle.

The name is stupid 'Xbox One' level needless corporate marketing tinkering.

I assumed it was “One D&D to rule them all” rather than Xbox that they were going for with the name. Not that that necessarily makes it less silly.

One change mentioned in the video that I wish would make it into BG3 is the ability to upcast spell granted through race abilities or feats.

Larian could also draw inspiration from the new spell lists (now divided into Arcane, Divine and Primal according to the spell’s essence). It would make flavor sense for the Wizard’s scribing ability to be limited to Arcane spells alone. As BG3 alredy relies on tags, it doesn’t seem insurmountable to implement.

Something that really bugged me bout the presentation was the way they upsold and obliquely lied about various things in order to make the new things seem better than the things they are slated to replace, when they literally are not - now I have every respect for Jeremy Crawford, but there were some deliberate wool-pulls in this video that they are trusting the majority to simply accept and eat up without question... and it's not cool for them to do that, even with playtest material.

For example: They spend several minutes enthusing about the "Healer" feat, and how much they've improved it... In particular, Jeremy is big on the fact that now they've improved it so that you can actually use it to heal your allies; he talks about it in this way, as though the current feat does not do this.

To clarify...

Current Healer feat: You can expend a charge to heal a target for 1d6 + 4 + the creature's maximum total hit dice (it's character level, effectively); you are healing and ally for between 6-30 Hp

Proposed Healer Feat: You expend a charge, And one of the target's Hit Dice - it they are all out you cannot use this feat on them, to heal the target for a roll of their hit die plus your proficiency; you are healing an ally for between 3-18 Hp, at the cost of one of the target's hit die.

So, it was deeply disingenuous of them to talk about the feat as though it was now going to let you heal allies, where the original version could not and did not.

They did this also for the several minutes they spent talking about the Alert feat: They talk about how the new alert feat still has everything the old one does, but now it has more oomph, and it has more too, since it has the initiative swap extra.

The initiative bonus that the proposed new feat grants is weaker than the existing one - it only catches up to the existing one at 14th level, and only gets stronger than it by one point at 17th level; levels 1-16 you're doing better with the current version. This is beside the fact that the initiative bonus that they spent their time focusing on is the damn Ribbon for the Alert feat... the actual Meat of which are the other two features it currently has.

Current Alert Feat:
- +5 to initiative rolls
- Cannot be surprised as long as you are not incapacitated
- Unseen attackers do not gain advantage against you.

Proposed Alert Feat:
- +Proficiency to initiative (beginning at 2, reaching +5 at 14, becoming +6 at 17-20; the extra +1 at 17-20 is not worth the larger reduced value for levels 1-13, not to mention it's an outright nerf to Alert Bards across the board)
- Swap initiative place with an ally once per combat.

They've just removed the two important parts of the feat, and the reasons why people actually use it, weakened the ribbon except at final tier, and given a moderately gimmicky, immersively nonsense other perk; sure it may be something that has value an will be liked as a thing on its own, but it is not worth gutting the actually useful aspects of the feat for - this deserved to be its own feat, not made to murder Alert and wear its skin...

A final example...


You could always already do this in current 5e! It's already covered in the spellcasting rules; it does not need to be stated in the feats that you can use spell slots to cast the spells you get from other sources.

You use spells slots to cast spells you know (and have prepared IF the spell requires preparation); if a feat grants you a spell, it is worded like this:

"You learn/know the Mirror Image spell, and can cast it once with this feature without expending a spell slot. You must finish a long rest before you can cast Mirror Image with this feature again."

You. Know. The. Spell. That is not frivolous flavour text; it has meaning. It means you know the spell, and you use your spell slots, if you have them, to cast spells you know. The feature gives you the ability to cast it without using a spell slot once per long rest, but you can, and could always, cast it more using spell slots you have, because you know the spell. If you can ONLY cast the spell using the feature, it SAYS SO. Otherwise, it follows normal spellcasting rules, meaning you must spend a slot to cast it. It never needed to be stated and that's why it was not, in the initial publications.

This isn't NEW.... the only thing new is that they're explicitly putting in extra words to say it, which they don't need to because it's already covered in the existing related rules.

My main complaint, however, is that they were deeply disingenuous about the way in which they spoke about these things...

To be clear, I'm generally pretty positive about most of the race content, which is the focus of this UA; it's interesting, and I'm in favour of more bit being given to backgrounds like this... I still want racial ability score propensities to be present, listed and acknowledged, but on the whole I'm pretty positive about what I'm seeing here. I'm on board for light-grade level 1 feats as part of that too, I think that's great! The mechancial stuff at the bottom end though, no, that's a hot mess in so many way, and I'm looking forward to giving my feedback about that when the forms open.