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

Sorry Tom - if my impression was incorrect, then let me just say, back to you: That's how you come off. As the kind of sweaty DM who will get hung up about what is optimal and what isn't, and who will frequently make side comments about other players playing sub-optimally, or back-seating them about what they should or shouldn't do, and what they should or shouldn't take, etc. That's how your posts read. If you're not that kind of person and player, then I apologise; it was the impression I got from your writing.

Since you didn't comment on it, I assume that you are also strongly in favour of them releasing a dedicated forgotten realms source book and campaign setting book, at the same time that they erase all of the lore and flavour from the base handbook/monster manual etc., in order to restore and update what they're erasing? I'm guessing you're looking forward to purchasing those books separately too?

Three things:

- The best and most effective barbarian's I've ever played with, have both been halflings. They make fantastic Barbs.

- What lore, exactly, should I be using for Fairy. Quote me something from their official release lore that I can use to play for or against type. Tell me something about their traditional society or culture, as released in their playable race lore, that I can get my teeth into. If you would take a moment to look into doing this, you'll see the problem; it's not there. There's nothing. In their desperate attempt to erase the differences between different peoples, they went and created their next new race with no flavour, no spirit, and no feeling at all. There's nothing to play into or against here. Please, go look at the release for Fairy and show me what I missed. You say no-one is stopping me, but the lack of a basic 'mundane' propensity, for 'average' representatives of any given race is. If I want to play a charter who is very simply an average representative of the peoples they come from, or starts as such, I don't have that - I'm basically pressured into simply allocating by min-max decision, and I don't like feeling like the system is pushing me to do that. It's actively encouraging min-maxing over thematic choices, and I don't like that. So I am against it.

- Tying your ability score bonuses to your personal character's past is not a good move, in my opinion. It encourages min-maxing in a soulless way. Allocating your ability scores is the statement of how your past, your upbringing, and your own life choices to date have shaped the person you are - allocating your ability scores, however you derived them, is what that is for, and it makes up the greater part of defining your character's ability scores overall. The bonuses are a representative of the elements your character didn't choose for themselves; the basic biology of their species, and it makes up the extremely lesser fraction of determining the ability spread your character starts out with. Making those bonuses also applied by background is doubling up in a way that I do not feel is legitimate. You don't put the 18 you rolled into your Intelligence "because you spent your early life raised in candlekeep and have been a dedicated scholar all these years", and then also put your +2 into intelligence "because you spent your early life raised in candlekeep and have been a dedicated scholar all these years". That's just... no. That's not legitimate, and it encourages a lack of depth in characters. I don't accept that as fair reasoning.

Enough; I'll read whatever last word you'd like to have, but I'm stepping out of this conversation at this point; you've got your opinion, and that's great and I hope you sent it along to Wizards while the feedback forms were open.
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Anyway...


I guess I don't really see "It's better that 2e" as a comment in its favour, mrfuji, when it's worse and more restrictive than 5e... it's like saying "We made this worse, but at least it's not as bad as it was in an even earlier edition!" Yeah, no, that's not a positive comment in my book ^.^

I don't disagree that illusion and enchantment are good thematic focus points for bards, but they are meant to be flexible, and by having access to only four spell schools of a single spell list, they're currently *less* flexible than any other full caster. Add to this, a lot of what they've lost access to are the gamut of flexibility and utility spells that bard has often stood out for. No abjuration, for example, guts their ability to buff and protect party members. No necromancy denies them any of the raising options, and even if they want to be healers, and the design is forcing them into... they can't really be, because they can't actually take any other healing spells besides the ones it gives them; no power word heal, which is an archetypal bard spell, no beacon of hope, etc.

Bard is losing access to, amongst others:

The spells we gain access to that we didn't have before are about the same in number, overall, but it's not an even trade, in my opinion - we're losing too much flexibility, utility, and flavour spells for the class, in return for a lot of traditionally wizard spells that are mostly about mechanical punch.

On save DC: Save Dc is much harder to raise than attack bonus. Players frequently end up with ~+14 to their attack bonus, and you'll often, by late game, see attack rolls passing 30 on the regular. Save Dc, competitively, grows more slowly, and rarely passes 18-19, even at late game. Taking a -5 penalty to your attack roll wills till see you averaging a high enough roll to hit reliably - there are even feats that do specifically this, and people love them. Taking that same -5 to your saving throws would be massive, beyond any sense, and would reduce your save Dc to the point that most creatures will pass it most of the time, in most cases; if there were a feat that let you take a penalty of -5 to your Save Dc, for any bonus, it would still never be taken, because that's just too huge a penalty. In terms of the new exhaustion, I would push that you should only lose one point of save Dc for every 2 levels of exhaustion. (Also, my bard is a buffer/debuffer/utility supporter. She doesn't attack or do harm at all, but is the party's strong card for social resolutions. She's also got a negative con modifier, and at eighth level only has 30hp, so she gets exhausted a bit more easily than her friends already ^.^)

Yes to grapple being a legitimate substitution on opportunity attacks; that should always have been the case, in my opinion. Grapple has been written as substituting one of your attacks for a grapple check, and that should always, absolutely, have extended to opportunity attacks. A large portion of Dms already allow this anyway, so definitely a good correction there.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the help action: I'm not proficient in athletics, and the bard isn't proficient in athletics, but I can absolutely wait by the wall to give them a boost up and Help them pass their check to climb the wall. It's both nonsensical and also anathema to the very concept of team play that I can't. I, the gunslinger, may not be proficient in arcana, but I've got a very good eye for detail, and I can definitely assist the wizard in examining and working out this arcane array; I can see where similar symbols are, and note details, as well as helping the wizard keep various pieces of information spinning while they actually put it all together. I'm not doing the check for them - I'm just Helping them... and it makes no sense to say that I can't. At least, that's how I see it. I also think you underestimate the amount of times a player may wish to help an ally without really knowing what check, exactly, the Dm will call for in advance. Making them guess, above table, and penalising them in-game for guessing the Dm's mind incorrectly, is silly, and generally harmful to team play, in my opinion. If someone isn't sure what sort of check will be required, they're far more likely to decide not to 'risk' helping their friend, and do something else instead. It's not a good design move, for a team game.

Movement, as it is now, is optimal and smooth - it's more or less perfectly implemented, though it could be worded slightly more clearly. There is no value to changing it from how it works right now, and the changes proposed are pure nerfs, for no gain. Right now, you spend your movement speeds simultaneously; you have a land speed of 30 and a swim speed of 60, and you run 20 feet to dive into the water, you're now swimming and your swim speed dictate that you have 40 feet left. It's clear, easy, flexible, sensible and fluid... it's basically perfect. Having to stop dead mid turn because you have to use a different movement speed is dumb as balls.

Though, if you've concerns or interest in the viability of moving and acting across your turn, there's someone who makes some very good demonstration videos of combat rounds related to the actions our characters take, and he shows how genuinely realistically acceptable a lot of it actually is, for a trained individual (aka 6 seconds is longer than you think, in active time). Take a look at David the Arrow Bard (This one and This one have some good demonstrations in them, but he's more active on tiktok and has a lot more besides over there. Some very informative stuff mixed in with the humour.)

Another thing that they're doing here is trying to delineate and clarify the difference between Perception and Investigation - which folks have often stumbled over. I'm on the fence about this On one hand, breaking up the Search and Study actions into formalised things like this will help with clarity... but at the same time, it feels very dry. Currently, you'll have players who will ask about their surroundings, and tell you what they'd like to look at, and the Dm will respond by proposing a check that they feel is appropriate. Now, the players might do the same thing, the dm will say 'that's the search action', and then they'll propose the same check anyway.. so nothing gained there... and it will also passively encourage disengagement for the world, as the more cut and dry formalisation tends to encourage players to fall back into it instead of engaging directly. You'll see far more instances of players just say they'd like to take the search action, or the study action, rather than speaking about what they'd actually like to do... not everyone, of course, but it will be more passively encouraged for them to do so, and I'm leery of that. I'm not negative about this, but I'm cautious about it.

I'd like to go over rogue and ranger as well, but I have a lot of other work to do today. I'll get around to my comments on that sooner or later, but not today right now ^.^ I'd still like to encourage other people to share their thoughts though, since that's the point of this thread.