Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General BG3 appeal: context, challenge or catharsis?

I highlighted a few key terms there. I would be perfectly happy, even love, for us to be able to do those superhuman feats after drinking potions of jumping/(giant) strength/dexterity/fly. I just have a problem with our level-1 characters being able to do these actions without magical help.

Great thread! I'll contribute a little as well

In terms of context my perception is flawed by playing EA over and over again for almost 1000 hours. My first impressions on the story were VERY positive though, but if one considers the replayability aspect - it definately rings a bell that BG3 has some unpleasant aftermath regarding its story, companions and immersion. Examples about the timeline of events and unnatural proximity of areas are both very representative. I have a feeling that storywise the game would be able to sustain players' interest for far less than challenge-wise.

For me, personally, this game's challenge is not enough. But it might be just the EA problem, because after playing through a lot of runs I know a lot of things in advance. I can slither through the whole act without taking a scratch if played conventionally, but luckily the game leaves much space for out of the box thinking in terms of party comp and creative builds. I CAN always recreate artificial challenge by playing truly unique characters in terms of both roleplay and gameplay, which brings us to:

Catharsis!! The game truly lets you to project your imagination into the interactive world by creating interesting characters and roleplaying them as such. The fact I've invested 1000 hours in EA speaks for itself, I think

I can see your point - I think some actions can still be done by certain races that others perhaps shouldn’t be able to without magical assistance. I do like that Larian appear to be working on the shove & jump and it’s based off attribute scores but always room for tweaking that - I don’t think it’s to far off the mark though.

Here I fixed it for you.

I too have clocked up over 400 hours so far but I’m hoping some of the story elements might be better fleshed out or make more sense in the full version - I say that because of the recent comments from Larian around a new experience even for those of us who have played the bejesus out of early access - we may not be getting full context of storyline at the moment.
Personally I don’t really care I’m hooked already 😋

Sure, I'm in favor of racial specie...al? speceic? [whatever the adjective form of "species-specific" is] abilities. And it makes sense that a person with high Strength should be able to push/jump farther than a weaker person.

Bringing it back to the topic, these types of changes would improve BG3 on 2 of the elements listed for me: Context for the world making more sense, the balance of mundane vs magical/hero. Challenge for making combats less cheesy.

Right, and ripping off a giant superhuman monster's arm by wedging it in a door and strangling a dragon with your bare hands are equally impossible feats, yet there they are in Beowulf. Heroic Fantasy is a completely legitimate genre of fantasy. Just because you want a more grounded fantasy experience doesn't mean that is the only way fantasy can be immersive.

Also according to 5e's PHB the vast majority of people in the world will never achieve the first level of a class. A 1st level fighter isn't just a normal dude swinging a sword, it is someone so incredible in combat that they have mastered every weapon type and can push themselves beyond normal limits to perform feats like Action Surge and Second Wind.

If you have a level in a class you're already exceptional.

I think a lot of people's problem as far as immersion goes is that the game does a bad job of setting a baseline. This may be fantasy, but there is a vast spectrum of fantasy. The story doesn't contextualise out abilities. Most people who play this game aren't going to be familiar wnough with the PHB to know that at level one we're already exceptional. I've actually played d&d and listened to live plays and stuff and I didn't really know that. The game needs to establish the context if it wants to be immersive. Level 1 sounds unimpressive, that's not easy to debate. Plus, we are in out character’s head and we don't really know what they've achieved, so we the player don't actually know how exceptional we are. Beowulf started by showing us Grendel as being able to kill a whole hall of people, then Beowulf comes in and everyone is impressed and by that outsider reaction we get context for his ultimate badassery. Meanwhile BG3 starts with us faaaar out of our league, in desperate run to escape the nautiloid, where we're supposed to feel overwhelmed and unsafe.

And in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is unable to jump clear over an Orc's head or shove them dozens of feet. Which is just as relevant as mentioning Beowulf in a thread about D&D.

Where did I ever state that this kind of fantasy is not legitimate? I said I find characters performing like Super Mario goofy seeing as they are able to do so at will from the outset where we are definitely not larger than life heroes and that Larian have created a game world which lacks coherency. If I didn't like this kind of fantasy why would the previous BG games be my favourite games of all time? All I am trying to get across is that you need some elements of baseline realism to go along with the high fantasy as I have tried to explain ad nauseam in this thread.

And just to nitpick, I'm guessing a level 1 fighter hasn't mastered every type of weapon as I assume that is why we choose our specialisations as we level up? The same applies to magic users, which is probably why you cannot cast every spell during early levels. I acknowledge I could be wrong here. So whilst at level 1 we might be exceptional in comparison to most civilians, we are definably not the super heroes you seem to think we are.

I think there are two things about fantasy games:

- Unless specified otherwise, things work like in the real world.
Yes, there is magic, different races and monsters, gods and so on.
But unless you use magic or special abilities and items, things work like in the real world.
For example shove is an action to make a target prone or shove it 5ft, not a bonus action to throw it several meters.
Or missing a target with a burning arrow does nothing, it does not set solid ground on fire.

- Once you established the rules ( such as wich changes compared to the real world exist ), you need to follow these rules to create internal consistency.
Spells and special abilities should do exactly what the description says. (Do they have the described effect? Do they do something on a miss or saving throw success? Do they do AoE damage when you select a single target?)


The goal of such things is to create a believable world.
Yes, its a fantasy world, but this does not mean you can do whatever you want.

Firstly, Frodo is obviously not a STR character. Duh.

Secondly Gandalf followed the Balrog down a frickin' mountain, fighting him all the way as fire licked at his flesh, before fighting him back up the mountain to the very top. Clearly Lord of the Rings has room for Heroic Fantasy as well.


By saying a character performing superhuman feats of heroism breaks the storytelling of the game you're implying you can't tell a coherent story with superhuman characters in it.

There's a big difference between stating you personally don't like this style of story and saying that the game has a fundamental problem with its storytelling, which is what saying the game is weak in the context/narrative department means. That is what I was pushing against, because if you happen to see your character as this larger than life hero then there is no gameplay/story dissonance coming from the high end performance of your character.


Fighters have proficiency in all martial weapons, which means they're trained in their use and can fight with them as well as any trained soldier. They further specialize in specific fighting styles in the form of Fighting Style choices, but even if you specialized in Great Weapon Fighting you're still as trained (proficiency bonus) in the use of a longbow as your resident rogue sniper is.

Fighters are masters of war who can pick up any weapon and fight effectively with it, but reach a new height of deadliness in a specialized style of combat. Even a 1st level fighter is meant to be a hardened combat veteran, a trained bodyguard, or a royal knight in the court of a king.

As contrast an actual nobody with a sword would be similar to a bandit, which has a CR of 1/8th. Which means it takes eight bandits to be a moderate challenge for four 1st level adventurers.

As for if the game wants us to see ourselves as nobodies or somebodies, I think the intro resolves that pretty easily. We see all around us dozens of bodies of normal folks who've been mind controlled by the Mindflayers and torn a part by imps. They're laying on the ground bleeding out as we march through the ship, weapon in hand, cutting through the imps and fighting our way to the controls.

We're clearly supposed to be someone exceptional. Someone that can earn the respect of a Githyanki pirate or a 200 year old vampire spawn. We go on to lock blades with ogres and come to blows with evil hags and flesh eating gnolls.

I dunno how much more clear the game can be that we're not average folk. We have a set of skills and abilities that make us exceptional, and that is why we're able to escape the Nautiloid ship in the first place.

My issue here is that we don't get context for any of that systemic stuff. WE don't know what our character has done, we don't know that they've had that training, etc. We have no context for our history to say why we're exceptional. Loads of video games in the past have gone the route where the player character is exceptional because they're the player character. Those other 'normal' people are mindcontroled and I don't think they make a good comparison for that reason. I also think that the nautiloid is meant to be a confusing, disorienting experience where we're not meant to fully understand what's happening around us. Maybe in retrospect what you're talking about is a good indicator of our exceptionalism, but on a first playthrough, I don't think most people are going to absorb that detail among all the other stuff going on.

Again, I'm someone who has played D&D and has read through the character creation rules before and still never really absorbed the idea that we're exceptional at level 1. All the stuff you're talking about as to what a level 1 fighter can do is great...but the game should tell us that if it wants us to understand and internalize what kind of story it's telling. We as the player characters also don't really get to be larger than life outside of combat. We don't get to talk about the things we've already achieved, etc. Like Wyll, he's already a known hero, he ACTS like a larger than life hero with experience enough to justify it.

And finally, I don't think we learn enough about the setting itself to know what such larger than life heroes would look like. Think about the first act and what we learn about the wider world only from that, no outside media. A city got dragged into Hell, how normal is that? Do adventurers deal with that stuff often? I've long had an issue with the game overall not being interested in really giving us a baseline for the setting that we can build off of. I played the original a little while ago and that was not a problem I had with it at all.

I'm not really sure of the wisdom of applying D&D metrics to LotR characters but anyway. Yes LotR is heroic fantasy but I don't recall Aragorn or Boromir regularly leaping 20 feet in the air from a standing position or using shove as the most efficient means of fighting in a battle (I assume I am correct in using them as examples because they would be STR based characters in your estimation?). Also, I assume you are referencing Peter Jackson's films here because he took some very creative liberties with his version of the source material. Legolas certainly never went surfing on a shield while loosing off dozens of arrows at the Battle of Helms Deep.

Like I said, I really don't have an issue with heroic fantasy but I feel there should be some progression from the relative inexperience of level 1 to the heroes we later become. Jumping and shoving are fine in themselves but they just need to be toned down in my opinion to feel a little more real. Quaff a potion of speed and jump or run larger distances? Totally fine. But our characters can do these things at will, with or without magical aid.


I really don't think a level 1 character is a Royal Knight, sorry. I can't recall a single D&D CRPG I have played where level 1 characters start the game surrounded by mind flayers, dragons and cambions. In BG1 we start the game clearing a cellar full of rats, hardly the work of a Royal Knight or powerful Mage is it? In my humble opinion Level 1 characters should not be getting off alive from a mind flayer ship of their own accord. This is Larian's take on D&D, quite a unique one it would seem.

This is the last comment I will make in communication with you because I think our opinions are a chasm apart. You seem to think Level 1 characters are akin to Superman, I don't. Let's leave it at that. Sincerely, I hope you enjoy the game on its full release.

With a character size of 1.8m :
My 17 strength gith barbarian can jump 7.7m horizontally, RAW says he can only jump for 5.1m with a running start and 2.4m without one.
Gayle has 9 strength and can jump 4.7m horizontally, RAW says he can only jump for 2,7m with a running start and 1.2m without one.

So distances aren't respected according to the DnD rules. My guess is that it is a compromise for level design, so that our characters can jump larger gaps scattered around the map.

Thanks for that info, very interesting to hear actual stats. I suspect you are probably correct in your estimation.

Gandalf, however, is not even a mortal being. If I remember my Tolkien lore he is closer to materialised celestial being. His D&D equivalent would be Elminster, not some dirty adventurer. He wouldn’t be a player character but a wise mentor who gets removed from adventure after providing tutorial and safety of the player.

If Larian intention is to tell a superhero story, I still don’t think it comes across. And let’s be frank - all games are likely to present their characters as more capable as they should be. BG3 just goes very, very over the top. If I thought it makes for good gameplay I might be more forgiving, but I don’t think that.