Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Does Anyone Else Miss The Identify Mechanic From BG1 & 2?

Actually, I'd forgotten until it happened to me again just now that there's the Sharran crossbow in the locked chest in Grymforge that just looks like a Light Crossbow +1 until you pick it up at which point you get a History check and, if successful, there's a comment about it being Sharran in origin and the weapon info sheet updates. I do ike that, and if it were introduced for additional items where it would make sense then I'd be all for it!

It's not Identify, but it gives some of the benefits.

In my opinion it just doesn't make sense AT ALL that a weapon has better properties if your character suceed a check.

The_Red_Queen didn't say it had better properties, only the description and name change 🙂
It goes from "Light Crossbow +1" to "Sharran Crossbow", both have the same stats (https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Sharran+Crossbow).

But, in my opinion, a History skill check could help the character remembering that the weapon was used slightly differently to be more efficient, potentially. Not advocating for that to be a thing, but I could see it.

Actually it does,DD5 has a limit on certain magical items, and how many you can have attuned, if you dont know about the magic, you cant attune to it and benefit from it... as far as i know ?

BG3 doesn't currently enable attuning magical items, and I'm not aware of any items whose actual properties change based on what you know about them, as @MelivySilverRoot says the example I gave just gives you some more lore not any benefits using the item (thanks for clarifying that point, Melivy!). Which is I guess consistent with BG1 & BG2 where you could still use the items and get their effects without identifying them ... it might just be a possibly unpleasant surprise to find out what they did!

But yes I believe 5e does have more stuff around identification and attunement. I think Solasta uses this mechanic, but I don't know more about it than that or whether there's been any talk of implementing it in BG3. I'm sure others on this forum will


As Melivy clarified, the Sharran crossbow isn't an example of this and I certainly am not advocating for it being implemented in the game either! But I do agree there is an argument that you might need to understand the magic of an item you're wielding in order to channel it, and perhaps it could make sense in certain scenarios.

Not curently, but if it is as Sven stated, we will get identify, its likely they also add the attument as of dd5... im not saying they will, but it do tie in with limiting magic, like for example concentraion...

Oh sorry I missunderstood. Yes I definitely like that too !!

But on top of not making much sense to me, it could be really frustrating if hidden properties were unlocked by the will of a dice. I usually like better in games if, in exemple a specific class can unlock special properties with a weapon. Which is basically what weapons attack are doing with proficiencies 🙂

For this purpose you can just code it to always max roll a D20, then add Arcana proficiencies, and set the DC on anything magic but fairly run-of-the-mill like magic arrows, weapons & armor +1 etc to 22. Anything rarer and more special then up the DC to 25+...