Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Switching between weapons

I agree, and I wasn't actually advocating for a reduced AC bonus when wearing a shield, just saying I can see an argument for .

The ruleset is of course necessarily stylised rather than always what makes sense, and I actually think that, though yes probably someone would get some defensive bonus from having a shield on their back, that should be ignored for the sake of simplicity and shield bonuses only apply when shields are equipped. But then, if you can always freely swap back to your shield at the end of the turn anyway (as long as you have one already equipped) that just means that we are incentivised switch back every time to get that benefit, so giving us the AC bonus regardless is just saving us boring busy-work. Though, as per the point about attacks of opportunity you made, we have another incentive there to do the boring busy-work anyway.

There is no Facing in D&D. You are considered to always be looking and spinning around, facing enemies that attack you. Thus, a shield only provides +2 AC when actively equipped, being used to block attacks. Dual Wielding doesn't naturally provide any AC because you haven't trained to do so. There's an entire feat representing that training (just as there is a feat you can take to get proficiency in Shields).

Otherwise, if shields provided +2 AC while strapped on your back, then every class with shield proficiency would be able to always get +2 AC. But if you continue this line of thought: as it requires no skill to strap a shield on your back, why does it even require proficiency? Why can't any random schmuck do this? Essentially we've just increased every creature's AC by 2.

To prevent a free shield bonus in BG3 (which, imo, is the real problem of the free unlimited weapon swapping), the RAW solution is to make switching to/from a shield should require an action. Every other weapon swap could be free. Shields should only provide +2 AC when wielded.

But if we want to reduce that penalty a bit, one of the following might be appropriate:
- swapping to a shield could take a bonus action
- you could only get 1 free weapon swap per turn, preventing you from always switching to a shield-weaponset at the end of your turn
- perhaps your weapon set is locked in once you make your full attack (all attacks granted to you by your X Extra Attacks, including Haste actions)

Good ideas. Your second or third options might be easier to implement in the engine Larian have created, and I'm liking option 3.

Or indeed the earlier suggestion that ...


I guess the choice of whether to disable weapon swapping after one weapon attack, or after all attacks, would then come down to whether we thought that our characters should be able to make a ranged and melee attack in a single turn. If I'm understanding what folk are saying about 5e correctly, only if they had at least three actions in one turn, as they'd need to attack with one action, swap to another weapon with another, then attack with that. So generally, most classes wouldn't be disadvantaged (compared to 5e) if they were stuck for the turn with the weapon set they first make an attack with, but I guess fighters could be?

RAW, you should be able to swap from melee to ranged or vice versa once per turn for free, at any point during your turn, with the caveat that you drop your initially held weapon(s). Item-interaction Rules:
If you didn't want to drop your initially held weapon, you'd need to spend an Action to Stow it. This is a full action. Not an attack-equivalent action. Alternatively, I suppose you could just drop your held weapon on your next turn, and spend your free item-interaction picking up your originally dropped weapon..??? Assuming an enemy doesn't kick it away, this is equivalent to getting 1 free item *swap* each turn.

Of course, all the above only applies to switching 1 weapon for 1 other weapon, and falls apart if you're dual wielding or have something else in your offhand. To be able to draw/stow two weapons at once, you need the Dual Wielder Feat. A shield requires a full action to don/doff, as shields are intended to be strapped in, not just held.

Okay, based on all the ideas and discussion here, I think I have decided how I personally would like weapon switching to work in BG3. And the good news is that it doesn't seem to involve any significant overhaul of Larian's interface.

My suggestion is as follows. And I know it has many steps and looks complicated, but I don't think it would feel so in practice. I've just tried to handle lots of different scenarios, and throwing in particular raises a number of complexities!

Normal melee and ranged weapons

• Characters only get their AC bonus from shields when using a melee weapon set with a shield equipped.
• Characters continue to have the ability to define one default melee set and one ranged as currently (bear with me here!).
• On their turn, they can swap freely between those weapon sets until they make either a main or off hand attack with one set, but at that point their weapon set becomes locked.
• They can continue to attack with their currently chosen set if they have actions to do so, but in order to unlock their weapon sets, they need to expend an "Unlock weapon set" action. This could be via a button that appears over the normal weapon set icons when they are locked, or the sort of toolbar icon that appears over on the right when there is some sort of conditional action (or bonus action) available such as dismissing wildshape or reapplying hex.
• Alternatively, equipping a new melee or ranged weapon from their inventory, which already costs an action anyway, will unlock their weapon sets.
• Once unlocked, the character can again swap freely between weapon sets until they make another attack with one of them, at which point the set would lock again.

Thrown weapons

• Throwing weapons are not equipped, but continue to be selected as now by pressing X or clicking the throw action, and (if this is not already stored as preference from the last time you used it) using the icon to filter for all weapons with the Thrown property in your inventory. Given characters lose weapons from their inventory when they throw them, this seems more flexible and less onerous than having to actually equip them.
• However, once a weapon is thrown, their main hand weapon is sheathed and their weapon set is locked (though as I think weapons are thrown one handed they can keep their shield bonus if they were previously using their melee set and have one equipped).
• They can continue throwing more weapons that turn, but in order to return to using their melee weapon or ranged weapon, they need to unlock their weapon set as before by expending an action. (I guess they could use an unarmed melee attack with their free main hand if they wanted!)
• Or again they can expend an action to equip a new weapon from their inventory, which also unlocks their weapon sets.
• Throwing something other than a weapon with the Thrown property doesn't lock the weapon set (maybe it should for at least some things, but the point of locking would be to maintain balance between characters that use throwing and ranged weapons for ranged attacks, so this complexity can be ignored).
• Possibly, to maintain true parity with characters who use ranged weapons, any character who uses a melee weapon attack should no longer be able to throw a weapon on the same turn without expending an action to unlock weapon throwing, but I might be willing to let that one slide.
• I don't know if 5e has throwing weapons that potentially return to your hand, as the original games did, but if so perhaps the best way to handle those would be to make them equippable as a normal ranged weapon, though I think it would also work to have them treated in the same way as other throwing weapons except that they reappear in your inventory once thrown.

Dipping thrown weapons

• The Dip interface should be changed to work more like Throw, so when you click the Dip button your default action becomes to dip your current weapon(s) in whatever, but it also updates your toolbar with a filtered list of all the Dippable items you have in your inventory and lets you pick one of those to dip instead. This uses a bonus action as now, does not equip the weapon, and does not lock your weapon set.
• But if the dipped item is a throwing weapon and is subsequently thrown then it applies any appropriate dipped effects as well as its normal damage (I am agnostic about whether or not dipped effects should apply when throwing a dipped weapon that does not have the Thrown property).

Changing the weapons in your melee or ranged weapon slots

• You can already change the melee or ranged weapon or shield in any hand at the cost of an action by dragging the item to the appropriate slot, and this seems fine.
• You can also already in the game map a number of weapons and shields (and other stuff) to the custom toolbar, which for items on the top row also maps them to the hotkeys specified in your key binding setup (the number keys by default).
• For weapons that can be equipped in either hand, you should also able to right click to pick a option for which hand you want the mapping to affect. The same functionality might also be helpful for other items for which multiple actions would be valid. (And this might mean we want to be able to put the same item on the toolbar mutliple times, once for each thing we might want to do with it, which I don't think we can currently do.)
• Currently, trying to use the custom toolbar to swap between multiple weapons, as opposed to just toggle between two, seems to result in weird, buggy behaviour which, as per one of my posts above, I think is caused by it trying to be too clever about letting you toggle weapons.
• This needs to be fixed, so that using a custom toolbar mapping simply equips the relevant weapon (in the hand specified), without it trying to do anything fancy. Equipping a new weapon (or shield) in one hand costs one action, which is as per the game's behaviour already.
• If you already have the chosen weapon in the appropriate hand, then pressing the key should unequip it (without costing an action), which I think is the current behaviour when not acting oddly due to bugs.
• Because equipping both a weapon and a shield, for example, should cost two actions, I'm happy on further consideration to manage the hands separately rather than define weapon sets. Simply swapping between longsword+shield and hammer+shield would just take one key press and one action still, as would swapping from a longsword+shield to a two-handed weapon. But re-equipping your longsword and shield afterwards would take two key presses and two actions. Again, this is how it already works in the game when it's not being weird and buggy.

I'm sure there are some scenarios I've not thought of that could complicate things still further, but I think that's more than enough for now.

EDIT: One scenario that this proposal doesn’t deal with, of course, is a character who wants to have a ranged weapon in one hand and a melee one in the other. Gah! Not sure how bad that omission is. Or if it could be fixed by allowing the off hand weapon in your ranged set to be a melee one, and the off hand of your melee set to be a ranged one.

BTW I mentioned the permanent AC from a shield even when not being used in one of my recent bug reports to Larian, and was told by Larian support that this was intended to be changed for the full release.

I know infinite switching would still make it possible to get the bonus if that’s not changed too, but at least I’d have the option to not switch and choose to replicate 5e behaviour if I wanted so I’d see this as an improvement if still not ideal.

Requiring a full-action for swapping weapons/shield would needlessly harm the experience playing hybrid builds who engage both in ranged and melee combat. Just make it impossible to swap weapon slots after having executed a full-action/attack to stop cheesy exploits such as equipping a shield after having attacked with dual-weapons or two-handed weapons. Let's not ruin fun by being rule sticklers.

It’s just a gameplay option for me - my current dwarven fighter doesn’t use any ranged weapons because throwing handaxes, spears, javelins is just so much fun & the animations better than ranged weapons too…
Also feels very dwarven fighter to hurl handaxes around the place …