Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Weapon slots

I think that a generally melee character has just as much requirement to sometimes attack at range as an archer needs close combat capability. Eg sometimes enemies might be too far away to reach, and they might prefer to do some damage at range rather than just dash, especially if the enemy is on a hard to reach ledge. Or they might want to hold a good position and do damage to weaken an enemy coming to them. And conversely an archer might prefer to disengage and regain range and positional advantage rather than swap to melee.

I don’t think, that is, that being able to adjust to handle different ranges benefits archers any more than strength based melee characters. It is more useful to characters who are specced to be able to cope as well both at range and close up, but as building a character this way would often already involve sacrificing potential benefits of specialisation I don’t see this as balance-breaking.

Okay, a strength based fighter would more likely use throwing weapons than the bow slot, but they have the same ability to freely swap to throwing as to using a ranged weapon, it’s just handled differently in the interface. And an archer would be unlikely to want to throw a weapon instead of shoot, so the weapon throwing functionality no more useful to them than the bow slot is to strength based fighters, retaining parity.


As I said, not a hill I’d die on. But if melee characters could use a weapon slot to freely swap to do a different damage type once per turn (as well as having the ability to attack at range by throwing weapons unless that is changed) this would seem to me to tilt balance in their favour by giving them an advantage that an archer wouldn’t share, particularly if there remained only two weapon slots plus throwing weapons as now. I’d therefore prefer to keep it so characters need to use an action to swap melee weapons.

That can happen automatically if you have af fully polished throw weapons slot /system they just move to that slot same for arrows ...
It's the same as having a poison, doesn't need to be a candles it can be a torch kit if you will, whatever few chemicals. Makes no diffrence when it comes to cheez. It's same as poison. If anything battlefield diping is a bigger cheeze. It makes no sense, how you goona transfrer fire by diping into it? on to steel weapon?! We need dip for throw weapons so.

No, you’re not convincing me I’m afraid . I don’t think this game needs easier ways to have our weapons flaming all the time, though I think points you mention are reasons to make it harder. Perhaps if someone can point me to evidence that 5e has ways that anyone can use to get burning weapons all the time then I might be less concerned this whole mechanic just breaks balance and encourages boring repetitive weapon buffing, but as it is, still a nope.

I don’t think it’s a good argument to say we can do it with poison, so why not fire as well, but perhaps that’s not what you meant.


I think I’m just not understanding how you’re envisaging this working. I know that the system for throwing weapons is far from perfect, and I’m sure it can be improved significantly, it’s just not obvious to me that being able to use a slot like those for melee and ranged weapons would be the best way to address that.

Currently, for ranged weapon attacks, we can click on the ranged attack action and get a filtered list of arrows we can fire. We also get the dip action via this (though we can also just use this from the hotbar if we’re already holding our bow) which we can use to affect the next three attacks with that weapon. Applying poison while holding the ranged weapon also affects the next three attacks.

Are you saying that thrown weapons should work the same way, and once we’ve dipped thrown weapons as a group somehow, the first three weapons thrown should all be affected? If so, I’m not sure about that. My feeling is that throwing weapons should be treated more like melee weapons than like ammunition in this respect, and should need to be individually dipped. But I would be advised by someone who knows 5e better on that.

Then with respect to a slot that is managed automatically, I don’t quite see what that looks like. For the ranged weapon slot, there’s a bow (and hopefully sling in the future) to manually put in it, while special arrows are just available to select directly from the inventory when we select the ranged attack action. But there’s nothing static to put in a throwing weapons slot, and all throwing weapons in our inventory are already shown when we choose the throw action (equivalently to the handling of special arrows). Or I assume this is how it is meant to work: though filtering the thrown list for “Throwing Weapons” currently seems to show all weapons whether or not they have the thrown property, I think this must be a bug.

I agree it’s a problem that there is currently no way to dip a throwing weapon unless we first equip it, at the cost of an action. I’m not sure how you’re thinking this could be solved with the use of a separate weapon slot for throwing weapons, or perhaps you think that’s okay, and we can have one throwing weapon ready to dip and throw, but moving a new weapon to that slot to throw on a future turn should take an action (which isn’t all that different from what we can already accomplish with the melee weapon slot)? Or does picking a weapon to move to the slot cost an action, but we have a free throw in the same turn of a weapon picked this way, kind of like the Produce Flame cantrip? Or should it be possible to equip a weapon into any slot without an action if the slot is previously empty? Or perhaps, unlike the other weapon slots currently, picking a throwing weapon to move to the slot doesn’t cost an action, only the throw itself? But in that case why actually move throwing weapons to a slot at all, rather than having a way to dip them without equipping them? Is it just that you think that’s the easiest way of accomplishing what you want without significant changes to the interface or systems? I could see a case for that, but think this would still require a specialist slot for throwing weapons rather than generic slots that could be used for anything, as it would need to work slightly differently than the melee or ranged ones. And we’d probably need easier ways to move stuff to it than we have for the other slots, given we’d be messing with it a lot more. And thought would need to be given as to how it would work in conjunction with the ability to throw direct from our inventory without equipping, which would still be needed for other stuff: could we still select throwing weapons that way if we didn’t want to dip them, or for thrown weapons would we be forced to use the slot? Or would any item selected for throwing move to that slot automatically, representing a sort of “ready to throw” status?

I’m definitely not saying your proposal wouldn’t work, or wouldn’t be better than what we have now, I just don’t understand enough about what it is.