Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Potion throwing

I guess he could have written between "a great game" and "a masterpiece".
For the record, what he quoted was ""craft a credible and consistent game world" and not "some cheesy and obscure features".

That's a bit related but it doesn't sums up the entire point.

I would consider Elden Ring a masterpiece, yet it has tons of cheesy mechanisms, such has most ranged magic, summons and some ashes of war. I honestly think potion throwing isn't even close to those. Would I like to see it balanced though? Absolutely!

It is not the potion throwing by itself, or the other silly things like jump distance, send wares to camp, having a lich as camp follower, having a camp in a pocket dimension, etc. The problem is that Larian does not seem to mind having internal inconsistencies in the game world for gameplay purposes. With a bit more thought, they should be able to come up with improvements to gameplay that do not break immersion.
To each their own, but I think a role playing game is worthy of the effort to create a somewhat believable world, and believable character behaviour, for that matter.

As I said, the cheesy part of things doesn't sums up everything.
In regard with "credible and consistent world"... it doesn't make sense that you can walk on healing liquid to heal yourself (or your friend) and, by extension, that everyone having a feet in the surface benefits the effects.
It also doesn't make sense that throwing a potion at someone heal (or any other effects) him.

That's not how it works in any fantasy world, and certainly not in this one. Drinking potion is so much of a basic component of the universe than making it "cheesy/goofy/..." (name it as it pleases you) makes it totally irrelevant.
So is jumping and shoving/pushing, in exemple.

In my opinion masterpiece story-driven RPG have to represent a credible world. It doesn't prevent some fancy or gameplay foccused features of course but BG3 is FULL of dissonance between the world in which it takes place and it's mechanics.
To the point that the universe seems just as customised as the campaign, which doesn't make it credible as we are supposed to venture an area in which many things are set in stones : the Sword Coast.

Larian keeps forgetting this is a D&D game not a Divinity game. D&D has an established set of rules that ground the RPG experience that player's like or at least accept as the rules of the setting they want to play in Larian needs to respect that with BG3. While Larian has to make make some changes to adapt a P&PRPG to a CRPG there are just too many rules being ignored and changed for no other reason than their version of "The Rule of Cool". While I can understand the limits of movement on a 3D map that gives us weird Jumping as a compromise I hate the Shove system which breaks at least two RAW for no reason I can figure except that someone thought it was "cool" to see characters and NPCs flying all over the damn place. Turning potions that should be consumed to be effective into AOE bombs is just another in this growing list of deviations from a beloved rules set that is the foundation of the whole D&D setting.

Larian, please stop these unnecessary and unwanted changes to this D&D game and save all the ideas you have that break those rules for Divinity 3.

Or we keep forgetting this is Larian ...
No matter what they do, they have certain brand, and audience that expect them to keep it ... sure, it will never suit everyone, but thats life.

The thing is.. there have been so many D&D CRPG's before this one. None of them needed to break a D&D setting by potion throwing to be great.

Larian feel like they need to inject more and more game into a game, when less was already enough. The silly and overly "gamey" gameplay starts to overshadow the setting and it's credibility. From a D&D title, I expect the world and story to come first and not be undermined by gameplay. I also expect good gameplay, and 5e RAW is very good at that. Better than BG3 with it's inane unnecessary additions, actually.

You can replace [potion throwing] by stealth cones, power shoving or jumping, dipping in candles, nonsensical teleport networks, odd weapon abilities, OP help action, non-spellcasters using scrolls, barrels.. or so many other things.

BG3 just annoys me, seeing how great it could be with less pointless fluff slapped on top of an already good D&D system and setting.

Bg3 is great fun and it doesn't annoy me.
5e as a "beloved" ruleset is being changed as we type.

It's a video game so I'm happy it is gamey.

But larian should use 5e rules, change the rules where absolutely necessary but they should make a larian game. Imo they should use the rules to tell their story in their tone.

But I can't wait until aug to play the full game!

Agree!!!

Agree or not people need to make peace with it.
They might be pleasantly surprised when the game releases

Sorry for being a pessimist, but I haven't been surprised by any RPG games the last decade or so.
Well...maybe one :

Disco Elysium

Neither do this one ...

Even if we put aside that "being great game" is completely different topic, that have hardly anything to do with throwing potions ... and even if we put aside that "being great game" is purely subjective assessment ...

That sentence is ... just false. :-/

That is just their brand ... every studio makes things their way.

If you buy a game from EA, you expect to play only half story and rest being released regulary for next two years in form of payed DLCs ...
If you buy a game from Blizzard, you expect high quality cinematics (and microtransactions lately) ...
If you buy a game from BioWare, you expect lots of romanceable companions and strong story ...
If you buy a game from Bethesda, you expect open world full of bugs ... and bzillions of mods ...
If you buy a game from CD project Red, well, im not sure what would you expect lately, but few years ago everyone certainly expected top quality product in every way ...
If you buy a game from Paradox Interactive, you expect to receive none and will be waiting for years, and years, and years just hearing from them "we still working on it, but will not show or tell anything ... we keep your money tho" ...

And if you buy a game from Larian ... you can certainly expect that the game wont take itself too seriously, and there will be a lot of humor, even in grim or dark scenery ...

It works the same with movie Directors ... i for one hate Taika Waititi, bcs his constant urge to ridicule every emotional scene with some silly bullshit drives me crazy ... to me Thor: Ragnarok was the worse movie with Thor ... but in general, most people i know conciders it to be best. O_o
I think in this regards, Larian is yours Taika Waititi ...
But no matter my prefferences (unfortunately for me) he is actually popular, so he gets to projects where i dont really feel like his style fits it ... like Star Wars ... and no matter how much i will hate it, he will make them (as it seems) ... and it will be make the way he would want it ... bcs that is his brand, and he will keep it, bcs that is what people expect from him.

Okay so I'm a bit late to the party, but here's my two coppers.

If the game has mechanics that are not exactly cannon, you can simply avoid using them.

I had no idea this was a thing. Now that I know it exists I will choose not to use it.

But with that being said it is a good idea in that if you are adjacent to a downed character you can use it in the spirit of administering a potion to the injured character.

Hells, the god awful death save in itself is an abomination added to D&D in the 5e rules, so why not have potion sharing from across the room?

I don't have a lot of experience with Larian games (and with the experience I do have, the fact they were trying to be funny went right over my head and I took them at face value) but while I agree with you that funny is apparently their brand, you can still have good and bad versions of that. And I do wonder if this is actually a good version of Larian's thing. The story they're trying to tell seems to be straight-forwardly serious. Not devoid of humor, but with humor suited to the moment. And the mechanics I don't think really meshes with that. With Taika Waititi fans, there are gonna be movies where they pull their style off well and where they don't. But then, who am I to judge? As I said, I never even knew they were trying to be funny in their games to begin with. Hell, I really don't know anything about Larian as a studio. Until a few months ago I didn't even know they made all the Divinity games. I thought they were a somewhat new studio that got the license for the setting after they had formed and made Divinity: Original Sin as a reboot/one of their first games.

Really the problem is that people came in wanting Larian to conform their style more to the beloved franchise than for them to conform the beloved franchise to their style. I for one don't have any particular reverence for the Baldur's Gate games, having never played them myself, but even after D:OS2 scared me away from them, the name specifically got me to give them another try. I'll probably end up perfectly content with the final game, my real worry is that more crpgs will get made in this style and the result will be fewer crpgs in the style that I like. I don't want this game to set precedent, and so many people are singing its praises (for reasons I genuinely don't get) that I fear it may be inevitable.

For me it is not about adherence to some official D&D rules. I just want a good game, the best that can possibly be achieved at this moment in its development. And I am all for game mechanics that make the game fun to play. But please do not let immersion and believability suffer. No matter which rulebook is followed, this is a role playing game, and I have to assume that for many players the depth of their experience depends on the ability to really get into the fantasy world and into the character they are playing. I think that should be a crucial aspect of this game. And not paying enough attention to consistency and logic undermines that. At least it does for me.

As long as the story is solid, I can live with a good bit oh home brewing. Tossing potions, in my mind, is like tossing a potion to a companion for them to chug as they have run out. My RPG mind sees my PC reaching into his belt while dodging a goblins arrow and tossing a potion into the air over a bugbears head. My companion, down on one knee, reaches out to catch it.

I have no problem with that; however, mechanically this isn’t what is happening - it’s just my way of justifying this hole homebrew. A dex save would be a good way to balance this one.

I just wish someone had the skill to mod in mult classing until August rolls around 😂 - I want to piddle with a few combos.

That ...
Or reaction for catch and drinking, as it was suggested in the past ... if your companion dont have reaction to use, potion will fall to the ground, break, and will be useless.

That would ofc. require removal of AoE potion effects if they are purposefully thrown on the ground in between all 4 characters.

I’m happy with their general approach. They’ve tried to incorporate as much of the situational shenanigans that DMs would probably allow players to try on tabletop as they can. IMO that’s as much in keeping with D&D as it is the Divinity games.

Some of the implementation is a bit little odd though. I didn’t know about this potion throwing business, which seems strange. Using an action to toss a potion to another character who catches it to use on their turn would seem more sensible.

Shoving people off a high spot is of course something you could do in tabletop D&D. I think it should cost an action instead of a bonus though. The other problem with shove is there’s so many bottomless holes to instakill you. They could maybe make being pushed into one a bit less final. Maybe take a bit of damage and remove from map with same animation as now, but one turn later, the character clambers back up? Like the classic movie fake out where a character seems to fall to their death but is really just hanging onto the edge by their fingertips. It would still be very useful to take someone out of the fight temporarily, but without overdoing it.

Coffee breaks at Larian...

"It's 3pm and I'm feeling like I need a boost, maybe I should go get a cup of Coffee..."

That's exactly what is pointed at.

About shove I would rather have removed all bottomless pits.
On top of being boring very quickly it is really unnecessary as the map have a lot of verticality.