Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General So... what is Sven's big upcoming surprise ?

Agree wholeheartedly

Casters have all sorts of spells for different situations whereas melee classes just have their 'best' weapon and then you just use it against everyone regardless until you find a slightly better one.

Would love for melee characters to be more like seasoned warriors who carry 3-4 weapons and have the option to pick the best tool for the job. It would also make loot for those characters more interesting more often and might make picking skills a bit more challenging in terms of deciding how specialised or versatile you want to be. Also, enemies could be made a bit more tricky without simply making them have higher HP and damage.

This is how I set up and play my melee characters and party members in the Pathfinder games. D&D 3.5e made this possible. It's yet another way in which 5e sucks.

What are you envisaging here? Characters can currently carry multiple melee weapons and swap them at the cost of an action, though it’s made inconvenient by buggy behaviour of the toolbar and the fact that key-bindings for custom slots I think still only work when you’ve already swapped to that toolbar. But presumably those bugs will be fixed in the full release, so I’m guessing you are looking for something else. Do you want melee characters to be able to select a few weapons they can swap between without any action cost, or to be able to shuck off or don a shield without action cost? More enemies that are vulnerable/resistant to different damage types to provide more incentive to swap weapons? Something else?

Personally, I have no problem with enemies with different vulnerabilities and strengths, but am not sure swapping weapons should be made less costly. Perhaps as a feat? Not sure if there are any relevant 5e rules? I believe that it is consistent with 5e that by default swapping a weapon in a hand takes an action, so BG3 is already being more permissive by letting us swap between a melee and ranged (or thrown) weapon without using an action, which has certainly been the subject of debate here before.

So, formally, you get one free interaction per turn - this free interaction is usually bundled with something related to it, and the most common one is drawing or sheathing a weapon. You get one for free - after that it takes an action.

This means that an unarmed person can draw/equip one weapon, and then attack with it on the same turn, but they cannot draw two weapons, or sheathe a weapon and draw a different one without using an action. You can drop what you're holding for free, if you really need to switch weapon and still attack, but that is dropping it and you'll need to pick it up again later.

There's still a reasonable amount of flexibility in this. For example... My level two barbarian has a short sword and a shield, and throwing axes on her belt. She can leap from hiding and stab a goblin through the chest, leave her sword buried point first in the goblin/ground there, pull a throwing axe (free interaction) and use her bonus action to throw it at the second goblin ten feet away; Next turn she can grab her sword (free interaction) and attack a new target with her action (and when she gets shield master at level 4, bonus action to shield-shove the next one prone). All perfectly legal by the book.

There exists a feat to support two-weapon fighting that lets you draw or sheath two weapons at once for your free interaction.

It may be worth noting here, that two-weapon fighting in particular has always been a little clunky in 5e, and the changes they propose in the oneD&D tests actually do look like they give it some much-needed love and smoothing.

5e doesn't suck.

It wasn't any fun to play a 3.5 caster. You could could only do a handful of things in day and you chances of succeeding were slim. Any spell could be interrupted by an attack of opportunity or by counter spell. Like you I'm having a blast fighting demons in WOTR but that's only because the devs didn't include the 3.5 let's make casters miserable rules.

But for Martials do you dislike the battlemaster? I think the 5e battle master is probably the strongest archetype in the game.

I've been taking a look at the world of Aetaltis - which has modified the 5e rules to include some of the elements we both like. Notably it's a world of heroes battling against the forces of darkness. Which I like and I think WOTC is wrong to be de-emphasize.

Wonder what you would think

https://aetaltis.com/

I Like battlemaster. As you may recall, I love playing melee warrior-type characters and don't care much for spellcasting (in both my own PC and in companions and enemies). I think my main reason for antipathy against spellcasting is the whole concept of buffing up one's PC and party with defensive spells before every combat encounter as well as having to de-buff the enemy in order to score hits on them. That's what turns me off to spellcasting in D&D-style games. And I'm happy to admit 5e is better on this issue that 3.5e/Pathfinder.

Thanks for the link. That setting and system indeed look very cool and interesting. Very high praise from some people I have great respect for, such as Greenwood and Cunningham. I wonder if we'll be getting any video games using Aetaltis?

Come on! The game has had its release a very long time ago and nobody has been able to answer the question?
If someone knows what Sven's big surprise actually is (or was), please post it here. But please do use spoiler tags if necessary.

I’m 90% sure Swen said in an interview after the last Panel from Hell the surprise was the Dark Urge, a full custom Origin character with a particular story.

If that's really it, then no one guessed right. Good job Sven, the surprise worked.

Needing to use an action to swap weapons is just terrible.

BG1/2 you had weapon slots so you could switch mid combat, even wizards had 2 slots.

So I have two +1 spell DC staffs, the one with acid arrow, and the other with fireball. mid combat switching them uses up an action so I basically never switch to the other.

With how many weapons there are and only 4 characters in the party, needing an action to swap weapons is just lame.

Was this meant to be posted in another thread? It seems to be completely off topic here.