Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback On Death loot generation does not fire when you knock out a creature

There is a passive ability that allows you to engage in non lethal combat.
You can loot knocked out characters but there is a separate on death script that can generate a significant amount of treasure.

As it stands killing a creature is far more profitable than knocking someone out.
I don't believe that was the intent of the non-lethal feature.

In early builds NPCs had their inventory wich remained the same when you killed them...
For some reason people disliked it ... i remember talking about too many gold after killing vendors or something ...
So instead we got this, where moat items NPC have somehow dematerialize after their death ...

Since then knocking enemies out instead is the only way for ua to keep some realistic sense in it ... dont take that away. :-/

So you actively want folks who knock out enemies to get less treasure?
Fascinating.

As an FYI it's not just vendor treasure, if you knock any character out and loot their corpse you will get less treasure than if you kill them.
An additional On Death script runs when they are killed (about 40% of the time) and gives the corpse additional loot. As you level up that loot is significant.

It was allready a long day, so i keep this as simple as i can: No.
Hope it was clear enough.

For any futher conversation ...
Often, when people dont say something, it have something to do with them not wanting it.
Just a hint.

As stated ...
People disliked whole inventory to be looted ... so "death loot" was invented.

I allways naively thought that if someone dont want to kill a vendor, its just as easy as ... well, not killing it.
But i was told back then this bullshit about "ignoring problem dont make it go away" and that was end of the debate.

Maked perfect sense to me in its first way ...
NPCs had an inventory ... we could trade with them, steal from them, or loot them when killed ... it was immersive, logical, and over all it just maked sense ... but people disliked it.
So instead we have items that automaticly de/materialize, when their owner heart stop beating ... i have no idea how, when, or why anyone would concider it better ... but here we are anyway. :-/

Both approaches are valid, it just whatever path one picks it needs to be well utilised. I never play murder hobos so it’s part of the game I have no experience with.

Classic Tim Cain RPG handled this stuff rather beautifully. I remember the shopkeeper in Arcanum had his own stick hidden in a locked backroom. With high enough lockpicking skill you could steal all of his stuff. OP you could say, but this lockpicking skill would come at a cost of being good in other areas like combat or social skills.

I can see it being an issue in BG3 though if from instrumental play point of view (I want that gear, what’s the best way to get this gear) killing a vendor ends up being the best option majority of time.

Whatever Larian does they need to tighten their design up. Non-lethal specifically requires either lots of attention or needs be removed, if the game won’t support it properly.

I'm getting confused. The original complaint was that when characters die loot appears that isn't in their inventory, whereas the change Ragnarok mentions would seem to explain the opposite, ie that loot disappears when characters die. Or is it just that the death loot breaks the connection with what the character actually was carrying, whereas if you just knock them out you get what was in their inventory, which might be better or worse than the death loot?

I confess I've never paid attention to any changes in what I get when looting knocked out versus dead characters and hadn't noticed that it was different. But I'd agree both with the OP that loot should be the same either way and with Ragnarok that this should reflect what the character was actually carrying (though I can appreciate that this would increase expectations of there being significant game consequences of killing folk and particularly merchants for their stuff).

Oh, and :moderator hat on:, let's keep the discussion friendly and constructive, and actively de-escalate tensions rather than the opposite.

I share your confusion.

I'm not quite sure how whatever it is Ragnarok is talking about has anything to do with the issue I mentioned in the opening post.

Currently if you knock out an enemy they may have a small amount of treasure.
If after you loot the unconscious creature, you kill them then an On Death script fires and you have approximately a 40% chance of getting more treasure that would be unavailable if you didn't kill them.

The treasure discrepancy is significant at higher levels (Knocking out a 5th level Duergar got me less than a hundred gold in treasure. Killing that same Duergar after he was looted spawned almost 1000 gold a Haste potion and a magic arrow.)

Yep, the current code procs a treasuretable on death...so maybe larian can change it to death or knockout.

You dont really need to ...

There is vendor in Zhentarim hideout, that turns hostile quite easily ...
There is vendor in Tollhouse, that turns hostile if you side Karlach ...
There is vendor in Goblin Camp (two of them in fact), that turns hostile if you ... well, actually dont play murderhobbo, and side with Tieflings.

Both ...

There is Inventory A ... that is what NPC is holding as long as they live.
There is Inventory B ... aka Loot ... that is what NPC is holding when they die.

If you knock NPC out ... it still holds its inventory, therefore you can take that ... if you kill it, its replaced with loot it gets after death.
And yes, it is (or was last time i tryed) possible to take both by knocking them out, loot, then kill them and loot again.

So if you sell +1 Greatsword to a Vendor NPC ... it have it in its inventory ...
If you kill the Vendor NPC later ... the sword dissapears.
AND another items it didnt possessed previously appear.

I dont like it at all, it makes no sence.

Wich would only lead to de/materializing items on both cases.
I for one would certainly vote for return to previous state, where NPCs just had their inventory wich we could trade/steal/loot ... and thats it.

Also, on slightly unrelated note ... i also believe that if NPC have some quest reward, that reward should be part of its inventory ... unless its specificaly shown that they create the item for us.

I imagine that this approach comes down to a balancing issue. As you pointed out Rag, there's a number of vendors you can aggro and have to kill purely in the course of playing the game normally. Which means Larian would need to balance the difficulty of their combats around players getting a lot of potentially powerful gear. And if we include your suggestion about quest rewards then that could get even worse, because then that would mean a bunch of occasions where our character could get two different potentially powerful reward items if we have to choose between supporting two factions again like we have here in act one. To avoid that they'd have to find ways to justify them not having the item anywhere we could easily get to it,which could hamper their writing.

I don't have much of an opinion on this aspect of things in general because I really don't care about loot and probbly would not have noticed this if it hadn't been pointed out, but the way I see it, this is a game and Larian made a choice that they think benefits the game mechanically. I've always been a beleiver that fiction doesn't need to make any kind of perfect sense, and I've never liked people using the term 'gamey' as a negative just on principle. It's a game, it's gonna be gamey because games should be fun and enjoyable, that's more important than adhering to logic. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive and indeed sometimes adhering to logic does make games more fun. Larian clearly didn't think this was an occasion when that was true.

Haha, good point. Yes, I killed those on multiple playthroughs, but I never paid attention to their drops vs shopping inventory.

I dont think so ...
You can still sell your things and then steal them back, so if ballance is the issue here ... the problem prevails.

It even gets worse, since you can sell all your stuff, steal them back, kill the NPC (wich spawns him aditional items) and loot it ... so in the end you have even more gold.

Im not really sure what you mean, Vendors rarely have anything so much gamechanging to my knowledge. O_o
Also, all item that are buyable/stealable/lootable ... should be concidered to overall ballance, since players will have them. O_o

Indeed ...
I didnt realized until you write this that Larian still have that odd "pick your reward" thing. :-/

That would indeed need to change somehow ...

On the other hand this i disagree with ...
Quite the oposite, situation where we need to pick between factions are exactly the reason why i would like to get same rewards in the end.

Take Glut for example ...
If you betray Sovereign and kill him ... Glut gives you quite nice ring that adds +1 to any Fire Spell damage you make ... its nothing Earthshatering i admit, but its the only way to obtain this item. :-/
I wonder where did that mushroom take it from, since its not in its inventory?
One could say that i find it immersion breaking when items appear out of nowhere. :-/
But quite honestly i would be satisfied if Sovereign would just say "we have found this on his body, take it as reward" ... giving us the same reward as Glut.

Same goes with Goblins/Tieflings ...
Interesting is that Zevlor offers you two rewards ... one is gloves that he have in his inventory and you can buy them ... another is some headpiece that looks awfully druidic, and materialize once again out of thin air. :-/

Note that im perfectly fine with different NPCs having different loot ...
That is okey, understandable and it makes sense on all fronts ... what i dislike are theese quest rewards that appear out of nowhere.

Honestly?
I dont see why.

[quote=RagnarokCzD]Same goes with Goblins/Tieflings ...
Interesting is that Zevlor offers you two rewards ... one is gloves that he have in his inventory and you can buy them ... another is some headpiece that looks awfully druidic, and materialize once again out of thin air. :-//quote]

No Zevlor just offers the gloves as reward. The headpiece is Kaghas reward to us if we side with her as far as I remember correctly. What can be, of course, that I have not tried, is to buy or steal the gloves from him beforehand and then later, when the quest is fulfilled, he offers the headpiece, which you can actually only get from Kagha after working for her.

Im quite sure ...

https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Wapira's+Crown

Also .. as far as i know, Kagha never gives you anything ... unless you are Druid, then she make a staff for you and give you meaningless title that even ahe ignores later on. :-/

Ah my bad Rag. You're right. I always betray Minthara xD. Because the reward is indeed very druidish I thought Kagha would give it...

Well, i gues story behind it is that some kid stole it from them ...
But thats not really the point here.

Its about items that appears out of nowhere just to be quest rewards.

Yes. With vendors in particular this gives you access to all their vendor gold but only if you trade with them first. If not you only get standard loot table.

If you kill a vendor instead of knocking them out you get back everything you traded to them + standard loot table, but not the vendor gold.

After you loot them (when they have been knocked out) if you kill them you (sometimes) get access to a second standard loot table drop.

It has modified our player groups behavior in multiplayer when we are dealing with having to kill the vendor in the Toll Road for the Hunt the Devil sidequest for Karlach.

Outside of that - it's generally not convenient to do non-lethal damage in other situations, and we don't kill/attack the Hag because she is too valuable as a vendor.

This may be a bit off topic, but I may end up killing the Hag if we are locked out of this area in act two. Hag is useful for as long as I can get Strength Potions. Got too many different role play points for my different characters.