Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General I think I'm giving up on Larian

Guys, both of you are better than this.
We want to support each other in spite of our differences and reach a consensus through collective effort rather than mutual criticism.

I totally understand feeling let down that the system isn't going to follow the table-top rules verbatim.

I am glad that they aren't though.

PHB Ranger and Monk (hell most monks to this day) are hot garbage. If you were a table-top gamer when 5e came out who loved rangers or monks you pretty much cried yourself to sleep for years.
I'm glad they allow all classes to have a use for their bonus actions. It isn't fun clicking 'end turn' with half of your actions basically unusable.
I'm glad that they gave martial classes some cool abilities to use with their weapons, gods know they needed something unique to do other than bonk over and over again.
I'm glad they added things like height advantage and expanded elemental interactions. Grease/Web + Fireball and freezing wet stuff were pretty much the only interactions in the PHB and it is nice to have other interesting things happening.
I like that we can get more than three decent magic items. I'm not sure how you personally feel about that, but I love the fact that I'm not just stuck with a weapon, armor, and shield for my magic items. New amulets, rings, and bracelets let me experience cool powers I would never otherwise have access to.
Magic items that interlink and provide a sort of 'set bonus' are a nice addition as well.


Do I like the way they are implementing everything? Not really.

It sounds like they are fumbling Tasha's racial rules by just swapping in the stat changes without balancing the other bonuses to fix the nerfs they introduced by doing that.
If they are opening up spell levels based only on access to spell slots, that isn't something I'd personally support at my table. But honestly, they did that in BG1 and BG2 as well, my favorite class was Ranger/Cleric and I got all the druid spells added to my cleric spellbook.

It can be frustrating when something we are really looking forward to lets us down, and I hope this doesn't end up ruining the game for you, because it feels like it is something that you could still have a lot of fun with.

I "care" because "If you don't like it don't use it" is a very solid principle applied to sex toys but it's garbage in reference to game design.
When I play the game I want to feel like it's designed to have a proper structure and balance; Idon't want to feel like I have to put in place my own restrictions and self-limitations to enjoy what experience it offers, otherwise everything breaks apart.

Let's say I like to make my character as efficient and powerful as possible. With these new rules in place I would now being basically forced to do some broken multiclass combo OR to pretend these rules don't exist and put a restrain on myself.

Other example: let's say I will play the game as a melee class, only to learn that way later in the game I will find several strong items setting my base abilities to incredibly high values in a couple of areas that matter (i.e. STR 24). In a normal tabletop campaign or a good videogame it would be "Whatever, I needed strength to make it so far, anyway". In this game the optimal solution would be "I'm going to reset my character and set my STR at 8, buff other stats, then equip this item. Here I am, exploiting the system without having to do the work for it".

I could listen other 50 examples of this type, eventually even focused on "roleplay" if the rebuttal is going to be that "power playing is a dirty word to begin with. Because that area is going to be affected as well.

Are we sure that we can actually change the appearance of the origin characters? I thought someone had a screenshot of the "edit appearance" option being grayed out. Maybe I'm wrong.

Can we turn Shadowheart into a man?

How can we see Astarion's teeth if we make him look like a half orc?

I don't know. This doesn't sound right. Is this really the way it's going to work or just speculation?

I think they should make it so that if you edit an Origin character the game should disable their story entirely...both if you play as the character in question and if you have them as companions. And there should be at least ten different, massive warning before you begin editing an origin character that if you go through with the edit the playthrough will be ruined forever and you'll have to start a new save file.

This thought Im having was brought up somewhere else in the forums, I am concerned and curious as well.

1. Lv 1 Wizard
Lv 1 Clr
Lv 1 Ranger

= LV 3 wizard for spells casting and Lv 3 Cleric as well This cant be right?


One level of every class x12 ( which I heard there is an achievement for finishing the game like this), will the 1st level wizard be throwing Lv 6 spells as well as lv 6 cleric and warlock...

Sounds pointless, if they removed the story you may as well just use a mercenary

Those were all good changes. They were introduced patch by patch though and were a direct answer to our criticism. I remember people saying that martial classes are boring in BG3 when compared to casters and then they introduced weapon actions. Ranger changes were appreciated by all as well, at least the initial ones. Patch 9 arguably pushed ranger over the top, I don't know if you've played but the beast master's companions are stupidly overpowered now. What they did now is such a big and sudden design decision, especially the multi classing changes. They just forced those on us without any proper open testing, without warning, without anything and I bet those will be hard to reverse. I am very curious about how this all turns out, I wonder why were they really confident enough to override the rules that's been there for a long time and proved to be half-decent at least. I'll be surprised if those recent changes result into a better experience, I'll try and hope for the best.

I'm afraid you may live in a sheltered environment in the table-top world, because that happens in TT as well. I mean, 95% of Paladin's have sworn themselves to an evil weapon from the Shadowfell. The Hexblade/Paladin/Divine Soul is exactly the same sort of multiclass combo that people will be making in BG3.

In the TT world you can ban combos like that, but at the end of the day those bans are just as much homebrew and self limitation that you would need to do if you want to curate your experience in BG3.

I just doubt the tech is advanced enough to support the animation mirror to another race, on any face, without awkwardness. Larian would have needed to hire a whole second set of voice actors, too. As far as I can tell, this hasn't happened.

I would be content with just easier respec and multiclass access, primarily for player characters. Anything beyond that: expedited progression for multiclasses, fundamentally altering companions, nullifying the significance of starting class... all of that seems to be in violation of the spirit of DnD or traditional CRPGs. DOS2 was built around that, but that was DOS2. This is not.

I see this type of argument used over and over... and conversely I'm afraid some of you don't seem to grasp that "X game has balance issues already" should never be considered an excuse/free pass to introduce even WORSE balance issues on top of it.

Yeah, and now with some of these changes the "Sorcadin" or the "Palalock" will come with even less drawbacks compared to what they already were.

How is that a mitigating factor, exactly?

Honestly, I understand your frustration and respect your opinion, but I understand it even less now. You're saying if you want to meta-game you are forced to meta-game. How is this different from not liking the RAW in tabletop and agreeing homebrew with a DM? That's changing the rules right? To do something you "shouldn't" be able to?

The issue I think Larian are contending with is that even 5e is a complex system. I know this from watching dozens of EA streams of people who aren't DnD familiar getting owned by simple mistakes because they don't understand that Shadowheart's Firebolt uses Intelligence to hit rather than Wisdom for her Guiding Bolt; or that her Mace is a Strength weapon and she is more likely to hit with a dagger. DnD is FULL of traps for inexperienced players to get hardstuck on without a DM to say "that's probably a bad idea".

Players feeling they have to restart a playthrough because their build turned out to be hot trash is a MASSIVE quit moment in gameplay. Quit moments are bad. Always. Larian need to make a product that people will buy at the end of the day - and the DnD market is a tiny fraction of the gaming market. The return on investment on making a game of the scope of BG3 without mass appeal outside of the DnD community isn't there. That's a major reason why the third installment took 20 years to come around. I'd be amazed if Larian's expenditure on this game is less than 30-50x that of Crown of the Magister or Wrath of the Righteous.

If the interview is correct, you'd get level 2 spells for each of those classes as your total level would be 3 -> grants access to level 2 spells. Additionally, as Ranger isn't a full caster class, it's unclear if it'll work this way. But for 3 full spellcaster levels (level 1 Bard + Cleric + Wizard): yes, they might gain access to level 2 Bard, level 2 Cleric, and level 2 Wizard spells.

Also, it's unclear how this will interact with Warlock...

The singular headband of intellect was fine. One additional headband/belt would also be okay. But if there's 1 of each of the stat-boosting items in the first Act (in particular, a Belt of Dex -- which doesn't exist in 5e) that'll be too much. Hopefully this quote wasn't an indicator that they'd be adding many more of these items...

I take it you aren't going to elaborate on that, or rather, can't. You clearly aren't here to offer constructive criticism or get a real debate going, you're just throwing a tantrum because Larian is taking some freedom in their approach to certain systems that wether we like it or not, will be most welcome by many players. You're also quick to dismiss others' points when they disagree or yours are challenged, your opinion is not more valuable than the others'.

Realistically, the only of these changes that will affect those of us who wouldn't normally want to benefit from these tweaks, is the one that touches spell slots when multiclassing, we don't know the severity of the changes yet, but worst case scenario, multiclassing will be slightly stronger than it should be for the price you're paying, hardly the end of the world.

Also @Darth_Trethon, multiclassing was one of the most requested features for this game, having it be stronger than it would normally be is clearly preferable over having it completely removed, suggesting otherwise is kinda ridiculous.

Just be reasonable guys, I don't personally like these changes myself, but they make sense and I doubt Larian will take them so far as to be game breaking.

IF MULTICLASSING IS EXPEDITED WHAT THE FUCK IS THE POINT OF FEATS THAT GIVE YOU ACCESS TO ANOTHER CLASS' ABILITIES, PERKS, OR SPELLS????????

I didn't even think about it before but this is a huge deal for Multiplayer. If we lose a player and we can't bring in a new player with a custom character - letting them simply respec the character they are taking over may solve the problem. I wonder if they can change name and appearance?

I'd argue that nothing is WORSE for character building than hexblade has been for 5e. But that is my opinion, you are entitled to feel differently.

My point regarding flaws in 5e is that BG3 is improving the rules in some ways, and arguably making them worse in others. It's a mixed bag, and for me at the current moment, the scales balance in favor of BG3 (even the WoTC crew are implementing some of the changes in DnD One or whatever they're calling it now).

It sounds like they are very much balanced toward the negative side for you.

However, I don't believe that any one person knows the exact right set of changes to make the game fit the perfect model for everyone. Anyone assuming they have that perfect answer may want to take a step back and give themselves time to process their feelings.

I feel like introducing a proper tutorial sections and properly tying it to a decent story should do the trick of introducing the game to a new player base. Unfortunately, it becomes impossible when you are from Larian studios and you build your prologue based solely on the rule of cool and then slap a clumsy and messy parody of a tutorial on top of this cool action. I think a proper tutorial and maybe a manual should solve these problems better than scrapping racial ASIs, scrapping multiclass restrictions, letting us respec every 10 minutes and giving fireball to anyone who dipped one time into Wizard.

I also fear it's more reasonable to have these options for all these reasons. The best mechanics in the world can be made unenjoyable.