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

Not surprised. They want it like DOS2 where you can be anything and everything without any roadblocks.

I feel this is why they hid multiclassing in EA. Who knows what else will be changed upon launch.

They were always going to do what they wanted to do.

That's where the table top ruleset is going too.

I intend to make the most out of my play-through and am confident that I can have a really fun play through. I am looking forward to launch.


That out of the way, I am with you after this title.

Larian absolutely Hijacked a great franchise and ruined it.

If they wanted to make a Horror RPG set in the Faerun Universe, then get the WOTC licensing and build your own lore from scratch.

Secondly, don't make false advertising.


"But I love the game!". I am sure you do, because the lore they outright stole is amazing and not their own brainchild (pun intended).

The big problem I have is all the fans of the franchise that are on the outside looking in, completely screwed over because the game wasn't made for them.

Then there are those like me that are feeling robbed thinking "this is NOTHING like a BG title".

Is it visually pleasing? It better be, this is 2023.

The acting is bang it out of the park, but the characters are B roll at best. Where are the great characters?

Who here wouldn't trade sex for feature X (like a day / night cycle).

Never before has a D&D developer NOT created and tested a proper engine that would support the D&D rule set BEFORE building a world.

I could keep going, but this post is too long already.


When Larian announced BG3 it was better than any kickstarter...CHA CHING! Instant pre-sales funding. Shameless money grab.

Some previews and new information are doing the rounds and what I'm learning is incredibly discouraging.

It took Larian three years to revert most of of their (almost universally bad) homebrew rules.
We had to fight for months and write down goddamn entire books to make our point about why these chances were not for the better, but here we were, close to the release and with MOST of the bad decisions finally reverted.
Sure we still have a bunch of lingering issues, but we were getting somewhere...

Then today new details started circulating.

- Apparently the player will be able to respec at will. But not just that, he will be able in any given moment to change everything about his character, including the stats and starting class.
- Apparently, the same will apply to companions too. They'll be tagged as "that companion" by the game, but you'll be able to change appearance, starting abilities and skills distribution AND STARTING CLASS, too.

Now, I know that there's always people who will argue that mods often give these options, but I think there's a fundamental difference and whole different level of abstraction between modders and use of external software and a game offering these options natively, with no barrier or filter of any kind.
It's like the game is going out of its way to remind you "Don't worry, everything about it is fake and there's no need to long term commitment about anything, because none of this matter".
Which is technically true, but heart-breakingly immersion-shattering as a message to the player.

it's not the end, thoug.

- In an interview with a popular Italian portal, the lead combat designer Nick Pechenin bragged about how they removed stat/abilities requirement for multiclassing...

...and if this wasn't already bad enough, what I read in the following statement made my eyes pop out.

- They are planning to help these "poor multiclassing underdogs" to unlock more spell slots and more quickly so that they'll be able to keep pace with the unlock of spells with their single-class counterparts. The example they made was that "It was disappointing for a multiclass player to have to delay so much the access to the fireball spell, while single-class could get it so much sooner".


This is depressing. I'm genuinely starting to think the people in charge of making key gameplay decisions at Larian may very well be some of the WORST rule designers I've ever witnessed.

I really don't understand the issue there. Respec is a basic feature that every CRPG should have and that pretty much everybody request. Playing for dozens of hour and realizing you built your character wrong is a terrible feeling. Multiclassing in tabletop is a clunky system with only a very few viable builds, so making it more viable make a lot of sense. Why would you want a feature where the only purpose is to weaken your character?

Multiclassing should allow additional flexibility in character customization and gameplay options, but it is bad design if multiclassing is *the* optimal way of play. If a multiclassed Fighter/Wizard character is strictly better than an Eldritch Knight...why does Eldritch Knight exist? If a Wizard 3/Cleric 3 character has the same # of spell slots and can cast the combined spell list as both a singly-classed Wizard 6 AND a Cleric 6, then why would you ever play a normal wizard or cleric?

This is something that I have literally found out today. The new generation of D&D is coming out next year and some of these horrific changes sound like Larian are aligning BG3 with with the next handbook...this is genuinely just terrible. Hold on to your 5e books and take great care of them because Wizards of the Coast are about to kill D&D. If you don't have physical paper books for 5e go and get a set now before they go out of print because when they are gone they'll be gone forever and all the digital stuff will be erased and replaced with the new horrible stuff.

I know why they removed the multi classing requirement.


They wanted to dumb things down and make it so people didn't have to plan their builds ahead of time AND so they could respec at will.

Sigh, I guess this generation's brains would melt if they had to plan a build that spanned BG1 and 2.


My multiclass build was set already. Making a build is a lot of the fun. Respec was just silly anyway. Rewriting the rules nonsense.

Larian understands NOTHING about D&D.

So far all that I see is speculation. Of course removing all things that makes multiclassing a compromise would make it the best way to play the game. That is not what I am reading though, merely that Larian want to avoid for it to be a noob trap.

Nick Pechenin: We've changed a couple of ground rules, just to remove possible friction with multiclassing. If you know the rules of the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, you surely know that in order to multiclass there are stat limits that you must respect: we have removed them, there are no more stat requirements and you can make a character with multiple classes in any moment. There's even an achievement that requires you to get to level 12 with a level in every single class. Of course, it will be very difficult for some players, but it is made possible by this removal of limits.


[...]

The other thing we've changed is how magic users use spell slots, making it less punishing to level more than one magic class. One issue with multiclassing is that if you multiclass early in the game, you don't get strong abilities like "Fireball" at the same level as a "pure" class, but we wanted players to be able to multiclass from the start of the campaign, without having to necessarily wait for the advanced levels, so it was the case to revise the use of resources a bit.