Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Multiclassing too easy?

There was an interview with the lead mechanics designer (in Italian) here: https://multiplayer.it/articoli/baldurs-gate-3-intervistata-lead-system-designer-larian.html

Amongst a number of positive changes, was this line that scared me: "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."

This seems to suggest that level restrictions (and perhaps only highest available slot) matter when learning spells. This is a pretty significant buff to casters. This may imply that on a pure caster (e.g., cleric, sorcerer, druid, bard) a single level dip in Wizard gives full access to the Wizard spell list (because wizards can scribe spells). They would still perhaps be limited by the number of spells they could memorize, but given that you can basically change your memorized spells outside of combat freely, it's not a huge deal. This is further complicated by classes that instantly learn their whole spell list. So a level 4 wizard takes a level in cleric. Does the character get fireball AND the first 3 levels of cleric spells?

How does this work with the major power gate for martial characters, extra attack? Does a fighter 2/ barbarian 3 get extra attack? Do you still get ASIs on 4 8 and 12 no matter what? If some (or all) of the costs of multiclassing are removed, the optimal build will probably be 4 classes (e.g., to get intro benefits of 4 subclasses). How does one balance difficulty for that? The power difference between a pure class character and a hodgepodge with no downsides is going to be huge.

Might I direct you to use one of the multiple other threads we have open that are discussing this topic:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=858893
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=859002
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=859014
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=858721

Yes, I didn't see those. But to be fair, those threads seem far more interested in complaining about no stat requirements, which I don't care about. None of those threads are about spell progression.

Tucos thread is about the spell progression among all the other things. You might want to take a look there.

I understand where they are coming from, Swen probably tried to mix two classes equally (cleric 6/ wizard 6 etc). It is a legitimate improvement in those cases and I could accept it. But it becomes more and more ridiculous the more asymmetrical the two classes are (sorc 10 tempest cleric 2 etc)

Multiclassing should be a bit of a hidden feature, mainly accessible for people who know what they are doing and are coming at it with a mastery of the game systems and a plan for what they want

More than anything multiclassing should be an opportunity cost: "I give up on something to gain something else". It should NOT be "Wooo! Best of both worlds, baby!".

Quite honestly this article made me a little woried.
They are buffing things, removing restrictions and "ballancing" (for the lack of better term) things ... so people who multiclass dont feel like they stay behind.

But what does that mean for people who dont multiclass? :-/

I mean, maybe this is exaggerative ...
But what is the point of being pure Wizard ... if Wizard/whatever on same level can get just as destructive? :-/

According to Larian, you can have it all and do all even if it's not in 5e rules, but you can't have stat rolling! 😅

Im not aware there would be any restriction in 5e about multiclassing ...
As far as i know, you can quite easily be all classes ... nobody do that, bcs it sucks, but it was never forbidden to my knowledge.

Aswell as stat rolling to my knowledge never got any official statement suggesting we cant have it.
On the contrary, some sources suggests it was confirmed in the past ... so by usual rule of "what i say apply until i say it dont apply anymore" it should be basicaly confirmed at this point.

Well those people who got to play the full version said that there were no stat rolling. Stat rolling is so easy to implement in the game, why would it not be there unless Larian thinks that it will break the games balance or something like that.

There is infinite potential answers for that ... and only one of them is true.
Only Larian know wich one, and they are not talking here.

But! To name some ...

- Swen repeately specificly told us that they want to keep some things as surprise to final release.
- It is indeed easy to implement, so they felt no rush to make it in advance to final release.
- They are still gathering telemetry, even from PFH event, and this would make it harder to get desired results.
(Having superpowerfull character in ballanced encounter is not a problem ... its problem to have encounter ballanced for superpowerfull characters. )

Counter question tho:
If Larian is so woried about ballance ... why didnt they resolve unbalances caused by Bonus Action Shove, diping weapons, sneaking around people frozen in time by combat, bombs, alchemist fires, wet effect, burning effects, and litteraly every other homebrew they created?

Good points, I haven't thought of those. I truly hope I get to roll my stats after 25 years from playing BG1, it was magical. I don't know why that kind of simple thing means so much to me, but it does.

Why? Because you just kept rolling until you hit a 96? Because that's what I've done for 25 years, and so did everyone else.
In classic BG, that was all fine, becasue the only roleplay element there was, was 'Yes, for honor!' 'Okay, but for gold' and 'Fine, but I'll kill your cat after'

This game is entirely different, where having strengths and weaknesses matter.

*nobody* will roll and role-play, everyone will keep rolling until they max everything out and roll-play. They might as well give you 18 in every stat, thereby skipping the Stat allocation entirely.

As long as the shove ability is a bonus action, and rogues get two bonus actions per turn, multiclass spellcasters will not be close to the most powerful builds in the game.

Okay, is this where we are discussing the news about multiclassing? I feel here or the Would the game be better if there were no minimum stat requirements for multi-classing? thread would be best, but then I have a prejudice in favour of threads that focus on one topic as I'm terrible at multitasking and prefer not to try to follow a discussion that's going off in multiple directions at once! I'll try here ...

As I say all the time, I'm not a 5e expert so I admit that the news about removing attribute restrictions for multiclassing doesn't worry me all that much. But perhaps I'm missing something about why that would be bad?

I realise that people might make bad characters who can't be effective at their classes, which would possibly be annoying but I'm not hugely fussed about. And I'm not generally in favour of departures from 5e for the sake of it, but I'm not going to strongly object to a departure either as long as we can still adhere to 5e rules if we wish, and as long as it doesn't break balance too badly. If it does break balance (eg by letting people dip and pick up really handy features without cost to their attributes) then I'll certainly reconsider.

But otherwise, I'm going to take this as a bit of a win. I'll probably adhere to 5e multiclassing rules normally anyway, but am very tempted to "cheat" with my planned dex-based paladin who I'd pictured as a devout follower of Elistraee. Given they can't select a deity as a paladin and anyway it would fit my character concept, I was thinking of giving them a level of cleric for flavour (or maybe more, given I've not yet really looked at whether or how a cleric/paladin multiclass would work). Not having to up their strength to 13 to accomplish this would be handy.

The bit that really worries me on first glance is the quote BROttorney picked out, about spell slots/progression. It's really unclear to me what this means in practice. I'm guessing (hoping!) that it doesn't mean that we get spell progression for all our classes whether we're levelling up in them or not, as I'd definitely see that as "revising the use of resources" just "a bit". But there is obviously that implication that a multiclass wizard could potentially get fireball before they hit level 5 in wizard so I'm not sure what else it could mean?


EDIT: And I meant to say. The other thing that surprised me about that interview and multiclassing, Nick said: "During the playtest we saw that many of the players eager to multiclass already had a clear build in mind to use, perhaps following the more impactful "tabletop" ones. Newbies to the game, on the other hand, usually kept the chosen class from start to finish. We designed the level up screen so as not to overemphasize the presence of multiclassing, because we realize that it is a feature mainly sought after by experienced players." So if multiclassing is for experienced players, surely those are the ones who are least likely to want homebrew changes to it? Unless the changes are to make multiclassing more appealing to newer players, but that doesn't seem to be the implication to me.

Thats another good reason Potatoo ...
When you sit at home, its no problem if you spend three hours rerolling your stats ... but in PFH, where they could play only some time, this would be source of lots of frustration ... especialy concidering how many people "suffers" from compulsions.

Seems like we have clairvoyant here ...
Shame he isnt very good one.

Anyway ... even if ... and that alone is big if ...
So what?

Indeed ...
They might, and they should ... infinite point buy, same results, fraction of time ... i keep repeating its benefits for last two years.

Can I suggest that stat rolling chat is taken to https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=859570&Searchpage=1 which is also active on that topic (or another thread where the main topic isn't something different!).

Helm sees all! Know that, and be judged!

In all seriousness, though; hop unto Youtube and find a BG/Bg2/IWD Playthrough. Any. Not a single person does not have an 18 in any relevant stat.

Note: That is unless it's modified by race, halflings get -1 STR +1 Dex, dwarves +1 Con, -1 Dex etc].
Also note that in BG1 there are *three* tomes that increase WIS by 1, so all Wizards/Sorcs take 15 Wis so they can cast Wish at 18 WIS later.
Note 2: I exclude IWD2, because it's more-or-less 3E and has point-buy.

I also notice that I'm taking this topic well away from what it is intended to be for, and that the Queen us to leave this place... I will. Sorry about that.

To me, it sounds like it might be at least in part an artifact of the level cap. When you have fewer levels available, each one you give up costs you more than if the cap is higher. Dropping four levels into a second class (so you don't lose an ASI) costs you 1 maximum spell level in tabletop as you can now get up to 8th level spells instead of 9th, but 2 maximum spell levels in BG3 as you top out at 4th instead of 6th.

I've seen multiple utube videos where the player dudnt have an 18 in any stat. Lol Largely because they were trying to play BG like a 3e or 5e game. Lol Some would try to keep theyr stats on 'even' numbers. I've also personally plated Bg with less than 18 in stats.