Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Suggestion - Larian, give us the option to go back to the old rules for Racial ASI and multiclassing

Hey Larian! Doubt you guys will see this but it's worth a shot.

As you've probably seen; the recent "changes" to the racial ability score improvements in addition to your upcoming changes to multiclassing has caused a bit of an uproar here on the forums.

Since you've said that you wish for the player to be able to play in whatever way he or she wants. And the recent changes highlighted on the last panel from hell will certainly make a lot of players be able to do just that. But! In doing so you also make it impossible for us who to follow thethe current rules for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition (not the ones in one dnd, but the current rules as laid out in the players handbook). By semi-implemening the changes that came with Tasha's to racial ASIs you make it impossible for us who want to play with set ability scores (for example shield dwarves gets +2 to str and +2 to con, whilst with the new system you only get a +2 and +1 to use) this change was already controversial when TCoE came out and this implementation is no different.

When it comes to your planned changes to multiclassing where you remove the requirements for picking an additional class, and making it so that a multiclassing caster gets access to higher level spells at the same rate as monoclass casters. Needless to say this is going to throw the balance out of whack.

Here's my proposed solution: Give us the options for using the new racial ASI "system" and the new larianescue multiclassing, or let us play by the "old" rules and racial ability scores outlined in fifth edition that so many dnd players are familiar with and expects to see implemented in Baldurs Gate 3.

Give us the option to play the way we want, Larian.

It would be best if the hardcore difficulty had the regular 5e rules and not a single Larian super friendly noob gameplay rules.

Agreed. If there was a "RAW" mode and "Modified" mode, then this could be easily fixed.

And there would be more rules that would need to be updated for "RAW" mode to work.

They are fixing things that weren't broken by dumbing down the game. Casuals ruining good games

In addition. The new rules make humans useless trash. If earlier in specific classes they were inferior only to races specific to these classes, now any other race has an advantage in a specific class. There are simply no more classes where humans could be superior to at least someone. These changes have made the human race completely unnecessary and useless. In previous editions of DND, humans were a do-it-yourself kit in exchange for the magical properties of other races. Here they are so weak. But the latest changes just put the final nail in their coffin.

Humans who get +2, +1 and feat from the start are useless?? I would say free feats are pretty powerful...

Feat and skill from variant in PH are missing. So? Everyone has +2/+1 on selected stats. But humans do not have anything significant other than that. The rest - their magical and racial features. So, any build of a human will lose to same build using any other race.

There is no feat ...
Wolfheart confirmed that Larian confirmed that Variant Human is not planned.

All you get is fluid +2, +1 ... as everyone else ...
And some proficiencies.

Fpr humans its specificly Light armor and Spears, Pikes, Halberds and Javelin i think

If that is indeed the case then humans are truly garbage. Why even include humans in the game then, just remove that race.

In general, it would probably be fair. Instead of ridiculous excuses for having a useless race in the list of possible characters.

This doesnt make sense at all. VH is easy to implement and is one of most popular races. There is absolutely no reason not to include it in the game.

If I understood well you don't "have" the +2 / +1 abilities points.
You have the regular races abilities bonuses BUT you can remove them entirely to choose to add a +2/+1.
It is basically the same except that the original system is still suggested first.

I really hope they'll remove this possibility to be honnest as it really makes the original rules obsolete / suboptimal and many races/sub-races very bad to useless choices.

They created a system everyone is now talking about (positive and negative opinions) while no one had anything to say about it before. They made a choice that divide the community and broke a well establish consensus.

(I never saw anyone asking for this before... wasn't daily active on reddit tbh but I really don't think this feature was something many players were waiting for...).

That's a strange move !

Indeed ...
And yet that is what Swen allegedly said.

That would be more than acceptable.

Question tho: When you say "understood" ... what do you mean?
You were on PFH, or do you reffer to someone else providing informations from there?

@Rag what I understood from Wolfheart's video but I may be wrong and maybe the "option" is the original rules.
That's how I imagine things now, but maybe The Red Queen can clarify that.

Ok, thanks for clarifying.

With the announcements made about the rule alterations during the PfH and afterwards, I must say I've gotten quite skeptical.

Removing racial ability bonuses and instead allowing to freely distribute a +2 and a +1 to whatever you feel like basically makes an already shoddy system fall apart even more and takes away whatever nuance and complexity there used to be. You no longer need to weigh pros and cons when designing your character - like how you can pick a shield dwarf for a wizard and get those free proficiencies while being less optimized statistics-wise. Now you can have both those proficiencies AND have a +2 to Intelligence, so what seems like "yay freedom" is actually making choice less meaningful and impactful and streamlines character-making to a point of being much too dumbed down, even for 5e.

It also makes some choices not only meaningless but downright harmful - like how there's no freaking reason whatsoever from any standpoint, be that role-playing or min-maxing or aesthetics, to pick a human. Before you could at least make an all-rounder with +1 to every ability, but now it's not only the most boring race as far as potential unique interactions go, but also the most useless - no darkvision, very awkward proficiencies, no identity. It's specifically racial identity, that was partially defined by the AS increases, that is now missing. Not to mention that, from a perspective of basic common sense, a dwarf with their physique will never be quite as agile as an elf, for example - they're just built different (literally, what with how the dwarves were effectively made by Moradin). The bonuses reflected the, you know, genetic advantages - as much as that applies to fantasy - that the races had because of their developmental background.

Half-elves too are now just worse elves, because they miss out on weapon proficiencies and perception while offering no unique bonus of their own, with wood elves effectively becoming worse deep gnomes (the same stealth proficiency and now the same ability choice, but inferior darkvision). Tradeoffs and choices potentially suboptimal on some scale but powerful in some other aspect are what makes character-building fun, and when you distill it to being a piecemeal buffet, it feels like admitting defeat when it comes to setting rules and restrictions. I know that the "just use mods" arguments will likely get used by the defenders of this direction - to which I can only reply with the same point, except it's one thing when the game is competently designed and balanced and you use mods to whack it up, and another when mods are needed to fix obvious shortcomings. Playing chess where you can arbitrarily assign rules to pieces is not the point of playing chess, or whatever other allegory fits here.

As for the multiclassing, it's again the balancing issue. I hope it was a misnomer and a misunderstanding, because the whole point of multiclassing is intentionally throttling the usual progression of a character to get advantages they otherwise don't get - again, a tradeoff that requires planning and thinking. When you don't need to plan and think, the game's value as something to think about and rub a braincell or two together for plummets down.

So wouldn't it be for the good of everyone involved to have all these changes be an optional difficulty customization setting or something? This way both the people looking for at least a semblance of a competently put-together and engaging system can have what they want, and people who have seemingly only heard about the game now thanks to the stunt Larian pulled can have their experience where they can make no wrong or suboptimal decision unless they really, really try. Which, by itself, means there's no value to a decision in the first place, then.

Edit. Nevermind, I was wrong.

I hope for an option like you describe, at the very least for the racial ASIs.

While I'm not averse to mods, we shouldn't have to rely on them but I fear we'll have to.

Where you get that?
We were only talking about ability score bonuses ... darkvision is not ability score bonus as far as i know.

I think Larian may have two reasons:

1. Balance. VA is very strong. When 5e came out it was already regarded as potentially the strongest race, easily fitting any class and allowing an early feat. The feat can be an absolutely game-changing boon, few races give you features that can even hope to compete with a free Sharpshooter or Polearm Master at level 1.
2. Discouraging people from playing humans. I'm sure I recall Sven saying it's disappointing for them to see so many people playing humans when they put so much effort into the other races. Perhaps they hope there'll be more tieflings and dragonborn if humans are unattractive gameplay-wise?

This is all guesswork on my part and I'm not defending these reasons, just thinking aloud. I'd like VA to be an option, though if they're reserved about balance I can only commend them for that.