Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Do I need to know DnD to play & enjoy?

I think that's a surprisingly tough question to answer. A LOT of the gameplay is D&D 5e but the game also deviates from D&D 5e is meaningful ways. Stuff like you can respec your character, multiclassing works differently, some of the subclasses and their pacts work differently, etc. And especially most of the loot and items are very different from D&D...not sure how many of the items you can find in BG3 you can find in D&D, but a lot you can't...the game seems to be more willing to hand out more powerful items, at least that's my impression so far. So knowing D&D 5e helps but there's a lot to this game that deviates from 5e too. But at least having an idea how the player classes works and how characters progress in D&D will probably spare you a lot of pain. The game has achievements for certain character progression styles that are just bad ideas and will either not work or be very hard to make work...stuff like get to level 12 while taking 1 level in each of the 12 classes or evenly distribute stat points among the six stats...spoiler alert, don't do either of those things...just don't. They are VERY bad for your character and his survival prospects.