Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Feedack on Gear and Tadpole Power, and how they will affect Builds

The first thing I imagined when I heard about the new tadpole system is my Tav snorting a tadpole and getting high on power xD.

I hope is something more like absorbing the tadpole energy because yours is stronger or special in some way or whatever, not just bloating your skull with 30 tadpoles and becoming megamind.

That video made me wonder how long will we keep our Adamantine armours or weapons ...
Concidering that "the one who would get the Forge would be known and feared across whole Underdark".

I also liked the original tadpole system more, improve by using it, makes total sense. They still could have combined that with the new skill tree.
If in the new system it's somehow explained by "consuming the power" of the tadpoles rather than just shoving more parasites into your brain... maybe i can accept it.
Anyway, on my first playthrough i'll go completely anti-tadpole, never (if i can) use the powers and destroy all i come across. Might be tough but also a good challenge.

So we can expect more "build items" like the Headband of Intellect. I really hate these items for several reasons.

- If I make an Eldritch Knight with 16 Intelligence, I want to be rewarded by stronger spells. A Headband of Intellect punishes me for it. I wasted those points on Intelligence when the correct build is to dump Int entirely.
- Your character's ability scores should always matter, rather than being overwritten.
- Magic items should not be a guaranteed thing to always get, or keep.
- 5e shifted focus from magic gear into characters and their abilities, which is really cool. Larian are now undoing that again with some asinine "Lightning Build" item sets that revolve around a particular gameplay-defining gimmick like fighting in a pool of water, every time. Also, underlining enemy AI's inability to avoid such obvious tactics.
- Encouraging dump statting is stupid.

Overall, I don't enjoy the "video game itemization" i.e. constant grind of upgrading your gear that came from MMO's that DOS also suffers from. RPG's don't need that grindy gameplay loop. It's just distracting and repetitive, and it makes all magic items feel like replaceable trash.

Larian said initially that magic items would be faithful to D&D i.e. rare and impactful. Now it seems like the floodgates are open again and a flood of videogamey magic junk is 'required' after all.

At higher levels where progression is slowed down, they should focus on great storytelling and well designed encounters for gameplay instead of adding more empty gameplay with small grindy power-ups. It's also nice to take your time and stop to enjoy your powerful hard earned abilities at level 9 or 11. It creates a good dynamic where higher levels feel different instead of just more of the same with constant linear upgrades in some form.

I have to admit that I kind of like some concept of items shown by fextralife.

Of course, it does not mean that I'm confident about the overal itemization of the game.
I still find their "sets" absolutely terrible and while I would have love to see a greater variety of items in the EA... I certainly don't want to find a lot MORE magical items.

DnD game or not, I absolutely hate games that does not let me enjoy the items mechanics or the build I'm working on before throwing something better to equip.

I didn't like itemization much in EA and I really fear it will be worse at release... but it does not mean that all items we saw seems bad to me.


About tadpole powers... I really like the idea.
But I really really hope the system as a whole will not only reward evil playthrough.
Tradeoff must be very important during the whole story and good characters should be rewarded too. The "role play" / "good ending" reasons does not worth at all to play without an entire skill tree / mechanic for hours.

I can't wait to see but I really hope Larian will not go over the top again. I just can't understand why such big changes haven't been brough to the EA build for testing /opinions purpose tbh.

Also considering how difficult and significant it is to have an 18 in any stat in BG3, stuff like Gloves of Dexterity is just stupidly OP.

Dump your Dex as a Barbarian > rush to known Gloves location > get a 10 point increase in the stat. +5 AC, +5 Ranged Attacks and Damage, +5 Initiative, +5 Dex Saving Throw, in the bounded accuracy frame of 5e is absurdly powerful. How does that even begin to compare to a +1 weapon that is on an appropriate power level?

The game is encouraging you to dump stats that are relevant to your class. In a role-playing game. It doesnt really get more counterintuitive and metagamey than that.

These items have always been part of D&D, and appeared in both of the previous Baldur's Gate games. Did the Gauntlets of Ogre Power you could get from the Low Lantern invalidate Minsc's 18/93 Strength? No, because you give the Gauntlets to someone else (Jalhera isn't a bad choice) and give Minsc the Gloves of Dexterity instead.

This misses that most classes don't really NEED high stats in their secondary attributes. A wizard with 20 strength is just as strong as a wizard with 8 strength. Neither will ever really make use of it. I guess you can jump better and avoid being shoved...
But mostly, nothing changes. Same for a wizard with charisma.

What matters are the primary stats, and constitution. If you can set your primary stat to 20 anyways (and remember, you do not have to cripple yourself until then, you can respec!), that really opens the door to min maxxing

Is there anything you don't hate, 1varangian?

By the way, BG2 had some gloves of 18 dex that were wonderful on Keldorn and enough strength boosters to go around. I don't think you've really got a strong case for such items to be "stupidly OP" and part of some MMO itemization when items are in line with what we had in BG2.

By the way, you could also roll a BG2 martial characer with bad strength and dex and then use gloves and a strength belt, but then you couldn't use any other items in those slots. And you had to suffer bad stats until you actually got the items. I suspect the same will be the case here. Edit: Respec obviously alleviates the problem with bad stats but you're still spending an item slot.

Agreed that BG2 also had those items and also agree that using them ment you cannot equip more fancy stuff found later

Are able to redistribute our stats on respec in BG3? If so, than people won't be suffering if they metagame.

Agreed. And I assume that we can change attributes when respec? That would make sense but I don't actually know that.

Yes, but posting about things that are ok would be pointless.

Do you realize how different D&D rules are in 5th edition? An item that sets an ability score to 18 is nothing in 2nd edition. Especially in BG2 where you can roll indefinitely and edit your Dex to 18 anyway.

5e's bounded accuracy makes every +1 far more significant than in previous editions where Fighters get +1 attack bonus every single level. That and using point buy does make items like Gloves of Dexterity massively more powerful in BG3, if we want to compare to BG2 and an entirely different ruleset.

Speaking of Gloves, there was an item called Gloves of the Underdog or something that gave Advantage to melee attacks if you are threatened by two or more enemies. Again, stupidly powerful and bad design. Larian still haven't learned (after 6 years of development) that throwing advantage around like candy is not a good idea. A permanent Advantage from some gloves invalidates every other tactic that grants it in a balanced and fun way, like Faerie Fire or Invoke Duplicity (which cost resources and/or have Concentration attached to a limited duration).

Don't knock setting 18 dex on a 10-12 dex character in BG2. It made a fairly big impact on both AC and ranged attacks.

As far as BG3, setting dex to 18 is questionable for any dex character, because they're going to want the full 20 anyway. Same reasoning as why low int mages still generally suck despite the headband of 17 int.

But these items are pretty good for boosting secondary stats, though it comes at the cost of using an item slot, which means your barbarian can't use this for getting cheaply to 18 dex and also use the gloves of the Underdog.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying something that sets dex cannot be cheesed, but it isn't obvious to me how it outright breaks the game.

There is a reason Gloves of Dexterity don't exist in 5e. They're way too powerful, with the way that 5e's design has made Dex into an uber-stat - governing to-hit & damage of both ranged & finesse melee weapons, AC, initiative, one of the Big 3 Saves, and plenty of skill checks.

Gloves of Dexterity that add +2 to Dex or that set your Dex to 14 or maybe 16 would be ~okay, but setting Dex to 18 is much more powerful than ~any other stat boosting item.

You can't really compared BG1&2 with their AD&D 2e rules to BG3 using (the framework of) 5e rules.

I didn't say it "breaks the game", e.g. like Stealth currently does.

In my first post I was explaining why I think this item type is poor design. Conversely, Gloves of Dexterity that would give +2 Dex couldn't be dump stat cheesed and wouldn't encourage counterintuitive builds, would never make a character's stat irrelevant, would never be stupidly OP giving a 10 point boost in an ability score, and would also benefit high Dex characters. Likewise Gale could power up his spells with a Headband of Intellect instead of it being useless for him.

The magical items don’t bother me. None of them are immersion breaking and you can sell any items you don’t want to use. It you want a lower powered version of that item, you can mod the game.

The idea of voluntarily stuffing additional tadpoles into your brain is immersion breaking for me.

The new tadpole powers look really good and much better than a fixed power set by your class.

I would need to see the items to determine if they are too powerful/ not right for the game.

I expect the legendary items to be very good on the right builds. They wouldn't be "legendary" if they were weak.

I definitely won't be using the tadpole system. Sorry, but adding more Ilithid tadpoles feels ... stupid and wrong for any character with a higher intellect than a rock.

That's a 5e issue.
There are about 27 items in the DMG alone that overwrite or adjust a player's stats.


That simply isn't the case.
There are a myriad of items in the DMG that allow your character to do things outside of actions that their character's class or abilities would allow.

Larian has never said anything about items being rare.
There is no 5e standard on loot rarity or impact, those things are entirely DM dependent.

5e has guidelines for high magic, medium magic, and low magic campaigns.
You seem to be conflating your preference for a low magic campaign with how 5e actually works.

1) It doesn't matter if 5e has those items or not. It's up to Larian to put them in the game, or not.

2) 5e reduced the impact of magic items severely with a +3 cap and Attunement compared to 3e where high level characters end up christmas trees with +5 to everything and then some. And if they lose their kit they become ridiculously squishy. 5e's Bounded Accuracy and Attunement mechanics brought some sense into that and magic items are no longer defining a character's power as much.

3) In the beginning of EA Swen did say magic items would be more like in D&D and earlier BG games, but Larian have already during EA gradually moved away from that in favor of showering the player with more and more weird homebrew minor conditional magic items and "Lightning" or "Momentum" set items, already at low levels.