Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Larian please revert some of the changes to 5e ruleset!

Some of the comments in this thread make me worry that haste will never be properly implemented in this game.

Haste providing only one extra attack per round, instead of doubling your attacks - the way it is in tabletop 5e - does not make the spell useless. It is still a fantastic buff. One extra attack per round just seems, in BG3, relatively unimpressive because so much else in this game, from items to other class abilities, is weirdly buffed with little rhyme or reason.

It also doesn't make casters 'garbage.' A lot of the caster stuff in BG3 seems underwhelming because, for *some reason*, Larian not only wrote MASSIVE nerfs into some caster control spells compared to tabletop, and made it much easier to have an ally break you out of some control effects - but also, at least the last time I played, some of the control effects had *active bugs* making them weaker. Like the fact that for spells like hold person and confuse, an enemy makes their per-round saving throw at the beginning of their turn. This means if you want those spells to make an enemy lose at least ONE turn, they need to fail TWO saving throws. With hold person, you can at least get SOME use out of the spell if you have allies with a turn in between your caster and the enemy's turn - they can get the auto-crit benefit if the enemy fails one saving throw. For confuse, though, this essentially means that every enemy rolls with advantage against the spell to get literally any use out of it. There was also apparently a bug where ground-based control effect spells, like Evard's black tentacles, had spell DCs that were way lower than they were supposed to be. I don't know if some of this stuff has been fixed by now, but all this combined made my favorite type of caster, control casters, incredibly nerfed compared to tabletop. But that's okay! Because even if you never cast a single control spell, or haste, casters could still be absurdly powerful thanks to Larian's implementation of a ton of items that gave +damage per missile hit, which made upcast magic missiles the best spell to cast 90 percent of the time.

This is also why players of BG3 think that concentration is such an unnecessary and weird mechanic. In tabletop, concentration is meant to be a check on the often battle-deciding spells a caster can use, very often CC effects. But in BG3, tons of CC is nerfed into the ground either by Larian's choice or their bugs, and haste is way overbuffed, so most of the time concentration just becomes 'that weird thing that makes me drop haste sometimes, and means I can't cast a bunch of spells when I use the thing I should obviously be using, haste.'

That being said, I don't even think it's the changes to the ruleset that hurt the game the most. (And yes, no computer implementation of DnD rules is ever completely faithful, but so many changes Larian made were *really* bad.) It's the ITEMS more than anything. Like so early on you can get healing synergy items that bless and add blade ward to every character you heal, and this is *absurd*. (I suppose you could argue that this is in fact a change to the ruleset because DnD would advise you not to hand out items so powerful at such a low level.) And these items are just the start to a game filled with insanely overpowered items.

Edit: As far as "optimizing the fun out of a game" goes, I *really* disagree that is the case here. Part of the *fun* of a game is trying to figure out what the optimal choices are in any given situation. If the optimal choice keeps on being "caste haste", you've made a boring game. "Using a spell that you have access to in the normal course of play" is hardly some obscure, arcane strategy arrived at by people straining to be as optimal as possible.