Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Is DnD 5e Needed?

Also the entire history of Balduran that needed to get rewritten, including a race change. The previous lore about mind flayer and the Gith is also not really followed, Orpheus invented, Karsus never had a crown. Important characters like Fzoul not showing up despite the situation warranting it, another chosen of Mystra that was never mentioned anywhere gets invented, ect.

And yes, Wylls story is also very strange. Thats basically the plot of the Rise of the Dragon Queen adventures. But how? Did Larian just reduce the entire epic adventures which required both huge preparations from the Cult of the Dragon and a large coalition of forces to stop them to some dudes on a field?

Was this a second attempt by the cult, done for some reason right next to a major city, and all this preparation they did previously was not needed?

The more that BG3 followed the DnD rule set, the better it became. Most of the issues I have with the game design are holdovers from DOS2 or other deviations from DnD. I also think that Larian benefited hugely from the Forgotten Realms lore and world building, which is so much better than DOS.

Without the DnD and Forgotten Realms IP, I doubt this would have been much more successful than DOS2.

Complete agreement here. And not even because I'm that much of a fan of D&D as a ruleset or Forgotten Realms as a setting, but mostly because it's simply better than the core systems and world building they used in DOS 2.

That said, I also think Larian at this point reached enough critical mass that their next title will be hyped since it's made by them, regardless of what it is.
Still, it would smart on their part to capitalize on all the work made so far to adapt D&D and extend this collaboration with WOTC for at least another big D&D game. This would also shorten significantly their development cycle, potentially.

On a personal note, I have to add that as far as I'm concerned I'd be happy to never have to see Rivellon again. The day they'll be done with D&D I hope they'll move on something else entirely.

It is really hard to figure out what this thread is about, which is why everybody is talking about something else here.

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The thread title specifically mentions D&D5. No, the game could also have used D&D3. That would have been perfectly fine. In fact I might even have liked it even more overall; not sure. While D&D5 has many great ideas, in some ways its not as satisfying as D&D3. For example you only get very few feats to customize your character.

I dont think AD&D would have been a good idea to use. D&D versions before 3 have been needlessly complicated and are quite hard to implement on the computer.

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But one could also read the title as a question if BG3 would need D&D at all, and thats how some people here have interepreted the question.

The question if BG3 needed D&D makes no sense to me. Its literally in the title. Baldur's Gate is a city in the Forgotten Realms settting, the most important D&D setting. Making a game in the Forgotten Realms without D&D would be weird, to say the least.

Even more importantly: the owner of D&D, Wizards of the Coast, would not allow that.

So BG3 didnt "need" D&D; it was a requirement. You literally cant make a game with Baldur's Gate in the title that doesnt use D&D.

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Of course Larian could instead have made some other fantasy game not referencing any IP.

But even if Larian never makes another D&D game, ever, making BG3 has helped their brand gaining recognition.

For example personally I'm now definitely interested into what science fiction game they will be making.

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The poll is about something wholly different.

Games are not really "remembered for". Primarily they are remembered. Or not.

Then they are remembered for what they archieved. But so many games archieved something significant, possibly even doing something for the first time, but without getting remembered much.

But for what category they are in, games arent really remembered for that, nor is anything else, at least I wouldnt know an example for that.

We dont remember Albert Einstein because he was a jew.

We dont remember John Fitzgerald Kennedy because he was a catholic.

That BG3 is a D&D game is certainly not the reason why it was successful. There are plenty of D&D games that had less success than BG3 (or BG1 and BG2, for that matter).

So I would think BG3 will be most remembered for is its archievement, the depth of its gameplay; the fact you can play the game twice and have wildly different outcomes. The fact that your class changes so much how the game plays. This required a lot of extra work, but Larian was willing to make this investment.

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I dont think the marketing had much to do with the success of BG3. This very idea sounds completely riddiculous to me. Many less successful games had far more marketing work done on them.

Even worse the claim that sex sells. It definitely doesnt. Many studies have confirmed that. Sex sold in the 1960s in the west because back then it was taboo breaking. Ever since, the direct opposite is true. You get more people to dislike your product, then like it.

Purely from marketing, my expectations for BG3 have not been very high. Even more so when I found out that it would only a four people party. I did not realize that this is a lot more manageable with D&D5 than it was with previous versions of D&D.

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D&D has been crafted and recrafted for 50 years now (D&D was first published in 1974). While it always was primarily designed for tabletop, both D&D3 and D&D5 have been made easier to adapt to computer. Which also made the rulesets a lot more logical and self consistent, too. All this design work and time resulted in a system that offers extraordinary complexity and balance.

Thats why using D&D as a basis for computer games is a good idea. You automatically get complexity and depth, yet balance. Its well thought out, and contains a ton of ideas, and saw a lot of testing.

The core design of D&D for example is so good, there is a version of D&D3 which is merely the core, its called d20. I played one game based on that, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. And while the rulesystem was frankly primitive, it still worked a lot better than many other games with more complex rulesystems.

If you can come up with a good system of your own, why, have at it. But I've seen many games fail at that.

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So apparently Larian made some errors in regards to the FR lore. Big deal. Wizard of the Coast will find solutions to that. If not in the short term, then in the long term. Popular strategies include changing the original, ignoring the change, and ignoring the conflict as a whole.

Nothing but the perfectionism of some people will be hurt.

Larian has made quite a few games in the past, but none of them has been D&D. That not everyone at Larian is a total D&D geek isnt surprising.

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The question what motivates people to play a game is completely separate from the question what makes a game great, or remembered.

For example back in 2007 I decided I wanted to try a MMORPG and I was looking for some that looked good enough and would have a large gameworld to explore. I found Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and it was so great in so many other ways, too.

Not sure if Vanguard will be remembered, though. Reading the Wikipedia article will give you no idea whatsoever why Vanguard was so great. Or that it was great in the first place.

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I dont expect Larian to make more D&D games. The fact they limited themselves to maxlevel 12 seriously limits such prospects. They cant make make any followup to BG3, only a completely new story with new characters.

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I enjoyed D&D 3E a lot back in the day, it was as revolutionary as 1E, but it has some serious short comings that 5E improved on.

- The math, the number spread in 3E D20 rolls varied hugely which meant by mid levels some rolls were auto-success and others auto failure.
- Spellcasters improved exponentially compared to martial improving additively. By 12th level pure spell casters were dominant.
- Magic item Christmas trees with must have items for each slot. Ironically BG3 echoes 3E, although without the must haves.
- Spell buff spreadsheets, after long resting the party would buff up all manner of stat altering buffs that had to be applied in specific order for optimal use. Heaven help when Dispel magic hit the party. I guess CRPG could use preset buff lists and auto-calculate.
- Class dead levels. Most classes, apart from spellcasters, had dead levels where you gained Hps, that's it.
- Rocket tag, initiative was king. Win initiative, cast Haste, Harm and quickened Inflict wounds to one-shot the big bad. Many variations of the same.

With friends and gentleman's agreements, you could mitigate much of the above, but it's sure just easier to play 5E.

Yes some things are better in D&D5, but other things are better in D&D3.

What annoys me about D&D5 is for example the lack of feats you get. And there arent many choices either.

Or I also miss the delay operation that allows to group characters so they can work as a unit.

There is definitely room for further improvement.

In fact D&D5 some problems are still not solved, such as that warriors are more boring than spellcasters.

Neither D&D3 nor D&D5 really solve multiclassing of spellcasters well.

I don't think the 5E incorporation was "necessary", but it was a really nice format. They did a good job with it, actually better than Solasta.
As an old D&D player I really liked it, thought they captured the spirit of the game, and gave kudos on what they did with the dice rolling. It was cute.
If I would make any changes I would suggest a more easily readable menu to Identify things, and maybe allow larger than four in a party. The camping deal was fantastic.

I'd be curious to hear you expound on that a little more and explain your position there; what metrics are you using to form that opinion?
There is zero question that Solasta is a far superior implementation of the 5e ruleset as transposed to a video game, at least as far as combat and encounters (which do make up the greater meat of the ruleset implementation) are concerned - it's not nearly as pretty, of course... but that's a game engine issue entirely unrelated to the implementation of the ruleset.

Out of combat, BG3 is more dialogue, character and RP friendly, absolutely no question there.

I don't see bg3 even being greenlight by Wotc without 5e.

Maybe when the toolset releases someone will mod the game to resemble Ad&d.

Well, I've played several turn-based games, and I generally like them. Solasta, when it came out was the best, but the travel options and rest mode could have been better.
BG3 hit a home run with their camp scenario. That was pure genius.
One of the other shortcomings of Solasta was the limited battleground area setup. BG3 is much better, and I like that you can make camp anywhere, because that is reality. You are adventurers out in the wilderness, so you should be able to make a fire and drop your bedroll almost anywhere.
I like how BG3 has used the 5E rules, although I didn't really play 5E (I was long before that time) and I actually learned about 5E watching Critical Role.
I don't think BG3 will replace anything, as I still enjoy the Assassins Creed combat, still like Skyrim and the Witcher to this day, but the old D & D, turn-based combat, I love, and doing it on PC with the visuals is a Dungeon Master's dream.
Now I have played Divinity, but I'm here to tell you BG3 has that totally outclassed.

The 5E feats are usually worth about 2-3 3E feats. Great weapon mastery is Power attack, Cleave, and an extra trigger for cleave when critical hitting. Alert is Improved initiative plus surprise immunity.

You get less feats, but bigger impact.

Dropping of Delay your action was an overall improvement. Yes, I enjoyed it and it worked well in say the ToEE CRPG, but in actual TT it slowed play down. Tired/rookie players would hmm and harr over what action to take and then decide to... do nothing but wait. And later hmm and harr again. It happened too often and was extremely annoying for other players to experience. I believe the stated reason to exclude it was it made players engage with a meta rule of combat that was unimmersive, plus slowed down play.

Warriors might well be more boring than spellcasters; WotC has taken a leaf from BG3 and added weapon combat maneuvers to the 2024 revision. This was developed how we know it in 4E but was lost along the way. Personally, I like simpler classes because for me it frees up attention span to better engage the setting.

Well yes, multiclassing. We've pretty much got the 3E system. These days spellcaster levels stack, cantrips scale by character level. The biggest problem remaining I see are different spellcasting classes using their own DC's. For gameplay simplification, should probably use the highest DC.

I do miss the greater simulationism of 3E, it had so many rule subsets. But you had to be a master to hold them all in your head, and some of the best adventures I ran I handwaved it to keep momentum moving. In this regard, 5E better suits how I actually play.

Back to BG3, a few of the 5E rules I wish they had implemented faithfully were:
- Haste/potions of speed
- Holding and changing weapons (though not as strict as Solasta)

If someone gave me money to disagree with this comment, I still wouldn't be able to disagree more than I already do.

EDIT - Since I'm not on my phone anymore I guess I can elaborate a bit.

- For a start, I was very pleased with the way Solasta handled fast travel options. It wasn't just better than BG3 "by contrast", it was actively one of the best systems I've seen in the genre.

- I ACTIVELY DISLIKE the camping system in BG3. It's extremely resource intensive AND unnecessarily immersion-breaking at the same time, as it creates a massively artificial disconnect between what you are doing during your exploration/adventuring and what you do in camp, and while Solasta's solution wouldn't be my first pick (that award would go to Kingmaker/Wrath of the Righteous, that allow for camping almost anywhere given the right conditions, but at a price) I still find it far more a far more convincing (and economical) design choice. Permitting camp in few areas "suited for the task" contextually to the game world or as part of the travel time was simple and elegant.

- I have no idea of what you EXACTLY mean with "battleground area setup", but if we are talking about environment I can tell you that Solasta has actual verticality in its scenarios. Flying things actually fly rather than floating two inches from the ground, wall climbing is an actual thing characters and monster can do, you can set "ready actions" and so on.

- While I still rate the overall BG3 experience fairly high compared to other titles in the genre (and it's probably the current king of said genre strictly in terms of production value), almost every single thing BG3 changed from the core rules of 5th Edition was NOT a change for the better, so I'm not exactly willing to praise that aspect, either.

- I also don't like Assassin's Creed (one of my LEAST liked popular franchises, in fact) nor I rate particularly highly Skyrim, so there's that as a bonus.


I do agree that BG3 outclasses the two D:OS games easily, though. Which on the other hand as a praise has a vein of irony in it, since a large part of the improvements that make it better come from the fact that it isn't built on their own proprietary ruleset and setting anymore.

There is no way I can express how MUCH I agree with this. First the idea of the camp they create is ludicrous on it's face. That is not some adventurers having a camp,. that is a traveling circus. In addition the camp has no purpose besides a catch all game mechanic. The actual passing of time has little in game meaning, despite the game starting by giving you a sense of urgency. The camp system and implementation in Kingmaker is VASTLY superior.



I really do not like 5E but understand the reasons for moving to it. I have to agree if your gonna use 5E then use it and Solasta did a better job at this.

BG3 has a HIGH production value, but then again considering the size of the studios this is not surprising. However it also "dumbed down" a lot of RPG elements to make a wider appeal. I understand the desire to reach a broader audience, and even applaud it. However I do not understand WHY the more "advanced" aspects could not have been left in the game as options for the player to choose? There could have been a simple option at creation to choose House Rules or Hard Core 5E rules. This in my opinion would have taken BG3 to a whole new level and taken it from GOTY to possible a real content for the CRPG GOAT.

Well, Tuco and Zentu, we are going to just disagree..there's no accounting for taste, as they say.
I didn't like Solasta's mode of travel and rest, and am delighted with BG3's way.
What can I tell you? Maybe I' just one of those old ignorant Southerners who never got a proper education.
So sue me.

I had no fun playing DOS2 exactly because the rules are not DnD and I do not want to learn new rules. I only passed ACT1 once, may be I ll give it another try
I am playing and playing continuously BG3 because it is using DnD rules

CRPG replace role play pen and paper and gold boxes, which are using DnD rules

It's been so long since I played Kingmaker I really don't remember the camping system, so I can;t say. Question for you both...are you still playing BG3?

After close to 500 hours and finishing the game 4 times, I have moved on. I might return if Larian does something to add new content but as the game stands now I have played it enough I can cheese through it easily even in Honor Mode. For my CRPG needs right now I am doing Kingmaker, with WotR, Solasta, Witchstone and Rogue Trader all waiting in the wings. I am also playing Enshrouded for my coop gaming itch.

As for the camping in Kingmaker, it is a bit more complex but also makes more sense. Each character in the party has a role fore the camp. Either hunting food, standing guard, concealing the camp or being the cook for the night. This creates a small feel of an extra dimension to the characters. The cook can try special recipes that can give the party buffs for the next day. Also a camp could be randomly raided during the night, this depends on your guards and ability to conceal the camp. Camping in a Dungeon is VERY different as there is no ability to "hunt" or to cook, so you carry rations specifically for such camping needs only.

Further camping is not a simple, lets do it to get our spells thing. Camping is sometimes required as passage of time is real in Kingmaker. Your party members become fatigued and you need to camp as not doing so has detrimental effects. Further the camping itself takes time and this plays into the fact that many quests and events are time limited based on the game world's calendar.

Compared to BG3 this is a ROBUST and deep camping system. Also in Kingmaker, camping will not allow you to switch companions, for that you need to be a safe location like a city.