Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Honor mode still too easy

Since the Gold dice were a nice motivating factor, they should keep with that. Like there could just as easily be the Green D20, the Red D20, the Black D20 etc. for the full spectrum like belts in martial arts or whatever.

I think I would also be interested in achievements which would play up or highlight different riffs on the difficulty curve, like with different characters or classes. Maybe with Duo Tone D20s for more variety.

Maybe we get a D20 for the "Autumnal Hues of Gale" if you complete the game with him as your partner, or I don't know, but they could do that for many things where the challenge keys off a particular set of tactics or goals that might be associated specifically, so it needn't be a one off or one size/color fits all.

I can think of a number of ways right now that the game might be made more difficult, or perhaps just more tedious or more meta depending on the perspective. Ideas for that might be...

Withering Silence: Where you never say hi to Withers or use any of those features of the game, declining when offered. Some sort of Black and White D20 that looks like it's from the silent film era.

Dirt Nap: the above plus permanent death for the Companions. So perhaps a companion can be resurrected once, but you gotta drag them to a temple or use some form of divine intervention where they can cap it. I don't know say it removes all the revivify scrolls from merchants or just makes them so prohibitively expensive that it's effectively off the table after the first time. This way you can keep the narrative stuff in play that may require a death/revivify mechanic for story reasons, but where that's limited to just one near death per character. Or something along those lines.

Or you could do some stuff in between. Say a narrower limit on the total number of camp followers so that Hirelings/Zombies only come into play once the regular group is thinned out.

For something on the other end of the spectrum, the Rainbow Bridge D20 might make it so that there is never a Pet Semetary situation with Scratch. Basically so he can be part of the team the whole time. You know like for the custom difficulty riffs, where you can pick and choose, cause that's one I'd like. To my thinking Scratch sort of becomes the animal companion for a Ranger or Druid in this game, or a familiar for whichever character doesn't generally get to have one as part of their class package.

For that I think it'd be fun to isolate out certain things from the difficulty mode that way, to make it more forgiving along one axis to make room for more challenge on another if that makes sense. I guess the general idea there would be a way to encourage/force the player to use the Help action, which is typically just completely overshadowed by potion healing or divine healing magic. There are some bones in the cupboard on this one, like with the idea of stabilizing the downed, but it sorta goes instantly out the window once you got a few potions in the pack and ranged healing spells. Here maybe that is removed, and in exchange the dog never truly dies while playing like that. I just feel that should somehow be a thing here, not necessarily for the challenge, but just as a nice touch and thing that would surely make me give it another run around.

I like how they somehow captured the haptics of rolling dice here, even if they're not actually in-hand and just a trick of the flickering screen, I think it's a bit of a hallmark now.

I hope that whatever Larian ends up doing for their next game, that they will be remembered for really capturing that D20 and making it feel special. It's something BG3 gave us that really adds to the sense of BG legacy. Because, for all their gloriousness in so many other respects, BG1 and BG2 kept the dice pretty under the hood, whereas BG3 really tossed em out there on the table for all to see!

I thought I would get tired of dice animations eventually when I first started playing this game, but it never really happened for me. I still dig watching em roll! That's a bit of a feat right there in and of itself hehe

Anyhow, just a thought

ps. knock on, so a further idea would be to associate a D20 with the player character, rather than the player. So say Astarion rolls a check for the lockpick, might show his Ascended/Redeemed color combo. Or like maybe Shadowheart has a Moonlit D20 and Shar D20 depending on what the player did with her character in the various runs. Same deal as like in MP where two player characters might want to rock different colored dice. Not that they need to go so insane with it all that it feels arbitrary, but just a progressive way to complete a big D20 ultra bag through replay. I think this could also play into the whole idea of NPCs unlocking as companions or other similar rewards of that sort. Things which don't necessarily alter all the mechanics at once, but that could play off whatever the desired/hardest setting, by setting alternative parameters that might be entertaining. People will likely keep looking for ways and excuses to run it again, cause it's good a BG game, but anytime it's a customizable choose your own adventure type difficulty I sometimes get lost in the weeds trying to pick. The other reason I like it, is because if you can get out to say a couple dozen color combos that's a lot more room to get two or more ideas working together. So I don't know say the Red and Muddy Green Nightmare on Elmstreet D20 achievement has a way to pace the long rests built in to the challenge, or perhaps nerfs back down to one short rest like in the earliest access, but then add on top of that you might be a Wizard, with some extra safety color to the Die, and suddenly it's got a different dimension to it right? I think something like that could certainly work, cause they just did it, and it was pretty.

I'll just still keep with my general and totally highball it. We have 3 different D20s right now, but to do it right maybe we need 256? lol

I mean that is one way to make good on the whole 'more endings than you could possibly fathom promise. People would definitely probably want to work through the palette for Baldur's Gate of Many Colors. Dyes for the Dice more or less, but making it part of the gameplay challenge.

pps. oh oh, and in Nightmare mode, fallen companions might return and visit us in our dreams for weird surrealist nightmare interludes. So the Haunted One background could be properly haunted. I don't know if it's even possible, but like say they got some stuff on the cutting room floor that didn't quite fit, maybe it gets tossed into that one. So like Minthara's revenge to break our mind from beyond the grave. Or Halsin's still trapped in the Shadowfell. Alfira's playing the lute at the Last Light, but then suddenly we're in the boiler room with Marcus and Isobel. The music boxes all start playing backwards. Wither's has hair! For the below ? I have no doubt mods will pull something together and this game will have some legs, or just really long arms. I look forward to it, but again the pick and choose can overwhelm. I mean you never know, maybe some devs will mod, or mods will dev, stitch it all together in one nice package, but it just takes a lot longer, because they wouldn't have the same sorta push, where everyone is all on the same page there. I think it could work on console more readily too, where modding is just not really an option. Ideally they would all sync up in presentation. Probably a moonshot, but while we're tossing em out there.