Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Why change spells?

There is nothing deep in this topic ... i just wonder and would like to hear some thoughts.
So:
Why do you think that Larian changed certain spells functionality?

And just to be clear ...
Im not really buying that "some things dont translate well into video games" ... i mean, yeah they sometimes dont, but not in cases im talking about honestly.

Lets just take few examples:
1) Haste ...
I mean sure, its much stronger this way and to be perfectly honest it is a little bit weird, when you think about how it works in tabletop ... BUT ... would it be doable, to translate it faithfully?
I beleive it would ... after all, Gloomstalker is showing us that add single attack that dont mess with your action economy is something the game can manage easily. o_O
So ... why the change?

2) Phantasmal Force ...
This is honestly one of my most beloved spells in low/mid-level tabletop games ... and yet, it somehow managed to be on almost every list for "worst spells in BG-3".
And i understand the appeal for the argument for bad translation here ... since you simply cant let people to make any illusion they want, things have to be perfectly defined in videogame ... but again, would it be doable?
And once again ... i believe it would ... lots of spells have multiple options so if Phantasmal Force would have option to create a mob (like Invoke Duplicity does), or object that would surround enemy (like Entangle does), or some kind of 10f wide obstacle capable of harming people (like Wall of Ice/Fire/Stone does) ... it all seems doable to me. :-/

Next part puzzles me even more tho ...
And this is not just matter for Phantasmal Force ... but really many spells (or effects as the matter of fact) that should require Ability check, works with Saving Throws instead ... and i wonder why.
Not just that it takes away synergy between classes (its quite fine to have Warlock in your party, who is Hexing to make your Fears/Entangles/Illusions harder to negate ... not in here tho) ...
But those Saving Throws are often made automaticly at the end of each turn, making lots of spells not really worth casting. :-/
And i just cant understand ... why? O_o

And last part directly related to this ...
I cant seem to understand how exactly should this works with Invisibility ...
When NPC goes Invisible ... im basicaly screwed, unless i sacrifice potion, scroll, spellslot or an eye ... and coresponding Action/Bonus Action ...
When PC goes Invisible ... NPC goes investigate for completely free (or at least i never noticed they would need to scarifice their action to do so, they were attacking me the whole time) ...
What the hells is happening here?

Anyway, thats all from me for today, feel free to share your opinions, looking forward to read them.

Invisibility, before it bugged out for me and only enemies could practically use it anymore, usually cost them their turn to investigate. Though, maybe not. It can be difficult to spot when going invisible near a ton of enemies, but I think I remember it being pretty good in wasting Duergar's time. Don't quote me on that, that was half a year ago.

A good counter to NPC invisibility appears to be the wet affect, since that gives them the same bug it does me. Say goodbye to your invisibility for 3 turns, hah!

Haste now DOES add just a single attack rather than doubling the entire turn like action surge, if you are playing at Tactician or above (Honor mode).

Rather than “doesn't translate well into video games” maybe it was more a case of lack of imagination.

Rag gave some pretty interesting and cool ideas there which do seem translatable.

Because despite the fact that Larian asked to get permission to make a BG game and the fact that BG games are based on the established ruleset found in DnD... Larian very clearly wanted to make their own thing.

Between all the homebrew and their statements about how "Restrictive" the DnD ruleset is, it's very apparent that Larian wanted to make their own game that uses their own rules and that the BG IP itself means nothing to them besides a way to gain popularity.

So they changed the functionality of various things. Often to make them even more powerful (Haste giving a complete standard action, including for spells. Tavern Brawler affecting throwing weapons and unarmed. Fast Hands allowing for ANY bonus action instead of just a Cunning Action. Etc.) because it's what they wanted to do rather than anything to do with its ability to translate accurately into a video game.

Which is honestly why I don't buy their reasoning for capping out at level 12. The problem of "Spells being difficult to translate into a video game" argument loses weight when they so clearly homebrew so much of what they did include anyway.

Wich only prooves it was allways possible to do. O_o
Im confused.

Yeah, that crossed my mind aswell ...
Either that or just general "i like it better this way" approach was my main 2 tips.

Oh thank you. ^_^
Maybe it will inspire some moder.

why = chaos
team 1 does patch 2, team 3 does patch 4 and a year or two latter they show what they made wich goes to EA a day later busting the game and every has to FIX it now before twitter explodes

this means coder 1 in new york made a change to the spell in order to get it working at midnight before going to bed and coder 2 in France changed another thing to get reaction spells working... then a year later Larian went with a different way of making reactions work but no body has got around to checking all the code yet [until they want to add mods of course]

yes there was covid and the 'reams' are all over the world with people leaving and new people coming then you get a memo that 'this' is the new plot etc

can it be fixed = in most cases yes... assuming fans put the effort into it for the next couple of years

Haha well said.