Larian Studios
Posted By: Vaell Inconsistencies with Baldur's Gate and D&D - 29/10/20 02:28 AM
I have been playing D&D a long time, and i have loved a lot of what i have seen about this game... but also am disturbed by quite a lot of it as well. Here are some major outliers.

  • Targets of 1 for skill checks? I know this is 5e, but this is one of the worst changes ever made to D&D. It waters it down and makes a lot of things way too easy to achieve. A good dm can compensate for this, but this is a videogame. I doubt the game will have the intelligence to dynamically change a result behind the screen to keep the game fun for effect. So in this case the 1= failure is essential to keep things interesting. A skill check is ALWAYS a minimum of 2 unless some special circumstance is at play. Why? Because a roll of 1 is ALWAYS a failure for skill checks. This is at the very core of how D&D works. Please fix this. It is shockingly annoying and off putting. Critical misses also seem to have next to no consequences, make them cause stray fire that hits a friendly or the environment instead, or even make you drop your weapon on the ground. The game would be way better off for it.
  • You can freely pass items to each others inventories while in combat. Is this a bug or an oversight? Transferring an item to others should use up your free action and require proximity while in combat. If no free actions are available it should use your movement to do so. This system makes the game way easier to cheese. Please fix this.
  • Multiclassing. Please make sure you include this down to the letter. It is at the very core of what makes D&D what it is, player choice and flexibility.
  • Many character creation options are missing. Here is an example: In the official handbook, humans may choose between a bonus to their ability scores, proficiency in a skill of their choice, or a bonus feat. This option is missing entirely along with many other options for characters. I do hope this is only due to the early access nature of the game.
  • The darkness spell. It's supposed to be a spherical mass that no light or vision can penetrate that cancels all light around it, except under very specific circumstances... but in this game it looks like some piddly smoke cloud. This is a very sad attempt and just looks incredibly lazy. I hope very much this is just a placeholder asset. Most of the spells look great, but why is darkness so sad looking?
  • The music. The music is very much divinity original sin, this is not a good thing. Don't get me wrong, the music is not bad at all but it is very out of place. When i play this game i want to feel the history of D&D and baldurs gate, the music currently in the game does the opposite. The soundtrack needs a complete overhaul.
  • Stealth. Why do we get to freely see the cones of vision of enemies we haven't even seen yet? This is a relic of divinity and needs to be tweaked. We should require a perception check to see the cones of vision of other characters, and these checks shouldn't be easy to pass either. Cones of vision shouldn't be visible if we can't see the character it belongs to either. It makes NO sense to be able to see cones of vision by default.
  • Give us alternatives for obtaining ability scores. Let us roll for our stats. If we want to sit there rerolling stats for an hour, let us do that. The current point buy system is fine too, just let us choose what kind of system we want to use. It doesn't feel like baldurs gate if i can't roll for my stats.
  • Let us create a full custom party of characters at start up without having to resort to messing around with multiplayer. This is THE way i like to play baldurs gate after the first run. As a long time D&D player i have a library of original characters i created. Being able to create parties with these characters in a game and seeing them come to life was one of the best parts of the original baldurs gate games. This game NEEDS this feature. It is NOT a baldurs gate game without it.
  • WAY too many consumables. Powerful potions and elemental vials everywhere. Potions in the baldurs gate games were fairly common, but the powerful ones were either rare or quite expensive at certain vendors. The amount of consumables needs to be reduced by upwards of 70%. It is actually insane. This isn't divinity. Stop treating it like it is. Get rid of the barrelmancy while you're at it.
Just FYI:

"Why? Because a roll of 1 is ALWAYS a failure for skill checks."

That is absolutely not true. The only time when a 1 is *always* a fail is when you're rolling to attack.

If you have a +9 modifier and the DC is 10 or less, you literally cannot fail the check.
Posted By: CMF Re: Inconsistencies with Baldur's Gate and D&D - 29/10/20 02:40 AM
Skillchecks being higher than 1 and inventory sharing in combat is fair feedback I guess, and I agree.

Multiclassing is missing, but I think they are trying to work around that for simplicity sake? We shall see if they add it, same with the character creation, it seems it was streamlined so options were removed on purpose.

Darkness and music feedback is subjective. I don't think it is fair or practical to say completely overall the music score. I like the music and it gives the game a theme and identity. Makes me wonder if the 'down by the river" is going to come to play in some sort of narrative or plot point in the game.

Stealth feedback is fair and couldn't hurt to apply. May make things more difficult though, unless there can be a change to the interaction to being in range of a target and initiating combat. Maybe if you get initiative, the enemy isn't agro yet and you can choose to back up and setup properly.

I am kind of against the masochism of rolling for stats. I think some D&D players are too addicted to dice.

The multiplayer thing for sure should be addressed. It is a capability within the game itself to have more than one custom character, so they just need to add menu options to create it instead of user work arounds.

Consumables concerns is understandable, but this is very early in the game and the more powerful ones are pretty rare right now. Food is basically a regular potion.

Barrelmancy hate is just more "play it my way" hate. You just said "if we want to sit there rerolling stats for an hour, let us do that". Then you said to get rid of barrelmancy, but if they want to sit there and gather a bunch of exploding items instead of take the fight head on....let them do that!
© Larian Studios forums