It's night and day between the two games. Insofar as classes, items, skills, feats, spells, hp, and combat are concerned. Solasta really proves that staying closer to 5e rules really works. That maybe implementing hundreds of home brew changes to a core game that has over four decades of balancing, improving, and expanding on D&D mechanics to derive at 5e may not be the solution. There's thousands of threads already about how implementing one core change can influence multiple other mechanics in the game, and Larian has introduced hundreds of changes to 5e without understanding how these influence other aspects of the game, and create severe balancing issues. You know you've really messed with balancing issues when you have to implement loaded dice to manipulate computer generated probabilities because your game is so unbalanced. What a mess. They can say it's because 5e is the issue, even though this is barely recognizable as a 5e game, and they had to make all the home brew changes because it's a video game, but Solasta proves otherwise.

Lol. Join the D&D Works in Solasta Club! 😄

Some of us here are trying so hard to make this point too. The one why Solasta really kills BG3 is that it does 5e right.

That's said, I have learned that part of the issue is that Larian is not just trying to appeal to 5e fans. You have a LOT of people out here who really hate 5e rules and want the game to be more like DOS or even other video games totally unrelated.

But, this game is Forgotten Realms. It was marketed as a 5e game. So, in my opinion, the non-5e people should take more of a back seat. I know that sounds harsh, but making a D&D world game NOT true to D&D is like throwing elements of Star Trek into Star Wars and saying it's okay, they're both Sci Fi. Faerun has ALWAYS been about D&D. So the game should be more true to D&D. It should not be a quasi-D&D kinda like DOS game.

Solasta does play a lot better. It's more tactical and it feels a lot better without the cheesy exploits.

At this point we can just hope Larian will acknowledge and respect that many people feel like this and will offer a mode that's as close to RAW as possible, instead of just shoving their way of "fun" down everyone's throat. Personally, the combat in BG3 is in a state that just ruins the game for me. I need an actual tactical challenge without all the silly high ground backstab pig head stuff. And for replayability's sake the focus needs to shift from the environmental gimmicks and modifiers to class abilities.

While it might be easy to change something like Disengage from bonus action to action through difficulty settings, the resting system is something that can't be changed by a simple difficulty setting. Unlimited free resting is a big problem in a system that has been designed around a finite amount of resting. So I really hope they consider how to give players a chance for an authentic D&D experience and build the game with that in mind from the ground up.

Preaching to the choir, of course, but yeah I agree! Most probably do. =)
Still, I am completely OK with Larian homebrewing some if they do it properly, but so far it's just unbalancing the game and making too many things silly. Solasta's implementation is insanely spot on, though, yeah. =)

I just hope the end result of BG3 will be freaking awesome. I am sure they wish to homebrew a lot, but... I just hope it will ultimately be fun and balanced and not too silly in the end.

I am sure that nothing "kills" BG3 because the difference between number of players of BG3 and Solasta is global. And I believe that the developers make the game on different engines, which can create certain problems when implementing any mechanics. Not to mention just different views.

Also, Larian seems to be trying to reach a larger layer of players, people here continue to talk as if every gamer has played DnD and understands the mechanics of the board game, but this is a mistake. That's why many people complain about dice, because they do not like "random", they do not understand why this is like that, they are not familiar with DnD they came to play RPG game thats all. Also, these "thousands" of topics are often created by the same people.

I believe that some of mechanics from DnD can be fun and interesting, and will have a good effect on gameplay BG3, but I also believe that if this does not happen, then it's okay, because for me it's just a video game, not a board game. I don't think Solasta or Pathfinder will ever attract as many people as BG3 or even DOS2 which was also very popular. I think Larian has a reason to act the way they do.

So probably the worst thing that could have happened to BG3 is a AAA budget, ironically. High production values, lame shallow gameplay. It happened to Dragon Age, maybe it's simply inevitable.

The only chance is that they somehow manage to create both a "D&D RAW mode" AND a "casual videogamer mode" where people can blow up barrels and never miss or fail skill checks. And that these two modes don't compromise eachother.

Unfortunately if they don't want to isolate one market, they do need to do this. They need a hard core D&D mode. They can even make standard mode casual video game, I hate D&D mode as long as there is a Hard Core D&D mode.

I don't get this though. D&D 5e is far more popular and profitable than this game will ever be. Wizards of the Coats made $814 million in revenue in 2020, while Larian made $12 million in revenue in the same year. Divinity OS II made just over 1 million sales, while 5e D&D has over 14 million current players, even by the lowest estimates. You'd think being closer to the core mechanics of 5e D&D would be a selling feature, not a detriment. 5e D&D is far more popular than this game could ever hope to be.

At this rate I'm going to have to give Solasta its own subforum. :|

Ah, but is it popular enough with video gamers? That's where we may be running into the issue. Not everyone who loves d&d loves video games.

Just look at the threads. You'll see. Lots of people out here hate the RNG and are trying to get Larian to no the opposite route, to move away from 5e.

Lol. I'm sorry Vometia. I can only imagine how much that sucks. IMO, BG3 is way better than Solasta. I've maybe only played 30 hours of that game while over 300 of BG3. I am way too addicted to BG1.

Its just the only game right now to compare to, and again, the rules are much more true to 5e.

I can't even imagine how frustrating it must be sometimes to deal with all of us. You have a lot of patience.

Are you seriously comparing the profits from a video game and a board game right now? Or is it a joke? Do you realize that these are different things, don't you? And that they get paid for completely different products? Different audience, huh? I hope I just didn't understand your irony.

lol.

Actually I know nothing at all about Solasta, it's just the number of references I've seen to it. I mean all the comparisons could well be a positive thing, I was just being snarky. I should go back to finishing off The Outer Worlds and not derailing other people's topics...

I also compared the sales of Larian's last popular game release Divinity OS II at just over 1 million, with the number of people currently playing 5e D&D too, which is 14 million. That's not even including people currently playing other editions of D&D. My point was, 5e D&D has a bigger player base than this game will. So I am suspicious that the decision to deviate so much from the 5e core rules will actually generate larger appeal and sales than just staying faithful to 5e and attracting that audience, along with people not familiar with 5e who enjoy a more balanced game.

Lol. I view Solasta as Marvel Comics and BG3 as the Marvel Movies. Solasta is good, but seeing Hulk smash Loki on the big screen is much more fun. 😁

True, which is why I strictly compared the two games in terms of game and combat balance. Since comparing a crowd funded game from a studio with 15 employees, to a triple A title from a studio with over 250 employees on most other aspects of what makes a video game isn't really fair.

Yep. The only reason I compare the 2 is the rules being more accurately done in Solasta.

The problem is that not all DnD players play video games. It's like focusing on the board game audience when you're creating a video game. Hmm

There should be room for different types of video games: some games that strictly follow the rules and some games that are adaptations. Then people can buy what they like. I love BG3 but am not interested in Solasta. Others may feel the opposite, and some like both.

Baldur's Gate 3 would be perfect if its combat system was more true to D&D and if there weren't so many Larianism ON TOP OF a deep and consistent system/setting.

Yes, Solasta prove that D&D mechanics are good in a video game even if Solasta lack of money and WoTC support to create a very popular experience.

But honnestly who really think that Larian changed the system because "it's a video game" ?

They took the horrible dice rolls during dialogs but they screwed the entire combat system because what ? Tactical combats doesn't work in video games but looking at a dice rolling is fun ?

I guess they changed things because they wanted to create a true Larian game "they would like to play" in a D&D setting... Nothing more.

Solasta is far from being perfect but Larian should hire Tactical Adventure because they know better how to use/play with/exploit D&D's mechanics.

I would much prefer that Tactical Adventures stays independent and small. Nothing good usually comes of a bigger video game developer buying up a smaller one *cough cough* EA buying Bioware

You're right... maybe Tactical Adventure should hire Larian then ?

Welcome to the forums! I love your input.

Seeing two dice changes so soon has me losing faith in the future of the game. If anyone DMs a campaign they can see quickly that fun comes from how everything is designed and presented, not what happened with the dice rolls.

If you add homebrew rules that players get disadvantage from dim light, disadvantage from being on a lower elevation, and players complain about misses... is it the dice? Or is it the homebrew? The fact that Larian chose to change the dice (again) over changing homebrew baffles me.

Agreed. Give me 5e rules difficulty settings and shut me up. I'm just saying, most of the complaints would go away if they just give us a 5e difficulty setting and allowed us the option of implementing a more strict 5e ruleset. Have your loaded dice and homebrew rules, but please give us the 5e.

As the number of rng topics shows, people don't like dice rolls. Aside from the XCOM series, how many games are really based largely on RNG?
How many topics have players complained of not hitting multiple times in a row despite the high %? How many complaints have there been about rng in the conversations?
I remember such a large number of topics of this type that it can be considered a real problem for a large number of players.
Homebrew doesnt matter if the player sees the chance of hitting the level of 80-90 + and then misses several times in a row, most likely he will start to get nervous and in the extreme case will uninstall the game and leave negative reviews.
I suspect that getting an easy advantage is just trying to reduce rng as much as possible.

I see people are still trying to fight for changes. I’ve resigned to the fact that Larian is set in their ways. But I’ll chime in again.

I personally haven’t touched BG3 since the last big patch. I tried messing around with it using mods but the game is becoming annoying. I am now wondering about the longevity of the game.

It’s fun for a couple of play throughs but with each play, you can’t help but see the obvious design problems. The combat system is a major problem but I’m also noticing how grating the group chaining and jumping is on my nerves. It’s like I’m fighting the goblins and the game system.

Simply put, the game is incredibly annoying to play. It’s pretty and has a somewhat decent story but the gameplay is awful. I think people like BG3 in spite of its flaws but those flaws become more and more evident with each play through.

On the opposite side, Solasta didn’t impress me at first with its low budget character graphics and cheaper cinematics. But the game grows on you. The game play flows very smoothly with each action guided by the system. It’s incredibly intuitive.

And it is starting to show more complexity. Tactics isn’t always about high ground or tossing bodies or barrels. It isn’t setting everything on fire. It’s using a variety of spells and counter spells that can change the battlefield. It’s about positioning and moving from one cover to the next and building choke points.

And because the game system works so well, I am becoming more invested in the Solasta world. I am curious where the story will go. And with the ability to build your own dungeons, the game will have longevity.

I have no such feeling for BG3. The only reason I have any investment is due to its connection to D&D and Forgotten Realms which evidence shows to be minor and shallow.

If anything, I don't think they "changed" the system because it's a video game. They originally had a system that worked perfectly in DOS2 and people played using these mechanics.

It is more correct to say that they did NOT CHANGE SYSTEM, because it worked for gamers in their previous game. I assume that the BG3 system is mainly complained about by those who are familiar with the DnD.

Those who are not familiar with the DnD complain only about dice and the limited skills, for obvious reasons, but not a word about DnD rules.

Now here's a good point.

I'm tired of posting feedback without hearing any kind of state of development / plans / roadmap / thoughts from Larian. If they could only state that "there will be a D&D RAW game mode" I could just shut up and wait for it.

Are they even reading this forum??

Maybe they're not sure themselves. Perhaps they're working on it now, but want to make sure they can pull it off successfully before revealing it to the public. Or who knows, maybe they have no intention whatsoever and don't have the heart to tell us.

I for one would love DnD rules. Though I play 5e and love it, I have fun with all the bonus actions they give in BG3. Still, combat encounters feel pretty easy the second time you go through them. It would be nice to have something to up the difficulty. Fewer bonus actions may not seem like much, but they go a long way.


I'm unfamiliar with the Forgotten Realms setting. TBH, this is my first experience with it. I don't think it's connection to DnD is shallow at all. There are some key differences that come from it being a single player video game, like having full control over the entire party, and there are home brew rules, but what DnD group doesn't have home brew rules? My group plays with lingering injuries. Larian has extra bonus actions, environmental effects, super jumps, etc. At the core of it all, it still feels like DnD to me.

Sure there’s homebrew. But if I had a DM who homebrewed as much as Larian did for 5e at the table, I’d leave. This isn’t core 5e with homebrew. It’s core DOS with 5e mods.

I didn't play DOS either, so I can't speak to that. I have to assume that core DOS is a lot like 5e, because BG3's gooey 5e center seems pretty evident to me. D20s affect the same stuff, add your proficiency and ability modifiers. The most radical change I've seen was done to the rogues. No expertise, which is something worth complaining about, but it doesn't ruin the game for me. Thieves gain an additional bonus action, as opposed to the stuff it gets in 5e. No sleight of hand bonus action. Again, worth speaking up about if it bothers you, but for me it's not a deal breaker. What am I missing?

RNG is in may games one way or another. A lot of elements in Doom are based on RNG and RPGs like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy. D&D rules are different in that they allow the player to fail, there is less safety. I remember a lot of people supporting RNG as well, the issue isn't the dice. The issue is who combat is balanced and how homebrew impacts the game. The more they change the dice, the more obvious it is that other aspects are the issue.
This is where comparisons go back to tabletop (closer to rules-as-written) & Solasta. The homebrew does matter, the encounters in Baldur's Gate 3 are lackluster in design, and it would be great if low rolls weren't always represented as misses. Even tabletop D&D starts to become boring when a DM just says "miss", for every roll below the target AC.

Right now Baldur's Gate 3 has avoided playing into the excitement of dice rolls and continues to go that route with each patch. You assert that people in general don't enjoy rolling dice, or random chance. But IRL gambling is a huge industry and people enjoy RNG with reasonable rewards enough to continuously purchase loot crates. Larian has done a poor job representing how exciting dice rolls can be. As of today, they've kept avoiding that as a design choice. (This is no fault of RNG).

If the masses can fall in love with loot crates, they can fall in love with rolling dice in Baldur's Gate 3. Of course, some homebrew would have to be changed/removed for that to happen.

Yep, they want mass appeal. So that is leading towards jack of all trades and master of none.

Have you not noticed a pattern in what they are trying to do? People did not like the dice rolls and hate the RNG. Oh, we will give you loaded dice so you pass the checks way more often despite your characters having poor modifiers or stats.

Oh, we want everyone to hit all the time even at low-level DnD play. We will give everyone ez-pz advantage for both spells (high ground) and melee (backstab) and lower AC across the board so everyone can hit way more often for morale.

Oh, you are not used to resource management and spell slots? No problem. We will make resting unlimited and without restriction so you can have all your spells up all the time and not worry about needing to save them for big battles.



At this point, I am convinced they will introduce a game mode with no dice at all for those that hate any RNG element. And maybe the image and illusion of dice will still be there, but you will pass 100% of non-combat checks.

They are scared to alienate anyone because that is less revenue. It is a lot of people who are interested in this game that only have DOS1 and DOS2 background with no knowledge of 5e mechanics and the training wheels (homebrew and Larian-friendly building) have to be put on so they are more likely to buy and play the game.

Another thing Solasta has even in EA! Sliders and options. Instead, Swen has stated in numerous times very passively about mod support and modders being able to create the game they want. I interpret that in translation as = we are gonna do whatever we want and if you want something else, mod it yourself or wait for a mod support.

Well, why should I (if I am in the minority or not Larian primary concern) have to wait for janky mod support that may or may not crash with every single hotfix or patch done to the game and a stable environment just because I want the game to be more closely aligned with the IP they licensed?



That is exactly what it is. Some players do not want RNG-based mechanics, especially off dice rolls that you do not see. I do think and believe if the dice rolls actually showed up in combat (like Solasta) maybe it would be a little easier to stomach for those complainers.

But look at Larian approach to that, loaded dice was prioritized and already implemented during EA (something not rooted in DnD) while the things that this forum has been asking for (removing lame brain high ground and backstab adv.) is untouched.

Do you really think it is any harder to remove that than it is to add a loaded dice system, which was just now updated again in another (on top of other) hotfixes. So how many man-hours and work days were put into loaded dice. Who is getting the priority with their complaints? It has been clear.

Then, look at the fact, and this is HUGE even if it does not appear to be so, that loaded dice is DEFAULT ON. You would think it would be off and you could turn it on. No, it is default on for a specific reason and it is not a coincidence.

If you downloaded the game and did not follow forum activity, you might not even know about the setting for a while. You are just going along thinking you are hitting and maybe lucky and high rolling.

How could someone complain about something he doesn't know ?

I saw lots of Larian's fan complaining about the lack of action/turn, the unlimited rests, the RNG, the spellslots/features/rest, the too hard/too easy encounters (balance) and so on...

Lots of those people complain because according to them it's D&D's fault... But if you know the rules enough you realize that a huge part of the issues comes from the implementation of the rules... Not the rules themselves.

Unlimited rest which defeats the point of short and long action resets. Backstab advantage just by attacking from behind. Everyone gets a bonus disengage/jump. Eating food for HP, even during combat. Surface effects for a lot of elemental spells and attacks. Dipping. Height advantage/disadvantage. Mages can learn any spell, including divine clerical spells. Tossing healing potions to heal others and creating a surface that heals. No real reactions as of yet and many are suspicious that we won't get it. There's a lot more but that's just from the top of my head.

You know why all these things are in the game? Because Larian likes extra actions for characters. They like surface effects. They like "cheese" as many have mentioned on this forum. And all this cheese came from DOS. Larian built BG3 on the DOS engine and migrated a bunch of the gameplay. So yeah, you roll d20 and have AC, HP and such that resembles 5e but the actual gameplay is a pale comparison to the tabletop version.

Mind you, no one is asking for a full faithful rendition of tabletop but there's a line where the homebrew overshadows the 5e ruleset as written. That's what is happening in BG3.

Look, you like BG3 as is. That's cool. But please understand that the players that have complaints about this game aren't doing it because they are bored or think the homebrews are minor. We all legitimately would like BG3 to be better and we are arguing that currently with all the Larian homebrew, the game is not as good as it can be.

@ReaLMoisan nailed it.

I don't know if Larian will be able correct it's problems because it would require loads of humility. They started this project with an attitude that said: "we've been really successful, we understand how make video games fun" and those feelings of pride lead them to start to project with "well, obviously, the tabletop mechanics won't work in video game . . . . so instead "

Meaning the started on the wrong foot. If they were to regain their footing they would to start with "I guess we weren't the experts in D&D. I guess we underestimated how much people liked the tabletop ruleset. So we are . . ." And I haven't seen anything like that level of humility in their interviews.

Larian has lots of strengths but humility is does not seem to be one of them.

How much invention and brainstorming actually went into faithfully trying to do 5e initially on their engine vs. knowing they were going to splice and dice in order to shift it to DOS as much as possible while creating a mirage of DnD shell?

We will never know. What we do know is the lead game developer said on a video that reactions like Solasta were not viable, Swen has said some DnD 5e mechanics were not viable. Who knows if they did or did not actually try first and what the breaking point was.

We will not because nothing is communicated. Any major issues has been placed as the on-us on modding and modders. What kind of game developer does that and then what was the point of EA if Larian (as they claim) have their own testers and QA.

Look. There are D&D game that don't have RNG. BG Dark Alliance, for example. They were marketed as hack/slash games.

This was not marketed as a hack/slash D&D game. It was marketed as a Turn Based Close to Tabletop D&D Experience. We are not getting that. End of story.

Don't market it as authentic Tabletop D&D PC game and then not do that.

I'm on your side but did they? Their word lawyers did a fine job to leave a lot open for interpretation. Is there a source that says Larian wanted to create an authentic TT RPG?

Again, I'm on your side. I would love BG3 to be more faithful to 5e but I don't remember Larian guaranteeing or even promising such a thing.

I respect that. Giving feedback to improve that game is what EA is for. I do hope they add a classic 5e mode for those that want it. Hell, I want it. I've played through the game a few times and Im in the middle of a few runs with other characters. I've gotten good at the game and would like anything to make the combat more difficult. I also want people to be able to play how they want to play. If people want 5e, then I'm all for adding the option to do so.

All I'm saying is that the game doesn't suffer for having all of the Homebrew in it. I know some people don't feel that way, and sure the Homebrew does allow for cheese, but I'm okay with cheese. The only issue I really hate is the long rest. Unlimited long rests sucks a lot of the difficulty out of encounters. It's not so much a problem for me, because I can self enforce these limitations and stretch my spell slots between three or four encounters. But not everyone plays that way, and self imposing restrictions might ruin some of the fun for them. I really hope they do something about it.

Im not trying to be technical or legal here. Im just saying it was totally presented that way. It was not represented as a hack/slash adventure but a turn based RNG authentic D&D game.

There are D&D hack/slashers and people expect them to be just that. They don't complain when they are not. This game was expected to be a D&D 5e game. That is way so many are upset that it is not. Its the bottom line. I don't care what word lawyers say, if you purposely make people think you are producing a certain kind of game, don't then make it something else.

One of the main reasons I bought this game was for an authentic 5e experience. Now, I enjoy this game. I love it a lot. But the point is that they shouldnt have said it would be 5e and then make it something else.

I tried to answer that question in that post, a little while ago (motivated by a similar question from someone else). My understanding of Larian's vision has probably improved since then, but the core of my post was looking at 4 interviews Larian gave, where they talked about the rules and the DnD/tabletop feel, and what they said won't change.

I wasn't able to provide a definite, clear-cut, yes/no answer to the question. But I found their communication to send mixed signals, saying both "it will be quite close/just some tweaks" and "oh we only focus on a game we'll enjoy playing, not so much on the RAW". And I think that it is very understandable that, as a result from Larian's communications, some players were expecting more faithfulness to the rules.

For so many of us to have expected 5e, that says it all. They marketed so that it would appeal to 5e players who have been wanting an authentic D&D experience on PC. They certainly were not marketing it as a game similar to DOS or Xcom or Baldurs Dark Alliance or even Neverwinter or whatever. I remember specifically it was supposed to be as close to 5e as possible because that was one of the things that drew me in. I like BG1 and 2. I liked Dark Alliance. I had no problem with them because I knew what I was getting.

Again, love BG3. But I will probably gripe until they give me a 5e option for rules because that is what they communicated to me.

No. I take that back. I will gripe until they make a decision and tell me what direction they are going. If you aren't gonna have authentic 5e, then just tell me so. I'll be happy and shut up and enjoy the game for what it is. If you decide to give us 5e through a difficulty setting or something, great. Tell me and I'll accept it and shut up. But until you tell me what way you're going, I'm gonna keep voicing my desire for a true, genuine 5e experience.

I hope you know, as it currently stands, you are penalized on your relationships with companions by waiting to take long rests. Yup. Long rests advance certain companion story lines so if you wait, you miss out.

Right. Again, my expectations were the same as both of you. I'm just saying Larian had very slick attorneys that made sure whatever they said or promised never mentions an authentic 5e experience. And probably will never say one way or another. And why would they? They would end up alienating a whole portion of their audience or worse, promise something that may not or cannot happen.

Do you have any links to where they said that? No one yet has been able to provide one.

Below is what is said on the BG3 steam page. They specifically mention dipping, shoving, and expanded environmental interactions. Some might not want those in, but it shouldn't have come as a surprise that they were.

"The Forgotten Realms are a vast, detailed and diverse world, and there are secrets to be discovered all around you -- verticality is a vital part of exploration. Sneak, dip, shove, climb, and jump as you journey from the depths of the Underdark to the glittering rooftops of the Upper City. How you survive, and the mark you leave on the world, is up to you." ...

"Evolved turn-based combat based on the D&D 5e ruleset. Team-based initiative, advantage & disadvantage, and roll modifiers join combat cameras, expanded environmental interactions, and a new fluidity in combat that rewards strategy and foresight."

The interviews and advertisements where they openly said that this would be a D&D game using the 5e rule set - and they did say that in the early days of promotion - now *Cannot Be Found* Those particular interviews have disappeared or been replaced with 'newer' ones that edge ever further away from really associating with 5e at all.

I am hoping they mean this:

“Since day one of Baldur's Gate 3’s announcement, community discussion, feedback, and organization (thank you) has shaped what we’ve said and done. Though we have a strong vision for the game throughout our team of over 300 people, our goal is to create a game that gets our audience excited, and to maintain a healthy relationship with those who take the time to provide feedback and help us create a better game. We use automatic data collection tools to help us better balance the game but we also listen to forum feedback and use that to drive internal debate. We create massive, sprawling games, and we couldn’t possibly explore every single permutation and combination of skills, choices, reactions and conclusions without our community. Working with your thoughts, feedback, and behaviour helps us to better understand how our ideas are toyed with, and how we can improve things.”

Well, people were wondering if these forums do make a difference and Larian uses them to make changes. It seems it does but not the way some of us had hoped.

The point is, Im not going to sue Larian about 5e. I don't care what their lawyers say. They said 5e, and people expect 5e. To not give 5e is to completely piss off a HUGE part of the WotC fan base. So if they don't want a bunch of D&D fanatics pissed off, they need to give us 5e as indicated if not promised.

Or at least tell us straight. Dont leave us out here wondering if its ever going to happen.

Then you better get mad at WotC also because Jeremy Crawford was on the last panel and he didn't seem like he was complaining on the development of BG3. In fact, the implication was, he agreed with the current direction of BG3.

You guys are all missing the point. I don't care who is responsible, what the lawyers say, what Larian says, the expectation was created. This game was supposed to be 5e. That was what they caused players to expect.

That said, I love BG3. I'm going to still play it. I just think they're going to piss off a huge part of their fan base if they don't do some sort of authentic 5e rules difficulty setting like Solasta did.

To say Crawford agreed with the current direction is a big stretch, Spectral.

I put up a synopsis of the panel itself (Here), but for Jeremy's bit, it was very disrespectful to him and he spent the entire time wearing his PR-plaster smiling face, and only actually looked like he was engaging or growing animated as a person when he was talking about background druid lore. He gave "safe" answers, when offered incredibly loaded, back-handed questions, especially given that he was on a publicity panel for the game that Wizards has already endorsed, and wasn't actually given any real opportunity to speak about his actual forte (being that he is lead for rules design, his entire segment had one single, largely rhetorical question about rules that was worded and loaded in a such a way that he didn't really have much room to answer it, and nothing else).

Sometimes what was not said tells the story more than what was said. Crawford never argued against any of the changes. Yes, they were safe answers. Why was he even there if he wasn't going to answer any meaningful questions? My guess? To put credence and confidence to Swen and company; a sign of official support. Surely if WotC and Crawford aren't against what Larian is implementing, then they are okay with it. That's what I perceived. If that's not what they were hoping for, well, that's not what I got from the panel.

Perhaps personally Crawford may not like it but his personal preferences don't matter if corporate is good with what Larian is doing with the game.

I never actually read through your synopsis because I was so disappointed after watching the (first ~2/3 of the) panel and didn't want to experience it again so soon after. So I read your synopsis just now and...I'm sad. It's just sad. (Not about your summary. Your summary and comments were accurate and great)

Poor Jeremy.

I have no problem whatsoever with stuff like the dipping and environmental actions. It might not be in the core rules, but from what I have read 5e is more rules light. Having an interaction for lighting flammable materials on fire is a good thing to put in a game like this and IMO a sensible building upon of the rules. Stuff like that has happened more than once in games I have DM'd and games I have played in-I feel it would be pretty ruleslawyer-y thing for a DM to stamp their foot down and say 'no you can't light the pool of lantern oil on fire' for example. I just don't want more Blackpits fights down the road.

It *could* use some tweaking- I think the food healing is a bit much and makes the expensive healing potions redundant. They'd be neat to have as sort of a resource for traveling if Larian was going for a more BG I exploration style, or as a requisite for rest healing to reign in the long-rest spam. Acid giving -2 ac feels really unintuitive, and dare I say it, unimerssive. Also really easy to mix up with poison, which is the surface you really need to watch out for, not acid.

I generally don't mind the existence of loaded dice at all. It is an optional thing, and I would rather we spend our effort hammering down the fundamental flaws with the combat system itself than something on the side that manipulates the RNG. The only issue I take with it is that they spent dev resources and time creating and promoting it, rather than addressing the fundamental flaws.

As you've basically said, I don't think the RNG itself is really the issue, it's how the homebrew rules really emphasize the absolute extremes of the RNG. It skews everyone's perception to the point where any attack without advantage is seen as a bad probability. Hence my constant arguing on Reddit last week where I mention that the combat system of BG3 at its very core is deliberately designed around using DOS-style homebrew mechanics to completely circumvent DnD RNG, and failing to take advantage of said mechanics means you immediately get slapped with penalties that mess with your RNG to a level far worse than you'd ever see from literally any other turn-based game. People need to realize that someone responsible for the combat design in this game really put actual thought into things like shoving from stealth having a 100% success rate, along with damaging field effects and exploding barrels not allowing any kind of saving throw to mitigate their effects.

It's kind of like video game reviews. 'Journalists' hand out 8-10 scores so often now, that anything lower than that is seen as a terrible game by all metrics. Even now, an AAA game scoring less than a 9 is seen as a complete failure.

Seriously. Bottom line. Larian created expectation. Larian has yet to deliver on the expectation. Larian has not told us whether they are actually going to deliver on the expectation.

So, the bottom line is: Let Down Expectation + No Word About Whether They Will Deliver On Expectation = Lots of Angry D&D Fans = A Huge Chunk Of The BG Fan Base Not Happy = Many Complaints In Forums = Many Potential Players Not Buying The Game Because They Think It Sucks = Less Money For Larian = No Future BG Titles Created = 1 Very Sad Gm4Him

It is sad.

WotC is part of Hasbro, which is a giant corporation. It is likely this entire panel run along a pre-agreed scenario, and that they have decided beforehand what they would speak about and what not.

I remember when HotU (the expansion to Neverwinter Nights) came out and at some point players discovered that it was supposed to have several endings. They were still left in the actual module, just blocked with a comment that it was removed on request from WotC. Frankly, I doubt WotC has a different deal with Larian now, and that they would now hesitate to interefere in game development when they didn't before.

I think it is possible that this reimaging of tabletop rules for a digital game is actually WotC's corporate strategy for this segment of products (that is computer & console gaming).

After I read your post, I thought more about the fact that they directly said that all DnD rules will be changed. I think the main argument is that they never said that would be absolutely accurate, so any change on their part can be justified. It is likely that the players only saw what they wanted to see.

Also about this guy from stream...

I watched the entire stream, obviously they called him in to show that WotC supports their direction. And in fact, BG3 really helps them, many people who were not interested in FR will now be interested more.

I think the people pushing for closer 5e mechanics are actually in the minority. This game was hyped and backed by Larian off the overwhelming success of DOS2, which is where the most of its player base is going to come from.

Those like us that want a 5e experience are in the minority. Of course, many of us have already paid for the game and will probably give it at least 1 full run on release but I have no doubts this game will be commercially successful because the DOS base is so large and wants another release from Larian.

We are just bonus revenue and headcount. That is the reason I feel Larian will not abandon their homebrew to shift away from RNG, resource management, and 5e mechanics because they want their DOS2 returning customers not to be alienated.

If the 5e players were in the majority, we would not still be asking them to remove height advantage over 6mo. into EA when it could easily be turned off.

I don't ever remember Larian promising to faithfully recreate 5e in BG3. The pitch as far as I remember was: "We want to be as close to 5e, but we are not afraid to make changes to make it more fun". It's just that portion of audience disagrees if changes they made result in better experience. I can't think of an instance when Larian could be accused of misleading their audience.

This is pointless. Why are we debating this? It doesn't matter what any of us thinks they said or meant. No amount of defending Larian matters. None of this matters except 1 thing.

This game is a D&D game. D&D fans want D&D 5e rules. If they don't put a setting in to make D&D 5e rules more strict, D&D fans are going to be upset. Thus, they will lose D&D fans. Just go back and look at the post history. See how many posts are from people upset about not getting true 5e rules. It's not the minority.

This forum is quite small and you don't get that many posters here, though. The amount of posts here don't say much, at least not compared to big data from steam sales & charts. I'd not expect a corporation Hasbro's size to make commercial decisions based on forum posts. Consider that the other big name game WotC ic currently marketing for is Dark Alliance, which happens to be a co-op PC / console action game. My guess is that why WotC went with Larian; their target is the co-op gaming market, especially consoles, which is where you get the big sales.

Sigh. The point is that it is a D&D game. Upsetting D&D fans by not giving them what they are expecting is just silly. It's like creating a trilogy of Star Wars movies and not giving Star Wars fans what they were hoping for just so they can appeal to non-Star Wars fans.

Oh wait! I think Disney did that, didn't they. I wonder how that turned out. Oh yeah. Lots of upset Star Wars fans who have given up on the franchise and Disney isn't quite sure what direction to go in now.

But whatever. I don't know why there are so many who are resistant to the idea of Larian creating a 5e authentic difficulty setting. It wouldn't harm anyone's gaming experience and it would shut D&D fans up and make them happy. We're talking an optional setting. So why resist it and argue about it? If Larian is wise, they'll give us the option. If not, whatever. I guess we'll see how the poop storm is that will follow. Maybe it wont be that bad. Who knows?

But the ask should still be made. Please give us a 5e option.

Dark Alliance is called a D&D game too (in fact it's in the game title), yet combat looks very different to both BG3 and Solasta.

Wait What? HoTU has cut endings? I have never heard of this, but it sounds really fascinating.

WoTC interfering with games is not new though. Obsidian was infamously blocked from implementing the ability to end the Wall of the Faithless in NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer by WoTC, which was awful since so much of that campaign revolved around what a horrific cosmic injustice its existence was. But they *did* let you eat Myrkul's soul. Fast forward to 5e and here we have references to the Wall quietly scrubbed from the books and Myrkul spontaneously reappearing and back in the spotlight. WoTC.

I think Iron Man 3 might be a fairer comparison. Marvel comic fans HATED the changes, they complained loudly and constantly and the film was still a critical and commercial success because companies aren't under the thumb of tiny niche audiences.

If Larian make a bad system then that will cost them, critically and commercially. If they make a good system that has a handful of Very Important Differences to 5E that makes a small number of people very angry then no-one else is going to care.

Whatever. You guys are relentless. Argue all you want. Im done.

I don't understand why you guys feel the need to shoot down people's suggestions that won't hurt you at all. There is literally no reason for you to defend Larians decisions. If they give people a 5e difficulty option, it won't hurt you. If they don't, it won't hurt you, so either way, it won't hurt you, so why do you feel the need to argue endlessly against having a 5e difficulty that would make more people buy the game? I just don't get it.

But whateves. Im wasting too much of my life arguing pointlessly with all of you.

Larian, I really humbly ask you give us 5e difficulty. For the sake of all of us who like the 5e game, pretty please. Thank you.

Love BG3. Can't wait for more.

Just my 2 cents.
Personally I don't really care how they were marketing the game and how D&D 5e accurate the rules should be in general. But I think a quite big portion of people are criticising the homebrew rules and saying that Larian should have a good reason for any changes they implement, and that the changes should make the game better - and i fully agree with this statement.

Based on my understanding of the original D&D rules, the changes made to BG3 EA (and well, based on my experience with Solasta) i have to say im in the camp who would like to see options (or as others said a 5e difficulty mode) to be able to alter/revert some changes. The reason im saying this is not because then it can be a true d&d game or it can be what they said they plan to make (i will leave these arguments for others), i just feel some of the Larian changes made the EA less tactical and less fun for myself and that these are not related to BG3 being a videogame. I completely agree that in a videogame things should be more fluid than in tabletop and hence, changes need to be made but i dont like the current approach to resting and combat 100% (i really like some things they added like the weapons specific skills and the shared initiative thing). BG3 does a lot of things outstandingly in my eye and I was open minded for ruleset changes, but at this point (after 3 EA playthroughs) i feel that the long rest spam and current action economy balance - even as it felt like something cool and modern thing at first, because yeah you can play however you want - eventually took away from the overall experience and challenge. Based on many posts and threads here and on Reddit as well around topics like healing food, jumping, disengage, OP high ground bonus, scrolls used by everyone etc... it seems im not alone. The game obviously has very positive steam review ratio because it looks and sounds gorgeous and has a very good introduction to the world and story, but one has to consider many people like myself did not leave a steam review at all yet (i gave feedback via the launcher though) because i have some gripes which i expect to alter my experience on the long run and i save my final steam review for full game.

What i want to say, its okay to alter things/add new stuff by them but its important to make them think what some of the homebrew changes can mean for a 100 hour game, designed for multiple playthroughs, because something can look/sound cool at first (hey i can do this with all my characters any time so cool!) but it can also mean that it takes away from building really cool class-specific tactics and party dynamics through that and while i agree not everything needs to be balanced, some things being really OP can mean tactics used over and over again can make the second half of the game repetitive over time (im looking at you DOS2 with the lot of teleportation skills, the armor system and the number bloating). Keep things as they are would not necessarily be reflected in sales or reviews when its releasing as the game would be still really cool, but in the eyes of many I think these could be something holding it back to become a legendary RPG.

I do trust Larian though and I believe its a really good choice they put this game to EA first, so we can give feedback like this and they can look into making the game more cool. Im sure that they see these complains (these are popping up constantly now, its impossible not to see) and i think we will see at least some options added or more of their comments around this topic in the near future. As many others said, we also want the game to turn out to be amazing and to be enjoyed fully by as many people as possible (which includes players who would like to have more challenges and tactics in the future state of the game, as myself).

Here's an example of the combat mechanics in Divinity Original Sin II. Load an ornate chest or backpack with as much weight as possible (literally 1000's of kg), spec into telekinesis (to lift 1000's of kg), and wits and scoundrel (to guaranty over 100% critical chance) and throw the chest at enemies, doing 10K damage with one attack. It's guarantied to one shot any enemy in the game with every attack. Dozens of other broken mechanics are rife in every Larian game. A year after the release of Divinity Original Sin II, Larian made a massive balance patch just to try to make their game somewhat balanced for the none cheese tactic players, and I considered it too little, too late. The game was still highly imbalanced regardless of cheese, and cheese strategies: whether features or exploits still existed, and they were numerous, and game breaking balance wise. Larian make the most mechanically broken games I've ever played in the genre. I could never imagine Larian making a game as nuanced, strategic, and balanced as Tower of Time. It took D&D decades of refinement to get to 5e, and while its not perfect, most would agree it's fairly mechanically balanced. Which is the exact opposite of anything Larian has ever developed to date.

The only reason I gave this game a chance was because I figured if Larian stayed faithful to the core mechanics of 5e D&D, they would have the foundation for a balanced game. I really hoped they stayed true to the numbers and mechanics of 5e, not because I am a fan of 5e, but because it was an opportunity for Larian to make their first mechanically balance game. All the numbers, all the math, and all the balancing was already done for them, how could they mess that up? I hoped that was Larian's intentions behind using the D&D licence, and 5e mechanics. Using 5e core mechanics would give Larian an opportunity to make a game on the foundations of a mechanically solid system. Instead, they made a 5e and DOS chimera, and it's a monstrosity.

I think the dialogues for the cut NWN endings you can read with the toolset. In one ending you could use the true name on the big bad to make him your companion as you wander the planes.

And I am not surprised WotC prevented the best good MotB ending. Yet in the evil ending you are allowed to kill gods, somehow that was not a problem for the setting.

Honnestly I'm not sure at all they're interrested in "balancing" their games.
I mean... It looks obvious that the game couldn't be balanced at all if they designed unbalanced mechanics as base mechanics...

Players : "Will there be a lone wolf mode like in DoS" ?
Larian : "Yes, that's something players asked a lot" "No, using a few base mechanics will allow you to solo'd the game"

Larian promotes cheese/imbalance/exploits under the guise of creativity and problem-solving. That is just their brand.

Swen said in an interview they were skeptical and hesitant when first getting into taking on BG3 because they feared WoTC would make them be as faithful to 5e as possible, but they later found out they was some wiggle room.

A lot of their employees are quirky and very jovial, sticking to pre-made source material with minimal deviation would be a slow death for them. For better or worse, they enjoy experimentation through their creations but that is not what is needed in BG3 in excess.

Really wish they would limit that to the Divinity-verse and truly isolate this game from the rest of their library. And if the opportunity comes for more 5e content, so be it.

Who knows now if there will be a DOS3. Remember Larian was going to do Divinity: Fallen Heroes which has a lot of features they bundled into BG3. The shared initiative and new TB adaptations were all things that were going to be in their next Divinity game.

Once they got the green light for BG3, they announced the indefinite pause on Fallen Heroes and began working on BG3.

They can totally allow such things in a balanced game...
The problem is that they're balancing their games arround unbalanced mechanics.

I'm laughing when they're talking about creativity and thinking out of the box.
Like if using consumables, base mechanics/buttons was "thinking out of the box and being creative".

The worst part of it is that players are proud to "think out of the box" when they use a 7D6 poison damage to kill the bulette in 1 turn, when they use a void bulb found in the tutorial to damage lot of ennemies or when they use thunderwave to OS the matriarch spider...

D&D have tons of options/spells/actions/features to encourage creativity and Larian just overshadowed them.
If their mechanics were balanced arround the balanced rules they're using, everyone could enjoy the game as they want : a tactical game that has tons of possibilities or a game you can cheese.

You know what's funny? I would never have guessed this method if you hadn't written it. These are things that you may NOT WANT TO USE, because this is not an online game or something like that, where you definitely need to use the most "strong way". It always amazes me how people ruin their own game. How they come up with the idea of carrying barrels or something like that.

You know, Larian can have problems with strategy or interface, but when people here talk about things like "I'm carrying 300 barrels, it ruins my game" I'm amazed. Just don't do it. I have 100+ hours in DOS2, I have never used it, I did not even think about it.

And I do not want to speak for everyone, but my opinion is that many people will not even guess that it is possible and necessary to do...

Speaking about DOS2, game can be played without these methods. So why you don't do it? Because someone on YouTube showed you what could be easier? Larian doesn't force you to use it.

Speaking about BG3 there are situations that are still really difficult to get through without it...

....BUT

this is EA, we have only 4lvl. For example, it is very difficult for me to protect grove without blowing up barrels. This is only place where game told you to "use barrels".

Another problem for me - gits 5lvl, after 4th patch they became more difficult, but thats mean Larian changes something. Cuz I dont have problem with gits on patch 3.

That backpack, telekinesis mechanic was something I came up with myself. I only used it once, because I had an idea it would work, and I had to try it. Out of curiosity I made a save and edited it to test the tactic as if I actually specked into using that strategy because I had to know what the numbers and feasibility would be. I couldn't imagine having to teleport and telekinesis that backpack to every encounter, because that doesn't sound like fun to me. Why are you presuming I used this exploit or any others through the game, because I certainly didn't say that. I've played every game Larian has released, and I've never completed any of them. I tried DOS II again after they released their massive balance patch, and I still found the gameplay extremely lacking. I've been playing these types of games since before the release of Pool of Radiance in 1996. I was also an Alpha and Beta tester for such games during that time, so finding the limitations and exploits of game mechanics, and determining game balance is something I am familiar with. Even though I no longer playtest professionally, finding interesting strategies within game mechanics is ingrained into the way I approach any game. Also, game balance isn't about challenge and difficulty. Game balance is about the core mechanics in the game, and how they're balanced with all aspect of the game.

Besides, the issue isn't even with these extreme examples. The issue is with the the changes Larian have made to the core mechanics of 5e, and how these changes fundamentally alter game balance. You can't just ignore most of these changes to the core mechanics of the game, and choose not to use them. Here's an example: do I stop using every damage cantrip that requires an attack roll? Larian has universally lowered enemy AC, and increased hit points to compensate, so using such cantrips feels like an exploit now. Which leaves a few cantrips that require a saving throw and not an attack roll to pick from. It's a good thing spells like magic missile still exist, they're an auto hit (without shield spell), it's too bad enemy's now have around double the hit points, so such spells really feel neutered now. So what do I do about not wanting to take advantage of using high ground, just never use it? That's an insane proposition. High ground sure makes spells like Bless and many other fundamental spells, feats, and class features feel utterly useless now. What's a 5% increase to a chance to hit while also using a spell slot, when I can move the character three blocks to high ground, and statistically get around a 20-25% increase to my chance to hit, all without even using a spell slot. Which is probably why Larian removed Bless from the game. Too bad the Bless spell isn't the only game balance issue to result in adding the high ground mechanic. What about my disengage options, or using backstab? I can point out dozens of changes Liarian have made to the core mechanics of 5e that now all feel like exploits. Some feeling almost as ridiculous as the DOS II backpack exploit I mentioned earlier. So what are my options now for playing the game without using these game mechanics? The issues with this game (or any Larian game) aren't as simple as not using fast travel in Skyrim if you don't like the game mechanic. These fundamental issues and exploits are baked into the core of the game, and they drastically influence game balance.

I currently just finished with Trials of Fire, and it's a very interesting game. My last run after getting familiar with the game was an all magic run on hard difficulty. I beat the game with no defence cards (the games only damage mitigation), no range, and no melee cards in any of the decks. No melee was interesting since the game has a strong mechanic that utilizes free melee strikes when adjacent to an enemy you're attacking with another hero. While using no defence cards fundamentally and drastically alters how you have to play the game. I didn't do this as some challenge, or to brag. Hard isn't even the highest difficulty setting, and I suspect thousands have bet the game on the hardest difficulty with far more unconventional tactics. I did it because my three favourite heroes were primarily magic attack users, and I wanted to enjoy the game playing with those heroes. I didn't have to remove all melee, range, and defence cards from my heroes decks, but I figured it would be interesting to try. Enjoying the game for me personally means no exploits and no cheese, just understanding the mechanics, and creating a strategy that works. I never even grinded the game long enough to unlock all the cards, but I really enjoyed the game. Like Tower of Time I mentioned in the original post, it's a strategic game with RPG elements, both are well balanced, and a challenge to play. Which certainly isn't like any game Larian has developed.

Just quoting what is pertinent to my reply.

This is the gist of it, isn’t it?

It’s easy to say to not to choose cheese options in the game but when the developers expect you to use them, it’s a problem. Goblins almost always rush to high ground. There’s explosive barrels and special arrows everywhere. Larian expects you to use those homebrew mechanics.

It’s the reason why at the grove you have a huge height advantage against the raiders. It why they decided to put barrels in strategic locations. It’s why you can jump and attack with advantage from behind with minimal cost.

You literally have to hamstring yourself to attempt to play this game using 5e rules. If players have to police themselves to maintain some form of balance in the game, that’s not player options. That’s just bad game design.

Let's not forget how even if you didn't want to use the tools/cheese/mechanics, the player is punished. The biggest problem is the cheese isn't optional.
If you don't go for high ground advantage... you get low ground disadvantage. If you don't go for backstab + shove, the goblins will.

Exactly. Those core mechanics unbalance everything whether the players uses them or not.

An underappreciated anecdote from Solasta's development:
Solasta used to have weird disadvan...k, the developer chose to change course.

I remember this so well. Tactical Adventures changed darkvision from the core mechanics of 5e D&D, and people were up in arms about this issue with Solasta. Of course Tactical Adventures addressed the issue and changed it as quickly as they could.Through the whole thing, all I could think about was this game, and the utter disregard for not only 5e mechanics, but any attempt at balanced mechanics at all.

Oh you mean, TA listening to feedback by the community and then analyzing and retesting, keeping communication open. They ultimately agreed with their EA testers. Man, that was nice. I wonder if there’s a lesson here somewhere...

I agree. It was nice that Tactical Adventures did that. I agree, I'd love some feedback one why or another. Just tell me what Im getting. I can accept a no 5e game. I might be disappointed but I can accept it. Its the not hearing anything that's hard.

That said, one thing I will say in Larians defense. Look at the sheer volume of posts. The difference between Larian and TA is that Larian has a MUCH bigger fan base that they really want to make happy. So while TA had 3,000 posts on steam, Larian had 18,000 just for BG3. That's a lot more people to make happy and a lot harder and more time consuming. Plus, BG3 is a MUCH more diverse game with a lot more potential and paths to take.

That said, this is why a 5e Difficulty Option would solve a lot of issues. Give the 5e'ers 5e strict rules more like how Solasta is and shut up half your fan base. Then give the rest who like quasi- DOS what they want. Yes, I'm sure that's more coding, but in the end it will make a LOT of fans happy and potentially bring in more hard core D&D fans.

D&D fans are like Star Wars fans. If something like the scar on Kyle Rens face is off, we notice and get upset. You gotta be consistent and stay true to the genre, the rules, the story, etc. Look at the Drow post and you'll see what I mean.

The problem lies in Larian's development ethos. Instead of starting with 5E and making changes to better suit the video game medium, they started with DOS, and attempted to stick in some 5E (which they admitted to not understanding very well), but 5E does not mesh well with DOS.

Now they have DOS environments and mechanics, with 5E characters running around in it, and it's a grand exercise in the 'law of unintended consequences'.

Well, there are two issues with BG3 and DD5 rules :

1 - First, the Larian additions that breaks DD5 rules. This is discussed in many threads : high ground, surfaces, backstab, jump, lack of some combat actions present in the PhB, etc ...
2 - Second, and it is not negligible : a very poor User Interface that is not convenient at all. Games as Solasta or before Pathfinder KM (for Pathfinder rules that are even more complex than DD5), POE, etc ... did a huge work to define a convenient (and most of the time nice / immersive) User Interface that helps the player to interact with the system.

For me, Larian should work on these two aspects. Despite the disappointment of some DD / BG players who may be disappointed by the fact BG3 is too far from DD rules, also that will show that Larian has difficulties to do something else than DOS games whereas this BG3 game should be an opportunity to show that Larian can do different games.

Exactly! This is an opportunity for them to do something new. But yeah.. the combat actions are significant too... Ready action and Dodge action are damn powerful tools in some combat situations. Not having them is definitely not good.

I agree with the OP. Solasta's combat plays way better then BG3's.

Long post, I know, but I hope someone reads this feedback anyway and does not ignore it as another Solasta-related shitpost
tl;dr Solasta if you like to solve tactical puzzles in SP (not aware if it has MP at all), BG3 if you want to have a cinematic Single-/Multiplayer experience

But can you shove a goblin watchman from his guardpost into a ravine? I have only seen Solasta's trailers, but BG3 appears simply more cinematic to me. Raw mechanics are interesting, especially when the finer/math-y points are handled by a fast calculating computer. If that is your main draw for a 5e/D&D video game, by all means play Solasta over BG3.
Edit: There is a reason Pool of Radiance and Temple of Elemental Evil, who slavishly followed D&D rules to the letter are somewhat obscure games for genre enthusiasts while Baldurs Gate 1+2 are beloved classics despite the jank.

That being said, I can see BG3 being more fun with friends, as it lends itself better to CREATING memorable stories. That is only in part referencing the writing that is in the game. How players interact with the story is always much more memorable. Like, your druid character wishes to help the druids first and foremost (i.e. "handling" the Tieflings) while your dickass thief buddy (who may very well exist in the same game at the same time) does not really care and navigates goblin politics for fun. That can lead to PvP conflict, and it has 'broken' many attempts at playing the campaign together with friends, each of them memorable, mind you.

This happened to me while playing the EA in MP for the first time: Cleric, Druid, Wizard party (all players with no NPCs)

I get your point and generally agree with you. BG3 is obviously made for the multiplayer & cinematic experience, whereas Solasta is made primarily for a linear story and tactical combat.

But one of the tutorial missions in Solasta explicitly tells you to shove some wolves off a bridge into a ravine. Like, a tooltip comes up informing you about Shove and suggesting that you push those puppies right off. So the example you brought up is amusing :P

BG3 has cinematics and aesthetics done completely well. For a dnd game they have translated that aspect really really well, many of the creatures look like how they are supposed to and everything looks fairly good to where graphical glitches actually are glaring cause everything else has quality.
But mechanics BG3 is not even close to Solasta, rather it is clearly incomplete. Most everything is clearly not finished and needs time and effort put to working on it. BG3 has the potential to be the best DnD game if they move closer to 5e mechanics and finish the mechanics.

I see, thanks for the clarification. I stumbled upon this "edition war" today and it is one of the more embarrassing things I have seen this month.
If people want to shitpost about Solasta > BG3 because reasons, they should do so on 4chan's /v/ or reddit and not in the Early Access feedback forum.

Look. Some people might be griping, but not everyone. I love BG3. That's said, I think it would be better if it took some elements of Solasta that Soladta does well. That's all. I like Solasta, but if I had to pick between the two, which I do often, I'd pick BG3. Ive played 300+ hours of this game and 30 of Solasta, so that tells you something.

But again, BG3 could be SO much more fun if they tightened up the mechanics, more like Solasta, and organized their UI a bit better, more like Solasta.

Most of us just want good visuals and fun combat in Baldur's Gate 3. It's not really about which is better.

Exactly, BG3 is an amazing looking game with a great story. If the core combat was better, this game would be a master piece in my opinion.

I never played 5e or any dnd games but I played solasta after reading the forum posts about this game. First I thought "this game was lame" but when I got to combat, I understood why it was praised in this forum.

Is solasta perfect ? No.
Is the combat fun ? Yes.

Bg3 can even be better than solasta in combat, they just need to accept whatever dnd 5e rules are. From what I saw the combat of 5e is not bad at all. If solasta was faithful to 5e rules.

Yeah I agree wholeheartedly and it seems quite many do. And yes; Solasta is indeed extremely faithful to actual DND 5E rules.

One must read between the lines, lest the actual meaning is lost.

It’s a lot less shitposting about Solasta, and a lot more shitposting about how Larian has given really awkward interviews about how they’ve changed the systems the way they did with very unfortunate implications about why they did so.

Solasta just happens to directly contradict some aspects of that philosophy, so naturally a fair amount of people gravitate towards using it in their arguments.

Exactly. Larian says that all the changes they made to 5e rules are because they don't work on a video game. In order to balance BG3 they had to put in their homebrew rules.

But Solasta proves that 5e does work on a video game. They stayed very true to 5e rules and it works really well. All we're saying is that BG3 would benefit greatly by taking a few lessons from Solasta.

Shove, for example, is an Attack and therefore an Action. It should replace doing a melee or ranged attack because it is an unarmed attack. That makes sense. In Solasta, you can push someone away OR knock them prone. If you knock them prone, it is easier to hit that's target with other melee attacks. So there is MORE strategy options with these rules and they make more sense. I can either shove someone off a cliff or knock them prone so my allies can hit them easier.

In BG3, I can hit with a melee weapon AND shove someone off a cliff all on one turn. So essentially Larian is allowing characters to do 2 attacks in one turn. There is also not knock prone feature, thus limiting your strategy options.

This is just one example. There are so many more.

So let me ask you, why would Larian have to make Shove a Bonus instead of an Action to make it work well in a video game? Why would they have to remove the knock prone option as well to make it work with a video game? If Solasta can do it, and it works well, why not BG3? THAT is our argument.

Because they think 1 action per turn is not enough.
I think they want something more "dynamic" than Solasta.

They failed according to me but I guess that's why they changed a lot of action to bonus action (and create new ones) and/or give us easy advantages.

Wrong answer to an idea that (can) make sense.

Lol. Right. My point though is that they said they changed things because they didn't work for a video game when they should have said they changed things because they didn't like them.

I think people would have compared BG3 less to Solasta if Larian had just said up front that they are loosely basing the game on 5e but tweaking the rules to whatever they want and the end result may be a cross between DOS and 5e. If they had said this up front, I think people would have been less upset. Then we would have known what to expect before playing.

I still remember my first playthrough. Shocked the heck out of me when I learned we could shove as a Bonus. I even relooked up the rules just to make sure I wasnt losing it. For the longest time, I was using shove as an action and then was totally confused that I still had bonus action available.

The current batch of video games seem to encourage superhero characters. I’m sure the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe plays a big role in this. Perhaps the popularity of anime is also a factor.

A lot of games now is about the single hero taking on piles of enemies using powerful combo moves that obliterate their opponents. People are getting used to big flashy effects and multiple attacks.

Now people want a group of superheroes and Larian is providing that. Of course that just means, the game will have more unusually powerful enemies and “boss” fights. It’s no longer about a group of adventurers seeking fame and fortune that become greater than the sum of their abilities due to their combined resources.

Aha! I see now the issue. D&D is supposed to simulate reality in a fantasy world. It is not meant to be super heroes jumping thirty feet and throwing 30 pound barrels.

But that's popular now. I get it. That's why we're having so many issues out here. Larian is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

D&D is NOT about super heroes. It is about characters who start out barely better than amateurs who grow and learn and become more powerful as they gain experience. By the end of the story, that is when they do more incredible things. Not the beginning. Im the beginning, characters need to be more limited so that by the end they have some place to go.

Don't even called it D&D if you are going super hero route.

Marvel being popular doesn't mean players want every game to be Marvel though. Players can also appreciate more down to earth fantasy games. Games need variety. Worst thing that could happen is everything turning into the same because market research says X sells 11% more.

Yeah, but as you read a lot of these posts, it makes sense now. There are a lot of players fighting against the true 5e rules because they like their characters being super heroes who can do,away more than is even remotely realistic, like eating a rack of ribs or a cheese wheel in less than 3 seconds.

Each round is supposed to equal about 6 seconds, but many are upset that we want Larian to not allow players to do things like eat food as a Bonus action.

Likewise, some players are upset if we want Larian to put realistic time limits on things, like the druid ritual not lasting an infinite number of days until you, the player, get around to maybe doing something to stop at.

It makes sense to me, know, that the issue is that players right now don't want realism, they want to just be super heroes who can do no wrong. They want to take all the time in the world and still save the day.

Oh, I am sorry if this offends, but it is seriously an aha moment for me. I now think I have at least a better idea of why we are running into so many issues on these posts with people who are fighting against making the game more real.

So the bottom line, Larian, is who you really trying to appeal to? Are you trying to appeal to D&D fans or super hero fans? Pick none. You cant make both happy. You cant have D&D realism and such without limiting the gameplay more and taking out the crazy super hero stuff. They are like the antithesis of one another.

I mean I get what your saying, but lets be honest here. D&D characters are not "normal" people. Normal people can't cast fireballs, vanish, or have low level super strength. I think it is a little unfair to compare, or to insinuate, Larian is making a "superhero" game and basically tricking people into buying it by saying it is D&D.

As for D&D fans, they are like any other passionate fandom (Star Trek, Star Wars, Tolkien etc) and if something doesn't match 100% to canon, they flip their sh&t and overreact. They would have been comparing this game to POE, KM, Solasta regardless. It is a human tendency to do so to justify their position or beliefs as being "correct". Seriously, this is no different than two people arguing whether or not Han shot first.

Well said.

What is D&D realism, though? Realism in a fictional setting is build by using a consistent set of rules (and I don't mean combat mechanics, but laws of your fictional reality), which you then apply to whatever story you create. So if you want to explain why a character cannot jump this high, then you need also to explain how, by the same rules, that giant red dragon is flying by flapping its wings, considering the sheer body size and shape. Why doesn't it look like a pterosaur instead?

Oh. Now you're just being mean. Overreact? Come on.

What's your favorite game, story, etc.? Have someone come along and mess with its. See how quickly you get upset. I feel for Star Wars fans. I am one. I feel for Star Trek fans. I am one.

At is VERY upsetting when some outsider comes along and doesn't respect your franchise and takes it and runs with it ina direction you don't like. It's like sports people who invest a ton into their favorite team only to have some rich jerk from another city buy their team and completely revamp it or even just trade someone awesome to a whole different team. Of course they het upset.

But that is so not the point and you obviously do not really understand D&D at all. The idea is regular people put themselves into the roll of a fantasy character. Though they can do some incredible things that we cant do in Earth, the world and game are still supposed to simulate reality.

I mean, imagine Han Solo in Star Wars jumping thirty feet through the air while fighting Boba Fett. Anyone watching would be shocked and think how unbelievable it is. He is also a fantasy character, but people would be upset and think the movie was dumb if he did this because there is not valid explanation and it breaks the rules established in the story. Luke can do these things, but Han can't because of established rules.

Likewise, in Faerun, a d&d world, characters cannot jump 30 feet like super heroes, drop behind someone and attack. That is against established rules for this world.

So the point is, you don't take on someone else's story unless you understand the rules they established for their world. If you don't respect the established lore you disrespect the creators and the fan base.

Being able to shove a guy and punch another in the same round is far from the "superhero" feats I expect of an actual comic book character.

Im talking jumping 30 feet through the air, landing behind an enemy and still slashing them. Im talking throwing barrels full of oil or water 30 feet through the air at enemies. Im talking eating an entire cheese wheel in 3 seconds because a Bonus Action is all it takes and a Bonus action is supposed to be an action that is maybe 3 seconds at most.

As it is, D&D allows a lot of things to take place per second round. You try to run 30 feet, swing a sword, and drink a potion all on 6 seconds. But that is what D&D already allows IF you follow the actual 5e rules. Allowing people to attack twice with the same weapon and run 30 feet or even jump 30 feet is utterly super heroic.

These are the kinds of things that are totally unrealistic.

Sure. I'm just saying there's a trend.


D&D itself has followed the trend. I kind of started with 3.5e but it really got more "superheroish" in 4e and now 5e. Magic was actually pretty hard to learn and get way back when. It's just becoming more and more normal for D&D characters to be able to cast spells. I mean practically every subclass can cast spells and all the new ones have magical abilities.

I do think Larian likes flashy, superhero type games. It's why they like giving players a whole bunch of actions per turn. It's to create a character that can perform lots of tricks at once.

And honestly, I don't understand why you continue to passively aggressively bash D&D fans. All that was stated was that certain movies and trends have pushed the genre to a new direction and some agreed with me. If anything, you are the one who seems to go nuts every time someone brings up a point you disagree with. There's no need for that.


What you and GM4Him are talking about is verisimilitude. A character in D&D cannot jump super lengths because the setting decided not to and even created a spell to perform jumping feats. The rules aren't exactly consistent using real physics. That's bringing real life science into a fictional setting. A red dragon can fly with smaller wings because the setting allows it to seem plausible but chose not to make superjump characters normal.

Where in my post did I go nuts? I am so sick of this snowflake attitude where someone posts a comment you don't like, and they are somehow being "passive agressive" and other BS. Seriously, if you see something "offensive" or "insulting" about a simple comment about fandoms being touchy about canon, than you really need to get thicker skin. Honestly, the only one that has resorted to insulting someone is you to me. Not to mention, more than likely I was playing D&D when you where riding your moms lap. I just don't project my need for recognition onto a video game that doesn't meet my expectations of what fantasy world I play in because *gasp* you can jump a little far......Is that passive aggressive enough for you.

Wow. I am sorry if I upset you in any way. This is so not worth it. It is just a video game. Whether they follow the rules or not and they make it like all the characters are superheroes I'm still going to play the game.

Ultimately it's about making a good game and whether or not things are fun and balanced and makes sense. Sadly, a lot of the homebrewing screws stuff up and makes things repetitive and un-fun. Some of the homebrewing is pretty good, though. The "special attacks" with various weapons adds a fun new dimension in combat. The race to the top is just tedious when every battle seems to have a million vertical places, and with this comes the adv/disadv obviously, and the trolly jumping over enemies, stepping behind them and getting advantage attacking their flank if they have no other enemy in close proximity is just ridiculous.

Cool it down a bit please, everyone. Discuss the game's attributes, not each other's.

There's so much wrong here but I'll let it go and grow a thicker skin.


Very true. I basically come here to offer my opinions and shoot the breeze to discuss where I'd like the game to go. Obviously, I'll still play BG3 since I bought it but at least for me, it won't have any longevity. I'll play it for the story once and that'll pretty much be it because some of the mechanics (chain grouping) is very annoying.

But back to the original point of this thread, 5e rules definitely can work and I have a hard time believing in good faith that Larian made a serious attempt to implement it. I'd say that's just me but there are others who seem to agree.

The game has SO much replayability it is sad to hear you may only play through once. I mean, I get the mechanics are a bit on need of some work, but there are so many story paths.

This is why I am out here trying to fight for cleaned up rules though. There are so many games out there that people can play that are more DOS-ish. I have literally been waiting for a good D&D TB game for a LONG time. Every stinking game has been RTWP or hack/slash or mmo... I haven't played a solid D&D TB game since Pool of Radiance.

Now I finally get one, and they don't do the rules right. THAT's why I get passionate about it. Besides Solasta and BG3, there aren't a whole lot of them. I really want some good old fashioned D&D played the way D&D has always been played. One round at a time.

And frankly, from a story perspective and delivery, Larian is the better DM.

It really doesn't matter if Solasta or BG3 have "better" mechanics, since "better" is subjective anyway.

What matters is that Larian claimed from the get-go that BG3 was a "faithful adaptation of D&D 5e rules". Which is isn't.

Larian lied. Period.

I always try to find the best "good" path in a story. That's what I like. I like playing the good guy. Replaying a game to discover all the other endings isn't something that attract me. I can find that on Youtube. Replayability for me is building different parties to tackle the challenges. The big problem I see in BG3 is, because so many rules are broken, it pushes you towards a particular playstyle and only that playstyle. While the story maybe multi-faceted, the combat is not.

As for the hope of Larian changing directions and making BG3 more tabletop 5e? I really don't see it happening. They may make little changes but I really think a lot of stuff we see now, will remain. They aren't accidents. All the combat mechanics are intentional and beloved by the studio. It is what it is. I'll chime in on threads like this but I don't have any expectations of change. Like I said, I like to just shoot the breeze here now and read what others have to say about the game.

And yes, the story is miles ahead of Solasta. But only because Solasta you are heavily railroaded and there's only one path. The story itself, albeit somewhat generic, isn't bad and the world has grown on me.

Yeah. I honestly have not had the best experience with all this. This is my first EA game. I don't usually post in video game forums. This is probably the last time I will be a part of an Early Access. And honestly, if larian doesn't listen to us, and give us a way to play this game with more of a 5e ruleset I probably won't ever buy another of their games. What is the point of playing Early Access when you give lots of suggestions and don't see any of them put in the game. So I really hope they put more of our suggestions in the game soon.

Honestly, Larian NEEDS to create a more direct conversation. Like I believe they should really really start to use this board and ask us questions, we are essentially free testers for them and direct communication will allow us to really cooperate and make the best BG3 that can be. They really need to ask us about individual 5e mechanics and stuff like that, gauge how fun that is to us.

Yes. Part of the issue I have had with this whole experience is that anytime I make a suggestion I get attacked for having an opinion and not liking certain things in the game, or someone really is opposed to my suggestion. It's one thing to disagree. What you usually get here on the Forum it's something different. I feel like it is nothing more than hostility. So, we are not really receiving any feedback from the company and the only feedback we get is constant bombardment from critical, negative, frankly toxic people. It's just not a good experience oh, and I don't feel like I'm really making much of a difference.

No, I am talking about consistency. I've used the red dragon as an example, but I could as well quote the "laws of magic" instead of real world physics. I could not make a dwarven wizard in BG1 or BG2, but now I can. So at some point the fundamentals of how magic works got reworked. The popularization of magic across the races is something I would expect to have a large impact on the various civilizations, yet I don't see that. BG city looks the same in all games, kind of like pseudohistorical Europe. Compare that to e. g. Arcanum, where you play in a setting that undergoes an industrial evolution. You can see how technology, despite being not as powerful as magic, is slowly taking over and the impact it has.

Larian team does not need feedback. They already have an internal plan and roadmap. They do need that extra cash from EA though. And not having a <<<"feedback">>>> <<<<"forum">>>>> would look unprofessional.

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I 100% believe all of this until given undeniable proof otherwise.

I don't even care about how faithful BG3 may or may not be to the core DnD rules anymore. I came to realize over the past few months that I cared far more about how imbalanced the game is in general at its very core, and not about any comparisons between BG3 and the actual tabletop rules themselves. It just so happens that the vast majority of mechanics that contribute towards this feeling for me are the homebrew mechanics and changes that were haphazardly shoved into the system anyway.

I can also see how a fair amount of people that are arguing from the faithfulness angle may feel rather miffed, if not insulted at how BG3 has handled things. One may bring up how the RTwP games aren't faithful at their very core, but that's something easy to accept because of how obvious it is and that the developer vision is very clear there (and that most people's standards of balance are a lot more lenient when it comes to more action-based games, since there's a lot more moving pieces compared to a turn-based game). But BG3 somehow took a ruleset that was already turn-based to begin with, and transformed it into a highly imbalanced version with a lot of custom mechanics that appear to be designed around the idea that you should avoid engaging with the more faithful mechanics as much as you can, lest you get slapped with penalties that didn't exist under the base system. To make matters worse, there were some rather unflattering interviews earlier on that some have interpreted as Larian mansplaining to fans of the base system about how the rules can't be translated to a video game format in a 'fun' way, to the point where I now wonder if Larian is right to keep their mouths shut as they have been lately to avoid such additional blunders.

Still, it takes an awkward amount of effort to pull off something that so systematically neuters the base mechanics so much, that prior knowledge of DOS mechanics would generally serve you far better than prior knowledge of the DnD mechanics in BG3.

Most hardcore turn-based enthusiasts would have absolutely already ripped BG3 a new one if it didn't have both the BG name and Larian's name attached to it. Would people have found things like high ground advantage/disadvantage acceptable within any other game such as Solasta? Considering how people were right to argue about how bad dim light disadvantage was in terms of having far too much of an influence in decision-making during the earliest parts of that game's EA period, definitely not.

I mean, I don't think people are generally hostile to homebrew mechanics - Solasta is literally far more homebrew than BG3, after all, the difference being that they had to homebrew their world and subclasses while leaving the actual combat mechanics largely untouched. But the majority of BG3's homebrew mechanics are just bad by all metrics, faithfulness or not. Barrelmancy? Fine, I actually don't care about that. Backstab/high ground advantage and low ground disadvantage? That's not interesting at all, they just force a specific playing style and limit rather than expanding options.

Even so, I think people should really stop trying to use the faithfulness to tabletop arguments. It means nothing to anyone not familiar with the base rules, and it lets people reduce your arguments to ramblings of rabid purists. But argue from the standpoint of the balance and mechanical design on their own merits itself, and most of the gaming public would understand. Larian would probably be forced to listen if BG3 were to suddenly gain a reputation as a game with impressive visuals, but with a combat system that people can meme in a really reductionist but accurate way - the three major solutions of high ground, backstab, barrelmancy.

I almost wonder if bonus action shove and jump actually only exist as an over correction to high ground/low ground advantage/disadvantage. When you really think about it, almost all of the game’s questionable design can be traced back to that very mechanic. Without bonus action shove, entire fights would be taking place at the summit of a mountain. Without bonus action jump, reaching that summit becomes much harder. Backstab likely only exists to give melee an answer to ranged having high ground advantage.

I came to this type of thought during a mental exercise, wondering who would win in a fight between a BG3 party and a Solasta party. The latter would probably win handily, not only because they had access to proper reactions, but because the BG3 ranged characters would get screwed over by their very own low ground disadvantage mechanic the very moment the Solasta party gets to high ground. Maybe it’s the reason proper reactions aren’t a thing either - a wizard with Shield would effectively be untouchable to anyone on low ground.

I completely agree with the game not being balanced. I made a comment earlier saying, I never played 5e but combat was good in solasta but not in Baldur Gate 3. The animations and everything else is superb, but the mechanics of combat feel lame to me. I do not care if the game abides by 5e rules, or whether the drows are a subrace or a race by themselves. To me dnd is already made for turn based combats, you shouldn't alter it so much that it gives so easy advantages.

It would be like if XCOM gave you a guaranteed crit if you are at a higher elevation and enemies got -60 hit chance along with full cover bonuses. Why would you use bombs, rockets, flanking maneuvers, rangers, melee at all? Also I hate surface effects in bg3. In dos2 it works because every character can fly around everywhere. Phoenix dive, blitz, nether swap, teleport, many more abilities that can just ignore surface or height. That's why in dos2 elevation bonuses made sense and wasnt a big deal since it was a fragile bonus. This game however, enemies have to walk through all that with no magic armour or physical armour.

The combat balance is super weak in my opinion, just implementing a more balanced game's rules would be the easiest solution.

Faerun is a fake place built over years by one guy from his own campaign. WotC uses it as its default D&D setting and as such has to make it generic with many fantasy tropes. It’s going to be broken and lots of inconsistencies. Heck they pretty much tossed out the last 100 years because 4e bombed and they had to recon everything. The game dictates how the setting works which creates these problems. Look at the utter brokenness of the Warcraft story.

Faerun and D&D is not War and Peace. It’s not going to analyze every detail about the world. That’s for each table to decide. To expect highly realistic portrayal of the world and it’s evolution is somewhat similar to expecting Star Wars to explain the technology in that universe.

If it seems reasonable in the setting based on the boundaries of the world, then it works. That’s the extent of consistency you will get in D&D.

It's not that combats "aren't good" in BG3 according to me. There are a lot of spells and features, the "arena" are interresting even if I'd like more choke points and close combats, you can sometimes interract with the environment, the verticality matter...

...but yes, they aren't balanced at all and you're doing the same thing again and again...

They're not tactical, they're not deep at all and the difficulty becomes very easy really fast when you know a very limited numbers of things.
The deepest thing to know in BG3 is backstab and highground... Hurra.

The first time you're playing it's +- ok but if you're not a noob tactical TB games player and/or someone that never played a D&D game before... It really becomes boring and unchallenging fast.

And higher level of difficulty won't change anything because the easiest things to know /understand in BG3 are also the most powerfull...

Oh yes you can also use the few other OP things or be "creative" with barrels so it becomes a real story mode.

On top of that we have "powers" our ennemy never use so we're very more powerfull than them ... Except when Larian add them frustrating powers to create a fake feeling of difficulty.... Hello minotaurs...

100% intentional. Their goal as a company is not to alienate a large part of their base, which are DOS1 and DOS2 players that have either 0 or a tenuous grasp of 5e. Those block of players do not care for the RNG dice fest, the seemingly excessive chances to miss, and the other resource and rest restrictions that come with 5e.

Why do you think that:

Larian initially only had 1 short rest? The intent with the story and the way the Origins work is predicated on long resting. They do not want players to end up chasing the Hag with 2 spell slots remaining and limited healing. DOS1 and DOS2 do not have a spell slot mechanic.

The free advantage and loaded dice minimizes the risk of missing greatly. The high ground importance is carried over from DOS2, wherein high ground provided extra range and extra damage. DOS2 players know to prioritize high ground in every fight.

RNG skill checks have been de-emphasized with the overabundance over Inspiration Points and now loaded dice. There are so many Inspiration Points in EA alone that, even with loaded dice, you will not come close to exhausting all of them if your main character has decent Charisma.

The game is literally not-so-subtly veiled to be as accommodating to returning DOS1&2 players as ostensibly possible, while also adhering to WOTC 5e demands to the satisfaction of them.


Doubtful. Larian game developers are quirky and encourage these sorts of things. These are the things they want to showcase on Twitch, YouTube, and other platforms. These behaviors are encouraged by Larian from other games, not deterred.

Barrels, excessive surfaces, explosions, the overhyped interactive environment are all considered byproducts of the Larian sandbox that equates to THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX. If you kill a named boss with setting up and luring it until a chain explosion, even if it breaks immersion that they would not notice you planting 20 barrels and pre-positioning before engagement, that is what they want to showcase.

The stealth/sneaking operates almost identical to DOS1&2 and can be abused in-combat and out-of-combat for infinite resources. Gold, money, and the price of rare/expensive items never has much importance in a Larian game.

If you know how to exploit the system, you can have infinite gold as long as you abuse the vendors every refresh. You can afford the best items early, which also makes difficulty and complexity trivial.

In DOS2, at least you were somewhat limited from wearing a more powerful item as early because you may not have the base stat requirement. And if the weapon exceeded your level, then your miss chance was much higher.

No such thing in BG3. If I can exploit the vendors or flat-out cheese stealth and steal rare equips at level 2, I am free to wear them. To Larian, that is innovation and applauded.



Jump/Shove, etc. exist because Larian does not want you to be strictly confined to 1 action a turn. DOS2 was a base of 4 Action Points (2 full actions for the most part) with many ways to get more.

Larian placed those as bonus actions because it is pseudo 2 actions, especially when you shove enemies off high ground. Not to mention they have placed so many haste potion and flasks around, again, to ensure you can do more than one thing a turn.

Yup. The same tactic over and over again. The more I played, the more I realized how poorly combat was implemented in this game. I guess for DOS fans, it’s fun but for someone who never played them like me, it kinda blows.

Snip the rest of your quote since the mods don’t like us to quote long text.

The more you analyze the game, the more you realize how disingenuous Swen’s quote is when he said they really tried to build BG3 as a 5e game and then had to make modifications.

This game was meant to be DOS3 but since Larian got the BG3 license they are hoping to cash in on 5e players too. They want their cake and eat it too.

Edit : finally I just don't care and left this thread for now.

Even as someone who played both DOS games front to back, the current system sucks. They basically took the absolute worst parts of the overall DOS design philosophy and slapped it into BG3. Hell, a lot of the DOS-type mechanics that people often cite aren't even the same in BG3 as in DOS. If anything, a lot of them are actually even WORSE implementations than they were before.

- High Ground/Low Ground: High ground in DOS2 offered you a damage boost, while low ground resulted in a damage penalty. They also altered your attack range. DOS2 actually capped the low ground damage penalty at -5% damage, while the high ground bonus starts at +10% damage and increases by +5% for every point you invest into the Huntsman skill. The penalty being capped at a measly -5% means there is still an emphasis to getting to high ground, but characters on low ground could still retaliate. The exact modifier is completely unique to the mechanic. Meanwhile, in BG3, being higher or lower actually does not appear to modify your attack range by any significant margin unless you're at the very bottom of a cliff trying to shoot up or something, high ground/low ground affects your accuracy instead, the exact modifier is shared with several spells that grant the same bonus/penalty with a far greater resource cost, and the penalty is as massive as the bonus.

- Field Effects: Field effects at their core are largely unchanged from DOS2 to BG3. The major difference is how they interact with the rest of the mechanics. In DOS2, you potentially had access to many mobility skills that could take you across the whole map, and you could do the same to enemies with Teleport/Nether Swap too. Magic armor would also block many of their effects until depleted. In BG3, there is no such magic armor defense, you have a bonus action jump to get you out of them (and one could also argue that maybe bonus action jump is an overcorrection to field effects existing), and field effect damage forces you to roll a concentration check.

It's why I am worried about the community reaction to Paladin if field effects are to remain as is once they are released - people talk about the smites, but few have considered that almost all of their spells require concentration. It would really tragic for your Paladin to lose that Branding Smite just because you walked into a fire field on your way to attack an enemy standing within. And you can't just stand outside of the danger zone and wait for the enemy to walk out to pre-emptively smack them during their turn like you can in Solasta, because ready actions aren't a thing in BG3. A lot of the really good Cleric spells later on like Spirit Guardians requires concentration too.

Quite frankly, I have a small list of things that would have to change in order to bring a lot of the actual tactical decision making into the game.

1) Turn high ground advantage/low ground disadvantage into +2/-2 modifiers. Maybe even get rid of the -2 modifier entirely.
2) Turn backstab advantage into a flanking system instead, and reduce the modifier from advantage to +2.
3) Allow saving throws to mitigate damaging field effects and items such as barrels. Field effect damage should additionally not trigger concentration checks.
4) Add ready actions and proper reactions to the game. One can talk about how cumbersome reactions may or may not be, but ready actions don't have that problem at all, and I don't see a valid reason why ready actions at the very minimum should be absent, unless the engine really is as non-flexible for programming anything new outside of environmental stuff as people are starting to believe.


The latter is very prevalent in DOS2 as well. It's why I hesitate to call DOS2 a tactical masterpiece today, even if I was highly impressed in my earlier playthroughs for its new ideas. But late game DOS2 more or less devolved into frontloaded turn 1-2 plays, just like BG3, and late game DOS2 was a complete balancing mess with some of the most insane rocket tag I had ever seen in a turn-based game. I fear BG3 is already headed towards that same path in other ways, even more because BG3's problems are already quite obvious in this EA phase, while from all accounts DOS2's balancing problems with the armor system weren't as obvious to anyone but the very far-sighted.

Most people cite the hardest boss fights in DOS2 as one of the two below.


DOS2 basically trains you to exploit cheese at every opportunity, perhaps to a level where I struggle to call it cheese when it's so clearly intended. BG3's haphazard implementation of the mechanics in comparison instead trains you to avoid engaging with the base DnD mechanics as much as possible, in ways I shouldn't have to explain at this point, and it only happens to look like cheese because the bonuses are insane with very little drawback.

They also need to add +2 cover AC against ranged attacks for enemies engaged in melee combat, and decouple jump and disengage, make them cost an action, and provoke AOO, and implement push as per 5e rules instead of their hulk push.

<sigh>

This is all wishful thinking though, I doubt Larian is backtracking from their insistence on including DOS mechanics in BG3 as much as possible.

I mean, those should be considered too, but I kept my list small because what I listed outside of reactions/ready actions should be trivial changes. Cover mechanics are clearly a step above, and I've accepted at this point that de-coupling jump/disengage is simply not going to happen unless backstab advantage and high ground advantage/low ground disadvantage are dealt with first - as they are clearly the very reason why jump/disengage even exists to begin with. Stamp them down first, and jump/disengage suddenly becomes far less abusable due to the removal of most incentive to use them offensively rather than defensively.

I personally think +2/-2 on high ground is too much too. In high ground you can move out of line of sight most of the time to not even be seen. But maybe that would be more applicable in higher difficulties, or add +2 AC to all creature in high difficulty to negate that bonus that way.

Jump and disengage is not only a problem related to backstab and/or highground.

Disengage as a bonus action mean that melee ennemies never have a proper zone of control and they NEVER deal any AOO. Being engaged in BG3 just mean absolutely nothing.
It reduce a lot the depth of melee combats, the value of having a good position not to be engaged, the value of our own melee characters (control the battleflield, intercept ennemies) and the consequences of being engaged.

It is definitely as OP offensively than defensively.
It also create one more issue to the game's balance because we can deal a lot of additionnal damages to our ennemies with AOO... which is something they won't ever do.

On the other hand why shouldn't we jump as a bonus action or a part of our movement ?

+1 for your list. These are also my top priorities but jump and disengage are as high on the list.

A Push action a bit more balanced could also become very interresting tactically speaking but I guess it's something else I could choose not to use...
Having not to use the base games mechanics because they're too powerfull is something I never saw in any tactical games except this one.

I'm of the opinion that high ground shouldn't impart any bonus; getting higher up doesn't make a person more accurate with a ranged weapon. If they implemented +2 ranged cover for melee engaged target, I'd be ok with a homebrew rule change to negate the +2 if one had high ground advantage, but otherwise nothing.

Maybe height should give a bonus only to dmg? Or even advantage on the DAMAGE rolls?

Please stop calling DnD a 'board game'. Your lack of knowledge on the topic is showing.

Technically, it IS a board game. But not in the classic sense of it coming in a box with a game board like Monopoly. A lot of DM's use home made maps to place your mini character. Also, using LED flatscreen "game tables" are very popular right now as well to lay out dungeon maps, town maps etc to work with your character miniature. You roll dice (though not to move, but to see success/failure of actions).

But most D&D sessions I have ever been a part of, utilize a "board" to help visualization. This has been going on since the inception. If you don't believe me, or think I am "hating on D&D players", look up Essential kits, or starter kits. Some get so into it they literally make 3D boards for their stories with walls buildings etc.

Let's not get upset over semantics.

That's a callback to many pages ago. I wouldn't call D&D a board game as it's not played on a pre-defined or special board that comes with the game. I feel like the board coming in the box with the game is basically required to classify a game as a board game. Or, failing that, there is a single standardized board used by ~everyone (e.g., the Chess board doesn't need to come with your chess set, but you'll always play chess on a chess board).

I'd lump D&D and board games in the larger category of tabletop games, but distinct from one another.

Boardgame is a specific type of tapletop game. D&D and Monopoly are both tapletop games, but only Monopoly is a boardgame.

I hate to break it to you, but I do not play D&D at all with a board. I used to, but I have found that it slows play down even more with a board. I now play completely with imagination. I tell players what they see, give them options, etc. No board.

So, definitely NOT a board game. It is an RPG. The point is to create a character and put yourself in the role. I would actually say that D&D is more like a choose your own adventure story than a boardgame.

Dude, I hate to break it to you, but just because you choose not to, doesn't mean that a bunch of people do. There is literally a whole industry supporting it. You choose not to with your games, that is cool. I have played both ways, depending on the group, either way could be better. Some people need more visual que, some don't. Some people like to have custom 3D minis printed up that they paint that represents their character, and like to play with more interactive mediums rather than imagination (even though they also are using their imagination).

Some players are DMs don't like using starter kits, or essentials kits. Some do. My whole comment was simply saying, that yes, depending on who you are playing with. Boards, flatscreen play tables, coffee tables set up with blocks to be a dungeon all are used. Also with essential kits they provide them for premade adventures (though usually they are cheap paper maps that fold out on coffee table).

Though DragonSnooz is correct in the definition between a tabletop and a boardgame. The real difference is, D&D is a tabletop, but can use boards, but isn't a "boardgame". So my original sentence of "technically" is wrong. But it is still game that can used a board but overall it is tabletop, and is not a classic boardgame.

*edit: also a boardgame is usually a competition between 2 or more players, where D&D is the co op play of 2 or more players. But the definition of boardgame is "Board games are tabletop games that typically use pieces moved or placed on a pre-marked board and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Most feature a competition between two or more players".

Lol. I was really just trying to say that it is definitely not a board game because it can be played completely without a board. I know you can play with a board, but it is totally not dependent upon a board.

This was in response to those who were trying to argue that it is a board game. It really isn't. A board is a supplement to the game, a tool people use to make it more visual.

The thing about D&D is that it can be played in so many ways. Some play it more like a board game. Solasta is actually designed in a way that is more for these types of players, and they've even said this was what they are going for. Baldurs is more story based.

So, if we were to put Larian and Tactical Adventures into DM types, Tactical Adventures would be more like the Board Game D&D players who like to map out every dungeon room and the focus is a bit more on mapping out and finding monsters.

Larian seems more story focused. They don't care as much about the rules and having you measure things out properly and such. BG3 feels more to me like the DM is describing things more loosely.

Here's an example of the difference.

Gale is fighting a goblin. In Solasta's DM gameplay experience, the DM measures out and says, "The goblin is 15 feet away." Gale says, "I will use Magic Missile and drink a potion." Solasta DM gets down level with the map and says, "Nope. Can't. Blocked. Oh, and potion is an Action. Not Bonus." Gale decides to move his pawn so that he has line of sight. He gets level with the map. "There we go. And fine. I won't use potions. I forgot. You don't allow potions as bonuses."

Larian Dm is more like, "You see a goblin ahead of you." Gale says, "I jump behind him and hit him with my staff." Larian DM says, "Ok. Roll to hit." Larian DM doesn't even have him roll to jump. He doesn't really measure things out. That takes too much time. He wants faster paced gaming to focus on story. So he just agrees yo Gale jumping behind a goblin and attacking. "Can I use a potion?" Gale asks. "Sure," says Larian DM. He doesn't want Gale to get even close to dying, because he is focused more on story, not on the finer details of the combat.

So Solasta DM is more like a board game. Larian DM is more like a choose your own adventure DM who isn't so much about the board.

But there is a board. The visuals of the game is board and that is why it is ridiculous to see jump to backstab. So the latter if your example does not work in a game like this. If this was a text game, sure it would work.

If you took the board away from monopoly, could you still play? Checkers or chess? D&D isn't sold with a board, it's optional. If I go to barnes & nobles, I could get one of the books by it self. Are you going to ever buy checkers with no board?

I really shouldn't have to type that.

If we're being pedantic, the table top part is optional too. There are online tools like DnD Beyond and Roll 20 that allow you to play over the internet, no tables needed.

The fact that people are arguing now whether D&D is a board game or not is a clear indication that they don't fully understand what D&D really is. It is a Roleplaying Game, RPG. The name tells you what kind of game it is. Yes, you CAN play it as a board game if you just take the mechanics of combat and you put down a board and pawns and move them from space to space on the board and just fight monsters and so forth. That is certainly one way to play it.

But that's not what the game is supposed to be. It was designed as a game that you play that is a story game. That's how the original was created and that's how it has traditionally been played throughout the decades since it was first created.

Again, the name says it all. You are meant to play the game by taking on the role of a character. You are supposed to pretend to be that character in a fantasy world setting. You are kind of like an actor/actress, pretending to be this whole different person. The DM is like the story teller and director of the ad-lib play. He guides you through the story, pretends to be the other characters, and so forth. Shoot, in the old days, people used to play the game by dressing up and actually BEING the characters out in the woods and such. I still remember Gen-Con when people would dress up as D&D characters and play together at tables. Yes, they used to sell tabletop/board game type stuff to set up huge maps and displays to create better visuals, but ultimately those were just to enhance gameplay.

But the game is designed so that you have scenes where you do lots of talking and interacting and then lots of scenes where you fight and kill things. Only the killing things scenes would maybe get a board if you want it. Otherwise, you don't really need a board for the talking scenes. Again. You can have one. I used to do that all the time with my players. But, in the end, unless you can constantly change up the board quickly, or you've spent a long time laying out some complex board with lots of locations, it slows the game down a lot to use maps and boards. I tried using electronic maps and such, which is okay, but even that can get tedious.

Why are we even having this discussion about what type of game it is anyway? I thought this thread was about BG3 needing to be more like Solasta with its game mechanics. Who cares what type of game it is? Maybe I missed something in the threads. They're all starting to blend now, so maybe I thought I read this thread through but I didn't.

"Pen & Paper"

Which is my point, it's not a realistic or consistent fantasy setting. It is not even that original, considering they have initially borrowed from Tolkien and only backtracked on that because of a possible lawsuit.

So why are you saying all this? Why are you picking on the story and world and game?

And if you play fantasy games at all, who hasn't ripped off Tolkien, btw?

But seriously, why are you even out here playing a Faerun game if you don't like Faerun? Why are you playing a game where they said it is a D&D game if you don't like D&D? I'm just not following.

It's like you're playing a star wars game and picking on it because it is star wars.

How is any of this related to making BG3 better and BG3 could benefit by being more true to 5e?

You could play monopoly without a board, yes. Keeping track of where players are on the "board" mentally is not very difficult and if you need a visual aid you could easily abstract parts of the board using pen and paper. There are far more things to keep track of in D&D than in monopoly, if you can play D&D without a board, you can also play monopoly without a board. This isn't just me being a pedant, when I was a kid I actually used to do things like play monopoly with friends using a pen and paper to keep track, because it wasn't easy to smuggle a board between lessons to play but it was very easy to hide scraps of paper.

The difference between the 2 lies solely in how they are sold, monopoly is sold as a board with rules, D&D is sold as a set of rules, of which you can optionally add visual aids, some of which include a board. Neither game actually requires a board, all you need to know is the rules.

I'm gonna chime in and say that first that yeah, if I had to pick I would like BG3 to be as loyal as Solasta because I quire like the 5e system when translated into a video game.

That being said, I think the issue is deeper than that. I personally am not married to 5e as a system and can take it or leave it for the most part, it's far from my favorite system. More than anything, I think that the changes that Larian has made just...don't really work great. They feel clunky and off and counter-intuitive at times. That's not because 5e can't be changed at all without breaking it, but because the changes that have been made aren't really compatible with the system.

To give you another example, there was a game called Torment: Tides of Numemenra, released several years ago. That was based on something called the Cypher system. I love that system and I love the game, even though the game had to make changes to the system, since it was a more story-focused system that doesn't translate well to a rigid video game. The changes worked there because they felt natural and the rest of the mechanics around those changes mixed well with it. On the other hand, BG3's changes feel like they were added in without a lot of thought for how they're going to interact with other mechanics. Which isn't great.

So while my personal vote would be to make the mechanics more loyal to 5e, ultimately I care more that they just pick a single lane, rather than this half-baked product we have.

Again, why are we debating this? What does it have to do with BG3 and Solasta?

And again, the two are TOTALLY different. In Monopoly, you roll dice, move your pieces around a static board loop. In an RPG like D&D, you create a person, pretend to be that person, travel through a fantasy world built by your imagination. You are literally only limited by your imagination.

Let's face it. D&D is like kids playing in a backyard pretending to be knights fighting dragons and monsters except they use dice to see if they hit the bad guys instead of just saying they hit them, and typically they don't swing swords at invisible monsters. Like it or not, D&D is like Adult Let's Pretend.

Good question

It is an argument on semantics and if you consider Tabletop and Board Games to be synonymous, and it kinda has gone well off topic in that people were discussing D&D 5e rule implementation in BG3 and comparing to Solasta.

It's new and therefore more interesting than repeating the same arguments about BG3 vs Solasta with (often the same) people.

I think we all agree on this but what’s this got to do with using 5e rules? Are you saying since the world is inconsistent, Larian should be able to do whatever they want? I’m just not following your point of view regarding this thread.

Larian is certainly breaking the rules that magnify the inconsistency. I can jump behind my opponent so now he’s off guard, swing my sword and eat a boars head like a power up all in one motion. Larian’s economy of action, even if the characters were superheroes borders on silly and ridiculous.

QFT

Hey i am new. It is because of this thread I actually heard and tried solasta. It was a good experience, now I am a cleric of BG3 should just obey the rules since apparently 5e rules do pretty good in combat. And I never played dnd ever.

Economy of actions is another argument, some points of which I agree on, e. g. healing with food. But this is different from the superheroes vs. realism. I don't play pnp, only the BG series of games. Just like jumping over someone stands out for you as inconsistencies in rules, the differences between who can be a wizard in BG1/2 and BG3 stand out for me.

I'd like to see some of the rules in BG3 changed, but not because they don't match Solasta/pnp, but because of how they impact combat as a whole. For example, one of the reasons why I'm not interested Solasta is that - at least to what info I could find on forums - you cannot play a solo character and have to create a party of four at least. I don't know if that is a pnp rule, but I'd not like to see this in BG3.

Welcome! Happy to hear that you tried Solasta based on things you heard here.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that nobody was new here. Just that a lot of people are and have had similar discussions in the past. But this is partially why it's good to revisit various discussion topics: we get new input from people like you. and can indoctrinate new members into the 5e raw or Larian homebrew cults

So you prefer if races and classes were restricted like in the old BG series since they were based on 2e? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you are arguing since each edition radically changed the gameplay, why argue about Larian not following 5e?

It is true you cannot solo Solasta. It’s been something I brought up as well. The devs never answered but it could be limited budget or the devs just balanced everything around a party of four. I don’t know but yes, I agree it should be changed. Solasta is far from perfect but it certainly did a better job translating 5e into a video game.

Changes are fine, but I'd prefer if they were incorporated into storytelling. The original argument was that BG3 is about playing superheroes and that it is not realistic unlike pnp. But in that context my question is how does pnp deal with the rule changes? For example if dwarves in Dragon Age would suddenly be able to become mages in the next installment of the series, but there would be no explanation whatever, it would be just weird.

One thing I haven't seen discussed is the fact that you can see your odds of success when you target an enemy. In DnD, you don't know off the bat your odds of success and have to work it out for your self by trying your spells or attacks. If I want to be as effective as I can in combat, I can (in BG3) cycle through my spells and attacks, aiming each at an enemy, and decide which one is most effective.

WotC just dismisses it and waves their hands. They just expect each individual table to decide or they just retcon it. WotC did try to explain the transition from 3.5e to 4e and back to 5e with a bunch of catastrophes to the world but again, it wasn’t implemented for moving the story. It was to change the gameplay.

4e was a fairly radical change to D&D as a game system and it seemed to model itself more to video games and MMOs. If it was a success, it would have translated very well to computer games. WotC incorporated a big change in Faerun at the time to match the gameplay and a lot of players hated it.

So they kinda backtracked with 5e, including the setting. 100 years have passed but it’s pretty much the same vibe as the 3.5e era.

I mentioned superheroes because that’s the trend I’m seeing in entertainment. I think Larian is following that trend. I call them the Michael Bay of video game developers because of it. They like flash. They like big dramatic scenes and explosions. They don’t seem to care if it really makes any sense in the setting.

5e is more grounded to earth than they like so they went with DOS system and added 5e rules on top of it.

Agreed. I also end up cycling through spells. Feels a bit disingenous during combat, like I'm not always playing how I would naturally. I kinda wish I could hide the percentage thing. While it's hilarious to see the sometimes 10%-25% hit chances, it also makes me die a bit inside lol.

Being near the end of a long running 4e campaign and have played a lot of 5e, there are actually a lot of changes from 4e that carried over into 5e I felt. While they are two very very different systems with wildly different strengths and weaknesses, there still feels like a throughline from 3 to 4 to 5 and every system could be enjoyed. That said, 4e genuinely would have been a lot easier to adapt into a video game. Abilities in 4e were designed with combat first and roleplay second, many could be applied to RP interactions but a player had to figure that out themself. 5e designs so many spells and abilities with RP first and combat second, most are still combat focused but a lot of abilities are designed with out of combat utility and roleplaying in mind. For example Speak With Dead which to become a focus for Larian cause now they had to voice and write lines for dead people. Also 4e gave you big stuff earlier I felt, or at least it did for the wizard. At first level I could summon a Fire Warrior or Dretch to fight my enemies and wreck havok, or burn down a building for a stupid entrance. 5e, a first level wizard is less... grand, the first level spells are useful but barely any would fit Larian's brand of big explosions and epic creatures, and even to level 4 things are toned back. That is cause 5e is considerably scaled back at early levels. But it does get to Larian's levels of grandness at later levels so I think they should try to be a lot closer to 5e and have that patience so it has more meaning when we reach those higher levels with large explosive abilities. Basing things on DOS and adding 5e on top ends up doing a disservice to both Larian's explosive style and 5e's system, when sticking to 5e would actually highlight both is something I believe.

Thank you, CJMPinger. That is the point I've been trying to make for quite some time. So many are so upset that their characters aren't rock star super models at Level 1. They get upset with D&D 5e because they're like, "I'm supposed to be a rogue so I should have a super huge advantage over my fighter to pick locks." But what they don't realize is at Level 1, nobody has a super huge advantage over anyone else. They have slight advantages over others in their areas of expertise that will increase as time goes on. A Level 5 Rogue is far better at picking locks than a Level 5 Fighter. Level 10 allows for even more of an extreme between the two.

So by NOT implementing the 5e rules right, in order to make people happy and give them more super-hero like characters from the very start, they are dooming the later levels which will then make it harder in the long run. I'm afraid they are going to have to really tank Level 10s so much that they will be even further from 5e rules in the long run, doing things that are so ridiculous that it will be beyond superhero status.

The whole point of D&D is that you are a weakling at Level 1, but by the time you hit Level 10 you really start to become that superhero person. By level 20, you are a god. That's the whole point. But instead, Larian is trying to start people out as superheroes so that by Level 10 they will be gods, and from there...who knows....who knows...

The main reason I am not worried about that personally (about them gimping the later levels), not sure if you played DOS:2, but there was a huge jump in difficulty when you left the starter area. Everything just really started hitting harder. I mean of course as you played, got better gear etc it leveled out, but when you first head over, it is noticeable how much harder it got. So I am assuming they will do the same with this game.

But then again, we are in a time of game development where they seem content on making games as "accessible" as possible, not wanting to be accused of elitism or gatekeeping by the game journalists (literally, some bile comes up when I call them that today lol), that it seems they are making games way easier. Which I hope is not the case in this instance as well. Keep in mind that there is still people that come on this forum, or the reviews and complain about how difficult the game is, which honestly I cannot understand, but there it is.

Larian could definitely work a bit more on character development as a concept. Start things a bit smaller sometimes so they have room to grow. And small doesn't mean being a level 1 character with an epic background who is abducted on a ship for a temporary inconvenience.

Baldur's Gate 1 does that so well. It creates a great arc for the protagonist.

Never played DOS, but that does not sound like fun. That also concerns me. I do not like games that start out easy and then become really hard all of a sudden.

Guys. This is a D&D game. It should look and feel like D&D not DOS. One of the major game elements of D&D is progressive increasing of abilities. It isn't about going from 0 to 60 in 6 seconds.

I don't know. The more I hear about DOS the more Im glad I didn't buy it yet. I've been tempted to because I love this game so much, but...

I just feel like DOS fans are trying to turn a D&D game into DOS instead of just accepting a game for what it is. Let D&D be D&D and let DOS be DOS.

That's why I feel like it's a scenario where Star Trek fans are trying to force Star Wars fans to play a Star Wars game using Star Trek weapons and equipment and ships and such. When playing a Star Wars game, you need to play by Star Wars rules or it isn't a Star Wars game, is it? Phasers don't belong in Star Wars and Jedi don't belong in Star Trek.

Likewise, DOS gameplay doesn't belong in D&D anymore than D&D gameplay belongs in DOS.

Can people stop alienating people who like DOS??? I like DOS but i dont think this game should be like DOS AT all. DOS setting does not fit this game because it is a completely different beast. I have talked about this before DOS surfaces dont fit because you cant fly everywhere or have magic armor anymore.

This also does not mean that DOS is bad. I think DOS is a very creative game. I especially liked how elements can create different types of surfaces damages and etc. It just wont work in this game. It already has a balanced combat in other ways already. Ofcourse adding creative things to 5e rules is okay but as people said, they built 5e rules on top of DOS not the other way around.

You could add to 5e rules that you do slightly higher damage in high ground because you spend resources to get on top to gain some advantage. Or +2/-2 advantage people are talking about(imo this should be 0/-1). They also wanted to give high grounds to people easily by giving jump mechanic which acts like Phoenix dive for example. You dont get hit by attack of opportunity and gives you quite distance. Obviously not as much as phoenix dive, but you get my point. If they did jump as a move bonus that cant be used near enemies, maybe to skip some hard terrain and get some elevation. People wouldn't be super upset about it.

Definitely.

Jump could be a movement action or a bonus action very usefull to get out of surfaces or to play with verticality in combats.

The biggest problem with jump is that it is coupled with disengage and the second problem is that jumping allow us to move further.

Those 2 things wouldn't change the overall experience but it would really increase the "look" of combats (mario, kangaroo, frog), their tactical value and the consequences of our choices (less systematic free things to do at each turn).

If it cost movement AND provoked an attack of opportunity or Cost an Action and could Provoke Attack of Opportunity I would be completely fine with it. Assuming it is decoupled from disengage which also should be an action for most classes. And randomly, I would actually like it if Jump was calculated based on Acrobatics or Athletics and not just Strength Score.

Agree. Agree. Agree.

1. Jump decoupled with Disengage for sure. I can't tell you how many times I clicked Jump to disengage, my character moves a smidge to get in position to jump, and gets AOO'd. We absolutely need the two decoupled.

2. Jump actually should be a move actions so that you can Disengage as an action, run and jumps to a location if necessary all on one move. I think jump should be an auto-feature. You pick where you want to go and if a jump is necessary the character just makes the jump.

3. Jump should be based on Athletics or Acrobatics. If the character has to make a difficult jump, a roll should be made. If failed, character fails prone and suffers fall damage.

I also think it'd be cool to see and animation difference between a character who uses Athletics for jump versus Acrobatics. If Athletics is higher, use current jump animation. If Acrobatics, show the character flip or something instead, maybe even a somersault and then flip, or something more acrobatic.

And distance really needs to be more believable. Flipping minotaurs jumping 90 feet across the screen is unbelievable. I don't think jump distances are right. Again, I think we need 5e more closely implemented here.

So. There are many and many and many messages to ask that BG3 follows more DD5 rules and reduce the DOS aspects. Do we know if this heard by Larian ?

I saw this thread and decided to give Solasta a try. I'm not an expert Baldur's Gate 3 player by any definition. I clocked about 4 hours of gameplay back when it launched, got annoyed with how the combat felt, left some feedback and then just promptly forgot about the game. I tried playing it again recently, but it doesn't feel like dungeons and dragons so I just quit again. I then resolved to just wait until release.

After installing and playing Solasta, I gotta say I'm now even less enthusiastic about BG3 (and I wasn't that enthusiastic to begin with). I honestly have no idea what the BG3 devs could have possibly been referring to when they said they made changes to core systems that didn't translate well to video games. I played Solasta for a few hours in a single sitting and it plays just fine. The combat is decently challenging, resource management between long rests seems balanced so far.

Don't get me wrong though. When BG3 comes out, I'll certainly start a multiplayer game with friends and have a good time. But this thread helped me find the D&D fix I was looking for, and it's a shame that it doesn't actually come from Baldur's Gate.

It's very telling how many players get the same impression.

I had started a new playthrough of Solasta 2 days ago.

This game is incredible and the devs did an amazing job during the EA. I hadn't played for a few monthes and it's really cool.
The items are perfectly well balanced,the difficulty is just what I need, there a TONS of meaningfull possibilities to deal with combats (well, it's D&D! creativity and so on...), hide really matter, concentration spell works, ressources management and the rest system is perfect and give us things to think about, etc, etc, etc...

This is a real and deep tactical turn base game as we can expect from a D&D game.

On the other hand I have to agree with Larian : missing can be an issue.
I had no problem yesterday but tonight it was really boring and combats sometimes last 3 more rounds just because everyone missed the 2 last ennemies (party of 6 with 2 companions!)

I totally agree that Baldur's Gate 3 has to deal with the D20.
It's not that easy to have an advantage in Solasta and that's really cool but to be honnest I was bored more than once.

Of course Larian's answer is the worst they could have had with this stupid easy advantage mechanic but if I have 2 (3) complaints about Solasta :

- The flow of combats when you're in a hell miss cycle is terrible. It doesn't happen often, but it happen (and I rolled 25 times for each characters to have good abilities^^)
- The animations are too slow - 2 seconds before he climb, 2 sec before he jump, 2 sec before he open the chest,...
(- The party of 4. It's definitely not enough to enjoy all the classes and subclasses)

I have the feeling that both combats and exploration could be a bit faster and I'm glad Larian is trying to improve this... Even if at the moment it doesn't work at all and create a lot of issues.

Yeah Solasta has AMAZING rule implementation and I love the combat, but man... the story, characters and voice acting .... wow. It's horrible. =)
Baldur's Gate 3 has the potential to be the best RPG ever imo, but... I soooo hope they fix all the weirdness with rule implementations, homebrewing causing unbalance and stupidity. If they do, it's going to be my religion.

This could be solved by a robust loaded/karmic dice system instead of completely breaking the core 5e combat mechanism.

Larian took a sledgehammer to a problem that only needed a chisel.

There was dialogue from Swen before the launch of EA last year saying that they had to find a way to nerf Guiding Bolt because it was too powerful. I should have known then...

The only things that don't work as well has to do with resting. BG3 is more open world, so resting restrictions are harder. In Solasta, a Long Rest zone is limited in dungeons, so players can't spam Long Rests. Thus, potions and short rests are vital.

In BG3, having fast travel from anywhere at anytime is, admittedly, a nice to have, but as stated in the Camping/Resting thread, allowing players to spam Long Rest ruins the entire game system. See that's thread for more.

Other than Long Rests, BG3 could easily implement most 5e if not all 5e rules. I think Larian isn't doing it to make non-D&D fans happy.

That said, if they did D&D rules right, like Solasta, I really think the non-D&D fans would actually see just how fun D&D can really be. I think that's what erks me so much. They are really not giving D&D 5e a good name right now, and so many non-D&D fans are hating D&D fans because we're upset it's not more D&D 5e.

I think what it really comes down to, is that no one at Larian really grasps 5e beyond the most basic level of understanding. They really should have brought someone over from Wizards full time, to guide them through understanding the rules before they set out "adapting" them.

Yea or easier, with customizable flat bonuses for highground and/or backstab^^

Probably could have gotten Joe Manganiello to explain it to them for free.

Do you guys actually think that Larian is doing ANY type of mechanic changes that are not authorized by WoTC? That Larian has somehow taken WoTC's intellectual property and just ran with it and are doing whatever they want? How do you know WoTC doesn't ALREADY have a consultant there discussing mechanics? Did it ever cross your mind that MAYBE WOTC is utilizing Solasta as the game for hardcore D&D players, and they want to utilize BG3 as a way to introduce people not familiar, or are not big D&D players into their playerbase?

That doesn't really change anything though. If true, it just shifts our unhappiness to include WotC in addition to Larian. I don't care what WotC declares if the result is worse gameplay. [insert "the council has made a stupid-ass decision" meme]

The ease of losing concentration due to surfaces is a bad gameplay decision that makes combat and spellcasters much more frustrating to play.
The high ground Advantage (instead of nothing or a flat bonus) makes a lot of spells and abilities useless and makes having low-ground so incredibly punishing.
The lack of ability to move concentration spells like Moonbeam while wildshaped is a huge nerf to the druid that takes away one of their main abilities and makes wildshape so much less useful in combat.
The ability for all classes to use scrolls and the availability of bonus action disengage&hide makes all classes feel more similar.

If WotC has explicitly approved of all of these things (as opposed to the more likely scenario where they've just given Larian blanket permission to make changes of this scale), then they obviously also have a problem with understanding what makes D&D combat and class individuality fun.

I don't think WotC gave Larian a blanket permission, because it would be unusual for a corporation their size to be that "freestyle" about their product development. WotC might not have a detailed plan on every change, but I'd expect they have a corporate strategy defining the direction they want to take in the computer gaming market with their various products.

I agree with you. WotC wouldn't give blanket permission to make any change Larian wants. But as you brought up, it's a bit unreasonable for Larian to get WotC's permission for every single change. Larian can probably freely make "changes of this scale"=small scale changes

Height Advantage: The DM is allowed RAW to give Advantage on anything reasonable = no need for WotC's approval
Surfaces: Are technically a thing in D&D 5e (alchemist's fire, various spells) = no need for WotC's approval
Concentration spells while wildshaped = Honestly this might (hopefully) just be an oversight on Larian's part that will be corrected
Action changes to disnengage/hide/etc is probably the only item on my list that really needed WotC's explicit approval

WotC is probably willing to allow a lot of Larian's home brew if the dumbed down combat is projected to increase video game sales, even if they hate it as much as I do. They know DOS games sold well so probably Larian gets a lot of freedom. And whoever is taking the financial risk with the AAA budget is calling the shots there. We don't really know what their contract is like.

WotC also allowed Sword Coast Legends devs to completely transform 5e into a "video game" format with cooldowns and such. And it was a total disaster even with Dan Tudge, director or Dragon Age Origins, at the helm. The developer closed down after 22 years in the business. So games can fail. Just with D&D video games, the more they stray from the tabletop rules, the more they tend to suck. Hope WotC remember this lesson with BG3.

Solasta, while being mechanically a better game than BG3, doesn't really do it for me because of the low production values. They bit more than they could chew with the cinematic dialogue and close up shots of the 3D modeled characters. Solasta would benefit greatly from remaining isometric like Pillars of Eternity or Pathfinder and leaving the rest up to the players' imagination instead of zooming in to reveal the horrible fake beards and crude cinematics. And I can't get into the story of Solasta, the writing has too many weak links. I'm sorry for the brutal honesty and I still have deep respect and admiration for Tactical Adventures and I really hope they get to make a sequel that improves all these shortcomings.

What I really want is BG3 that plays like Solasta... aka D&D 5e.

Totally agree 100% 1varangian. Solasta's story is weak. There were too many plot holes for me. The story has a lot of potential, but the execution was not quite so grand. I could go into said details, but that might spoil it for others. Besides, don't get me wrong, I like Solasta and the story. I just think that it could have been way better. Who knows, though, maybe with the finished product in May it will be.

But yes. The main point that I totally agree with is that I really want BG3 to play more like Solasta. Maybe not 100% like Solasta, but pretty close to it. The UI is simple and easy to understand, though as some have pointed out before they could have given it some hotkeys to make it less point and clicky. Their UI is also quite large, so they could have made menus smaller to take up less space. The camera was still an issue for me in that game too. I like free camera modes in tactical games. I also like in Drive Mode being able to tilt the camera so I can see better where I'm going. BG3 has this issue too. In order to really see where I'm going, I have to constantly zoom out, and that kinda ruins some of the immersion value for me. I also think that in Drive Mode the WASD keys would be SO helpful for both games. Especially zoomed in in Baldurs, party members will suddenly run in the way and get under my mouse cursor and the next thing I know I'm having a dialogue with them while I'm running down the road.

But Solasta does so many gameplay things right. The game is balanced because they follow 5e rules more strictly. Therefore, all items have meaning and purpose and value. Long Rests cannot be spammed. They have specific long rest zones, and food is required to receive a long rest. You can't just fight a battle, long rest, fight the next battle and rinse and repeat. Actions are Actions and Bonuses are Bonuses. You can't just switch from your sword and shield to bow and then back to sword and shield at the end of your turn just so that you can maintain your shield's AC bonus to defense. They restrict it so that if you switch to Ranged, you can't switch back to Melee. (I suggested to them, though, that if a person didn't actually use an Action after switching that maybe they could switch back. That way, if you make a mistake, you can undo your mistake. As long as you didn't take an Action, I think they should let you switch back.) Spells are easy to locate, easy to know which are Actions versus Bonus Actions, and Special Actions have their own places as well. There is no backstab advantage nerf rules in Solasta. There are no high ground advantage nerf rules. There is a cover bonus rule where if you have cover you get like a +2 to your AC. There is not jumping like super heroes.

I mean, they just do so many rules right, and it really makes the game so much more enjoyable from a game mechanics perspective. I REALLY REALLY hope Larian takes a cue from them.

Wasn't Sword Coast Legends an action RPG? Dark Alliance is a D&D-based action game to come out this year, so I'd say despite the failure WotC will try again to get into this section of the gaming market. A failure of a single product to sell is not necessarily make a corporation change their strategy.

I doubt WotC is letting Larian do what they want simply as long it makes a game sell well. Even a big name such as BG3 would be considered in the context of their entire portfolio. And WotC' own business model is based on changing the "versions" of their products every few years.

Let's be perfectly honest with ourselves, if WotC really cared that much about product control right now, that one Drizzt action game would have most likely been canned.

That said, I really hope the Solasta team makes it big, they got the combat system right on their very first try, and everything else can be improved with a bigger budget for the most part. I don't see them tackling a project as big as BG3, but I can totally see WotC considering the idea of having them become DnD's direct answer to what Owlcat's cRPGs have done for the Pathfinder franchise. The Pathfinder cRPGs are actually video game adaptations of actual modules, with some of the changes and additions made to the plot for the sake of better pacing/filling in plot holes now being recognized as outright canon (and my personal speculation is that Iron Gods may be the next module to be adapted after WotR, as it's a high level campaign with some sci-fi elements in a region literally right between where Kingmaker and WotR take place on the world map, along with possibly addressing plot threads that were briefly mentioned in Kingmaker).

Solasta's combat, writing and party setup is really as unapologetically tabletop as it gets, so they'd be a natural fit for this kind of project.

People say BG3 loosely picks up from where the Descent into Avernus module left off. The Solasta devs could make a game based on that, though I would also much rather have the Solasta devs make a Waterdeep series of games that may end up tying a lot of their modules and smaller adventures together, or even indirectly establishing a clear timeline of events and changes in the city. It's a bit baffling that one of the most popular cities for modules on the Sword Coast doesn't have a modern video game representing it. (No, I don't count that shovelware mobile game.)

Sword Coast Legends was a RTwP isometric game like BG1&2 or NWN. And it was the only D&D game I didn't buy because of how obviously terrible it was.

If Larian is taking risks because of the AAA budget, I'm sure they wouldn't enter a deal where another company could force them to make a tabletop simulator. Still ironically, all the "video game" changes they have made to the rules so far have turned BG3 into a worse video game. The shallow cheese tactics combat is terrible for both DOS fans and D&D fans.

Larian should have more faith in how well a RAW adaptation would play as a video game. Maybe they should go play some Solasta or Pathfinder.

I think combat is one of the factors holding PK back from reaching bigger sales. I've played it initially on release and there were a lot of complaints on how the stat on enemies don't match pnp and that makes the combat too difficult. I've had the impression the game was actually easier if you never played pnp, because then you'd go in with no expectations.

But while the stat numbers didn't bother me, I've found the enemy ai was just too simplistic. Even BG2, a much older game, tried to do better with its spellcasters. As a result many battles which could have been memorable in PK, just weren't. Certainly nothing amazing.

Honestly, Pathfinder also has one of the lowest completion rates than any other isometric rpg.
Add that plus problems on the statute, I wonder how this will affect the sale of the sequel.
I hope that the situation with PoE2 will not happen again, which was a much better game than PoE1.

What does it matter whether it is WOTC or Larian who is to blame for the ruleset and gameplay being as it is. Both have their names on the game. Therefore, if people are unhappy, both are technically going to receive the blame for it. Therefore, both should be working together to ensure that the game is going to reach the audience that they are targeting.

When writing a story or creating a video game or movie or TV show, you are always supposed to determine first who your target audience is. If you are trying to make everyone happy, then no one will be happy. The fact that they brought in WOTC and that it has been labelled a D&D 5e game means that they targeted D&D fans as their primary audience. The fact that they did not, then, implement the D&D 5e rules more strictly just baffles me. It is like you told everyone, "Lord of the Rings Fans are our audience. We're making a Lord of the Rings Game," but then you actually decided to create a Game of Thrones game. You have SOME elements of Lord of the Rings in your game, but ultimately you made a Game of Thrones game.

This wouldn't be as big of a deal to D&D fans if they had legitimate proof that they had to change the D&D rules in order to fit the game. However, the point of this entire Thread is that the D&D rules that they changed CAN and DO work in a video game, and they CAN and COULD work well in BG3. If Larian implemented the D&D 5e rules more strictly, BG3 would work SO much better because the game would be more balanced. The issue with the game is that right now you are either wiping the floor with all enemies because you have found a cheese rule that lets you do that, OR the enemy is wiping the floor with you because some crazy homebrew rule is allowing them to wail on your characters 2-4 times per round. There is no in between, and it can suddenly switch from going super well for you to super bad for you because of just how imbalanced the game is.

So the only reason I keep going back to the point of this thread and fighting for it is because:

1. They told us it was a D&D 5e game. So it should include MOST if not ALL of the D&D 5e rules with maybe a minor tweak here or there to make it work with BG3. (Example, Long Rests and Short Rest might need to be tweaked a bit to make them work in a video game. Allowing players to long rest anywhere at any time breaks the balance of the game. This is being discussed in a different thread.)
2. Solasta proves that MOST of the D&D 5e rules CAN be implemented in a video game very well, and it balances the game nicely and makes the game work well. Solasta's strongest element is that its combat mechanics and 5e rule implementation are spot on.

After playing Solasta, I can't help but play BG3 and wish they had the same battle mechanics and such. I play Solasta BECAUSE of this. BG3's story is better, it is more diverse and epic and emotional and everything else. The ONLY thing that it truly lacks, in my opinion, is that the battle mechanics are inferior in every way to Solasta's. Between the two, BG3 rules in all but the combat. In combat and ruleset, Solasta is King/Queen.

BG3 could easy win even about combats with a few tweaks. No need to be 100% faithfull to the rules.

The cover mechanics is a good exemple of something Larian didn't take from 5e and that is definitely not a problem to me.

This system doesn't add a lot of value to Solasta. A cover system is fine and interresting in games with guns because you have to cover your allies + flank you ennemies but honnestly in a game with lots of melee combats it's not really interresting.

I guess it is in the TT because there's a tree, a rock or something but I'm not sure you have more than 2 solutions in video games :
- wasting your time designing a complex system that's gonna be very situational (like it probably is in the TT)
- designing all "combats arena" with graves and crates and any other items behind which your characters can hide. The balance is pretty ok in Solasta but honnestly I don't think it's a great feature of the game. Wouldn't change that much without it.

The main problem of BG3 is not that it has homebrew... It's that Larian wants our creativity to fit theirs even if they like claiming that it's all about OUR creativity...

Not sure it's their intention or not but no it's not... As a results it's only about our DM's creativity...
In combats ours is always a bad choice.

The reason I couldn’t finish Pathfinder Kingmaker was not the combat; it was the kingdom building. I couldn’t stand micromanaging a kingdom and I know I’m not alone in this. I just wanted to have a group of adventurers and find adventure.

The combat was fine. And this is coming from a guy who thinks 3.5e which Pathfinder is based upon, is way too number crunchy.

It’s the same reason I am hesitant about the sequel. It seems to have mythic play where you lead armies. Again, it’s not something I enjoy in my cRPGs.

Considering the Kickstarter success of the sequel that is very unlikely.
Currently Pathfinder blows BG3 away, no matter how fancy the graphic in the latter is.

Pathfinder has a low completion rate because they wrote an ending halfway through. It's a completely different game after you rule a kingdom. What were they thinking? I just retired my level 9 Wizard as king and never touched the game again. If I want to play sim city I'll be sure not to look for that in an RPG.

Enemy stats were also ridiculous, but the underlying core gameplay was really solid.

I wonder why they put so much pressure on managing something other than the team. I don't remember rpg games where castle / kingdom management or something else was well done or more importantly well received by players.
I have a feeling that some developers love to shoot their feet (Obisidian isn't better).
How good that Larian has announced that they are not going to introduce something like this.

Not in my experience. I've found combat in PK works fairly well the first two chapters, but after that it kind of falls apart. There are spells & abilities which can just destroy enemies with ease; initially it was sneak attack on ray spells, now it is kineticist's deadly earth. And because the difficulty relies just on stat increases, the counter to that is basically just raising your spell dc etc. as much as you can.

OwlCat doesn't understand CR scaling in Pathfinder, they are as bad as Larian in making changes without understanding the system well enough to comprehend the affects of the change.

You know what might help here. Check out my thread in the General category called BG3 as Tabletop. In that thread, I played D&D 5e with a person whose character is Diadell. I am taking her through the BG3 story using D&D 5e story and combat. The enemy stats are all genuine 5e stats and combat is genuine 5e combat.

It is any example of how this game would play out if they'd truly made it more of a 5e gameplay. Note: I may have my own homebrew rules. It's hard to remember the rules exactly as printed so sometimes DMs do make it their own. So if I flub up a rule or two, that's why. 😁

But seriously, id you don't know D&D, just try reading that post and see what it is supposed to be like.

No amount of reasonable dice buggery can overcome advantage/disadvantage buggery.

Solasta isn't a story driven rpg, it's a tactical combat action game. It is good that Solasta nd BG 3 are different, it means u are able to play both and get different experience.
Pathfinder kingmaker was always a game about kingdom ( the name isn't just for fun heh ). I finished it and tbh it's kingdom sim isn't as bad as combat and character progression. At least kingdom sim was actually new and unique there, much more deep and complex than in dragon age or pillars. But the combat and character progress after a few hours became a boring pile of.. stuff, it was the only rpg in my life where i just hacked all my party skills to 99 and autocombat through last few hours of the game, because fights were extra boring and repetitive. If it's something like that in a new pathfinder, than it can't compete with bg3, hell it can't compete with anything tbh.

I don't buy it. Sure, Solasta is putting more emphasis on combat and gameplay, but it is no excuse for a bad story. You could say some people care more about one aspect of the game than others, but that does hurt the game's success for sure

Solasta ? Not a story driven RPG ?

There's nothing else to do than being driven by the story^^

All this talk about Solasta made me buy it to see for myself. So far, it seems fine. It does have quality combat for sure, which is what we're talking about.

Sorry i didn't get your point. It's a game about tactical combat, if u just skip all dialogues you won't miss much. Same as if you read everything, you won't get much))

I read everything in Solasta and I get a story. It's not a complicated story, but it doesn't have to be. It's certainly enough to tie the pieces of the game together and give you some motivation to go around doing things. I wouldn't say it's about tactical combat, it just happens to do that really well and everything else is adequate.

Actually it has to be. That's why the developers of Solasta said, that "this game about tactical combat, like X-com series". So either they have no clue what they developed, or not complicated story is simply good for you to call that game story driven or story focused rpg game.

Oh great, a semantic argument where everyone more or less agrees except about trivial minutia.

In this topic yes, you're right. I'm trying to clear this definition out, because when i first heard about solasta i put it in my metaphoricly speaking "A" priority list, but after i read developers description i moved it ty my "C" priority list. So this semantic details are actually important.

You're back.

I don't think the story is at all bad, it's just not the selling point. It's just a classic quest -- powerful artifact and looming disaster. Unwitting low level adventurers somehow end with a crown that could determine the fate of the world.

What was the story of Icewind Dale? Something about a devil wanting to destroy the world? I really can't remember. But I do remember some of the more challenging battles from that game.

For a dungeon crawl, the story isn't bad at all.

Story aside, which I agree it is a story game also with dialogue and such, the point is that everyone who plays it says, "Hey yeah. Its combat is solid." So again, that's why we keep bringing Solasta up. It's not to piss Larian off. We're just saying that D&D 5e is fun and CAN be implemented well into a video game.

BG3 beats Solasta hands down on story in my opinion, and I think that's why Tactical Adventures says they are a tactical game, but it definitely beats BG3 on mechanics. If Solasta had more of a budget to focus more on story and scripts, they would have left BG3 in the dust.

I just can't help but go back to Solasta's example to say, "Larian. Wake up. You could blow Solasta away and shut us all up if you fix your game mechanics and make it more like Solasta's."

Great game, mind you.

For Baldur's Gate 3 we want a great story with good combat.

Not a great story with cringe-inducing combat.

Pretty much. You can write the best story you can, but most people realistically aren't going to bother with more than one playthrough if the combat is is an unbalanced mess at best. Which is extremely bad for a game that would emphasize choices like this one.

Yeah, but, this is not a Solasta board so whether it's a C tier or A tier game really doesn't matter to the topic at hand. Its relevance is solely in relation to this game's weakest part, namely, the gameplay. Something we can all agree is very important in a game that you play.

So very yes. +1. Or more.

If you haven't done so, check out my part of the thread https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=771617&page=3

It details how BG3 could play out for the spider lair if they implemented level 5 cap and D&D 5e rules more accurately.

I think there is something to be said for trying to keep to the 5e rules where they make sense, but I am not at all against changing things for a better experience. Implementing a grid in combat would be welcome, because currently the controls are very awkward.

Seems weird to me that Solasta has so much invested in getting 5e right but not have multiplayer implemented. Single player D&D just feels odd to me, like you have strayed so far from what D&D is meant to be - can it still be considered D&D at this point?

Aren't BG1&2 (arguably the best D&D video games) considered excellent single-player experiences? There's nothing that requires a D&D game to be multiplayer.

Obviously it'd be incredible if Solasta was multiplayer, and even better if a DM could control monsters directly instead of them acting on their AI. But that's simply too much work for their 12-developer studio. Hopefully Tactical Adventure's next game will include multiplayer.

I thought it was interesting that all of a sudden they said, "Yeah. EA is over. Oh, BTW. We're not really giving you much more of what you guys asked for in forums. It's not a story RPG. It's a tactical game."

It has a story. It is a fairly good one. It has fun banter and interactions. It is very much a story game, but I guess they were out of funding and decided we are getting what we get, limited faces and voices and all. Maybe down the road we'll get more.

I just really hope BG3 doesn't turn out that way. I want to see this game blow Solasta out of the water like Godzilla using his breath weapon on a fishing boat. I like Solasta, but come on Larian! I'm rooting for BG3!

I get it, different value systems, no big deal. For myself I go with Dan Harmon's (Community, Rick and Morty) definition of D&D from Harmontown where he defines it as "a story we tell together".

For some people D&D is an outlet for artistic expression, vis a vis storytelling. These people are my community, the storytellers, the jokers the ones who act out all kinds of crazy stuff. The beauty of the BG3 system is that it is being BUILT around a solid foundation that supports my form of experiencing D&D in addition to how you want to.

I hope we both get what we want.

Thats why the most popular video games of DnD are ones that deviated from the core rules by a lot right? Oh wait.... BG1 and BG2 didnt. Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 didnt either.... hmmm. The most faithful games were by far the most successful DnD games.

All the older DnD video games were faithful to their ruleset and were, for the most part, successful. Name one 5e game fully licensed by WotC that was successful in the slightest. Ill wait.

Every time someone makes this post you know they either:

1. haven't played BG1 and 2 originals
or
2. haven't played 2e DnD
or
3. less interested in the truth than they are in wielding a rhetorical hammer

there are so many better ways to argue for RAW than continuously perpetuating this myth.

I agree, I hope they got enough sales and supports to do bigger and better things, like Larian did in the past.

I wonder how many people here actually finished Solasta. I couldn't get through the first few hours out of boredom

I did, but it really has zero replay value and by the end I was pretty bored.

Thinking about it I realized I am either excited to do multiplayer or enjoy a deeper story and Solasta doesn't do multiplayer and the story is very meh.

Yeah... as much as I love the core DnD 5th ruleset, and how impressively they've implemented that in Solasta... the combat *IS* far more impressive, fluid and fun in BG3. I just hope they implement a good reaction system, the Dodge and Ready action, and let go off the height advantage/disadvantage, and make wizards unable to cast all damn spells.

yep. so I'm still not convinced this game is proof the system works "raw" in video game form. Might be a bit of a reach on my part, but I think fun enough gameplay could have enticed me enough to at least dedicate several hours.

I do not understand the concept of one game or another killing it or not. Solasta has its own homebrews going on and it deviates from 5e in a couple of ways here and there, mostly ones that I approve of like generally replacing alignment with personality tags. They're both decent games and they both follow pretty closely to 5e rules and make deviations in different places. They can both exist and you can enjoy both games.

I loved it for what it was.

It has some charming bits. The dialogue your character uses being partially formed out of the personality tree you have. Could definitely have done with a wider range of voices... but then so could BG3.

I suppose I was spoiled by NWN1&2

Soooo many voice options there.