Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Level Cap of 5

Just writing to say I think a level cap of 5 would be better at this point for Act I. Some of the battles are very hard, and that extra level makes a big difference for mage characters.

Also has anyone else noticed there's no alignments listed? Or am I just looking in the wrong places?

WotC indicated they wanted less stress on alignments, we can see the progression of this since wizards bought the rights to D&D. We saw the first examples of this making the Druid at least on aspect of a Neutral alignment character vs a TRUE neutral only class. The ranger went from must be good to no alignment restrictions. The rogue could be any alignment because they expanded the rogue from just a thief, a broad type of different characters ranging from diplomates to 2nd story thief, from assassin to traveling merchant. All of those archetypes can be made with the rogue class, thus alignment needed to be broader for the rogue class. By the time we get to 5e we see evil paladins. That's really not that far out there given that the paladin got its mirror in the anti paladins in 2e, but i have seem more than one player "lose their shit" over the change.

Also alignment has always been a divisive aspect in the player base since the 1970's so I am not surprised to see wizards slowly change the rules to dilute the importance of alignment over the last 20 years.

I finished the early access, and only had issues with 2 of the fights. One of them I straight up got murdered, and when I reloaded my save I passed the check that I previously failed and ended up just not having to retry it. The other one was a single monster that was just one-shotting literally everyone, or knocking them off cliffs, which also one-shotted them. Actually have no idea what was up with that guy. Ended up just stealthing past him.

I don't think the level limit is that restrictive from a difficulty point of view, but I would like to not have so much wasted experience, so I'm good with either way.

Edit: Also, Re: alignment, I've had plenty of discussions with my friends on why alignments are silly and pointless, and we generally all agreed on that. I don't think it's a necessary mechanic. TL;DR: Acts can be construed to be behaving in accordance to pretty much any alignment if you're clever enough, so it's all super arbitrary.

The question is "are people entirely arbitrary, going from one extreme to the other, or do they tend to have consistent world views?". And does a world that is arbitrary make sense?

I don't think alignments are necessary to answer that question. Just good writing. As it is, the characters seem consistent as it is. If you feel like it, you can pretend that they have alignments based on how they act, but in my opinion, as I already mentioned, I feel alignments are incredibly arbitrary. I don't think video games are a good medium for them, because developers might have different opinions on what makes an act belong to a particular alignment than a player would.

I get that people have different ideological interpretations of what is 'good' and what is not. But what 'good' characters would have in common would be a sense of individual dignity and rights, and of pursuing the common good. There are many possible ideological variations ; but this much in common.

Alignments will be returning to character creation, but don't expect a lot of mechanics associated with them. See 24:05 in this video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/763351879

alignment isn't needed to have concise world views. if anything I've found alignment can oft be a crutch

Alignment would probably be good in game honestly, would not expect many machanics (besides changing alignment depending on actions)