Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Permanent party after Act 1

I have read somewhere that WotC wanted Larian to abandon the alignment system for this game. Strange

Locking the party will mean you will have to do multiple runs to explore all origin stories. Also, if you pick the warlock guy you will have to go without one of the 4 standard roles through the entire game, which is sub-optimal. Gale/Shadowheart/LAE'ZEL/Astarion provide a well balanced party. Replacing one of them with a warlock make it less ideal.

I have a feeling the tadpoles will be with us throughout the game. I just posted this text from BG3's Steam Store page on another thread for a different reason, but look closely at what they're saying here:



Maybe they're talking just about Act 1 there, but it sounds like they're describing the main plot driver; whether you go to the Dark Side or the Light Side of the tadpole powers you've been given. It's not a bad plot mechanic.

It's true, the whole "dreams calling you to a promise of power" is straight out of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. YMMW but I feel like it's a decent enough callback, though I'm a bit worried that BG 3 is going to suffer a fair bit from recycling of concepts from D:OS2 as well, making it seem too much like they're just mashing old Divinity and BG bits together instead of creating something original.

Considering that you need to rest inbetween every dialogue use of the tadpole I never used it much and as such triggered the later content so late in my playthrough that I never got to use it. I think if Larian wants us to play with the tadpole powers they should remove/relax the resting requirement (or give us more reason to rest).
As for your read on what happens at Moonrise Towers, it sounds like a pretty good guess



I look forward to when the game lore will inform my character of this potential for Ultimate Evil (I assume it comes with Ultimate Power, too)

ya ive heard that too and i agree that it is strange and i dont really understand the rationale or the decision dynamic behind it, as in if it was a firm decision by wotc? tbh i just dont agree with removing alignment, but i also think alignment could be revamped (id prefer selfish v selfless instead of evil v good, but thats just me).

i feel like this and the party locking after Act1 are examples of what i has been mixed messaging from larian regarding their vision for the game as bg3. like, you want to remove the alignment system, but also want to preload EA with all 'evil' characters and encourage us to have an 'evil' playthrough so you can collect 'data' - i feel like those two perspectives dont reconcile? and if we are removing alignment, then why are there still good/neutral/evil cleric tags? i think adding alignment as part of the tagging system (which i also think should be heavily expanded on to include things like alignment, background/profession, hometown, diety for all characters, maybe some pc specific past decision tags that would impact your playthrough - like DAorigins origin stories etc.) would only work to immerse yourself more in the world and your player character and enhance your playthrough experience. as it stands now i feel like the player character is really underwhelming compared to the origin characters (which i am seeing more and more now as dmpcs not npcs) who we will need to decide after one act whether we want to carry the rest of the way (before we even reach the city that is the games namesake where these origin stories are really supposed to pick up) - just my thoughts

i want to be able to gather my party before venturing forth - and having limitations on who and when i can select companions for my party seems overly restrictive. that being said, larian very well could have solutions or additional content post ea that compensates or builds on our act 1 decisions, but as it stands now we will just have to wait and see

I think that your conversations with the Hooded Skeleton, who later turns up in camp to provide resurrection services, offer pretty heavy foreshadowing. He wants to know what value the PC places on a mortal life and if the PC says it depends on the life wonders on what basis you will choose. To me that suggests that the player will be making significant judgments, possibly concerning which companions survive, perhaps in another context (the new Jergal?)

I'm personally OK with not all companions surviving the first act, since I really dislike having unused companions sitting around waiting for me to call on them. Never knowing whether the entire camp will need to rally to an effort like the defense of Denerim, I feel like they need to be equipped, carry healing potions, and have their skills leveled, even if I'm not actively using them. Since reputation matters, I also need to chat them up. On the other hand I don't want to discover too late that I no longer have access to a needed skill set (for instance will my ranger continue to provide more or less adequate lock-picking). To me, having a bit of party turnover (as companions die, decide they don't like you, or just have agendas they want to pursue on their own once the tadpole issue is resolved), seems entirely natural. Meeting possible new companions in Baldur's Gate is something to look forward to. Being forced to group with companions your character might not normally choose after the crash is true to the situation, and I consider the first act companions to be well enough designed that having to rely on them isn't really a hardship.

Having now played a bit of the game, I still think six companions would be too many--a balancing and pathing problem--but five might be nice.

Oh yes, it's one of the reasons I made now 2 characters that entirely reject the tadpole and never use it. Never. I did reload an earlier save just to see how all these dream sequences play out and how heartbreaking it is that because of the PC deciding to bypass an encounter with the tadpole mind control the entire party suffers. I get it, but I don't like it, which is why come full release I won't ever use the tadpole options. Also, I hate how there is absolutely 0 recognition in the game as of now when it comes to our restraint. 0. No dreams, nothing. In BG1/2 all the dreams varied on your reputation/alignment. I do hope Larian will rectify that. Like we don't need to get all these enticing dreams promising us power that we get if we use the tadpole, but give us SOMETHING.



What I don't like, and I have said/written it quite a lot of times (and I hate repeating myself) is that there needs to be more permutations of these dreams. You use the tadpole, you get a dream. You don't use the tadpole, you get no dreams, like what?! Give us dreams too, goddammit! Clearly different ones than you get when you let yourself be corrupted. But there has to be something, I understand why you get special tadpole powers and whatnot when you use the thing, those of us that reject the thing don't need any extra powers, just give us something. Anything.

As to resting triggering some extra content, you have no idea how that irritates me. BG1 had a crapload of flaws, but the fact that you got your dreams after finishing certain main story quests was a good design. I also hate how many companion cutscenes are just completely skippable or you have to go through a lot of extra hoops and effort to get them. Legit, I'm at the end of my 2nd playthough and I still have not had the Weave scene trigger with Gale, like wot m8? I feed you magic man. Imho I guess it's what EA is for, for feedback on these things (and I swear, once I'm done with this playthough I am legit gonna write a book of a feedback of things like that that need improvement asap + bugs). But basically, some of the camp cutscenes should be directly tied as to what you do and how long you hang out with certain party members. I hate the 'timed missions' and 'timed content in games' but in the case of BG3 it might be the only solution.



Speaking of the hooded skeleton guy, well. If you play a cleric, you can actually 'detect' that he's got a crapload of divine power oozing out of him and you can actually question him about it. Obviously, he's dodging the questions pretty well, but basically the conclusion was that he was some sort of chosen of Jergal. Also, I have not had this same line trigger on my wizard.. so it's very class specific. Also, that line of questioning him is locked behind an absurdly high skill check, which took me 10mins of save scumming to actually get him to speak about it.

I personally would prefer to keep all companions, but I won't be complaining too much if there is a good story reason behind it. I dunno, like them deciding to swap sides and backstab us maybe? Eh, as long as it's properly written. But yes, 5 companions would be nice...

Kevin Vanord has mentioned on Twitch that this "decision" is far from being set in stone when I mentioned it in his chat, so let's keep that debate alive!

not really, WOTC's been moving away from alignment for awhile now, 4th edition tried to (nonsensicly) shave off several alignments, and while 5E keeps alignments it really feels like something just there to appease old time fans given absolutely nothing in the game triggers off alignment anymore (detect evil, smite evil etc now are about he subtype not the alignment)

Alignments have been such a huge part of D&D to the point of people applying them to their real life personalities as well. Its a very strange decision to have fully removed them, as opposed to having a shifting good / evil and law / chaos axis that changes based on your decisions.

dont those subtypes have alignments tho? i think you should play/dm whatever works for your group, but i think the inclusion of selecting an alignment (and being unaligned) in 5e isnt in itself a bad game system, its just how/if you use it as part of your gane, and relating back to bg3 i think it would only work to improve the game if alignment was more fleshed out as i think only clerics (and i would assume paladins at the minimum on launch) really have any related alignment gameplay mechanics so far in ea? idk, i may have missed that part of the ea content.

i like alignments as i feel it gives players more character options and story ideas, and the more player agency the better imo, but i also dont know if 30 counts as being an old time fan so i could be in the minority here

There is nothing WotC or Larian can do to keep players from playing THEIR game THEIR way. So if someone wants to play the game with alignments, they can. Even without the labels, one can identify certain actions as good and others as evil. So, for example, I don't need Larian to tell me Shadowheart is evil. If I as the player find her to be evil, then she is evil. All that matters is whether Larian has set up biased roadblocks within the game to try and prevent me from treating Shadowheart as evil.

The decision to abandon alignment or the one to make the party permanent?

Right now I'm still wondering how any of this will work with a Paladin. Even if they add "good" characters later a Paladins rigidity can piss off just about anybody at different times. What if you piss off companions enough for them to want to leave the party after ACT 1? .. Or are they just going to remove that possibility all together taking any of those types of fun consequences away from us?

lol, sry this just reminded me of the anakin quote from episode three

i actually dont think i disagree with your overall sentiment - i just think that alignment should be a working function of a bg3 game based on 5e. if larian includes/improves it where it impacts the gameplay in a meaningful way that, as you said doesnt set up biased roadblocks within the game preventing you from treating SH as evil, i think it will be real successful - i just want to see it first.

Alignment has virtually no rules in 5th edition. It is barely a thing at all. There are no spells or abilities that have anything to do with alignment, and there are a tiny handful of legendary items that can change your alignment. Outside of those, alignment has been functionally removed from D&D.

Now it is more a feature of the lore than anything else.

This is one of the things that concerns me. Also, Heraclea has a historical tendency throughout these games to prefer an all female party. She is willing to forego or tolerate a wide variety of ethical perspectives to achieve this makeup. Right now. since I rolled a cleric PC, Shadowheart is redundant, and worse, there are only male NPCs to fulfil the 'mage' and 'rogue' roles in the party. Would very much like to see female characters be able to take on those roles even if they aren't in the first chapter.

What do you consider biased roadblocks? Characters shouldn't act only of their alignment. If Shadowheart does good things and likes if you are nice in some situations, this to me makes her have more depth. Same thing with a good character, they should have moments where they aren't so nice. None of this should prevent you from forming an opinion about any character and treating them accordingly but it should make you think a bit.

I am kind of glad they are not obsessing over alignment and wish they would take out the cleric tag for it as well. A lot of players jump to instant conclusions about a character once they find out the alignment and this is just stupid. Even players often limit themselves to acting only within a certain alignment if forced to pick at character selection instead of freely doing whatever they feel is right at the time.

At best alingments could be a starting point for a character. but you can't arbitrarily decide what a character is. is a baby goblin has to be evil? and what if he was raised in a Paladin Tample? what about characters like Jaime Lennister or Theon Grayjoy? Does a baby who was raised by Shar but never got out to the world, and only now learns of its complexities cannot be redeemed and must automatically be killed by a band of Paladin irrespective of his actual deeds? how does it make the Paladins good, and not a bunch of fanatic zealots?
totally agree. I'm sure there are characters who are unambiguously evil or good (after some time with BG3 I can safely say Astarion), but some characters have potential to change and grow.

final question - is Darth Vader Evil? and if he is, was he evil as a boy, and more importantly, was he evil when he killed the emparor?

In my book Astarion isn't awfully evil tho, it totally depends on how you treat him, like how can you explain my ''good'' cleric having ''very high'' approval with him despite doing all the ''goody-two-shoe'' things and my wizard is ''exceptional'' with all - Astarion, Shadow and Wyll. And again I went the ''goody-two-shoe'' route with a bit more chaotic/neutral options thrown in. Obviously if you treat Astarion like a monster, he will become one. So I can already foresee a ton of topics like these getting derailed into discussing finer points of moralities of our ''supporting'' cast. I think Larian did a great job at creating these types of polarizing characters. It will keep the game and forums alive for years to come.

As to Darth Vader, no, when he was Anakin Skywalker he was just a child, an innocent child who's lost too much at certain point. A child born into slavery basically, so he knew how bad it would get. Then the Emperor was slowly spinning his web of dark seduction to him, Emperor was the one responsible for the visions Anakin got of his mother in peril, and he acted out on that, what was the first strand towards falling into the clutches of the dark side. Then he got visions about Padme dying, but what he didn't realize was that he'd be the one who was responsible for that. She, quite poetically, died of heartbreak, she refused to live beyond giving birth to her children. When Anakin was the Darth Vader, he was truly evil, but meeting his son and stopping the Emperor from killing his last link to Amidala, was born out of love, which made him swap again from evil to good. Mind you, when he was evil, he thought he had lost everything, since the Emperor lied to him the entire time. So, basically, yes and no. Anakin has been both good and evil throughout his life. Just as any person is capable of both. Also, as you might've guessed - I love redemption stories.

Edit: Broken freaking quotes lol.