Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Constructive Feedback - This doesn't feel like DnD

I know how copyright works. If you want a good idea of the constraints they put on content creators, you can read through the Dragonlance lawsuit, to see what kind of creative control they keep over their products. Hoeg Law on YouTube did a pretty good breakdown of it. I can dig up the link if you're interested.

Are they breaking the system? Probably. I really haven't been very impressed with how they've handled it over the years, and I do miss the TSR days. They are, however, the final arbiters, and whether I'm down or not, I can't, in good conscience, lay that at Larian's feet. They proposed what they wanted to do, and WotC said ok, so if it's well and truly broken, then it's well and truly on WotC/Hasbro.

The OP here seems to think that BG3 has to adhere to a very rigid interpretation of the hard rules presented in the 5E core books in order to feel like D&D.

I disagree with this, on the grounds that D&D itself is not really about adhering to the hard rules presented in the core books.

The rules in the core books should be a starting place for a DM to learn how to adjudicate the things that happen in the game for which there are no rules. For example, if a player somehow starts a fire in a cave where bandits are hiding, the DM should not say:

“Well your fire doesn’t do any damage because sustained AOE damage normally requires concentration.”

Instead, the DM should just pick some kind of reasonable damage and have the fire does, and have it damage the bandits every round. This is basically equivalent to a surface effect.

Same difference with if a player tries to drop a Huge chandelier on an enemy. The DM should not say:

“Well at your level you can only do a max of 1d10+4 per round, so the chandelier only does 5 damage.”

That’s lame. The chandelier should do whatever damage seems reasonable for 300 pound hunk of metal and glass falling on someone from 50 feet high would do.

This kind of thing, this dynamic gameplay that is not necessarily laid out in the rulebooks is very common in D&D.

But most D&D video games don’t allow for any of this, or it’s extremely situational.

But with BG3, they actually put mechanics like, surfaces, environmental effects and height advantage into the game that let you do a lot more of this unconventional stuff that normally can only happen in pen and paper D&D.

I feel like taking this out in order to present a more bog standard D&D video game would be a terrible mistake.

Fair enough... still, while WotC may have the final say on the "what" of the overall storyline, I doubt they care much about the "how", if any of the "not so good" novels coming out over the years are anything to go by, and that might very well be laid at Larian's feet.

I'm sure there's some to go around too. I was sort of surprised at how much control they exercised over what the Dragonlance creators were writing in their new trilogy. They made them take out love potions, change a character's name, hit 'em for and some other stuff that's "sensitive" to some people. I'm sure that's not going to have a very good impact on story quality either. Unless WotC loses the suit, and has to let 'em publish the books they signed the contract for, we'll probably never know.

Yea, that sounds like "current year" WotC alright... not able to provide descent card stock in MtG for years now, but at least they make sure all their products are nicely sanitized and PC...

+1

There's a big difference between "The spirit of the game" and the "rules as written".

I agree, the game doesn't have to doggedly replicate the rules of tabletop to be a great game.
There are going to be compromises that have to be made in service of making a fun video game.

I think there's room for improvement for sure, but I enjoy seeing a unique take on the system.
I love environmental effects and interaction. It rewards so much more than just rolling against stat blocks.

Then just play DOS1, DOS2? Can't we have finally a DnD game? There is already great RPG with that.

We don't need another DOS. We need DnD game.

I just bought Solasta in EA, it is the 5E game you've been looking for.

I'm afraid the only similarities to D&D I see in BG3 are mostly cosmetic. The names pf the character classes and spells.

The entire combat system in BG3 has virtually nothing to do with D&D's mechanics. It's all about height advantages and environmental effects. This puts melee classes at a SERIOUS disadvantage as they have to be at the same height as their target and will almost always be subject to the same environmental effects at their target because they have to be in melee distance.

After playing Solasta, I wish they had got the Baldurs Gate licence.

Yeah, I mean either make BG3 or make DOS3. I would play DOS3 with pleasure, but this is not what I expected from DnD.

Surface combat is not rewarding when it becomes the default way to complete every encounter. It is fine if there are certain encounters where surfaces could come into play, but as the game plays right now it is nearly EVERY encounter.

That’s exactly my definition of how battles should be handled by BG3. Why would you bother with 12 classes witch branches to tons of subclasses if people are playing by the environment? DnD is a class based system (which DOS isn’t and I’m okay with that), where the class must shine ( once in a while you can apply the rule of cool to allow your players to accomplish unrealistic things for the sake of the roleplay). Currently I don’t feel classes intertwining in that special way because the game wasn’t programmed for direct combat.

There’s a simple test to run the balance. You take an early boss fight (phase spider matriarch for instance) - fight with it without using the environment - without pre-buffing and without killing the eggs beforehand (because by the sake of roleplay you shouldn’t know that the damn eggs would watch) - you should win more than 50% of the time.

Currently if you take that battle using the class system that’s not going to happen. It’s feasible but you’re depending on luck purely.

Had a thought about this. What if placing and removing barrels from an area worked like damaging the war drums? Someone would come and investigate, if too many were moved then they would know something was up and attack. If the player carried barrels to another area and dropped them near npcs they would then move away and maybe question the player like vendors do if you steal from them. Or just make them weigh a lot more so they can only be moved not picked up.

Actually did the spider fight without using explodables and surface abuse ( Didn't even knock it down shooting all the webs ). It's not tailored to beat it with any class atm ( Specially Melee ), the dmg it does is dumb ( Has heavy damage area attack ) just like the HP scaling and has infinite teleports. The only way you can beat it is through hide cheese. Also check how many spiders they throw at you at the same time. Even the small ones do good damage, it was so stupid xd. They literally want you to play like Divinity for the majority of encounters then some kid comes out and says: "You don't have to use the D:OS mechanics if you don't like them" haha. That is what "Balanced encounters around the D:OS System" does to a D&D game. That's why the 5E ruleset had set HP for monsters too because the AC system exists and now we have it all Larianized.

+1

I'm down for DOS3 but when you advertise BG3 i want BG3.

+1

Exactly.

Same my dude... my 4'th playthrough, i use two rouge and most of the fight i had to stealth cheese the mechanic they have in BG3... The spider does beyond any phase spooder damg in PHB. Also beat her with the cheese where i keep throwing potion at one of my down rogue, while the other bonus backstab till the matriarch die. Now i see some people are saying they have to sell more copy that mean dumbing down the mechanic or LACK THEREOF of DnD 5e.... Knowing now that a company of 17ppl can recreate the 5E rule so well, almost 1:1 and works great, now there people are doing mental gymnastic to protect Larian who promised BG3 will "faithfully follow DnD 5e". Is astounding really...

Faithfully foolow DnD 5e = a DnD style DOS game xD

Are you not enjoying the forgotten realms skin?