Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Speak With Dead = Always Kill Everyone for Max XP?

In the last two Larian RPGs, you could potentially get 1-2 higher levels by the end of the game by killing every single person you met in the game, even allies and neutral characters. This worked because, for some reason, you were granted extra XP but given no real consequences for killing every person you met. From an RPG perspective, I think this is a big problem if you are claiming to make a game where "choices matter" and there are actual systems in the game named "Reputation," etc.

Since BG3 is not complete yet, I can't comment on whether or not the same mistakes are being made this time. However, the deliberate inclusion and advertising of "Speak With Dead" seems to indicate that it's now officially expected that you will always kill everyone you meet in the game to get the most XP out of it. This seems to be yet another step in the wrong direction of implementing a faithful and complex alignment aspect to an RPG. Why is everyone killable? Why do you always get XP from it? Why are there no major consequences? Why is there now a built-in way to fix the minor consequences that may have existed for doing so?

From a D&D perspective, this is really inconsistent with the strict alignment expectations of many of the characters you will roll in a typical party, and some of the ones you must have in your party to complete certain quests or receive certain bonuses. I am not a BG purist or a Larian hater at all, but this is one of those instances where I can't help but see "DOS3" instead of "BG3."

I get your point. But i think you poorly named your topic.
1) If you are going to kill everyone, what stops you from doing it after you asked all questions? Removing the need for the spell.
2) "Speak with dead" isn't Larians invention. It is a DnD 5e spell. And it is one of those that are hard to implement good (hence the advertisement).
3) Noone is forcing you to abuse this exploit to get all the XP in the game. I finished DOS2 without using it.

This question is absurd in a D&D context.


BG3 is not going to contain everything in 5E. And, many of the things that are "included" have been or will be altered significantly. So, there is quite a lot of leeway for Larian to choose if and how to implement this spell. The fact that they are doing this gives me the impression that they don't see any alignment/RP issues with killing everyone for XP.


This is a terrible argument. I might as well just play a different game, then. It is the responsibility of the designer to make good choices and justify them. More XP is one of the central goals of characters in an RPG, especially when there are weak or nonexistent alignment concerns.

No, it's not. He made a legitimate counterpoint.
Your problem seems to be that you can kill anyone for extra exp even after completing quests with them exploiting the system for extra exp rewards (which may be a legitimate concern to a certain extent), not that you can talk to them after the kill (which is a separate matter).
Incidentally, in the overwhelming majority of cases the game actually doesn't let you interrogate characters you are directly responsible for killing (they in fact "refuse to talk to their killer") so there's that.


And it's not really clear what point you are trying to make here, on the other hand. Are you saying that the spell shouldn't just be available at all, by any chance?

"If you don't like it don't use it" is indeed generally speaking a poor argument.
It doesn't change the fact that you are identifying a genuine problem (an exploitable reward system) but failing badly at identifying the culprit or the possible solution (the "Speak with the Dead" spell and its removal).

No, it isn't. NPCs are not uniformly available for XP and robbing in D&D. So, saying you can complete quests before murdering everyone you meet makes absolutely no sense in D&D, both from a mechanical and an alignment point of view. It's absurd, as I said.

Once again you are actually conflating entire different issues.

Also, his question wasn't "about D&D" in general. It was about this game specifically.

Your cluelessness reveals your ignorance about the game. You should play D&D before making embarrassing comments about a game you don't understand. This is an officially licensed implementation of 5E by WotC.

Yeah, I'm definitely wasting my time.

So are you proposing to Larian that not every NPC should give exp? It's up the GM to figure out how to handle exp.

I do have a preference for milestone/session based leveling but it's hard to implement in a cRPG the GM can't be at every session for.

However, I think setting non-combat NPCs (the innocents of the world) to 0 exp would probably be a good thing.

I do as well and no, it's not particularly hard to do either.
In fact, some of my all time favorites (Vampire Bloodlines come to mind) are computer games that used precisely a goal-based exp system.

Still, this has virtually nothing to do with having the systemic option to question the dead with a spell.
As already pointed the OP is conflating two different issues (having an exp reward system that let you leverage a murderhobo approach for maximum benefit and being able to interrogate corpses) and mistakenly assuming one thing is the cause for the other, when that's just not true.
He's just too hopelessly dense to realize this distinction even after this was pointed to him, so he chose to became gratuitously aggressive about it, instead.

Err, looking at the issue of xp granted and exploiting that, I actually don't see much issue? Dnd 5e has a max level of 20, and true you could try to min max experience gains by questing then murder hoboing BUT the game will still penalize you likely. People will react very poorly to that and if the saw the murder, go directly hostile. It is also likely you could be cutting off future quests by killing them, or creating a bad reputation where certain factions will attack on sight. So you need to balance your wants of xp vs other game rewards and interactions I think?

Kindly quit the snarkiness and quit the insinuations and assumptions.

A lot of rude and ignorant comments. Ignored.


But there are no penalties in Larian RPGs. In fact, the only way to get an additional 1-2 levels at the end of their games is to kill all NPCs. This is contradictory to and impossible in D&D campaigns, so for anyone who has actually played D&D, it's an obvious issue.

I will say that if the only way to reach max level in this game is through exploits like that then that very much is a problem and I would be very much against that. I hate when games expect you to jump through hoops to reach the max level when really you should be able to achieve that through ordinary play. However if you actually can reach max level through ordinary play and the killing NPCs and completing quests and thing just puts you a level or two ahead of the curve then I honestly don't think it's a problem. Sure it's an exploit, but it's one that's pretty obviously not how the game is meant to be played, it sounds like it would be kind of tedious and honestly while "if you don't like it, don't use it" is a response I find trite a lot of the time, I think in this instance I would agree with that sentiment. Dev's can't plug every possible hole or emergent design issue, and just because the game technically allows for something, that doesn't mean you have to do it. I know there is a lot of stuff in games that seems tedious to me but would technically be "optimal play," but it's not actually required so I don't do those things. Until I have reason to think that this method that's been brought up will be encouraged by the game in some way, I don't see it as a serious problem, though I certainly won't object to Larian patching this hole.

I warned you about your posting and you evidently ignored that as well. Take a week off.

I'm not arguing this point. I hated this in DoS, and didn't use it.

My original comment was defending the spell. It's not the problem. And it's main purpose is to provide you with ability to talk to someone who died otside of your controll.

Sven during the stream was trying to joke about "kill evrybody, you can talk to them later"

If the fEature is entirely optional - it is a valid argument. You wouldn't argue about not using the ability to change volume for example.

This seem like odd question ...
Why should they not be killable? O_o
You are meeting mortals, and one of major feature of such creatures is being "able to die". O_o

For myself it was realy releaving that we are technicaly "able" to kill anyone and screw our story completely. :-/
I HATED it in Skyrim or new Fallout, that "cruicial" characters are just knocked down, seemed exhausted for few seconds, and them just stand up with full HP attacking once again. O_o

Its nice to see that developers are actualy creating consequences for our decisions, and they have to count with that in story creation that litteraly every character can die, not just bcs we kill it, it simply can ... its dangerous world out there. :-/

Can you imagine DM telling you "nah, you cant attack that guy, i need him for story i prepared" or even worse "you would kill him, but i need him for the story, so he survived three shots in the chest, decapitation, poisoning, and burning his body to dust" ... and still concidering that being a well handled plot? O_o

I think the real question here is how many XP you get and how relevant they would be in the end.
Bcs so far as we know, Larian is allready working with level cap system ... first anounced cap was level 10, now we know that level cap will be slightly above, no one really knows so far how much above, but somewhere around 10 ...
So you definietly will not getting another levels for killing everybody, you might get that last level a little faster tho. Important question here is: How much faster.

Since if you get for example 20 000xp total for killing everyone in Act 1, but you would need 150 000 000xp for geting level 10 ... its actualy kinda negligible.
(i know the numbers might seem ridiculous, but please remember that our main XP source are quests, and if you get 50 000xp for quest, there is no problem in needing 150 000 000xp for level)

How do you know there arent?
So far we only have seen Act1, and multiple NPC allready told us "see ya in Baldur's Gate" ... so its quite safe to presume there will be some content if they survive and therefore there is ensurance that there will be consequences, if they dont.

I presume you are refering to Speak With dead now ... funny enough, there isnt.
Most corpses refuse to talk with their murderer, and there is a lot of other bodies you can hear out to find out some juicy tidbits ... as far as it seems, corpses are unable to lie.
For example:

Im affraid there is no non-combat NPCs ...
Sure some provide harder challenge than the others, but the only civilians i have found are Tiefling refugees and they dont give you almost any XP anyway (1 or 10 per kill if i recall it corectly).
Everyone else is perfectly able to defend themselves, and therefore any XP you gain, is earned.

I think a lot of us are in agreement this is a small issue. The edge case of edge cases.I just realized I wrote the word hard instead of harder, I intended to write about either system in relative terms. Either way this thread shouldn't have been postured as some massive design issue.

There is no real-time Game Master to get their feelings hurt if the party murder-hobos. I think player choice is okay in this situation. If a player wants to play the game a certain way, why not?

I have to be honest and say that I genuinely have never understood this attitude. Why is it at all an issue that plot-important NPCs are invulnerable? And how is it a meaningful improvement when every NPC is killable? Like, I'm indifferent to that as a design choice but I have seen so many people in favour of making every NPC killable and I just want to understand why. What is meaningfully gained in terms of experiencing gameplay or story if you can kill a plot-important NPC and potentially block off the quest? Especially if it's the main quest and not an optional side quest that can just be checked off as failed.

And regarding the example you gave, a computer game isn't a live game at the table, where a DM can potentially pivot and make their story work in spite of a dead NPC. A computer game is far more limited and I can't fault a dev for making their lives easier by letting themselves not have to accound for every bit of random death and destruction that the player can cause. Sure it's nice to imagine the possible creative results killing important NPCs could give, but realistically it would just leave you screwed out of completing the main game and at that point, what even IS the point?