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hello Niara

This is talking about BG3 and removing the alignment system, it is gone Niara or it never existed. Pretty sure it was in a interview they talked about it, along with it mentioned some where else that they were moving away from the alignment system.

Originally Posted by Niara
5e is more about permissiveness and consequences, than it is about restrictions. Your clerical domains give you bonuses, rather than unlocking things that you'd otherwise be barred from. Light domain, for example, the purview of many of our fire and sun deities, gets access to *Extra* spells that suite that theme, which other clerics of different domains don't get.

A cleric of a good god that follows their healing and life folio, CAN ask their deity for Inflict Wounds, certainly, and if they are in good grace with their Deity, the god may well grant it to them under the assumption that it is with good cause. If they then go on to abuse that trust, or use the spell in nefarious or unjustified ways, then there may well be consequences for that between them and their god... because Alignment is NOT gone. It's not mechanically mandated with a hard rule structure, but is instead placed into the flexible space that exists between players, their DM and the role-play space of the world... but it's absolutely a part of the world and the system.

It was never restrictions, it was choice and what you describe is pretty much what I was saying.

Talking about removal of alignment actually reminds me of 3.5 books, Book of Exalted Deeds and vile of darkness. If I remember correctly there was a pacifist feature where you had restrictions to harming others but gained benefits from it. There was also scenario where you run into two succubus lovers, do you kill them because they are evil creatures or leave them be because they are a couple in love? The pacifist vs a normal cleric or the succ scenario always seemed interesting.

By this article https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/d...mprovements-racial-depictions-take-years

D&D is moving away from alignment based creatures, wonder what 6th edition will look like.

Last edited by fallenj; 19/09/21 05:41 AM.
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I dunno, older editions were big on restrictions. There were restrictions for just about everything.

Anyhow, I may have missed a thread of the conversation - when folks were talking about alignment, I read it as talking about it being removed from 5e, not about it being removed from the game, since, as you say, it was never in the game (at least not visibly) at all... so it wouldn't make much sense for anyone to be talking about removing it from BG3 specifically... so I felt the need to pop in and note that the common refrain about alignment being 'gone' from 5e, which I see from various sources more frequently than I care for, is quite markedly untrue ^.^ If I'm off-topic further than I realise, just ignore me!

Though I will add that any future edition that comes out where entities such as celestials are not inherently and innately good, capital 'g', and entities such as devils and demons are not inherently and innately evil, capital 'e', and these are no longer such potent absolute truths of their respective beings that they don't physically and tangibly cease to be celestials/devils/demons if they change enough to no longer be considered 'Good' or 'Evil' respectively.... it will not be a step forward or an improvement, it will just be a much blander, less interesting multiverse.

Last edited by Niara; 19/09/21 01:06 PM.
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I do wonder if Baldur's Gate 3 is setting up this movement away from species and alignments. We already see drow and goblins shifting away from their main gods in Lloth and Maglubiyet (? idk how to spell that lmao) and the end of the game could involve divorcing the pantheon entirely from specific races. Meaning gods and their worshippers would be bound only by ideology instead.

Personally, anything that shifts us further away from fantasy eugenics is a win in my book. But I do hope they keep the core concept of alignments, even if the form changes. It's rather grown on me.

Edit: That said, if they make these changes and continue to make creatures like goblins the main antagonist forces that we merk in droves, well... I'm with Niara, then. That's just taking away a defining concept of the cosmology for a cosmetic change.

Last edited by MyriadHappenings; 19/09/21 01:01 PM.

“But his mind saw nothing of all this. His mind was engaged in a warfare of the gods. His mind paced outwards over no-man's-land, over the fields of the slain, paced to the rhythm of the blood's red bugles. To be alone and evil! To be a god at bay. What was more absolute?”
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Originally Posted by Niara
I dunno, older editions were big on restrictions. There were restrictions for just about everything.

Anyhow, I may have missed a thread of the conversation - when folks were talking about alignment, I read it as talking about it being removed from 5e, not about it being removed from the game, since, as you say, it was never in the game (at least not visibly) at all... so it wouldn't make much sense for anyone to be talking about removing it from BG3 specifically... so I felt the need to pop in and note that the common refrain about alignment being 'gone' from 5e, which I see from various sources more frequently than I care for, is quite markedly untrue ^.^ If I'm off-topic further than I realise, just ignore me!

Though I will add that any future edition that comes out where entities such as celestials are not inherently and innately good, capital 'g', and entities such as devils and demons are not inherently and innately evil, capital 'e', and these are no longer such potent absolute truths of their respective beings that they don't physically and tangibly cease to be celestials/devils/demons if they change enough to no longer be considered 'Good' or 'Evil' respectively.... it will not be a step forward or an improvement, it will just be a much blander, less interesting multiverse.

You got a example? If not I'm just going to guess its to each there own.

Gotcha, the thread started off as clerics in the game feeling the same, 1varangian started talking about spells being related to deities and having to much spells period. I mentioned they were actually related to domains associated with deities. So ya we started branching towards 5e. I could see where the confusion is coming from and it could of been just my typing also, no big Niara.


Ya I agree, curious to see if they go full stupid though.

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Originally Posted by fallenj
Gotcha, the thread started off as clerics in the game feeling the same, 1varangian started talking about spells being related to deities and having to much spells period. I mentioned they were actually related to domains associated with deities.

Gods still have portfolios, though, don't they? You could categorize these portfolios under alignment but they're simply never talked about as such.


“But his mind saw nothing of all this. His mind was engaged in a warfare of the gods. His mind paced outwards over no-man's-land, over the fields of the slain, paced to the rhythm of the blood's red bugles. To be alone and evil! To be a god at bay. What was more absolute?”
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Originally Posted by fallenj
You got a example? If not I'm just going to guess its to each there own.

I'll spoiler this, because it's a little bit tangential but, off the top of my head, restrictions that I'm glade are gone or eased up (this will be using my 3.5 knowledge only, and it may be spotty in places):


Barbs are Required to be illiterate, unless they waste extra skill points (which they have precious few of compare dot other classes) on it.

Barb and Bard both are restricted from any lawful alignment, and are restricted from levelling up if they drift into a lawful alignment (this is true of any other alignment restriction mentioned).

Clerics are alignment restricted based on their deity, and domain restricted based on their alignment... although in this particular case I will make note that, contrary to what many seem to say, clerics in 3.5 were not actually required to worship a specific deity at all, and if they did not could pick their alignment freely... and amusingly, if you didn't worship a particular god, there was no lock-out for drifting, so a non-deity cleric would never go ex-cleric.

Druids were locked to at least one Neutral axis point - could be either, but they had to maintain at least one.

Monks had to be lawful, Paladins had to be Lawful Good

Wizards could only choose to specialise in particular school if they accepted being hard locked out of two other schools of magic (My brain is saying there's something kooky with divination though... like it got preferential treatment for some arbitrary and unjustified reason... like, only locked out one school, and could not, itself, be locked out...)

You were soft-restricted in multiclassing by favoured classes based on race – if you were, say, a level 15 halfling fighter, you couldn't multiclass into ranger without having to take a heavy XP penalty... because halflings favoured rogue. Everyone but Human, I think, had a favoured class, which meant that everyone but human would take an xp penalty for multiclassing if they didn't pick their racial favourite class, or start with it (there's more to the rule than that, but I'm being brief).

You were restricted on what languages you could learn or know, based on your race; You're a halfling, so it doesn't matter that you grew up in the stacks of Candlekeep, have an 18 Int at level 1 and are setting out to see the world as a Bard, knower of stories in dozens of dialects... you CANNOT know Draconic, Sylvan, Giant and Infernal as your bonus languages... you just can't, full stop... nope, you're a halfling so your bonus languages are: Dwarven, Elven, Gnomish, Goblin, and Orc. Fun.

A whole bunch of skill were only allowed to be attempted at all if you had put ranks in them... and there were skills in place the required checking for many minute and discrete things to the extent that you couldn't possibly afford to spend points in all of them... So good luck to your 9 strength elven dex fighter, who, because they didn't want to waste skill ranks specifically on the 'swim' skill, because they only had so many points to spend, and needed to put them into actually combat-relative ones like tumble... now has to accept the fact that they will drown if they are dropped in the middle of a calm, placid lake on a sunny, still day, because they still have to check to swim out, and their take-10 is a failure.


Those are what come to mind immediately...

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jeez ya those are restrictions, you got me on that, forgot about all of those.

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I really hope we get some domains from XGtE. If I could play a forge cleric of Moradin, I'd be a happy man. Life domain is great as well, but it doesn't have the same thematic dwarven punch.

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Just the ability to make the armors look a little different in character creation would be great.


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Originally Posted by fallenj
jeez ya those are restrictions, you got me on that, forgot about all of those.

Yeah... Previous editions where big on restrictions. No such thing as a neutral or evil paladin. Lawful good is the only way to go. The choices you get as a paladin in kingmaker screwed you if you didn't use the crappy lawful good choice and made you lose your powers. They had to slap a bandaid to soft fix it by adding in scrolls of atonement. I think back on 1e & 2e you could only be good aligned if you wanted to be a ranger.

5e fix that by leaving that up to your subclass. As for cleric you get abilities based on your domain that you picked along with bonus spells. Like the Arcana Domain gives you access to some of the Wizard spells with use of your wisdom modifier.

Last edited by Alealexi; 27/09/21 05:56 AM.
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ARRRGH I hope they will include Death Domain!!!!!

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Originally Posted by Alealexi
Originally Posted by fallenj
jeez ya those are restrictions, you got me on that, forgot about all of those.

Yeah... Previous editions where big on restrictions. No such thing as a neutral or evil paladin. Lawful good is the only way to go. The choices you get as a paladin in kingmaker screwed you if you didn't use the crappy lawful good choice and made you lose your powers. They had to slap a bandaid to soft fix it by adding in scrolls of atonement. I think back on 1e & 2e you could only be good aligned if you wanted to be a ranger.

5e fix that by leaving that up to your subclass. As for cleric you get abilities based on your domain that you picked along with bonus spells. Like the Arcana Domain gives you access to some of the Wizard spells with use of your wisdom modifier.
5th ed doesent have much restrictions at all honestly. Paladins can still lose their powers but how is kind of left up to the DM. That said the class itself does say that at page 86 that a Paladin who breaks his bow willingly and does not seak repentance could lose his class benefits or have to serve pentance somehow. Its left up to the DM though like alot of things are in DND.

Clerics domain spells are nice in that they are often spells that clerics normally dont have acces to. A light cleric can cast fireball for example and a tempest domain can cast lighnting bolt. Not huge things in itself but just small things that just denote themselves to be slightly different from clerics devoted to another domain.

Imho the channel divinity features are a bigger difference between clerics but that alone is also a small thing to differentiate clerics from eachother.

Aside from maybe a visual change by giving you stylized armor or something im not sure what they could alter. I dont think WOTC will want them to change class features smirk

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You could probably make a full game devoted entirely to clerical schisms and still not do FR religions justice, there is so much nuance and depth to dig into. It would be very hard to tailor the dialogue to account for the verisimilitude of religious ideas. Maybe it’s better to let the player head canon the religious ideas that gives rise to a specific response.

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I’ve played clerics exclusively for some reason in this game of different faiths and I can’t say there is much difference between them. I get the option to say a prayer now and then, but I agree there could be more faith-based actions. I also wish for a few more gods, or that there should be comments based on the core values of the religion.

Such as a cleric Elistraee having something to sat about slaves and helping drow etc.

I’m not overly fond of the Forgotten Realms deity choices overall though

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I do hope that the deity choice has much more roleplaying focus down the line. Clerics (and Paladins) are some of the most roleplay-heavy classes on Tabletop, IMO because their lives revolve around service to a god(dess). So more unique dialogue options for them would be great for them. A lot of the god-specific dialogue options right now are generic ones that are somewhat disguised unfortunately-what used to have the 'evil cleric' tags now might have [SHAR] or [LOLTH] for example, without actually having any unique dialogue or response involved. I really enjoy it when I see that the game remembers that I'm a cleric of X or Y deity but there aren't a whole lot of places in the game where I noticed it's impact. You'll see more reactivity playing a Cleric of Shar or Selune as far as I have seen, at least. The best experience so far I have had is to do a Lolth-worshiping drow cleric, but even then almost all of the Lolth-related dialogue options came from the Lolthsworn tag, not from being a cleric,-one place I noticed a difference was with the Eilistraeen sword you can acquire in the underdark. You could identify it as being part of a ritual of a heretical faith and draw Lolth's wrath by choosing to go through with it anyway. Although I'm not sure if the second part was due to my status as a cleric or a lolthsworn drow, it did feel like my background as a cleric of a specific deity was recognized and relevant.
I'd like to see more like that in the future. For example, Helm was a pretty big deity in Elturel IIRC, but there's basically no real helm-specific content in the grove or relating to the Tieflings atm, which is a shame.

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