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Howdy! First post here, retreading some old ground in dozens of other threads potentially from the names of others. Bearing in mind this IS the Early Access and my opinions/observations are formed with the idea this game is far, FAR from being on design targets as well as implementation:

1. Mage hand is ridiculously broken, both in an overpowered sense and for its actual functionalities. The first time I used it was an attempt to press a button from a safe distance. Much to my dismay I can't do simple things like that, trigger traps with it, or rummage through inventories at range while I still have line of sight. I should be able to grab low weight objects and bring them to a character. Inversely, Mage Hand shouldn't be an offensive tool. Shoving and throwing stuff is fun, but that is the domain of the party, not at will long range cantrips. It is written in PHB deliberately weak. Take note as to the why. Mage Hand throwing oil barrels 30 feet or more at height remotely to end entire fights isn't balanced for Divinity, LET ALONE 5e.

2. Speaking of Divinity, why are there many surface effects tied to cantrips/surface effects in general? Ray of Frost can knock enemies prone on attack, by itself without liquid surfaces. No! Bad. Why make Grease, an area denial utility spell FLAMMABLE, thereby neutering its usefulness with one counter cantrip like firebolt clearing it entirely? What is the fascination with overloading goblin archers, random crates, and every encounter with magic scrolls, special arrows and bombs? And for the love of GOD why can my Wizard learn ALL of them? You have to balance your world and enemies with the idea that the player WILL loot everything, and will call your bullshit if that goblin hucking 8 bombs during the last fight didn't have any on his corpse when they save scum killed him. It is impossible to fudge rolls in a video game and it will be fact checked. You can't cheat DnD players on this stuff, we notice.

3. LOL, Rangers. I have a feeling you guys are using the Summoner stuff from Divinity to placeholder for actual implementation but if you aren't, I'm sorry. It's bad. Summoning your animal companion into a group of enemies to force threatened is going to be the meta in this game. I would know, because the first Goblin that did it to me pissed me off so badly I had to rant about it for a good five minutes to my own party. Rangers aren't summoners. They are 1/3rd level limited casters with a pet that needs to be caught and trained. They ARE the weakest base class in 5e as written though, so a more friendly approach to how the companion handles death and how strong they are in general might be warranted for the difficulty of the game as stands.

4. I can understand that
the Absolute only picks from the best of the best in her chosen and those that follow those chosen, so
it makes sense from a STORY standpoint why you want to give baddies more tools BUT.. Adventurers have these abilities because they ARE outside the mold. You make the party less interesting and the world less interesting when every other Goblin, nameless penniless fisherman NPC or shopkeeper is also a Cleric or Sorcerer or Wizard. Especially with this gritty mature direction you guys are trying to go from Divinity to Baldur's Gate III you NEED to nail the general atmosphere of Faerûn right. If you were sitting at a table rolling dice and you can just buff one of the DM's friendly NPCs and let them do the work for you, why are you even playing? What is unique about your character?

5. Action economy. Rogues have been severely nerfed into the ground by a number of things, including how well 3D spaces and movement are defined. The coup de grace was making it so that their main defining feat, Cunning Action, is now mostly useless because everyone has it. "You can take a bonus action on each of your turns in combat. This action can be used only to take the Dash, Disengage, or Hide action." ...Guess what already is defined as bonus actions now according to Early Access? That's right. Hide and Disengage. Everyone can do that. Everyone is a Rogue, but at least the Rogue is still good at running away from their problems better than anyone else I guess.

The reason why it is bad is archers mostly, if you guys were curious. You should have something with less than 4 hit points left dead to rights if it tries to move into position AND attack on the same turn if it isn't a rogue itself and surrounded on all sides. Little bastards get away with bad positioning every single time in BG III though. Return Cunning Action to the Rogues, Larian. Please. The more you buff action economy the worse it gets on BOTH sides if it is universal.


THAT IS ALL.

Only thing I can think of for a fix as far as looting goes is just run quiet investigation checks against the type of container you are looting and have different tables defined by the type and rarity of the container in question (Containers can also be enemies, though general rule of thumb should be if they use it in combat, are you willing to GIVE it to the player?). It would offer a lot more replay value to the game right off the bat and feel more like an unseen DM is rolling their eyes at you.

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https://twitter.com/thebonezone66/status/1315869316491939841

Here's an example of some of the stupid things I could get away with because of surfaces too.

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I am now actively trying to break the game in more ways and I have found that, by far, my spell slots have been used almost entirely for either raw damage (Giving and taking) and healing word to avoid death saving throws when I can't reach them with the currently OP help action.

Grease is stronger because of the flammable component I realized, as long as it is used purely offensively and not defensively as intended. You can trip and then set it on fire in the same turn for damage beyond what it normally accomplishes so that feels weird.

All your Wizards know Healing Word, you can go home Shadowheart, you are no longer needed except for Pass Without Trace since I found and learned all of the spells you currently have.

Speaking of spell scrolls, it feels dirty to be able to use so many in one sitting. I don't even see this many in a Level 17+ heroic campaign traveling through the Elemental Plane of Fire's City of Brass or the Crawling City of Gehenna. It's pretty.. Out there. So much so I can comfortably burn them and have a lot of multiples for certain buffs and attack spells.

If I can figure out how to, using nothing but scrolls, clear most of the content without a rest then we're going to run into entirely different problems I think. We're almost there. I almost don't need to use resources at all with food all over the place.

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Grease being flammable is a very popular homebrew, considering that grease is flammable (often enough, anyways, that 'non-flammable' grease is the exception). Additionally, PC-rangers cannot summon their minions mid-combat. Other than that, I agree with most of your critiques/questions.

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I agree with pretty much all of this as well.

Interesting point about Grease no longer being area denial, most of the complaints are that it is a powerful flammable surface, but the loss of CC is another good consideration.

I will note that Wizards learning non-Wizard spells from scrolls is NOT working as intended, they simply haven't yet put in the class check system yet.

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Major +1 here, especially about the amount of scrolls in the world and the amount of empty containers. Rolling an investigation check in the background as you search a container to see if it has anything valuable would be an amazing way to handle all the empty containers that I feel compelled to search just in case they might have something in them. And the amount of scrolls...good grief. Just a little bit of exploring and I have enough scrolls to go through most combat using nothing but scrolls. Don't get me started on special arrows and bombs either, got a good amount of those too. On a side note here, isn't a vial of acid supposed to just effect one character? So why does it work like a freaking hand grenade and coat a huge area in acid damage?

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+1 I agreed

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Pretty much a +1 to everything you said.

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+1 +1 and +1 I can't +1 this enough.

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+1 x 10^10.

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Originally Posted by fishworshipper
Grease being flammable is a very popular homebrew, considering that grease is flammable (often enough, anyways, that 'non-flammable' grease is the exception). Additionally, PC-rangers cannot summon their minions mid-combat. Other than that, I agree with most of your critiques/questions.


I even have it in my own homebrew honestly, my alchemist Wizard PC wants all utility spells but pushes the rules to extremes to try and break the action economy for spells. (I let them DROWN a Gnoll with the Grease spell because they claimed the target was inside of them for instance, I'm against being too rigid BUT..) That being said, it doesn't work as well with a dispassionate by very nature DM ghost in the machine running the numbers in Baldur's Gate III since the enemies are typically smart enough to ALSO utilize grease in this way and there IS no mercy or alternative interpretation from the game DM.

I only think of it as a buff AND nerf because of the fact that enemies know it explode and will do it as often as they feel they can get away with it essentially wasting the Wizard's spell slot if you wanted to force the dexterity saving throws and difficult terrain. A majority of later enemies in D&D tend to have fire resistance or immunity built into them, which would make this a devastating mid to late game upset if we see any of those types.

Last edited by Hyuponia; 14/10/20 06:02 AM.
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Originally Posted by Stabbey
I agree with pretty much all of this as well.

Interesting point about Grease no longer being area denial, most of the complaints are that it is a powerful flammable surface, but the loss of CC is another good consideration.

I will note that Wizards learning non-Wizard spells from scrolls is NOT working as intended, they simply haven't yet put in the class check system yet.


That's a relief to hear. My wizard PC was getting way too powerful after a point. I know that it couldn't possibly be by design or hoped as much when I saw that they were intending on at least the entirety of the PHB and Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide content.

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+1


French Speaking Youtube Channel with a lot of BG3 videos : https://www.youtube.com/c/maximuuus
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Alright, short rest. After messing about a bit longer, here's an idea that might work for the videogame: Have it just be automatic after every normal combat encounter. Just give it to them.

Hear me out now; This ISN'T without a drawback..

I feel like camp spamming right now is too powerful/trivializing and I hope (Though some may HATE this idea, us Wizards ESPECIALLY) that you eventually have a hard number of these long rests you can spend on each segment of the game. I'd rather them be done automatically at certain thresholds and it is shared up front when and where they might be.
(Such as the Tiefling's camp intersecting with yours for the party if you rescue them)


If soft locking is a concern, keep the food as is and HEAVILY reconsider enemy strength compared to the PHB and Monster Manual. Right now you pretty much HAVE to long rest between most encounters involving 3 or more enemies and the action economy isn't already in your favor because of how 5e treats combat momentum.

Otherwise you might as well just implement a DOS2 bedroll and insta long rest and be done with it.

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Originally Posted by Hyuponia
Right now you pretty much HAVE to long rest between most encounters involving 3 or more enemies and the action economy isn't already in your favor because of how 5e treats combat momentum.


Really? I'm on my way to the goblin camp (Did pretty much everything on the eastern side of the map + tiefling camp + Harpies) and I've now rested once. I rested, not because I needed to, but because I wanted to see what would happen.
I've basically been able to keep magic use limited to cantrips and scrolls. I still had most of my spell slots available. Both wizards also still had their Arcane recovery ability. Basically I could've gone on a while longer, I still have more then enough scrolls and shenanigans in my pockets! Doubt I'll ever need to use spells slots the way this game's going!

+1 on your initial critiques though. I've been doing my fair share of moaning about the state of Cantrips and surfaces (especially those created by cantrips).





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Originally Posted by Makeshift
Originally Posted by Hyuponia
Right now you pretty much HAVE to long rest between most encounters involving 3 or more enemies and the action economy isn't already in your favor because of how 5e treats combat momentum.


Really? I'm on my way to the goblin camp (Did pretty much everything on the eastern side of the map + tiefling camp + Harpies) and I've now rested once. I rested, not because I needed to, but because I wanted to see what would happen.
I've basically been able to keep magic use limited to cantrips and scrolls. I still had most of my spell slots available. Both wizards also still had their Arcane recovery ability. Basically I could've gone on a while longer, I still have more then enough scrolls and shenanigans in my pockets! Doubt I'll ever need to use spells slots the way this game's going!

+1 on your initial critiques though. I've been doing my fair share of moaning about the state of Cantrips and surfaces (especially those created by cantrips).


My initial example comes from trying not to utilize any of the stuff I at least personally consider Divinity fluff, like the special arrows, overabundance of bombs, scrolls, and surfaces effects outside of my spell slots (If I can help to avoid them at all). It quickly becomes clear (at least to me anyway) that they balanced this like they would their more campy high fantasy romps and that doesn't play nice with vanilla 5e at all. We've gone from the instant rest mechanic + full heal every few second GCD economy to a limited charge healing economy while taking more or less the same damage you would expect from one of Larian's games.

These guys NEED to sit in with an Adventurer's League I think and get an idea of how a normal game goes at different levels of play.

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[Linked Image]

I am now going to make the rounds and screenshot some of the most ridiculous piles of -things- people just have scattered around and you tell me if it looks ridiculous honestly.

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I don't see how the tabletop Ranger works in a CRPG. All of their abilities are about removing any disadvantages in set situations - and if you don't pick the campaign's situations you've got a useless character. There's already been articles on how the Ranger for BG3 needed to be redesigned to function in a CRPG at all:

https://kotaku.com/the-ranger-class-is-getting-some-changes-in-d-d-and-ba-1835659585

I think that giving them the option of animal summons and swapping in some abilities from other classes is an acceptable compromise.

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Made a account just to +1 this post.

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