Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Hot take: does anyone not hate the changes to 5e?

I've been playing and running 5e games for a few years, but I've never picked up a divinity game before. It seems like half of the posts on this forum are criticisms of the game for not being exactly like 5e, which baffles me a little. Sure, I think there are a few things to tone down a little, but I think a lot of the shifts are things I not only enjoy in the game, but would implement as homebrew if I thought I could handle the book-keeping and calculations to use them in pen and paper. I love the creative preparation that surface interactions, even when coming from cantrips, provide. Similar bizarre tactics are capable in the pen and paper game with spells like mold earth, shape water, control flame, and prestidigitation, after all. Exploding barrels could have their damage or convenience reduced some, but again, they offer me a way to interact with the game in more nuanced and creative ways if I want to prep the field instead of fighting with brute force. The rogue should be buffed back up after losing expertise and cunning actions, but I still find them functional and the interplay the new bonus actions allow feels awesome, especially since some 5e combats I've played tend to boil down to close in and attack until angry thing dead.
Is the ability of the wizard to memorize any spell balanced? Hah! Not on your life, and in fact it was never intentional, but I've still had fun messing around with it.

Are things perfect and Larian should run wild, source material be darned? No! but if you strip all the additions, the game would feel really shallow, since it'd just be a 5e clone with less customization and no DM improvisation. I think they are by and large taking advantage of the digital format to make the game more interesting rather than less.

I don't know, it just seems like everyone is frustrated with things I've been having fun with. The game still seems to have significant challenge unless your both very clever and very patient, which I feel like should be a given in a turn-based strategy game. Does anyone else feel like this?

It's not a matter of "it's different, so it sucks."

Many of the changes simply don't make sense or aren't explained. People are frustrated because they come to the game with a strong understanding of how 5e works, and then that's changed in a way that they can't make sense of and makes the game less fun for them. What's not to understand?

Eh, I'm fine with most of them, and there's not that much difference that can't be explained by the fact that TTRPGs and CRPGs are different mediums that work in different ways with different limits.

For one, i actually hope Larian would homebrew lots of 5e rules, that WotC haven't attended for years (and at this point like never will).
5e is anything but perfect. Certainly step forward from 4e, which was god-awful, and everyone's hated. But still just a shadow of what 3.5e used t be (not mentioning further improvement done in PF1e and 2e)

Of the changes I noticed. Rogue needs their expertise back. Heck, they took away the rogue's thieves' tools proficiency, so they kind of need to add in slight of hand as an auto proficiency with the way they're doing traps and locks. Cunning Action was definitely weakened by everyone getting Disengage and Hide as a bonus action. Thief getting 2 bonus actions was an interesting way to handle fast hands, but being able to apply poison and then attack with main hand and off hand felt a little over powered at times. Rogues need their level three sneak attack buff back; Fighters and Rangers get a damage boost at 3rd level.

The Ranger changes are ... neat, but I don't think they go far enough. A cantrip is ... weak ... especially an attack cantrip. The familiar was neat but I took it with my beastmaster and I couldn't have both out at the same time, so that wasn't helpful. Rogues get a damage boosting ability at 1st level. Fighters get a healing ability at first level. Rangers need a similar valued combat ability at first level. I get Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer not working; they don't work in PnP either and that's why they're getting a big rewrite in Tasha's.

I don't like the prevalence of the surfaces. They're there in almost every single fight. Bonus action potion chugging is ... weird. Food providing healing is ... weird. If they want us to be fully healed before each fight, then just give us a short rest before each fight and dial the game around that. But it would be difficult to make long rest points (hit me up Larian, i can show you how to rebalance all of the classes to be short-rest classes, I'm available, I've done it in PnP).

All the people who have never played a D&D title or D&D pen and paper in their whole life can't hate it because they don't know what there is to hate. And the only thing that Divinity Fans can hate is that it doesn't play exactly like Divinity ( Combat always takes longer in D&D ).

"People are frustrated because they come to the game with a strong understanding of how 5e works, and then that's changed in a way that they can't make sense of and makes the game less fun for them."

Isn't that the definition of "it's different, so it sucks?" I feel like tons of things from 5e are still here, too. Someone who's never played dnd will still be playing catch-up to the players that recognize all these features, no?

No. Differences in and of themselves don't suck. Differences that don't make sense and don't make for a better experience suck.

+1

I'm with you

I've had a lot of fun playing with the larian mechanics and it still feels like a dnd "video-game" to me. It has it own advantages and limitations to work with being a different medium from tabletop

I think if they had named firebolt, "create bonfire", which doesn't sound as cool, and introduced bonus actions as something related to the tadpole, there would be less complaining

Obviously classes need work, it's EA, rogues need to be more of a rogue and not a dex fighter, wizard learning everything is a bug, ranger pets need work, etc

What doesn't make sense to me is all the play demos Larian put out there so people could actually see what they are getting. There is also the difference in platform going from multiplayer pen and paper table top finished game to largely single player computer open beta if we're honest. Things are going to be up in the air, right now they want to see what sticks, but some things simply don't translate well, the telepathy gained from The Great Old One warlock at level 1. There's just really no need for something like that. With Ranger, Beastmaster has really needed some polish to make it feel complete. I will say Larian was a touch heavy handed with their interpretation, but now's the time to take it for a spin and see what happens ya know? A lot of comments have been made about the excessive jumps and I seem to remember those being psionic enhancements from the tadpole assuming my memory serves.

Sure, not everyone's gonna love it but honestly the games got a lot to offer and I hate the idea that people will completely write this title off over some unmet expectations in early access of all things.

What things aren't explained and don't make sense? Besides the cartoonish inventory space. That I'll grant wholeheartedly, even if I still think it's funny.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the BG3 adaptation of 5e's rules. I get why someone who bought the game because they love 5e would be frustrated but I also think it's sort of silly to expect a 1:1 equivalence. NWN was more of a nod to 3e than a direct translation and it's not uncommon for other D&D themed games to have to make compromises in order to function as video games. I would definitely like more rp-utility things from the rpg (It'd be cool to be able to cast Fly to force fast travel and not just as battle mobility or to a Teleport spell to return to old act locations and not just for repositioning) but I do think the game does a reasonable job of taking 5e's material and turning it into something that's (so far) a decent video game and not just a decent adaptation of a tabletop game.

Why does my bow damage pop up multiple damage numbers? Why does my offhand attack have a lower chance to hit? Why can everyone disengage as a bonus action? Why are the ranges of some weapons and spells dramatically reduced? Why does Hunter's Mark consume the buff granted by Guiding Bolt? That's just off the top of my head.

Let me be clear, I am loving this game. But the parts that provide the most frustration are the parts where I'm confronted with a change from 5e that makes my experience worse.

I have been thinking this as well. 5e simplified the rule system in a manner that made the game more accessible to new players and less convoluted in general for veterans (even though some people still like the advanced system). There really is nothing wrong with homebrewing in some rules or even using some of the older 3.5 rules for a few mechanics you want to add back in (armor reduction comes to mind).

The weapon short rest abilities are a nice touch. These are the kind of homebrew things I want to see stay, I do not want a direct 5e port. Some of the crafted items too, like grease bottles and such. I have asked myself this question as well "Am I wanting this game to be too much like 5e despite the many other things from earlier versions"? I think it is safe to say that we wont be seeing classes from 3.5, but there is no reason that the homebrew philosophy cant work. In fact I think a lot of homebrewing will be necessary, which is why I havent really argued against the help action replacing "Spare the Dying" cantrip. there is a lot that i am not a fan of but I do think thinks like the Firebolt cantrip may grow on me if they add more of the cantrips to the game.

Um, no. It's not people going "it's different so I don't like it", it's a matter of the changes they've made being bad changes. Cantrips are pretty OP now, being basically turned into free to cast 1st level spells. Effect surfaces are cool and something I actually like, but there are simply too many of them. See they ported the surface effects over from DOS2, and they were awesome in that game, but in DOS all it costs to remove a surface effect is a short cooldown timer on a spell/ability, while here it takes up a limited resource. It's a matter of surfaces being really really easy to apply, and annoyingly difficult to actually get rid of.

The problem isn't that they changed things at all, it's that they messed things up with the changes they made. If these changes were well balanced and explained properly in the game, it wouldn't be a problem. But most of the changes aren't well balanced, and some of them are just plain confusing. For instance, they changed the way that Skill Checks work, not in any major way but just by simply reversing the process. Instead of rolling a d20 and adding your modifiers to the roll, it removes the modifiers from the DC for the check. Not a problem, right? Except they didn't bother to tell us this in the game, so when a skill check DC is 5 and we have a +5 modifier, it looks like it should be an automatic pass but instead if you roll a 4 or lower it fails, making you wonder what happened to your modifiers. I spent a good few minutes scratching my head wondering why the hell it didn't add my modifiers and had to come to the forums to find out that they had changed it to work this way. I certainly would prefer it being swapped back to the way it's usually handled, but that's just a personal preference, since it still works fine then it can be left as is, all it needs is to actually be explained in the game.

Meanwhile, while that's a good change, others aren't so good. And some things they have in the game are just plain not working very well. For instance, there's a few puzzles in there that seem to almost be pulled straight out of Divinity, but the problem is that you can't solve them the same way you could in Divinity. In Divinity, you have cooldown timers instead of spell slots and can have any spells you know ready at all times, but in BG3 you can't have all your spells ready at all times and it costs a spell slot to use them, making these Divinity puzzles tedious to get through because the system it was based to work around isn't present in this game. Don't know why the hell they included the same style puzzles when they should have known they wouldn't work, but then again they seem more interested in slamming 5e and Divinity together to make a flashy game more so than a balanced 5e game that includes some parts of Divinity.

As a follower of D&D games since 1990s with TSR and having played classics like Eye of the Beholder, Menzoberranzan, Dark Sun etc... I'm just excited for more D&D games like this. Ofc I won't even mention NWN, BG2.

Even if there's a lot of stuff to improve, it pretty much beats most if not all D&D games released in the last 10 years. I mean, did anyone even try Sword Coast Legends? Daggerdale?

I mean, I hate the fact that WotC just gives their license away to any publisher and they often just spit in the name of the franchise.

However, in this case, we have to remind ourselves that Swen took it up on himself to knock on Wizards doors to get this game out. Which makes me hope Owlcat Games and Obsidian would do the same.

So yeah, after a 10-15+ year hiatus of good D&D games, I'm really, really glad this came out, and it's multiplayer too with beautiful graphics/story!

Going back to topic, I think there is enough groundwork done to make it a game with "proper" D&D 5E rules. I'm just hoping they fix these things soon and listen to feedback.

I think people comment so much in these threads cause they see all the potential this game has to offer and know that this can be a MASTERPIECE once it comes out as a full game (if stuff gets fixed!)

"Why does my bow damage pop up multiple damage numbers? Why does my offhand attack have a lower chance to hit? Why can everyone disengage as a bonus action? Why are the ranges of some weapons and spells dramatically reduced? Why does Hunter's Mark consume the buff granted by Guiding Bolt? That's just off the top of my head."

1. unsure. Sneak attack?
2. actually a 5e mechanic. You don't add your ability modifier to offhand attacks. That's always been how it works.
3. it's fun and encourages more than "attack until death." If it makes you feel better, the full-action disengage of 5e makes you immune to ALL opportunity attacks invoked that turn, not just the ones jumped away from.
4. because making battlefields, render distances, and ranges that long would be far more strenuous on a digital game than a paper one, and also because it would make melee combat nearly pointless in the largely open maps, as range is already strong in this game.
5. I'm assuming that's a bug, which early access is here to weed out.

1. I'm a ranger.
2. Incorrect. You don't add your ability modifier to the DAMAGE of the bonus action attack, unless it's negative. The attack roll is unchanged.
3. No, it's not fun. Being able to maneouevre around the battlefield with impunity and still make attacks is a huge part of playing a rogue. When literally everyone can do it, it makes being a rogue feel bad, and it makes fighting enemies really annoying.
4. The battlefields themselves are dramatically larger than they are in 99% of tabletop games. That's already punishing to melee characters, who have to spend two turns chasing down enemies instead of actually attacking. The way the game is built makes melee combat almost impossible to actually engage in. Nerfing weapon and spell ranges just makes it so that ranged characters also can't have fun.
5. Cool.

I party wiped to Gale at least twice before I realized WTF was going on. Turns out he dies on top of everyone, and they die if thye dont move. You cant mouse over the area and know that its killing you either, it just took me figuring it out on my own