Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Introduce spell components and focuses, please?

Frankly? Not sure we need mountains of BS. I can imagine adding component for an odd super powerful key spell that is game-changing, so you limit spamming of it - akin to Source points in D:OS2.

But having mountains of reagents and trash for mundane spells? No thanks.

there's no such thing as the "mountain of reagents", you get a component pouch which is assumed to have all reagents up to X value in GP, which you simply need to restock for a small fee, for RP purposes. And some spells require a focus, rather than a consumable, so you just need one. For those high level stuff, you need to place them in the pouch, and that's it.

You might want to read what I wrote.

Any more opinions chiming on this?

I Liked the fact we needed diamond dust for resurrections in PF:KM if i remember correctly
So id like spell components but only for very few spells like resurrections and if we ever get 9th lvl spells than time stop , and components shouldn't be to hard to come by

It depends on how it would be implemented... I'd be ok with a "component pouch" item for the everyday spells and only powerful, special spells requiring any special materials.

I'd also love to have limited normal arrows/bolts, at least as an option.

I ignore the component costs in tabletop because I think it's a waste of time and doesn't make sense to me personally. If you know the spell and have it memorized, that's enough IMO.

For simplicity's sake, what should happen is the addition of a straight gold cost to a spell with a component that costs money to acquire. They're already doing that for the wizard's material cost to learn spells, and this would remove the need to scour the globe for those ever-important diamonds.

I think that you should get an item as a caster who can use a focus, amulet, or components pouch and pick it as a vanity item. Their intent is to NOT be used and are assumed to have all components needed for non-consumed spells. A piece of tree struck by lightning for electricity is you using it as a tuning fork focus to help shape the weave as you cast, it doesn't use so youd never need to go shopping for another one.

Thins like summon familiar needing incense should be handled as spell transcription is. It costs a certain amount of ink and paper, and it is deducted from your purse.

Needing 300gp diamonds for resurrections sounds fun until you dont have one and getting back to camp is going to be annoying. The cons probably outweigh the pros.

Overall, keep things that cost money just be money. Its too much work for them to maintain a good frequency and density of items, especially if its an MP 2 cleric 2 wizard party or something.

I think you should be able to make yourself look cool though ^.^

My wizards components pouch is a bunch of ground up components like fleece and bark and ash that he poured into moulds and made into buttons and sewed them to button up his omni-worn green felt vest. Wizards like having them, its personal

I'd rather manage spell component than useless items such those we find in Larian's games (fork, knife, plate, skull, bone, .....).

But that said, or would be another main things to balance.
I have to admit that I don't really know how it work in D&D, ife you can find tons of component or not, if this is really hard to manage or not, if it drastically reduce the possibility of using spells or not.

I like such management, but I don't really know what this would mean for the gameplay experience.

I'll be glad to have a little bit more informations about it

We all would, but unfortunately there has been a lot of silence or unrelated information

As a difficulty type game setting...sure. But I don't want it.

Yeah I wonder what they will do about some of the controversial spells like stoneskin.

When I was DMing I never used spell components. Just never found the concept that interesting and found the "search for components" subquests kinda boring.

There is already enough garbage management in the game.

YOU CAN MANAGE IT?! HOW!!! Im swimming in this shit

The only option is not to collect.

I really want to say that I don't care, but the more I think about it, the less interested I am.

Some of these reagents are supposed to be really expensive. So the game would have to turn into a "Monte Haul" loot fest to ensure players can afford them. If it doesn't, players will complain about the lack of loot to pay for stuff, we already have stuff like that w/out having to spend gold on reagents, and if it does, players will complain about that too. Players are already complaining about bags to carry stuff in, is it really a good idea to add more fuel to the fire? Encumbrance will eventually get fixed, one hopes, so some of the lowest strength characters in the game are going to be even more limited in what they can actually carry, because reagents should also have weight, and you're surely not going to just carry one or two of each.

Maybe it's still that I just don't care, but do believe that it's impractical, on it's face anyway. If we go with "BoH that can only carry reagents" the rules lawyers are going to have a field day. They're already spazzed out about items that "creatures shouldn't have". So I'd say it's better to just leave well enough alone. Better a few "but my immersion" threads, than flame wars over "special rules", or the availability of reagents.

Every kind of yuck and a bunch of ew. I could not be less interested in finding bat scrotum and 36 ounces of milky puss, and being sure I had it so I could use my character's spells. Inventory management is never fun and adding needless layers of complication would just be tedium.

I find that hard to believe.

Let's think about this issue in bigger picture. Since we can long rest after each encounter we are actually missing any resource management system. We are only managing limited resources during encounters, not in between them. And I believe this is an issue to be solved somehow. Healing spells outside of combat are useless, Warlock short rest spell slots are useless, etc. The proposal for having a component pouch which will cost some money to recharge is at least some way how to introduce resource managment system between encounters. Not an ideal one but it scratch the same itch.

From game designer perspective you need to decide first wheter you want to implement any limited resources at all and if yes, it's important to keep it simple. Remember that resources are an abstraction. For example HP and Mana bars are one of the best inventions of game design we have. It's robust and simple. Any more different bars (food, water, fatique, vitamins, oxygen, separate bars for separate body parts, ...) will probably not make your game any better unless it's your very core design decision.

DnD have limited resources in form of HP and slots for spell and abilities (just a different representation of Mana), plus optional lifestyle expenses in gold which can abstractly covers all material requirements (food, repairs, mundate ammunition, components, ..). It's also very simple and very robust. You need rest to replenish your HP and slots and you need to go to adventure to have money for lifestyle expenses. But the longer I play BG3 (over 100h now) the more I feel Larian does use DnD only as a flavour, not an actual mechanic which drives the game. The game is driven by story and visuals (edit: with no intention to have any resource management.)