Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Long Sword - Looks out of proportion

I've created a Wood Elf Ranger for my restart after the new patch and noticed something odd when equiping a long sword.

I get +3 to hit when equipped which is only my Dex bonus, according to the 5e PHB a Wood Elf should have: Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the longsword, shortsword, shortbow, and longbow. So my bonus to hit should be +5 which would be my Dex and Proficiency bonus, not sure if this is a bug or an incorrect application of the 5e rules.

NVM the top part, I forgot it was based on Strength rather than Dex.

Also when the weapon is equippped, it looks far too large for a long sword and more like a bastard sword or a two handed sword which makes me wonder if it has the wrong properties applied.

+1 on the size comment. The longsword looks more like it should be a great weapon in the hands of the characters. Feels like they need to tone it down a bit to be more similar in scale to the rapier.

Longsword uses your STR to hit, not DEX.

Larian have chosen to represent the historical longsword, rather than the one-handed arming sword which has been a staple of (A)D&D for so long.

The traditional longsword is, indeed, primarily a two-handed weapon. It was developed to be used in two hands and only used one-handed when mounted or in some other situation where using two hands was impossible. It should be around 4 feet in length.

The sword in that illustration does seems to be over-sized, however. That maybe due to the elf being quite short. The screen-shots of longswords carried by humans seem more in proportion, assuming human men in BG3 to be around 5' 8" or so.

Sword definition is a nebulous business, but antiquarians and historians tend to make a distinction between longswords and arming (or 'broad') swords.

Ahh I see my mistake now, thanks for clearing that up.



It looks a fair bit bigger compared to this: https://gizmodo.com/this-stunning-medieval-longsword-was-just-pulled-from-a-1796300991

I think it looks out of proportion in the game.

Though it can be used two-handed (versatile weapon trait) in D&D 5e, as the longsword in real life, it is a bit too big in the picture. It looks a lot like the claymore swords as seen in the movie Braveheart.

Wikipedia says :
"The Scottish name 'claymore' (Scottish Gaelic: claidheamh mór, lit. 'large/great sword') can refer to either the longsword with a distinctive two-handed grip, or the basket-hilted sword developing from a rapier. The two handed claymore is an early Scottish version of a greatsword."

So the claymore is considered in between a longsword and a greatsword, which I am pretty sure is what is in this picture.

I generally feel almost all the weapon graphics in this game are way oversized. I mean just look at the grip on that Long Sword for gods sake. Was is made for a Hill Giant's hands? And the 2 hander/great is insane. Even a human would be unable to sheath it on their back without if dragging on the ground.

AFAIK a typical claymore is a hand-and-a-half sword. I have a couple of examples of the same general type next to me, they're about 3" or so longer than a typical arming sword and maybe as much as 6" longer than e.g. a Viking sword.

I have no "hands-on" experience of D&D prior to BG3 but I am aware that older nomenclature and statistics tended to be extremely problematic; and that things have improved a lot more recently. Regarding the above picture, it's "a bit big" but not so much that I find it enormously bothersome, except that it's slightly the wrong style for the size and general era. But it's not terrible.

Maybe my expectations for RPGs in general are low but it's just nice to see a sword that isn't covered in a million pointy bits that will cause more injury to the person holding it; and which isn't made with a weirdly thick blade that supposedly weighs 10× more than the real thing...

Actually, it looks pretty spot on with the picture you gave.