Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems D&D 5E action-related issues

I have spotted a few problems related to combat actions, turns and rounds. Don't hesitate to correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a D&D guru
PHB = Player's HandBook (D&D 5E)

1) The action & hotbar panel, and what's available during combat rounds



From left to right,

• "Attack" panel
  • Melee attack & weapon-associated action
  • Ranged attack & weapon-associated action
• "Mixed" panel, with the character's hit points above
  • Top: "bonus" actions
    • Jump: it's actually a move, not an action (even less a bonus action), see PHB pg 182
    • / disengage: this is actually an action, should be independent from Jump, see PHB pg 192
    • Dip: not sure what this is, perhaps an interaction
    • Shove: this is an action, also the target should either be pushed 5 ft away or go prone and not get up immediately (should allow the next player to use advantage, ... here it's just a fun button to push enemies off an edge). See PHB pg PHB pg 195
    • Hide: this is an action, see PHB pg 192
  • Bottom, "actions"
    • Throw
    • Dash
    • Knock
    • Help: this is an action, but Help has another meaning in D&D related to advantage / attack, see PHB pg 192
• Character's face
• Hotbar panel, with the movement bar above. It contains whatever the player puts there, spells, cantrips, items, potions, ...
• Reaction panel, doesn't seem to work yet

What players can do each turn, and each round, is complex in D&D 5E. That's why the presentation is important to guide them, and the current layout is wrong and confusing. The categories should be grouped correctly, especially since the panels grey out when they're not available anymore (which is a good intent). The player can do 1 move which can be fragmented, 1 action, 1 bonus action and 1 interaction per turn, and prepare 1 reaction between turns. Not necessarily everything all the time, and there are conditions of course, but that's a potential way to regroup the panels.

Readying an action would be nice too.


2) Rogue-related attack issues
(this may also appear in other classes)

The bonus actions my rogue gets are

• cunning action: dash
• item-related bonus actions, seems out of the scope of 5E
• offhand attack

Here I get 2 times the cunning action / offhand attack per turn, I don't think it's correct, see screenshot below, "Naya used Offhand attack":


(note also the apparent bug with the Bless condition)

The sneak attack has multiple issues too:

• sneak damage shown in incorrect (should be 1d6 for levels 1-2, 2d6 for 3-4, ...), see PHB pg 95
• sneak damage is actually not applied, see screenshot below
• conditions are apparently not verified, see PHB pg 96 (advantage on attack roll, or enemy of target within 5 ft + ...)

In the screenshots below, we see that
- the rogue Naya "used Sneak Attack (Ranged) on Sharp-Eye". She didn't have advantage (wasn't hidden and so on), and there was no enemy to Sharp-Eye within 5 ft.
- the amount of damage is 1d6 + 3, since she's level 4, there's a missing "+ 2d6".




Check this for another explanation outside PHB: https://www.flutesloot.com/sneak-attack-tactics-dd-5e-rogue-tips/


3) Resting

A little out of the scope of actions, but related to the state of what is possible

Why only 1 short rest? PHB 186: "Adventurers, as well as other creatures, can take short rests in the midst of a day and a long rest to end it."
There's no limitation, the generally accepted rule is 1 or 2 short rests. The spell recovering is covered in other rules (once per day after a short rest, for instance). It's not a fault in itself though, more a question, was it on purpose or has it just been overlooked?

Not sure the "teleport items and players to camp, and sometimes back" is within the rules either. For a long rest, it would make sense and it would be more immersive to see them make camp where they are. There's also the chance they're interrupted by enemies, if they choose the wrong spot. Unless there's a reserved purpose to the distant, static camp, of course, it's just not realistic.


PS: It would be so much easier to host the images directly in the forums, instead of having to find external websites for that. If all the users have to look for one for an early access, without knowing even if their posts will be read, or when, and with the chance the image is deleted from the host when it is read... well. Again, that's not how I'm used to organizing test reports.

I think I see why there are too many offhand attacks per turn.

The game explains "Fast Hands" by "Gain an additional bonus action".

It's incorrect, see PHB pg. 97: Starting at 3rd level, you can use the bonus action granted by your Cunning Action to make a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check, use your thieves’ tools to disarm a trap or open a lock, or take the Use an Object action.

So Fast Hands gives new possibilities with the Cunning Action given at level 2. It's not an additional Cunning Action!

I haven't checked if that bug had an impact on the other bugs related to bonus actions being actually something else (previous post).

There should be a complete review of the rules related to combat actions, it seems pretty shady.

Interesting, I just found there was already a mod in the works to rectify some of those problems:

https://github.com/ZerdBG3/DnD-Rebalancing/blob/main/Features.md
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/19?tab=description


The very annoying part is that, without Larian giving any feedback in the EA testing, it's not possible to know if those differences are on purpose or not. Is it worth going on reporting issues? I'm not sure.

My stance on this is that, if Larian advertises the game as D&D 5E, they should at least warn customers about what they want to implement differently in the ruleset, because it's quite significant.

I think that publicly available issue tracker (even if it's being read-only for everyone but the devs) would go a very long way.

From the lack of response and what I read elsewhere, it seems they did that intentionally, even if that completely breaks the tactical aspect and the balance (over-powered rogues who can have a lot of different actions per turn, with fancy sneak attacks).

So I'll stop reporting about those, they wrote that the early access was not about testing [and reporting] anyway, so I had got that wrong.

2 offhand attacks a turn, if you coated your weapon with poison, now you get your thief a real assassin. No need to implement the subclass at this point.

And I am not even talking about dual wielding allowing two attacks of opportunity on the same target a turn lol.

What are Larian's plans regarding this and D&D 5E in general, just so we know what to expect?

I am afraid they are not very intent on changing much of IT, because Sven Vincke said, that he thinks rogue and fighter are not fun to play, hence the deviations from DnD 5e.

I hope they give us the option to choose whether people want to play with true DnD 5e action economy or with what Swen seems as 'more fun'.

Heh. I found the rogue very dull in BG3 because it's overpowered, and I had much more fun in Solasta where it's D&D 5E (well, OGL / SRD 5.1, but same rules).

Thanks for the info, I haven't seen any remark from them on the subject (but I'm not reading all the posts here). Tactical Adventures maintains a public list of the deviations (and why), and known issues, it's much easier to understand what's planned and, incidentally, much easier to report problems. Here we give detailed reports of issues, and nothing, no feedback whatsoever, it's not easy.