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Originally Posted by DiDiDi
That rule they ditched (well, maybe just ignored or forgot) had reasons to exist: https://www.xanthir.com/b4tZ0

That article doesn't really give any good reasons for the rule to exist though. It mentions it as anti-nova protection, when that's simply not a legitimate justification, considering that other classes are permitted to nova their resources in far more extreme ways without any rules limitations being placed on them. At base, a Paladin at level 5 can nova three spell slots every turn without any limitations, and a high level paladin/fighter can nova upwards of eleven spells lots or more into guaranteed damage in a single turn. The "anti-nova" contention is a complete fallacy.

The first point is also fallacious; there simply are not any useful exploits with bonus action spells that this causes a legitimate balance issue for, and if there were, it would be a matter of errating the individual spell, and not punishing all casters everywhere. If the exploits only come from quickening other action spells for the double-cast nova, then the issue lies with quicken, which can be errataed to fix the problem without punishing all casters everywhere.

This rule adds nothing of benefit or balance to the game for existing, and it should not.

I do play in several games at the moment, and frankly, the idea that wizards and sorcerers are op compared to other classes is pretty bogus - it's a notion that comes from older generations (where it was definitely true), and they're certainly flashier for the most part... but if you want damage output, fighter, straight up, has them both whipped five ways to Sunday, and without any expendable resources, and don't even start about monks for the balance of damage and lock down... Casters burning 5th, 6th, 7th level spell slots on a damage dealing spell - a valuable and extremely limited resource - and getting less damage for it that the fighter on their regular three-strike attack, or the paladin on their double-smite, or even the rouge's sneak attack - is an extremely common occurrence in 5e. They don't need this further, counter-intuitive limitation.

I'd really just invite anyone who thinks the rule is justified to play a game where it doesn't exist, and just see; you will not notice its loss, and no-one will suddenly end up being broken or over-powered because of it. Seriously - just try it. You won't look back.

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Originally Posted by Baraz
Originally Posted by Mat22
I (...)
(...) Solasta chose the path to make their game more accessable to have a lot of toggles so you can actually tailor the rules and make it either to an authentic dnd5e experience or just a more simpler version, which i think is a good approach. I hope Larian will do something similar.
For fun, one of the things they removed in Solasta (mid-January 2021) was actually a *homebrew* rule they had implemented that made lack of light more hardcore. Characters in dim light without Darkvision had a rough time (Disadvantage on attacks. In vanilla 5e, Dim LIght is Disadvantage on Perception checks only; not to be confused with darkness, heavily obscured, etc.).

I do see the following in Solasta's settings :
- You can choose to change Prepared spells without doing a Long Rest (by default, it respects 5e rules) ;
- Spell components : for each Verbal, Somatic and Material component, you can choose to disable it, make it basic or full (eg. full: you need a free hand to cast and Revivify cost 300 gold of diamond dust).

They also plan to add these tweaks:
[Linked Image from solasta-game.com]

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Originally Posted by spectralhunter
Originally Posted by DiDiDi
Well, without some sort of limitation in place: Move to the enemy group, Fireball, Action Surge, Fireball, Misty Step away... smile

You certainly can do that with 2 levels of fighter but you've burned 3 spell slots on one encounter. In addition, you'd have to wait till 7th level at the earliest when other full casters were tossing fireballs at level 5. In PnP where long rests matter, that's a significant loss of resources. But in BG3 currently, why not? Just rest up and repeat.
Yeah, that's the main problem currently. The rest system in its current state means that every single spell/ability is practically per-combat, if needed. But there is now a whole thread regarding the rest system, so let's not discuss it here.

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Originally Posted by DiDiDi
Originally Posted by spectralhunter
Originally Posted by DiDiDi
Well, without some sort of limitation in place: Move to the enemy group, Fireball, Action Surge, Fireball, Misty Step away... smile

You certainly can do that with 2 levels of fighter but you've burned 3 spell slots on one encounter. In addition, you'd have to wait till 7th level at the earliest when other full casters were tossing fireballs at level 5. In PnP where long rests matter, that's a significant loss of resources. But in BG3 currently, why not? Just rest up and repeat.
Yeah, that's the main problem currently. The rest system in its current state means that every single spell/ability is practically per-combat, if needed. But there is now a whole thread regarding the rest system, so let's not discuss it here.

Although to be fair, it could kind of be discussed here too, since it's clearly not meant to be that way in DnD 5th edition. There are recommendations for how many short rests and long rests one should use in campaigns and such, and naturally it shouldn't be possible to constantly spam long rest. It's absurd. They did that far better in Solasta too, where there are certain places on the map where you can long rest.

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Originally Posted by Mat22
Originally Posted by Baraz
Originally Posted by Mat22
I (...)
(...) Solasta chose the path to make their game more accessable to have a lot of toggles so you can actually tailor the rules and make it either to an authentic dnd5e experience or just a more simpler version, which i think is a good approach. I hope Larian will do something similar.
For fun, one of the things they removed in Solasta (mid-January 2021) was actually a *homebrew* rule they had implemented that made lack of light more hardcore. Characters in dim light without Darkvision had a rough time (Disadvantage on attacks. In vanilla 5e, Dim LIght is Disadvantage on Perception checks only; not to be confused with darkness, heavily obscured, etc.).

I do see the following in Solasta's settings :
- You can choose to change Prepared spells without doing a Long Rest (by default, it respects 5e rules) ;
- Spell components : for each Verbal, Somatic and Material component, you can choose to disable it, make it basic or full (eg. full: you need a free hand to cast and Revivify cost 300 gold of diamond dust).

They also plan to add these tweaks:
[Linked Image from solasta-game.com]


That's great. I love toggle options like that so you really can customize the diffuculty and rules to your own liking.
Not just a simple selection between Beginner, Normal, Hard and Insane

Last edited by Peranor; 01/02/21 02:23 PM.
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And for EA and trying to find good default settings, lots of configuration options will be twice as helpful. For EA testing, I don't even need fancy menus, a config file will do just fine.

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Originally Posted by DiDiDi
And for EA and trying to find good default settings, lots of configuration options will be twice as helpful. For EA testing, I don't even need fancy menus, a config file will do just fine.

I would imagine that their better option would be to keep the difficulty as is for now. Let them see how it works out for now and maybe come patch 5 or 6 then they offer a menu. I think giving themselves time to really get a consistent idea of how people are managing on this particular difficulty would make it easier for them to know what to adjust rather than having everyone be able to shift things as they like.

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Originally Posted by Mat22
They also plan to add these tweaks:
[Linked Image from solasta-game.com]
Woh, mind blown : did not see that.

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Originally Posted by Baraz
Originally Posted by Mat22
They also plan to add these tweaks:
[Linked Image from solasta-game.com]
Woh, mind blown : did not see that.

Yup. And this is why I am frustrated with Larian. A tiny studio is able to create a system that’s incredibly robust enough to extensively modify and faithful to 5e but Larian can’t.

Last edited by spectralhunter; 01/02/21 07:15 PM.
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Originally Posted by spectralhunter
Originally Posted by Baraz
Originally Posted by Mat22
They also plan to add these tweaks:
[Linked Image from solasta-game.com]
Woh, mind blown : did not see that.

Yup. And this is why I am frustrated with Larian. A tiny studio is able to create a system that’s incredibly robust enough to extensively modify and faithful to 5e but Larian can’t.



Daaaamn... yeah... this is mindblowing stuff!!! I *TRULY* hope we'll see similar things in BG3!!!!!

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Originally Posted by andreasrylander
Originally Posted by spectralhunter
Originally Posted by Baraz
Originally Posted by Mat22
They also plan to add these tweaks:
[Linked Image from solasta-game.com]
Woh, mind blown : did not see that.

Yup. And this is why I am frustrated with Larian. A tiny studio is able to create a system that’s incredibly robust enough to extensively modify and faithful to 5e but Larian can’t.



Daaaamn... yeah... this is mindblowing stuff!!! I *TRULY* hope we'll see similar things in BG3!!!!!


Hmm, this kind of modularity needed to implement so many granular difficulty options is probably only possible if you intend it from the beginning.
I really hope Larian planned ahead, or they will have a really hard time creating that many difficulty options.

Here's to hope!

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Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
Originally Posted by DiDiDi
And for EA and trying to find good default settings, lots of configuration options will be twice as helpful. For EA testing, I don't even need fancy menus, a config file will do just fine.

I would imagine that their better option would be to keep the difficulty as is for now. Let them see how it works out for now and maybe come patch 5 or 6 then they offer a menu. I think giving themselves time to really get a consistent idea of how people are managing on this particular difficulty would make it easier for them to know what to adjust rather than having everyone be able to shift things as they like.
I didn't really mean difficulty settings, more like various options relating to combat mechanics (e.g. "toggle backstab advantage", "toggle low/high ground (dis)advantage") - though those might have difficulty implications (but would apply to allies and enemies the same). The combat/rest system/mechanics is currently broken and abusable, with difficulty varying from super easy to difficult depending on your willingness to abuse resting, the AI and the combat system in general. There is no point in spending too much effort on balancing the difficulty before at least these things are more or less set in stone (I really hope that the current state is not it). So yeah, I think it would be VERY helpful if we had configuration options and used them in a collective effort to find rules/mechanics that would make both combat and general gameplay enjoyable, challenging and reasonably balanced in the long term.

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Originally Posted by daMichi
Hmm, this kind of modularity needed to implement so many granular difficulty options is probably only possible if you intend it from the beginning.
I really hope Larian planned ahead, or they will have a really hard time creating that many difficulty options.

Here's to hope!

When you see stuff like this, you can tell Solasta is a labor of love. They truly want to replicate tabletop as much as possible. It looks like the devs play D&D and know where it lacks and where it is strong.

Again, I know I am being overly critical of Larian but BG3 was a cash grab first and gameplay second. At least that’s how I perceive it.

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As Larian is an AAA game company, with Baldur’s Gate 3 being a huge title in gaming industry it is why I am extra critical of them and BG3 too. Especially with a small company on the side doing so much better within the same game type (not everything but still)

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Originally Posted by TheFoxWhisperer
As Larian is an AAA game company, with Baldur’s Gate 3 being a huge title in gaming industry it is why I am extra critical of them and BG3 too. Especially with a small company on the side doing so much better within the same game type (not everything but still)


Yeah I agree with that really.

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In their defense, Larian already made huge-impact changes in the past (even for bg3, they changed the style of the narrator and the initiative system once they saw these were not popular after the gameplay demo last year). I agree that for tweaks like these to be more easily implemented devs have to plan their coding structure accordingly from the beginning so it allows to alter stuff (it might not be impossible but definitely harder to rewrite the code to work on a specific way retrospectively). However there was an Gamasutra interview with their lead systems designer and i quote what he said according to the interview, this is what keeps me optimistic:

"My advice would be to be prepared to throw away your design docs on at least some of the features and to respect the process. I think if the studio is doing Early Access, they need to realize that this really means that the players can give you feedback that does not align with your design vision at all. And you will have to reconcile that. But doing that will actually make the game better for a lot more players as it turns out.
So my advice would be to be flexible, design wise, and to plan your design ahead in a way that is kind of modular. This is something we got a quite a bit better for this project I think. We have plans for systems that we foresee that we'll have to add due to new classes, new features, things that we haven't talked yet about. But we try to make sure that all of them can be swapped for something else that the players will say is really a priority for them, or can be changed in a way that will not make us remake everything from from the get go. So we try to keep systems kind of modular. Flexibility is really the key here."

They have a lot of time to alter things still (and thats the purpose of EA) and a couple of mechanics as they are now in EA are not fully functioning (and it might be on purpose). I have a feeling that the spammable rest mechanic is just a placeholder as during one of the Gamespot interviews from June 2020 Swen said "because of the way that the world works and how dungeons and dragons works its not always safe to long rest, there are zones where its unsafe, so if you are in an unsafe zone the only thing you can do is a short rest." What i can think is that they wanted to test out companion interactions more effectively so they just left it without restrictions for EA. Similarly i heard somewhere they said they already work on options to alter the RNG but they wanted to go full-RNG for EA on purpose just to see how the crowd reacts.

So fingers crossed they are listening and design their systems cleverly. I know mods can fix things but i have a mixed experience with those (I use mods but not on my first playthrougs), usually they rarely work with each other and not always up to date so here's hoping we have a couple of official toggles for the ruleset and difficulty in bg3. Im okay if not all of these are part of EA testing because i see how multiple versions of the rules could mess with their statistic and feedback tools but i hope they at least do a community update about their approach on this topic.

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If something is a placeholder in EA though, that should at least he communicated with the people playtesting the game (As that is what EA is for really). If people keep giving feedback on a feature that is a placeholder anyway, that is kind of wasting those people's time for no reason.

If it is made known something is a placeholder, then feedback could be focussed on other things.

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Well at the early stages they kind of said that nothing is set in stone, even if they had further plans with a certain feature i guess they still wanted to hear what the community says about it and what alternatives we would like to see in case they need to scrap the original plan entirely (or make it an option for players who like it that way). Though I definitely agree with that in the upcoming weeks/months it would be nice to have more frequent communication of the direction they want to take with core features so we can focus our feedback accordingly.

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Originally Posted by Mat22
In their defense, Larian already made huge-impact changes in the past (even for bg3, they changed the style of the narrator and the initiative system once they saw these were not popular after the gameplay demo last year). I agree that for tweaks like these to be more easily implemented devs have to plan their coding structure accordingly from the beginning so it allows to alter stuff (it might not be impossible but definitely harder to rewrite the code to work on a specific way retrospectively). However there was an Gamasutra interview with their lead systems designer and i quote what he said according to the interview, this is what keeps me optimistic:

"My advice would be to be prepared to throw away your design docs on at least some of the features and to respect the process. I think if the studio is doing Early Access, they need to realize that this really means that the players can give you feedback that does not align with your design vision at all. And you will have to reconcile that. But doing that will actually make the game better for a lot more players as it turns out.
So my advice would be to be flexible, design wise, and to plan your design ahead in a way that is kind of modular. This is something we got a quite a bit better for this project I think. We have plans for systems that we foresee that we'll have to add due to new classes, new features, things that we haven't talked yet about. But we try to make sure that all of them can be swapped for something else that the players will say is really a priority for them, or can be changed in a way that will not make us remake everything from from the get go. So we try to keep systems kind of modular. Flexibility is really the key here."

They have a lot of time to alter things still (and thats the purpose of EA) and a couple of mechanics as they are now in EA are not fully functioning (and it might be on purpose). I have a feeling that the spammable rest mechanic is just a placeholder as during one of the Gamespot interviews from June 2020 Swen said "because of the way that the world works and how dungeons and dragons works its not always safe to long rest, there are zones where its unsafe, so if you are in an unsafe zone the only thing you can do is a short rest." What i can think is that they wanted to test out companion interactions more effectively so they just left it without restrictions for EA. Similarly i heard somewhere they said they already work on options to alter the RNG but they wanted to go full-RNG for EA on purpose just to see how the crowd reacts.

So fingers crossed they are listening and design their systems cleverly. I know mods can fix things but i have a mixed experience with those (I use mods but not on my first playthrougs), usually they rarely work with each other and not always up to date so here's hoping we have a couple of official toggles for the ruleset and difficulty in bg3. Im okay if not all of these are part of EA testing because i see how multiple versions of the rules could mess with their statistic and feedback tools but i hope they at least do a community update about their approach on this topic.


Holy hell, I sure hope this is accurate stuff, and that it aligns with their current philosophy and plans! =)

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Originally Posted by TheFoxWhisperer
If something is a placeholder in EA though, that should at least he communicated with the people playtesting the game (As that is what EA is for really). If people keep giving feedback on a feature that is a placeholder anyway, that is kind of wasting those people's time for no reason.

If it is made known something is a placeholder, then feedback could be focussed on other things.


Exactly. I don't see the point in dropping a EA game on the players just to go more or less radio silent. If they want relevant feedback from the players they really need to learn to communicate more with the community.

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