Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Larian's communication, faithfulness to 5E rules, and the players who feel betrayed.

A number of players, and this set includes me, seem to remember Larian announcing BG3 as being somewhat DnD 5E on a computer, in their pre-EA communication. What we have at the moment, and what Larian is apparently shooting for, isn't quite a faithful adaptation of 5E rules. As a result, some players feel betrayed. But is that feeling warranted ?

I have decent reading and listening skills and I am not at an age where I should be worried about memory deterioration. So I tend to think that Larian did indeed say they would stay close to 5E rules. On the other hand, it's easy to fall prey to some mix of distortion-in-relay and echo chamber effects. After all, I have spend more time reading the forum than interviews these past months. So maybe I remember it wrong.

A couple of remarks, before I dive into the thick of things.
- I am not talking about what happened in the heads of the people at Larian. I am just interested in the distance between two measurable things : what Larian said, and what they delivered.
- The question is not whether Larian should aim at sticking to 5E rules for the full release of BG3. Nor why they should do that if one thinks they should stick to 5E. The question is whether players should have expected a set of rules close to 5E.



1) What Larian has delivered (so far).

BG3 rules clearly differ from 5E in a number of ways :

• Revised basic-action economy. Even if Jump and Disengage are made two again, it's likely that Disengage, Shove and Hide will remain Bonus Actions in BG3 instead of Actions as in 5E.
• Jump, which now costs a Bonus Action but allows you to cover more distance than your normal movement budget would allow you to. (And also gives combat a Super Mario or cartoonish vibe.)
• Backstab and High-Ground rules. Which give you Advantage for free and nearly permanently.
• Last-minute and out-of-turn decision points. Reactions are automatically executed in BG3. Some spend-resource-to-boost actions are paid for at the last minute in 5E (like many of the Battle Master's maneuvers, and the Rogue's Sneak Attack), and pay-before in BG3. In the same vein, a spend-resource-for-rider-effect spell like Ensnaring Strike is one-attempt in BG3, but can last up to 10 rounds in 5E.
• Surfaces and elemental interactions.
• Dipping weapons in fire.
• Possibility to attack with the off-hand weapon without having attacked with the main hand. Possibility to cast more than one spell per turn.

And this list isn't meant to be exhaustive.

Opinions can diverge how on big these differences are and how big the impact is. Are we talking about tweaks, minor/significant/major differences, complete overhaul ? I haven't played 5E but I can understand how rules interact, and how changes in the rules induce changes in the balance. I feel these are significant differences.



2) What Larian said.

I have found a couple of interviews, and I have quoted relevant passages below (colouring is mine). Note that these interviews cover a lot of text. I often scanned superficially the text and used the search feature with some keywords. If you find important passages that have been criminally-overlooked, please let me know. Same if you have videos, with time-stamps (the videos are long, so I didn't bother re-listening to them).






3) Comparison.

Well ... it's not as bad as I thought it would be.

On the one hand, when asked specifically about the faithfulness to the rules, translating 5E from tabletop to video game, and gameplay/combat, they have described their changes as :
- Necessary ("we need to", "we had to" multiple times).
- Tweaks.
- For the purpose of : (a) handling things that don't work in a video game setting (multiple times), or (b) making things more fun.

As far as the description as tweaks as concerned, as I said above, it's subjective. But I think it's grossly understating the impact of the changes. (As a side note, I find the quotation about being worried that they'd have to invent a whole bunch of extra stuff fairly ironic.)

Solasta is a lot more faithful to 5E and, from what I've heard, Solasta can at least be said to work.

The notion of fun is subjective, of course. Although this is an often forgotten fact. And they didn't exactly insist on it, when discussing specifically faithfulness to the rules and combat.

Finally there's the framing of these changes as necessary. But I'll come back on this below.

On the other hand, in several other places, notably when asked about the high expectations around BG3, they have said that they would focus on making the game they want to play (and I'll come back on this very point below). They've also said that they were the GM, that there would be house rules, and faithfulness to the rules wasn't their top priority.

All in all, I feel it's clear why many people expected a more faithful adaptation of the 5E rules. Especially if, like me, you haven't played a Larian game before, and thus didn't immediately make much of it when they said they'd make changes to 5E rules to make BG3 "more fun". These interviews containted more don't-expect-the-strict-5E-rules than I remembered though. But they were more linked to questions of pressure/expectations and DnD/GM feel. In the end, I think that saying here that the gameplay would feel "very true to 5E" and saying there that what they're shooting for is not "a strict DnD adaptation" isn't exactly sending the clearest message. So, I completely understand why some people feel there's a discrepancy between what was advertised and what is being done. And I think Larian could greatly benefit from better communication on this topic, clarifying what they envision regarding the rules for combat-and-adventuring.

Additionally, I feel there are two problems with Larian's communication and management of Early Access.


4) Larian's very own vision of fun combat.

They have mostly painted their rule changes as necessary. As changes they had to bring. Solasta showed, I believe, that there is no fundamental obstacle to making 5E work in a video game, which is one half of the reasons Larian gave for making changes to the rules. The other half is "making the game more fun", but they haven't been very explicit about what that means. Rather, it sounds as if they've used "more fun" as a different way to say "better".

It really feels to me as if they constantly shy away from saying "we find <this> fun, so we'll make changes to the 5E rules so that combat is closer what we want it to be". They have not clearly given their vision of what is fun gameplay.

Yes, they've said in places that they are trying to make the game that they’d like to play. I've said elsewhere that I think that's exactly how it should be. I'd rather they make the best version of their vision than make the game by referendum. But that doesn't specify their vision.

Now, putting pieces together, I can pick up some aspects of their vision (bearing in mind that I haven't played their games before, so I'm not familiar with their style).
- They consider Fighters to be for noobs and to be boring.
- They don't think low-level Fighters and Rogues are fun to play.
- They find buffs/Bless boring and they like fireworks and damage (although they framed it as being not their tastes, but the players' preferences and failed to mention how their house rules influenced the supposed evidence they had).

It's certainly not the closest one could be of my own tastes. I've never had a problem repeating the Attack action with Tifa, Zell or Steiner in the old Final Fantasy games. But that's not a problem. I'd be very fine with hearing Larian assume their vision and communicate it, so that players can give them feedback accordingly.

(Side note : one great thing about tastes is that you can't really argue them. Whereas the moment you start saying "this is better", "this is more fun", or "players prefer this", people can argue.)


5) Releasing an incomplete ruleset : a bad idea.

One thing that happened with the combat system, in my view, is the following.
- 5E provides a combat system which is, at the very least, decent.
- Larian declared that some aspects of 5E were boring and announced that they'd make BG3 "more fun".
- They changed some 5E rules they didn't like and added some of their own.
- The combat system that they let us play with is broken.

From there, it is not surprising that some players doubt that Larian is capable of doing "more fun" than 5E, or even merely decent.

Granted, the current system is incomplete. It is also not final, naturally, and I do hope that a lot of rules will change significantly. But I feel it is also incomplete in the sense that the rules for a number of things were left completely blank, instead of receiving even a first draft. For instance, there is no rule regarding the use of long rests (unless you consider that unlimited access to long rest is a rule ... which, from a technical point of view, it is ... ok).

I think it would have been preferable to work "in-width", setting a first-draft, hopefully-good-enough rule for every thing (which could have been the 5E rule for that thing, to save on design time), rather than working "in-depth", providing for instance a somewhat sophisticated elemental interactions system, and ending up letting people play with an incomplete system.

I certainly believe that Larian has so far not delivered a faithful DnD game, and I consider most of their homebrew rules to screw both balance and fun up. I was blown away by the rule implementation in Solasta, but I think BG3 will be a far better game in so many ways... although I certainly hope that it will be waaay more faithful to the PHB rules in the end.

Good post OP. My issue is mostly around the claim that they 'tried'. I find that extremely unlikely. As I'm blasting my way through another run on a Warlock, I'm just shaking my head at all the splash damage, exploding fire arrows, and for lack of a better word, litter, that is all over the screen, constantly.

That's all put there for a reason, and its not because 'we are looking to remain faithful to 5e'.

Thankfully I'm going to be busy tomorrow, so I can get to 17th ASAP because I need to know if its time to just step away from this place for a few months.

I feel I had a fairly good idea of the type of game Larian was making from reading the Steam page and watching a few videos before I got it. As far as resting goes, the older BG games didn't have any limits on resting, either, and weren't 100% faithful adaptation of the rules. People should of course make any suggestions they want for EA, but I don't see how Larian lied about anything.

Thanks again Drath, well considered.

I recall seeing the earliest articles and interviews about this where they commented more frequently that it was going to be a D&D game, a 5e game, and that it would feel like playing D&D and that it would be as true to 5e as they could make it in a video game and still have it work. Those interviews and articles are much, much harder to find these days, if they can be found at all, and the more recent ones stress much more firmly that they're making their own game, with very scant mention of 5e D&d at all. I do find this concerning and upsetting; I do feel very distinctly misled and lied to.

If Larian are my DM, and they came to me saying we're going to play 5e D&D, with a few little tweaks here and there, I'd ask what they were, and if they were minor and I had no objections, I'd sit and play.
If they came to me and said we're going to play 5e D&D, and then spelled out this system which really honestly in no way resembles playing D&D except very vaguely, and which invalidates the vast majority of the system with the overbearing house rules, I'm sorry, but I would not sit down at that table.

If I had read the language present in the most recent articles and interviews, back when this was first announced, instead of the language that was used back then, I would not have purchased the game. Instead, I've dedicated a lot of time and effort to doing what I can to provide useful, solid feedback and commentary in the hope that there is a strong chorus that feels similarly, and that it stands a chance of change. The upcoming patch will indicate whether that effort was worthwhile or not, and whether it's worth my emotional investment to continue trying. I hope it is.

I don’t feel betrayed, I never had huge expectations. But I am disappointed. It could be so much better, and maybe it will be. But what I’m most disappointed about is how much theorising and guesswork we’re having to do because they don’t give us any indication of work in progress or even a known issue list. We go for months without knowing what’s intentional or not implemented fully yet, or just plain broken. Not ideal.

From what I am reading, it seems Larian never really intended to be faithful to 5e. I believe their goal was to get the "feel" of D&D, not the actual ruleset. So that's what they are concentrating on: setting, races, story...etc.

And I'll chime in what I said awhile back. I think they dumped a huge amount of their budget on said graphics, art, cinematics to make the game look amazing. In that, they haven't failed. I think following the ruleset was a secondary thought and using a significant part of the budget for that was never a consideration. They figured they could just modify DOS with some tweaks and hoped it would resemble 5e. And that's what exactly happened. What they didn't expect was the old school BG players and tabletop players complaining. I think Larian wanted to cater to their audience (DOS) and probably thought the tweaks were good enough to satisfy the rest.

I am convinced we won't see any significant changes in combat. There will be some tweaks that can be done with the DOS engine but it will still feel like DOS with 5e adjustments and not the other way around. I think the announcement will discuss and emphasize the strengths of BG3, which is the cinematics, art, characters and possibly the story. And I think they will continue to say BG3 will have the "feel" of D&D but never really say it will be faithful to the current ruleset.

I believe the expression then is 'lipstick on a pig', but I'm sure they will fix the camera in the sex scenes...

In truth, I wasn't quite so unhappy or jarred by my experience with the game until I came to the forum and was made aware of all the ways other players have found BG3 strays from its D&D roots. I do like the systematic, turn-based feature implemented here in comparison to the real-time pausing present in the earlier BG games, but as other players have mentioned, its similarity to DOS just feels lazy, and almost stubborn when one considers the fact that the rules already exist and are already balanced.

And yes, Icelyn, the earlier BG games did implement limitations on long rests: players were not permitted to do so unless they were outside of battle, and did so in the wilderness at the risk of being woken by monsters, sometimes risking days' worth of time simply attempting to rest.

I’m all good with it so far - still in ea let’s see what comes of this weeks panel announcement around actual gameplay improvements /mechanics,
Hard to argue it’s not D&D but the hard core 5e rules fans want more - fair enough but we don’t want a cyberpunk scenario now do we....

We are lucky enough to have solaster coming along too - I’m yet to buy that one in early access but I want both games to be hugely successful so we get more D&D games in the future...

As it is, this game doesn't feel like D&D to me. Some of my frustration is probably borne out of the fact that I only came into EA just before Patch 3, so when they say that they tried 5e rules as they were and found it was necessary to change them, I don't know how genuine that initial effort was. It seems likely that many of the things that they're claiming don't work were problematic due to poor implementation and they gave up too quickly. If your first attempt at a car has square wheels, of course no one is going to enjoy the ride.

One of the biggest things that I look for in a good D&D game (and game in general) is the opportunity to develop a unique character. I want the choices that I make for my character to make that character feel special. My class, for example, should make me an expert (in training) at something that almost no one else can do well and most people can't do at all. The places where Larian has decided to deviate from 5e seem to almost universally take away from the uniqueness of the classes.
-Everyone can dash and hide and disengage equally well. Sorry rogues.
-Everyone can do unreasonable amounts of damage and elemental effects with barrels that they shouldn't be able to carry around and spell scrolls and grenades and special arrows that seem to be everywhere. Sorry spellcasters.
-Everyone can get all of their spell slots and other limited abilities back whenever they want, outside of battle, by long resting with no consequences. Sorry warlocks, monks, fighters, etc.
-Anyone can resurrect another character with ubiquitous resurrection scrolls. Everyone has access to nearly limitless, cheap healing by eating food. Sorry clerics.
-Reactions either need to be prepared in advance (and thus, aren't reactions anymore) or happen without your say-so. Sorry counterspell, feather fall, opportunity attacks, hellish rebuke, etc.
-Many class features are inexplicably more difficult to use than they should be, and so are less appealing. Sorry bless, battle master maneuvers, sneak attack, etc.
-The maximum range on everything is now 60'. Sorry longbows, heavy crossbows, long-range spells.
-It's relatively easy for anyone to get advantage on attacks. Sorry to all classes that have features that help them get advantage on attacks.

I'm sure I'm missing a ton of things that could go on this list and I imagine that there are good reasons for a few of these choices, but the pattern I'm seeing is that Larian doesn't think that the things that make characters special in D&D are fun enough, so they're changing things to make them all obsolete. I'm fine if they want to deviate from 5e rules, but only if they're doing things that actually make the game better.

I made a huge post in a different thread about how I feel about the house rules, and in the interests of not dumping that wall of text into this thread, I'll just link to it.

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=756130#Post756130

That said, normally I wouldn't be that worried about how BG3 would turn out later on, if it weren't for the fact that these interviews exist and that I have prior extensive knowledge of Larian's prior games (both DOS games and Divinity 2), which is more than most people on these forums. I like their games, but it's not because their combat was ever reasonably balanced by any metric, so Larian expecting their 'throw everything at the wall and let players figure it out' design philosophy in regards to the actual gameplay to work with an entirely different IP that is several degrees more revered and established than they are is rather concerning.

A lot about the things they say about what they think is 'fun' only really makes sense if they are analyzing each of their own game mechanics in a vacuum, and aren't very good at seeing the big picture that they themselves pieced together. What they say about Bless betrays a complete misunderstanding about why players assign value to each factor of the game in a combat scenario. In this case, they believe buff spells like Bless aren't used because players find them 'boring', whatever the hell kind of metric that is supposed to be. The real takeaway that most other devs would have had was to check why people didn't want to use them by comparing them to other game mechanics that would perhaps be overshadowing their use, rather than dismissing it as a preference thing. The real answer is that spells like Bless aren't worth using in BG3 because...

1) The bonuses it grants are seemingly miniscule when you have easy sources of free advantage such as backstabs and high ground - both being Larian's homebrew concepts.
2) It is a concentration spell, which is even worse when you consider that damaging field effects are a thing and a lot of enemies possess grenades and explosive arrows for whatever reason. Oh, and even more when you consider point 1.

I know bringing up Solasta is like beating a dead horse in these parts, but comparing the usage of the Bless spell between both games is worth analyzing in this context. In BG3, Bless is hardly worth anything as it is, because the homebrew rules make the bonuses miniscule and a hassle to maintain. In Solasta, where said homebrew rules don't exist, Bless is actually one of the most powerful spells in that game and well worth using, because getting advantage on your rolls in general is MUCH harder in Solasta than it is in BG3, so every boost to your normal rolls is highly welcomed.

It almost insults the collective gaming community's intelligence to assume that the lack of Bless usage in BG3 is just because it's 'boring' - after all, Larian's previous game was highly hailed as an innovative breath of fresh air for turn-based RPGs that encouraged players to think outside of the box, and I do not intend to dispute that. But a lot of these BG3 interviews appear to retroactively reveal that perhaps Larian was just incredibly lucky and maybe never understood *why* D:OS2 became such a hit to begin with. Their attempts to seemingly import a lot of the D:OS2 feel into BG3 is highly suspect at best. It is not a sign of confidence when developers given the reins of one of the most cherished RPG IPs in the world talk about their game design using terms like 'fun' and 'boring' along with wanting to let the visuals speak for themselves, rather than doing an actual deep dive explanation on how their own mechanics interact with each other.

Though to be fair, most people are bad at seeing the big picture too. Indeed, in their highly revered D:OS2, the armor system worked out well enough for the first half of the game, especially during the heavily playtested Early Access content. It wasn't until after the Early Access content that the flaws in the system became apparent - but the game was bloated and long enough that most reviewers would never play far enough to see said glaring flaws before hailing the game as a masterpiece. The last act especially was so much of a mess on so many levels that they had to create a Definitive Edition to fix it. And yet no one in the gaming press ever took Larian to task for that - although to be fair, it was a free upgrade.

Keep slaying them Saito.

I don't feel betrayed because of D&D. I'm not a D&D player, just a video game player... but I feel "betray" because the game doesn't feel like Baldur's Gate (or any other tabletop video game adaptation, including ToEE) at all and because it's a cheap tactical turn base game.

My first concern is not the "faithfull 5e implementation", but obviously everything that has been changed by Larian drive the game away from my expectations.

I'm here because of "the name" but I'm a huge fan of tactical TB game and I'm fine with many things in BG3... They did a great job on many points and the game has an awesome potential but the "Larian layer" upon D&D seems to be all what I don't like in BG3.

As a results it leads to many inconsistencies whatever we're talking about the story or the world. They completely altered the reality of the classic fantasy world in which our journey take place and I don't like the silly (some would say funny) things they added.

On the other hand, to me combats is one of the main features I like in a tactical TB game.
According to me combats in BG3 are poor and repetitive, determined by the limited but OP Larian's custom rules.

I'm not a D&D expert but I know the PHB pretty well now and it looks like it has all the materials to create a real and deep tactical turn based video game...

That's why the rules implementation is important to me. It could leads to a more consistent setting and to better tactical combats.

At the moment the game looks more like an assembly of elements than a coherent whole.
You see a sex scene and the next second you're a kangaroo in combats... You learn that goblins can't find the druid grove but you walk 3 min between both... You're exploring the dangerous underdark but the next second you're safe outside...
Not sure those exemples are the best but you'll probably get the idea.

I would love improvements as much as the next guy, but must say that at this point, BG3 is the best CRPG D&D combat experience I've had.

BG1 & 2 combat was a huge chaotic mess, and you'd spend most of the time pressing space trying to keep your characters from doing something suicidal. It was terrible. NWN was better, because you only controlled one character. I've been playing Pathfinder on and off, and for all the care taken to respect the tabletop game, it's frankly a snorefest. Everyone standing in a big pile, hacking away, and like BG1 & 2, you primarily have to time your healing potions. BG3 has me constantly thinking about tactical advantages, which to choose and which could backfire. That they borrowed a bit from their own games (D:OS), is forgivable in my opppinion, because those games worked well as video games. But I have never played 5e around a table, and perhaps that makes me easier to please. I just don't think it's entirely bad to make the game a fun experience for the average player, first and foremost.

It looks like you don't like RTWP

Had you tried The Temple of Elemental Evil (or any other TB tabletop based vdeo game) or is BG3 your first D&D turn based video game ?

About advantages, did you notice the highground/backstab advantages or are you playing with spells like true strike / faery fire / invisibility and so on ? Are you usual with tactical TB games ?

These are serious question to understand a very different point of view than mine.

What I find rather unbelievable is that the current deviation from 5E are the results of deliberate tweaks introduced by Larian. Rather it looks more like that they are leftovers from DOS which Larian left in the game either because of time constrains or because they wanted to see how they work. Or because they made verticality so much a marketing point that they leave everything in which makes verticality more important/usable (jump, advantage).

Well well well, I really feel betrayed.
Like, "I sell to you a D&D5 game with some homebrew" (when we see "homebrew", with Matt Mercer and many others... this is on small things, like, a bonus action for a potion...) : I say ok
But then, it is a completely unbalanced system : so yes, I am angry
100% D&D5 I do not care : 95%, maybe
But here, this is not little homebrew here and there, with nice homebrew rules for rest, or homebrew for magic creation items, or homebrew to swim...

Here, homebrew is : I completely unbalance some of the fundamental rules ; it is far more than just "not 100% D&D5"
Yes, betraaaayyyyyyyyed

They did it because BG3 is literally being built on top of DOS2. Laziness, convinience, you call it.


Angry and disappointed.

I don't think this pessimism is warranted. It's very easy to tweak these kinds of rules at this stage in development. Changing the way these kinds of abilities work is pretty straightforward and it's easier to get good feedback by overtuning tweaks and dialling back than undertuning and amping up. Their goal is definitely not the same as Solasta's but I don't think it's fair to judge their ability to make an insteresting system based on early access. We've seen from their previous games that Larian are extremely good at incorporating feedback from players into their games. They've worked small miracles on Original Sin so getting the balance right for BG3 should be a snap. I don't think their goal is going to be a 100% faithful recreation of 5E but I'd be very surprised if the blatantly overpowered moves made it in without adjustments.