Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Solasta CotM proves 5e Rules Work in a Video Game.

Good question

It is an argument on semantics and if you consider Tabletop and Board Games to be synonymous, and it kinda has gone well off topic in that people were discussing D&D 5e rule implementation in BG3 and comparing to Solasta.

It's new and therefore more interesting than repeating the same arguments about BG3 vs Solasta with (often the same) people.

I think we all agree on this but what’s this got to do with using 5e rules? Are you saying since the world is inconsistent, Larian should be able to do whatever they want? I’m just not following your point of view regarding this thread.

Larian is certainly breaking the rules that magnify the inconsistency. I can jump behind my opponent so now he’s off guard, swing my sword and eat a boars head like a power up all in one motion. Larian’s economy of action, even if the characters were superheroes borders on silly and ridiculous.

QFT

Hey i am new. It is because of this thread I actually heard and tried solasta. It was a good experience, now I am a cleric of BG3 should just obey the rules since apparently 5e rules do pretty good in combat. And I never played dnd ever.

Economy of actions is another argument, some points of which I agree on, e. g. healing with food. But this is different from the superheroes vs. realism. I don't play pnp, only the BG series of games. Just like jumping over someone stands out for you as inconsistencies in rules, the differences between who can be a wizard in BG1/2 and BG3 stand out for me.

I'd like to see some of the rules in BG3 changed, but not because they don't match Solasta/pnp, but because of how they impact combat as a whole. For example, one of the reasons why I'm not interested Solasta is that - at least to what info I could find on forums - you cannot play a solo character and have to create a party of four at least. I don't know if that is a pnp rule, but I'd not like to see this in BG3.

Welcome! Happy to hear that you tried Solasta based on things you heard here.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that nobody was new here. Just that a lot of people are and have had similar discussions in the past. But this is partially why it's good to revisit various discussion topics: we get new input from people like you. and can indoctrinate new members into the 5e raw or Larian homebrew cults

So you prefer if races and classes were restricted like in the old BG series since they were based on 2e? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you are arguing since each edition radically changed the gameplay, why argue about Larian not following 5e?

It is true you cannot solo Solasta. It’s been something I brought up as well. The devs never answered but it could be limited budget or the devs just balanced everything around a party of four. I don’t know but yes, I agree it should be changed. Solasta is far from perfect but it certainly did a better job translating 5e into a video game.

Changes are fine, but I'd prefer if they were incorporated into storytelling. The original argument was that BG3 is about playing superheroes and that it is not realistic unlike pnp. But in that context my question is how does pnp deal with the rule changes? For example if dwarves in Dragon Age would suddenly be able to become mages in the next installment of the series, but there would be no explanation whatever, it would be just weird.

One thing I haven't seen discussed is the fact that you can see your odds of success when you target an enemy. In DnD, you don't know off the bat your odds of success and have to work it out for your self by trying your spells or attacks. If I want to be as effective as I can in combat, I can (in BG3) cycle through my spells and attacks, aiming each at an enemy, and decide which one is most effective.

WotC just dismisses it and waves their hands. They just expect each individual table to decide or they just retcon it. WotC did try to explain the transition from 3.5e to 4e and back to 5e with a bunch of catastrophes to the world but again, it wasn’t implemented for moving the story. It was to change the gameplay.

4e was a fairly radical change to D&D as a game system and it seemed to model itself more to video games and MMOs. If it was a success, it would have translated very well to computer games. WotC incorporated a big change in Faerun at the time to match the gameplay and a lot of players hated it.

So they kinda backtracked with 5e, including the setting. 100 years have passed but it’s pretty much the same vibe as the 3.5e era.

I mentioned superheroes because that’s the trend I’m seeing in entertainment. I think Larian is following that trend. I call them the Michael Bay of video game developers because of it. They like flash. They like big dramatic scenes and explosions. They don’t seem to care if it really makes any sense in the setting.

5e is more grounded to earth than they like so they went with DOS system and added 5e rules on top of it.

Agreed. I also end up cycling through spells. Feels a bit disingenous during combat, like I'm not always playing how I would naturally. I kinda wish I could hide the percentage thing. While it's hilarious to see the sometimes 10%-25% hit chances, it also makes me die a bit inside lol.

Being near the end of a long running 4e campaign and have played a lot of 5e, there are actually a lot of changes from 4e that carried over into 5e I felt. While they are two very very different systems with wildly different strengths and weaknesses, there still feels like a throughline from 3 to 4 to 5 and every system could be enjoyed. That said, 4e genuinely would have been a lot easier to adapt into a video game. Abilities in 4e were designed with combat first and roleplay second, many could be applied to RP interactions but a player had to figure that out themself. 5e designs so many spells and abilities with RP first and combat second, most are still combat focused but a lot of abilities are designed with out of combat utility and roleplaying in mind. For example Speak With Dead which to become a focus for Larian cause now they had to voice and write lines for dead people. Also 4e gave you big stuff earlier I felt, or at least it did for the wizard. At first level I could summon a Fire Warrior or Dretch to fight my enemies and wreck havok, or burn down a building for a stupid entrance. 5e, a first level wizard is less... grand, the first level spells are useful but barely any would fit Larian's brand of big explosions and epic creatures, and even to level 4 things are toned back. That is cause 5e is considerably scaled back at early levels. But it does get to Larian's levels of grandness at later levels so I think they should try to be a lot closer to 5e and have that patience so it has more meaning when we reach those higher levels with large explosive abilities. Basing things on DOS and adding 5e on top ends up doing a disservice to both Larian's explosive style and 5e's system, when sticking to 5e would actually highlight both is something I believe.

Thank you, CJMPinger. That is the point I've been trying to make for quite some time. So many are so upset that their characters aren't rock star super models at Level 1. They get upset with D&D 5e because they're like, "I'm supposed to be a rogue so I should have a super huge advantage over my fighter to pick locks." But what they don't realize is at Level 1, nobody has a super huge advantage over anyone else. They have slight advantages over others in their areas of expertise that will increase as time goes on. A Level 5 Rogue is far better at picking locks than a Level 5 Fighter. Level 10 allows for even more of an extreme between the two.

So by NOT implementing the 5e rules right, in order to make people happy and give them more super-hero like characters from the very start, they are dooming the later levels which will then make it harder in the long run. I'm afraid they are going to have to really tank Level 10s so much that they will be even further from 5e rules in the long run, doing things that are so ridiculous that it will be beyond superhero status.

The whole point of D&D is that you are a weakling at Level 1, but by the time you hit Level 10 you really start to become that superhero person. By level 20, you are a god. That's the whole point. But instead, Larian is trying to start people out as superheroes so that by Level 10 they will be gods, and from there...who knows....who knows...

The main reason I am not worried about that personally (about them gimping the later levels), not sure if you played DOS:2, but there was a huge jump in difficulty when you left the starter area. Everything just really started hitting harder. I mean of course as you played, got better gear etc it leveled out, but when you first head over, it is noticeable how much harder it got. So I am assuming they will do the same with this game.

But then again, we are in a time of game development where they seem content on making games as "accessible" as possible, not wanting to be accused of elitism or gatekeeping by the game journalists (literally, some bile comes up when I call them that today lol), that it seems they are making games way easier. Which I hope is not the case in this instance as well. Keep in mind that there is still people that come on this forum, or the reviews and complain about how difficult the game is, which honestly I cannot understand, but there it is.

Larian could definitely work a bit more on character development as a concept. Start things a bit smaller sometimes so they have room to grow. And small doesn't mean being a level 1 character with an epic background who is abducted on a ship for a temporary inconvenience.

Baldur's Gate 1 does that so well. It creates a great arc for the protagonist.

Never played DOS, but that does not sound like fun. That also concerns me. I do not like games that start out easy and then become really hard all of a sudden.

Guys. This is a D&D game. It should look and feel like D&D not DOS. One of the major game elements of D&D is progressive increasing of abilities. It isn't about going from 0 to 60 in 6 seconds.

I don't know. The more I hear about DOS the more Im glad I didn't buy it yet. I've been tempted to because I love this game so much, but...

I just feel like DOS fans are trying to turn a D&D game into DOS instead of just accepting a game for what it is. Let D&D be D&D and let DOS be DOS.

That's why I feel like it's a scenario where Star Trek fans are trying to force Star Wars fans to play a Star Wars game using Star Trek weapons and equipment and ships and such. When playing a Star Wars game, you need to play by Star Wars rules or it isn't a Star Wars game, is it? Phasers don't belong in Star Wars and Jedi don't belong in Star Trek.

Likewise, DOS gameplay doesn't belong in D&D anymore than D&D gameplay belongs in DOS.

Can people stop alienating people who like DOS??? I like DOS but i dont think this game should be like DOS AT all. DOS setting does not fit this game because it is a completely different beast. I have talked about this before DOS surfaces dont fit because you cant fly everywhere or have magic armor anymore.

This also does not mean that DOS is bad. I think DOS is a very creative game. I especially liked how elements can create different types of surfaces damages and etc. It just wont work in this game. It already has a balanced combat in other ways already. Ofcourse adding creative things to 5e rules is okay but as people said, they built 5e rules on top of DOS not the other way around.

You could add to 5e rules that you do slightly higher damage in high ground because you spend resources to get on top to gain some advantage. Or +2/-2 advantage people are talking about(imo this should be 0/-1). They also wanted to give high grounds to people easily by giving jump mechanic which acts like Phoenix dive for example. You dont get hit by attack of opportunity and gives you quite distance. Obviously not as much as phoenix dive, but you get my point. If they did jump as a move bonus that cant be used near enemies, maybe to skip some hard terrain and get some elevation. People wouldn't be super upset about it.

Definitely.

Jump could be a movement action or a bonus action very usefull to get out of surfaces or to play with verticality in combats.

The biggest problem with jump is that it is coupled with disengage and the second problem is that jumping allow us to move further.

Those 2 things wouldn't change the overall experience but it would really increase the "look" of combats (mario, kangaroo, frog), their tactical value and the consequences of our choices (less systematic free things to do at each turn).