Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Panel From Hell 3 (LarPG) : summary of announced features

This is a minima-list summary of the new features that were announced during the Panel From Hell 3 / LarPG show and that will be shipped with Patch 5.

There will probably be an official list in the Community Update, when Larian publishes one. Whether this will come right after the Panel From Hell 3, or to accompany the release of Patch 5, I do not know.

The Patch will be released on Tuesday 13th July 2021.


Upcoming features for Patch 5.

• New UI for Ability Checks during cutscenes.
  - Swen called this the Active Roll System.
  - It shows the check's Difficulty Class and the various bonuses that apply : Ability Score Bonus, Proficiency, and other sources (such as spells).
  - It allows to cast spells from within the Ability Check's UI.
  - For what it's worth, it seems as if the dice will look a bit different and no longer be red.
• Background goals.
  - Larian added specific mini-quests throughout the game, that are related to background.
  - You will get inspiration points by "playing to background". I guess this means at least completing the background-related quests that you find.
  - I believe I heard there will be 130 background goals. Not sure if this is intended for EA, or throughout the game. For context, there are 13 official backgrounds in BG3, so that's 10 per background.
• Camp setting now matches the place where you sleep.
  Examples mentioned include Underdark, Crypt, Cave, Forest.
• Rest system : new mechanism, resource management.
  - This puts limits on long rests and start creating a difference between short rest from long rest.
  - If you eat enough food when resting at camp, you get the benefits of a long rest. If not, you get only the benefits of a short rest.
  - Thus, managing supplies (both food and class abilities) becomes a thing. And finding food becomes important.
  - This mechanism is announced as a trial. No guarantee that it will remain in that form in the final version. Swen explicitly said they are seeking feedback on this.
• Jump and Disengage.
  - Jump and Disengage are now separated.
  - Also, there is now be a hotkey for jump.
  - Disengage now costs an Action. This was described off-handedly by Swen as an answer to a chat question, and is meant to be a trial in Patch 5.
• Concentration can now be stopped.
• New gameplay / story content.
  - While Larian announced that the focus of this Patch was on systems, not content, there will be a couple of new things.
  - He mentioned new cutscenes in camp. Check out Scratch and the Owlbear.
  - It is apparently be possible to free Shadowheard in the Nautiloid. Expect her to be the teased surprise on the beach.
  - I think Swen also mentioned new quest permutations.
• Characters now say things when the player issues them orders.
  - Basically like when you select or give order to units in some RTS games or CRPGs.
  - What they say depend on the order : Move, Hide, etc.
  - Swen called this the point-and-click system. I'm sure someone can find / knows of a better name for this.
• New combat actions.
  - Non-lethal attacks. This should apparently be activated via a toggle.
  - Disarm.
• Inspiration point cap.
  - The cap will apparently be 4 Inspiration Points (for the whole party, I'd assume, not per character).
  - Gaining Inspiration Points beyond the cap should bring you XP instead.
• Visual effects for spells.
  - The VFX team has been working on theming spells to classes, if they are class-specific.
  - I don't remember if this was for Patch 5 or later.
• Crafting/loot.
  Apparently more crafting is coming.

Swen also did a sort of live AMA (Ask Me Anything), answering some questions from the Twitch chats. So here is additional information, not necessarily related to Patch 5.

• Act 2 in EA : definitely not.
  - Overall, mechanical content (such as races, classes) and gameplay/story content (new maps, quests, plot progression) is definitely something people should not expect.
• Reactions will not change in this patch. But it is a something that Swen actually mentioned. And he said they'll be expanding (?). Basically it sounded like they're working on it.
• Inventory management : they are working on a revamp.
• Multiclass will come. But much later. Probably.
• Difficulty level : will come very late.
• The AI is going to start using/knowing the rules of the game. (Not sure I caught that well.)

We also learned that Swen is a save-scumming expert, though that wasn't as part of the AMA and I doubt this was an intended Patch 5 announcement.

Did anyone catch what jump's resource cost will be? That's something I'm curious about.

Also non-lethal attacks are coming in Patch 5.

They didn't mention anything about any changes to shove, throwing, backstab, or height advantage/disadvantage, but I suspect they want to see how main action disengage affects the encounter balance first. The one potentially negative thing is that main action disengage by itself is basically a straight nerf to the player rather than affecting any existing encounters from an enemy economy standpoint, now it's going to be slightly harder to contest enemies for high ground at the start of a fight, which is still just as important as it has been since the start of this EA. It also means it's significantly harder to get backstab advantage now, especially if your melee is surrounded by multiple enemies.

But still, the rest will most likely come later.

Overall everything mentioned here is definitely for the better, and I definitely agree with disengage being a main action now, I just didn't want to see it happening without all of the other issues being addressed along with it. I now have actual hope for the direction of this game.

I think it's still a bonus action. At least it's in the "bonus action" part of the UI.

Yeah, pretty sure jump is still a bonus action. Which isn't an issue, the real problem was the disengage which they've addressed. A non-bonus action jump would be far too much of a nerf to player economy, especially with how many of the encounters are designed.

They went overboard with the hype, I thought we were getting a new class or at least a new race, subrace. The githzerai name drop at the end was a nice touch, so I'm crossing fingers they add them in the near future.
The changes and new implementations are nice and welcome, but I'll have to take your guys word of them since this isn't enough to make me reinstall the game, sadly.
See you when the next patch rolls out, stay hopeful.

Same here. I was pretty pessimistic about the game, but these changes helped a lot.

Plus, the Jump/Disengange changes show that they are actually open to adjusting their homebrew.

I believe i have heared Swen telling us that they will keep "some races" hidden until full release as surprise?

Yeah, we definitely won't have all races. Swen wants the launch to add a LOT of extra content.

Swen said experience on release will be unique, so I wouldn't expect many new things in EA. Thats fine.

I'm totally fine with not seeing a lot of new content in EA, I like the idea of having the majority of stuff on the full release be new, I think that's the best option. I will say though that they should probablt introduce if not all then a majority of the classes in EA, because those definitely need testing to make sure they work with Larian's system changes.

Overall though I'm quite excited by this patch. It's got a lot of stuff I'm enthused about and it leaves me hopeful for the direction of the game. In particular I'm hopefull that they'll continue tweaking combat to something better-balanced. At the very least things like separating Jump and Disengage as well as changing how camping works shows they are actually listening and taking feedback under advisement.

I would still really like it if they gave us a list of commonly brought up issues that they acknowledge so we know what they're aware of. I fully support them not announcing stuff until they have something to show but I don't think it would be a bad thing for them to say "hey, this handful of issues you guys keep bringing up? We're looking at them. We're not saying we'll change them or how, but we know you guys care about themso you don't have to keep bringing them up."

So can you still jump to disengage, or will jumping now provoke a counterattack? I am not a fan of spending an action to position myself, since the main point of combat in this game is to outposition masses of enemies and deny their actions. Any action you spend is not spend on the main combat goal, so it is a net loss.

Got to admit I'm pleasantly surprised by this. Particularly the changes to the rest mechanic addressing criticisms of lack of immersion and balance is huge. The disarm "homebrew" (optional) mechanic leaves me both worried and hopeful as it seems to indicate Larian is balancing the action economy. More positive about the direction of the gameplay after this (never worried about Larian not measuring up elsewhere).

[quote=I would still really like it if they gave us a list of commonly brought up issues that they acknowledge so we know what they're aware of. I fully support them not announcing stuff until they have something to show but I don't think it would be a bad thing for them to say "hey, this handful of issues you guys keep bringing up? We're looking at them. We're not saying we'll change them or how, but we know you guys care about themso you don't have to keep bringing them up."[/quote]

Technically, they did just that. They noted U/I changes, Inventory management changes, Reactions, and Crafting would all be receiving further changes/updates. They noted multi-class and difficulty settings will be included, but not until much further along in development. They added mechanics to include relevant spells and abilities in skill checks - an issue that has been raised - I can easily see this ultimately impacting areas as diverse as conversations and pickpocket attempts. They made drastic changes to camping and resting, an area that has received a huge amount of comment, and indicated this is still an area under development. Changes to the use of food, concentration, jump and disengage are clearly in response to complaints and comments about the previous mechanics. They continue to make changes in the way Origin companions act/react - certainly an issue raised over and over. Addition of new systems such as Inspiration mini - quests and the "point and click" and camping systems certainly suggest they are not "wedded" to everything they started out with in EA. They also made it clear certain things would definitely NOT be part of EA - there will be no Act 2 content, they will NOT include every race in EA, they likely will NOT advance characters to lvl 5, and certainly not in the foreseeable future, they will not be adding multi-player mechanics anytime soon, if at all during EA.

To me, that's a pretty broad review of what they are willing to look at, revise, and change, some idea of what to expect short and long term, and what kind of things they are looking at. Is it comprehensive? No. Is it a guarantee? No. Is it going to satisfy those who regularly post here? I highly doubt it. But it IS their definition of responsive, and it is not unreasonable - we have probably a year to a year and a half of development time still ahead.

Wait, so is the camp meant to be a base of operations or does it change every night? that would imply that your entire group (animals/skeleton all) are following you around the whole time? That's..odd.

Jumping will provoke an attack of opportunity.
You'll have to think about your positions not to be engaged. That's how "positionning" works in every good tactical games (>< position doesn't really matter because you can always disengage and teleport and...)

And if you're really engaged you won't HAVE to use your action :
- moving and take the AOO to attack
- use a bonus action spell to disengage (i.e misty step)
- use your rogue cunning action disengage as a bonus action
- attack with the threatened status
- use your action to disengage and loose your action
- use your action to disengage but use metamagic because you're a sorceerer and cast your spell as a bonus action
- and so on.


We'll have to see.
I think that the main camp will stay the "main camp" but that they'll introduce "mini camp" in some locations. I guess the followers will stay at the main camp ?

Good changes, but this was not worth 5 months. We have had 1 new class and it is probably going to be a full year before Patch 6.

Personally, I would have been happy if they just released that video and not bothered with these panels from hell, waste of staff resources. I expect they are being done to please / reward Swen.

So, overall I am happy, they are making some progress but I expect once I test patch 5 next week, I'll find issues to be unhappy about.

I'm mostly eager for the patch notes, there has to be a bit more for balance changes.

Folks watching live on Twitch seemed to be enjoying the spectacle - so it likely met whatever PR goal they and WotC were after.