Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Encounter Boundaries in D&D and Bg3

So this is a question for everyone who plays RPG's. It occurs that once we leave ACT 1 we will likely find ourselves in Baldur's Gate fairly soon. The City of Baldur's gate is not like the druid grove. There are powers in the City that are far beyond ours.

A 4 person party - or even 6 - would stand zero chance at killing all 50k people in Baldur's Gate not to mention there are entities that are puissant.

Given this - and the proclivity for people feeling that if a being exists in a video game then they have the right to murder it - how should Larian go about creating absolute boundaries of who you can and cannot reasonably kill? Not talking about stealth assasinations that you pull off without getting noticed. I mean "I am going to unleash a massive explosion in this crowded and public area" kind of thing.

One approach is like the Dragon in the EA, where you cannot even attack it. However that takes away from people being allowed to do the dumbest thing possible. Objectively there is NO way in hell a group of level 4 dweebs are going to take on an adult red dragon, in an open field, and survive. So if the exploits are properly addressed the situation will unfold in a predictable way.

Should the same go for Baldur's Gate? Where if some 5th level dweeb unleashes a Fireball in the market should it result in an insta death? Or should actual forces show up, beyond the capabilities of the offending character (assuming it wasn't some stealth job) and smash that character to pieces. or maybe, a thousand soldiers spawn and simply crush the processing power of your computer resulting in a game crash (I kid, but that is a realistic scenario for a greater disturbance or assault on the populace).

Just from an RPG perspective how should that be handled?

Forces, definitely forces, whole city going aggro. Why this even a question?

+1

Im totally against any spawning or stuff ... that should not really be necesary, just ring the alarm and let NPC from whole town run towards the criminal.

if they want consequences for going straight murder-hobo, they should make it logical. For one, everyone in the town/area will no longer deal with you at all and you'll be either forced to just never come back or slaughter them all, possibly failing all quests. Adding in god-tier guards is a possibility but would only make sense up to a very limited level. Level 20 guards in DND would be silly

Everyone has the right to do stupid things. I'm pretty sure, you could have attacked anyone in BG 1 and 2. But there should be consequences. Those forces are good, but also that your reputation will go so much down, that noone wants to trade or even talk to you, if you survive the forces.

A level 20 guard would have to be a retired adventurer and have some sort of injury...possibly a knee injury involving projectiles. Half movement speed but still has 5 attacks per round.

But seriously there will be Dragons, Archmages and other powerful beings in Baldur's gate. If you started a fight and proceeded to slaughter the entire city I think they would manifest.

In DOS 2 you could wipe out entire cities and they would stay that way and never recover.

What I am really talking about is legitimate boundaries. Enemies you cannot expect to defeat without cheating or getting extremely lucky.

You're forgetting that DOS2 had different system, where you can keep on going without resting at all. And you're nearly a god capable of creating storms of blood and rotten meat in DOS2 when you reach Arks. In D&D you can actually overhelm a high-lvl murder-hobo PC with just more battle units.

+1 for enemies you're not supposed to be able to defeat, at least when first encountered. This shouldn't be limited to the city of BG (guards calling for help from powerful people in the city, important shopkeeps being high level or having high level guards/defenses), but also in the open world (stumble upon a level 10+ enemy in Act 1).

Obviously the game shouldn't initiate lethal combat with these entities; the player should have to (stupidly) choose to do so. And these enemies should be higher level, not just invulnerable to damage or untargetable. It is possible to defeat them, likely through exploits/cheese, but so unlikely as to be heavily discouraged for all but challenge runs.

I'd also like it if, in cities, stealing was responded to by calling the guards to bring you to jail instead of the victim (and every single nearby NPC) becoming hostile. The guards would ask you to surrender, but if you chose to fight they'd deal non-lethal damage to you and then take you to jail. There you could either pay the fine or escape, but if you escaped then as previous posters suggested no one would want to trade with you. On the other hand, if you initially beat the guards, hopefully the game would also consider whether you murdered or just knocked them out. If the former, the city becomes hostile. If the latter, most traders will still trade with you, but traveling through the city would risk encountering stronger guards sent after to to take you to jail. And repeat until resolved.

They can add a sort of reputation system, like in BG2. When your reputation was low, your party was occasionally waylaid by high level goody-goodies. Something like that, except these enemies should leave no loot whatsoever. This will prevent their intentional farming, leaving the murder-hobo path to the actual crackheads.

Or Flaming Fist can simply subcontract some Giths to hunt you down from above...

I'm all for the systemic approach, which means putting the boundaries inside the limitations of the rules: you should be free to ATTEMPT to kill anyone. Which doesn't mean you are also entitle to the right of having a fair chance to succeed.
I'd be perfectly fine with certain fights being virtually impossible for the players and their parties.

If you attack citizens on the streets, law enforcers should spawn and kick your ass. If you attempt to murder a high caliber/powerful NPCS, they should be well protected, by their own set of abilities, by over-leveling your party and by having bodyguards, etc.

Powerful npcs should be powerful within the rules. Even if that allows for a tiny theoretical chance that players manage to kill them. (The guard captain being a level 20 redemption paladin is fine, if he has a mechanic like "when you would reduce his hp to 0 your PC dies instead" that's bad).
Peasants and common city guards should be reasonably weak. I really don't like it in some other games, where common guards can easiely kill the PC. Then I'm always wondering, why did you send my hero on the quest to kill the BBEG? Why didn't you just send a few of those guards to do it? Also unlike other games DnD5 heaviely favours the bigger party and has onlv limited amounts of healing and aoe damage. So even if we manage to kill half the city, we will eventually run out of spell slots and get overwhelmed by those low level peasants with slings and clubs.

One thing I really liked about the EA story so far is that there are no NPCs protected by plot armour. If I manage to kill anyone and survive, that might take quest options away from me, but there are still other ways to progress the story. Hope it stays that way.

Yup. +1. Allowing players to do anything, doesn't mean everything should be doable, even if game is rigged to continue either way just in case.

Yeah but you are going to run head-first into typical gamer entitlement.

-Even if you clearly show that there is no reason to attack this person
-And that they are MUCH more powerful than you
-And the entire encounter is optional
-And they have powerful friends and the result will be a negative reputation hit and making lots more powerful enemies.

You are going to get - "if it's in the game I should be able to kill it" As well as calls of it being "unfair".

But I want us to be able to have completely optional encounters that are extremely challenging. As well as possible entities that are so beyond us in power that having a go at them is going to probably result in a messy death regardless of how min/max you are.

Yet people complain about the Spectator Beholder fight as if you are forced to deal with it.

I didnt get to that particular encounter, but I think it all depends from what the game communicates up-front. So far act1 feels gamey - archdruids are low level and are easily killable, all areas feel like content rather then world building. If I get to Beholder, and it is indeed unwinnable encounter - then it would feel off, as everything in the game seems to be tailored for me to face.

If, however, game would from the beginning set different expectations - regularly meeting NPCs whom we should try to kill, or enemies we should avoid for now - then it becomes a different kind of language. Gothic1&2 has mastered it, but it's entirely different game type and design then BG3.

Sounds like a fictional hypothetical problem, frankly.
People have been dealing with "gatekeepers" in CRPGs since the dawn of the genre. I also don't see how the "impossible to attack/kill" is any better than "Fine, have your shot, but you are going to get your ass handed to you".



Maybe we are mixing things here? The Spectator fight is perfectly manageable (BOTH of them, in fact). If anything most people (myself included) complained that its repertory of moves does NOT match the rules and the setting (see Larian giving to him a whole bunch of extra actions for no reason and a buttload of extra HP over its theoretical maximum).
Which has nothing to do with making the encounter challenging and more with making it arbitrary bullshit.

There's a reason if I specifically pointed that things should be challenging (or even impossible, if the context calls for it) INSIDE the boundaries of the rules.

From early access it didn't seem like we were going to touch Baldur's gate in act 2. Figuring its going to be act 3 and if that's true well be at least level 10 I'm guessing. Just like the grove, everything should be interactable, so if someone wanted to go full murder hobo, sure.

Also, act 1 we far exceed level 4, so its possible we could get higher level just in the first act.