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In the game Pathfinder - Wrath of the Righteous, there is a society of pathfinders, from whose representative you can order the retraining of the main character (the first three are free).
There you can change not only combat skills and attribute points, but also race, gender, and so on.

Is this necessary in Baldur's Gate 3? Topic for discussion.


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No, it’s not.
Not even a fan of convenient respec, in general, let alone of the idea of recreating the main character at will mid-play through.

That aside, didn’t that “feature” in WOTR break the game is some fairly horrible ways?
Which isn’t even surprising, given that a “save game” is usually a collection of variables that summarize (among other things) all your past choices, decisions, things you looted or unlocked, major dialogue choices you made, etc.
Pretty damn obvious that altering that type of data mid-run would mess things up.


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Actually this brings up the Druid spell Reincarnation, which I have always felt would be cool to have in the BG series. Many people would probably not use it, but on the other hand, look how Wild Magic turned out to be a popular thing. Reincarnation is sort of a wild version of Resurrection. And it could certainly be used in as a plot device in a quest, too!

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I thought this was going to be about the belt of masculinity/femininity when I saw the title. That sort of thing is up Larian's ally humor wise, and it would be a callback to BG1, so I bet it will be in there somewhere.

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Option to respec would be much appreciated ...
Option to change gender would be probably never even touched by me ... especialy concidering how awful male models lookalike. :-/

Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 26/01/22 07:18 AM.

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Originally Posted by dwig
I thought this was going to be about the belt of masculinity/femininity when I saw the title. That sort of thing is up Larian's ally humor wise, and it would be a callback to BG1, so I bet it will be in there somewhere.

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I can use retraining but I will not try changing the class, race or gender of my character. That being said, if somebody wants this feature, so be it. It does not matter to me. Changing the race and gender of companions I personally find more intrusive as it does steal a bit from their personality and breaks my immersion.

By the way, even if there is such a belt, I will insist on creating effective ways to dispel (preferably with a subplot.)

Originally Posted by RagnarokCzD
Option to respec would be much appreciated ...
Option to change gender would be probably never even touched by me ... especialy concidering how awful male models lookalike. :-/

One of the few things I disagree with you. Some of the male faces are quite attractive. That's also true for some of the female ones. I guess it is a matter of perception and preference.

P.S. That being said, I get it that the whole thread is a wink at the constant calls for companion customization.

Last edited by Scales & Fangs; 26/01/22 07:29 PM.
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Originally Posted by Tuco
No, it’s not.
Not even a fan of convenient respec, in general, let alone of the idea of recreating the main character at will mid-play through.

That aside, didn’t that “feature” in WOTR break the game is some fairly horrible ways?
Which isn’t even surprising, given that a “save game” is usually a collection of variables that summarize (among other things) all your past choices, decisions, things you looted or unlocked, major dialogue choices you made, etc.
Pretty damn obvious that altering that type of data mid-run would mess things up.

I agree it's not *necessary* but from what I could tell so far, the game doesn't even seem to recognize your character's sex in any way, which means changing it shouldn't affect anything. It seems to be a cosmetic choice as trivial as choosing your face type, hair color, etc., so I guess it would be trivial to allow changing it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

A bit weird for sure that every potential companion we come across just so happens to be bisexual, but eh, I'm not complaining. Once you give any recognition at all to sex, gender, sexual orientation, etc. in the game, you will invariably get into politics, which probably nobody wants. I know I certainly don't. So IMO it's wise of Larian to pretend that these things just don't exist.

There's actually two places I can think of where the game still recognizes the existence of sex/gender at all, just not in ways that affect gameplay:

1) When choosing a character model, you click on a gender symbol (venus/mars) to choose a female or male model. If they really wanted to completely pretend that sex doesn't exist, they could have just called them Model 1 and Model 2 or something. (And if there's going to be more body types in the future, you could put them all into one shared pool, just like with the voices you can choose from. The voices are just called 1, 2, 3, and 4 with no limitation based on your body model, even though clearly two are female and two are male.)

2) When casting Disguise Self, you choose between "feminine body shape" and "masculine body shape" or something. (The game uses this really awkward wording instead of just "female/male" but I sincerely don't understand why.) Assuming that your sex really doesn't affect NPC reactions at all, I guess they could make the spell choose randomly every time? But then I guess it would decrease RP potential so they wanted to give you the choice? Maybe that's why they ended up using that weird wording with "feminine/masculine body shape" instead of just female/male? Because they're trying hard to pretend that no such thing as female or male exists? LOL

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Originally Posted by Taylan
I agree it's not *necessary* but from what I could tell so far, the game doesn't even seem to recognize your character's sex in any way, which means changing it shouldn't affect anything. It seems to be a cosmetic choice as trivial as choosing your face type, hair color, etc., so I guess it would be trivial to allow changing it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

It's not strictly about sex, and yes, the game does check for/recognize the player defining traits at several steps.

Im also not arguing against the liberty to let the player characters be whatever they want to be, but against the idea that that should be something that can be changed at will mid-run.

Last edited by Tuco; 26/01/22 08:42 PM.

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No....just no......

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Originally Posted by Taylan
2) When casting Disguise Self, you choose between "feminine body shape" and "masculine body shape" or something. (The game uses this really awkward wording instead of just "female/male" but I sincerely don't understand why.) Assuming that your sex really doesn't affect NPC reactions at all, I guess they could make the spell choose randomly every time? But then I guess it would decrease RP potential so they wanted to give you the choice? Maybe that's why they ended up using that weird wording with "feminine/masculine body shape" instead of just female/male? Because they're trying hard to pretend that no such thing as female or male exists? LOL

This came about at roughly the same time that they removed the acknowledgement of your sex from your character sheet as well. I'm assuming it's to do with modern social hyper-sensitivity, and a fear of possibly making someone feel not represented or upset, which is ironic, since, you know, I like having my physical sex acknowledged in game on my character sheet, along with all of my other personal details, so I was a bit upset and disappointed when they decided to remove it. It detracts from my enjoyment of the game for it not to be recognised. Go figure.

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Originally Posted by Tuco
It's not strictly about sex, and yes, the game does check for/recognize the player defining traits at several steps.

With "player defining traits" do you mean race and class, or do you have any examples in mind where the character's sex is recognized? (I'm not doubting you, I'm genuinely curious.)

Originally Posted by Niara
This came about at roughly the same time that they removed the acknowledgement of your sex from your character sheet as well. I'm assuming it's to do with modern social hyper-sensitivity, and a fear of possibly making someone feel not represented or upset, which is ironic, since, you know, I like having my physical sex acknowledged in game on my character sheet, along with all of my other personal details, so I was a bit upset and disappointed when they decided to remove it. It detracts from my enjoyment of the game for it not to be recognised. Go figure.

It's impossible to please everyone, but IMO not recognizing anything sex/gender-related is the most "neutral" stance since otherwise people will go "if you recognize that, why aren't you also recognizing this!!" The moment you can have "female" or "male" there will be people who demand "non-binary" and "genderfluid" and what not, giving the developers a hard time.

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It is impossible to please everyone - in fact it's impossible to please some people at all...

The rest of this is more or less off-topic, I think, so I'll spoiler tag it.

It's impossible to please some people at all, and attempting to cater to them achieves nothing, because nothing is ever good enough - nothing is done well enough, and with these sorts of people, the effort isn't even counted for much because it's just not good enough for them; attempts to be inclusive are met with further outrage because it wasn't accurate or sensitive enough for any given particular individual's experience... Attempting to please this particular crowd is, unfortunately, an exercise in futility; the best thing you can do is be as even-handed and fair as you can be, and beyond that, ignore them.

We choose our physical sex when we make our character. We don't nominate a gender. Originally, choosing your sex granted you a tag, the description of which read "you will be perceived as a male/female of your race by others" - and you know, that was fine, because it's TRUE. You WILL be. The description even left it entirely open for space to correct that initial perception with your friends an allies, and could have been used to add depth of character and further inter-character conversations to make the party feel like a party as they get to know each other, and as they get to know *You*... Perhaps something of that nature could even have been used to flip a pronoun reference flag under the hood, so that those who know you get it right, if it's other than the basic perception implies.

Instead, they've just clumsily erased the reference to your physical sex from the character sheet, without actually changing anything else - the game will still refer to you using terms that match the sex you picked... so who exactly have they made happy by doing this?

And no... I don't want to play through another game with all of the NPCs clumsily using awkward and unnaturally avoidant language or eternal enforced neutrality; that sucks. It creates a rift in the game immersion that makes it highly visible that nothing about your character matters; when your details are not acknowledged, it makes it harder to feel like the story is yours. I don't just want the game to acknowledge that I'm playing a male or a female; I want there to be places where it can acknowledge if I've chosen a character that is particularly tall or short, or reference the colour of my hair, or eyes - I want to feel like the game sees me and acknowledges me, and the harder they move into bland, empty every-possibility non-reference, the less it is capable of doing that for ANYONE.

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Don't get caught in the confusion trap of "gender", which is more of a cultural-behavioral thing and means different things to different people. Gender has *always* been a fluid term. Chromosomal determination of sex is absolute and there is no ambiguity there. Males have the XY pair of genes, and females have XX. Some males may have XYY, rarely, and there are even more rare cases of true hermaphrodites which are the third classification. Natural physical characteristics are derived from the individual's set of chromosomes, and this even applies to plants! I have male and female juniper trees in my yard, and you can tell by the berry-like cones.

Scientists have wondered why sexual reproduction became so dominant on the Earth over the aeons ... it didn't used to be that way. In fact, there are arguments that asexual reproduction is actually more efficient (cf. algae). For complex organisms, I think it has something to do with the ability to rapidly adapt during times of cataclysm. A male juniper tree could pollinate thousands of females thousands of miles away during a hurricane, and thus spread a favorable mutation much faster and more widespread than some form of asexual root grafting.

I am sure Larian regularly discusses these big issues and strives to keep the game on the right track.

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Does the Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity not qualify? It might not be golden pantaloons but Its still one of the more memorable magical items for me anyway.

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Changing sex should be allowed, especially for elves as some do have the ability to do so after long rest. Eilistraeen clergy who can perform the changedance, and it used to be required for Priests of that Goddess. Fortunately, it no longer required to be female to worship this goddess.

Last edited by SereneNight; 28/01/22 08:35 PM.
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I think players should be able to change their character's sex if they choose to. However, it should not be a purely mechanical toggle-box sort of thing, but rather a (totally optional) quest line. There's a lot of roleplaying potential in storylines about trans or genderfluid characters. It could be very fun and fulfilling and could allow you to explore experiences beyond your own, which is what roleplaying is all about.

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What about re-training? Reset skills, and so on

(Actually, I would not want third gender, sex change in the form of a quest and all of this in the game, initially the question was about how deep retraining in the game is acceptable)

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Originally Posted by OneManArmy
initially the question was about how deep retraining in the game is acceptable
Speaking purely for myself ...
I would like to have option to retrain my character completely ... just as if i create new one. :-/

The only thing i would keep unchangeable is race, and class ...
Everything else in my honest option should be retrainable.

And there also should be some way to "try" spells (or Feats) before you pick them ... in case you missunderstanded the tooltip.
I mean i know that "carefully picking spells, bcs you stuck with them for whole level" is ment to be part of Sorcerer/Warlock experience (for example) but when i pick Mage Armor for my Dragonblood Sorcerer ... there is no fun at all, it just sucks, nothing else. laugh

Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 28/01/22 10:40 PM.

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