ForewordI've been having an overall great time in BG3, however there's been a number of pain points along the way, many of which I discovered when trying to use seemingly compatible mechanics with each other, most of which feel like oversights that slipped through the cracks due to BG3's sheer volume. I've been writing them down on a notepad with intent to post them, but at this point I feel they're too numerous to make individual threads about. So, I'm putting them all here, loosely organized by their type. Be aware that there may be mechanical spoilers.
Also, for those that seem like bugs, I'll indicate that I've also reported them as a bug by putting "(Bug)" in their title.
Core IssuesHalf-Feats Not Covering All Stats:
Half-feats are great, but the ones that are currently offered don't include any that boost Intelligence, Wistom, or Constitution (iirc) except for Resilient. This makes building out characters that use these as primary stats a little more difficult to build. Would be nice to have at least the Observant feat as an option.
Pickpocketing (Bug):
Not sure if this is just a UI issue, but it appears that pickpocketing doesn't really factor in any buffs related to it. Enhance Ability: Cat's Grace, Guidance, and the Smuggler's Ring all seem to have absolutely no impact on the success of a pickpocketing attempt. Divination Wizard's Portent is also not an option here. I'd also assume that Halfling Luck and the Lucky feat also can't be used to help with pickpocketing attempts.
Corpse Disposal:
When trying to engage in stealth play, after killing a target it would be great if there were methods of disposing bodies other than picking them up and putting them into a container. Players can't throw or shove corpses off a ledge into an abyss for some reason, and it's also not possible to reduce a body to ashes or similar with either fire or acid. Having these options would be nice, especially since killing with fire and acid damage already ruins a corpse for Speak with the Dead
Floating Items from Spider Cocoons (Bug):
This wasn't an issue in EA, but in full release I've noticed that if you see a spider web cocoon and you break it, if it contained any items they just sit there, often very much out of reach of the player.
Climb on More Objects:
It would be nice if we could do this with more objects than just crates. Even including barrels in the list of climbable things would make a world of a difference. As it is, unless I were to just mass-collect crates expressly for climbing purposes, this is a mechanic that goes pretty underused. Barrels are far more commonly used in the set design.
Preview Dye:
It would be nice to have a way to preview what an object would look like if dye was applied to it. As-is, the best you get as a player is to quicksave right before any dyeing attempt and then test out the dyes and reload your save once you've decided on a color. This is mostly an issue because certain dyes are rare, and most dyes don't really give the color they're advertising to the piece of equipment, but rather apply a color that sorta matches with that color's "theme". E.g. a "yellow" dye could turn something orange or brown instead of yellow. For this reason, being able to preview a dye before committing would be a nice UX improvement.
Throwables Must Be In Inventory:
This is a pretty dumb restriction. Spell scrolls and arrows don't need to be in the inventory of the person who's firing them. You can just open their context menu when they're in a party mate's inventory and use them directly that way. Why is this a restriction for throwables? Please let us use them just as arrows and scrolls -- as is, it's a frustrating UX that muddies a fun and useful mechanic.
Throwables in Hotbar (Bug):
I love the throw mechanic, but it's a bit of a hassle to use. Using the "throw" action in the hotbar works, but you have to select the item amidst literally everything in your inventory, including things you probably don't care about throwing, and the list is completely disorganized. So, rather than opening my full inventory and throwing using the context menu, I decided to try putting my commonly thrown items directly in my hotbar. Weirdly though, like with Second Marriage this seems to require two actions: one to pull the item out and one to throw it. Arrows and scrolls don't have this issue, and it would be nice if throwables didn't either, especially with how often I find myself throwing healing potions and water bottles.
Consistently Disorganized Skill/Spell Options (Bug):
Currently, whenever you try to use an ability that has multiple variants (e.g. Hex, Create Water, Enhance Ability, Disguise Self) the options are completely disorganized and occasionally randomize themselves. The worst offender here is Disguise Self due to how many options it has. I'm not sure what causes the options to re-randomize, but they'll stay in the same order for some length of time, and then occasionally I'll be given the choice for the skill and now all of the options are in a completely different order.
"Sort by Type" Not Actually Sorting by Type (Bug):
It sort-of sorts by type, but there's still weirdness for a lot of items that causes them to be in a really bizarre order. For example, camp clothes are rarely organized in a way that makes sense. Most of the pieces are just strewn about all of the other things in my camp trunk or inventory. Water/Smokepowder/Firewine Barrels are also not grouped together for some reason. But then you have stuff like all weapons tend to stick together and be grouped by the type of weapon it is. It seems that misc items are the worst offenders for how weirdly they get sorted. This can make inventory management a bit of a nightmare.
Bartering Not Available in Dialogue Unless at Dialogue Branch (Bug):
This is a weird one, because it worked just fine in EA. Unless the NPC you're talking to gives you an option in dialogue, you cannot click the trade button. This means most non-merchants can never be traded with (and thus also never improve relations with), and even some merchants can have their inventories made completely inaccessible due to having exhausted dialogue options (e.g. Nettie in the Druid's Grove).
NPC Approval Not Influenced By Quest Progress:
I don't get this one. There's an entire approval system, and the only way to gain approval with NPCs is to buy their affection. An NPC could be singing your praises, but then if you examine their approval level they're just like "meh". It's a weird disconnect that can be pretty immersion breaking.
Throwing Potions/Poisons Needs to be More Consistent (Bug):
The preview for throwing both poisons and potions is inconsistent for how it might influence things. Some of them show a ring AoE at their previewed point of impact, which implies there's a cloud/surface they make that can apply their effect, but when thrown nothing happens. As I recall, there are also potions/poisons that have the inverse problem: there's no indication that they do a splash AoE, but they do. The Potion of Hill Giant Strength is one of these offenders, off the top of my head. It would also be nice if who gets impacted by the potion's effect was more reliable in networked play, because in a networked game even if all players are grouped up tight and inside the AoE, not all of them get the effect. I'm assuming this is due to latency reasons.
Spell / Ability IssuesMinor Illusion:
Bit of a shame that it's only useful as a distraction, but the real issue for me is that there's no way for me to end the effect early. I've had a number of occasions where I use it to benefit from it for a round or two, but then need it gone. As it stands, I have to just wait until it vanishes, which sometimes causes issues with whatever I'm trying to do.
Mage Hand:
Both the EA and full release versions of this spell bug me, for different reasons. In EA the fact that it could be cast as many times as I wanted as long as I could afford to concentrate on it meant I was able to use it in early levels since I didn't need concentration for most of my spells, and it helped in combat a bit. Problem was that once I started really needing concentration for other spells, I stopped using it almost altogether. In full release, it's a different but similar problem. Now it doesn't require concentration, but you can only cast it once every short rest. This caused me to never use the cantrip, even at low levels, because now I feel the need to keep it on hand (hah) in the event I need its utility to grab a trinket or something. Outside of those niche instances, it's basically entirely forgotten about. IMO, there's no need to balance how frequently a player can use it, as the power given to it by its implementation in BG3 is roughly equivalent to that of 5e. Essentially, it traded out-of-combat utility for in-combat utility. Even if I could cast it endlessly, I don't think I'd always want to use my action that way.
Arcane Trickster Rogue's Mage Hand Ledgerdemain (Bug):
This trait completely lies to the player, and does not reflect how it's supposed to feel in the TTRPG. For Arcane Tricksters, Mage Hand Ledgerdemain is a
core aspect of the class. Not only does it really need to be able to be cast as much as the rogue wants, it also needs to perform as advertised and honestly stick to the source material better. Its invisibility type should be Greater Invisibility, so just as in the TTRPG it always stays invisible if the rogue chooses to make it so. It also doesn't currently do much of anything other than what the normal Mage Hand does, despite what the traits claims. The only extra utility I've seen from it is being able to use it to lockpick or disarm traps at a distance, but unlike in the TTRPG doing so uses the Mage Hand's (terrible) stats rather than the rogue's Dex and Sleight of Hand proficiency/expertise, making this utility next to worthless.
Arcane Lock:
This is already a niche spell in the TTRPG. The way it's implemented in BG3 makes it even more so, for not really any good reason. It needs to last much longer (e.g. 100 rounds), and also when initially cast prompt the user for what kind of allow list they want. At the very least the player should be able to choose between "nobody passes through" and "only party members can pass through".
I feel it's pretty telling that this is a terrible spell as-is when absolutely no NPCs ever make use of it, and the scroll is hard to come by (as is the same with Knock).
Knock:
This is another terribly implemented spell. In the TTRPG this is meant to be a counter to Arcane Lock, following the general trend that spells with persistent effects have an opposing spell that can directly counter them (e.g. any cloud spells vs wind spells). This needs to be able to counter Arcane Lock, and it should also be bad for stealth if it isn't already, as it's supposed to be very loud. As-is, it's never really worth a 2nd level slot to make use of this since individual locked containers don't commonly have loot that's worth the spell slot cost. The value of this spell also hits 0 if you have a Rogue or similar in the party, because they can basically do this for free all the time.
Find Familiar (all variants):
Something I feel is missing from the Find Familiar spells is the ability to have your familiars deliver items and throw lightweight stuff. Having a tiny inventory and very low carrying capacity but the ability to toss water bottles and healing potions short distances for certain forms would be a welcome addition, as would being able to fit through tiny holes (currently restricted to Druids) to grab items or whatever. These would also fit the flavor that they have in the TTRPG. I realize this would be a bit odd to balance, but it would go a long way to making familiars feel more involved. As they're currently implemented, familiars feels pretty useless as anything but a small meat shield in combat, and they have limited utility outside of combat as well.
Pact of the Chain:
No Pseudodragon or Sprite?
But in all seriousness, I tried this pact initially because in the TTRPG I tend to prefer Chain over Tome, but in BG3 Chain feels pretty lackluster, in part due to how limited familiar utility is. It also didn't seem to give my familiar the multiattack that it promised. I swapped over to Tome shortly after experiencing Chain, despite Tome initially being less appealing because...
Pact of the Tome:
I really want the spells or at least just the cantrips in this to be customizable. Having them predetermined feels very restrictive when building your warlock.
Starving for Rituals:
There appears to be very few rituals in the game, which causes it to easily be an overlooked mechanic, and also turns Ritual Caster into a feat with questionable value. Would be nice to see more rituals implemented, or more existing utility spells converted into rituals.
Divination Wizard's Portent UX (Bug):
The messaging on this ability is difficult to parse. When the player is prompted whether they want to use a Portent die or not, it says something to the effect of "SomeCharacter needs X to hit, and they rolled a Y. Do you want to use a dice with value Z?". The problem here is that X, Y, and Z aren't all the same sort of number. Some are values on the die with no modifiers, and some are dice rolls with modifiers already added. When I first encountered this, it really wasn't clear to me whether the game was handling this skill intelligently, and I thought that it might be possible for me to pick a Portent die that would still result in the roll outcome being undesirable for me. So I found myself doing math each time to make absolutely sure I wasn't screwing myself with the Portent die I chose, until I managed to convince myself that the game wasn't going to ask me if I wanted to use a die that would change absolutely nothing. These X, Y, and Z values all need to be the same type so it's easier to grok how the skill works. Aside from that, it would be great if Portent could be used for
any roll, including perception checks in the field, dialogue checks, and pickpocketing. To keep this from being annoying, the setting for how often you're prompted could be located in your character's passives, such as is the case with traits like the Warlock Invocation Repelling Blast.
Divination Wizard's Expert Divination UX (Bug):
Just like Portent has messaging issues, this one does as well. The class trait says the dice "recover after a short rest", but the reality is that after a short rest your Wizard gains an effect on them that acts as an extremely minor "buff-quest" to do something like deal 1 fire damage in order to be granted the die. You get one such "buff-quest" for each die you're lacking when the short rest happens. Unless the player notices these effects added and investigates them, it's easy to assume the skill is just broken and you don't actually get any Portent die back on a short rest. Also, some of these "buff-quests" don't really make sense for a Wizard. For instance, why is there one that asks the Wizard to deal 1 Radiant damage? Wizards don't really get much of anything even in the TTRPG for dealing radiant damage, and by level 7 I still haven't encountered a way for my Wizard to deal radiant damage outside of throwing Holy Water at an undead creature. So when "buff-quests" like that pop up, I just have to write it off as a Portent die I'll never get back for the rest of that day. It would really be nice if these quests stuck to things the Wizard is likely to do, and better yet would be great if they only gave the Wizard goals that they
definitely can do, or at least re-randomize the quests after each short rest.
Second Marriage Action Economy (Bug):
For some reason, using the wand Second Marriage requires two actions. One to pull out the wand, and one to use it. This makes it completely unusable in combat without Haste, and it's not clear to the player that this would be the case. It either needs to message that it requires two actions or just take one.
Polymorph Effects Shouldn't Prevent Ability Activation (Bug):
Circle of the Moon Druids are the biggest offenders here. In the TTRPG, the way you're generally meant to play a Moon Druid is to use a mixture of their Wild Shape and their magic simultaneously. A first turn for a Moon Druid generally looks like using their Action to cast a concentration spell (e.g. Flaming Sphere) and then use their Bonus Action to Wild Shape, allowing them to continue concentrating on that spell. BG3 sort-of allows this, but with a catch: if the concentration spell can be re-activated using an Action or Bonus Action, you cannot do so while in Wild Shape because for some reason that counts as casting a spell and in the beast form you are silenced. This prevents comboing Wild Shape with classic druid spells like Moonbeam, Heat Metal, and Call Lightning. It feels more like a developer oversight than an intentional design decision, honestly.
Transfuse Health + Warding Bond Interaction is Broken (Bug):
Warding Bond is supposed to halve all of the player's incoming damage so it gets shared with the person who made the ward. Transfuse Health damages the player by half of their current health and then heals their target for the same amount. The problem here is that Warding Bond does not halve this incoming damage, but still responds to the damage in turn. So if I'm warded with 20 HP and use Transfer Health on another character, I would expect that both my warded character and the character that's warding them to take 5 damage (10 total, half of the HP) and then the target of Transfer Health to get healed for 10. Either that, or for Transfer Health's self-damage to not be eligible for Warding Bond at all, and act as though the effect isn't there. What happens instead is that in this same scenario, the warded character using Transfer Health takes 10 damage, the character who used the ward take 10 damage, and the target of Transfer Health heals 10 HP, effectively doubling the downside of Transfer Health and making it never worth using, which is rough because it's already pretty niche. As with my previous gripe concerning concentration spells and polymorph effects, this feels more like an oversight than intentional design.
Goodberry Needs to Remember Who Cast It:
This mostly matters for gear interactions, such as with Wapira's Crown and The Whispering Promise. If my druid has these sort of items on, I'd really expect any character who consumes the Goodberry to trigger the effects of these gear items, because the druid cast a spell that healed an ally.
Wood Woad's Regeneration to Work as Advertised (Bug):
Recently got ahold of Conjure Woodland Beings, and while experimenting with it I noticed that despite the Wood Woad supposedly healing 10 HP per turn that it's in a vine surface (provided it doesn't take fire damage), this doesn't actually seem to work at all. I hadn't tested it in combat, though, so perhaps it's combat-only. But, if it is combat-only, this needs to be messaged to the player.
Sneak Attack Should be Passive:
In the TTRPG, Sneak Attack is a completely passive ability that only procs once per turn (not round! So opportunity attacks and etc can also proc it). This allows it to be used in conjunction with special arrows and such. In BG3, it's its own skill, and if a rogue has Haste or similar, they can actually pull off two Sneak Attacks per turn (one at range, one in melee). However because Sneak Attack is its own skill, it's really not clear to the player that they can't use special arrows with it, especially because when you click Sneak Attack it shows you all of the arrows in your inventory, and if you click one of them you use that arrow instead of doing Sneak Attack. It should really be a passive effect that shows with all of the other buffs when an attack the player is performing is being previewed. This would also prevent the weirdness with how currently Sneak Attack (Ranged) has a completely different trajectory compared to other bow shots, making it hard to use while behind cover.
Polymorph is Extremely Disappointing:
With all of the other spells that offer options, why was Polymorph restricted to turning an enemy into a sheep? Why not just treat it like the Druid's Wild Shape, and give creature options that scale with the target's level? The main draw of Polymorph in the TTRPG is how extremely versatile it is, and how it can be used by arcane spellcasters as a "pseudo-heal" for allies in danger. The implementation in BG3 doesn't offer any of this, instead opting for easily the least-used application of Polymorph, which is uncommon to see use because in the TTRPG other spells do the same thing but more effectively and with a better stat target (e.g. Banishment targeting Charisma). Polymorph
can be used to do this, but it's worse than a spell that specializes in it. Polymorph is meant to be a spell that's a multitool, and that's its main draw. By taking out the soul of the spell, it's been completely neutered and is basically never worth using.
War Caster Should Match the TTRPG More Closely:
In the TTRPG, War Caster is great for any spellcaster because of its boost to concentration saves while also making your caster's opportunity attacks worthwhile. It allows casters to get off any spell that targets just the creature triggering the opportunity attack, as long as the spell uses one action. This means it can be used for anything from Dissonant Whispers, to Blindness, to Blight, to even Lightning Bolt if the only creature that would be hit is the one who triggered the opportunity attack. As this feat is implemented in BG3, it's extremely lackluster. Shocking Hands is a nice cantrip, to be sure, but restricting the feat all the way down to
only allowing for usage of Shocking Grasp is a joke by comparison. The feat doesn't even teach the character Shocking Grasp! So if the character doesn't already know Shocking Grasp or can't learn it somehow, the feat completely loses half of its functionality. It really needs to be revised.
