Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Poseidon00]

WOTC actually saved D&D

No.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

WOTC actually saved D&D

No.

Yes the 4th edition is what made Pathfinder to exist. Many were leaving D&D in favour of Pathfinder so the WOTC had to gather feedback and from that feedback they made the 5th edition gaining back a lot of popularity.

4th edition was trash.

 

[Xamenos]

WOTC actually saved D&D by undoing what the super awful 4th edition brought on the table. In the 4th edition they messed up so badly that in the end they gathered feedback from the community largely retconning and undoing the 4th edition and putting back quite some things that were loved in the secon edition. For istance the 4th edition ruined basically everything that was Plane related killed some Gods and ruined others for no apparent reason screwing up also other settings as well by doing them FR dependent. It also removed Sigil as the center of the universe and put Brass a city in the elemental plane of fire ruled by Efreeti as center of it. With the 5th most 4th bulsshit was stomped hard and replaced to restore old things.

And is for the best. Since the 4th edition lore and cosmology was utterly terribly bad.

What 4e did to the Realms was a travesty, but 5e was only marginally better. They should have just retconned everything out, returned the clock to 1372 and be done with it.

 

[Poseidon00]

and from that feedback they made the 5th edition

That's the entire problem.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Actually is not. 4th edition was universally acclaimed as bad. The realms in 5th edition we barely know thing as there is not a FR manual for 5th edition yet. Just a couple of adventures and some small appendices related to specific places. 5e brought a lot of good stuff for everything was bad. Splitted again Abeir from Toril restored places that were destroyed just for the sake of nothingness. The FR 5th edition map looks exactly like the 3.5 one. This is all the stuff they restored.
4th edition did just not ruined the Forgotten realms but basically messed up with all the cosmology doing everything forgotten realms dependant.

 

[Elex]

Not that wotc really care about forgotten realms it’s just too convenient to keep it as base setting.

they need a generic fantasy setting.
They care more about putting magic setting in D&D than the background of the forgotten realms.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

They went instead to explain many things that are interesting in the 5th edition. Like the concept of planes and spheres.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

WoTC couldn't get people interested in Eberron, so they nuked Forgotten Realms in 4th edition to push players into it. After the exodus of the player base, they were forced to acknowledge their mistakes--both with the ruleset and FR lore. The "Second Sundering" coincidentally undoing all of the shit people hated about the Spell Plague wasn't actually coincidence. Ed Greenwood said himself that it was basically WoTC hitting a big fat undo button.

 

[Joseph Stalin]

Didn't Icewind Dale II hint that Bane would devour his son and return? Which is exactly what happened?

Icewind Dale II is set in 1312 DR, decades before the Time of Troubles, but the game itself was released in August 2002. Bane was resurrected in FR canon in June 2001 according to the FR Wiki (ref. 42), so it was published before Black Isle began the game's ten-month long development.

Yeah, true, no one planned all this from the beginning. But I think it worked well enough that the smarter two of the Dead Three had more than one plan in place. And it was even better when Bane was the only one to succeed, before 5e started handing out divine resurrections like candy.

Agreed, 5E feels like WotC just went and combined "bring everything back" and "don't decanonise the 4E crap" in a frenzied panic. I think Bane was worth resurrecting as of 3E, he was a pretty cool dude with a role to fill, but Bhaal and Myrkul were more valuable as history fodder. On a related note, it's also why I dislike the existence of spells like True Resurrection. I get that it might be tough losing a high-level PC, but at some point dead's gotta mean dead.

That's true, but Iyachtu Xvim is already present in the game, and there is a dialogue line from an NPC, I can't remember which one, which hints strongly that he's kindling, or something along those lines. Wouldn't be the first time BioWare were prophetic - just look at their hints that Amaunator would be making a return in Baldur's Gate II.

 

[LESS T_T]

Oh right forgot to post this. With recent Capcom leaks by hackers, it's revealed that Google paid $10 million to Capcom to get Resident Evil 7/8 to be released on Stadia. Not exclusivity or something, just got the games released there.

Makes me wonder how much Larain got for BG 3 EA release. Probably less than 10m.

 

[Gargaune]

Didn't Icewind Dale II hint that Bane would devour his son and return? Which is exactly what happened?

Icewind Dale II is set in 1312 DR, decades before the Time of Troubles, but the game itself was released in August 2002. Bane was resurrected in FR canon in June 2001 according to the FR Wiki (ref. 42), so it was published before Black Isle began the game's ten-month long development.

That's true, but Iyachtu Xvim is already present in the game, and there is a dialogue line from an NPC, I can't remember which one, which hints strongly that he's kindling, or something along those lines. Wouldn't be the first time BioWare were prophetic - just look at their hints that Amaunator would be making a return in Baldur's Gate II.

Not sure what you mean, it's not prophecy if it's already happened and WotC had already resurrected Bane before Black Isle (not BioWare) began developing IWD2.

 

[Grunker]

Didn't Icewind Dale II hint that Bane would devour his son and return? Which is exactly what happened?

Icewind Dale II is set in 1312 DR, decades before the Time of Troubles, but the game itself was released in August 2002. Bane was resurrected in FR canon in June 2001 according to the FR Wiki (ref. 42), so it was published before Black Isle began the game's ten-month long development.

Yeah, true, no one planned all this from the beginning. But I think it worked well enough that the smarter two of the Dead Three had more than one plan in place. And it was even better when Bane was the only one to succeed, before 5e started handing out divine resurrections like candy.

Agreed, 5E feels like WotC just went and combined "bring everything back" and "don't decanonise the 4E crap" in a frenzied panic. I think Bane was worth resurrecting as of 3E, he was a pretty cool dude with a role to fill, but Bhaal and Myrkul were more valuable as history fodder. On a related note, it's also why I dislike the existence of spells like True Resurrection. I get that it might be tough losing a high-level PC, but at some point dead's gotta mean dead.

If you enjoy dead meaning dead play Tomb of Annihilation. One of the better adventures I’ve run

 

[Gargaune]

If you enjoy dead meaning dead play Tomb of Annihilation. One of the better adventures I’ve run

I don't necessarily mean I want a meat grinder, but I feel like True Resurrection trivialises the stakes at high level somewhat. It also poses plot difficulties as a concept, but that's a separate matter.

 

[Catacombs]

If you enjoy dead meaning dead play Tomb of Annihilation. One of the better adventures I’ve run

I've wanted to run this game for a long, long time.

 

[millenialboomer]

I don't want to parrot what others have said, but the general idea in this thread is right.

It does feel bad to completely MISS out on something because of a bad roll. Failure states shouldn't be binary (either you "win" or "lose"), but rather fan out with multiple degrees of consequences ---> how many rolls did you fail in a row? what kind of approach did you use in dialogue?

Pathfinder 2 handles this by having critical success and critical failure: tasks that you are sure to get critical success in gets lowered to a mere success if you roll a 1, for example.

Either way, people complaining about d&d d20 RNG in a game which hands out advantage (roll two dice, take the highest result) like candy should probably learn to abuse the system a little more. To be fair though, Larian's social encounters are just flat checks, which is wrong on a lot of levels compared to how the 5th edition DMG advises you to handle these.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

I noticed usually the ones that complains about rng in conversation are the ones that roll chars with high dex str con and leave 8 on charisma and intelligence. If you expect to be good at investigation persuasion intimidation with a character that is dumb like a rock and has a personal magnitude like a dead rodent well in that case you can complain all you want but is because you don't know how to play D&D properly

 

[Grunker]

If you enjoy dead meaning dead play Tomb of Annihilation. One of the better adventures I’ve run

I don't necessarily mean I want a meat grinder, but I feel like True Resurrection trivialises the stakes at high level somewhat. It also poses plot difficulties as a concept, but that's a separate matter.

ToA isn’t a Meat grinder. It has optional rules for it but out of the box it isn’t

 

[Gargaune]

ToA isn’t a Meat grinder. It has optional rules for it but out of the box it isn’t

I see, thanks. Well, my group's currently on hiatus, but maybe after we eventually finish Out of the Abyss.

 

[Nano]

I noticed usually the ones that complains about rng in conversation are the ones that roll chars with high dex str con and leave 8 on charisma and intelligence. If you expect to be good at investigation persuasion intimidation with a character that is dumb like a rock and has a personal magnitude like a dead rodent well in that case you can complain all you want but is because you don't know how to play D&D properly

That makes no sense. Why would these people complain about RNG when they certainly would fail dialogue checks if it isn't implemented?

 

[anvi]

MTG RPG, still waiting.

 

[Flying Dutchman]

WoTC couldn't get people interested in Eberron, so they nuked Forgotten Realms in 4th edition to push players into it. After the exodus of the player base, they were forced to acknowledge their mistakes--both with the ruleset and FR lore. The "Second Sundering" coincidentally undoing all of the shit people hated about the Spell Plague wasn't actually coincidence. Ed Greenwood said himself that it was basically WoTC hitting a big fat undo button.

I admit enjoying Eberron, I thought the world and character building opportunities were cool (the quasi-dopplegangers were a neat idea).

Spell Plague, ugh.

WotC doesn't seem to have much luck with new settings, feels like the real lore and world builders vanished a long time ago and now there's... well, whatever passes for D&D designers in the Seattle area who seem too busy being woke to actually be creative.

 

[Cael]

There aren't power levels in D&D like it's Dragon Ball Z or something. The power of a god depends on their portfolio and how many worshipers they have.

There's a distinction between lesser, intermediate and greater deities, for one. It's not like the capabilities of gods are arbitrary. There are no rules for blowing your load investing your divine essence into things but I doubt gods can just do it without giving some of their power away in the process.

It is written that Mystra specifically had more than 50% of her power locked away in her various Chosen and stuff. So, creating special snowflake will decrease a God's power.

The thing is, worship gives it right back, so if you are suitable capitalistic about it, you can have a God that creates his own worshippers and thereby increasing his power by spending power.

Worship as power source is easily exploited, and is as dumb as it sounds. Look at the kind of power Cyric (of all people) commands, and that is after he nuked his own centre of power (Zhentil Keep) in an ego-inspired stupidity, and is reduced to covert bands of assassins and Evululz types. Now, imagine the tens of millions of leftard cucks of western civilisation worshipping Bane. Ao better watch his back.

 

[Alienman]

Oh right forgot to post this. With recent Capcom leaks by hackers, it's revealed that Google paid $10 million to Capcom to get Resident Evil 7/8 to be released on Stadia. Not exclusivity or something, just got the games released there.

Makes me wonder how much Larain got for BG 3 EA release. Probably less than 10m.

They promised to erase Swens browser history.

 

[Yosharian]

The Spellplague was a fantastic idea. All spellcasters losing their spells? That's a brilliant way to run a new campaign, or a chapter of one.

The problem isn't with the concept, it's with the execution. The Spellplague should have been a fun way to run a few games, not an excuse to completely change the game world AGAIN, and for the worse.

 

[Bara]

WOTC actually saved D&D

I'd agree but only for the reason that by the creation of the OGL letting they let the genie out of the bottle. From which the older editions will live on forever via retro-clones no longer just bound to the original books.

But 5e's pretty alright not my main meal but its a pretty good as a side dish.