Game News Baldur's Gate 3 Community Update #11: Patch 3 - Inspiration, Freedom & Pacifism

[luj1]

So Larian are bunch of cucks who will yield to whatever any pussy who can't handle failure tells them in early access. If you roll a 1 it's not catastrophic failure it's a pat on the head and another roll. This is really lame.

The same thing happened with Pillars, Tyranny and Numenera. Making core systems more accessible, using shitty subsystems that are forgiving, etc., but really only bloat the game. Because these modern devs like Soyer, Fargo and Sven Cucke have no spine or integrity. This is not how the classics were made, therefore these games will never be neo classics, they will forever be controversial 50-50 split games.

 

[Corvinus]

I know its a stupid question but why even have dialogue skill checks without being able to fail them. Larian just do a dialogue wheel with sarcasm option and be done with it. We already understood that its not going to be a BG game but also not an RPG all together. "Starts googling when Wraith of the Righteous is out"

You still have decent chance of failing them after this fix. Anal diffuculty and contect gating is not always good, believe it or not.

Also using Pathfinder Kingmaker as something with hard dialogue dicerolls shows that you are brain damaged.

Joined: Feb 8, 2020

Anal difficulty = Being able to fail on a "1" result.

 

[Roguey]

The way 5e handles checks is garbage because there's no way to invest in an attribute in such a way that you will consistently pass that particular kind of check. It needed to be modified.

lets say you get mid diff check, by shares, how high you can cover it with char build and how much is left to dice?

The RAW:

Typical Difficulty Classes

Task Difficulty DC
Very easy 5
Easy 10
Medium 15
Hard 20
Very hard 25
Nearly impossible 30
To make an ability check, roll a d20 and add the relevant ability modifier.

The ability modifier is your stat plus the proficiency bonus which is modified per level (a flat +2 up to level 5).

Your stats are capped at 15 at the start, so at most you will only be able to get a +4/20% advantage on skill check. You can pass a very easy check with no problem, passing an easy check requires a roll of 6 which is a 75% chance of success (compared to the base 55% chance), passing a medium check requires 11 which is a 50% chance (compared to the 30% chance) so you're going to lose half the time which will feel like all the time, a hard check requires 16, 25% versus 5% (might as well not even bother).

Now with D&D 3.5 you could put 4, even 5 points for certain races into an attribute and put four points into the skill itself at level one for a +8/9 40%/45% bonus which is far greater and likely to result in consistent success (and there are feats and such that you could let you have even more of a bonus but that's overkill for the available 3/3.5 crpgs ime).

And as noted by that proficiency chart, you can't just gain a level to get an advantage in 5e. You have to gain 4 to gain a measly +1.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Jesus.... And I thought that 3.5 skill system wasn't very good, At least in 3.5 you had to invest in intelligence to make skill progression linear.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Dr Schultz]

The way 5e handles checks is garbage because there's no way to invest in an attribute in such a way that you will consistently pass that particular kind of check. It needed to be modified.

lets say you get mid diff check, by shares, how high you can cover it with char build and how much is left to dice?

The RAW:

Typical Difficulty Classes

Task Difficulty DC
Very easy 5
Easy 10
Medium 15
Hard 20
Very hard 25
Nearly impossible 30
To make an ability check, roll a d20 and add the relevant ability modifier.

The ability modifier is your stat plus the proficiency bonus which is modified per level (a flat +2 up to level 5).

Your stats are capped at 15 at the start, so at most you will only be able to get a +4/20% advantage on skill check. You can pass a very easy check with no problem, passing an easy check requires a roll of 6 which is a 75% chance of success (compared to the base 55% chance), passing a medium check requires 11 which is a 50% chance (compared to the 30% chance) so you're going to lose half the time which will feel like all the time, a hard check requires 16, 25% versus 5% (might as well not even bother).

Now with D&D 3.5 you could put 4, even 5 points for certain races into an attribute and put four points into the skill itself at level one for a +8/9 40%/45% bonus which is far greater and likely to result in consistent success (and there are feats and such that you could let you have even more of a bonus but that's overkill for the available 3/3.5 crpgs ime).

And as noted by that proficiency chart, you can't just gain a level to get an advantage in 5e. You have to gain 4 to gain a measly +1.

You wouldn't notice the difference in terms of consistency of roll results switching from 5ed to 3.5ed. Checks would still be decided by a single dice roll and this roll cold still result in a random number between 1 and 20. The inconsistency would be granted by this fact alone.
If you are REALLY aiming for a certain degree of consistency in the non combat results, you need dice pools instead of flat bonuses.

The truth is that D&D was never designed with consistency in roll results as a goal, which is totally legit in a tabletop game. Problems arise the moment you translate its mechanics in a videogame and allow players to savescumm over bad results.

 

[Bohrain]

Your stats are capped at 15 at the start, so at most you will only be able to get a +4/20% advantage on skill check. You can pass a very easy check with no problem, passing an easy check requires a roll of 6 which is a 75% chance of success (compared to the base 55% chance), passing a medium check requires 11 which is a 50% chance (compared to the 30% chance) so you're going to lose half the time which will feel like all the time, a hard check requires 16, 25% versus 5% (might as well not even bother).

15 before racial bonuses. With a racial bonus you can get +3 on a stat along with proficiency bonus that makes +5 on roll from start. Not that it makes much difference, given that the game has stuff like needing to pass multiple rolls in a row.

Could someone who is currently playing the EA tell me if long rests are free or somewhat restricted?

Not restricted as of yet. The only difference being that short rest is just one button to recover HP + warlock spells and whatnot, whereas long rest always means going through two loading screens.

 

[Roguey]

You wouldn't notice the difference in terms of consistency of roll results switching from 5ed to 3.5ed. Checks would still be decided by a single dice roll and this roll cold still result in a random number between 1 and 20. The inconsistency would be granted by this fact alone.
If you are REALLY aiming for a certain degree of consistency in the non combat results, you need dice pools instead of flat bonuses.

The truth is that D&D was never designed with consistency in roll results as a goal, which is totally legit in a tabletop game. Problems arise the moment you translate its mechanics in a videogame and allow players to savescumm over bad results.

I have never needed to reload in games like NWN, NWN2, and Kingmaker in order to get consistent success. People don't complain about the checks in those games. They do in this one.

 

[Murk]

The way they changed BAB into proficiency + some classes get extra attacks per round outside of a systematic parameter that grows by level is really some smooth brain shit in 5e.

Those who said it earlier in the big thread were spot on; the main issues with BG 3 are primarily (not all, but most) 5e related.

 

[deuxhero]

Bonded accuracy continues to be retarded.

The way 5e handles checks is garbage because there's no way to invest in an attribute in such a way that you will consistently pass that particular kind of check. It needed to be modified.

lets say you get mid diff check, by shares, how high you can cover it with char build and how much is left to dice?

The RAW:

Typical Difficulty Classes

Task Difficulty DC
Very easy 5
Easy 10
Medium 15
Hard 20
Very hard 25
Nearly impossible 30
To make an ability check, roll a d20 and add the relevant ability modifier.

The ability modifier is your stat plus the proficiency bonus which is modified per level (a flat +2 up to level 5).

Your stats are capped at 15 at the start, so at most you will only be able to get a +4/20% advantage on skill check. You can pass a very easy check with no problem, passing an easy check requires a roll of 6 which is a 75% chance of success (compared to the base 55% chance), passing a medium check requires 11 which is a 50% chance (compared to the 30% chance) so you're going to lose half the time which will feel like all the time, a hard check requires 16, 25% versus 5% (might as well not even bother).

Now with D&D 3.5 you could put 4, even 5 points for certain races into an attribute and put four points into the skill itself at level one for a +8/9 40%/45% bonus which is far greater and likely to result in consistent success (and there are feats and such that you could let you have even more of a bonus but that's overkill for the available 3/3.5 crpgs ime).

And as noted by that proficiency chart, you can't just gain a level to get an advantage in 5e. You have to gain 4 to gain a measly +1.

You wouldn't notice the difference in terms of consistency of roll results switching from 5ed to 3.5ed. Checks would still be decided by a single dice roll and this roll cold still result in a random number between 1 and 20. The inconsistency would be granted by this fact alone.
If you are REALLY aiming for a certain degree of consistency in the non combat results, you need dice pools instead of flat bonuses.

The truth is that D&D was never designed with consistency in roll results as a goal, which is totally legit in a tabletop game. Problems arise the moment you translate its mechanics in a videogame and allow players to savescumm over bad results.

False, lack of consistency in results is shit in tabletop too, precisely because you can not save scum. A system where a trained character fails at basic tasks half the time is only suitable for dystopian games with expendable characters.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Some DMs "save scum" via dream sequence, time anomaly, the Dallas TV Bobby sequence... I was drunk etc.

 

[Dr Schultz]

Not restricted as of yet. The only difference being that short rest is just one button to recover HP + warlock spells and whatnot, whereas long rest always means going through two loading screens.

This is beyond me. For what I'm reading in the official forum they are handling the source material with a grain of salt. But why players should bother to use short rests in a game where long rests are free?

I have never needed to reload in games like NWN, NWN2, and Kingmaker in order to get consistent success. People don't complain about the checks in those games. They do in this one.

People who complain about unfair skill checks in BG3 are the same people who complain about being screwed by a bad dice roll in combat, a.k.a. people with no experience with D&D. They would complain as much with the other four editions.

A check based on a single dice roll doesn't allow a bell curve distribution of results to exsist. All twenty faces of a D20 always have a 5% chance to appear in that check. Only multiple rolls per check allow for "consistent" results, that's why you use dice pools if you are aiming for consistency in a game system.

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/quest...ve-distribution-that-narrows-and-increases-me
https://anydice.com/

The only noticeable difference in terms of skill-checks between 3.5Ed and 5Ed is that in the older system skills grow unevenly by investing points in them, in the newer system they grow organically by getting levels.

False, lack of consistency in results is shit in tabletop too, precisely because you can not save scum. A system where a trained character fails at basic tasks half the time is only suitable for dystopian games with expendable characters.

a) You are confusing the intrinsic inconsistency of a dice system with the death ratio of a ruleset. The latter is WAY more dependent on the health system than the dice rolls themselves. As a matter of facts, Hit Points are designed in a way that the likelihood of dying for a bad roll is inversely proportional to your character level, hence D&D can be at the same time a system very RNG dependent and with a very low death ratio.
b) I'm not saying I like inconsistency in dice rolls. I'm all for dice pools in tabletop games and for quasi-deterministic systems in videogames. Lots of people like the thrill of frequent unexpected results, though, otherwise you wouldn't explain the success of D&D. Problem is, in a videogame powered by D&D the thrill isn't really there (because of the savescumming).

 

[Roguey]

People who complain about unfair skill checks in BG3 are the same people who complain about being screwed by a bad dice roll in combat, a.k.a. people with no experience with D&D. They would complain as much with the other four editions.

On this forum?

5e More Sawyer than Sawyer'd the system, skills included. People want to feel like their heavy investment into things are worthwhile (even with the misses, a level 1 fighter with 18/20 strength is going to feel noticeably better than a 10 strength fighter), and 5e doesn't allow that.

 

[Dr Schultz]

People who complain about unfair skill checks in BG3 are the same people who complain about being screwed by a bad dice roll in combat, a.k.a. people with no experience with D&D. They would complain as much with the other four editions.

On this forum?

5e More Sawyer than Sawyer'd the system, skills included. People want to feel like their heavy investment into things are worthwhile (even with the misses, a level 1 fighter with 18/20 strength is going to feel noticeably better than a 10 strength fighter), and 5e doesn't allow that.

For christ sake, Roguey: It's a quite simple concept even if you don't understand the first thing about statistics !

In combat, where multiple rolls occur in the simplest encounter, your character build matters even with a single d20 rolled per action, because over multiple rolls a pattern inevitably appears.

Outside of combat, where a single check could decide an entire encounter, rolling a single dice per check implies a high degree of unpredictability, no matter how skill progression works.

This is the reason why decades ago people more interested than Gygax in consistent results invented rulesets based on dice pools

I think your beloved Josh wrote a post about it recently which was quite spot on.

 

[Roguey]

Outside of combat, where a single check could decide an entire encounter, rolling a single dice per check implies a high degree of unpredictability, no matter how skill progression works.

5e makes it worse.

Third edition's idea of skill difficulty class:
Very easy (0)
Easy (5)
Average (10)
Tough (15)
Challenging (20)
Formidable (25)
Heroic (30)
Nearly impossible (40)

A level one character with 18 in an attribute and four ranks in a skill will have a 95% chance of passing easy and average checks (extremely rare chance of failure) and a 70% chance of passing a touch check (likely, but sometimes failure).

As mentioned, 5e's idea:
Very easy 5
Easy 10
Medium 15
Hard 20
Very hard 25
Nearly impossible 30

Assuming a human character (which is seemingly most people's preferred choice) a level one character with 16 in an attribute can have an 80% chance of passing an easy check, and a 55% chance of passing a medium check. Easy and Average checks are no longer practically-gimmes for an invested character; it's a no-brainer that this is going to result in more failures and more frustration.

This is the reason why decades ago people more interested than Gygax in consistent results invented rulesets based on dice pools

Gygax's design philosophy was encouraging players to role play in such a way that rolling dice was a last resort, as detailed here https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/toee-is-orgasmic.128943/page-5#post-6250567

3.5 encouraged building god-like characters that would make the die roll irrelevant (aside from rolling the rare 1).

5e seems to be fixated on

 

[Dr Schultz]

Outside of combat, where a single check could decide an entire encounter, rolling a single dice per check implies a high degree of unpredictability, no matter how skill progression works.

5e makes it worse.

Third edition's idea of skill difficulty class:
Very easy (0)
Easy (5)
Average (10)
Tough (15)
Challenging (20)
Formidable (25)
Heroic (30)
Nearly impossible (40)

A level one character with 18 in an attribute and four ranks in a skill will have a 95% chance of passing easy and average checks (extremely rare chance of failure) and a 70% chance of passing a touch check (likely, but sometimes failure).

As mentioned, 5e's idea:
Very easy 5
Easy 10
Medium 15
Hard 20
Very hard 25
Nearly impossible 30

Assuming a human character (which is seemingly most people's preferred choice) a level one character with 16 in an attribute can have an 80% chance of passing an easy check, and a 55% chance of passing a medium check. Easy and Average checks are no longer practically-gimmes for an invested character; it's a no-brainer that this is going to result in more failures and more frustration.

This is the reason why decades ago people more interested than Gygax in consistent results invented rulesets based on dice pools

Gygax's design philosophy was encouraging players to role play in such a way that rolling dice was a last resort, as detailed here https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/toee-is-orgasmic.128943/page-5#post-6250567

3.5 encouraged building god-like characters that would make the die roll irrelevant (aside from rolling the rare 1).

5e seems to be fixated on

My gosh, what I'm forced to read... Gygax was totally OBSSESSED with dice rolls. This is literally the first thing you learn about the guy when you study his life. The more rolls you make, the better.

You are confusing what everyone does while playing an actual RPG (bending a system flexible in nature and using your creativity) with Gygax design philosophy. No one plays D&D like a videogame powered by D&D, and the same goes with any other rulesets out there.

Having said that, I don't really know how to explain the concept better than I've already done. I'll try for the last time: It doesn't matter how many levels is gonna take you to have a decent chance of passing a skill check as long as you roll a single d20 in order to pass said check. You still have a linear distribution of results DURING THE ACTUAL ROLL (meaning all numbers are equaly likely to appear) and therefore you still have a lot of unexpected fails. This is a goal that all D&D designers have purposely pursued over the decades. If you are aiming for consistency, you use dice pools, because they create bell curves of distribution, where median results are way more likely to happen than extreme results and therefore they produce more consistent successes or failures. Gygax was well aware of that but he picked the single dice roll mechanic because he wanted uncertainty in his game.

Bottom line: Outside of combat, in a CRPG powered by a D20 system, in order to really appreciate the difference between a character well developed and one barely developed, any encounter should have a shitload of skill checks with all the skills of the game involved. Pacific interactions should have the same amount of rolls of combat, in short. This would allow consistent results to appear over time. Instead in all d20 videogames you have sparse skill checks coupled with single dice rolls = LOT of unpredictability.

It's a quite basic concept that seems to elude you.

 

[Delterius]

each D&D edition is like a schism in the christian church of gygax

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[NJClaw]

Fire Bolt, Ray of Frost and Acid Splash no longer create surfaces on impact. Fire Bolt still ignites flammable surfaces, and Ray of Frost still freezes water and blood puddles. Fire Bolt's damage has been adjusted accordingly.

The party can now take 2 short rests per long rest.

The default action on a container's tooltips is now 'Open' instead of 'Pick up'.

Thank fuck

 

[Delterius]

The default action on a container's tooltips is now 'Open' instead of 'Pick up'.

jesus christ sven stop piling crates on top of me

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

dice are for lazy people, to fill holes in systems

Indeed... fucking cucktards! Be a real grog!

 

[Thac0]

This is a really good patch changing a lot of technical problems the game has. Reading the comments here it becomes apparent quite fast who has and who has not played the game.
Some details:

More Xp/loot for pacifism:
Self explanatory, good change and allows min maxers to double dip.

Nicer Companions:
Who gives a fuck

Better dialogue DCs:
The DCs in this game were ridiculously high. And 5e does not have many systems to increase your max ability roll. Making the math on some of the hardest checks, like opening the cursed book or not getting into combat with the one healer gave 5-10% success chances for a character with maximum speech/wisdom at character creation. This is not making the game baby mode, this is fixing Larians shitty understanding of math.

No more micromanaging jumps:
Thank god

2 Short Rests per long rest:
Really important as soon as they properly implement resting restrictions, not that important now.

Rebalanced Cantrips and Surfaces:
Literally changes the entire game and takes the rating I would give it in it's current state up a notch from 6/10 to 7/10. This is looking promising.

UI improvements:
Upcasts via hotbar are an absolute must.

Cross saves:
Meh. I game on 2 pcs, but one is specifically for old shit since my battlestation can't run old Wizardry for some arcane reason. But my oldschool stuff Pc probably can't handle BG3. Nice for those that utilise it I guess.

Some excellent rpgs came out recently, and I am still absolutely hooked in Thea 2 and replaying Kingmaker with turn based, so I won't play this patch as much. It wipes my progress anyway. But not a single change made here is bad, and half of them were quite literally critical to making this game not shit anymore. It should easily surpass Dragon Age Origins in it's current state (which is not a high bar to pass) and settle comfortably a notch below Kingmaker. An excellent space to be in for an AAA rpg.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Apple's M1 chip murders Intel and AMD low-voltage counterparts with no sweat. Runs much faster and so much cooler (60 degrees vs boiling 100), while never thermal throttling WITH NO FUCKING FAN and never using more than about 15W whereas Intel's 15W CPUs actually reach up to around 40W in turbo-boost.. And that's just in Macbook Air lol. In fact, it even competes with higher voltage CPUs. M1X coming up for Macbook Pro 16s will probably easily compete with the higher voltage 35/45W chips.

Funny how soon Macbooks might become decent gaming laptops.

Except many non-Apple applications are not even running on the M1 chip, because they are not designed for it. Unless Apple learned to bend the laws of physics, I wouldn't hold my breath on a high performance CPU with no fan, no thermal throttling and low power draw.

Yeah, but with time more and more will run, and if M series CPUs prove to outperform Intel and AMD in the long run as well, obviously more people will jump to it and more software will be supported.

Though the best outcome would be to force AMD and Intel to design their chips better, but hard to say whether it will really improve competition or they really are at their best already and just stay inferior. Time will tell, I guess.

EDIT:
Oh, and M1X and other higher-voltage Apple chips will have fans, obviously. It's amazing how much Macbook Air already achieves without one though.

Majority of PC users won't use Apple's overpriced and closed devices, so not much chance for a widerange gaming usage. Also, do we have benchmarks on the actual gaming performance of the M1?

Konjad is a hopeless moron who owned like 18 gaming laptops and even thinks he can brag about it. Anyone who tries to spread hype about an Apple laptop for gaming is like someone who wears a fashion watch and thinks it will make me admire him. What a gigantic moron.

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[KeighnMcDeath]

Tis not animated. Ploopies must move.

 

[gulagdandy]

Some excellent rpgs came out recently, and I am still absolutely hooked in Thea 2 and replaying Kingmaker with turn based, so I won't play this patch as much. It wipes my progress anyway. But not a single change made here is bad, and half of them were quite literally critical to making this game not shit anymore. It should easily surpass Dragon Age Origins in it's current state (which is not a high bar to pass) and settle comfortably a notch below Kingmaker. An excellent space to be in for an AAA rpg.

Ouf, the heresy. But I guess one of the few things in which DA:O isn't better than P:K is in the depth of the combat system, and that's all that matters around here, eh?