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Game News Baldur's Gate 3 Community Update #14: Patch 6 - Forging the Arcane

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Baldur's Gate 3; Larian Studios; Nick Pechenin; Swen Vincke

Larian released their sixth major patch for Baldur's Gate 3 yesterday. The release was accompanied by a new Panel From Hell event during which Swen Vincke and Nick Pechenin introduced its various features in a live two hour playthrough. The centerpiece of the new patch is the addition of the Sorcerer class, including the Wild Magic and Draconic Bloodline subclasses. Furthermore, a major new location has been added to the game's Underdark region, an ancient Sharran ruin known as Grymforge. Other features of the patch include a new set of weapon-specific active abilities and a substantial graphical overhaul. During the stream, Swen and Nick made their way through the Underdark to confront a drow cultist who has occupied Grymforge with a band of Duergar mercenaries. With the help of a clan of enslaved deep gnomes and some high explosives, they actually managed to win this time. Here's the trailer Larian put together for the patch and an excerpt from the accompanying community update:



Unleash your inner magic: Baldur’s Gate 3 gets a powerful new Sorcerer class

Sorcerers aren’t your typical magic-wielder. Unlike your bookish Wizards or soul-selling Warlocks, a Sorcerer’s abilities come from within. This class taps into their own latent power to wreak havoc in battle.

Sorcerers receive five new spells in this update. Horrific Visage is a Tadpole Action that makes your enemy bleed and allows you to leech a Sorcery Point from them for your benefit. Chromatic Orb is a powerful single-target nuke that lets you hurl a sphere of energy at whoever deserves it most. Cloud of Daggers can be cast by Sorcerers for defense, surrounding them in a protective blanket of flying daggers. Crown of Madness, as the name suggests, sends an enemy mad and can cause them to attack their nearby allies. And finally, Enlarge/Reduce alters the size of a character while also affecting their physical stats, which is likewise what my body has been doing throughout the entirety of lockdown.

But a Sorcerer’s foremost ability is Metamagic. This is their signature skill which allows you to modify your spells in battle, making you a dynamic and unpredictable force to be reckoned with. With Metamagic, a Sorcerer can increase their spell’s range or duration, hit two enemies at once, or purchase other powerful spell variations using Sorcery Points gained as they level up. And just imagine the kind of devastation you can unleash when applying this ability strategically toward spells cast by other magic-wielders.

As any D&D fan worth their dice knows, Sorcerers are available in two flavours: Wild Magic and Draconic Bloodline. Both subclasses have their own particular set of strengths, abilities, and visual look.

The Wild Magic Sorcerer is a manipulator of chance and magic. Using their Tides of Chaos ability, they swing the battle in their favour by gaining advantage of attack rolls, ability checks, or saving throws. But with every swing there is also a roundabout. And for every successful gain a Wild Magic Sorcerer receives, they also have a chance of being on the receiving end of a random effect. Some positive – like gaining teleport as a bonus action – and some, ah, less good – like setting everyone on fire.

Draconic Bloodline Sorcerers on the other hand possess spell-casting abilities passed down through their dragon ancestry. Each Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer reaps the benefits of their dragon lineage, and can harness the damage-type possessed by their ancestor: Fire, Acid, Poison, Lightning, or Cold. Was your great-grandma a Red Dragon? If so, you’ll be able to wield Fire abilities like Burning Hands. Additionally, this subclass gets an extra hit point with every level gained, meaning they’re quite the powerful adversary in combat. And as you can see in the image above, you will be able to customize the look of your Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer with a variety of dragon facial designs so scaley not even the heaviest of moisturizers can soften them.

New weapon actions - combat just got a lot more interesting

But Forging the Arcane isn't just about magic.

In this patch, we wanted to ensure that fans of melee and ranged combat gain even more tactical agency during fights next time they jump back in to BG3. Thus, we've introduced new Weapon Actions.

So what does that mean exactly? Well, characters who are proficient in a particular melee or ranged weapon will now have up to three signature moves at their disposal, giving you new ways to eviscerate any nearby Goblin who happens to look at you funny. The aim here is to ensure players will experience melee actions closer in line to those dreamt up during a tabletop D&D game.

Smash an enemy's chest to damage and potentially reduce their actions by one with the new Heartstopper move, target an enemy's hands with a non-lethal Weakening Strike attack to give disadvantage on Attack Rolls, or hit an enemy with all your might for a chance at dazing them with a Concussive Smash. But please do not use these new moves on the Owlbear as our hearts can't handle it. For the full list of new Weapon Actions, have a gander at the patch notes at the bottom of the page.

Larian exhibited the new version of Baldur's Gate 3 at EGX last week, so in addition to all of this there's also a new batch of press previews. The full patch notes for the update are available here.
 

Rinslin Merwind

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As any D&D fan worth their dice knows, Sorcerers are available in two flavours: Wild Magic and Draconic Bloodline.
And anyone who can use search engine knows that technically there 7 flavors of sorceror in 5e, but as always there some bullshit that prevents players to receive full package.

Not to mention that classes with unpredictable magic can be theoretically fun at table, but if your sorc will fry his own party with failed spell in CRPG - the only thing player will be rolling is his/her eyes while loading previous save/starting new game. For same reason rerolls don't matter as much.

Possibility of adding new character on fly can solve problem with unexpected deaths, but many games don't even allow to start with custom party and force poorly written canon fodder on you as much as possible. Even after decades ghost of Bioware's corrupt influence haunts D&D RPG's *sad sigh*.

And Dragon sorc is boringly standard at this point *yawn*
 

Zeriel

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Are Larian feeling so much pressure and backlash they gave up on their usual plans to only include Act 1 in EA? Or is this new area also part of Act 1?
 

Dr Schultz

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As any D&D fan worth their dice knows, Sorcerers are available in two flavours: Wild Magic and Draconic Bloodline.
And anyone who can use search engine knows that technically there 7 flavors of sorceror in 5e, but as always there some bullshit that prevents players to receive full package.

Not to mention that classes with unpredictable magic can be theoretically fun at table, but if your sorc will fry his own party with failed spell in CRPG - the only thing player will be rolling is his/her eyes while loading previous save/starting new game. For same reason rerolls don't matter as much.

Possibility of adding new character on fly can solve problem with unexpected deaths, but many games don't even allow to start with custom party and force poorly written canon fodder on you as much as possible. Even after decades ghost of Bioware's corrupt influence haunts D&D RPG's *sad sigh*.

And Dragon sorc is boringly standard at this point *yawn*

Only 2 in the player handbook, even more than 7 if you count everything that has been published for the 5E.

I think they have already confirmed that BG3 will stick to the PHB, though.
 

Thonius

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As any D&D fan worth their dice knows, Sorcerers are available in two flavours: Wild Magic and Draconic Bloodline.
And anyone who can use search engine knows that technically there 7 flavors of sorceror in 5e, but as always there some bullshit that prevents players to receive full package.

Not to mention that classes with unpredictable magic can be theoretically fun at table, but if your sorc will fry his own party with failed spell in CRPG - the only thing player will be rolling is his/her eyes while loading previous save/starting new game. For same reason rerolls don't matter as much.

Possibility of adding new character on fly can solve problem with unexpected deaths, but many games don't even allow to start with custom party and force poorly written canon fodder on you as much as possible. Even after decades ghost of Bioware's corrupt influence haunts D&D RPG's *sad sigh*.

And Dragon sorc is boringly standard at this point *yawn*

Only 2 in the player handbook, even more than 7 if you count everything that has been published for the 5E.

I think they have already confirmed that BG3 will stick to the PHB, though.
DLC's fuel.
 

Dr Schultz

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As any D&D fan worth their dice knows, Sorcerers are available in two flavours: Wild Magic and Draconic Bloodline.
And anyone who can use search engine knows that technically there 7 flavors of sorceror in 5e, but as always there some bullshit that prevents players to receive full package.

Not to mention that classes with unpredictable magic can be theoretically fun at table, but if your sorc will fry his own party with failed spell in CRPG - the only thing player will be rolling is his/her eyes while loading previous save/starting new game. For same reason rerolls don't matter as much.

Possibility of adding new character on fly can solve problem with unexpected deaths, but many games don't even allow to start with custom party and force poorly written canon fodder on you as much as possible. Even after decades ghost of Bioware's corrupt influence haunts D&D RPG's *sad sigh*.

And Dragon sorc is boringly standard at this point *yawn*

Only 2 in the player handbook, even more than 7 if you count everything that has been published for the 5E.

I think they have already confirmed that BG3 will stick to the PHB, though.
DLC's fuel.

Probably. It's something already engrained in 5E. Just look at the list of books published for this edition.
 

Dr Schultz

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More than 3.5? Is the bloated 5e maggot larger now?

Not remotely, but I bet it will, in time.

My point was slightly different. In short: By reading the PHB you got immediately the idea that it was written for being easy digestible by new players and easy expandable by further (and already planned) books.
 

Dyspaire

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I am completely, utterly, totally unexcited about this game. It's a shame.

I played both Baldur's Gate games at release, and have replayed them both many times over the years. In fact, I'm currently doing a solo run (just imported my save into BG2 yesterday) through both games just because it's been a long time since I followed through on the Golden Pantaloons thing.

Also, playing Chaotic Evil and finally choosing the evil path whenever and wherever possible. Minsc? Dead by my hand. Jaheira and Khalid ? Never spoke a word to them. I've killed Drizzt, Shandalar, everybody of note except Elminster, whom I'm pretty sure is impossible anyway. Just stepped out of the starter dungeon in BG2, and I can't wait to solo Watcher's Keep and attain godhood. I vastly prefer low-level d&d, but the Baldur's Gates do epic as well as can be expected. Where else can it feel like you actually took down the Demogorgan? Can't wait go see the Big Metal Unit in action. It's been awhile on that one. Can't even remember if it's worth it, but The Golden Pantaloons is one of the great quests in all of crpgdom. Sometimes the reward is in the journey and all that.

It's been a fucking blast, as always.

I too have absolutely no interest or desire to play Larian's game. No interest in it whatsoever.

And I would think I'm at least one of the target demographics for their game.

It just reeks of missing the point of d&d entirely.

Cheers.
 

Infinitron

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I feel like at least 50% of the negative reception towards BG3 on this forum comes from people who don't have time to watch Larian's long-ass streams and subconsciously resent being expected to sit through them to see whether the game is good.
 
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NJClaw

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More than 3.5? Is the bloated 5e maggot larger now?

Not remotely, but I bet it will, in time.
5E will never be able to reach 3.5 level of bloat. Even considering ALL the 5E handbooks published so far after the PHB, the added content is still less than what 3.5 got with the Complete Adventurer and Complete Arcane alone. WotC is incredibly afraid to officially add new classes, archetypes, and spells, so newly released handbooks mostly contain useless fluff.
 

Sobchak

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I feel like at least 50% of the negative reception to BG3 on this forum comes from people who don't have time to watch Larian's long-ass streams and are subconsciously resentful that they're expected to watch them to see whether the game is good.

I've seen the streams and you feel wrong young padawan. We actually think it might be a good Larian CRPG but not a good Baldur's Gate game. The only thing that respects the saga is their logo.

If *you* also watched their streams carefully you can also realize that their bought the franchise for marketing reasons, all the gimmicky shit that they will put on (twitch integration and other atrocities) are mainstream bullshit.

I'm not a nostalgia fag and I will support innovation but if you choose to do that with a title that already exists (and especially this one) you need similarities as well, especially fundamental ones, otherwise go ahead and create a new title. If that was the case, would this title be able to create such noise ? I doubt it. If the game was not called BG3 would mainstream CRPG players be that excited ? I don't think so.

So, yeah we've seen the streams. Looks decent for Larian's standards (maybe even good to very good) but... it's not... a Baldur's Gate title.
 
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Decado

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I feel like at least 50% of the negative reception to BG3 on this forum comes from people who don't have time to watch Larian's long-ass streams and are subconsciously resentful that they're expected to watch them to see whether the game is good.

I've seen the streams and you feel wrong young padawan. We actually think it might be a good Larian CRPG but not a good Baldur's Gate game. The only thing that respects the saga is their logo.

If *you* also watched their streams carefully you can also realize that their bought the franchise for marketing reasons, all the gimmicky shit that they will put on (twitch integration and other atrocities) are mainstream bullshit.

I'm not a nostalgia fag and I will support innovation but if you choose to do that with a title that already exists (and especially this one) you need similarities as well, especially fundamental ones, otherwise go ahead and create a new title. If that was the case would this title created such noise ? I doubt it. If the game was not called BG3 would mainstream CRPG players would be that excited? I don't think so.

So, yeah we've seen the streams. Looks decent for Larian's standards (maybe even good to very good) but... it's not... a Baldur's Gate title.


This is my biggest complaint with what I've seen so far. In what sense is this a "Baldur's Gate" game? This isn't rhetorical, I genuinely do not fucking know. It looks for all appearances like the BG logo stamped on a generic DnD game.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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This is my biggest complaint with what I've seen so far. In what sense is this a "Baldur's Gate" game? This isn't rhetorical, I genuinely do not fucking know. It looks for all appearances like the BG logo stamped on a generic DnD game.
Yes, which is why it might actually have some redeeming value. :martini:
 

Dr Schultz

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If the game was not called BG3 would mainstream CRPG players would be that excited? I don't think so.

Considering that Divinity: Original Sin I and II are by far the most successful Classic Rpgs in recent times, while Baldur's gate has been in a limbo for 20 years, I'd say that the fuss among mainstream players would've been just slightly less intense with a different name. Probably the 5E license are doing more marketing wise than the Baldur's gate name.
 
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Sobchak

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Considering that Divinity: Original Sin I and II are by far the most successful Classic Rpgs in recent times, while Baldur's gate has been in a limbo for 20 years, I'd say that the fuss among mainstream players would've been just slightly less intense with a different name. Probably the 5E license are doing more marketing wise than the Baldur's gate name.

That's true, but the struggle for them was to get the franchise name and that was done for a reason (combined ofc with the usage of the 5e). I'm not saying that Sven is a chaotic evil guy and he's trying to manipulate us, I want the game to be good but again, the main problem is that it doesn't feel a Baldur's Gate game at all, it's just a Larian CRPG game using the 5E.
 

Dr Schultz

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Considering that Divinity: Original Sin I and II are by far the most successful Classic Rpgs in recent times, while Baldur's gate has been in a limbo for 20 years, I'd say that the fuss among mainstream players would've been just slightly less intense with a different name. Probably the 5E license are doing more marketing wise than the Baldur's gate name.

That's true, but the struggle for them was to get the franchise name and that was done for a reason (combined ofc with the usage of the 5e). I'm not saying that Sven is a chaotic evil guy and he's trying to manipulate us, I want the game to be good but again, the main problem is that it doesn't feel a Baldur's Gate game at all, it's just a Larian CRPG game using the 5E.

Yes, this is a perfect description of BG3. Probably the name Baldur's gate will be justified only by the presence of famous city in the second act. And that is that.

But is this a problem?

I wouldn't say. Larians has already proved that it's capable of making the closest adaptation of a P&P RPG in the videogame format and they are advancing down this path with BG3.

Also, if someone really want to play a modern incarnation of the first two BG, he/she already has two different RPG sagas to choose from (Pillars of Eternity and Pathfinder). Do we really need a third one?
 
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Inveigh

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Lots of dusty old farts in this museum who have had the ability to enjoy things beaten out of them by life. This game actually looks good, and I'm sure the mod support will allow for all the autistic horseshit from one of the books that you're upset wasn't in the base game.
 

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