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

[Jasede]

Vampires take damage crossing running bodies of water as per the standard rules.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Oh, I'm not a Gygax purist myself. I agree that the attribute system is one of the most absurd things I've ever seen and 3e made the right move in making it something anyone can understand without having to consult a chart every time or putting forth the effort into memorizing six different progression tables for six different attributes.

people like you are the reason D&D is now full of homos who never get past the 2nd level

 

[NJClaw]

Vampires take damage crossing running bodies of water as per the standard rules.

And as per Larian's rules they have a 50% chance of being retarded and trying to randomly cross rivers if you forget to accurately micromanage their path.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Vampires take damage crossing running bodies of water as per the standard rules.

 

[Jasede]

Early Access is, I must admit, a genius move by a big company like Larian. Any complaint can simply be hand-waved away as Early Access and it's a license to print money.

I don't like them but I respect the cheek.

 

[LESS T_T]

Podcast interview with Swen: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/ax...incke-on-baldurs-gate-3s-early-access-release

The interview starts at 26:19.

Larian founder Swen Vincke returns to the podcast to discuss the initial feedback on Baldur's Gate 3's early access release, turn-based vs. real-time with pause, dice rolls, and more! Plus, Kat and Nadia share their impressions on Genshin Impact, the Monster Hunter movie trailer, and more!

 

[ChildInTime]

All spiders are friendly to me and help me in fights. It is superior to kingmaker.

Spoiler

So you can just walk straight through the phase spider cave? That's quite a nice touch.

Not only walk freely, you can convince the matriach to help u in the goblin fort fight, but u have to visit the fort first and agree to kill the leaders, you then go back to phase sppider cave and talk to matriach, go back to goblin fort and open the spider gates in the dungeon. I just used stealth and opened the gate and the spider horde massacred everyone inside. It is even more funny because as a lolth cleric u can warn the drow heretic that lolth wrath will come soon for abandoning her for the absolute. It was glorious i just hid the entire party and watched spiders kill everyone.

Can you do this with any drow character or only cleric?

 

[NJClaw]

Oh, I'm not a Gygax purist myself. I agree that the attribute system is one of the most absurd things I've ever seen and 3e made the right move in making it something anyone can understand without having to consult a chart every time or putting forth the effort into memorizing six different progression tables for six different attributes.

people like you are the reason D&D is now full of homos who never get past the 2nd level

Friendly reminder that this was a thing in the past:

 

[Ninjerk]

Nothing wrong with it, but the best tea is black tea (preferably one of the 'smokey' variants, drank without sugar and with some added milk).

Agreed. I eventually put a dash of honey in green tea, but black is the superior choice.

Please don't take my last statement out of context.

I love a cup of lapsang souchong, brewed deep amber myself. I also enjoyed a couple varities of tea that were shared with me when I went to a bathhouse in Russia--they added honey and even various spices (I think cayenne+honey in one variant)--as well as the French presses full of sea buckthorn and various other leaves and berries at the mid-level restaurants (e.g., Svoya Kompaniya). Tea culture in kwa is so lacking.

Anyway, sounds like I'm going to have to take the plunge into BG3.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

All spiders are friendly to me and help me in fights. It is superior to kingmaker.

Spoiler

So you can just walk straight through the phase spider cave? That's quite a nice touch.

Not only walk freely, you can convince the matriach to help u in the goblin fort fight, but u have to visit the fort first and agree to kill the leaders, you then go back to phase sppider cave and talk to matriach, go back to goblin fort and open the spider gates in the dungeon. I just used stealth and opened the gate and the spider horde massacred everyone inside. It is even more funny because as a lolth cleric u can warn the drow heretic that lolth wrath will come soon for abandoning her for the absolute. It was glorious i just hid the entire party and watched spiders kill everyone.

larian reactivity/quest design is top-tier

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Oh, I'm not a Gygax purist myself. I agree that the attribute system is one of the most absurd things I've ever seen and 3e made the right move in making it something anyone can understand without having to consult a chart every time or putting forth the effort into memorizing six different progression tables for six different attributes.

people like you are the reason D&D is now full of homos who never get past the 2nd level

Friendly reminder that this was a thing in the past:

and it was glorious

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

I don't know noticed anyone or not, but elf vampire takes damage while attempting to cross river near owlbear's cave. I don't know it was a bug or actually nice touch (undead kinda not in favour of crossing running water, at least in some legends).

This is intentional. In the run-up to the release there was talk somewhere about how they'd check every water in the game for whether it's running water or not.

 

[Voids]

I'm not a TT player so this is my first interaction with 5E. Does anyone else think that it's really.. simplistic? It's super streamlined and honestly kinda boring. Where does the individualized character development come in? I mean yeah you build a character but the depth is just not there. Is that just a thing for 2 and 3.5?

 

[Ol' Willy]

I love a cup of lapsang souchong, brewed deep amber myself. I also enjoyed a couple varities of tea that were shared with me when I went to a bathhouse in Russia--they added honey and even various spices (I think cayenne+honey in one variant)--as well as the French presses full of sea buckthorn and various other leaves and berries at the mid-level restaurants (e.g., Svoya Kompaniya). Tea culture in kwa is so lacking.

If you haven't tried well made dried fruit tea you missed a lot.

 

[Grunker]

Oh, I'm not a Gygax purist myself. I agree that the attribute system is one of the most absurd things I've ever seen and 3e made the right move in making it something anyone can understand without having to consult a chart every time or putting forth the effort into memorizing six different progression tables for six different attributes.

What I do advocate for is removing feat bloat from party-based games, e.g. all those talents and abilities in Pillars of Eternity were a mistake. Sawyer should have made a 2nd-edition derived game (like 4/5 of the Infinity Engine games) with a more-sensible attribute system. 5e/BG3 may have gone too far in removing skills though; noticed a lot of grumbling about how difficult it is to pass any kind of check which is amusing given how the dex has complained about how easy it is to build characters to pass every skill check in most recent RPGs; suppose it's difficult to find a spot where you easily pass things you invest in and have difficulty passing things you don't invest in in a system where you only get like a +3 bonus to a check at most? They could just go deterministic, but there'd be grumbling about that.

I agree with you about everything except about what you call "feat bloat." I think 5E (and you by extension as far as this argument goes) diagnosed the reasons that 3E felt so bad to play (compared to how good it felt to do customization in it) *except* that it went to far and got rid of a feat/talent system almost altogether.

A lot of 3E's complexity-bound problems had to do with how overwhelming attacks became compared to defense (which led to the "1st round combat"-gameplay) because so many of the system assets where primed to empower attacks and overwhelm defenses. But 5E already got rid of this by using bounded accuracy (it's called accuracy, yes, but the design also applies to sources for damage numbers, DCs, critical hit chance, all that stuff). There was no need to clamp down so hard on feats, skills, and class feature assets. There's still an OK amount of customization because they implemented PF's archetype system in a clever way, but at the end of the day you still feel too limited when customizing your character, and I don't think expanding it with just one system (like general feats instead of the dogshit system they implemented) would make things too hard to still maintain the pretty good gameplay of 5E (compared to 3E, that is). Like, why couldn't they have done to the feat system what they did to the archetype-system? That is: reduce the complexity in favor of gameplay, but keep the great customization in there somewhat.

The most extreme area where you can identify this "overcorrection" is with Magic Items. People said they wanted more rare and more interesting (i.e. less universally powerful and combat-only) magic items. The end result is that going by RAW or adventures, players will end up with MAYBE a couple of magic items of extremely narrow usability. They should have reminded themselves that the design goal with most other things in the system was to hit a compromise between the fun abundance and diversity in 3E and the game actually playing well, I think.

Still, 5E is easily my favourite D&D edition so my complaints aside, I agree with your overall points. I'm just curious how that would bring you to praise Gygax - but I think you kind of answer that question with your AD&D criticism. It seems you lean more towards agreeing with his statements on how the game should play, and where verisimilitude and minimalism is important. As opposed to agreeing with how he actually built systems himself, which I'm sure we agree was often underwhelming in execution if not in vision.

EDIT: For an example of how 5E could have done a great feat/talent system in a "5E way", check out the Character Talents-books on Dungeon Master's Guild. It has its fault but it's a great outline of how such a system should have been done within the context of 5E.

 

[Nerevar]

5Etards crack me up.

 

[Ninjerk]

I'm not a TT player so this is my first interaction with 5E. Does anyone else think that it's really.. simplistic? It's super streamlined and honestly kinda boring. Where does the individualized character development come in? I mean yeah you build a character but the depth is just not there. Is that just a thing for 2 and 3.5?

In the long gulf between AD&D 2nd edition and 3rd edition, we did differentiated our characters with this thing called roleplaying.


But seriously, how do you make a system that engages the imagination of people who are not buildfags without having buildfags ruin the former's enjoyment (without having extremely competent DMs that know how to rules lawyer the buildfags into the ground)?

If you haven't tried well made dried fruit tea you missed a lot.

I received some of what I think is black tea mixed with dried fruit as a New Year's gift from my sister's husband's parents in Moscow. It's quite tasty and has a bit of red hue. The flavors are so strong you can smell them about 6-8 inches away from the closed bag.

 

[Thonius]

All spiders are friendly to me and help me in fights. It is superior to kingmaker.

Spoiler

So you can just walk straight through the phase spider cave? That's quite a nice touch.

Not only walk freely, you can convince the matriach to help u in the goblin fort fight, but u have to visit the fort first and agree to kill the leaders, you then go back to phase sppider cave and talk to matriach, go back to goblin fort and open the spider gates in the dungeon. I just used stealth and opened the gate and the spider horde massacred everyone inside. It is even more funny because as a lolth cleric u can warn the drow heretic that lolth wrath will come soon for abandoning her for the absolute. It was glorious i just hid the entire party and watched spiders kill everyone.

There is also some hitman esque parts in goblin fort. Talk to cleric she takes you hostage spoiler happens she dies. I told drow, the location of druid grove then when she walked over bridge I shot off the support beam and she fell into abyss. Haha.

 

[Robber Baron]

Spoiler

 

[Ninjerk]

Spoiler

Tiefling storytelling day would be a great skit.

"And then an EVIL prince attacked the dragon for NO REASON at all."

 

[Jasede]

Despite being only 13% of the population Tieflings commit 52% of the crimes...

 

[Ol' Willy]

What happened to attractive, and most importantly, white and non trans tieflings?

 

[Jasede]

In 4th edition Tiefling appearance was standardized. Before, it was basically pick what you want. (blue skin or horns or glowing eyes or hooves or wings or a tail or any combination.)

 

[Raghar]

Despite being only 13% of the population Tieflings commit 52% of the crimes...

You are mistaking VERY rare less than 0.1 percent of population with something else.

 

[Jasede]

Are you saying the (((gnomes))) are behind it?