Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
I think so. I would have to make a new character and play to the same village to see if they sell exactly the same and the one goblin chief drops the same gauntlets to confirm.
The items aren't bad, no where near the Divinity "Helmet of Leadership +1 and Water Magic +1" bullshit. It is more like "Burning Edge, a normal Greataxe but it sets targets it hits on fire", so probably much better than DOS in that regard.
But they shouldn't be this common in a 5e game, not even in a BG game. BG 1 had most vendors not carry magical gear at all.
Mechanically a lot is very faithfull, which is nice. They nerfed firebolt significantly and grafted their gay surface system onto it, but that cantrip was an autochoice before so ok.
Mirror Image change is odd, it got a lot weaker for pure mages and a lot better for any sort of hybrid/high AC playstyle. Meh, but still a good spell.
A lot of spells missing which I would like to see still.
My biggest gripe mechanically is push on a bonus action. It makes the Battlemaster pushing attack hilariously redundant and it makes it so that your ranged doods are never really threatened in melee. Just push your enemy away, then do your ranged attack and walk away. I think I am gonna complain about that to them later. I see no benefit from the change.
Still that is a rather small complaint. Combat is good, very very lethal and yet still fair. The AI plays pretty ruthless, has no qualms about trying to kill downed allies. Game is quite easy, even with the unoptimised mess that are your default companions. A +3 Cha Warlock with agonizing blast massacres all early game threats.
Generally combat is rare, a lot of talking and puzzle solving and general rpg shit inbetween.
Magic items are very common, and tiered with colour rarity. This is kind of aids and goes against the whole ethos of DnD, but it will be impossible to change their minds on that. At least most enchantments are fittingly small in impact, gloves giving +1 Athletics or inflicting curse on enemies on hit as an example. Too early to tell if itemisation will be as shit as in the DOS games, but it sure as hell won't be as good as in BG and IWD.
Dialogue, skill checks and stuff are okayish. Checks are rolled often and to great effect, and succeeding or losing has great effect. But you can not see the DC of a check before attempting to roll. So you might see attempt to investigate or insight, you try insight because your bonus is +2 instead of +1, but the DC is 5 points higher.
Also the game does not automatically use the check that is highest in your team. This is incredibly cancer and I really hope they change it. Currently you run into the situation, see you can only roll arcana here, back out again if the game lets you, restart it with the wizard and then roll arcana.
Feels incredibly unintuitive and clunky, in a game that is ultra unintuitive by default due to a lot of shitty UI grandfathered in from DOS2.
Also some DCs and decision paths absolutely have to be redone by someone with a basic grasp of stochastic.
In the early game you get poisoned. Convincing the healer to give you the antidote are three DC 11 cha checks in a row. 12% success chance for someone untrained, and less than 50% success chance for someone with the maximum possible starting persuasion of +5. And it even tests Persuasion and Deception, making it harder still to get the antidote peacefully. I doubt that way is supposed to be so hard, they just didn't calculate how much harder making to succeed three times makes the check.
Overall it feels like a much better game than both DOS games, thankfully. But there is a lot of stuff in there that I really would like to see overhauled, so that this game may become worthy of wielding the name of BG without getting collective cringe like Siege of Dragonspear.
I think I am gonna start complaining to Larian about push on a bonus action and use highest team skill by default first, those are needed changes. Maybe something bigger comes up.
I think so. I would have to make a new character and play to the same village to see if they sell exactly the same and the one goblin chief drops the same gauntlets to confirm.
Loot distribution is a good point of query, you could just pick another Codexer playing EA and compare notes:
- pick a random but fairly obvious container along the critical path and see if you got the same vendor trash from it;
- check whether you both got the same notable (e.g. magical) piece of loot from the same place.
The reason to check both is because you can have a mix of systems, NWN had most chests spawn random level-adjusted crap in addition to any significant, hand-placed items inside.
Ok, did the goblin in front of the druid camp drop gauntlets that inflict bane for everyone else aswell?
-1d4 on attack rolls and saves for opponents struck by the weapons of the user.
Trash container loot is 100% randomised, I played through the tutorial twice and I had more potions of speed and less acid grenades in the illithid chests the second time.
Undead always struck me as communists, so I picked the first option. Not sure if its "the good option", but he didn't fight me and I did steal his furniture.
They just couldn't help themselves.
Every vendor in the first level 2 "city" sells at least one +1 magical item. Prices are low enough that I could buy one in the first hour, if I sell all the space grenades I got from the tutorial.
Also I already found one dose of a very potent poison, which shows off as blue rarity in my inventory. They probably made +1 and equal power enchantments green, +2 blue and +3 red. Stronger orange or so.
Utter decline, but if they put so much work into this shit they sure as hell are not gonna remove rarity now.
At least most magic items are just cute, like a staff that allows you to cast create water, a noncombat spell, for free.
Sounds pure decline. Magic items are meant to be even rarer in 5e than older editions, a +1 weapon is supposed to be a powerful treasure at low levels not something thrown around willy nilly.
I was really hoping Larian would restrain themselves this time round.
Yeesh, +4 from the levels, +3 or +4 from the stats, and so the +1 from the weapon matters less and less. And the combined +8/+9 from all these sources is still paltry compared to the D20 itself, and the broad range of results it provides. At level 10 the fighter would likely face stuff such as Stone Golems (AC 17), meaning he would hit only slightly more often than half the time. I'm not quite convinced this is the sensible approach.
The idea of bounded accuracy is generally that a DM can use low level enemies as effective enemies against high level parties, and also that low level parties could theoretically stand a chance against high level enemies.
And the idea itself is sound. What I take issue with is the numbers employed. Due to the nature of the D20, +1 magical items just aren't... sufficiently magical. Using the same example as above, but replacing the D20 with a D10 we would get +7/+8 to hit and probably something like AC 13 or maybe even 12. Suddenly the +1 from the weapon bumping the hit modifier to +8/+9 feels much more impactful.
Go to game dir/bin then select the bg3_dx11.exe ,hold shift then right click and run as admin while still holding shit. That way you will be able to start the game without problems. It runs fine lol!
Without a sorcerer and multiclassing impossible to tell. Warlocks are good tho, pretty much all of their Arcana toolbox things are in. Even devil eyes.
They just couldn't help themselves.
Every vendor in the first level 2 "city" sells at least one +1 magical item. Prices are low enough that I could buy one in the first hour, if I sell all the space grenades I got from the tutorial.
Also I already found one dose of a very potent poison, which shows off as blue rarity in my inventory. They probably made +1 and equal power enchantments green, +2 blue and +3 red. Stronger orange or so.
Utter decline, but if they put so much work into this shit they sure as hell are not gonna remove rarity now.
At least most magic items are just cute, like a staff that allows you to cast create water, a noncombat spell, for free.
Sounds pure decline. Magic items are meant to be even rarer in 5e than older editions, a +1 weapon is supposed to be a powerful treasure at low levels not something thrown around willy nilly.
I was really hoping Larian would restrain themselves this time round.
Yeesh, +4 from the levels, +3 or +4 from the stats, and so the +1 from the weapon matters less and less. And the combined +8/+9 from all these sources is still paltry compared to the D20 itself, and the broad range of results it provides. At level 10 the fighter would likely face stuff such as Stone Golems (AC 17), meaning he would hit only slightly more often than half the time. I'm not quite convinced this is the sensible approach.
The idea of bounded accuracy is generally that a DM can use low level enemies as effective enemies against high level parties, and also that low level parties could theoretically stand a chance against high level enemies.
And the idea itself is sound. What I take issue with is the numbers employed. Due to the nature of the D20, +1 magical items just aren't... sufficiently magical. Using the same example as above, but replacing the D20 with a D10 we would get +7/+8 to hit and probably something like AC 13 or maybe even 12. Suddenly the +1 from the weapon bumping the hit modifier to +8/+9 feels much more impactful.
Yeah your idea makes sense. It's a bit of an odd one in 5e as gear with abilities is much rarer. In 3.5e/Pathfinder the enchantment bonus was generally much weaker than magic abilities.
Keen for example is a +1 equiv ability, but with a crit fishing weapon (a keen falchion +1 for example), is going to be much much stronger than a straight +2 falchion.
Without a sorcerer and multiclassing impossible to tell. Warlocks are good tho, pretty much all of their Arcana toolbox things are in. Even devil eyes.
Mechanically a lot is very faithfull, which is nice. They nerfed firebolt significantly and grafted their gay surface system onto it, but that cantrip was an autochoice before so ok.
Mirror Image change is odd, it got a lot weaker for pure mages and a lot better for any sort of hybrid/high AC playstyle. Meh, but still a good spell.
A lot of spells missing which I would like to see still.
My biggest gripe mechanically is push on a bonus action. It makes the Battlemaster pushing attack hilariously redundant and it makes it so that your ranged doods are never really threatened in melee. Just push your enemy away, then do your ranged attack and walk away. I think I am gonna complain about that to them later. I see no benefit from the change.
Still that is a rather small complaint. Combat is good, very very lethal and yet still fair. The AI plays pretty ruthless, has no qualms about trying to kill downed allies. Game is quite easy, even with the unoptimised mess that are your default companions. A +3 Cha Warlock with agonizing blast massacres all early game threats.
Generally combat is rare, a lot of talking and puzzle solving and general rpg shit inbetween.
Magic items are very common, and tiered with colour rarity. This is kind of aids and goes against the whole ethos of DnD, but it will be impossible to change their minds on that. At least most enchantments are fittingly small in impact, gloves giving +1 Athletics or inflicting curse on enemies on hit as an example. Too early to tell if itemisation will be as shit as in the DOS games, but it sure as hell won't be as good as in BG and IWD.
Dialogue, skill checks and stuff are okayish. Checks are rolled often and to great effect, and succeeding or losing has great effect. But you can not see the DC of a check before attempting to roll. So you might see attempt to investigate or insight, you try insight because your bonus is +2 instead of +1, but the DC is 5 points higher.
Also the game does not automatically use the check that is highest in your team. This is incredibly cancer and I really hope they change it. Currently you run into the situation, see you can only roll arcana here, back out again if the game lets you, restart it with the wizard and then roll arcana.
Feels incredibly unintuitive and clunky, in a game that is ultra unintuitive by default due to a lot of shitty UI grandfathered in from DOS2.
Also some DCs and decision paths absolutely have to be redone by someone with a basic grasp of stochastic.
In the early game you get poisoned. Convincing the healer to give you the antidote are three DC 11 cha checks in a row. 12% success chance for someone untrained, and less than 50% success chance for someone with the maximum possible starting persuasion of +5. And it even tests Persuasion and Deception, making it harder still to get the antidote peacefully. I doubt that way is supposed to be so hard, they just didn't calculate how much harder making to succeed three times makes the check.
Overall it feels like a much better game than both DOS games, thankfully. But there is a lot of stuff in there that I really would like to see overhauled, so that this game may become worthy of wielding the name of BG without getting collective cringe like Siege of Dragonspear.
I think I am gonna start complaining to Larian about push on a bonus action and use highest team skill by default first, those are needed changes. Maybe something bigger comes up.
I was wondering that next - it seems skill checks are total random rolls, nothing that boosts "knowledge" of topics. Man, this seems like total decline to be honest.
They always were random rolls in a way, so this is nothing new as a concept/reality of actual PnP. The difference between 3.5E and 5E for example is how the skills aren't separate categories you put some points + your INT modifier into at level up. You choose however many skills depending on class and you get your proficiency bonus on top of the roll every time (+2 at the beginning, raising every few levels). Rogue gets double proficiency bonus to skills. The problem is the proficiency bonus is not enough to differentiate between laymen and specialists, so everyone is almost as equally good as everyone else at everything ever. When I play PnP, I enforce a disadvantage on skill checks you aren't proficient in, that mostly gets the job done in the current system.
But you can not see the DC of a check before attempting to roll. So you might see attempt to investigate or insight, you try insight because your bonus is +2 instead of +1, but the DC is 5 points higher.
I'm confused by this point, I mean isn't how it usually work? DM asks you to roll and you know the DC after that or you know you succeeded based on how he narrates?
Mechanically a lot is very faithfull, which is nice. They nerfed firebolt significantly and grafted their gay surface system onto it, but that cantrip was an autochoice before so ok.
Mirror Image change is odd, it got a lot weaker for pure mages and a lot better for any sort of hybrid/high AC playstyle. Meh, but still a good spell.
A lot of spells missing which I would like to see still.
My biggest gripe mechanically is push on a bonus action. It makes the Battlemaster pushing attack hilariously redundant and it makes it so that your ranged doods are never really threatened in melee. Just push your enemy away, then do your ranged attack and walk away. I think I am gonna complain about that to them later. I see no benefit from the change.
Still that is a rather small complaint. Combat is good, very very lethal and yet still fair. The AI plays pretty ruthless, has no qualms about trying to kill downed allies. Game is quite easy, even with the unoptimised mess that are your default companions. A +3 Cha Warlock with agonizing blast massacres all early game threats.
Generally combat is rare, a lot of talking and puzzle solving and general rpg shit inbetween.
Magic items are very common, and tiered with colour rarity. This is kind of aids and goes against the whole ethos of DnD, but it will be impossible to change their minds on that. At least most enchantments are fittingly small in impact, gloves giving +1 Athletics or inflicting curse on enemies on hit as an example. Too early to tell if itemisation will be as shit as in the DOS games, but it sure as hell won't be as good as in BG and IWD.
Dialogue, skill checks and stuff are okayish. Checks are rolled often and to great effect, and succeeding or losing has great effect. But you can not see the DC of a check before attempting to roll. So you might see attempt to investigate or insight, you try insight because your bonus is +2 instead of +1, but the DC is 5 points higher.
Also the game does not automatically use the check that is highest in your team. This is incredibly cancer and I really hope they change it. Currently you run into the situation, see you can only roll arcana here, back out again if the game lets you, restart it with the wizard and then roll arcana.
Feels incredibly unintuitive and clunky, in a game that is ultra unintuitive by default due to a lot of shitty UI grandfathered in from DOS2.
Also some DCs and decision paths absolutely have to be redone by someone with a basic grasp of stochastic.
In the early game you get poisoned. Convincing the healer to give you the antidote are three DC 11 cha checks in a row. 12% success chance for someone untrained, and less than 50% success chance for someone with the maximum possible starting persuasion of +5. And it even tests Persuasion and Deception, making it harder still to get the antidote peacefully. I doubt that way is supposed to be so hard, they just didn't calculate how much harder making to succeed three times makes the check.
Overall it feels like a much better game than both DOS games, thankfully. But there is a lot of stuff in there that I really would like to see overhauled, so that this game may become worthy of wielding the name of BG without getting collective cringe like Siege of Dragonspear.
I think I am gonna start complaining to Larian about push on a bonus action and use highest team skill by default first, those are needed changes. Maybe something bigger comes up.
But you can not see the DC of a check before attempting to roll. So you might see attempt to investigate or insight, you try insight because your bonus is +2 instead of +1, but the DC is 5 points higher.
I'm confused by this point, I mean isn't how it usually work? DM asks you to roll and you know the DC after that or you know you succeeded based on how he narrates?
Most crpgs show you the DC - since unlike with a real DM failing a skillcheck is usually much less interesting than succeeding.
Also most DMs usually at least give you vague warnings on wether it will be an easy check or very hard. Here you just have to go by gut.
No biggie but I would like to see my DCs.
But you can not see the DC of a check before attempting to roll. So you might see attempt to investigate or insight, you try insight because your bonus is +2 instead of +1, but the DC is 5 points higher.
I'm confused by this point, I mean isn't how it usually work? DM asks you to roll and you know the DC after that or you know you succeeded based on how he narrates?
I was wondering that next - it seems skill checks are total random rolls, nothing that boosts "knowledge" of topics. Man, this seems like total decline to be honest.
They always were random rolls in a way, so this is nothing new as a concept/reality of actual PnP. The difference between 3.5E and 5E for example is how the skills aren't separate categories you put some points + your INT modifier into at level up. You choose however many skills depending on class and you get your proficiency bonus on top of the roll every time (+2 at the beginning, raising every few levels). Rogue gets double proficiency bonus to skills. The problem is the proficiency bonus is not enough to differentiate between laymen and specialists, so everyone is almost as equally good as everyone else at everything ever. When I play PnP, I enforce a disadvantage on skill checks you aren't proficient in, that mostly gets the job done in the current system.
That isn't a half bad solution. I would go for the opposite, and grant advantage to those proficient though. Positive reinforcement, rather than negative
That isn't a half bad solution. I would go for the opposite, and grant advantage to those proficient though. Positive reinforcement, rather than negative
This doesn't solve the problem of everyone being good at everything, or the possibility of such. You can still end up with the inbred nudist being an endless font of arcane or historical knowledge. Enforcing disadvantages mitigates that a lot and doesn't contribute to every skill check being a success. As a DM, I can also choose when to give out disadvantages. If it's a check about basically common knowledge, it doesn't make sense to roll with disadvantage.
Most crpgs show you the DC - since unlike with a real DM failing a skillcheck is usually much less interesting than succeeding.
Also most DMs usually at least give you vague warnings on wether it will be an easy check or very hard. Here you just have to go by gut.
No biggie but I would like to see my DCs.
