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

[rusty_shackleford]

There's a few NPCs you encounter that seem to heavily suggest they'll be companions in the full game.

Spoiler

I assume the bard I missed is one of those.

I doubt that there will be more than the starting retards.

Spoiler

Halsin is probably one, he even comes to your camp. The druid class isn't in yet. Bard class not being in would also explain the bard.
If you don't get Halsin, you probably get the drow instead.

Spoiler

There's probably a ranger companion close to being added because the ranger class is in.

Anyone know anything about the

Spoiler

tiefling at the bridge before the gith? Was she someone I was supposed to remember? You can invite her to your camp.

Why do you assume that there will be a companion for every class? This is not a bioware game,it is larian one,and they have always given you companions in the first chapter. I don't think that they will be actual companions,maybe factions liaisons like in dragon age origins,or something similar. Most likely that is the reason why they decided to have only 4 member party. Dos2 had 5-6 companions,depending if you are custom character or premade,they also killed of the other 2-3 characters in the second chapter.

Just seems strange they'd add ranger of all classes when the other 5 are all directly tied to origin characters.

and they have always given you companions in the first chapter.

All of these characters are met in the first chapter...

 

[NJClaw]

Why do you assume that there will be a companion for every class? This is not a bioware game,it is larian one,and they have always given you companions in the first chapter. I don't think that they will be actual companions,maybe factions liaisons like in dragon age origins,or something similar. Most likely that is the reason why they decided to have only 4 member party. Dos2 had 5-6 companions,depending if you are custom character or premade,they also killed of the other 2-3 characters in the second chapter.

Maybe not a companion for every class, but do you honestly think that we are not getting AT LEAST a dwarf, a drow, a tiefling, an elf, and a gnome as companions?

 

[Yosharian]

So after playing a bit more, I have some more complaints. As pointed out earlier in this thread, in 5e skill checks just feel bad. It feels like there is no difference between a supposed expert on a subject and someone with no specialization in it at all. In terms of UI, space to skip dialogue and space to select dialogue on the same key is one of the most frustrating design decisions I have seen in a while and I hope that this gets fixed in future. Combat wise I feel like encounter size is in a good place, but enemies need more abilities and to be more tactical with how they play. As an aside, seeing a bear climb down a ladder was 1 of the more interesting things I have seen in a game.

Anyone who's played 5E knows how shit skill specialization is in that edition. Even with Expertise, you only start to get a decent bonus at later levels.

 

[ChildInTime]

so what happens if you side with the drow and wipe out the druid encampment?

I killed the drow bitch for her loot, but I guess you go the "evil" (retarded) path of killing all the tieflings and druids. Why would you trade those cool characters and that cute bard with her song for a bunch of smelly goblins I don't know.

I've seen the bard mentioned a few times and I have a feeling that I missed her

Here is her song. This is Lohse voice actress singing again I think.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

So after playing a bit more, I have some more complaints. As pointed out earlier in this thread, in 5e skill checks just feel bad. It feels like there is no difference between a supposed expert on a subject and someone with no specialization in it at all. In terms of UI, space to skip dialogue and space to select dialogue on the same key is one of the most frustrating design decisions I have seen in a while and I hope that this gets fixed in future. Combat wise I feel like encounter size is in a good place, but enemies need more abilities and to be more tactical with how they play. As an aside, seeing a bear climb down a ladder was 1 of the more interesting things I have seen in a game.

Anyone who's played 5E knows how shit skill specialization is in that edition. Even with Expertise, you only start to get a decent bonus at later levels.

Being untrained should really give a negative bonus or have the option entirely unavailable. The bonuses being trained give are too negligible compared to a d20. I understand at low levels you're meant to be a journeyman or something, but someone entirely untrained has a nearly equal chance of passing many of the same skill checks.

 

[Gargaune]

You have sneak attack but it works only if the enemy is disadvantaged or something,and only once lol.

As I recall 5E P&P rules, the Rogue can apply Sneak Attack to the first attack on an enemy they have Advantage against. You can get Advantage from a variety of circumstances, most common being attacking from Stealth or enemy being engaged with someone else in melee. I assume high ground would count too. I actually felt like the rules were too generous with Advantage from Stealth, so I nerfed it a bit by stating that you got it from the enemy being unaware of you, otherwise it leads to some silly gameplay where the Rogue keeps ducking behind the same damned barrel screaming "cunning action hide, cunning action hide!"

Nah stealth doesn't count as advantage,got really butthurt because of that. Also i don't think that high grounds matter. Anyway it is garbage system compared to 3.5 or pathfinder.

Well, for what it's worth, the PHB states that:

When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it. If you are hidden - both unseen and unheard - when you make attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses.

And as for Sneak Attack:

Beginning at 1st level, you know how to strike subtly and exploit a foe’s distraction. Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack if you have advantage on the attack roll. The attack must use a finesse or a ranged weapon. You don’t need advantage on the attack roll if another enemy of the target is within 5 feet of it, that enemy isn’t incapacitated, and you don’t have disadvantage on the attack roll.

Now, whether Larian haven't gotten around to implementing it yet or have chosen to rebalance the feature, I don't know.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You have sneak attack but it works only if the enemy is disadvantaged or something,and only once lol.

As I recall 5E P&P rules, the Rogue can apply Sneak Attack to the first attack on an enemy they have Advantage against. You can get Advantage from a variety of circumstances, most common being attacking from Stealth or enemy being engaged with someone else in melee. I assume high ground would count too. I actually felt like the rules were too generous with Advantage from Stealth, so I nerfed it a bit by stating that you got it from the enemy being unaware of you, otherwise it leads to some silly gameplay where the Rogue keeps ducking behind the same damned barrel screaming "cunning action hide, cunning action hide!"

Nah stealth doesn't count as advantage,got really butthurt because of that. Also i don't think that high grounds matter. Anyway it is garbage system compared to 3.5 or pathfinder.

Well, for what it's worth, the PHB states that:

When a creature can't see you, you have advantage on attack rolls against it. If you are hidden - both unseen and unheard - when you make attack, you give away your location when the attack hits or misses.

And as for Sneak Attack:

Beginning at 1st level, you know how to strike subtly and exploit a foe’s distraction. Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack if you have advantage on the attack roll. The attack must use a finesse or a ranged weapon. You don’t need advantage on the attack roll if another enemy of the target is within 5 feet of it, that enemy isn’t incapacitated, and you don’t have disadvantage on the attack roll.

Now, whether Larian haven't gotten around to implementing it yet or have chosen to rebalance the feature, I don't know.

You have a separate sneak attack that you can use which does extra sneak attack damage if you have an advantage

 

[fantadomat]

Why do you assume that there will be a companion for every class? This is not a bioware game,it is larian one,and they have always given you companions in the first chapter. I don't think that they will be actual companions,maybe factions liaisons like in dragon age origins,or something similar. Most likely that is the reason why they decided to have only 4 member party. Dos2 had 5-6 companions,depending if you are custom character or premade,they also killed of the other 2-3 characters in the second chapter.

Maybe not a companion for every class, but do you honestly think that we are not getting AT LEAST a dwarf, a drow, a tiefling, an elf, and a gnome as companions?

Did you play the last two larian games? What makes you think that those are not all the companions? The loading screen shows only them,i doubt that there will be more.

 

[Lacrymas]

I like how people are just now figuring out 5E, while we've been complaining about that stuff since the beginning of 5E and the beginning of the first BG3 thread. Maybe play some tabletop? It's very fun, I promise.

RE: Are these all the companions? Like I said before, I doubt there are going to be any more. The fact Larian are so keen on making them also PCs with their own stories, voice acting, and unique options makes it unlikely there will be more. Maybe 1 more, but I doubt it. This isn't BG1, you guys.

 

[Thac0]

Yeah, this game is way too unfinished to really play much currently. Still quite promising, I went into the swamps and killed a few lvl 4 and lvl 5 encounters on lvl 3. Still not hard in any stretch, but the lethality made for some exciting fights. I even lost once.
However too many scripts are broken currently, leading to quests becoming a jumbled mess. I have seen what I liked, and seen what I dislike. I will probably wait until the next big content patch and start a new run or so, pretty sure some questchains are already fundamentally broken on the old one.

I will probably send them a medium sized forum post or whatever later (do they have a feedback form or something?), to toss in my 2 cents.
If they continue along this development path however the end prodcut will certainly be worth my money.

I actually liked the companions, not liked as in they are sympathic individuals, but like in as I am interested in their storyhooks.
The living bomb was my favourite, which might be related to the fact that he is a minmaxed powerhouse in a sea of derelict idiots.
The Gith woman is interesting, but incredibly edgy. She started flirting with me after I betrayed and sold the vampire dude to a monster hunter, saying that she rarely finds joy, but she did so in my cruelty and betrayal. Apart from that she captures the hypermilitarism of the Githyanki pretty well, makes a nice counterpoint to the hipstershit of the Githzerai with Dakon and his 8 circles or whatever. I hope there is a Githzerai in this game somewhere aswell.

I sold the Vampire, never interacted with the Warlock and found Shadowheart to be boring. But for a 4 man party liking 2 out of 3 npcs is fine.
Also I hope the bard becomes a party member, good waifu.

Exploration is a mixed bag. The actual content itself is good, interesting maps with lots to see and enough skillchecks and everything, but there are so many annoying small gripes.
Way too many jump and run passages, where you have to painstakingly have each character individually jump over a ledge, fight, and then have them all jump back one by one after the event. Perception rolls are rolled so late you usually already triggered the trap by the time you roll for it.
Random spergy vine surfaces which root you and damage you just laying across the fucking ground. What is this razorwire shit? It is straight up much stronger than a lvl 1 spell entangle and it is just growing here?

I am growing towards the loot. Apart from the autism crayon coloring the actual items are fittingly sparce and adequate in power. As an example the loot for a longwinded lvl4-5 quest with a bossfight was a wand that lets me cast Ray of Sickness 1/day.
Honestly the loot is so good I might use this games loot tables for my campaigns in the future. So much low level loot that feels neither useless nor too impactfull. It is better than many homebrewed low magic item lists I have seen.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/j79k8k/spoilers_a_list_of_magic_items_found_so_far/
Some doods on r*ddit are compiling lists if someone want's to take a look. Maybe this game's itemisation will not be that much worse than BG1+2.

The biggest flaws for me right now, in order of magnitude, are:
DOS 2 dialogue system where only one npc participates in the dialogue and can roll skillchecks.
Awfull UI is pretty much copy pasted from DOS 2 and straight up doesn't work at times.
Bad pathfinding and Jump + no good control over the entire party makes exploring tedious.
Some changes to the sourcerules are made without understanding of them, leading to odd gameplay. As an example fighters are heavily nerfed by the implementation of Battlemaster and Wizards are heavily buffed by the cantrip changes.
As scarce as they are, when surfaces appear they are always as cancerous as before, if not more so.
Merchants carry too many magic items and they are coloured in an ugly way.
You find too much trash loot (less than in DOS tho) for a game with carry weight and such a bad inventory sorting system.

 

[fantadomat]

I like how people are just now figuring out 5E, while we've been complaining about that stuff since the beginning of 5E and the beginning of the first BG3 thread. Maybe play some tabletop? It's very fun, I promise.

Want to play some 5e then

 

[Takamori]

Stream this Codex session of pure spergery and in fighting!

 

[Tyranicon]

Yeah, this game is way too unfinished to really play much currently. Still quite promising, I went into the swamps and killed a few lvl 4 and lvl 5 encounters on lvl 3. Still not hard in any stretch, but the lethality made for some exciting fights. I even lost once.
However too many scripts are broken currently, leading to quests becoming a jumbled mess. I have seen what I liked, and seen what I dislike. I will probably wait until the next big content patch and start a new run or so, pretty sure some questchains are already fundamentally broken on the old one.

I will probably send them a medium sized forum post or whatever later (do they have a feedback form or something?), to toss in my 2 cents.
If they continue along this development path however the end prodcut will certainly be worth my money.

I actually liked the companions, not liked as in they are sympathic individuals, but like in as I am interested in their storyhooks.
The living bomb was my favourite, which might be related to the fact that he is a minmaxed powerhouse in a sea of derelict idiots.
The Gith woman is interesting, but incredibly edgy. She started flirting with me after I betrayed and sold the vampire dude to a monster hunter, saying that she rarely finds joy, but she did so in my cruelty and betrayal. Apart from that she captures the hypermilitarism of the Githyanki pretty well, makes a nice counterpoint to the hipstershit of the Githzerai with Dakon and his 8 circles or whatever. I hope there is a Githzerai in this game somewhere aswell.

I sold the Vampire, never interacted with the Warlock and found Shadowheart to be boring. But for a 4 man party liking 2 out of 3 npcs is fine.
Also I hope the bard becomes a party member, good waifu.

Exploration is a mixed bag. The actual content itself is good, interesting maps with lots to see and enough skillchecks and everything, but there are so many annoying small gripes.
Way too many jump and run passages, where you have to painstakingly have each character individually jump over a ledge, fight, and then have them all jump back one by one after the event. Perception rolls are rolled so late you usually already triggered the trap by the time you roll for it.
Random spergy vine surfaces which root you and damage you just laying across the fucking ground. What is this razorwire shit? It is straight up much stronger than a lvl 1 spell entangle and it is just growing here?

I am growing towards the loot. Apart from the autism crayon coloring the actual items are fittingly sparce and adequate in power. As an example the loot for a longwinded lvl4-5 quest with a bossfight was a wand that lets me cast Ray of Sickness 1/day.
Honestly the loot is so good I might use this games loot tables for my campaigns in the future. So much low level loot that feels neither useless nor too impactfull. It is better than many homebrewed low magic item lists I have seen.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/j79k8k/spoilers_a_list_of_magic_items_found_so_far/
Some doods on r*ddit are compiling lists if someone want's to take a look. Maybe this game's itemisation will not be that much worse than BG1+2.

The biggest flaws for me right now, in order of magnitude, are:
DOS 2 dialogue system where only one npc participates in the dialogue and can roll skillchecks.
Awfull UI is pretty much copy pasted from DOS 2 and straight up doesn't work at times.
Bad pathfinding and Jump + no good control over the entire party makes exploring tedious.
Some changes to the sourcerules are made without understanding of them, leading to odd gameplay. As an example fighters are heavily nerfed by the implementation of Battlemaster and Wizards are heavily buffed by the cantrip changes.
As scarce as they are, when surfaces appear they are always as cancerous as before, if not more so.
Merchants carry too many magic items and they are coloured in an ugly way.
You find too much trash loot (less than in DOS tho) for a game with carry weight and such a bad inventory sorting system.

Solid points. I would say it's fairly likely that githzerai make it into the final game if the monk class also does.

Overall I'm more hopeful for this game's future than I was when it was announced. Given that there's still time in the oven to finish this game's dev (or more likely, time for modders to remove all of Larian's dumb quirks), BG3 may actually be a game worth buying, if only for being the only worthwhile vidya with 5e's ruleset.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I like how people are just now figuring out 5E, while we've been complaining about that stuff since the beginning of 5E and the beginning of the first BG3 thread. Maybe play some tabletop? It's very fun, I promise.

 

[Lacrymas]

I like how people are just now figuring out 5E, while we've been complaining about that stuff since the beginning of 5E and the beginning of the first BG3 thread. Maybe play some tabletop? It's very fun, I promise.

Want to play some 5e then

If you didn't hold such... specific and tasteless political views that are actively dangerous to me and the DM of the group, I'd have invited you play with us next time I am in Sofia, but alas.

 

[Thac0]

Solid points. I would say it's fairly likely that githzerai make it into the final game if the monk class also does.

Overall I'm more hopeful for this game's future than I was when it was announced. Given that there's still time in the oven to finish this game's dev (or more likely, time for modders to remove all of Larian's dumb quirks), BG3 may actually be a game worth buying, if only for being the only worthwhile vidya with 5e's ruleset.

Maybe one day Solasta implements multiclassing and becomes good aswell.

It would be rad if we get a monk Githzerai companion. I want to have both in my party and see if they rip out each others throats or if there is a way to defuse the situation.

 

[Gargaune]

Jesus Christ, more streaming and I paused on a weapon description. "Dippable." Good to know, I'll get some garlic sauce. Oh, and another thing - why go through the trouble of adding a "crit cam" to focus in on your critical hits if you then obscure the action with another fucking d20 sprite?

That and climbing. The new "climb on" feature of boxes(along with climbing on the environment) is really nice. Having a lot of fun just exploring areas.

Spoiler

 

[Tyranicon]

Solid points. I would say it's fairly likely that githzerai make it into the final game if the monk class also does.

Overall I'm more hopeful for this game's future than I was when it was announced. Given that there's still time in the oven to finish this game's dev (or more likely, time for modders to remove all of Larian's dumb quirks), BG3 may actually be a game worth buying, if only for being the only worthwhile vidya with 5e's ruleset.

Maybe one day Solasta implements multiclassing and becomes good aswell.

It would be rad if we get a monk Githzerai companion. I want to have both in my party and see if they rip out each others throats or if there is a way to defuse the situation.

I forget, did Solasta license 5e or are they using SRD?

 

[Jezal_k23]

Is anyone else upset about the combat log? It's not only invisible by default, it's also kind of intrusively placed, you can't move it, it's tiny and not resizable.

 

[Thac0]

I forget, did Solasta license 5e or are they using SRD?

SRD pretty sure. Same as that blobber based on 5e.

 

[TemplarGR]

Yeah, this game is way too unfinished to really play much currently.

Like DOS 1 and 2 were in early access.

Still quite promising

Not really, no. The best content in the game is going to be what is already there right now. Like DOS 1 and 2.

 

[Thac0]

Is anyone else upset about the combat log? It's not only invisible by default, it's also kind of intrusively placed, you can't move it, it's tiny and not resizable.

Another part of the shit UI. You can't even see spell descriptions in the log, or even see damage dice on a hit that missed and did no damage. IDK if this is intentional, but it annoyed me on my second run since I wanted to find out what kind of fire the imps threw at me since the damage was laughably low. But since they never hit me I will never know I guess. All I know is that their to hit bonus is +1 due to being trained but having -1 in their mainstat.

 

[Gyor]

This GOG review hits the nail on the head about this title :

I stopped playing halfway through the game. Don't get me wrong: Baldur's Gate is certainly a good game. However, it suffers from the same lacks in world building and setting as Divinity Original Sin 2. Instead of depicting certain races - Tieflings, Aasimar, Elves etc. - as rare, secluded and enigmatic, they are thrown at you in quick succession and shown as everyday occurrence. Right in the beginning of the game, for example, you meet an entire settlement of Tieflings - in the vicinity of Baldur's Gate - who are just another kind of staple Humans who happen to have Horns. This 'sloppy' kind of writing was already present in DOS 2. A whole lot of potential was going to waste for quick "show effects" - stong abilities, powerful races and monsters were thrown at you in the first act, obviously to catch the attention of the players. It would have been very easy to start more slowly. Maybe to have the protagonists happen upon a human fisher's village after crashing, which is under attack by goblins. And a secluded druids grove that doesn't want to help. And then, somewhere in the third or fourth act, you might have come across Tieflings. Going fast and flashy is not always the best.

The whole village of tiefling makes sense lore wise, since asmodeus rise to power everyone with a single drop of devil blood turned tiefling.Thats why they are refugee too and in a ghetto. Every time there's an edition change there's a cataclysm, time of trouble, spell plague and now the avernus events.GOg reviewer is yet another ignorant normie.

Not just those of devil blood, the Toril 13 changed all Tieflings of a partucular generation into Infernal Tieflings tied to Asmodeus, no matter their original hertiage. The original type of Tieflings can still be concieved and born, but the Infernal Tieflings breed true no matter who they breed with (aside effect of the magic cast my the original coven of 13 Warlocks).

And I think the influx of Genasi from Abeir changed things for Genasi too.

Aasimar are weirder. In 4e they got linked to the 4e Devas and all of a sudden they were reincarnating all over Toril, and almost all of them were tied to the missing in Action Mulan Gods.

I will note that even before 4e Tieflings, Aasimar, and Genasi were common in the Old Empires region (which admittedly is far from the Swordcoast), I can only imagine how much more common they are now.

 

[NJClaw]

Why do you assume that there will be a companion for every class? This is not a bioware game,it is larian one,and they have always given you companions in the first chapter. I don't think that they will be actual companions,maybe factions liaisons like in dragon age origins,or something similar. Most likely that is the reason why they decided to have only 4 member party. Dos2 had 5-6 companions,depending if you are custom character or premade,they also killed of the other 2-3 characters in the second chapter.

Maybe not a companion for every class, but do you honestly think that we are not getting AT LEAST a dwarf, a drow, a tiefling, an elf, and a gnome as companions?

Did you play the last two larian games? What makes you think that those are not all the companions? The loading screen shows only them,i doubt that there will be more.

According to Swen, around 130 people worked on D:OS 2, while more than 300 worked on BG3. And a D&D game like this can't have only 5 companions. It's just not possible, my mind isn't able to comprehend it. Maybe they will go for some sort of sidekicks that don't have an origin story attached and that can't be selected during character creations, but I refuse to believe that they don't plan to add new companions to the game.

Even if 2022 comes and the full game gets released without additional companions, I will still stand behind my statement.

When 2025 comes and BG4 gets released in early access, I will still stand behind my statement.

The day I die, I will die screaming that it is not possible for a D&D game like this to have only 5 companions.

 

[BarbequeMasta]

Solid points. I would say it's fairly likely that githzerai make it into the final game if the monk class also does.

Overall I'm more hopeful for this game's future than I was when it was announced. Given that there's still time in the oven to finish this game's dev (or more likely, time for modders to remove all of Larian's dumb quirks), BG3 may actually be a game worth buying, if only for being the only worthwhile vidya with 5e's ruleset.

Maybe one day Solasta implements multiclassing and becomes good aswell.

It would be rad if we get a monk Githzerai companion. I want to have both in my party and see if they rip out each others throats or if there is a way to defuse the situation.

Wait, Solasta is confirmed not to have multiclassing?