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

[Dishonoredbr]

Holy shit, we are only ONE MONTH away from the release of the game of the century!

One month away from ''RPG 2''

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Champion... Why? But I ask again, why?

No Alchemist, No Skald, No Bloodrager and no Kineticist .. What's even the poi- Oh shit, Monk.. Can't wait to Monk Dip in this game.

 

[jf8350143]

The have announced total of 10 companions, and there is only one tiefling and one githyanki. The rest are either human, elf or half elf. That's just pathetic. They didn't even bother to include a dwarf companion.

Also they pretty much confirmed you can romance Jaheira. Except she looks like a old lady now. Guess you have to satisfy some weirdo's feitsh. Also the franchise has three games and she has romanced three different characters, what the hell.

 

[Gargaune]

Gargaune What's so bad about them? I haven't tried the game, so when I read something like this, I feel like I want to know what's up.

Why, thank you for asking, it's been a while since I've bellyached about this subject! It's like someone at Larian looked at NWN2 and thought "this tried to do roughly the same things we want to do, for the same reasons, how can I make our system much worse?... and came up with a solution.

Character multi-selection is done via a spring-loaded "toilet chain" stack, you have to drag portraits in and out of that stack to a certain range to change the current selection of characters you're commanding. There are no modal Shift+clicks on characters or portraits to add or remove them from your current selection, nor are there any keyboard accelerators or function keys to do it, and don't even dream about click-and-drag marquee selection. The only concession we got was an Unchain All keybind but nothing to let you quickly form subgroups, you must use the toilet chain which is unbelievably tedious for something that you'll be doing very, very often.

My other big gripe with the controls was the camera and the lack of edge turning. When you hit the screen edges, the camera will pan around - which is fine as a mode, but there is no other. You don't have an option to lock to a character and use the screen edges to turn your view, you have to hold down a key (MMB by default) and move the mouse, and with the nature of BG3's levels, you'll be adjusting your camera angle every thirty seconds. Additionally, camera pitch is tied to zoom level - zoom close in to the character, and you'll pitch up to see farther ahead, zoom out and you'll pitch down to "isometric" perspective. It might sound cool, but you don't have any means to control the pitch independently so you can never really settle on a perspective that's comfortable for you for any amount of time.

This might all seem trivial but it's not, there's nothing trivial about party selection and camera controls in a tactical 3D D&D game, these are functions you'll be relying on constantly. When I joke that it's worse than NWN2, I'm not actually joking at all - that's a quantifiable statement and I can hit stride with NWN2's controls, see my guide, but not with BG3's. I thought I'd get used to it but it was the opposite, the longer I played, the worse it got, to the point I couldn't bear it anymore and just gave up on the EA somewhere in the Underdark. Which was made all the easier because BG3 literally killed a mouse for me, the MMB finally gave up the ghost after all that camera turning.

The salt in the wound is that this (the party controls, at least) was a well known complaint throughout EA, not just griping from some random Codex asshole with a NWN avatar, go and ask Tuco Benedicto Pacifico for the link to Larian's own forum thread. And it would've been piss easy to fix, they eventually gave us that Chain All keybind, they just need a couple more modal click listeners or key accelerators for adding/removing characters for the current selection. The camera stuff too would've been peanuts, all of this crap could've been done inside of a lunch break. So yeah, I'm a little butthurt about that.

 

[Larianshill]

So, looking at companions we'll have...

Lae'zel - fighter
Shadowheart - cleric
Astarion - rogue
Gale - wizard
Wyll - warlock
Karlach - barbarian
Mintharra - paladin
Minsc - ranger
Halsin - druid
Jaheira - honestly, I have no fucking idea.
Helia (?) - bard (?)

Nearly complete representation, except for monk and sorcerer. Token paladin is evil, but maybe Karlach can become a paladin, Kelghar-style. A lot of evidence pointing that direction.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

When was the last time something like this happened?

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was moved from september to July last year.

 

[Robber Baron]

Here's hoping the 8 man party mod is up to date day 1

 

[Zayne]

Jaheira - honestly, I have no fucking idea.

Probably a few fighter levels and druid up to the top

 

[NecroLord]

So, looking at companions we'll have...

Lae'zel - fighter
Shadowheart - cleric
Astarion - rogue
Gale - wizard
Wyll - warlock
Karlach - barbarian
Mintharra - paladin
Minsc - ranger
Halsin - druid
Jaheira - honestly, I have no fucking idea.
Helia (?) - bard (?)

Nearly complete representation, except for monk and sorcerer. Token paladin is evil, but maybe Karlach can become a paladin, Kelghar-style. A lot of evidence pointing that direction.

Minsc and Jaheira are back as companions, not merely cameos?

 

[Larianshill]

Yes, they are both confirmed as companions.

Probably a few fighter levels and druid up to the top

This shit may have flown in the second edition, but not now, and I'm not even sure if the game will have multiclassing. Also, the game already has a druid companion, Halsin, giving you two druids is weird.

 

[Abu Antar]

Is there even multiclassing? Is it even worth it at a maximum level of 12?

 

[Shrimp]

So, looking at companions we'll have...

Lae'zel - fighter
Shadowheart - cleric
Astarion - rogue
Gale - wizard
Wyll - warlock
Karlach - barbarian
Mintharra - paladin
Minsc - ranger
Halsin - druid
Jaheira - honestly, I have no fucking idea.
Helia (?) - bard (?)

Nearly complete representation, except for monk and sorcerer. Token paladin is evil, but maybe Karlach can become a paladin, Kelghar-style. A lot of evidence pointing that direction.

Did I miss something or did they confirm that we're getting additional companions beyond the confirmed/named ones?

 

[Larianshill]

Did I miss something or did they confirm that we're getting additional companions beyond the confirmed/named ones?

Right in the steam update, they have confirmed Karlach and one more origin companion (probably Helia, who has been datamined for a while). We also get some non-origin companions - Minsc, Jaheira, Mintharra and Halsin have been confirmed.

 

[Larianshill]

Is it even worth it at a maximum level of 12?

Yes, sometimes. The most popular multiclass in 5e is a dip into warlock for one or two levels. A multiclass between druid and fighter, however, is questionable at best. There is already a class that does that - it's called ranger. Go play that.

 

[Delterius]

are clerics/druids shit fighters in 5e? I'd think that just pure druid would portray jaheira well enough

 

[Larianshill]

What makes or breaks you as a melee combatant is multiattack, which is a class ability. If you have multiattack, you are expected to fight with your weapon. If you don't have multiattack, you're either supposed to use magic, or you're a rogue with his sneak attack gimmick. Druids only gain multiattack through wildshaping into beasts, and even then, only Moon Druids are actually good at wildshaping. Clerics don't get multiattack, but they get a (terrible) feature at level 8 that adds a measly 1d8 damage to their weapon attacks.

 

[NecroLord]

What makes or breaks you as a melee combatant is multiattack, which is a class ability. If you have multiattack, you are expected to fight with your weapon. If you don't have multiattack, you're either supposed to use magic, or you're a rogue with his sneak attack gimmick. Druids only gain multiattack through wildshaping into beasts, and even then, only Moon Druids are actually good at wildshaping. Clerics don't get multiattack, but they get a (terrible) feature at level 8 that adds a measly 1d8 damage to their weapon attacks.

Can druids cast spells while shapeshifted? I remember there was a feat in 3E, 3.5E called "Natural Spell" which allowed them to cast while shapeshifted, but this is 5E.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Yeah, I'm calling it RPG of the Decade.

 

[Deadass]

Monk bros we have won

 

[Shrimp]

I can't imagine they'll remove the chain movement system in the full release so I'll just have to live with the quirks and annoyances associated with it, but my final hope for the 1.0 release is a revamped dialogue system that lets you swap characters mid-dialogue or at least let you participate in a conversation as multiple characters. I was never a fan of how some interactions would be treated as if it just was a one-on-one with all the remaining party members standing around doing nothing.

 

[Larianshill]

Can druids cast spells while shapeshifted?

Yes, on a level that won't be achievable in BG3. You can still concentrate on spells while wildshaped, however.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

TBH my only complaint is that I won't be able to finish my current run through BG2 before 3 is released. But the hype train reigns supreme!!

 

[Zayne]

I've quickly checked the classes and it seems that if I want a jedi-like spellsword character, the best option is Swords Bard - with full casting and additional attack.

Are there any good alternatives on that list?

Spoiler

I'm not necessarily opposed towards heavy armored spellsword

 

[Dodo1610]

Multiclassing confirmed

https://t.co/cuYPQsSHfn

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Multiclassing confirmed

https://t.co/cuYPQsSHfn

That should keep build autists happy I guess...