Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 Pre-Release Thread [EARLY ACCESS RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Cryomancer]

FR population is around 70.000.000 and the percentage of magic users should be around 1%, so we have to potential for an army of 700.000 casters. How the fuck have dragons survived this long.

How many scrolls of finger of death exists?

 

[Lacrymas]

Finger of Death is a 7th circle spell, finding enough mages to industrially create scrolls of it doesn't sound like an easy task. I think people have a skewed understanding of D&D levels at this point. The vast majority of mages aren't experienced enough to have access to the 7th circle. And the dragon has a higher initiative than a lvl 1 wizard, so they are going to be able to breath first almost always.

 

[Elex]

Yeah I remember, even in 2010 when I joined, Codex had this holy trinity - Fallout, Arcanum and Planescape: Torment, and BioWare games were considered not true RPGs. Only Volourn defended them Things had changed, indeed.

Of course, and the reason is “the blog” TM we must delete any mention of that thing from this site.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

It's probably easier to feed the dragon lethally terrible cuisine or something instead of rounding up all those wizards.

 

[NJClaw]

How many scrolls of finger of death exists?

Finger of Death is a 7th circle spell, finding enough mages to industrially create scrolls of it doesn't sound like an easy task. I think people have a skewed understanding of D&D levels at this point. The vast majority of mages aren't experienced enough to have access to the 7th circle. And the dragon has a higher initiative than a lvl 1 wizard, so they are going to be able to breath first almost always.

Yeah, the scrolls production represents a relevant bottleneck for the plan, but I guess humans would be able to find a way to mass produce them in order to exterminate a dangerous race.

Scribing a single scroll costs 1,135 gp and requires 3 days. So, assuming an endless reserve of gold, a single level 13 wizard can produce 121 scrolls each year. But he can't keep doing this every year, because he also needs 91 experience points per scroll (11.011 experience points per year). This means he has to kill 11 monsters with CR 10 (a fire giant, an eleven-headed hydra, a guardian naga, a rakshasa or a juvenile red dragon) for each year of production. Now, to lift the "endless reserve of gold" constraint I should open my old FR handbooks and search for some clue on how much money we can expect a small/medium kingdom to spend on this project, but even if I have a lot of time on my hands right now, I don't have THAT much.

A red dragon has +0 to initiative, so we can expect the wizards to beat him (not all of them, sure, so we need to take that into account). He can cast Nerveskitter, but so can the wizards.

Finger of Death is also a very inefficient way of doing this, since a Shivering Touch should be enough (it completely disables the dragon for 3 rounds and has no save) and it costs a lot less (only 187 gp, 1 day to scribe).

I mean, I'm not arguing that all dragons should be dead by now, but their existence sounds like a shady conspiracy and it surely raises some questions.

 

[Lacrymas]

There are also the political aspects to consider. Not all countries/kingdoms are going to be for the eradication of the dragons, so when one of them starts massing scrolls of finger of death it might mean all-out war, especially since those fingers of death can be used for other purposes.

 

[NJClaw]

There are also the political aspects to consider. Not all countries/kingdoms are going to be for the eradication of the dragons, so when one of them starts massing scrolls of finger of death it might mean all-out war, especially since those fingers of death can be used for other purposes.

Yeah, first we build the Realms Union, then we fight those fucking dragons

 

[Lacrymas]

Finger of Death also does damage (3d6) on a failed save, so if enough mages succeed at casting the spell the dragon is going to die either way. Even a Great Wyrm only has around 540 hp.

 

[Harthwain]

I mean, I'm not arguing that all dragons should be dead by now, but their existence sounds like a shady conspiracy and it surely raises some questions.

It'd say that it's unlikely to happen, because you can't expect people to unite on such a scale to get that kind of task done, on top of the usual human inefficiency. Also, statistics don't take logistics into the account. And there is a psychological factor to consider (are we really expecting MAGES to put their lives on the line just like that?).

 

[YLD]

Even within D&D rules, how many ranged attackers with enchanted projectiles would it take to successfully hit once or twice and deal 1 damage each before a dragon is dead? Probably one or two orders of magnitude fewer than what random European shitholes could muster to wage wars for much less legitimate justifications than a potential existential threat sitting on a fat pile of gold, that's for sure.

Even more, dragons are usually felled by parties of 3 to 8 high-level assholes who are only after money and glory. In our world people do tons of boring and dangerous shit their entire life simply because it is the job they are good at; all you need is a handful of such parties to tackle dragon-killing full-time and I doubt you will lack applicants once a concerned king offers a lifetime of gold and underage hookers for the job. In a world where most estimates put the number of dragons in the few hundreds (not all of these dragons being equally dangerous or even adults), the dragons would be purged in a couple of decades.

Sure dragons are fearsome in person, they sometimes possess human-like intelligence and have terrifying powers, but their solitary nature is their downfall. If you are an animal and a human collective has decided that you should die, you're fucked. Humans routinely eradicate entire ecosystems accidentally, indeed have been doing so ever since they realized that sticks can be sharpened to poke at things from afar (remember it didn't take guns and armies to eradicate the mammoths), they ravage entire nations for fun and fuck up their economy to wage total war out of spite, so I get a good laugh each time individual animals are presented as a credible threat.

In real life, megafauna might survive by doing their best to leave us alone and even then they usually die anyway because we kill them just in case, or for sports: almost all animals fear humans because animals that don't fear us are all dead. Some dragons are retarded enough to go out of their way to pick a fight with humans, so combined with the damage they might do when they chimp out that would definitely mark them as a hostile race to be exterminated as soon as feasible. We almost eradicated wolves because they chomped on a few sheep, what do you think we're gonna do to a race of literal citybusters who are deliberately hostile to us?

Very few non-D&D settings taking place in more advanced settings still feature dragons, so we all take for granted that dragons were exterminated at some point; settings like D&D are explicitely taking place at "that time" when there were still some megafauna around, on top of all the other theme park fantasy that makes no sense. It's fantasy, just roll with it.

Real life is boring, we are superpredators with no real competition except ourselves. Of fucking course dragons should be a joke to us.

 

[Cael]

Even within D&D rules, how many ranged attackers with enchanted projectiles would it take to successfully hit once or twice and deal 1 damage each before a dragon is dead? Probably one or two orders of magnitude fewer than what random European shitholes could muster to wage wars for much less legitimate justifications than a potential existential threat sitting on a fat pile of gold, that's for sure.

Even more, dragons are usually felled by parties of 3 to 8 high-level assholes who are only after money and glory. In our world people do tons of boring and dangerous shit their entire life simply because it is the job they are good at; all you need is a handful of such parties to tackle dragon-killing full-time and I doubt you will lack applicants once a concerned king offers a lifetime of gold and underage hookers for the job. In a world where most estimates put the number of dragons in the few hundreds (not all of these dragons being equally dangerous or even adults), the dragons would be purged in a couple of decades.

Sure dragons are fearsome in person, they sometimes possess human-like intelligence and have terrifying powers, but their solitary nature is their downfall. If you are an animal and a human collective has decided that you should die, you're fucked. Humans routinely eradicate entire ecosystems accidentally, indeed have been doing so ever since they realized that sticks can be sharpened to poke at things from afar (remember it didn't take guns and armies to eradicate the mammoths), they ravage entire nations for fun and fuck up their economy to wage total war out of spite, so I get a good laugh each time individual animals are presented as a credible threat.

In real life, megafauna might survive by doing their best to leave us alone and even then they usually die anyway because we kill them just in case, or for sports: almost all animals fear humans because animals that don't fear us are all dead. Some dragons are retarded enough to go out of their way to pick a fight with humans, so combined with the damage they might do when they chimp out that would definitely mark them as a hostile race to be exterminated as soon as feasible. We almost eradicated wolves because they chomped on a few sheep, what do you think we're gonna do to a race of literal citybusters who are deliberately hostile to us?

Very few non-D&D settings taking place in more advanced settings still feature dragons, so we all take for granted that dragons were exterminated at some point; settings like D&D are explicitely taking place at "that time" when there were still some megafauna around, on top of all the other theme park fantasy that makes no sense. It's fantasy, just roll with it.

Real life is boring, we are superpredators with no real competition except ourselves. Of fucking course dragons should be a joke to us.

You are trying to talk sense and real life to a bunch of dramaqueens who cry about how things are not realistic in a fantasy game while they play a wizard who hurls fireballs made of bat guano. The only correct reaction to these dramaqueens when they rear ugly their heads is total, utter, unending contempt laced with a liberal dose of sarcasm.

 

[Cryomancer]

You are trying to talk sense and real life to a bunch of dramaqueens who cry about how things are not realistic in a fantasy game while they play a wizard who hurls fireballs made of bat guano. The only correct reaction to these dramaqueens when they rear ugly their heads is total, utter, unending contempt laced with a liberal dose of sarcasm.

FAntasy games NEEDS to have inner consistency. If the fireball in the question dealt COLD damage, it would make no sense. If on Dark Sun, clerics works like on Faerun, it would't make any sense.

Read about sanderson's law of magic

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Aside from Fallout and Arcanum, what CRPGs did early Codexers actually esteem? I've occasionally seen old-timers write that the Codex originally possessed a proper disdain for Bioware and all its works, but there doesn't seem to have been much affection for older CRPGs (Wizardry-likes, Dungeon Master-likes, Gold Box, et cetera).

That's because true codexers esteem C&C, and Black Isle/Troika games were the epitome of such, while Bioware never had it.

Yes, I'm aware of the reasons that the Codex once valued Fallout and Arcanum while scorning Bioware games, but it remains unclear whether the Classic Codex Consensus Past had any favorite CRPGs outside the handful of games in the C&C subgenre.

 

[Cael]

You are trying to talk sense and real life to a bunch of dramaqueens who cry about how things are not realistic in a fantasy game while they play a wizard who hurls fireballs made of bat guano. The only correct reaction to these dramaqueens when they rear ugly their heads is total, utter, unending contempt laced with a liberal dose of sarcasm.

FAntasy games NEEDS to have inner consistency. If the fireball in the question dealt COLD damage, it would make no sense. If on Dark Sun, clerics works like on Faerun, it would't make any sense.

Read about sanderson's law of magic

Who said they didn't? The problem with dramaqueens is that they base their notion of "inner consistency of a fantasy world" on real life, while conveniently ignoring parts of the consistency that blows up their "logic".

 

[Foamhead]

I'm enjoying this thread because when I first joined in 2005 everyone called Baldur's Gate dog shit. Now everyone is ragging on BG3 because it won't be as good as 1 and 2. I can't wait until 2030 when BG4 comes out and everyone thinks it'll suck and not be as good at part 1,2 and 3.

Aside from Fallout and Arcanum, what CRPGs did early Codexers actually esteem? I've occasionally seen old-timers write that the Codex originally possessed a proper disdain for Bioware and all its works, but there doesn't seem to have been much affection for older CRPGs (Wizardry-likes, Dungeon Master-likes, Gold Box, et cetera).

That's because true codexers esteem C&C, and Black Isle/Troika games were the epitome of such, while Bioware never had it.

I wonder how long until everyone here thinks Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel for the PS2 was a great game and the new Fallouts suck donkeys for straying too far?

 

[Cryomancer]

I wonder how long until everyone here thinks Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel for the PS2 was a great game and the new Fallouts suck donkeys for straying too far?

We would need a epic decline to it happens. Most people here don't even consider Gothic 3 as a good game and IMO is a decent game compared to other games of his time(not good as G1 BTW). ABout what i've said about TB being slow, after like 10 hours of Dark Sun, i changed my mind. A encounter with a templar + a army of at least 15 guards took way less time than the same battle on a game like Wizardry would take.

 

[Serious_Business]

Declining degenerates

Does this mean that they are becoming pure and true

 

[Grotesque]

Well, the current hypotheses (besides Larian bashing) is that either the story is being told to someone after it took place or that the dialogue is from the perspective of the tadpole.

And that makes sense the same as watching a movie where actors do their thing without saying anything while a narrator conveys their lines in third person

 

[Lacrymas]

Declining degenerates

Does this mean that they are becoming pure and true

 

[DraQ]

Even within D&D rules, how many ranged attackers with enchanted projectiles would it take to successfully hit once or twice and deal 1 damage each before a dragon is dead? Probably one or two orders of magnitude fewer than what random European shitholes could muster to wage wars for much less legitimate justifications than a potential existential threat sitting on a fat pile of gold, that's for sure.

Even more, dragons are usually felled by parties of 3 to 8 high-level assholes who are only after money and glory. In our world people do tons of boring and dangerous shit their entire life simply because it is the job they are good at; all you need is a handful of such parties to tackle dragon-killing full-time and I doubt you will lack applicants once a concerned king offers a lifetime of gold and underage hookers for the job. In a world where most estimates put the number of dragons in the few hundreds (not all of these dragons being equally dangerous or even adults), the dragons would be purged in a couple of decades.

Sure dragons are fearsome in person, they sometimes possess human-like intelligence and have terrifying powers, but their solitary nature is their downfall. If you are an animal and a human collective has decided that you should die, you're fucked. Humans routinely eradicate entire ecosystems accidentally, indeed have been doing so ever since they realized that sticks can be sharpened to poke at things from afar (remember it didn't take guns and armies to eradicate the mammoths), they ravage entire nations for fun and fuck up their economy to wage total war out of spite, so I get a good laugh each time individual animals are presented as a credible threat.

In real life, megafauna might survive by doing their best to leave us alone and even then they usually die anyway because we kill them just in case, or for sports: almost all animals fear humans because animals that don't fear us are all dead. Some dragons are retarded enough to go out of their way to pick a fight with humans, so combined with the damage they might do when they chimp out that would definitely mark them as a hostile race to be exterminated as soon as feasible. We almost eradicated wolves because they chomped on a few sheep, what do you think we're gonna do to a race of literal citybusters who are deliberately hostile to us?

Very few non-D&D settings taking place in more advanced settings still feature dragons, so we all take for granted that dragons were exterminated at some point; settings like D&D are explicitely taking place at "that time" when there were still some megafauna around, on top of all the other theme park fantasy that makes no sense. It's fantasy, just roll with it.

Real life is boring, we are superpredators with no real competition except ourselves. Of fucking course dragons should be a joke to us.

Few points regarding Dragons:

• The Witcher novels put it maybe the most eloquently - dragons make for an interesting foil to humans (in a way any more or less fantasy human reskins don't), being lone intelligent superpredators in settings where intelligence implying knowledge directly implies arcane power, significantly blunting technological "equalizers" available to large scale civilizations. Them being not just (extinct or going there real quick) megafauna is kind of built into setting's assumptions.
• The make an interesting counterpoint to goblins and other such races - instead of being seen as vermin they actually have every right to see humans and assorted humanoids as such.
• Purely mechanical durability is the least significant measure of power. An intelligent dragon would probably not sit around waiting for that army of wizards or whatever manufacture their scrolls and come over to do battle. cRPGs really do blunt your sense of other party's agency, I'd wager.

It's puzzling, BTW, how none of the local wannabe Nazis have latched onto dragons given how perfect metaphor they are for majestic K strategists withering the onslaught by the unwashed hordes of r strategist barbarians.

 

[GarfunkeL]

They can't fuck busty blondes if they are dragons and that's the true motivation of wannabe-nazis.

 

[Lacrymas]

They can't fuck busty blondes if they are dragons

You'd be surprised.

 

[Cryomancer]

They can't fuck busty blondes if they are dragons

You don't need to be a dragon, you only need money to do that...

where intelligence implying knowledge directly implies arcane power, significantly blunting technological "equalizers" available to large scale civilizations

Most Dragons on video games are far weaker.

One thing that i loved about gothic 2 RETURNING is that dragons cast circle 6 spells(highest in the game), have summons, ulra quick regeneration, deadly breath weapon, powerful AoE that can throw you many meters away and only being 300m near fire/ice dragon makes you take fire/cold damage. On original game, they are pushovers BTW.

 

[Lacrymas]

If I had to reinvent/depict dragons, I'd have made their relationship to humans like the one humans have with animals in terms of brain power and overall superiority.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

If I had to reinvent/depict dragons, I'd have made their relationship to humans like the one humans have with animals in terms of brain power and overall superiority.

The intelligent dragon is already an old fantasy trope, mate.