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

[Cryomancer]

DOS2 is actually good.

Good? Everything wrong with dos2 >

• Cooldowns on everything without any explanation. In a RPG, is interesting to have mechanics representing the game's lore and narrative. Contrary to rules like plate armor having a higher armor class vs slashes compared to blunt weapons on Baldur's Gate 2, which are rules that makes sense, cooldowns RARELY has any justification.
• No fast animation / concurrent turns. Seriously. I had Wizardry 8 PTSD flashbacks due the lack of this features. Dark Sun Shattered Lands and Temple of Elemental Evil was fun and engaging on turn based.
• Zimbabwe inflated numbers. Numbers should be measurements of things, They don't need to be ludicrous high by no reason. The numbers on DOS2 becomes soo high that they stop representing anything. Nizidramanii'yt, one of the hardest BG2 enemies has 200 hit points and most stats around lower 20s.
• Only numeric progression. You get all skills relative early on and then, they only trow bigger numbers. Is not like Baldur's Gate 2, where there are over 300 spells to learn and each new magical circle means that your sorcerer/mage can learn tons of news interesting spells. Even Gothic 3 which got rid of tier/circle based magic, requires that you have a lot of ancient knowledge and saturas for example will only teach hailstorm if you side with Adanos on the God's conflict. Even Diablo 2, which is a very mainstream game, a necromancer goes from a single weak skeleton to a army of skeletons, skeleton mages, revived monsters and a iron golem. On DOS2 a necromancer will have just one minion from the beginning til the end of the game.
• Item Fever - Item fever is when the monsters drops items that makes no sense for then to drop. For example, on Fallout New Vega,s if you wanna a anti materiel rifle and explosive .50 BMG rounds, you can kill every Deathclaw and other high level mob in the map and if they don't have the rifle and ammo, they will never drop. Enemies drop exactly what they are wearing, contrary to DOS2.
• Armor mechanic. It just makes all crowd control skills worthless.

Here's a sample of how ridiculous lvl 10+ actually is -

How do you proceed from here?

A lv 9/10 cleric being low land owner/nobility is not a problem; you can become a Baron at lv 5 on pathfinder kingmaker.

And high tier magic is far more limited on 5e.

 

[Lacrymas]

At this point your party members are small feudal lords , your adventures determines the outcome of wars and fate of entire countries . It's easy to keep going on,just think bigger scope, send them on far away journey to gather rare artefacts, the followers are still low level fighters that wont follow in dungeons. Even if they do , CR10+ encounters and attrition alone would wipe them out. Write some stronghold related quests too. A good Dm can bring your character to godhood , becmi covered that very well.

You go into wargame territory here, though. Ascending to godhood is just lazy and boring. The "core" of an RPG is a band of adventurers traveling together. When all of you are feudal lords with your own strongholds, that's kinda missing the point. And my main observation was more how D&D goes bonkers at lvl 10+.

 

[vortex]

DOS2 is actually good.

'k

Spoiler

 

[Cryomancer]

The "core" of an RPG is a band of adventurers traveling together

Wrong. The core of a RPG is role playing. Dungeon crawling is part of RPing but is not everything.

This feat is just to explain that a lv 10 cleric reach the same status as low nobility. And a lot of RPG's include player stronghold.

You get your barony at lv 5 on kingmaker, you can get your stronghold on baldur's gate 2 on chapter 2... And note, that 2e and Pathfinder 1e has way less usage limitation on high tier spells. What makes 5e unplayable at higher levels is that nothing is a threat. You get more hp than 3.5e, but spells, monsters, etc deals way less damage and there are no OHK effects. Fire Storm for eg, deals only 7d10 damage on 5e. Acid rain deals far more damage over time. And at lv 20 can deal 3d4+3d6+14d8 damage which is more than the double of 5e damage.

And PC's and NPC's get way less hit points after lv 10 on 2e. Soi the same spell on 2e is probably 4x deadlier than on 5e.

 

[Anonona]

Cooldowns on everything without any explanation. In a RPG, is interesting to have mechanics representing the game's lore and narrative. Contrary to rules like plate armor having a higher armor class vs slashes compared to blunt weapons on Baldur's Gate 2, which are rules that makes sense, cooldowns RARELY has any justification.

No fast animation / concurrent turns. Seriously. I had Wizardry 8 PTSD flashbacks due the lack of this features. Dark Sun Shattered Lands and Temple of Elemental Evil was fun and engaging on turn based.

Sure, yet you always fail to mention why it makes it bad beyond "muh immersion". Then when people point out that the vanecian system and memorizing spells too is a little bit of a stretch and poorly justified, you will just draw a dumb comparison like "it has precedents in literature!" as if that suddenly make it ok and it made total sense. Second point is subjective, I found the animations and combat to be fast enough not to bother me. It helps the game doesn't drown you in combat encounters.

On DOS2 a necromancer will have just one minion from the beginning til the end of the game.

You complain about combat being slow and now you want Necromancers to summon an army of undead? And yeah, sure, only one summon, but you fail to mention all the powerful and interesting spells like Shackles of Pain, Death Wish, Last Rites, Raining Blood, among others that can be combined to great effect. You can, for example, combine Shackles of Pain, Living on the Edge, and then use Last Rites, so you kill your opponent through the transferred damage, you survive, and resurrect a party member all in one go. Or the amount of spells that combine with Raining blood, from using the blood for healing, summoning, as a conduct for electricity etc. Without mentioning how spells of different schools can combine with each other.

• Armor mechanic. It just makes all crowd control skills worthless.

Bullshit. Running out of armor is a dead sentences exactly because you will be CC to dead, and managing to keep and recovers yours is an important part of the game.


I concede the rest of the points as issues it has, but they do not paint the whole picture. But the truth, is that you don't know jack shit, just parroting whatever other say about the game and have hardly play it because of your own personal biases and obsession with D&D systems and derivatives, and the games of your youth, where if a game doesn't fit your vision of what RPGs have to be, them you automatically hate them.

 

[Lacrymas]

The "core" of an RPG is a band of adventurers traveling together

Wrong. The core of a RPG is role playing.

Not in video game adaptations. There are 2 (3) RPGs in existence which focus on roleplaying - AoD and Fallout (and 2).

 

[NJClaw]

The "core" of an RPG is a band of adventurers traveling together

Wrong. The core of a RPG is role playing.

Not in video game adaptations. There are 2 (3) RPGs in existence which focus on roleplaying - AoD and Fallout (and 2).

I still haven't finished it, but I would count also Expedition: Vikings at least.

 

[Lacrymas]

Haven't played either of the Expeditions games. Your stats influence the things you can do in that (those) game(s)? I didn't know that.

 

[fantadomat]

Haven't played either of the Expeditions games. Your stats influence the things you can do in that (those) game(s)? I didn't know that.

Do you even play RPGs,nigger? Those two are one of the best RPGs in the last decade. Tho i kind off am not surprised that lariantards haven't played good RPGs.

 

[NJClaw]

Haven't played either of the Expeditions games. Your stats influence the things you can do in that (those) game(s)? I didn't know that.

Your stats and skills determine how you can approach encounters and situations. If you have high Finesse, you can stab an opponent before the fight begins; if you have high Diplomacy/Leadership, you can convince a faction to become your ally; if you have high Sense, you can understand what's going on around you and how to take advantage of the situation.

But I was thinking more about the fact that you can play a diplomacy-focused explorer or a blood-thirsty viking.

 

[Cryomancer]

little bit of a stretch and poorly justified

Wrong. Vancian magic system is 100% based on literature and the explanation dates the time of Karsus. Mystra established certain rules to avoid another Weave destruction.

slow and now you want Necromancers to summon an army of undead?

Make then being controlled like one minion. So you order all minions to attack a target, all will move and attack at the same time.

Most DMs do that on P&P because manually rolling everything reduces the game speed by a lot. If you have 20 skeletons but all are attacking the same target and rolling averages, you are maintining the minion master power fantasy without slowing the game.

 

[Poseidon00]

So have the Larian bootlickers come to grips with the fact that 5e is a terrible system and that BG3 will be awful modernized garbage yet?

 

[Saravan]

So have the Larian bootlickers come to grips with the fact that 5e is a terrible system and that BG3 will be awful modernized garbage yet?

I think you guys need to cry at least 200 pages more to truly drive the point home.

 

[Mortmal]

At this point your party members are small feudal lords , your adventures determines the outcome of wars and fate of entire countries . It's easy to keep going on,just think bigger scope, send them on far away journey to gather rare artefacts, the followers are still low level fighters that wont follow in dungeons. Even if they do , CR10+ encounters and attrition alone would wipe them out. Write some stronghold related quests too. A good Dm can bring your character to godhood , becmi covered that very well.

You go into wargame territory here, though. Ascending to godhood is just lazy and boring. The "core" of an RPG is a band of adventurers traveling together. When all of you are feudal lords with your own strongholds, that's kinda missing the point. And my main observation was more how D&D goes bonkers at lvl 10+.

You could use small wargame mechanisms , use the excellent stronghold and followers from matt collvile if you play 5E but its really not mandatory . If in classic d&d crawling is the core element , the 1984 becmi version already had a well designed stronghold system. Its part of d&d at 9 in becmi you got to build a stronghold, cleric their temple, demi humans some clan hall , thief a city guild etc.. .
Its a roleplaying game, you play characters in a living breathing world, you start as pennyless vagrant , you risk your life to get riches worth the lifetime of several commoners, you take insane risks for what ? There's a reason you want riches, at some point you'll use them to buy a title, your guildhouse, your harem whatever..Else it makes no sense at all. Dungeons are deadly , rewards must be appropriate. The fighter will build a stronghold controlling a trade route, which leads to more adventures, the mage a tower and get into crafting very powerful items, thus more higher level adventures in even more dangerous places.Then you will never have enough, you want to rule the country, adventures will lead to that, followed up by quest for immortality and godhood.
D&D is a power trip and intended to be played like this , even more in previous editions .

 

[Anonona]

Wrong. Vancian magic system is 100% based on literature and the explanation dates the time of Karsus. Mystra established certain rules to avoid another Weave destruction.

Like fucking clockwork. Also really amusing, seems like you have limited yourself to skip over my post and ignore my point. But even more amusing is that you post those videos, which use books published by WoTC themselves much later after the invention of the system and the release of Baldur's Gate itself to justify the casting system, as if Larian couldn't just do the same. You could have at least have posted the real literary inspiration for the magic system, which are the "Dying Earth" novels by Jack Vance, which works exactly like D&D, yet the games still lacked a convincing in-universe explanation as to why it was like that until later. Also I have skimmed a bit through the video, but I couldn't find the explanation as to why you have to memorize spell and then forget them, just that the reworking of the weave meant that spell over level 10 stop functioning. Could you perhaps post a timestamp, please?

Make then being controlled like one minion. So you order all minions to attack a target, all will move and attack at the same time.

Most DMs do that on P&P because manually rolling everything reduces the game speed by a lot. If you have 20 skeletons but all are attacking the same target and rolling averages, you are maintining the minion master power fantasy without slowing the game.

So, the only reason you don't like it is that it doesn't fulfill your necromancy fantasy. Because it seems you don't even mind if they work mechanically the same. Instead of a single, very powerful summoned creature you wanted a small army of weak skeletons, so this make necromancy bad. This is too subjective to be considered as serious criticism.

 

[Lacrymas]

Then you will never have enough, you want to rule the country, adventures will lead to that, followed up by quest for immortality and godhood.
D&D is a power trip and intended to be played like this , even more in previous editions .

But does anyone actually like playing this way? Most campaigns end before ever reaching that point and it's a prudent think to ask why. I certainly never liked it and the very few campaigns I've been a part of, both as a DM and as a player, have been lowish lvl. That campaign about the commoners trying to pay the feudal lords' demands didn't even have levels per se, all of em were lvl 1 commoners. It was pretty fun and interesting. I just don't see the point of reaching godhood, it's too abstract a goal. At most I can see a band of lvl 10ish characters trying to overthrow a king or searching for a powerful lich using their accumulated wealth. Feudal lords banding together to go dungeon delving as if they are lvl 3 again doesn't seem convincing to me.

 

[Anonona]

Here, Victor, is a very interesting, article written by Gygax himself about the creation of D&D magic system. It explains why it was chosen like that, the principles about why it helped to balance the game, a comparison to other systems from different games and literature and more. Very interesting stuff really.

https://archive.org/stream/TheStrategicReviewDec1975/The Strategic Review - April 1976#page/n1/mode/2up


But what stuck to me was the following passage.

"The principal error here is that the one 1st level spell allowable to a 1st-level magic-user could be used endlessly (or perhaps at frequent intervals) without the magic-user having to spend time and effort re-memorizing and preparing again after a single usage. Many players also originally thought scrolls containing spells could be reused as often as desired." ...
"To further compound the difficulties, many dungeon-masters and players, upon learning of the more restrictive intent of the rules, balked. They enjoyed the comic book characters, incredible spells, and stratospheric levels of their way of playing"

Does this remind you of anything? The fact that there were many players and DMs that hated the system at the beginning because it didn't fit with their preconceived fantasies of what wizards were supposed to do and how magic works? And you know what is more funny? Before he became greedy once he realized that he could make some mad cash with D&D, Gygax himself was completely ok with GM having freedom to make their own systems and wasn't rally that concern to explain the "lore" behind it, so much as to make it fun to play and balanced.

 

[DraQ]

Good? Everything wrong with dos2 >

• Cooldowns on everything without any explanation. In a RPG, is interesting to have mechanics representing the game's lore and narrative. Contrary to rules like plate armor having a higher armor class vs slashes compared to blunt weapons on Baldur's Gate 2, which are rules that makes sense, cooldowns RARELY has any justification.
• No fast animation / concurrent turns. Seriously. I had Wizardry 8 PTSD flashbacks due the lack of this features. Dark Sun Shattered Lands and Temple of Elemental Evil was fun and engaging on turn based.
• Zimbabwe inflated numbers. Numbers should be measurements of things, They don't need to be ludicrous high by no reason. The numbers on DOS2 becomes soo high that they stop representing anything. Nizidramanii'yt, one of the hardest BG2 enemies has 200 hit points and most stats around lower 20s.
• Only numeric progression. You get all skills relative early on and then, they only trow bigger numbers. Is not like Baldur's Gate 2, where there are over 300 spells to learn and each new magical circle means that your sorcerer/mage can learn tons of news interesting spells. Even Gothic 3 which got rid of tier/circle based magic, requires that you have a lot of ancient knowledge and saturas for example will only teach hailstorm if you side with Adanos on the God's conflict. Even Diablo 2, which is a very mainstream game, a necromancer goes from a single weak skeleton to a army of skeletons, skeleton mages, revived monsters and a iron golem. On DOS2 a necromancer will have just one minion from the beginning til the end of the game.
• Item Fever - Item fever is when the monsters drops items that makes no sense for then to drop. For example, on Fallout New Vega,s if you wanna a anti materiel rifle and explosive .50 BMG rounds, you can kill every Deathclaw and other high level mob in the map and if they don't have the rifle and ammo, they will never drop. Enemies drop exactly what they are wearing, contrary to DOS2.
• Armor mechanic. It just makes all crowd control skills worthless.

That's all true (apart from only numeric progression - you get new skills some of which need points in two different abilities and will generally keep your skill points busy, if anything BG had fuck all progression for any non-caster character and DOS2 still has >200 spells and spell like skills) and all shit (apart from fast animations which I don't really give fuck about) - and yet it's still much more enjoyable game than BG.

Location design shits on BG from so high up turds need aerodynamic shielding.
Combat mechanics (yes, with idiotic armor system AND moronic cooldowns) shits on BG from so high up turds need aerodynamic shielding.
Environmental reactivity shits on BG from so high up turds need aerodynamic shielding.
General interactivity shits on BG from so high up turds need aerodynamic shielding.
Story, ok BG had fairly serviceable story, but it was buried underneath a mountain of awful pacing and it still feels like two submarines competing on which makes a better aircraft (especially given the underlying writing was still shit most of the time - seriously, if Minsc and Boo are BG's definition of funny, then Larian, which did accomplish actual comedy, mind you, on purpose and more than once, wins by default).

Now, we have Larian working with source material that disallows any of the shit decisions they insisted on incorporating into any of their games to date - this is pretty much the equivalent of that moment when after you were given sound trouncing your opponent reveals that he is not actually left handed.

 

[Cryomancer]

skip over my post and ignore my point.

Maybe i just don't wanna answer everything.

which use books published by WoTC themselves much later after the invention of the system and the release of Baldur's Gate itself to justify the casting system

Wrong, the story of Karsus dates 2e. Netheril: Empire of Magic is a 2e book https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17546/Netheril-Empire-of-Magic-2e

MYSTRYL appears on page 49 on that book. Many 11th tier spells exists only on 2e, for eg

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mavin's_worldweave

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Proctiv's_breach_crystal_sphere

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Karsus's_avatar

planation as to why you have to memorize spell and then forget them,

Page 116 of the book Netheril: Empire of Magic

if they work mechanically the same. Instead of a single, very powerful summoned creature you wanted a small army of weak skeletons

That is not true because you always summon the same thing. Only the numbers are different. On Kingmaker, summon monster IX can summon a Thanademon. Summon monster I, a weak dog. Let the player decide between quality, quantity and anything in between.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I guess all Larian has to do to have their bullshit cooldown explained by lore is to have one character say "god of magic said that it would be bothersome if wizards cast the same spell over and over again so he made them unable to do it". What a lazy piece of writing.
There is one logical way of limiting Wizard's power which is casting using mana (alternatively casting using stamina or health). You have your magic fuel, without the fuel you can't cast any more spells. I don't understand why people try to change it. That's how psionic works in ADnD.

 

[DraQ]

I guess all Larian has to do to have their bullshit cooldown explained by lore is to have one character say "god of magic said that it would be bothersome if wizards cast the same spell over and over again so he made them unable to do it". What a lazy piece of writing.
There is one logical way of limiting Wizard's power which is casting using mana (alternatively casting using stamina or health). You have your magic fuel, without the fuel you can't cast any more spells. I don't understand why people try to change it. That's how psionic works in ADnD.

Reagents are also good.

 

[Mortmal]

Then you will never have enough, you want to rule the country, adventures will lead to that, followed up by quest for immortality and godhood.
D&D is a power trip and intended to be played like this , even more in previous editions .

But does anyone actually like playing this way? Most campaigns end before ever reaching that point and it's a prudent think to ask why. I certainly never liked it and the very few campaigns I've been a part of, both as a DM and as a player, have been lowish lvl. That campaign about the commoners trying to pay the feudal lords' demands didn't even have levels per se, all of em were lvl 1 commoners. It was pretty fun and interesting. I just don't see the point of reaching godhood, it's too abstract a goal. At most I can see a band of lvl 10ish characters trying to overthrow a king or searching for a powerful lich using their accumulated wealth. Feudal lords banding together to go dungeon delving as if they are lvl 3 again doesn't seem convincing to me.

Of course they do in good campaigns ,but if the game is poorly handled and never get past lower levels with bland and uninspiring adventures done by lazy ,inept , DMs accompanied by players not commited to the game , late, playing on their phones, like 90% of the games you'll find online , you will never experience that. I am pretty sure you got accustomed to such mediocrity. Thats where CRPG shines, no more hassle...Too bad they arent making any anymore .
It's extremely hard to find a good group,usually all of them were DM once too . When you get that you just dont mix with anyone else nor invite anyone . If you dont see what can be done at higher levels you just dont have enough experience at roleplaying or imagination, dungeon delving is a broad term .Higher level opens more political intrigues, higher challenges , exploring alternate planes , or just plain classic dungeons with much higher CR.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Mixing lore and gameplay mechanics like this is awful

 

[guestposting]

Feudal lords banding together to go dungeon delving as if they are lvl 3 again doesn't seem convincing to me.

They’re warrior aristocrats, it’s what they do. “Get a few well-armed friends together and start some shit” was practically the number one pastime for real world noblemen.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There is one logical way of limiting Wizard's power which is casting using mana (alternatively casting using stamina or health). You have your magic fuel, without the fuel you can't cast any more spells. I don't understand why people try to change it. That's how psionic works in ADnD.

iirc spell points were an alternative rule as early as uh.. AD&D? I want to say it's in the original Unearthed Arcana.