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

[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.

 

[Silly Germans]

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.

If all spells require the same "fuel" you will most likely end up with using the same spell all the time, the best spell in its respective category.
There would be no incentive to use other spells. Cooldowns are an easy way to avoid that and help to differentiate spells further.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

If all spells require the same "fuel" you will most likely end up with using the same spell all the time, the best spell in its respective category.
There would be no incentive to use other spells. Cooldowns are an easy way to avoid that and help to differentiate spells further.

The answer to that problem would be to have the spells different enough to be useful in different situation. If I have 3 damage spells, one dealing 50 dmg, the other 30 and the last one 15 then I don't see how forcing me to circle through them makes the game more interesting.

 

[Anonona]

Maybe i just don't wanna answer everything.



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



Page 116 of the book Netheril: Empire of Magic

You could had started by citing this instead on some random video which didn't even had the answer. And still it wasn't explained in OD&D (which if you see my last post, even the creators weren't so bothered about explaining the lore behind the magic system itself, they were more worried about how it worked mechanically), so does that mean the Vancian was shit until e2? Besides, the explanation isn't really that good, I have seen fucking J-Rpgs having more explanation for their systems than this. Hell, I think literally most J-RPG have as a narrative cliche that an ancient civilization was very powerful with magic, until they fuck up, and the gods seal the most powerful magic, and now only a few can use it and with limited effectiveness.

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.

Ah, but you didn't say anything of this on your original post. You just decided to bring up Pathfinder all of the sudden too. Also, how is this better exactly? Is different, sure, but better? Why would I want to summon a fucking dog at level 16? I'm pretty sure in general you won't summon many of the lower level creatures except some specific ones for specific uses, which you can also do on D:OS 2 as you have the Incarnate (which can change elements), a familiar(cat), a baby drake, a falcon, the Willow, etc, each with its uses. Again, you also miss the original point. Multiple summoning are a pain in the ass in TB, so Pathfinder system becomes a pain in the ass to manage and the advantage of using multiple summonings is lost. Or you want to put that Thanademon and skeletons all in a single unit? Also you ignore again the whole tree of Summoning spells, which are designed to interact with your summons and make for very interesting strategies, like sacrificing them in exchange of a incredible attack, swaping places, CC, healing, etc.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

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.

If all spells require the same "fuel" you will most likely end up with using the same spell all the time, the best spell in its respective category.
There would be no incentive to use other spells. Cooldowns are an easy way to avoid that and help to differentiate spells further.

D&D system has the same issue, much worse in cRPGs due to the limited nature of utility spells compared to pnp roleplaying. Shitty spells simply aren't slotted.
D&D-system is actually worse in this regard because some low-tier spells are extremely powerful but have a low "cost", whereas the cost for such powerful spells could be individually tweaked when they cost mana. There's no way(sorta, there are reagents) in D&D to make a powerful spell 'cost' more while simultaneously making it available to a lower level spellcaster.

Anyway, you don't spam powerful spells because the game designer recognizes these are powerful spells and gives them a high cost to use(or some other reason such as putting a malus on the caster after using it more than once in a small period of time or somesuch)

edit:
I should clarify by "D&D system" I meant pre-4E. 4E and 5E use different systems(different from each other, too.)

 

[Cryomancer]

Mixing lore and gameplay mechanics like this is awful

Yep. Having the game mechanics contradicting lore is amazing. Lets have spells, weapons, armor and everything working completely different in lore and mechanic. Like D&D 4e, Diablo 3 and tons of other games. Nothing more fun than seeing a necromancer casting finger of death to ohk a ultra powerful enemy in a cutscene and when you get it, it deals 2 damage on 5 minute cooldown. /sarcasm

That topic The REAL overlooked sin in RPGs: disconnect between narrative and mechanics is perfect https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...nnect-between-narrative-and-mechanics.131091/

you will most likely end up with using the same spell all the time,

Only when you have a bs called "best spell" and it is AWFUL.

See Dragon's Dogma, ricochet shot is amazing vs living armor on CQB but complete useless vs thunder dragons at range.

Multiple summoning are a pain in the ass in TB

On TT is turn based and most DM homebrew rules to speed up the gameplay. A PC doesn't need to do the same; just make all summons move in a concurrent turn and the problem is fixed.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Yep. Having the game mechanics contradicting lore is amazing. Lets have spells, weapons, armor and everything working completely different in lore and mechanic. Like D&D 4e, Diablo 3 and tons of other games /sarcasm

That topic The REAL overlooked sin in RPGs: disconnect between narrative and mechanics is perfect https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...nnect-between-narrative-and-mechanics.131091/

It has nothing to do with that. The problem is that the explanation is too specific and uses terms that are game rules to describe how something works in the game universe. Vancian magic never needed this description before, that was just the way it worked.

 

[Sharpedge]

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.

You should have just linked to the last thread in which this discussion took place, featuring the same people too. I think it was the Dragon Age thread. His arguments haven't improved since then.

If all spells require the same "fuel" you will most likely end up with using the same spell all the time, the best spell in its respective category.
There would be no incentive to use other spells. Cooldowns are an easy way to avoid that and help to differentiate spells further.

The answer to that problem would be to have the spells different enough to be useful in different situation. If I have 3 damage spells, one dealing 50 dmg, the other 30 and the last one 15 then I don't see how forcing me to circle through them makes the game more interesting.

This on the other hand is a far more interesting topic, development of new magic systems which currently don't exist on games. I have thought about the mana system before and I think one that could be interesting would be a modified version that functions similarly to the spirit eater curse in MotB. The more mana a spell costs to cast, the greater it increases your "addiction" to mana, which decreases some meter and inflicts some penalties. This incentivizes a player to use magic more sparingly and not not just spam magic all the time. It also solves the problem of rest spamming (because resting will further the addiction) and it allows for powerful magic to exist, as you could have powerful spells which greatly increase the addiction and cause heavy player penalties for casting them.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Yep. Having the game mechanics contradicting lore is amazing. Lets have spells, weapons, armor and everything working completely different in lore and mechanic. Like D&D 4e, Diablo 3 and tons of other games /sarcasm

That topic The REAL overlooked sin in RPGs: disconnect between narrative and mechanics is perfect https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...nnect-between-narrative-and-mechanics.131091/

It has nothing to do with that. The problem is that the explanation is too specific and uses terms that are game rules to describe how something works in the game universe. Vancian magic never needed this description before, that was just the way it worked.

Plus the explanation itself is contradicted by in-universe materials. Magic works different on Faerun because Mystra said so, right? But Faerun is connected to the planes, which are connected to Sigil. Gods cannot directly intervene in Sigil. Why would an arbitrary magic law apply in Sigil were Mystra explicitly cannot impose her will as well as other DnD worlds where people never head about her. Just outright stating that that's the way magic in their universe would make more sense. We have laws of physics that cannot be full explained by scientists in our world, DnD may have laws of magic that cannot yet be explained by their wizards.

 

[Anonona]

Only when you have a bs called "best spell" and it is AWFUL.

See Dragon's Dogma, ricochet shot is amazing vs living armor on CQB but complete useless vs thunder dragons at range.

Using Dragon's Dogma as an example of balance? Please, I love that game, but it was unfinished and painfully so, and many classes had straight up broken shit that made the rest obsolete. Fuck, Warriors with 3 slots were completelly fuck, and Fighter's Dragon's Maw was so ridicolous strong you could spam it non-stop, eat some mushrooms, repeat, and you fucking win the game.

On TT is turn based and most DM homebrew rules to speed up the gameplay. A PC doesn't need to do the same; just make all summons move in a concurrent turn and the problem is fixed.

Except you actually control your summons in D:OS 2, so how you are going to make that work? It is not "summon and forget" like Pathfinder, if there is a single summon in that is for a good reason. You have a higher degree of control and you summons have multiple skills that are very powerful, so player control is mandatory. Without mentioning, which you seem to have ignored again, that many spells of the summoner's tree actually interact with your creature, some granting them new skills to use. Again, the system is different for a reason, not worst.

 

[fantadomat]

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.

Just spend the last hour reading random D&D lore lol. It is amazing how many times the goddess of magic gets fucked over only to get resurrected yet again by something lol. Also it is amazing how stupid and pointless her deaths are.

 

[DraQ]

If all spells require the same "fuel" you will most likely end up with using the same spell all the time, the best spell in its respective category.
There would be no incentive to use other spells. Cooldowns are an easy way to avoid that and help to differentiate spells further.

That only means something in your combat system is shit (usually due to bloat) and you are using cooldowns as bandaid for that.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

This on the other hand is a far more interesting topic, development of new magic systems which currently don't exist on games. I have thought about the mana system before and I think one that could be interesting would be a modified version that functions similarly to the spirit eater curse in MotB. The more mana a spell costs to cast, the greater it increases your "addiction" to mana, which decreases some meter and inflicts some penalties. This incentivizes a player to use magic more sparingly and not not just spam magic all the time. It also solves the problem of rest spamming (because resting will further the addiction) and it allows for powerful magic to exist, as you could have powerful spells which greatly increase the addiction and cause heavy player penalties for casting them.

Interesting idea but the problem is that the players could easily fuck themselves over by abusing magic when they are new at the game which would then come to bite them in the ass later. Perhaps players should be able to periodically permanently reduce or reset their mana addiction. For example players get super-addicted to magic which cripples their character, then find an item that lets them reset and learn to be more careful in the future.
The other dowside is that the mechanics would be hated by normies everywhere like the original MoTB curse. They can understand concepts like "you can't cast this spell because you don't have enough points" but "don't cast this spell over and over, you will regret it in 2 hours" is much more difficult to comprehend.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Just spend the last hour reading random D&D lore lol. It is amazing how many times the goddess of magic gets fucked over only to get resurrected yet again by something lol. Also it is amazing how stupid and pointless her deaths are.

That's the price of reworking your magic system over and over again. Good thing they don't try to rework the character system, it would be silly if for example Abyss exploded and reformed a couple of times.

 

[Silly Germans]

If all spells require the same "fuel" you will most likely end up with using the same spell all the time, the best spell in its respective category.
There would be no incentive to use other spells. Cooldowns are an easy way to avoid that and help to differentiate spells further.

The answer to that problem would be to have the spells different enough to be useful in different situation. If I have 3 damage spells, one dealing 50 dmg, the other 30 and the last one 15 then I don't see how forcing me to circle through them makes the game more interesting.

Just like i reduced mana systems to its worst outcome, you are reducing cooldown mechanics to their worst outcome, i.e. causing simple cycling.
I agree that in this case nothing is won, but cooldowns can interplay with the dynamics of the battle. If it is well designed it might not be
the best option to cycle through them nonstop but to consider when you should use them and what you are risking if you put your best spell
on cooldown right now. Cooldowns and Mana aren't even opposites and can, perhaps even should, be used together.

 

[fantadomat]

Just spend the last hour reading random D&D lore lol. It is amazing how many times the goddess of magic gets fucked over only to get resurrected yet again by something lol. Also it is amazing how stupid and pointless her deaths are.

That's the price of reworking your magic system over and over again. Good thing they don't try to rework the character system, it would be silly if for example Abyss exploded and reformed a couple of times.

Well they could have reworked it without killing her off only to be resurrected a bit later. It is a fucking fictional game after all.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Well they could have reworked it without killing her off only to be resurrected a bit later. It is a fucking fictional game after all.

That's what happens when you try to explain game mechanics like this

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

If all spells require the same "fuel" you will most likely end up with using the same spell all the time, the best spell in its respective category.
There would be no incentive to use other spells. Cooldowns are an easy way to avoid that and help to differentiate spells further.

The answer to that problem would be to have the spells different enough to be useful in different situation. If I have 3 damage spells, one dealing 50 dmg, the other 30 and the last one 15 then I don't see how forcing me to circle through them makes the game more interesting.

Just like i reduced mana systems to its worst outcome, you are reducing cooldown mechanics to their worst outcome, i.e. causing simple cycling.
I agree that in this case nothing is won, but cooldowns can interplay with the dynamics of the battle. If it is well designed it might not be
the best option to cycle through them nonstop but to consider when you should use them and what you are risking if you put your best spell
on cooldown right now. Cooldowns and Mana aren't even opposites and can be used together.

But if you wait for the perfect moment to use a given spell you risk a situation where you could use that spell and have it restored by the time you needed it. For example you put-away using charge which has 2-turn cooldown for 5 turns waiting for a good opportunity only to realize that you've wasted on charge by being indecisive. Which is why people end-up cycling through their best abilities.
If your goal is to make players hesitate before shooting away all their best spells then the old vancian system or limiting their per-encounter use is better.

 

[Cryomancer]

Why would an arbitrary magic law apply in Sigil were Mystra explicitly cannot impose her will as well as other DnD worlds

Amazing point. I never played a campaign in that setting. But the book is a interesting reading to understand the story behind many spells... The Feyworld is abandoned by the Gods. Right? So, can i use Karsus Avatar in Feyworld?

Fuck, Warriors with 3 slots were completelly fuck, and Fighter's Dragon's Maw was so ridicolous strong you could spam it non-stop, eat some mushrooms, repeat, and you fucking win the game.

I strongly agree. Sorcerers that uses only one weapon(archistaff) can have 6 skills. My point was not to compare DD warriors to magick archers, but to compare a magick archer skill usefulness depending the situation.

 

[DraQ]

Yep. Having the game mechanics contradicting lore is amazing. Lets have spells, weapons, armor and everything working completely different in lore and mechanic. Like D&D 4e, Diablo 3 and tons of other games. Nothing more fun than seeing a necromancer casting finger of death to ohk a ultra powerful enemy in a cutscene and when you get it, it deals 2 damage on 5 minute cooldown. /sarcasm

Don't be dense. Lore and mechanics should be consistent, but lore should never refer to purely mechanical aspects like AC, THAC0 or levels.

Mechanics is like imperfect lens through which we observe the "real" universe of an RPG.
Having lore mention those concepts is like having characters in the movie discussing lens flares in the very scene they are participating in.

Only when you have a bs called "best spell" and it is AWFUL.

True.

 

[Anonona]

But if you wait for the perfect moment to use a given spell you risk a situation where you could use that spell and have it restored by the time you needed it. For example you put-away using charge which has 2-turn cooldown for 5 turns waiting for a good opportunity only to realize that you've wasted on charge by being indecisive. Which is why people end-up cycling through their best abilities.
If your goal is to make players hesitate before shooting away all their best spells then the old vancian system or limiting their per-encounter use is better.

How about the idea of using skill and spells that have different effects under certain circumstances? In D:OS 2 there are skills like Sawtooth knife which bypass armor and does 100% your damage, but if you use it when enemies have no armor, you inflict bleeding. Also I guess powerful CC that has short duration means that casting it at a bad moment may mean that you just wasted it, specially if the enemy still has ways or nullifying your CC. I don't know how good these would be though.

I have thought about the mana system before and I think one that could be interesting would be a modified version that functions similarly to the spirit eater curse in MotB. The more mana a spell costs to cast, the greater it increases your "addiction" to mana, which decreases some meter and inflicts some penalties. This incentivizes a player to use magic more sparingly and not not just spam magic all the time. It also solves the problem of rest spamming (because resting will further the addiction) and it allows for powerful magic to exist, as you could have powerful spells which greatly increase the addiction and cause heavy player penalties for casting them.

I know a game with something similar to this. The jrpg Breath of Fire V: Dragon's Quarter has the D-system. The protagonist has the power of adopting a draconian form, which is a "I win" button. Like, literally, there is not a single enemy than can kill you once you transform and you can 1-hit anything, even bosses. The problem is, it increases you D-counter when you use it. The D-counter is always increasing through the game, functioning as a sort of time limit, and transforming makes it go even faster. And once it reaches 100%, you are killed and forced to restart the game. You are also pitted against enemies far more powerful than you (party level 30 against level 80+ bosses), so the game forces you to be smart to avoid using the transformation, but will try to temp you in doing so. Saves are limited, objects are limited, and fights are limited too, so you cannot grind. To gain more experience you have to fight big groups of enemies at the same time, but it is of course more risky, and dying means starting over from the beginning. Is quite an interesting game, but it failed because it was too different from others Breath of Fire and the time limit and resets weren't liked by many.

 

[Ontopoly]

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?

Shills will always be shills

 

[rusty_shackleford]

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?

Shills will always be shills

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5e>3e/3.5e