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

[Joseph Stalin]

Oh, by the by, I've also written Larian Studios directly, asking them what, in light of the upcoming third title, will be their stance on the canon of the previous two games - which events happened and which didn't; will they reference the adventure modules etc. The polite gentlemen replied that Larian Studios does not have, as of yet, an established canon to the series. I was slightly incredulous, to say it mildly, seeing as how the game has been, at that point, in development for around two years. His reaction was... rather feisty.

 

[fantadomat]

Oh, by the by, I've also written Larian Studios directly, asking them what, in light of the upcoming third title, will be their stance on the canon of the previous two games - which events happened and which didn't; will they reference the adventure modules etc. The polite gentlemen replied that Larian Studios does not have, as of yet, an established canon to the series. I was slightly incredulous, to say it mildly, seeing as how the game has been, at that point, in development for around two years. His reaction was... rather feisty.

Ahhh it makes sense,the project is a mess. If they had all that shit planned out and worked on,they would have changed the dialogue being from the narrator's point of view. That shit needs a lot of work to be done,thus they wouldn't have change it. They didn't had anything ready beyond an updated engine,demo level and a trailer.

 

[Joseph Stalin]

You may laugh, dear lurkers of the Codex, but it was my first experience of a PR Representative calling a customer an "arrogant dick." How rude.

 

[fantadomat]

You may laugh, dear lurkers of the Codex, but it was my first experience of a PR Representative calling a customer an "arrogant dick." How rude.

Sounds like a good read,post a pic of the mail,or you are a lying attentionwhore cunt !

 

[deuxhero]

Reminder that, by the time of 5E, rogue Halruaan have been selling airships on the open market (which have explicitly been bought by multiple countries) for over a hundred years while the Lantanna have had all kinds of wondrous tech for over two hundred while also being enterprising traders, but none of this matters because Forgotten Realms is a shitty setting where countries simply cease to matter if they don’t directly border the place where the story is set. Thus all technology in BG3 will be exactly the same as it has been in the FR for the last millennium.

Isn't this just like Warhammer Fantasy? Or Middle-Earth? Or Rivellon, where technology randomly appears and disappears throughout the ages? Or Thedas, where nobody outside of the Qu'nari possesses any advanced technology?

Warhammer Fantasy is literally a setting where the Empire uses renisance style gun spam. Even with the shitty world wrecking GW did a few years ago, they're still progressing in tech.

People say Rivellon is a good setting?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There's no reason for technology to advance if you have magic.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

There's no reason for technology to advance if you have magic.

There no reason to use magic if you can advance technology. Especially with Vancian casting system.
Life in feudal society which besieged by apex predators is shitty enough to think if magic power available to only several "chosen ones" is really worth of suffering for all sentient races for centuries. Even for casters their "gift" can be sometimes a curse, when average people expect magician to save the day with spell, but caster can't do anything because she/he forgot some shitty spell from first circle.
Technology can give to average people relatively comfortable life without relaying on cast of gifted elitists with memory loss and more predictable in many cases.
For sure , fireballs impressive and all, but can caster transport several tons of grain every day from one city to another? Can magician give a warm water to bath tubes in millions houses?
Hell, technology is better at killing things, maybe first muskets, bombards and cannons are a bit clumsy to use, but further advancement - benefits are higher. Almost no hide/shell can stop projectile that moves with speed of sound and even if tough fuckers with such natural armor exist - poison gas, nuclear weapons, napalm and laser weaponry can fix this.
I mean, magic has some benefits too, but it available only for few people and very restrictive in power to the point that sometimes benefits don't outweigh shortcomings. After all, casters forced by their organism to shit in same awful unhygienic toilets as everyone else, otherwise alternative would be shitting in open field or forest with risk of catching pointy spear in his/her ass from kobolds that just happen to camp nearby.

Yeah, I know that my criticism of magic is weird since I like playing caster, but I don't think that people would pass up opportunity to compensate some shortcomings of magic with technology as time passes and remain in same deep shit for generations. And we already got decades of pure magic settings.

 

[Oreshnik Missile]

Real question is combining magic and technology, but that would be tough to write since you'd need to really understand technology. Trying to mass-produce magic with Mentats or autist breeding programs would be another thing.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There no reason to use magic if you can advance technology. Especially with Vancian casting system.

Absolute bullshit.
Yeah, what reason would anyone have to magically create food and water from nothing? Genius. Might as well ask what reason there would be to use Wish to create a utopia.

For sure , fireballs impressive and all, but can caster transport several tons of grain every day from one city to another?

Yeah, if only they could conjure food. Before you know it, even priests and druids would be able to do it, madness.

Hell, technology is better at killing things, maybe first muskets, bombards and cannons are a bit clumsy to use, but further advancement - benefits are higher. Almost no hide/shell can stop projectile that moves with speed of sound and even if tough fuckers with such natural armor exist - poison gas, nuclear weapons, napalm and laser weaponry can fix this.

It seems you've forgotten that the most powerful D&D mages are essentially reality warpers.

 

[Harthwain]

There's no reason for technology to advance if you have magic.

There is one reason: availability. Can everyone use magic? Because everyone is able to use technology, even though not everyone can create said technology.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There's no reason for technology to advance if you have magic.

There is one reason: availability. Can everyone use magic? Because everyone is able to use technology, even though not everyone can create said technology.

But who will create said technology though?
The topic is specifically about forgotten realms where most intelligent people will be mages.
There will be very, very few people capable of innovating that aren't already mages to begin with.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Because everyone is able to use technology

Even this is heavily open to contention.

 

[Lacrymas]

Being mages with long lifespans will allow them to be inventors as well. Not to mention gnomes already have advanced technology like crane lifts that look like tanks. Here's the deal with magic irl - the mages would demand exorbitant amounts of money to conjure food or benefit someone else in general, so technology won't be superfluous. Also entertainment like music, film, and video games.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Absolute bullshit.
Yeah, what reason would anyone have to magically create food and water from nothing? Genius. Might as well ask what reason there would be to use Wish to create a utopia.

Yeah, if only they could conjure food. Before you know it, even priests and druids would be able to do it, madness.

It seems you've forgotten that the most powerful D&D mages are essentially reality warpers.

Except Wish does not fucking work like that, there heavy limitations, otherwise why there is still monsters and natural disaster in FR? Oh, right, because this spell is treacherous as wishes that granted by Jinn and should not be casted without many precautions and limitations.

Yeah, if only they could conjure food. Before you know it, even priests and druids would be able to do it, madness.

Good luck with attempting to feed a sizeable town with several autists that can cast spells only restricted amount per day. Btw these autists somehow should protect town from apex predators that can't be killed with average weapons, but I guess spell slot distribution is not fitting in your idealistic views.

It seems you've forgotten that the most powerful D&D mages are essentially reality warpers.

It seems that you forgotten how fucking hard it is to study magic and survive and only few manage to reach highest power. And services of these few are VERY costly.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Except Wish does not fucking work like that, there heavy limitations,

No, Limited Wish has limitations.

The wish spell literally grants the desire of the caster, altering reality to do so.

Oh, right, because this spell is treacherous as wishes that granted by Jinn and should not be casted without many precautions and limitations.

The assumption is that anyone smart enough to be able to cast it isn't dumb enough to word it in a way that would get twisted.

Good luck with attempting to feed a sizeable town with several autists that can cast spells only restricted amount per day.

How much food do you eat, fatty?

You create 45 pounds of food

Btw these autists somehow should protect town from apex predators that can't be killed with average weapons, but I guess spell slot distribution is not fitting in your idealistic views.

No, the guards with magically enchanted equipment will do it.

 

[NJClaw]

In common imaginary, wizards are almost always on a quest to gain more power. If technology can be used to wield and control magic to even greater effects, there's no reason why wizards shouldn't research it. Sure, a wizard can use his teleport spell to go from one place to another, but maybe he can improve said spell through technology to create a teleporting train. He can use a fireball spell to kill some rats, but maybe he can use it to power up a mass-destruction weapon.

Obviously, unless some very specific precautions are taken (like in Arcanum), in a setting where magic and technology coexist like this, the line between technology and magic items will necessarily be extremely blurred.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

No, Limited Wish has limitations.

Any wish has limitations otherwise world of FR would be not looking in the way it does. If Wish spell had no limitations - no war/plague/hunger/natural disasters and other suffering, which clearly isn't the case.

The assumption is that anyone smart enough to be able to cast it isn't dumb enough to word it in a way that would get twisted.

In the world without science to at least partly comprehend world that surrounds caster, anyone who isn't omnipotent can make mistake with this spell. And at best it would result in some weird shit like houses which made from water and it in worst case this spell would destroy the world.
It's not about being dumb or not, it's about amount of knowledge and this knowledge can be amassed only through experiments to test theories aka scientific way to understand the world that in one way or another will give birth to technological progress.

How much food do you eat, fatty

Amount of fat in my body has zero correlation to fact that conjured food is shitty way to fed people, but nice try to dodge my argument. I eat much less food that caster able to summon, but I prefer food that has actual taste and vitamin value + can be stored in longer period of time than some shit from magical plane.

No, the guards with magically enchanted equipment will do it.

Look, I now that CRPG love to shower magical equipment on you like these items grow like grass in plains, but normally magical equipment actually pretty rare and expensive and nobody has enough money to arm city guard with magical gear.

I understand that you failed to bore yourself by playing in CRPG that have only magic in setting (for several decades ffs!!!), but not all people are killjoy like you and concept of world, that stopped in development, getting really fucking stale.

 

[fantadomat]

Real question is combining magic and technology, but that would be tough to write since you'd need to really understand technology. Trying to mass-produce magic with Mentats or autist breeding programs would be another thing.

Shadowrun does the job well. That said all the magic and tech shit is getting old and done to death.

 

[Lacrymas]

People who haven't played PnP 5E, or maybe in general, don't have any idea how rare even +1 items are. In Dragon of Icespire Peak, there are a grand total of 2 +1 items, 3 if the DM creatively interprets a reward instruction, and they are specific items requiring proficiency to wield well.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Amount of fat in my body has zero correlation to fact that conjured food is shitty way to fed people, but nice try to dodge my argument. I eat much less food that caster able to summon, but I prefer food that has actual taste and vitamin value + can be stored in longer period of time than some shit from magical plane.

Are you saying that Create Food summons forth the McDonald's meal of the gods? This is a fascinating discussion.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Are you saying that Create Food summons forth the McDonald's meal of the gods? This is a fascinating discussion.

How about you read spells description before accusing me in saying something?
Here description of the spell https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/create-food-and-water
The same spell was linked by rusty in defense of his idea that people should remain in Medieval Age forever, because apparently eating summoned food that taste like shit is worth it.
I don't recall how McDonald's tastes, because last time when I ate there, was several years ago, but my apology if you had bad meal at McClown's today and in true childish fashion decided that "tech bad mkay" and shitty stale pure magical settings worth defending on Internet forum.

 

[Thac0]

People who haven't played PnP 5E, or maybe in general, don't have any idea how rare even +1 items are. In Dragon of Icespire Peak, there are a grand total of 2 +1 items, 3 if the DM creatively interprets a reward instruction, and they are specific items requiring proficiency to wield well.

They are not that hard to get if you play Adventurers League, the intended offical format (not that you should, AL is fucking gay).
Official adventures give them out rather regularily, Curse of Strahd has a good dozen of them laying around, although you will probably find only half of them at most. They are more common in homebrew settings usually. They are not terribly rare, by the time monsters with immunity to nonmagical damage show up noone in the party is still dealing nonmagic damage.

 

[Lacrymas]

You still don't find them in scrap piles and barrels like you do in video games, though.

 

[Joseph Stalin]

All these discussions remind me of the universe created in A Song of Ice and Fire and related material - certain aspects of the world are autistically explained in an elaborate and disciplined fashion, whilst others are simplified to the point of resembling a child's first story.

 

[Cryomancer]

No, Limited Wish has limitations.

Wish can't replicate the effects of other 9th tier spells, create a divine spark, replicate the effects of a epic tier spell

But i agree with other things that you said. There are no reason to develop technology in a world that you have magic.

Why waste time making a grenade launcher, when you can literally read a book and have a "arcane grenade launcher" in your head ie - fireball. Why develop engines when you have animate objects? Why develop medicine when you have heal and other cleric spells? Magic has a insane advantage over technology. You can't "disarm" a magician.