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

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
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2nd Edition AD&D had the best art, the best Monster Manual, the best Player Handbooks, the best balance of classes, the best level of difficulty. It is the best DnD.
Although I awarded you the same :obviously: as the posters who advocated for AD&D 1st edition or B/X D&D, the artwork in the AD&D 2nd edition rulebooks was quite disappointing, given the immense artistic talent TSR had amassed by 1989. BECMI Mentzer D&D clearly wins in this category from Larry Elmore alone, as a small sampling demonstrates:
tumblr_lsf7rd3a131r15y4io1_500_grande.jpg

Aleena-by-Larry-Elmore_grande.jpg

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elmore-cleric-basic-red-box-d-and-d_grande.png

DD-Party-696x461.jpg

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Elmore_Larry_010_Expert_D_D_grande.jpg

a87d8114e62b2b5155eed2a20a1dad03--classic-rpg-fantasy-pictures.jpg

5500b267c58add1e8793a9fc43b7b031--larry-elmore-classic-rpg.jpg

tumblr_m8sysy6X4t1ro2bqto1_1280.jpg


companion%20set%20DnD.jpg

cf253522a327d7f08cf355dc485f8d07--fantasy-rpg-medieval-fantasy.jpg

9d51a8d5786184e8e1abd32647a7cb6e--classic-rpg-larry-elmore.jpg



Some quality Jeff Easley illustrations as well:

Purchase_D_D_Red_Box_Players_Manual_Page_11_Comp_grande.jpg

Red_Box_Three_large.jpg

Red_Box_Four_large.jpg
 
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mediocrepoet

Philosoraptor in Residence
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Has deck of many things ever been taken out of D&D? It's notorious in 5e.

It hasn't been taken out but iirc they changed the card effects and toned them down, particularly the negative ones, which basically neutered it. I'd have to actually look it up between editions but it's usually one of the first things I look at to get a feel for an edition and its approach to random potentially screw the players effects.
 

thesheeep

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Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Congratulations, you described 90% of combat in every RTwP RPG ever released.

And there are lot of turn based games that have trash mobs that conform to my description.
Thus, making a former rtwp game into a turn-based game, it's not a guarantee of a quality gaming experience just because now it's turn-based.
Oh, I totally agree.
Like PoE2 has shown, turn-based does make combat more fun, but if you don't also improve the encounter design, all it does is drag out trash encounters...

The point is that TB makes encounters take more time.
Which means a game can have less encounters and still be long.
Which means more development time can be spent on each encounter, making it as good as possible.

Meanwhile in RTwP, encounters are often over in seconds (or less than five minutes if you do a lot of pausing) - that's just not worth the development time investment to make them all challenging and interesting.
As such, only some encounters in RTwP games can have that level of attention (usually boss fights).

Additionally, RTwP is harder to play than TB, which in turn means the encounters have to be easier for people to be able to play through the game. Not the best players, mind you, but the majority of players.


Turn based combat is not even a remotely guarantee of a quality gaming experience and neither rtwp.
I agree that neither is a guarantee of a good experience.
But RTwP is pretty much a guarantee for mostly trash encounters, and in the best cases a few good ones.

And Larian has shown that it can make memorable encounters that will end up being close calls in many cases in TB games.
Why ignore that skillset and go RTwP instead where they cannot spend as much time on each encounter?

Because the series so far was RTwP? That's just not a convincing argument to me.

Now, if they did both, and make it switchable while playing (like Arcanum), I think we could end up with a very good result. Trash encounters could be resolved in RTwP, while the tougher nuts to crack could be resolved in TB. And Larian would be free to design more tough encounters as they don't need to make the encounters easy enough for everyone to breeze through in RTwP.
 
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mediocrepoet

Philosoraptor in Residence
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Codex 2012 Codex+ Now Streaming! MCA Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
Has deck of many things ever been taken out of D&D? It's notorious in 5e.

It hasn't been taken out but iirc they changed the card effects and toned them down, particularly the negative ones, which basically neutered it. I'd have to actually look it up between editions but it's usually one of the first things I look at to get a feel for an edition and its approach to random potentially screw the players effects.

I got curious enough to go digging through my books looking to see if I misremembered.

2nd Ed. DMG p. 166, effects range from gain 1d4 wishes, random magic items or XP, lose XP, become imprisoned or be destroyed.
3rd Ed. item doesn't exist.* Magic items in the DMG go from Deck of Illusions straight to Dimensional Shackles. DMG p. 215.
4th Ed. item doesn't exist.* As above, different page numbers. (Didn't bring the book upstairs.)
5th Ed. PHB p. 162-164. Actually you're right, this edition brings it back to pretty close to the 2nd Ed. version.

* If it was brought back in splatbooks, I may or may not have them. I don't have a photographic memory, but I distinctly recall being bummed out in those editions when it wasn't there.
 

InD_ImaginE

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Pathfinder: Wrath
As a youngfag BG while are good games is boring as fuck for martial class. Especially BG 1 with the low adventure. BG 2 will always be superior simply for giving player more things to play.

3.5 ftw :dance:
 

Lycra Suit

Prophet
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Political refugee in Canada
The graphics and UI are what really strike as decline though. Characters look way too much like pristine metrosexuals for adventurers and what not (like in DA), UI follows the now widespread minimalist transparent, ants-acccesible, design philosophy and environments look a bit dull compared to the vibrant art pieces BG2 gave us.
 

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