Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Haplo]

Still it sounds to me more as fun spell rather than as an effective one. There're not many instances where you have to fight for long, against many targets like that towers assault for example. But I can give it suits well range-oriented party, alright.

Oh its very effective. Cripples and damages enemies and offers no save. In a huge zone.
Its just that when your melee martials start to steamroll content, it may no longer be as desirable - as it may slow them down then.

I found that the AI is now very good at moving out of it consistently on Tactician.

Perhaps. if they have somewhere to go (the area is pretty big).
But then you can cripple them further by stacking Plant Growth or Sleet Storm to make escape much harder.

Also Repelling Blast, Black Hole, Void Bulbs, Pushing maneuver, Shoves, Mobile Fluorish, Arrows of Thunder and other forced movement effects.

 

[Fedora Master]

Enemies might be immune to fire and lightning and fart gas but even flying Illithids can be knocked prone. lel

 

[Haplo]

Bane is actually really solid providing you don't have access to Haste and you have near-100% uptime on Bless. It also debuffs saving throws. And it's a CHA save which means you can have excellent chance to succeed fairly early on, unlike other spells which require a bit more grunt to reach that high chance of success

Okay. The nice thing is that its level 1.

However early on I'd prefer to rely on no-save CC (Hunger of Hadar, Spike Growth, Darkness - maybe supported by forced movement) and later on, once I get Arcane Acuity running or stack multiple DC boosts, I'd directly cast hard CC.

 

[Fedora Master]

Wait, that's it with the Bhaal ending? 20 seconds of a cutscene? Really? What a ripoff.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Wait, that's it with the Bhaal ending? 20 seconds of a cutscene? Really? What a ripoff.

And worse yet, zero voice acting or custom animations apart from the player's last line. All of your companions just do generic pantomime like NPCs.

It's like they didn't expect anyone to actually commit to the evil option in the end.

The failed Bhaalist ending has more put into it than that.

Spoiler

You're turned into a mindless rape-animal who runs around rutting and pissing himself before he murders his former companions in their camp.

 

[Yosharian]

Bane is actually really solid providing you don't have access to Haste and you have near-100% uptime on Bless. It also debuffs saving throws. And it's a CHA save which means you can have excellent chance to succeed fairly early on, unlike other spells which require a bit more grunt to reach that high chance of success

Okay. The nice thing is that its level 1.

However early on I'd prefer to rely on no-save CC (Hunger of Hadar, Spike Growth, Darkness - maybe supported by forced movement) and later on, once I get Arcane Acuity running or stack multiple DC boosts, I'd directly cast hard CC.

That's fair

 

[Fedora Master]

You're turned into a mindless rape-animal who runs around rutting and pissing himself before he murders his former companions in their camp.

Based

 

[Dishonoredbr]

If theres's one thing that hope all CRPGs going foward to steal from this game is all the Thievery and Stealth aspect. Spliting your group and , taking enemies one by one and stealing actual good loot from NPCs is the best aspect of Larian's game.. The verticality too.

 

[Yosharian]

If theres's one thing that hope all CRPGs going foward to steal from this game is all the Thievery and Stealth aspect. Spliting your group and , taking enemies one by one and stealing actual good loot from NPCs is the best aspect of Larian's game.. The verticality too.

The issue is the complete lack of investigation that shopkeepers have. Like I just stole half their inventory for the 50th time and they aren't reacting?

"HELLO PERSON WHO JUST ENTERED THE CAMP FOR THE FIRST TIME A FEW DAYS AGO, GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN AND I'M SURE IT'S JUST A COINCIDENCE THAT CRIME RATES JUST WENT UP BY 5000%! WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU? MORE USELESS JUNK FROM PEOPLE YOU'VE KILLED? SURE I'LL BUY THAT FROM YOU! BREASTPLATE THAT LOOKS SUSPICIOUSLY LIKE THE ONE I HAD STOLEN FROM MY SHOP YESTERDAY? SURE, I'LL BUY THAT TOO!"

Please, this is not good game design

 

[Old Hans]

the more I play the more I feel like this adventure was intended to be a solo journey. npc interactions make it feel like the other party members do not exist. it feels so awkward.

The issue is the complete lack of investigation that shopkeepers have. Like I just stole half their inventory for the 50th time and they aren't reacting?

I was in grymforge recently and there was a lone healing potion on the ground and I just HAD to steal it. This caused a guard to confront me, I tried to bribe him, but he mad and started a fight which caused a chain reaction until everyone in grymforge was dead

 

[Desiderius]

I've got other super soldiers that want that Bane to land. Expected value of 1d8 is still 4.5 malus on any made save which is pretty nasty, especially since Bane attacks CHR.

Bane? Really? That's what you're using Concentration on? Hmm, IDK, kinda feels bad, man.

As usually in my book, superior offense trumps better defenses.

Bane isn't defense lol.

Saving throws. Bane attacks CHR so your procs, weapon abilities, and class abilities land vs CON/DEX/WIS to apply conditions that debuff saves on everything else. The first link in the chain reaction.

I find it both more fun and proactive (thus effective) than persistent clouds, kinda like not being a big fan of Sirrocco in P:K/Wrath. Shit gets too spread out for clouds (and granted sometimes Bane, but it's good against what I want to take down first).

And of course every link in the chain also makes the enemy suck more on its own. So yeah also defense.

Fedora Master come tell Haplo that I've barely made in halfway through Act 2 so don't know shit. I guess playing this way could degenerate into D:OS-style enemy never gets a turn kind of play.

 

[Fedora Master]

Oh Im sure you've managed to find Moonrise Tower by now.

 

[Desiderius]

Bane is actually really solid providing you don't have access to Haste and you have near-100% uptime on Bless. It also debuffs saving throws. And it's a CHA save which means you can have excellent chance to succeed fairly early on, unlike other spells which require a bit more grunt to reach that high chance of success

Okay. The nice thing is that its level 1.

However early on I'd prefer to rely on no-save CC (Hunger of Hadar, Spike Growth, Darkness - maybe supported by forced movement) and later on, once I get Arcane Acuity running or stack multiple DC boosts, I'd directly cast hard CC.

Upcast buys additional targets. Bane + Cutting Words cuts way down on variance from beginning of game to as long as I've played so far. It's why I want a Bard (other than dialogues). Wyll, Karlach, and Laezel all set up nicely to respec into Bard.

As for Bless, debuffs > buffs if they can be reliably applied. But yeah both is nice.

 

[Desiderius]

Oh Im sure you've managed to find Moonrise Tower by now.

Waiting for game to be restored to full version first. They'll be redoing Arx at some point. Got roped back into Wiz8 anyway. What a great game.

 

[Haplo]

If theres's one thing that hope all CRPGs going foward to steal from this game is all the Thievery and Stealth aspect. Spliting your group and , taking enemies one by one and stealing actual good loot from NPCs is the best aspect of Larian's game.. The verticality too.

The issue is the complete lack of investigation that shopkeepers have. Like I just stole half their inventory for the 50th time and they aren't reacting?

"HELLO PERSON WHO JUST ENTERED THE CAMP FOR THE FIRST TIME A FEW DAYS AGO, GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN AND I'M SURE IT'S JUST A COINCIDENCE THAT CRIME RATES JUST WENT UP BY 5000%! WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU? MORE USELESS JUNK FROM PEOPLE YOU'VE KILLED? SURE I'LL BUY THAT FROM YOU! BREASTPLATE THAT LOOKS SUSPICIOUSLY LIKE THE ONE I HAD STOLEN FROM MY SHOP YESTERDAY? SURE, I'LL BUY THAT TOO!"

Please, this is not good game design

Yeah, this is like not my experience at all. They start to sniff after loosing pretty much anything - and you don't have to wait till the 50th item.
Might be able to continually convince them it wasn't you, but I'm not sure how this works.

Well, except for them not caring where we have items we sell them from, that's true.

 

[Haplo]

I've got other super soldiers that want that Bane to land. Expected value of 1d8 is still 4.5 malus on any made save which is pretty nasty, especially since Bane attacks CHR.

Bane? Really? That's what you're using Concentration on? Hmm, IDK, kinda feels bad, man.

As usually in my book, superior offense trumps better defenses.

Bane isn't defense lol.

Saving throws. Bane attacks CHR so your procs, weapon abilities, and class abilities land vs CON/DEX/WIS to apply conditions that debuff saves on everything else. The first link in the chain reaction.

I find it both more fun and proactive (thus effective) than persistent clouds, kinda like not being a big fan of Sirrocco in P:K/Wrath. Shit gets too spread out for clouds (and granted sometimes Bane, but it's good against what I want to take down first).

And of course every link in the chain also makes the enemy suck more on its own. So yeah also defense.

Well, I could sympathize with the idea... except at lower levels the spell slots are pretty scarce.
I prefer those persistant aoes that I know I can rely on in my limited slots - over rolling the dice and spending spells for debuff -> CC chains.

 

[Lambach]

It's like they didn't expect anyone to actually commit to the evil option in the end.

What was that statistic? Something like over 80 or 90 percent of players go for the "good" route and never get to see the other side of the story?

I mean, yeah, you can criticize them for not having a proper "evil" route (which BG 3 is guilty of 150%), but at the end of the day, it just doesn't make logistical sense to spend an equal amount of resources on something that fewer than 10-20% will ever see as compared to the other 80-90%.

Mask of The Betrayer will remain forevermore as the Golden Standard in terms of providing a satisfying REAL evil playthrough, and it will never be topped, because it's just not commercially viable.

 

[Fedora Master]

The shit that happens in the Evil ending is some End-Of-Edition level stuff.

Which I guess they did before with Storm of Zehir but not as stupid.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

It's like they didn't expect anyone to actually commit to the evil option in the end.

What was that statistic? Something like over 80 or 90 percent of players go for the "good" route and never get to see the other side of the story?

I mean, yeah, you can criticize them for not having a proper "evil" route (which BG 3 is guilty of 150%), but at the end of the day, it just doesn't make logistical sense to spend an equal amount of resources on something that fewer than 10-20% will ever see as compared to the other 80-90%.

Mask of The Betrayer will remain forevermore as the Golden Standard in terms of providing a satisfying REAL evil playthrough, and it will never be topped, because it's just not commercially viable.

Sounds like a Skill Issue to me. I had a great time doing Lich recently in a certain game.

 

[Lambach]

Sounds like a Skill Issue to me. I had a great time doing Lich recently in a certain game.

Compare the amount of unique, plot-relevant content the Lich had in that game as opposed to, say, the Angel.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Sounds like a Skill Issue to me. I had a great time doing Lich recently in a certain game.

Compare the amount of unique, plot-relevant content the Lich had in that game as opposed to, say, the Angel.

If it's about plot relevant content, then Demon has similar amount of content to Angel. Down to become Lord of the Abyss over Nocticula. I know that the writing isn't .. the greatest compared to Mask of Betrayer but still.

 

[Yosharian]

If theres's one thing that hope all CRPGs going foward to steal from this game is all the Thievery and Stealth aspect. Spliting your group and , taking enemies one by one and stealing actual good loot from NPCs is the best aspect of Larian's game.. The verticality too.

The issue is the complete lack of investigation that shopkeepers have. Like I just stole half their inventory for the 50th time and they aren't reacting?

"HELLO PERSON WHO JUST ENTERED THE CAMP FOR THE FIRST TIME A FEW DAYS AGO, GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN AND I'M SURE IT'S JUST A COINCIDENCE THAT CRIME RATES JUST WENT UP BY 5000%! WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU? MORE USELESS JUNK FROM PEOPLE YOU'VE KILLED? SURE I'LL BUY THAT FROM YOU! BREASTPLATE THAT LOOKS SUSPICIOUSLY LIKE THE ONE I HAD STOLEN FROM MY SHOP YESTERDAY? SURE, I'LL BUY THAT TOO!"

Please, this is not good game design

Yeah, this is like not my experience at all. They start to sniff after loosing pretty much anything - and you don't have to wait till the 50th item.
Might be able to continually convince them it wasn't you, but I'm not sure how this works.

Well, except for them not caring where we have items we sell them from, that's true.

Are you joking? NPCs have no memory whatsoever. Hide for 30s and then come back to them once they are finished wandering about like retards, they do not react in any way. The ONLY way they react differently is if they saw you steal the item, and it's trivial to use items like the fog cloak to guarantee success at stealing.

If you are caught in the area that's different - then they magically know it was you that stole the item*, and you have to pass a speech check not to get aggroed.

* this happens even if you were disguised at the moment of the theft, or are now disguised, or even that the person who did the theft isn't present but rather his party mates are

It's a shit system

And I didn't even mention the fact that the game gives you a free teleport that allows you to escape from the area the second you are done stealing

 

[Lambach]

If it's about plot relevant content, then Demon has similar amount of content to Angel.

Down to become Lord of the Abyss over Nocticula.

Except you do not become the Lord of the Abyss. You become some middle-management cuck in charge of one Demon Domain, like Nocticula was, at best. Just one, out of god-knows-how-many more.

Meanwhile, the Angel Path actually has you turning into the leader of all of Heaven's armies, pretty much a minor Deity by that fact alone.

 

[Rhobar121]

If theres's one thing that hope all CRPGs going foward to steal from this game is all the Thievery and Stealth aspect. Spliting your group and , taking enemies one by one and stealing actual good loot from NPCs is the best aspect of Larian's game.. The verticality too.

The issue is the complete lack of investigation that shopkeepers have. Like I just stole half their inventory for the 50th time and they aren't reacting?

"HELLO PERSON WHO JUST ENTERED THE CAMP FOR THE FIRST TIME A FEW DAYS AGO, GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN AND I'M SURE IT'S JUST A COINCIDENCE THAT CRIME RATES JUST WENT UP BY 5000%! WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU? MORE USELESS JUNK FROM PEOPLE YOU'VE KILLED? SURE I'LL BUY THAT FROM YOU! BREASTPLATE THAT LOOKS SUSPICIOUSLY LIKE THE ONE I HAD STOLEN FROM MY SHOP YESTERDAY? SURE, I'LL BUY THAT TOO!"

Please, this is not good game design

Yeah, this is like not my experience at all. They start to sniff after loosing pretty much anything - and you don't have to wait till the 50th item.
Might be able to continually convince them it wasn't you, but I'm not sure how this works.

Well, except for them not caring where we have items we sell them from, that's true.

Are you joking? NPCs have no memory whatsoever. Hide for 30s and then come back to them once they are finished wandering about like retards, they do not react in any way. The ONLY way they react differently is if they saw you steal the item, and it's trivial to use items like the fog cloak to guarantee success at stealing.

If you are caught in the area that's different - then they magically know it was you that stole the item*, and you have to pass a speech check not to get aggroed.

* this happens even if you were disguised at the moment of the theft, or are now disguised, or even that the person who did the theft isn't present but rather his party mates are

It's a shit system

And I didn't even mention the fact that the game gives you a free teleport that allows you to escape from the area the second you are done stealing

Actually the system wasn't bad but it wasn't finished.
Just removing instant teleportation would improve it a lot (I understand why it's there though).
Also, NPCs should not forget what you did as soon as you teleport to the camp and back.

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

Wait, that's it with the Bhaal ending? 20 seconds of a cutscene? Really? What a ripoff.

And worse yet, zero voice acting or custom animations apart from the player's last line. All of your companions just do generic pantomime like NPCs.

It's like they didn't expect anyone to actually commit to the evil option in the end.

The failed Bhaalist ending has more put into it than that.

Spoiler

You're turned into a mindless rape-animal who runs around rutting and pissing himself before he murders his former companions in their camp.

Question about the video. It says your lover would never let you a breed a spawn then cuts to Astarion. How would two fags breed?