Game News Larian is making Baldur's Gate 3

[Ulfhednar]

Do Minsc change a hamster each third year or does he carry around a stuffed corpse of Boo?

First inventory slot is a time-dilated pocket plane when occupied by a giant space hamster. Canon, I swear!

 

[Fenix]

OK, how'd we go from D:OS 2 Codex GOTY and a fairly positive reception to Divinity: Fallen Heroes to this post getting a bunch of Prosper ratings?

Come on people, they really couldn't have picked a better developer for this except maybe Owlcat (but then it wouldn't be turn-based). Wizards of the Coast are finally making a high class D&D CRPG for the first time in a decade.

Almost enough is not enough.

 

[Rpguy]

I hear Gorion's voice....

Let's hurry child! The night can only get worse so we must find E3 soon. Don't worry, I will explain everything as soon as there is time. Wait! There is something wrong. We are in an ambush. Prepare yourself!

E3 is on June 11th but Stadia is going to have a big reveal on June 6th this Thursday. We will see if the rumors are true

https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1135584478389264389

Some news can't wait for E3

 

[bussinrounds]

Hmmm... some of my friends who dislike reflex-based gameplay also dislike RTwP.
Maybe there's a connection there... or maybe they want to take their sweet time planning every step.
I personally don't care, I like both TB and RTwP the same.

Feedback is big. I like to know about all the actions/rolls when they're happening. Not having to scroll back in the combat log to see what the fuck just happened after all that chaos on my screen.

 

[bussinrounds]

When Atari acquired the DnD video game license, that move killed the Black Hound, right?

P.S. I'm still waiting for Sawyer's promised NWN2 Black Hound module

Fuck the Black Hound, they killed a lot more than that.... (taken from the Tim Cain codex interview https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8416 )

 

[hexer]

Instead Atari released Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale

-_-

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Hmmm... some of my friends who dislike reflex-based gameplay also dislike RTwP.
Maybe there's a connection there... or maybe they want to take their sweet time planning every step.
I personally don't care, I like both TB and RTwP the same.

Feedback is big. I like to know about all the actions/rolls when they're happening. Not having to scroll back in the combat log to see what the fuck just happened after all that chaos on my screen.

ToEE handled it extremely well, PoE 1 & 2 are close contenders on this.
IIRC, ToEE combat logs are pretty compact but everything is linkified and you can click it for detailed information on rolls, etc.,
ToEE having an entire ingame manual and so much being linkified like a wiki was complete incline, the game in general was ahead of its time

 

[hexer]

ToEE having an entire ingame manual and so much being linkified like a wiki was complete incline, the game in general was ahead of its time

Tim Cain's a smart dude.. when I met him at a game dev conference,
we talked about psychology which was surprising for me.
He's definitively thinking about all aspects that come into gameplay.

 

[Delterius]

whats the time diff between beginning of bg1 and ending of tob? Asking coz hamster lifespan is 3yrs

Maybe Boo is a title or it's like if your kid's goldfish dies... better hurry to the pet store and find his double before your toddler notices.

summoning Delterius to get fanfic/mod lore on boo romances

As far as I can tell, it almost happened.

 

[Incantatar]

I hope they're aware how important the magic system was in the games. They can't just give us circumcised MMO shit and call it BG3. I want my mage battles! No other CRPG can hold BG2's water in that regard.

 

[hexer]

I hope they're aware how important the magic system was in the games. They can't just give us circumcised MMO shit and call it BG3. I want my mage battles! No other CRPG can hold BG2's water in that regard.

BG 2 with Sword Coast Stratagems II and Tactics

 

[Spectacle]

I hope they're aware how important the magic system was in the games. They can't just give us circumcised MMO shit and call it BG3. I want my mage battles! No other CRPG can hold BG2's water in that regard.

BG2 style mage battles aren't going to happen with 5e rules, those kinds of spells just don't exist.

 

[Decado]

All I want is a Protection from Undead spell that lets me buttfuck a lich with Daystar spam, and I'm fine.

 

[vortex]

BG2 style mage battles aren't going to happen with 5e rules, those kinds of spells just don't exist.

Which ones?

 

[Spectacle]

BG2 style mage battles aren't going to happen with 5e rules, those kinds of spells just don't exist.

Which ones?

The layered protection spells and the various spells used to penetrate them. There are protection spells of course, but you can generally only have one active at a time.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Thats the greatest fault of new rules and a feature that made Bg games stand out, and was never again reached let alone surpassed.
I would guess the enhanced and improved elemental mechanics of DoS games could possibly be a replacement ... but i dont believe Larian would improve them as needed.
In DoS2 they went the other way by adding more nonsensical "elements" while not increasing the interactions, combinations and options, while making it all less significant and more of a bloated visual effects spam.

 

[hexer]

I'll never forget the moment I found out Demogorgon was immune to Time Stop

 

[Zeriel]

I hope they're aware how important the magic system was in the games. They can't just give us circumcised MMO shit and call it BG3. I want my mage battles! No other CRPG can hold BG2's water in that regard.

BG2 style mage battles aren't going to happen with 5e rules, those kinds of spells just don't exist.

TBH 2E AD&D is really its own unique and peculiar beast, its why although I know lots of people love 3E I personally didn't pay much attention to it (D&D) after the huge catalogue of 2E stuff was abandoned.

 

[Spectacle]

I hope they're aware how important the magic system was in the games. They can't just give us circumcised MMO shit and call it BG3. I want my mage battles! No other CRPG can hold BG2's water in that regard.

BG2 style mage battles aren't going to happen with 5e rules, those kinds of spells just don't exist.

TBH 2E AD&D is really its own unique and peculiar beast, its why although I know lots of people love 3E I personally didn't pay much attention to it (D&D) after the huge catalogue of 2E stuff was abandoned.

It wasn't like BG2 mage battles would have been possible with just the spells in the 2nd ed. PHB either, Bioware had to dig into a whole bunch of splatbooks of questionable quality to find them. If a tabletop player had tried to pull some of the spell combos that NPC mages did in BG2 they would have been booted from most tables for munchkinism.

Tabletop games back then had a very different approach to balance than is normal now. Game designers didn't hesitate to add new character features without considering if they would be too strong in combination, because it was expected that players would self-moderate and not create overpowered characters, and that DM's would punish the ones that did it anyway.

 

[Decado]

I hope they're aware how important the magic system was in the games. They can't just give us circumcised MMO shit and call it BG3. I want my mage battles! No other CRPG can hold BG2's water in that regard.

BG2 style mage battles aren't going to happen with 5e rules, those kinds of spells just don't exist.

TBH 2E AD&D is really its own unique and peculiar beast, its why although I know lots of people love 3E I personally didn't pay much attention to it (D&D) after the huge catalogue of 2E stuff was abandoned.

I agree and 2E ADnD is still the best version of DnD ever made, in my opinion. There's so much to it. A 2nd Edition CRPG would be so fucking cool (yes I know they will never bring it back).

 

[The_Mask]

I'll never forget the moment I found out Demogorgon was immune to Time Stop

That one wasn't such a big shock... I mean it still was, but given who he is, it kind-of wasn't. What was a real shock was Balthasar being immune and being able to use his stances - that one was where my eyes really widened.

Ah... good times.

 

[hexer]

I'll never forget the moment I found out Demogorgon was immune to Time Stop

That one wasn't such a big shock... I mean it still was, but given who he is, it kind-of wasn't. What was a real shock was Balthasar being immune and being able to use his stances - that one was where my eyes really widened.

Ah... good times.

Hahaha.. casting Time Stop against them meant you just granted them 4 extra rounds to beat the crap out of your party for free XD

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

TBH 2E AD&D is really its own unique and peculiar beast, its why although I know lots of people love 3E I personally didn't pay much attention to it (D&D) after the huge catalogue of 2E stuff was abandoned.

AD&D 2nd Edition is David Zeb Cook's reorganization and rationalization of AD&D 1st Edition, to give it a clarity and consistency that had been lacking.

Perhaps you're thinking of the mass of optional material released over the decade following the AD&D 2nd Edition core rulebooks, but you would have been hard-pressed to find two DMs who used the same modifications to the core rules.

 

[Azarkon]

Spell battles of the type Baldur's Gate 2 had would not be possible, as previously said.

On the other hand, 5th edition does still have many powerful combinations of talents, abilities, and spells, that were they to be implemented, would feel fairly insane.

I'm not going to mention the optimal damage builds, which are obviously stupid, but are not anything out of the ordinary for Larian.

But take this, for instance: 14th level necromancers in 5th edition get an ability called Command Undead that takes control of ANY undead with intelligence lower than 12 permanently. The necromancer can only have one such "pet" at a time but it works on challenge rating 20 nightwalkers and challenge rating 15 mummy lords. Since this is a base feature of the specialization, the chances of it being implemented is fairly high, which indicates Larian will either have to house rule the effect to not last forever, or they'll have to allow necromancers to take control of powerful undead in their game and take them any where.

Then there's the old wizard special, Simulacrum, which is as ridiculous as ever in allowing you to create a copy of anything with no equipment and half the health, requiring an almost certain house rule to prevent infinite spell casting like in Baldur's Gate 2.

There's also the Archdruid, which get infinite wild shape and thus a full heal any time he wants.

And so on, so forth. It's up to Larian to decide what they implement, obviously. But the rule set has potential to be almost as broken as 2nd edition.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

BG2 style mage battles aren't going to happen with 5e rules, those kinds of spells just don't exist.

people who think this is a bad thing are stupid