Thread: Baldurs Gate 3

  1. #881
    Quote Originally Posted by Arrashi View Post
    Pretty much this. Noone would bat an eye if larian made new amazing D&D game, that could possibly be what BG was to RPGs back then. Hell, people would be happy that D&D is back. The entire topic wouldn't exist. because worst case scenario people simply wouldn't care. The thing is that most people don't doubt larian can make a good game, or even that they are the good choice to make D7D game.

    What caused the problem is that by calling it BG3 people expected...BG3. Not a modern D&D game. What defined BG was its core elements like (hilariously enough) moving away from turn based gameplay, it was its open formula, its party composition, and most importantly that BG was more than sum of its components. Not that it had minsc or took place in baldurs gate.

    The biggest irony of BG3 atm is that its closer to almost any other classic RPG of the time than it is to baldurs gate.
    That's like being angry that the new Doom games have a jump button and the ability to aim on a Y axis because Doom 1/2 didn't allow you to and franchises should never change. BG1/2 were and still are great games, but the gameplay is archaic as fuck. There's a very good reason that pretty much every modern CRPG, while taking inspiration from it, doesn't actually follow it. Fuck the idea that you already need to be well versed in all the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of 2ED to be able to even play the damn thing above Easy.

    I personally like RTWP, but a good-turned system can be just as good. I have my issues with Larian, but if Wizards are backing them up then hopefully the writing will be better and the ruleset and (especially) power scaling will be less of a complete clusterfuck than in OS2.

  2. #882
    Quote Originally Posted by Myobi View Post
    Man, I fucking love how far you could take some of the dumbest shit in OS2 and just make it work...

    Me and my co-op mate once started a playthrough on max difficulty completely naked, no weapons, just by stacking trash inside barrels and chests and throwing them around, it was pretty damn fun.


    (Warning, the fucking song is way to loud, sorry about that!)
    Yeah, that. I get that some people like that sort of sillyness, and more power to them, but I like a bit more structure to my ruleset. Feels like both Original Sin games have far too much cheesing going on, from both the player's part and some of the enemies's.

    My main beef with OS2 were the armor system which penalized hybrid parties far too much for my liking, and the insanely aggressive power scaling that mean foes even one level above you were lethal, and fighting stuff one level below you was a trivial waste of everybody's time. I hear that the Definitive Edition softened this somewhat, but I can't be assed to replay a 60+ hour game to find out if that's true.

  3. #883
    Not sure why the system was disliked so much.
    If you have a phyiscal build such as a 2handed one, isn't the only thing you have to do:

    Switch your main weapon to a staff?

    All your damage turns into elemental damage.
    Dunno, I was playing with a friend and we had 4 completely different builds for our characters (each of us controlled two).

    I liked the armor system, you'd focus different enemies with different characters.
    There are a lot of spells that deal physical damage and there are also a lot of skills that add elemental damage.



    It's probably far more effective to just roll with 1 type. But at the same time, it doesn't really matter.
    Last edited by KrayZ33; 2020-03-27 at 05:05 AM.

  4. #884
    Quote Originally Posted by KrayZ33 View Post
    Not sure why the system was disliked so much.
    If you have a phyiscal build such as a 2handed one, isn't the only thing you have to do:

    Switch your main weapon to a staff?

    All your damage turns into elemental damage.
    Dunno, I was playing with a friend and we had 4 completely different builds for our characters (each of us controlled two).

    I liked the armor system, you'd focus different enemies with different characters.
    There are a lot of spells that deal physical damage and there are also a lot of skills that add elemental damage.



    It's probably far more effective to just roll with 1 type. But at the same time, it doesn't really matter.
    Status effects do not apply until all the armor is gone which means that it only becomes a game of choose a target to nuke and rinse-repeat. They later remedied it somewhat but it's still very neutered. Thankfully this can be fixed with mods.

    Also initiative is totally broken because devs force a round-robin. Sadly this cannot be fixed with mods because it's somehow hard-coded.
    Last edited by Wilian; 2020-03-27 at 08:25 AM.
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  5. #885
    Quote Originally Posted by Wilian View Post
    Status effects do not apply until all the armor is gone which means that it only becomes a game of choose a target to nuke and rinse-repeat. They later remedied it somewhat but it's still very neutered. Thankfully this can be fixed with mods.

    Also initiative is totally broken because devs force a round-robin. Sadly this cannot be fixed with mods because it's somehow hard-coded.
    What's wrong with the round robin. That's the point of Initiative in these games, is it not?
    And that it becomes a game of "choose a target to nuke" is wrong too, or rather, that completely depends on what you want to play as.

    You have enemies with way more armor and others with way more magic armor.
    If the enemy has way more magic armor, your mages use their necro spells, so you can start CCing with your melees, if he has way more armor, your melee switch to staff to reduce magic armor. So you can start CCing with your mages.

    Sure thing, you can brute force yourself through the armor with 4 characters of one type or whatever, but again - it doesn't really matter.
    You can achieve the same thing by playing out strengths vs weaknesses.

    If there was anything that bothered me about combat in DOS:2, it's that AoE is way too strong and easy to accomplish and with that -CC.
    Last edited by KrayZ33; 2020-03-27 at 04:16 PM.

  6. #886
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    I mean, the armour system wasn't THAT bad. Enemies usually had high physical armour/low magic armour or other way around (sometimes nothing at all), so you attack with your guys accordingly, to burn them fast.
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  7. #887
    Epic! Highelf's Avatar
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    As far as classes go, I've been reading that Rangers are vastly underpowered. Is there not a decent balance with the classes?
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  8. #888
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Highelf View Post
    As far as classes go, I've been reading that Rangers are vastly underpowered. Is there not a decent balance with the classes?
    They aren't, really. But this is a complex subject, so bear with me.

    The original 5e Ranger has some issues, but it's mostly in the subclasses, and the non-combat abilities. The subclasses in the PHB aren't well balanced against each other, and the Beastmaster in particular largely fails to achieve the "class fantasy" of a guy and his loyal beast fighting together (it ends up being more either/or, not both, and the beast is almost never the better choice). Hunter is a solid pick, though, so it's more that Beastmaster fails to live up to itself.

    The non-combat abilities are, unsurprisingly, in the Exploration pillar; Rangers are excellent scouts and such. The problem with them is that rather than making the Ranger awesome at them, they just straight-up obviate the need for a check. Need to navigate the wilderness? No need for Survival checks; you just can't get lost unless magic's involved. So rather than making you excel at a thing, it just eliminates the thing from consideration; it just happens. This isn't so much an issue for a video game, but it's an issue if you're the player playing a ranger at an actual table.

    The other issue is that Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer both require you to pick targets; a specific type of enemy (undead, demons, etc) and terrain where they apply. If you're fighting them/in that terrain? You're awesome. Not? You lose a big chunk. This generally just "feels" bad; Ranger's fine without them, but it's irksome.

    Another minor issue; there's a Ranger spell called Hunter's Mark, that lets you mark a target, and get bonus damage every time you hit them. It's critical to the class's DPR (Damage Per Round). The issue is that Hunters have limited spell slots, and Hunter's Mark requires Concentration, and lasts a long time; Concentration means you can't use another spell that requires Concentration (limits the stacking in a good way, generally), and the duration means you often use Hunter's Mark and hold Concentration on it and ignore a lot of the other neat Ranger spells that use Concentration.

    Now, that all said, there was an Unearthed Arcana article that launched Class Variants that lets people swap out class features for others; it's not official content yet, but there were a bunch that let people swap out the worst of these for options that are really great. There was also a Revised Ranger UA, a while back, that never got made official. Larian's suggested they're reworking the Ranger more than other classes, in shifting it to a video game framework, so it's likely that they're making use of some of those ideas in doing so.

    TLDR; Rangers are "fine", but the core Ranger has some awkward abilities that WotC has been trying to amend for some time. It isn't an overpower/underpower thing; they can do really well in combat regardless, it's mostly in the secondary stuff, and Larian's already aware of all this from what we've heard, and should be tweaking things a bit. Classes in general are fairly well balanced in 5e, but they definitely aren't trying to maintain 4e's standardization of all class effects; some classes shine more or less at various levels or in different circumstances, and that's fine.

    Speaking as a dude who played a Ranger in the last big campaign he played in, for over a year (not counting the last game where I DMed, for a year and a half, or the current game which just started a month ago).


  9. #889
    Epic! Highelf's Avatar
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    That is totally fine! I like that way of handling classes instead of Blizzards way of tweaking things every 5 minutes. Sounds like Ranger can be pretty solid especially if Larian does some minor tweaks. That's usually my go to class in any RPG game so when I heard that initial explanation of them, I was sad face.
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  10. #890
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    They aren't, really. But this is a complex subject, so bear with me.

    The original 5e Ranger has some issues, but it's mostly in the subclasses, and the non-combat abilities. The subclasses in the PHB aren't well balanced against each other, and the Beastmaster in particular largely fails to achieve the "class fantasy" of a guy and his loyal beast fighting together (it ends up being more either/or, not both, and the beast is almost never the better choice). Hunter is a solid pick, though, so it's more that Beastmaster fails to live up to itself.

    The non-combat abilities are, unsurprisingly, in the Exploration pillar; Rangers are excellent scouts and such. The problem with them is that rather than making the Ranger awesome at them, they just straight-up obviate the need for a check. Need to navigate the wilderness? No need for Survival checks; you just can't get lost unless magic's involved. So rather than making you excel at a thing, it just eliminates the thing from consideration; it just happens. This isn't so much an issue for a video game, but it's an issue if you're the player playing a ranger at an actual table.

    The other issue is that Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer both require you to pick targets; a specific type of enemy (undead, demons, etc) and terrain where they apply. If you're fighting them/in that terrain? You're awesome. Not? You lose a big chunk. This generally just "feels" bad; Ranger's fine without them, but it's irksome.

    Another minor issue; there's a Ranger spell called Hunter's Mark, that lets you mark a target, and get bonus damage every time you hit them. It's critical to the class's DPR (Damage Per Round). The issue is that Hunters have limited spell slots, and Hunter's Mark requires Concentration, and lasts a long time; Concentration means you can't use another spell that requires Concentration (limits the stacking in a good way, generally), and the duration means you often use Hunter's Mark and hold Concentration on it and ignore a lot of the other neat Ranger spells that use Concentration.

    Now, that all said, there was an Unearthed Arcana article that launched Class Variants that lets people swap out class features for others; it's not official content yet, but there were a bunch that let people swap out the worst of these for options that are really great. There was also a Revised Ranger UA, a while back, that never got made official. Larian's suggested they're reworking the Ranger more than other classes, in shifting it to a video game framework, so it's likely that they're making use of some of those ideas in doing so.

    TLDR; Rangers are "fine", but the core Ranger has some awkward abilities that WotC has been trying to amend for some time. It isn't an overpower/underpower thing; they can do really well in combat regardless, it's mostly in the secondary stuff, and Larian's already aware of all this from what we've heard, and should be tweaking things a bit. Classes in general are fairly well balanced in 5e, but they definitely aren't trying to maintain 4e's standardization of all class effects; some classes shine more or less at various levels or in different circumstances, and that's fine.

    Speaking as a dude who played a Ranger in the last big campaign he played in, for over a year (not counting the last game where I DMed, for a year and a half, or the current game which just started a month ago).
    Halfling beastmaster was OP if i recall correctly. At least made beastmaster work with animal companion as a mount.

  11. #891
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    Quote Originally Posted by Highelf View Post
    That is totally fine! I like that way of handling classes instead of Blizzards way of tweaking things every 5 minutes. Sounds like Ranger can be pretty solid especially if Larian does some minor tweaks. That's usually my go to class in any RPG game so when I heard that initial explanation of them, I was sad face.
    IIRC Larian even stated that the Ranger in BG3 will use some of what people call the "revised ranger" which uses the unofficial revisions that Mike Mearls worked on. So that's very good news, as it means the Ranger in BG3 should by default be in a better shape in its first ever official video game capacity under the 5e system.

  12. #892
    Moderator Northern Goblin's Avatar
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    I'm amused at people trashing armour systems in a Baldur's Gate thread and the subject NOT being THAC0

    - - - Updated - - -

    On a side note, really hoping XGTE content gets added soon, especially some of the sub classes, most notably hexblade.
    Last edited by Northern Goblin; 2020-03-30 at 03:10 PM.
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  13. #893
    Quote Originally Posted by Northern Goblin View Post
    I'm amused at people trashing armour systems in a Baldur's Gate and the subject NOT being THAC0
    The armor discussion was for DOS2, which used a dual physical/magical armor system and, IMO, did feel gimmicky after a while. It was a good concept which I liked initially, but as the game dragged on I felt it fell apart. I'm sure others felt it was perfectly fine; it's really a preference/feel thing.

  14. #894
    Moderator Northern Goblin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclone Jack View Post
    The armor discussion was for DOS2, which used a dual physical/magical armor system and, IMO, did feel gimmicky after a while. It was a good concept which I liked initially, but as the game dragged on I felt it fell apart. I'm sure others felt it was perfectly fine; it's really a preference/feel thing.
    I meant to put the word "thread" after Baldur's Gate, which significantly changes the meaning of my post, apologies.
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  15. #895
    Epic! Highelf's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pennem View Post
    IIRC Larian even stated that the Ranger in BG3 will use some of what people call the "revised ranger" which uses the unofficial revisions that Mike Mearls worked on. So that's very good news, as it means the Ranger in BG3 should by default be in a better shape in its first ever official video game capacity under the 5e system.
    Oh my that's even better! Thanks for this news.
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  16. #896
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    Quote Originally Posted by Northern Goblin View Post
    I meant to put the word "thread" after Baldur's Gate, which significantly changes the meaning of my post, apologies.
    THAC0 is annoying lol. Especially when there's inconsistent messaging between AC bonuses from armor too.

    "Ok so I want my AC to go lower, but this Shield says it gives +1 AC does that mean I'm easier to hit?! Oh looks like it actually subtracts 1 from AC when I equip it."

    Like jeezus lol so dumb. Keep it consistent!

  17. #897
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nymrohd View Post
    AD&D design was some weird shit. I blame drugs.
    Since the BG games were on sale I've bought both to playthrough in prep for BG3, also just in the mood for CRPGs with many lined up after (PoE, PK, DOS).

    They certainly have their charm, but sometimes I get my party equipped and their inventory sorted and I'm like ok I need a break cuz that was a lot of micro-management lol.

    I want to play these oldies so I don't play something modern that BG would "feel too archaic to play".

  18. #898
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nymrohd View Post
    Plus consumables are very important.
    Can't be overstated! I actually like these games making them important vs other games where people tend to hoard consumables and then never use them because they turn out unnecessary.

    Also towns feel safe and adventuring out feels dangerous, another aspect I notice a lot of modern RPGs don't have.

  19. #899
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    There is a reason Korgan carries a veritable arsenal of one handers in my BG2 runs, the only constant is Crom Faeyr in the offhand.

    The mainhand goes between FoMH or one of several other weapons that gives him vs type versatility.
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  20. #900
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    Damn, urge to play BG1/2 rises. I just discovered Sword Coast Stratagems, which apparently greatly enhances combat and AI, making game much more tactical. I think I will check it.
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