Baldurs Gate 3

[Trifle]

Ranger: Ranger is decent, three functional specs. Although Gloom Stalker is usually only used for 5 points as multiclassing, no point going further down the line in that subclass and it's very powerful for 5 points as a multiclass
Rogue: Thief is the only even remotely functional subclass. The two other are useless. Singlespeccing Rogue is stupid, too, due to the lack of an extra attack. So you should only use a multiclass thief for 3-5 points.

5 levels in ranger isn't really specific to gloom stalker imo, I'd go 12 gloomstalker over 12 hunter, and I honestly would just never pick beast master at all.

For rogue, the house rule extra bonus action per round is frankly broken and they should have done something else instead. Actions are the most valuable combat resource, and anything that breaks the action economy (eg thief, how they implemented haste) is always going to stupid overpowered. Other than that single spec rogue gets the sneak attack progression because they don't get extra attacks, and if you go dual wield you get 3 attacks per round as a thief anyway which is the same as eg a dual wield ranger.

Warlock: OP, but only one of the subclasses (Fiend) actually does something. Great Old One could be good, but it's range limitations and buggy interations with the reactions hinder it useless. Pact of the Blade extra attack stacking with other extra attack effects is another OP thing. Not sure if it's a bug or not.
Wizard: Many subclasses, vast majority of them pointless. Evocation, Divination and Abjuration have some function, others basically not. Necromancy if you want to do 6 spore druid 6 necromancy or RP some wannabe death knight, but it's not actually good.

I'd consider the warlock extra attack stacking a bug, it explicitly doesn't work like that in pen & paper. I also wouldn't consider warlock OP since there's not really anything stopping you long resting after every combat so other casters can use all their best spells every combat.

The wizard subclasses are mostly weak, but that's really just because the base wizard class is strong enough that the subclasses don't really matter. Same thing with cleric domains really, they're meant to be the icing on the top of a already very solid class not the main feature.

Then there is the "wet status effect" which I touched a bit with the lightning sorc - those kind of things are cool and all. Unfortunately there are basically just three things function like that in combat, cold/lightning vulnerability for wet, you can set grease on fire and turn water/blood into ice with cold spells.

The wet status effect would be fine IF there were more ways to apply it other than "create water" (druid/cleric spell) or throwing water bottles at mobs.

Personally I find throwing a flask of water at someone so your lightning spell does double damage as stupid as putting down 5 barrels next to someone and vaporizing them, but Larian things. That's all house rule stuff.

None of the (damaging) cantrips should have saving throw attached to it. It makes some of the already subpar cantrips outright unusable.

The saving throw replaces the hit chance so ideally both sacred flame vs ray of frost would both average ~70%ish hit rate, with the more accurate depending on creatures saves. Unfortunately there's a lot of stuff in this game that boosts attack rolls and not a lot of enemies with really bad dex saves, so the attack roll spells just end up being better virtually all of the time.

The "best class" in the game is by far bard. It is a charisma class with (usually) high dex so it performs well in conversations, lockpicking and stealth. It has access to the "must have" spells of longstrider, friends, light and speak with animals. You of course want guidance and resistance, too, but you get them from a cleric/druid and can't stack it from the same character than friends anyway. Bard also has access to extra attack which is obviously a must have for a weapon user and even great for a caster.

Bard is a good skill monkey but you don't really need lockpicking and stealth on your conversation person so calling it the best class is a bit of a stretch imo. You can do the same thing with warlock or sorcerer anyway, both those classes benefit a lot from dex.

Overall I would point out that while 5th edition d&d definitely has it's faults, a lot of what I'd consider to be issues in this game stem from the house rules and custom item design that introduce a whole lot more balance issues.

[TirielWoW]

I very much prefer the EA version (which was called Daisy internally). It felt more like an actual dark bargain and it also had more interactions with your companions each of whom reacted differently to Daisy's offer. Daisy's scenes had an obvious purpose because they presented you with the consequences of using the tadpole while the Guardian scenes are largely just exposition dumps. You don't really get to interact with the Guardian. You can't lock them out of your dreams by not using the tadpole like you could with Daisy. It just ended up feeling really bland and impersonal to me since it doesn't respect player choices in any way (stabbing the Guardian in the Githyanki creché is a prime example). The Emperor/Guardian stuff suffers from a lot of issues like a lack of reactivity, lack of player choice, poorly defined motivations etc. much of which is likely owed to the fact the he's a product of a late revision (the official art book still features Daisy and has no mention of the Emperor). Of course we don't know what the Daisy scenes would have looked like past act 1 but after playing through the game I can hardly imagine that it would have been worse than we got.

Okay, I see what you're saying, but it was so fucking obvious what was going on from the very first dream. Unless you're playing a character with an Int of like 8 and you just wanted to really RP it out by having your character make dumb decisions, your character should have figured it out immediately. I just felt like it gave away the game, as it were, way too fast. The Guardian, at least, takes a bit longer for you to figure out exactly what he's up to. But I also *still* wish that we'd been able to choose Orpheus earlier.

[Nymrohd]

Okay, I see what you're saying, but it was so fucking obvious what was going on from the very first dream. Unless you're playing a character with an Int of like 8 and you just wanted to really RP it out by having your character make dumb decisions, your character should have figured it out immediately. I just felt like it gave away the game, as it were, way too fast. The Guardian, at least, takes a bit longer for you to figure out exactly what he's up to. But I also *still* wish that we'd been able to choose Orpheus earlier.

Or choose between Orpheus, the Emperor AND the Absolute (with the latter trying to guide us to defeat the three chosen instead of trying to take over our brain). And Daisy would have been the Absolute in this case.
I don't know how it is with origins or custom characters but the relation between the Absolute and the Dark Urge at the end of the game seems so interesting and a Daisy path could have let us explore it through the game; it seemed to have far more respect for the Chosen of Bhaal who was the one who came up with the entire plan and actually enslaved it than for the other three Chosen who it treats like children bungling OUR plan
I mean if you are not Dark Urge I guess you might end up thinking Gortash was the master mind behind this when it really was the Bhaalspawn who did and just picked Gortash along

[Nerovar]

Okay, I see what you're saying, but it was so fucking obvious what was going on from the very first dream. Unless you're playing a character with an Int of like 8 and you just wanted to really RP it out by having your character make dumb decisions, your character should have figured it out immediately. I just felt like it gave away the game, as it were, way too fast. The Guardian, at least, takes a bit longer for you to figure out exactly what he's up to. But I also *still* wish that we'd been able to choose Orpheus earlier.

I don't think Daisy was ever conceived as an elaborate deception (the second dream literally shows you a burning city). It's more of a Raphael type scenario where you know that you're dealing with a devil but you can lie to yourself (or sincerely believe) that you can outsmart him and somehow end up on top or that the tradeoff is simply worth it similar to how Gale made a deal with Raphael in the Early Access if you didn't give him any artifacts. The dreams also gave you options (usually requiring a skill check) to resist Daisy's advances - which is more than you can say about the Guardian.

It does take longer to figure out the Emperor's true intentions I'll give you that but the main reason for that is that he barely appears in act 2 since they crammed all of his backstory and the big reveal into the third act and by the time you actually get to make up your mind about whether you trust the guy or not the game is over. Everything prior to that (meaning your interactions with the Guardian and the tadpoles) don't really matter.

I would have preferred the Emperor as a standalone Act 3 character who isn't Balduran and have the tadpole/prism stuff be confined to Daisy and Orpheus. He's kinda stretched thin because it feels like he plays three different roles at the same time while not properly filling out any of them and it's very noticeable and jarring, especially if you played EA. The Guardian also inherits the same problem as Daisy (people automatically view the dream visitor with suspicion) while on top of that telling you to put more worms into your eye socket at a point in the story where you can let various people gouge our your eye in the hopes that it will remove your tadpole.

[Mehrunes]

Okay, they can't do that and you know it. The baseline should be there, you can't just do half a wizard by removing something as core as magic schools.

Now, my take on this is whatever, they probably made a shortlist of what they want to make to have the game not be in development hell forever and the rest the community mods will take care of.

Yeah, pretty much. Larian was very upfront that they were going to focus on introducing PHB content and only pull things from other sourcebooks on case by case basis whenever they saw necessary. So for me this is a rather asinine complaint when not taking the time requierd to add things into consideration. Do I like that I can't play as Undead Warlock multiclassed with Shadow Sorcerer? Not really, especially since one of the bosses apparently has Undead's base Form of Dread ability from what I read. But I also wouldn't want to wait for months on end more for the release (a reminded that there were 2-3 EA patches in a year, each with just 1 base class and 2 subclasses). The same applies for all the spells, feats and the like from Tasha's, Xanathar's and the like. At best I'd say Death Cleric may stick out a bit, because while it's not a PHB subspec it is from DMG which is still one of the 3 core books, and its fellow Oathbreaker Paladin was added.

My main argument for Bladesinger is mostly the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (SCAG) which is a key Forgotten Realms book for 5E. It introduced a few subclasses, and a few spells. Much of which got added into Tasha's as reprints. But it is whatever, I'll mod it in on my DU playthrough as that is my favorite spec in the game.

It just ticked me off when I found the ring that grants Shadow Blade. The fuck they go to all that trouble to put that spell into the game and not have the blade cantrips or Bladesinger to go with it. /shrug

I don't see a reason to remove the PHB subclasses for Wiz though

SCAG is pretty much the least important source book in the entirety of 5E aside from Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordekainen's Tome of Foes (and the only reason why they rank below SCAG is because these two had been subsumed by Mordekainen's Monsters of the Universe by now). Almost everything significant from it had been either reprinted in other sources already (often with some further tweaks) or, like the Undying Warlock, completely forgotten by WotC and essentially replaced with a new subspec covering the exact same theme later on.

Dice mechanics for conversations was a big mistake. It turns a roleplaying game into a gambling one. One of the big F's of BG3. D&D dice stuff works alright for the turn based combat, but it's absolutely shit for the roleplaying part where you just reroll and reload the game until you get the roll you want for your RP choice. And if one tries to argue that you shouldnt "save scum" and just accept the roll - that's definitely not roleplaying, it's 100% gambling.

As for combat - Larian shouldn't have incorporated dnd 5e "as it is" for the most part. They should have used dnd inspired class/spell design and heavily reiterate it so that all classes and specs are viable and have a sensible collection of spells available.

But you're not rolling to select the option you want. The option remains locked regardless of your success or lack thereof. You're rolling to see if you successfully deceived, convinced or intimidated your target. Which is not a guarantee. And outside of your full control, hence the element of chance. And it's not like you get a game over if you fail, the game just follows a different path depending on the outcome.

Is there a way to defend the druid thicket against the drow? Tried everything with barrels but spiders are terrible, in the end I had to side with the drow

But you fight way more enemies if you side with Minthara. Also, you can reload an earlier save and just kill her in the temple without sending her to the attack the grove.

You can also kill Gut downstairs after having one of your party members drink her sleeping potion without the need for a one round kill. You have to fight a big girl as well though.

Or, better yet, send an Elf with her, have them not fall asleep to the potion because they are immune to that, fight her in her room where no one will aggro anyway and have the rest of your team jump into her room across the gap to the side.

It's where this perception of "new games must always be bigger and have better graphics and do everything" comes from that makes game development take longer, produce bloated games with less identity and even raises prices.

Meanwhile, small to medium sized studios are putting out new games every day and not only are they getting their money back, but actually innovating and moving the industry forward.

So I can't wait for EA or whatever to try and rush their own cRPG because "there's a market for them" only to fail spectacularly. Unfortunately they'll probably buy and then dismantle an existing studio for it.

Which, since the topic had been once again raised in the last few pages, is what actually most of the Twatter dev drama surrounding BG3 was about. Now, there were some salty fucks that were quite clearly threatened by the game, but they were a minority. But most of the devs talking about this topic were warning that the above is precisely what the brainless money-chasing morons making the decisions will reach as a conclusion from BG3, only screwing studios in the process (especially since for studios with such constraints those exact same people would then throw in ridiculous deadlines, because they won't actually look at the circumstances that let Larian achieve this success and their thought process will stop at "the latest money-making trend in game dev is clearly that, so we cannot fail if we chase it too").

If this was not a Dungeons and Dragons game, I would agree.

However, just like D&D, not everything is going to be optimal. Much of it is for the sake of RP rather than optimized combat.

If you look at Wild Magic from a combat perspective, it is terrible, and there is no reason anyone should ever take it. But if you look at it from an RP perspective, it can make a character so much more interesting.

Also, some of those complaints don't make sense. Take the cantrips for example. There is a clear reason why both attack roll and saving throws cantrips exist, which is that high AC enemies are a thing. And AC doesn't have any strict limits, whereas abilities have a strict cap of 30 that even the enemies of the divine persuasion abide by. So if you only have attack roll cantrips and need to use a cantrip but you face an enemy with high AC (but at least some ability scores that are lower than average), you're kinda screwed.

I think the problem with these "conversation" skills are that their benefit isn't just some a way to talk yourself out of combat in some situations but sometimes also provides additional story / context.

But that also applies to dialogue options that don't require any check though, so wouldn't that mean that the dialogue system is flawed as a whole? If anything, at least the checks make it clear you're dragging the information out the target with intimidation or guile, so the extra information is a reward for success. Whereas situations where you have 3 similarly worded dialogue options to choose from, but one of them reveals a little bit extra without you knowing that upfront just bites you in the ass. Or, alternatively, you just roll with the flow and assume you learning every single thing there is to learn from an NPC is not a given (especially since you can then snoop around various notes and whatnot and learn it anyway).

[Kralljin]

But that also applies to dialogue options that don't require any check though, so wouldn't that mean that the dialogue system is flawed as a whole?

Kinda varies depending on the conversation, as sometimes you can go through the entire dialogue tree in one go.

But i think there is a difference between "Choosing option X locks you out of Option Y because the conversation then wouldn't make sense" and "You choose X, failed a dice roll and receive an outcome you didn't want".

What you're talking about is basically pointing out that the logic is flawed because you cannot get *all* information in every dialogue without savescumming, but the reality is basically the same except it drags out longer because a % chance is involved.

Disregarding that sometimes, you just want a specific outcome for a given reason, be it RP, makes a fight easier or just because you enjoy the dialogue, but can't get it because you failed a dice roll.
Of course, you can reroll with Inspirations, i know, but you can't throw them at every conversation.

[ParanoiD84]

2 achivements left the save all thiefelings one and the save the Sazza goblin one then im done for a while with this, hope they add a new difficulty in the future because the game is way to easy even on tactician i say it somewhere like story or normal mode in wotr, 2 manned last tactician run with a warlock/paladin and a rogue/ranger. Great game though i give it 8/10 and hope they add some future expansions perhaps in avernus but they didnt for divinity 2 so i doubt it.

Would be nice with more levels too i spent almost the entirety of last act already at max level so no levels made it pretty boring after first playthrough and not enough fun feats to pick from most martial classes take great weapon fighting then 2 asi feats for example. It hurts replayability imo.

But mods are a thing so nothing to worry about really.

[TirielWoW]

It does take longer to figure out the Emperor's true intentions I'll give you that but the main reason for that is that he barely appears in act 2 since they crammed all of his backstory and the big reveal into the third act and by the time you actually get to make up your mind about whether you trust the guy or not the game is over. Everything prior to that (meaning your interactions with the Guardian and the tadpoles) don't really matter.

I will absolutely give you this. It felt incredibly railroaded at the start of Act 3.

I would have preferred the Emperor as a standalone Act 3 character who isn't Balduran and have the tadpole/prism stuff be confined to Daisy and Orpheus. He's kinda stretched thin because it feels like he plays three different roles at the same time while not properly filling out any of them and it's very noticeable and jarring, especially if you played EA. The Guardian also inherits the same problem as Daisy (people automatically view the dream visitor with suspicion) while on top of that telling you to put more worms into your eye socket at a point in the story where you can let various people gouge our your eye in the hopes that it will remove your tadpole.

I actually like that idea. I honestly would have preferred three characters to the one (well, two EVENTUALLY, if you count Orpheus) that we got in the game. I think it would have made it a lot more interesting and felt a lot less like I was on rails the entire time.

- - - Updated - - -

Or choose between Orpheus, the Emperor AND the Absolute (with the latter trying to guide us to defeat the three chosen instead of trying to take over our brain). And Daisy would have been the Absolute in this case.
I don't know how it is with origins or custom characters but the relation between the Absolute and the Dark Urge at the end of the game seems so interesting and a Daisy path could have let us explore it through the game; it seemed to have far more respect for the Chosen of Bhaal who was the one who came up with the entire plan and actually enslaved it than for the other three Chosen who it treats like children bungling OUR plan
I mean if you are not Dark Urge I guess you might end up thinking Gortash was the master mind behind this when it really was the Bhaalspawn who did and just picked Gortash along

Oh wow...I honestly love this idea. That would have been crazy to try to navigate. Crazy fun, anyway!

[Zenfoldor]

PS5 Digital Foundry:

"Baldur's Gate 3 on PS5 is effectively the PC version at ultra settings And yes, we've tested Act Three too."

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfou...ultra-settings

Eurogamer:

"I'm beginning to prefer Baldur's Gate 3 on PS5"

https://www.eurogamer.net/im-beginni...-gate-3-on-ps5

PS5 version is legit. Let's gooooooo!!!!! I bought the most expensive version I could. Make it so number 1.

Also, LOOOOVE that cross save feature in on day 1, I'm so eventually going to be playing this across PC and PS5 and hopefully Switch 2, lol!

It coming down to BG3 vs TotK for GotY(with maybe spiderman 2 or if it releases silksong could challenge?) and who will win at most outlets? I'm a huge fan of both, so not even mad. I'm expecting BG3 to squeek it out, but what a year for gaming! Pure Larian magic, this is.

[Makabreska]

Has anyone still paying attention to this thread done a non-Dark Urge origin character playthrough(Gale/SH/Astarion/etc as the main character)?

In DOS2, the story made a lot more sense when doing origin vs custom. I'm curious if Larian continued that practice in BG3.

Like, are there origin-specific dialogue options? Additional quest-related content? Does the non-voiced dialogue options detract from the experience?

There are origin-specific dialogue options. Extra quests? You do them regardless of maining character or not. Did OS2 have extra content like that?

[RobertoCarlos]

Has anyone still paying attention to this thread done a non-Dark Urge origin character playthrough(Gale/SH/Astarion/etc as the main character)?

In DOS2, the story made a lot more sense when doing origin vs custom. I'm curious if Larian continued that practice in BG3.

Like, are there origin-specific dialogue options? Additional quest-related content? Does the non-voiced dialogue options detract from the experience?

It was only really the red prince that felt like he had something different going on as an origin character imo

[Kralljin]

Has anyone still paying attention to this thread done a non-Dark Urge origin character playthrough(Gale/SH/Astarion/etc as the main character)?

Well, i've seen at least an epilogue for both Shadowheart and Gale on YT if you play them as origin characters.

Going to guess that the others have one as well.

[Zmagoslav]

Has anyone still paying attention to this thread done a non-Dark Urge origin character playthrough(Gale/SH/Astarion/etc as the main character)?

In DOS2, the story made a lot more sense when doing origin vs custom. I'm curious if Larian continued that practice in BG3.

Like, are there origin-specific dialogue options? Additional quest-related content? Does the non-voiced dialogue options detract from the experience?

I just got to act 2 with Wyll as the origin character. Coming from 2 previous play-troughs as a non-oathbreaker paladin, it feels very much the same.
I didn't do a full-on gap analysis, but the dialogue thus far is slightly different, but not substantially.
(For instance: 1st meeting Karlach was somewhat different, but it played almost the same scenes)

[Orby]

I love the pathing in this game when picking up items...

Grabs apple on shelf > turns around, > comes back > climbs two boxes > grabs apple.

dude! the apple was right there lol.

[Makabreska]

I love the pathing in this game when picking up items...

Grabs apple on shelf > turns around, > comes back > climbs two boxes > grabs apple.

dude! the apple was right there lol.

Ye, pathing is one of my main issues with the game. Especially when jumping is involved.

Doing my 2nd play-through, and man Guidance is waaay to strong as a cantrip. Unlimited uses for everyone on every check.

[Diaphin]

I do agree that changing character mid conversation would've been a nice addition. Especially since there are situations when the conversation might start after an event or combat and the one doing the talking is the one closest to the NPC who wants to talk.

Still disagree with rolling on conversations though.

Rolling on Conversations would be funny, though I think there should be the option to pass on the role, so that you can have the spicey drama of players having different ideas of how you respond but also be able to coordinate who speaks when.

[Kyanion]

Rolling on Conversations would be funny, though I think there should be the option to pass on the role, so that you can have the spicey drama of players having different ideas of how you respond but also be able to coordinate who speaks when.

I was hoping it would be something like that. If Star Wars MMO can have a mode like that why not BG3?

[RobertoCarlos]

It would be weird if gods and monsters started threatening you and you said "hold up ill just grab my speech coach I didn't mean to be standing in front. If you could just hold on a sec"

[Gaidax]

I was hoping it would be something like that. If Star Wars MMO can have a mode like that why not BG3?

It was their conscious decision, as in having you sometimes ambushed in conversations too. Whether it's a good or bad decision, I don't know - it is annoying one though. I guess some mod will eventually change it.

[Kyanion]

It was their conscious decision, as in having you sometimes ambushed in conversations too. Whether it's a good or bad decision, I don't know - it is annoying one though. I guess some mod will eventually change it.

I mean supposedly there is an option to always make sure your main character (in solo player) always gets picked for conversations that suddenly happen and that fails to work a fair amount. Like I get it the party face always does not talk in D&D but at the same time it is a bit more organic as other people in the party speak/roll dice instead of the first one to talk making all those rolls.