is the stealth bad as bg2?
and how is playing evil characters with the system? bad like in the paper 5ed?
I hated that too. It was needlessly mechanical. Every aspect of gameplay is supposed to be a necessary and coherent metaphor in games. I really didn't think that the armor bar was effective in either regard either.
The D&D ruleset reigns in a lot of the weirder Larian design tendencies, I think.
Be on the lookout for Pathfinder: Wrath of The Righteous coming soon!
Kind of amazing they even get to make another game after how awful unfinished and buggy the first Pathfinder game was
I understand what they tried to do with it, but in practice it just ended up encouraging extremely high damage builds so that you could CC chain enemies before you got CC chained, and that's just not fun. Doesn't help that they also gave most difficult bosses crazy high Initiative so they blew up your armor before you could retaliate if you didn't also cheese yourself.
And the fact that mods can remove it, doesn't make it good design. Same argument I have with Bethesda games, yeah it's cool that you can mod the bad shit out of them (and to be clear they're as a rule way worse than Larian games about that), but the doesn't make the design good.
It is all that is left unsaid upon which tragedies are built -Kreia
The internet: where to every action is opposed an unequal overreaction.
Well without armor it is just a CC fest anyway. The original Divinity was just about chain CCIng stuff to make them lose turns.
BG3 will have the same problem that all D&D games have where "save or suck" spells just dominate everything past mid-level, and whether they work or not is completely random. Like random mind flayers or spellcasters in BG2 who dropped a chaos on your party - oops, everyone failed, might as well reload. That's such degenerate gameplay by 2020 standards.
I really like the Divinity 2 mod that makes the status effects debuff your character but not lose turns. That is much better design.
Indeed, the solution is to nerf CC so that you don't need the armor to block the overpowered CC that can disable characters for several turns to begin with, or other annoying shit like Decaying.
It is my understanding that 5e D&D is less savage with save or die spells than 2e was back in the days, but yeah I picture lots of quickloads ahead of me when half the party gets Charmed or a character I like gets level drained or int drained into oblivion. I think there's a reason my favorite party-based RPGs didn't have stupid shit like that (or not as much of it), or that my favorite turn-based games (such as XCOM 2 or Darkest Dungeon) have character deaths as a feature and not a basically automatic failure state. It greatly helps lessen the blows of the RNG.
It is all that is left unsaid upon which tragedies are built -Kreia
The internet: where to every action is opposed an unequal overreaction.
Save or die yeah, but save or suck is still going strong. Confusion is basically unchanged for 20 years - drop it on a group, if a couple fail their saves you might as well reload. There are plenty of other examples, and of course enemies will have all this stuff long before your party does.
A few patches made it one of the best RPGs of the modern era. When they added the entirely turn-based mode, the game really took off. The mod community is robust as well.
I have never encountered a single bug, glitch, or issue with 'Kingmaker', fwiw.
Games on release rarely matter these days with live services, DLC, and patching available on PC and Console rather passively. No Man's Sky, Among Us, Titanfall 2, Apex Legends, Destiny 2, Pillars of Eternity 2, Avorion, Wolcen, Inquisitor, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, even Divinity Original Sin had significant and/or progressive updates which changed the respective games around. Fan reaction & aggregate reviews tend toward positive too.
There is a reason why Steam made the distinction between recent and historical reviews of products. Static release day assessments are bygone for the most part, and the industry will likely never go back.
- - - Updated - - -
That's exactly what they are like. The World of Warcraft variant is atypical.
- - - Updated - - -
Well, it's more a problem that stems from efficient actions. Or rather, how many actions you maximize per round/turn. This is common to many turn-based systems.
Because all actions are a resource, I can't dynamically run out of a stinking cloud or dodge away from a scorching ray without committing an inherent action. In of itself, you are not in too much danger from this type of mechanism in D&D but the rules provide a lot of asymmetrical snowballing (if you will) that you are totally right in saying, 'Might as well reload."
There are some systems that essentially use a resource of reaction to correct this snowballing effect. But fundamentally, D&D was and is a combat-based game where players are assumed to have a certain amount of leeway. I don't think video games can ever get us there though.
Yea, I liked that too.I really like the Divinity 2 mod that makes the status effects debuff your character but not lose turns. That is much better design.
To each their own, but I thought the PF game was awful. And granted (as is probably obvious), I think most D&D mechanics are really stale after 20+ years. I loathe the concept of spells per day with a passion.
Part of the reason I found the Divinity games refreshing despite their flaws was that they had their own rules and systems without relying on d20s and outdated tabletop mechanics. But ymmv
Picked it up tonight, here's a few first impressions.
Some of the spells go from slightly different to vastly different. Firebolt goes from a D10 to a D6 with ignite, thamaturgy gives advantage on persuasion and (iirc) intimidation rolls (it also currently isn't working) and there's a few others that have gone through a change to transcribe from PnP to the game.
I hit a few of these various skill checks people were complaining about including a DC18 from a certain psycopathic druid and I offer one piece of advice.
Always run guidance on your charisma person, just like in D&D itself, if your Cleric isn't spamming guidance at every god given opportunity then you're making things unnecessarily difficult.
I love that shove/disengage and hide along with potion drinking are on the bonus action, rather than the action. This gives you a much healthier action economy.
Loving this early run through, probably killed people I need but oh well!
Ex-Mod. Technically retired, they just won't let me quit.
Using Thaumaturgy to give you advantage on rolls is pretty much one of the things it's supposed to do. Trying to scare someone into talking vs trying to scare someone into talking while lights flicker, windows bang open and close etc is quite the leap.
But the change to fire bolt is strange..
Disengage (neither should Shove or Hide for that matter) shouldn't be a bonus action for obvious reasons. Firstly, it invalidates a Rogue class feature and similarly a Goblin racial feature. In addition, casters and range attackers have no disadvantage anymore, they don't have to care about attacks of opportunities or attacking with disadvantage because they can just disengage. In fact, there's no point in attacks of opportunity at all anymore (apart from the off case you wanna cast a spell as a bonus action, big deal).
Ray of Frost is currently ridiculously powerful for a cantrip. Prone is completely off in the current version. In 5e the Prone condition gives you advantage against ranged attacks, and disadvantage against melee attacks, as well as disadvantage on attack rolls. In BG3 it's basically just a lost turn. You can't get up at half your movement speed and you can't do anything from prone instead you just lose your action. You can't drop prone to protect against ranged attacks, and being prone gives no advantages against such attacks. It needs serious fixing.
Not even really going to go into surfaces, but see Ray of Frost.
Last edited by Cairhiin; 2020-10-19 at 12:02 PM.
Ray of Frost as it stands is ridiculously broken, short of vulnerabilities/resistances, it's the staple go to as a wizard. No reason to use anything else.
Disengage on the bonus is also an issue with casters/range just ignoring melee at will, but it also does let you get away from endless pursue/melee that the AI loves to target casters with.
Also not a fan of the prone change.
Ex-Mod. Technically retired, they just won't let me quit.
Damn, there's so much unique dialogue for a Drow (especially Lolth Sworn) in the Goblin areas. First of all, they just let you in wherever you want to go, no questions asked (instead they may apologize for being unworthy to be in my presence). But I found the best one yet. I popped a potion of animal talking I got from rummaging through Ethel's hut to talk with the rats inside the sanctum to see if they know some interesting stuff. But then I noticed the Goblins are feeding some dude to their spiders. So I had my Wizard cast Feather Fall on me and then I jumped down to the pit. The spiders wanted to eat me, but I could BS my way out. And one of the options, the one unique to Lolth Sworn Drow, was to impersonate Lolth herself. Upon passing it you get some unique dialogue and can order the spiders. To either sit tight or to slaughter the Goblins.
Also, I accidentally killed the Druid. I wanted to socialize with the Goblin kids throwing rocks at their new bear they wanted to break in so I joined in on the fun. After a particularly precise throw the bear got pissed off, kicked the door of is cage on top of one of the Goblins and started a fight. Only to turn into a guy after I killed it. Had to reload after that. It was nice to see one of the Goblins rush to the Warg cage to let them join the fight though.