Gladius Legis
Legend
Limits the extra action to 1 attack a la 5e Haste, but still allows 2 spells a round.
So turning Haste into a still-busted 3.0 version of the spell for casters, but making it as weak for martials as it is in 5e.
D&D General BG3 and 5E Theories. Top 10.
So turning Haste into a still-busted 3.0 version of the spell for casters, but making it as weak for martials as it is in 5e.
Zardnaar
Legend
I'll have to settle for 14 eldritch blasts then
Li Shenron
Legend
I have serious problems understanding what you wrote, so I will focus on the only thing I think I understood:
"Short rest after every fight." > I haven't had a chance to try playing the game as the SO is playing it all the time, but I thought I heard that BG3 has a limit of 2 short rests between long rests. Maybe I heard it wrong, but if that's true then I wonder how can you really short-rest after every fight.
"Short rest after every fight." > I haven't had a chance to try playing the game as the SO is playing it all the time, but I thought I heard that BG3 has a limit of 2 short rests between long rests. Maybe I heard it wrong, but if that's true then I wonder how can you really short-rest after every fight.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Yes, there is a limit to two short rests between every long rest. However, the bard Song of Rest ability has been changed to grant an extra short rest.
I suppose the point is, when you run out of short rests you can refresh them by taking a long rest.
Zardnaar
Legend
Plus extra short rest per bard per respec.
Apparently you can beat the game without any long rests. 10 bards is 12 short rests
Long rests are essentially possible after almost every fight and definitely after every 3 fights.
There are a few exceptions where an area is blocked from returning to camp (although many of those you can just walk out of the blocked area and come back), and there are only a few times where negative story progression would happen if you long rest too often.
Yeah, easy respec and multiclasses don't help.
Disallowing multi class would help a little I guess, but I don't think that much.
I had a Sorc 12 that never bothered to go SorLok and it still crushed.
Adding Thief to Monk is a nice kicker but Monk 12 with tavern brawler and elixirs and items is still broke.
etc
A no magic item run might be good. But magic items are fun of course so limiting that is kinda boring.
Zardnaar
Legend
No MCing you just tweak the build. Gloomstalker/thief combinations become fighters, rogue MCs become bards, clerics, Sorcerers are happy being single classed. Monks are mostly fine they stsy single classed to level 6ish anyway.
Monk damage drops from absurd to very good. Self ban tavern brawler.
Ogre Mage
Hero
I was wondering if BG3 players have a preferred party composition they like to use most of the time. After many hours of playing mine is --
Swords Bard 10/Fighter 1/Wizard 1 (sharpshooter feat) (Astarion)
Light Domain Cleric 12 (radiating orb and/or reverberation gear) (Shadowheart)
Berserker Barbarian 5/Fighter 4/Rogue 3 (tavern brawler feat) (Karlach)
Draconic Sorcerer 10/Fiend Warlock 2 (potent robe) (Wyll)
I am working through my first tactician run and am in Act 3. It is going pretty well. Not sure if I have the nerve to try honor mode.
Swords Bard 10/Fighter 1/Wizard 1 (sharpshooter feat) (Astarion)
Light Domain Cleric 12 (radiating orb and/or reverberation gear) (Shadowheart)
Berserker Barbarian 5/Fighter 4/Rogue 3 (tavern brawler feat) (Karlach)
Draconic Sorcerer 10/Fiend Warlock 2 (potent robe) (Wyll)
I am working through my first tactician run and am in Act 3. It is going pretty well. Not sure if I have the nerve to try honor mode.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
@Zardnaar
As for my own theories:
1. Magic items will become slightly more common (as in showing up at all in more campaigns) and significantly more creative. BG3 absolutely showers players with magic items, in part because it can't know what class(es) players are running. DMs can be more selective, so they don't need to have THAT many. But it's still fun to get various bits and bobs, and these magic items can have useful effects or powers (similar to 4e items...) that aren't just bland +N or "you deal Nd6 additional <foo> damage on a hit" or the like.
2. DMs will try, but struggle, to implement terrain features and hazards into their combats. They will most likely also try, but struggle, to deal with the "fights are binary" and "slapping a fat sack of HP with no interesting actions is really boring" problems.
3. A very few DMs will take note of how low the DCs are for the skill checks in act 1 (and to a certain extent act 2 as well), and realize that presuming that a "Medium" difficulty check EMPHATICALLY DOES NOT mean a "typical" check. Given that even with Guidance and other bonuses, a DC 15 is often a nail-biter early on, I hold onto the slimmest hope that 5.5e will actually get DMs-in-general to change their behavior on this front....but I fear nothing will really change.
4. Dragonborn are going to be a LOT more accepted by many folks now than they used to be. Not "liked"--I don't expect any meaningful proportion to become fans, after all--but BG3 finally gives many folks a tangible, visible something to think about, and that's a huge, huge, huge step toward making them feel real and grounded and "something I can understand why someone would like," rather than how a lot of people felt even as little as five years ago. (That is, where folks would deride Dragonborn fans as simply wanting egregious power.....despite the fact that 5e Dragonborn are one of the weakest races in the whole game, and certainly the weakest race in the PHB.)
5. We'll see less of mindflayers, githyanki (and possibly githzerai too), Far Realm, and (non-DS) psionics than we would have otherwise. Not because these things were used poorly, but because they were used well. This will mean folks who care about originality will avoid them to not be accused of "copying" or getting on a "bandwagon" or the like, and many of those who still use them will fall short of Larian's polish, meaning there will be a (minor) stigma associated with their use. Basically, people will be "done" with such elements for a fair bit, and expect to see (or think they need to use) other elements instead, unless the situation specifically calls for it (as Dark Sun does.)
Having a Paladin who always has maxed Strength really does make a difference at level 4.
Short-rest parties are certainly not bad (though it helps that BG3 has changed or added many rules to boost such parties), but it really does make a huge difference that (a) short rests are instant, and (b) you can (and often should) do them after every combat. Getting only half as many resources to spend per combat is a massive nerf, and a big part of what holds short-rest-based classes back in tabletop.
Can't really say I agree with the 5MWD thing. While, admittedly, I'm not playing on a high difficulty (I have little interest in high-difficulty gaming), I absolutely hoard camp supplies. Even though my groups tend to long rest extremely frequently, as in rarely more than 3 encounters between long rests and that would be a long day for us, we still have over 3000 camp supplies now, before even entering Act 2. Meaning, even at the 80 camp supplies rate, we could long rest 37 times. Since I doubt we've taken anywhere near that many long rests thus far, we'd probably still have another 20 more in the tank, accounting for the doubled cost, and you can bet your britches I would have been hounding even more for supplies than I have been.
This isn't to say that short-rest classes aren't useful. Lae'zel can hit extremely hard, even without gith-specific weaponry (in my furthest-along playthrough, we have just destroyed the zaith'isk and are about to fight the gith about it), but she runs out of steam very quickly. Short Rests being effectively instantaneous definitely helps a lot, and will probably matter for clearing out the Creche, but I strongly suspect this will be one of the few times we actually use both short rests before we long rest....and that only because we've got to fight our way out of the creche, so I doubt we'll get the chance to long rest as we like.
Crowd control is still very good at high(er) levels, you just have to pick the right kind of crowd control. E.g. sleep is insanely good for the fight at the grove gate, where the goblins all have single-digit HP. Toward the mid-game, area denial and forced movement become far more useful, especially if you don't care about loot and can thus comfortably throw enemies into unreachable pits for instant death.
Not sure what happened to the point between 3 and 5. But we all know what that number is associated with!!!ILLUMINATI CONFIRMED!!!!! (Hopefully my sarcasm is evident...)
I think boss encounters are tolerabe....within BG3. Especially because a lot of them are closer to puzzles where you need to find the One Weird Trick (or one of a handful, anyway.) But yes, speaking charitably, "set-piece" fights are far from 5e's strong suits, and even a very good DM needs to wrangle with the rules to get something decent, let alone good.
Fully agreed on point 6--terrain and hazards are no less important than monster design for a good, interesting combat. Unfortunately, 5e pretty badly neglects terrain and hazards as meaningful components of D&D. BG3 makes up for it by capitalizing on Larian's prior experience with DOS2. And, since it's essentially a package deal, point 7 is completely spot-on. 5e simply does not offer good rules for tactical, environmentally-driven combat, and provides little to no support for DMs to develop their own approach to it. There's very little difference between fighting on a featureless flat plane with a couple choke points, and fighting in an actually complex and interesting environment unless the DM does a ton of heavy lifting.
For #8, I remain steadfast in the claim that if a playstyle only becomes fun because the DM plays favorites, then that playstyle is badly designed and needs to be reworked so that it is fun in its own right.
On Encumbrance: Speak for yourself. I find it tedious even in BG3. "Jump through hoops so you don't suffer an annoying penalty; you get nothing for success" is generally not a very good mechanical design. It's one thing to punish outright failure or to reward cleverness. It's quite another to punish because someone allowed an otherwise-inconsequential number to pass an easily-forgotten threshold without realizing it.
Finally, none of those are really a surprise to me. Gith being able to daily pick up a bunch of related skill proficiencies was pretty obviously extremely powerful...and they get other features on top, too. Half-elves have always been powerful so that shouldn't surprise anyone. Dragonborn (pre-Fizban) have always been weak so that shouldn't surprise anyone. Frankly, all BG3 did was make it abundantly clear just how weak "resistance to one damage type and a per-short-rest elemental AoE" is as the abilities for a race. I'm hopeful 5.5e will follow Fizban's and provide both more interesting and more useful benefits.
Can't really say I agree with the 5MWD thing. While, admittedly, I'm not playing on a high difficulty (I have little interest in high-difficulty gaming), I absolutely hoard camp supplies. Even though my groups tend to long rest extremely frequently, as in rarely more than 3 encounters between long rests and that would be a long day for us, we still have over 3000 camp supplies now, before even entering Act 2. Meaning, even at the 80 camp supplies rate, we could long rest 37 times. Since I doubt we've taken anywhere near that many long rests thus far, we'd probably still have another 20 more in the tank, accounting for the doubled cost, and you can bet your britches I would have been hounding even more for supplies than I have been.
This isn't to say that short-rest classes aren't useful. Lae'zel can hit extremely hard, even without gith-specific weaponry (in my furthest-along playthrough, we have just destroyed the zaith'isk and are about to fight the gith about it), but she runs out of steam very quickly. Short Rests being effectively instantaneous definitely helps a lot, and will probably matter for clearing out the Creche, but I strongly suspect this will be one of the few times we actually use both short rests before we long rest....and that only because we've got to fight our way out of the creche, so I doubt we'll get the chance to long rest as we like.
Crowd control is still very good at high(er) levels, you just have to pick the right kind of crowd control. E.g. sleep is insanely good for the fight at the grove gate, where the goblins all have single-digit HP. Toward the mid-game, area denial and forced movement become far more useful, especially if you don't care about loot and can thus comfortably throw enemies into unreachable pits for instant death.
Not sure what happened to the point between 3 and 5. But we all know what that number is associated with!!!
I think boss encounters are tolerabe....within BG3. Especially because a lot of them are closer to puzzles where you need to find the One Weird Trick (or one of a handful, anyway.) But yes, speaking charitably, "set-piece" fights are far from 5e's strong suits, and even a very good DM needs to wrangle with the rules to get something decent, let alone good.
Fully agreed on point 6--terrain and hazards are no less important than monster design for a good, interesting combat. Unfortunately, 5e pretty badly neglects terrain and hazards as meaningful components of D&D. BG3 makes up for it by capitalizing on Larian's prior experience with DOS2. And, since it's essentially a package deal, point 7 is completely spot-on. 5e simply does not offer good rules for tactical, environmentally-driven combat, and provides little to no support for DMs to develop their own approach to it. There's very little difference between fighting on a featureless flat plane with a couple choke points, and fighting in an actually complex and interesting environment unless the DM does a ton of heavy lifting.
For #8, I remain steadfast in the claim that if a playstyle only becomes fun because the DM plays favorites, then that playstyle is badly designed and needs to be reworked so that it is fun in its own right.
On Encumbrance: Speak for yourself. I find it tedious even in BG3. "Jump through hoops so you don't suffer an annoying penalty; you get nothing for success" is generally not a very good mechanical design. It's one thing to punish outright failure or to reward cleverness. It's quite another to punish because someone allowed an otherwise-inconsequential number to pass an easily-forgotten threshold without realizing it.
Finally, none of those are really a surprise to me. Gith being able to daily pick up a bunch of related skill proficiencies was pretty obviously extremely powerful...and they get other features on top, too. Half-elves have always been powerful so that shouldn't surprise anyone. Dragonborn (pre-Fizban) have always been weak so that shouldn't surprise anyone. Frankly, all BG3 did was make it abundantly clear just how weak "resistance to one damage type and a per-short-rest elemental AoE" is as the abilities for a race. I'm hopeful 5.5e will follow Fizban's and provide both more interesting and more useful benefits.
As for my own theories:
1. Magic items will become slightly more common (as in showing up at all in more campaigns) and significantly more creative. BG3 absolutely showers players with magic items, in part because it can't know what class(es) players are running. DMs can be more selective, so they don't need to have THAT many. But it's still fun to get various bits and bobs, and these magic items can have useful effects or powers (similar to 4e items...) that aren't just bland +N or "you deal Nd6 additional <foo> damage on a hit" or the like.
2. DMs will try, but struggle, to implement terrain features and hazards into their combats. They will most likely also try, but struggle, to deal with the "fights are binary" and "slapping a fat sack of HP with no interesting actions is really boring" problems.
3. A very few DMs will take note of how low the DCs are for the skill checks in act 1 (and to a certain extent act 2 as well), and realize that presuming that a "Medium" difficulty check EMPHATICALLY DOES NOT mean a "typical" check. Given that even with Guidance and other bonuses, a DC 15 is often a nail-biter early on, I hold onto the slimmest hope that 5.5e will actually get DMs-in-general to change their behavior on this front....but I fear nothing will really change.
4. Dragonborn are going to be a LOT more accepted by many folks now than they used to be. Not "liked"--I don't expect any meaningful proportion to become fans, after all--but BG3 finally gives many folks a tangible, visible something to think about, and that's a huge, huge, huge step toward making them feel real and grounded and "something I can understand why someone would like," rather than how a lot of people felt even as little as five years ago. (That is, where folks would deride Dragonborn fans as simply wanting egregious power.....despite the fact that 5e Dragonborn are one of the weakest races in the whole game, and certainly the weakest race in the PHB.)
5. We'll see less of mindflayers, githyanki (and possibly githzerai too), Far Realm, and (non-DS) psionics than we would have otherwise. Not because these things were used poorly, but because they were used well. This will mean folks who care about originality will avoid them to not be accused of "copying" or getting on a "bandwagon" or the like, and many of those who still use them will fall short of Larian's polish, meaning there will be a (minor) stigma associated with their use. Basically, people will be "done" with such elements for a fair bit, and expect to see (or think they need to use) other elements instead, unless the situation specifically calls for it (as Dark Sun does.)
Ironically, not a problem for me in BG3. I also grabbed a friggin' pile of said potions of giant strength before Auntie Ethel, ahem, departed, and my friends and I are quite happy to use potions and save spell slots for actually wrecking faces or solving problems in one fell swoop, depending on circumstances.
Having a Paladin who always has maxed Strength really does make a difference at level 4.
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