D&D General Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access

Baldur's Gate III is now available for early access on Steam and on Stadia.

I couldn't get the Steam version working on my Mac, but the Stadia version works just fine. The opening tutorial level is pretty gruesome (at one point I had to squish somebody's brain) and the mind flayer airship you're trying to escape from beings to mind the movie Aliens a lot.

Character creation is quick and easy, although options in the early access are limited. The gameplay is like Divinity Original Sin 2 with the 5E rules layered over it. I've only played an hour or so of the game, and as an early access game, it is occasionally a bit buggy, but nothing showstopping (yet).

This isn't a review (I haven't played enough of it to do that, and I don't think it's fair to review an early access version anyway); it's mainly just an alert to the few people who don't already know it's available. If any such person exists!

 

[CapnZapp]

Also with resurrection being fairly easy given we have a servant of Jergal hanging around in our camp, the fact that they focus on killing downed characters probably ends up for the best given that it's a couple of attacks spared from the rest of the group. You want the enemy down fast and then you can go to camp and rez (or use the scrolls). Heck help seems pointless quite often in some fights since they can easily down the character before they get to act unless you get a chance to also heal (or throw a potion)

Something is clearly wrong with this picture.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

No, why?

(Not only do I prefer to communicate my thoughts where they are seen by a wider audience, I am convinced my thoughts carry more weight here - where you and others can see them and maybe be influenced by them - than as just the feedback of one out of a million playtesters)

Your feed back here will not be seen by Larian and has zero possibility of being taken on board and resulting in a change in the game. On Larian's forums or on the Steam discussion boards(If you bought the game through Steam) there is a very good chance of Larian becoming aware of your issues and acting on them. That is one the purposes of Early Access.

 

[Nymrod]

I am a registered user here. Not there.

Cheers

Oh the horror, registering on another forum

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Your "question" is fair. It doesn't really have anything to do with the technology level. What I mean is:

View attachment 127925
"Modern" combat: bullets can take you out entirely so moving from cover to cover, ranged combat, and terrain is paramount.

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Classic "fantasy" combat: heroically wading into melee defeating loads of monsters by sheer brawn, heroism or impudence alone.

My point is that Larian's decisions regarding rules, monster design and encounter terrain transforms the 5E game from a chiefly "fantasy" experience into a chiefly "modern" experience, and that I'd like it if they at they very least offered the option to play the game in a more classical way.

Nothing Larian has done has made 5e play that way, they have actually inflated HP in some cases to make one shot kills less likely, and increased the size of "threatened area" where ranged attacks have disadvantage. If you play Solasta, it also favours ranged combat, and makes even bigger use of cover.

The truth is, wading into melee and defeating monsters with shear brawn is an inherently a sub-optimal tactic in 5e. Players only get away with it because human DMs tend to play monsters dumb.

 

[Nymrod]

Nothing Larian has done has made 5e play that way, they have actually inflated HP in some cases to make one shot kills less likely, and increased the size of "threatened area" where ranged attacks have disadvantage. If you play Solasta, it also favours ranged combat, and makes even bigger use of cover.

The truth is, wading into melee and defeating monsters with shear brawn is an inherently a sub-optimal tactic in 5e. Players only get away with it because human DMs tend to play monsters dumb.

Well Larian DID do one thing, they added so many barrels of wine or flameable oil or exploding mushrooms you can fireblast to an explosion. Which is more ranged AoE than any 1-4th level character has. They have also added are effects to so many ranged attacks that leave acid/fire/frost puddles on the ground. If a frost cantrip is cold enough to freeze the ground a few feet away from the target, it should be doing way more damage and not be a cantrip maybe?
Just saying, the design choices they made that changed things over 5E do favor ranged attackers.

 

[CapnZapp]

Your feed back here will not be seen by Larian

My purpose is for you to see my feedback.

Why are we still discussing this as if I don't know what I'm doing? Cheers

 

[Nymrod]

My purpose is for you to see my feedback.

Why are we still discussing this as if I don't know what I'm doing? Cheers

Because when you are sharing your opinion about a product where the producer will not see it, it by definition is not feedback since it is not going back to them. And that's cool, this is a forum so it's the right place for an opinion, but maybe do not use the word feedback for it.

 

[CapnZapp]

Players only get away with it because human DMs tend to play monsters dumb.

This is utterly dismissive of the play experience of many many gamers.

Players don't "get away with" anything, as if players and DMs are competing against each other. Your viewpoint is alien to me.

There's nothing wrong about "playing monsters dumb", and there's nothing wrong with hoping Larian emulates it, so BG3 doesn't become just another DOS2 computer game.

 

[CapnZapp]

Because when you are sharing your opinion about a product where the producer will not see it, it by definition is not feedback since it is not going back to them. And that's cool, this is a forum so it's the right place for an opinion, but maybe do not use the word feedback for it.

Tell that to ardoughter who started using that term.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well Larian DID do one thing, they added so many barrels of wine or flameable oil or exploding mushrooms you can fireblast to an explosion. Which is more ranged AoE than any 1-4th level character has. They have also added are effects to so many ranged attacks that leave acid/fire/frost puddles on the ground. If a frost cantrip is cold enough to freeze the ground a few feet away from the target, it should be doing way more damage and not be a cantrip maybe?
Just saying, the design choices they made that changed things over 5E do favor ranged attackers.

Doesn't make much difference, having be forced to play D&D digitally of late, I have found their is much more manoeuvring and ranged combat on a digital battlemap than there is when combat it theatre-of-the-mind or artificially confined to a 20' square room.

No reason why a DM can't scatter exploding barrels around a dungeon if they so choose anyway.