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!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I feel confident my personal feedback isn't going to make one iota of difference, which is why I can't be bothered to seek out other venues than this one.

But it does feel like Marian is about to learn how players actively want them to go back to the core rules, and skip their own tweaks to the rules.

Maybe this indicates they will make other changes that bring the game experience closer to the tabletop experience too...

Many of the changes to the core rules are to make melee less unattractive (once per short rest weapon abilities, disadvantage shooting upwards etc). If they where undone there would be even less reason to use melee weapons.

You Should try Solasta: Crown of the Magister. That sticks more closely to core 5e rules, and has soft cover for standing behind another character, but ranged weapons and spells still dominate.

 

[Nymrod]

Oh there is a mod that suggests there is a tiefling female whose class is not implemented yet as an origin character (Karlach). Something tells me tiefling Paladin (they are using Fighter in the mod to make her available). And there is talk of Minsc being in the gamefiles as a companion. If the third one is really a female halfling bard, I'll be pissed. Not one dwarf or gnome. If you want to call it BG, at least do one thing right and give a decent number of companions from a wide assortment of races/classes/alignments.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I actually think there will be companion characters who are not origin characters - i.e. not playable as the protagonist. But yes, Karlach looks like she will be a (Zariel) tiefling paladin companion. I'm pretty sure her appearance isn't done yet either, since she is supposed to have a broken horn.

 

[Nymrod]

I actually think there will be companion characters who are not origin characters - i.e. not playable as the protagonist. But yes, Karlach looks like she will be a (Zariel) tiefling paladin companion. I'm pretty sure her appearance isn't done yet either, since she is supposed to have a broken horn.

Could also be a ranger.

But I will be very disappointed if it's just 8 characters. With three female characters whose main personality trait is "I'm a bitch"

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Could also be a ranger.

But I will be very disappointed if it's just 8 characters. With three female characters whose main personality trait is "I'm a bitch"

She could be almost anything, but her whole quest is paladin themed. [and we already know who the ranger is]

It will be easy enough to mod additional companions. The obstacle for the professionals is the expectation of fully voiced elaborate personal quests for every character, which makes each one very expensive to do.

 

[CapnZapp]

Anyone else finding Baldur's Gate more deadly than actual 5e sessions?

I think this is because:

1. It is a sandbox, you can easily get in above your head. Which I like.
   
   
2. You are not let through level-appropriate encounters, which I also like, but think may frustrate many. I get a little frustrated when I spend a lot of time on an encounter that goes to combat that I can't win and have to go back to an early save and try to go somewhere else.
   
   
3. You can build your own party. You are stuck with the characters available, who are all squishy. I didn't know what I was doing when I started and I managed to get my Gith companion killed and am playing a wizard, so I have no real fighters in my party. I'm almost tempted to start over with a fighter build, even though I like playing wizards. But I would be happy with Gale as the party wizard.
   
   
4. Not a merciful DM. I like how the enemies will actually continue to attack downed characters. Too often in live games of 5e, DMs don't do this.
   
   
5. I just really suck. I tend to do well tactically in D&D games and my players in particular make it challenging to challenge them in 5e. I like to blame my suckitude on items 1 through 4. I'm just not doing well in combat. It is leading me to play more of a social and stealth game. While I like but Baldur's Gate really isn't the ideal explore, stealth, social game. Much of the fun is the tactical, turn-based, combat which I love, esp for its 5e feel. But, man, I'm tired of having to go back to previous saves after an hour or two of failing to win a combat encounter and then having to go find a more appropriate encounter.

6. Because Larian has very different ideas for their encounter design, as well as their AI priorities.

In most tabletop D&D adventures, you face far less difficult opposition in general. And range and terrain plays a far smaller role (terrain plays no role at all in many published encounters). And finally, few DMs find it fun to actually kill their players' characters.

As for this last point, already back in 2015 I identified the unfortunate result of the changes to dying implemented in 5th Edition:

D&D 5E - Whack-a-mole gaming or being healed from 0 hp

Many of you have observed that a simple Healing Word is all that is needed to "save" a downed ally's set of actions - even at 1 hp, that ally performs at full capacity. How big of an issue has the fact that being downed in combat mostly means going prone (perhaps the lightest penalty in the...

www.enworld.org

In short, unlike previous editions of the game, you don't track negative hit points in 5th Edition. This makes it far too attractive to make monsters waste a lot of attack damage when they attack heroes close to zero hp. Which in turn makes it too compelling to have your monsters actually kill off dying heroes. Few DMs want their run of the mill monsters act this ruthlessly, which again is a direct result of oversimplifying the game to begin with ("tracking negative hp is too bothersome, let's nix that rule").

 

[Paul Farquhar]

6. Because Larian has very different ideas for their encounter design, as well as their AI priorities.

In most tabletop D&D adventures, you face far less difficult opposition in general.

This is true for all CRPGs. You kill millions of monsters in BG1.

And range and terrain plays a far smaller role (terrain plays no role at all in many published encounters).

Sure it does. There is a whole chapter on "creating interesting encounters" that discusses using terrain features. As for published adventures, it's definitely used. For example there is caustic lime on the floor in the room where you fight the slug monster in Hidden Shrine of Tamouachan.

 

[Gradine]

"This D&D game is too tactically rich and deep" is a weird flex but good on you for knowing what you like, I guess.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I have some more information on Karlach, who it seems is an origin character. Big spoilers:
She was a soldier in Zariel's army in the Blood War. She escaped from Avernus aboard the nautaloid and is heading to Baldur's Gate on a quest for revenge against those who where responsible for her situation.

 

[Aldarc]

"This D&D game is too tactically rich and deep" is a weird flex but good on you for knowing what you like, I guess.

Yeah, most of the coverage of this game has not been from people who particularly care about D&D but by computer gamers who enjoy CRPGs. While this should be based on D&D, it should still be an enjoyable computer/video game for (likely) the hyper-majority of non-D&D players who pick up this game.