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!

 

[Gladius Legis]

With it still in early access, they'll are probably still fine-tuning charisma based encounters and checks like that...

One thing I really hope they do is reward XP for resolving quests and encounters through non-combat means. That's one issue that's really stuck out to me so far.

 

[Iry]

One thing I really hope they do is reward XP for resolving quests and encounters through non-combat means. That's one issue that's really stuck out to me so far.

Historically, Larian does. In fact, they do both. Which hilariously rewards doing all the quests then killing everyone.

 

[Oofta]

Historically, Larian does. In fact, they do both. Which hilariously rewards doing all the quests then killing everyone.

Does that make players polite murder hobos or diplomatic murder hobos?

 

[Horwath]

Real Time with Pause is garbage and we only put up with it in the late 90's because we didn't know any better, as a people. I'd much rather play out encounters in Torment: Tides of Numenera than Baldur's Gate II. Honestly.

Frankly, when it comes to D&D games I'm much more interested in playing an RPG than an RTS

well, I guess to each it's own.

With exceptions of Heroes of might&magic 3&5, I hate turn based PC games with a fire of a thousands suns.

I just wished that they kept their turn based B.S. for DOS3 and made BG3 as it's predecessors RTwP.

but hey, you can't win them all...

 

[Teemu]

In the past few years, turn-based RPGs have been much more popular than RTwP RPGs. Why would they go RTwP when turn-based sells a lot more? Also, the two high-profile RTwP RPGs of the last few years (Pillars 2 and Pathfinder: Kingmaker) both added turn-based modes post-launch. Isn't it obvious which mode the market prefers?

 

[SkidAce]

well, I guess to each it's own.

With exceptions of Heroes of might&magic 3&5, I hate turn based PC games with a fire of a thousands suns.

did you ever play Final Fantasy Tactics?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If anyone is interested, current weird bugs:

It doesn't check to see if you have made a main hand attack before you use a bonus action attack. So you could make a bonus action off hand attack, then cast a spell of shoot a bow. Becomes even weirder if you are a Thief, since BG3 thieves get two bonus actions instead of Fast Hands.

When you scribe a scroll, there is no "is a wizard spell?" check. Gale has a spellbook full of cleric and warlock spells.

 

[Aldarc]

Turn-based let's you play games co-op, as you can't really RTwP with 2+ other people, which adds a lot of added Twitch streaming value.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

My only issue so far is how hard it is to get peaceful resolutions without save scumming. But that's part and parcel with 5E's bounded accuracy. Quite a few of the situations qualify as hard or very hard after all and you cannot focus your build well at low levels.

There are several cantrips that might help with social situations, I must test them on my next run. Friends, Guidance, and Thaumaturgy (which is currently tiefling only) could all help.

 

[Horwath]

Turn-based let's you play games co-op, as you can't really RTwP with 2+ other people, which adds a lot of added Twitch streaming value.

yes you can.

we played 4 player NWN2 at a lan party. a few centuries ago, haha