D&D General Baldur's Gate 3 will now be releasing August 3rd on PC and September 6th on PS5, increased level cap, race & class details and more

[Ruin Explorer]

Another big change is the tadpole powers are now on a "Highlander" basis rather than "the more you use them" basis, and have an actual screen where you can pick what power to get next and so on.

This is presumably in part because it was incredibly easy to just ignore the tadpole prompts except for the essentially "required" ones, but also is because it gives another progression mechanism (as Larian said), and frankly, players will find an actual system a hell of a lot harder to resist than some than just a dialogue option.

EDIT - Unrelated but I was pleased to find I have BG1 EE and BG2 EE thanks to Amazon Prime games, so I guess I'll give BG1 EE a go and see if I still hate it (odds are good I do! I loved BG2 though).

 

[Ondath]

EDIT - Unrelated but I was pleased to find I have BG1 EE and BG2 EE thanks to Amazon Prime games, so I guess I'll give BG1 EE a go and see if I still hate it (odds are good I do! I loved BG2 though).

Funnily enough, I find BG1 more fun than BG2 - the game is pretty difficult and deadly (much like lower level AD&D 2E I suppose - whooops, better not carry over the debate from the other thread!), but if you know what to expect (and play intelligently) it's quite manageable. However, BG2's Real Time With Pause system was completely unbearable for me at high levels - I have to micromanage 6 high level characters every 2 seconds, some fights are basically unwinnable walls where you need to know which dispel spells to prepare beforehand, and the game's length made it very difficult to follow for me. I could play it every other week or so, and I lost track of what to do before I could rescue Imoen and once I forgot the insanely complex character specs and story threads, the game was lost to me.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Funnily enough, I find BG1 more fun than BG2 - the game is pretty difficult and deadly (much like lower level AD&D 2E I suppose - whooops, better not carry over the debate from the other thread!), but if you know what to expect (and play intelligently) it's quite manageable. However, BG2's Real Time With Pause system was completely unbearable for me at high levels - I have to micromanage 6 high level characters every 2 seconds, some fights are basically unwinnable walls where you need to know which dispel spells to prepare beforehand, and the game's length made it very difficult to follow for me. I could play it every other week or so, and I lost track of what to do before I could rescue Imoen and once I forgot the insanely complex character specs and story threads, the game was lost to me.

Same for me, although I don't find BG2 that bad - basically tolerable enough that I'll push through. I do love BG1's "wander through the countryside exploring" phase, although even then real time with pause was a pain with AoE effects - oops, just fireballed half the party by accident! BG3 going turn-based is such an improvement there, even if it raised an outcry from some fans of the original games.

 

[Seramus]

You know, I'm really interested to see how they handle Shadowheart's artifact. Knowing Sven considers it a design mistake and wishes he didn't do it adds a lot of dev humor for me. I'm sure it will be fine, but it made me triple curious.

We've all done things as a DM we wish we'd done a different way.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Funnily enough, I find BG1 more fun than BG2 - the game is pretty difficult and deadly (much like lower level AD&D 2E I suppose - whooops, better not carry over the debate from the other thread!), but if you know what to expect (and play intelligently) it's quite manageable. However, BG2's Real Time With Pause system was completely unbearable for me at high levels - I have to micromanage 6 high level characters every 2 seconds, some fights are basically unwinnable walls where you need to know which dispel spells to prepare beforehand, and the game's length made it very difficult to follow for me. I could play it every other week or so, and I lost track of what to do before I could rescue Imoen and once I forgot the insanely complex character specs and story threads, the game was lost to me.

Well I spent all evening looking at portraits and finally picked one and then it was time for bed lol so sounds like I'm off to a flying start.

With BG2, I remember I had an improved combat script I'd downloaded from somewhere and personally tweaked (I have no idea how one even does that or if that's still a thing), which helped a lot with the micro. Also I was playing a Sorcerer who could really dispel the everliving crap out of people.

 

[Scribe]

A lot of people find just creating one character a sweat-inducing nightmare (I admit almost none of those people likely post on this board!) so tend to be terrified of mercenary options in BG-style games (especially the Pathfinder ones, jesus).

My son, a gamer, grew up surrounded by this stuff, played through BG1 and IWD as a kid, asked me about Wrath of the Righteous after I told him about the 'special ending'. He made it through character creation and then I showed him what my 'save before the last fight' party looked like, walked him through the various options and buffs and synergy and....he declined to play.

 

[vecna00]

The third major villain is Orin the Red, who seems to be a doppleganger/changeling. She is voiced by Maggie Robertson, known to many as the voice of Lady Dimitrescu.

Oh, that last part I did not know about!

 

[W'rkncacnter]

She is voiced by Maggie Robertson, known to many as the voice of Lady Dimitrescu.

BIG LADY.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's also way less stressful for more casual or less mechanically-inclined players.

A lot of people find just creating one character a sweat-inducing nightmare (I admit almost none of those people likely post on this board!) so tend to be terrified of mercenary options in BG-style games (especially the Pathfinder ones, jesus). So if the race/class/stats (and possibly subclass) are already picked, you're good. I imagine most of these guys, it's just "accept and go", and you can respec them if you want to change them.

You can fully respec, seemingly including classes, everyone in your party (though you don't seem to be able to change races).

The trouble with the Pathfinder games is you can't create them as pregens, you have to go through the whole long winded character creation process every time. IWD and Solasta do it better, but you can only recruit your mercs at the start.

Respecing is a pain in WotR too - you want to change one thing, but it completely wipes all your character data, including name, species and alignment. I had to take a bunch of screenshots so I could rebuild my character as they were.

Some of those character names are a bit dodgy though - Ver'yll Wenkiir the ranger?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

My son, a gamer, grew up surrounded by this stuff, played through BG1 and IWD as a kid, asked me about Wrath of the Righteous after I told him about the 'special ending'. He made it through character creation and then I showed him what my 'save before the last fight' party looked like, walked him through the various options and buffs and synergy and....he declined to play.

I always play WotR in turn-based mode. But by the final fight my main character was so uber-powerful that they barely needed a party.