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

[Ondath]

Exactly. Solasta's implementation shows how terminally tedious it is. Solasta is absolutely unafraid to be boring or have outright bad gameplay in the name of sticking to the rules slavishly, which is kind of commendable.

Thing is, at least coming from the P&P background, I absolutely didn't find Solasta's gameplay to be boring or bad. Complex? Absolutely. But I liked having the choice to roll as many hit dice as I wanted, to set out crafting goals for a journey, or judge every instance of a reaction trigger. For a turn-based game, I really don't think these are that much of a problem.

At least I absolutely prefer them to the atrocity that is Real Time With Pause.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For a turn-based game, I really don't think these are that much of a problem.

What I don't think you're processing is that people don't play turn-based games for those kind of minutiae. No successful turn-based game has that sort of level of genuinely pointless detail, and the more complex a turn-based game gets, the more it pushes away the audience, the less accessible it becomes. People want important decisions in turn-based games, and Solasta presents you with endless meaningless chore-decisions, ones which might just about make sense if you only control a single character, but don't for an entire group.

There's absolutely nothing interesting or cool about Hit Dice and spending them, for example, and as I demonstrated, mathematically, BG3 does basically exactly the same thing. Solasta elaborately simulating this largely pointless system is not something that makes it a better game for anyone but obsessive D&D hobbyists, who are probably a small percentage of the people who will play BG3. Hell they're not even a large percentage of TT D&D players.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Random note - the self-assuredness and idiot confidence of people who started in 5E or who have never played TT D&D but watched a Youtube video about it one time never ceases to astound me. As of today, over on the BG3 reddit, I have been told by not one, not two, but in fact three different and unrelated people that Bards (and in one case, Barbarians) didn't exist until 3rd edition. Amazing.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Random note - the self-assuredness and idiot confidence of people who started in 5E or who have never played TT D&D but watched a Youtube video about it one time never ceases to astound me. As of today, over on the BG3 reddit, I have been told by not one, not two, but in fact three different and unrelated people that Bards (and in one case, Barbarians) didn't exist until 3rd edition. Amazing.

I've been dipping in and out of that subreddit over the last couple of weeks just to join in the hype, but the number of people posting questions that would be answered after two seconds of Google or the FAQ is astounding, along with, as you say, people with little or no D&D knowledge acting like they're experts.

 

[Ondath]

What I don't think you're processing is that people don't play turn-based games for those kind of minutiae. No successful turn-based game has that sort of level of genuinely pointless detail, and the more complex a turn-based game gets, the more it pushes away the audience, the less accessible it becomes. People want important decisions in turn-based games, and Solasta presents you with endless meaningless chore-decisions, ones which might just about make sense if you only control a single character, but don't for an entire group.

There's absolutely nothing interesting or cool about Hit Dice and spending them, for example, and as I demonstrated, mathematically, BG3 does basically exactly the same thing. Solasta elaborately simulating this largely pointless system is not something that makes it a better game for anyone but obsessive D&D hobbyists, who are probably a small percentage of the people who will play BG3. Hell they're not even a large percentage of TT D&D players.

I understand your point - but I think there is a possible world where BG3 maintains Solasta's fidelity to the rules while offering more complexity. In the EA, Reactions in BG3 were very poorly implemented - so much of the complexity of things like Opportunity Attacks, Shield and Counterspell and so on would be lost if the Reaction system were maintained that way. Some friends with insider knowledge told me the Reaction system was brought more in line to P&P in the beta builds, and I'm really hoping that's the case.

Because here's the thing: I agree with you that many of Solasta's implementations are extremely clunky. But nothing can convince me that BG3 EA's reaction implementation ("click on the feature and it automatically happens, giving you no choice on whether you want to belay a Reaction or choose different options") is better than Solasta's system of simple reaction prompts. Sure, Solasta's system meant that you needed to go through the prompt every time a triggering situation occurred, which could be tedious. But that is better than the "click and never configure" system by miles. Surely there is a possible world where the game feel of choosing to take a reaction in P&P can be transferred to video games in a way that doesn't feel like trudging through minutiae, and surely this isn't a concern only for the hardcore P&P players.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I understand your point - but I think there is a possible world where BG3 maintains Solasta's fidelity to the rules while offering more complexity. In the EA, Reactions in BG3 were very poorly implemented - so much of the complexity of things like Opportunity Attacks, Shield and Counterspell and so on would be lost if the Reaction system were maintained that way. Some friends with insider knowledge told me the Reaction system was brought more in line to P&P in the beta builds, and I'm really hoping that's the case.

Because here's the thing: I agree with you that many of Solasta's implementations are extremely clunky. But nothing can convince me that BG3 EA's reaction implementation ("click on the feature and it automatically happens, giving you no choice on whether you want to belay a Reaction or choose different options") is better than Solasta's system of simple reaction prompts. Sure, Solasta's system meant that you needed to go through the prompt every time a triggering situation occurred, which could be tedious. But that is better than the "click and never configure" system by miles. Surely there is a possible world where the game feel of choosing to take a reaction in P&P can be transferred to video games in a way that doesn't feel like trudging through minutiae, and surely this isn't a concern only for the hardcore P&P players.

Well, if it's any solace, I was playing a paladin in the latest build, and it let me choose when I could smite, although I could also have set it to be automatic, or auto on crits only. So it seems the choice is there, though I didn't try out other similar situations for other classes.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I understand your point - but I think there is a possible world where BG3 maintains Solasta's fidelity to the rules while offering more complexity. In the EA, Reactions in BG3 were very poorly implemented - so much of the complexity of things like Opportunity Attacks, Shield and Counterspell and so on would be lost if the Reaction system were maintained that way. Some friends with insider knowledge told me the Reaction system was brought more in line to P&P in the beta builds, and I'm really hoping that's the case.

Because here's the thing: I agree with you that many of Solasta's implementations are extremely clunky. But nothing can convince me that BG3 EA's reaction implementation ("click on the feature and it automatically happens, giving you no choice on whether you want to belay a Reaction or choose different options") is better than Solasta's system of simple reaction prompts. Sure, Solasta's system meant that you needed to go through the prompt every time a triggering situation occurred, which could be tedious. But that is better than the "click and never configure" system by miles. Surely there is a possible world where the game feel of choosing to take a reaction in P&P can be transferred to video games in a way that doesn't feel like trudging through minutiae, and surely this isn't a concern only for the hardcore P&P players.

I dunno when you last played but in the most recent EA build most reactions were given the options of:

1) Off
2) Always On
3) On and Choice prompt

So on setting three they'd do the Solasta thing. As @Demetrios1453 says some have other options too like Smite with Crits.

Honestly I think most of them should have been reworked and the general concept of reactions re-examined by Larian but they kind of kept putting it off and putting off until it was too late to do something clever and just did something mid instead.

I mean, the best solution if keeping the 5E approach to reactions might have been some sort of elaborate conditionality you could edit, but if you're doing that, you're halfway to a RtwP system anyway.

surely this isn't a concern only for the hardcore P&P players

It pretty obviously is though, watching discussions about it on the subreddit, Discord, and so on.

Non-TT players don't know or care what reactions are. So already only TT players care about reactions. And of those, only really serious ones want anything more than OAs automatically triggering. This isn't 4E where reactions are a huge and dramatic part of the game.

 

[Reynard]

Explain it to me like I’m a Gen Z who’s only ever played 5E.

Only 8 companions? And some get introed later? And ONLY 4 party members? Does that mean if I don’t play a healer I have to use one of the only other 2 healers, both who don’t look interesting at all.

I planned to go Bard but I’m worried I won’t have the healing I’ll need if I don’t take either the Druid or Cleric companions.

BG1-2 gave you options (lots of companions) but this seems lacking in that area.

Also why are all/most of the companies like morally grey in their descriptions?

I feel like I’m being pigeonholed into playing a healer class.

There are also hirelings and mercenaries you can bring into the party. They just don't have stories of their own. And the party size is 6, not 4. You just can't have more than 4 Companion level characters in the party at once.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There are also hirelings and mercenaries you can bring into the party. They just don't have stories of their own. And the party size is 6, not 4. You just can't have more than 4 Companion level characters in the party at once.

Nah it's 4. The UI can potentially accommodate 6 and mods will allow it though.

 

[deganawida]

Random note - the self-assuredness and idiot confidence of people who started in 5E or who have never played TT D&D but watched a Youtube video about it one time never ceases to astound me. As of today, over on the BG3 reddit, I have been told by not one, not two, but in fact three different and unrelated people that Bards (and in one case, Barbarians) didn't exist until 3rd edition. Amazing.

Wasn’t there a Basic or OD&D bard in a Dragon mag somewhere? Seem to recall seeing that online.

Anyway, confidently proclaiming one’s ignorance seems to be the true role of the internet.