D&D General Drawbacks of a World with BG3 in it

[fluffybunbunkittens]

BG3 does do many things better than tabletop - Wildheart Barbarian, Ranger, jumping making Str useful, short rests are instant but limited to twice per long rest, a lot more spells being rituals, bonus action to drink potion, anyone can use any scroll...

Then it does a lot of stuff worse - absurd Guidance spam, overpowered gear with no attunement limits, 5 fireballs per turn sorcerers, no cover against ranged attacks, optimal use of a healing potion is to set it on the ground near your party and smash it, prepared casters can swap any of their spells at-will...

It's a weird mess with a Monty Haul DM... but if the players who move into tabletop, do so with an eye towards using environmental hazards to their advantage, that's pretty damn well done.

 

[Reynard]

One thing to remember about guidance is that it is a concentration spell, so you can't spam guidance while you have another concentration spell up.

 

[Seramus]

prepared casters can swap any of their spells at-will...

I had this happen! New player joins the table, didn't pick any spells at their first session because they thought they could swap on the fly.

They were very understanding about the 5E rule and adjusted smoothly, but it happened!

 

[Dausuul]

One thing to remember about guidance is that it is a concentration spell, so you can't spam guidance while you have another concentration spell up.

BG3 enforces this. My tomelock lost concentration on Hex several times this way, and it prevents combining Guidance with Enhance Ability from the same caster.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

i'm on the side of subtle spell metamagic existing meaning that all other spells are by implication, not subtle, though i might be inclined to let a player roll an additional stealth check for it.

I am on the side of "a spell might or might not be super loud normally, Subtle Spell makes your spells completely undetectable unless the effect is obviously traceable to you, e.g. a fireball explicitly comes from your hand to wherever you point it at, can't conceal that."

Subtle Spell is complete immunity to detection unless it is impossible to justify based on the spell description. That's very powerful in the right contexts, and useless in others. (Though it does have the special effect of making Sorcerers immune to silencing, being tied up, etc., which expands the utility nicely in any game where being captured is a possibility.)

Anyone else, they take risks of some kind. But I won't just saddle them with "and now you (effectively) auto-fail" because they tried to be supportive to the team.

as for guidance spam, does anyone impose some variation of the houserule of being immune to the effects of guidance for [timespan] after benefiting from it's effects? how does that work out in your games? and how long do you find is a good timespan, 10 minutes? an hour? the next rest?

I wouldn't, and if a DM did this to me without explicitly stating it WELL in advance, I'd definitely have some choice words for them. Inserting random gotchas into rules because you don't like the implications of the existing ones is some real "jerk DM" behavior. Doesn't mean that DMs shouldn't try to address things they consider issues, but such things need to be known ahead of time so players can make effective choices.

 

[Reynard]

I wouldn't, and if a DM did this to me without explicitly stating it WELL in advance, I'd definitely have some choice words for them. Inserting random gotchas into rules because you don't like the implications of the existing ones is some real "jerk DM" behavior. Doesn't mean that DMs shouldn't try to address things they consider issues, but such things need to be known ahead of time so players can make effective choices.

Why are you presumingvthis was a "gotcha"? They even used the term "house rule" which suggests something the table agrees upon. Every time you respond this way to innocuous posts it makes discussion here harder.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Why are you presumingvthis was a "gotcha"? They even used the term "house rule" which suggests something the table agrees upon. Every time you respond this way to innocuous posts it makes discussion here harder.

Because I have--more than once--been informed by a DM of one of their "house rules" only when the "house rule" in question applied to an action I had just taken. Usually in 3e/PF1e, but it's happened in 5e as well.

People don't generally take an action when they already know that doing so will force a near-guaranteed failure. Hence, the only reasonable assumption is that the player in question did not know that using guidance would cause them to (effectively) auto-fail their stealth check.

 

[Seramus]

A good chunk of it is forgetting/not realizing Verbal and Somatic components are clear arcane chanting and appendage waving. A bucket full of D&D media has these elements stripped down to bare bones or not exist at all.

Heck, how many people think the verbal component of Suggestion is just saying the Suggestion?

 

[DarkCrisis]

I always love how players think they can just cast spells in front of NPC they are talking to and not expect a reaction. It's akin to someone waving a gun around during a conversation.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Because I have--more than once--been informed by a DM of one of their "house rules" only when the "house rule" in question applied to an action I had just taken. Usually in 3e/PF1e, but it's happened in 5e as well.

People don't generally take an action when they already know that doing so will force a near-guaranteed failure. Hence, the only reasonable assumption is that the player in question did not know that using guidance would cause them to (effectively) auto-fail their stealth check.

It falls on the DM to say "are you sure?" when the players haven't taken into account something that would be obvious to their characters.