Baldur's Gate 3: On the Highway to the Nine Hells

[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

This game is not kind the loot everything players like me! I mean the highlight button does not even highlight most items and containers. I actually found some really good stuff in containers that were not highlighted... 

This is true and something I found really weird. What is the point of ALT clicking to find items if it doesn't show what is right there in front of you.

I would think that inventory management would be one of the first things they will add in a patch. The ability to swap items between members of your party who are at camp should a priority (as would be easier ways to swap out members other than tedious dialogues)
 

8 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

On another note I just discovered that I can use unused characters to buff my party while I'm in camp. All buffs that stay until a long rest work... The min/maxer in me is in love. I now have a cleric, bard and mage hireling just for that reason... 

Just in general preparing for battles by casting 'until long rest' buffs is something I always forget to do, as well as trying to cast a 'bless' just before I attack someone

[Fez]

2 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Speaking of lacking option. The absence of the variant human and the nerf to humans it represents is really annoying. The racial features in the game are just not very good and don't really synergize with  any class.

The absence of variant human is a change I'm totally fine with, they're too OP. And the replaced racial feature is shockingly good actually for casters. Remember, it means that they can get a free +2 AC by having a shield; and that includes party members like Gale and Wyll. It's also good for any ranged martials that don't otherwise have shield proficiency, since you get the shield bonus even if you are using your ranged weapon set.

 

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

I would think that inventory management would be one of the first things they will add in a patch. The ability to swap items between members of your party who are at camp should a priority (as would be easier ways to swap out members other than tedious dialogues)

This is my number one complaint by far. It seems like a relic of when the game was intended to force you to chose which 3 party members you'd have for a playthrough. But even inventory management within the active party is a real pain.

[Arakasi]

3 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Speaking of lacking option. The absence of the variant human and the nerf to humans it represents is really annoying. The racial features in the game are just not very good and don't really synergize with  any class.

The extra skill proficiency is also bugged and cannot be assigned in character creation if you use a controller.

Yeah they were very lazy on the race design. Just giving everyone +2/+1 just means it’s all very samey. I don’t mind the human variant since that was so much better than the others but in general their race options are lame. Maybe this is fixed now but when I was trying drow the sub races didn’t even give bonuses.

in general their choices in how they’ve adjusted progression are lazy. Like for warlock it’s clear they know melee lock is weak so they just gave thirsting blade for free (the extra attack invocation) but there still really isn’t five invocations worth taking if you’re a melee lock that doesn’t want to lean into Eldritch blast.

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

Like for warlock it’s clear they know melee lock is weak so they just gave thirsting blade for free (the extra attack invocation) but there still really isn’t five invocations worth taking if you’re a melee lock that doesn’t want to lean into Eldritch blast.

This is probably why I never take Wyll with me. He introduced himself as this swordfighter dude with his rapier and I thought 'oh he's cool', but actually he's a Warlock and quite rubbish at melee. 

I don't actually understand the Warlock class, I can't conceptualise it. It uses Charisma?! Yeah I don't get it. So he stays at camp.

[Arakasi]

It’s also why all the content creators I follow all push multiclassing in this game. Now no doubt mc is already strong in paper d&d but it is even stronger here. Reason being they have so little class content that rewards you for staying in a class if you’re not a spellcaster. I just don’t understand why a 2023 game lacks 2015-2017 content.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

The absence of variant human is a change I'm totally fine with, they're too OP. And the replaced racial feature is shockingly good actually for casters. Remember, it means that they can get a free +2 AC by having a shield; and that includes party members like Gale and Wyll. It's also good for any ranged martials that don't otherwise have shield proficiency, since you get the shield bonus even if you are using your ranged weapon set.

And now they are basically useless except for casters and the polearm proficiency is utterly wasted on them.

Ranged martials getting the AC from the shield has nothing to do with the racial bonus, it's because Larian didn't bother with properly implementing swapping weapon sets and with casters requiring a free hand to cast.

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

in general their choices in how they’ve adjusted progression are lazy. Like for warlock it’s clear they know melee lock is weak so they just gave thirsting blade for free (the extra attack invocation) but there still really isn’t five invocations worth taking if you’re a melee lock that doesn’t want to lean into Eldritch blast.

It's all the more baffling since their signature warlock is supposed to be the Blade of Frontiers^TM

 

[Poobah]

15 hours ago, IlyaP said:

So, not shit stirring here, but this is something I was wondering about yesterday during a road trip home: the people here have identified some serious issues, and the staff at Forbes have actively warned people that act 3 has some serious, undeniable bugs. Between this and numerous frustrations with the UI among users (around sorting, the various bags, pouches, etc.), why the hell is everyone barring Eurogamer singing this thing's praises to the high heavens? I keep wondering if they're even playing the same game! For goodness sake, the System Shock remake was more stable and refined than this! Why aren't people being a bit more...moderated, I guess, in their reviews, given the clear and obvious number of issues that are present in the game? 

(To say nothing of the awful camera problems in the Underdark, which gave me severe motion sickness and headaches several times.)

I don't want to discount your or anyone else's experiences but so far at 50 hours in I've had basically zero bugs, game runs fine on my pretty old system (6600K and GTX1070) and I'm enthralled by the storytelling, the freedom, the myriad of options, the responsiveness of the world/characters to my actions, and the way they've translated 5e to the computer in a way that's faithful except where it can be patched/improved upon without fundamentally changing the game.

12 hours ago, Arakasi said:

I think this game is really lacking for character options and customization. I have no idea why there doesn’t seem to be any of the options from Volos, Xanathars, Sword Coast or Tasha’s. Some of those books are 6-8 years old! It’s just PHB stuff

12 hours ago, Arakasi said:

Well for the class I play (warlock) it allows you to actually play as a melee gish. Really not doable here. Also just a lot more patron options and invocations.

Ok so... this was a concern for me. But having talked with friends who had never played D&D, never opened a PHB, etc. they were already hugely overwhelmed with the number of choices in character creation so on balance I think it was a pretty reasonable choice to limit their scope somewhat to the PHB + a few extras to bring each class up to a minimum of three subclasses. I am also a big warlock lover. I play a Hexblade (the class that Arakasi is talking about here) in my main game and I really wanted to play one again... and Arakasi I have news for you. Much as Hexblade as a patron was basically a crappy way to patch Pact of the Blade to not be total dogshit, Larian just... went ahead and patched Pact of the Blade to not be total dogshit and gave it baked in charisma scaling and an extra attack at level 5 so you can go ahead and play a gish. The main thing that is missing I suppose is the "blade" cantrips, but can't have everything I suppose.

Larian haven't tended to do expansions or anything but I do hold out hope in this case that there is room for them to put together some kinda pack with a bunch of extra classes and spells in, though modders are already hard at work on all this stuff too. And there's always the inevitable "Enhanced Edition" down the line too.

6 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

The racial features in the game are just not very good and don't really synergize with  any class.

Darkvision has entered the room. Free speak with animals on forest gnome wants a word. Gith psionics are all great. I've used my Tiefling thaumaturgy a ton of times in conversation checks.... looking through the list of racial passives I feel like we're not even playing the same game if you think resistance to various forms of damage, advantage against various checks, extra weapon/armour proficiencies, or even just the basic extra carrying capacity for the enormous amount of cool loot you're gonna be hoarding are bad. 

[Arakasi]

You don’t have to go “I have news for you” I have read through the rules and already know what they gave you for the melee style. No hexblade curse, no enhanced crit range, no melee cantrips, no spirit, no armor just makes it all underwhelming. Yay they gave me the second attack for free and the charisma scaling damage. But for a melee lock there isn’t even five invocations worth taking so giving me thirsting blade for free doesn’t help. Doing melee attacks just does not give me the warlock gish feel. I want my attacks to actually be magical and for that this game fails. I can just poke people with my stick twice with some extra damage on it. Woohoo.

[Werthead]

D&D has always had a multiclassing problem. 2E nerfed multiclassing so hard it was non-viable, 3E kind of made multiclassing work (and offered Prestige Classes as an excellent progression mechanic, sometimes merging two classes into one) and 5E and PF seem to have made multiclassing too powerful, and not make much sense (i.e. someone taking one level of thief, one level of sorcerer etc to access archaic feat combinations).

[Arakasi]

PF2 basically got rid of it. You can archetype to take other classes features with your feat choices but you’re locked into 20 levels of your main class. So you’ll always be a full wizard but you might have less options and instead be more martial if you took the fighter archetype.

[Heartofice]

Yeah I refuse to multi class because the system seems so gamey and breaks immersion. I was fine in BG2 making a fighter thief but here it’s all one level of this, a level of this and then get a level of that to really min max. There is no fun in that at all for me. 

[Arakasi]

Yeah I don’t like it. Well I can justify taking like 1-2 levels in something and be one thing mostly with a little of something else. But doing this 3 in lock, 3 in rogue, 2 in paladin, 2 in fighter, etc is just yuck.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

1 hour ago, Poobah said:

Darkvision has entered the room. Free speak with animals on forest gnome wants a word. Gith psionics are all great. I've used my Tiefling thaumaturgy a ton of times in conversation checks.... looking through the list of racial passives I feel like we're not even playing the same game if you think resistance to various forms of damage, advantage against various checks, extra weapon/armour proficiencies, or even just the basic extra carrying capacity for the enormous amount of cool loot you're gonna be hoarding are bad. 

I was talking about the racial features for humans.

Edited August 21, 2023 by ASOIAFrelatedusername

[Luzifer's right hand]

Having fun in the underdark.

Spoiler

I was really disappointed the temporary Myconid party member you can get can only turn monstrosities and  humanoids into zombies. A Minotaur packs a lot of punch but I really wanted to use to Spectator. 

But I suspect that moving it around would have been difficult as the Minotaur I used during the Spectator fight was problematic already.

Personally I have not bothered with multiclassing so far. Game seems easy enough even on the highest difficulty. But I'm using a lot of consumables which makes things easier I guess. I did not enjoy the complicated ways you could build characters back when playing neverwinter nights 2 and just used pure classes even in that game. I'm kinda glad the this game seems simpler than NW2. That game had millions of feats. Still Mask of the Betrayer has the best story after Planescape Torment and it was a game well worth playing just because of that. 

Throwing is a weird mechanic it more or less adds extra attacks to my current barbarian(berserker) and they can deal a lot of damage. As a Gith my character excels at getting to the high ground which boosts throwing. I can't wait to hit high enough strength to throw normal sized humanoids.

Edited August 21, 2023 by Luzifer's right hand

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Yeah I refuse to multi class because the system seems so gamey and breaks immersion. I was fine in BG2 making a fighter thief but here it’s all one level of this, a level of this and then get a level of that to really min max. There is no fun in that at all for me. 

Even in WoTR, where multiclassing is a lot more common/necessary I try to only use two classes at most and have them be thematically related. So far I haven't multiclassed at all in BG3 and I haven't felt the need to. I might do it in a second playthrough, sticking with my thematic rule. But I'm hoping they patch in a class progression encyclopedia first. I don't want to have to use any outside tools to figure out what I want to do. 

Edited August 21, 2023 by Fez

[Relic]

Complaining about the amount of class options after a game is released is weird. You easily could have known they were giving us 3 subclasses per class. As it stands there are like 42(?) options, with magical items making some other builds viable. 

As for the +2/+1 ability bonus at lvl one, that's been standard 5e practice for years, and as a DM I leave that choice to players. I like smart orcs, clumsy elves, and sickly dwarves. I do t like locking certain classes to certain races. It's not lazy, it's inclusive. 

Edited August 21, 2023 by Relic

[Arakasi]

Well when they don’t give us six year old options that let me play my class fantasy I feel I have the right to voice my opinion. I am curious in 2023 how many 5e tables play with only PHB. I’m guessing not many. 

[Relic]

45 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

Well when they don’t give us six year old options that let me play my class fantasy I feel I have the right to voice my opinion. I am curious in 2023 how many 5e tables play with only PHB. I’m guessing not many. 

You arent playing at a table? You're playing a video game? Nothing beats the options you will find at a ttrpg.

Edit - and yeah, you have a right to voice your opinion. and i have the right to say i find it to be weird. no worries.

Edited August 21, 2023 by Relic

[Arakasi]

Don’t think it’s particularly weird to think that the most popular patron for warlocks in all of 5e that was published in 2017 should be in a 5e game in 2023. Looks like there is mods that will do this but need to figure out how to get mods working first.

[Poobah]

3 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Having fun in the underdark.

  Reveal hidden contents

I was really disappointed the temporary Myconid party member you can get can only turn monstrosities and  humanoids into zombies. A Minotaur packs a lot of punch but I really wanted to use to Spectator. 

But I suspect that moving it around would have been difficult as the Minotaur I used during the Spectator fight was problematic already.

 

Spoiler

I grabbed the Bulette and used it to destroy everything in my path