While BG3 is fairly accurate to 5e, it does have a fair number of changes. A fair number are pretty much legacy of Divinity (such as their love of surfaces and similar statuses), but other things (such as weapon actions) are new mechanics. So... which set of adjustments do people like better?
While BG3 has some nice innovations for martials in terms of its special weapon attacks, it has serious balance problems too - such as Haste granting a whole extra action instead of just an extra attack, and casters being able to cast leveled action and bonus action spells on the same round, and facing/vision cones letting stealth challenges become trivial if you can outsmart a 5th grader the game's not-very-bright AI. And that's before all the surface shenanigans you can pull in Larian fashion as mentioned, i.e. a couple of well-placed barrels or a shove near a cliff letting you one-shot nearly any encounter regardless of difficulty.
One area the UA definitely has a leg up over BG3 is in feats, what with every UA feat being either available at 1st level or a half-feat if they come online at 4th. Overall, I think the UA has some things it can learn from BG3, but ultimately I prefer the UA so far.
BG3 is in no way balanced, certain classes and builds just get way too powerful and Larian doesn't really have a need to fix that. BG3 is a game that can cater to individual power gamers needs to power game, in a game of D&D with multiple players such things need to be tempered else you'll have a 'that guy/gurl/etc'. After all, BG3 is a game you can potentially get a legendary weapon at level 5. It also has it's own homebrew subsystem of becoming more and more like an illithid to get exceptional powers, overall, way too much going on to track at an actual pen and paper table.
I think bg3 has a really healthy approach of just having things work instead of getting tied up in small restrictions and limitations. Key examples for me is how intuitive it is to pick up two hand crossbows for dual wielding, the bards slashing flourish actually being an attack on an extra target, the way haste actually just gives you an extra action.. its all so much more easily understood and boiled down to the essence of what youd want from those abilities.
Now, this approach sometimes leads to quite overpowered options (haste being an obvious example) so its not like you can just take BG3s changes directly into the tabletop.. But I do think that the general approach prioritises an instinctual understanding of things rather than having to read the specific restrictions and corner cases of each individual feature... Giving the thief an extra bonus action for you to play around with as you wish, is at its core far more satisfying than how 5e would probably do it.
Baldur's Gate 3 is a mishmash of extremely unbalanced, absurd choices that only get a pass because of video-game power-fantasy desires, and not only would these changes be awkward and nonsensical for proper 5e place, it would also be wildly unsatisfying for any player who doesn't go for the power-gaming or blatantly-favoured options. Is it fun for DEX-focused classes that the STR-focused Fighter in heavy armour is more maneuverable than they are, because of bunnyhopping? Why would anyone take any of the Rogue subclasses other than the one that gives you an extra bonus action? Why does one Monk subclass get a brand-new feature at Level 9 and none of the others do?
dex has never in 5e had anything to do with movement or speed. And in fact str is the stat most closely associated with movement in 5e. jump distance, swimming, climbing are str based activities.
Dexterity is only associated with balance, and this is why onednd changed thief to allow dex for jumping checks.
Monk subclass gets a new feature at 9, because open hand needed a rework. Arcane trickster and Assasin aren't weak. Assasin can destroy an encounter with Alpha damage. I have had Astarion Almost kill bosses before anyone even got to act. So you may not have known this but monk in 5e is one of the worst classes mathematically the further you get from level 5. by level 11 they become extremely bad. Larian had to try to correct this. Even with the changes, monk is not actually the strongest class in bg3
BG3 is homebrew, but its actually not crazier than 5e in general, its just different classes with powerful things and more access to magic items.
I just want to point out that in AD&D Dex did have something to do with speed.
Otherise, nothing to add.
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Bunnyhopping is weird but it's a lot more fun and a definite improvement over 5e and the UA. It's no secret that Dexterity is straight up a superior stat compared to Strength. Yes, you get a damage boost and the ability to grapple or shove but those options are not worth the trade unless all you care about is your single target damage numbers in melee. BG3 did good by making Shove and Jump way more powerful. Perhaps, to make bunnyhopping less weird, horizontal distance could be increased with a lunge of some kind instead. Based off of Strength of course. Dexterity is too good. Give nice things to Strength players. They're not the ones altering reality anyway. Monks already get huge no cost bonuses to speed and Rogues get a bonus action Dash.
As for the other stuff BG3 does...well it's hit or miss. A lot definitely doesn't work so well for a TTRPG and some stuff was arbitrarily buffed or nerfed in a way that leaves you scratching your head (Haste being too strong seems to be the go to example). Overall, at least martial combat feels better. I'm not sure I care that much about the Bonus Action/Action spellcasting rule change though. It's not written very well in the books and even though the intent was to "not slow down the game" the most obvious solution would have been just to say only 1 leveled spell per turn or round.
I'm willing to bet Larian buffed Haste in their game because it was much easier. Just have the buff increment the "Actions per round" variable from 1 to 2, instead of going through and figuring out/tagging which ones are legal for the extra one and which aren't.
I agree that "1 leveled spell per round" is the ideal way to write the casting rule, not least because it also nerfs dipping Fighter for Action Surge. As for why the rule needs to exist in the first place, slowing down play might be part of it, but the power that comes with multiple leveled spells is likely the even bigger reason. Quickened and Swift Action spells were a big part of caster dominance in 3.5, and this rule at least helped that in 5e.
I'm willing to bet Larian buffed Haste in their game because it was much easier.
Maybe there's some limits to how they implemented action economy that makes it hard; in general it's not hard (Solasta manages it, along with restriction on bonus action spells).
Baldur's Gate 3 is a mishmash of extremely unbalanced, absurd choices that only get a pass because of video-game power-fantasy desires, and not only would these changes be awkward and nonsensical for proper 5e place, it would also be wildly unsatisfying for any player who doesn't go for the power-gaming or blatantly-favoured options. Is it fun for DEX-focused classes that the STR-focused Fighter in heavy armour is more maneuverable than they are, because of bunnyhopping? Why would anyone take any of the Rogue subclasses other than the one that gives you an extra bonus action? Why does one Monk subclass get a brand-new feature at Level 9 and none of the others do?
dex has never in 5e had anything to do with movement or speed. And in fact str is the stat most closely associated with movement in 5e. jump distance, swimming, climbing are str based activities.
Dexterity is only associated with balance, and this is why onednd changed thief to allow dex for jumping checks.
Monk subclass gets a new feature at 9, because open hand needed a rework. Arcane trickster and Assasin aren't weak. Assasin can destroy an encounter with Alpha damage. I have had Astarion Almost kill bosses before anyone even got to act. So you may not have known this but monk in 5e is one of the worst classes mathematically the further you get from level 5. by level 11 they become extremely bad. Larian had to try to correct this. Even with the changes, monk is not actually the strongest class in bg3
BG3 is homebrew, but its actually not crazier than 5e in general, its just different classes with powerful things and more access to magic items.
Yes, thank you for explaining the obvious about DEX not affecting movement. But the simple reality is that neither stat gives an overall boost to movement range for a reason. Making one stat allow for an effective increased movement range throws balance out of whack, and is especially when it takes the form of bunnyhopping like a 90's FPS protagonist around in plate-mail armour.
Also, "mathematics" very rarely understands or acknowledges what the strengths of a given class are. Such as the Monk's movement abilities, which are nerfed in BG3, because BG3 is built entirely around pure combat utility and multiclassing min-maxing. Rather than focusing on their unarmoured features, BG3 lets a fully-armoured Fighter get all of the benefits of Monks' martial arts and ki abilities while wielding martial weapons and high-AC armour—then throws in a perk that boosts unarmed damage in a way a pure-classed/DEX-focused Monk can't benefit from, making it so that a Fighter who takes one level in Monk can do more unarmed damage than a max-levelled Monk. And BG3's Open Hand benefits further from blatant favouritism by getting a feature that boosts unarmed damage (in an unsuccessful attempt to keep pace with overpowered loot) that no other Monk subclass gets, meaning every other Monk subclass falls further behind in BG3's terrible power-curve.
in BG3 monks lose their movement speed if they use armor, and they lose defense if they go strength without armor; and a fighter isnt going to benefit from open hands wis bonus to unarmed, or the wis bonus to unarmed items. And as a guy who plays monks a ton in 5e, BG3 monk is an improvement. Not only in power level, but in entertainment and combat flow. I wouldn't copy it for 5e, because the goals and rulesets are different. But Their monk design, including tavern brawler as a str feat, its still a better tavern brawler than 5e for monks.
max level openhand monk will body a fighter with one monk level, its not even close. They get +5 or 6 from tavern, but their die is a d4, their Ki is 2. open hand gives d4+wis at six per hit. so +7-10. This doesnt even include their level 9 ability.
There are a lot of things in BG3 that I really like and would enjoy in DnD, but obviously not everything.
If there was one thing I'd want to port over I think it'd be the way they treat Strength. Jump, Shove, and Throw are all actions that feel incredibly strong when you have a STR-based character. Jump gives Martials mobility, and because of the verticality of BG3 that mobility feels essential for dealing with a lot of encounters. Shove and, especially, Throw gives Martials some really effective control options that can lead to some incredibly fun gameplay. One of the most memorable moments in my first playthrough as a melee ranger was sneaking up behind a halfling, picking him up, and chucking him into a suspended rock that then collapsed on his two buddies below, killing all three. I'm constantly grabbing enemies, corpses, or dropped weapons and chucking them at people when I'm not in range to hit them or need to knock someone prone. It's a lot of fun.
BG3 is the first time I've felt like dumping Strength is an actual decision that has some weight to it. Even on characters who don't use it, I like having the little extra wiggle room with Jump distance or better odds at succeeding or resisting a Shove. Totally dumping Strength makes you a lightweight who can get bullied around the battlefield even if your main combat stat is DEX or CHA, and I think that is a much healthier state for the attribute balance than the current situation of Strength being unimportant if it's not your primary.
STR-focused characters getting more movement range by bunnyhopping in platemail and PCs constantly getting shoved into bottomless pits are horrible game mechanics and would be absolutely unfun in any actual 5e game that doesn't involve save-scumming.
Strength-focused characters need something, though I have to agree that bunny-hopping is weird. The problem with bottomless pits isn't a problem with bonus action shove, it's a problem with map design (probably an artifact of not being a 3d map, it's a 2d map with areas of impassible terrain and the engine doesn't have a way of handling characters in invalid locations other than preventing the motion or killing the character).
STR-focused characters getting more movement range by bunnyhopping in platemail and PCs constantly getting shoved into bottomless pits are horrible game mechanics and would be absolutely unfun in any actual 5e game that doesn't involve save-scumming.
I see it more as a heroic leap, though I'd probably tweak things a bit so you can't just jump out of difficult terrain and maybe add some kind of Charge action for moving horizontally over flat terrain to reach an opponent rather than encouraging everyone to jump toward their opponents in every circumstance. There's a reason most video games give their melee characters mobility-increasing options. It's because being melee and not being able to get into melee isn't fun.
As for Shoving into pits? That is more on the DM choosing to add tons of pits and cliffs to their battles than anything. On flat terrain, Shove is more about knocking melee away from your squishies and forcing enemies into player-made traps and killzones. It makes positioning more important and gives your melee guys more options for keeping the enemy melee off your backline beyond relying entirely on Attacks of Opportunity.
It's not written very well in the books and even though the intent was to "not slow down the game" the most obvious solution would have been just to say only 1 leveled spell per turn or round.
But that wouldn't have felt "awesome!" You have to acknowledge that a mainly single-player video game has different priorities than a multiplayer TTRPG. Broken combos / features are totally fine in a single-player game because those players that like to be broken can use them, and those those that don't can choose not to use them and in either case it doesn't affect the fun of other players.
I'm willing to bet Larian buffed Haste in their game because it was much easier. Just have the buff increment the "Actions per round" variable from 1 to 2, instead of going through and figuring out/tagging which ones are legal for the extra one and which aren't.
I agree that "1 leveled spell per round" is the ideal way to write the casting rule, not least because it also nerfs dipping Fighter for Action Surge. As for why the rule needs to exist in the first place, slowing down play might be part of it, but the power that comes with multiple leveled spells is likely the even bigger reason. Quickened and Swift Action spells were a big part of caster dominance in 3.5, and this rule at least helped that in 5e.
Honestly, they didn't do a whole lot to address the biggest cause of the Martial/Caster divide that appeared in 3rd Edition, the one-two punch of boosting save DCs while also smacking the warrior classes with a saving throw nerf wrecking ball. In 2nd edition, Warrior classes (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, and where the Barbarian would fit if it wasn't just an add-on in 2nd) had weak saves at low levels, but the among the best in the high end. Each of the other classes had one save category where they were king, but were adequate in most of the others, but Fighter classes....they were at least 2nd best in ALL of them at higher levels (not counting the Paladin having this base PLUS bonuses), and the best on some others, then reduced to being the worst in 2 out of 3, and one of those two being the "just run to the store and grab the rest of the group some snacks" spells that removed your character from the game until they mercifully wore off. In some ways I think 5E may have made that issue even worse by increasing the save categories to 6 from 3, but at least most things allow a save to end the effect at the end of every round (one of the good things from 4th - I hate the edition, but I have to admit that many good things appeared in it) when they lasted the duration before.
Of course, this is all pure TTRPG stuff and has little to do with Baldur's Gate.
One thing I think they could do is institute the BG3 short rest rules into OneD&D - easy to take (5-15 minutes instead of an hour) but limited in how many can be taken before a long rest must be taken - 2 (like the game) or 3 (so that there is a counterpoint for short rest classes to be superior to long rest ones occasionally - to balance out the times when a 5 minute workday happens), and it would be a much more elegant solution to the disparity there than trying to eliminate short rests as much as possible.
BG3 is balanced for a single player to control multiple characters who can do stuff that would be broken in tabletop play, and it does it in vastly more difficult combat encounter and is much more free with its rests.
The reason it gets away with this is that you don't have to worry as much about a single player outshining the rest of the table and ruining the fun of others, because either you're playing single player and your own fun is all that matters, or you're playing multilayer and "oh my God we survived I can't belive we survived that was awesome!" no matter who did the op shit.
Like, I'm having a lot of fun being able to quicken a leveled spell and still cast another leveled spell after, but I can see why this isn't allowed at the table.
In actual TTRPG play, there isn't a magic button you can press to undo hours of playtime after you ruin someone's day by shoving their character into a bottomless pit over one failed save, or when the entire party gets mowed down by a force three times their size that attack six times each on their first turns.
Yes, there is. Players and the DM can talk about it and choose to turn back the clock to avoid campaign-ruining events if they so choose. It's not that uncommon when players make a choice that leads to a total party wipe and the players don't actually want the campaign to end yet.
The biggest advantage tabletop gaming has over any video game is that it is more intuitively malleable than a game made by coding can be. BG3 can't sense the vibe at the table and change its plans, nor can it balance its encounters by how min-maxed the party is. The DM can do all of this and more. Maybe your character failed their save and got shoved off a cliff. Maybe the DM decides there's a lake at the bottom and your character isn't dead after all, just removed from the immediate combat. Or the DM decides you managed to grab hold of an outcropping and can climb your way back up. Or the player made some quick use of their handy rope to prevent them from falling to their death.
Or heck, the DM can look at the situation and just choose not to try to shove their player to their death. It's no different from choosing to disperse the NPC attacks across the whole party rather than having all the archers focus down the wizard on turn 1. The DM isn't trying to kill their party. The BG3 AI is because it's an AI and isn't capable of nuanced thought like "I really want the player to think they are being challenged but without the real risk of a total party wipe being present".
In actual TTRPG play, there isn't a magic button you can press to undo hours of playtime after you ruin someone's day by shoving their character into a bottomless pit over one failed save, or when the entire party gets mowed down by a force three times their size that attack six times each on their first turns.
Yes, there is. Players and the DM can talk about it and choose to turn back the clock to avoid campaign-ruining events if they so choose. It's not that uncommon when players make a choice that leads to a total party wipe and the players don't actually want the campaign to end yet.
The biggest advantage tabletop gaming has over any video game is that it is more intuitively malleable than a game made by coding can be. BG3 can't sense the vibe at the table and change its plans, nor can it balance its encounters by how min-maxed the party is. The DM can do all of this and more. Maybe your character failed their save and got shoved off a cliff. Maybe the DM decides there's a lake at the bottom and your character isn't dead after all, just removed from the immediate combat. Or the DM decides you managed to grab hold of an outcropping and can climb your way back up. Or the player made some quick use of their handy rope to prevent them from falling to their death.
Or heck, the DM can look at the situation and just choose not to try to shove their player to their death. It's no different from choosing to disperse the NPC attacks across the whole party rather than having all the archers focus down the wizard on turn 1. The DM isn't trying to kill their party. The BG3 AI is because it's an AI and isn't capable of nuanced thought like "I really want the player to think they are being challenged but without the real risk of a total party wipe being present".
This exactly.
The reason things seem so imbalanced in BG3 isn't really the balance changes to the classes, subclasses, spells etc. The reason is because the game is in a singular state with only certain pre-planned changes being possible. One of the reasons Larian had to cap the game at level 12 is because after Tier 2 players stop just participating in the world and start actively remolding it - either literally with spells like Wish and Planeswalk, or figuratively by explaining how their character runs straight up a wall and stands upside down on the ceiling. At lower levels, this means players can always choose to grab the Club of Hill Giant Strength or Disintegrating Nightwalkers boots or The Graceful Cloth or the Mourning Frost arcane staff. However, the DM can't adjust the encounter or the loot availability or anything else. Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't know that you're reading a strategy guide and have pre-placed your characters around a room for maximum efficiency in the next encounter. But an attentive DM can and does account for the party's actions.
When we look at the actual balance changes that BG3 attempts, many of them are successful from a game mechanics standpoint. Bunnyhopping means that Strength based martials gain mobility that was previously only available to spellcasters for doing things like assaulting a raised platform or across a raging river. Speak With Dead and Animals lasting until a Long Rest means that they are viable preparations for a class with few spell slots to spare. Weapon Abilities grant martial classes new options for controlling the battlefield but also have the side benefit of making other classes just as interested in a short rest as the Monk and Warlock. The rest mechanics are awesome for setting an encounter tempo that fits your table and limits rest spamming.
There certainly are failures. One of the largest is the removal of Multiclassing Prerequisites - a change I suspect is due to actual code limitations more than anything else (and the related achievement is a bonus added at the last minute by way of apology). Another is automatic failure on a 1 outside of combat, which can feel very egregious on certain speech checks.
But these mechanical changes are not going to negatively affect your table in most cases unless the DM is unwilling or unable to adjust on the fly.
Baldur's Gate 3 is a mishmash of extremely unbalanced, absurd choices that only get a pass because of video-game power-fantasy desires, and not only would these changes be awkward and nonsensical for proper 5e place, it would also be wildly unsatisfying for any player who doesn't go for the power-gaming or blatantly-favoured options. Is it fun for DEX-focused classes that the STR-focused Fighter in heavy armour is more maneuverable than they are, because of bunnyhopping? Why would anyone take any of the Rogue subclasses other than the one that gives you an extra bonus action? Why does one Monk subclass get a brand-new feature at Level 9 and none of the others do?
dex has never in 5e had anything to do with movement or speed. And in fact str is the stat most closely associated with movement in 5e. jump distance, swimming, climbing are str based activities.
Dexterity is only associated with balance, and this is why onednd changed thief to allow dex for jumping checks.
Monk subclass gets a new feature at 9, because open hand needed a rework. Arcane trickster and Assasin aren't weak. Assasin can destroy an encounter with Alpha damage. I have had Astarion Almost kill bosses before anyone even got to act. So you may not have known this but monk in 5e is one of the worst classes mathematically the further you get from level 5. by level 11 they become extremely bad. Larian had to try to correct this. Even with the changes, monk is not actually the strongest class in bg3
BG3 is homebrew, but its actually not crazier than 5e in general, its just different classes with powerful things and more access to magic items.
Yes, thank you for explaining the obvious about DEX not affecting movement. But the simple reality is that neither stat gives an overall boost to movement range for a reason. Making one stat allow for an effective increased movement range throws balance out of whack, and is especially when it takes the form of bunnyhopping like a 90's FPS protagonist around in plate-mail armour.
Also, "mathematics" very rarely understands or acknowledges what the strengths of a given class are. Such as the Monk's movement abilities, which are nerfed in BG3, because BG3 is built entirely around pure combat utility and multiclassing min-maxing. Rather than focusing on their unarmoured features, BG3 lets a fully-armoured Fighter get all of the benefits of Monks' martial arts and ki abilities while wielding martial weapons and high-AC armour—then throws in a perk that boosts unarmed damage in a way a pure-classed/DEX-focused Monk can't benefit from, making it so that a Fighter who takes one level in Monk can do more unarmed damage than a max-levelled Monk. And BG3's Open Hand benefits further from blatant favouritism by getting a feature that boosts unarmed damage (in an unsuccessful attempt to keep pace with overpowered loot) that no other Monk subclass gets, meaning every other Monk subclass falls further behind in BG3's terrible power-curve.
It helps to balance the two statistics.
Dexterity leads to going first. Strength increased jump distance, and thus total movement per round, but at the cost of a bonus action. And since Strength-based attacks are overwhelming melee, it helps them close the gap to be more effective.
It's honestly not a bad idea. Especially with the verticality.
I feel like doing a direct comparison is not fair to either of them because I also feel like both systems excel at what they are designed for, but they are not designed for the same thing, even if there is a good bit of overlap.
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While BG3 is fairly accurate to 5e, it does have a fair number of changes. A fair number are pretty much legacy of Divinity (such as their love of surfaces and similar statuses), but other things (such as weapon actions) are new mechanics. So... which set of adjustments do people like better?
While BG3 has some nice innovations for martials in terms of its special weapon attacks, it has serious balance problems too - such as Haste granting a whole extra action instead of just an extra attack, and casters being able to cast leveled action and bonus action spells on the same round, and facing/vision cones letting stealth challenges become trivial if you can outsmart
a 5th graderthe game's not-very-bright AI. And that's before all the surface shenanigans you can pull in Larian fashion as mentioned, i.e. a couple of well-placed barrels or a shove near a cliff letting you one-shot nearly any encounter regardless of difficulty.One area the UA definitely has a leg up over BG3 is in feats, what with every UA feat being either available at 1st level or a half-feat if they come online at 4th. Overall, I think the UA has some things it can learn from BG3, but ultimately I prefer the UA so far.
BG3 is in no way balanced, certain classes and builds just get way too powerful and Larian doesn't really have a need to fix that. BG3 is a game that can cater to individual power gamers needs to power game, in a game of D&D with multiple players such things need to be tempered else you'll have a 'that guy/gurl/etc'. After all, BG3 is a game you can potentially get a legendary weapon at level 5. It also has it's own homebrew subsystem of becoming more and more like an illithid to get exceptional powers, overall, way too much going on to track at an actual pen and paper table.
I think bg3 has a really healthy approach of just having things work instead of getting tied up in small restrictions and limitations. Key examples for me is how intuitive it is to pick up two hand crossbows for dual wielding, the bards slashing flourish actually being an attack on an extra target, the way haste actually just gives you an extra action.. its all so much more easily understood and boiled down to the essence of what youd want from those abilities.
Now, this approach sometimes leads to quite overpowered options (haste being an obvious example) so its not like you can just take BG3s changes directly into the tabletop.. But I do think that the general approach prioritises an instinctual understanding of things rather than having to read the specific restrictions and corner cases of each individual feature... Giving the thief an extra bonus action for you to play around with as you wish, is at its core far more satisfying than how 5e would probably do it.
dex has never in 5e had anything to do with movement or speed. And in fact str is the stat most closely associated with movement in 5e. jump distance, swimming, climbing are str based activities.
Dexterity is only associated with balance, and this is why onednd changed thief to allow dex for jumping checks.
Monk subclass gets a new feature at 9, because open hand needed a rework. Arcane trickster and Assasin aren't weak. Assasin can destroy an encounter with Alpha damage. I have had Astarion Almost kill bosses before anyone even got to act. So you may not have known this but monk in 5e is one of the worst classes mathematically the further you get from level 5. by level 11 they become extremely bad. Larian had to try to correct this. Even with the changes, monk is not actually the strongest class in bg3
BG3 is homebrew, but its actually not crazier than 5e in general, its just different classes with powerful things and more access to magic items.
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Simulacrum#content
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Animate Objects#content
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Greater Invisibility#content
tender's transformation.
I just want to point out that in AD&D Dex did have something to do with speed.
Otherise, nothing to add.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Bunnyhopping is weird but it's a lot more fun and a definite improvement over 5e and the UA. It's no secret that Dexterity is straight up a superior stat compared to Strength. Yes, you get a damage boost and the ability to grapple or shove but those options are not worth the trade unless all you care about is your single target damage numbers in melee. BG3 did good by making Shove and Jump way more powerful. Perhaps, to make bunnyhopping less weird, horizontal distance could be increased with a lunge of some kind instead. Based off of Strength of course. Dexterity is too good. Give nice things to Strength players. They're not the ones altering reality anyway. Monks already get huge no cost bonuses to speed and Rogues get a bonus action Dash.
As for the other stuff BG3 does...well it's hit or miss. A lot definitely doesn't work so well for a TTRPG and some stuff was arbitrarily buffed or nerfed in a way that leaves you scratching your head (Haste being too strong seems to be the go to example). Overall, at least martial combat feels better. I'm not sure I care that much about the Bonus Action/Action spellcasting rule change though. It's not written very well in the books and even though the intent was to "not slow down the game" the most obvious solution would have been just to say only 1 leveled spell per turn or round.
I'm willing to bet Larian buffed Haste in their game because it was much easier. Just have the buff increment the "Actions per round" variable from 1 to 2, instead of going through and figuring out/tagging which ones are legal for the extra one and which aren't.
I agree that "1 leveled spell per round" is the ideal way to write the casting rule, not least because it also nerfs dipping Fighter for Action Surge. As for why the rule needs to exist in the first place, slowing down play might be part of it, but the power that comes with multiple leveled spells is likely the even bigger reason. Quickened and Swift Action spells were a big part of caster dominance in 3.5, and this rule at least helped that in 5e.
Maybe there's some limits to how they implemented action economy that makes it hard; in general it's not hard (Solasta manages it, along with restriction on bonus action spells).
in BG3 monks lose their movement speed if they use armor, and they lose defense if they go strength without armor; and a fighter isnt going to benefit from open hands wis bonus to unarmed, or the wis bonus to unarmed items. And as a guy who plays monks a ton in 5e, BG3 monk is an improvement. Not only in power level, but in entertainment and combat flow. I wouldn't copy it for 5e, because the goals and rulesets are different. But Their monk design, including tavern brawler as a str feat, its still a better tavern brawler than 5e for monks.
max level openhand monk will body a fighter with one monk level, its not even close. They get +5 or 6 from tavern, but their die is a d4, their Ki is 2. open hand gives d4+wis at six per hit. so +7-10. This doesnt even include their level 9 ability.
There are a lot of things in BG3 that I really like and would enjoy in DnD, but obviously not everything.
If there was one thing I'd want to port over I think it'd be the way they treat Strength. Jump, Shove, and Throw are all actions that feel incredibly strong when you have a STR-based character. Jump gives Martials mobility, and because of the verticality of BG3 that mobility feels essential for dealing with a lot of encounters. Shove and, especially, Throw gives Martials some really effective control options that can lead to some incredibly fun gameplay. One of the most memorable moments in my first playthrough as a melee ranger was sneaking up behind a halfling, picking him up, and chucking him into a suspended rock that then collapsed on his two buddies below, killing all three. I'm constantly grabbing enemies, corpses, or dropped weapons and chucking them at people when I'm not in range to hit them or need to knock someone prone. It's a lot of fun.
BG3 is the first time I've felt like dumping Strength is an actual decision that has some weight to it. Even on characters who don't use it, I like having the little extra wiggle room with Jump distance or better odds at succeeding or resisting a Shove. Totally dumping Strength makes you a lightweight who can get bullied around the battlefield even if your main combat stat is DEX or CHA, and I think that is a much healthier state for the attribute balance than the current situation of Strength being unimportant if it's not your primary.
Now if only we could do something about INT...
Strength-focused characters need something, though I have to agree that bunny-hopping is weird. The problem with bottomless pits isn't a problem with bonus action shove, it's a problem with map design (probably an artifact of not being a 3d map, it's a 2d map with areas of impassible terrain and the engine doesn't have a way of handling characters in invalid locations other than preventing the motion or killing the character).
I see it more as a heroic leap, though I'd probably tweak things a bit so you can't just jump out of difficult terrain and maybe add some kind of Charge action for moving horizontally over flat terrain to reach an opponent rather than encouraging everyone to jump toward their opponents in every circumstance. There's a reason most video games give their melee characters mobility-increasing options. It's because being melee and not being able to get into melee isn't fun.
As for Shoving into pits? That is more on the DM choosing to add tons of pits and cliffs to their battles than anything. On flat terrain, Shove is more about knocking melee away from your squishies and forcing enemies into player-made traps and killzones. It makes positioning more important and gives your melee guys more options for keeping the enemy melee off your backline beyond relying entirely on Attacks of Opportunity.
But that wouldn't have felt "awesome!" You have to acknowledge that a mainly single-player video game has different priorities than a multiplayer TTRPG. Broken combos / features are totally fine in a single-player game because those players that like to be broken can use them, and those those that don't can choose not to use them and in either case it doesn't affect the fun of other players.
Honestly, they didn't do a whole lot to address the biggest cause of the Martial/Caster divide that appeared in 3rd Edition, the one-two punch of boosting save DCs while also smacking the warrior classes with a saving throw nerf wrecking ball. In 2nd edition, Warrior classes (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, and where the Barbarian would fit if it wasn't just an add-on in 2nd) had weak saves at low levels, but the among the best in the high end. Each of the other classes had one save category where they were king, but were adequate in most of the others, but Fighter classes....they were at least 2nd best in ALL of them at higher levels (not counting the Paladin having this base PLUS bonuses), and the best on some others, then reduced to being the worst in 2 out of 3, and one of those two being the "just run to the store and grab the rest of the group some snacks" spells that removed your character from the game until they mercifully wore off. In some ways I think 5E may have made that issue even worse by increasing the save categories to 6 from 3, but at least most things allow a save to end the effect at the end of every round (one of the good things from 4th - I hate the edition, but I have to admit that many good things appeared in it) when they lasted the duration before.
Of course, this is all pure TTRPG stuff and has little to do with Baldur's Gate.
One thing I think they could do is institute the BG3 short rest rules into OneD&D - easy to take (5-15 minutes instead of an hour) but limited in how many can be taken before a long rest must be taken - 2 (like the game) or 3 (so that there is a counterpoint for short rest classes to be superior to long rest ones occasionally - to balance out the times when a 5 minute workday happens), and it would be a much more elegant solution to the disparity there than trying to eliminate short rests as much as possible.
BG3 is balanced for a single player to control multiple characters who can do stuff that would be broken in tabletop play, and it does it in vastly more difficult combat encounter and is much more free with its rests.
The reason it gets away with this is that you don't have to worry as much about a single player outshining the rest of the table and ruining the fun of others, because either you're playing single player and your own fun is all that matters, or you're playing multilayer and "oh my God we survived I can't belive we survived that was awesome!" no matter who did the op shit.
Like, I'm having a lot of fun being able to quicken a leveled spell and still cast another leveled spell after, but I can see why this isn't allowed at the table.
Yes, there is. Players and the DM can talk about it and choose to turn back the clock to avoid campaign-ruining events if they so choose. It's not that uncommon when players make a choice that leads to a total party wipe and the players don't actually want the campaign to end yet.
The biggest advantage tabletop gaming has over any video game is that it is more intuitively malleable than a game made by coding can be. BG3 can't sense the vibe at the table and change its plans, nor can it balance its encounters by how min-maxed the party is. The DM can do all of this and more. Maybe your character failed their save and got shoved off a cliff. Maybe the DM decides there's a lake at the bottom and your character isn't dead after all, just removed from the immediate combat. Or the DM decides you managed to grab hold of an outcropping and can climb your way back up. Or the player made some quick use of their handy rope to prevent them from falling to their death.
Or heck, the DM can look at the situation and just choose not to try to shove their player to their death. It's no different from choosing to disperse the NPC attacks across the whole party rather than having all the archers focus down the wizard on turn 1. The DM isn't trying to kill their party. The BG3 AI is because it's an AI and isn't capable of nuanced thought like "I really want the player to think they are being challenged but without the real risk of a total party wipe being present".
This exactly.
The reason things seem so imbalanced in BG3 isn't really the balance changes to the classes, subclasses, spells etc. The reason is because the game is in a singular state with only certain pre-planned changes being possible. One of the reasons Larian had to cap the game at level 12 is because after Tier 2 players stop just participating in the world and start actively remolding it - either literally with spells like Wish and Planeswalk, or figuratively by explaining how their character runs straight up a wall and stands upside down on the ceiling. At lower levels, this means players can always choose to grab the Club of Hill Giant Strength or Disintegrating Nightwalkers boots or The Graceful Cloth or the Mourning Frost arcane staff. However, the DM can't adjust the encounter or the loot availability or anything else. Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't know that you're reading a strategy guide and have pre-placed your characters around a room for maximum efficiency in the next encounter. But an attentive DM can and does account for the party's actions.
When we look at the actual balance changes that BG3 attempts, many of them are successful from a game mechanics standpoint. Bunnyhopping means that Strength based martials gain mobility that was previously only available to spellcasters for doing things like assaulting a raised platform or across a raging river. Speak With Dead and Animals lasting until a Long Rest means that they are viable preparations for a class with few spell slots to spare. Weapon Abilities grant martial classes new options for controlling the battlefield but also have the side benefit of making other classes just as interested in a short rest as the Monk and Warlock. The rest mechanics are awesome for setting an encounter tempo that fits your table and limits rest spamming.
There certainly are failures. One of the largest is the removal of Multiclassing Prerequisites - a change I suspect is due to actual code limitations more than anything else (and the related achievement is a bonus added at the last minute by way of apology). Another is automatic failure on a 1 outside of combat, which can feel very egregious on certain speech checks.
But these mechanical changes are not going to negatively affect your table in most cases unless the DM is unwilling or unable to adjust on the fly.
It helps to balance the two statistics.
Dexterity leads to going first. Strength increased jump distance, and thus total movement per round, but at the cost of a bonus action. And since Strength-based attacks are overwhelming melee, it helps them close the gap to be more effective.
It's honestly not a bad idea. Especially with the verticality.
I feel like doing a direct comparison is not fair to either of them because I also feel like both systems excel at what they are designed for, but they are not designed for the same thing, even if there is a good bit of overlap.
"Not all those who wander are lost"