Baldur's Gate 3 - 15 Reasons why it could be big

Honestly, some people might want a vast array of choices but I prefer a tighter tactical experience. I'm not trying to always have water and then a spell using electricity. Or ignite the oil with my fire spell. It becomes too much rinse and repeat. Knowing when to cast fireball and when you need to try to save your spells is half the fun.

I am weighing in, but I haven't played it, just watched a lot (will buy it when I am bored or on the first day of full release)

D&D spell mechanics in a computer game are tricky! Why be a low level mage, when you could potentially read a scroll, or take a potion… I think that is restricted in this game though, so that is good!

But in computer games, the action and fighting is more regular and frequent than in tablet top, and a mage who can only cast one or 2 spells is soon surpassed by the physical damage dealers. And it is boring!! Not to mention I do think the mechanics or memory wiping etc a little funny in the D&D universe….

A simple answer would be to alter the spell tables to give more uses of spells… Still limited for resource management, but as others said, I would just hold off using spells, and wouldn't use them!! Or use a variation on a cooldown mechanic or mana and skills.

I am more a fan of RTwP, but if you are going to do TB, doing they way they do with initiative order is the way to go…

I was playing wasteland 3 recently, and when the your group or their group gets to go first, it is so unrealistic in the outcomes! It should be based upon individual turns, as this game rightly does (if it has to be TB instead of RTwP lol).

Vancian casting is my favorite. If the encounters are properly weighed, that is, if there aren't too many of them before you can rest, you can easily manage your spells. If you're in a place where resting is limited, you have to be more strategic about them. There's no problem inherently with Vancian casting, i.e. D&D's system for magic, it's how the game itself and the encounters are balanced.

Bah I hate the new Vancian casting rules in the 5th ED AD&D rule set. They made a bunch of good changes for the Wizard class but nerfed the sorcerer class to much.

Although even fans of the 5e style will admit that it has made the sorcerer into a poor man's wizard due to bad design choices - namely, the fact that the sorcerer, previously designed as the "flexible arcanist", has no game mechanics to allow for quick and easy spell-slot recovery. Oh, it can "convert" spell points into spell-slots, but in comparison, the wizard can use Arcane Recovery once a day to recover an almost equal number of spell slots anyway. Did I mention that four level's worth of the Sorcerer's class features use that same meagre pool of spell points, bleeding the entire class completely dry of its unique resource?

Originally Posted by TheRealFluent
There's no problem inherently with Vancian casting, i.e. D&D's system for magic,

There is a big problem: It makes no sense.
I cast fireball!
I cast fireball!
I cast fireb- wait, I can't because, uh, my… book is empty? Or I suddenly forgot how to do it? What. Or I am drained magically - okay, but then why can I still cast other spells, potentially including much stronger ones?

It tries to argue that spellcasting is actually ritualistic and you have to prepare spells. Fair enough, but then why can't I just prepare MORE spells. Rest for a freaking week and have all the spells I need.
Don't sleep for one night and have twice the spells at the cost of some stats, maybe.
Convert spells at higher levels to multiple spells of lower levels to make it more like a "mana bar".
It's just so inflexible and any logical inspection makes the system fall apart at the seams - yes, it is "magic" but that doesn't mean anything goes. It still has to be internally coherent, and it isn't. It never has been.

Other systems are vastly superior in how they implement magic. The best is IMO Shadowrun. You can attempt to cast any spell you know at any strength as often as you want to - but it comes at a price to your health. Spellcasting "hurts" you in a way, because it is mentally draining - the stronger the spell, the more it drains you, including the possibility of death.
There is even the concept of kamikaze mages that train to cast one spell extremely well, so that their spell check succeeds. But they cast it at such a high level that they cannot possibly survive the backlash. It's the mage equivalent of smuggling a nuke in.
More common is of course to cast spells at a level that is manageable for the mage, so they might only take very little damage or none at all.

All that said, 5E is actually the best in this regard, as it has much more at-will or per-encounter spells which scale with your level and that don't force you to rest all the time or become a useless character. Only the stronger stuff is still locked behind those Vancian shenanigans.<
So I'm not actually that worried about magic in this game despite it being D&D.

This is RPG, it's a tactical model and not a realistic one - in any case, I never saw anybody casting a fireball, but I know I don't go out often enough So I think they should get away with unrealistic features, as long as there is some degree of explanation to support them, even if it's not perfect.

In real life, most of the time we take Newton's physics laws for granted. They don't make sense and they are inaccurate, it's just an approximate model you can exploit to build most of human-sized devices. Games often have a modified physics model to balance the gameplay, and it makes even less sense (a soldier hit by a rocket in real life won't get patched up by a simple medkit…).

RPGs are partly born of a crude rule set used as an approximate model to train for war. They modified it to get a more balanced gameplay, and not everything makes sense either.

I have a preference for 5th Edition, but that's just personal (I have to check about the sorcerers because I haven't paid much attention to them in 5E). Pathfinder derives from the 3rd Edition and the old Vancian rules, but I'm happy with it, I just take that as a tactical parameter.

I liked how they did spells in Dragon Age: Origins. The most powerful spells were limited, in that you would get to cast it once or maybe twice during a long battle, or three times in a really epic and long battle. But it took time to cast the most powerful spells and it felt good in how they did the mechanics of it.

Also the most powerful spells really were powerful and potentially could swing the tide of battle, as it should be.

I'm personally happy with how DnD5E works in general. As someone else mentioned, half the fun is choosing when to use your best spells, making those tactical decisions to have the greatest impact and turn the odds in your favour. If these spells weren't limited, or had a cooldown, it would lead to gamey systems in which you use your spells, then stall the battle by hiding/running/other shenanigans and then unloading your best spells again. That can also be fun in its own way, but I just prefer this style in which choosing when to use what spell or ability becomes critical to your success.

Also in DnD5E they addressed old gripes with spellcasters being basically useless and boring to pilot when they ran out of spells or just didn't think it was a good time to use them in "trash" encounters, and now all spellcaster classes have cantrips with infinite uses that are decent to use in most situations and scale up with character level.

All in all, the balancing factor will be how often you can rest. If you can rest after every encounter, then it doesn't really matter how you use your spells, since you'll have the back for every battle anyway. Hopefully Larian will find a way to make the game challenging in that aspect, at least for those of us who are looking for that challenge.

Shoot a fire arrow at any oil/poison patch and fireball happens. Every class can be a mage with arrows and elemental effects. The BG3 demo showed such surfaces everywhere.

I only hope it's 2021.
Disclaimer: I own the EA and did a run with it - no major complaints besides the level cap and the first big patch that broke most quests. I don't want to replay this, just waiting for the full release.

Originally Posted by Telstar
I hope it's 2021.

Come on, it was 2004 just a few days ago and now it - oh. Oh, no.

I like how buffs are handled. I would get so bored in older games where it was always buff everyone the same tired way with the same set of spells +/- a few situational ones. It was like every big battle would have the same 5 minute buffing session.

If I recall right, now you have more of a concentration. So you could cast speak with dead but then you can't cast speak with animals until you give up the other.

It makes sense that mentally you would have a limit on what you could focus on. So the idea of an ongoing spell requiring some concentration makes sense and means more tactical decisions.

I didn't mind the old method of spells. Every world has its own way of defining how magic works. In some cases that may mean memorizing certain symbols and words and so on in a very specific way for each spell. Memorizing that spell and learning it also stores the energy tied to it. So once cast that energy goes with it. But you could still have a lightning bolt spell left after using the fireball. Makes sense to me since each spell has to be stored as part of memory and it is tied to the energy of the spell.

Another magic system might use a pool of magic so you can cast as many spells as you have energy for and training on how to use. Skyrim magic for example.

Others require wands, cards, runes. Another may all be around concentration and so on.

I never had any problems with the mages not using spells every fights. Someone ought to use that +3 sling, anyhow ;-)

I always preferred low magic settings. Too much magic kills how "special" it is. In Lotr, you don't see Gandalf spaming fireball around despite him being a demi-god and the most powerful wizard of the world. It makes the world more believable.

Also, Dnd for me has always been about team work. In some situations, your rogue is the most important character. In some others, it's your fighter. And sometimes it's your wizard that needs to cast that so important spell to save the day.

Originally Posted by vanedor
I never had any problems with the mages not using spells every fights. Someone ought to use that +3 sling, anyhow ;-)

I always preferred low magic settings. Too much magic kills how "special" it is. In Lotr, you don't see Gandalf spaming fireball around despite him being a demi-god and the most powerful wizard of the world. It makes the world more believable.

Also, Dnd for me has always been about team work. In some situations, your rogue is the most important character. In some others, it's your fighter. And sometimes it's your wizard that needs to cast that so important spell to save the day.

And sometimes it's the cleric when morons in your group want to split the party.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Shoot a fire arrow at any oil/poison patch and fireball happens. Every class can be a mage with arrows and elemental effects. The BG3 demo showed such surfaces everywhere.

True, but elemental arrows are few and very expensive, at least in the EA. Hopefully they keep it that way.

Originally Posted by vanedor
I always preferred low magic settings.

The Forgotten Realms are a high magic setting… but if you liked BG1/2 that was very similar magic-wise.

I've only watched a little about this game. Kinda avoiding watching too much since it's a sure buy at some point unless the game somehow nosedives and tanks from here, which is cosmically unlikely.

I've only watched some the early gameplay that was posted and that was enough for me to know the game looks solid.

Most importantly, the combat looks less elemental soupy - my least liked aspect of the D:OS games.

My first D&D was pnp with the thin paperbound rule books but I'm not a D&D purist. I don't need BG3 to be "D&D perfect." Almost every cRPG with D&D ties has to bend the rules. I prefer the D&D combat in TOEE - to me all others are inferior anyways, but at least BG3 will be turn-based.

Originally Posted by wolfgrimdark
I like how buffs are handled. I would get so bored in older games where it was always buff everyone the same tired way with the same set of spells +/- a few situational ones. It was like every big battle would have the same 5 minute buffing session.

If I recall right, now you have more of a concentration. So you could cast speak with dead but then you can't cast speak with animals until you give up the other.

It makes sense that mentally you would have a limit on what you could focus on. So the idea of an ongoing spell requiring some concentration makes sense and means more tactical decisions.

I didn't mind the old method of spells. Every world has its own way of defining how magic works. In some cases that may mean memorizing certain symbols and words and so on in a very specific way for each spell. Memorizing that spell and learning it also stores the energy tied to it. So once cast that energy goes with it. But you could still have a lightning bolt spell left after using the fireball. Makes sense to me since each spell has to be stored as part of memory and it is tied to the energy of the spell.

Another magic system might use a pool of magic so you can cast as many spells as you have energy for and training on how to use. Skyrim magic for example.

Others require wands, cards, runes. Another may all be around concentration and so on.

Yeah, I found the gothic 1 setting quite interesting too. You could learn magic spells from different levels but needed a rune to cast it with mana.

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Need to try Gothic 3 again one day. The only thing I didn't like about the Gothic magic system was that you couldn't really access it till the game was half over.

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Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I can't see these "it's not like X or Y game system so it sucks" arguments as any kind of real criticism. You can see just from scrolling through these comments how futile that is, given that there are at least three different, discrete opinions being voiced about what system it just has to use. Engage with the game on its own merits and you may find that you enjoy it. Or if you don't, it will at least be for a concrete reason.

That is not true. It is a fair criticism. If you brand the game as a D&D game, people will expect a D&D game, and fans of the source material will expect a familiar system.

That being said. A few tweaks in the ruleset are fine, even good in some cases. Even if you are a ruleset purist you should know that the rules allow some homebrewing.

I have played the BG3 EA from day one and I must say that Larian did a good job with the rules. They adapted the rules just a little bit to match their style and the game was great on day one IMO. It is even better now.

However, in some cases (most cases probably) some video game developers brand their games as D&D (or World Darkness, The Dark Eye, etc.). But they think they can do a better job creating a system than a beloved system that has been here improving since the '70s. And that is how crap games such as Sword Coast Legends are born. And that is why people are understandably unsatisfied when they see a game that is supposed to be something but it is another thing.