Zzulu posted:

I never played Balldurs gate

What's so good about it?

ChrisBTY posted:

Also it's one of those games where people have written absolute tomes on how to abuse it.
As opposed to a lot of games that feel in control of how powerful you are at any given point in the game.
Now of course some people call this 'good game balance' and they totally correct.
But good game balance is for competitive multiplayer games; single player? lemme take the chains off and wreck poo poo.

En Garde Motherfuckers posted:

Was there ever a name for the genre of tactics game where you queued up a series of orders for each unit then hit a button and watched them play out? One of those ill-fated Jagged Alliance sequels/reboots used it iirc

Watch BG3 use that style for maximum chaos

frajaq posted:

SLAP IN THE FACE

FairGame posted:

Keldorn dies in battle in the epilogue and then goes to chill with Helm as...whatever you become in D&D lore when a god is like "hey, come chill with me; you're good and that dispel is handy."

Viconia dies I think no matter what.

Basic Chunnel posted:

BG means a lot of things to a lot of different people but to me it’s mostly associated with the pacing and tonal balance of BG2, the former in particular being something that’s extremely underrated and also extremely out of vogue.

I’m not excited mainly because no one, save Harebrained Schemes, makes area focused hub-and-spoke games like BG2 anymore, open worlds are both rewarded in the marketplace and fetishized by grogs / spergs. D:OS2 was a big sprawl of Diablo 2-style countryside and it was just a never ending loving slog. Even in the looser Baldur’s Gate 1, BioWare level design (which is quest design, which is game design) was focused typically around an area landmark, with things to see and fight that you would clear and move to the next area landmark.

You spent an hour or two in any given dungeon area, new things constantly cycling in and keeping things fresh, very rarely letting anything get old. That was the defining shape of BG to me. Given what’s been said already I don’t expect to see it again.

Crowetron posted:

The placement of potential party members in BG1 was pretty weird anyway. It makes sense to assume most players just stuck with the goobers hanging out on the beaten path, since there were tons of dudes just lurking in the corners of the multitude of forest maps or waiting for the PC to pick them up in the final act. And the harder to find party members weren't any better mechanically than the more obvious ones, so the only incentive to bring them along was maybe liking their brief intro dialogue.

Why would I want to tag in a brand new thief once I get to Baldur's Gate itself when I've had Imoen tagging along from jumpstreet and built up in exactly the way I want her?

frajaq posted:

Conot posted:

Also I think it's a bit premature to call something "not dnd" based on one vague statement about modifying the rules in certain cases to some extent

Fritz the Horse posted:

How so? Are you new to Larian games?

I've found it to be pretty straightforward. Some of the fights are tough and force you to do some serious planning and preparation but that's fine imo.

I haven't run into major bugs or jank.

The only minor annoyance I have with the UI is that when you are casting a self-only ability, you have to click, then hover over yourself to target, then click again to activate. Which is a little fiddly since it's, y'know, self only. Oh and battles against large groups of enemies are slow.

inthesto posted:

I had to put this game back on the shelf after some more problems. On the technical side, there was stuff like the game telling me I'm out of range for an attack when I'm very obviously not. On the design side though, I got fed up when you find another one of the mind flayer slugs and you have to pass two separate ability checks to stomp it. On top of my general RPG no-no of "don't force the player to pass two checks to do one thing" (because it just means more chances for the player to fail), the entire party disapproved if I failed either check.

Again, in a tabletop game I might be willing to give that a pass because there's a chance the GM could turn that throwaway encounter into a plot hook down the line, and I can also just talk to the GM between sessions and say "here's why you don't do this". In a video game though, that's most likely just a one-off middle finger to the player, and I can't exactly talk directly to the devs and tell them why this is bad encounter design.

inthesto posted:

Speaking of, why is Larian staying with the choice of having a million containers in every room with 99% of them empty? It was an annoying time waster in DOS2, and it's annoying here too. Just leave the ornaments there and make them non-interactable, jesus.

change my name posted:

Alt highlights stuff on the ground (consumables and bodies) but not containers... but pretty much everything is a container. I was maybe going to try to stream an evil run of the game after I finished the EA, but so much of it is just clicking through barrels/bookshelves/boxes

inthesto posted:

I agree with the philosophy you outlined at first, but I don't see that in practice at all. Fail an ability check with the mind slug? The mind slug gets away and your approval with the entire party falls. Fail an ability check with the dying mind flayer? Your character dies and you have to fight the thing on top of that.

Yes, failure should put in twists and snags and success shouldn't always be guaranteed, but this game seems to enjoy punching you in the throat for failing a check when you have far less agency in your decisions than you would in a tabletop game to begin with.

Magil Zeal posted:

Sometimes it's also just "companions lost opinion of you" which I actually find just as annoying if not more than a fight really.

upgunned shitpost posted:

day one trip report: the dwarfs are half-a-head too short. unplayable. the halflings are disgustingly gnomish. unplayable. finally settled on a half wood elf circus act, heavy on the wisdom, intelligence and charisma with charming investigative skills. kinda like batman, or closer to robin I suppose, chucking bombs and stuff in combat while being able to pass all the skill checks that open up different options.

some time later...

this dude has failed every skill check, save for one in arcana and another in medicine, which he has no advantage in. it did not bring joy. honestly surprised my companions didn't show up fully encumbered given they're not only weighed down by considerable amounts of baggage, but each one is lugging around their own forbidden closet of mystery. they are absolutely tedious and I hate them. I'm afraid to sleep at camp cuz they'll just start cutting themselves. sleeping also does nothing to speed up their transformation in mindflayers, which would do wonders for their likability. not a single coolguy chillbro to say 'wow' when I do. where is my mazzy or jaheira? eder? steven heck? can't even get a fun shithead like xan.

it is kinda pretty though.

unattended spaghetti posted:

I know it’s off topic-ish, but what were y’alls first D&D characters?

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Only thing holding me back from going polearm master paladin is I want to see the magic item list first. Shame if the holy avenger is a greatsword.

wizard2 posted:

and with Red Prince in particular, it is absolutely critical that you do this

Evil Canadian posted:

Khanstant posted:

bud we were all higher level back then

Mr. Lobe posted:

Incorrect, Larian Studios made the correct call of spending years of dev time curating a sensuous encounter with a bear.

FuzzySlippers posted:

I never rested very often in these games because it goes against the vibe.

rojay posted:

I wonder if Larian have modeled the sewers after the original Baldur's Gate? Like, if I know where a secret door is from BG, can I find in in this game?

Dexo posted:

It can work, but more times than not it does not.

It takes a really really good table, where everyone at the table is fairly well adjusted and trusts each other for it to have a chance at working.

And even then, when things get untenable, and that crossroads is hit, the players should either leave/kill the evil traitor, the Traitor should have a change of heart, or the GM should take control of the evil player character and it becomes an NPC with that person rolling a new character

Khanstant posted:

How good is Assassin or sneaky backstab rogue in 5E? The rogue in our party was a Crowperson who mostly did ranged weapon attacks and flew around for advantage on rolls or maybe sneak attack die? It was cool but our combat was more like, of you have a cool idea and do something interesting or make a plan, you roll for it and see what unfolds. Our DM set up encounters around this more than spending much time doing like straight forward combat . It was very fun, but not going to translate to a computer game version of DnD.

I feel like most cRPGs I end up with a rogue around for skill utility, but my attempts playing a shadow cloaked assassin type vary wildly from game to game, edition to edition.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Conquest is absolutely my favorite subclass both mechanically and thematically; I've played two of them in tabletop over the past few years, the first was a full goth emo drama hellknight with the crusher feat who just smashed everything and then my next character was a minotaur ("half-cow") who was basically a parody of the first character.

There's a great mod for it for BG3 on the Nexus and it avoids most (but not all) of the paladin oath triggers so you can just play how you want without fretting.

The great thing about it is how neatly all the class mechanics fit together and fit the theme. Great AOE crowd control, mass disadvantage, with all the strength of a martial, plus Armor of Agathys. Probably the strongest "tank" subclass in 5e.

Dpulex posted:

if loxodon was a choice the other races would be obsolete because there is no reason to play anything else.

MonsterEnvy posted:

Tabaxi are around, they are the main cat people of D&D now. A Tabaxi baby is rescued from a fish in the new movie.

Air Skwirl posted:

I'm going to be honest, serial killer adventurer doesn't make sense to me, even a super goody two shoes run you're already going to tack up a massive body count.

Dragon Age II posted:

Varric: Oh, cheer up, Blondie. You're making me cry just looking at you.
Anders: Don't.
Varric: You made a mistake. It happens.
Anders: I almost killed a girl.
Varric: You've killed two-hundred and fifty-four by my last count. Plus about five hundred men, a few dozen giant spiders, and at least two demons.
Anders: It's not the same.
Varric: Why? Because this one you feel bad about? Maybe that's the problem.

Jon Irenicus posted:

best video game evil: I'm going to buy the burnt down orphanage at rock-bottom prices and use city council connections to build luxury apartments in its place

Issaries posted:

That's a hateful stereotype. I'm both dumb and pacifist.

worm girl posted:

Swen said in the last panel that some of the devs were worried that some content wasn't going to get seen by the vast majority of players, but that the design goal of the game was to make sure that stuff was there regardless.

Even if you never see the evil stuff, it's cool that it's there, and it means that what you're doing is actually personalized even if you're not going off the beaten path very much.