The previous post was starting to lose steam so here is another one.
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Lucky rolls to you all.
Who is with me: Larian improves the BG3 engine, and starts putting out D&D campaigns, from the classics on. Buck the Baldurs Gate thing, and do some modules as games. Be my dungeon master, Larian.
I’d love that but it’s far too lucrative an idea for Wizards of the Coast to ever do it with the way their business is currently being run
Honestly, the number one thing I wished for while playing BG3 was DOS3. BG3 is great and all and the combat is fun, but there are so many things about DND 5e (and especially its combat) that just don’t work well (both in BG3 and tabletop imo).
But DOS3, where every ability would be designed fresh, without any pre-defined requirements, combined with the amazing engine that they’ve built for BG3? That just sounds soo good imo.
So yeah, I can’t wait for them to go back to working on something else actually.
This is what I’ve been thinking the whole time too. Absolutely love the game, but coming from Pathfinder I find 5e… lacking.
What is DOS3?
Divinity Original Sin 3, I assume.
Quests and gameplay bugs aside, am I the only one who has a gripe with how there are so little to no good looking helmets in the game? Most of the time it’s set to Hide Helmet for all of my characters. I just want my Oathbreaker to look the part.
Agreed. The circlets are the only consistently good ones because they’re barely there. It’s tragic when a helmet is both a huge upgrade and distressingly ugly.
Yeah ikr? We’ve seen some better designs when it comes to the rest of the armor sets and helmets on NPCs. Let’s just pray they’ll include better helmets in the future updates.
Circlets my man. Diadem of Arcane Synergy is huge for Paladins.
True but aesthetically circlets might as well be the same as setting it to hide helmet. Hopefully future updates and dlcs will remedy that by adding more helmets.
I was referring to mechanically. As to full helms the Holy Lance Helm, Grymskull Helm, and Helm of Balduran are all good for Paladins.
As far as Ascetics, functional helms rarely look good for Tanks. You can look good or have a dent in your skull. Circlets are a mid point for half casters and full casters.
If you are really concerned about having a good looking helm that isnt a noose then equip the Flawed Helldusk.
There is a hood and a couple of hats, but otherwise definitely agreed.
Agreed on the helmets. It would be great if the hide helmet option worked on the party members you leave back at camp.
My biggest gripe would be the inability to preview dyes though.
Can I get some love for my boy Raphael. Dude’s a literal Disney Villain. His fight in the house of Hope has been the highlight of 2.5 runs.
My first run I killed him in one round and had to reload to hear the conclusion of his song. Tell me that isn’t nailing a Performance check. He bought 1 minute of life with his voice.
Aw man, I decided to save and quit about 5 minutes away from this boss fight and now I’m super excited to play some more.
Edit: This was a great boss fight. “Liiiives, all mortal liiives, expiiire”
I’m at the door of the final fight, but House of Hope is my highlight of the game so far. I loved Raphael from the moment he appeared and his conclusion was as epic as was befitting him. I like him so much I might side with him next time. Among a selection of great voice acting I might like his the best, too. Not just the song. Great character.
Here come the claws…
“Lives, all mortal lives … expire …”
From the first moment I met Raphael I kept expecting him to break into song. Didn’t think it would actually happen but damn was it glorious.
When I began the fight, my wife thought the song was hilarious. Since I had a lot of trouble with it, by the time I finished, she hated it. She’d start groaning everytime Raphael would start singing.
I think that was the highlight of the game for me, which is kinda wild because I only went on a whim. My story wasn’t pushing me in that direction at all, just figured I’d poke around. Great fight, too. I’d been steamrolling everything for most of the act by that point, so it was nice to get challenged again.
The song was a pleasant surprise too. That, the harpy song, and the Ketheric/Gith battle music are going to be stuck in my head for a while.
I liked the fight with him but I was a little frustrated at how railroaded into it I was. I had planned to get in, and get out before he got back but it just drops you into a fight with him. I’d love for them to add a round timer and make it possible to get out without fighting him.
Is anyone else at awe with how massive this game actually is?
Like I was in a big zone in Act 2, explored the crap out of it, went past the next part of the main story line but decide to explore a bit more. I find a door to some seemingly small dungeon… “Uh let’s see where this leads.” It’s starts to become bigger and bigger, and then inside that there’s another door to an even bigger place. Holy shit I’m completely lost, I don’t even know what I’ve already left behind.
minor spoiler for zone name in Act 2
I’m talking about the Mausoleum for those reading this.
The only downside is that I get rather tired when playing splitscreen on my living room TV. Otherwise I think I wouldn’t even leave my home for 2 weeks.
I would kill for the dynamic split screen from DOS2.
I don’t want this to sound like criticism, but a lot of the length of this game is due to the Cinematic Dialog. It would probably only be 40-60 hrs without it, ie it’s about the same length as PoE or Tyrany. Planescape Torment, or both Owlcat Pathfinder games have considerably more content and depth; but the Cinematic Dialog is part of what has drawn so much attention to this game and that takes WORK.
This is going to be the game of the Decade due to the marriage of Classic RPG and Modern Graphic but it sacrifices a lot of Act 3 and some companion’s endings (namely Karlach) on this altar.
I created my own character, drow elf druid. I think I messed up in the beginning and didn’t grab one NPC, so my entire party is weak. No tank just warlock, druid, cleric, and whatever the vampire is. Do I have a chance to get a tank later?
So you have Shadowheart, Wyll, and Astarion, at least. You missed Lae’zel? Did you get Gale?
There’s a Barbarian character that you can pick up a bit later than the other companions. Make sure to get her before leaving Act 1, she makes a great front-liner.
There will be more companions to get in Acts 2 and even 3.
If you have Withers at your camp, you can also respec companions or get a hireling.
I do have gale. I have him a magical artifact already to consume
You can respec any character at whithers in your camp. Also as other have said circle of the moon druid can bear form to get an extra 60 hp (half from each cast) circle of the spore can spawn minions that can tank the hits that would other go towards your team mates.
It sounds like your problem isn’t just that you don’t have a tank but that you’re solely relying on Shadowheart for healing. In my run I’m doing an ancient paladin so I’ve got lay on hands plus the heal aura to subside her healing.
When you level up you can also multiclass to get some desirable traits from another class to help your comp.
True, I really on shadowheart, and healing potions. I’ll look at respecting her as a life cleric. I think my druid is already circle of the spore, but I’m only level 3,so maybe I can’t spawn minions yet?
Don’t forget you can throw healing potions to heal all four of your party at once.
Animate dead you get at lvl 5 and fungal infection you get at lvl 6.
You are saying that if I throw a healing potion, All of my party benefits from it? I suppose they need to be in some nearby radius for it to work
Thrown potions have a splash radius on the ground. If you huddle and toss one between everyone they all get it’s effects. This is true for all potions.
You can change classes once you meet an NPC early on. Explore around the starting area, and you’ll meet someone that’ll show up at your camp and let you respec anyone.
Also, druids can get tanky if they go the wildshape route
I have withers at the camp, so I can respec
Druids are tanky any route so long as you take a lvl of MonK.
Warlock, Druid, and Cleric can be built into tanks pretty easily via Feats and Subclasses. Heavy Armor proficiency solves a ton.
That said you did miss Lae’zel, the Str Fighter; and Karlach the Barbarian.
There’s some additional late game companions in act 2 and 3 but not too much. A lot of casters (including druids) will also gain elemental summons as spells in later levels. The summon itself can be a tank for you. You can also respec characters at Withers in your camp. You want to be careful changing origin characters classes, but subclasses are fine. Clerics can be great tanks, especially in the life domain. For example my current character is a cleric/monk with an armor class of 24, almost ever attack misses them.
EDIT: removed my first sentence, it mentioned the class of a later game companion which may be considered a spoiler to some.
Their character is the druid.
It is a druid, but I made it myself, not one of the pre-made ones
Realized that after reading it again oops. Removed my first sentence in that case.
If you are playing a shape shifting druid your character can easily tank. Especially if you pick up a few levels in Barbarian. Rage stays active after shape shifting and a raging bear is one of the tankiest builds available.
Without knowing how far you are it’s difficulty to say if any companion are still available. Except for Shadowheart and Asterion I found all other companions fairly easy to miss in a blind playthrough. So you might want to read up on who they are and where to find them.
I’ve beat momma spider, and the shagging giants in the blighted village, I think I’ve done everything there, so I’ll move on from that point.
Stopping now after making it about 2/3rds of the way in on my second run. Had a blast, but with as many bugs as I’m running into now even before Act 3, I think it’s best to shelve it until more fixes are made. Straw that broke the camel’s back was missing romance scenes seemingly because I didn’t long rest enough. That’s funny because I felt like my party was getting wrecked a lot more than my first party was, so I had to be resting even more. Maybe by Act 2 I had figured things out more than I realized.
Next run (whenever that is) I’m thinking evil bard and fully Embracing My Potential, if you know what I mean. Also probably going to bump it up to Tactician when I hit level 5 on that run.
Just go Tac at the start a Bard can take it. It’s probably the strongest class.
Spoiler
Make sure your character goes in the Zathisk to ascend. BA Illithid abilities are broken.
About to go into the final battle and finish the game off for my 1st run. I’ll probably shelve the game for a couple months and play Starfield and Phantom Liberty and then give an evil run through a try.
Loved act 1, but not too impressed with act 3. Seemed a bit rushed and all over the place, maybe should’ve split the content up and made an act 4. Always felt with Larian games that the writing usually falls apart near the end and this game was no exception. Bit let down with the other 2 chosen fights as well. The highlight was definitely the house of hope, between the music, the characters you deal with and the fight itself it was absolutely my favourite part of act3.
I’ve also run into numerous bugs requiring reloads too. Jumping across a small gap and characters will get caught on some invisible wall and just die. Quests not completing or triggering properly. Companions repeating dialogue or just giving me dialogue as if I chose different outcomes from quests(looking at you Gale). Also managed to get two different outcomes for the same gather your allies quest so I guess I’ll see if that works out or not. (EDIT: Just a dialogue/extra character glitch. Didn’t have two skills in the allies bar to use for them)
All in all I enjoyed the game, but bg2 is one of my all time favourite rpgs and this fell short for me. I’m glad it did really well though, hopefully they can make an Icewind Dale or Neverwinter Nights game, that would be wicked.
Act 3 bugs and unexpected quest lock offs make me sad. My Monk is now punching his way directly to the finish line and I’ll roll a new hero and play again in a little while. Had a blast but a bit disappointed with the bugs.
What bugs did you have? I guess I’m surprised to hear of complaints about it, I haven’t really had any in 150 hours. Guess just got lucky.
Not many to be fair, but they have been frustrating.
A certain character repeating quest dialogue but not advancing the quest. This was after a significant amount of effort including a boss fight, had to abandon the quest.
One bigger quest to help a group of people unexpectededly closed but my journal wasn’t updated so it just stays there in an incomplete state. Quite frustrating as I was really wanting to do it and it also blocked two areas that I wanted to come back and explore.
I had a similar thing where I couldn’t advance in a quest which required me to talk to a companion and they just kept repeating a line and not giving me dialogue options.
But then I figured out I had to talk to them with a specfic character for the dialogue to open up. It definitely wasn’t clear that I needed to do that or which character needed to talk with them though. Can remember which quest it was.
Patch 2 cleaned up a bunch, but there are still a few scripting errors on secondary quests. That said all of the big ones I found on my first run have been patched.
There is a particular end game situation that monk just flat out trivializes. You’ll see it when you get there. Lets just say, spamming the free jump from Step of the Wind: Dash feels like cheating, but it certainly is an effective way to do things on a Tavern Brawler monk at a certain point in the game.
Controversial take: party size unlock is absolutely the best experience, feels more narratively justified and more like a 5e D&D adventure.
First thing I did once I had more than 3 party members! Game isn’t quite balanced for it but the difficulty level changes helps. Ran into one bug already (getting on a boat in the underdark area) that made 3 party members forever invisible. Definitely makes the big battles super cool!
Say I go down the Oathbreaker path for a while. When I switch back, will I still have access to the skills I learned as an Oathbreaker?
I challenged The Prison Warden to a dual, and then accidentally fired my crossbow, killing her lol. Insta-Oathbreaker. I wanna see what the skills are like
It’s like a respec. You can either have the Oathbreaker subclass or your original subclass, they have some mutually exclusive class abilities. It shouldn’t affect things like your skill proficiencies or feats, though.
Thanks! The Oathbreaker Knight looks like a badass. Almost looks like a Death Knight. My first fight with it was really fun. The Hellish Rebuke exploded around me towards the end of it, and I took out 4 enemies at once lol
