The majority of tabletop games are turn-based. Nearly every board game ever made is turn-based. Literally gashed.
Baldur's Gate 3 (from page 8)
- Thread starter Fierce Headmaster
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Outrageous.
Necro.
As a long time fan who's quoted BG2 lines for a decade, if not longer, is BG3 worth playing? I love Larian, but I dunno if I wanna play BG3 before it's complete.
As a long time fan who's quoted BG2 lines for a decade, if not longer, is BG3 worth playing? I love Larian, but I dunno if I wanna play BG3 before it's complete.
I already got 60 hours out of that first act before I stopped playing. It's already a pretty great game and tons of fun but at this point I'd rather wait until I can play the whole story. Though with the content they keep adding if you played for a bit and came back later at release it'd probably still feel fresh.
I played through Early Access once (at least until I hit level cap and found zone transitions that were restricted) right after the launch and had quite a bit of fun. They've made improvements I agree with and pushed out another base class (Druid), but I'm still going to wait for a proper release before hitting it again. I'm looking forward to it as much as I was before EA launched, which can't be said for some other EA games. 
Kinda a necro I suppose. Is BG3 worth playing yet? I have uncountable hours in BG1+2 and hundreds in Divinity 2 but somehow I've been turned off by BG3 thus far.
If you're looking for a good CRPG then I highly recommend Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, it's pretty fantastic and you get the option to play it in the abomination that is Real-Time with Pause if you so choose. The consensus so far on Baldur's Gate 3 is that it's good but incomplete and content is on a long and slow drip-feed, so I'll likely continue avoiding it until it actually releases.
Their development of BG3 is mirroring that of DOS2, at least, where content additions come few & far between but bug fixes come out fairly regularly. I wish it was going faster, but it is what it is. Stability and performance have been great since the middle of last year, when I gave Sorcerer a quick whirl just to see how it ran on my new hardware. There's another major update coming pretty soon, but still no news on a full release AFAIK.
WotR is a great--though slightly buggy--game, but if you're prone to choice paralysis it can be a literal non-starter as you spend hours or days agonizing over a planned character build with the 25 or whatever base classes (each with 4+ subclasses), something like 10 prestige classes, and 10 additional progression options that are story-related and offer game-changing synergies and hybridizations (but there is a difficulty option to enable respec, and for the main character it is a full-blown ground-up rebuild). I wanted to start a fresh game the day after I completed it for the first time, but spent a week trying to plan out a better build to do it with and ended up respec'ing 3 times by level 6 because I was confused how animal companion level scaling worked, changed my deity & domains, and absentmindedly forgot about monk alignment restriction. I'm about to do it a final time and go full caster cleric (maybe divine and arcane with a prestige class that progresses both?) because I can't puzzle out how to make a viable battle cleric that doesn't sacrifice too many caster levels and thus a potent gimmick with the secondary progression system.
CR scaling seems a little bonkers at times, and on any difficulty that doesn't handicap enemies it's clearly designed for players who can competently plan character builds for their entire party. If you've played D&D 3.5e or TT Pathfinder then you should have a good foundation for it, just be aware that >95% of encounters allow you to pre-buff and it will be incredibly frustrating if you don't. The ability to extend buffs to 24 hours is a huge convenience, as resting too often is punished.
That said, all combat difficulty options can be freely changed up and down on the fly, even in the middle of a fight. You can get off the strugglebus at any time (or pop to a higher difficulty to gauge how well your build would hold up there). Many of the companions and other characters are interesting, though some of the dialogue is as long-winded and unnecessary as this post.
WotR is a great--though slightly buggy--game, but if you're prone to choice paralysis it can be a literal non-starter as you spend hours or days agonizing over a planned character build with the 25 or whatever base classes (each with 4+ subclasses), something like 10 prestige classes, and 10 additional progression options that are story-related and offer game-changing synergies and hybridizations (but there is a difficulty option to enable respec, and for the main character it is a full-blown ground-up rebuild). I wanted to start a fresh game the day after I completed it for the first time, but spent a week trying to plan out a better build to do it with and ended up respec'ing 3 times by level 6 because I was confused how animal companion level scaling worked, changed my deity & domains, and absentmindedly forgot about monk alignment restriction. I'm about to do it a final time and go full caster cleric (maybe divine and arcane with a prestige class that progresses both?) because I can't puzzle out how to make a viable battle cleric that doesn't sacrifice too many caster levels and thus a potent gimmick with the secondary progression system.
CR scaling seems a little bonkers at times, and on any difficulty that doesn't handicap enemies it's clearly designed for players who can competently plan character builds for their entire party. If you've played D&D 3.5e or TT Pathfinder then you should have a good foundation for it, just be aware that >95% of encounters allow you to pre-buff and it will be incredibly frustrating if you don't. The ability to extend buffs to 24 hours is a huge convenience, as resting too often is punished.
That said, all combat difficulty options can be freely changed up and down on the fly, even in the middle of a fight. You can get off the strugglebus at any time (or pop to a higher difficulty to gauge how well your build would hold up there). Many of the companions and other characters are interesting, though some of the dialogue is as long-winded and unnecessary as this post.
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Release date was moved up from 31 August to 3 August,
Highlights:
- New races/subraces (dragonborn, half-orc, duergar) to complete the list of those found in the 5e PHB
- Monk base class, completing the list of PHB base classes
- All base classes (incl. monk) have 3 subclasses, except for Paladin (3+1 in the form of Oathbreaker), Cleric (7 domains) and Wizard (8 schools)
- Level cap set at 12 (was originally planned as 10, but anyone familiar with 5e knows that's a cockblock b/c 11 is a power spike)
- New origin story character (a tiefling barbarian, originally a planned recruitable companion)
- Total of 37 feats (IIRC the 5e PHB has 42, and some of them aren't applicable in BG3 like mounted combatant)
- About 600 total spells & abilities (excluding upcast variants, approximately triple the amount available in DOS2)
- Nearly 200 hours total of cinematics & cinematic sequences (which you can't see the entirety of in a single run)
Of the content above, some of it is a little homebrewed (they specifically say that monk has been modified a fair bit to remain competitive with the other classes) and not all of it is from the PHB. Some parts of it--like College of Swords bard and Gloom Stalker ranger--are from other source books. The absence of some things are a bit obvious, like Warlock pact options (currently, only pact of the chain is in the game)
I'd like to see a modified form of ritual casting that fits the pacing of the video game setting (e.g. takes 2-4 rounds to cast instead of several minutes & is interruptible by common combat events e.g. knockdown, damage vs concentration check) which would enable a lot of utility spellcasting that you simply won't see when a spell slot tax is always imposed. It would also trivialize the addition of Pact of the Tome for Warlocks, as ritual casting is almost always a core mechanic of the pact.
Is it obvious that I'm a bit miffed about warlocks in BG3? It's like they want to pigeonhole the class that was already pigeonholed the most from previous editions. The joke is that PHB warlocks spend every round of combat saying "I cast eldritch blast," which is mostly true because of their severely limited spell slots and the high opportunity cost of utility vs. combat invocations, but every video game adaptation of DnD has a heavy combat focus and BG3 is no exception. There's no DM to fudge dice for a party that puts in the work for RP and deliberately makes sub-par builds for flavor. "I cast eldritch blast" is your life as a warlock in BG3, you absolutely must build for it and your only utility for the party is going to be a high charisma score (could've just played a sorcerer or bard instead).
[Edit]
An interview with an Italian outlet confirmed the presence of pact of the blade for Warlock, and they rolled certain hexblade subclass features into it (specifically the extra attack feature, but probably the charisma to attack/damage rolls will be there as well). This likely meshes into their mentioning of a full rework for the warlock companion during the last livestream before launch. They've also nixed ability score requirements for multiclassing, and added some items that function like gauntlets of ogre strength (i.e. sets your strength to a specific score, unless you already meet or exceed that score, then they do nothing) for other ability scores, like an item that already exists for intelligence in the early access. They're also changing the scaling of penalties for multiclassing caster classes, most likely with regards to spells known/spell slots available, with the stated intent of making it less punishing to multiclass from one caster class to another caster class.
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