Opening cinematic of Baldur's Gate 3

[Aotrs Commander]

*thinks hard about how best to properly explain Spelljammer to AOTRS Commander to make him like it*

No! Bad Torath! It's okay for people to not like Spelljammer! It's fine! Leave him alone!

*....fine.*

You really can't, sorry. I don't really care for sailing ships particularly at the best of times - no, pirates don't do anything for me, either - and I loathe them in space like it's going out of fashion (seriously, DO NOT GET ME STARTED) and I find the whole crystal spheres and phlostigion or whatever as a concept inherently awful as it (DAMN IT, I cannot think of the correct word for the unlife of me, even with the interwebs) diminishes and replaces Space. Which is BAD.

(Paizo's Golarion sold me or most entirely solely on the fact it was based in an actual solar system - hell, I actually bought the hard-copy of that sourcebook!)

[Rynjin]

Spelljammer is really wacky and neat, but I too prefer PF's take on it. Plus you can have the same type of wacky Spelljammer shenanigans with actual space too, except it doesn't require all the convoluted pseudo-science/pseudo-magic stuff.

[Morty]

Personally, I'm ambivalent about being able to choose the classes of companion characters, because what that character does is part of who that character is. There can be a dissonance between who a character is, based on backstory and character moments in the game, and what a character does, based on what their class and abilities say that they do - a party member whose backstory and character moments say he or she is innocent law-abiding youth cannot be a thieving assassin, a party member whose character moments and backstory say that he or she is an unrepentent murder who'd just as soon kill you as look at you cannot be a D&D-style cleric or paladin of the deity of Virtue and Justice, and a party member who wouldn't hurt a fly if they had any choice in the matter had better be conflicted if they're going to be drawing power from the pain and suffering of others, for example. As nice as it is when your favorite characters and your preferred classes align for party creation, not all characters can really work as any class.

I feel like Deadfire's method of offering three options that suited the companion's backstory and character worked pretty well. This way if you didn't need to double down on any given class if you didn't want to, but you couldn't make Pallegina not a paladin, or similar.

[Caledonian]

Wow. Literally the only problem I had with that video is that it somehow suggests a playable character can be carrying an ilithid tadpole, when the only thing someone so infested can plausibly seek is a quick death. It's difficult to imagine how they could have changed that.

Otherwise... wow.

[Millstone85]

Literally the only problem I had with that video is that it somehow suggests a playable character can be carrying an ilithid tadpole, when the only thing someone so infested can plausibly seek is a quick death. It's difficult to imagine how they could have changed that.

It is all the more odd considering how the previous trailer got criticised for portraying ceremorphosis as this amazingly fast process, like weresquid fast. But I remember a designer commenting that it was intentional, so perhaps it will all click together. Theory time: the illithids found a way to tremendously hasten ceremorphosis in the presence of their kind, at the cost of the tadpole's ability to develop by itself.

[Eldan]

Other fan theories suggested is that these are tadpoles modified in the other way: these develop more slowly, or not at all in the normal way. They aren't Illithid transformation tadpoles, but to create some kind of infiltrator or half-illithid.

[Keltest]

If were doing theories, I have one to add to the board. The illithid tadpoles aren't special at all. We are. A Wizard Did Something, or we have the blessing of a god, or our brains are made of anti-illithid grey matter or something that makes us resistant to ceremorphosis, and the illithids were experimenting on us trying to figure that out.

[Narkis]

There was a whole bunch of dead Illithid on board the ship, even before the Githyanki attacked. I bet the Illithid we see in the opening has its own agenda and did not intend to just make more Mind Flayers.

[Eldan]

Yeah, that was very noteable too. Something killed those illithids and it was not the Githyanki. They wouldn't have left the ship or the tadpole pool intact and the one surviving illithid looked quite surprised when they attacked. Internal conflict would explain it.

[Keltest]

Yeah, that was very noteable too. Something killed those illithids and it was not the Githyanki. They wouldn't have left the ship or the tadpole pool intact and the one surviving illithid looked quite surprised when they attacked. Internal conflict would explain it.

From my understanding, fully grown illithids that are part of the same hive are really not into internal conflict. They have a hive mind, sort of, that sorts that stuff out. Assuming these aren't renegade illithids, there may be necromancy at work.

[Eldan]

They don't have a hivemind, no. Or at least they didn't in older editions, maybe that changed with newer fluff. They are telepathic with each other, but they do occasionally come into conflict, including assassination. Elder Brains sort of dominate their hives, through superior power and because they lie about offering a sort of immortal super powerful afterlife to the other illithids, but even that control is not absolute.

So, depending on which source they draw from, one Illithid coming up with some radical plan, maybe one in opposition to the rest of the hive and the elder brain, and then getting rid of a few other Illithids assassination so it can steal a ship to carry out its idea isn't impossible.

[Leon]

Yeah, that was very noteable too. Something killed those illithids and it was not the Githyanki. They wouldn't have left the ship or the tadpole pool intact and the one surviving illithid looked quite surprised when they attacked. Internal conflict would explain it.

The way the surviving one looks at the fallen gives that feeling certainly.

[JadedDM]

I was thinking disease, maybe? Which might explain why the tadpoles are so slow to act, because perhaps they have been affected by it, as well.

[Millstone85]

Larian's "fact sheet" on the game tells us a few things about the story.

We are in the Forgotten Realms, a land of many races and multiple divine beings. We know that the world is in turmoil: armies of evil (gnolls, orcs, duergar, goblins, drow, ...) rampage along the Sword Coast, and refugees swarm to Baldur’s Gate.

This reminds me of BG1's expansion, Siege of Dragonspear.

Amid all this chaos, a new cult is on the rise: the cult of the Absolute. Seeking to overthrow the old order, its shadowy network is chipping away at the Forgotten Realms foundations. Baldur’s Gate itself will be the first to fall.

I wonder who/what this Absolute might be. Ilsensine, perhaps, which VGtM describes as an illithid philosophy of universal knowledge and consciousness.

That is where we come in: the players. And we’re off to a very inauspicious start indeed… Out of nowhere, we were kidnapped by mind flayers. A tadpole was put in our heads. We barely survived the crash landing of a nautiloid, and we find ourselves stranded in the middle of an inhospitable wilderness. We discover we have only a few days to get rid of the parasite inside, or we’ll become mind flayers ourselves.

The first two games were annoying in that dialogues sometimes gave you a fake sense of urgency, and sometimes actually started a quest timer. I wonder which one it will be.

As we desperately seek a cure, we discover the tadpole gives us godlike powers and we find ourselves on the centre stage of a complot hatched by none other than the Dead Three: the gods of Murder, Tyranny, and Death.

Now this is big! If Bhaal has a major role in it, the story might actually feel like a sequel. Also, maybe death is the aforementioned Absolute.

Our journey will not only take us back to the legendary city of Baldur’s Gate, but through and beyond the Forgotten Realms.

Spelljamming, please? Eh, probably just plane hopping.

It is a journey of survival: ours, and all of the Forgotten Realms.

Cool.

[Morty]

If I play this game, I'll probably try to recreate my dwarven rogue that I played for a while on tabletop. I quit playing her because in combat she practically ran on autopilot - will BG3 make playing a ranged rogue more exciting? Doubtful, but I'm open to being surprised.

The other 5E character I played was a hafling battlemaster with a spear and shield - but the spear was a reskinned rapier. Since reskinning isn't really a thing in a video game, this one's out too. Barring perhaps mods. Another character I wanted to play was a fighter (or some other martial class) with a single weapon - but it'd require houserules not to be strictly worse than using a shield and I don't expect BG3 to change that.

I could, of course, go down the nostalgia trip and play a half-elf wizard, like I did so many years ago in the original BG games (except he was called a mage back then). My tastes in RPGs and characters have really done an impressive 180 since then.

[Meta]

If not for Larian stating you only have a couple days to live with the tadpole, my called shot was going to be:

Spoiler: long shot prediction

Show

The Mind Flayer shown is The Adversary. A mind flayer urban legend/prophecy about a creature that will undergo ceremorphosis but only assume the appearance of a mind flayer. It retains its own thoughts and memories and is in a uniquely powerful position to combat mind flayers. I believe there's a named Adversary in some book or another.

[Millstone85]

If not for Larian stating you only have a couple days to live with the tadpole, my called shot was going to be:

Spoiler: long shot prediction

Show

The Mind Flayer shown is The Adversary. A mind flayer urban legend/prophecy about a creature that will undergo ceremorphosis but only assume the appearance of a mind flayer. It retains its own thoughts and memories and is in a uniquely powerful position to combat mind flayers. I believe there's a named Adversary in some book or another.

Spoiler: Peeve with illithid lore

Show

I would find it a lot more interesting if all illithids started like that, only to later see themselves as an amalgamation of that original humanoid and every meal that followed.

In fact, here are a couple pieces of 5e lore that, if I am not mistaken, conflict with previous editions, but that I regard as improvements:

• Elder brains actually believe that illithids survive within them. They even believe that it extends to the illithids' preys.
• Ilsensine is not so much a deity as it is the pursuit of "full incorporation into the universal consciousness".

The problem is that illithid ceremorphosis and brain-eating are still portrayed as yielding only a few memories.

[Clertar]

Carefully excited about BG3, but the cinematic and the gameplay shown make me optimistic. Thematically and story-wise, all I want is to revisit the Sword Coast in an interesting way, and if it has a little connection with some aftermath of the Time of Troubles and Bhaal all the better.

However: why did they keep calling that saber a rapier?

[mangosta71]

Personally, I'm ambivalent about being able to choose the classes of companion characters, because what that character does is part of who that character is. There can be a dissonance between who a character is, based on backstory and character moments in the game, and what a character does, based on what their class and abilities say that they do - a party member whose backstory and character moments say he or she is innocent law-abiding youth cannot be a thieving assassin, a party member whose character moments and backstory say that he or she is an unrepentent murder who'd just as soon kill you as look at you cannot be a D&D-style cleric or paladin of the deity of Virtue and Justice, and a party member who wouldn't hurt a fly if they had any choice in the matter had better be conflicted if they're going to be drawing power from the pain and suffering of others, for example. As nice as it is when your favorite characters and your preferred classes align for party creation, not all characters can really work as any class.

In D:OS2, classes don't exist. You don't pick what your companions do, but you do get to pick how they do it. For example, Ifan is an assassin and his default is that he does his work with a crossbow, but you can decide that instead he stabs his victims in the back, or slits their throats, or poisons them, or sets them on fire, or hurls lightning at them... But you can't change the fact that he's an assassin. Same goes with the other characters; none of the skills tie in with an occupation, so all of the characters' backgrounds work reasonably well with any combination of skills. Does the Red Prince take the point on the field with sword and shield or does he support his troops from behind the lines with magic? It's entirely up to you. Which means you can pick party members based on which personalities you want rather than which ones have abilities that synergize with your PC, which is an issue that many CRPGs have: "I really want to see how X and Y interact while they're both in the party, but I need A, B, and C in case combat breaks out so I don't have room for both of them."

[Aeson]

In D:OS2, classes don't exist. You don't pick what your companions do, but you do get to pick how they do it. For example, Ifan is an assassin and his default is that he does his work with a crossbow, but you can decide that instead he stabs his victims in the back, or slits their throats, or poisons them, or sets them on fire, or hurls lightning at them... But you can't change the fact that he's an assassin. Same goes with the other characters; none of the skills tie in with an occupation, so all of the characters' backgrounds work reasonably well with any combination of skills. Does the Red Prince take the point on the field with sword and shield or does he support his troops from behind the lines with magic? It's entirely up to you. Which means you can pick party members based on which personalities you want rather than which ones have abilities that synergize with your PC, which is an issue that many CRPGs have: "I really want to see how X and Y interact while they're both in the party, but I need A, B, and C in case combat breaks out so I don't have room for both of them."

You've entirely missed my point: It does not matter whether the system is class-based or classless; there should be some degree of consistency between a character's backstory, a character's character moments, and a character's skills, and allowing the player to pick a character's class - whether that's a literal class in a class-based system or a particular set of skills in a classless system - gives much greater potential for inconsistency than giving the player a character with a fixed class which they then build upon over the course of the game, thus the characters need to be in some sense more generic because their background and character moments need to be able to fit however the player decides to build the character's class. The 'ideal' chivalric knight should have the skills that say he's the guy in shining armor leading the charge, not the skills that say he's tossing fireballs or support spells from the back line while in his bathrobe; the assassin who takes pride in giving his targets a quick and clean death while causing minimal collateral damage and attracting little if any attention should probably have the skills for sneaking around and slitting throats or garroting people in their sleep, not the skills for torturing people to death with lightning a la Palpatine or for building nail bombs and throwing them into crowded rooms; the skilled infiltrator should have skills that actually let him or her get into places covertly, whether by stealth or by subtlety, not the skills that say that his or her idea of how to pick a lock is to bring in a battering ram; and so on.

Also, if you don't believe that how someone does something says something about who they are then I don't know what else to say to you; the sniper who waits for a clear shot at the target while safely hidden some distance away, the thug who walks up to the target in broad daylight and stabs them repeatedly in the middle of the street, the monster who burns down a crowded pub to kill one person, the infiltrator who covertly slits the target's throat or poisons the target's meal, and the sadist who tortures the target to death with repeated electrical shocks are all different characters even if they can all be called assassins.

[Anteros]

I mean, I get your argument...but on the other hand they could just not write characters that are defined by their roles? Obviously there's some dissonance if your chivalric knight is tossing spells, or your famed healer is stabbing people, but it's easy enough to write characters that aren't defined by their roles.

[Clertar]

I mean, I get your argument...but on the other hand they could just not write characters that are defined by their roles? Obviously there's some dissonance if your chivalric knight is tossing spells, or your famed healer is stabbing people, but it's easy enough to write characters that aren't defined by their roles.

I think that this would be a diagnostic of the game and the world being in dissonance. Most players don't like our RPGs being about a blank slate character to which people react the same no matter what anymore---like it used to be in the times of BG and BG2. Few things are more frustrating than playing a mage Hawk in Dragon Age 2, precisely because the class system is so integrated with the worldbuilding that whatever mage-specific interactions are in the game don't feel like they're enough. In that world, joining the templars and being a mage really would not make sense, and that's awesome for immersion.

In the case of BG3, I definitely want more of that, not less: being able to own some sort of class-related base (ala BG2), or being recruited into a guild. And unless you make these gameplay variables be sex-specific (very bad idea) or race-specific, making them class-specific is definitely the best approach. We know how the Forgotten Realms work from the previous games, sex- or race-sensitive variables would be totally odd, but having them be class-sensitive would be great: something magic research related for mages and sorcerers, something dark and treacherous for rogues, something about nature for druids or rangers, etc. And to capture that, you need the class, not just ability points and feats.

[Morty]

This is made more complicated by two things - first, class/race/whatever-specific interactions are a ton of work, which is why you don't actually see them all that often and they're not very impactful when they do happen. Second, two classes (fighters and rogues) are deliberately crafted as generic blank slates that can cover more concepts than the other "martial" classes (paladins, monks, barbarians, rangers) combined. The game could decree that if your character is a rogue then they're obviously a sneak and criminal - but that's just as bad and it leaves fighters in the dust.

[Aotrs Commander]

I am of the opinion that class should never be more than fundementally a metagame concept (of building blocks, even) at the best of times. I NEVER liked the AD&D approach of "you are your class," and this is someone who actively PREFERS class-based RPGs generally.



If you need to have that level of involvement, let the player choose their occupation, and make that their background, and let them play to that if they want and rationalise how it ties to the mechanics they select themselves. (And if you - deliberately, because you can't do it any other way - pick a combo that you can't make sense of even to yourself, then that's your problem, innit?). Otherwise, you might as well fall into the trap of having the system with binary morality - where picking the response that matches the alignment of your current playthrough is not really very much roleplaying - only this time replacing the metaphorical dialogue option with "class" instead. Why can't my wizard own a castle? (Actually, in BG2, my wizard literally did, because he was dual-class and then the next time, she literally owned all of them because I found a mod.)

Come to that, 5E does have multiclassing anyway, doesn't it? So you're already in the situation where somone could pick at least two (I don't know how it works compared to 3.P) or more - how does that sort of system hold up to the aforementioned monk x /paladin 2/rogue 3?

(Kingmaker, I thought, did a fairly good job of it as far as it goes; my Paladin/monk/rogue was LG, but drifetd quite hard towards the NG because I didn't pick LG every time (aided by the fact you weren't given nine alignment choices every time one was offered.)

[Keltest]

I am of the opinion that class should never be more than fundementally a metagame concept (of building blocks, even) at the best of times. I NEVER liked the AD&D approach of "you are your class," and this is someone who actively PREFERS class-based RPGs generally.



If you need to have that level of involvement, let the player choose their occupation, and make that their background, and let them play to that if they want and rationalise how it ties to the mechanics they select themselves. (And if you - deliberately, because you can't do it any other way - pick a combo that you can't make sense of even to yourself, then that's your problem, innit?). Otherwise, you might as well fall into the trap of having the system with binary morality - where picking the response that matches the alignment of your current playthrough is not really very much roleplaying - only this time replacing the metaphorical dialogue option with "class" instead. Why can't my wizard own a castle? (Actually, in BG2, my wizard literally did, because he was dual-class and then the next time, she literally owned all of them because I found a mod.)

Come to that, 5E does have multiclassing anyway, doesn't it? So you're already in the situation where somone could pick at least two (I don't know how it works compared to 3.P) or more - how does that sort of system hold up to the aforementioned monk x /paladin 2/rogue 3?

(Kingmaker, I thought, did a fairly good job of it as far as it goes; my Paladin/monk/rogue was LG, but drifetd quite hard towards the NG because I didn't pick LG every time (aided by the fact you weren't given nine alignment choices every time one was offered.)

So, I think a middle ground approach is better here. Some classes, namely the paladin and monk, describe specific careers/professions beyond just "fighter." If you say youre a paladin, everybody immediately knows that youre a fighter with magical enhancements dedicated to a specific cause. If you say youre a monk, that automatically comes with the information that youre a monastic student dedicated to self-control and martial discipline. There isn't nearly as much room for variance there. If you say youre a cleric though, that means youre a priest who knows how to fight a little, but that still leaves a fair amount of room for actual gameplay builds and personal styles. Maybe you like to hit things and are a poor man's paladin, or maybe you only cast spells and don't even bother with armor because you never go into melee anyway.

I do like when games treat your profession differently from your class. I think the best implementation here is probably just to stick with the 5e standard and let somebody pick their background. Maybe add some restrictions of the clearly nonsensical (you cant be a lawful good person exiled for legitimately being a serial killer, just as an example) but otherwise let people decide how the class mechanics interpret to backstory, or vice versa.

[Morty]

I can't think of a D&D-based game that had a lot of class reactivity. Baldur's Gate had next to nothing. Icewind Dale had some minor reactions. NWN1 had some extra dialogue for wizards (whom I played almost exclusively back then - in my defence, I was young). Druids and rangers could talk to animals as well and I had little experience with other classes. I blocked out a lot of my memory of NWN2 in self-defence, so I'm not sure. Temple of Elemental Evil did have some bits here and there, I think - like making paladins fall for really dumb reasons. I have no intention of playing Kingmaker, so there might be a lot of it there for all I know.

I don't know if I'd expect BG3 to have much more than any of those. Any class reactivity that ends up included will likely heavily favor some classes while ignoring others.

[Aotrs Commander]

I have no intention of playing Kingmaker, so there might be a lot of it there for all I know.

Not a lot as I recall, most interactions reactivity was alignment-based.

[Morty]

Not a lot as I recall, most interactions reactivity was alignment-based.

I'd hesitate to call it an improvement, because alignment is involved... but at least alignment can be expected to affect all characters in equal measure, so it works better as an interaction hook than classes. Which run the gamut from saying a lot about your character (paladin, cleric) to saying virtually nothing (fighter, arguably rogue) and various states in-between.

I do hope alignment is as easy to ignore in BG3 as in tabletop 5E, though.

[Keltest]

I'd hesitate to call it an improvement, because alignment is involved... but at least alignment can be expected to affect all characters in equal measure, so it works better as an interaction hook than classes. Which run the gamut from saying a lot about your character (paladin, cleric) to saying virtually nothing (fighter, arguably rogue) and various states in-between.

I do hope alignment is as easy to ignore in BG3 as in tabletop 5E, though.

Im not aware that many D&D games actually make a big deal out of alignment. Kingmaker is actually the one with the strongest alignment impacts in a game ive seen simply because a relatively high number of game options are alignment restricted in some way. Between their work with DOS and the way 5e doesn't make alignment a big thing, I suspect its going to get a few token mentions and then be ignored. They may follow the spirit of the original games and give you some fame/infamy that affects how people react to you.

[Morty]

Im not aware that many D&D games actually make a big deal out of alignment. Kingmaker is actually the one with the strongest alignment impacts in a game ive seen simply because a relatively high number of game options are alignment restricted in some way. Between their work with DOS and the way 5e doesn't make alignment a big thing, I suspect its going to get a few token mentions and then be ignored. They may follow the spirit of the original games and give you some fame/infamy that affects how people react to you.

Temple of Elemental Evil did have you pick your whole party's alignment at the start. All your characters needed to be within one step of it and it determined your starting location. I can't remember how much impact it had later; ToEE's story was so aimless and meandering I can't recall much of it in general. I agree that BG3 isn't likely to do much of anything that the original trilogy didn't, though.

In BG1, your alignment determined the dreams you got. I think they were determined by your reputation if you were neutral. In BG2, I remember having some different reactions as a low-reputation evil character, but I think they were caused by the former. Of course, that's Good/Evil. Law/Chaos were about as meaningful as usual.