Baldur's Gate III Announced - ...and it's coming to Google Stadia and PC

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@Cheeseknife if you have Gale in your party, he gives her a useful tip. I always thought that he didn't know any better but at the chess puzzle at Ansur's dungeon thing he was pretty helpful.
 
I was pretty chuffed that I managed to figure out the solution to mine on my own.
 
Magical Negro said:
Can someone who has been into D&D computer games since the original Baldur's gate recommend to someone who just came into the series with BG III which of the older games are worth playing? I figure Baldur's gate 1 & 2, being so highly regarded around here, would be worthwhile, people also seem to include Planetscape among the greats. Besides those 3, which else would you suggest? Old school graphics and play aren't an impediment to me. I've played many games from that era and enjoyed them so a lack of modern conveniences and mechanics isn't an issue. I just want a good game.

My overall restrictions are must be true RPG and/or Action RPG. Must be 3rd person perspective. Technological restrictions as far as getting them to work isn't a problem, I work in IT, so I can make just about anything work if I beat it hard enough. Any insight is appreciated for a BG/D&D pc gaming n00b.
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Speaking of this, a dark horse recommendation I have is Age of Decadence. It's one of those quirky RPGs that went all in on "choices matter" (yes, you see radically different things depending on who you start with), and on the mantra that "combat is lethal". It utilises its own system however, and you may need to adjust to its unforgiving nature.
 
MembersSchoolPizza said:
I'm not asking "what class is best" or "what build is strongest", what I want to know is, what role in the party should I pick? Because I'm going to have to sideline the companions who would fill that role. I've made a few characters and played through the intro and some of the crash site/beach area, and I can't decide. I'm kinda leaning towards Cleric, because something about Shadowheart bugs the piss out of me.
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Honestly, full Fighter with dex + ranged focus is extremely good, very forgiving, and no one fills the niche especially well by default (although Astarion with weird multispec can, and I guess Laezel also could). I think it was ideal for my first playthrough. But you can always respec anyone, so it doesn't really make sense to base your build around the companions. If you want to play a Cleric and also use Shadowheart, just make her into a paladin or something. The same is true for any companion. Personally, I recommend a Wizard, because you can never go wrong with more Wizards.

I finally got around to beating the game on Tactician. I liked it a lot less than my first playthrough. The "evil" route that I went down felt way underbaked in comparison to the more standard "good" route, and the non-Dark Urge custom PC doesn't get anything to replace the Dark Urge stuff. There's just... less. In every respect. Also Minthara is fucking unbearable; whose idea was it to make the only evil companion not actually evil guys I'm just mind controlled! It's such a baffling decision. I get that you can recruit her somehow even as a good boy, but it basically always makes more sense to straight-up murder her instead when you get to the goblin camp.

I played up until level 11 as a Sorcerer and was supremely underwhelmed. Relative to actual 5E or Solasta, the sorcerer spell dice systems in BG3 are just mediocre. They're not that useful except in niche situations. Meanwhile you don't get access to spellshaping like Evocation wizards do, which makes a dedicated offensive sorcerer... always worse than an Evocation wizard. Basically 100% of the time. Worst of all is that you don't get access to the really good high level spells. I found the scroll for Curriculum of Strategy: Artistry of War, but I can't ever, ever learn it. It's a one-time cast, and that's it.

So at that point, at level 11, I gave up and became a Wizard. And it was honestly way more fun, and I'm glad I did. I like Warlocks a lot, but Sorcerers really seem like a waste of time to me, at least by Act 3. Their niche is way too niche. Not being able to learn the high level spells makes them terrible.

I also managed to turn Astarion into a dual wielding crossbow archer with a Ranger 5 (Gloomstalker)/Fighter 3 (Champion)/Rogue 4 (Thief) build. His damage was ridiculous. He can shoot his offhand bow twice with his extra Thief bonus action, and has two attacks every round by default already. With the various stacking bonuses, each shot ended up having a base floor of ~90% to hit (even with disadvantage) and did somewhere around 20-40 damage. He probably could've been way more effective, but in the end I stopped bothering with the Gloomstalker stuff because there wasn't really a need.

Also, you can apparently use Hold Monster on the red dragon during the final boss fight. It was a 30% chance but I got it on my first try. That sure makes it easy!

Magical Negro said:
Can someone who has been into D&D computer games since the original Baldur's gate recommend to someone who just came into the series with BG III which of the older games are worth playing? I figure Baldur's gate 1 & 2, being so highly regarded around here, would be worthwhile, people also seem to include Planetscape among the greats. Besides those 3, which else would you suggest? Old school graphics and play aren't an impediment to me. I've played many games from that era and enjoyed them so a lack of modern conveniences and mechanics isn't an issue. I just want a good game.
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Skip BG1 unless you really like that kind of game's combat. It's barely an RPG. There are no dialogue trees, no branching narrative, and every encounter ends in combat. BG2 is way better, but personally I think it's still aged worse than games like the original Fallout (but I really hate Infinity Engine combat). Planescape: Torment is definitely worth playing, but it's pretty rough in a lot of ways. Adjacent and technically using D&D as the base are the two KotOR games.

If you're just looking for older strategy/tactics cRPGs and not only D&D-based ones, I highly recommend Fallout 1, Dragon Age: Origins, Tyranny, Disco Elysium (it's about as much of a tactics game as Planescape, anyway), Pillars of Eternity 2 (skip 1 IMO), and, depending on how much you like Burn Notice, Alpha Protocol. The three Banner Saga games are also masterpieces, with the best combat of any series in this genre--and pretty good storytelling, too.
 
Betonhaus said:
I'm looking at the thread title and... Did this ever launch for the Stadia?
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Stadia died before it got out of early access so no, lol. They used the time to port it to the XBox and PS5 instead though.
 
The w40k one is made by a smaller studio and is way less pretty and polished. BG3's polish is outstanding, but even just for bare graphics the Pathfinder and 40k games are late 2000s at best.

Oh and Owlcat romance is the polar opposite yet copy of BG3.
You want to meditate with me? Well now we are girlfriends. We may even hold hands, monkey.
And I wanted to just do the straight stuff with the Inquisitor, as that would have been such a great political marriage.
 
Absolutego said:
Does Isobel keep to the unique dialog if you push Shart to not kill the Nightsong? I noticed she increasingly falls into the wheelhouse of a jealous girlfriend after all that on my Drow Lore Bard playthrough
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So, Aylin acknowledges you're an enemy of Shar now and praises you for it. Not much changes with Isobel. Most of the changes come from Aylin. There's quite a lot more they say to you as a Shart Origin. Plus I obtained Selune's Spear this playthrough which hadn't happened before. I looked it up and apparently I never got it before because of a bug.

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Also, if you abandon Shar, there's this comment from Lae'zel:

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Cheeseknife said:
So, Aylin acknowledges you're an enemy of Shar now and praises you for it. Not much changes with Isobel. Most of the changes come from Aylin. There's quite a lot more they say to you as a Shart Origin. Plus I obtained Selune's Spear this playthrough which hadn't happened before. I looked it up and apparently I never got it before because of a bug.

View attachment 5639063View attachment 5639073

Also, if you abandon Shar, there's this comment from Lae'zel:

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Not modding in Ser Aylin. Pathetic
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How good do monks get? I like the idea but I've never played one in any cRPG. Also any advice for specific party build/loot for an honor run?
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
I had a feeling it was relegated to the creche. Kind of a shame. Is there anything else for Karlach besides Dammon telling her she's going to die but someone in the city might help her?
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Not really. You do get a scene post-Gortash death, however. And you can run into a few friends of hers in the city (one of the weapon merchants).
Incel Death Note said:
How good do monks get? I like the idea but I've never played one in any cRPG. Also any advice for specific party build/loot for an honor run?
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From my experience in my 100 hours first run on Balanced? Very powerful in BG3. There are a lot of monk-specific items to collect throughout the game, and the tavern brawler feat gets absurd with monk. (Though that is not to say a Dex monk is bad. Far from it. Dex monk is more than enough to carry you through the game and then some. TB monk is just you trying to break the game as hard as possible.)
 
Incel Death Note said:
How good do monks get? I like the idea but I've never played one in any cRPG. Also any advice for specific party build/loot for an honor run?
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They are pretty good. Best to leave them unarmoured, but they armor rating bonus comes from wisdom. Can use staffs(duh) but fists are best weapon, to which they can add extra psychic, bright or necrotic damage at 5 or 6 level
 
More of a long term question, is there any tool or plan for tools for players to expand the game? It will be pretty awesome to have full on new adventures, races and enemies made by players like good old NWN.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
More of a long term question, is there any tool or plan for tools for players to expand the game? It will be pretty awesome to have full on new adventures, races and enemies made by players like good old NWN.
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That would be great, but I doubt they'll do it, as it maybe too hard to do. Remember a lot of the game is mocapped, not sure how much that is tied into creating new areas. Ideally players could at least make cutescene free maps for fighting a dragon or something.

There is a mod that spawns more encounters.
 
I know I’ve seen a mod that lets you play as any race or humanoid creature that currently exists in the game.
 
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