You know there's something wrong with you when an alien fondles your junk before roughly entering you, and you're somehow not frustrated, but MOTIVATED.
I'm doing OpenXCOM right now actually. It's two games in one. I like the base builder and world map. Might try the X-files mod. Is the Star Wars mod for the newer X-COM good?
XCOM in theory: Tactical squad action with an alien-horror twist. XCOM in reality: "RNGesus demands a sacrifice! Please send your most expendable Rookie to the next door, or RNGeus will decide for you!"
I mean, depends on the writers, but at their worst (written), absolutely. "My moral code tells me to use my power for self-satisfaction. Therefore I will do only incredibly petty evil acts, nyeh"
A good DM is aware of the fact that even though s/he's in control of all the monsters and villains, it's NEVER actually "players versus DM." You're all at the table to have fun together.
and it's never about telling the story you prepared- it's about the confrontation of your plans for the story with the players, and then adjusting it to player's decisions, kinda like writing a "what if" scenario for the initial story. Learning how to encourage players to follow the storyline (even if they keep messing up your plot point after plot point) and making sure they have fun along the way, crafting an unique and personal story together.
@@deadjuice1880 And also if the group somehow fucks up your planned food or eats it in a different way, you usually want to go along with it but makes sure they steer to the right path.
I just finished replaying KOTOR, twice, which is based heavily on 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons. It handles the problems of randomness the way that 3rd edition handles problems of randomness: if you have time to prepare your action, or you can try again, the dice roll is treated as an automatic 20. There is nothing interesting about failing a hundred times to open a footlocker if you will succeed on the hundred and first attempt, so the game makes you succeed on the first attempt. The issue at play here is that dice are used for resolving uncertainty, not for inserting randomness. Dice are the enemy of the classic children's argument, "I shoot you and you die, yuh huh," and provide a framework for determining the outcomes of situations where the outcome is both uncertain and the consequences for success and failure are interesting. You never ask for a roll for something that has no chance of success, or for something that should have no chance of failure. You never ask for a roll for something where failure in inconsequential or the stakes are uninteresting. Rolling less will also speed up the game, since you don't have to deal with your players not remembering what their bonuses are or bartering for advantage or not knowing how to add two numbers together. In combat, your average enemy should be hit on a roll of 5 to 7. If your players can obtain advantage, which is what fuels interesting and dynamic combats, they will hit over 90% of the time. You solve the XCOM problem in tabletop not by fudging dice, but by letting the players feel clever for fudging the dice on your behalf. If those numbers seem wonky to you, please review XGE's CR advice and your DMG's quick monster stats. A 10th-level character faces evenly against a CR 4 with an expected AC of 14, which they contest with an attack bonus of 7 to 9. The message is pretty clear: only in the most tense of encounters should the outcome of combat be determined by your dice rolls. Players fail as the result of poor planning and succeed as the result of good planning, with the dice only covering the middle grays.
@Silvaren cRPG it was a actually a weird miss of Star Wars d20 Revised, and Star Wars Saga who was being developed at the same time, having played both ttRPG playing KotOR was a bit weird as you where seeing from mechanics from both game. And Saga was kinda D&D 3.5 starting to morph in 4e…
Something to make a point about, though this is as far as I'm aware is only a thing in dnd, is that a natural 20 can never be a critical success outside of combat rolls and cant make the impossible possible, that requires abandoning common sense. The nat 20 critical success on everything is just an extremely common house rule that everyone misinterprets as the official rule. That being said it is always up to the dm on how they run their game, the rules are just a suggestion.
Whenever I run into a "critical success for everything" DM, I always pull out the classic "I jump to the moon." Try it till you get a nat 20, and whoosh!
Nat 20 is license for the DM to employ the Rule Of Cool. Generally, I would expect a slight bump to the success, or an improbable outcome in favor of the roller. This swings towards players equally as much, the evil wizard might crit against an expert liar. Nothing too game breaking, but it makes for more excitement on skill checks outside combat.
Table-top is always improved by a DM that doesn't have the rule book shoved completely up his ass. No one cares how many deci-liters of water we have and you shouldn't have to roll a skill check for fastening your belt. Video games are never going to be as free form as table-top; because they are made *before* you play them and table-top is created *while* you play it. Just accept that and make a great game with an engaging story. Also, Larian needs to be allowed to release a campaign creator. Imagine how much replayability the game will have if people can import their own campaigns.
This is why Neverwinter Nights is one of my favorite D and D games of all time. The ability to make your own campaign and even share it online. It is truly a gem in the Dungeons and Dragons video game lineup.
@@saltee8460 Absolutely. I played on Amia before it went to crazy with the mods. There are so many game servers for all types of players too! Roleplayers, dungeon crawlers, PvPers... It is such a good game.
>you shouldn't have to roll a skill check for fastening your belt UNLESS - and ONLY unless - you are playing Roll For Shoes, which is intentionally designed to make this exact kind of gonzo roll interesting and potentially useful.
Oh you can play with a rule book DM that does not cheat, but as in any group activity people need to be okay with that. I hate more DM that cheat all the roll and railroad people to where they need to go make them avoid any danger give them what they need and want, failing is part of the game dying is part of the game sometime people can die to shitty goblins and kobolts or a pickaxe hit from a miner in salt slave mine. You are protagonist not invincible heroes. yes losing another level1 heroes at the star of a campain suck but its also why you are playing carefully and not like a bunch of muderhobbo(except if that the point), for the resting system like any system just explain it and usually people will think it throught personnaly i suually see no problem with it. 1hour pose to recover hitpoint and some skill is very good, can you do it every time? of course not same for resting, or casting rituals ect...
@@__-gf3zn plus there are white checks (redo-able rolls if you level up the skill that failed last time) and red checks that can’t be redone. DE mastered conveying the correct amount of info + risk to the player
I remember losing a bunch of soldiers on Xcom 2 ironman because my entire team happened to be in stealth when enemy reinforcements showed up. The AI had a complete meltdown and straight up just teleported all the enemies in the middle of my team from halfway across the map, I'm assuming because it didn't know what to do when there are no targets available. Good times
Shit like that is why I just refuse to play xcom games in ironman. I ain't paying the price for the game being buggy I got sick of aliens shooting me through a pinprick hole in the wall because either a shot hit it, or the proc gen just made that wall apparently a little bit 'not wally' in that area, that apparently they can see through at range, killing a dude from flanking when there's a full *WALL* between them
I only tried ironman once and lost my entire squad 15 hours in because I missed a key 95% shot and the enemy happened to crit off a 45% chance to hit. Never again.
“The resting system is stupid” finally someone says it out loud. If your dm hates short rests, guess what? Playing a warlock is absolute hell God, the rest system needs a rework ok
I've read the 5E DMG rules for balancing combat encounters. Class resources are balanced with the expectation that you will have 6-8 medium-hard encounters per long rest, with two short rests inbetween. The problem is that I don't know anyone at all that plays to this exacting standard. The 5E Playtest had short rests 1 minute long, which was a lot better. But my games tend to have only one really big combat per day, so even 1 minute short rests aren't enough. What I do for my own games is give my players a Dark Souls style Estus Flask that they can spend an action to take a hearty chug out of and gain the benefit of a short rest. They can use it two times before needing to refill it by finishing a long rest.
4e had the rest system figured out. Short rests were a couple of minutes and you were expected to do them after every single fight, and there was no janky division between short rest and long rest classes. Everybody had abilities they got back from short and long rests, so everybody wanted both. You didn't have Fighters or Warlocks getting fucked over because they were hanging out with a Wizard, Paladin, and Cleric.
@@kormael no it doesn't. It just drags out things longer. It just creates forcible downtime and inability to change spell each day makes niche spells worthless. Simultaneously it makes short rest based classes even weaker by not being able to charge their abilities multiple times in a session. It's a change that doesn't add anything besides tedium of attempting any recovery.
The issue with BoTW’s durability system isnt the system itself, but the game’s larger issue with providing the player with a false sense of progression. When enemies start getting replaced by their tougher variants, so too do their weapons. Weapons with not only higher attack, but also durability. Eventually the player will get to the point that they have more royal halberds than they could ever use. This is why I imagine that many players find that BoTW’s combat shines on Eventide Island, the Great Plateau, and even the Master Sword trials. Not on Master Mode, of course. And what these all have in common is that they return Link to the baseline level of weapons, armor, and enemies. Showing that your stick spear breaking isnt the issue- its the fact that your stick spear stops being a simple stick. The weapon/enemy progression eventually even ruins the unique elemental weapons. Its funny because an ice greatsword offers something no other greatsword does, that being freezing enemies, but come the end game, it is too woefully weak to be of any use.
Another couple of issues was that swapping weapons mid-fight messed with the flow of combat and exploring for loot lost a lot of appeal when it set in that any cool weapons would only last 2-3 fights.
@@TimtheWinzard if only nintendo has a controller which allowed them to put a menu on a second screen, it could even look like the shiekah slate Oh well
I feel like the progression would have felt better if the regional special weapons had been the best and operated like the master sword. That way, you would have a reliable weapon of each category that wouldn't go away.
Well said. I really want them to reduce the amount of "bad rng = less game for you". And my god, there are plenty of those in the game. As it stands failing a dialogue check can lead to unsatisfying encounters. The best example of this is the Tiefling and that druid in the Prologue. There should be more outcomes rather than just slaughtering everything that moves on a bad check. They definitely need something to balance out the loss of the DM and a dynamic plot.
I think he literally just made Connor. I saw the uncanny resemblance immediately. Like...idk if it was intentional but hot damn Connor looks good as a weird archer boi
The outcome of Failure in an RPG should or could be just as entertaining as a successful one, hopefully modding and being able to add/change some dnd rules becomes a thing
It's not that simple. A dm can rewrite the story in the heat of the moment to fix problems that arise as they go. A videogame is preset, with all player choices and outcomes preloaded. Honestly, Baldur's Gate should not be seen as DnD. It will never, and has never, fully emulated the tabletop. It's moreso an adaptation than a port
Do more of these. They have the same Plague-y goodness I come here for, just with less hand drawn diagrams of Goku timelines, and that's not why I'm here.
Just a couple problems of 5e that are insurmountable for a video game: 1. Advantage and disadvantage are just about the only way to increase/decrease your odds of success in a roll, but all that does is make you roll twice and take the better/worse roll. This has hilariously inconsistent results but feels fun in a game where you can't save scum, or is funny when you and your 4 buddies get to laugh at how little it helped. It's a mechanic that's great for reactions in a group setting, garbage for a 1 player campaign. 2. The only other way you get better is by having "proficiency" in something. You essentially flip a switch on your character that makes you completely worthless at a task forever and always, or you slowly and passively grow in your number just enough to have a 50/50 chance of succeeding as the content gets harder. Did your proficency just go up +2 and now you're more likely to hit? Well too bad every single enemy from this point onward also got a +2 to their armor, so nothing has changed. 3. 90% of getting advantage in social or knowledge situations is just arguing with a DM, because advantage has the baked in ruling of, "If you can explain to the DM why you should have a good chance of succeeding, they'll just give it to you." So a player with a 50/50 chance will suddenly explain to the DM that because their character used to love museums as a kid, he should totally gain advantage on knowing what that statue is, and the DM will allow it because improvising a BS reason for getting advantage is the point of advantage. 4. Game design based on damage being performed by dice doesn't work. Doing 1d10 damage means every hit can be a 1 or a 10, meaning an enemy with 6hp is either a laughable encounter, or a little blighter that takes multiple hits to go down. Then you realize that that damage is what you'll be doing whether the enemy has 6hp or 30hp, and suddenly it's impossible to know if this will be easy or impossible. Most games allow for a window of damage (i.e. do 4-6 damage) so they can balance encounters based on how much damage a hit should do, and roughly how likely you are to hit can result in a proper fight. It's fine in D&D because as the DM you can cheat, giving the enemy less HP or making them do less damage than they should to balance things out, but again, improvisation is what most tabletop RPing is about. 5. Most good tabletop RP has degrees of failure, especially in social situations. Maybe you need to roll a 15 to convince the gate guard that you're a superior officer so he'll let you in, but a roll of 10 might just make him roll his eyes at you and resume the conversation. Mediocre rolls don't instantly fail the attempt, but they might make you have disadvantage on the next attempt, or you might be locked out of that method but still granted other options to get inside such as intimidating or charming the guard. This is also 90% improvised, because players do stupid shit and can't go fighting every person they talk to and then roll a 4 at. There's a lot more, but Plague covered a good bit, and everything else starts to get so specific as to be meaningless to anyone who doesn't already play the game.
I agree with most of these except #4. While most weapons have a single die of damage range (e.g. 1-10), if you're smart enough to use a weapon that fits your character's strengths (like a warhammer for, well, high-strength characters) you'll receive a bonus to damage based on the associated attribute. In effect, even if you have a DEX bonus as low as +1, you'll be doing 2-5 damage with your dagger instead of 1-4, and if you're REALLY skilled, you could do 6-9 damage with that dagger. As a DM, I also take issue with the assumption that combat in tabletop D&D (or any RPG) only works because the person running the game cheats and softballs their players. The number of times I've let a creature with 1-2 hit points die for the sake of expediting combat is miniscule compared to the number of creatures that have hung on, just barely, to either escape, shout for reinforcements, or get one last swipe in. It's about making the most entertaining story, not making things easy for your players.
@@dylangladysz You're totally right on the first point. You can build a character that can compensate for low damage rolls...to a point. Rogues and Mages have the worst time of this because later on your sneak attacks/spells end up being like 8d6 + 4, meaning you could do anywhere from 12 - 52. Other classes mitigate this way better by having 1 dice and a ton of static numbers, so they do 1d10 + 20 or something like that. Really depends, and that's to say nothing of criticals. Anyone who's crited and rolled a 1 for damage knows that pain, and every DM knows the pain of having their big bad by crited and losing half health before they've even had a turn. And yeah, the best story is what matters, but that's crazy subjective. Hell plenty of times I've cheated against the players to make a fight more exciting, and had to wrestle with the idea that a tense fight might not be as "entertaining" as having the big bad that was talked up for months die instantly to a crit and a bad save, leaving everyone laughing at what a pushover they were. But I've never had to wrestle with the idea that cheating has saved multiple games and first experiences from being unfun and frustrating, and in a game where you have to account for players making a garbage character versus a pro min-maxer and having them be on the same team, improv and cheating are like the backbone to running tabletop roleplaying, 5E especially.
#2 isn't...entirely accurate, but neither is it entirely wrong either, at least not in 5e. Yes, as your character levels up many monsters generally get better armor, but there are also many who don't, or at least, they don't gain nearly as much to keep pace with a characters natural proficiency bonus growth, more so for characters that put a little extra focus on getting good at hitting things. Instead some monsters can get abilities that let them do massive amounts of damage or gain access to spells that can negatively effect your character in many ways, like causing a roof to collapse, or take control of an ally, or even teleport them to another plane of existence. Same goes with player characters, sure a Wizard will probably never be as tanky as a Fighter or a Barbarian, but most Fighters or Barbarians can't shoot Lighting from their fingers either. The purpose of the "Proficiency Bonus" in 5th edition, at least from what I've gathered in my time of playing, is so that a characters skills and abilities effectiveness aren't completely left in the dust if they decide to focus on other things, like taking a Feat instead of an Ability Score Increase or if they decide to Multi-class. So, yeah, tanky monster will still feel tanky for some character, but some squishes will gradually get easier and easier to hit from a damage dealing focused characters perspective, the only problem is that now they may have a some new abilities that could trip your character up or exploit a weakness of theirs if they're not careful. Something like this could work in a video game, but it would require some tweeking and reworking so that it doesn't frustrate the player, which it doesn't sound like they did.
Nr 4 is like that because the game is wrongly balanced and not accurate to 5e. Example the rogue sneak attack, instead of giving 2d6 at level 4 it gives 1d6 x2. It’s really a huge statistical difference. With more dices you get a more average rolls
@@DabroodThompson You do realize that you're just doing more math to explain the same point I made right? If Proficiency starts at +2 and ends at +6, and enemies start around AC 14 and end around AC 18, thus nothings changed. Everything else you're describing falls under character builds, which starts to get complicated, especially given that your +5 from your primary stat is in 90% of cases the highest it'll ever go, can be done hilariously early with some builds or frustratingly slow with others, and even with your hypothetical is only giving you a 70%-55% chance to hit. The issue isn't that you always have a 50/50 chance to hit, it's that you almost always have the same chance to hit anything no matter how strong you get or what build you do, unless your build sucks.
"Baldur's Gate 3 does for dice rolls what e621 does for Animal Crossing. It does a great deal and most of it is... Bad." And best quote of 2020 goes to Plague of Gripes, god damn man.
@@MrNoot39449 thats good but that also kind of shows why the game shouldn’t have been put out when it was. All the people who wanted to play and/or review it already bought it and did so, especially reviewers because you gotta get that review out while the game is still in the popular zeitgeist, leaving the game held down by these poor early access reviews. Even now as of writing this Baulders Gate 3 when it DOES get an update is given the reputation of “BG3? That game was shit why bother?” While people are waiting for Kingmaker 2 to come out and the team working on BG3 has been porting Divinity Original Sin 2 everywhere they can to stay afloat (only a month ago or so it came out, fully, on iOS of all places). Baulders Gate 3 needed to be fixed up BEFORE release. Not after.
@@OtioseFanatic It wasn't released tho, only a dumbass will base his opinion on early access, I have to say at least this early access game has more content and is more fun than most fully released modern games
@@MrNoot39449 I wanna agree with ya but as a wise man once said while against a stark yellow background, “the problem with releasing a game into early access is that sometimes it remains in early access the entire time it’s in the popular zeitgeist. Meaning that by the time any early access issues get fixed or indeed IF they get fixed, nobody’s gonna give a shit.” And that’s what’s happened here. BG3 has been in early access soo long that the next D&D game got developed, released and ITSELF pushed out of the popular zeitgeist and BG3 still isn’t even close to done. And also, it released for $60. That’s full release price. Early access games are traditionally priced much less than full games to reflect that you arnt even getting the full game and also to try and win over early adopters. You release an unfinished game at full retail price however, it’s GOING to be reviewed as one and that’s their own fault. BG3 is a DISASTER of a game. Good riddance to it.
One the best changes that New Vegas made compared to Fallout 3 is that all speech checks were no longer randomized; your character either knew exactly what to say or they did not. And it contributed so much to actually making your character feel like it existed in the world.
@@joedatiusDoesn't matter if it's Fallout or not, New Vegas had an amazing speech check system. Honestly I wish BG3 would have implemented something similar instead.
All of your complaints about the game are things that Larian didn't put in Divinity original sin 2, because people complained about them in original sin 1. I'd say in Baldur's gate's case the problem is more people that demand the game adhere to 5e's ruleset to the letter, rather than Larian themselves, who already have designed away these problems in their own series. The thing is, there is a significant number of people who prefer the "kick in the door" style of roleplaying. This is a phrase I recall from the 3.5e DM's guide that refers to a DM/players who prefer to let the numbers and dice have a more concrete impact on the story telling and a greater focus on the mechanics of the combat as opposed the more abstract approach you are promoting here as "real" D&D. While I find the more abstract approach more fun personally, most of my friends with whom I play RPGs (tabletop and otherwise) are big fans of the number interaction in the mechanics (our DM was a mathematical science major, and it shows in how he treats the rules), and their tastes do matter, especially for a game like Baldur's gate 3 that is using the tabletop's association for marketing.. Why would someone like that buy Baldur's gate 3 if it was mechanically identical to Divinity original sin 2? I agree the latter's mechanics work better for a video game application, but it wouldn't play like the tabletop, and this type of person wants it to play like the tabletop, for better and for worse. It's less a failure of the designers to adjust tabletop to computer (as they have already done so in a previous game) and more that the stickler's of the tabletop's mechanics need to be appeased, likely at the cost of those without such criteria's experience. I completely agree about it being stupid though.
kick in the door is not dice heavy, its mostly combat heavy. run in, roll thembones, kill the gobbos, grab the loot, sell it, upgrade, restock and repair gair, repeat, ad nauseam. Intrigue can be just as dice heavy.
Average roll on a d20 is 10.5 A +3 on your relevant score bumps it to 13.5 And since you'll inevitably be proficient, it's between a +2 and +4 in levels people actually play. 16.5. The AC of most beasts is 15. Humanoids, 16. Heavily-armored enemies, 20 50-70% success chance feels pretty bad, even in 5e.
Yeah, rolls fail all the time even when you have overkill in a stat and even if you can technically not fail a roll because you're a min/max god you can still roll a 1. I think Plague's a bit off base here. I don't think his point is entirely without merit, but I do think perhaps there is a bit more nuance and space than he paints in the video. And 100% human psyhcology makes 50/50 with a natural number distribution feel awful. City of Heroes is an MMORPG that eventually had to put in streakbreaker code because people missing attacks multiple times in a row at 90%+ accuracy (cap of 95%) was a constant sore point in the community. So if you missed an attack at 95% chance to hit it'd force the next attack to autohit. Because humans had realistic RNG :D
People said the same thing about DOS1 and 2. The only difference is this time Chris Avellone isn't around to keep Larian from writing their trademark goofy-cheesy nonsense. The only thing that matters is if Cyberpunk2077 shits the bed. If it does, the horde of "rpg fans" will flock to this, FFXVI, or Vampire (whichever sucks least) and then place Cyberpunk, and CDPR by extension, on the altar of "shit we all hated while pretending we weren't overhyped", right next to Skyrim and Mass Effect. But Cyberpunk will not likely shit the bed, so in a year when this releases there will be no hype left and no one will talk about it except the few people who don't buy into hype and hyperbole, y'know, all five of us. In other words, this game is Pillars of Eternity with slightly more eyes on it.
Fun fact: almost the totality of the community is currently bitching about the exact opposite. Specifically on Larian taking too much liberties with the official D&D rules to make the players miss less often and have too much convenient tools at their disposals.
If listening to actual smart GMs has taught me anything, the majority of D&D 5e players are idiots (I cannot speak for other systems) who don't know what 5e is (in terms of RAW) or what 5e is intended to do (it isn't for sci-fi gunfights, for example) Thus, it only makes sense they whine about things they don't understand to earn street cred as traditionalists in an edition marred by nobody actually reading the rules. TBF nobody ever read the rules, but I feel 5e has taken this tradition to new heights.
@@SapphireCrook one of the most important rules that 5e does its best to remind the PC's and DM is that the rules are subject to change and encourage you to change whatever you like for the sake of enjoyment of the group. And so trying to get larian to make the game as traditional as possible is possibly the most toxic and anti DND as you can get since at the end of the day the Dungan Master has the final say of what is considered the proper rules for said game.
@@joedatius Except that Iarian isn't a GM and they aren't making a Director AI like Left 4 Dead 2 has, or XCOM2's apparently fudged rolls. If they are, it sure doesn't show. Additionally, what's the point of using the core of 5e if it's unfit for purpose and you have to rework it to the point of annoying fans? I think there's an irony that 5e gets the video game that 4e was designed to be, warts and all.
Morality systems in games have unsurprisingly always felt hilarious, I almost miss them. I'll never forget trying to play Knights of the old Republic as I really would act. And some random drug addict with a quest hook is like "I gambled all my money away please go solve all my problems for me while I stand in place", so I decide not to help them. Queue dark side anthem as my character literally channels glowing red energy into their body. . . I was reminded of the time I gave a beggar by a grocery store money, and they got angry I didn't give them enough.
That's a D&D and video games problem, honestly. "My character goes on a murder spree and kills everyone in the camp. They're all evil, so even though I killed one by ripping her throat out with my teeth and then murdered the rest with her severed head, I'm a good guy. Not, you know, a psycho." D&D at least has a DM who can veto that, and certain spells require or can turn you evil, but the rules I don't think care otherwise.
One thing to note is that the whole idea that you can "critically succeed or fail" at an ability check is wholly a house rule and isn't part of the tabletop game at all,. Rolling a 20 doesn't make you automatically succeed any task regardless of how absurd it is, beating the DC set by the DM is all that matters.
Rolling a 20 also means that the best possible outcome should happen. Like if you try to intimidate a king into giving up his kingdom to you and you roll a 20. The best possible outcome is that the king has a good sense of humor and doesn't kill you on the spot for treason or attempted regicide.
Everyone riding Larians D so hard rn but this is basically what prevents any kind of roleplaying I thought I could do in this game. I mean, endless bugs, unfinished third act, performance issues, horrendously tedious inventory and party system, rather flat characters from cut content, logic holes, dumb companion AI, no freemoving camera option and so on (also fully agreeing on the depth issues argument from the character creator system), this is my biggest gripe with it as well. If I make a strengthbased character and half of the time failing just outright results in a fight or failure progression, I do not want to fail half of my dicerolls. What do I have all those bonuses and proficiencies and advantage setups for if everytime it´s another "crossing my finger I don´t have reload fourteen times in a row" situation...
Your script scratched the itch that Baldurs Gate 3 was giving me. Something about... dedicated results from conversation, when i wanted a "DnD Tabletop experience game" but the game doesnt come close to that... was really getting to me. Also, showed my brother the "Gohans many masks" video and it blew his mind.
Fun fact about THAT windmill: I got the jump on the goblin that was on top of the rocks, invisible sneak attacked them, which triggered the fight and FLOODING me with goblins. I proceeded to hole up in a nearby house, and was shot at THROUGH THE ROOF. Apparently there were holes in the roof that I wasnt allowed to see, meaning I retreated into a kill box, instead of "300 narrow passage" killing them all. Man, the fact that the camera let's you see SO FAR ahead is actually a hindrance to stealth/CHA builds. Want to be a rakish, fast talking, sneaky thief? Fuck you, one or the other
I shot the Goblin Leader with an Intimidating Shot, he failed the save, surrendered, and all the other goblins just fled. Fight was only a single round.
@@pmw1993 Damn really? That would be a nice laugh for a actual DND game. Imagine the DM preparing this big fight only for the Goblins to all run away scared.
I love how he says "It's technically not even a game yet." While I agree completely this may be the first "not a game" that I've put over 100 hours into.
Rolling a nat 20 won't allow you to do *everything* . If you want to suplex a fucking dragon a nat 20 isn't going to let you do that unless your wizard casts enlarge on you or something.
You forget the "that guy" group will be the most vocal group because they want to do whatever makes their pp feel bigger. This isn't directed at gripes but some of the playerbase because damn are some of them brain dead.
I mean if your campaign is super silly fucking go for it. Or if the roll is largely inconsequential. But never telling the players your DCs means you can just drop it if you feel itd make the day more fun. Seriously. Adapt and improvise is the dms motto.
"It's so they can hide what they're doing... Those... Sneaky little freaks" He's 100% right. I've got a player in my group who's a lovely person but has the emotional fortitude of a glass teaspoon. All it takes is something bad happening to her 1 time in a session and she'll shut down entirely. So sometimes that Nat20 just turns into a 2.
I think a good way of explaining tabletop RPGs in general is this: The rules are there for conflict resolution. Nothing more. Everyone at the table is there for the same purpose: To create a memorable story that you can all be amused by, or even others can be amused by later if you tell them about it. It's a group storytelling game. The reason dice rolls exist is because a player would say "I think my fighter is strong enough to pin this guy to the ground." The DM may simply agree because the person they are wrestling is that frail and weak, or they might say "No, he's going to resist." How to resolve this conflict in the story's progression? Roll dice. All of the rules, stat blocks, etc exist so the players can resolve conflicts in the clashing ideas they might have about how the story should play out. There are many more "narrative-oriented" tabletop RPGs than games like D&D, which drastically simplify conflict resolution, which means the rules can also be simplified. The bad part about that is that, to me personally, the more conflicts you resolve on the way to your characters' goals, the more meaningful the story feels.
D&D is particularly agonizing if you've been doing a lot of a system like GURPS. It's a real joy to specialize in something right out the gate and know for sure that you'll be great at that particular thing, then have to deal with "Oh boy, a concept and skill my character is built around is a whole 10-20% more likely to succeed than the average person!"
This is honestly an issue with 5e in particular, where the bounded bonus system prevents any character's specialization from actually mattering. The system is built to make characters who are even more generic than any other edition.
Funny you mentioned the character creator. I've seen other youtubers praise the shit out of the character creator when there's really not much there, is there.. Gimme sliders with numbers so I can write down what I made.
Yeah I'm really hoping there's more options coming I know more body types are coming but right now there's not much hell maybe somebody wants to play a little old lady XD
i agree a lot with this, chance based skill systems are really hard to implement well in video games, the only way I see them working is if you go the disco elysium route of giving not only multiple ways of accomplishing a single thing but also make failing rolls interesting with alternative events that maybe be just as succeeding and plus that you also make it possible to re-roll failed checks if you increased your stats in the meantime or if you did some kind of optional side objective that also increases your chances of succeeding
The best version of the X-Com style combat is Wasteland 3. The numbers are real, they don't lie like X-Com. Also, holy shit I've never in my years seen real life legitimate dice rolls for social interactions end up so badly, so consistently. This game is lying, about how a D20 will often act.
@@music79075 Yeah Planescape had tables for randomizing your look and abilities, they had a lot more variation than "horns, tail, maybe hooves, and you can have any skin color you like as long as it's some shade of blue or red"
Randomized tieflings were the best. Physical contact withering plants, feathers, abnormally long arms to outright hilarious stuff like being immune to nonmagical weapons or burning when on holy ground.
He's worse, he has the sad horseshoe of barely there hair. He is a vampire of follicles, not enough for hair but not quite bald. He lies somewhere...in between.
I agree, I missed so much in this game it frustrated the heck out of me. I hate missing to the point where I always prioritize accuracy over power. And I don't want to miss out on dialogue or options so I always go charismatic, but in this game it doesn't even matter. You may succeed, or not, who knows, no one can tell. Having to save before every choice sucks. Entering a conversation then aborting it, saving and going back in to attempt the check is not how it should be played. But missing out on so many extra info or options due to sheer luck shouldn't be either...
This made me laugh a lot, great video. A point on resting in DnD. Not BG3. You can only long rest once in a 24 hour period, it's in the rules. But then the DM would have to know the rules to enforce that. And many don't.
After a flood of "OMG! 10 OUT OF 10! BEST GAME EVAH!" reviews across the interwebs, this was a breath of fresh air. Any chance of you reviewing Solasta: Crown of the Magister? I'd love an honest opinion on it.
Have to take issue with your characterization of JRPGs there, plague. That style of game also arose from D&D roots, just a very Japanese perspective of how those tabletop games work, separate from the CRPG (Western) perspective. I mean, you can't say "you're not playing a role" when that's literally the intention of a RPG, whether it's on-rails or open-world. Like him or not, Cloud Strife is every much a Player Character as a randomly-generated Baldur's Gate character (or indeed, a randomly-rolled WFRP character). It's less about what is or isn't an accurate duplication of the tabletop experience (which personally I think is the worst thing to do in a VIDEO game), but more a matter of how the game chooses to present that role to the player, whether it's "here's the story and this is the part you're playing", or "here's a sandbox, go run around in it and do whatever". Some may prefer one to the other, but it's all still roleplaying in the end, if you ask me.
I've always thought of JRPGs as kinda like playable books, but, yeah, it's still an rpg in the way you describe. It's almost like you're playing through the steps of an already-played/pre-determined campaign Though you can't say that for sure even since then there's freedom like Persona gives you and stuff.
@@onimaxblade8988 Yeah, exactly. I agree with plague as far as annoyance when someone slaps numbers on a gun and says "our shooter now has RPG elements", but RPGs as a genre have evolved, both on the tabletop and in video game form, far beyond their Gygaxian roots, so I think there's a lot more wiggle room these days to define what an RPG *can* be, instead of trying to strictly enforce what it *must* be.
@@DarkErdrick Fair enough, but by your standards as I understand them you are technically roleplaying EVERY videogame protagonist ever created in every single genre. Unless I just didn't follow you.
i can imagine one of the first mods to ever get made will be one that boosts conversation chances to 100%, or making it threshold based instead of roll based. Cause if i'm gonna cheat to get my desired result anyways, i might as well save myself 20 minutes (per convo, which probably translates to fucking YEARS cumulatively) same idea i had with Morrowind, i was grinding levels in magic, until i just said "i can either spam this shit-tier crafted spell next to the guild bed, getting constantly assaulted by overzealous assassins and making ludicrous amounts of cash from the free enchanted daggers and high quality armor (top-tier game design, just fucking nuke your own economy with DLC), for hours real-time. Or i could just give myself a couple thousand gold and max out alteration/destruction, and save myself the hemorrhoids" remember kids: if you're gonna set up a macro, you might as well just cheat the fast way (if it's a singleplayer game, i don't condone multiplayer cheating, unless its fun for *everyone* else, too, like those DS3 cheater boss fights)
Rest systems in games server a different purpose than rest systems in PnP. In PnP resting is limited often times to make you go through a battle of attrition and compound various choices you've made as well as social breaks. IF this puts you in dire straights it's the DMs jobs to help make sure the way forwards is still possible unless you've made grievous errors. In video games it's a bit different. Rest systems and recovery systems are normally more about making each combat encounter balanced to your full strength party. Because in PnP a grueling failure of an adventure can be fun with a good DM, in video games a grueling failure of a dungeon crawl is normally extremely frustrating for players. This allows individual fights to be much more challenging and exciting because they don't have to worry about designing around you losing 5 hp a fight resulting in you utterly failing 45 minutes from now due to running out of healing. Treating PnP resting and video game resting the same is an exercise in folly. XCOM injury system is basically a way to try and find a middle ground between attrition and utterly screwing over a player for minor mistakes in the long run. But even XCOM can destroy you via attrition depending on difficulty and while some might find that fun, most do not. Not in video games where there is no DM around to guide things back to "there is hope" or at least make some event to make the ultimate defeat more memorable/fun than "game over".
the problem is they then break the immersion of this story by having the encounters overly hard. you are crossing perhaps 20 feet, maybe 3 or 4 combat encounters, every "day". not to mention the immersion break of fighting a boss, and then being thrown back to your wooded camp, and then walk the next 20 feet for the next boss fight.... while in a building. it is simply not fitting the urgent narrative that Larian is trying to sell here. it is especially frustrating that a lot of the camp dialogue is based around the presumption that you are going to rest every 2 feet, so if you soldier through or "skip" to the next story encounter without side grinding+resting like i did my first 2 games you will completely miss a lot of the early camp scenes. many scenes are skipped by simply progressing the story with a single fight if one doesn't go wandering off.
@@MFenix206 That's just not how most gamers approach things so you're off base with that complaint. Wrong medium. Most gamers don't take time limits seriously and we've been trained not to. The kingdom will always wait for us to save it. Because not doing so actually ruins the experience for most. Only a few rare games take their time pressure seriously.
@@Ralathar44 it isn't how the COD generation interprets it maybe. Any sort of story gamer is going to notice shit like this. this is the RPG genre, not the looter shoot scooter genre *you* are off base. RPG is all about semi-realism, narrative, story pressure, stakes, etc... it is the "living in a fantasy world" genre. walking 2 feet and then resting for the day when you are told you have 2 or so days to live? not conducive to story pacing. the fact that the game also assumes you are a week into it when you have managed to walk a half mile from the beach to the grove is utterly stupid. i didn't realize until my third playthrough that I had missed 3 camp scenes in the first 20 minutes of act 1 post tutorial.. I still haven't managed to get Gale's weave scene to trigger (presumably based on story progression and can only be triggered at a certain time) which is a prerequisite for romancing him. so I am locked out of major story content because I didn't rest every 12 feet! I know for a fact I have missed a significant amount of Wyll's content. about the only one i am confident i actually saw most of the cinematics for was Shadowheart. I want to grow to know my companions damn it! this is further not helped by each companions camp scene taking priority, meaning you would have to camp multiple times to clear the "backlog" of scenes that will poof into thin air if you advance the story slightly in-between.
@@MFenix206 Don't throw bullshit attacks, it's been no time pressure since Final Fantasy 1 and the original Zelda on the NES. I'm 36 and I've been here since Atari and playing games on DOS having to enter in command line executables manually to start the game. So would you kindly STFU little sister :D. Very very few games have done time pressure and time progression. A few select games like Majora's Mask and Outer Wilds do it but the game is built from the bottom up for it. RPGs and Adventure games and open world games are all very story heavy but very very rarely have time pressure. Maybe a timed mission or quest here and there. Walking simulators are all story and they are even more lax. At most there will be specific scenes or areas with a time limit like the escape from the floating island in Final Fantasy 6 (you better MFing wait for Shadow!) as well as the Opera House scene where you're rushing to save someone. But they're like a novel change of pace from the rest of the game, it'd suck if the whole game was like that. There are very good reasons there is no time pressure in most games. Not the least of which is "how do you balance your time progression?" For example it can't be real time because otherwise you screw over people who read slow or explore. It can't be per activity or you screw over those that like to do side quests or companion quests. "Time Loops" like Outer Wilds and Majora's Mask circumvent the time pressure by letting people play at their own pace but still essentially have infinite time. But not everything can be a time loop. Hell even Chrono Trigger, which is a time loop heavy story game, does not have any actual time pressure and you can take as long as you want. Problem is that time pressure just doesn't end up being fun for most games and it impacts different players different. You need a game design centered around it to deliver a very specifically flavored experience with impeccable balancing to make time limits feel good and even then many/most will hate it. That being said for specific scenes/scenarios in games time limits can be good.
@@MFenix206 Now in a separate reply I want to acknowledge that the specific complaints you threw at Bauldur's gate are valid, they just have nothing to do with time pressure. That's more playability, pacing, and poor execution. Possibly a bit of sloppy writing. No time system issue though. That same scenario you're talking about has been done well in story games you have all the time in the world to fart around even though the story insists the world is on the brink of collpase like Dragon Age Origins for exmaple. Done well in dozens of story heavy games like that in fact. Pretty much every major good RPG/CRP. Even the grand pappy of this genre Neverwinter Nights where you can take all the time you need as Neverwinter is supposedly crumbling around you. Yet NWN 1 still holds up amazingly well thanks to having areas with well done personality that feel unique, strong themeing, good story lines, and an amazing VA performance by Aribeth de Tlymerande. It'd still be a top tier CRP if it wasn't for the graphics/UI/controls/camera being old. The gameplay, the character builder, the story, and the characters are all still quite good even by today's standards.
"the resting system relies entirely on the dungeon master telling you not to use it" Not sure about other editions, but in 5th you can only benefit from a long rest once per day. The short rest abuse is the real issue, but so few classes benefit from short rests outside of regaining hit points
Every class except sorcerer, ranger and rogue get important resources back on a short rest (and the latter is just because rogues don't even do resources), not to mentions 1/sr abilities.
Isn short rest supposed to take about 12 hours, and lomg rest days to weeks? If the dm bothers to keep track of time, the rests very much come with their cost inbuilt. It seems reasonable tonme that a short rest in an unsecure location, say in a dungeon would incur the risk of an ambush, or evsn a large scale coordinated assault.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 No, short rests are 1 hour and long rests are 8 hours. You might be thinking of gritty realism (aka "Fuck casters") where a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is a week.
welp, you've made evident to me why I love TTRPGs and _loathe_ VGTTRPGs. Then again, it was explained in a simple adage years ago - "TTRPGs have rules. Rules can be interpreted, bent, broken, and weaseled around. Video games, have laws. Not legal laws, _natural laws_." You can simply never talk your way out of gravity, and as a result, you cannot effectively recreate this experience inside such a rigid system. It's not possible.
Honestly, this is mostly fair. People who play 5e aren't happy, people who play normal games with normal game design aren't happy. I'm hoping that they have a version that removes the 5e aspects from the game because, right now, it just makes me pissed to have to reload the same damn save for the 500th time - all because my Wizard with a +8 to Arcana rolled a 2 on a check of 11. This video quality is great, I'm assuming the time it took to script was probably the most difficult part but overall I just want more content from you in general.
Throwing some dice to decide whether I dislike the soothing commentary of this video. Edit: failed the check. I like the short-style videos and would enjoy more.
Achshually... When it comes to combat, Larian did predict that people wouldn't like missing a lot. From what I've been told they doubled the chance to hit specifically so that people wouldn't feel like they were missing all the time. They also doubled the HP of monsters to counter the increased hit rate, so that fights wouldn't be too short as a result. But yeah, it seems that Larian's RPG engine gives you a sizable handicap to your hit rating when fighting in low visibility - which is a problem when a large number of fights take place in some dank dungeon. This is what sets it apart from tabletop, where people would find some clever way of circumventing a problem like that, or maybe the GM would just be lenient about it. There's also other factors that ruin your chance to hit, like fighting from low ground. These are some rather unsavory mechanics that Larian brought over from Divinity, along with their unfortunate habit of making surface effects (like fire) a dominant factor in almost every encounter.
Yup, they lowered AC to raise hit chance and then raised HP to compensate. Which has the unintended consequence of screwing spellcasters. So now things like magic missile are useless, so they had to add items to double the damage of magic missile. The game is full of bad decisions like this. They could've just kept their DOS2 combat system that they understand and focused on hiring good writers and it would've been better, and I'm not a fan at all of DOS2 combat.
I've found a lot of your observations to be totally correct, I've got 60-70 into the game now and my findings are disheartening. I find all of the characters to be unlikeable, perhaps because I can't actually interact with them in any "successful" manner with rolls that as you say I have failed *every single one of*. Combat is so-so to me, but as a DoSII vet I don't mind it too much, the voice acting and visuals are absolutely excellent but the storyline is also nothing to note IMO. I find the plot device of the mindflayer tadpole super gamey lazy. I'm not save scumming and the resting system is just trashing me, perhaps that's my management of skills but I was not really guided into the resting system at all? I got to level 3 before even realising you could just go to my camp as the game hadn't explained to me it had been magically set up without my knowledge. I want to love this game, I want to actually empathise with some of the characters, but I find them all hard work and like I'm being punished by my boss by sending me on a team building weekend with the *entire* narcissistic, sociopathic sales dept.
I'm not sure how much my take on the laziness of the video has value, as this subject matter is fascinating to me and somewhat overwhelms the other aspects. But I do like what you put forth in this video.
i like the thematic background video but the sound mixing is a bit meh plague. I'm trying to listen to your insanity, but dnd jargon and screeching sound effects keep leaking in. consider lowering that layer like 25-30%, so i can listen to your sweet sweet voice.
I wanted the audio to be an option, but any lower and it may as well have been muted. The lower portions are already totally inaudible anyway. Will probably just not bother trying to mix anything in the future since most of my videos are silent anyway.
@@PlagueOfGripes I listen through old Radio speakers rejiggered to accept PC stereo output and the background dialog mixing was just fine. Ignore the OP on this one, he's probably one of those obnoxious gamers you run into in instant-dead TTK Shooters who knows exactly where you were walking 50ft away b/c his expensive _gamer_ headphones have Hyper Normalization built in
Can we talk about how they gave the trickery cleric 9 dex? She has the strength for melee but cant wear heavy armor, and gets a dex penalty to every other armor.
I'm still excited for this game, even though I've played the early access and agree with most of what you're saying, Plague. Mostly because it was put into early access early enough to be changed significantly, so this is my chance to make a difference by doing what I do best: Loudly and exhaustively complaining on forums.
I have really enjoyed it a lot, honestly. I guess I’m not a table top player so idk shit, but the writing is great. I see what they are going for, my play through have been different and fun, and I failed a ton of shit. I guess if you are the type to get aggravated by missed rolls then you would hate this...just like xcom...
If you want to 'fix' BG3's combat system, reduce enemy attacks, armour class, and saving throws by ~2. Then reduce their damage by about 20%. If you want to fix BG3's resting system, first allow two short rests between long rests. Then, make it so that every time you take a long rest, you build up a point of "Psychic Poison". You get an extra point if you used the tadpole that day, and every time you see your "dream lover" you build up one point for each failed skill check. When your Psychic Poison equals your lowest mental stat (Int, Wis, or Cha) it's game over. You can remove Psychic Poison through certain events (killing illithids, destroying tadpoles, defeating champions of The Absolute) or through consumable magic items, like Potions of Restoration.
I admit, I wasn't sure I agreed with you until about half way through the video, then it all started to come together. I would love to hear more of your opinions on other TTRPGs.
The whole "philosophy" behind 5th edition D&D is to bullshit you into buying a worse version of 3.5 on the premise that is better for the DM and players not to focus on so many on rules.
I hate the fact that the randomness stops me from learning more about the game world and the characters. I want to know more about the story, not get cockblocked because I needed to roll a 7 charisma check and I rolled a 6, despite having 16 charisma. It doesn't make it more interesting, it actively takes away my enjoyment.
And the penalties are harsh enough that you can't just infinitely roll your way out of a situation or break the game by doing something dumb. WotC has a real "hey if the game gets broken that's your DM's fault for not thinking hard enough" attitude with a rather rules light roll for everything system in 5th edition (where you have to house rule it into not being easily exploited) instead of a solid commonsense foundational ruleset that is adjudicated by the DM.
I recognize that german suplexing a dragon reference. One of the all time best green texts. Also love these kinds of videos. In your words, it ruuullezzz.
BG3 is an insanely easy game. If you bypass the combat via barrels and surface spam in my honest opinion. I just send every barrel I find to camp. Then when there is a tough fight i just pepper the area with barrels and explode them. Boom. Everything dead. Miniboss hag? Boom dead instantly in less than 1 turn. Ultra tough encounter with tons of enemies in the goblin camp? KABOOM! Dead. Maybe 1-2 survive because of positioning. Still dead. Surface spam via cantrips is also great. The fire cantrip makes a fire surface that does damage over time to anyone standing EVEN IF YOU MISS. This isn't in 5e... but it makes the spell infinitely more useful than anything else because it by proxy means its a spell that doesnt miss that sometimes deals extra damage (when it actually hits). A DM would tell me this is silly, stop. Or that the NPCs would look at me placing 500 exploding barrels and say you know what? This is not very gucci of you. But nah. Its a video game with an uncaring DM in many cases.
Yeah, it's a lot like Divinity Original Sin in that if you set things up properly, you will nuke the enemies near-instantly no matter how tough they appear to be.
@@nateszigeti3653 BG3 is hard if you play it like DnD. BG3 is a walk in the park if you play is like DOS. Its not breaking the game so much as playing as intended although not intended by 5e.
I see the movement wanting to push D&D away from simulation and more towards a streamlined "moments that matter most" approach, I just don't agree. Actual combat is messy, combatants failing to maneuver and regretting their current position. Not every conversation changes your life,some do. Some are about sex at least. I need the trivial,or the constant strive for max impact renders the whole experience banal. Everything being exciting success devalues too much of the experience for me, breaking the artistic concord,the agreement that we shall inhabit this world.
An idea I had for a morality system was instead of good and evil, players would be given virtues and vices to choose from which decide what options that character can even make, which will also be subject to change depending on player action throughout the story (the coward becoming brave, compassionate becoming apathetic, etc.). I experimented with this idea while playing Star War the Old Republic, using the Evil Virtues from TvTropes. I ranked the virtues based on what kind of character I wanted to play, and always prioritized the highest ranked virtue that's apparent in the dialogue. As a result the character alignments were all across the spectrum, with every virtue resulting in both good and evil choices being made.
After playing for 15 hours i kinda feel the same way. Dialog rolls are fuckin annoying. When i roll 1 on a "roll 4" check i just wanna punch someone. And it happened multiple times. And even if you get the roll and avoid conflict you get exactly 0 exp for it. WTF. Combat is fine tho. Even if you miss you still can move around or do some free actions.
If they are giving you 0 experience for avoiding fights that reward exp and loot then they are doing it wrong. Taking the diplomatic option instead of the fight should always award you just as much exp as if you won the fight. Otherwise most players will take the fight just to avoid missing exp. Similarly they have to make sure a smooth talker playthrough results in about the same amount of gold/loot overall as a murder hobo playthough or people will murder hobo just to avoid missing the loot/gold.
yeah. here the skill checks are almost always dependent on the dice. there is practically nothing you can do post-character creation to help you with skill checks. Pathfinder Kingmaker has skill checks too, and can be brutal like BG3 too, but unlike BG3 you can actually *develop* your skills as you level. most checks are designed to be in the range of a 50/50 for a character of that level unless it is particularly difficult (like intimidating a barbarian ghost priest of the God of war for instance) and they also grant XP, unlike BG 3 which generally *deprives* you of XP for going with skill checks. by level 4 in PFKM you can have +8 or more on a skill check if you really want to go into it. here? you have your attribute, chosen at level 1, and a measly +2 from proficiency that you choose at level 1.
@@MFenix206 For a contrast here I'd recommend playing through Neverwinter Nights 2 as a charisma specialized bard with diplomacy, bluff, perform, taunt, and maybe a touch of intimidate. Then dump skill points in whatever else. You'll be subpar at fighting but that game really lets you feel the power of being a specialized conversational character. Best dialog experience in a game I've had to date for a "smooth talker" style character. IIRC I never felt deprived for winning skill checks to avoid fights. The issue here (beyond the 0xp and lack of rewards BS) seems to but that you are level 4 in the D&D system by the end of the demo and that's just barely getting started. So you'd start with +3 as much from a stat check and then you'd add in your relevant skill ranks. If I was to create a Bard in NWN 2 a level 4 Bard would starting with 16 charisma, 14 int, and 12 other stats I'd have a max of +7 of each skill and then +3 from stats. This means your skill checks will be D20 + 10 as a specialist character. You start with +4 max in a skill check (plus attribute bonus) and then get a max of +1 per level if you continue to invest in it so level 4 is +7 plus attribute bonus. If BG 3 operates differently than that let me know but that is D&D character design. I would expect a specialist character to pass almost any skill check they focus in from the start and keep maxed (athletics, diplomacy, slight of hand, etc). Pure attribute checks however are much more random since you have lower modifiers and I imagine from what I've seen this is where the frustration is. So a very easy attribute check has a DC of 5 and D20 + 3 (from 16 Strength for example) should be enough to pass that outside of rolling a 1. But the average DC is actually 15 which gives you a 50% fail chance as a fairly specialized character since ability modifiers are small. IMO skill checks work really well but ability checks (strength, dex, int, etc) are where it can be frustrating and those I feel like should be lowered from an average DC of 15 to an average DC of 10-12 to make them feel less frustrating in a video game. In PnP you can turn failure into high entertainment, but a game does not have the ability to creatively improvise like that, you just fail and if you're constantly failing with no creative storytelling from a DM to make it funny it's just going to feel bad.
I very much agree with everything you're saying. The major things I'd add as problems for this game are ones of narrative scale and how the main character feels undefined. The games choices become limited because they wanted to make the beginning of the game 'epic' in scale. In other rpg's the starting area will tend to be unhinged from the main plot, serving mostly as an onboard to the story that allows you a space to make meaningful decisions for a small area that in the greater scale of things doesn't matter. This gives the player a lot more agency within the scope of the first area and allows for a gradual escalation into the main plot that feels natural and makes sense for the main character. In this game the starting area is entirely focused on what seems to be the primary plot and this means the choices presented to the player get gimped. The biggest characterization of this is on the path where you side with the goblins. No matter what you do, no matter how close you get to the drow lady on the enemy side she will try to kill you at the end and even if you talk her out of that specific action her faction becomes hostile to you. This is obviously because of the way that she and her faction tie into the 'epic' main plot but we're in such an isolated region with its own isolated politics that under normal circumstances there's no reason they couldn't just have the 'evil' faction take over that area and call back to it later in the game and the developers made the choice to present this story in a way that limit's the ability to give meaningful choices to the player. The moment to moment story here is suffering because EVERY action you take in the prologue area is in service to the main plotline. Every side quest is 'get this bug out of my head' which makes sense because of how catastrophic the bug is BUT again the developers made the choice to present that as the main driving force behind the story that way and the game suffers for it. They present the player with a choice, but when the player takes that choice they're railroaded back to a 'default world state' because the dm has an epic story to tell and doesn't want this small section of the story to get in the way of the overall plot. I'm not even sure you play as the main character in this game. It feels like all of your companions have a plot and story going on but you're just a weird bystander in events with no real personality. I think this is tied into the fact that come the full game each companion will actually be selectable as a main character which worked as a conceit in divinity 2 (in part because that game felt like one built for co-op) but feels like here its just going to make it feel like you're playing as a companion character at best no matter what you do because they aren't willing to write for a custom main character that you can choose to not have in the plot, and each story selectable character is going to have the plot of a non player party character. I can get behind a somewhat blank slate main character if that blank slate is presented meaningful choices that allow you to define the character through your actions over time but it doesn't feel like they're doing that, it feels like the main character is just a placeholder for the other characters in the party
that is a problem of the 5ed system. In pathfinder or D&D 3ed you get incredible high values for skill checks even in the beginning of the game, the problem then, comes if the dm decides that everything is CD 40
the sweet spot for 3.5 is levels 3-6 imo. You can have the skills and feel good about it but there isnt yet a cosmic gap between someone proficient and someone who dabbles
This is something that 4e fixed, by having DC depend mostly on level, and have stat bonuses be somewhat rare. so the difference between trained and not trained would never be much more than like 30-20% chance of success without actually uses resources. HP bloat was still an issue AIRC.
I don't think that's necessarily a problem that 5e has so much as the translation of 5e into a game. For 5e, I think the system handles well in tabletop format whereas a video game like this (Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder Kingmaker) wants specialization and those high numbers found in Pathfinder. Unfortunately, I think the Devs were chained to 5e, being the current hotness.
Nah, 5e has it right there in the rules take 10 is the floor for any check that doesnt have a direct failure consequence and that you should use degrees of success/failure for reactions of everything from nps to trap triggers.
@@suddenllybah eh i prefered 3.5 and older 2e adnd because it had so many build options and you actually chose what to train in every level. By comparison 5e just feels like everythig is on rails.
When you mentioned X-COM I was hoping you would explain, that every mission a sequence of rolls gets generated and then game actions are using these rolls in the exact order the sequence was generated. That's why save scumming works, change order of your squad actions, and you can make the more important actions succeed. And as to why predicted 100% action can fail are hidden modifiers. Vipers have hidden bonus for dodging.
That is... not how save scumming works... save scumming just allows you to reroll, allowing another chance at getting the positive result. In fact, it's the ANTI save scumming option that seeds your chances, though i'm not entirely sure as to the specific mechanics of how. As for the Viper's dodge, that's considered independent of the hit/miss chance (actually it only procs if you hit, so i guess it is kinda dependent) it's the same dodge mechanic your soldiers can have. The 100% miss thing is because the game straight up lies to you most of the time about what your ACTUAL hit chance is, either rounding it up or down. There are mods that tell you exactly what's going on under the hood, giving you your actual hit chance, and telling you exactly what is modifying your success chance, like elevation, enemy cover, enemy bonuses, etc.
"In programming all elements are known." Hmm. So what you're saying is we need to spend less time on making light look good in water, and more on developing game systems capable of creating content on-the-fly. I'm in.
@@HellecticMojo .....I didn't say it was. My point was "graphics sucked, till we poured time and manpower into it." That's what procedural gaming will take. A shift. Studios deciding the most important part of a game is the GAME, and not how well light diffuses through leaves.
@@HotaruZoku and the point of procedural is to NOT put in the man hours. By making the stage and compositions by randomization and formula instead of actually crafting things themselves with specific intent.
"I hate xcom. That is why I love xcom."
Spoken like a true xcom veteran
like the quicker rant videos btw! Always happy to hear you talk about things
You know you've played too much xcom when you can hear that and completely agree.
You know there's something wrong with you when an alien fondles your junk before roughly entering you, and you're somehow not frustrated, but MOTIVATED.
I'm doing OpenXCOM right now actually. It's two games in one. I like the base builder and world map. Might try the X-files mod.
Is the Star Wars mod for the newer X-COM good?
XCOM in theory: Tactical squad action with an alien-horror twist.
XCOM in reality: "RNGesus demands a sacrifice! Please send your most expendable Rookie to the next door, or RNGeus will decide for you!"
"Being a Sith is tantamount to being an insipid street thug that shakes down old ladies for quarters."
The Legacy of Darth Pockets haunts us still.
Loneliness is the deepest pocket of all.
I mean, depends on the writers, but at their worst (written), absolutely. "My moral code tells me to use my power for self-satisfaction. Therefore I will do only incredibly petty evil acts, nyeh"
"But how are we gonna fill these.... POCKETS!?!?"
I R O N I C
LET'S SEE THOSE POCKETSSSS
A good DM is aware of the fact that even though s/he's in control of all the monsters and villains, it's NEVER actually "players versus DM." You're all at the table to have fun together.
and it's never about telling the story you prepared- it's about the confrontation of your plans for the story with the players, and then adjusting it to player's decisions, kinda like writing a "what if" scenario for the initial story. Learning how to encourage players to follow the storyline (even if they keep messing up your plot point after plot point) and making sure they have fun along the way, crafting an unique and personal story together.
@@miqvPL In my dnd experience its
Step 1) make a plan
Step 2) have it go horribly wrong
Step 3) improvise
@@An_Ian Then there's:
1) Improvise
2) Have it go
3) Make a plan
4) It went horribly wrong
5) Improvise
Someone once likened being a DM to being a cook: you're preparing a meal for consumption by a group.
@@deadjuice1880 And also if the group somehow fucks up your planned food or eats it in a different way, you usually want to go along with it but makes sure they steer to the right path.
I just finished replaying KOTOR, twice, which is based heavily on 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons. It handles the problems of randomness the way that 3rd edition handles problems of randomness: if you have time to prepare your action, or you can try again, the dice roll is treated as an automatic 20. There is nothing interesting about failing a hundred times to open a footlocker if you will succeed on the hundred and first attempt, so the game makes you succeed on the first attempt.
The issue at play here is that dice are used for resolving uncertainty, not for inserting randomness. Dice are the enemy of the classic children's argument, "I shoot you and you die, yuh huh," and provide a framework for determining the outcomes of situations where the outcome is both uncertain and the consequences for success and failure are interesting. You never ask for a roll for something that has no chance of success, or for something that should have no chance of failure. You never ask for a roll for something where failure in inconsequential or the stakes are uninteresting.
Rolling less will also speed up the game, since you don't have to deal with your players not remembering what their bonuses are or bartering for advantage or not knowing how to add two numbers together. In combat, your average enemy should be hit on a roll of 5 to 7. If your players can obtain advantage, which is what fuels interesting and dynamic combats, they will hit over 90% of the time. You solve the XCOM problem in tabletop not by fudging dice, but by letting the players feel clever for fudging the dice on your behalf. If those numbers seem wonky to you, please review XGE's CR advice and your DMG's quick monster stats. A 10th-level character faces evenly against a CR 4 with an expected AC of 14, which they contest with an attack bonus of 7 to 9. The message is pretty clear: only in the most tense of encounters should the outcome of combat be determined by your dice rolls. Players fail as the result of poor planning and succeed as the result of good planning, with the dice only covering the middle grays.
I really wish you could save a library of comments to come back to and read through easily because this comment kicks ass
Damn I've been looking at all my d20s wrong this whole time
@Silvaren cRPG it was a actually a weird miss of Star Wars d20 Revised, and Star Wars Saga who was being developed at the same time, having played both ttRPG playing KotOR was a bit weird as you where seeing from mechanics from both game. And Saga was kinda D&D 3.5 starting to morph in 4e…
Something to make a point about, though this is as far as I'm aware is only a thing in dnd, is that a natural 20 can never be a critical success outside of combat rolls and cant make the impossible possible, that requires abandoning common sense.
The nat 20 critical success on everything is just an extremely common house rule that everyone misinterprets as the official rule. That being said it is always up to the dm on how they run their game, the rules are just a suggestion.
Whenever I run into a "critical success for everything" DM, I always pull out the classic "I jump to the moon." Try it till you get a nat 20, and whoosh!
Nat 20 is license for the DM to employ the Rule Of Cool. Generally, I would expect a slight bump to the success, or an improbable outcome in favor of the roller. This swings towards players equally as much, the evil wizard might crit against an expert liar. Nothing too game breaking, but it makes for more excitement on skill checks outside combat.
@@Gorgondantess DM: why would I let you roll, that will never work.
You: it's up to the dice.
Okay, roll with triple disadvantage
@@draakgast 3 nat 20s later.
@@oniwolfin9589 you hit em with the :
Okay, now because it's disadvantage roll 3 more and take the lowest of the 6
Table-top is always improved by a DM that doesn't have the rule book shoved completely up his ass. No one cares how many deci-liters of water we have and you shouldn't have to roll a skill check for fastening your belt. Video games are never going to be as free form as table-top; because they are made *before* you play them and table-top is created *while* you play it. Just accept that and make a great game with an engaging story. Also, Larian needs to be allowed to release a campaign creator. Imagine how much replayability the game will have if people can import their own campaigns.
This is why Neverwinter Nights is one of my favorite D and D games of all time. The ability to make your own campaign and even share it online. It is truly a gem in the Dungeons and Dragons video game lineup.
@@tylerwellman8252 The ravenloft and arelith servers are the only thing i do on nwn, multiplayer is just too fun for me. And well it's just fantastic.
@@saltee8460 Absolutely. I played on Amia before it went to crazy with the mods. There are so many game servers for all types of players too! Roleplayers, dungeon crawlers, PvPers... It is such a good game.
>you shouldn't have to roll a skill check for fastening your belt
UNLESS - and ONLY unless - you are playing Roll For Shoes, which is intentionally designed to make this exact kind of gonzo roll interesting and potentially useful.
Oh you can play with a rule book DM that does not cheat, but as in any group activity people need to be okay with that. I hate more DM that cheat all the roll and railroad people to where they need to go make them avoid any danger give them what they need and want, failing is part of the game dying is part of the game sometime people can die to shitty goblins and kobolts or a pickaxe hit from a miner in salt slave mine.
You are protagonist not invincible heroes. yes losing another level1 heroes at the star of a campain suck but its also why you are playing carefully and not like a bunch of muderhobbo(except if that the point), for the resting system like any system just explain it and usually people will think it throught personnaly i suually see no problem with it. 1hour pose to recover hitpoint and some skill is very good, can you do it every time? of course not same for resting, or casting rituals ect...
"German suplex a dragon out of mid air"
Good ol' Los Tiburon. A badass, indeed.
I've seen that in a manga once.
source is faraway paladin.
Man, that took me back.
ROLL
TO
PIN
VIVA LA LUCHADOR
Los Tiburone, The Shark of The Land!
"Play Disco Elysium. It has the breastfeel of breasts." that should be on the website or something
Currently going through it right now. Fucking phenomenal game with a much MUCH better rolling system
@@__-gf3zn plus there are white checks (redo-able rolls if you level up the skill that failed last time) and red checks that can’t be redone. DE mastered conveying the correct amount of info + risk to the player
Disco elysium is a DAMN GOOD rpg
@@__-gf3zn that's not true, there are times people take pity on you for embarassing yourself and other situations that open different dialogue paths.
I remember losing a bunch of soldiers on Xcom 2 ironman because my entire team happened to be in stealth when enemy reinforcements showed up. The AI had a complete meltdown and straight up just teleported all the enemies in the middle of my team from halfway across the map, I'm assuming because it didn't know what to do when there are no targets available. Good times
Shit like that is why I just refuse to play xcom games in ironman. I ain't paying the price for the game being buggy
I got sick of aliens shooting me through a pinprick hole in the wall because either a shot hit it, or the proc gen just made that wall apparently a little bit 'not wally' in that area, that apparently they can see through at range, killing a dude from flanking when there's a full *WALL* between them
I only tried ironman once and lost my entire squad 15 hours in because I missed a key 95% shot and the enemy happened to crit off a 45% chance to hit. Never again.
The chance of bugs destroying hours of work is what makes me avoid ironman games or modes.
"I hate X-COM. That is why I love X-COM."
Moooom, Eli is tsundering again!
This is a common attitude expressed by X-COM players.
98% to hit, MY ASS!
the man hates everything, and loves a handful of things.
overlap is inevitable.
I can HEAR the Tim Rogers bleeding through there. We know you've been watching those videos Plague.
I didn't think anything could out X-com X-com's RNG till I watched gameplay of BG3
@@Antonicane that's nothing, I have missed on a 100% before and 99% TWICE IN A ROW! IN THE SAME COMBAT!
2 years later... they did not fix your listed issues.
*Magic missle pelting against a fence*
“The resting system is stupid” finally someone says it out loud. If your dm hates short rests, guess what? Playing a warlock is absolute hell
God, the rest system needs a rework ok
What would be a good HB to make it better? Reduce the time cost?
I've read the 5E DMG rules for balancing combat encounters. Class resources are balanced with the expectation that you will have 6-8 medium-hard encounters per long rest, with two short rests inbetween. The problem is that I don't know anyone at all that plays to this exacting standard. The 5E Playtest had short rests 1 minute long, which was a lot better. But my games tend to have only one really big combat per day, so even 1 minute short rests aren't enough. What I do for my own games is give my players a Dark Souls style Estus Flask that they can spend an action to take a hearty chug out of and gain the benefit of a short rest. They can use it two times before needing to refill it by finishing a long rest.
Gritty realism fixes it
4e had the rest system figured out. Short rests were a couple of minutes and you were expected to do them after every single fight, and there was no janky division between short rest and long rest classes. Everybody had abilities they got back from short and long rests, so everybody wanted both. You didn't have Fighters or Warlocks getting fucked over because they were hanging out with a Wizard, Paladin, and Cleric.
@@kormael no it doesn't. It just drags out things longer. It just creates forcible downtime and inability to change spell each day makes niche spells worthless. Simultaneously it makes short rest based classes even weaker by not being able to charge their abilities multiple times in a session.
It's a change that doesn't add anything besides tedium of attempting any recovery.
The issue with BoTW’s durability system isnt the system itself, but the game’s larger issue with providing the player with a false sense of progression. When enemies start getting replaced by their tougher variants, so too do their weapons. Weapons with not only higher attack, but also durability. Eventually the player will get to the point that they have more royal halberds than they could ever use. This is why I imagine that many players find that BoTW’s combat shines on Eventide Island, the Great Plateau, and even the Master Sword trials. Not on Master Mode, of course. And what these all have in common is that they return Link to the baseline level of weapons, armor, and enemies. Showing that your stick spear breaking isnt the issue- its the fact that your stick spear stops being a simple stick.
The weapon/enemy progression eventually even ruins the unique elemental weapons. Its funny because an ice greatsword offers something no other greatsword does, that being freezing enemies, but come the end game, it is too woefully weak to be of any use.
Another couple of issues was that swapping weapons mid-fight messed with the flow of combat and exploring for loot lost a lot of appeal when it set in that any cool weapons would only last 2-3 fights.
No its the durability.
@@TimtheWinzard if only nintendo has a controller which allowed them to put a menu on a second screen, it could even look like the shiekah slate
Oh well
@@matilyn_rf Haha, right?
I feel like the progression would have felt better if the regional special weapons had been the best and operated like the master sword. That way, you would have a reliable weapon of each category that wouldn't go away.
Well said. I really want them to reduce the amount of "bad rng = less game for you". And my god, there are plenty of those in the game. As it stands failing a dialogue check can lead to unsatisfying encounters. The best example of this is the Tiefling and that druid in the Prologue.
There should be more outcomes rather than just slaughtering everything that moves on a bad check. They definitely need something to balance out the loss of the DM and a dynamic plot.
Plague got REAL close to just making Connor from Detroit.
Now I can't unsee it!
To be fair, the character creator options have a bad case of 'boxface'.
28 STAB WOUNDS
Well, now it just means you have to make Clancy Brown for your ideal one.
I think he literally just made Connor. I saw the uncanny resemblance immediately. Like...idk if it was intentional but hot damn Connor looks good as a weird archer boi
I wasn't watching the screen at 11:00 and LEGIT thought Plague had someone kidnapped nearby and screaming for help
That was just to further immerse you in Isabelle's constant mind state in lieu of the image gallery he was referring to
I'm making my Baldur's Gate review. I gotta get my pizza rolls.
Its hard to run horror furry farm without fresh supply of DNA.
It's funny how this 2 years old video is a perfect summary of most of my problems with this game.
"B-b-ut It's beta!"
"B-b-ut they'll patch it!"
Has become a meme over two decades for a reason it seems.
Pattern recognition bros stay winning.
@@InvadeNormandy we in December 2023 and folks still kissing the ground this game walks on. it's a fun game, but it is sweaty AF
Yea gave in, i got deluxe edition 10 bucks off 30hrs in, over it worst crpg experience I've played. Shoulda known better.
3 years later and this video has aged like a fine wine. Not much changed since
The outcome of Failure in an RPG should or could be just as entertaining as a successful one, hopefully modding and being able to add/change some dnd rules becomes a thing
It's not that simple.
A dm can rewrite the story in the heat of the moment to fix problems that arise as they go. A videogame is preset, with all player choices and outcomes preloaded.
Honestly, Baldur's Gate should not be seen as DnD. It will never, and has never, fully emulated the tabletop. It's moreso an adaptation than a port
Knowing div original sin 2, modding will be big
Do more of these. They have the same Plague-y goodness I come here for, just with less hand drawn diagrams of Goku timelines, and that's not why I'm here.
Just a couple problems of 5e that are insurmountable for a video game:
1. Advantage and disadvantage are just about the only way to increase/decrease your odds of success in a roll, but all that does is make you roll twice and take the better/worse roll. This has hilariously inconsistent results but feels fun in a game where you can't save scum, or is funny when you and your 4 buddies get to laugh at how little it helped. It's a mechanic that's great for reactions in a group setting, garbage for a 1 player campaign.
2. The only other way you get better is by having "proficiency" in something. You essentially flip a switch on your character that makes you completely worthless at a task forever and always, or you slowly and passively grow in your number just enough to have a 50/50 chance of succeeding as the content gets harder. Did your proficency just go up +2 and now you're more likely to hit? Well too bad every single enemy from this point onward also got a +2 to their armor, so nothing has changed.
3. 90% of getting advantage in social or knowledge situations is just arguing with a DM, because advantage has the baked in ruling of, "If you can explain to the DM why you should have a good chance of succeeding, they'll just give it to you." So a player with a 50/50 chance will suddenly explain to the DM that because their character used to love museums as a kid, he should totally gain advantage on knowing what that statue is, and the DM will allow it because improvising a BS reason for getting advantage is the point of advantage.
4. Game design based on damage being performed by dice doesn't work. Doing 1d10 damage means every hit can be a 1 or a 10, meaning an enemy with 6hp is either a laughable encounter, or a little blighter that takes multiple hits to go down. Then you realize that that damage is what you'll be doing whether the enemy has 6hp or 30hp, and suddenly it's impossible to know if this will be easy or impossible. Most games allow for a window of damage (i.e. do 4-6 damage) so they can balance encounters based on how much damage a hit should do, and roughly how likely you are to hit can result in a proper fight. It's fine in D&D because as the DM you can cheat, giving the enemy less HP or making them do less damage than they should to balance things out, but again, improvisation is what most tabletop RPing is about.
5. Most good tabletop RP has degrees of failure, especially in social situations. Maybe you need to roll a 15 to convince the gate guard that you're a superior officer so he'll let you in, but a roll of 10 might just make him roll his eyes at you and resume the conversation. Mediocre rolls don't instantly fail the attempt, but they might make you have disadvantage on the next attempt, or you might be locked out of that method but still granted other options to get inside such as intimidating or charming the guard. This is also 90% improvised, because players do stupid shit and can't go fighting every person they talk to and then roll a 4 at.
There's a lot more, but Plague covered a good bit, and everything else starts to get so specific as to be meaningless to anyone who doesn't already play the game.
I agree with most of these except #4. While most weapons have a single die of damage range (e.g. 1-10), if you're smart enough to use a weapon that fits your character's strengths (like a warhammer for, well, high-strength characters) you'll receive a bonus to damage based on the associated attribute. In effect, even if you have a DEX bonus as low as +1, you'll be doing 2-5 damage with your dagger instead of 1-4, and if you're REALLY skilled, you could do 6-9 damage with that dagger.
As a DM, I also take issue with the assumption that combat in tabletop D&D (or any RPG) only works because the person running the game cheats and softballs their players. The number of times I've let a creature with 1-2 hit points die for the sake of expediting combat is miniscule compared to the number of creatures that have hung on, just barely, to either escape, shout for reinforcements, or get one last swipe in. It's about making the most entertaining story, not making things easy for your players.
@@dylangladysz You're totally right on the first point. You can build a character that can compensate for low damage rolls...to a point. Rogues and Mages have the worst time of this because later on your sneak attacks/spells end up being like 8d6 + 4, meaning you could do anywhere from 12 - 52. Other classes mitigate this way better by having 1 dice and a ton of static numbers, so they do 1d10 + 20 or something like that. Really depends, and that's to say nothing of criticals. Anyone who's crited and rolled a 1 for damage knows that pain, and every DM knows the pain of having their big bad by crited and losing half health before they've even had a turn.
And yeah, the best story is what matters, but that's crazy subjective. Hell plenty of times I've cheated against the players to make a fight more exciting, and had to wrestle with the idea that a tense fight might not be as "entertaining" as having the big bad that was talked up for months die instantly to a crit and a bad save, leaving everyone laughing at what a pushover they were. But I've never had to wrestle with the idea that cheating has saved multiple games and first experiences from being unfun and frustrating, and in a game where you have to account for players making a garbage character versus a pro min-maxer and having them be on the same team, improv and cheating are like the backbone to running tabletop roleplaying, 5E especially.
#2 isn't...entirely accurate, but neither is it entirely wrong either, at least not in 5e.
Yes, as your character levels up many monsters generally get better armor, but there are also many who don't, or at least, they don't gain nearly as much to keep pace with a characters natural proficiency bonus growth, more so for characters that put a little extra focus on getting good at hitting things.
Instead some monsters can get abilities that let them do massive amounts of damage or gain access to spells that can negatively effect your character in many ways, like causing a roof to collapse, or take control of an ally, or even teleport them to another plane of existence. Same goes with player characters, sure a Wizard will probably never be as tanky as a Fighter or a Barbarian, but most Fighters or Barbarians can't shoot Lighting from their fingers either.
The purpose of the "Proficiency Bonus" in 5th edition, at least from what I've gathered in my time of playing, is so that a characters skills and abilities effectiveness aren't completely left in the dust if they decide to focus on other things, like taking a Feat instead of an Ability Score Increase or if they decide to Multi-class. So, yeah, tanky monster will still feel tanky for some character, but some squishes will gradually get easier and easier to hit from a damage dealing focused characters perspective, the only problem is that now they may have a some new abilities that could trip your character up or exploit a weakness of theirs if they're not careful.
Something like this could work in a video game, but it would require some tweeking and reworking so that it doesn't frustrate the player, which it doesn't sound like they did.
Nr 4 is like that because the game is wrongly balanced and not accurate to 5e.
Example the rogue sneak attack, instead of giving 2d6 at level 4 it gives 1d6 x2.
It’s really a huge statistical difference.
With more dices you get a more average rolls
@@DabroodThompson You do realize that you're just doing more math to explain the same point I made right? If Proficiency starts at +2 and ends at +6, and enemies start around AC 14 and end around AC 18, thus nothings changed.
Everything else you're describing falls under character builds, which starts to get complicated, especially given that your +5 from your primary stat is in 90% of cases the highest it'll ever go, can be done hilariously early with some builds or frustratingly slow with others, and even with your hypothetical is only giving you a 70%-55% chance to hit.
The issue isn't that you always have a 50/50 chance to hit, it's that you almost always have the same chance to hit anything no matter how strong you get or what build you do, unless your build sucks.
"Baldur's Gate 3 does for dice rolls what e621 does for Animal Crossing. It does a great deal and most of it is... Bad."
And best quote of 2020 goes to Plague of Gripes, god damn man.
Well with the new update, it seems dice rolls will be better now
@@MrNoot39449 thats good but that also kind of shows why the game shouldn’t have been put out when it was. All the people who wanted to play and/or review it already bought it and did so, especially reviewers because you gotta get that review out while the game is still in the popular zeitgeist, leaving the game held down by these poor early access reviews. Even now as of writing this Baulders Gate 3 when it DOES get an update is given the reputation of “BG3? That game was shit why bother?” While people are waiting for Kingmaker 2 to come out and the team working on BG3 has been porting Divinity Original Sin 2 everywhere they can to stay afloat (only a month ago or so it came out, fully, on iOS of all places).
Baulders Gate 3 needed to be fixed up BEFORE release. Not after.
@@OtioseFanatic It wasn't released tho, only a dumbass will base his opinion on early access, I have to say at least this early access game has more content and is more fun than most fully released modern games
@@MrNoot39449 I wanna agree with ya but as a wise man once said while against a stark yellow background, “the problem with releasing a game into early access is that sometimes it remains in early access the entire time it’s in the popular zeitgeist. Meaning that by the time any early access issues get fixed or indeed IF they get fixed, nobody’s gonna give a shit.”
And that’s what’s happened here. BG3 has been in early access soo long that the next D&D game got developed, released and ITSELF pushed out of the popular zeitgeist and BG3 still isn’t even close to done.
And also, it released for $60. That’s full release price. Early access games are traditionally priced much less than full games to reflect that you arnt even getting the full game and also to try and win over early adopters. You release an unfinished game at full retail price however, it’s GOING to be reviewed as one and that’s their own fault.
BG3 is a DISASTER of a game. Good riddance to it.
@@OtioseFanatic that's just jumping the gun, imo
One the best changes that New Vegas made compared to Fallout 3 is that all speech checks were no longer randomized; your character either knew exactly what to say or they did not. And it contributed so much to actually making your character feel like it existed in the world.
this isn't fallout though so why would that matter.
@@joedatiusDoesn't matter if it's Fallout or not, New Vegas had an amazing speech check system. Honestly I wish BG3 would have implemented something similar instead.
All of your complaints about the game are things that Larian didn't put in Divinity original sin 2, because people complained about them in original sin 1. I'd say in Baldur's gate's case the problem is more people that demand the game adhere to 5e's ruleset to the letter, rather than Larian themselves, who already have designed away these problems in their own series.
The thing is, there is a significant number of people who prefer the "kick in the door" style of roleplaying. This is a phrase I recall from the 3.5e DM's guide that refers to a DM/players who prefer to let the numbers and dice have a more concrete impact on the story telling and a greater focus on the mechanics of the combat as opposed the more abstract approach you are promoting here as "real" D&D.
While I find the more abstract approach more fun personally, most of my friends with whom I play RPGs (tabletop and otherwise) are big fans of the number interaction in the mechanics (our DM was a mathematical science major, and it shows in how he treats the rules), and their tastes do matter, especially for a game like Baldur's gate 3 that is using the tabletop's association for marketing.. Why would someone like that buy Baldur's gate 3 if it was mechanically identical to Divinity original sin 2? I agree the latter's mechanics work better for a video game application, but it wouldn't play like the tabletop, and this type of person wants it to play like the tabletop, for better and for worse.
It's less a failure of the designers to adjust tabletop to computer (as they have already done so in a previous game) and more that the stickler's of the tabletop's mechanics need to be appeased, likely at the cost of those without such criteria's experience.
I completely agree about it being stupid though.
kick in the door is not dice heavy, its mostly combat heavy. run in, roll thembones, kill the gobbos, grab the loot, sell it, upgrade, restock and repair gair, repeat, ad nauseam. Intrigue can be just as dice heavy.
JSHADOWM you don’t know what I mean is what it sounds like.
Average roll on a d20 is 10.5
A +3 on your relevant score bumps it to 13.5
And since you'll inevitably be proficient, it's between a +2 and +4 in levels people actually play.
16.5.
The AC of most beasts is 15.
Humanoids, 16.
Heavily-armored enemies, 20
50-70% success chance feels pretty bad, even in 5e.
Yeah, rolls fail all the time even when you have overkill in a stat and even if you can technically not fail a roll because you're a min/max god you can still roll a 1. I think Plague's a bit off base here. I don't think his point is entirely without merit, but I do think perhaps there is a bit more nuance and space than he paints in the video. And 100% human psyhcology makes 50/50 with a natural number distribution feel awful. City of Heroes is an MMORPG that eventually had to put in streakbreaker code because people missing attacks multiple times in a row at 90%+ accuracy (cap of 95%) was a constant sore point in the community. So if you missed an attack at 95% chance to hit it'd force the next attack to autohit. Because humans had realistic RNG :D
I’m holding out until full release
*GODS GRANT ME STRENGTH*
I read it in Uriel Septim's voice xD That was your goal I take
People said the same thing about DOS1 and 2. The only difference is this time Chris Avellone isn't around to keep Larian from writing their trademark goofy-cheesy nonsense.
The only thing that matters is if Cyberpunk2077 shits the bed. If it does, the horde of "rpg fans" will flock to this, FFXVI, or Vampire (whichever sucks least) and then place Cyberpunk, and CDPR by extension, on the altar of "shit we all hated while pretending we weren't overhyped", right next to Skyrim and Mass Effect.
But Cyberpunk will not likely shit the bed, so in a year when this releases there will be no hype left and no one will talk about it except the few people who don't buy into hype and hyperbole, y'know, all five of us. In other words, this game is Pillars of Eternity with slightly more eyes on it.
Jokes on you, there's probably going to be a 2nd full release a year or so after the first, if D:OS & D:OS II are anything to go by.
@@ixis oh no..
@@billybobferguson3946 You wanna tell him or...?
Fun fact: almost the totality of the community is currently bitching about the exact opposite.
Specifically on Larian taking too much liberties with the official D&D rules to make the players miss less often and have too much convenient tools at their disposals.
If listening to actual smart GMs has taught me anything, the majority of D&D 5e players are idiots (I cannot speak for other systems) who don't know what 5e is (in terms of RAW) or what 5e is intended to do (it isn't for sci-fi gunfights, for example)
Thus, it only makes sense they whine about things they don't understand to earn street cred as traditionalists in an edition marred by nobody actually reading the rules. TBF nobody ever read the rules, but I feel 5e has taken this tradition to new heights.
@@SapphireCrook one of the most important rules that 5e does its best to remind the PC's and DM is that the rules are subject to change and encourage you to change whatever you like for the sake of enjoyment of the group. And so trying to get larian to make the game as traditional as possible is possibly the most toxic and anti DND as you can get since at the end of the day the Dungan Master has the final say of what is considered the proper rules for said game.
So pedantic assholes make it a hassle to play a game defined by being open and imaginative.
@@joedatius Except that Iarian isn't a GM and they aren't making a Director AI like Left 4 Dead 2 has, or XCOM2's apparently fudged rolls.
If they are, it sure doesn't show.
Additionally, what's the point of using the core of 5e if it's unfit for purpose and you have to rework it to the point of annoying fans?
I think there's an irony that 5e gets the video game that 4e was designed to be, warts and all.
@@SapphireCrook what do you mean they aren't the GM? they literally make the game and what it has for you its in every way a GM.
“Go play Disco Elysium, it has the breast feel of breasts”
-PlagueofGripes 2020
Any game that rewards (?) you for a no pants run is worth your time.
He has my vote
@@tomisabum your tie ordering you to drink 98% alcohol mixture is definitely something to remember
Morality systems in games have unsurprisingly always felt hilarious, I almost miss them. I'll never forget trying to play Knights of the old Republic as I really would act. And some random drug addict with a quest hook is like "I gambled all my money away please go solve all my problems for me while I stand in place", so I decide not to help them. Queue dark side anthem as my character literally channels glowing red energy into their body. . .
I was reminded of the time I gave a beggar by a grocery store money, and they got angry I didn't give them enough.
That's a D&D and video games problem, honestly. "My character goes on a murder spree and kills everyone in the camp. They're all evil, so even though I killed one by ripping her throat out with my teeth and then murdered the rest with her severed head, I'm a good guy. Not, you know, a psycho."
D&D at least has a DM who can veto that, and certain spells require or can turn you evil, but the rules I don't think care otherwise.
One thing to note is that the whole idea that you can "critically succeed or fail" at an ability check is wholly a house rule and isn't part of the tabletop game at all,. Rolling a 20 doesn't make you automatically succeed any task regardless of how absurd it is, beating the DC set by the DM is all that matters.
Rolling a 20 also means that the best possible outcome should happen. Like if you try to intimidate a king into giving up his kingdom to you and you roll a 20. The best possible outcome is that the king has a good sense of humor and doesn't kill you on the spot for treason or attempted regicide.
Everyone riding Larians D so hard rn but this is basically what prevents any kind of roleplaying I thought I could do in this game. I mean, endless bugs, unfinished third act, performance issues, horrendously tedious inventory and party system, rather flat characters from cut content, logic holes, dumb companion AI, no freemoving camera option and so on (also fully agreeing on the depth issues argument from the character creator system), this is my biggest gripe with it as well. If I make a strengthbased character and half of the time failing just outright results in a fight or failure progression, I do not want to fail half of my dicerolls. What do I have all those bonuses and proficiencies and advantage setups for if everytime it´s another "crossing my finger I don´t have reload fourteen times in a row" situation...
Wut iz bey beter that any othert Aaa game nowdays, stuf lickboter!1!
- Some BG3 hive mine drone
Your script scratched the itch that Baldurs Gate 3 was giving me. Something about... dedicated results from conversation, when i wanted a "DnD Tabletop experience game" but the game doesnt come close to that... was really getting to me.
Also, showed my brother the "Gohans many masks" video and it blew his mind.
You just covered all my problems with this game. Bravo.
Fun fact about THAT windmill: I got the jump on the goblin that was on top of the rocks, invisible sneak attacked them, which triggered the fight and FLOODING me with goblins. I proceeded to hole up in a nearby house, and was shot at THROUGH THE ROOF. Apparently there were holes in the roof that I wasnt allowed to see, meaning I retreated into a kill box, instead of "300 narrow passage" killing them all. Man, the fact that the camera let's you see SO FAR ahead is actually a hindrance to stealth/CHA builds. Want to be a rakish, fast talking, sneaky thief? Fuck you, one or the other
I shot the Goblin Leader with an Intimidating Shot, he failed the save, surrendered, and all the other goblins just fled. Fight was only a single round.
@@pmw1993 Damn really? That would be a nice laugh for a actual DND game. Imagine the DM preparing this big fight only for the Goblins to all run away scared.
You know its Plague when he says a small video (and it ends up being 40 minutes).
Wow, time flies. I thought it was short lmao
What I'm hearing is "incorporate passive checks."
I love how he says "It's technically not even a game yet." While I agree completely this may be the first "not a game" that I've put over 100 hours into.
Same :/
I did that with Conan Exile first personally
You played 100 hours of a divinity clone demo, yikes
A video game should be a video game. All the table top elements make this game a nightmare to play.
Rolling a nat 20 won't allow you to do *everything* . If you want to suplex a fucking dragon a nat 20 isn't going to let you do that unless your wizard casts enlarge on you or something.
You forget the "that guy" group will be the most vocal group because they want to do whatever makes their pp feel bigger. This isn't directed at gripes but some of the playerbase because damn are some of them brain dead.
Yeah, this is something DND-memes have completely ruined in new players. Everyone seems to think that nat 20 means you become a demi-god.
@@occiferjehons2329 In the RAW yeah but a lot of DMs do let nat 20s let you do ridiculous things because it's more fun that way sometimes.
I think that's why he made the stipulation of "If the DM agrees".
I mean if your campaign is super silly fucking go for it. Or if the roll is largely inconsequential. But never telling the players your DCs means you can just drop it if you feel itd make the day more fun. Seriously. Adapt and improvise is the dms motto.
Crazy how little BG3 changed from here to release. Game of the Year 2023 ladies, gentlemen, and those in-between/prefer either end
Neat, I was wanting to watch some gameplay to see if I wanted to buy it.
Now I can hear Plague gripe about it.
"It's so they can hide what they're doing... Those... Sneaky little freaks"
He's 100% right. I've got a player in my group who's a lovely person but has the emotional fortitude of a glass teaspoon.
All it takes is something bad happening to her 1 time in a session and she'll shut down entirely. So sometimes that Nat20 just turns into a 2.
I think a good way of explaining tabletop RPGs in general is this: The rules are there for conflict resolution. Nothing more. Everyone at the table is there for the same purpose: To create a memorable story that you can all be amused by, or even others can be amused by later if you tell them about it. It's a group storytelling game. The reason dice rolls exist is because a player would say "I think my fighter is strong enough to pin this guy to the ground." The DM may simply agree because the person they are wrestling is that frail and weak, or they might say "No, he's going to resist." How to resolve this conflict in the story's progression? Roll dice. All of the rules, stat blocks, etc exist so the players can resolve conflicts in the clashing ideas they might have about how the story should play out. There are many more "narrative-oriented" tabletop RPGs than games like D&D, which drastically simplify conflict resolution, which means the rules can also be simplified. The bad part about that is that, to me personally, the more conflicts you resolve on the way to your characters' goals, the more meaningful the story feels.
D&D is particularly agonizing if you've been doing a lot of a system like GURPS. It's a real joy to specialize in something right out the gate and know for sure that you'll be great at that particular thing, then have to deal with "Oh boy, a concept and skill my character is built around is a whole 10-20% more likely to succeed than the average person!"
This is honestly an issue with 5e in particular, where the bounded bonus system prevents any character's specialization from actually mattering. The system is built to make characters who are even more generic than any other edition.
They should use passive skill checks for most things.
Funny you mentioned the character creator. I've seen other youtubers praise the shit out of the character creator when there's really not much there, is there.. Gimme sliders with numbers so I can write down what I made.
Yeah I'm really hoping there's more options coming I know more body types are coming but right now there's not much hell maybe somebody wants to play a little old lady XD
Sliders are hard to work with tbh. I prefer the colors and face types. Just need more types
"Baldur's Gate does for dice rolls what e621 does for Animal Crossing. It does a great deal, and most of it's bad."
Plague is the best furry.
i agree a lot with this, chance based skill systems are really hard to implement well in video games, the only way I see them working is if you go the disco elysium route of giving not only multiple ways of accomplishing a single thing but also make failing rolls interesting with alternative events that maybe be just as succeeding and plus that you also make it possible to re-roll failed checks if you increased your stats in the meantime or if you did some kind of optional side objective that also increases your chances of succeeding
The best version of the X-Com style combat is Wasteland 3. The numbers are real, they don't lie like X-Com.
Also, holy shit I've never in my years seen real life legitimate dice rolls for social interactions end up so badly, so consistently. This game is lying, about how a D20 will often act.
While I don’t see people mention it often, you can infact get a 100% shot
Wonderful video. Wholly agree with everything
Nothing like BG3 makes me remember why I miss 2e randomized tieflings
Randomized tieflings?
@@music79075 Yeah Planescape had tables for randomizing your look and abilities, they had a lot more variation than "horns, tail, maybe hooves, and you can have any skin color you like as long as it's some shade of blue or red"
Randomized tieflings were the best. Physical contact withering plants, feathers, abnormally long arms to outright hilarious stuff like being immune to nonmagical weapons or burning when on holy ground.
Suplexing a dragon reminded me of FF6... When your martial arts user can suplex a moving train...
“This is why I hate video games, this is the male fantasy.”
*Suplexing Train*
The martial arts user can also get confused and suplex himself
Is Plague really bald or is he missing the top of his head and it's just an exposed brain?
He's worse, he has the sad horseshoe of barely there hair. He is a vampire of follicles, not enough for hair but not quite bald. He lies somewhere...in between.
Those with a wisdom of 5 think he’s bald
Those with a wisdom of 15 know the truth
I agree, I missed so much in this game it frustrated the heck out of me. I hate missing to the point where I always prioritize accuracy over power. And I don't want to miss out on dialogue or options so I always go charismatic, but in this game it doesn't even matter. You may succeed, or not, who knows, no one can tell. Having to save before every choice sucks. Entering a conversation then aborting it, saving and going back in to attempt the check is not how it should be played. But missing out on so many extra info or options due to sheer luck shouldn't be either...
"Until that f'ing windmill"
Getting FF Tactics flashbacks.
Dark Souls 2 flashbacks.
Curse of Strahd flashbacks
@@yourlocalpunkposer8107
Screw that windmill
@@yakudde that windmill changes a party..
This made me laugh a lot, great video.
A point on resting in DnD. Not BG3. You can only long rest once in a 24 hour period, it's in the rules. But then the DM would have to know the rules to enforce that. And many don't.
After a flood of "OMG! 10 OUT OF 10! BEST GAME EVAH!" reviews across the interwebs, this was a breath of fresh air.
Any chance of you reviewing Solasta: Crown of the Magister? I'd love an honest opinion on it.
Have to take issue with your characterization of JRPGs there, plague. That style of game also arose from D&D roots, just a very Japanese perspective of how those tabletop games work, separate from the CRPG (Western) perspective. I mean, you can't say "you're not playing a role" when that's literally the intention of a RPG, whether it's on-rails or open-world. Like him or not, Cloud Strife is every much a Player Character as a randomly-generated Baldur's Gate character (or indeed, a randomly-rolled WFRP character).
It's less about what is or isn't an accurate duplication of the tabletop experience (which personally I think is the worst thing to do in a VIDEO game), but more a matter of how the game chooses to present that role to the player, whether it's "here's the story and this is the part you're playing", or "here's a sandbox, go run around in it and do whatever". Some may prefer one to the other, but it's all still roleplaying in the end, if you ask me.
I've always thought of JRPGs as kinda like playable books, but, yeah, it's still an rpg in the way you describe.
It's almost like you're playing through the steps of an already-played/pre-determined campaign
Though you can't say that for sure even since then there's freedom like Persona gives you and stuff.
@@onimaxblade8988 Yeah, exactly. I agree with plague as far as annoyance when someone slaps numbers on a gun and says "our shooter now has RPG elements", but RPGs as a genre have evolved, both on the tabletop and in video game form, far beyond their Gygaxian roots, so I think there's a lot more wiggle room these days to define what an RPG *can* be, instead of trying to strictly enforce what it *must* be.
I mean sure, but you do realize you are kinda playing with semanthics, yes?
I absolutely am, but I think there's a distinction there that matters, which is why I brought it up.
@@DarkErdrick Fair enough, but by your standards as I understand them you are technically roleplaying EVERY videogame protagonist ever created in every single genre. Unless I just didn't follow you.
i can imagine one of the first mods to ever get made will be one that boosts conversation chances to 100%, or making it threshold based instead of roll based. Cause if i'm gonna cheat to get my desired result anyways, i might as well save myself 20 minutes (per convo, which probably translates to fucking YEARS cumulatively)
same idea i had with Morrowind, i was grinding levels in magic, until i just said "i can either spam this shit-tier crafted spell next to the guild bed, getting constantly assaulted by overzealous assassins and making ludicrous amounts of cash from the free enchanted daggers and high quality armor (top-tier game design, just fucking nuke your own economy with DLC), for hours real-time. Or i could just give myself a couple thousand gold and max out alteration/destruction, and save myself the hemorrhoids"
remember kids: if you're gonna set up a macro, you might as well just cheat the fast way (if it's a singleplayer game, i don't condone multiplayer cheating, unless its fun for *everyone* else, too, like those DS3 cheater boss fights)
Rest systems in games server a different purpose than rest systems in PnP. In PnP resting is limited often times to make you go through a battle of attrition and compound various choices you've made as well as social breaks. IF this puts you in dire straights it's the DMs jobs to help make sure the way forwards is still possible unless you've made grievous errors. In video games it's a bit different. Rest systems and recovery systems are normally more about making each combat encounter balanced to your full strength party. Because in PnP a grueling failure of an adventure can be fun with a good DM, in video games a grueling failure of a dungeon crawl is normally extremely frustrating for players. This allows individual fights to be much more challenging and exciting because they don't have to worry about designing around you losing 5 hp a fight resulting in you utterly failing 45 minutes from now due to running out of healing. Treating PnP resting and video game resting the same is an exercise in folly. XCOM injury system is basically a way to try and find a middle ground between attrition and utterly screwing over a player for minor mistakes in the long run. But even XCOM can destroy you via attrition depending on difficulty and while some might find that fun, most do not. Not in video games where there is no DM around to guide things back to "there is hope" or at least make some event to make the ultimate defeat more memorable/fun than "game over".
the problem is they then break the immersion of this story by having the encounters overly hard. you are crossing perhaps 20 feet, maybe 3 or 4 combat encounters, every "day". not to mention the immersion break of fighting a boss, and then being thrown back to your wooded camp, and then walk the next 20 feet for the next boss fight.... while in a building.
it is simply not fitting the urgent narrative that Larian is trying to sell here. it is especially frustrating that a lot of the camp dialogue is based around the presumption that you are going to rest every 2 feet, so if you soldier through or "skip" to the next story encounter without side grinding+resting like i did my first 2 games you will completely miss a lot of the early camp scenes.
many scenes are skipped by simply progressing the story with a single fight if one doesn't go wandering off.
@@MFenix206 That's just not how most gamers approach things so you're off base with that complaint. Wrong medium. Most gamers don't take time limits seriously and we've been trained not to. The kingdom will always wait for us to save it. Because not doing so actually ruins the experience for most. Only a few rare games take their time pressure seriously.
@@Ralathar44 it isn't how the COD generation interprets it maybe. Any sort of story gamer is going to notice shit like this.
this is the RPG genre, not the looter shoot scooter genre *you* are off base. RPG is all about semi-realism, narrative, story pressure, stakes, etc... it is the "living in a fantasy world" genre.
walking 2 feet and then resting for the day when you are told you have 2 or so days to live? not conducive to story pacing.
the fact that the game also assumes you are a week into it when you have managed to walk a half mile from the beach to the grove is utterly stupid. i didn't realize until my third playthrough that I had missed 3 camp scenes in the first 20 minutes of act 1 post tutorial..
I still haven't managed to get Gale's weave scene to trigger (presumably based on story progression and can only be triggered at a certain time) which is a prerequisite for romancing him. so I am locked out of major story content because I didn't rest every 12 feet!
I know for a fact I have missed a significant amount of Wyll's content. about the only one i am confident i actually saw most of the cinematics for was Shadowheart.
I want to grow to know my companions damn it!
this is further not helped by each companions camp scene taking priority, meaning you would have to camp multiple times to clear the "backlog" of scenes that will poof into thin air if you advance the story slightly in-between.
@@MFenix206 Don't throw bullshit attacks, it's been no time pressure since Final Fantasy 1 and the original Zelda on the NES. I'm 36 and I've been here since Atari and playing games on DOS having to enter in command line executables manually to start the game. So would you kindly STFU little sister :D.
Very very few games have done time pressure and time progression. A few select games like Majora's Mask and Outer Wilds do it but the game is built from the bottom up for it. RPGs and Adventure games and open world games are all very story heavy but very very rarely have time pressure. Maybe a timed mission or quest here and there. Walking simulators are all story and they are even more lax. At most there will be specific scenes or areas with a time limit like the escape from the floating island in Final Fantasy 6 (you better MFing wait for Shadow!) as well as the Opera House scene where you're rushing to save someone. But they're like a novel change of pace from the rest of the game, it'd suck if the whole game was like that.
There are very good reasons there is no time pressure in most games. Not the least of which is "how do you balance your time progression?" For example it can't be real time because otherwise you screw over people who read slow or explore. It can't be per activity or you screw over those that like to do side quests or companion quests. "Time Loops" like Outer Wilds and Majora's Mask circumvent the time pressure by letting people play at their own pace but still essentially have infinite time. But not everything can be a time loop. Hell even Chrono Trigger, which is a time loop heavy story game, does not have any actual time pressure and you can take as long as you want.
Problem is that time pressure just doesn't end up being fun for most games and it impacts different players different. You need a game design centered around it to deliver a very specifically flavored experience with impeccable balancing to make time limits feel good and even then many/most will hate it.
That being said for specific scenes/scenarios in games time limits can be good.
@@MFenix206 Now in a separate reply I want to acknowledge that the specific complaints you threw at Bauldur's gate are valid, they just have nothing to do with time pressure. That's more playability, pacing, and poor execution. Possibly a bit of sloppy writing. No time system issue though.
That same scenario you're talking about has been done well in story games you have all the time in the world to fart around even though the story insists the world is on the brink of collpase like Dragon Age Origins for exmaple. Done well in dozens of story heavy games like that in fact. Pretty much every major good RPG/CRP. Even the grand pappy of this genre Neverwinter Nights where you can take all the time you need as Neverwinter is supposedly crumbling around you. Yet NWN 1 still holds up amazingly well thanks to having areas with well done personality that feel unique, strong themeing, good story lines, and an amazing VA performance by Aribeth de Tlymerande. It'd still be a top tier CRP if it wasn't for the graphics/UI/controls/camera being old. The gameplay, the character builder, the story, and the characters are all still quite good even by today's standards.
"the resting system relies entirely on the dungeon master telling you not to use it"
Not sure about other editions, but in 5th you can only benefit from a long rest once per day.
The short rest abuse is the real issue, but so few classes benefit from short rests outside of regaining hit points
Every class except sorcerer, ranger and rogue get important resources back on a short rest (and the latter is just because rogues don't even do resources), not to mentions 1/sr abilities.
Isn short rest supposed to take about 12 hours, and lomg rest days to weeks?
If the dm bothers to keep track of time, the rests very much come with their cost inbuilt.
It seems reasonable tonme that a short rest in an unsecure location, say in a dungeon would incur the risk of an ambush, or evsn a large scale coordinated assault.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 No, short rests are 1 hour and long rests are 8 hours. You might be thinking of gritty realism (aka "Fuck casters") where a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is a week.
@@Nukestarmaster oh. Well I underszand the problems involved then. 1 hour is not much time. Mayve you should be made to chose what to replenish.
Actually you can only do up to 4 short rests a day.
welp, you've made evident to me why I love TTRPGs and _loathe_ VGTTRPGs.
Then again, it was explained in a simple adage years ago - "TTRPGs have rules. Rules can be interpreted, bent, broken, and weaseled around. Video games, have laws. Not legal laws, _natural laws_." You can simply never talk your way out of gravity, and as a result, you cannot effectively recreate this experience inside such a rigid system. It's not possible.
Honestly, this is mostly fair. People who play 5e aren't happy, people who play normal games with normal game design aren't happy. I'm hoping that they have a version that removes the 5e aspects from the game because, right now, it just makes me pissed to have to reload the same damn save for the 500th time - all because my Wizard with a +8 to Arcana rolled a 2 on a check of 11.
This video quality is great, I'm assuming the time it took to script was probably the most difficult part but overall I just want more content from you in general.
Throwing some dice to decide whether I dislike the soothing commentary of this video.
Edit: failed the check. I like the short-style videos and would enjoy more.
The dc is 30 wisdom ability check, no wonder you fail.
@@Vincentpanh
Lmao
Achshually... When it comes to combat, Larian did predict that people wouldn't like missing a lot. From what I've been told they doubled the chance to hit specifically so that people wouldn't feel like they were missing all the time. They also doubled the HP of monsters to counter the increased hit rate, so that fights wouldn't be too short as a result.
But yeah, it seems that Larian's RPG engine gives you a sizable handicap to your hit rating when fighting in low visibility - which is a problem when a large number of fights take place in some dank dungeon. This is what sets it apart from tabletop, where people would find some clever way of circumventing a problem like that, or maybe the GM would just be lenient about it. There's also other factors that ruin your chance to hit, like fighting from low ground. These are some rather unsavory mechanics that Larian brought over from Divinity, along with their unfortunate habit of making surface effects (like fire) a dominant factor in almost every encounter.
Yup, they lowered AC to raise hit chance and then raised HP to compensate. Which has the unintended consequence of screwing spellcasters. So now things like magic missile are useless, so they had to add items to double the damage of magic missile. The game is full of bad decisions like this. They could've just kept their DOS2 combat system that they understand and focused on hiring good writers and it would've been better, and I'm not a fan at all of DOS2 combat.
I've found a lot of your observations to be totally correct, I've got 60-70 into the game now and my findings are disheartening. I find all of the characters to be unlikeable, perhaps because I can't actually interact with them in any "successful" manner with rolls that as you say I have failed *every single one of*. Combat is so-so to me, but as a DoSII vet I don't mind it too much, the voice acting and visuals are absolutely excellent but the storyline is also nothing to note IMO. I find the plot device of the mindflayer tadpole super gamey lazy.
I'm not save scumming and the resting system is just trashing me, perhaps that's my management of skills but I was not really guided into the resting system at all? I got to level 3 before even realising you could just go to my camp as the game hadn't explained to me it had been magically set up without my knowledge.
I want to love this game, I want to actually empathise with some of the characters, but I find them all hard work and like I'm being punished by my boss by sending me on a team building weekend with the *entire* narcissistic, sociopathic sales dept.
I'm not sure how much my take on the laziness of the video has value, as this subject matter is fascinating to me and somewhat overwhelms the other aspects. But I do like what you put forth in this video.
i like the thematic background video but the sound mixing is a bit meh plague. I'm trying to listen to your insanity, but dnd jargon and screeching sound effects keep leaking in. consider lowering that layer like 25-30%, so i can listen to your sweet sweet voice.
I wanted the audio to be an option, but any lower and it may as well have been muted. The lower portions are already totally inaudible anyway. Will probably just not bother trying to mix anything in the future since most of my videos are silent anyway.
@@PlagueOfGripes it'd be a hassle but audio equalization in audacity and then porting it back in would fix that
@@PlagueOfGripes I listen through old Radio speakers rejiggered to accept PC stereo output and the background dialog mixing was just fine. Ignore the OP on this one, he's probably one of those obnoxious gamers you run into in instant-dead TTK Shooters who knows exactly where you were walking 50ft away b/c his expensive _gamer_ headphones have Hyper Normalization built in
@@PlagueOfGripes I didn't even notice it, the levels are probably fine.
Baldurs gate 3 is an angry GM
Makes party fight beholders at level 4 .... seems legit
Wait there is a beholder.
Only encounter it’s weaker cousin “specter” with the petrified drows
Can we talk about how they gave the trickery cleric 9 dex? She has the strength for melee but cant wear heavy armor, and gets a dex penalty to every other armor.
Who dumps Dex in d&d??
Unrelated, but Shadowheart is pretty strong. Every time I use her, she does more damage than the other followers.
Happy to see my favorite complaint department make a video on a rpg aspect. Thank you neko gripes!
Just listening to plague talk and ramble about literally anything is why I'm subbed.
I demand that “Breastfeel” is used as a metric for all game reviews from now on!
Atleast the "choise you have" is not as bad as on the Telltale Games have.
I'm still excited for this game, even though I've played the early access and agree with most of what you're saying, Plague. Mostly because it was put into early access early enough to be changed significantly, so this is my chance to make a difference by doing what I do best: Loudly and exhaustively complaining on forums.
I have really enjoyed it a lot, honestly. I guess I’m not a table top player so idk shit, but the writing is great. I see what they are going for, my play through have been different and fun, and I failed a ton of shit. I guess if you are the type to get aggravated by missed rolls then you would hate this...just like xcom...
What larian doesn't fix pc modders likely will.
They are a very mod friendly studio.
If you want to 'fix' BG3's combat system, reduce enemy attacks, armour class, and saving throws by ~2. Then reduce their damage by about 20%.
If you want to fix BG3's resting system, first allow two short rests between long rests. Then, make it so that every time you take a long rest, you build up a point of "Psychic Poison". You get an extra point if you used the tadpole that day, and every time you see your "dream lover" you build up one point for each failed skill check.
When your Psychic Poison equals your lowest mental stat (Int, Wis, or Cha) it's game over. You can remove Psychic Poison through certain events (killing illithids, destroying tadpoles, defeating champions of The Absolute) or through consumable magic items, like Potions of Restoration.
Love u Plague!
I second this
I admit, I wasn't sure I agreed with you until about half way through the video, then it all started to come together. I would love to hear more of your opinions on other TTRPGs.
I always wanted to hear Plague gripe about WRPGs and Isometric RPG games.
I liked this video Plague. I hope that you make more like it!
The whole "philosophy" behind 5th edition D&D is to bullshit you into buying a worse version of 3.5 on the premise that is better for the DM and players not to focus on so many on rules.
More like a beta version of 3.0.
I hate the fact that the randomness stops me from learning more about the game world and the characters.
I want to know more about the story, not get cockblocked because I needed to roll a 7 charisma check and I rolled a 6, despite having 16 charisma. It doesn't make it more interesting, it actively takes away my enjoyment.
*That whole lost cellphone bit*
Ok. This is getting a little too personal...
I like AD&D because a lot of the roleplaying and stuff can be very freeform and not everything is constant rolling outside of combat.
And the penalties are harsh enough that you can't just infinitely roll your way out of a situation or break the game by doing something dumb. WotC has a real "hey if the game gets broken that's your DM's fault for not thinking hard enough" attitude with a rather rules light roll for everything system in 5th edition (where you have to house rule it into not being easily exploited) instead of a solid commonsense foundational ruleset that is adjudicated by the DM.
I recognize that german suplexing a dragon reference. One of the all time best green texts.
Also love these kinds of videos. In your words, it ruuullezzz.
Dude name-dropped one of my most favorite games of all time(Disco Elysium). What an absolute GOAT.
BG3 is an insanely easy game. If you bypass the combat via barrels and surface spam in my honest opinion. I just send every barrel I find to camp. Then when there is a tough fight i just pepper the area with barrels and explode them. Boom. Everything dead. Miniboss hag? Boom dead instantly in less than 1 turn. Ultra tough encounter with tons of enemies in the goblin camp? KABOOM! Dead. Maybe 1-2 survive because of positioning. Still dead.
Surface spam via cantrips is also great. The fire cantrip makes a fire surface that does damage over time to anyone standing EVEN IF YOU MISS. This isn't in 5e... but it makes the spell infinitely more useful than anything else because it by proxy means its a spell that doesnt miss that sometimes deals extra damage (when it actually hits). A DM would tell me this is silly, stop. Or that the NPCs would look at me placing 500 exploding barrels and say you know what? This is not very gucci of you.
But nah. Its a video game with an uncaring DM in many cases.
Yeah, it's a lot like Divinity Original Sin in that if you set things up properly, you will nuke the enemies near-instantly no matter how tough they appear to be.
"this game is easy because I broke it" isn't the same thing as the game straight up being easy lmao
they should fix that though
@@nateszigeti3653 That's not breaking it, games made by Larian Studios have always expected you to play like this or suffer the consequences.
@@SeruraRenge11 Which is ironic, since 5e RAW is designed around Attack and Cantrip spam, and everything else is gravy.
@@nateszigeti3653 BG3 is hard if you play it like DnD. BG3 is a walk in the park if you play is like DOS. Its not breaking the game so much as playing as intended although not intended by 5e.
I liked this. Love listening to you ramble about... well anything.
I see the movement wanting to push D&D away from simulation and more towards a streamlined "moments that matter most" approach, I just don't agree. Actual combat is messy, combatants failing to maneuver and regretting their current position. Not every conversation changes your life,some do. Some are about sex at least. I need the trivial,or the constant strive for max impact renders the whole experience banal. Everything being exciting success devalues too much of the experience for me, breaking the artistic concord,the agreement that we shall inhabit this world.
An idea I had for a morality system was instead of good and evil, players would be given virtues and vices to choose from which decide what options that character can even make, which will also be subject to change depending on player action throughout the story (the coward becoming brave, compassionate becoming apathetic, etc.). I experimented with this idea while playing Star War the Old Republic, using the Evil Virtues from TvTropes. I ranked the virtues based on what kind of character I wanted to play, and always prioritized the highest ranked virtue that's apparent in the dialogue. As a result the character alignments were all across the spectrum, with every virtue resulting in both good and evil choices being made.
11:00
How can you be so brave yet so true?
I didnt knew what e621 was... I regret searching it on google.
"What do you desire"
Me: No Dragonborn options?
Tadpole: "Oh no, I'm in one of these one's aren't I?"
After playing for 15 hours i kinda feel the same way. Dialog rolls are fuckin annoying. When i roll 1 on a "roll 4" check i just wanna punch someone. And it happened multiple times. And even if you get the roll and avoid conflict you get exactly 0 exp for it. WTF. Combat is fine tho. Even if you miss you still can move around or do some free actions.
If they are giving you 0 experience for avoiding fights that reward exp and loot then they are doing it wrong. Taking the diplomatic option instead of the fight should always award you just as much exp as if you won the fight. Otherwise most players will take the fight just to avoid missing exp. Similarly they have to make sure a smooth talker playthrough results in about the same amount of gold/loot overall as a murder hobo playthough or people will murder hobo just to avoid missing the loot/gold.
yeah. here the skill checks are almost always dependent on the dice. there is practically nothing you can do post-character creation to help you with skill checks.
Pathfinder Kingmaker has skill checks too, and can be brutal like BG3 too, but unlike BG3 you can actually *develop* your skills as you level. most checks are designed to be in the range of a 50/50 for a character of that level unless it is particularly difficult (like intimidating a barbarian ghost priest of the God of war for instance) and they also grant XP, unlike BG 3 which generally *deprives* you of XP for going with skill checks.
by level 4 in PFKM you can have +8 or more on a skill check if you really want to go into it. here? you have your attribute, chosen at level 1, and a measly +2 from proficiency that you choose at level 1.
@@MFenix206 For a contrast here I'd recommend playing through Neverwinter Nights 2 as a charisma specialized bard with diplomacy, bluff, perform, taunt, and maybe a touch of intimidate. Then dump skill points in whatever else. You'll be subpar at fighting but that game really lets you feel the power of being a specialized conversational character. Best dialog experience in a game I've had to date for a "smooth talker" style character. IIRC I never felt deprived for winning skill checks to avoid fights.
The issue here (beyond the 0xp and lack of rewards BS) seems to but that you are level 4 in the D&D system by the end of the demo and that's just barely getting started. So you'd start with +3 as much from a stat check and then you'd add in your relevant skill ranks. If I was to create a Bard in NWN 2 a level 4 Bard would starting with 16 charisma, 14 int, and 12 other stats I'd have a max of +7 of each skill and then +3 from stats. This means your skill checks will be D20 + 10 as a specialist character. You start with +4 max in a skill check (plus attribute bonus) and then get a max of +1 per level if you continue to invest in it so level 4 is +7 plus attribute bonus. If BG 3 operates differently than that let me know but that is D&D character design.
I would expect a specialist character to pass almost any skill check they focus in from the start and keep maxed (athletics, diplomacy, slight of hand, etc).
Pure attribute checks however are much more random since you have lower modifiers and I imagine from what I've seen this is where the frustration is. So a very easy attribute check has a DC of 5 and D20 + 3 (from 16 Strength for example) should be enough to pass that outside of rolling a 1. But the average DC is actually 15 which gives you a 50% fail chance as a fairly specialized character since ability modifiers are small. IMO skill checks work really well but ability checks (strength, dex, int, etc) are where it can be frustrating and those I feel like should be lowered from an average DC of 15 to an average DC of 10-12 to make them feel less frustrating in a video game. In PnP you can turn failure into high entertainment, but a game does not have the ability to creatively improvise like that, you just fail and if you're constantly failing with no creative storytelling from a DM to make it funny it's just going to feel bad.
I very much agree with everything you're saying. The major things I'd add as problems for this game are ones of narrative scale and how the main character feels undefined.
The games choices become limited because they wanted to make the beginning of the game 'epic' in scale. In other rpg's the starting area will tend to be unhinged from the main plot, serving mostly as an onboard to the story that allows you a space to make meaningful decisions for a small area that in the greater scale of things doesn't matter. This gives the player a lot more agency within the scope of the first area and allows for a gradual escalation into the main plot that feels natural and makes sense for the main character.
In this game the starting area is entirely focused on what seems to be the primary plot and this means the choices presented to the player get gimped. The biggest characterization of this is on the path where you side with the goblins. No matter what you do, no matter how close you get to the drow lady on the enemy side she will try to kill you at the end and even if you talk her out of that specific action her faction becomes hostile to you. This is obviously because of the way that she and her faction tie into the 'epic' main plot but we're in such an isolated region with its own isolated politics that under normal circumstances there's no reason they couldn't just have the 'evil' faction take over that area and call back to it later in the game and the developers made the choice to present this story in a way that limit's the ability to give meaningful choices to the player.
The moment to moment story here is suffering because EVERY action you take in the prologue area is in service to the main plotline. Every side quest is 'get this bug out of my head' which makes sense because of how catastrophic the bug is BUT again the developers made the choice to present that as the main driving force behind the story that way and the game suffers for it. They present the player with a choice, but when the player takes that choice they're railroaded back to a 'default world state' because the dm has an epic story to tell and doesn't want this small section of the story to get in the way of the overall plot.
I'm not even sure you play as the main character in this game. It feels like all of your companions have a plot and story going on but you're just a weird bystander in events with no real personality. I think this is tied into the fact that come the full game each companion will actually be selectable as a main character which worked as a conceit in divinity 2 (in part because that game felt like one built for co-op) but feels like here its just going to make it feel like you're playing as a companion character at best no matter what you do because they aren't willing to write for a custom main character that you can choose to not have in the plot, and each story selectable character is going to have the plot of a non player party character. I can get behind a somewhat blank slate main character if that blank slate is presented meaningful choices that allow you to define the character through your actions over time but it doesn't feel like they're doing that, it feels like the main character is just a placeholder for the other characters in the party
that is a problem of the 5ed system. In pathfinder or D&D 3ed you get incredible high values for skill checks even in the beginning of the game, the problem then, comes if the dm decides that everything is CD 40
the sweet spot for 3.5 is levels 3-6 imo. You can have the skills and feel good about it but there isnt yet a cosmic gap between someone proficient and someone who dabbles
This is something that 4e fixed, by having DC depend mostly on level, and have stat bonuses be somewhat rare.
so the difference between trained and not trained would never be much more than like 30-20% chance of success without actually uses resources.
HP bloat was still an issue AIRC.
I don't think that's necessarily a problem that 5e has so much as the translation of 5e into a game. For 5e, I think the system handles well in tabletop format whereas a video game like this (Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder Kingmaker) wants specialization and those high numbers found in Pathfinder. Unfortunately, I think the Devs were chained to 5e, being the current hotness.
Nah, 5e has it right there in the rules take 10 is the floor for any check that doesnt have a direct failure consequence and that you should use degrees of success/failure for reactions of everything from nps to trap triggers.
@@suddenllybah eh i prefered 3.5 and older 2e adnd because it had so many build options and you actually chose what to train in every level.
By comparison 5e just feels like everythig is on rails.
When you mentioned X-COM I was hoping you would explain, that every mission a sequence of rolls gets generated and then game actions are using these rolls in the exact order the sequence was generated. That's why save scumming works, change order of your squad actions, and you can make the more important actions succeed. And as to why predicted 100% action can fail are hidden modifiers. Vipers have hidden bonus for dodging.
That is... not how save scumming works... save scumming just allows you to reroll, allowing another chance at getting the positive result. In fact, it's the ANTI save scumming option that seeds your chances, though i'm not entirely sure as to the specific mechanics of how. As for the Viper's dodge, that's considered independent of the hit/miss chance (actually it only procs if you hit, so i guess it is kinda dependent) it's the same dodge mechanic your soldiers can have. The 100% miss thing is because the game straight up lies to you most of the time about what your ACTUAL hit chance is, either rounding it up or down. There are mods that tell you exactly what's going on under the hood, giving you your actual hit chance, and telling you exactly what is modifying your success chance, like elevation, enemy cover, enemy bonuses, etc.
I see you save scumming Plague.
You cannot escape your sins!
Keep doing more of these. They're nice to listen to while drawing (or at least trying to).
"In programming all elements are known."
Hmm. So what you're saying is we need to spend less time on making light look good in water, and more on developing game systems capable of creating content on-the-fly.
I'm in.
Procedural generation suck generally.
@@HellecticMojo So did graphics. Till they didn't.
It's just a matter of putting the effort in.
@@HotaruZoku processing/resolution power isn't the problem of procedural generation.
@@HellecticMojo .....I didn't say it was.
My point was "graphics sucked, till we poured time and manpower into it."
That's what procedural gaming will take. A shift. Studios deciding the most important part of a game is the GAME, and not how well light diffuses through leaves.
@@HotaruZoku and the point of procedural is to NOT put in the man hours. By making the stage and compositions by randomization and formula instead of actually crafting things themselves with specific intent.
This is the griping that I subscribed for. Please do more of these.