Larian_Swen

1

While it’s not going to be in EA immediately, the features and mechanics that allow a character to perform an action as a reaction will trigger automatically. The players will be able to control which reactions they want to enable in anticipation of enemy actions. E.g. a wizard would disable their Attack of Opportunity but enable their Shield spell, which will be cast automatically whenever the wizard is targeted by an attack or Magic Missile spell.

2

We don’t have grappling, but we have shoving. Extra attack will work like in 5e (though a bit less limiting). You currently can’t actively ready an action, but you can select which one of your reactions can trigger during the enemy turn. We’re not doing auto-casting. Ammunition is there for things that are special ammo. Spell components are only present on spells that require expensive materials as a balancing tool.

3

Yes – we actually started with a more mundane version that but it didn’t work that well and made it harder to read which is why to give it some extra flash.

4

HB/MM/DMG are the base we are starting from but we are taking material from other books too.

5

We’re planning a mixture of magic items from published DnD materials and some homebrew items of similar complexity and power level.

6

The small portion of the adventure we’ve shown takes place many miles East of Baldur’s Gate, and the initial journey will take players along the banks of the river Chionthar, and surrounding wilderness and settlements, toward BG and the coast. You won’t be walking the whole way to BG in real-time, so there will be several large, open regions. Later, you’ll visit the city of Baldur’s Gate itself, of course. Other places I’m not going to spoil for you because discovery and exploration are part of the joy.

7

This is our campaign, but it's absolutely your adventure. The small amount of gameplay we've shown so far, focused on one of our origin characters, but whether you roll a custom or origin character, the choices you make and the actions you take carry the same weight. In Baldur’s Gate 3, ‘origin characters’ are basically fully-fledged companions, that you can optionally play. BG 1 & 2 had companions with intricate, unique backstories and quests, and our origin system allows us to give you the choice of getting even closer to those stories by roleplaying as characters that also act as companions. Even if you’re not playing as an origin, you can explore their backstories and personal quests by having them in your party. Just as with a custom character, you’re still deciding how those characters behave, how their story unfolds, and how they interact with the world and the party.

Custom characters will see the world react to them based on their chosen race, class and background..Creating a character gives a sense of who you are, but the heart of the game’s reactivity is based on what you do after character creation.

A very practical example of how custom characters are tied to the story is the fact that the game identifies and recognises them as Baldurians. Given the importance of the city in the game (in its own way BG is very much one of the game’s protagonists -or antagonists depending on your perspective and how events unfold), making it the players’ home makes the place and the stakes you’re fighting for feel very personal. (It should be noted though that player characters from the Underdark or other places - githyanki and drow for example - have their own unique experiences and backstory in the world, as you’d expect).

8

We are trying to make all characters with backstory available as origin characters. Other than that, you will be able to recruit generic mercenaries and customize these. We’re also planning to allow you to build a custom party from the character creation screen though that most likely won’t be present in early access from the get go.

9

Yes. We actually have an entire system in development for grit and grime that adapts to circumstance. But it’s not ready yet. When it comes to world and story we aim for a broad spectrum. It can get very very dark but there are also moments of brightness.

10

There’s several reasons we’re doing it this way. Of course there are story reasons but it also allows you to get closer to your character; their thoughts, their feelings and moments of introspection allowing you to truly understand their motivations. We’ve experimented with several styles when starting development but this was the one that at the end of the day stood out and we’re actually quite excited by what we can do with it. It turned out to be an excellent way of allowing players to tell their own story and role-play their character on a deeper level. I think it’s a wonderful tool for role-playing and story telling and when you’re playing it’s like you’re narrating your own adventure.

11

We’d like to allow the players to combo small common-sense bonus actions with full actions. From the mentioned Dash and Hide still require a full action while Disengage is merged with Jump as a bonus action. We are aware of the effect this has on Rogues and are looking into ways of keeping them appealing and viable.

12

Identify is going to be in. And I did indeed mean magical items.

13

One of the big themes of BG3 is the focus on party over individuals. As we were trying to encourage more cooperation between party members in combat, we had the idea to let them share their turn for total tactical coherence. Additionally, it provides a more comfortable co-op experience.

The introduction of the common party turns naturally leads to the changes for the initiative system - we need to compare the initiative of groups of characters instead of individuals. We have considered several ways to do that, some more complex than others, and for EA we’re going with taking the highest initiative roll outcome in the party or NPC group.

We chose this way because we want to explore the mechanical subtheme of allowing the entire party to benefit from each member’s personal excellence in some area. The same way an eloquent Bard can lead their entire party through a tough dialogue check, a swift Rogue should be able to give their party the best shot at going first in combat. On top of that, this way of resolving team initiative opens the way for the player to scout out the enemy with the top initiative and neutralize them before entering the combat

However, all of that said, it is something we are still working on and experimenting with. If we find it doesn’t work as well as we hope, we’ll tinker with it. It’s one of the things we’ll figure out during Early Access.

14

We’ll demo multiplayer at a later stage, but the camp is certainly an important part of BG3.

15

Each avatar will be granted special significance and that significance will be based on player agency. There are many possible fates waiting for you.

16

That’s really a question for WOTC.

17

I replayed BG1 & 2 when we started on this and the same things that stood out back then still stand out today: The sense of being on an epic quest with a party of interesting companions which I need to keep happy, the promise that there’s something to be discovered everywhere I go, the sense that I’m someone special in this world and make a difference and a lot of “oh that’s cool”. I think I appreciated it even more now than I did back in the days.

We really don’t want to spoil anything but we wouldn’t call it Baldur’s Gate 3 if there wouldn’t be a link. Let me just say that we touch upon the story of BG 1 & 2 in meaningful ways, there are returning characters and what happened in BG 1/2/tob leads to what happens into BG3. You won’t necessarily see that at the start of the adventure but you will quickly understand once you get further into the game.

I always thought when it's ready is a pretty good answer.

The level of immersion. From the narrative to the depth of the systems and mechanics, we’ve never made a game before that brings you closer to its characters, and offers more tools to the players to define the story they way you can in BG3. This is really core and the new version of our engine has allowed us to make huge leaps in every area of development. Not to mention it’s also using an entirely different rule-set, in an entirely different setting, of course. And it's lot darker. You can do some really terrible things.

Wrote an answer to that here - https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fhk1u3/im_swen_vincke_creative_director_at_larian/fkbkrl2/