Leveling up doesnt feel like DND

[Jzoo]

In other DND games before BG3, leveling up has always been a detailed process. one in which I often made mistakes and often felt overwhelmed and had to google or search what this was and how it worked before investing a "Feat". Unfortunately for BG3, these other games have left an impression of what feels "Right" during the level up process for a DND video game. And i just feel like the leveling up process in BG3 has been dumb'd down and overly simplified.

Anyone else feel this way?
Anyone want to tell me that its in early release and isnt complete? lol
Just worried. Got big hopes for this game and im looking forward to playing paladin.

[PhamTrinli]

I am not afraid to boldly say that 5e is hot dumpster fire trash and should be un-released and the people who made it should be ashamed and feel bad

[Masamune]

Originally posted by dolby:

Hope they make more changes and add choices, Cos leveling a rogue was like the worst experiance in history of video games level ups. May as well not asked me if i wanted to level him up.

That's why I'm waiting for a Wild Magic Sorcerer (to then mod it into something even more crazy, if necessary :) ). Ah, the possibility to nuke everyone around when someone asked you for a little help with charisma checks or an invisibility... Or to turn into a sheep when you're the last one still alive and everything relies on you... Nothing like WMS to keep everyone's spirit up! I'm sure my companions will love me dearly :D

[Dorok]

The more I discover the 5e the less I feel it simplified combats, it is superior on that aspect to all other D&D but for 3.5e, in this case the comparison is complicated.

But also it seems rather clear that 5e pushed too far the character building simplification. BG3 EA and even Solasta aren't representative yet, both are missing the multiclass which is an important point of character building diversity and by adding a bit of complexity to the whole system.

Still if 3.5e is more complex for building, it's also a total mess, and for me it's negative, it's a system for OP builds, but OP builds are boredom combats so total pointless crap.

[Alealexi]

Originally posted by psibot:

5e Rule set seeking to simplify things have less hassle and shallow learning curves. I understand that notion but not being able to make meaningful or wrong decisions makes also the building phase uneventful.
Also, characters have become very similar in terms of attack defense and subclass supply vanilla combos.

Result bigger player base with a less interesting system you what was the goal… we’ll see if that holds long term.

If you think that the 3.5 leveling system was eventful the you are wrong. It was a mess. I don't want to spend hours on leveling up since in 3.5 you had to preplan your character ahead of the game. So when you leveled up you already knew what you were building cause you already did all the hours by starting your character from lvl 20 and going down from there. In 5e it may be over simplified but at least I don't have to spend too much time in chosing what I want to do.

[Alealexi]

Originally posted by lazarusblack:

So not a fan of 3.5 then?

Started on 4e and moved to pathfinder/3.5 because it was better. Pathfinder has it flaws and it was too number crunchy for my taste. Then 5e came out and brought back the role play in the game. Sure they went a bit over board in some areas but it did fix some of the problems that 3.5 had.

It was an open question and I would say that levelling, using this hybridised 5e/Larian levelling system, does feel far removed from DnD. And boring. Really lacklustre.

What hybrid 5e Larian leveling system? That is exactly how 5e works.

Now I'm not saying they should have used 3.5e as the foundation for the game (though I wouldn't have minded)

But they didn't have a choice on what system they could use. Either way 5e is still a great system.

[dolby]

Originally posted by Alealexi:

Originally posted by psibot:

5e Rule set seeking to simplify things have less hassle and shallow learning curves. I understand that notion but not being able to make meaningful or wrong decisions makes also the building phase uneventful.
Also, characters have become very similar in terms of attack defense and subclass supply vanilla combos.

Result bigger player base with a less interesting system you what was the goal… we’ll see if that holds long term.

If you think that the 3.5 leveling system was eventful the you are wrong. It was a mess. I don't want to spend hours on leveling up since in 3.5 you had to preplan your character ahead of the game. So when you leveled up you already knew what you were building cause you already did all the hours by starting your character from lvl 20 and going down from there. In 5e it may be over simplified but at least I don't have to spend too much time in chosing what I want to do.

yeah but why go from one extreme to the other.
why can't we have best of both worlds..

[Alealexi]

Originally posted by dolby:

Originally posted by Alealexi:

If you think that the 3.5 leveling system was eventful the you are wrong. It was a mess. I don't want to spend hours on leveling up since in 3.5 you had to preplan your character ahead of the game. So when you leveled up you already knew what you were building cause you already did all the hours by starting your character from lvl 20 and going down from there. In 5e it may be over simplified but at least I don't have to spend too much time in chosing what I want to do.

yeah but why go from one extreme to the other.
why can't we have best of both worlds..

Because that will have to wait for 6e.

[Danyel]

Originally posted by jjwareham:

Basically 5E is going to feel different because they've dumbed it down. Too much in my opinion, character creation has always been a big part of RPGs for me, pc or tabletop and 5E loses a lot of the variability that earlier editions had.

Indeed.

[Danyel]

Originally posted by lazarusblack:

Back in the day, when D&D had achieved a degree of mainstream success and sat pretty, on top of the tabletop rpg ruleset pile with 3.5e, WOTC decided, that they needed to reinvent the wheel, fix what wasn't broken. For fear that someone might come along with something "new" and steal their crown.

The result was an abhorrent monster, the lovechild of a down and out illithid, wedded in unholy matrimony, with the pustulent canker, on the backside of a particularly brutalised goblin. Otherwise known as 4e.

It didn't take long, before anyone with more than 2 brain cells to rub together, realised that 4e, was not only "not good" it was objectively "very bad"

WOTC obstinately refused to admit their mistake however and doggedly persisted with 4e, far longer than any sane group of otherwise intelligent individuals, had any right to.

But even WOTC couldn't deny the travesty, that was 4e forever and so, they couldn't go back (and be wrong? Never!) so they decided to "move on" taking all the things they could from 3.5e but, with painstaking exactitude, sucked all semblence of life, personality, nuance and colour from their previously successful ruleset.

Thus the world was given 5e. 3.5e with the training wheels on and none of the youthful charm and excuberance of it's predecessor.

And it is because of 5e, that levelling up, doesn't feel like "DnD" WOTC insist on new games using it's latest ruleset. Because "It's the BEST!!" ™

Exactly, well said!

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

5e is the best D&D edition I've ever played far superior to the bloated whale carcass that is 3.5/Pathfinder.

[Alealexi]

Originally posted by pandariuskairos:

5e is the best D&D edition I've ever played far superior to the bloated whale carcass that is 3.5/Pathfinder.

Exactly, well said!

[Danyel]

This is how I feel about 5e...lol

https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Simpleton_(5e_Background)

That said haven't played this yet so looking forward to try it out and see how I like it.

It has to be better than the new DnD Dark Alliance game......

[lazarusblack]

Originally posted by Tinball:

Originally posted by wendigo211:

Using just the core rules there's very little for the player to do other than the basic function of a class (e.g. a Paladin is a smite bot).

I guess you haven't explored any multi-class options in 5e? 5e's mantra is everyone can do everything. You can create incredibly complex characters with loads of options through MC.

5e is the most popular version of DnD all time thanks to it's streamlined feel. I've been playing every version since 81, and I have to say myself (and 10 million others) love the feel of 5e and would love nothing more than a video game that emulates that experience.

I hear over and over 'you have to home brew the hell out of 5e to make a great cRPG.' ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Solasta has created a great combat system based of 5e. Hell, the OG BG games were mostly faithful to 2e.

When everyone can do everything, whats the point of character classes beyond adding a little flavour to the piss called ale?

When you have to multiclass to evoke any sense of personality or identity in your character and playstyle... something is wrong, no?

Honestly, I think, whether you like 3.5e over 5e or vice versa, varies based on what it is you come looking for.

I get why a lot of players who don't want to have to bother with forward planning of character progression, might find the watered down, simplified version that 5e offers, appealing. They tend to be the ones who talk about OP builds (which aren't OP, they are well crafted, compared to the average) It's time consuming and who wants to plan that much, just wanna jump in and wear muh pretty dress and swing muh big sword, hail fellow well met, where did you see your frying pan last, good woman?

But some people do like to plan, they like to craft a character in more than the whimsical sense of, well they can do everything that everyone else can do, but I like to think they wear obscenely coloured mittens during battle, because that's quirky! Which doesn't require talents... or attribute points or much of anything "rules" like.

The people who aim to define their character by the choices that a DM or, in this case, the developers lay out in front of you, in terms of quest outcomes. Will I release the foulmouthed goblin wench and have her lead me to my target? Or leave the degenerate creature in it's cell, because I'm principled. That is where such people get their sense of character identity and expression.

I think fans of 3.5e, tend to have that same experience, through the build of their character instead, navigating the sometimes labyrinthine talent pools, stat point distributions and the like. They define their character that way and the choices they might make will always be informed by their characters build.

Where as 5e fans define their character by the choices they make, their build be damned.

[TheBlueFox]

Everyone saying that 5e's leveling up process is restrictive is an absolute bad faith actor. You're simply not trying.

In an earlier thread I went through the process of making 7 UNIQUE DIFFERENT ROGUES with different playstyles all using only 4 pure class levels of rogue with ONLY the options of the PHB.

So you can put your "I need to take monk at level 6 so I can invest 5 points into concentration but also raise balance because it's not a class skill for clerics" Away right now. That isn't FUN, that's garbage minutia.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by lazarusblack:

Originally posted by Tinball:

I guess you haven't explored any multi-class options in 5e? 5e's mantra is everyone can do everything. You can create incredibly complex characters with loads of options through MC.

5e is the most popular version of DnD all time thanks to it's streamlined feel. I've been playing every version since 81, and I have to say myself (and 10 million others) love the feel of 5e and would love nothing more than a video game that emulates that experience.

I hear over and over 'you have to home brew the hell out of 5e to make a great cRPG.' ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Solasta has created a great combat system based of 5e. Hell, the OG BG games were mostly faithful to 2e.

When everyone can do everything, whats the point of character classes beyond adding a little flavour to the piss called ale?


I think fans of 3.5e, tend to have that same experience, through the build of their character instead, navigating the sometimes labyrinthine talent pools, stat point distributions and the like. They define their character that way and the choices they might make will always be informed by their characters build.

There's nothing wrong with that, and obviously some games cater more to that playstyle than others. Path of Exile, for example, is to arpg's what Pathfinder is to crpg's.

What irritates me is the entitled sense of elitism often displayed by those players. Most of us have been in that stage of gaming before. Have you ever heard of the TT game Rolemaster? It makes 3.5/Pathfinder look like a children's book. Every rulebook was filled with percentile charts for determining the exact outcome of an possible action. Rolemaster was wildly unpopular (which is why you've probably never heard of it) and only played by obsessive types (I had one friend who played it). It's not that the rest of us can't do that, it's that we don't want to because we don't find it entertaining. We've all taken math classes. We can all get a calculator out and figure out which class/combo is capable of dealing the highest DPR. Everybody has access to D&D Optimized (which I think changed it's name recently).

But we moved on from that a long time ago because we found it boring. I think that most of the players who enjoy playing the game from their character sheets are younger gamers with something to prove. They're still trying to prove how good they are at gaming (as if that's even a goal worth having in life) while the rest of us are just looking for entertainment.

I like building characters too, but I do not enjoy needing a 3rd party website or resource (like a Wiki or character builder) just to play the game, and I don't enjoy a game who's character progression is so complex that it takes hours just to make a single decision. I've done the math heavy games in the past and I got less enjoyment out of them than I do a game like Baldur's Gate 3 where each choice is impactful and meaningful, but not difficult to understand. If you want to be a 2 Hd wielder, then take Great Weapon Mastery. If you want to shoot a bow, take Archery and Sharpshooter. See, simple choices that make an impact on your build, not a complicated Excel spreadsheet.

And above all I hate games that are riddled with "noob traps" (builds that are utterly broken and don't work and stop progress). In BG3 you can make lots of builds that aren't "optimal", but most of them will at least suffice. Combat is more about the choices you make from round to round, supported of course by your build choices, but you can't ruin a character so badly that they are non-viable. Every character has a chance and I actually appreciate that because it lets me try out a lot of weirder ideas for characters that would otherwise be impossible (like a Monk/Druid multiclass).