Why a level 12 cap?

[stratzilla]

I don't play D&D, is there a lore reason you can't go above level 12? Someone told me level 20 is basically a god but is it strictly a lore thing?

I'm level 12 and have 98,000 extra experience. Not sure what that'd lead me to, but I got max level about 20 hours ago.

At least some of the "carrot on a stick" is lost when you no longer gain levels. If not a higher level cap, I wonder if the experience rewards of some Act 3 stuff could be re-balanced. I wouldn't have minded it taking longer to reach level cap, even if it's 12.

[MostlyPanda]

Origineel geplaatst door TheProphet:

People who say that 20 is demi-god level do not even know what a demigod is in dungeon and dragons. I agree with you , the level cap is to small , i reached it in the beggining of act 3 and it kinda unmotivated me to explore the whole city

You're kidding, right? Just a full party of lvl16 people in it is strong enough to change the course of an entire continent, a party of lvl20 are gods.

[Kazeck]

tbh, every single neverwinter nights game had higher level caps, as did BG 2, as BG 2 was about being a literal demi god and eventually ended with fighting on the level of a god.

So the level-cap is really disappointing in contrast to the previous official titles from wizards of the coast AND BG2.

Dark Urge should be able to reach level 20, for obvious but spoilery reasons, but hey why not cap it at 12.

Also despite there being spells to move between planes and everything else in 3.5, NWN1, 2, and expansions, as well as BG2, icewinddale etc. all featured up to level 20, and even above awith epic level play.

[Kazeck]

Origineel geplaatst door Kamiyama:

Neverwinter Nights had prestige classes and epic levels, letting you reach level 40. You still weren't a god but you were really strong.

AFAIK D&D has never really laid down a path to godliness other than you need to found a religion and have people believe in you. That's great but what about levels? XP? How many believers? How much stronger do your believers make you?

I imagine the religion and the faith in you is more of a level boost, and the faith adds XP to a special god-themed class. So if you're not already strong when you start your religion you aren't going to become a very strong god.

It was handled in Pathfinder with mythic levels, and we have a tabletop game that goes mythic+level 20 with 3.5 rules sort of, wrath of the righteous. It's not too hard to do, so honestly while I like larian studios, the way wizards of the coast have done things for years is to just ♥♥♥♥ on higher level content, and to basically focus everything on small time adventurers.

BG1 didn't reach higher levels it's true, but BG2 and the expansion went to level 20+ with some epic level feats, and a handful of 10th level spells.

NWN1 and 2 did.

it's sad honestly, they already implemented 5e 'faithfully' for the most part so leveling up is boring...and you're on the archetype railroad from level 2-3 onward, but to top it off they cut out all the 'good' stuff from most archetypes.

[Maverick56]

Origineel geplaatst door stratzilla:

I don't play D&D, is there a lore reason you can't go above level 12? Someone told me level 20 is basically a god but is it strictly a lore thing?

I'm level 12 and have 98,000 extra experience. Not sure what that'd lead me to, but I got max level about 20 hours ago.

At least some of the "carrot on a stick" is lost when you no longer gain levels. If not a higher level cap, I wonder if the experience rewards of some Act 3 stuff could be re-balanced. I wouldn't have minded it taking longer to reach level cap, even if it's 12.

So long story short, anything beyond level 12 gives people access to level 7 spells. And MANY of the level 7 spells break the game.

Reverse Gravity
Turn into a Dragon
Resurrection...like flat out
Conjure Celestial
Finger of Death
Plane Shift
Power Word Pain
Simulacrum

And it only gets worse from there. The options available to players becomes so ridiculous that it takes a flesh and blood DM to handle all of possibilities, and in reality most Campaigns also don't go above 12 for the same reason.

Players are too powerful. Fights that would need armies to kill you can kill with ease.

That might sound fun, but it isn't, and every level after this gets exponentially more powerful.

While 20th level isn't 100% guaranteed "godhood" you are essentially one of the most powerful beings in existence.


For example, the highest D&D game I ever played in was Decent Into Avernus which is designed to go to level 13.

Won't spoil, but by the end, our cleric was powerful enough that he remained behind in hell, and acted at the eternal "gate-keeper" for Avernus.... (Yeah it was a homebrew Dm choice to allow it, but he was easily powerful enough to make it a reality)

[Dekent]

Why does everyone keep acting like they'd HAVE to add wish and other crazy spells? They omitted and changed quite a few things already. This isn't the reason at all. They could have skipped over anything that wouldn't work well in a video game and only add things that do.

They are either planning to do an expansion at some point or act 3 is a bit of a mess and keeping things capped at 12 made it easier on them.

[Widget]

call me old school but i prefer the 3e rule set for DnD i like the level 20 cap and what not i too feel levle 12 is rather low and should be 20 but then again i have palyed path finder wrath of the righteous and i do like what they did with the level system the cap is 20 and then on top of that they added the mythic skills and system i feel like they did implement that well my only gripe with the game is the writing for it is gawdaful, I wish they could have done that with BG3 has it feels like alot of wasted potential but thats just me.

[ProestUnicorn]

Many people feel like it should be easy-ish to balance lvl 7 spells which alredy allow You to:

summon a whole freaking mansion with surroundings and with hundreds of servants that look however You like, wear whatever You like and You can make them work on whatever You want, since they can do everything a servant would do, which is cooking, sewing, cleaning, caring for guests.. etc.

That is just one spell out of a pretty sizable list that would alredy basically overhaul camping by a huge margin, I imagine.

Other problem is that early on devs decided to make lvl 10 campaign(raised to 12) and made the story to be balanced as such, which is illithids. Monsters of higher tier that exist in DnD are much, much stronger than main boss and by the time You would get to that level 14-16, not to mention lvl20, these encounters would be very easy.

This also makes making a DLC of similar quality to that of the game difficult, because it would be really anticlimactic to suddenly go after a mummy lord, lich or something after whole campaign focused on much less threathning enemies and finishing another big-bad-guy in a shorter time than some weak-ish brain-monsters. It is not impossible ofc, but what I mean is that they locked themselves from many, many options for expansions here.

Now, they could homebrew some ilithids that are stronger than demi-liches and adult dragons, but they want to keep to DnD as much as possible, I imagine.

[Zackerie]

if 12 is the cap they should turn off xp gain. seems like they just ran out of time to balance higher levels. not that they are somehow impossible to add. I mean mods add the levels just fine. a studio could do it too. I mean you are literally fighting in the astral plane in this game.

also I see no official communication that even hints at a bg3 dlc. I don't know why that is the consensus Larian is adding more levels later, when they are probably going to move on from wizards of the coast for their own IPs.

[kn1ghtsabre]

From my understanding it's a spell and open player options programming thing. The higher the level, the more free-form the game becomes.

The most iconic high level spells, for example, are too open ended to be able to program them. The most iconic spells being "Wish" and "Miracle" they can nearly do anything.

Sure they could program in pre-made selections but that defeats the purpose of those spells. Then there are spells that dramatically change the environment, again it's too open.

A real-life DM can just improv and roll with whatever a player might do, but in a game you need to program every possible thing a person might do. It's just impossible.

and to compound the problem with video games; even with future AI systems they would have to alter the code of the game itself, art assets, dialog, story-line paths etc... Future AI might be able to run a tabletop "theater of the mind" style game (you might have to look this type of game up) but anything more advanced even near future AI would struggle.

[Zackerie]

meanwhile the spells are coded into the game by a modder.

yet it is impossible for a studio.

literally just a lame excuse at this point.

[Hobocop]

Origineel geplaatst door zackerie:

meanwhile the spells are coded into the game by a modder.

yet it is impossible for a studio.

literally just a lame excuse at this point.

Which ones? Because all of the interesting ones that aren't just bigger versions of lower level spells or big damage/healing numbers probably aren't happening.

[MostlyPanda]

Origineel geplaatst door zackerie:

I mean you are literally fighting in the astral plane in this game.

tell me you dont know anything about DnD without telling me you don't know about DnD.

Astral Plane is the space that connects the Planes. To translate it into our world, it's the Space consisting of Black Matter.

And about the "we are literally fighting in the astral plane"... we are on 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of it, and even that is heavily sealed off.

Astral Plane is not similar to Avernus for example, which is just the FIRST layer of the Nine Hells.

Astral Plane is just a regular ass place compared to actual Planes...

Why did I brought up Avernus? A lvl13 (by "A" I mean a single person) character could single handedly hold off the forces of Avernus... the Demons of the first layer of HELL.

Try and translate that power into the game that plays on the Sword Coast... 1 spell from a lvl13 character would annihilate the entire continent.

But you want lvl20?

[Naqel]

One notion that should be immediately dispelled is one of being "faithful" to the source material: Baldurs Gate 3 is Original Sin 2.5, not a faithful adaptation of the DnD:5E ruleset.

There is an abundance of changes that were made purely for the sake of supporting Larian's obsession with interactive surfaces (e.g.: Chromatic Orb) and forceful displacement (e.g.: Shove as a bonus action), and plenty of leftovers from Original Sin like the free item manipulation that can lead to some ridiculous scenarios no DM would accept.

That alone makes it clear that level 12 was NOT a result of 7th level spellcasting: They could have just changed how that works too.

[Orion Invictus]

Origineel geplaatst door zackerie:

meanwhile the spells are coded into the game by a modder.

yet it is impossible for a studio.

literally just a lame excuse at this point.

Just because they didn't doesn't mean they couldn't, and implying so doesn't help. It's clearly part of the intended design, even if we don't agree with it.

[tensai.industries]

can use Nexus mods to go to 20 (still max 12 in single class) - allows for some cool Multiclass builds and have your XP at least go somewhere lol