Enjoying BG3 so far, but...

[GrumpyOne]

I think the devs have over-thought the whole enchanted item thing. I'm surrounded by enchanted weapons, armor, and jewelry, and 99% of it is only fit to sell or feed to Gale. They've tried to be far too specific about what each item can do or be used for and in turn made them useless.

I haven't played the previous BG games, but I'm an old time NWN / NWN2 player and I'd kill right now for a good flaming sword or a ring that actually illuminates.

[Recjawjind]

Items do indeed range from "gale food" to absolutely gamebreaking busted broken, artifact+ levels of power that no sane DM would ever give to their players. Which ends up making the game far too easy.

[Moonbane]

You actually can get an illuiminating flaming sword in the beginning zone. Use shadowheart to cast command: drop on the cambion fighting the mind flayer.

Forgotten realms is full of magic items, its a very high magic world once you start getting up in levels.

[Recjawjind]

Originally posted by Moonbane:

You actually can get an illuiminating flaming sword in the beginning zone. Use shadowheart to cast command: drop on the cambion fighting the mind flayer.

Forgotten realms is full of magic items, its a very high magic world once you start getting up in levels.

Which is outclassed when you get your first +1 weapon an hour into the game, but yea you can get the everburn (and immediately feed it to gale xd)

[Dizzy Ladybug]

are you still in Act 1 ? a lot of the fun loot doesn't come until later in Act 1, plus Act 2 and 3.

[SassyMuffinz]

Just to point out that yes there are a lot of weapons with different stats and benefits but don't forget the amount of potential classes, sub classes and so forth, so while a weapon may not suit your build or companions, it may do so on another play through.

[Moonbane]

Havent seen monsters needing a +1 weapon to be hit in act1. The everburn blade deals a hefty amount of additional firedamage. Its usually not replaced until the gith monastery when Laezel can get a soulbreaker greatsword with psychich damage from the gith captain.

[Supply Slut]

Originally posted by Recjawjind:

Originally posted by Moonbane:

You actually can get an illuiminating flaming sword in the beginning zone. Use shadowheart to cast command: drop on the cambion fighting the mind flayer.

Forgotten realms is full of magic items, its a very high magic world once you start getting up in levels.

Which is outclassed when you get your first +1 weapon an hour into the game, but yea you can get the everburn (and immediately feed it to gale xd)

It’s one of the better two-handed weapons for the first half of act 1, but yeah by the end of act 1 you’ll be swimming in better options. I don’t think I’d give up the extra bit of fire damage for just a plain +1 though.

Personally I get why they flooded the game with powerful magic items - gamers love loot! And while on tabletop you typically have to work hard for comparatively mid level weapons and equipment, in video games a lot of people are used to looting great swords off of wolf corpses and all manner of silly things. They clearly made the game to appeal to a broader audience besides just tabletop players - and there’s nothing wrong with that.

It just means you have ♥♥♥♥ like a level one cleric soloing end game bosses

[suejak]

I really like how situational many items are. I think this is a lot more interesting than generically good/useful items that you don't have to think about. Instead, you have to use these items in specific situations that work for your party/spell composition and strategy.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

There's a flaming sword on the nautiloid and a glowy ring in Act 1.

[Paganini]

Originally posted by GrumpyOne:

I think the devs have over-thought the whole enchanted item thing. I'm surrounded by enchanted weapons, armor, and jewelry, and 99% of it is only fit to sell or feed to Gale. They've tried to be far too specific about what each item can do or be used for and in turn made them useless.

I haven't played the previous BG games, but I'm an old time NWN / NWN2 player and I'd kill right now for a good flaming sword or a ring that actually illuminates.

I definitely prefer it this way, rather than the silly search for the weapon with the next higher level, as is the trend. This way, I at least sometimes enjoy looking at the weapons and collecting something. In almost all other games, I would prefer if such busywork were completely removed from the game.

[Recjawjind]

Originally posted by Supply Slut:

Originally posted by Recjawjind:

Which is outclassed when you get your first +1 weapon an hour into the game, but yea you can get the everburn (and immediately feed it to gale xd)

It’s one of the better two-handed weapons for the first half of act 1, but yeah by the end of act 1 you’ll be swimming in better options. I don’t think I’d give up the extra bit of fire damage for just a plain +1 though.

You can bonus action dip a candle you drop as a free action from your inventory, for the same 1d4 fire. Esp early on, bonus actions tend to not be in short supply for most classes (including all the classes that can actually use everburn).
1d4 is an average of 2 extra damage, whereas a +1 weapon is 1 extra damage, but also a flat 5% higher accuracy, significantly more valuable than 1d4 extra fire.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by GrumpyOne:

I haven't played the previous BG games, but I'm an old time NWN / NWN2 player and I'd kill right now for a good flaming sword or a ring that actually illuminates.

I understand that. It's true that equipment in BG1/2 and in NWN1/2 etc you could find consistently better equipment throughout the games that had meaningful straight up no nonsense bonuses.

In BG3 there is a strict limit on how much better in raw stats equipment gets. There are some +2 weapons, for example, but most are just +1 and that's it. Similarly with armour you are never going to find any with a big straight up bonus the AC. Just +1 or perhaps +2 if you are lucky I'm not sure. Mostly it's odd tangential bonuses and extra spells, stuff like that.

I think this is to do with core table top 5e balance and because Larian have followed that, including in the strength of the monsters/enemies, they haven't put any big +n items in the game.

What they have done however is be very creative within the constraints of the core 5e rules to pepper the world with groups of items that synergize well with certain play styles and builds as well as themselves to very significantly power up characters, but not necessarily in a traditional way.

You can think of this as the game being filled with a number of themed "sets" of equipment except these "sets" are not named as such and the items are not marked as being part of these sets. It's part of advanced BG3 play to recognise these item synergies and how they relate to character build decisions.

Or you can delve into some build guides on Youtube many of which specifically go into particular items that super-charge the build in question.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by GrumpyOne:

I haven't played the previous BG games, but I'm an old time NWN / NWN2 player and I'd kill right now for a good flaming sword or a ring that actually illuminates.

I understand that. It's true that equipment in BG1/2 and in NWN1/2 etc you could find consistently better equipment throughout the games that had meaningful straight up no nonsense bonuses.

In BG3 there is a strict limit on how much better in raw stats equipment gets. There are some +2 weapons, for example, but most are just +1 and that's it. Similarly with armour you are never going to find any with a big straight up bonus the AC. Just +1 or perhaps +2 if you are lucky I'm not sure. Mostly it's odd tangential bonuses and extra spells, stuff like that.

I think this is to do with core table top 5e balance and because Larian have followed that, including in the strength of the monsters/enemies, they haven't put any big +n items in the game.

What they have done however is be very creative within the constraints of the core 5e rules to pepper the world with groups of items that synergize well with certain play styles and builds as well as themselves to very significantly power up characters, but not necessarily in a traditional way.

You can think of this as the game being filled with a number of themed "sets" of equipment except these "sets" are not named as such and the items are not marked as being part of these sets. It's part of advanced BG3 play to recognise these item synergies and how they relate to character build decisions.

Or you can delve into some build guides on Youtube many of which specifically go into particular items that super-charge the build in question.

In 5e there's a design principle called Bounded Accuracy, and item enchantment bonuses do not reach above +3, which should be spread out over 20 levels (1-7 +1, 8-14 +2, 15-20 +3) which means we really shouldn't even see +3 weapons/armor in BG3, but we do (Larian loves power creep).

Bounded Accuracy helps keep the power creep manageable.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Pan Darius Loveless:

In 5e there's a design principke called Bounded Accuracy

WotC may call it Bounded Accuracy but I call it Bloody Boring. Almost as bad as Concentration spells which are an even bigger fun killer.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by Pan Darius Loveless:

In 5e there's a design principke called Bounded Accuracy

WotC may call it Bounded Accuracy but I call it Bloody Boring. Almost as bad as Concentration spells which are an even bigger fun killer.

Where do you draw the limit then?

+10
+100
+1,000
+10,000
+100,000
+1,000,000?

Power creep for it's own sake is meaningless, but if you're into that sort of thing, there's Pathfinder and Diablo.