Baldur's Gate 3 - Combat Basics

[Music] foreign what's going on everybody mortum here this time bringing you the combat Basics 4 Baldur's Gate 3 just ahead of its launch and with a lot of people looking to dive into this game for the first time or potentially even playing DND 5e for the first time it seems like a pretty good time to go over it that said I wasn't really planning on making a video like this as fifth edition is a very popular rule set but enough people asked me this question that I figured it was worth its own video If Only to ease people's introduction to this game as making crpgs accessible is a big deal for me but to kick this video off a few things of General note right here at the beginning as I mentioned Baldur's Gate 3 uses the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition rule set that's very important because 5th edition d d is by far the most popular of tabletop rule sets for a variety of factors to be sure but a big part of that is that it's a very approachable rule set It's relatively simple it doesn't lean in on the math very much and compared to something like Pathfinder 1e which I play a ton of and have made many videos on its relevant video games for this is a simple system by comparison so while it can still seem a little overwhelming at first once you get used to it and kind of see how the pieces fit together it's very simple especially in a video game which brings me to my second point which is simply that the game is going to do the math for you it can be helpful to know how that math is added up and how individual mechanics work so you can understand what you are doing and why you might make a decision versus another decision but ultimately we have a relatively simple rule set being translated into a video game which is going to do most of the work for you on top of that so with those two things combined it's a very approachable system and if it feels like you're getting caught up in the math of the things I'm explaining just keep in mind you're not going to have to do any of that the game will another thing about 5th edition though is that the reason it is so simple in terms of its mechanics is that it is very heavy on the role play side of things a lot of things are intentionally left vague so that you the player or in this case the video game leaves room for you to role play whatever it is you want on top of that and Baldur's Gate 3 is leaning into that very heavily so if you're not deliberately playing on the highest difficulty don't worry so much about getting the absolute best build possible go with what feels fun to play is that's what's going to keep you playing though on the topic of difficulties this game will be launching with a few different ones at the very least a version of easy normal hard so if you are brand new to the game or the system and chances are if you're watching this that might very well be the case do remember you can just turn that difficulty down until you get to grips with everything ultimately it's a video game with a very heavy focus on role playing and you deserve to enjoy the thing you paid for it's not that big a deal from there let's actually start die diving into these systems though the first major system of note is your ability scores this is really the last part of character creation but once you've decided what class you want to play what race you want all that stuff when you get to ability scores is where things start getting important in terms of combat especially because each of these scores is going to do different things for you and are either more or less important based on the class you chose I've already covered most of the classes besides monk so I'm not going to go over that in painful detail here but it's still important to have a basic understanding of what these do now before we talk about each one individually ability scores can pretty much be from 1 to 20. 10 or 11 is considered an average human being in terms of representation of what that stat actually means for every two points above 10 so 12 14 16 Etc we get plus one to the modifier for that ability score and then as we start to move below 10 we start to take penalty ease to that modifier modifiers are used for a variety of things in terms of the relevant skills saving throws Etc you don't need to memorize what each one is but you do need to understand the modifiers you have for each ability score naturally the things we want to be good at need to be as high as possible this is again going to vary by class the modifiers themselves are used to modify various roles that are based off of that particular ability score so if I want to make a strength based attack that uses my strength modifier in the appropriate places now let's start going over these ability scores individually strength and dexterity are generally used for attacks and a couple of other things but generally speaking if you're playing a character that is going to be swinging a weapon they will either have a high strength or dexterity score to reflect that strength is most of your melee weapons it also determines how much your character can carry on top of your general athleticism so it is very important for for our Frontline characters that are swinging weapons around then we have dexterity dexterity is used for potentially finessed-based weapons on top of ranged attacks so if you are using a bow or a crossbow or something like that if that's your game plan you want to hide dexterity as dexterity will then replace the strength modifier in those instances in terms of your attacks dexterity also does a few other things for us though mainly it's used in various dexterity checks around things like lock picking stealth the usual stuff perhaps more importantly it also determines two other things a bonus to our initiative on top of a bonus to our Armor class if you are wearing light or medium armor you will potentially get a bonus from your dexterity modifier to your base Armor class which will make you harder to hit which is representative of you dodging the attack but it also gives us a bonus to our initiative role which will help you move earlier in turn based combat so very important there as well then we have have Constitution Constitution is important for a variety of things though generally this is reflective of the General Health of your character it affects your hit point maximum but most of your hit points are going to come from the class you chose so I wouldn't worry about that specifically but Constitution is also used for a variety of checks especially when it comes to spell casting it is used for your concentration checks if you are holding concentration on a spell and take damage you will perform a constitution saving throw to hopefully not break your concentration and we'll cover that a bit more in depth later but basically the game checks your Constitution score to see if you can continue to do what you are doing then we move on to our mental attributes starting with intelligence intelligence is used for the modifier to a variety of skill checks so if you are trying to learn something or recall something you know about nature investigation just various things like that intelligence is what you would use intelligence is also the spellcast casting ability for a wizard so where appropriate and they need to make a role for their various spells such as a spell attack they would use their intelligence modifier versus strength or dexterity for a martial based character then we have wisdom which is a reflection of your perceptiveness or your natural intuition and your ability to actually understand the things that are happening around you again useful for a variety of skills and various saving throws but it is also the spell casting ability for clerics Druids and Rangers and lastly we have Charisma pretty straightforward one here it's just a determination of your personality that is to say things like confidence your eloquence or simply a commanding Aura this is reflective of your ability to lie to people intimidate them make some kind of performance Etc but it is also the spell casting ability for paladins Sorcerers bards and warlocks all of them use Charisma for their spell casting now an important thing to understand about the ability scores though is that your character is not going to be good at everything ideally you really only want to at most rely on two of these for your particular character and the main things you do trying to do everything is a recipe for failure which is a good time to talk about proficiencies and saving throws proficiencies are simply a representation of what your character knows how to do and do well this is reflected through a proficiency bonus that is to say a bonus to a role that that character gets for anything they are proficient in this starts as a plus two bonus and then every four levels it increases by one so at level five it becomes plus three and at level nine it becomes plus four and with the level cap of 12 and Baldur's Gate 3 that's as high as it's going to get for you now in relation to ability scores certain classes will be proficient with various saving throws from those ability scores but only for the saving throw in particular as when it comes to the related ability checks you might make with those ability scores in relation to skills that's represented by the skill you are proficient in and that's because every skill already uses that base ability score as a modifier so the skills you are proficient and give you a little bit extra on top of that but saving throw proficiency is specifically for saving throws which are an attempt to resist something like a spell or an effect that would otherwise harm your character in an effort to either mitigate it by having the damage potentially or just completely negating it the number your character has to beat on a given saving throw is usually determined by the effect of the thing that was causing the saving throw to be rolled so it will vary greatly but proficiencies also apply to things like your weapons when you're making an attack with one if you're proficient in the weapon you are using you can add your proficiency bonus to that whereas if you're using a weapon you're not proficient in you don't get that bonus now when it comes to armor proficiency allows you to use it without taking a penalty as opposed to giving you a bonus this is especially important for spell casters because if they are wearing armor they're not proficient in they cannot cast spells in addition to just that though wearing armor you don't have proficiency for will give you disadvantage on any ability check saving throws or attacks that involve strength or dexterity while you're wearing it basically meaning you're not very effective so this means it's important to use things you are actually proficient in and understand what that means because otherwise you simply won't get your bonus or at worst you'll actively take penalties but now let's move into actual combat the first things to know about combat actually start right before combat begins and that is with the turn order those 5th edition DND and the table top as well as Baldur's Gate 3 will be a turn-based system meaning that the order of those turns has to be determined somehow and this is what we use Initiative for at the start of combat everybody rolls a niche initiative this is a very simple role it is a D20 plus your dexterity modifier the higher you roll the earlier you get to go at least generally as you are required to beat everyone else's score so from highest to lowest determines the move order with the highest going first it is also possible to catch people by surprise that is to say you either Ambush someone or they Ambush you potentially at which point the person being surprised is subject to a surprise round which is essentially being robbed of your first turn of combat you don't get to do anything on your first turn so if you were to say attack someone from stealth or sneak up on them or Ambush them in pretty much any way this would apply a surprise round which is definitely a thing in Baldur's Gate 3 so something to keep in mind now let's talk about rounds and turns as it is good to know but not necessarily crucial as we are playing a video game and not the tabletop generally speaking combat takes place in rounds each round is six seconds a round is over when every person has taken their turn this means that 10 turns would be one minute though lucky for us the game pretty much keeps track of everything and how long it should last in turns and I'm merely mentioning this because if you happen to look something up many of the rules will talk about actual time increments like minutes as opposed to converting everything to turns like we see in game now let's talk about what we can actually do in combat combat is ultimately what I like to refer to as a move and Action System though it is a little more complicated than that basically when it is your character's turn you will primarily be able to move and take an action however this doesn't necessarily need to be consecutive you can move a little bit attack and then take the rest of your movement the amount of movement available to you is typically 30 feet at a base and then that can be modified by various things like your race and various effects you don't have to move or take all of your movement how much you choose to move is up to you but then we can take our action actions can be a lot of things but most notably attacking of course by far the most common however you can also use an action to perform the dash function dashing will let you spend your action on doubling your movement so you won't be able to attack that turn probably but you can move twice as far or you could do something like take the Dodge action which will make you less likely to be hit though most probably you'll be attacking something most of the time before we talk about attacking though it's important to understand a few other types of actions in addition to moving in an action there are two other things you can potentially do which are bonus actions and reactions bonus actions are of course very quick actions and these are usually things like drinking a potion or something however many abilities will potentially let you do things as a bonus action and outside of an instance of a subclass you'll get one bonus action per turn typically which is also the case for a reaction however the caveat to reactions is that typically you don't take a reaction when you are in control of your character as you are reacting to something another character does various abilities can be activated as a reaction however you can only do that once until it rolls back around to your turn again at which point it will reset so at a maximum every time it's your character's turn you will generally be able to move take your basic full action a bonus action potentially and then while you're waiting for your turn again you might be able to take a reaction but most of the time let's be honest we'll be attacking things so let's talk a little bit about how that works in order to attack something we need to make an attack roll provided we are in range but assuming you're next to something and able to hit them you can make an attack your percentage chance of success here is determined by a small math equation basically you're going to roll a D20 and then add your ability modifier plus your proficiency bonus where appropriate you will always roll the D20 and you will use whatever ability modifier is relevant to the type of attack you're making so if you are using a regular melee weapon this will typically be strength but if you're using a finesse weapon or a bow this would be dexterity instead we'll talk a little bit about spells later but it's a similar case there as well now if you are proficient in the weapon you are using you also get to add the proficiency bonus to that so D20 plus ability modifier plus proficiency bonus that's generally what you're going to be adding up to make your attack roll that total number has to beat the enemy's Armor class Armor class being a representation of of course armor but also a character's ability to say Dodge or simply absorb the blow from whatever you are trying to do for most humanoid enemies this is a function of actual armor but for animals they use something called natural AC in any event though the higher some things AC the harder they are to hit which is why it's important to stack bonuses in your favor using weapons that utilize your highest ability score and that you are proficient in because raising those things is how you are going to be consistently hitting something now again the game is going to do this for you basically you're just going to click attack and this is everything that's happening behind the scenes but understanding this basic function is how to go about raising your chance to hit but let's assume you rolled well you were able to clear your enemy's AC and you have connected now how much damage did you do this is determined by your damage roll for partially focused characters this is a function of the weapon you are using which will have a damaged eye associated with it which Baldur's Gate 3 handily converts into minimum to maximum numbers for us when we hit something so you don't need to necessarily know the exact dice you're rolling here behind the scenes however in addition to the damage Dice from the weapon you also add on your appropriate ability modifier if you're using a strength based melee weapon you would add your strength mod fire and if you're using finesse or ranged weapons you add your dexterity modifier however it is also possible to deal some extra damage by Rolling a critical hit if when you go to attack an enemy you roll a natural 20 on that D20 roll you will critically hit at which point you get to double up the damage dice that you are rolling to deal extra damage now on the opposite end of that Spectrum though if you roll a natural one on that D20 this is called a critical Miss and even if that one plus all of your other modifiers would clear the enemy's AC you still do not hit them this means even in an absolute perfect scenario there's always at least a five percent chance you will miss but much in how we can attack enemies they can also attack us let's assume they get a decent role and manage to hit us so how does that actually affect our team now at a base level I think everyone watching this probably understands the concept of hit points but the amount you have is a function of your class on top of your Constitution modifier mostly your class though if that gets brought to zero you're in a bad way but you're not necessarily dead rather at zero you become unconscious and move to the dying State at which point our character will start making death saving throws these are very simple they are pass or fail anything above a 10 on a D20 roll is a pass anything below that is a fail once that character has either passed three roles or failed three roles they will either completely die and bleed out or if they pass they will stabilize if they roll a 1 that is two failures and if they roll a 20 they immediately regain one hit point however while that keeps our characters from immediately dying it's also possible for our team to help them of course which we can do with the help action this will get them back up on their feet and prevent them from dying it's also possible to just heal them of course that said it's also possible for a character not to go into the dying state if they take big enough damage in particular if you take damage equal to your maximum health below zero you instantly die so if I was sitting at one HP right now but I had a total of 12 and then I take 13 damage that character is just dead that's not necessarily the end this is a video game so there will be ways to resurrect your characters typically through Scrolls so don't worry if someone actually dies you can still fix that it won't be the end of the world now let's talk damage types and resistances as you've probably noticed all of our spells and types of attacks typically deal a specific type of damage this can be things like slashing bludgeoning fire acid the usual stuff that's important to note because enemies will either be unaffected by this that is to say they take normal damage or they will be resistant or vulnerable resistant means they take half damage to whatever you roll so if I were to hit something for say 30 damage and they were resistant to it then it would drop down to 15. whereas if they are vulnerable to a specific type of damage it becomes double this of course applies to us as well so if you have effects that potentially make you resistant to certain things that can help you out especially if you are fighting against something dealing that kind of damage from there though I want to talk about advantage and disadvantage one of the ways in which 5th edition D and D moves away from a very math heavy system is by simply introducing advantage and disadvantage to various situations basically either through the use of skills or simply a situational Advantage you might have a better chance to hit or a better chance to fail potentially in the case of disadvantage and that is reflected through dice rolls in both cases we will roll an extra D20 in the case of Advantage we will roll twice and take the higher number and in the case of disadvantage we will roll twice and take the lower number this can apply to basically any role in the game based on the situation for for instance if you're wearing loud metal armor you will typically get disadvantage to your stealth checks making you less likely to succeed but there's all sorts of ways to gain advantage to pretty much anything and going out of your way to gain that Advantage can be a really good way to make it more likely you actually hit something so this makes it worthwhile to pay attention to how you are approaching something as opposed to just going in guns blazing because sometimes it can be worth it to get The High Ground to gain that Advantage because if you were to say run up on someone with a bow and arrow directly in their face you would gain disadvantage if you are within five feet of them because you would be engaged in melee combat at that point the last thing I want to talk about here before we move on to spell casting is opportunity attacks basically when you are next to Something in combat you are considered engaged in combat with it and if you are moving out of their range without taking the disengage action they will attack you as you go to do so which is also the case if you run by someone as well typically so you have to be a little bit careful about how you are maneuvering around various enemies though because this is a video game you get a nice little visual display if that's about to happen so it's pretty easy to avoid now let's talk about spell casting spell casting both Works similarly and very different from other types of combat now in order to cast spells at all we of course have to be playing a class that actually gets the ability to cast spells which is then represented by spell slots depending on the class you are typically either a full or half caster which will determine the power level of the Spells you are going to get access to with a half Caster only being able to cast up to level 5 Spells at a maximum which will be lower than that thanks to the level cap of Baldur's Gate 3 whereas a full Caster would get the entirety of their normal spell progression or to put it simply they get better spells faster moreover each class typically based on half Caster or full Caster also gains spell slots as they level up in order to cast a spell you have to have the resource to do so which is known as a spell slot spell slots have levels associated with them which fall right in line with the levels of the Spells you are using in order to cast a spell you have to have at least one spell slot of the level that spell actually is at a minimum however the exception to this is it is possible to cast lower level spells with higher level spell slots which will usually Grant an increased effect via more damage so while I cannot cast a level 2 spell with a level 1 spell slot what I can do is cast a level one spell with a level two spell slot it'll just deal more damage however this only applies to our particularly powerful spells in order to keep things like Wizards and Sorcerers and the like casting spells even when they are out of spell thoughts we have hand trips can trips are called level zero spells basically they are simple things that you can cast every turn is your action they will increase in damage as you level up to keep them relevant though usually they won't perform as well as an actual leveled spell from there some spell casters are prepared casters others are spontaneous prepared casters means that you cannot cast every spell you know right out of the gate you first have to prepare your spells in Baldur's Gate 3 this means going to a menu and setting them and you don't have to rest or anything in the tabletop version you'd have to rest before you were able to use them for the day which is part of the preparation process other casters are known as spontaneous casters they typically have fewer spells known total however they can cast all of those spells without having to prepare them so they don't necessarily have to know what they're facing ahead of time as they can simply cast every spell they have available with their available spell slots but we're not done yet spells much like pretty much everything else will either take up an action a bonus action a reaction so spells themselves have so many many effects it's hard to go over them in any real capacity in a shorter video but basically make sure that you understand what the spell does you're actually trying to cast and what kind of action it is going to take or be triggered by and that's before we start talking about things like their range and their shape if you will is it a cone a cylinder a square Etc because ultimately spells can have a variety of effects that can really change the battlefield and in many cases this requires a few modifications to the way we roll attack and damage for them in comparison to martial things so first and foremost if you are casting a spell that happens to require concentration that is to say it has a persisting effect then your character has to keep concentration on it this means they cannot cast another spell that would require their concentration because they're spending all their concentration keeping this spell going so if you cast another one it will just cancel the first one in addition if you get hit you will have to pass a constitution saving throw to keep concentration and if you fail that saving throw you lose the spell now when it comes to attacking creatures with spells sometimes you will have to make an attack roll for the spell these are generally considered ranged attacks but that's mostly for things like if you're standing really close to an enemy then you would have disadvantage as for the actual attack roll this is your D20 plus that class is spell casting ability so if I'm casting as a sorcerer I would use Charisma if I was casting as a wizard I would use intelligence plus our proficiency bonus so rather than dexterity or strength we use our appropriate casting stat however that's only the tip of the iceberg for spells because many of them affect an area not an individual Target in those cases you don't roll attack rolls or anything it simply affects everything in the area however everything in that area will typically receive the chance to roll a Save which can potentially mitigate some of the damage this is usually dexterity but but it depends on the spell at which point they will have to clear your spell DC in order to mitigate whatever the effect was they will have to roll eight plus your spell casting ability plus your proficiency and then any other modifiers that affect this so if I had a 16 in intelligence and I was a wizard casting a fireball or something that's 16 intelligence would correlate to a plus three modifier which means the DC for that would be eight plus three plus whatever my proficiency bonus is so if it's a fireball it would be plus three which means the DC for that would be at least 14. so if they rolled their saving throw and it was higher than 14 then they would only take half damage from that so that's typically how area of effect spells are handled and just a final note on spell casting before we move to wrap up remember that in order to cast spells with a class you have to have proficiency with the armor you are wearing if you are wearing armor as long as you have that you'll be able to cast spells in our armor if you don't have that proficiency you simply won't be able to cast spells and this is how paladins can cast spells in heavy armor as a simple example now as we move to wrap this video up having discussed many of the basics As you move through combat and your spending resources like your spell slots or any other class specific resource oftentimes those are recharge and restored by resting either a short or long rest various abilities can be restored on a short rest as opposed to a full rest but a full rest is simply like an eight hours night of sleep this will typically restore your health and reset all of your spell slots and everything and get you ready to continue moving through combat with restored resources however resting in Baldur's Gate 3 does require a small amount of supplies so it's not completely free but more often than not you can rest pretty easy in Baldur's Gate 3 so don't worry too much about spending your class resources on combat though don't forget to take advantage of the short rests as often times that can reset various class features Etc so you don't need to take a full rest every single time that though is pretty much going to cover the combat basics for Baldur's Gate 3 alongside a bunch of other stuff again to really drive this home the game is going to handle most of this for you it's helpful to know how these things work and how they are added together and everything because that's going to help you make decisions with your class and build but in terms of handling all that math and whatnot the game does all of that for you it's pretty intuitive which is honestly the nicest thing bg3 has going for it so if any of this sounded remotely intimidating it's really not that bad especially in the video game format and because of that while this can seem intimidating at first especially if you've never played tabletop games or games like crpgs in general once you get a feel for it it is very easy to get going and get to grips with everything else going on that said if you're curious about what individual classes can do for you I've covered all of them but the monk as well if you want a good look at what the class fantasy of them on top of their General mechanics is that could be a great place to go from here to learn more about the game before diving into it or just making a decision on what you want to play that said that's going to do it for this video I certainly hope you enjoyed it if you did like comment subscribe all that YouTube jazz but regardless of any of that truly just thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 328,936

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, Baldurs Gate, BG3, BG2, BG1, Baldur's Gate, Connections, baldur's gate 3 story, baldurs gate 3, bg3 story, baldurs gate 1 & 2 before 3, bg3 multiplayer, bg3 gameplay, bg3 panel from hell, bg3 panel from hell recap, bg3 final panel from hell, bg3 release showcase, baldurs gate 3 release showcase, baldurs gate 3 panel from hell, bg3 multiclassing, baldurs gate 3 multiclassing, bg3 classes, bg3 combat, bg3 combat guide, bg3 tutorial, bg3 new players

Id: EjGMn3e3NVo

Length: 30min 47sec (1847 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023