Baldur's Gate 3: Larian on Creating the Paladin, Barbarian and Monk

foreign Stevens and I'm one of the Senior Systems designers at larion and what and what does that role do system sort of looks at how you play the game holistically like everything you do sort of like as a big picture so a less moment to moment like we don't focus on like a specific combat or how a specific storyline plays out but we're very much we look at classes that's sort of the easy thing to see um so myself like I was the lead on the Monk class the Paladin and the Barbarian but in between like we all sort of like chip in with like helping outside on some spells or one of my favorite things I got to work on was like the food like all the camp supplies I had so much fun working on that I did not realize how much fun I would have like looking at nutritional values of stuff that's fantastic wait well you must be you must feel very proud that the Paladin is so popular in the the analytics yeah like I think a Paladin's like like a 10-pole class like everyone kind of wants to be a paladin you've got that kind of Versatility of like I can wear like heavy plate armor where I can do a bit of spell casting and I've got like a lot of Charisma so I can it's a very narrative driven game so people want that kind of Charisma in their character um and kind of like that knight in shining armor kind of archetype is very much for a lot of people going into a first Fantasy game like that's where they see themselves um and we kind of see like similar patterns during the tabletop like the most popular classes tend to be stuff like sorcerer Paladin um unfortunately a random Spectrum we kind of got clerics sort of like left at the bottom yeah um but cleric is so fun as well like there's some really cool stuff you can do but but I think shadowheart just sort of like she's the best companion that everyone wants it's hard to show up shower Horrors so what do you enjoy about paladins and count run me through the subclasses and well it's important to capture free to them one of the biggest house rules we did for Paladin was we decided to bring oath to level one so when you start out your oath is really key to what your character means when you're developing your character and character creation um so off of ancients is very much a part in that strives to keep the balance of like life and death and nature um there's a bit of crossover with Druids but I really enjoy that you can be like this night in China armor who all right it's more of a green night which as someone from the UK like a green Knights like very old law like very altharian yeah and it's kind of nice kind of seeing that kind of like coming out and then over devotion very much your classic Paladin class um someone about like upholding Justice and like looking out for those in need I think that's very much the pardon like a lot of people kind of are drawn towards of like water Paladin should be and that's fun and like we'd like to play with like a pad and that's like I'm a bit supporty like I'll help my allies out I'll sell the front I'll take a beating um and then we have Oath of Vengeance which we held back for the full release just because it takes a paladin down a different path where you're about righting wrongs and you're about seeking out um people who have like violated either laws of land who have harmed other people and they're a lot more brutal than the other two starting subclasses um and their kind of ability set as well sort of like mirrors that they're very much about like controlling the battlefield and seeking out singular foes um and then my favorite part about it is the oath breaker where you start out with an oath with some tenants that you must uphold um which we incorporate into your dialogue choices but also in your gameplay so if you start killing everyone you see you're gonna break your roof um so you then become an oath breaker and you then are met by this oath breaker night who we want to make sure it wasn't just black and white like the reason why you broke it off wasn't necessarily because you are evil it could be you just struggle to follow the rules when you feel like there's something for the greater good that you want to fight for but doesn't necessarily stick for the original oaf um so we made the oak break at night very much a character where the player got to interact with them to develop their own role playing so it's not about the Knight themselves it's about the questions they're asking you and why you broke your oath and what it now means to you to be an oath breaker and it's just quite a fascinating thing to see like why players have broken arrows so during a play testing sessions like I had to sit down with everyone that kind of played the Paladin it's like okay right and the ones that did break the off I'm like why did you break it off and it's always for so many times additionally different life they just murdered someone because they want a local weapon but sometimes it was like the encounter you have for the hag in act one there's a character whose outcome depending what you pick could go against your oath of ancients but could seem morally like the right thing to do as a paladin so you could break her off in that way and that's what happened to this player and they kind of felt a bit told by that it's like I felt like I did the right thing but it was against my oath but now I've got cool and dead raising Powers so I'm chill yeah it's I'm pretty Tempted By Any Undead raising uh myself uh so especially is having a little bit of an undead Army is always kind of nice that has been one of the things I've really enjoyed as seeing players pick necromancy Wizards and just saying that it looks like a fun party skeleton followers and just it's a bit weird just seeing all these skeletons like raised and running around Baldur's Gate um but I'm cool with it if you want to make your turn order longer that's that was your choice yeah that's very true it's very how do the the dozens of Baldur Escape react to Undead wandering around the city I'm 90 certain they do react to that yeah I can't remember off the top of my head if we did add that or not I'm pretty sure they do we definitely have reactivity for if you're a druid and you're wild shape into a spider like people do freak out a giant spider like running around yeah which is quite fun um our spiders look too realistic in the game like they are horrifying yeah I have a problem with spiders I can just about deal with spiders in the house like in the UK like spiders are tidy like they're nothing so it's like all right out we go I don't really want to touch you that's fine but when I go into the game and I have to look at a spider I'm like this is yeah there's something they're too good looking to the Barbarian because you worked on it like what did you enjoy what was important to capture about the Barbarian experience I'm very keen on playing a barbarian that is wild magic oh wild magic was so much fun there wild magic barbarians are idiots who don't understand how their magic works it just happens I think I just really enjoy that I don't care what I'm doing magic I'm just having fun I'm angry and Magic's just shooting out of me um another thing as well was like I know a fun one worker of narratives like we have all the reactivity in the game like if you're a monk you'll get special dialogue dialogue options because you are a monk and Paladin especially we sort of branched out into like your oof unlocks like brand new um narrative options and game for the Barbarian we kind of want to not just make it about being like hulking out and just going and rage all the time but we did make a special Edge case for Berserker so Berserker gets their own custom dialogue options where you do Hulk out and you are just angry um there's some fun ones like I really enjoyed it like when you're on the nautiloid for the first time at the start of the game and Shadow Hearts is like banging out of banging on the the capsule to be let out and like every other class has to sort of like look around like how can I do this and interact with the elephant Powers Barbarian just rips the thing off I love that that's such a barbarian like I would do that in tabletop I'll just screw it right you strength check come on ripping This Ring Off yeah that's that was a nice weather I started a barbarian and I thought I could do that I'm like oh this is lovely how how more often am I going to get to do just tear things to pieces in this game The Narrative dream really want to make car like a barbarian and I was like oh this is cool and getting to like chat to uh bo who was the narrative lead on carlac and they had these like crazy ideas like Ross could we do this like we do this like I want Carla to be on fire like can we do something with soul coins with her and I was like okay let me sit down let's kind of like have a good chat like what can we do to make car look special like what makes her this ultimate barbarian from Hell uh so that was cool so that's another narrative point was like oh I get to help out with some writing stuff like that's not usually what I do I usually just sit in spreadsheets and do numbers and talk to programmers but you have like that environment where you can just kind of yeah I think cross-pollinate that's exactly it and I think it learned like we all sort of like sit around each other at the different Studios like we all take ideas from other people so I've had writers suggest things like hey like this attack should it do this or um like hey you want to do Flurry of Blows like kind of lead it into something else so we get these like cool conversations like sit around the kitchen um just chat with each other I think like it's fostered this identity of lion being like everyone's got good ideas and we want to see these good ideas kind of brought forward to the games kind of like Elevate things because everyone plays these games like everyone in the studio is a big DND fan everyone's a fan of the game they're working on so ideas should come from everywhere you hadn't been very excited for all these different Monk subclasses and they're varied what what can you break them down a little bit what you enjoyed about them so monk got a lot of attention from us um we weren't really scared to kind of household things where we felt that it didn't translate into a video game as much like in a tabletop environment monks about describing your actions and your emotions and how you do things and to a certain extent like you don't have that same flexibility to sort of like Drive The Narrative to describe your actions so we kind of like went back to class like okay how do you make this like live up to the kind of um archetypes that people want to see at the monk like open hand monk is very much like the Kung Fu Master it's the Bruce Lee Jackie Chan I want to do cool moves it's a class that you kind of have to think like you have not as big a tall but as say um a wizard like a wizard spellbar is massive yeah with an open hand monk um it's a lot more manageable but I think the clever thing with open our Monk Is about how do I use my smaller selection of tools can be used in a much wider way um so you have like ways to Dash and then get free jump and then just use that as your bonus action and about like how can I get from here to here really quick and punch this guy can I stun this guy it's about like sort of manipulating the battlefield in a fun way um where the Shadows is it's the ultimate ninja it's the guy who's skulking the Shadows to like pop out and instantly strike enemies uh it is the Ninja fantasy um and then for for elements Monk Is someone where controls the weave in a very different way and it's about through those like a movement so they can like manipulate the elements around them um and it is fun to run and punch someone and just drop a fireball um at the feet of your enemies foreign

Channel: Dungeons & Dragons

Views: 32,369

Keywords: Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, gaming, roleplaying game, ttrpg, forgotten realms, eberron, Wizards of the Coast, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, tabletop, RPG, Todd Kenreck, dnd, Wildemount, Critical Role

Id: XucniU0d4VI

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 05 2023