Five Huge D&D 5e Rules Changes in Baldur's Gate 3

this week's episode of our show is sponsored by World Anvil if you haven't heard of them before World Anvil is a web-based World building and campaign designing platform well World Anvil is a fantastic way to organize and digitize your entire campaign notebook it's also far more than that it's a great tool to Spur your creativity and help support you as a game master and a World Builder in creating your adventures and your own bespoke campaign setting but also sharing the key details with your players and other game Masters the amount of depth that you can go into to design not just fantasy RPGs but really any type of ttrpg that you want to imagine if you're planning to write or design your own narratives for publication this is a great place to brainstorm gather ideas put everything laid out in a concise way that you can reference anytime you want and the ability to share those references with your players and decide what they can see and what's just for you as the DM is also incredible built for storytellers creators and game Masters first and foremost World Anvil is a fantastic platform that you can check out by following the links down in the description below and now onto this week's episode greetings my name is Monty Martin and I'm Kelly McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes Welcome to our Channel where we cover everything D and we are super excited because Baldur's Gate 3 is finally here and we are going to be syncing a lot of hours over the next little while into Baldur's Gate 3. we've been interested in talking about video games uh because it's probably our second most loved hobby on d d uh and this feels like the right Port of Call to really dive into video game discussions because uh if you are not playing Baldur's Gate 3 it is very much inspired by the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons the characters the classes the dice rolling all the mechanics you love in d d are here in Baldur's Gate 3 but there are also very drastic differences in the way some of the rules work in Baldur's Gate 3. So today we're going to think we noticed right away when we started playing Baldur's Gate 3 at release some of these changes we're really excited about and we might be implementing as house rules in our home games of Dungeons and Dragons but some of them are also pretty controversial and were are worth discussing whether or not they add something or take something away from the tabletop game experience all that to say Baldur's Gate 3 is amazing I am loving this game and I am spending whenever I have had a spare moment I have been putting my hours into it whether on my PC or my steam deck I am loving playing my Paladin sorcerer it's been a lot of fun I have been able to play passively at Monty's house from time to time but I am waiting for the PlayStation 5 release on September 1st uh because I do not own a PC and crying emojis um but I already know that it's going to be one of the best games that has ever come out and is setting a new bar for RPG video games everywhere and what better way to do that than with DND there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling so the very first thing that we're going to talk about is one that has made me actually Rage Quit Baldur's Gate 3 a few times and save scum my game and that I I like to just play and let things be as they may but I can see how this could be frustrating that is that in Baldur's Gate 3 if you roll a natural one or a natural 20 on a skill check the natural one is an automatic failure and the natural 20 is an automatic success this is not the case in DND 5e when you're playing at the table automatic successes and failures apply to attack rolls only so if you're a Bard with a plus 12 to your persuasion checks and the DC is 10 you can't fail and Monty and I are more on the side of hey if you've built your character to be exceptional at these things then it feels good to succeed most of the time but if you've built your powerful social Bard and you're doing a social encounter in Baldur's Gate 3 and the DC is five and you roll a one and you fail that feels bad for me this is super jarring because there's another subtle but impactful change in Baldur's Gate 3 with skill checks when you go to roll a skill check the game tells you what the DC is and the interface shows you all the potential bonuses that you could be adding onto the role like guidance or Eagle Splendor or Advantage from some other source so you can see yourself stacking the deck up to get a plus 10 plus 12 bonus on this mangy little dc10 Charisma check and then you still roll a natural one and you get that very depressing noise and for me it's either I slam the reload button or fortunately there's the inspiration button right on underneath that lets you re-roll the check now this is one change that I would not Implement into my home games I think that characters who take expertise or specify in certain skills want to be good at those things and I've heard counter arguments going the other way saying saying that a one should always be a failure because you always have a chance of failing if you have a plus 20 then what's the point what's the challenge why even ask for a role I don't really have a great argument against that yes even if I'm extremely proficient in something in my real life I still can flub and mess up but in our games of d d I haven't ever had it negatively affect my table that oh they have a plus 12 to persuasion then if it's an easy DC then yeah they just succeed at it but there are still challenges that we can put in front of those players Baldur's Gate is making that change and whether or not it feels good I leave up to the audience for Monty and I it we don't love rolling a one when we're 99 sure that we've got this I am at the point that as soon as mods start coming up for Baldur's Gate 3 I'm going to mod this out of the game I hate it so much so starting off on the constructive foot let's get to something that's a little more exciting Baldur's Gate 3 introduces you Universal bonus actions these are a list of options that you always have that you can perform as a bonus action this includes jump shove or drink a potion as a bonus action another big change and dip I want to talk about dip for a second dip is the ability to dip your weapon into poison or acid or fire and then it does bonus damage yes as a DM I would totally allow this at the table but I love that the game tells you that this is an option and tells you that it should be a bonus action I think that implementing that immediately into our games and if a player says hey can I dunk my ax into the furnace and do extra fire damage yeah as a bonus action you can I think that's brilliant I also quite like jump being a bonus action it still costume movement in Baldur's Gate 3 and your jump distance is based on your strength score but having it as a bonus action makes it feel really good and that might just be the computer RPG element of it because one thing that Baldur's Gate 3 kind of obscures and doesn't quite handle well is that free interact with the environment sort of thing that you're allowed to do it's always it still is confusing to me what it's taking me to flip a switch or open a door or do things like that on my turn it seems to cause movement sometimes seems to cause action other times it's a little bit unclear there but the the bonus actions with jump and dip are really really fun and I will say in a video game environment drinking a potion as a bonus action feels right I do think that that is something that will come up in this video is I won't necessarily use that at the table we already have said in previous videos we like to do the max healing on potions and I feel like you either go Max healing on potions as an action or bonus action to drink a potion I've seen so many people now I I don't know if we can claim credit for this but I've seen a lot of people actually allow players the option of both bonus action but you roll action you get the maximum right I I think I would roll with that um now but of course Baldur's Gate 3 also gives you tons of other potions as well and you can actually throw a potion at an ally to heal them or throw it on the ground to make a puddle that if you walk through it heals people which those are all very larion Studios things those all come from like divinity original sin 2 and previous layering games but it's cool to see them in a DND environment those are things that I might allow at my table I think it depends on how much my players are abusing that but if there's a sticky situation and somebody's like I can't get to the person who's dying can I just whip a potion at them I might be like yeah okay let's do it now shove being a bonus action is also an interesting change from the tabletop game because shove usually requires you to give up one of your attacks which means it's part of an action on your turn or you need to take the shield Master feat in order to shove as a bonus action there's a few other ways that you can get shove as a bonus action in the tabletop game but just having it as a free bonus action in balder skate 3 is kind of fun you can always shove people around if you got nothing else to do with your bonus action It's really impactful because it means anybody can do this so I've actually had a situation where I had in a desperate move against a face spider matriarch I had Gail My Wizard shove a face spider matriarch off a cliff and kill it hey if it works I mean that's the beautiful thing about Baldur's yeah and d d and I think that's one of the one of the beautiful things that Baldur's Gate does so well is you just get to try stuff yeah and I think we could talk about this more so but Baldur's Gate 3 in terms of its level design uses a lot of verticality in its encounters there's a lot of encounters where you can destroy Bridges to have foes fall there's a lot of cliffs where there's instant death below that you can push people off of and so having shove is a bonus action I think in the context of Baldur's Gate 3's overall design is pretty powerful and I think that a meta shove character raging with karlak and having her pushing people off cliffs is an encounter winning strategy so it would be interesting to import that into DND 5e but I think this also teaches us something as DMS if you're playing Baldur's Gate 3 take notes of the level design and what is fun for you as a player of balder's gate 3. pushing enemies off a cliff is super fun so build more environments in your tabletop games that have Cliffs and bridges for your players to throw enemies off of just put a few extra enemies on the board and everybody's happy next up comes one of my favorite implementations in Baldur's Gate 3. we've seen hints of this in the one DND packets but I think Baldur's Gate 3 actually does it better and that is the weapon actions in Baldur's Gate 3 depending on what weapon you have equipped you may gain one two or three additional actions you can perform once per short rest these are all based on the type of weapon that you pick and are very thematic to bring to life the fantasy of what it means to build that weapon I think that this is incredible so if you're using a great ax or a great sword you get the cleave action this lets you make a sweeping attack which hits up to three enemies and it does half damage to each of them or if you are using a longbow you get access to the hamstring shot which if you hit an enemy it reduces their Movement by 50 percent or you can brace yourself giving up your own movement to re-roll the damage that you deal with your shot there's a huge range of these actions and I'm still trying them all out in my playthrough but it really makes the weapons feel distinct useful and it gives martial characters a lot more options in combat sorry to say this to one DND but I actually think that this is an incredible system and we should just scrap whatever it was they were working on and take what larian Studios did here and Tack it into our DND games we're going to probably talk about this in a bigger way but I honestly think that larion has done the job for Wizards of the Coast and wizard of the coast should just just go like Larry and just let us take it and put it in the game I actually think it would be stronger for wizards the coast to do this because a whole bunch of people are going to be introduced to fifth edition through Baldur's Gate 3 and it would be a better pipeline for them if things work the same and these things are first of all these actions aren't really easy to bolt on um their descriptions are already in the baltus gate 3 wikis it's very clear how they work and they immediately work in D D I think that this is probably if there's anything that you should immediately consider taking from Baldur's Gate 3 and using it in your tabletop games it is the weapon actions and they're absolutely a total home run I think they work great I love them put them in the game up next we have our long rests and short rests these are pretty famous options in DND and here they are in Baldur's Gate 3 but they work a little bit different first of all short rests interesting enough are instantaneous you just click a button and you get the benefits of a short rest no time to spend there's usually a fun equip from a Starion or Shadow heart that helped but you're ready to move on I love that for a video game I don't think I would Implement that into my home games I think it's a really good argument for short refs to be five minutes instead of one hour but it's counterbalanced by the fact that you can only take two short rests per long rest that I love that should be implemented into the games once you've taken a second short rest you can't short rest again until you take a long rest this immediately solves one of DnD 5e's biggest problems which is people spamming short rests if you can only take two and then need a long rest we're good so I actually think that that's a brilliant rule also when you take a short rest in Baldur's Gate the hit dice you don't have those you just gain 50 of your hit points back which I also think is pretty cool it also reduces the time as people who stream DND yeah one of the biggest things is when we're taking short rests and everybody's like should I roll three oh that's not enough healing I'll roll three more uh still notice and then we end up taking a long time taking a short rest it is interesting because what I have found is that if I have an encounter where one of my characters in Baldur's Gate 3 got beat up really really badly and is under 50 I'll take the short rest but then and have them drink a bunch of potions because the game gives out a lot of healing potions so it's easy enough to quaff your way back up to full by chugging on some potions plus using the short rest to get all of your things and I will say combined with our previous point with the weapon actions you're incentivized to short rest more often because characters are getting their weapon actions back on their short rest they're getting all of their fighter features warlocks are great in Baldur's Gate 3 because of the way short rests work as well so it really feels quite significant that this change has been made but it's also a change that goes hand in hand with how long rests work in falter skate 3. long rests now require camping materials in order to perform them in Baldur's Gate 3 you need 40 camping supplies to get the benefits of a long rest and camping supplies are pretty plentiful so far we haven't really experienced much in the way of not having yeah but it's never happened that I have haven't had enough to fully heal but this immediately tells me as a dungeon master that if I implement this necessity for camping supplies I then get to determine based on the environment how many camping supplies my party is able to find if they're traversing a dangerous desert I might greatly limit the amount of camping supplies they have because it's much harder to find a good night's rest in the desert this would be a really cool rule to implement in fifth edition especially combined with encumbrance rules because first what you could say is that if you are resting in a home or a base of operations or a Tavern or an inn of some kind you don't need camping supplies because the business or the base is providing them for you but if you're on the road you do need 40 camping supplies and I think a really interesting rule might be an individual character can only carry 10 supplies with them and then you're encumbered if you carry more than 10. or more than 20 or like again you could adjust based on the style of campaign you're running so if you want to run that hardcore Wilderness survival campaign you could say yeah five player characters if you are carrying more than eight camp supplies you're encumbered so that means that the party can only bring enough supplies for one long rest or if you want to be a little bit more generous depending again depending on the campaign you could say that a full pack of camp supplies for 40 is enough for one character to cover so that way if you have a party four they have four long rests between them on their expedition and then they have to go back and resupply you could also have some levers to pull based on not only the weight but the price of the camp supplies so I think that this rule in its simple Elegance in the way it's implemented in Baldur's Gate 3 it doesn't feel like much of an obstacle but by increasing the cost and the amount of supplies the party can carry we could have a really interesting system in d5e I think that that together there's actually a lot here to uh to broaden the scope of what short and long rests mean in our games and I think that that's brilliant one of the most notorious rules in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition is the bonus action spell casting rule the way that this works in DND 5e if you use a bonus action to cast a leveled spell you can only cast a cantrip with your action so for example if I cast Missy step or spiritual weapon I can now only use my action to cast Firebolt or guidance this rule has been a part of fifth edition since its origin and has made it more of a question of when you should cast your bonus action spells what you should use for your action for and adds an I think an appropriate limitation but Baldur's Gate 3 says now we're just not going to pay attention to that and lets you do crazy shenanigans I think that as a single player game this is super fun but I would never allow this in my table so the most notorious example of this is that Sorcerers can Quicken spells to cast them as a bonus action so what you can't do in fifth edition is you can't cast Fireball and then Quicken a fireball to Fireball twice in the same turn you can absolutely do this in Baldur's Gate 3. they have increased the sorcery Point cost of quick and spell to three from two but it still means that a sorcerer can drop two Fireballs in a turn which is pretty devastating and encounter ending but it gets worse than that because there's a couple other things that can be stacked on top of that now you can multi-class in Baldur's Gate 3. so if I take two levels of fighter for Action search and I can Quicken a fireball then I can just cast is it three three Fireballs yep Quicken action action search but it gets worse because in Baldur's Gate 3 the haste spell also lets you use that extra action that it gives you to cast a spell how many Fireballs is that so if you are already if you have another character cast haste on you and you're a sorcerer with two levels of fighter and you have enough sorcery points and enough spell slots you can Fireball with your action Fireball with your bonus action action surge to fire a wall again and then use your haste action to Fireball one more time so you do need four third level or higher spell slots to do this and three sorcery points but the way I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 is generally I do like three encounters and then take a long rest so and the game doesn't feel like it's penalizing me for doing this yet um that feels like fun I I'll actually say one of the other like just a side of Ballers to get three is I don't take too many long rests because every time you take a long rest in Bulger Gate 3 you have to go back to your Camp which usually means that every one of your party members is gonna have to have some therapy with you and you have to do all the conversations with all your party members so I wonder if that's like the side rule is that Bulger Gate 3 makes you do all the role playing associated with taking a long rest so if you want to persuade your party not to take as many long rests force them to role play for hours every time they do yeah no no no it's like I just want to take are trying to strangle each other and so it's like guys I'm just trying to finish this dungeon please do not kill each other I I do think that this uh bonus action rule again for a single player game where there's not a DM actually at the table it's you playing with a computer system in front of you so let the player the single player cast their four Fireballs in a turn oh no we broke the game the only person that you're ruining it for I guess is yourself and if you find it that it doesn't ruin it and it's a lot of fun then that's fine but I do think at our tables because it's a team game the dungeon master wants to have fun the players Want to Have Fun everybody wants to turn in the spotlight this is not something that you should Implement totally because Baldur's Gate 3 is a single player game the inter-party balance doesn't matter and this is one of the things that is a huge takeaway from Baldur's Gate 3 is that larion has done a whole bunch of changes to the classes that we'll probably talk about in future videos but in Baldur's Gate 3 it doesn't matter that Lazelle is completely useless in Exploration and social interaction encounters she's just there to be the fighter while the main character does all the social stuff but in a team game where everyone is piloting one character that doesn't work as well and even though Bulger Skate 3 has multiplayer and you can play it as a group I really do feel like this the balance concerns that larion has are different than the balance concerns that an RPG might have and also larion can balance and tailor the balance for every single individual encounter for the very specific campaign that they've created it's not like there is that this has to be a rule set that works for every possible game it only has to work for the storyline of Baldur's Gate 3. and while we're speaking about party balance uh the final point that we're going to talk about today is that multi-classing in Baldur's Gate 3 has no restrictions on your ability scores in DND 5e if you want to multi-class two classes together there are certain prerequisites for ability scores that you need to hit if you're a paladin you need to have a 13 in strength and Charisma if you're trying to pair that with a ranger then you also need a 13 in wisdom and dexterity and things get a little complicated but in Baldur's Gate 3 if you want to play a paladin Ranger which is very unlikely in most tables you can do that probably still not a great combo anyways but it does mean that you can multi-class Paladin sorcerer and completely dump your strength and it gets even more powerful because Baldur's Gate 3 has unlimited respects for a hundred gold which means that you can change all your characters ability scores and change their entire class and all their level selections every time you gain a level for only 100 gold pieces with every single character in your party so I don't know if people necessarily will do this but every time I've gained a level in bulgence Gate 3 I've respect all of my characters and just optimize them perfectly like just changed exactly what their stats are Min maxed every single thing with every single level and again if you had to level up as a paladin sorcerer in traditional DND you'd have to decide what your level breakdown is going to be but every time I gain a level I just decide okay I'm level six now I think the most optimal thing for me to be at this level is just six levels of Paladin and so I just go over to Withers and respect I I on the other hand am more of a person who when I play games like this I kind of just go with the flow I might do a little bit of respecting on my main character but generally I'll let the uh the NPCs fall where they may and kind of just maybe if one I think is not carrying their weight I might respect them no I totally respect Shadow heart into a light domain cleric which is completely opposite from her character I respect a Starion into a gloomstalker ranger um and I'm probably gonna respect does that cause any narrative changes so I haven't noticed any um I have seen that you will get dialogue options that are class based so as a paladin sometimes you'll get Paladin talk about your oath in this social situation um but because I'm never having my NPC companions in any of the dialogues it's always my main character it seems like it hasn't come up fair enough and I don't know if I haven't encountered anything in the game yet that has been subclass specific I hadn't seen anywhere yet that it's cared what subclass I am although I do believe that the Paladin Oaths you can break your Paladin oath yeah and there are different ways that you break them in the game and you become an oath breaker so that's one where it seems like it's relevant but I haven't seen anywhere where as a cleric it's cared yet again I haven't finished the game yet so I don't know if it does or if it doesn't that'll be an interesting thing to see but I mean I I respect the stereo into a gloomstock arranger and it hasn't come up at all because he's often just hiding in the darkness and not interacting with anybody until he shoots them I do think overall uh we could and we will be carrying on the conversation on Baldur's Gate 3. there's a ton of spell and feat and class changes but we're probably going to do a much deeper dive into each of those categories in future videos also at the end of the day Baldur's Gate 3 is a video game so although they've done probably the most fantastic job I have ever witnessed in bringing what feels like a tabletop game to life in a video game with just the sheer amount of options there is still the limitation of it being a video game programmed by people with a certain set of limitations d d the beautiful thing about the tabletop game is that you can do whatever you want whenever you want obviously there's rules in place but if you want to blow up a wall or kick down a door or climb up onto a roof you you can do all of those things whenever you feel like just by saying I would like to do this thing yeah but in Baldur's Gate 3 you can't climb a wall unless the game lets you climb the wall and although the dialogue options are vast and plentiful the beautiful thing about d d at the table is that we can say anything and bounce off of each other's interactions in a very human way and so balder ski 3 gets two thumbs up a pluses it's the greatest yeah it like it is a worthy successor to the franchise and stands it stands on the shoulders of giants I love Neverwinter Nights I love so many other crpgs that have come before it but this this feels like a watershed moment for uh a hundred percent it is an amazing game and we're going to be playing this is easily like I've been craving another game that I can sync 500 to a thousand hours into and this feels like one of them and I think as a final note about all of this it still doesn't take away from the magic of playing d d and if you're watching this video and you're just getting into Baldur's Gate 3 but have never played D this might be a great opportunity to try it out because if you like what you're getting in balder's Gate 3 it's that times a hundred when you play at the table with your friends and if you did happen to find this video because you are playing Baldur's Gate 3 our guides for the various classes in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition are still pretty close to the games and I found that just implementing the advice that we've been giving in our videos in my character builds for the game as I play through it have worked pretty well so far of course there's a couple key changes and we'll cover those in future videos but please check out the other videos on our Channel if you are new to Baldur's Gate 3 and 5th edition as well and want to learn how to build your characters so let us know if there's any other rules that we didn't cover today that you've found in Baldur's Gate 3 that you might be implementing into your home games of DnD the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters if you enjoy the work that we do here on YouTube please consider becoming a patron of the show by following the links down below and if you want to see us playing DND in an actual play Campaign you can check out our campaign in the worlds of drachenheim which airs Tuesday evenings on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and if you're looking for of those class guides they're right up over here please subscribe to our Channel like this video and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 173,764

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: 34SGI_eIzi8

Length: 31min 5sec (1865 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 22 2023