on March 12th Larian Studios held an ask
me anything forum on reddit where they
spent two hours responding directly to
comments and questions regarding details
on the upcoming game Boulder's Gate
three let's discuss everything we
learned from the AMA. If you want to stay
up to date on the latest BG3 news or you
want to learn more about the lore and
the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons
rule set that BG3 is based on consider
subscribing and turning on notifications
so you don't miss anything. So first up
let's talk about everything we learned
about characters and character creation.
Larian Studios did confirm that all
classes and subclasses from the player
handbook will be available at launch and
that you will be able to multi-class
just like in fifth edition. The key part
there being at launch, so not all of the
classes will be available during early
access. For those of you that aren't
familiar with fifth edition the player
handbook core classes include the
Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid
Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard. I do have an
entire Dungeons & Dragons basics series
that I've been working on, a couple of
the videos are already up so if you want
a little bit more information on the
core races and classes I'll put a link
for those up in the corner. They also
responded to a question regarding the
Ranger class, now if you're new to fifth
edition basically the Ranger is a bit of
a controversial class. It's considered by
many to be the weakest class of fifth
edition, a few years ago Wizards of the
Coast actually released an unofficial
rule set for a revised Ranger. I
talked about all of this in my class
video, I've been very curious to see
what Larian Studios was going to do with
the Ranger class in Baldur's Gate 3 so I'm
glad that someone asked the question and
Larian did respond saying that there will
be revisions to the Ranger. Specifically
there will be changes to the Favored
Enemy and Natural Explorer features all
of this was done based off playtest
material provided to Larian Studios by
Wizards of the coast.  They also responded
to some questions regarding character
creation, all the characters will be
fully customizeable, you'll be able to choose your
starting spells, your skills and
attributes. If you do not
want to do all that customization you
have the option to play an origin
character where everything will be
selected for you or you can still do a
custom character where you choose your
race class and background and then
you're ready to go all of your skills
and starting spells will already be
selected. In terms of appearance of your
character it'll be similar to divinity
original sin to where you are choosing
from preset face types, hair styles,
facial hair, and skin color however they did
say that there's much more diversity in
creation than any other game that
they've made so you should have lots of
options to choose from to customize your
character's appearance. We'll be able to
build custom parties at character
creation although this feature will not
be available in early access. There have
been a lot of concerns around custom
characters because in divinity original
sin 2 most people felt that they needed
to play an origin character in order to
get a more in-depth storyline and that
by making a custom character they were
missing out on some of those special
dialogue options so this is something
that Larian Studios responded to. During
the AMA they mentioned that custom
characters will be fully voice acted
just like origin characters and that
even custom characters are going to have
meaningful story arcs and much stronger
connection to the world and the main
story than what we saw in divinity
original sin 2. They basically said
whether you do an origin character or
whether you do a custom character you're
not going to miss out on anything and
you'll still be able to explore and see
the storyline of those origin characters
by having them in your party and seeing
their story that way. They also mentioned
that full release is going to cover from
levels 1 to 10 which I'm personally fine
with, that's a standard range that you
would cover in a typical fifth edition
campaign and it leaves the option for
potential expansions or sequels in the
future which is great. So moving on from
characters and character creation I want
to talk a little bit about this theme
that I was seeing in a lot of the
responses which was that your choices
matter. they really kind of kept
coming back to this in a lot of the
responses that they were giving, specifically they mentioned that NPCs
will remember your actions
and your attitude and they will react
accordingly. They mentioned that there
are serious consequences for your
choices and that as you move through the
game you'll discover quest lines and
stories that relate directly to the
character you're playing and the things
that you've done. While the alignment
system does not have as much emphasis as
in previous games each character does
still have their own moral compass and
the decisions that you make could result
in companions leaving your party or even
deciding to attack you. You may play your
character how you choose from an
alignment perspective you may play as a
hero or a villain or anything in between
and that when the story ends you will
have determined your fate and the fate
of many others. I'm personally really
excited for this part of the game I
really like that they're putting a lot
of thought and effort into making sure
that the world feels alive and
responsive. I love that there are
consequences for your actions and that
the ending that you get is going to be
specific to the choices you made
throughout the game. I personally really
love when we get these types of
difficult choices and game impacting
decisions, it's probably one of reasons why I
love the Dark Souls series so much
because it has a lot of this and it has
multiple endings, so that's just
something that I'm pretty excited for.
Alright so moving along here we did get
some more information around story and
location it was confirmed that the game
will be act based so similar to what we
saw in the divinity series basically
you'll get to explore and adventure in a
huge terrain and then you'll move on to
the next act where you'll travel to
another huge region and the next part of
the story will take place there one
other cool thing that they did mention
is that the deities of clerics and
paladin's and the patrons for warlocks
will introduce additional dialogue
options, also deities and patrons
will have what they are calling voice
sparks which are essentially comments
reactions or banter that are interjected
throughout the storyline they also
mentioned that there will be more
features available at full release
regarding deities and patrons than what
is available at early access, although
they did not go into details as to what
this meant. Regardless of what those
features will be it does sound like
there
a lot of effort and thought and to
ensuring that the relationship between
the character and the entity from which
they derive their powers is going to
play a role in the storyline for that
character. They also mentioned that there
will be connection to the story events
of Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, there will be
returning characters and that the events
of baldur's gate 1 & 2 have led to what
is now happening in baldur's gate 3. They did not provide any details on what
all this means, presumably they want us
to experience that for ourselves when we
play the game however most of the
speculation right now is that it is of
course related to the bhaal spawn
storyline and probably the dead 3 as
well. It is actually canon that Minsc & Boo are both still alive in the
Dungeons & Dragons universe so I think
we're all hoping to see those two make
an appearance for sure, and they did
specifically confirm that we will see
Volo. Leave a comment down below what
characters do you think we're gonna see
make an appearance and/or who is it that
you want to see? So there have been a
number of vocal critics stating that
they think Baldur's Gate 3 is too cartoony
or too light-hearted and that it didn't
have the same dark undertones of its
predecessors of Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 so Larian did take the opportunity to respond to that,
they stated that "at PAX you saw one
hour of what will become a very very
long story, in other words you've seen
nothing yet.
Rest assured that the story of BG 3 is a
dark epic rife with dark encounters and
tough choices that will challenge your
preconceptions about what it is to be a
hero, in fact I'd say heroic players will
have a hard time staying on the
righteous path whereas fiendish players
will simply have a ball." Now if you
watched my breakdown of the BG 3
factsheet video that I did a couple
weeks ago this is something that we kind
of already talked about there but again
it just highlights the fact that this is
likely not going to be just another I'm
the hero and I'm gonna save the day type
of storyline you are gonna have to make
a tough choice about whether to play as
a hero or embrace evil and seize
power for yourself and with this
statement I think it just takes it a little
bit further where it sounds like the
right choice is not always going to be
obvious
and what you may think is going to be
the heroic thing to do could in fact end
up having some terrible consequences.
They also gave us a little bit more
information on the companions and the
relationship between the player
character and the companions. They
mentioned that there will be party
banter, so again voice sparks and
automated dialogue we saw this in
divinity original sin...it states that
the companions will react to what the
party is doing and what they're not
doing and most of this dialogue and
reaction will happen at the camp setting.
You'll also be able to recruit
mercenaries that you can customize
mercenaries, however they  will not have back stories like companions do.
Next let's talk about everything they said
about combat, they did reiterate the
fact that the action economy is
generally going to follow that of fifth
eddition, each character is going to get
an action and a movement and they can
use a bonus action if they have one
available to them or an extra attack if
it's a feature of their class. They
responded to some of the concerns around
the use of bonus actions, they clarified
that dash and hide do in fact require a
full action while disengage and jump are
a bonus action that's available to
everyone. They noted that they are aware
of the impact that this has on the rogue
class and are quote "looking into ways of
keeping them appealing and viable" so
this is one of those topics that I on
one hand fully trust Larian to get it
right, I really liked the feel and the
play style of the rogue in divinity
original sin 2 so I do think that they
know what they're doing... that said fifth
edition rogue is very near and dear to
my heart. My favorite character that I've
ever played in tabletop was a rouge so
yeah I'll probably be very critical of
the rogue and I'll just be very
disappointed if it's not perfect. We also
got a little bit more information on how
reactions will work so originally it
sounded like attacks of opportunity we're
the only reaction that would be
available which brought a lot of concern
because there are classes like the
wizard who have very iconic spells like
shield and counter spell that are kind
of considered as defining features for
those classes so there were questions
around how this would work in baldur's
gate 3. They did clarify, stating that
players will have the
ability to enable the reaction of their
choice and it would then trigger
automatically when the correct
conditions are met.  Things that they
confirmed are not currently part of
combat: there is not an option to grapple
and there is not an option to ready an action
They also talked a little bit
about ammunition, there will only be
ammunition for special ammo and spell
components will only be present for
spells that require expensive components,
mainly for balancing purposes. They also
addressed some of the questions and
comments around the team-based
initiative. They mentioned that
team-based initiative was done in an
effort to give a more tactical coherence
and allow for more comfortable co-op
experience. The initiative system is
however something that they are still
working on and experimenting with so if
they find it doesn't work as they
intended they will be making changes
it's something that they're going to be
watching and tinkering with during early
access. We did get a little bit more
information around how the rest feature
will work, the time between combat is
considered a short rest. Any class
features that you would normally regain
during a short rest will be refreshed
during that time.
Long rests require that your party go to the
camp and spend the night,
there was no mention of how often you're able to long rest
there was also additional information
provided around loot, as we learned
during the PAX livestream all loot is
static meaning that you get the same
item each time from each location and
this does include magic items as well.
I think this is kind of nice it takes
away some of the RNG it also means that
if you're replaying the game you know
where to go to find a particular item
that you want, maybe for a certain
build that you're doing. They did also
mention that there are overall less
magic items than what we saw in divinity
original sin 2, magical items that
you do find will feel special and that
they're hand placed and in many cases
hand created. That kind of covers most of
the highlights, there were a few other
miscellaneous items that they addressed
one being the grit system so some of
the complaints that the characters were
too clean looking they did mention that
they do have a grit system but it was
not ready yet they also addressed some
of the comments and criticisms around
the past tense dialogue style that
they've chosen. They mentioned that there
are several reasons that they went
with this style, citing storyline
reasons. They mentioned that they
experimented with a lot of styles and
that they chose this one because it
quote ..."turned out to be an excellent way
of allowing players to tell their own
story and roleplay their character on a
deeper level. I think it's a wonderful
tool for role-playing and storytelling
and when you're playing it's like you're
narrating your own adventure." end quote
I personally don't have a big
preference on the dialogue style so I
don't really have a problem with this
especially if there are story reasons as
to why they chose to do it this way. That pretty much hits the highlights,
I'm personally very pleased with the amount
of information that we got out of this
event, there are still a few questions
that I have. Namely; how often are we able
to long rest and how are we going to be
determining ability scores during
character creation. If you found this
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