The writer got mad when a goblin shoved Astarion off a cliff. It reminded me of when I had Karlach shove a goblin in lava, then a goblin ran up and shoved HER in the lava. I didnāt get mad; I took it as a learning moment: enemies can shove me back, so move away from the lava.
5e is a bad table top game, but thatās part of whatās made it so successful - itās not treated as a game unto itself anymore, but just some loose guidelines to help generate setpieces, and people like that.
But also BG3 seems to recognize this and actually fills in the broken or missing game elements, just like everyoneās DM does whenever they come across these gaps. It takes an opinionated approach to implementing the rules, and does so with the confidence of years of building CRPGs.
Itās an impressive feat.
The only thing that I would say is missing from BG3 is a more comprehensive encyclopedia of game and class mechanics a la the Owlcat Pathfinder games. Being able to see all the things a class would get ahead of time would be hella dope and help with character planning.
I feel like the game really, really, really needs an āIāve Never Played D&Dā mode - one that actually explains what the terms and such means. It took me forever to figure out what things like ā1d6ā in weapons meant, and Iām still not completely sure what a ācantripā exactly is.
Cantrips are just spells that donāt use spell slots. No further explanation needed
And this info is nowhere.
Itās in the game, Iāve never played 5e and I knew that since Iāve started playing.
Additionally, it can help to see them as ālevel 0ā spells.
Here is the full description of them in the Player HandBook:
Itās true that mechanics in BG3 could be better explained to people who donāt know dnd. Then again, in RPG videogames, mechanics are usually implementation details that no player gets in details. :) At leat this time, there is an opportunity to understand them (the basic rules are free to obtain on dndbeyond.com, btw)
I agree, I made some leveling choices not fully understanding cantrips either.
Basically, what they are is a spell that doesnāt use your spell slots. So for example, wylls eltrich blast is a cantrip. You can cast it once per turn and it doesnāt cost any resources, just like a regular melee attack or ranged attack, it just uses your attack move that turn.
I think the problem with 5e is that itās super crunchy with combat but super fluffy with everything else. It is really combat centric. It encourages a lot of ad hoc roleplay but super rigid combat. āThe problemā is a strong term. This is mostly my opinion. Itās a popular system so everyone is going to have things about it they dislike.
Iāve tried to get my friends to try other systems but it has been tough getting buy-in. Itās good enough. We basically play with one combat per long rest but thereās a sort of an unspoken agreement to not go crazy with dumping a bunch of strong spells. Plus I think we actually donāt even have any full casters in the group which is what would benefit most from that style so it works out nicely.
No itās not. Everybody loved 5e before the OGL fiasco early this year, but the hardcore old-schoolers who found it too simplified. The recent bad sentiment is about poor business moves by WotC regarding their license, and has nothing to do with the 5e system, which has been to date the most successful edition of dnd.
It really depends on what you mean by āgoodā and ābadā for a table top game. Clearly many people are having fun with it, so itās hard to say that itās a complete trash fire except as hyperbole.
However! I would argue that many of the people playing DND would have more fun with a different system. All those people who do one fight per day? Should play a game that supports that. All the people who do mostly social encounters with the occasional fight? Thatās not what dnd is good at, and would have more fun with a system that was built for that.
Unfortunately DND is mega popular and sucks most of the air out of the hobby. This has a important effects.
One, I suspect thereās a huge survivorship bias in the hobby. DND is the first game most people play because itās super popular. Thus, most of the people who stick around the hobby are people who didnāt hate DND enough to leave. There are probably lots of people who would like rpgs in general that donāt play anything because their first experience was DND, and they hated it. Most of them wonāt come back to the hobby.
Second, because DND is such a janky system thatās difficult to learn (donāt you tell me a 15 is a +2 is an easy system), most of the people who do stick around are hesitant to try something else. Why would they want to learn another system and memorize another set of stat mappings? Some people probably donāt even know there are rpgs without six stats, or character attributes like that at all.
Anyway. I digress. 5e is very good at being 5e, but it is not a general purpose RPG. It also has something I dislike in pretty much every one of its systems. As a shorthand I often say itās a bad game.
Being popular and being a good game are completely different things. Being fun and being a good game are different things. Being useful and being a good game are different things.
Iām not making a value judgement on whether 5e is likeable. I like 5e. Itās just that itās not a complete and coherent experience.
Argument ad populum doesnāt change that.
Right. Gladly, youāre here to explain those masses of idiots who are having fun why they should not. Youāre just being pedantic. And for the record, no, it doesnāt make you sound smart.
Right? And āa fun game doesnāt mean a good gameā is just bizarrely wrong headed. Yes, definitionally a fun game is a good game. You have to be incredibly high sniffing your own farts to confidently and obstinately state otherwise.