Baldur's Gate 3 announced

[Caliga]

I have been playing too and it's fantastic, but I loved the Divinity games so I expected Larian would not disappoint.

I created a custom character, a female drow warlock Lolth-worshipper, and was kind of a little disappointed when I encountered Minthara, because I expected a lot of dialogue about our shared drowness and Lolthiness, but I guess that's a reflection of how high Larian set the bar with this game.

[The Minsky Moment]

Switch Astarion to the Thief subclass.  The extra bonus action is just vicious.  On the same turn he can hide (bonus) and unleash two sneak attacks if dual wielding.  Or hide, sneak attack and then disengage to safety.

[crazy canuck]

Switch Astarion to the Thief subclass.  The extra bonus action is just vicious.  On the same turn he can hide (bonus) and unleash two sneak attacks if dual wielding.  Or hide, sneak attack and then disengage to safety.

Yes, he is one of my favourite things about the game. 

I am trying a tankless party, with a Soceror main, Asterion, Blackheart and Gale.  It's loads of fun, partly because I need to think about tactics more than I did when I had a Paladin.  But most battles now end a lot quicker.

[The Minsky Moment]

There really is no such thing as a tank in this game. Armor steps are limited, and it is very easy for casters to access armor and shield options, plus the shield spell gives them a unique defensive boost.  The closest thing to a tank is the bear heart barbarian that gets resistance on all physical damage forms while raging. But even there opponents can just ignore or go around it. 

[Tamas]

yeah there's no real way to aggro opponents that I have found, so no real tank-tank.

[Solmyr]

Battlemaster fighters get goading strikes which give enemies a disadvantage when attacking anyone else than them. Also bear druids apparently have some sort of hard taunt, but I haven't looked at it yet.

[HVC]

The Bard

[crazy canuck]

yeah there's no real way to aggro opponents that I have found, so no real tank-tank.

There are a few ways actually.  Paladins get a bonus action spell which forces an opponent to attack them.  Simply being located near an opponent forces them to attack so that they don't incur an attack of opportunity.

Fighters have similar mechanics.

There really is no such thing as a tank in this game. Armor steps are limited, and it is very easy for casters to access armor and shield options, plus the shield spell gives them a unique defensive boost.  The closest thing to a tank is the bear heart barbarian that gets resistance on all physical damage forms while raging. But even there opponents can just ignore or go around it. 

Not of you are using the skills of the tank classes properly.  For example, Paladins have passive and active abilities that improves their armour class.  Also, see above, can force opponents to target them.

The game difficulty is reduced having a Paladin as the player character, which I suppose is why it was the number one pick.

[crazy canuck]

On my second play through I surprised how much content I missed on my first trip through.  I thought I had been careful not to miss things

[Legbiter]

Love how aggressively horny the companions are toward the MC. 

[The Minsky Moment]

yeah there's no real way to aggro opponents that I have found, so no real tank-tank.

Paladins get a bonus action spell which forces an opponent to attack them.  Simply being located near an opponent forces them to attack so that they don't incur an attack of opportunity.

The battle master goading strike affects one opponent for one turn only.  It doesn't really work for a true "tank" build.  Also the stronger defensive build is eldritch knight which gets the shield spell; the BM fighter is likely not to be the strongest defensive character on the team.  Overall, IMO there are better maneuver options.

The Paladin spell also affects only one opponent.  It does last longer, but it also uses a crucial spell slot that could otherwise be used to power divine smite, so the opportunity cost is high in terms of foregone offense for a short-term single target taunt.

I haven't tried the druid bear taunt - at least as described it should affect multiple opponents. The bear has crappy AC though so that will only work at lower levels where opposition damage output won't swamp the bear HP.  It's a tank like the Pz II - good enough against weak opposition, but a danger to itself against stronger opponents.

You certainly could try to create a tank like build by using one of the above options, possibly with barbarian for the resistances, and pick the sentinel feat and big pole arms to lock down opponents.  (Although that means foregoing a shield--> lowering AC and thus in part defeating the point).  Just seems suboptimal to me.

Every character class in BG3 can deploy good defensive abilities in some way, whether based on high AC, resistances, movement, stealth etc.  Better to take advantage of particular strengths of each team member rather than force a tank role on one them that doesn't fit comfortably into this rule set.

[crazy canuck]

This isn't an MMO.  Just because there is not the sort of aggro mechanic that is found in games like WoW, doesn't mean there isn't a tank class in this game.

There is, it's just that you need to be a bit smarter about it than in an MMO where holding aggro is the only job of a tank class character.

I agree that there are better ways to craft a party but that does not detract from the point that if a player choose to, it is possible to create a tank type character.  I just think that is not the best use of one of the four slots.

[Syt]

I originally started playing when the game came out, but stopped after the initial combat tutorial (fighting the imps) and decided to finish BG2 first since I was close to the end (see Syt plays thread for some hot takes ).

I restarted fresh yesterday and consequently spent an hour in character creation only to settle on my default character from BG1 and 2 (redhead female human paladin).

Anyways, played as far as I made it before last night (i.e. end of first combat with imps) and I notice the cutscenes are smoother, but I encountered glitches I hadn't before, despite the patches:
- in the encounter with the "open brain guy" his character model was now missing, so I was interacting with "air"
- in the combat tutorial, after switching characters the actions menu disappeared (it reappeared when I went back to the other character), forcing me to reload a quicksave (fortunately I quicksave often, anways ... hooray for 50 quicksave slots ) which sorted it out

The intro cinematic is a good reminder that living the life of an average Joe in the D&D setting must be an existential horror where powerful beings can step into your life at any point and kill you, maim you, or consign you to a myriad fates worse than death. Kinda makes you wonder if there's a The Boyz kind of take on this.

And coming from BG2 I'm of course "overjoyed" to see Ilithids again so soon. (Though obviosly a lot more gross than could be presented with BG2's capabilities.)

[Solmyr]

- in the encounter with the "open brain guy" his character model was now missing, so I was interacting with "air"
- in the combat tutorial, after switching characters the actions menu disappeared (it reappeared when I went back to the other character), forcing me to reload a quicksave (fortunately I quicksave often, anways ... hooray for 50 quicksave slots ) which sorted it out

The disappearing UI bug is apparently unique to Lae'zel, happened to me a couple of times too. Quicksave/quickload fixes it. It also usually fixes the disappearing model bug.

[Legbiter]

I'm still in chapter 1, just discovered the Underdark. I swear half my time is spent clicking on containers.