Baldur's Gate 3: developed by Larian Studios

[Sly Boots]

Fair few of us playing this, how would people feel about starting a co-op campaign?

Doesn't have to be something we set out with the idea of playing the game through to completion, but could be a bit of a laugh for a bit...

[Raid]

I like the idea, but I can only ever see co-op runs in these things as a second playthrough. Not only are they extremely long, but at what point do you worry about holding the others up if you're listening to all of the dialogue, or doing inventory management?

[Wrathbone]

I don't think I'd be able to commit to a full campaign, but I'd happily dive into a game or two if availalble.

[Snowy]

I think I might be interested in this. Will absolutely want to play it through first, although at 40+ hours in it would be unlikely to meet spoiler territory.

I could see it working as a set evening each week with a pre-agreed set of rules up front. My starter for 10:
- Agree who the slowest reader is, and they have control of the Spacebar of Acceleration +1 for dialogue
- All pick up a mod to bin off the inventory carry capacity. Moar loot, moar money, moar epixxx from vendors, moar carnage. Much less inventory faffing.
- Everyone pick their character and roleplay it. I desperately want to play a total Edwin - I went into the game with that exact intention but am hopelessly drawn to the heroic options each time.
- Comms on Discord a must, it will only be fun as a shared experience

[Sly Boots]

I'd be happy with all that Ian

[Mantis]

I played a four player coop campaign on Divinity OS 2 a few years ago and it was pure chaos. I imagine this would be similarly entertaining.

Haven't bought it yet though mind so will have to sit out unfortunately!

[Sly Boots]

OMG the Volo operation scene!

I turned him down the first time, but a comment on one of my vids said I should go through with it... I'm really squeamish with anything eye-related so didn't enjoy the cutscene, but it was indeed worth it!

[Hatredsheart]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 8543586471

[Raid]

I'm having a miserable time in the Underdark, and it's all down to one feature that Larian have changed from the 5E ruleset; shove. Not only is shove normally a full action, rather than a bonus, but it generally only knocks someone prone or moves them just out of melee range. In BG3? It's like being picked up by the Hulk and thrown. On three occasions now I've gotten to the end of a really difficult fight, only for the last enemy, one that's been sat on the outskirts of the battle taking pot-shots with a crossbow, to dash from half a mile away and shove one of my characters into a bottomless chasm or lava. I really don't think you should be able to both dash and shove in one turn. It's not like I'm even standing visibly close to precipices. It's game-breakingly powerful and it's ruining my enjoyment of certain fights.

[Sly Boots]

I've not had that happen to quite that extent, and I've certainly benefited from it in some encounters, but my first proper party death (not just being downed) was in the Underdark when a bulette cruised through my party before combat even began and yeeted Gale into the abyss

FYI I just made it to the githyanki creche, you can still access it even if you enter Act 2 from the Underdark (as I did). You can circle back to the mountain pass through the area you find yourself in, and well worth doing.

[Wrathbone]

I do agree that shove is OP and should at least be a full action or be less effective (or both).

The crèche area is great, although the way I ended things there was somewhat messy. Spoilers for the whole area:

Spoiler

I’d been quite diplomatic dealing with the gith, even saving Lae’zel from the extraction device chair thing and convincing the science woman that it was an accident. Lae’zel seemed to be mellowing and coming to accept that the gith way was not necessarily flawless, so I was surprised when I rejected Vlaakith’s demands and Lae’zel immediately became hostile. As I understand it, that was an unintentional bug, but I ended up killing her and then fleeing the place via the secret vault where a holy artefact of Lathander was kept. There was zero chance I was leaving without, er, ‘liberating’ the priceless item, despite the big flashing “DON’T PISS OFF A GOD” warnings.

In a way, it was probably for the best given how violent and dangerous the gith were, but I did feel bad as I fled the crumbling monastery, holy relic in hand, and watched a gigantic laser weapon channeling the fury of Lathander vaporise the entire crèche and everyone in it. Whoops!

[Raid]

I've not had that happen to quite that extent, and I've certainly benefited from it in some encounters, but my first proper party death (not just being downed) was in the Underdark when a bulette cruised through my party before combat even began and yeeted Gale into the abyss

Yeah, I had exactly the same thing happen to me in my first fight in the Underdark.

I don't think I'd be quite so annoyed about it if it didn't keep happening at the end of gruelling fights, where I'm constantly on a knife-edge and a single lucky die roll can be the difference between reloading and success. The example that caused me to get annoyed enough to post about it had Lae'zel get 5 critical misses in a row across three turns, and I'd just managed to turn my fortunes around when the last guy ran a marathon to shove my player character 20 feet into a river of molten iron. The only defence against it is to position yourself with nothing dangerous behind you, but a lot of areas in that map are extremely narrow and it's not always easy to do that (nor obvious how far from a chasm you need to be).

Edit: Did the fight again. Started it by shoving one of the seargents into lava. Ended it by running up to that one guy with a crossbow that had ruined the earlier attempt, shoved him off his balcony, then beat him into a bloody pulp as he lay prone. Fair's fair.

[Sly Boots]

Soooo... apparently the party NPCs' outrageous thirstiness was due to a bug

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/baldur ... rian-admit

[Sly Boots]

Ok, will avoid any specifics in case of spoilers, but my session today made me laugh and was absolutely something that would probably happen in one of our campaigns

An incredibly shady dude stopped me outside the area I was about to enter, and convinced me to kill an even shadier dude, a devil in fact, inside. Upon exploring I found an exceedingly shady dude, who I believed fitted the description, and despite him offering me an easy route to progress a major quest, I killed him (with some difficulty).

Exploring further I eventually happened upon an almost literal devil, who was clearly the one I'd been originally tasked with killing. So I killed him as well, but felt rather awkward about the whole thing

[Sly Boots]

BG3 voice actors play a one-shot, haven't finished it yet but it seems like a fun time, plus interesting to see the faces behind the characters: