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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a masterpiece built on a bad tabletop game
(www.polygon.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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There's also the fact that generally DND magic has every spell as a bespoke effect. There's not an underlying system you can reason about. You're not really expected to make your own spells. You don't really tweak the ones you get very much. What can you do with a 4th level slot vs 5th? You can kind of infer from the examples, and maybe there's details in the DMG somewhere , but it's not foregrounded.
They also are very, well, mechanical rather than magical. You declare you're casting, check off the spell slot, and the spell just happens. Some people might prefer this taste, but it makes it feel very mundane and bland to me . Compare like Mage (awakening, 2e) where you're always looking for ways to stretch how far your spells can go, balancing risk, and looking for thematic boosts.
The "looking for ways to stretch how far your spells can go" bit from Mage always struck me as "playing mother-may-I with the Storyteller." I really prefer it as a player when my abilities do what they say they do, and as a DM when my players' abilities don't require me to make too many judgment calls, which can lead to players who are more persuasive IRL getting their way more often than players who aren't.
I think I meant more about "I can take a -6 on the roll to affect all the guys and risk it not working" or "I'll risk three dice on paradox" for stretching your spells rather than "I can totally cure cancer with life 2, right??"
DND doesn't really have much tactical depth for the spells. They do what they say and always work (unless saved against). You never get the "I don't know if I have another spell on me!" trope.
What you meant I think shows up in DND too. Players being like "can I use mage hand to swing a sword?" or "can I use create water to drown him?" That's more an annoying player problem, but I see what you mean about some systems enable it more than others.
You'd probably really dislike Fate, then, where it's almost entirely based on what the table agrees makes sense for your free form written character traits.