I really need to look into that. I liked the setting in the original Tainted Grail board game but hated the difficulty level. If I remember correctly, you fail a skill check that’s relevant to the story, the board game punishes you by sending you back to the beginning of the chapter with an additional debuff which of course makes it even harder to get a success on the check the next time around.

My biggest complaint with BG3. So many act 1 battles feel like if you can’t take out at least one enemy each turn you just get ankle bit to death.

I just wish I could make fat characters.

Part of that is that most of the fights are way beyond what a low-level party should be dealing with in standard tabletop D&D, which makes the gameplay weird in some ways. The player characters and friendly NPCs get power-ups, too, but it’s definitely expected that players reload often, which is obviously not a thing in tabletop.

Yeah dnd has quirks that aggravate that problem. Fighting at full capacity until you drop dead, for one. Limited options for fighting defensively (bg3 took out the dodge action).

Some stuff you can win by being really tedious. Assassin sneak attack, then run until you reset the fight and repeat. Real Dm wouldnt allow that.

Ya know, once had a level 3 party (DND 3.5) lasso a death giant and drag him behind their horses till he died. Was there more to it than that? Yes, did it matter? No. Is that cuz it was cool AF? F YEA!

I might add that thanks to poor understanding of politics this party of badasses, badasses their way into the collapse of their home country cuz they couldn’t resist showing off. I love hubris

I’ve heard complaints about Tainted Grails difficulty but maybe that was before their recent patch. The game is not hyper easy but as long as you’re not insanely stupid you should be fine. If you spec out into magic the game becomes almost a joke. I am mage boy zapping everything near me mwahahaha get fucked Gallahad.

To be fair if you don’t make it clear to the party that they can’t take the creature or some other kind of warning there’s no way for them to know if they can handle it without metagaming.

I the player know a level 2 can’t take on a giant, but does my character know that

When you stand next to water for too long and mud crabs converge on your location.

If you’re playing a character that foolhardy to see a creature anywhere from 2x to 10x their size and think tbey can fight it, then let them die. It’s not metagaming to see something large and make the reasonable assumption that it could crush you.

Can you beat an orca in a fight? How can you assume that without metagame knowledge of its stats?

Edit: quite a few people have very low opinions of a reasonable person’s self-preservation instincts. Or assume every PC is the type of internet person that says they could fight a lion mano-a-mano.

Kinda hard to stay fat when you’re on the move all the time, both marching around and fighting for your life. It’d take a conscious effort to overeat (and/or a relatively sedentary work situation) to stay fat.

If you’re really fat, it takes quite a while to get the weight off. In BG3 specifically, you’re not (necessarily) an adventurer before the game, but get picked up randomly in a city. I see no issue with a fat level 1 wizard, and even for martials you can just say they trained for a couple of years and then stopped training once they got a job in the city. They probably should get some kind of penalty, but on the other hand you should also get a penalty for being small (i.e. gnome or halfling) and BG3 just threw that out completely. If a gnome can wield a two-handed sword made for adult humans without penalties, a fat dude can have the same stamina as a thin dude.

I played the demo a year ago or so and it seemed promising. Would you say it’s more Skyrim or Oblivion in terms of character stats/skills and “crunchiness?” Is there a dedicated speed stat?

Older editions had stuff like “small characters are harder to hit, so they get +1 AC. But then it’s weird they have a hard time hitting each other, so they get a +1 to-hit, too”.

Trying to simulate reality gets wacky real fast, and quickly becomes more work than it’s worth.

Ah, the ol’ Skyrim Space Program.

To be fair humans did take down wooly mammoths at some point

I don’t know man I can cast fire from my hands. That’s pretty over powered. Plus Steve over there can channel divine energy into their weapon. I think we can take a giant. It’s just like a really big human right? And there’s 4 of us.

That’s not an unreasonable viewpoint for inexperienced adventurers.

Now if your character is a little more familiar with monsters and other adventures they would know better.

To your Orca example I’m just a guy. I have no abilities. A commoner wouldn’t try to fight a giant. Now if you give me the ability to shoot lighting from my hands and 3 other people with similar abilities, I could reasonably believe I could fight an Orca.

Friendly reminder that 6% of Americans think they can beat a grizzly bear in a fight. A shocking 17% think they could beat a chimpanzee. These are just regular people without special skills.

Surprising Number of Americans Feel They Could Beat Wild Animals in a Fight

Newsweek spoke to experts about some of the most fearsome animals to see whether these Americans were right.

Newsweek (www.newsweek.com)

Can you beat an orca in a fight?

If I was a magic robot that could throw fireballs or kill something by simply touching it IRL, probably.

Yeah, but you’re not that at level 2.

Well, not fireball; but being a Warforged isn’t level dependent, it’s a race, and Touch of Death is a level 2 spell for a Death Domain cleric.