All throughout my life, I’ve been prone to being captured by good RPGs. When a new one comes along, everything else in my life finds the back seat as I engage with these games for hours. I’ve missed meals, I’ve lost sleep from being too excited to return to the game to return to rest.
When I picked up Divinity: Original Sin 2, it ensnared me for two weeks’ worth of my free time. I can’t begin to count the number of times I played Dragon Age: Origins or The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion or Skyrim. These games just perfectly capture my brain and cinch closed like a steel trap.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is the latest case. In the three and a half weeks since its release, I’ve played it every day. I’ve completed the game twice, I have a co-op run with a friend in late Act 2, and I’m launching another pair of games to go for 100% achievements, just to have an excuse to keep playing.
There’s a lot to love about this game. It’s got its imperfections, some bugs, some unfortunately cut content, but Larian Studios has proven they don’t consider a game’s launch the end of their work. With Divinity, they released a Definitive Edition one year later as a free upgrade, and I and many others think we’ll see something similar with Baldur’s Gate given enough time. Even without that, it’s easily a contender for one of my favorite games of all time.
But I’ve lavished praise enough. I wanted to write this pose to draw attention to some adjustments Larian made to 5th Edition D&D that I think would translate well into the tabletop. Certainly, were I running a 5e game right now, I’d be making many of these changes.
Day Long Durations
Several effects in Baldur’s Gate 3 last until you take your next long rest – Speak with Animals, Speak with Dead, Hunter’s Mark, Enhance Ability, the game’s elixirs. It seems these are changes made for the sake of gameplay – and I’d advocate that they’d all improve the tabletop experience as well.
Spending a limited resource (and potentially your very valuable concentration slot) to activate these effects is already a noticeable cost. It also gives the party a reason to try and delay their long rests so they don’t lose powerful effects, especially in the case of the game’s elixirs. I’d even suggest broadening the slate of spells that can last for a full day, adding effects like Comprehend Languages, or Detect Magic. (And Mage Armor, but most people probably ignore it has an 8-hour duration already).
Increased Effectiveness
There’s also several spells and abilities that are stronger in Baldur’s Gate 3 than they are in the tabletop. The level 3 spell Daylight triggers Sunlight Sensitivity for a lot of monsters, such as Shadows, Wraiths, and Vampires, while much of my tenure in the tabletop space drew a line in the sand between “Daylight” and “Sunlight.”
Warlock pact boons have powerful bonuses. Tome gives you immediate utility cantrips then adds Call Lightning, Haste, and Animate Dead to your repertoire as once-per-day casts. Blade freely grants you extra attach at level 5 and always scales your weapon with charisma.
The Haste spell grants someone an additional full action, making it even better to throw onto the martials. You can make massive plays without the restrictions on casting multiple leveled spells in a turn, like using Misty Step to arrive in front of a large horde of monsters near a ledge and using Thunderwave to throw them all to their doom. Switching between ranged and melee weapons is completely free, and casting with a hand occupied is negligible. The number of times martial characters can shove has been reduced down to a bonus action, but with Larian’s area design it feels even more powerful than before, especially with the distance being derived from your character’s strength, rather than a flat 5 feet.
I think all of these effects and boons would provide an improved experience for the tabletop.
Ease of Resurrection
For the sake of gameplay, it’s pretty easy to Revivify someone in Baldur’s Gate 3. There’s numerous scrolls on sale, the component cost of the spell and its time limit is gone, naturally, and there’s a camp NPC that can bring your pals back for a pittance of gold. I think many tables would benefit from making a few of these changes. I think the component cost is a good thing to holdover into the tabletop, but maybe allowing the PCs to have access to purchasable scrolls, or even letting them each begin with one for the first handful of games where they’re learning their characters could be a boon to them. The starting scrolls could even have an expiration of some sort, so the value of them diminishes the further they get into their adventure.
This comes down to the table’s preferences. My players and I generally enjoy the possibility of PC death being there, but a table of people more attached to their specific characters for the adventure at hand might like a more relaxed ruling.
Well, that does it for today. My apologies for the delay between posts – it might happen again with Starfield, but we’ll see. I might get a few drafted and scheduled before it consumes me (if it does). As always, thank you very much for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.
(These boots have seen everything.)
Ben Stovall Blog 
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