My knowledge of 5e is definitely useful for some things but it also feels like a hindrance at times. I chose to make a character into the Battle Master subclass of Fighter. I misread quite a few of the maneuvers.
- Commander’s Strike uses one of your attacks and a superiority die to allow an ally to immediately make an attack as an action. This is useful for getting extra attacks out of especially heavy hitters like rogues. In BG3 it lets them make an extra attack on their turn. And I think they don’t get any extra damage from the superiority die.
- Maneuvering Attack uses a superiority die to allow an ally to use their reaction to move up to half their speed and not trigger opportunity attacks from the target of the attack. In BG3 it lets effectively lets them get a free disengage on their turn (so not just against your target). So it’s a little better and a little worse.
These were two of my favorite abilities as a fighter and it helped encourage me to keep other players focused when it wasn’t their turn. Also, we had a big group, so getting to do something small when it wasn’t your turn helped with the boredom.
I’m not complaining, some of the changes are good and some are bad. All in all you can’t really compare the two because one is a videogame and one is a tabletop game. A lot of the abilities have great QoL changes for videogames. Guidance lasting for a while is great. Many abilities that last a long time now just last until a rest. True Strike got a buff – it’s not necessarily great or anything but not pointless anymore. (True Strike did have some very small very niche uses but all in all it was mostly bad since it’s better to just attack twice 99% of the time.)
It feels like some of the spells have descriptions slightly wrong but maybe I’m just confused. I’m enjoying the game. It’s rough around the edges but I do like it.
Here’s an important one: in BG3, spells like Cloud of Daggers that deal damage when enemies start their turn in the area, or enter it, ALSO deal damage when cast. Since they are balanced as though you’re usually only going to get one damage tick, this makes them roughly twice as good. You will get two ticks before they have an opportunity to move.
Also: barbarians can choose whether to Reckless Attack after they see if their attack hits or misses without Advantage. And in fact, if you have advantage already and miss anyway, you can Reckless Attack for a third die roll. Tides of Chaos works this way too, but only for attack rolls and saving throws during combat, not for checks during dialog.
Re: spells - that’s usually how they work in DND too. They’ll say like “when you cast” in addition to “when a creature enters for the first time on it’s turn”
This is the rules text for Cloud of Daggers:
The intention is that it does not deal damage when cast. Check the math versus another 2nd level damage spell, Scorching Ray: the Ray requires three attack rolls, and does a maximum of 6d6 damage if every ray hits, for an average of 21 damage, but more like 13-14 damage when factoring in a likely 65% hit chance. Cloud of Daggers deals 4d4 (average 10) damage. The slightly lower damage is because there is no chance to miss, and there is potential upside if you can hold them in the cloud or push them back into it.
If you allow it to tick when cast and at the beginning of the enemy turn, then you double the damage. Guaranteed 8d4 (average 20) damage is excessive for a 2nd level spell; that’s close to the three-hits scenario for SR, reliably on every cast! It’s also more damage than Melf’s Acid Arrow does when you hit the attack roll, so there’s no reason to ever cast Acid Arrow if this version of Cloud of Daggers exists (unless you are desperate for 30 more feet of range).
Oh shit, you’re totally right. My bad!
Interesting, TIL the tables I’ve played at may have been interpreting these kinds of spells wrong.
Do you happen to have an official comment disambiguating this? If not that’s fine. Basically the reasoning has been “when you cast it is also the first time they enter the spell area”, although it did seem like a lot of damage for that level of spell.