How much 5e do you have to know to enjoy Balders Gate 3?
I mean, the title is mostly it. I haven’t played DnD for…long enough that I know none of the rules and few of the classes. I didn’t play BG or BG2.
It looks so shiny, but I’m afraid I would just be 100% lost. Can anyone say what it’s like to go in cold?
None really. The game will walk you through everything through tool tips and help menus.
There is a considerable amount of depth to the game, but it's not insurmountable for anyone. You'll have no problem going through the game if you read through tool tips and help pop-ups as they arise. DnD knowledge needed is none at all or negligible at best.
If you do end up playing, I hope you enjoy!
Really none. The game walks you through rolls and what each thing does.
Having a little knowledge of how D&D works only serves to make the leveling up process go quicker since you have ideas on how to allocate stats or what specialties you take without reading through everything.
Yeah I think OP is looking at this from the wrong way. As opposed to a normal game you’ve never played before in which you have to learn the mechanics completely from scratch, with BG3, if you have any knowledge of 5e, you’ll be able to pick it up easier.
It's very user friendly in terms of tooltips, and if you don't make deliberately bad choices during level up (e.g. taking a feat that gives you a cantrip from the Wizard class... that scales off your INT score... while playing a Barbarian with 8 intelligence that can't cast spells while raging) it's fairly difficult to make an unplayably bad character.
There's a few cases where some general knowledge of D&D is helpful, such as knowing to never take True Strike because it's literally worse than just attacking twice and having some knowledge of good builds is useful, since it helps guide what you take when you level up. That said, there's also entire categories of actions in BG3 that don't really have an equivalent rule in TTRPG 5e, such as weapon proficiency attacks, so online cookie cutter builds don't capture the full extent of what you can do.
To add to the true strike thing, it is for your next 2 attacks in BG3, so it's actually not super amazingly awful
I don't think that's true. It lasts two turns, but the description only says "the next attack". And I think the reason it lasts two turns is because the first turn you cast it you'd have already used your action.
No knowledge of dnd needed, from someone who has no knowledge of dnd and having a grand time
It is also helpful to know that if you make any mistakes in you character build, you can respec your class and ability scores very early in the game for a fairly low price. The things that you cannot change are your origin, race or appearance, but these don't have such a great impact (unless you take the Dark Urge origin and find a bit too bloody for your tastes - in which case you have to start over)
Personally, I never played DND but I did play a bunch of RPGs before (such as the Pathfinder games on PC) and I love checking out character build guides. The learning curve of BG3 was pretty smooth for me.
I feel like someone generally familiar with RPGs will be fine with the basic mechanics of BG3. It's my first exposure to the 5e rules - bonus moves, reactions, feats, etc - but they mostly make sense. I may not have combat as optimized as someone with tons of practice, but it works most of the time.
Long term character building, though? When I was presented with class specializations at L3, with nothing to tell me about what they get at L4, 5, 6....those choices seemed completely arbitrary. Being able to respec on the cheap if you feel like you've made a mistake is nice reassurance.
OTOH, making choices of specialization and feats without a long term plan, but entirely on the immediate circumstances and whim, feels a lot more like how I planned my IRL degree, job, home... So, immersion?
They put a lot of time into making sure the game would be accessible and fun for new players. Give it a go and I’d wager you’ll have a blast
As somebody with no knowledge of 5e but some knowledge of 3.5e, it’s been pretty user-friendly. The game goes out of its way to make mechanics pretty easy to grasp. Tooltips can be brought up to and you can go further with any highlighted words in the spell/ability tooltip, so you can look up what “Prone” is when you’re look at the “Trip Attack” tooltip, as an example.
The only knock I have so far is that it doesn’t outline class progression at all, especially since the game apparently does deviate from tabletop rules at times, but that’s more of a QoL thing than anything else.
It is very similar, but you don't need to know anything to start playing. Just a basic understanding of turn based RPGs. The rest will come with playing the intro tutorials.
If you have experience with RPGs that's all you need, the game will walk you thru it as others have said, I've never played d&d and having a good time
Paladin and smite, all you need
Am playing a Paladin in a 5e game rn, can confirm. If only I had more smite slots...
I haven't played BG1 or BG2, but so far I haven't felt that BG3 requires prior knowledge in order to understand the story. As for DND knowledge, the only things I know about the game are from the bits and pieces that I glean from watching Critical Role. BG3 is doing a wonderful job filling in the missing pieces of knowledge with really handy tooltips and descriptions of how everything works. If anything, it's probably the most interesting primer to DND I've ever encountered.
In my opinion, It helps to know the rock bottom basics (like why is this d20 being rolled all the time and what the stats are) but it's certainly not a necessity.