Baldur's Gate 3 by Larian Games

There isn't a single instance that I've come across you have to have someone in conversation with to make them able to be robbed, I'm a thieving mother fucker.

Level 3 rogue/thief with 2 actions you don't even need to sneak first.
-Go into turn based mode, locks their movement
-If people are watching, have one of your other chars cast fog/darkness/dark arrow, if you literally can't then you may have to do that first before turn based mode since pickpocket uses up an action point
-Sneak
-Rob blind, pray for no 1's (or be a... halfling? who has lucky to reroll those). Turn off the feature that tries to normalize dice or you probably will roll back to back 1's even with lucky cause its bullshit rng.

Rogue's make the best choice cause you can (from the getgo) pump up their sleight of hand and stealth proficiency obscenely, and later on you can multiclass something like 3 rogue for the 2 bonus actions & 9 monk, rob and beat the shit out of those damned merchants.

k^M said:

There isn't a single instance that I've come across you have to have someone in conversation with to make them able to be robbed, I'm a thieving mother fucker.

Level 3 rogue/thief with 2 actions you don't even need to sneak first.
-Go into turn based mode, locks their movement
-If people are watching, have one of your other chars cast fog/darkness/dark arrow, if you literally can't then you may have to do that first before turn based mode since pickpocket uses up an action point
-Sneak
-Rob blind, pray for no 1's (or be a... halfling? who has lucky to reroll those). Turn off the feature that tries to normalize dice or you probably will roll back to back 1's even with lucky cause its bullshit rng.

Rogue's make the best choice cause you can (from the getgo) pump up their sleight of hand and stealth proficiency obscenely, and later on you can multiclass something like 3 rogue for the 2 bonus actions & 9 monk, rob and beat the shit out of those damned merchants.

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Level 3 Bard can get expertise in Slight of Hand, so they should become equal to rogues at that point. Sneak doesn't matter, because it only gets rolled if you pass into an NPC's sight cone; which you shouldn't, if you are doing things right. A Bard can cast Cat's Grace on themselves, which is nice. Pure rogues are also considered one of the bottom tier classes, if your meta-gaming, but a 3 level Thief dip, after at least level 5 or 6 in a different class, is one of the best for multiclass.

I'm not sure your saving any time dealing with turn-based mode when in many cases you can just lock them into a conversation then get to picking some pockets (w/o messing with turn-based). Also, the area around some vendors didn't allow me to go into turn based mode.

Apparently I attracted attention the first time I tried it or something. There were always 3 tieflings just a few feet away looking and I think that's what triggered him when I hit sneak.

I went on and did other things and took a long rest and came back and they were gone. Stealing is not my thing but I thought I would try it. On my main playthrough I guess I'll stomach through it and finish the guantlet of shar. Not my cup of tea and from what I read it's supposed to help the shadoheart story. She's not even in my party, in fact I killed her some time ago.

Borzak said:

Apparently I attracted attention the first time I tried it or something. There were always 3 tieflings just a few feet away looking and I think that's what triggered him when I hit sneak.

I went on and did other things and took a long rest and came back and they were gone. Stealing is not my thing but I thought I would try it. On my main playthrough I guess I'll stomach through it and finish the guantlet of shar. Not my cup of tea and from what I read it's supposed to help the shadoheart story. She's not even in my party, in fact I killed her some time ago.

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Hold down left CTRL and see where npc sight cones are. Make sure you are not trying to sneak in their line of sight.

The Tieflings should clear out from the vendor area, after you talk to the main guy, after getting through the gate.

Here is a quick video guide on the basics:

I liked the Gauntlet of Shar, for the most part. The most annoying part was the silence room; first time around I pulled all the npcs out of the silence, which was sub-optimal (there is a way to disable the silence). The shadowpath room was a bit annoying too, the first time, but the second time I found an easy work around, but don't remember what it was, atm. The Demon was the best part (like 3+ ways to finish that "quest") and messing with the necro guy was fun too.

Burns said:

Hold down left CTRL and see where npc sight cones are. Make sure you are not trying to sneak in their line of sight.

The Tieflings should clear out from the vendor area, after you talk to the main guy, after getting through the gate.

Here is a quick video guide on the basics:

I liked the Gauntlet of Shar, for the most part. The most annoying part was the silence room; first time around I pulled all the npcs out of the silence, which was sub-optimal (there is a way to disable the silence). The shadowpath room was a bit annoying too, the first time, but the second time I found an easy work around, but don't remember what it was, atm. The Demon was the best part (like 3+ ways to finish that "quest") and messing with the necro guy was fun too.

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Was just Aaron the first guy you come to that is a vendor. Somehow I attracted a crowd of Tieflings from down the hill without them trying to kill me. I don't think stealing is my thing. I had thought I might eventually try to steal something I could use and not just steal and sell it later for gold.

I think the only thing I have bought from a vendor up to lvl 9 has been strength potions for my tavern brawerl monk and respeced him to 8 strength.

Borzak said:

Was just Aaron the first guy you come to that is a vendor. Somehow I attracted a crowd of Tieflings from down the hill without them trying to kill me. I don't think stealing is my thing. I had thought I might eventually try to steal something I could use and not just steal and sell it later for gold.

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You could try the minimum subtlety version of thieving - disguise your guys, turn on non-lethal combat, beat him unconscious and then take all his stuff while he is out cold.

Borzak said:

Apparently I attracted attention the first time I tried it or something. There were always 3 tieflings just a few feet away looking and I think that's what triggered him when I hit sneak.

I went on and did other things and took a long rest and came back and they were gone. Stealing is not my thing but I thought I would try it. On my main playthrough I guess I'll stomach through it and finish the guantlet of shar. Not my cup of tea and from what I read it's supposed to help the shadoheart story. She's not even in my party, in fact I killed her some time ago.

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Those tieflings walk away the second you talk to them, you either convince them to stay & fight with the rest, or leave, and then he becomes a lonely loot pinata.

I liked the Gauntlet of Shar, for the most part. The most annoying part was the silence room; first time around I pulled all the npcs out of the silence, which was sub-optimal (there is a way to disable the silence). The shadowpath room was a bit annoying too, the first time, but the second time I found an easy work around, but don't remember what it was, atm. The Demon was the best part (like 3+ ways to finish that "quest") and messing with the necro guy was fun too.

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Was a fun place, but that shadow path room was annoying as shit the first few patches. I remember at launch, you couldn't see the path no matter what. Nor could you retrieve your corpses. Thank god for the gith's super leap cheese.

Thinking about it, I don't think I knew that the rat swarm was even part of the demons nonsense until a recent playthrough when I had swung by there first and he was like "OH GOD IT STOPPED, PEACE OUT".

I thought I'd start a new playthrough and not go all out kill anything and everything while switch to my monk to finish guanlet of shar at times. So I started paladin. Got an oathbreaker warning in the first 10 minutes. Old habits die hard.

This is D&D 5e.

Why would you want skill points? Whether you level a class to unlock an ability, or put +gooderer in warfare, rogue etc comes out the same way.

Even pathfinder dumbed down skills. Every crpg does it and every version of dnd streamlines them more and more as well.

3.5e. even 3.5e based games didn't have all these.


I'm not sure if the dumbing down of tabletop is due to video games doing it, or if it was part of the general streamlining of DnD. removing flanking, etc, for just advantage/disadvantage for example.

was it temple of elemental evil I played last, which had skills you could invest in.. but had ZERO actual application in game.


5e has bounded accuracy. and the overall reduction in number of skills. so instead of picking and choosing where to place skill points per level. you just get your starting prof bonus choice.

10th edition 40k dumbed shit down big time too

Still tons of strategy to go around but the trade off of a character/army/thing you made feeling more cookie cutter than personalized is real

One of the good things is you can get to a certain lvl you want and respec to try whatever you want. Pickpocket your gold from withers and he doesn't care. You can practice spells on him too and he doesn't care. Can go from true caster to hybrid to martial class and back for no cost to try them all out. Some races get a nice bonus or cantrip but it's not end build making or breaking for most of them. It's more of a compliment.

Then make an entire new build with whatever you want to try. The drawback is if you wait too long then there's limited stuff left to try it on.

I've been looking at a few videos of some really odd builds. No way you could play that in a pen and paper game. Entire build at the end game is nearly built on reactions. Run into as much stuff as you can and react react react. The DM would go mad rolling all that crap.

Kind of like blowing up the entire goblin camp with explosives at once. Hmm let me roll for that 50 times.

Urlithani said:

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Ya. A lot of the stuff in the game is really tuned and designed around a larger audience. Not necessarily a bad thing. But none of the games areas really come off / give a vibe of "dangerous."

Daidraco said:

Ya. A lot of the stuff in the game is really tuned and designed around a larger audience. Not necessarily a bad thing. But none of the games areas really come off / give a vibe of "dangerous."

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It's also the Underdark is a dangerous but cool place. D&D has been trying to make it accessible since 2e with the Night Below campaign where low level PC's can go there.

I think Larian did a good job showing off the wilder places of the Underdark, which is suitable for lower levels. BG2 you're right next to a drow city, illithid lair, beholder lair. There's a lich, and a Balor demon at the deep gnome settlement. Both are good options but I think BG2 is closer to the reputation of what the Underdark is, even though both interpretations are accurate.