Baldur's Gate 3: How a Tiny Feature Makes combat Awesome!
Baldur's Gate 3: Elemental Hazards—A Game Changer!
Baldur's Gate 3 (BG3) brilliantly adapts Dungeons & Dragons rules into a video game. But games and tabletop RPGs are completely different beasts. What works in one might not work at all in the other. BG3 is simply far more innovative here!
One of the coolest examples is how BG3 handles floor hazards – puddles, piles, and all sorts of things that affect your battleground and the entire strategic setup! Things like pools of burning oil, icy patches—they're all interactable! These are things only really achievable within a videogame and these environmental factors create that key layer of interactive gameplay impossible within typical D&D.
Elemental Mayhem: Fire, Ice, and Everything in Between
A lot of hazards come from elemental attacks and spells. Fire spells ignite flammable stuff, lightning electrifies wet surfaces, and so on. One of the best spells that highlights all that awesome potential is a simple first-level spell: the Chromatic Orb. This totally versatile thing deals any of the six damage types (fire, cold, acid, Poison, lightning, or thunder). Beyond hitting that monster you’re fighting – the Orb leaves that amazing lingering environmental hazard, freezing surfaces, making them toxic, and far more!
That spell isn't alone though! Most fire spells can totally ignite objects (or creatures standing on things that might burn) spells such as ice storm that can change and drastically alter the battle field– think large circles of ice that could potentially become into water and drastically impact battles for players!
Spells aren't the only way. Those breakable barrels (water, brine, even acid!), or even toxin and acid vials make smaller, more controllable versions. There are many additional items that can produce similar outcomes. You can even make those hilarious healing potions into instant patches of health!
Interactive Combat: Dipping Weapons and Altering Battlefields
Here is another extremely awesome addition that highlights a totally key gameplay mechanic that creates another important layer that can change battles entirely. That’s that amazing ability to "dip" your weapons (and arrows) into things. Poison and fire are amazing examples; other liquids produce a surprising variety of potential changes to this environment, highlighting an additional unexpected level of interaction in many of the battles.
BG3 also has various ways to deal with hazards; using spells such as Create Water (for fire), or thunder spells like Shatter (to destroy hazards). The creative potential with elements to dynamically affect combat is immense. These changes totally demonstrate why video game settings work better here.
Why This Doesn't Work in Traditional D&D (Usually!)
These cool effects are so much fun because it's so easy for a video game to do it! That same approach becomes intensely difficult for a D&D DM; it really matters a lot to create this key environmental factor to consider.
A video game can meticulously plan every location – figuring out where stuff might spread and the actual outcome produced for this effect–that’s so very, very different from what might be feasible in a typical tabletop setting using typical techniques like that method known as "theater of the mind"! Even maps would take that added time and detail that a DM could realistically manage in short amounts of time.
Even with online tools, maintaining those ever-shifting effects could be hard. Movement isn’t always reversible (a key element within BG3). Those meta-game choices–players' knowledge for repeated attempts –these don’t easily fit the flow of that average D&D gameplay. Even the ability to provide every player their own feat at the beginning of the game would not impact that level design so greatly!
Conclusion: Small Changes, Big Impact
This relatively simple feature – this seemingly simple yet entirely unique change to create and design new battles by using existing materials, and enhancing those interactions. BG3’s level design showcases creativity that makes BG3 excel—a level very, very hard for D&D DMs to match! It provides incredible versatility which has only strengthened battles.
While replicating it perfectly within D&D could be really tough—those possibilities could still provide new options within D&D! This is worth considering. That seemingly little detail of environmental interaction within BG3 totally changes the experience. This makes its brilliance obvious and needs appreciation!
