Nearly three years after its debut on Steam Early Access, Baldur's Gate 3 is just three weeks away from debuting version 1.0 after the developer's decision to bring the game forward and avoid a direct collision with Bethesda's Starfield. During last week's Panel from Hell, Larian also confirmed many features, such as multiclassing.
In a new interview with Italian website Multiplayer, Larian's Lead System Designer Nick Pechenin delved into a series of key changes that Baldur's Gate 3 players will find compared to the regular D&D5th edition ruleset.
We've changed a couple of ground rules just to remove any possible friction with multiclassing. If you know the rules of D&D5e, you surely know that in order to activate multiclassing, there are stat limits that you must respect. We have removed them, and you can make a character with multiple classes at any moment. There's even an achievement that requires you to get to level 12 with a level in every single class. Of course, it will be very difficult for some players, but it is made possible by this removal of limits.
During the playtest, we saw that many of the players eager to multiclass already had a clear build in mind to use, perhaps following the more impactful "tabletop" ones. Newbies to the game, on the other hand, usually kept the chosen class from start to finish. We designed the level up screen so as not to overemphasize the presence of multiclassing because we realize that it is a feature mainly sought after by experienced players.
The other thing we've changed is how magic users use spell slots, making it less punishing to level more than one magic class. One issue with multiclassing is that if you do it early in the game, you don't get strong abilities like "Fireball" at the same level as a "pure" class, but we wanted players to be able to multiclass from the start of the campaign without having to necessarily wait for advanced levels, so we revised the use of resources a bit.
These are some pretty big tweaks. The latter in particular left more than a few fans worried about balance in Baldur's Gate 3. Casters already tend to shine the most with multiclassing in D&D5e, and it looks like that'll be even more true in the game.
Baldur's Gate 3 will be available on PC starting August 3rd. The PlayStation 5 version is set for September 6th, while Larian is still working on the Xbox Series S|X version due to an issue with running split-screen co-op on the Series S.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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