A pedantic dive into which tabletop games would be best for emulating the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired video game from Larian Studios.
There’s a lot going on in Baldur’s Gate 3: incredibly detailed response options, making friends with your companions, intense battles, and sometimes even-more-intense romance scenes after the battles. Larian Studios really put a lot of depth into BG3, and while the basis for the way the game moves though the world is rooted in Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, the more I heard about it, the less convinced I was that if you wanted to play a tabletop roleplaying game that emulated Baldur’s Gate 3 at your own table, you would actually want to chose 5e.
First, a disclosure: I haven’t played Baldur’s Gate 3. Before you dismiss my opinions based on that alone (which… fair, I suppose), I want to assure you I’ve done research. I spoke with multiple folks who have played the game and I’ve watched a couple hours of Twitch streams. And after a good amount of thinking and sorting through a library of games and hours of gameplay, I came to a key realization for the purposes of this exploration: Baldur’s Gate 3 is two different games. There is a combat game and then there’s a relationship game. Let’s start with combat.
Combat in BG3 uses the 5e ruleset, but in practicality, very few players play 5e to the degree of specificity that a video game replicates. What you want to do is to play a modified version of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5e that also uses the Pathfinder three action economy system. 3.5e put a lot of emphasis on miniature combat and distance—people got out rulers in order to help move their characters around terrain—which helps emulate what BG3 is doing with character positioning. Additionally, instead of relying on the D&D framework of ready action/reaction-action-bonus action, you’ll want to institute a modified Pathfinder system that allows three actions to be done within a combat turn. This is partially because 3.5e is already extremely rules-heavy, but also because it will make it easier to recall all the actions that a character can take during combat, allowing players to better control the flow and pace of battle.
Another argument for 3.5 here is that the rules for magic in that edition are not only for how and when to use magic, but why magic happens. It’s got a little more context than 5e, which again, is a very forgiving combat sim. If you really want to get into the fiddliness of BG3’s magic, my vote is still 3.
