Baldur's Gate 3

DND 5e is a horrible system. Bg3 would be better if it was built on something else. The reasons they focus on in this article aren't really the reasons why.

• the adventuring day is trash. It's especially bad when there's no human dm to be like "no you JUST had a long rest you can't have another". Though apparently most tables do one fight per long rest on average anyway, which is insane. That's not how the game is balanced! Bg3 kind of sort of limits you by making you get supplies, but that doesn't really make a big impact. Also there's good berries.

• there's very little room for mechanical customization and optimization. You pick a subclass, skills to be slightly better at, and some stats that matter but not a whole lot. Pretty much every early character is going to do their main thing at +5. But that modifier is dwarfed but the comparably huge 1d20 random factor.

I didn't even notice I wasn't proficient in my weapon on a new game the other day for like an hour. I lost the +2 Prof bonus but the +1 magic bonus mostly made up for that. And since the random factor of 1d20 is so big in comparison, it doesn't make a big difference.

But character mechanics are very shallow, especially at low level. Compare pillars of eternity 2 where there are many more classes, class combinations, and the way weapons and armor work is actually interesting.

• dnd's armor system is kind of stupid. This is a dead horse. But like come on ac as avoidance, no concept of damage reduction (outside of one feat and rare sources of 50% reduction).

• no degree of success or failure. Rolling a 30 vs a target of 5 is the same as rolling 5. A human dm will probably be better here, and they could have programmed it for some of the skill checks. But for combat that's not how DND works.

• the assumed miss rate is pretty high. Whole turns can go by where everyone just misses. This is better at 5th level where you have two attacks, but low level can become a slog.

• they didn't implement take 10 (or 20) so the game has a lot of boring rolls that don't really mean anything. Mostly picking locks and searching. It's very save scummy, especially when failure is just a dead end.

• personally I vastly prefer a low random factor. I liked how new Vegas skill checks were either you had it or you didn't. No save scumming. No "why did my barbarian roll so high on arcana but my wizard at +10 rolled so poorly"

• 1d20+stuff gives flat probability, which I dislike. Every outcome on the die is equally likely. That doesn't feel good to me.

I could go on but it's late. 5e kind of sucks. Article didn't nail why.