Baldur’s Gate 3 is changing how Dungeons & Dragons spells work

Dungeons & Dragons is changing how many spells work in the upcoming Player’s Handbook (2024), and one shift in particular was inspired by Baldur’s Gate 3.

As Baldur’s Gate 3 has adapted the D&D 5E rules, it has spotlighted how ineffective some spells can be, especially in a game with so much combat. Players who picked spells like True Strike quickly realized how bad they were compared to their other options, something D&D fans have known for years.

One positive aspect of Baldur’s Gate 3’s use of spells is that it’s changing how they’ll work in the future, as a new iteration of D&D 5E is launching in 2024. In a video on the Dungeons & Dragons YouTube channel. Lead Designer Jeremy Crawford discussed how Cloud of Daggers was changed because of Baldur’s Gate 3.

“So, that’s what I mean by this chapter being filled with new little bits of fun that we’ve worked into various spells. Similarly, in Cloud of Daggers, this spell now lets you move it. As a player, when I’ve cast Cloud of Daggers, that is often my main frustration with it: I cast it, and then the monsters move over there.”

Crawford continued, “Or even when I cast Cloud of Daggers in Baldur’s Gate 3, I as a player am like, I wanna be able to move it, so when we got to finalizing the spell chapter, we made it so you can now move Cloud of Daggers.”

The Cloud of Daggers spell deals a lot of damage, but it remains static within a 5-foot cube. Considering most monsters can move 30 feet per combat round, this means they can easily avoid the spell unless the player works hard to trap or bottleneck them into the cloud’s AoE.

This problem is more pronounced in Baldur’s Gate 3, where the player has more movement options, and the battlefields have more verticality. Here, avoiding a Cloud of Daggers spell is even easier.

It’s great to see Baldur’s Gate 3 changing how D&D works. Many people have been introduced to the tabletop RPG via the tale of Tav and their tadpole, so it makes sense for the next iteration of the game to feel familiar.