Baldur’s Gate 3 caps out at level 12 owing to its reliance on D&D 5E’s ruleset, but we could see level 20 at some capacity in the future. Director Swen Vincke said that incorporating levels 13-20 is certainly achievable.
Baldur’s Gate 3’s near-faithful incorporation of D&D 5E’s rules is at the heart of what has made it so beloved by players. It allows for viral shenanigans like one-shotting bosses with capitalism or accidentally murdering your companions in the pursuit of love.
Those rules are not always hard and fast, however, and Larian will bend them in Baldur’s Gate 3 for the sake of transferring the tabletop to the video game. One of the primary examples of that is the institution of the level 12 cap to keep things somewhat grounded.
In a video interview on the D&D YouTube channel, Baldur’s Gate 3 Director Swen Vincke was asked about how the cap would impact DLC in the game if they were unable to set a new cap. Vincke replied that it would not be impossible to bring levels 13-20 of D&D into a game.
Swen Vincke on levels 13-20 in Baldur’s Gate 3
In D&D 5E, level 12 is when the power scaling ramps up significantly in terms of the abilities and especially the spells that players have access to. Larian has been open about the potential difficulty that this brings to development.
Despite that, Vincke did say that while a new level cap isn’t necessarily on the cards, DLC is not out of the question. “Well you could do different things in it (DLC) so it doesn’t have to be necessarily at the end of the game,” Vincke explained. “There’s different ways that you can do that.”
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In regards to the potential for a level 13-20 experience, Vincke said it was definitely possible, but it would be “a different game”. “You’d need different stakes, different environments, different protagonists, and antagonists but it’s not undoable,” he asserted.
Interestingly enough, in that same interview, Vincke revealed he had already moved on to “the next game” for Larian Studios. Could a fully functional D&D campaign be in the works for the developer?
The possibility of wielding the godlike power that becomes available to certain classes in their level 20 D&D incarnations is a tantalizing one. However, the potential wait does dampen the hype a little.
Our Baldur’s Gate 3 guides certainly won’t let you brandish the power of a god but they’re definitely handy. If you want to be the most powerful Level 12 Wizard or Warlock you can be, check them out.
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