From the precision of the Arcane Archer to the fierce prowess of the Samurai, among many others, Baldur’s Gate 3 players who are looking for expanded playstyles need not look any further.
Thank you so much for agreeing to an interview! Would you be able to tell us a little bit about yourself?
Thank you for having me - it’s a little surreal. My name is Lee, and I am just a normal 46 year old guy down in Florida with a family, job, and a bunch of dogs - it can get pretty hectic lol. I’ve always had these little things in my life to help balance, whether it be drawing, playing guitar, gaming… stuff like that. My D&D tabletop group disbanded right around when Baldur’s Gate 3 launched, so that ended up filling the gap that was left, and once I saw the modding potential in the game, it also became a way to satisfy the creativity itch. Modding kind of keeps me entertained and peaceful nowadays - which sounds silly, but I look forward to the time I get to do it and escape into my own fun world for a little bit. It was never really supposed to be for anyone else but my own personal enjoyment - I am still shocked that other people like what I make and that it adds value to their gaming experience.
It’s wonderful that you found a new passion after your tabletop group disbanded! If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of dogs do you have?
Our furry children are French Bulldogs and an old Schnauzer. They don’t play D&D, but our 14 year old non-furry child does, which is kinda cool. I got him started when he was really young, and now he DMs a group with his friends which makes me really proud, even though he won’t let me play in his campaign (teenagers… I guess I’m not as cool as I think).
What is your history with D&D? What inspired you to add subclasses to Baldur’s Gate 3?
This is going to date me heavily, but I have been playing D&D since 3rd edition… like pre 3.5. I played with the same group of friends basically my entire life - even when we became adults and lived in different areas of the world, we played virtually. It has always been something that promoted friendship, comradery, and laughs so it has a special place in my heart with some of the best memories.
After my first BG3 playthrough I really wanted to play again with a character that I used in tabletop… some of the older edition subclasses that made their way into 5th edition provide a lot of nostalgia (Arcane Archer, Purple Dragon Knight, Horizon Walker, etc). The existing Arcane Archer mod on Nexus was outdated, and Horizon Walker didn’t exist, so I was kinda like I wonder if I can just make them. That’s really what started it. The community was awesome because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing… folks like SixfingeredMage, JuuM, drkekyll, and Celes basically taught me how to do this as I was asking questions. I think I’ve gotten better now (I hope) lol. I’d like to bring as many tabletop-loyal iterations of these subclasses as I can to BG3.
Do you have a favourite class/subclass, and why?
My all-time favourite subclass is the Bladesinger (shout out to Celes for doing that one for the game). It’s so busted and fun. For stuff I have made, I tend to focus on martial classes because I think the game already does an awesome job of making casters visually exciting… I try to bring some of that to the martials in my mods. Probably my two favourites that I have done are Psi Warrior and Ancestral Guardian. AG is for some reason not as popular in downloads, but I am super proud of how the VFX and gameplay turned out with that.
I’d love to see a Psi Warrior Lae’zel! Do you think any of the origin characters would work well in different subclasses?
I always thought Lae’zel would make a great Psi Warrior or Astral Self monk! Karlach was born to be a Storm Herald using the Desert Aura, though it’s a super weak subclass… but it almost doesn’t matter because it looks cool as hell.
Let’s dive into your creative process! Can you walk us through how you typically develop your mods? What’s your workflow like?
The artist in me cannot start any mod without first nailing down the subclass emblem/icon and any action or action resource icons that I need. I’ve always done those by hand. Something about getting it all laid out visually inspires me to put the work in to actually make the mod itself.
Then I take the source material from the tabletop rulebooks and get some basic ideas of how to represent them in the game and start working down through them one by one. Things almost always change from how I thought about them initially to when I actually write them out in the game files. Part of the fun is trying to figure out ways to do the things that the game doesn’t really natively handle well - an example would be Hurricane Strike from the Path of the Juggernaut mod… trying to time the different reactions together, or Hold the Line from the Cavalier mod… fabricating opportunity attacks that scale with your reach for enemies that try to circle your character. I have my friends in the community that thankfully allow me to bounce ideas around with them to solve things when I get stuck. Anyways, it's a linear process - write an ability, test it, move to the next. Then a few end-to-end tests to clean stuff up and then release. As I make subsequent mods I will see better ways to do things on my older ones, and I try to get those updates and fixes out quickly.
You mentioned earlier that you were happy with the VFX and gameplay of your Ancestral Guardian mod. Can you elaborate on the design choices you made to achieve that?
So the flavour of that subclass is that there are supposed to be these ancestral spirits that follow you around when you rage and that go and disrupt your foe’s attacks and shield you from things. I tried several ways to implement this visually that gives off that vibe without being too over-the-top. So when you rage, there’s a spirit that sort of hovers around your character that jumps from you and onto your enemy when you attack to hinder the target, and intercepts attacks that hit your allies. The visuals adapt to whatever race you are playing so they look of similar lineage. It’s not super sophisticated but I think it looks great. And I had visualised all of the spirit elements to be sort of blue and white, so the whole barbarian rage colour scheme is recolored to match.
Do you have any tips or advice for anyone looking to dip their toes into modding?
Yes! Just go be polite and inquisitive and ask questions. I think you’ll find that people love sharing what they’ve learned, and as you figure things out you can reciprocate the kindness yourself. It’s a nice circle of giving. Honestly, find a modder you like and say hi and ask for help. And then pay it forward. :)
Do you have any more subclasses in the pipeline? Or any other mods you’d love to create?
I just went off-script a bit and did one of the Critical Role homebrew subclasses, which was pretty cool. I think after I finish up the Fey Wanderer Ranger I might look at doing a few more of those. The dream has always been to do Scribes Wizard one day.
The Scribes Wizard sounds like a fantastic dream project! Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview once again, do you have any final thoughts or closing comments you'd like to share?
Just that I feel really fortunate to have my own little content space on Nexus next to so many really talented people. It has been a really rewarding experience.
Thank you so much Lee for today’s interview, what incredible work! If you have any recommendations for future mod author interviews, send SlugGirl a message or drop them in the comments below!
11 comments
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Which was 24yrs ago (Dec 2000), but I'm reading this having tabletop-wargamed since the 1960s, and even 2 of my 5 current PC games are older than D&D 3rd Ed. (for any interested, they are Red Baron 3D of 1997 and Combat Mission of June 2000). So I guess that makes me almost prehistoric... still, I'm happy to read of another tabletop gamer! Anyway, keep up the good work and thanks for sharing your mods!
Well deserved Sumradagnoth8
That's too funny but,so true.............