Despite being based on Dungeons and Dragons 5e, Larian Studios decided to forego D&D's level cap of 20 to instead implement a level cap of 12 in Baldur's Gate 3. Cutting the level cap nearly in half, especially in a game that could take hundreds of hours to complete, may not appear to make sense but, like the other changes Larian Studios made in adapting the D&D systems into a single-player video game, there were several reasons behind doing so. These reasons mainly concern the length of Baldur's Gate 3 and its magic system.