Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Balance Patch

So, a decent chunk of hours into BG3, I'm actually surprised how much I'm liking the game. Having not enjoyed DOS 1&2, I had concerns about Larian's direction for BG3 (EA didn't help either until Patch 9), but I feel the team did a good job (I'm in early Act 2 so understandably, the first part is the most polished in the game).

That being said, I truly feel the game needs a decent balance pass, as I think it will greatly help replayability. More challenging combat that still allows for a wide variability of builds should be the goal here.

So, to make things simpler, I propose a thread on mechanical balance for classes, spells, abilities, items, you name it.

Here are a few of mine:

- Shove as an action: you know it, I know it, everyone knows it

- Longer durations for CC spells: many are only for two turns, which is underwhelming when these spells require an action, concentration and force a save on creatures. Currently, direct damage is king, whether from spells or weapon attacks. I saw someone suggest longer durations for harder difficulties (balanced and tactician), and that made a lot a sense I felt

- Lore Bard/Pact of the Tome: allow us to choose which proficiencies we want for our bards and which cantrips for our tome warlock.

- Casting Friends/Charm Person in dialogue: on balanced, I have never had any issue with casting enchantment spells to convince NPCs, despite a warning in the spell tooltip that it could lead to a hostile reaction. This should be the case for both balanced and tactician IMO

- Reduction in camping supplies: after 40+ hours, I've never felt any tension about resting since supplies abound (I've only used camp supplies) and there are no location restrictions. Less camp supplies could help with this. Good ressource management helps provide a stronger challenge and thus, replayability

- Reaction "ask" as default


Feel free to add more and I'll try to keep the OP updated for ease of reference !

Make spiritual weapon, flaming sphere and guardian of faith untargetable by enemies. Atm they can tank a very significant part of the enemies attacks, making them too powerful. Also using the first 2 should cost a bonus action of the caster.

Reduce the number of concentration loss checks - as the game is, you get several checks on each attack (as the damage is partitioned to several component and every component can make you lose conc), plus remove the checks from non-damage things like falling prone or getting a debuff. I've had cases where I lost concentration on the turn I cast a spell just because I went into some aura or another with no damage....

Summons are too good atm - elementals for example are supposed to require your concentration and go against you if you lose it, instead they're just there until next long rest....

Tone down the explosions on traps - some traps make the whole room explode, repeatedly..... It's over the top.

Good points thanks !

I noticed for the concentration loss, it is indeed very annoying.

Shove is more about distance than action economy. It's 5ft in DnD but here we are doing ridiculous 30ft shoves that guarantee targets will fly off the nearest ledge.

Good point about the various summon-like effects tanking a lot of damage when they shouldn't. The new damage soak ability of Spiritual Weapon is actually better than it's damage dealing capabilities, but of course it now has both. Clerics are a bit much in general when they can have Spirit Guardians, Spritual Weapon and Guardian of Faith ALL ACTIVE at the same time. In the same game where Concentration stops Arcane casters from using Blur and Web at the same time.....

I don't understand why they are keeping the camp supply "mechanic" in the game. It's not at all interesting or meaningful if the party ate apples, or potatoes or fish. Even if they would lower the amount of camp supplies and food lying around, what then? If you run out, you will need a merchant that sells more so the game doesn't just end there lol. At that point it becomes about gold. I guess a gold tax could be meaningful to discourage rest spam. But where are you going to find a camp supply merchant in the Shadow Cursed lands that makes sense? In my playthrough all safe havens got destroyed. I would love to deal with the consequences myself and save my spells and abilities as much as I can, but I'm sure a lot of players aren't and would complain how food system is unfair.

Tavern Brawler feat needs balancing. +4 attack and damage at level 4 and +5/5 later are absurd numbers in 5e.

CC spells were discussed at length already. They need to be useful.

Haste needs to be brought back in line. No full sets of Extra Attacks or additional spells, please.

Paladins shouldn't be able to burn all their Smites in one turn. That's more of a 5e problem but its even worse in BG3. All the "kill X in one turn" and "hit for 500 dmg lolz" videos are using Paladin.

The new Illithid abilities probably have a lot of broken stuff in them. Luck of the Far Realms seems to be a key component in a lot of broken builds. Auto crits with all the elemental damage available from weapons, dips and poison AND smites.. even rings.. plus abundant Giant Strength potions.

5e problem perhaps, but personally I'd like to see level 1 and 2 spells remain competitive with Cantrips at level 11. Nothing would break if Chromatic Orb would also get an additional damage die when Fire Bolt does. 5d8 at level 11. Or 5 magic missiles. Leveled spells should always remain relevant. It's boring how you're using all level 1 slots for Shield later on because that one does remain relevant.

I feel that the larger distance for shove would be tolerable if it wasn't so accessible (BA). Either the distance needs to be toned down or the action economy needs to be reined in. It's pretty bonkers, especially with how haste is implemented (an accessible through potions).

Agree on the rest, except maybe for lower level spells already scaling. Damage is already so prevalent, I wouldn't add more ways to do more dmg.

The increased Shove distance is the main reason why you can't protect yourself against it. Position yourself away from the edge of a lava pool - nuh uh, you'll fly in there anyway from the center of the cave.

When you use Thunderwave to just get out of melee you're accidentally one shotting enemies you wanted to loot into chasms. It's ridiculous.

I disagree. The devs need to prevent unwise players from reaching an unwinnable game state. If we run out, we can't rest, and if we can't rest, we can't win. It could be over a hundred hours down the drain. It should be 100% impossible for the game world to run out of camping supplies. It's bad enough they are finite, but at least they are abundant.

The long - as well as short - rest mechanic is terrible in general. This is one DnD thing i do not like at all. Short rest is obviously stupid. Using long rest to refill your spells and some attacks is also stupid. I never liked it but i have to live with it. Restricting the supplies will not ease the pain. Let the casual players rest as often as they want. I noticed that all the players who bought the game because of all the genitals, owlbear cubs as well as cinematics and zoophilia do not succed because the game is still too difficult for those guys. They play it 20 h and than they go back to D4 or CoD.

These were already said, but I'd like to emphesize I think these are the main balance problems:

1) Being able to deal too much damage at once: Speed potions/Haste's extra action in 5e is one extra attack, here it's an extra 'attack action' that translates to 3 attacks for a fighter, or exta spell on caster. Quicken-spell and multiple smites on the same turn are also to blame for excessive burst damage. The existence of many strong weapons (that add an extra damage die or more per attack) makes this even worse as your hasted fighter gets that extra die 6 times per turn.

2) Shove distance / push with thunder arrow distance etc. are all yeeting targets really far into instant death chasms. In many circumstances these chasms don't even need to be there and are just pretty-scenery.
3) enemies getting bonus action throw-paralyzing-poison attack on top of their 2-attack action. Paralyzing a character is powerful and scary enough, no need for them to also attack on the turn. There's a huge contrast between some creatures spending all their turn just to dash and get conveniently closer for you to kill them, and other creatures just doing one nasty thing after the other....

The shove distance seems necessary for it to be a feature in the game to be honnest.
Edges are not often in straight lines.. And the map shows lots of small mounds, rocks and other things in relief.

I tried to mod the game during AE to reduce shove distance and it became mostly impossible to shove in MANY situations (even when your characters were close to an edge).

Shove as a full action + less "pushing effects" (skills, consummables, items,...) would be the best solution imo.

But it is now pretty clear that Larian will not change anything about the ridiculously OP, unbalanced and often infuriating shove.

Plenty of ways to win without resting. PLENTY, especially with Larian house rules at the helm. Just have to give it a bit more thought. Thats part of the fun and variations of experiences playing D&D games.

So by that thought, to protect unwise players why even have spell slots were you need to even rest then? A regenerating mana bar after combat would be so much more...convenient. And why so many types of classes? ONE class which lets have whatever skills to build your favorite character would be so much more convenient.
Etc...
Some Restrictions, rules and advantages/disavantages is the pillar of great RPG games, were you need to make tough/interesting decisions in order to win. On the flip side of that, you have Diablo etc...

You are already restricted from abusing Long Rest by having in-game events run on a timer. If you abuse the feature you risk locking yourself out of certain rewards.

That's currently not at all designed as a system to restrict long rest... it is just totally hidden and painfull consequences.

Making Shove an attack action also opens up the possibility of Fighters shoving three times per turn, and turning Haste into yet another, or three more possibilities to insta-kill Shove. Normal attacks competing with distance-buffed insta-kill Shoves would lose and it would become an even worse Shove-fest than it currently is. I can imagine the videos already where a Hasted 11th level Fighter Shoves 6 creatures into chasms in one turn. Or "only" 4, should they at least fix Haste.

Let an 11th level enemy Fighter with 20 Strength Action Surge and use 6 Shoves against the party on a high cliff and see how well it works out.

That's why Shove's distance should be reduced in addition to making it an attack-equivalent action. Also, this is exactly where the Fighter should shine: frontline combat. Most classes wouldn't be able to shove more than twice a turn (3 or 4x if hasted). If an 11th level Fighter wants to spend a Haste potion and all 6 (9 if they action surge) of their attacks to (attempt to) shove someone into lava/a pit...I'm fine with that.

@Maximuuus: I wonder if increasing the angle of the shove upward would help with your mod, if that's possible? This would help shoved characters get over those small mounds, allowing one to also reduce the distance so they were always shoved only ~5 feet. It would look a bit comical, but if it get's the job done...?

Regarding push distance, my experience was seeing an enemy with some big pool of damaging surface behind them, pushing (via repelling eldrich blast I think, where it doesn't show you the arcs they'd fly in before you commit) and having them fly over the surface to land on it's other side.

The long pushes are over the top, they often leads to unpreventable player deaths.

I think part of the problem is the strong scaling push distance has with STR. A low STR can barely move the same target that a 18-20 STR will push over the chasm you cant see on the next room.

Not at all.
There are plenty of actions in the game that are not considered as "extra attack" and that consume the entire action.
It does not necessarily have to be "part of your attack action" like in DnD considering how powerfull it can be.

Sure, with haste potion you could shove twice.

@Mrfuji I also tried to change the angle a bit (because it often look ridiculous tbh) but I did not succeed. It was before I managed to change the arrows trajectories /speed so maybe I could try something though...