Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Is this game gonna have "challenge scaling"?

My personal opinion is no level scaling because I like feeling powerful as I level up and I must admit I sometimes like having the option with difficult fights to just come back at higher level.

I don't see any reason why there can't be a level scaling option for people who want it though.

I get your point about story-related fixed encounters, but you can take difficulty into account by saying "if medium difficulty, leave as designed. If hard difficulty, add in 2 extra x, if very hard difficulty add in giant". You don't have to completely change the fixed encounter creature type, you can just add more or remove some.

You still need to buff some creatures too, namely the "named ones": Bosses, minibosses, story-related enemies, arch-nemesis, recurrent villains... even allies! so they can still put up a fight if the party is too strong.

If not it happens like in DoS2, where you can one-shot Divine Lucian with a min-maxed ranger with guerrilla shooting from high ground.

PD:I did not mean to say that you have to do the same with the bandits outside the city gates that want to assault you for 50 gold like in oblivion, of course.

Oh, i definitely agree about the buffing. If you look in the monster manual, all monster/creatures have hit dice that determine their hit points. I like goblins so we'll use them as an example. They have 2d6 hit dice which averages 7 (rounded) hit points. I think it would be cool if they used an RNG feature for every normal goblin to have anywhere between 2 and 12 hit points (2 being the lowest you can have with 2d6 and 12 being the most). They have a 10 constitution so they don't get any bonuses. If you have named goblins, or boss goblins, or 'leader' goblins...basically any goblin that needs to be a little stronger, give it a class level like fighter which will give it 1d10 more hit points and/or make its average hit points per hit dice only range in the top 50%; so instead of 1-6 their RNG would be 4,5, or 6 of the d6 dice. Or just max hit points within their hit dice. You could also give that goblin more constitution since its the bigger/badder/leader,etc. Just don't add on any hit points that would be more than their hit dice + constitution modifier. Then it is no longer D&D IMO. All enemies hp needs to fall within the standard rules.

My argument is that I don't want normal, average goblin fodder to adjust to character level and have like 50 hit points when its not one of those things (chief/leader/boss/etc). To me, that would be ridiculous and immersion breaking. D&D is a very established RPG and there are many ways that you can adjust the difficulty of the game. It just wouldn't make sense to fight a peon goblin at level 5 and feel like its the same challenge as other CR 5 monsters, like a hill giant, that is actually CR 5. That would just be ridiculous.

One is easier to do than the other. But it really doesn't matter which method is used. If there is some algorithm that can magically add in the right types of monsters to increase the challenge then that's scaling.

I do not like level scaling because it ruins the feeling that your char gets stronger.
Lets say you fight a group of lv1 goblins at lv1 and later you fight a group of lv3 goblins at lv3 the challenge is similar, but you lack the feeling that you have grown stronger.

Personally I loved Gothic 1+2: The world has fixed enemies with fixed stats. You can go almost anywhere if you survive. Your character starts very weak and gets stronger over time.
The numbers are not correct but you get something like: lv1 A wolf will kill you if you make a mistake in combat, lv10 you one shot the wolf but an orc will one shot you, lv20 you can kill an orc but several of them can finish you fast especially when there are some shamans among them, lv30 you are god
BG1 was similar. You could explore almost the whole map from the beginning and you were only guided in so far that there could be very powerful enemies when you go to another direction.

It felt good when you can destroy easily that used to be very dangerous and finally you can take on this huge monster that used to one shot you just by looking at you.
It can also feel great if you manage to kill an enemy that is assumed to be way to powerful for your current level.
There is a video of a player in Gothic 1 or 2. Right from the start he avoids all enemies and walks to a giant troll and killing it by beating it for ages with a wooden stick without getting hit at lv1.

That's not scaling. That's adding in enemies of the appropriate level, not scaling the enemies to your level. If you're level 10 and you go fight a group of kobolds, adding in a dragon as the kobold leader to get the CR to your party level is not the same as scaling all the kobolds to now be as deadly as a dragon. Scaling like that does not fit in D&D.

I agree, the mechanics to scale the CR of the encounters to the party is very different to the one used in videogames like diablo or bethesda games like Fallout or TES. It has more options. You also add or remove abilities and spells from the creatures, not only buff their stats; add more enemies or different enemies, etc.

In Skyrim ( I know, it´s a videogame and not a PNP game but it´s the comparison that we are using in this thread to have a common ground for everybody) you can fight a necromancer in level 81 and they are still using the same ice spell against you from when you were level ten, they just do more damage, have better equipment and are tougher to kill.

Personal preference: Scale by party size, not level. It doesnt make sense for enemies that are powerful (like demons) to be scaled down because your party is lower level. However the group attacking you could have more or less enemies in it, depending on party size.

The lv cap is 10. You will not face powerful enemies like a Balor...