Channel Oath - Sacred Weapon: - This spell should be staple of playing a Paladin but is only viable to cast pre combat - It requires a full action to cast, there are almost always better options than casting this spell - Most Paladins are low Dex, so they are often last in the turn order, this means your actions are even more valuable and not to be wasted
- Suggestion: Change Sacred Weapon from Action to Bonus Action
Crowd control spells are too heavily nerfed. There are three major nerfs.
1) The durations are reduced from 10 turns to 2 turns. 2) Enemies perform unarmed attacks to wake each other up from CC. 3) Enemies get to make their saving throw at the beginning of their turn, rather than the end, counter to DnD rules.
As a fourth honorable mention, we have enemies targeting casters on tactician mode, breaking their concentration.
This is bad for CC-focused casters in general but especially bad for bards, who don't really have other options until they get magical secrets at level 10.
It makes Confusion especially useless, because enemies must fail two saving throws before having a chance to act confused. Unlike most other spells, it does nothing in the interim between casting it and their first turn (you don't get advantage when attacking them, for example).
I'm not sure why Larian decided these spells needed such heavy rebalancing, but they need to revisit it.
Crowd control spells are too heavily nerfed. There are three major nerfs.
1) The durations are reduced from 10 turns to 2 turns. 2) Enemies perform unarmed attacks to wake each other up from CC. 3) Enemies get to make their saving throw at the beginning of their turn, rather than the end, counter to DnD rules.
As a fourth honorable mention, we have enemies targeting casters on tactician mode, breaking their concentration.
This is bad for CC-focused casters in general but especially bad for bards, who don't really have other options until they get magical secrets at level 10.
It makes Confusion especially useless, because enemies must fail two saving throws before having a chance to act confused. Unlike most other spells, it does nothing in the interim between casting it and their first turn (you don't get advantage when attacking them, for example).
I'm not sure why Larian decided these spells needed such heavy rebalancing, but they need to revisit it.
I can actually see the nerfs being SOMEWHAT justified (although I think going from 10 turns to 2 is way too harsh.) But point 3 is clearly a bug. And I think other people have bought up that spells that apply a "terrain" effect don't have the correct DCs for their saves (as in they're way too low.)
Has Larian said ANYTHING about, at the very least, the things that are obviously bugs getting fixed? My favorite type of character to play is a control caster and this sort of thing severely hampers my enjoyment. It's one of the big things preventing me from doing another playthrough.
I'd like to quickly second that I'd love the saves being at the beginning of the turn rather than the end to be corrected, I have to assume it's a bug, and even though CC is *very* powerful I'd nonetheless like to see it where everyone doesn't get 2 saves to avoid losing their turn.
Has anybody ever found any viable uses for Grasping Vine?
It's a lvl 4 spell, all it does is summon an immobile tree vine that can pull enemy once per turn, and since its only 6hp it gets killed in like 1 turn after it's summoned. I can't think of a situation where it'd be useful...
After completing the game and playing almost all caster classes present, I have a lot of feedback about spells. Most of them are decently balanced as they can have a niche or cases where they are better than other same level analogues, but there is a list of spells that seem undertuned or not worth using - they could use some reasonable boosts. The list of these spells and suggestions for their improvements are below. Larian could also implement other improvements if they want, the main goal is just to make the spells more competitive.
Sorcerer / Wizard:
Cantrips: - True Strike is the elephant in the room for this list. You spend an action to get advantage on one hit and in most non-Rogue cases it is inferior to just attacking / casting a spell twice - with two attacks in worst case you get similar chances to hit as with True Strike and in best case you hit both times and deal double damage. It needs a boost. Suggestion: Make True Strike additionally increase damage of affected attack / spell attack by X%. The value should be reasonable enough to make it better than just attacking twice, but not too big, as it is still a cantrip. - Dancing Lights is just inferior to Light - it does not move like the latter (which is attached to weapon of a character who can move) and requires Concentration. Could use a boost. Suggestion: Remove requirement for Concentration. Its inability to move is already a downside enough.
Level 1: - Witch Bolt is inferior to most other single-target spells - it does damage over time, requires Concentration AND requires an action each round to keep dealing damage. Could use a decent boost. Suggestion: Make the link damage enemies passively each round it is active or at least require a bonus action instead of full action. - Chromatic Orb is useful at starting level, but then quickly loses value not only to higher level spells, but even to other level 1 spells and cantrips. At level 10+ - why would you use Fire Orb (2d8 damage + burning surface) over Fire Bolt (3d10 damage)? Or Ice Orb (2d8 damage + ice surface) over Ice Knife (1d10 single-target +2d6 AoE damage and same surface with similar radius)? It could use a boost. Suggestion: Make it deal 3d8 damage for all damage types AND create the current surface. That would make it more competitive at both higher levels with cantrips (since it would deal comparable damage and create a surface to justify spending a 1st level spell slot over free catrip) and at upcasting with spells like Scorching Rays. As for Thunder Orb, it could get additional minor knockback effect to get in line with other damage types for Chromatic Orb.
Level 2: - Phantasmal Force is quite odd. It is a damage over time effect with quite weak damage, still has a Save and requires Concentration. What is its benefit compared to simply blasting an enemy with any of single-target spells that deal their damage immediately? Could use a boost. Suggestion: Increase its damage to 2d4 or 2d6 and allow it to be upcasted with more damage or targets. - Ray of Enfeeblement is very niche and not that powerful - it spends Concentration to halve damage from exclusively strength based attacks, so pretty much mostly melee attacks and not even all of them. Hold Person looks at it with pity and Blade Ward that affects all physical damage and does not require Concentration for that just shrugs (BW lasts only 2 turns, but Ray of Enfeeblement triggers saves every round, so usually would last about same period of time) Suggestion: Make it affect all physical damage or both Strength and Dexterity based damage. If that would not be enough, it could additionally reduce attacker's melee attack rolls by 2 to make it both different from and stack with disadvantage. - Shatter is useful at character level 3 and 4 and then gets outshined entirely by Fireball, Glyph of Warding and other 3rd level spells. It could use a boost exclusively to upscaling to be more competitive in that department. Suggestion: Make it upscale to 5d8 at level 3 spell slot and then get standard +1d8 per level. That makes its damage at 3rd level spell slot equal to Glyph of Warding and gives it a usage case - if enemy is Fire resistant / immune (so no Fireball) you can use Shatter if they are far away or constructs and Glyph of Warding if they are closer (as Shatter has longer range and specific enemy type disadvantage and GoW allows to pick damage type and has larger radius, so both abilities would have pros and cons). That also still does not allow it to replace GoW entirely, as it is limited to one damage type and has lower radius, so rule of "higher level spell is usually better or at least not worse than upcasted low level spell" is preserved.
Level 4: - Stoneskin provides similar effect to Blade Ward, but with much higher cost and additionally requires Concentration. It could use a boost. Suggestion: Remove Concentration requirement, but limit it to 1 target maximum. That turns it into a spell that provides permanent Blade Ward like effect to one ally or self, but at the cost of 4th level spell slot. That seems like a decent trade and as comparable benefit to other non-Concentration 4th level buffs like Freedom of Movement, especially since there is an armor in the game that provides similar effect and with no cost.
Level 5: - Wall of Stone's health is undertuned. 30 HP is about one hit from one high level enemy and both he and other enemies can then just ignore the wall and pass through the breach to your party. That does not seem like a proper effect for both Concentration and 5th level slot. Suggestion: Increase its health.
Level 6: - Circle of Death seems undertuned compared to other 6th level spells. Its closest analogue is Otiluke's Freezing Sphere, which has similar radius, does more damage (10d6 vs 8d6 from Circle of Death), creates ice surface and does not require a target to radiate from. CoD could use a boost. Suggestion: At the very least increase its damage to 8d8 or 10d6.
Druid:
Level 2: - Barkskin quickly loses its benefit the higher level you get. AC 16 is equal to non-enchanted medium armor + 2 from Dexterity and starting from Act 2 even light and Mage Armour often exceeds it. It could use a boost to effect and scaling. Suggestion: Allow it to get benefit from Dexterity and remove Concentration requirement. That would make it just a stronger Mage Armour, but at least worth the cost, especially in Act 3, where even robes with Mage Armor can have 15 base AC + Dexterity modifier.
Level 4: - Grasping Vine is much weaker than other summons - it has very low health, can only pull and for some reason requires Concentration when most other summons don't. It could use a boost. Suggestion: Remove its Concentration requirement, increase health and make it pull action additionally deal some damage. That should make it more competitive.
Bonus: There are spells and metamagic options that can easily be added to the game, as they already exist there as item bonuses or can be based on existing mechanics. These include: - Absorb Elements - exists on two capes and can be just put as a spell available for learing. - Shadow Blade - exists on one ring and can be put as a learnable spell. - Seeking Spell - exists on gloves. However, 1 Sorcery Point per spell level is too expensive cost and should be toned down to just 1 or 2 SP cost for any spell (like in 5e). - Empowered Spell - an interesting option for its implementation could be making it the casters' Savage Attacker analogue - you roll damage dices for spell twice and use the higher result and spend 1 or 2 sorcery points for any spell to achieve that. - Transmuted Spell - since Phantasmal Force already provides damage type conversion, it seems possible to implement that as a Metamagic option. It should take into account bonuses like from Draconic Sorcerer's Elemental Affinity or Markoheshkir's affinity if transmuted to the according element though.
After completing the game and playing almost all caster classes present, I have a lot of feedback about spells. Most of them are decently balanced as they can have a niche or cases where they are better than other same level analogues, but there is a list of spells that seem undertuned or not worth using - they could use some reasonable boosts. The list of these spells and suggestions for their improvements are below. Larian could also implement other improvements if they want, the main goal is just to make the spells more competitive.
Sorcerer / Wizard:
Cantrips: - True Strike is the elephant in the room for this list. You spend an action to get advantage on one hit and in most non-Rogue cases it is inferior to just attacking / casting a spell twice - with two attacks in worst case you get similar chances to hit as with True Strike and in best case you hit both times and deal double damage. It needs a boost. Suggestion: Make True Strike additionally increase damage of affected attack / spell attack by X%. The value should be reasonable enough to make it better than just attacking twice, but not too big, as it is still a cantrip. - Dancing Lights is just inferior to Light - it does not move like the latter (which is attached to weapon of a character who can move) and requires Concentration. Could use a boost. Suggestion: Remove requirement for Concentration. Its inability to move is already a downside enough.
Level 1: - Witch Bolt is inferior to most other single-target spells - it does damage over time, requires Concentration AND requires an action each round to keep dealing damage. Could use a decent boost. Suggestion: Make the link damage enemies passively each round it is active or at least require a bonus action instead of full action. - Chromatic Orb is useful at starting level, but then quickly loses value not only to higher level spells, but even to other level 1 spells and cantrips. At level 10+ - why would you use Fire Orb (2d8 damage + burning surface) over Fire Bolt (3d10 damage)? Or Ice Orb (2d8 damage + ice surface) over Ice Knife (1d10 single-target +2d6 AoE damage and same surface with similar radius)? It could use a boost. Suggestion: Make it deal 3d8 damage for all damage types AND create the current surface. That would make it more competitive at both higher levels with cantrips (since it would deal comparable damage and create a surface to justify spending a 1st level spell slot over free catrip) and at upcasting with spells like Scorching Rays. As for Thunder Orb, it could get additional minor knockback effect to get in line with other damage types for Chromatic Orb.
Level 2: - Phantasmal Force is quite odd. It is a damage over time effect with quite weak damage, still has a Save and requires Concentration. What is its benefit compared to simply blasting an enemy with any of single-target spells that deal their damage immediately? Could use a boost. Suggestion: Increase its damage to 2d4 or 2d6 and allow it to be upcasted with more damage or targets. - Ray of Enfeeblement is very niche and not that powerful - it spends Concentration to halve damage from exclusively strength based attacks, so pretty much mostly melee attacks and not even all of them. Hold Person looks at it with pity and Blade Ward that affects all physical damage and does not require Concentration for that just shrugs (BW lasts only 2 turns, but Ray of Enfeeblement triggers saves every round, so usually would last about same period of time) Suggestion: Make it affect all physical damage or both Strength and Dexterity based damage. If that would not be enough, it could additionally reduce attacker's melee attack rolls by 2 to make it both different from and stack with disadvantage. - Shatter is useful at character level 3 and 4 and then gets outshined entirely by Fireball, Glyph of Warding and other 3rd level spells. It could use a boost exclusively to upscaling to be more competitive in that department. Suggestion: Make it upscale to 5d8 at level 3 spell slot and then get standard +1d8 per level. That makes its damage at 3rd level spell slot equal to Glyph of Warding and gives it a usage case - if enemy is Fire resistant / immune (so no Fireball) you can use Shatter if they are far away or constructs and Glyph of Warding if they are closer (as Shatter has longer range and specific enemy type disadvantage and GoW allows to pick damage type and has larger radius, so both abilities would have pros and cons). That also still does not allow it to replace GoW entirely, as it is limited to one damage type and has lower radius, so rule of "higher level spell is usually better or at least not worse than upcasted low level spell" is preserved.
Level 4: - Stoneskin provides similar effect to Blade Ward, but with much higher cost and additionally requires Concentration. It could use a boost. Suggestion: Remove Concentration requirement, but limit it to 1 target maximum. That turns it into a spell that provides permanent Blade Ward like effect to one ally or self, but at the cost of 4th level spell slot. That seems like a decent trade and as comparable benefit to other non-Concentration 4th level buffs like Freedom of Movement, especially since there is an armor in the game that provides similar effect and with no cost.
Level 5: - Wall of Stone's health is undertuned. 30 HP is about one hit from one high level enemy and both he and other enemies can then just ignore the wall and pass through the breach to your party. That does not seem like a proper effect for both Concentration and 5th level slot. Suggestion: Increase its health.
Level 6: - Circle of Death seems undertuned compared to other 6th level spells. Its closest analogue is Otiluke's Freezing Sphere, which has similar radius, does more damage (10d6 vs 8d6 from Circle of Death), creates ice surface and does not require a target to radiate from. CoD could use a boost. Suggestion: At the very least increase its damage to 8d8 or 10d6.
Druid:
Level 2: - Barkskin quickly loses its benefit the higher level you get. AC 16 is equal to non-enchanted medium armor + 2 from Dexterity and starting from Act 2 even light and Mage Armour often exceeds it. It could use a boost to effect and scaling. Suggestion: Allow it to get benefit from Dexterity and remove Concentration requirement. That would make it just a stronger Mage Armour, but at least worth the cost, especially in Act 3, where even robes with Mage Armor can have 15 base AC + Dexterity modifier.
Level 4: - Grasping Vine is much weaker than other summons - it has very low health, can only pull and for some reason requires Concentration when most other summons don't. It could use a boost. Suggestion: Remove its Concentration requirement, increase health and make it pull action additionally deal some damage. That should make it more competitive.
Bonus: There are spells and metamagic options that can easily be added to the game, as they already exist there as item bonuses or can be based on existing mechanics. These include: - Absorb Elements - exists on two capes and can be just put as a spell available for learing. - Shadow Blade - exists on one ring and can be put as a learnable spell. - Seeking Spell - exists on gloves. However, 1 Sorcery Point per spell level is too expensive cost and should be toned down to just 1 or 2 SP cost for any spell (like in 5e). - Empowered Spell - an interesting option for its implementation could be making it the casters' Savage Attacker analogue - you roll damage dices for spell twice and use the higher result and spend 1 or 2 sorcery points for any spell to achieve that. - Transmuted Spell - since Phantasmal Force already provides damage type conversion, it seems possible to implement that as a Metamagic option. It should take into account bonuses like from Draconic Sorcerer's Elemental Affinity or Markoheshkir's affinity if transmuted to the according element though.
With all due respect, making early level spells scale more, without considering how long we have them is wrong.
Chromatic orb is a fantastic level, which only falls after level 11 on casters, I think. It’s better than cantrips for vast majority of the game. While I agree on some points, I think you are overbuffing way too many of them.
As for me:
-Greater Invisibility sucks. It requires constant stealth checks making it borderline useless on non-rogue. Instead of making targets Invisible it should work similar to blur, giving enemies disadvantage and you advantage. -Polymorph is Terrible. Instead of turning allies into owlbears, etc, we can turn an enemy into a sheep for 5 turns. -Sleep, Hypnotic Pattern lasting only 2 turns and being easily broken by bonus action shove is just horrible.
The way I see it, Larian loves big explosion and has got massive hate boner for all control spells.
Considering how long we have spells is taken into account, but does not change the point. We get Magic Missile and Scorching Rays about just as early, but they remain relevant at higher levels because of either additional features like auto-hit or proper initial damage and scaling (since even though we get Fireball quite soon after Scorching Rays and it is AoE, Scorching Rays deal similar damage at spell level 3 and can be used if enemy is single and engaged with your allies that would be hit by Fireball and outscale its damage starting from spell level 4). As such, other spells could get similar treatment.
Chromatic Orb actually starts to fall off at level 5+. Fire Bolt there deals comparable damage (2d10 vs 2d8 + 1d4 from burning). Ray of Frost does similar damage without ice surface, but if you need it you are better off using Ice Knife (1d10+2d6 damage and second part is AoE).
As such, buffing Chromatic Orb to 3d8 (13.5 avg) + surface at level 1 is reasonable. That would just bring its power to the level of Ice Knife (12.5 avg damage + ice surface, but 7 avg damage is done in AoE), Guiding Bolt (14 avg damage + advantage on next hit) and so on.
I can agree about Sleep though, since it is a spell slot and action that can be negated by a bonus action, so could use some buffs as well. Not so sure about Hypnotic Pattern - with Careful Spell I was able to pause whole battlefield of enemies with it, so making it last longer is questionable.
Spells mentioned: - Witch Bolt - Phantasmal Force - Conjure Barrage - Contagion - Circle of Death - Barkskin - Goodberry - Charm Person - Protection from Energy - Feign Death - Grasping Vine - True Strike
The Evocation spell "Wall of Stone" is pretty underwhelming in combat. It's supposed to cut through enemy space and push enemies to either side of the wall, with the player choosing which side of the wall they end up on.
Unlike the similar spells Wall of Fire or Wall of Ice, which do direct damage, the Wall of Stone is meant as a control spell, but it breaks apart when trying to cast across space occupied by friendlies/hostiles/neutrals.
Instead of crushing enemies or hurling them to either side, or raising friendlies to high ground, or doing something useful like that, instead the spell just fails to materialize in that space? Leaves us with a series of stone pillars instead of a wall.
It can't be used to effectively divide the battlefield with a bunch of openings like that. It's marginally useful if you can corner an isolated enemy in a single elevation area, but that's pretty niche and sorta the opposite of the control theme. Like it might as well be a banish spell at that point. It also seems pretty easy for opponents to shoot around the wall, destroy the wall, or just jump over the wall, since most areas are built around elevation platforms. Weirdly, when using jump normally the PCs will often snag on invisible walls in the environment after the player has already committed to the jump action (preview lines for jump are less accurate than they are for the spells or ranged weapons) and when this happens the player will hang on whatever edge and just fall to the lower elevation, wherever they snagged mid-jump. So I could imagine something similar for the hostiles with this spell, but that doesn't happen with the wall of stone either. The spell seems like it would be most useful in fights with many enemies or big trashmob spill-over type battles, but these situations make the spell even harder to use, since there is less unoccupied space to trace an unbroken a path for the wall.
We can only paint the wall in a straight line across the floor of the environment, and it doesn't work in any area that can't be reached already normally, so not terribly useful as a bridge or makeshift ladder either. It's also concentration spell, which means that if there are gaps in the wall such that enemies can still shoot through, it's going to be tough to maintain.
Seems buggy for big 5th level spell that should be more of a show stopper.
Here are a bunch of screens with some examples from the Nightsong Prison, showing the discrepancy between the spell previews and what we end up with...
spoilers* image heavy
Thanks to sanctuary and chaos magic, it's predictably up to mini-Lae'zel now to keep us in the fight lol
All the walls came tumbling down, but at least Shadowheart's guiding bolt for the killshot was reliably on target hehe
Shadowheart also came clutch with Turn undead in a pinch, and pretty much laid down the gauntlet like a champ...
but it was a Magic Missile for final nail in the coffin...
Phantasmal Force - what a cool spell. What a disastrous implementation in BG3.
It's essentially a creative control spell that can take an enemy out of a fight. The meager damage is just a bonus. In BG3 it only deals damage, hence it's completely useless.
Please fix. Add Frightened or something that makes it useful. The phantasm is something the creature fears, fire or a ghost. Or immobilize the enemy if the phantasm is a spiked pit under their feet. A bit of creativity, please.
Buff/heal spells (e.g.: Expeditious Retreat or Healing Word)display saving throw stats which shouldn't be there at all. This is confusing players who are completely new to D&D as whole. I wonder if this was caused because every developer and early access players were already into D&D and knew what they did.
All I ask for is Mage Hand Legerdemain to get fixed so we can do stuff with it as it should be. We can't pickpocket with it, we can't unlock doors, can't stow away objects. Nothing. It's basically an invisible normal Mage Hand. That's not what it's supposed to be. It worked in EA, I believe before it got the permanent ability. Pls fix it
First, I wanted to start out by saying Baldur's Gate 3 is truly a masterpiece. With that said, I would like to share a few quick balance suggestions to improve several lackluster spells. Unfortunately, these spells felt underwhelming in most situations and there was always a better alternative. The list below is not intended to be exhaustive, but wanted to share this feedback nonetheless...
Dancing Lights * Remove concentration requirement
True Strike * Now reduces critical hit while attacking by 1
Colour Spray * Increase duration from 1 turn to 2 turns
Find Familiar * Now squeezes through and can enter small spaces * Now carries a weight up to 3 lb (low carrying capacity)
Ray of Sickness * Increase poison damage from 2d8 to 3d8 * On critical hit, target gets upset stomach condition
Witch Bolt * Reactivation cost changed from action to bonus action
Bark Skin * Now reduces bludgeoning and piercing damage by 1
Magic Weapon * Now changed from action to bonus action
Phantasmal Force * Increase psychic damage from 1d6 to 2d6
Ray of Enfeeblement * Increase range from 18m to 32m * Now casting this spell at a higher level allows an additional ray for each spell slot level above 2nd.
Vampiric Touch * Increase necrotic damage from 3d6 to 4d6
Polymorph * Instead of restricting to sheep, now adds additional creature options that scales with upcasting. By the very defintion, poly meaning “many,” so this change would make this spell multifaceted.
Honestly, I don't understand why Mage Hand is a cantrip in this game.
Cast once per Short Rest is garbage compared to what other once per Short Rest abilities exist in game.
They should give the Mage Hand the ability to Rend Vision and turn the Raven Familiar into a Pigeon who lacks this combat ability.
That way you can justify turning that spell into a cantrip, since all the Familiars, apart from Raven are terrible combatants.
I get that this will mean reworking Gith psionics but...I am ok with that as long as I can burn my 1st level spell slots on a Mage Hand that can both turn invisible and gauge people's eyes out.
Secondly I want to talk about Magic Weapon and True Strike cantrip.
I think Magic Weapon should be changed to include the following ability: "After casting this you may also grant one of the following special properties to the target's weapon:"
- gain the Bound Weapon trait from EK - gain the ability to cast True Strike as a bonus action - gain the ability to ignore Low Ground Penalties when attacking with a range weapon
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