Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Enemies should follow the same rules

I had played D&D but never read about Drizzt, so I worked overtime (like 3 hours) to figure out a kitting strategy.


...Best loot ever! Was like WOW its Christmas.

I was more talking about weaknesses listed in the game by way of examination, not that there isn't a vulnerability. Also, bludgeoning is only one kind of damage, and without metagaming, you only learn it works by finding those Drow explorers. I liked that you couldn't just throw magic and random physical attacks at Grym; you had to modify your strategy fundamentally relative to all the other boss fights. It's cool that in order to make it vulnerable, you have to have it off a platform with the lava on, and in order to defeat it easily, you have to lure it to a specific place after you lured it off a platform to get superheated. That's way better than just wailing on it with spells and attacks (as long as these kind of fights are not the norm, but given to break up the monotony of DnD combat).

Really don't think it'd be that much work at all.

While I do think the HP bloat for low CR enemies is a real issue and that the Gith encounter is pretty brutally balanced, it's worth noting that enemies in 5e aren't built like players and don't have class levels. They generally will have more hit dice than their CR and usually more than a PC of a specific level does (e.g. a Hobgoblin Captain in the Monster Manual has 6 hit dice despite being a CR 3 creature).

Nere's stats aren't really that ridiculous, atleast when it comes to HP. 72 HP is pretty normal for a CR4 boss enemy (an Orc warchief is also CR4 and has 93 HP).

The druid's transforming into weaker bears actually makes sense according to the rules if we assume they're circle of the land druids. A 4th level circle of the land druid is restricted to at most a CR 1/2 creature, which means the best bear they can wildshape into is a black bear (19 hp). 4th level Moon Druids can wildshape into CR 1 creatures such as Brown Bears (34 hp). The polar bear transformation that players can use is just a slightly weaker version of the brown bear statblock (slightly less hp and d4s instead of d6s as damage dice).

And that's what I was trying to say. Thank you.

And I totally think crafting every NPC in BG3 using PC character creation would be a nightmare. Dear God. As it is, it seems like they kinda did do that, but think about how many enemies there are. 30 in the goblin camp alone.

That's a crappy system. NPCs with class levels should be built just like player characters.

If the scene needs to the NPC to be stronger, raise the level.


Larian has how many employees?

30 NPCs? That's not even an afternoon's work for one person. If I had an employee who was that unproductive, said employee would not last long.

Here's an article and a few reddit threads on the subject of creatures with class levels:

https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/dont-give-your-monsters-class-levels
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/a44otf/5e_should_i_build_enemy_npcs_like_pcs/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/mf1muh/enemies_with_class_levels/

TL:DR

You generally should not build enemies like you would PCs because doing so would make them dramatically stronger than they're intended to be. Enemies are designed to last a while and deal moderate damage to the entire party whereas players have less HP but can deal more damage through class features and abilities. Classes were never designed with PvP in mind, so making players fight enemies designed with class levels would be brutally difficult and imbalanced.

Nonsense. Just adjust the levels accordingly. DMs have done it for ages.

To be clear, enemy CR is NOT the same as enemy "levels" (if you're judging enemy levels by their # of Hit Dice and their abilities). This is because
a.) Enemies are meant to be simpler, easier to play by the DM, with higher HP and less overall power
b.) CR is calculated according to what an entire party of 4 level-X characters can defeat/take on.

However, enemies are calculated according to specific rules that correspond to player rules: e.g., they have X*(Hit Dice + Con) hp, and abilities corresponding to that level.

Eg., a Bandit Captain is CR 2 but has 10 Hit Dice** worth of HP, multiattack, and a proficiency bonus of +2, so he could be considered a *very* weak 10th level fighter except for the PB. However, it makes no sense to classify him as a "level 10 enemy" because a party of 4 level 2 characters would wipe the floor with him. Alternately, it doesn't make sense to label him a "level 2 enemy" because 4 Bandit Captains against 4 Level-2 PCs would result in a TPK.
If Larian *needs* to put levels on enemies (they shouldn't, or at least should use the term "CR"), then they'd need to choose a level such that a party of level X characters can take on ~4 of that enemy. For a Bandit Captain, this would be 4. Nicely (possibly by chance), level 4 corresponds to a PB of +2, which a Bandit Captain has!

**Also noted is that NPCs have hit dice according to their size. Medium creatures have d8s, Large creatures have d10s, etc.

They do, to a lesser extent follow the same rules as players, it just feels highly rigged because BG3 uses round robin. You make 4 moves to their 4-X. Aka you feel that your fighting in an unfair fight because yo are fighting a private army. Just how IRL a single person would fair poorly against a group, so does your group do poorly against a hoarde.


I do not know how you play, but this game is more about cheating the game in every single way you can. Take it from me, BG3 is a lot easier then DOS2. Now from the perspective of stats…

I agree, I have no tools to prove it, but it does seem certain stats are inflated in enemies. From my experience it comes from their inflated ability to dodge. I done around 5 play throughs, and I maybe dodged 8 times in 50 hours. I know enemies dodged me way more then that.

From a game design stand point I understand if they did in fact cheat certain stats. Feels bad

There is no "dodge" chance per se in D&D 5e or BG3. Your attack misses an enemy if your roll + modifiers is less than their AC, and the same for enemies attacking you. The game tells you your chances to hit when you mouse over an enemy. And the dice rolling in BG3 -- using Weighted Dice (by default on) -- is statistically consistent with the distribution predicted by a balanced d20.

There are also Saving Throw abilities/spells, which work the opposite way. The target makes a roll + modifiers against the caster's Save DC.

I'm not sure why exactly you're finding that your attacks are missing enemies more than theirs are missing your characters, but possible explanations are:
- you are using attacks with low chances to hit - make sure you don't have disadvantage on attacks due to e.g., the enemy being in darkness, or other negative modifiers such as attacking from low ground. Additionally, make sure your character is proficient with the weapon they're using, and that weapon is the best for your stats (e.g., finesse weapons for dexterity characters)
- you are using saving throw abilities against enemies with high saves for that specific ability. This is something that IS a problem in BG3 due to some NPC ability-score bloat. Additionally, some enemies in BG3 have lowered AC and raised HP, so Attack-Roll abilities are automatically more effective than Saving Throw abilities.
- confirmation bias, where you preferentially notice negative outcomes over (expected) positive outcomes

In theory ... yes, 100% ...

But as far as i know there is no such fight in EA right now.
The most challenging is to piss off everyone in Grymforge ... ane even that can be resolved without any unfair actions.

Its true tho that in both Githyanki and Grymforge it only takes few really well rolls on for them, or really bad rolls for you ... to get completely wrecked.
Personaly i blame that statistic for that since with theese ability scores its MUCH harder for them to make really bad roll.

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I still hope tho that both encounters were created this way purely for testing purposes ... bcs Larian needed data on how tough wnemies we can handle ...
And they will be tuned before release.

Bcs there are simply too huge gasps between combats.
BUT (and this is a big butt) !
Presuming fighting with Goblins represents Easy ...
And fighting with Githyanki or Duergars + Nere in Grymforge represents Hard (talking only about NPC power not encounter itself) ...
Then it seems perfectly fine to me.

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Problem with Githyanki is that they have both HP and Damage.

Quite honestly tho ...
I wouldnt mind if BOSSES would get some boost, since they indeed are supposed to be exceptional individuals.
But when every single tracker is as strong as your (half or even entire ... depends on when you get there) party ... you just have to ask why on Earth have i ended in team with the one and only Githyanki weakling in the universe? :-/

Simple solution. Use 5e stats for monsters instead of homebrew because, you know, 5e stats have been tested and we're designed for the system. Oh, and don't design every encounter to be Deadly CR.

I haven't managed an honest fight with the gith patrol. I tried a few times, to challenge myself, but if I don't metagame by positioning at the very least, those 'good rolls' you mentioned, wipe the team. So I'm quite a bit salty about it... I guess. Grymforge was a cake compared to that, even on the first try. I remember that I roleplayed a hunter who just jumped straight to free Nere and aggroed all the dwarves - the environment and enemy positioning and enemy tactics just give you more leeway, even with all the lava shoving attempts.

Yes.

I can beat the Githyanki fight without cheesing or buffing or positioning, BUT I can also have several members downed or maybe die based on Initiative order and some Saving Throws.

There's just no reason why their stats are so high in everything, even WIS which a Githyanki Fighter would never have a lot of and also STR CON DEX.

It really depends on the rolls and if we can spread out enough before the Bomb and other dumb AoE. A few times I have a character downed in the fight before it even gets a turn in the first round.

I never understand why people automaticly concider this to be metagame. o_O

I can promise, with one hand on Bible and another on heart, that Astarion and Gale stayed hidden "in case something went wrong" in my very first playthrough.
Seems like smart decision to me, not metagaming.

I believe this can be quite easily explained ... at least based on my experience, i rarely get to Grymforge with no magic items ... usualy i keep that fight to the very end of patch.

When i just recently headed there straight from the start ... the combat was actualy quite different.

Yes, that would be good.

And while we're at it, I'd love to see the hitpoints and damage for the druid's wildshape forms be true to 5e as well. Currently, only the (giant) badger and the cat have their correct stats as far as I am aware.
And please, for the love of Silvanus, the Earth Mother and every other druidic deity, change the polar bear (Circle of the Moon) to a brown bear and let us transform into a black bear regardless of circle (after all, the druids at the grove can do it, so why can't we?)

Edit: Double post, sorry about that

lol. Why not polar bear? I'm sure most druids have visited Icewind Dale. Right?

The irony is, when I was creating my fan fiction, I pulled in a character I had made for the Icewind Dale games. She is a druid from the north Silver Marches, and she fit perfectly into the game because of the polar bear. Wynari Nell. Her favorite wild shape is polar bear.

I have to agree with this first part. After watching the dragon waste those defenders it seems plain stupid to me to just walk right up to them. I unchained 2 people up at the well for the same reason, before taking Laz down to talk.