Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Balance XP received from dialogue vs combat

Hi,
So basically what the title says. Right now is way better to attack in every encounter that try to resolve the situations with dialogue options if you want to get as much XP as possible. The following video explains it pretty well:



There is a comment in that same video that I think would be a pretty cool way of balancing this issue and it´s the following:


What do you think?

Thanks in advance

+1 I seem to recall that this has been addressed before in the forum. In any case, I agree.

+1

Yep, I’m all for not overly incentivising violent as opposed to peaceful ways to achieve goals. There definitely have been conversations about this before, and there are multiple ways it could be attempted. One interesting suggestion I think was to tie XP to achieving objectives as opposed to what you do along the way, but I don’t think any solution is perfect.

It’s hard to comment on the balance in the game as it stands as I have done playthroughs minimising death (though not at the expense of forgoing quests) and still not had any problem hitting the XP cap or felt that my character is under-levelled for the content. I’ve not completed a patch 9 playthrough though, and of course the divergence between an XP-maximising approach and one that avoids unnecessary fights will only grow further in the full game if the XP-granting approach doesn’t change. Which is why I think this has come up in the past alongside discussion of level caps.

It´s good to know that even trying to do things peacefully you got to the level cap more or less fine. But as you point out, i´m a bit worried about the "snowball" of getting less XP than doing more combat will affect difficult batlles in the future.

This can also be balanced if you get extra help for certain battles if you have tried to avoid combat with certain characters that later joins you for that temporarily for example. I hope it´s balanced for the different acts because I´ll try to solve each situation with dialogue at least with those i think deserves it

Absolutely agreed.

Pillars 2 is spectacular in term of quest design.

That's the thing tho - quest design. Larian's Quest always revolved around go to point a to point b and killing goblins in between, there are no quests (to the best of my knowledge) that resolved by providing information or providing item that could solved the quest (the items you can received in non-lethal way).

Dialogue, in this game, mostly revolves around information gathering and nothing else.

In Pillars of Eternity 2, for example, in the city of Neketaka, you can resolved a quest where you have to get a medicine to cure certain virus that plaguing a community. You can resolved said quest via blind force by killing everybody and their mother, you can steal the item from certain vendor, you can ask assassin to kill certain vendor (so you can loot the thing you need from their body), you can talk around and found out about a secret passage where you can steal the thing more safely ------- and there are plenty of quests like this in the game.

That´s precisely what it should be here. There are many ways of confronting a situation instead of combat so the XP received should be similar, if not the same, as the violent way at the end of each "mission", so that people who don´t want to go all in are encouraged to do so.

I've always been on the fence about this topic, on the one hand i like solving things without resorting to violence, but i always found it odd that my characters becomes stronger/hardier, better at fighting or casting magic, without actually doing any of it. I actually feel that it suits my roleplaying better if i don't get any Xp from it. it's kinda like taking the narrow path, Sure I might not get any immediate rewards or riches from it, but my soul is kept clean.

An interesting viewpoint! There are some rule systems I believe where you get better at the skills you exercise (was an early Fallout like that?) but of course BG3 is tied to 5e so you can’t get better at even stuff like persuasion, stealth or sleight of hand without levelling up so while I have a lot of sympathy with your position my agreement is qualified.

Within reason, though, I am happy to sacrifice XP, gold and items for the sake of roleplay, and think you’re right that choices to avoid conflict or crime actually feel more valuable and real if they cost something.

You know, I have to be honest and say that at this stage I have a bit of a problem with the idea that it's *avoiding* conflict that should cost something. Avoiding conflict usually takes more thought and effort than just fighting. Why should it cost more? If anything I feel like the dumb route of just fighting and killing is the thing that should cost extra, the penalty for being violent and taking the easy route. It's just a personal peeve of mine, I'm tired of the default assumption being that the 'good' route should always be the harder one, or the one that costs more. Why can't the violent, evil route be the one that ultimately ends up not paying off, or being more trouble than it was worth?

If only that were always the case in real life as well as in games

Seriously, though, I think that ideally there should be costs and benefits to each path that are fitting, for example a peaceful character might miss out on getting some cool loot and XP by not killing an NPC, but a violent one misses out on subsequent interesting interactions or a quest with associated rewards that the NPC gives if they live. I think BG3 is setting itself up to be able to have that sort of responsiveness to our actions and I really hope the full game lives up to its promise and lets, for example, those of us who let Gimblebock live get their reward in the form of more content later on. Even if it’s just him and his gang ambushing us and us having to kill him anyway, or I’d even settle for the opportunity to chat with him in a pub in Baldur’s Gate

What I don’t particularly mind is whether or not the rewards of different paths are precisely balanced, as long as they’re each fulfilling in their own way.

Well i just feel that it is more rewarding not getting a reward for being good, but that's just me, i understand that most people want to eat the cake and have it too. I wouldn't mind that in real life though.

But if you would be rewarded for being good and punished for being evil!
What would an evil characters motivation for choosing the "evil" path be then, you could just take the good path and reap the rewards, with none of the downsides of choosing the evil path? Besides just being a murder hobo?

And i disagree that the violent route is the Evil route automatically, that would very much depend on what you are trying to accomplish.
If you are trying to pass a city guard who are just doing his job, it might be the good route to try and persude him to let you pass,
but if you are accosted by some raiding goblins, i would say it's your duty as a good citizen to erradicate such evil vermin instead of trying to talk your way out.
To stop them from harming innocent people in the future.

With that said, Unless you have a really hard stutter, i don't really agree that fighting a bunch of monsters instead of convincing them not to fight is the "easy" route. I agree that it might take a bit more cunning to pull off, but definitely not more effort.

In addition to the Spell&Shield video, I also like this short where Brennan Lee offers some comical but interesting perspective on the matter : https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xrA9n7ywinA

edit : also, the comments are hilarious. I recommend.

Funny buy flawed, since wizards would probably study and practice magic, not persuasion tactics. Just as a fighter probably would practice sparring and combat maneuvers, not reading up on how to sell ice to eskimos.

Well, it´s not black and white i think. For the wizard doing things such investigating a crime, studying ancient artifacts/books or unveil some plot from a cult(that can be the case of BG3) may add up to its ability to experiment or create new types of magic or just get better at it from that experience as an investigator. And those things also require the ability to get as much information out of people/things/scenes as possible. As for the fighter, i guess you´re right about the sparring and combat manuevers but it´s not like they are barbarians who just seek to "smash" everything, they also need to study combat tactics to improve and learn to get info out of people, either they are common folk, criminals or something in between.

Yes, but the main thing that would make you better at magic would be studying and practicing it. The same with a fighter, studing and practicing combat. (Btw learning "Combat tactics" is a part of studying combat )

Hey i get it, a part of me (a very greedy part) want my characters to get xp or loot from all encounters too, but for some characters i roleplay as it would feel wrong.
I want those character to do the "right" thing, even if it means sacrificing some kind of reward.

But it doesn't mean that much to me, that i want to enforce it upon others.

The way it’s currently set up is geared towards the murder hobo.

Any DM worth her salt would hate playing with a murder hobo. My younger brother would kill off a murder hobo (if he didn’t refocus) because he said it was no longer fun for the DM and possibly the other players. As a DM he wanted a story to unfold not a hack and slash. He would always reward xp when a player came up with witty, outrageous and/or brilliant ways to advance the story narrative. He could write a book with some of the stories he has.

Are there any XP given at the ruined temple if you talk the group away? I don’t think so, but if you fight them, then yes.

Another example (I could be mistaken here). When you poison the goblin booze and kill a number of them. That should be rewarded. That’s a lot of xp you missed out of because you didnt bloody your staff.

If that´s the case it´s even worse than i though, because, as you said, you are literally killing the exact same goblins, just in another more concealed and creative way.

I agree that not all situation may report XP of course(for example, negotiating with a merchant to lower its prices should not give XP). But at least those who are somewhat equivalent to solving an issue without combat should be.

The intrincacies of what kind of issues should be covered i understand can be difficult to choose, but even if you don´t cover all, at least those with enough importance for each mission/story so that the characters grow from that experience and from that creative/non-violent way of resolving the matter.