Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks why are bosses that damage you when u attack?

why are there boss mechanics which give them the ability to somehow damage you when u attack them? and its ALWAYS the boss fights who spam a bunch of tanky extra enemies too. Seriously, I cant stand the combat in this game and this idiotic mechanic makes the combat more frustrating than it already is

Doing automatical damage to attackers is a known principle of CRPG combat. You can use this principle yourself with certain builds/spells against the NPCs (like Armor of Agathys, Flaming Shield). Bosses are bosses because they are strong and offer a big challenge, so they have to have a lot of hp and strong abilities. They usually spawn minions if alone because it would be too easy in BG3 to deal with one char, even a very strong one, if you could concentrate on him alone from the start.

If the combat is too unpleasant, I would propose to change difficulty. I did it for example in the Isobel fight, from Tactician to Story. There is no need to torture yourself by high difficulty settings.

Short off topic question: Whats the point of the different modes besides some more challenge? Do you get more XP and / or better loot then?

Armor of Agathys and Flaming shield only damage melee attackers, while the damage reflect will damage the caster even if they walk into a wall of flame the caster is maintaining, then the caster could lose concentration on said wall of fire due to the reflected damage.

I would have preferred it if it only reflected melee too. Seems pretty weird that shooting a fireball at an enemy damages you. I find it emersion breaking.