Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Improving the Balance of Casters

Having finished the game - its become quite clear that (in contrast to tabletop), martials really overshadow basically all caster classes in this game. The main reasons for this are simple:

- There's a whole stack of extremely strong gear that is heavily tailored to martial classes and very little in comparison for casters

- Anyone can cast a high level combat changing spell from a scroll

- Crowd control has been heavily reduced in efficiency due to a combination of bugs (see below) and changes in duration

I'd appreciate any advice on how to actually get Larian to read this (e.g. if I should submit separate bug reports). I'm sorry if I'm also doing anything wrong here, not really done this much before

MY SUGGESTIONS:

- Fix the bug where saves for spell effects happen at the START of the enemy turn rather than the END. (Effectively this means you need the enemy to fail twice for one turn of disable)

- Fix the bug where all ground based crowd control spells (e.g. Evard's Black Tentacles) have a fixed static DC of 12. This makes them useless.

- Restore the duration of many crowd control spells to their tabletop durations. For example Hypnotic Pattern should go from 2 --> 10 turns. Similar for Banishment. Vancian casting is balanced around single spells turning the tide of battle at the end of the day. Plus when Larian want to counter this they can always include enemies with Counterspell/Legendary Resistance

- Only allow arcane/divine casters to cast spells from arcane/divine scrolls. Sadly I really don't see Larian doing this one as it feels quite contrary to their style of gaming - but I do think it immediately helps to make casters feel relevant when suddenly you can't have martials casting L6 spells from scrolls. I'd make an exception for the Revivify scroll (I haven't seen any other divine scrolls).

- To give casters something to compete with martial itemisation, I'd like to see a new legendary item added to the game that allows a caster to maintain concentration on TWO spells at the same time (they have to be different spells so as not to step on the toes of twin spell). This should probably be a ring so as not to clash with the other commonly used caster slots. Yes this is of course mega strong - I'd say too strong for tabletop - but here, I see it as one of the only ways of easily giving casters something that meaningfully competes with the high end martial items.

- Spells that can be recast multiple times per combat (Telekinesis/Eyebite) should be recast as a Bonus Action and not as an Action. This differs from tabletop but I think important here for relative balance. The fact that you can't grapple with Telekinesis in BG3 is a huge power reduction of the spell - being able to use it as a bonus action would somewhat soften that blow and it might actually become worth casting with the above legendary if you have an additional concentration slot for other things.

Problem is, scrolls serve two purposes. They makes wizard's spellbook, and they make up for not having a divine or arcane caster. Just like how everyone can try to pick locks.

The difference is: 5e allows for anyone to try and pick a lock as long as they have the tools to do it (though their chances may be slim without having the proficiency). Scrolls, however, are only meant for casters and can't be read by just anyone.

Removing the ability to use scrolls from non-casters would go a long way to balance them.
As would using D&D 5e rules for certain other abilities (Cunning Action, Haste, etc) to avoid multiclass cheese...

And of course removing the damned elemental damage from most magic weapons.

I don't think that you should be able to 'have your cake and eat it'. By not bringing an arcane or divine caster - you simply shouldn't get access to spells. And in any event in 5e there are so many ways to get someone who can use scrolls - be it a bard/eldritch knight/arcane trickster etc. If anything - it would actually make subclasses like eldritch knight and arcane trickster a lot more useful.

As I say - I doubt Larian would do this as restricting players is counter to their playstyle - but its absolutely the correct thing to do here in my opinion.

This isn't 5e RAW though. They make allowances for things in games.

If you have no caster, there's a potion or scroll to fix it.

If you think this is bad, Gale used to be used to learn divine scrolls. They did fix that.

Meanwhile casters can't benefit from venoms, poisons, or oils, or special arrows unless they are elves. Scrolls are supposed to be caster consumables to balance against melee advantage, but the fact is they are accessible to melee and further tilt the balance in favor of martial classes. Then there's the fact haste effects double the amount of extra attacks on martials, which shouldn't be happening. They should get a single extra attack, and that's it.

I also want to bring in intra-caster balance.

Warlock is absolute garbage compared to sorc and wizard. At lv12 I have 3 measly spell slots and they are capped at lv5 spells. Warlock is also the only caster in the wiz/sorc/warlock category that does not learn powerful lv6 spells like Chain Lightning or Disintegrate. For some reason they don't get Dethrone either (and neither do Spore druids, so the thematically necromantic/summoner casters are really gimped).

The perks warlocks get while leveling are also as mediocre as they can get. A once per long rest cast of lv2-lv3 spells is nothing to write home about, and short rests restoring warlock spell slots means absolutely nothing because sorc and wizard sit at like 4 lv4 spells slots, 3 lv5 spell slots, and 1 lv6 spell slot. BUT, because of the arcane battery legendary staff effect, a wizard/sorc can cast a lv6 chain lightning twice per long rest.

And the fact is, short rests are kind of obsolete past Act 1 because you get so much food from crate and exploration that by the end of Act 3 I had enough food in my camp to have like 20-30 long rests remaining by the end of the game if not more. Sorcs and wizards hardly pay a cost for their far more expnaisve spell slots because long rests are so accessible and cost free, which is fine because I don't think casters should be this limited while melee barely need any recharging and do so damage with so little resource cost.

One would think they would balance the warlock spell damage with maybe having powerful summons, but summons in this game are terrible outside the lv6 spell slot myrmidons. Their damage and attack rolls don't scale with yours, so their hit rates stay static at like 65-70% regardless of what gear and attack roll bonuses you acquire. Their damage is also unremarkable.

Even spell balance is out of whack. Disintegrate has abysmal save rates for 50-100 damage, does no damage if the save goes through; meanwhile chain lightning is not single target, does almost the same damage, and chains to three other targets. Blight, Circle of Death, Sun Beam, and the spore spells do abysmal damage. Dethrone has the same damage roll as Chain lightning, but is only single target and no caster besides wizard can learn it via scroll.

As it is, if you're a caster who can't learn chain lightning or be a wizard abusing magic missiles/Art of War with Dribble gloves extra 1d8 dice effect per missile, the damage of your other spells falls off a cliff in scaling for Act 3, while melee are doing the same or more damage as your Blight or Call Lightning spells while getting to attack 2-4 times per turn.

Casters are not in a good place in this game, especially warlock/druid, since at least cleric is a support powerhouse with Bless and Channel Divinity Life Domain.

Sorc and Wizard are also the only casters who have tools to remove friendly fire from aoe spells, which is huge in this game as many of the fights you want to use aoe is to save ally NPC's like the Gondians or the Harpers in Moonrise.

I agree with some of this - but note that Warlocks aren't meant to be competitive as pure Spellcasters with Wizards/Sorcerers/Clerics/Druids/Bards. They don't get L6-9 spells - except through their Arcanums. They're a hybrid class and you can create some truly insane hybrids e.g. Warlock 5 / Paladin 5 / Fighter 2 (as well as the Coffeelock that should be possible but is currently bugged). Pure caster warlocks aren't really great without the Genie subclass.

I'd also like to move the discussion away from scrolls because I strongly suspect Larian won't change that - as I mentioned, its very much against their usual game design to do something like that even though it needs to happen for balance - I suspect mods will be required for this one.

To the other poster who said 'This isn't 5E RAW' - Note that many of things I'm suggesting have nothing to do with 5E RAW. I'm proposing the addition of a legendary item to allow multiple concentration spells (something I would never allow on tabletop as a DM). I'm also proposing things like bonus action telekinesis to make the spell actually worth something as a 5th level slot.

I'm interested in further discussions along these lines - as well as how to get Larian to fix the bugs with CC spells. I feel a pragmatic way to balance casters right now is not to try and balance their damage vs martials - but to make them the crowd control monsters they should be.

I mean some of this isn't really "balance." Some of this is "fix things that are clearly bugs." Needing to pass two saves to have a hold spell take effect for even one turn cannot be working as intended. That's basically "Creatures roll with advantage against some CC spells."

Yes, some things could stand to be fixed, but I highly doubt they'll ever make scrolls caster only.

Personally, I funnel them all to Gale. He either learns them, or uses them. Especially ones in levels I don't have many slots for.

All casters can use light crossbows, can’t they?

So all those things are available to them. They might not always be the best use for their actions, but I have certainly found uses for many of them occasionally.

All my casters (even Gale) have had at least dex 14, so they aren’t even hopeless shots. Certainly better than they are at hitting things with staffs.

I also assumed that was why I’ve never found a better light crossbow than regular +1. There are better bows available because fewer characters can use them, presumably.

I agree that the scroll usage seems a bit off, but I’ve not abused it myself.

The first two parts of my post for sure are pure bugfix. My concern is these two bugs specifically have existed throughout the whole of early access - so it's unclear that Larian are aware of them. This is also why I'm keen to get some advice on how to best raise these issues in a way that they get fixed.

In terms of what I'm suggesting

- First two are bugfixes I want to raise

- The scroll use restriction is something I firmly believe the game needs for balance but I doubt Larian will change. How do we suggest balance changes? I'm guessing just by posting here? But how do we achieve any sort of consensus on what the whole community agree on as far as balance is concerned? A single thread by one user - often with conflicting discussion, isn't going to get noticed or actioned on.

- The rest of my post is more balance suggestions (a caster item and some proposed changes to the spell action economy)

I agree with most of what you say except double concentration. That would make casters wildly unbalanced. The key to reigning in melee is to implement haste properly, so they don't get a full new action. If they only take two or three swings, they're much more balanced versus casters. I use a mod for this and it really do make a massive difference.

Casters in 5e don't outdamage fighters in 1v1 situations, nor should they. Casters are fine in AoE situations and for CC (once they fix the bugs).

I don't think casters need buffs either. They don't need 2x concentration. I think casters need:
1. To have their obvious bugs fixed so things are actually working as intended within Larian's homebrew (which already includes some nerfs to CC)
2. I would actually say that after that, casters need some NERFS. Enforcing the one-leveled-spell per turn rule. Haste might impact martials more, but it is in fact a buff to a spell. That needs to be nerfed. Wizard subclasses need to be reworked because some of them are really good while some are terrible. I *play* as a diviner wizard in BG3 and I think it needs to be nerfed. 9 portent dice a day is absolutely busted.

That's the thing, I don't think anyone needs buffs. I think there needs to be some across-the-board nerfs. Tone down some of the absurd martial gear that allows you to stack tons of additional die and damage types on top of your melee hits. Nerf the consumables. Nerf the stupid gear you get that turns magic missile into the best spell you could cast 90 percent of the time. When I play a caster, I want to feel like I'm choosing the right spell for the situation. I don't want to feel like the game is telling me "You're an idiot if you don't spam MM because of the absurd gear we gave you."

Because the thing is, even with the bugs that make spells not work properly, right now this game is *absurdly* easy. And I don't want people who are currently playing on tactician or balanced or whatever to feel like I'm insulting them, so let me clarify I'm a person that has a lot of experience with these types of games. If you think tactician or balanced is good fun, that's great. But I think that as you play the game, and you become more familiar with its systems, you will reach the same conclusion I do: This is a *very* easy game. In fact I will go a step further: I don't think I've ever played a game of this type where the maximum available difficulty felt as easy as this.

And the problem is, because of a combination of Larian's homebrew and the absurd items they give you, it's actually going to be *hard* to come up with higher difficulty in the future - hard, that is, without taking the laziest route you could of simply absurdly inflating monster's statistics. But it's a sticky situation because you can't do across the board item nerfs - which is what I REALLY think is needed, more than anything - without impacting the people wo are currently enjoying lower difficuties.

Maybe a solution is that they could actually have versions of items specific to each difficulty level. Like, an item that adds 1-4 fire damage to melee strikes on story difficulty, would add 1-2 on balanced, and only 1 on tactician, something like that.

But yes overall I think that trying to put casters more on par with martials by buffing them is currently a very, very bad idea. Fix the obvious bugs, figure out some way to nerf the martial-centric items.

And I said this before....but uh, if you have Karmic dice on....isn't the way they work an inherent buff to martials and an inherent nerf to casters? The way I understand karmic dice is that if you get a low roll, you will eventually get a high roll. Or in other words, it skews the distribution of rolls so that while you can still roll anything, you are a little weighted towards higher numbers. But it applies to both your characters *and the enemies.*

Am I wrong, or is that inherently something that favors martials? Because martials will often be rolling against an AC to hit, and be more likely to succeed. However, for spells, most of the time it's enemies rolling against the spellcasting DC to save - and they are more likely to succeed.

Looks like a wandering gnome said pretty much everything I wanted to say on the subject. What I'd recommend is on the highest difficulty (Commander plus) use a modified version of Attunement. You get the full effect of three magic items only and can attune after a long rest. Maybe have some unattuned bonuses that are much less busted so itemisation doesn't feel too unsatisfying. I'd also agree with preventing martials using scrolls because that's another way you can stop the game getting too easy. If you add a challenge mode I think I'd run at least three martials as it stands.

Why does anything need to 'make up' for not having a spellcaster? Spellcasters are in no way needed to beat the game. If I play with four spellcasters, they get nothing to 'make up' for the fact that I don't have warriors in the party. Warriors who in BG3 get to beat the snot out of everything while enemies drop your squishy casters.

As for the double purpose - scrolls are meant to be a backup for spellcasters when they run out of spell slots. Spell scrolls are not for non-spellcasters to become spellcasters. That's a Larian invention and it's not a good one.

I don't disagree ,but sometime I get the impression that some of you are missing the point:

This is not an "oversight in balance" from Larian, this is exactly what they want... To throw to the player so many tools to be able to compensate even for the most ill-advised party composition.
They WANT everyone being able to use mage spells even without having a mage.
They WANT to trivialize the access to "special abilities" like Speak with the Dead and Speak With Animals.
They WANT unlimited and super-cheap respec to be a far-too-convenient tool bordering into the potential cheat.

And so on.

It's "messed up by design", because they are too afraid to ask the player to COMMIT to any long-term decision and its consequences.

I get that, and I don't even think it's bad design in some cases. Like I think the super-cheap respec is great for friends playing together who aren't familiar with DnD 5e. You don't want the game to become a chore for a friend who got locked into a class he doesn't really enjoy.

I can even understand the whole "making speak to dead and speak with animals easily available" thing. You don't want to feel like you're missing out on a ton of content just because you don't have the right spells.

But the thing is that you can ABSOLUTELY overcome and explore pretty much everything this game has to throw at you without ever casting a single spell. And it's such a huge caster thing that martials get *for free!* Couldn't they at least make it cost a feat if a martial wanted to be able to use scrolls?

I get that, and I don't even think it's bad design in some cases. Like I think the super-cheap respec is great for friends playing together who aren't familiar with DnD 5e. You don't want the game to become a chore for a friend who got locked into a class he doesn't really enjoy.

I can even understand the whole "making speak to dead and speak with animals easily available" thing. You don't want to feel like you're missing out on a ton of content just because you don't have the right spells.

But the thing is that you can ABSOLUTELY overcome and explore pretty much everything this game has to throw at you without ever casting a single spell. And it's such a huge caster thing that martials get *for free!* Couldn't they at least make it cost a feat if a martial wanted to be able to use scrolls?

Then that is bad design. I want a warlock class fantasy, not some hybrid fantasy with a paladin or martial class while being forced to go into pact of the blade. The warlock fantasy is that of a caster deriving power from a patron.

If you have to prop the class up with actually good martial classes, then the class sucks.

Multiclassing in itself is a scourge on balance because so much of the powerful main class passives are available early and make pure investments into a main class suboptimal. That needs to be fixed.

And while that is a valid opinion, it's just that... an opinion. Especially with how the game is/was designed.

And any game that essentially forces you to have a spellcaster, or any archetype, is poorly designed for an RPG. I should be able to do it with a full group of rogues or fighters.

And I also feel that if you're going to restrict scrolls, eldrich knights, paladins, druids, bards, arcane tricksters, wild magic barbarians and any other class with access to spells or spell like abilities should be able to use them. I once played a tabletop game where my cleric exclusively scribed and used scrolls, both arcane and divine. *shrug* Magic gods are fun.
With how the game encourages you to swap party members around for quests it's unreasonable to expect you to commit to anything in this game.

Multiclassing has been part of D&D since at the very least 2e. There's no reason to remove it if you're staying true to the idea of the tabletop ruleset. You're not forced to do anything.

This is coming from someone that does not multiclass 95% of the time. In my party, my main party right now, the only one that's multiclassed is Astarion. My sorcerer is not, and none of my other saves' main characters are either.