Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Who Else Wants a Hardcore Mode?

Note that this is not the same as an Ironman mode with limited Saves and such (although I suppose that could be included).

Since Larian made some obvious 'homebrew' choices with the game and deviated from RAW D&D 5e, I think that they should think about including a grittier mode that takes this even further and corrects some of what I see as issues and mistakes in 5e's design. Some examples include:

1) Regain full HP on a long rest. Seriously? I'm literally at death's door and after a good meal and a nap, I'm FINE? A LR should restore half of your HP at a maximum (possibly less) with the assumption that healing magic and rituals can cover the difference.

2) Half of your HP for a Short Rest that happens in an instant? Same problem as above. IMHO a SR should advance the game clock an hour (it can still happen with the press of a button though) and restore as many HP as you roll on your Hit Dice. If you blow all of your dice in one go, you can't take another SR today. This would make Feats and magic items that increase your HP recovery useful again.

3) The hit-or-miss system of AC has always been hot garbage. That's not how armor works and it's so over-simplified as to be laughable. Light armor should still provide an AC number but damage taken should be reduced by 1. Medium armor would be 2 points and heavy would be 3. This coming from a medieval reenactor...it IS possible to take a full-on hit and not be injured. That's what armor if FOR. Yes, this means that the Heavy Armor Master Feat would need to be redone but it's much more accurate and thematic to the setting.

4) Certain types of armor should be more or less effective against certain kinds of damage. Slashing at Plate armor should be a waste of time for non-magical weapons. Piercing for most smaller weapons (like arrows and daggers) should go through chain easier. Padded armor should be worn under most armor and help against bludgeoning damage and so on.

5) Enchanted armor should provide at least some protection against environmental damage. An armored knight with a shield at the ready will take less damage from the gout of flame than the Wizard running around in his PJs.

6) Exhaustion should be a thing. Carrying less for long periods of time should make you have to rest less often and even improve your movement speed. Carrying heavy loads should make you rest more and move slower.


These are just a few things that I've implemented in my TT games or have played in games with such rules. I'd like to hear from others about what they think.

Well, personally Ironman mode never made any sense to me whatsoever.

If I do a playthrough of a game I want the saves to prove it. What else am I supposed to do ? Record the whole gaming session ?!?

More importantly I want to go back to any levelup and proceed differently if I feel I've done an error in how I leveled.

Or I want to go back after the game is finished and check how exactly I leveled.

Or I want to go back and solve one of the big quests again, but differently. For example if questions on the internet appear about it.

But if you like Ironman, it doesnt sound like something thats very hard to implement, so sure, why not. Just make it an option, not a requirement, for any difficulty setting, please.



But yeah, more difficulty modes would be nice to have, to support a wider audience.

I would propose:

- Story: your main characters hitpoints cant fall below 1 HP and the enemies get a permanent bone chill applied after a certain amount of time (cant heal lost hitpoints anymore) while your main character gains increasing immunity to disabling negative status effects, thus making sure you can win any battle.

And above Tactitician, the usual acceleration of difficulty, traditionally called something like:

- Hardcore

- Nightmare

- Hell

- Impossible

Or whatever fancy name you want to come up with for such modes, after all they named Easy "Explorer", Normal "Balanced" and Hard "Tactician".

This could be implemented without changing the current interface.

You could just, if you select Explorer, also get an option/CheckBox for "Story Mode".

And if you select Tactician, you get a number of Radio Buttons to select how hard you want the game to be, exactly. Plus an option / CheckBox for "Ironman".

Hard disagree on every suggestion I'm afraid. Most of those suggestions also are not D&D 5e rules at all. I just want a higher difficulty mode that either adds a few more mobs or exchanges som enemies to tougher variants for more challenging encounters.

Indeed, if they implement encounter scaling in the game — which would be a beneficial addition — they could easily adjust the difficulty by modifying the scale of encounters.

Well according to that logic, we shouldnt have difficulty modes at all, and everyone should be forced to play on Balanced.

And for the love of god - no level scaling. Thats one of the most retarded ideas in gaming ever. Whereever you go, the mobs are adjusted to your level. Level turns completely meaningless.

I want a RAW D&D mode. No Larian house rules.

I mean there is a reason why they do this, and BG3 currently demonstrates it. If you explore *everything*, you can easily become overleveled for the content you're doing, and combat becomes trivialized. Your reward for exploration, as a result, is a game that's less fun. It's hard to solve this without SOME form of scaling combat to your level. You could nerf the amount of exp rewarded, but that would mean that people who *don't* do full exploration runs are now likely to be *underleveled.*

A lot of armchair games designers rail against level scaling without really understanding it. It's a tool and it has been used abysmally in the past but there have been other games spoiled by clumsy level systems without level scaling and games where it was used with finesse that don't really cause the problems people rail against.

Maybe they could use some kind of milestone levelling? People wouldn't like it but it would solve the issue in a coherent fashion. It's hard to scale it otherwise since 90% of the content in the game is optional so you can't weight the xp towards main content the way most games do.

In the current state, the game is way too easy even in Tactician.
I am finishing some of my fight before the enemies take a single turn.
Bosses are no better, killed Cazador on 2nd turn without spending high-level spell slots.
The game is amazing but please provide an optional challenge mode. The current state is very unchallenging.
I am not using any potions, elixirs, or oils occasional Potion of speed because the encounters are not hard enough. (And i am not using any tadpoles)
Indeed, the camp is way too strong. Full HP and spell slots for 80 food is way too much. In Tactitian it should be at least 200... maybe more.
I'd like to see more places where you can not camp. ( Red areas )
Cheers,
Anyway, I am still enjoying the game but will be 10 times more if the game provides some challenge.

Damn, and here I am wondering if I need to drop the difficulty down because of the Myrkul fight after having scoured every last bit of XP I could find in acts 1 & 2...

Personally, I feel like the 0HP Larian houserule (where you have only a bonus action after getting up) should be relegated to Tactician and any theoretical harder difficulties. I will say, I do like the enforcement of 2 short rests per long rest, rather than having to juggle hit dice -- might just steal that houserule for my own table to speed things up.

I think OP suggestions sounds horrible. They don't add difficulty only making things more tedious. A higher difficulty is what this games needs. Better AI, more health and better abilities and spells on mobs, maybe scaling enemies that's below your level could be a thing to.

The game currently is easier to solo on tactician then divinity 2 was on tactician Honour mode.

Yep. Mostly this.

Thats not an issue Larian needs to address though. Theres always fan modders around who make such mods. They existed for BG1+BG2, too. No regular programmer is such a stiffler for rules than these people and basically unlimited time to implement them.

So all Larian has to do for this is to allow modding of the game.

By the way any reallife DM I ever met had house rules. I dont mind them as long as they make sense, or preferably improve balance.

Yeah, same.
Most of them sucked, too.