Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Inconsistency in difficulty is annoying af (tactitian)

What is it with the boss fights?

Rafael: Fun fight
Cazador: Had to save scum so Astarion dosen't die. (At least make it clear that he dies after a certain ammount of turns at the start, please!)
Orin: A complete joke. Like I had fights against random guards that where harder.
House of Grief: Basically impossible. Rare and legendary equipment, buff up entire party before the fight, use elixiers, coat weapons, summon elementals and everything... There are like 987452 million enemies, all do a crap load of dmg and cast fucking darkness that deals necrotic damage, so I can't see shit and attack nothing and they all murder me before it's even my turn. I'd need an entire party with like 12 initiative even stand a chance.

Yes, the House of Grief was difficult for me too (on Tactician). Shadowheart had to use her special one time only divine power to let us gain the upper hand. It made me reconsider my 'please add another difficulty level' viewpoint.

The difficulty of boss fights is probably personal, and depends on how well your party can counter special boss powers. The party that I brought to the House of Grief was getting complacent, did not pay much attention to being prepared for all circumstances. I very much liked how the game showed me the error of my ways.

Think of it this way: would the game be more fun to play if the act III boss fights were made similar?

I can't comment on tactician as I've not got far with my Durge tactician run yet, but I will say that on normal I found the big fights where enemies were able to stop my party healing (like the House of Grief and the basement during the raid on Moonrise Towers) by far the hardest. But while those took me a few tries to survive, on the whole I found the combat on difficulty reasonably consistent, or at least varying within limits that I found challenging but achievable. I wouldn't want it to be too same-y.

But I agree that too much inconsistency isn't fun. It really bugged me in WotR, for example, that I felt I had to keep tweaking the difficulty level to progress (though am willing to accept that possibly I just sucked at playing it). I'd found BG3 so much better in this regard, but I'll reserve my judgement until I've completed my tactician run.

I find tactician consistency easy

When someone says it's inconsistent, I think that they have a party set up and tactics that are generally effective and always directly goes for it without taking a moment to look at the enviroment, check up enemies and think a gneral tactic and approach to the encounter.

This game doesn't take the approach of infinite random combats that always look the same. Every combat is different and should be take more as a puzzle than a pure skill check. It's true that this approach is sometimes more succefull than other. The above examples of difficult encounter feels to me some of the times where the game do this job well.

In the OP examples, the combat difficulty can be strongly reduce with simple tactical approachs:

-Just take half a minute to "examinate" Cazador and you will know that you need to help Astarion ASAP. That can be easily done in one turn with a good movement character (haste, misty step, fly, leap, just being a rogue thief... As chapter III characters the possibilities for doing it are almost ending)

-When an enemy overwhelm you in numbers like in the house of grief, don't fight all of them at the same time. It's something that logic that I don't think any strategy mind is needed for that. The set up of house of grief makes really easy to create choke points using difficult terrain and wall spells. Darkness is powerfull but easy to fight (blind inmunity, devil sight, just walk out of the darkness cloud) it's also a concentration spell so a ranged character with magebane coating can easily remove it. Not to mention that it's just a level 2 spell, so counterspell works automatic if you use it

Alternatively, scrolls of Globe of Invulnerability goes brrr....

House of Grief is especially annoying due to the 4x reflect damage from Radiant Retort (Personally kinda see reflect damage to be a little uninspired for increased difficulty).
First successful attempt used the Globe but decided to retry it after I remembered I had Destructive Wave, which made it alot easier.

For Raphael, funnily enough, I found Harleep and his knockback mephits far more harder/annoying but that'd be because I was locked to the window entrance.
Also, something I'm confused on, how is Raphel's fight supposed to work? I always destroyed the towers, but that apparently makes the fight harder by supercharging him instantly? And his Cambions have radiant reflect damage too?

Also, how was Ansur? I wasn't able to defeat him without the Globe. The AOE reaction damage was a bit much, that and his countdown is 1 turn rather than 2.

Interesting take on those fights.

Raphael: This was a tough fight for my party. No illithid powers and had an unbalanced party. Gale's Counter spell thwarted Raphael time and again. Minions were tough, I actually needed Hope's help a lot.

Cazador: Breezed this one. Dimension doored to Astarion, second companion freeing him. Had a host of summons to block Cazador drawing power and ranged him to death.

Orin: A complete joke, except... 2 companions yeeted to death after Orin's death. The 'minions' posed serious threat - again! Reexamined everyone's athletics, acrobatics and resistance to forced movement afterwards. Gale started chugging Str potions from then on.

House of Grief: 4 hour fight, apparently. I took the experimental B-team there. Fight broke out, summoned a Deva... got rekt. Plan B time, Astarion needed to escape and rez the party, but shadow stepping Sharrans kept getting behind us. Anyway, noticed Jaheira's (Ftr/Dru) Sleet storm was breaking the horde into manageable squads that were funneling up to break on my tanks. Daughter came home and said 'Dad, that's been like 4 hours!'

To me, it seems like party composition, spell selection, items equipped and character paired combo's matter a lot. Have to say, I don't consider any of these Act 3 boss fights easy on tactician. Personally, I need to watch those minions, they often hit hard.

Haven't been playing tactician so far, but for the House of Grief it's worth mentioning that the fight can be easy when Furthermore the reward is exceptional

Just destroy the pillars, that gives everyone around the pillar elemental resistance for two turns. Can easy be destroy in a single attack if using a blunt weapon.

Trigger the reaction (he just do it one time per turn) with someone that can tank the damage (elemental resistance and good hp is more than enough) just be careful that they are apart from the other characters

For the countdown attacks just elemental resistance and be at max hp should be eneough (at least it's for me). In any case with the dps you should have at that point of the game he only have time to do it once

Hmm interesting takes, for me all fights on tactician were easy except trying to save everyone in the submarine. Like it's almost impossible on tactician to do that at least it took me like 3 hours of attempts, calculation, switching gear and spells, preparing of items with mobility and rng luck matters too due to NPCs pathing bugging out.

i enjoyed the House of Grief fight but darkness doesn't stop you targeting yourself with ice storms so that prob why you had a harder time of it than i did

honestly if you don't want some fights to need a different um tactic then perhaps don't play in 'tactician'?

House of Grief with all those Darkness spells is a painfull combat. It takes forever and everyone just miss all the time for the sake of it.
I hadn't have a hard time it was not particularly pleasant.

The entire game's balance is totally broken... it was already true in EA and it is even more at release with all those crazy items / buffs / feats / class features and so on.
But no one should be surprised considering that you can OS many bosses in BG3 with a very common bonus action shove...

I just loaded up the house of grief and Casador it's a joke no tadpole single class no prebuffing no sleeping no barrels no power usage of smites. If someone don't believe me just go to tactician is to easy thread. Today I will finish elder brain and I am done.

The only figth I had some fun and difficulty was Ansur the dragon. Basically I defeated BG3 w/o death. The biggest enemy was a geometry bug with the Sharan lift that could kill me.
Like a casual dad hou is usly playing Diablo 4 where he is constantly dying even after resistance is fixed. W/o tadpole only sleeped when the game forced me i rejected tadpoles don't savescummed and the list is looong.

On my first run on "balanced" I had a very stressful time due to the oppressive difficulty of the early game. Since then I managed to do a tactician playtrough without any significant hurdles. It felt MUCH easier than my first attempt. The difference was in my increased knowledge of the game mechanics. The game gives you enough tools to handle any challenge, but it cannot reasonably expect any beginner to immediately recognize and use them. This is where inconsistency of difficulty balance comes in. All major battles are like puzzles, and once you know a solution, they become trivial.
On my troubled first attempt I was stuck in the Shattered Sanctum for a while trying to figure out how to deal with Dror Ragzlin. It seemed almost impossible. Then I've found some explosive barrels in a room nearby... Much later when I arrived to the House of Grief I knew instantly that this is the perfect place to use one of the runepowder barrels I've stolen. It was quite satisfying.

House of Grief of Tactician is so “impossible” that I go solo with 20 HP left and exterminate everyone in like 5 rounds like cockroaches lol



And I don’t even use mods , scrolls, barrels or any glitches …

@victorvnv No cheese, really!

I am sure I got a strong whiff of Cheddar at the beginning of the video. Cast Darkness then talk, fight starts with you in darkness, you hide and combat stops. Then you attack seemingly from out of the blue (darkness), as they are all surprised. Though moments earlier they were trying to attack but could not find you due to that lump of darkness right in front of their eyes in the middle of the room.

But seriously, an impressive video and its not because you soloed them in 5 rounds with 20 hit points. It's impressive not just because you were able to do it and avoid taking any damage, but how and why you took no damage. You took no damage because you never allowed the NPCs an opportunity to attack you on their round, impressive.

So I took your “no cheese” advice and made a new build to solo HoF on tactician. This time no prebuffs, no combat reset in any way, no consumables etc.

Showed the build and items in the video too, wonder if you call this cheesing it as well lol



But seriously I have soloed this encounter with like 10 different builds it’s really easy if you put some thoughts into your game

Nice recently my friend called me from UK.
And he told me that we should wait with multiplayer because for him the game is to easy even for the first time.

He played bard cleric multi class combination. And he told me that sanctuary is too powerful and he wiped the floor with every enemy using something similar like you. When I asked him about tadpole he told me he don't used it. Because he was in belive that he could cure this. But that was leading to another conversation and it's not related to this thread .

I just feel that every one of us have different kind of strategy or approach. And all of them functioning and It feels like not intended or is it just me??? I am more and more convinced that they planned the game with the difficulty curve of act 1.
But someone got kicked out of the company or got sick and they replaced her or him with a game journalist. Or I dont know. But act 1 feels a little bit better. But even I EA ppl asked about increase in the difficulty. And Swen told us that Its so hard that we should not come here to cry.

So what went wrong??? Honestly my wish list is that guy who created Astarion and Ansur should rebalance this game.
Because I think Ansur is the only one boss that is some where at the lvl of act1 difficulty curve .

How can one NOT cheese BG3 when the entire gameplay and encounters are designed around cheesing.

I have a few theories about the difficulty:

1. they wanted streamers to shine while they played, and so they made the game relatively easy for that purpose. Streamers feel good playing because they're doing well, looking impressive (on tactician!), and so they keep streaming the game.
2. the early play testers for Act II were better suited for a lower level difficulty.
3. the fella in charge of setting the tactician difficulty either sorely misjudged the mark or erred on the side of caution. relying on too much feedback from folks who should've been giving feedback to a lower level difficulty.
4. it's just tough to get the difficulty right and it's a work-in-progress.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's a combination of all four.

Mybe its logical for marketing stand point. But on the long-term I think it will fall of.
Just because bg1 and 2 are still talked about even after 20 years.
So If they don't do anything leave it as it is, I think no one will remember.
The replay ability core rule is to have high difficulty options, because more and more the player will or want to play it. The more and more better she or he will be in that game.
Mybe that person whould be interested to play 6-8-9 xxx more time but the challenge will become something (booring) slow uninteresting. In the end that person will move on and forget.

There is reason that Bg1-2 Nwn1 Iwd 1-2 Planescape are still enjoyable even for me hou played them like 20-30 k hours. Ofc I mean all other them togather.
A litte bit different story.
I also played a ton of Pathfinder but there is a huge personal problem with pathfinder 1-2. A missing component MULTIPLAYER.


It will go down like Neverwinter Night's online. Got the hype good Graphics at his time. Builded on the back of Nwn1 and Nwn2 and nowadays no one even knows that it's existing.
Yeah it had different problems but they did kind of the same thing. They ignored the fan base and the dnd community.
Now it's a micro transactions action game like dnd eberron online. Also another failed project.

I feel they are focusing too much on the wrong side. On those ppl hou came here for the bear. But those ppl will not keep alive the game for years. I think most of them are already moved on. And every one can see this on steam. Ofc some of us are still here hoping.


So I hope that you are right with pont 4. and it's really a work in progress. I honestly believed Swen the promise of crying about the difficulty part. And I thought that this is it my dream game after 20 f... Years. And I believe them because previous games were really difficult especially divine divinity and beyond divinity.