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

Yess, indeed, I have been thinking on why my runs of PF:KM and PF:Wotr seemed so much harder on unfair (and I beat both games TWICE on that difficulty) and then it hit me: yes, you could multiclass the default set of companions, but within reason given by their stat spread and base classes (which is as much as I liked Sosiel's personality... he was kind of overshadowed by Daeran and Ember combat-wise). Not to mention that corruption mechanic and the fact you could get attacked while camping out in the wilderness effectively wiping your group cause you got caught without buffs...

BG3 should've indeed taken a page from those cRPGs when it comes to the overall encounter design and difficulty design (unfair KM/wotr is particularly nasty early game, but enemies still remain a threat throughout the campaign, even so called trash mobs). Imho, what they should've done to encourage long resting is - disable short rests on tactician, disable respecs, possibly leave 1 respec for the MC for the entirety of the game (or have 1 respec for MC/companions so you'd have to choose who to spend it on). Add to that tadpole brain rot corruption. Make actual passage of time matter. But yeah, like you said, BG3 devs seem to be allergic to taking inspiration and learning from other cRPGs, or the devs just don't play any PC games themselves, or don't play cRPGs at all due to lack of time, maybe? I dunno, half of the time it seems like BG3 is trying to reinvent the wheel, instead using what's actually working.


Don't get me started on BG3's shit lvl up UI, again, something what games had solved ages ago, games as old as NWN1...

Also, Larian's goddamn insistence on tying important events to long resting. Ever since EA I've been conditioned to rest every 5min, sometimes even 5 times in a row to ensure nobody has nothing new to say (once they're fully rested with camp supplies I just spam partial rests, since they fire off those events too). Like shit, I could probably go with only 2 long rests, maybe even 1 through the entirety of surface lvl of act 1 on tactician... Meanwhile the game expects you to have rested at least 5 times before reaching the grove, ridiculous!

If they disable short rests on Tactician then they totally gimp Warlocks , Monks and Bards.

Warlocks specifically will only have 2 spells a day and then have to long rest. Not a good design and makes them many times weaker than Sorcs and Wizards.

The opposite is true if they make long rests harder to achieve and short rests remain the same- then bards , warlocks and monks will be mandatory for a good party and wizzards ,clerics , sorcs etc will be gimped .

The problem is warlocks, bards and monks are already strong, sure, removing short rests would gimp them but they would still be playable, the true kings of that scenario would be fighters, since they can just can keep on going, all they need is HP.

But at the very least a middle ground would be removing one short rest. Also, long resting doesn't become a problem unless Larian would introduce some type limitation to it, early game supplies are nuisance but quickly you get showered by all kinds of foods...

At the very least Larian should introduce the no-resting red zone in more places, and make it so if you try to game the system by going out of it's boundaries to rest, it would cause some quests to fail. Introducing some type of difficulty and consequence.

Short Rest is not the problem or the answer. Long Rest is the problem. You can Long Rest whenever you could Short Rest so I'm not sure why SR even being discussed.

Larian stubbornly refuse to add any kinds of negative consequences for Long Resting at every turn, even on higher difficulties. All it takes is adding some random encounters if you rest in dangerous locations or frequently fast travel over long distances to a safe campsite. It makes you think before hitting that rest button and subsequently it makes you think if you really want to overkill enemies by spending all your spell slots after all.

This is also why the literal magical teleportation network for fast travel was a really poor idea. The runes should have been mundane waypoints, nothing more. A magical teleportation network with access points every 100m doesn't make any sense in the game world. It's more akin to breaking the fourth wall, having player convenience features as game world items only the player characters are aware of. They know these things exist only for them because a game needs a fast travel system.

Random encounters remains the only meaningful way to restrict Long Resting through increased strategic depth. Having to anticipate an extra fight in a hostile location is realistic and immersive, and rewards smart gameplay of not exerting yourself. But oh... what if the player has to fight an unwinnable fight with all their resources spent? Why do games need to be so convenient and lazy these days? Wasn't the idea to make the game harder in the first place, because it's too easy???

So.. first change the fast travel system into actual traveling that can be interrupted by enemies. Then add random encounters to resting in hostile locations. And just generally spawn some new location appropriate monsters to repopulate areas. Challenge is back in the game. World is a more exciting place with new dangers lurking everywhere. Seems like a no-brainer to me.