Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Combat Balance

Hi everyone,

I've played both divinity games and loved them both. But for BG3 I have a different opinion on how certain things should be.

maybe its just me, but please give your honest opinion on the following things


1) Disengage shoud NOT be a bonus action, it should be a standard action (you cant attack that round, except for bonus action attacks)

2) Jump should provoke attacks of opportunity from everyone in range, and along the jump path

3) Use the tumble rule for athletics (check vs countercheck), so that it can be used to move in combat without attacks of opportunity but can also fail, depening on the enemies

4) Rebalance jump distance & use the "take 10" rule for out of combat, and in combat do a check (jump distance is waaaay too far at the moment)

5) Bonus action of help other to get someone downed +1 hp is totally unbalanced. Remove it completly

6) Have a heal check instead of 5), also make it a standard action, and also make administer potion to a downed player an option (standard action) for everyone

7) Make the AI combat system be in combat and attack the party if a nearby ally of them was attacked and killed (strange to see them doing nothing)

8) Make everyone within a certain range of friends or foes be in combat, if the friends / foes are in combat. Especially rogues who sneak, its lame for them to be allowed to move around freely, let them stay sneaking around unseen but be in turn based combat

9) Remove many of the spell effects and effects / barrels that leave a ground surface. Plainly it is utterly imbalanced. Ray of Frost for instance, shoud just deal cold damage on a hit, not create a patch of ice that they then have a chance to slip on (yay for sneak attack? but too imbalanced) The patch of ice is even created when you MISS with the Ray of Frost. All the mechanics were really fun in divinity 1&2, earth + fire = boom; water + ice = freeze and you know the drill. However all the explosions and all the surfaces (ice fire and so on) leave me utterly perplexed in BG3, they should be used sparingly to great effect in selected encounters, or traps. Not in almost every fight, its strange. If you want to have barrels present in a given fight, make them rare, and also non pick-up-able.

10) Make it impossible to long rest in dungeons. There should also be more balance to it, unlimited long rest have always been a problem in game iterations of d&d. But at least make it so that you can only rest safely in town / the inn. Make a surprise attack that interrupts the rest possible and then you cant rest in that area again till you have rested in town or something like that. The surprise attack enemies give no XP or loot (to not let you farm them ect)

11) Skill DC progession should be seen / felt. It is kinda lame for the DC to be lowered by your skill points in a given skill. Technically its all the same. But it just FEELS better to later on succeed in a skill check with a DC of 35, or 38. You loose the feeling of character progession. The DC's right now will always be around the same number 10 + - 3. Again I know technically it is absolutly the same. It just rubs me the wrong way.

12) Rogue sneak attack: I dont know if they tested it for themselfs and decided that +1d6 every 2 levels is too much. Right now it feels kinda lame. (The rouge gets better damage through sneak attack, but has only 1 attack (standard action), even later on. Which is what it is balanced around. I guess the same didnt quite work out for BG3? Was it too powerful later on? I am left perplexed ^^ Dont really have the nessecary information to make a valid suggestion on how to change it, but I feel that it should be changed.


13) If you solve a situation / quest without combat, but could have solved it with combat, PLEASE let that give us the same ammount of XP. and afterwards set the involved NPC's to not grant XP on a kill if the social interaction granted XP. Because its just plain silly. Do you want us to kill everyone and everything? Because that is what is (mostly) going to happen. It feels way off.



Just to elaborate: I dont expect a 100% true to the ruleset BG3. but there are too many combat imabalances right now, that just lets you cheese everything. From combat positioning, to jumping around 60feet with impunity, strange spell effects that should just not be there, resource free action free healing from everyone for every downed ally. It just all feels too imbalanced.

Also you could make in a difficulty setting, that you set up at the start of the game and cant change (only rest in the city), diffrent jump rules ect, for thoose that want it and find it fun, and for those of us who like the challange of good combat mechanics in this very combat heavy game.

What do you guys think?

I saw the first part of your post and wrongfully assumed this would be another "no knowledge of DnD this needs to be more like Divinity OS 2" post. I am surprised, but glad for it since you seem to actually be up for a good discussion on why things are the way they are currently


1. YES. 5e RAW only the rogue (and maybe some other specialized subclasses?) can use disengage as a bonus action. It is one of the bigger advantages of playing that class in the first place! For anyone else, it should be an action.

2. I agree that jumping should cause an attack of opportunity for the enemies within melee range, but not sure if I would make it also incite attacks from those along the jump path. I suppose you likely aren't jumping over their heads out of melee range, but at the same time, in 5e RAW you don't incite those attacks moving into their melee range, only moving away from it. Gets kind of dicey here.

3. Not as fond of this one. This feels homebrew, because there isn't any RAW for tumbling out of an attack of opportunity AFAIK--it's just their attack vs your AC.

4. I have noticed a substantial difference when jumping with a very high strength character and a low strength character (like my wizard). So idk. I am not against bringing the ruleset closer to 5e by any means, but I also don't see jump distance an issue.

5. This is RAW, not unbalanced at all. The help action in 5e RAW can be used to stabilize a player and bring them to 1hp. I am 100% against removing this.

6. Not sure what you mean a heal check instead of 5? But for potions, I do feel they should be actions--but many tables have a house rule that taking potions are bonus actions. This was popularized as a house rule by Matt Mercer from Critical Role. Personally I would like to see potions being a full action, but you can also use them on downed allies--you just use up your action to do so. In 5e, any DM will allow you to pour a potion down an unconscious characters throat.

7. Yeah, this is a bit immersion breaking. AI needs some work for sure.

8. Agree to this too. at an actual table, EVERYONE rolls initiative, hidden or not. Yeah they are still hidden, but they also follow the turn order. Good point!

9. Some of these are in the 5e ruleset though--and often times, if you miss with a firebolt or something, the DM will have it set fire to the trees, grass, or whatever. It is something that makes sense. I get the complaint, it does make everything feel "busy" and to some degree cluttered, but it's not strictly something you wouldn't expect to see portrayed in an actual DnD game. I'd like to see it stay personally.

10. Nah. Resting is a big part of 5e. Even in dungeons, a DM will let you rest most of the time--there is just the ever present danger of being woken up with a fight or some sort of encounter. I wouldn't mind THAT possibility, but I like being able to rest freely and at will.

11. I feel so much the same way. I mean, I get why they did it visually, it's more intuitive. But at the same time, it doesn't feel like DnD, and like you said, it definitely takes away from feeling like a badass when you never roll above a 20--and instead always see low DC skillchecks. At very least, make this a toggle option.

12. I have yet to play a rogue, so I can't really comment on this one.


As you can see, I agree with a lot of what you suggested. As someone who is strongly behind the 5e mechanics at play as the core game mechanics, the closer to 5e the better in my book

I love most of these balance changes. I don't have time to address them all individually, but definite thumbs up.

1.) Agreed, disengage should not be a bonus action.

2.) Disagree. As it stands, sometimes jump is the only way to maneuver in tight spaces due to the engine, the player shouldn't be punished for design decisions for which they were not responnsible.

3.) No opinion

4.) Disagree, Jump seems to be proportional to strength. Also, many of the terrain features require the distances for their own reasons. Have you finished all the content released?

6.) Help is their approximation of stabilizing. I haven't had anyone downed in a combat yet, but I am just a few hours into the Underdark a lot could change. Having said that, I believe it is better to have such options than not.

6.) Hard diisagreement. Losing two turns in a lot of these encounters would be a difficult thing to come back from, if at all possible, especially when enemies start getting triple digit health and multiple actions while you are still low double digits and possess only single actions.

7.) Disagree, Stealth mechanics in this game are a little less than optimal. In DnD luring an NPC into a stealth kill ambush is not only possible, but frequently employed by any reasonably tactical party. This is the best replication possible without introducing cumbersome mechanics.

8.) Disagree. Again, ambuscades are difficult to emulate given the engine, this is a very agreeable approximation.

9.)Fire shouldn't burn forever, ice should melt, acid should absorb into soil or eventually be neutralized by stone, there should be reasonable expiration of some terrain modifications but immediately after combat seems a little silly.

10.) You can rest somewhere outside of camp? I haven't done any resting yet, my companions made it quite clear sleep was for the weak. I thought it would be interesting to wait to make camp until they were begging for it

11.) Disagree. The more competent one is, the less of a challenge some things become. What they have done makes sense.

12.) Disagree. My rogue is still my primary damage dealer even gimped, and worse, what will work for the player will apply for the NPCs. There are enough scripted encounters where enemies have the advantage of numbers, terrain, health and damage. The last thing they need is increased sneak attack damage to ensure one shot kills to kick things off.

13.) Agreed. I am of the opinion that any RPG that truly cares about player choice and freedom should make non-violent runs a real, if difficult, option.

Good list.

Disengage needs to be a full action and a Rogue perk to do it as a bonus action. Larian's change unnecessarily nerfs both melee characters and Rogues. Don't understand the reason for this change at all.

High jump distance is ridiculous in BG3. Lae'Zel looks like Spiderman in half plate with just 17 Strength and no magical enhancement.

Reviving someone from negative HP absolutely needs to require a healing potion.


I'd like to add...

14) Remove magical healing properties from mundane food. It makes the game feel like Super Mario. Eating pork in melee as a powerful bonus action heal is really dumb.

Huge agree with all of these. Just take food out. If you want to be extra about food do what modern games do and make it something small you can do at camp for a buff. As it is now it's a bad idea for balance reasons (infinite heal = trivial game) and for gameplay reasons (who loves being encouraged to do accounting for a massive cluttered inventory full of apples and leeks?).

i just want to point out you guys might want to take a stroll through my post on "polite suggestion for monk" because it also highlights how weak rogues are. even if you allow for 100% accuracy on sneak attack they nosedive as the other melees get more attacks that add their base stat to their hit. hell warpriest outparses them for the entire game with a level one ability to get an extra attack. and extra abilities that add to accuracy like reckless attack. Monks have it a touch worse for most of the game, but i pointed out the flaw in rogues as well.

5th edition is a dumpster fire of imbalance its one of the worst functions of the system.

That's not to say 5th edition is inherently bad on the contrary there's lots of neat stuff in 5th ed that make it stand out.

but if you want the game to be more balanced and for more people to have fun playing it then Larians top concern should be the game balance or rather lack thereof in raw 5th edition.

The main reason you are concerned about extra rogues in a combat from the enemy perspective is thier chance to hit you on median is 45% and your chance to hit them on median is 55% so the difference in accuracy is very small its basically up to RNG for who wins the fight, not positioning or choice of actions taken.

As someone who played editions 1, AD&D, 3.5, 5 and Pathfinder 1, where game unbalance was wild, I totally disagree with you, 200%. 5e is the most balanced system yet. The exceptions I feel is that weapons need to be balanced in 5e as some weapon choices can be flavor choices that make you far weaker and the armor table needs some love. I am not saying monster stats versus players are balanced. I am talking only about balance between player classes and about avoiding power scaling up too high at higher levels in other editions.

Balance is almost impossible (a build that attacks versus a build for support) and somewhat subjective, but it does not compare to the extreme discrepancies from past editions and Pathfinder.

+1

I agree 1000% with all of these points, except 2) and 3) :
2) Just at the starting point of the jump.
3) Attack of opportunity should always work. Armor Class is already here to decide if u can or not avoid this attack. But we could imagine a Disengage action (different of jump) with an accrobatics/athletics test.