Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback High difficulty level ideas

Some ideas for highest difficulties :

- No tp (or limited to waypoints).
- No scroll, some infrequent potions and food.
- Anti-save scumming system (fix rolls).
- Weight penalties (no barrelomancy)
- Limited Rest (short and long)
- Jumping/disengagment, pushing and hiding use an action and no a bonus action.
- Ennemies are looking for u when u "hit-and-hide".
- Different classes required for multiplayer.
- Stronger ennemies but XP gain unchanged.
- Random character (with a "reroll button", and changing skin available) -> not sure about that (spamming reroll, and i love the "theorycrafting" part of character creation^^)

So ?

Yes, these are ok ideas for hard difficulty level, but in a normal game, leave it as it is please
Some (especially streamers), on the contrary, would like a "story" mode where everything is simplified

Hence the interest of a different difficulty, to please everyone as much as possible !

I agree with most of the points apart from:

- No teleportation - that will just prolong the game, once you clear an area there is barely anything to do there, so running around empty areas will be a pointless waste of time
- No scrolls - you kinda need scrolls if you have wizards in the party, since learning spells from scrolls is a core class mechanic. Granted less of them would be fine.
- Anti-save scum - I think that is unnecessary - probably just implement a honour mode with only one save would be easier
- Different classes for multiplayer - Why? Plus if multiclassing is a thing how would you control that.

Icewind Dale: Heart of Fury
Make enemies much stronger yet reward more XP and more powerful items. This would obviously change the max level of the game. It never felt like a low level campaign to me so I would appreciate that.
Place additional difficult encounters on the map. I would like more difficult non-story encounters anyway. Running into a full powered Beholder in the underdark would be nice. I liked Gothics approach of using strong enemies as an alternative to "you cannot go here yet". Don't force players to deal with such encounters but let them stumble upon them sometimes. One of the companions or the narrator could point out that it would be foolish to go there. As it stands now the enemies are adjusted very well to the capabilities of the players group. Finding a way to avoid an encounter can be just as rewarding as fighting. I think it furthers immersion when your group cannot simply eradicate every single creature on the map.

Iron Man with 5E pure rules should be enough to be difficulty.

1 - I am fine with TP as it is, walking everywhere manually gets old. in the tabletop setting you can gloss over a few hours of walking to somewhere you've already been but in a game like this you cant do that.

2 - An idea i saw for the frequent scrolls and food is putting an investigation check on lootables to cut down on how much stuff you get, on higher difficulty you could simply raise the DC.

3 - anti-save scumming - agreed

4 - weight penalties, i believe there are weight penalties in 5E, i distribute weight across party members so i haven't noticed if its been added to BG3 though.

5 - Rather than limiting rests there should be a chance of your rest getting interrupted (as many DMs including myself love to do.) I would also use the alternative healing rules in the PHB, no hp gain on short rest, and use HD on long rest. puts more emphasis on needing a healer and potions, which may justify all the mountain of potions as it is lol.

6 - action economy totally needs fixing, thats a in general thing though, not just hard mode.

7 - not sure what you mean here, but iv been mainlining a warlock or a fighter so sneaking hasnt been used much for me.

8 - totally disagree here, games are for having fun not making folks play something they dont want to. if everyone wants to play fighters they are going to have a hard time sure, but if they are having fun who cares?

9 - I don't think enemies need to be stronger, i think the conditions to heal should be harder (as i alluded to earlier and will add to later)

10 - i feel that would be a waste of effort on larian's part personally but if enough people want it im wrong lol

Alright ill counter with a few of my ideas.

1 - Right now there are 3 primary methods of healing in 5E (4 in BG3 with food) and what i do for my games is create a unique place for all 3.
- first is resting, this is unaided mundane healing and i feel it should be fairly slow. This i would have as no healing on a short rest, roll HD on long rest, regain one HD each long rest.
- Second is alchemical healing, this is aided mostly mundane healing which is much faster than normal but not instant. For this i would change healing potions/food to heal 1hp per minute for an hour (much less for food). a decent amount of healing but not fast enough to be useful in combat.
- third is magical healing, obviously the fastest method and mostly likely to keep you alive in combat. no real changes need to be made to magic.

By changing healing in this way it really promotes the idea of having a balanced team, that healer while not 'absolutely' needed suddenly looks a lot more valuable as part of the party.


I have more in-depth stuff for alchemy for 5E but i'm unsure if it would apply to BG3, but ill leave the link anyway if folks are interested.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DHABdJpjeK8zggKmn9oNw92pghqq45ywu5dqWfPxic8/edit?usp=sharing

2 - hide rolls for noticing hidden objects. I will actually have players record rolls in front of me at the start of every session so i dont have to ask players for perception checks. if no one sees something literally no one sees it. I had a time where no one noticed an arrow trap, walked right into it only for it miss by chance and STILL no one noticed it lol, they were much more surprised when they left thinking they had disarmed everything. for BG3 it would cut down on noticing hidden traps and rooms, and perhaps ambushes from sneaky enemies.

3 - totally need fog of war based on what each character can see, if your in a dark cave with no light source that human is useless. well...should be hence the comment.

4 - each time a character is brought back from the brink of death (falls unconscious in a fight) have them gain a level of exhaustion. I do this in my 5e games to prevent minor healing spells keeping fights going waaay longer than they should be able to by letting people get KO'd then healing them a level 1 healing word for like 3 hp so this barely alive guy can keep fighting. getting knocked out like 4 times in less than a minute and still be dragged up to fight sounds more akin to necromancy than healing to me lol.

basically my premise is that each fight doesn't need to be that difficult, but the cost of each fight should be felt for much longer than it is. if i take a greatsword to the gut ill be the hospital for months not a single day (assuming im still alive), magic is what changes that and it should be reflected.

Not fond of the anti save scumming. Imagine if you let Astarion bite you and he kills you . Heyy, game over. That would be very frustrating. Plus, each players already has the liberty to play without reloading for rolls if he so desires.

Why not for everything else. The most interesting options, are , imo , Limited rest and less food and potions, as it forces the player to be very careful and plan ahead.