Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Paladin Fight Attacks

I recently decided to fight the paladin and his crew instead of helping him. All his team members (except maybe the mage) seem to have 2 attacks per round as level 4s. What is allowing them to have 2 attacks per round?

Game balance. Enemies don't necessarily have class levels that correspond to ours, usually having fewer abilities but more HP and often more attacks. This helps with action economy, allowing the DM to put fewer enemies against a PC party of 4-6.

For example, Thugs (CR 1/2) make two melee attacks and have 32 HP. If they were actually "level 1/2" fighters, then they'd have one attack and like 4 HP and you'd need like 10+ of them to have any chance against players.

Don’t characters get a second attack anyway at level 5? Why not just make them level 5 enemies?

Edit: quick clarification but I have not played 5e, but I did try to look up the attacks per round. I am just trying to understand how I know how to balance my party’s strength vs a particular adversary. If a level 4 fights like a level 5, that is hard.

In D&D enemies aren't actually given levels. They are assigned a "Challenge Rating," which is supposed to correspond to how difficult of a fight they'll present to a full party of adventurers. Ergo, a CR 5 enemy has to be more powerful than any level 5 character, because a CR 5 enemy is supposed to be able to put up a good fight against 4 level 5 characters.

Video game systems interact with this weirdly, especially in games where you're always supposed to face enemies of the same level as you. This results in things like these Paladins and the red dragon being labeled "level 4" when there's nothing to really support this.

I don't remember this fight exactly, but I assume the Paladins you fight don't have all the abilities of a level 5 Paladin (smite, channel divinity, 1st and 2nd level spells, a fighting style, a possible feat, etc). So these Paladins aren't "fighting like a level 5" just because they have Extra Attack. Enemies of the same level will typically have more HP and attacks but less abilities than a PC of the same level.

tl;dr: Enemy "levels" should not be thought of as the same as PC "levels."

Ok copy all. I guess my real question is how do I know an enemy is level appropriate? I can’t defeat the gith war party without totally cheesing the fight. Is there no way for us to identify that we probably should not be fighting these dudes at a give level?

Theoretically, if the enemies are the same level as you then you should be able to win against them (regardless of their abilities). That's how most video game systems work and I assume what Larian is going for. Of course, this is EA so all the fights aren't necessarily calibrated correctly. (Larian, if you're reading this, I don't think the gith fight needs to be changed. Some fights should be very difficult)

The gith fight in particular is a difficult one. Party positioning before the fight isn't necessarily cheese. You know that some enemies will misty step to high ground, so if you place one of your characters there that will help (I like Gale + Thunderwave). Consumables like potion of speed can help a bunch. Focusing down the more powerful gith is necessary.
But honestly this fight is probably balanced around using at least some level of cheese: backstab & high ground advantage, jumping, BA shoving, etc. If you're not using those then it'll be pretty tricky.

Edit: I feel like you can't use 5e sources to estimate encounter difficulties simply because so much is changed (for better or worse) between 5e and BG3

I presume fighting them will be a lot different when they will actualy be paladins ...
Or at least as far as i understand it, the second attack could be simply placeholder for Divine Smite.

Attacking druid groove become also quite tougher after patch 4

I do wonder about dragons though. Dragons always have wizard levels. They correspond with cr level too. Larian might drop that all together though.

Where did you find paladin class in early access ? О_о

Its not paladin class (yet?), its paladin NPC ...
And its at least that dude in tollhouse, who offers you his two handed sword if you kill Karlach for him ... he claims that his whole group is "paladins" but, the others seem to be paladins more by conviction than class.