Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Loss of Backstab/Flanking

So, you are saying the mechanics were changed from non-5E solo-flanking rules to another version of not-exactly-5E rules? I wonder why they just resist going for straight 5E rules as written and see what happens. At least disengage is now a full action, but bonus shove every turn is still very silly. With the AI improvements, enemies started shoving after their attack as well. I'm just hoping that more players get annoyed with this constant shoving against their characters and demand it to be changed into a full action.

And a related question: why is it so hard to make sneak attack automatic on the first eligible attack? Separate action icons for melee and ranger sneak attack is just cumbersome. I understand this is early access, so hopefully the user interface and quality of life changes are coming later.

Thank you, yes, that's what I meant. I keep seeing the two as the same thing.

Interesting didn't know this one.

Currently it is is a not-exactly-5e-rules state. As mentioned before it could be a bug (modest oversight with all the changes from patch 4 to patch 5). Rogue still plays a lot better than in patch 4.

I considered backstab an accurate mechanic, if you are attacked from behind you will not be able to see the hit coming right? So having better chance to hit when hitting someone from behind was a good thing, it made sense. What has removing the backstab added to the chance you have to hit an enemy? Height also make sense, for long range having the highground is beneficial, for melee it is easier to attack someone higher than lower. The person above you would have to crouch to hit meanwhile it's fairly easy to swing your sword at their legs, it's harder to defend from melee attack when you are higher up unless you get out of range but then you can't really deal damage anymore.

So yeah.. I will miss backstab :V

The thing about this is that in DnD, each round is basically represented by 6 second intervals. It's the same principle behind swapping from real time into turn-based mode when you need to get past certain obstacles in BG3. In a fight, it is assumed that an enemy will be aware of their attackers in melee range at all times and will defend themselves appropriately. Sure, it makes sense that you have a higher chance of hitting someone from behind. But it makes far less sense for them to simply stand there and let you circle behind them unless they're blinded. This is why people argue for an alternate flanking rule, because at least it means that the target is being distracted by someone else long enough for the attacker to find an opening.

The problem isn’t that those “didn’t make sense”, but that those are cannibalising and overpowering existing gameplay systems.

It makes sense for positioning to impact your chance to hit.

But it doesn’t make sense for positioning to impact that greatly chance to hit, if there are limited resource skills and spells that are to provide such boost.

Not getting encouraged to circle around the enemy that I want to hit is just welcome removal of tedioum.

More accurately, if another enemy of the target (not necessarily one of your allies) is within 5 feet of it and that enemy is wielding a melee weapon. A creature that's wielding a bow or crossbow won't count.

You can confirm that the condition is met if the enemy has the Threatened status.

I also saw people on reddit claiming (with screenshots) that the Sneak Attack mechanic is sometimes buggy in the new patch, but I myself haven't run into problems yet.

It definitely has some bugs, it's usually after an enemy has been hit with a spell (from what I've seen). The game won't let you get sneak attack through Threatened. There is a workaround if you have shared initiative where you can hit the enemy with a weapon, and then you can get sneak attack on the turn.

Holy shit, thank god it's gone.
No more dancing combat.
maybe BG3 will actually get good in the end!

I didn't have strong feelings about it, but I'm personally glad backstab advantage is gone. Since you can't easily change what direction your characters end their turn on without using movement, this seemed very luck based/easily exploitable by the AI. If there were some sort of "pivot" like there is in the Final Fantasy Tactics series, I would think otherwise.

It's by no mean confirmed but it is suspected that distance of 5feet is calculated from centre of character model - making backstab not trigger against larger enemies, and not registering for smaller if someone is not standing quite close enough to them.

Would be glad if highground advantage is removed too.

We are all just waiting for it, really.

NO we dont ... certainly not "all of us" :P

I wouldn't mind flanking as advantage, but not backstab or high ground. Flanking makes sense. If you are fighting someone, and another enemy comes at you, it is VERY hard to defend against both.

So there is strategy in flanking. Backstab, no. That's jist dance around behind an enemy every round, which you can usually do easily, and get advantage. No enemy is going to let you dance around behind them every round in 1v1 combat.

That said, if they just remove high ground advantage, I'd be happy. We don't need flanking advantage. Combat is fine without it.

Just need to create another 1000 topics for Larian to reconsider this genius of a homebrew.