Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Beat Act I, My Thoughts and Feedback and all that crap

Right, so I just beat Act I and I'm feeling slightly underwhelmed. I enjoyed most of the game, and had a good time, but boy was it marred with some bug combinations and gameplay mechanics that just made me wonder what was going on and why, so I'll list some things and maybe it'll have an impact. Idk. I paid the 60€ Larian has to read this now, or else.

-Notable Bugs-
1. Not being able to eat food. The only food I was able to eat outside of camping for the night were a few apples, which gave me diarrhea. I couldn't eat anything else, even other types of apples. I don't know if this is a bug or feature, but I'm leaning more on bug.
2. Not being able to climb certain climbable objects. Sometimes I would not be able to "Reach" ladders or vines or climable cliffs. I sometimes had this problem, but my friend who played his wizard was unable to climb most of the climable surfaces at all, as he'd either not be able to reach them, or he'd climb up only to immediately climb back down. Kind of frustrating.
3. Not being able to reach items within arm's length. Self explanatory. Crate in front of me "can't reach."
4. Unable to save game due to mid-dialogue bug. This is a big one. I hadn't noticed this for a little while, and I am not sure what happened, but at some point I was unable to save my game anymore. This set me back at least an hour. Sometimes I'd be able to save, but then as soon as my friend joined, the save option would be greyed out. This was pretty bad.
5. Shadowheart's AI. Shadowheart's AI freaked out on me, and she was always making a beeline in some direction, spouting lines like "Did you hear something?" and "Don't let them go." This caused her to not follow me, despite being linked with me, and made her run into enemies, causing herself to be surrounded. I don't know at all what this was about.
6. The Well in the Village. In the ruined village, there's a well you can get into. I ran into an issue where upon entering the well, nobody would be able to ever enter the well again, myself included. The well would be permanently blocked off. I don't know if this is a bug or feature, but I can't imagine it's designed to be that way.

-Personal Complaints-
1. Hit Chance. It makes no sense to me how I can be a Level 4 Fighter with all weapon proficiencies, and still only have a 30% chance to hit a level 2 goblin, while the level 2 goblin always seems to hit me, with heavy armor on, for a ton of damage. I don't know a lot about DND and how the combat works, but compared to Divinity: Original Sin 2, I felt like I got my ass kicked way more than I should have by creatures who had no business beating me as easily as they did. As a Dwarf Fighter with a Greataxe, how is it that I have only a 25% hit chance on enemies that Shadowheart with a simple mace and shield has a 70% hit chance? She's a cleric, I'm a fighter. It should be the other way around.
2. Turn Order. I get that initiative plays into turn order, but sometimes I'd get into an ongoing fight after the initaitive is rolled, and even if I got good initiative, I'd skip my turn no matter what. This happens a few times, where an enemy will go twice before I do, and it makes things very frustrating and unfair.
3. Camera. I don't know if there's a way to turn this off, but I hate how the camera gets blocked by terrain. If I want to scout the map, I'll have to follow the road so my camera will get over all the bumps and actually let me see what I want to see. It's a pretty bad way to design your camera, and I don't like it. Just makes it unnecessarily harder to see things.

-Suggestions-
1. I think it'd be pretty cool to have something like the mirror in Divinity: Original Sin 2, where you can alter your character. Maybe not to the same level, where you can switch classes, but maybe where you could re-customize. Would be nice. Like maybe a potion that'd change your look. Idk. Could make sense in the game world.
2. Right now I really feel like the enemies have some kind of advantage over me 24/7. They succeed in save rolls more than I do, they hit more than I do, I miss them more than they miss me, their spells seem more powerful than mine, they hurt more than I do, I just get annoyed when no matter how much I try to optimize my character build, I just compare to the degenerate goblin hobo, who will dodge 3 of my attacks in a row, and then pull off a 27 crit right after.

That's about it. It wasn't a bad experience, but I did struggle with the idea of quitting, because of how tedious some of the bugs made the game to me. Hope this helps, and you guys fix this game up faster. Bye.

Hey there, thanks for adding your input!

So, let's have a look...

1) Food now translates into camping supplies, and cannot be eaten on its own for healing etc., This is a feature change since most felt (and it seems Larian ultimately accepted/agreed) that eating food for healing was far too game-breaking and over-bore other actual game systems and rules substantially. Ethel's rotten apples are a trick, but a more obvious one now that other food doesn't work the same way any more.

2) The pathing and climbing is pretty janky in the game at the moment, and the latest patch introduced a whole swathe of new pathing issues that weren't there previously. Lots and lots of 'Can't Reach' errors now. The best thing you can do with these is submit them, along with screenshots, to Larian's formal bug reporting form directly, and time you come across one and can spare the time and effort to report it.

3) As above, this issue has gotten particularly pronounced in the recent patch when a lot of things broke. All we can do for now is report them

4) I've heard of this one popping up in Multi-player a lot, and occasionally in solo games. It seems that the flag preventing mid-dialogue saves is getting stuck sometimes. In multiplayer, it triggers whenever Anyone is in any kind of dialogue or conversation, so check that your friends are not.. but it seems that there's a good chance of one of the flags getting stuck on if two players enter different dialogues at the same time, if a player is in a dialogue when another player triggers a cut-scene, and also just randomly as well, details uncertain.

5) That's certainly an interesting one with Shadow... I've not encountered it, but it sounds as though it could be related to something in her latest content update, that gave her new scenes and dialogue, going funny.

6) The well thing does sound like a bug, unless new physical blocking was spawned. If it just won't work any more, but doesn't look any different, I'd bug that.

So for the rest, some discussion:

In D&D your hit chance is dependant on a few fairly simple factors.

Enemies have AC, or armour class, and in order to hit them with an attack roll (that is, where you roll a die to hit them), you've got to meet or beat that number. Different creatures will have different AC values, and AC can represent physical defences, like heavy armour and shields, as well as agility and nimbleness, such as particularly slippery, dexterous creatures.

If you are making an attack roll with a weapon, you roll 1d20, and you add your proficiency bonus, your ability score modifier, and any magical bonus you might have from the weapon or other factors.

Your Proficiency Bonus is governed by your character level, and is +2 until we get to level five, so everyone in your party is the same here. You add it as long as you're proficient with your weapon.

Your ability score modifier is the small number attached to the ability that you are using to wield the weapon – usually Strength, but sometimes Dex, for physical weapons. In game, your modifier will be somewhere between +1 and +4, depending on what ability score is It starts at +0, at 10, and goes up by one for every two points of core ability, so someone with 18 Strength, using a strength based weapon, is adding +4 for this.

If a weapon is magical, you might add a +1 to your attack and damage rolls with that weapon, if it says so. If you are under the Bless spell, you will add an extra 1d4 to your attack roll. If you are under the effects of the Bane spell, you'll subtract 1d4 from your roll. Other small modifiers may exist as well, but those are the main ones you'll see.

Beyond this, the only other thing that affects your hit chance is Advantage and Disadvantage. If you had a very low chance to hit, it sounds as though you may have been at Disadvantage. With these situations, you roll two different d20 dice, and you use which ever one rolled higher if you have Advantage, and whichever one rolled lower if you have Disadvantage. If you have at lest one source of Advantage and Disadvantage, they cancel out and you make a straight roll – they don't stack.

Advantage comes from a variety of sources, but a few examples include attacking a paralysed, unconscious or blinded target, or a Prone target in melee, attacking from a situation where your target is unaware of you or you are hidden, if your target is under an effect that gives you advantage, such as Faerie Fire, or, in BG3 (much to many people's chagrin because it's an exceptionally powerful homebrew that removes more tactical strategy from the game than it adds), if you are on higher ground than your target.

Disadvantage comes from similar but reversed situations; some example includes attacking when you are blinded or restrained, attacking a target you can't see clearly, or that is in darkness that you can't see through, attacking a target that has taken the Dodge action, or has another spell buffing them that imposes disadvantage on attacks against them... and, as above, if you are on lower ground than your target.

So, as an example here: If you are a Fighter using a Greataxe, with 16 Strength, your attack bonus would be +5 to hit with it (+2 proficiency, +3 Strength). If you're trying to hit a Bugbear with 16AC, that means you need to roll a 11 or higher to hit. That would give you an average expectation of a 50% hit chance. If The bugbear is standing on a little box, however, and has height advantage over you, then you have Disadvantage, and you have to roll 11+ on your lowest roll of two dice if you don't want to miss... so your chance to hit them drops to ~25%. The bugbear, meanwhile (assuming that your Fighter also has an AC of 16, and the bugbear also has a +5 attack bonus), has Advantage to hit you, and only needs to roll that 11+ on at least one die of two, so their average 50% chance jumps up to 75% chance instead.

Advantage and Disadvantage are really big swing factors in 5e, and Larian give them away fr too readily with height advantage still, to the point that it still unbalances everything else dramatically – it's a homebrew that I personally hope they do away with, or scale back substantially.

So, if you and Shadow have a 25% and 70% chance to hit the same target respectively, it sounds as though she has advantage coming from somewhere, since she's not particularly strong and Maces are still Strength weapons, and that you have disadvantage coming from somewhere as well. (I'd also recommend checking whether you're wearing any equipment that you're not proficient with, but you're a fighter, so, you're proficient with everything... but do check for gear that might be cursing you – anything that belongs to the Aboslute, like the gauntlets from the gate, or Gut's shield, will debuff you for using them, if you aren't marked for the Absolute)

As for the initiative order: it's still a bit buggy. If it is working properly, no-one should be taking double turns on you, unless you were stunned or otherwise incapacitated on your turn. Sometimes he order gets itself mixed up, and it's very hard to trace what causes this or why... however, one thing that seems to be a constant trouble fro it is stating a battle by surprise or having a non-combat party member jump into the initiative.. or just generally whenever the game has to add extra targets to the initiative order. This seems to mess it up royally at times. The other thing to watch out for, is if you have characters in shared initiative – if you've done anything at all with a character, even selecting them, then click the end turn button on a different character in the shared initiative, the game will often end the turn for both of them, even if you had tings left to do for the other character.
Camera: Camera is everyone's complaint right now. There's not much you can do about it. Going into tactical view rarely helps.

Thanks for taking the time to write up your feedback. Every bit helps!

Thanks for the reply. Just to give context on what the Shadowheart AI bug looks like, here it is. https://imgur.com/a/eykQPzN

As for the hit chance, is it possible that maybe... I am getting penalized so much... For being a dwarf? You know... Bugbear's tall, I'm short... It's like a constant height advantage.

For most things, when you highlight a target to attack and it shows you a percentage, on the left, it should also have a little window that will tell you whether advantage or disadvantage are in play, and what those factors are coming from - I say most, because the game is a bit spotty with actually telling you why you have Advantage or Disadvantage at the moment, but at the very least it does tell you *when * they are in effect. I couldn't say for your exact case, but keep an eye on that and see it it feels like it's making many more sense for you.