Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The Help action should stabilize the dying at most, not outright revive them

Having played through Patch 6 and beaten the nastier fights in the Grymforge (Nere, the mimics, the guardian), I am once again 100% certain that the Help action in its current form is heavily detrimental to the combat's flow, making any fight against a single opponent, as long as you have at least 3 characters and said opponent doesn't have any means of doing damage to several characters at once, practically a guaranteed win. Even if you party has 1 HP remaining on everyone and you have no means of healing, you can simply Help whomever gets taken down every turn while using your remaining character(s)'s action to deal damage. Rince and repeat for however many turns it takes to finish the enemy off.

I realize that further into the campaign, once enemies get extra attacks and such, such situation will become less and less likely to occur, but the point still stands regardless. Now, if Help were to only stabilize the dying (perhaps even with a Medicine check involved), that would immediately raise the stakes and make the player choose between spending a healing resource (spell, potion, what have you) to get the character back on their feet or to prevent them from dying temporarily, but still have them unconscious for the duration of the fight.

+1

It would be better to just remove the help and make the characters stand up automatically after the fight is over. It would be less annoying.

I am torn on this. Party of 4 is a very small party. Loosing a character can be devastating. I did find that some fights can end up with 3 of my characters perpetually resing each other while the 4th one actually does something.

Still, I think BG3 home brew has too much unavoidable “bullshit” mechanics to be able to dish out stricter punishment for failure. That would only further encourage cheesemongering.

I have mixed feelings about this too, to be honnest.
It happend to me a few times... Down, rez, down, rez, down, rez... This is just boring but it happen less now than before... probably because I'm better, but especially because the game is really better balanced than before.

But I have to admit that I'd like if this was a part of the combats difficulty. At the moment when someone fall on the ground, it's never really a problem. OP's suggestion (or Rhobar's variation) looks interresting.

+1
I'd be glad to try.

+1

It's already easy enough to heal downed characters in 5e with Healing Word; the Help Action giving them 1hp just exacerbates this whack-a-mole problem. Especially if Larian is going to leave in the dumb potion throwing; at least that requires resource expenditure!

Help should be able to stabilize (5e allows an ~easy Medicine Check to stabilize dying characters) and possibly remove certain conditions (e.g., prone).

+1... and I don't know. Did you say it? A Medicine roll should be made. Right now, the Medicine skill is the most underused skill in the game, and it should be one of the most heavily used especially if you're creating a healer cleric or something. Those with Medicine skill should have a much better chance than those who do not of stabilizing party members.

While it's good that characters auto-stabilise after combat ends now, within the current system, having to go over and help-action them afterwards is just pointless busy work and time waste for no benefit; I agree with others here that downed-but stable characters should just recover to 1Hp when combat is over, since that's what your post-battle help actions (which are free and cost no resource) do anyway. ... But I do feel that we should not leave turn based combat initiative while there are unstable characters in play, and they shouldn't auto-stabilise as long as that is the case instead.

There is a problem with their system design right now, in that they're trying to make the help action do too many things, but by virtue of doing that, they're also locking players out of many things they should be able to do. Help currently is the 'tool' you use to break someone out of a removable condition - anything that has the clause "an ally can use an action to do 'X'," the result of which is you waking up, or being cut loose or untangled etc., has all been put into the help action... but this currently means that players can't then do those things themselves - you can't take an action to free yourself from vines or webs when you should be able to (and I believe there are spell cards that even say you can in game right now... you just can't), for example, because you cannot access that function - it's bundled in the help action which you cannot use on yourself; you can't use it on yourself because it's also bundled with the ability to clear other afflictions that don't necessarily rob a sufferer of their action, but aren't allowed to simply be shrugged off alone.

I'm on the fence about some of the minor minutia, because we have to consider the translation into a video game format here, and there are certain elements of flow and progression in combat in particular, that do benefit from tweaks when we make that jump.

I'm fine with a single action to auto-stabilising characters in combat, without a check, as long as they don't heal.

I'd consider having a stabilise check make a medicine check (dc variable by number of failed saves perhaps), when they do stabilise someone in combat, and if they pass it, then the character can get 1hp back...

At the same time, I can feel the sense that that takes away from the exciting moments when you roll to on your death save, and regain 1 hit point and wake up... this game can't emulate that at the moment, because getting that boon is no big deal in the current game-play.

The 3v1 scenario where a lone overpowering opponent can never win against a trio that helps each other back up every turn is really bad design. Situations where Commander Zhalk can't beat three level 1's, or is deadlocked against two, shouldn't exist. Yeah it's EA, but this stuff has persisted for a full year after release.

5e has a very merciful system built-in that protects PCs from dying even if they get to 0hp. Larian's version of "help" on top of that system turns it into a twisted repetitive whack-a-mole that just makes a mockery of combat.

Furthermore, how exactly do you "help" a maimed or unconscious character back into a fight at full capacity without magical healing? Poke on the shoulder? Inspirational words? Sure, it's a game but this is pushing it too far. Magical healing exists in D&D for that purpose.

So.. +1.

+1

To be fair, he does get backup eventually (if you take too long, two more cambions show up), but it is indeed one hell (pun intended) of a design oversight.

Off-topic, but they really need to do an enemy level reassessment by the time the game is ready for release and there is no longer a throttling lvl 4 cap. Zhalk should have extra attacks. Ethel should be much at a much higher level (even without tweaking her HP, but with more dangerous spells) if she's supposed to be an ancient hag. There are hints of there being at least some kind of sensible CR going on with the Grymforge guardian who is level 8 (but should probably be higher too), but then Voss' red dragon friend who was at level 17 before now got tuned down to 10 for some reason.

I have mixed feeling on this. A downed character is not necessarily dead so helping them up is useful if they have an ability to defeat an enemy. I don't help a downed character if an enemy with more than a quarter of like is next to them. I try to take them out first. I feel like revivify should bring back a character at full health instead of a quarter health. Helping a downed character can be useful depending when is their turn and if a enemy has low health.

It is incredibly useful to help a downed character back up; that's exactly the problem. It's too useful at too low of a cost.

While a downed character isn't dead, they have taken a possibly lethal would and are in danger of bleeding out. Barring magical healing, other characters shouldn't be able to take a single 6-second action to bring them back into the fight. Even with a successful medicine check, the best they could do is staunch the bleeding. This wouldn't bring the downed character back to fighting fit, and if they tried they'd almost certainly just start bleeding out again.

I'd rather not have to waste a turn just to keep the character from dying and get nothing of it. It is better to remove the aid and follow the DA path.

I mean, depending on which DA you're talking about, that's kind of how BG3 works already. The combination of resurrection scrolls and the Hooded Skeleton's revival services are similar to the DAO injury system, just that you spend resources to revive characters instead of treating their injuries.

-1 that we shouldn't have the option to stabilize characters in combat. There should be some kind of consequence for character death, so we should be motivated to keep characters alive. The DAO system made sense because there were limited means of reviving a character during combat, which is not true for 5e given healing spells and potions.

I am not buying "consequences". The game is too rng dependent and a single critical hit is enough for your character with full hp to die.
I prefer much less irritating gameplay than some "consequences".

A single crit isn't enough for your character with full hp to die though, at least past level 1 or 2. No matter how much damage you take, as long as you're not taken to your negative max HP in a single hit, characters in 5e don't die outright. And once unconscious, it takes at least two hits to actually kill them which provides time to stabilize or heal them.

I agree that BG3 is fairly rng dependent, especially with it's enemy AI and enemies being given multiattack. But I'd prefer that the AI to not target downed characters on easier difficulties over eliminating the ability to stabilize downed characters. Then you'll have 2-5 full turns to stabilize (or heal) an ally if they don't stabilize by themselves.

Having the option to stabilize fallen characters strictly makes the game less irritating, assuming all other things are left the same.

In my opinion, it would be better to give it up.
If the characters would automatically get up after the end of the fight, it would have solved a lot of problems.
You don't have to give the player so many ways to revive a character, which makes no sense for teams at such a low level. It also solves the plot holes why, in the case of our characters, the tadpoles do not want to leave the host.
The need to stabilize the fallen companions adds absolutely nothing to the game if they don't get back into the fight. At most it makes it more annoying.
The scrolls could still be useful to lift characters during fights, allowing them to return to the combat.

In patch 4, Flind was able to almost take down my bear druid.
With one blow she threw my character out of the form (full hp) and gave additional damage to the character. So one crit is enough to exclude the character from the fight.

The one shot critical issue is a separate issue from whether or not the PC's have access to unlimited magical revival actions.

They don't have to design enemies like the Flind who hits for a million for a low level party. They also don't have to give Gnoll Hunters multiattack at level 2 for massive burst damage but they like to do that for some reason.

OP enemies + unlimited "helps" = they must really like the whack-a-mole style combat. I would much prefer balanced combat where I could keep my party going with good tactics, but also where a PC going down actually means something more tactically than just having to click on them.