Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Alert Feat Grossly Overpowered

I urge the devs to consider nerfing Alert Feat whereby reducing the bonus to initiative from +5 (125% bonus) to +2 (50% bonus).

As Baldur's Gate 3 utilizes a d4 + DEX modifier to determine initiative order (as opposed to d20 in TT), this feat is grossly overpowered. Initiative is argubly the best stat in the game as no other stat weighs combat as heavily in your favor. With that said, the Alert Feat makes the other feat choices underwhelming and effectively removes choice for the player.

Shhhhhhh don’t ruin it for us :p

why not go the other way around and make initiative a d20? i'd like the game to be as faithful as possible to dnd. especially because most changes make literally no sense or remove gameplay depth.

Agreed, that would be the preferred choice. Whatever path the devs choose, they simply need to nerf Alert in the current state.

I suspect Alert is working as intended, but I agree that a d20 approach would probably be a good idea.

We can only speculate why Larian chose d4. My guess is that it was intended to liven up combat; your party is more likely to get the same rolls and you switch order to can set up combos instead of 1 by 1 as it is in tabletop. If this was the case, judging from reddit it did not succeed. Many people don't even know you you can do this.

I believe d20 would be the better path, and I use a mod that does just that. Alert is still amazing, but it is more appropriately balanced.

No! If you find it too OP, don't use it. I'm tired of people demanding nerfs on optional things in single player games.

Alert is a great feat, but for the usual optimized builds, you often have to pick a different class specific feat or the 2x ability boost. You only get max 3 choices per character.

Respectfully disagree. In general, Feats should offer interesting choices for the player, but the Alert Feat does the exact opposite. It removes choice as all other feats are underwhelming compared to it.

Yeah, the fix here is doing initiative on a D20 RAW instead of this D4 nonsense. I get that they love their "swarm" turn taking and this may slow things down in combat but with some minor tweaks the Swarm tactics could still work with shared initiative.

The D20 solution would just make the Alert feat totally mandatory, which is not that great for the experience of player choices.

Don't Rogues and Fighter get 4?

As to Alert being OP - I've never taken it yet but I suppose it helps.
IMO the game is random enough as to keep it withing bounds - going first does not prevent you rolling "1s" in succession on Attacks and/or Damage.

RAW initiative would be better, but it's still a single player game. You aren't balancing against other players, you are choosing how you play. Something being strong is not a good reason to make changes unless it's broken from a bug. There's always a vocal group in video games that min-maxxes. With a million+ players I guarantee most don't even know how initiative is rolled let alone feel compelled to use that Feat.


1d4 + 5 means you go first in initiative all the time, except for a few bosses. In a game where many fights have a lot of opponents, dropping AoE damage or a strong CC like sleet storm can dramatically decrease the difficultly.

I would argue the opposite. Having initiative order based on a d4 system makes the Alert Feat essentially mandatory. As you can see below, Alert Feat is broken on the d4 system...

d4 initiative system: Alert provides (5/4) = 125% bonus
d20 initiative system: Alert provides (5/20) = 25% bonus

Alert was balanced around the d20 initiative system in TT.

There are bunch of items that also increase the initiative, making Alert less needed in the d4 system. With a decent dex and a +2 bonus you will usually go first.

There is probably a reason for them to not go with the TT system. I think it is fine this way, considering how many enemies you usually have to fight. The increased randomness would make sure that enemies are always more likely to go first.

How much initiative does a character need? Sometimes I feel like it’s overkill when my characters have +10 or +12 initiative. Is that unnecessary?

Increased randomness to initiative is a good thing. As you mentioned, with items also having initiative, the Alert Feat just exacerbates the problem. Characters rolling with 10+ to initiative on a d4 system is overkill. This removes alot of the difficulty from the game.

My guess would be that they found D20 initiative rolls to have too big impact on battles, and thought it was easier to balance them with less randomness.

I disagree that this particular change removes depth though. Less randomness allows you to plan ahead and strategize more, while more randomness forces you to react and adapt more. Devs need to strike a balance between the two to make combat fun.

I feel like +5 or +6 usually does the job if you want to go first or second, with +3 it seems less consistent to me but that might be luck. Though I honestly think it's a little boring if all your characters lead the initiative and you have to wait endlessly for your next turn in big battles.

I don't pick this feat that often, so I think it's a bit of generalization that it is necessary. I use vigilance elixirs sometimes, on characters that might need it, or just use items to help along. But considering how easily and early invisibility is available, that you can stealth & surprise many encounters yourself, I've found it matters less than I'd expect. You can even go up invisible against the final battle, something that I find weird, since I'd expect certain enemies to just be able to "sense" your presence.

That may be true, but I've played alot of TT, and never thought d20 initiative was an issue. It would be interesting if the devs could explain their design decision for the initiative system.