Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The spell slot use issue...

Being able to use any amount of spell slots is kinda fun but... it will severely impact balance. Imagine sorcerers with quicken spell and haste. Three fireballs in one round.... o_o

They don't care. So many videos of people thinking they're "cool" posting YouTube clips of dropping stealth Fireball combos into Haste into more spells.

Not being hugely knowledgeable about 5e, I’m not sure how it should work. I agree casting multiple levelled spells as actions seems massively overpowered and would definitely be on board for limiting that. I’m not so fussed about - and in fact like - being able to cast one levelled spell as an action and another as a bonus action (e.g. Thunderwave nearby enemies and Misty Step away) given the spells that use bonus actions don’t tend to be attacking ones. I’m not sure whether even that would be permitted under 5e?

Per 5e rules, you cannot cast one leveled Action spell and one leveled Bonus Action spell in the same turn. Some people agree with what you said--getting rid of this restriction--for various reasons.

Quicken turns an Action-cost spell into a Bonus Action-cost. Thus, a Quickened spell falls under the "no leveled Action + leveled BA spell" rule.
- At the very least, this restriction should be followed for Quickened spells. Otherwise you can get easily the Fireball + Fireball occurrence.
- This could alternatively be balanced by higher sorcery point costs. Something like 2*spell level, so Quickening a Fireball costs 6 points.

Additionally, the "Action" granted by Haste can only be used for a single attack, the dash/disengage/hide action, or use an object per 5e rules. NOT multiple attacks via Extra Attack. NOT any spell.

...none of the above restrictions are in BG3.

Thank you for the explanation!

I can definitely agree with a change to make "the "Action" granted by Haste ... only be used for a single attack, the dash/disengage/hide action, or use an object".

I remain on the fence about using levelled spells as Actions and Bonus Actions, even if the Quickened Spell case were allowed (though admittedly I have only played a sorceror once and may be wrong in my assumption that this is not something a sorceror would be able to do many times a day). But I wouldn't object to application of 5e rules here, though I'd miss being able to cast a spell and Misty Step, or cast a cleric spell and Healing Word in particular.

If someone finds it enjoyable to burn every and any enemy in single round with three casters ...
And then imediately go to Long Rest ...

I say let them ruin their game.

Sorcerers quicken is the only real place where the BA restriction makes sense and needs to be in place; outside of that it just creates unnecessary restriction and some fairly asinine weirdness - If you poke around some of my other posts on the subject, I make a few examples of how the rule formally works in 5e, what that means, and why it's generally ridiculous and silly - and worse, unfairly crippling and limiting of classes that don't deserve it (point in case for those folks who think I'm a 5e-defending zealot across the board - there are numerous places where it handles things poorly, or has bad rules, and this is one of them).

The balance problem is not just being able to alpha strike with spells.

It's surprise attacks giving you one full turn too many.

It's Fighters doing Action Surges with torch-dipped weapons. Paladins emptying all their smite spell slots and using another smite with Pommel Strike.

It's dropping Haste and Invisibility potions around like candy.

It's not allowing enemies to roll Perception against stealthy or invisible PC's.

It's creating Magic Items that grant extra Bonus Actions you can use to off-hand attack with a torch-dipped Hand Crossbow standing in a pool of poison wearing Broodmother's Revenge.

And finally, it's casting three Fireballs before initiative even kicks in. 1 Initial 2 surprise 3 haste.

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It's all of the above that really snowballs and underlines the weakness of a turn-based system. If they want to have a good game, they should work to downplay the alpha strikes that make even the hardest encounters redundant.

I would allow a Perception check against stealth or invisibility when attack intent is declared, or simply roll Initiative if the attacker can be seen. A mage who casts a Fireball has to speak and conjure the fire before the spell is launched. That's plenty of time for a high Perception quick reflex enemy to notice and react by spreading out or even firing an arrow. Likewise someone drawing a Greatsword and approaching to striking distance shouldn't really "surprise" you at all.

Other stuff:

Fix Haste so it grants an extra attack instead of an extra full action. And no extra spells for obvious reasons.

Stop with the extra Bonus Actions from items and fire dips that don't cost any consumable items.

The most fireballs you can cast in 1 turn currently is 4 if you expend almost all of your resources, and if you could generate just one more level 1 spell slot to gain 1 more sorcery point you could start a fight with a fireball, then proceed to cast 4 fireballs on your first turn.
To do this you need Circlet of Fire for an extra bonus action for non cantrip fire spells, which fireball obviously is. Generate 2 extra level 3 spell slots by turning level 1 and 2 spell slots into sorcery points then into 3rd level slots. Drink a haste potion before the fight. Now you have 2 actions and 2 bonus actions and if you turned enough level 1 and 2 spell slots into sorcery points you should be able to quicken 2 fireballs.
You start with 5 sorcery points and need 2x5 for level 3 spell slots and 2x3 for quickened spell. You can generate 4 + 6 with low level spell slots and an extra 2 with your Ilithid power and 3 more with Spellthief converting the gained spell slots into sorcery points. This means you can expend all your resources for 4 fireballs in a single turn and have 4 sorcery points remaining, just one short of an extra level 3 spell slot which would allow you to start the fight with an extra fireball making it a total of 5.

No fight in the game really lives past 2 or 3 except ones that have fire resistence or immunity.

This breaks 2 5e rules, the multiple leveld spells one that was mentioned and also the action granted by haste should be restricted to: That action can be used only to take the Attack (one weapon attack only), Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object action.

I know this is a game and all that, but setting your sword on fire with a candle seems a bit silly. Not to mention that a sword being on fire would only harm the wielder but that's beside the point.

well this guy doesnt agree with you https://www.instagram.com/kiwamissimo/

That guy uses chemical coatings on metal for fire which would be ok for BG3 as well.

Dipping weapons in fire without needing any consumable is as silly as it gets in BG3. I'd like to see it gone to be able to enjoy this game without stupid cheese.

Spell: heat metal and flameable swords (beside the ever burning blade) coexisting is quite weird. Normally, video games solve this by letting spellcasters enhance the party's weapons

Sorcerer's really are a 4 fireball wonder, making it theoretically the class with highest damage per turn in the game. It's only for one turn. But, that doesn't matter much. As said, no boss survives this without immunity.

I think it's honestly a matter of how serious we take balance between classes. A tiefling 2 handed paladin, a fireball sorc and a ranged battlemaster can cause unimagineable chaos in one turn. Add some class for utility and you've broken the game.

The state of Bg3 is having overpowered classes and wet socks... plus the thief who lives inbetween

The ridiculous alpha striking is only going to get worse and worse as the classes get more powerful spells, weapons and abilities.

They're probably not going to bother fixing the EA anymore and it's fine, I don't need to play it anymore. I just stealth cheesed the entire Flaming Fist unit from the rooftop without ever getting attacked. Right after cheesing Buthir with two characters using Help - something a lone powerful enemy can never beat. And then got machine gunned down mercilessly on turn one by Gnoll Hunters who for some reason have three attacks with a bow. But I could always cheese them too without getting attacked. This game is just not fun to play. I'm worried they consider all kinds of stupid broken OP gameplay you have in EA "fun" and it will be the same in final release.

I cant understand how can you use theese two things in single sentence and mean it. O_o

Wouldnt you say there is some kind of conection between them maybe?

I mean ... you did it ... and it was not fun ...
So you did it again ... and it was not fun ...
So you did it again ... and it was not fun ...
So you did it again ... and it was not fun ...
So you did it again ... and it was not fun ...

i guess some one never heard about EA testing and goofing around?

His right about stealth btw. It's broken, right now you can stand right next to the guy face to face nose to nose and still hit him as if you were hidden... + 23 on stealth skill check + advantage and with lucky rerolls on 1s you are pretly much undetectable as bonus you can cast fog on yourself so that's funny spell that breaks AI in tiny pieces prfect for stealth run hehe.

Can't wait for muticlassing and Greater Invisibility that will be funny even more!

With stealth as is you can play this game as if it's RTWP game about 80% of the time where the other 20% you are forced into TB combat by a cutsceens. That's how broken the stealth is

I’ll admit that I wondered why 1varangian did this to themself, too! I agree that stealth in combat, and particularly its use for surprise/ambush attacks is awful. But what I usually do rather than use it and infuriate myself is stay unhidden and only attack once my party is in normal range, and use hide in combat only for characters I’d expect to be sneaky, which puts me at a disadvantage but is more fun than exploiting mechanics I feel are broken. I desperately hope Larian will fix stealth in the full release so I can enjoy using it as I should be able to, but in the meantime believe it is perfectly possible to have fun playing the game by avoiding dodgy mechanics as far as possible. (And of course, if that’s what floats your boat, to also have fun exploiting the potential for cheese as hard as you can.)

Even with the full release, while I hope Larian will fix things like stealth and the ability to cast two levelled spells in a turn with actions at least (and ideally prevent two quickened spells exploiting bonus actions too), I’m not expecting the game to close off absolutely every avenue that I’d consider cheesing. I think it’s quite right that it prioritises flexibility, and am perfectly happy to act as my own DM on some points and decide that there are some things that the game mechanically lets me do that are ruled out for my own particular games, or are ruled out except in specific situations.

I just keep my fingers crossed that some of the worst examples that impinge even if I don’t want to engage with them are fixed, but if the levelled spell issue that is the real topic of this thread isn’t, I’ll just have to decide when I play whether or not to ban myself from leveraging it.

I think a problem with self-restraint is that the AI will still exploit these loopholes even if you choose not to? That pretty much ruins my experience. I want eveyone to play by the same rules....sure, a boss can have something extraordinary, within reasonable limits (they already have things like legendary actions, used to good effect in "the other game") , but that should be something rare and exciting. Already things like hurling potions to heal people etc leave a bad taste in my mouth - I don't do that, but the AI certainly does.

Definitely! For me, these are exactly the sorts of cheese that impinge on my playthrough that I hope Larian will fix, though I'd not go as far as saying that the AI using them ruins my experience, it just makes me a bit grumpy.

Though we should probably keep the discussion here focussed on topic given there's already another recently active thread talking about cheesy exploits and mechanics in general at https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=839848.

Still, it would be nice to have a functional stealth system in game.