Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Level Cap

Yep. Immunity to slashing/piercing/bludgeoning is extremely uncommon. Even a completely incorporeal creature like a Ghost only has resistance to normal weapons. For challenges up to level 10 I seriously doubt we'll run into anything that's immune to standard weapon types.

Level cap of 10 is a good idea...not a bad one. Most games have a stupid high level cap and when you level up it doesnt mean anything because you level up very often, Having a level cap of 10 means every time you level up, even from level 1 to 2 it is very meaningful. At least thats my reasoning, anyway.

I agree, it seems like a good starting point and actually allows some more experimentation with multiclassing with different typical dips. 5/5 dips and 6/4 dips are more viable since you don't have to worry about missing out on 10+ level class feats and such.

I hope not. A long game is not necessarily a good game.
ESPECIALLY true for RPG's when you get so much padding and 2475 fights thrown in along every step of the way.

I like it that its a large game with level 1-10.
BG1 was the same and it was great.
Every magic item you find and every level up feels importent.

BG2 was also a great game but:
- You spend a long time pre buffing to kill powerful enemies fast, without buffs they can destroy you. Maybe that is reduced now with concentration mechanic.
- Any balance is gone. Casters become gods with some high level spells, while fighters can still only hit things with a weapon, just like lv1.

ToB I finished only once, it became boring when I wanted to play again.
The game throws epic items and epic encounters at you all the time, but you destroy everything anyway. One level more or yet another epic items make no difference, you already rush through everything like a god.

This made me wonder (if it hasn't been mentioned already) how difficult it might be to balance a game for too many levels. It seems to me a common experience for an RPG to start out challenging only to enter god-mode at some point at higher levels. Hopefully the 10 level limit can help prevent this.

As i've said many times FU** the balance.

Balance is completely against immersion and variety. Look to VtMB. If the game devs decided to remove nosferatu who is the hardest clan to be played or nerfed his deformity to a minor seduction penalty instead of making the deformity a harsh curse in a highly social game, do you think that the game would be better? In some settings like Dark Sun, by lore reasons, arcanists are hated with passion. I expect to have a much harder time being a Arcanist on a dark sun adaptation than in a baldur's gate adaptation. The game mechanics needs to reflect the game world. After i finish another PFKM run, i will purchase dark sun on gog and i expect to have a much harder time using arcane magic.

Note that :

• You can find really powerful items on bg2
• There are magical immune creatures that require Tenser's transformation + melee even for casters
• Now on 5e, spells above tier 5 are far more limited
• On 3.5e and 2e, be a arcane caster is a pain in the *** until you hit lv 5/6
• Enemies can dispel your buffs. nwn1's Klauth is an example
• Magic is far weaker on 5e. Finger of Death no longers OHK on failed save for eg.
• People compare arcane casters with fighters on 3.5e BUT never with clerics. Clerics can do everything that a wizard can do, in armor, with better WILL save, weapon proficiency, better BAB, healing capacity, better hit points and don't even need to buy scrolls.

I an trying to beat(again) spawn of rovagog on pathfinder kingmaker. He is insanely hard even for a lv 20 MC with high level companions. Unless you are "Ao", there are always a bigger fish...

If you want an example of an over-balanced RPG, look at Pillars of Eternity (the first). IT's levelling and difficulty curves are parallel and linear.

If there was one major flaw in the Pillars design, that it is. It was what I think lead to people finding the combat stale - you were always the right level for the combat in front of you.

PoE is boring exactly by being very balanced. Everything fels the same. See D&D 4e to have a TTRPG example.

Never understood why people think this of PoE. There are many extremely powerful items, though not motherfucking broken like the ones from BG (and I really prefer these) that grant you +4 to stats or knockdown on hit.
My Rogue was very OP by endgame, capable of 100 dmg per hit and hitting 2~3 times per second, this in a game where the most powerful enemies won't go over 800 hp.

PoE2 is FAR worse in terms of being too balanced, but because there are so many multiclass options you can get away with some pretty powerful shit.

of course you're OP by end game.

but as you levelled up ... the challenge was 1:1.

I played PoTD difficulty and thought the difficulty peaked at around level 5. Aside from some difficulty spikes in the first DLC, end game was way easier than early game.
I always thought the same about BG, but because of the absolute broken shit you can get, endgame is a joke. Not that I dislike this, I like feeling like a demigod after a rough start, specially when you literally are one.

@SorcererVictor

I agree that DnD is unbalanced it it will always be, but I still think that you should not ignore balance completely.
Those games are complex as hell and it takes a long time to understand the system.
Expert players will enjoy this but new players get completely lost.
I have played P:K and it was very hard for even though I played many RPGs before.
If you do not look for a guide in the internet it is really hard to find out which class/spells/feats are usefull.
You have a guy in heavy armor and shield: lol, most powerful enemies will use touch attacks.
You do not know what freedom of movement does: lol, there are groups of enemies and each one tries to paralyze you every round.
BG3 would be my first game with the DnD5E system and even though I read the players handbook there will probably be lots of situations where I do not know whats going on.

You said clerics are better than mages, I say: It depends

In NWN2 I had a favoured soul as main char and it was better than a fighter in every way, mostly thanks to persistent spells. Cast some spells in the morning and bash enemies all day long. I agree that a cleric is way better than a fighter in this game.
But in BG2 powerful mages were almost impossible to beat without having a mage youself. Protection spells and the removal of those spells were almost a game in itself.
With spell triggers and contingencies they were gods and then came ToB with improved alancrity+robe of vecna to boost your power beyond any limits.
In P:K they can make most enemies helpless with stinking cloud and in all games its always good to have somebody cast haste.

Stinking cloud is an OP spell in every DnD game, just cast it and snipe enemies from afar. Apparently P:K mantained tradition (bought it recently but didn't play it yet).

I like the character system of PoE2.
You have many options but its relatively intuitive how to build the char you want.

And yes, there are massive differences in power between several chars when you select the right classes, abilities and equipment.
There is only a handful of players who have beaten the ultimate challenge in this game,
but most players should have little problems to finish the game on normal if they do nor cripple their char intentionally.

This goes for normal. Now PoTD in PoE2 is a different beast. It is the hardest RPG I have ever played by far, to the point of some parts making me rage quit and stop playing for days.
Apparently when the game came out some masochistic douches complained that PoTD was "too easy".

I think this has something to do with the way communication works.
In game forums you will probably find more "nerds" than "normal players".
Not because there are more of them, but because they are more active in forums.
No matter how hard a game is, some players will always say its too easy because they found a way to beat the highest regular difficulty without problems.
Some players (not me) think that the highest difficulty is the only acceptable way to play a game.
In online forums you will probably always find more players saying its too easy than those who say its too hard.
And when somebody complains its too hard then come the expert and says: "You are an idiot noob. Learn to play."

When PoE2 was released it was way too easy (on normal). You could just auto attack everything without problems.
The devs admitted that it was too easy and that they did not listen to the players who said it is too easy because of the stuff I wrote above.
Then they made it harder until the players who played PotD stopped saying its too easy.

Feedback is great when there are consesus or a large majority. But I find it hard that most players liked the state of PoTD. I only finished the game, all DLC and all mega bosses because I got butthurt and wanted to show that I could. But it wasn't fun at many points.

Are mindflayers much nerfed on 5e? Because on BG2 i had problem dealing with then with high level party members. How they plan to have a low level game with such powerful creatures?

In the unmodded original BG2 they can be very easy.
They can dominate you and they can AoE stunn with mind blast and then eat your brain.
Use one character with immunity to mind effects (e.g. Lilarcor equipped) as bait and when they go after him the others attack from far away.
When you can cast mind blank on the party they become completely harmless.