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

Yeah, Blackguards and Shadowdancers were fun to play in BG EE too, the latter even better because you got the sneak attack too unlike in PNP. And technically they were made by WOTC so...

On Kingmaker was worst because hellfire ray for eg, 3 rays, half fire half unholy means that the sneak attack is applied 6 times. If you have 6d6 sneak, you can deal 24d6 + the spell damage... This not mentioning a goblin companion that can attack like 8 times per round with dual wielding weapons and a decent BAB.

Anyone knows how sneak works on 5e?

In short, same as in the pathfinder videogame, you can deal sneak damage if you have advantage or the enemy is engaged in melee combat with anyone and you do not have disadvantage.

The difference is that you can only make the damage dice of SA once per turn, you cannot do the Nok-Nok trick of SA 6 times in the same turn, even if you are dual-wielding. You can use a finesse weapon, or ranged attacks to deal SA.

I read that you have only 1 sneak attack damage per turn but sneak damage gets multiplied on a crit.

I also read its once per turn, which means you can add sneak damage only once when you attack on your turn, but you can add it on another characters turn. Some classes have an ability that allows another party member to make an attack or enemies provoke AoO. Of corse you still need to have advantage or an ally stands close to the enemy.

You MUST have a ranged or finesse weapon, it does not work with other weapons.
A ballista is a ranged weapon, right

So basically Pathfinder was 3E but they tweaked a few rules like with the Sneak Attack? and its still a decent game imagine that.

I have played NWN2, but only OC, MotB and SoZ and I do not know the PnP rules.
Why do you say warlocks and other arcane casters are bad?

Warlocks can use a few spells infinite times and their eldritch blast gets 1d6 damage every odd level. You can upgrade the blast to cause AoE damage and cause additional damage or cause additional effects.
It is a touch attack and it can ignore spell resistance (the SR part is complicated, but it can be ignored).
So they do exactly the same as kinecticists in PK which you called very powerful.

Sorcerers are considered one of the most powerful classes in NWN2.
All of them use the arcane scolar prestigue class for more meta magic. The default epic caster is 26 sorc, 3 blackguard and 1 lv in another class.
The epic version can cast all spells in plate armor and shield, the normal one can still make himself immun to most effects and disable or blast all enemies.

No, pathfinder kingmaker changed the sneak rules.
In PnP you apply sneak attacks when the enemy is flanked or the enemy cannot see you or cannot defend himself.
The importent part is how flanked works.
In PnP a character is flanked when 2 characters engage an enemy in melee AND IF YOU DRAW A LINE FROM ONE CHAR TO THE OTHER THE LINE MUST GO THROUGH THE ENEMY.
The enemy is only considered fanked for the characters who engage the enemy in such a position.

In PK an enemy is considered flaked WHEN HE IS ENGAGED BY 2 CHARS AND THEN IT IS CONSIDERED FLANKED FOR ALL CHARS:
So when an enemy is attacked by 2 melee chars (including pets or summons) all characters can add sneak damage with any attack, including ranged attacks and spells.

example: E = enemy, M = melee chars, R = ranged character

E R PnP: nobody is flanked, PK: enemy is considered flanked for all chars
MM

MEM R PnP: enemy is considered flanked for both melee chars only, PK: enemy is considered flanked for all chars


Edit: The text ignores several space in a row. In the first example 2 melee chars attack the enemy from the same side while the ranged char is far away.
In the second example The melee chars attack the enemy from opposing sides and the ranged char is far away.

Well, the Eldritch Blast DC is bugged making enemies far more likely to resist. Kineticists on Pathfinder aren't nerfed, they just have way less things to choose from. But what makes then very good is that Wings can't make you immune to the effect of certain infusions like Deadly Earth(contrary to P&P where you can fly)

About Warlock Look to what Warlock reworked fixed on warlock https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/warlock-reworked-102g

• Fixed Warlock to have the right save DC on eldritch blasts (10 + half-level, shape level or essence level whatever is higher + Charisma modifier)
• (...)
• The Dead walk now works as DnD. It animated 1*Caster level (max 20) of undead and put them under your control for 1 minute. You can cast it as many times you want but you cannot control more than 2*Caster Level HD of undead. Those in excess will be removed from your control.
• Flee the Scene is now a teleport spell
• Word of Changing is now an hostile polymorph spell that change creatures to 1 HD ones if failed save
• Retributive Invisibility last 1 round/level as it should
• Chilling Tentacles changed with a proper Grapple routine and it now works as DnD
• Tenacious Plague works as DnD now, it doesn't stack with itself and it's more powerful.
• (...)

This are the most important things that the mod corrected. Chilling Tentacles is one of the most powerful invokations on P&P and on nwn2 is useless. Due the lack of grapple. As for sorcerers, is too hard to detail everything, but here is a big list https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/script/spell-fixes-and-improvements

To mention just two of my favorite spells





Sorcerers have d4 hit points on 3.5e and had to talk to a boss before they got all defenses dispelled and start the combat on melee. That with the spell nerfs made my sorcerer run at highest difficulty pretty hard.

I can understand that you like the PnP rules.
But this would make powerful classes even more powerful.
When I look at the NWN2 build maker, warlocks and sorcs are very popular classes, together with bards.
Only one build mentioned that it has a chance to beat a sorcerer (cleric, stormlord 10, dragon disciple10, becoming a storm elemental and being lv10 RDD gives immunity to some powerful sorc stuff)

Warlocks can cause AoE damage that causes additional effects every round without spending resources.

Sorcerers have many powerful spells and they can chose to use meta magic whenever and however they want.

Making them more powerful would ruin any remains of balance more, and game balance in DnD is already bad.

Playing a game at the highest difficulty is supposed to be hard.
Games are usually designed to be played with a full party at normal difficulty.
When you have problems on the highest difficulty (maybe even solo) than everything is fine.
If you had no problems, either your class is totally OP or the game design is really bad.

Balance is a thing that kills immersion, variety and replayability. Imagine a FPS, if everyone is using only M16, the FPS is very balanced, if everyone can use every weapon mass produced since black powder discovery and the game has realistic ballistics, the game can't be balanced. D&D is a game where you play as archetypes of many things present on fantastic literature. Of course a druid gameplay needs to be different than a warlock gameplay.

That said, on NWN2, Martial > Divine > Arcane. On P&P : Divine > Arcane > Martial. A boss that took like 8 minutes to my sorcerer kill, a warrior could kill in about one minute



Look how many times he hits 200+ damage in a single round. Not even epic spells can reach that Look to the weapons that some warriors can get mainly on MotB. Like +5d6 elemental weapon which means that if you have 4 attacks per round, and hit all, it is +20d6 damage.

Many offensive spells are not only nerfed compared to D&D but also compared to NWN1

For example, in nwn1 Evard's black tentacles get 1d4 tentacles + 1 / caster level (maximum 20)[1] tentacles, in nwn2 only 1d4[2]. If each tentacle can do 1d6+4, at lv 20 you can do 1d6+4*24 max damage in nwn1 and in nwn2 you can do only 1d6+4*4, 6x more damage in nwn1, is a very useful spell against spell immune creatures, but is useless against creatures with high DR. Other problem with NWN2 implementation of tentacles is that there are no grapple on NWN2. So they can't be used to deal damage, can't be used to prevent opponent move, can't be reliable used against high SR enemies, so what is the point of having a spell so nerfed that has ZERO use????

Other example : Horrid wilting, damage up to 25d8 in nwn1[3] and 20d6 in nwn2[4] and note that there are a lot of undead creatures in nwn2 OC.

sources :
1 : http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Evard%27s_black_tentacles
2 : http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Evard%27s_Black_Tentacles
3 : http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Horrid_wilting

---------------------------------

TL;DR - Even if balance is something important, invocations that nobody picks like the dead walk who only creates a single minion that dies in one round and was one of the most popular P&P invocations is NOT balanced. Having archers outDPSing your warlock eldricht blast by many times because the DC of his eldritch blast is bugged is NOT balanced.

Forget the balance thing. Forcing balance down the throat might lead to boring gear as in PoE2, probably the worst gear I've seen in any RPG.
BG is a timeless classic because of the crazy shit you can do. Hell, is there anything more fun than finding bizarre combos with UAI?

What is UAI?

Maybe some nerds like this stuff.
Players who are not experts for super complex PnP rules will get totally lost.
Either you look in the internet for a guide to make a powerful build and what spells/abilities to use then or you will likely crate total crap.
Pathfinder Kingmaker was very hard for me and the char I created was bad even though I spend lots of time reading the rules. It was my first pathfinder game ever.
At one point I gave up and finished the rest of the game on story mode difficulty (started on normal).
The game was good, but the rules are complex as hell and I did not want to start with a new char after playing for so many hours. I do not have infinite time for playing.

BG1+2 were fine, after reading the manual I was good enough to finish the game on normal with a full party.

NWN2 was also fine. My first char was a martial one with a huge sword. He was good enough to finish the game on normal with a full party, but he was not very good.
Later I played it again with a favoured soul and a full party on normal and this was much better. With persistent spells ( or spells that last long anyway) you buff yourself once and bash enemies all day long.

Once again, I play games on normal difficulty with a full party and without mods.
When I play for the first time I try to do it without a guide.
Back in the old days games were released with a huge manual that explained all game mechanics and some lore.
BG1+2 and arcanum had a manual that had a list of all spells and all abilities THAT ARE IN THE COMPUTER GAME!
For PK I had to look in the internet for the PnP rules and guess what of it gets changed for the computer game.
I have the feeling that devs expect players to look at guides in the internet today, which I consider bad.

Well, that's the thing. I think that this kind of complex game REQUIRES some reading, at least to have a basic understandment of the mechanics. I hate this conception from AAA studios that every game is for "everyone" and everything should be streamlined and easy to understand. Just compare Destiny with Borderlands to see how much some complexity and customization can elevate a game compared to a similar one.
I always read guides, and I also have way more fun when I start understanding how the game works and using it in my favor. A well placed spell in BG can make an impossible fight into a stupidly easy one.
And UAI = Use Any Item, HLA from Thiefs that can yield some hilarious results.

I like a manual that makes digging in to the game easy and approachable, with resources available for when im ready to dig in to the weeds.

RTFM 4 Life.

I like reading too.
Like I said, BG 1+2 were perfectly fine.

One of my problems is that many new games are released without having a manual as good as the one of BG.
When you get a game with complex rules the devs should also give you a manual that explaines these rules.
The devs of PK have said that they wanted to improve on how they explain the rules to the player in their next game.

As for use any item: I have finished ToB with a thief holding blackrazor on one hand and crom fayr in the off hand, together with gloves that give more attacks per round.
But spike traps killed everything anyway.

Even the Pathfinder creator had problem on Pathfinder Kingmaker. On my first run, i failed on Pitax due a bug(silver draconic sorcerer), but din't had to lower the difficulty or look to solutions online. I just carefully read the spell descriptions.

After some bug fixes, i finished as a sorcerer of undead bloodline. As for playing without mods, i generally only play my first time with bug fixes, my second, third, fourth, run i generally use mods to EXPAND the options of the game and some times, make the game more hard. I love Gothic but the inability to become a Guru on G1 made me install Golden mod. On NWN2, after i saw that most of my favorite spells was useless(normal, unmodded), i installed spell fixes mod for my second run. On Gothic 2 i finished 3 times before i installed RETURNING mod who mades the game exponentially harder and allow you to be a Xardas apprentice, something that i missed from Original game.

Skyrim i played normal but can't play with deadly dragons and other mods. I wanna fear dragons, not steamroll then with apprentice spells like firebolt + dual casting + impact perk. About manual, i was playing Dark Sun Shattered Lands and the lack of detailed explanations on manual made me pick awful spells. One class that i love is necromancer and in most games, it *****. So i have to use mods on most games.

EDIT : I DON'T recommend Sorcerer for starting players in any D&D 3.5e/Pathfinder 1E games. Sorceres can't switch spells, so if you picked a awful spell, you are stuck for the rest of the game.

EDIT 2 : See at 32 min here; he is playing on NORMAL >

And isn't this badass? If Josh Sawyer had designed BG you could forget about UAI and Spike Trap, two of my favorite things in the game.

When you create an RPG game (being tabletop or a videogame) with several options to customize your character, it´s understandable or even normal that some builds, weapon choices or party formations are more effective than others, some against some type of enemies or the setting of the campaign, others as overall all-rounders.

But a little balancing is always good because BG3 would be also a Role-playing game, so you may want to be able to play any class-race-background combination you want to play.

I mean, If I want to play a Half-orc artificer wielding a whip in the purest Indiana Jones-style I know it´s not going to be an optimum build but I least expect it to be playable. That´s even more important in MP games because you could be "forced" to play certain builds and discard others that you find fun.

I remember in NWN high-level servers you can find almost only multi-classed weapon masters of several kinds in the melee department because they are so over any other build that playing other thing is stalling your party members in high-level parties (and I am not even talking PVP here, because engaging a weapon master with another build is suicidal at best) and you seldom see a bard or a ranger of high level. I would like to be able to play without having to roll a fighter mage dual-wielding katanas or a cleric-ranger with flails or hammers because most of the weapons are subpar in comparison (and I do not want to be forced to play in story mode because I want to roll a particular character I want to roleplay that is not a power-play choice).

I can understand your point, but I should add that I remember this char because it was the only time I finished ToB.
There are a few tricks that can kill any enemy in a few seconds which I considered boring after doing it a few times.
Thanks to the HLAs you are a god who destroys everything.
This is one of the reasons why I liked BG1 way more than ToB.
In BG1 every char started weak and got more powerful over time.
In ToB some classes or abilities are gods while others feel totally useless in comparison.
Thats why I think that balance is importent, not in a sense that everyone is equally powerful, but at least all classes should feel viable and not completely useless compared to some others.

To be fair BG1 did one bad thing: It ruined the bard class for me as my bard was the most useless char there, Jack of all trades, master of non
- They can cast spells, but only when naked. Armor prevents casting and only mages can wear robes. Only late in BG2 comes an armor that allows casting.
- They can use most weapons, but they have only 1 attack per round, no specialisation and lower hit chance than warriors. Rogues have the same hit chance but their backstab makes them very useful.
- They can pickpocket. Well, this means the party rogue can spend more points on other skills.
Maybe I should try playing a bard in BG3 to overcome my hatred, they seem quite useful now.

I agree with you, this is the reason why balance matters.
It makes no sense to have 100 classes and races in a game when 90 of them feel totally weak compared to the other 10 and everybody either uses one of the OP characters or you have the feeling that your char sucks completely.