Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Goblin fights have huge balancing issues.

From what im seeing so far after going to the goblin camp is that many dialog options there can go wrong for you. This is fine but some of the combat moments that happen after these are waaay overblown to the point of frustration.

First big one is when you lose a charisma check or pick the wrong answer when talking to the goblin that gives you the Chicken Chase Game quest (or whatever it was called). After you antagonise her before or after starting her game she calls almost the entire camp for backup to kick your butt. Not sure but its something like 6-7 goblins total plus the big ogre near the temple door. Problem with this fight are the numbers of goblins that fight you because even with most of them beeing lvl 1 they still overwhelm you with the damage they deal. This huge fight comes out of nowhere for the player and is too big of a punishment IMO. This leads to me having to reload the save simply because the fight will wipe my party or i would have to analize the fight itself a few times to even stand a chance. Why bother to take your chances and fail an innocent charisma check vs some goblin gambler.


Second fight is in the temple with the goblin priestess. To keep it short (SPILER!!!). The goblin priestess offers to look into the parasite problem in your head but this just leads to her going 180 on you and wanting to kill you anyway. The fight? She calls for backup the whole temple with makes sense sure. Again this fight can go terribly for my lvl 3 party even with the goblins beeing lvl 1 mostly (not all of them) but perhaps im asking for it beeing balls deep in a goblin camp? The bigger issue is when the gnome merchant plus her 2 bodyguards swoop in. They only join the fight if a gobling happens to get close to them. That makes it so its not clear whether or not they are even supposed to join? They seem to tip the scale of the fight even more to the point where again im so punished by the choices i make that i have to reload and not make them at all.

Even if the answer is lvling your party to lvl 4 and preparing for the fight it still adds hoops to an experience that should be organic. Tell me what you think

Regarding the failed CHA check triggering combat, I agree that's not great design, however, it's pretty clear going in that you're not to faff about and anger the goblins, as it can go poorly for you.

Both of those combat encounters are very doable at-level using the right tactics. For the priestess fight, she doesn't actually aggro every goblin in the area. It's a wide area that gets pulled in, but if you keep your party in her little room and funnel them in you can limit the number of combatants and it becomes more manageable. It seems to be the war drums that toggle the entire area to hostile, and there aren't any near her for that fight.

For the fight outside, I recommend doing it after you've cleared more of the camp and they're all hostile. Fast travel to the goblin camp waypoint (this starts the fight) and get your party on top of the wall where you spawn. From here you have advantage over the entire field, bad guys trickle in one after the other and are easily 1-2 shot. Fire surfaces go a long way to limiting how fast goblins come, as the AI would rather risk arrows than damage from surfaces. The ogre's pathfinding sucks and he can't get to you. It's an easy, if somewhat tedious fight if you do this.

I didn't have much of an issue with these fights, I actually thought the outside of the goblin camp was a little undertuned and the goblins could use more HP. My only issue is there's like no way to stop Priestess Gut from calling for help.

I dies twice to the goblins outside the camp and the third time I barely survived. It is truly baffling to me how wide the experience of combat is among the current playerbase. It runs the complete gamut and it cannot be a sign that things are well balanced currently.

I did not experience this but something similar and with essentially the same encounter. I walked through the goblin camp and took out the leaders inside one by one. I was able to do this at my own pace until I took out the last one at which point the entire camp became hostile and when I exited the inner area it automatically turned into a massive encounter without any warning. You can take out the lesser bosses without triggering any further combat so it came as a surprise that I could not just walk out of the goblin camp as I had walked in. I ended up reloading a save and just warping out of there but its just that the last thing you are expecting after clearing a dungeon and finishing the boss fight is to walk back through an area that was no hostile and immediately get dumped into a 16 enemy encounter.

I was kind of chuffed with the idea that I had stealthed my way in and out using the goblin prisoner but it didnt really matter in the end because some variable got ticked and everything went hostile.

Are you sure none of the goblins banged a drum? I think the intent is that the drums toggle the whole camp hostile and I personally wasn't able to keep them away from them so I'm not totally sure.

For me the issue comes with the archers having a lot of bombs on them. Why? Bombs are supposed to be rare in DnD but nope, they got all the bombs and arrows with surface effects and just bomb you from higher ground. Your AC means jackshit then because it creates fire surfaces and ur down to half hp by the time u get ur turn. Divinity rules in a game that doesn't have the Divinity armor system.

Heh I had an entire experience with Priestess Gut where I went into dialogue with her and we never engaged i combat. I reocmmend trying that one out I did it by accessing the temple through the alternate entrance shown in a previous Larian playthrough but coming from the backside of the mountain (where the Githyanki encounter is). Then sneaked all my way to her from the ceiling. Used invisible poition to send one guy to engage in a conversation with her. Really cool encouter!