Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback stick with the 5e monster stat blocks

I agree since I can see both sides of the arguement just want the three letter one to go away so we can focus on the whys and not simple assumptions, or opinions because some mechanics are the same. which is again true in a vast majority of games nowadays. It's only then imo that we can actually provide useable feedback. Such as number of booms, blips, pows, and oofs in the game that don't make sense.

I don't mind monsters having occasional variations, but please tone down the area of effect knockdown/knockback effects. Maybe I was just traumatized by having the bulette arrive in the middle of my minotaur fight, but it felt excessive (the minotaurs alone felt excessive as far as that went - the only time I won that battle was when the bulette arrived (knocking down a minotaur as well as me) and there was an AI error that prevented one minotaur who was on a higher elevation from realizing he could jump down (and knock my party sprawling) until later in the fight). Or at least have the knockdown attack be his only attack for the round and force him to do his 3 attacks per round on attacks he's not doing knockdown/knockback.

Hm, I'd say that in total, a LOT more people today know about DnD than did back in the 80s/90s/2000s...it has almost become mainstream (which I very much welcome, no matter what some people might think about 5E. It's wildly successful with an audience far bigger than any before).
However, it might be the case that the percentage of "people who know and like DnD" within the group of "people who care about story-driven tactical RPG video games" has changed compared to how things were back in the day - but I wouldn't know how to find out for sure.

Suffice it to say that I don't think going core 5E would 'alienate' too many people. But just as I wrote in the original post: If that is the worry, by all means, they could make it an option when starting the game: "Do you want 5E by the rules, no nonsense, or do you prefer things go boom every encounter?" <-- the latter option would need no balancing, just give enemies all the nitroglycerin they can eat, go nuts. The people who enjoyed DOS2 for that (I ended up playing Story Mode because I got so fed up with the system, but loved the story + writing) will again enjoy cheesing the hell out of unfair encounters or steamroll everything with that one combo they found.

Changing stat blocks is fine in principle but the changes being called out here are pretty aggravating. Every Goblin having an AoE attack item or secret special move just gets frustrating. If you don't split your party in prep of every encounter expect to be fire bombed before you even take a move... against a couple of goblins. Or there's the Mud Quasists. As written they have an ability that once a day lets them summon 25% chance of summoning 1d4 Quasists, so on average about 0.6. In this they have a per turn ability that summons an add. I mean if they had 100% chance of summoning one that would be on average a 50% buff, but one per turn. It's just annoying and drags the encounter. That's before you take into account that they seem to get ranged attacks of opportunity or the terrain makes dealing with the mobs popping in an out of cover cheesing the encounter slow to deal with. It's like playing D&D with a DM that's actively trying to kill the campaign.

yeah there's probably statistics somewhere, but I'm technologically impaired so not even going to try and find it all. Plus that was back when I was young, and the other two things I forget.

Pure DnD translates well to PC gaming when it's real-time with pause, like BG 1 and 2, Icewind Dale, etc. This game is taking a very deliberate turn-based approach which struck me as reinventing the wheel, but given Larian's track record I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt. Having played 4-5 hours so far it feels like combat is still very early in development. The turn-based approach does not flow well or feel good when combined with BG3's interpretation of DnD rules. Larger combats take a long time to resolve and the dice rolls seem to me to have a massive tendency toward missed attacks, which contributes to the slow feel of combat. I just don't think that faithfulness to DnD rulesets should take precedence over the needs of a turn-based RPG -- what BG3 the game needs should be prioritized over the DnD ruleset.

I'm gonna agree that tweaks and changes can be made as needed to keep the gameplay fun and keep us from fighting the exact same creature over and over and over again, but it still needs to be balanced and actually fun Just entirely throwing the already decently balanced monster stats out the window and giving them triple attack actions that can absolutely slaughter a party? That isn't fun, it just feels like whoever designed those monsters wants us to quit playing the game. When I finally managed to overcome a difficult fight, it didn't feel rewarding or like I had done something awesome, it just felt like I had slogged through a bunch of BS design choices until I finally managed to win.


A fun, rewarding fight that feels like I accomplished something and made some good tactical choices in a fight feels much better than almost being forced into cheesing a fight just because if you don't then it's full of BS mechanics like multiple monsters with high damage triple attacks or a certain Gnoll Warlord with a weapon that can one shot PC's that are higher level than it. The Gnoll statblock says they can use a bite attack as a bonus action if they drop an enemy to 0 HP, well to balance that into BG3 while keeping combat from being a slog, how about simply making it so that the Gnolls can use their action to attack one, and then their bonus action to bite attack whether they KO'd someone or not? That gives them 2 attacks a round no matter what weapon they have, which would be much more manageable and would keep Gnoll archers from being complete bastards who make me want to refund the game. If an archer wants to shoot me once and then try to close the distance for an extra bite attack, that's fine. But staying as far away as possible and firing off 3 arrows in one turn is nothing but annoying and frustrating, especially when there is usually more than one archer.

As a longtime DOS2 player I fully agree. Superficially it looks and "feels" like DOS2, then when you get into a medium to large-sized fight, it feels like a somewhat awkward and strange new experience compared to DOS2. For example, the movement bar is almost totally unused for some characters, while the one action limit feels crippling. It's worse when you forget to do a short rest and thus lack a spell slot. Yes, of course you can always remember to do short rests but what really is the point? Just make it automatic -- ah but I am sure here the DnD purists would get upset. I think the bulk of the work for Larian on combat mechanics is going to be making changes that favor turn-based PC RPG gameplay over a strict interpretation of table-top rules. I still need to play EA a lot more but already it feels like combat needs to have reduced variability in some of the misses (some epic bad dice rolls like XCOM, lolwhut), faster gameplay in larger/longer fights, and the limited action/spell slot/divinity point/combined with a huge separate movement bar that often goes unused is worth taking a long hard look at.

That's how action economy works, and it should stay that way. Sure there are some things they can tweak and change to make battle feel a bit smoother, but having your movement speed, one action, one bonus action, and your reaction (attacks of opportunity and some spells) is the way 5e D&D plays and should absolutely stay how it is. If they toss out the general basis of how D&D combat is run, they might as well just rename the game entirely cause then it would be lacking some of the most basic 5e rules. This is supposed to be a D&D 5e game, not a Divinity Original Sin game, they should not be making it play more like a game that it isn't supposed to be while drifting farther from the game it is supposed to be. That's like DOS3 coming out and you find out that it plays like a completely pure adaption of D&D rules. You wouldn't be very happy that your DOS game plays like a pure D&D would you? Well, we're not gonna be very happy that our D&D game plays like an almost carbon copy of a DOS game.

A game marketed and sold as a D&D game should lean towards D&D rules, with some tweaks and balances as needed to make it fun and keep a little bit of that Larian brand in there. But it should not move even farther away from the material it is supposed to be centered around just to appease the DOS players. When DOS3 comes out, then we'll have our next Divinity game. But this is not, and should not, be it. Whenever a DOS3 gets made, the D&D people aren't going to flood into the forums insisting that it become more like D&D when it has nothing to do with D&D, so why should this game that has nothing to do with DOS other than being made by the same devs be pulled towards playing more like DOS and less like D&D?

Some of that is 5e like fewer spells, you slowly gain extra spell slots as you progress in levels. Extra attacks those come in for some classes at lvl 5. the same with channel divinity. Also with the movement bar most times you are locked into combat with another and unless your a rogue monk, have certain feats, your going to get hit if you try and move. Which is why I asked rather politely (not really, though really for me it was a mary poppins moment) that the arguement about DOS be dropped and people focus only one what works and what doesn't. The short rest is also a mechanic of 5e, as is the long rest.

The most baffling thing about this game, and the changes they've made from 5e D&D is, "if it's not broken, don't fix it." Am I saying 5e is flawless and without issues, certainly not. But there's no denying that with over 45 years of evolution, 5e D&D has become a fairly balanced game, with many issues resolved over it's years of continued improvement and innovation. 5e hasn't become the most popular edition of D&D ever for nothing. While those trying to say "but this isn't PnP, it's a PC game" need to realize is that D&D has been faithfully implemented into PC games for over 30 years. Also, it's important to note that if things were reversed, and you made these fundamental changes to gameplay mechanics in PnP D&D they would be broken in that format too. The core mechanical game of D&D is actually fairly simple to implement into a PC game, it's just numbers. The difficult issue is making those numbers and core mechanics into a PC game that's enjoyable to play. Again, that's been done dozens of times (over 70 times if you include enhanced editions) over the decades with D&D, it can be done again. In fact, many of these games are considered some of the best RPG games ever made. And if you say "but they haven't done a 5e D&D PC game before" aren't familiar with two immensely popular programs called Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds for 5e D&D. Sure there's a lot more that goes into a PC game, the UI, the characters, the writing, the accessibility and ease of player controls, etc. But the fundamental mechanics (the numbers) of the game are already made for them, they simply need to copy them. Which is crazy, because many of the issues players are voicing and experiencing with this game are because they've altered the easiest thing to faithfully duplicate from 5e D&D, the numbers.

I'll give a couple examples of how two seemingly tiny changes in these numbers can drastically alter the gameplay and game balance of an entire system. A cantrip cast at first level that does 5-22 damage is game breaking. This change completely unbalances many other low level spells, it also unbalances all martial classes at low levels incapable of casting these now buffed cantrips too. Also, giving every character bonus action shoves and disengages not only undervalues a fundamental defining aspect of the rogue class, it completely alters the action economy of the entire combat system. While also diminishing the value of martial classes that get extra actions at higher levels too. This also makes other spells and feats that made these actions possible by other means useless now too. These two simple changes don't just influence the balance of casters to martial classes, action economy of all combat, and other low level spells either. These two changes now drastically alter the CR of all encounters too. Which means the CR of encounters now needs to increase as a result. Which creates another issue, now the party is taking more damage, and requires more healing. Which means they now have to introduce things like food that heals, and more healing potions and revivify scrolls. They have to be careful though, giving too much healing and your cleric class becomes obsolete and you're better off with one of those casters who can fire off those OP cantrips every round. Don't even get me started on how they've combined these two issues, and now have a cantrip that can shove as a bonus action now, and another that still does damage while also knocking opponents prone.

Two little changes and multiple systems drastically influenced. But they didn't just change two little things that drastically altered game balance. There's currently over 1,600 threads on this forum, many of them disusing how their changes to the core mechanics of 5e has fundamentally altered game balance. I have faith that many of the issues like pathing, inventory management, skill checks in conversations, UI annoyances and general bugs will be addressed as development continues. What worries me, is all the changes they've made from the core mechanics (the numbers) of 5e D&D, and the vast influences these changes have on what has made 5e D&D so popular and enjoyable for so many. As well as the impression this game will leave on players whose first experience with 5e D&D will be this game. If its not broken, don't fix it. If they want to improve on some issues with 5e, great! There are issues with 5e that could be addressed and improved on. But they're not trying to reinvent the wheel here, or at least they shouldn't be. They promised a 5e D&D BG game, and hopefully that's what they deliver.

I've mentioned it in other threads but I still feel like the way to make Baldur's Gate the most accessable to both people who like the Divinity series and people who want a faithful recreation of 5e is simply implementing difficulty the same way as BG1 and 2 did. If you wanted the full 2e experience it was there for you and all the missed dice rolls, memeber deaths, and action ecomony etc. were there for that experience. I think that's where BG3 should start and create that authentic 5e experience to start with in EA and then move onto changes for other difficulty settings that provided more quality of life changes to either player health, monster stats, extra spell slots, not needing short rests etc. A faithful 5e recreation is going to be a brutal game though, the unfeeling and uncaring DM that is BG3 has no issue with wiping your party as soon as possible and it's not hard to see why people just aren't a fan of that.

Well put RealMoisan.

I want to emphasize the part where you just gave two small examples, but that there are a huuge number of changes for those who know 5e well and are looking out for them.

I am hoping he majority of them are jsut bugs/oversights that will be fixed.. because they are easy to fix.. just need to change a tag or a calculation.

I'll agree with what you said in large part, but the thread count is probably off do to multipules of the same things being discussed. For instance there are 2 why should I be evil subtopics on the first page currently, another on page three if I remember correctly. So then there are a plithera of this isn't BG subtopics further throwing off the numbers.

perhaps if they simply went back to 5e straight up, purist style for their play testers as we're playtesting *enter massive brain fart* yeah well that which flew out the window.

[quote=clavis][/quote]

There are so many modules out for D&D 5e that do exactly what you are saying a game could not accomplish. My current group is playing Descent Into Avernus right now. That is a premade D&D game that the DM doesn't really have to put as much effort into. All of the things you mentioned are basically in the module already. Seems like a cop out response to justify not implementing 5e rules right away and adjust them over the next year to make it more enjoyable.

Butchering 5e rules before EA was a mistake imo. They could have had, like they do now, 1000's of free testers for 100% pure 5e rules. Also, this game is suppose to be 5e, as close to it as possible anyways.

So, it's actually broken. Cool.

And unfaithfully which is fine too.


Blown out of proportion; it raises and flattens the curve for casters and is mainly a concern from levels 1-3 but that's pretty much just the tutorial. Also, the problem is the terrain not the cantrip itself which can be adjusted to be internally consistent with D&D rules as Stabbey and others have mentioned. Don't conflate the issues.


Thief still gets another bonus action and still maintains having the best mobility out of all the classes and options. Being undervalued doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing either, it's dependent on context. And yes, it completely alters the action economy and balances it with a bias towards something else. But that something else is most likely not intrinsically bad either. So shrug.




Martial classes are pretty much the same, they didn't touch GWM and will probably implement SS. You're most likely not going to be shoving or doing anything of those sorts from levels 5+ as the field becomes more and more lethal. What is interesting to see is how the disengage and jumps play out. Will it change the balance? Absolutely. Will it be worse, I dunno that's what EA is for and just like anything it takes iterations to improve.

Also, most cRPGs do not follow the X encounters per rest guidelines and there is at least one DM treatise on what constitutes as an encounter. So CR is a wash for the most part since that is directly tied to the encounters per day thing. Also, you know that the existence of food and a large amount of potions may indicate more pressing matters other than the party has a chance of taking higher damage right? It may mean that they have to compensate for the fact that players may not even want to run a cleric in their party and if they do that the cleric is an EVVVVVVIL cleric who does nothing but deal pain.

You can also just sell those resources to gear up and clerics have more uses than just being healbots. Some of the most important things they do are providing advantage and other buffs.

You make a lot of assumptions here without knowing their constraints or their objectives.

unsure which post your quoting. Most of my posts though are focused on the differences between being able to do things on the fly as a DM with group in front of them, versus tweaking things from a video game developers stand point. The game developers can't adjust on the fly, and can't get direct feedback

never played Descent into Avernus as of yet, but Descent was built for pnp. and some of it would not carry over to video games, specially to players that have never played 5e before. there would have to be adjustments made to aid them, while still balancing game for hardcore, or just 5e players in general.


if want copy past the quote your referring to and pm it to me. so as not to cause to much scrolling.

Theifs extra bonus action makes it one of the best classes in the game right now, while arcane trickster is left in the dirt. This is mainly due to being able to offhand attack twice even if you didn't make a mainhand attack with a light weapon first. Hopefully this is a bug. But even if that does get fixed, the extra bonus action is still very strong.. perhaps still busted right now, it's hard to say.. but certainly once multiclassing is in, it will again be the most broken subclass feature.There is no way that that subclass feature can stay in the game the way it is.. it needs to be either severely restricted, or removed, and because of that we can't really say rogue is okay just because of this feature.

I believe he's referring to programs like Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds that I mentioned earlier. Basically, these programs have all the mechanics (numbers) for D&D already. You just download and install the adventure and input the character sheets, and the program handles all the dice rolls, attacks, damages, skill checks, saving throws, spell effects, monster stats, etc. And even displays everything on a hexagonal map, tracking movement, sight lines, distances, character and enemy placements, cover, elevation, fog of war, etc. So the DM just narrates the adventure, and the players just decide their actions, etc. Essentially, it's almost like re-creating a PC game of D&D where everyone communicates through mics, usually via Discord, and use the program to play the adventure. Suggesting that the core mechanics of 5e D&D are already proven to work well in a PC game. Not saying these two programs are identical to a PC game, there's still a DM. But everything is pre-loaded before the session starts, and it's amazing how infrequently the DM actually has to deviate from the core adventure, and just lets the adventure play itself.

But it is a problem, and one could argue that it was a problem that was completely unnecessary. One could also argue that the problem continues past level 3 (up until lvl 5 at least) considering how many spells loose value because the utility of some of these cantrips. There is at least a strong argument to be made concerning the identity of some spells in D&D.



Changing core features of a class is problematic for several reasons. First of all, people like to recreate their favorite characters. Not just as an RP concept, but mechanically. Another ting to consider, is that new features require lots of testing and balancing. And one could again argue that it was unnecessary in this case. And changing a class identity, pushes the game further, if only slightly, away from being D&D. I would say that the classes are one of the core pillars of what makes D&D, D&D.



Here you make some assumptions. Like shoving not being part of higher level play. I can see tons of situations where shoving something large down a steep cliff to get fall damage+prone+advange for ranged would be a good use for a bonus action, yes even at high level. Especially considering the maps so far. And you admit you don't know if it will be worse. So we come back to this: Why go the unbeaten path? Why create all this unnecessary work?

I would also argue that martials are changed for the worse with the implementation of facing. Your actions become close to scripted as a martial when you always slip around and hit. Positioning matters less than with for example flanking.



I do not agree that CR is a wash. Most DM's do not follow the recommended adventure day anyways (What is it, like 8 encounters?). They view it more like a tag that shows how hard a monster is. But there are system you could put in place to get sort of a normal adventure day. Take Darkest Dungeon for example. You get a certain amount of rests for a delve. I am not a game designer, but giving players a certain amount of camping supplies or similar could create something like an adventure day. I am sure smarter heads than mine could come up with a nifty design solution.

And if they want to let players play groups that have no healing and still be at full health, I would suggest that Larian adds a game option to let everyone heal to full after each combat instead. I am a big proponent of game mode options in games.