Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Low AC high HP goblins - Larian's combat redesign

i really don't get most of the changes from 5e.
they unbalanced so many things by changing them even though they were perfectly fine before.
i am not a purist but don't fix things that are not broken.

Make Goblins less on AC and Hit point but rise their damage and distance they can walk per turn.

Where do you see these 7 AC goblins? Most of them are 12AC from what I see. It is lower than 15AC stock goblin with shield and their HP hovers around ~12HP area most of the time, which is higher than stock 7, but these are not some drastic differences there.

Overall, my recurring feedback was that there are too much misses as a whole. I certainly prefer 12AC over 15AC, I certainly do not fancy gameplay of spending an hour trading misses. It would be better in real time mode game, where every round takes 6 seconds flat and a few misses will just prolong combat by half a minute or so, but here a round can go good 2 minutes+. I don't really want 1 hour battles, unless it's maybe a key Act fight like that and even then 1 hour would be pushing it really.

You can consider this change a homebrew which is perfectly fine. Larian is a DM in this case and it's within their power to make changes that they think will benefit the game. It's same thing as them tweaking other stuff, like dipping, surfaces or even making their own version of Ranger (thanks god for that, even WoTC do not know what to do with this class with all the revisions, rollbacks and errata for 5e Ranger).

A fair point on spell effectiveness and yes it also might mean they would need rebalance a lot and they will. We can already see a lot of changes and it's not the last of those, EA will last 1 year+. I would not worry about Fireball at this point, especially because it will for sure leave a fire surface that is pretty powerful in BG3 for zillion reasons. If anything they might need to nerf Fireball a bit, just like they did with Firebolt. Same goes for sleep - if they really will up HP across the board, they will buff Sleep and similar spells too eventually.

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Also, quite frankly. This game will last good 80 hours single playthrough. Some people here say "whelp, misses would be more exciting if there would be blocks and different miss animations" and they certainly need to put these in, but let's be real - it would be nice and all first 2-3 encounters, but then the miss trading would get very stale very fast anyway, the end result. Pretty sure, I would not give a damn if that skeleton warrior parries me with a sword or blocks with a shield or just sidesteps 60 hours in on several misses in a row - it would be just annoyance all the same.

Change one thing in a well tested and balanced system, then you have to change something else, then you have to change two more things... chain reaction.

The game would benefit greatly from drastically reduced surface use. Concentration spells are nerfed to oblivion when you have to wade through seas of fire everywhere.

Non dnd players want to hit, Larian satisfies them.

I think claiming 5e is a well tested and balanced system is a bit of a tall order.

They revised, changed and modified it many times already. Heck there is a new book coming up with even more changes and you most certainly have pretty big issues in 5e as is, let's not pretend it is some sort of perfection there - far from it.

That's the whole point of this post. I don't want them to start rebalancing and changing everything for trivial reasons.

They ONLY need to make the misses exciting so it looks like intense combat instead of incompetent PC's. And that's something a video game can do better than tabletop anyway.

I do not agree it's "trivial" reasons. All said and done this game is not only for 5e purists, it is also a big AAA D&D title that needs to be successful for both Larian and WoTC - this means many people who are unfamiliar with D&D and/or 5e need to be welcomed and quite a few 5e quirks are a tough thing to swallow for many.

So yes, they do tweaks being aware it's not a game for just a bunch of D&D geeks' elite club, but for millions potential players outside that. They know too well those Xcom 99% memes and I am sure they want to try and alleviate that pain at least somewhat.

It is a known fact that Larian asked for this and other changes from WoTC and got a green light for it, because they both need the game to not be a frustrating experience for newcomers. My take is that it is absolutely fine, because bottom line - the more people buy it and the better rep it gets from general crowd - the more chance I'll get Baldur's Gate 3 expansion and Baldur's Gate 4 this century. If this means that your goblins have to get down to 12AC and up to 12HP and surfaces and such need to be more available, so be it.

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All in all, we're looking at normal difficulty now. I am sure after all said and done, they will also add higher difficulties that might be closer to what you so desire. And failing all that - you can count on mods that will make adjustments close to 5e - I can assure you there will be those 100%.

Look, an epic "miss" animation is cool and all, but that will become old very quickly. So I don't see the point in that. If I am seeing it 50% of the time (which would happen at AC 15 with lower level chars) I will get bored regardless.

Plus, at with low AC creatures disadvantage is much less punishing, and disadvantage on attacks (at least ranged) does seem to come up more in the game than in 5e because of reduced ranges/verticality.

I posted this in another thread already, but I think it's a great solution to the problem:

Make animations based on this.

It was also pointed out in the other thread that an animation for spell based AC should be added between dodging and armor.

I think you did not understand what the person was talking about. It does not matter if miss would have the most amazing animation ever that makes goblins Naruto-run away from your arrows or do feats of acrobatics worthy of circus performance or go full Jedi and parry your arrows and spells with their swords. It's ok - they can add these regardless and I bet they will. First 10-20, heck 30 times you see it you'll be "waaaw so cool", but after that it would be just "ok these misses are just bullshit, sheesh".

The main point of the quote was that no - missing half the time constantly is simply not fun in a video game like this. There is a reason why Xcom is such a meme and its hit rates are higher as is. People need to remember that this is not a tabletop game, we will have much more combat here, much more frequently than in any of the TT runs.

And there is also a fix possible for that "missing 3 times in a row" thing. There are already games out there which let the player decide through a setting which kind of dice they want to use. There is the normal dice you can get 4 ones in a row and others which try to reduce the cahnce of that happening by lowering the chance of rolling a certain number if you already rolled that one in the last say 10 rolls and increase the chances for the other numbers.

So instead of having 2 animations per enemy type you want 5? If not more. That is a lot of extra work for the team to do.

And all it does it hope that you don't get bored of the animations while you are facing the same type of enemy. Which is unlikely, at least in the case of goblins.

From my personal experience, I don't find the surfaces to be overbearing. I have completed the EA twice solo now, once with a ranger and once with a wizard and in neither solo run did I run into a situation where I felt like surfaces were a problem. I definitely did not feel like concentration being interrupted by surfaces was an issue either and I relied heavily on expeditious retreat on the wizard run and heavily on hunter's mark in the hunter run. I have vivid memories of fights like the black pits in dos 2, which I was not a fan of and despite all the criticism I see of surfaces in BG 3, I don't feel like they are ever present. They may be a balance concern, but they certainly don't feel like they outstay their welcome.

I don't relate to this, or understand how doubling the HPs and thus number of hits needed to kill is somehow better.

It reduces the dependency of luck. Killing an enemy with 2 hits is safe. High AC could mean you kill an enemy with one miss and a hit or 10 misses an a hit.

For reference, goblins don't have 7AC, Intellect Devourers do.

Booyahg is 8AC 9HP
Tracker is 10AC 10HP
Brawler is 12AC 12HP
Za'krug boss is 12AC 19HP

All significantly down from 15AC and up from 6HP though.

Bubgbear is 15AC 27HP.

It is a matter of perception, which is an important thing for something like a video game. Hence my Xcom references.

Miss is perceived as a frustrating waste of your turn, where as hit is a hit - you took action and it succeeded. Even if in the end it would average out to be the same - having much less of your turns effectively wasted is already a more positive gaming experience.

It is a psychology and there are reasons why this way it is better than a complete RNG-fest.

I would like it as well if they stick to the DnD 5e rules, giving Goblins high AC and low HP. High AC low HP enemies are simply not meant to be attacked by weapons. Use Spells or skills that target attribute saves. Or inflict status effects on them (e.g. prone, sleep). Or use AoE spells and skils to increase your chance of hitting. But giving them low AC and high HP just to make the standard 2H melee Fighter more viable in every situation sounds kind of dull to me.

Better visual feedback on what's actually happening in combat would be a very good thing. When everyone hits all the time, you have no distinction between evasive Rogues and tanky Fighters. Combat is just about depleting inflated HP pools, which I did not like at all in Divinity.

I'm 100% having more fun when enemies miss me, if I dodge or block or tank the attack. I hate it when I have 1500HP that steadily get depleted as nothing ever misses. And same rules need to apply to PC's and monsters.